‘Some of these programs go way too far’: Ursula weighs in on white Seattle worker’s revived workplace lawsuit

A federal appeals court has revived part of a lawsuit from a former City of Seattle employee who said the city’s anti-racism program created a hostile workplace for him because he is white.

Joshua Diemert joined the city’s Human Services Department in 2013. Like all employees in his department, he was required to take part in the city’s Race and Social Justice Initiative. He said coworkers called him a “colonist,” told him white people were inherently racist, and discouraged him from applying for a promotion. He resigned in 2021 and sued the next year.

Gee Scott, co-host of “The Gee and Ursula Show” on KIRO Newsradio, said Diemert has a case, noting that kind of conduct simply should not happen to anyone.

“If he has proof that coworkers were calling him a colonist, and he has proof that they were telling him that white people are inherently racist, he has a case for sure,” Gee said. “I don’t care what nobody says. That should not happen to you at work if you are a white person. Period.”

Co-host Ursula Reutin said many companies and government agencies brought in anti-racism training after George Floyd’s murder in 2020. She said the programs can do real good, but some go too far.

“As a person of color, but even if I wasn’t, I would say that there is some benefit to having these programs, because I think there are a lot of people who don’t know that they have a bias,” Ursula said. “And I also think some of these programs go way too far. For example, the ones that make someone feel like you are racist because you are white.”

Ursula believed the approach can backfire.

“Instead of bringing somebody into understanding a bias or a blind spot, you make them automatically defensive,” Ursula said. “You shut them down, because now they’re feeling like, ‘Wait, now I’m being accused of something that I am not, and now I don’t feel like I have a fair shake in this environment.'”

Gee: ‘Ain’t no classes in the world’ can fix some people

Gee agreed that training on unconscious bias has value, but said it has limits.

“I don’t care what kind of classes you bring in, what kind of trainings you have. At the end of the day, there’s just people that look down on other ethnicities, and they feel that they’re better,” he said. “They can work with them. They can go to school with them. They can have neighbors. It’s just stuck in your soul, where you look at somebody, and you say, ‘I’m better than you.'”

After hearing it his whole life, Gee said it’s now apparent when someone is being racist unintentionally.

“I’ve been on this earth 50 years,” Gee said. “There are conversations that I can have with people, and you might not even call me the N-word. You might not even say, ‘I don’t like Black people,’ but there are topics that come up where I hear it.”

Ursula agreed, but explained employers still have a responsibility to offer the material.

“Whether it’s a company or a government entity, they have to make sure that people are aware and be able to say, ‘We have offered this training,'” Ursula said. “If you are displaying that behavior in the workplace, you’re out, and there’s a reason to get you out.”

Gee built on Ursula’s point that some trainings make things worse.

“Once someone is told you’re this and you’re that, defensive mechanisms go up, justification goes up, and so then it ends up being counterproductive,” Gee said.

“Exactly, and that is my point,” Ursula said. “I also know of great programs that are able to show people, ‘Oh my gosh, that is something I didn’t recognize in myself,’ without being accusatory. If you’re telling somebody you’re not going to get better because you’re white and you’re just racist, where do they go from there?”

“There’s nowhere to go,” Gee responded.

KIRO producer opens about his battles with biases

KIRO producer Andrew Lanier said understanding your own biases has real value, and he talked about his own.

“Let’s be honest. Everybody has biases,” Andrew said. “We’re told stories about ourselves, other people, society, from the moment we’re born, and those things get baked into us. When I was a kid, I didn’t like female authors. That was just a bias that I had. It’s taken me real work to get through that stuff.”

He responded to listeners who texted in that racism goes both ways.

“You’re not wrong. Everyone has biases, and many people have racist ideas ingrained in them,” Andrew said. “The difference for me is, do you work to understand them? And when it comes to racist thoughts or actions, do they hurt my feelings, or do they meaningfully impact my life and change the trajectory of it and my opportunities? I’ve had racist statements made to me as a white person, but that’s never limited me in any way.”

Ursula said she has seen the same patterns over a long career.

“Gee, you often say, ‘I’m 50 years old, I’ve known all this all my life,'” Ursula said. “At 61, and being in a particular business for as long as I have been, there are things that become very, very evident.”

Watch the full discussion in the video above.

Listen to Gee and Ursula on “The Gee and Ursula Show” weekday mornings from 9 am to 12 pm on KIRO Newsradio.