Question:

I cannot believe what I just read on this page. The answer made some valid points, but I would like to point out (and I am a Black-female "baby boomer") that some whites understood the injustices suffered by Blacks that made the organizations mentioned necessary. The NAACP was founded by Blacks and sympathetic whites who understood the issues. How would you like it if just because more than two white families moved into a neighborhood, everyone else moved? It probably really wouldn't bother you at all. How would you like it if when you went to work, the only other person of your race who worked there was the janitor or the maid? How would you feel if every time you took a class, you were the only white person there? And, finally, how would you feel if you are sitting in a job with more degrees than anyone else there, yet you made the smallest salary? Don't talk about Blacks needing to get over anything. The straight fact is very little has changed, except now employers don't have to give you a reason for not hiring you. They can't advertise "whites only," but when you get to the interview, you know that the job is for "White People Only."

Answer:

Your e-mail points out why proactive, mandatory diversity training with follow-up is absolutely necessary in a business environment. Training will reduce the sense of entitlement that is a natural result of being a member of the majority culture. The natural state of affairs for the majority culture anywhere on earth is to believe that "everything's fine."

For people not in the majority culture, it helps reduce the sense of incredulousness. Your "how would you feel if" scenarios are real, but most white people simply don't have enough life experience to understand them in a realistic enough way to change behavior. Training helps non-majority people to understand that this is due to simple human nature. It also helps surface their own internal biases.

Competent training promotes an "aware" work force. It encourages equitable treatment of customers and coworkers. Training will also surface incorrigible bigots for further action. A company has the right to determine its values and diversity can be held as dear as proper accounting practices. 

By the way, most of the people who e-mail me with their hate rants don't realize that the "white-only" jobs and neighborhoods aren't for them either. Once you get past the easy-to-see differences like race, you can go to the more difficult to discern differences of religion, alma mater and socioeconomic class. (For my supremacist readers, look up "night of the long knives.")

For those companies that don't have mandatory diversity training (one aspect of what we measure in The DiversityInc Top 50 Companies for Diversity^®), please look at the endless loop of "get-over-it" e-mails. This column will provoke more e-mails like this one, which is what provoked the e-mail that heads up this column.