I will occasionally ask someone I meet what their experience has been with secular diversity training programs. Their response usually begins with a roll of their eyes and then follows with something along the lines of, "Yea, they made us go through some type of training but I really didn’t get much out of it." One person told me, "They made us take an online course but, honestly, I just clicked all the way through it because we had to." So, I wasn’t that surprised to hear that a recent American Sociological Review study based on 31 years of data showed that secular diversity training programs are having a very limited impact on our country¹. This is incredible in light of the enormous amount of time and billions of dollars that are being spent on them. A variety of recent books even argue that secular diversity programs are having a negative impact on race relations in our country. For example Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn (a secular author) writes in Race Experts: How Racial Etiquette, Sensitivity Training, and New Age Therapy Hijacked the Civil Rights Revolution (p.232):

By not discussing the policies, tech­niques, and theories of the race experts, we fail to submit them to col­lective debate and referendum. We have been lulled into acquiescence by the experts’ claims of expertise, by what appears to be their rather innocuous commitment to "valuing diversity;" and by the way they align themselves with the rituals and rhetoric with which we have become all too familiar.

We are playing with fire. When racial oppression and racism are cast only in terms of incorrect attitudes or estranged emotions, solid ground for condemning them imperceptibly slips away. The resulting confusion potentially allows for a resurgence of racism — either by blacks or by whites — all under the guise of self-expression. If that self-­expression ever goes beyond the pale into clear racism, the logic to tackle it is hard to retrieve. After all, racists might have only been expressing themselves, which is the first step toward recovery, even if recovery itself seems always to be receding over the horizon.²

My point in this article is not to critique secular diversity training programs. I have found that well-developed diversity training programs, research, and resources can be very helpful. However, I think it is important to recognize that diversity training…

1. Shouldn’t determine our approach: For good or bad, secular diversity training programs play an enormous role in determining how the people in our society think, feel, and talk about race relations. When we talk about the New Culture we must be careful to not just adopt their theories and language without evaluating them in light of the teachings of the Bible.
2. Confirms the need for Christ: Seeing the struggles of secular programs to bring about societal change is another confirmation that it is impossible to build and sustain the New Culture apart from abiding in Christ.
3. Cannot fix the race problem: We should not look to diversity training programs to heal the racial divisions and to right the injustices in our country. It is the Christian church’s responsibility and privilege to lead this effort.
4. Can make us "guilty by association": People often associate our efforts to build the New Culture with diversity training programs even though they are entirely different (see below). For most people this sparks a certain set of emotions (usually negative) that must be recognized and overcome.

Building biblical, multi-ethnic community vs. secular diversity training

Here are a few of the ways that building and sustaining biblical, multi-ethnic community is different than many secular diversity training programs:

1. Christ is our example and the source of our unity: All of our efforts to join in community with one another are based on the foundation of Christ’s life, teachings, and power.
2. We have a compass point: Why should people of different ethnicities seek to build relationships with one another? How do we judge what is right/wrong, appropriate/inappropriate, etc? How should we handle conflict? These can be difficult questions for secular programs to answer. The Bible gives us a clear compass point to answer these and the hundreds of other difficult questions that must be navigated when people come together from various ethnic backgrounds.
3. We focus on the Creator: We acknowledge and enjoy our ethnic differences as an expression of God’s amazing creativity and artistry. But, we are careful to give the worship to the Creator and not the creation and to not promote our culture at the expense of loving one another.
4. Our primary focus is not avoiding offense: Much of the secular diversity training industry is focused on keeping people from offending one another, reducing a corporation’s potential of being sued, etc. We are concerned about avoiding offense (Romans 14:19) but that is not our primary focus.
5. We are not pursuing tolerance: Our goal is not to help people to tolerate one another’s differences or just coexist peacefully. Our goal is to help people overcome their ethnic barriers and form strong, loving relationships in the context of a unified community. As Michael Emerson explains in People of the Dream, p. 192:

The ideal of tolerance has important implications for how people relate and should relate to each other. Namely, they do not have to. Its critics charge tolerance as mere escapism. Rather than attempting to resolve differences and working to correct injustices, people are merely told to be tolerant. Tolerance, critics charge, has no healing power. Rather than producing understanding, it merely produces indifference.³

Footnotes:

¹ Cullen, L (2007). Employee Diversity Training Doesn’t Work. Time, Retrieved August 7, 2008, from http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1615183,00.html.

² Lasch-Quinn, E (2002). Race Experts: How Racial Etiquette, Sensitivity Training, and New Age Therapy Hijacked the Civil Rights Revolution. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.

³ Emerson, M (2006). People of the Dream: Multiracial Congregations in the United States . Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

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