The Black Snob's editor, Danielle Belton, writes in a blog entry that workers in fashion and advertising ought to take sensitivity training seriously to avoid embarrassing gaffes such as Vogue Italia's story on "slave" earrings.
No one ever takes sensitivity training seriously. It's always a joke to people. I have a friend who works in human resources who occasionally conducts racial sensitivity training sessions in various workplaces. It's a mess. No one, I mean no one, ever truly "thinks" they have a race problem. But then they say troubling things like, "Shelly only got this job because he was an Affirmative Action hire and a woman. She's a two-fer!" Ignoring the fact that Shelly put herself through four years of law school, had three letters of recommendation and is the first black and woman they've hired since never. Preston Winthrop the third who was a legacy hire from Yale because his father is a big cheese down at the cracker factory "worked hard for everything he got in life" and whatnot and so forth, so it was OK for him to say that shit about Shelly …
Sensitivity training. It's important.
Read Danielle Belton's entire blog entry at the Black Snob.