Brexit champion Nigel Farage has slammed Coca-Cola for allegedly requiring staff to take training urging them to “be less white”.
Slides from the LinkedIn-based training originally circulated on social media after being shared by psychologist Karlyn Borysenko.
One explains that “To be less white is to: be less oppressive, be less arrogant, be less certain, be less defensive, be less ignorant, be more humble, listen, believe, break with apathy, break with white solidarity.” Another simply urges the view: “Try to be less white.”
Responding to the scandal on his YouTube channel, Reform UK party leader Nigel Farage lamented that he had thought progress was being made against the “Black Lives Matter madness”, but that the Coca-Cola revelations were another example of the corporate world having “lost its marbles” as a result of the movement.
“So, to be less white means you’ll be less arrogant, less ignorant — I mean, the list goes on: ‘try to be less white’,” he said.
“And the inference here is clear, isn’t it? That white is bad; white means supremacist; white means you look down your noses at everybody else; white means you are guilty!” he continued.
“And this is what Coca-Cola is foisting upon their employees in the USA?” he asked, expressing his hope that it would not “cross the Atlantic”.
“[U]ntil we have more people, far more people, in British politics and British media unafraid to stand up and tell the truth, unafraid of the extreme left screaming ‘racist!’ at them, event though they know themselves that that would not be true, until we do this, I fear we continue down this route,” Farage warned.
“And what is telling white people they are guilty and bad, what is that doing?” he asked.
“Do you think it means that white people who are exposed to this suddenly think: ‘Ah, yes! I must become a better person; I must make sure I exhibit within myself no prejudice towards anybody.’ Or does it actually make white people really, really angry, and actually make them feel that society is now more divided than ever?”
The former UKIP supremo suggested that the inheritors of Martin Luther King’s campaign for “justice, fairness, and equality” no longer want people to be judged purely on “character, honesty, integrity, intelligence — no, they want us all to be divided up into different groups, different groups based on race, gender, and sexuality”.
“[W]hen we are confronted with this nonsense, when we are told we must atone for the past, we must confess our guilty simply because we’re white, or any other colour, or any other faith, we’ve just gotta say ‘enough is enough’,” he insisted.
Coca-Cola, for its part, has been careful to avoid denying that the “try to be less white” presentation is a compulsory part of training for any of its staff, but it has claimed it is “not a focus of our company’s curriculum”.
“Our Better Together global learning curriculum is part of a learning plan to help build an inclusive workplace. It is comprised of a number of short vignettes, each a few minutes long. The training includes access to LinkedIn Learning on a variety of topics, including on diversity, equity, and inclusion,” they said in a statement, adding that they would “continue to refine this curriculum.”
Last month, the fizzy drinks corporation announced it would be requiring a quota of “diverse attorneys” from law firms doing work for it, with fees for firms that fail to meet its targets having their fees docked by 30 per cent.
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