(A)woke Workplaces

Abstract

With heightened expectations for a reckoning in response to the broad support for the Black Lives Matter movement after the senseless murder of George Floyd in 2020, employers explored many options to improve racial understanding through discussions with workers. In rejecting any notions of the existence of structural or systemic discrimination, let alone the need to address the consequences of such discrimination, certain groups have begun to oppose BLM by seeking to diminish any social justice actions. One of those key resistance efforts includes labelling in pejorative terms any employers that pursue anti-racism objectives via social justice statements or internal initiatives as being “woke” workplaces. These groups have also criticized employers who adopt diversity, equity, and inclusion training to help workers address racial differences by arguing these sessions apply divisive Critical Race Theory principles that discriminate against and seek to stigmatize white participants. By using CRT and woke labels as weapons, critics leave employers in the unenviable position of determining how to implement antiracism trainings in an environment of BLM reforms and race discrimination concerns. These all-encompassing anti-anti-racism narratives now force employers to show how their DEI trainings and related initiatives do not discriminate against white employees. This Article offers unique insight for employers who pursue DEI measures to achieve racial progress and asserts they may circumvent antianti-racism narratives by continuing to rely on the litigation reforms and stillpresent empirical results that led to the growth of DEI training practices in the 1990s. Many employers had adopted DEI initiatives as good corporate citizens valuing diversity in human resources as a growth of affirmative action in the 1970s. With legal concerns in the 1990s about huge jury verdicts in discrimination lawsuits and empirical indicators of systemic discrimination, employers embraced more comprehensive racial improvement and training steps via written consent decrees and judicially approved settlements. This Article concludes that awoke employers should adopt broader DEI goals and limit training on entry-level racial awareness given empirical data suggesting this particular approach tends to spark backlash without any resulting diversity improvements. Instead, awoke employers understand that most constituents want them to act and lead responsibly regarding comprehensive DEI measures by going beyond legal protections. Training can focus on managers who may subject a company to employment discrimination liability. Awoke training integrates key follow-ups and correlates to measurable DEI results. Focusing on DEI training alone ignores the more important structural change work.