Chloé Valdary’s Kind, Gentle and Honest Diversity Program

Are you tired of hearing about the bullying, divisiveness and unvarnished bigotry pushed by many players in the diversity, equity, and inclusion industry? Players like Robin DiAngelo and Ibram X. Kendi, who freely misrepresent the facts and statistics and hide behind abstruse terminology?

Are you frustrated that many so-called programs in the booming diversity industry completely fill the time of their sessions with preaching and refuse to leave any time for questions and criticisms from the audience? That is what I’ve noticed about two recent mandated continuing education diversity programs I attended (now required for all lawyers in Missouri).

I’m not claiming that all diversity programs are deficient. I don’t know enough about all diversity programs. Based on many programs about which I am familiar, however (including programs like this), this is an industry that needs to be vigorously investigated for its numerous lapses in integrity. No doubt we live in a country that includes racists, but the extent to which these increasingly popular “diversity” programs solve the problem (rather than making things worse) is a troubling question.

Are you dismayed that today’s social justice warriors and critical race theorists have abandoned and ridiculed Martin Luther King’s dream for a color blind society? So am I, and many “diversity” programs also ridicule MLK’s dream. I’ve learned of several programs that explicitly segregate the participants by skin color. Here is a recent instance, the Brentwood School in Los Angeles:

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And especially if you have had your fill of the types of “diversity” programs exposed by Christopher Rufo, you’ll find this article in The Atlantic to be a breath of fresh air: “Can Chloé Valdary Sell Skeptics on DEI? Valdary’s Theory of Enchantment elicits unusual openness, trust, and engagement from ideologically diverse observers.” Here is an excerpt:

Chloé Valdary is the founder of Theory of Enchantment, a diversity and resilience training company that the 27-year-old African American entrepreneur runs from Downtown Brooklyn. Its website lists clients including TikTok, WeWork, the Federal Aviation Administration, and Greenwich High School, and asks potential customers a loaded question: “Looking for an antiracism program that actually fights bigotry instead of spreading it?” . . .

Three principles guide all of the coursework [Chloé Valdary’s] company offers:

    • Treat people like human beings, not political abstractions.
    • Criticize to uplift and empower, never to tear down, never to destroy.
    • Root everything you do in love and compassion.
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Erich Vieth

Erich Vieth is an attorney focusing on civil rights (including First Amendment), consumer law litigation and appellate practice. At this website often writes about censorship, corporate news media corruption and cognitive science. He is also a working musician, artist and a writer, having founded Dangerous Intersection in 2006. Erich lives in St. Louis, Missouri with his two daughters.

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    Erich Vieth February 3, 2021 Reply

    Chloe Valdary, writing in the Boston Globe:

    Organizations around the country have brought Kendi in to give talks and schools have added his work to classroom curricula, including in Virginia, California, Chicago, and Washington, D.C. And I fear that in such settings, discussing race in broad strokes and calling for confession lay the groundwork for well-intentioned seekers of racial justice to pursue the opposite.

    For one thing, the focus on racial groups implicitly asserts the existence of monolithic and stereotypical “white” and “black” Americas. Life is far more complex than this limited taxonomy would allow. In fact many Americans are black and white: There are few black descendants of slaves in the republic who are not also partially white. American culture itself is a blend of European, African, Asian, and Native American traditions.

    . . .

    [B]usinesses and school districts across the country are embracing diversity training in which white attendees are held responsible for the sins of their ancestors, and their lived experiences are prejudged (by extension, so too are those of their nonwhite colleagues). White attendees are told that they are fragile — to use a word promulgated by another prominent diversity consultant, Robin DiAngelo — and that such fragility proves their racism. They are told that they must commit to becoming active antiracists and get with the retraining program: Admit you suffer from the sin of being white and seek penitence.

    This relies on mental frameworks that are as limiting as those used by white supremacists against black people. Perhaps this is why some studies suggest that many diversity trainings fail and reinforce the very stereotyping they seek to undermine.

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