more to the point, there is no evidence that "diversity training" actually does anything than provide cover for institutions and corporations to cover for lawsuits while a small number of middlemen collect their salary; while ensuring racial solidarity is broken down to deter unionization etc.
Basically its a window in to the mind of the liberal. Solve poverty by giving cheques and properly funded education to the poor, who are disproportionately black? Nah, that's too hard; better just spend the equivalent amount of money to pay some college educated snake oil salesman so they can boring and patronizing powerpoints to sanitation workers.
This is happening in service of a growing but still disproportionately small Black (and more broadly non-white) professional class. The professional class
in general is wildly blind to its own elitism and inaccessibility - if you have rapidly growing inequality between the elite professional and middle/working classes combined with marginally more non-white people in elite ranks, very few people will actually be served. The people demanding this training are so incredibly blind to the experience of a poor person or subordinate worker that they simply don't know what would help them.
There are some generous interpretations justifying diversifying the non-white professional class at the expense of the even more non-white working class that are worth considering. One is that fostering a larger Black professional class will begin to produce multi-generational wealth that has given whites a half-century (at least) in economic and social dominance. Another is that a larger professional Black (and refugee, etc.) class will, because it will typically (but certainly not always) have more connections and commonalities with the dispossessed, will be less closeted and guarded in their elite professional attitudes. I'm skeptical of the goodness and truth of both of these arguments but they're worth considering.
Of course, the city is likely offering these services because they are getting more demand from businesses staffed by uncreative professional "diversity" and "inclusion" officers who have no idea what they are doing. The people making these demands likely don't understand how businesses generate and wield the power they have in a place like Seattle.
