Diversity Training

On the surface, diversity is an easy sell. Companies endorse it; government supports it; people give lip service to it. After all, everyone looks good when they say, “Of course, I’m for diversity. Who isn’t?” “I’ve even been through training.” “We have a diversity policy here.”

As a writer, I have been in a position to promote diversity awareness for twenty years. I’ve been hired by major corporations and nonprofits to create videos; training manuals; four-color, glossy brochures; and two books on disabilities. I once tried to launch a business to help small businesses institute diversity practices. It didn’t fly.

The story behind these efforts was not always pretty. The first company that hired me to write and produce a video spent thousands of dollars on the project. I was naive enough to believe management was sincere in its efforts. The HR director told me the CEO only agreed in order to honor a clause in the company’s contract with the union.

The editor of the training manual decimated the copy for reasons I no longer remember. It didn’t take me long to figure out she knew absolutely nothing about the subject. I asked to have my byline removed from the manual.

The saddest outcome was the book that told the stories of thirty-seven young adults with developmental disabilities. Its publication would have coincided with the passage of The Americans With Disabilities Act. But the director of the association that sponsored the project put the completed book in a drawer and left it there for three years. By the time it saw the light of day again, the lawyers had hacked it, as well as the photographs, to shreds.

In the intervening years, the world we live in has fulfilled its promise of becoming ever more diverse. Where once the issue revolved primarily around gender and race, it now encompasses every conceivable characteristic from ethnicity to disability and from language to age. As our society has become increasingly heterogeneous, sadly, appreciation of individual differences has not kept pace.

Sad to say, it may have moved in the other direction.