Debate flares over diversity training for lawmakers
Two racially insensitive incidents at the Oklahoma state Capitol have ignited a conversation about whether state lawmakers should undergo racial sensitivity training.
Legislative Democrats want Republican House leaders to implement diversity and inclusion training for state lawmakers.
House Speaker Charles McCall, RAtoka, said there are constant efforts to maintain civility and decorum in the House. However, diversity training is not the answer, he said in a statement.
“The House’s tradition has been for members to use relationships to achieve reconciliation,” McCall said. “That approach tends to be more authentic and effective than trainings. We are told trainings like these have not successfully occurred in other legislative bodies and emphasizing relationships and decorum, as our leadership team does, works best.”
Some states have adopted diversity training for state lawmakers, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. The Alabama Legislature offers diversity training, and non-discrimination or anti-discrimination training is required for some legislators in Minnesota, New Jersey and Wyoming.
Rep. Jim Olsen, R-Roland, recently came under fire for comparing lawmakers’ efforts to end abortion to the fight against slavery while presenting in a legislative committee a bill to limit abortions.
Democrats called on Olsen to publicly apologize. They also called for him be formally censured or resign.
Olsen said afterward that he stands by his comments that included a historical comparison to British abolitionist William Wilberforce, who tried for decades to convince Parliament to end slavery.
Comparing the number of abortions to the number of slaves brought to the United States paints the picture that abortion is a big issue, he said.
“Slavery, we all agree … was a bad thing,” Olsen said. “Nobody in this conversation was trying to justify slavery or say it was a good thing. Frankly, the reason I think that they’re bothered is because it is such a powerful illustration.”
In March, another Republican lawmaker apologized after using a racist term describe Black babies during an abortion debate on the House floor. Rep. Brad Boles, R-Marlow, called the remark a “slip of the tongue.”
“People don’t know how to have conversations with people that don’t look like them and don’t think like them, which, I think, is why we need diversity and inclusion training,” said Rep. Mauree Turner, D-Oklahoma City. Turner, who is Black, is Oklahoma’s first Muslim legislator and the nation’s first nonbinary state legislator.
Turner said lawmakers undergo sexual harassment training, but not diversity and inclusion training.
Rep. Denise Brewer, D-Tulsa, filed legislation this year to require all state lawmakers to attend racial sensitivity training.
Members of the Republican majority in the House saw no reason for the training even though a local nonprofit had agreed to do it for free, Brewer said.
“They would not even hear (the bill) because there was so much pushback to the idea that legislators may actually need diversity training,” she said.
Brewer said House Bill 1888, which would prevent public bodies in Oklahoma from conducting gender or sexual diversity training, was a reaction to her bill to require lawmakers to attend racial sensitivity training. The bill language from HB 1888 by Rep. Danny Williams, R-Seminole, has advanced as Senate Bill 627.
Gender and sexual diversity training should not be a role of government or government-funded entities, Williams said.
“My goal is to make sure state government doesn’t try to opinionate in areas where where we’re really not qualified to opinionate,” he said.
Brewer said Olsen’s remarks in the House Public Health Committee are a clear example of why lawmakers need racial sensitivity training.
“This session has been one of the most blatantly anti-diversity sessions on record,” Brewer said. “Not that it hasn’t always been there. They’ve gotten bold enough to say it out loud.”
Olsen directed his remarks to Rep. Ajay Pittman, D-Oklahoma City, who had asked a question about Olsen’s anti-abortion bill. Pittman, who is Black and Native American, said the incident was an example of the implicit bias people of color face. Implicit bias is the idea that people hold unconscious beliefs that reinforce stereotypes.
Training on implicit bias is offered to some legislators in at least six states, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.