Mr. Moriyama worked with these guys for 30 years, but why listen to him?

Vignette from a diversity training class held in a 90 year old  industrial manufacturing facility:

Japanese-American chemical engineer Kichirou Moriyama (name changed) spent the last 30 years becoming a successful project manager and supervisor. His work requires him to direct the efforts of process operators who are typically high school graduates and union members who are between 30 to 60 years old. The operators are the ones who actually open the valves, add the catalysts, take the samples etc. to run the plant. These operators work in teams of about a  dozen. They take turns cooking dinner in the break room kitchen located off their control room during the 12 hour night shifts. They have nicknames like “rack man” and “Polish prince.” It is with this group of men that Moriyama has spent most of his career.

In our diversity class the instructor from the training vendor is a twenty-something female African-American. She states the following maxim: “there is no room in the workplace for ethnic jokes.” Moriyama disagrees.

“I’ve learned that I have to tell the best Japanese jokes” he says.

It is unlikely there is going to be someone better informed on diversity in the workplace than this man. He has spent 30 years in one of the worst east-coast smokestack environment workplaces, where management and labor are at each others’ throats constantly. And as a member of management he has maintained civil, friendly relationships with men who are as far removed from him culturally as you are likely to find on this planet.

Can you guess the diversity trainer’s response?

“There is no room in the workplace for ethnic jokes” she said, repeating word-for-word what she said the first time. No amplification. No redirection. No clarification. No example/counterexample. Didn’t change a word. Pure, distilled dogma.