Of course, when people work together, there can be tension and disagreement. But policing informal behavior makes it hard for people to speak freely for fear they will say the wrong thing. Even self-aware individuals can doubt their judgement and start to rely on the diversity trainer to judge if something is offensive.
America's problem is too much political correctness.
When employers are faced with substantial penalties for discrimination, then they'll begin to do something.
We decided a number of years ago we could do a better job at diversity. It was going to be one of the growth areas available to us. There are a variety of initiatives to create more awareness with African-Americans and Hispanics and anyone else.
It takes zero politically correct people to screw in a lightbulb because they are perpetually in the dark.
Building a police culture that reflects the professionalism of our best officers will require that we pay a decent wage. Treating every American as truly equal in the eyes of the law will require that we teach officers to understand different cultures and social conditions and to recognize the implicit biases we all carry.
If we could create the conditions that make racism difficult, or discourage it, then there would be less stress and less need for affirmative action programs. One of those conditions would be an economic policy that would create tight labor markets over long periods of time. Now does that mean that affirmative action is here only temporarily? I think the ultimate goal should be to remove it.
We want to teach girls of color the skills they need and create a diversity of voices into the tech community.
Absolutely the greatest challenges in dealing with discrimination are with the larger group who needs to consider how they think and act in everyday life. It remains the possibility of the majority to accept the call to change.
As somebody who has been an executive producer on a television series, I can tell you that increasing director diversity is as simple as hiring more women and more people of color.
I haven't done years of diversity training, so sometimes I say things which are probably tactless, and I don't mean to, to be honest, I don't mean to do that.
Any sort of political correctness needs to be swept out of the way
The two pillars of 'political correctness' are, a) willful ignorance, and b) a steadfast refusal to face the truth.
Racist, sexist, and homophobic thoughts cannot, alas, be abolished by fiat but only by the time-honored methods of persuasion, education and exposure to the other guy's-or excuse me, woman's-point of view.
I think it's not up to Congress to dictate what the right amount of diversity is, but I think it's Congress' place to ask the question, to any industry, in talking about what's going on out there. Is there a lack of preparation of the community to be ready to be involved in that industry?
I think that if companies build for diversity from the beginning from the ground up, that's definitely the ideal state for how to build diversity into your company.
While I started out with a vague understanding that diversity would be important, my own observations have led me to realize that achieving greater levels of diversity is in fact vital to our long-term success.
The South African native is probably the one impossible person to train in the entire world; he is probably impossible by any human standard.
I have a vested interest in increasing the amount of diversity in my own business. That's something that I care about. So mentoring people who are trying to break into the business who could use a hand, that's the type of person I look for.
I think the issues around diversity of all kinds are really a huge problem in the startup world.
I don't mind the job of saying to white people, "Yes, this is what I think you need to know, this is what I think you've been missing." And it's my job to educate white folks every day.
When the culture of police departments is sometimes infused with bias or preconceived ideas against certain groups, there needs to be reform and retraining throughout. And unfortunately, we cannot rely on local departments to police themselves; we need intervention from the top.
Political correctness gets in the way of all too many things in this country of ours, I am not a subscriber of political correctness by any means, shape or form.
The notion of political correctness has ignited controversy across the land. And although the movement arises from the laudable desire to sweep away the debris of racism and sexism and hatred it replaces old prejudices with new one. It declares certain topics off-limits, certain expressions off-limits, even certain gestures off-limits. What began as a crusade for civility has soured into a cause of conflict and even censorship.
This (multicultural) approach has failed, utterly failed.
