> it seems very unfair to paint Google as a prejudiced organization for carrying out a diversity exercise that is explicitly recommended by organizations who specialize in this field
The site [1] says the "diversity exercises listed below are geared toward college students, faculty and staff." Out the door, they're being mis-applied.
The PDF [2] is attributed to the "Office of First-Year Programs Northern Kentucky University". No names, let alone specialists.
For an organization (Google) claiming to be scientific about its decision making, they seem to have misapplied a program with a propensity for being abused, put it in the hands of someone without "a background or expertise in facilitating exercises that may be culturally sensitive," and retaliated against individuals who complained.
You're right, that's a good call out. I'm certainly not well-versed enough to know the nuances between diversity training intended for University staff vs Google staff. My first instinct is that "college staff" covers a very generic and broad set of workplaces, hence why it seems reasonably applicable to Google's workplace as well. But I might certainly be mistaken.
I was mostly responding to the parent comment which stated: "Can’t even wrap my mind around why someone thought this would be a good idea". I'm not endorsing this exercise myself. But given the above source and purpose, I can wrap my mind around why a reasonable well-intentioned person might think this was a good idea.
The site [1] says the "diversity exercises listed below are geared toward college students, faculty and staff." Out the door, they're being mis-applied.
The PDF [2] is attributed to the "Office of First-Year Programs Northern Kentucky University". No names, let alone specialists.
For an organization (Google) claiming to be scientific about its decision making, they seem to have misapplied a program with a propensity for being abused, put it in the hands of someone without "a background or expertise in facilitating exercises that may be culturally sensitive," and retaliated against individuals who complained.
This is worth calling out.
[1] https://www.uh.edu/cdi/diversity_education/resources/activit...
[2] https://www.uh.edu/cdi/diversity_education/resources/activit...