Starbucks needs more than racial bias training: "You cant train bias out of people" [View all]

[Amaryllis]

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“Just doing training is not enough,” said Holly Hutchins, associate professor of human resource development at the University of Houston’s College of Technology. “Organizations tend to rush to the training option as a way to quickly window-dress issues, especially around gender or racial bias.”

Of all the options available for educating the workforce, Hutchins said diversity training “actually has the least impact”.

“People are feeling like they’re going to be strong-armed into changing their beliefs and perspectives about something, and it can often trigger even more stereotypes and backlash,” she said.

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Heather McGhee, president of Demos, an equal rights thinktank, will develop the Starbucks training plan with the former US attorney general Eric Holder and representatives of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education fund, the Equal Justice Initiative and the Anti-Defamation League.
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McGhee said she was not surprised by what happened to Nelson and Robinson.

“It called to mind some of my earliest memories as an African American of feeling unwelcome and being discriminated against in stores and restaurants and movie theaters,” McGhee said. “This is – more than most people who are not black know – a regular part of the considerations we have when moving through public and private spaces in America.”

McGhee said that while the closure of stores and the implementation of racial bias training was an eye-catching step, it would serve “really as an introduction”. It was important that Starbucks carried on the work, she said, including encouraging “interpersonal interactions” among employees of different races and backgrounds.


More:
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/apr/21/starbucks-racial-bias-training-black-men-arrested?utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=GU+Today+USA+-+Collections+2017&utm_term=272313&subid=20993289&CMP=GT_US_collection