Here is Ravi Sov because There is an interesting story about this; You can view the complaint and attached exhibits here. Of course, note that this is only the plaintiff’s side of the story (Soave reports that “did not respond to a request for comment,” which is common in litigation). A quote:
In November 2022 [Diemert] filed suit, alleging that the city’s racially hostile work environment damaged her mental and physical health… inspired, she argued, by so-called antiracist training sponsored by the city government’s Racial and Social Justice Initiative (RSJI).
“The city of Seattle believes that race representation is paramount, and they believe that people should not be judged by their personalities or their individual actions, but by their collective race,” said Diemert. “In fact, they say that if you judge people by personality, it was actually a tool of white supremacy that was used to oppress people of color.”
The environment Diemert describes is almost too toxic and oppressive to believe; By his account, Seattle’s RSJI program sounded like a conservative’s nightmare of a progressive workplace—something that would be ruthlessly parodied. South Parkor Portlandia. But his allegation is backed by hard evidence: actual copies of the anti-queer training documents the city uses. In fact, these documents can still be found on the city’s RSJI website.
The training is based on the highly controversial and much-criticized work of Tema Okun, a consultant who identifies issues such as perfectionism, timeliness, sense of urgency and aspects of “white supremacy culture”. (Okun is a white woman.) Okun has had a significant impact on the diversity and equity industry, and these ideas often come up in the training materials of educational seminars. A similar work by author Judith Katz—also a white woman—previously appeared on the website of the National Museum of African American History and Culture.
Okun was interviewed recently The Interceptof Ryan Grimm, who has reported at length on dysfunction within progressive organizations. He expressed deep doubts about the weaponization of his work and asked Grimm to publish an updated version in which he qualified many of his original claims.
“It became clear to me that quite a few people were abusing it,” he said….
Click here to see the full story.