Читать книгу Inclusion, Inc. - Sara Sanford - Страница 25

On February 11, 2018, former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz was asked at a town hall meeting about the arrest of two Black men in a Philadelphia Starbucks the previous April. He stated, “As somebody who grew up in a very diverse background as a young boy…I didn't see color, and I honestly don't see color now.”

In response to the arrest, Starbucks closed 8,000 stores for an afternoon and hosted its largest one-day corporate training on unconscious bias. Bryan Stevenson, the founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, took part as a leader. In a video at corporate headquarters, hip-hop musician and actor Common delivered an opening meditation, urging employees to participate with open minds. Starbucks didn't skimp. This was venti-sized diversity-and-inclusion star power.

And yet, almost a year later, Starbucks's chief executive couldn't understand why “I don't see color” is off the mark at best, and more likely, harmful. Starbucks is just one of many US companies that spend a total of $8 billion a year on diversity training, only to have it backfire.

As noted in chapter 1, one of the most pernicious aspects of bias is that learning about it doesn't make us any better at recognizing it in ourselves or stopping it from impacting our behavior. As I experienced through the Harvard Implicit Association Test, being faced with my own biases over and over didn't make me any better at countering them in the kinds of split-second decisions that make up most of our lives.

But why do these trainings backfire? Why are white men who are asked to attend diversity trainings actually less likely to hire and promote women and minorities?

This unintended consequence can be credited, in part, to a pesky phenomenon known as moral licensing.