Woke @ Work

Read Time: 4 minutes On Jan. 17, The New York Times published an opinion piece from Jesse Singal titled “What If Diversity Training Is Doing More Harm Than Good.” The article was a missed opportunity to highlight the benefits of organizational transformation focused on mitigating measurable identity-based inequities, a change that unfolds along a developmental continuum from diversity to inclusion to equity and is executed over years. The “gotcha” framing of the article focused on a well-known fact among equity practitioners and demonstrated in studies: transactional trainings focused on unconscious bias and “consciousness raising” yield little to no measurable benefit and can challenge morale in ways that degrade commitment to diversity and inclusion.

Read Time: 2 minutes Mara Brennan-Magidson (she/they) is the White Allies Training Associate at Equity In The Center. Mara is a facilitator, organizer, and highly distractible creative living and learning her way on the Dakota and Anishinaabe land, also known as the Twin Cities of St. Paul and Minneapolis in Minnesota. Mara is honored to support EIC’s learning spaces that are intended for white folks to examine internalized white supremacy and commit to anti-racist action.