Just Another Day in the USA

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[–]L_X_A 4 insightful - 2 fun4 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 2 fun -  (1 child)

Well, the post is a meme, so I guess we can both agree its content is to be interpreted as hyperbole. And I don't think it's reasonable to dismiss its message just because the current situation is nothing like literal re-education camps.

I appreciate and understand that you, like many others, do not perceive the push for "goodthink" as all that intrusive. And that you see no problem with a single 3-hour training done once for one's entire tenure at a company. Neither would I.

But standpoint epistemology ("lived experiences") is not a good tool for assessing generalized sociocultural trends. Your company might be doing it right; meanwhile, Coca-Cola is telling their employees to be "less white". Just because it's not happening to you at this moment, doesn't mean it is not happening to others, or that it won't happen to you in the future.

Complacency and desensitization are two of standpoint epistemology's blindspots woke grifters take advantage of. It's the boiling frog paradigm. They will not start by hitting you with compelled speech, identity-based penitence, public demoralization, and fully-fledged Robin DiAngelo-style indoctrination. If they did that, there would be immediate resistance, and the gig would be over. Instead, they will encroach little by little, shifting the line just a little bit further. Enough to make you slightly uncomfortable, but not enough that you'd do something about it.

This gradual, ever-intrusive progression was already mentioned in the Harvard Business Review article I linked to in my original comment:

we recommend investing in a multipronged diversity and inclusion program [...] this includes a broad range of approaches, from targeting training to different audiences, to re-engineering hiring practices, to normalizing flex time, to using technology and behavioral science [...] collect data on the attitudes and behaviors of current employees who are the target of most diversity trainings

Just to be 100% clear. I do think certain types of cultural sensitivity and inclusion training do make sense in a lot of situations. I, for example, attended cultural sensitivity training before assuming a technical lead position on a project where half the workforce was located in India. It was really informative and saved me a lot of potential trouble down the line. I also think a code of conduct course addressing harassment and discrimination is a perfectly reasonable part of onboarding.

That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the encroachment of pseudoscientific, ideology-based, behavioral and language policing; the attempted highjacking of the workplace for social engineering purposes. [1] [2] [3]

[–]FozzieBear 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Thanks for this. It's the first I've heard of 'standpoint epistemology' and the first I've seen these kinds of arguments (and I only occasionally read well-written arguments like this on Saidit). The usual excuse that we need greater inclusivity in the workplace makes sense to me, though I think and/or would agree that it does come at a great cost: that the inclusive dialogue does not protect/include those of us who enjoy sarcasm. It can shut down honest, open dialogue in the workplace. Inclusivity should, it would seem, involve the tolerance so-called microaggressions or sarcasm. It's not even up for discussion at the woke workplace. Like me, many at Saidit are contrarians who've likely offended with "microaggressions" the sensitive folks at Reddit (but I also offend people here at Saidit).Thanks for the informative response.