As America Wakes Up From Woke,
PT Digs In Its Heels
Amidst recent reporting, here and in the Leader, on the looming collision course of the city’s increasing expenses and diminishing revenues, news leaked recently to the Port Townsend Free Press indicates that our fearless leaders are nowhere near applying the brakes on runaway spending for consultants.
Later this month, City Hall and the library will be closed for four-and-a-half hours for a compulsory DEIB training.
You may be as surprised as I was to learn of the fourth character tacked onto the end of the all-too-familiar Diversity, Equity and Inclusion label. That’s “B” for Belonging. More about all that later in this article.
Our streets are in deplorable condition — embarrassing, really. Our infrastructure is crumbling. For years, piles of our money have been thrown at “affordable housing,” none of which has yet to materialize, nor looks to be in the offing. With City Hall already limiting its days open to the public to Monday through Thursday, this required “training” not only means an additional loss of public hours, it is arguably another top-down driven, unnecessary and wasteful drain of city resources.
Who? What? When? And How Much?
The DEIB training will be conducted by Tacoma/Seattle-based Potential Unleashed Consulting on Wednesday, April 23rd. This won’t be their first appearance here. The city hired them for a 90-minute workshop in December last year, to begin city employees’ “learning journey.”
Here is the HR memo to staff for the April event:
23 Apr 11 AM (4h 30m)
Save the Date – City Training
RSVP
Hello all,
We are excited to continue our learning journey with Jahmad Canley from Potential Unleashed Consulting. Jahmad will facilitate an interactive workshop designed to help us continue our goal of building teams and cultures of belonging by:
• Examining the difference and linkage between invitation, inclusion and belonging
• Learning practical frameworks to help us be more intentional about creating belonging in our environments
City Hall and the library will be closed on April 23rd to allow employees to attend this workshop. This workshop is considered part of your workday, unless your absence has been approved by your supervisor.
We look forward to your participation as it will offer knowledge and tools to support both [sic] your personal growth, your professional development, and our team’s overall success.
Thank you for your continued commitment to excellence.
According to their Linkedin account, Potential Unleashed Consulting was founded in 2010 and is headquartered in Seattle. The company has 11-50 employees and 5 “associated members,” one of which is their founder, Jahmad Canley. Articles and archives on their website do not date further back than 2020. This article referencing the Chamber of Commerce also notes the founder as Tacoma-based.
Their 90-minute and 4.5 hour workshops offer this boilerplate syllabus:
DEIB Foundational Workshop
We will design and facilitate training to ground all participants in a set of shared frameworks, common language, and initial skills to understand how the work of DEIB functions in society and within organizations.
Participants will:
• Unpack and reflect on how race, gender, age, and other social identities set up all people to have different degrees of power and privilege in society.
• Examine key “both/and” concepts that support authentic relationships across social and hierarchical power differentials.
• Recognize the difference between blame and responsibility, and use that as a platform for accountable relationships.
• Differentiate between racism, prejudice, discrimination, and oppression, and explore how different forms of oppression intersect.
• Examine unconscious bias and its impacts of it [sic] on our culture.
• Begin to examine how bias functions within society and within organizations.
• Understand how our social identities give us different but equally significant roles in the work of DEIB, and how we can work together, strategically, to create justice and liberation.
• Begin to develop a “journey mindset,” the understanding that becoming an organization rooted in diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility is a process that requires sustained commitment to a vision.
The 90-minute workshop in December 2024 cost $3,800 for the ‘training,’ $748.28 for lunch, and however much 90 minutes times 130± employees’ salaries and benefits add up to. American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds were used to cover the “training” cost then.
The contract for the upcoming April event lists $7,300.00 for the vendor. Lunch will be provided by the city (taxpayers). Then we have the cost of 4.5 hours of 133 employees learning about oppression that does not exist in their workplace, instead of doing the city’s business. A rough guess at salaries, benefits and full versus part-time indicates the tab likely to be in the $20,000-$30,000 range. (I welcome anyone to sharpen their pencils on that.)
A Long and Winding Road
Diversity training in the workplace was an outgrowth of JFK’s Executive Order (EO) 10925, signed on March 6, 1961.
President John F. Kennedy issues Executive Order 10925, which creates the Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity and mandates that projects financed with federal funds “take affirmative action” to ensure that hiring and employment practices are free of racial bias.
This order required education of federal employees to ensure they were in compliance with the new regulations. However, JFK felt compelled to spell out his intentions, lest they be misunderstood:
In a White House memorandum on the same day, he called for the elimination of any program that “(a) creates a quota; (b) creates preferences for unqualified individuals; (c) creates reverse discrimination; or (d) continues even after its equal opportunity purposes have been achieved.
Civil rights leaders meet with President John F. Kennedy in the oval office of the White House after the March on Washington, D.C. 1963. Library of Congress
The pressure on Lyndon Johnson to take it a step further during the ensuing tumultuous years was successful. Passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964 went beyond JFK’s EO focus on federal funding proscriptions, expanding non-discrimination orders to restaurants, theaters, transportation and other public accommodations.
…it authorized the government to withhold federal funds from schools that had not desegregated in compliance with the 1954 Brown decision. In all, it contained 11 sections or titles. Title VI and Title VII are most important to the evolving connection between Civil Rights enforcement and affirmative action. Title VI covers discrimination in federally assisted programs, and Title VII covers employment discrimination in all large and medium-sized private businesses. [source]
What was often referred to as the “soft power of affirmative action” gradually morphed into exactly what JFK warned about in his memorandum, with the imposition of quotas in the early ’70’s under Richard Nixon.
Thus, affirmative action evolved from a vague concept buried in an executive order, to a set of legal regulations and practices. The shift from “weak” to “strong” methods of policy enforcement, it is important to recognize, was largely the result, not of legislative action, but of decisions made in the executive branch of the federal government and in federal regulatory agencies… toward the goal of achieving a color-blind society, and as a necessary means of ensuring that Whites would not discriminate against Blacks… [source]
Six decades later…
On June 29th, 2023, the U.S. Supreme Court — siding with Students for Fair Admission — determined that, at least as far as college admissions are concerned, we seem to have come full circle to the vision for potential outcomes noted in JFK’s 1961 memorandum. Chief Justice John Roberts delivered the majority opinion of the court:
Because Harvard’s and UNC’s admissions programs lack sufficiently focused and measurable objectives warranting the use of race, unavoidably employ race in a negative manner, involve racial stereotyping, and lack meaningful end points, those admissions programs cannot be reconciled with the guarantees of the Equal Protection Clause.
At the same time, nothing prohibits universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected the applicant’s life, so long as that discussion is concretely tied to a quality of character or unique ability that the particular applicant can contribute to the university.
Many universities have for too long wrongly concluded that the touchstone of an individual’s identity is not challenges bested, skills built, or lessons learned, but the color of their skin. This Nation’s constitutional history does not tolerate that choice.
Dissecting the Details of Woke Language in the Realm of DEIB
Diversity, equity, inclusion, belonging. We’re all familiar with the classic definitions of those common words. But do they mean what we think they mean when it comes to DEI?
D — It’s doubtful that anyone who lives in Port Townsend is opposed to seeing a broader representation of women and non-white people in government, or anywhere else. Gays and lesbians have been welcome here for decades. It’s unclear exactly when the “trans” activists hitched their wagon to legacy diversity, but this broadening of the definition is not seen as legitimate or welcome by much of the wider society. Immutable characteristics appear to matter to most people. Look no further than Rachel Dolezal, who lost her career and a lot more for pretending to be black.
E — There’s a critical distinction between equity and equality. Equality provides the same opportunity, rules and standards for all. Equity guarantees the same outcomes despite qualifications, effort and time invested. In this After Skool video, Equity, the Thief of Human Potential, economist and author Thomas Sowell explains how visions of “fairness” often go sideways…
If you want one or the other [equity or equality] you can go for it, but the one thing you cannot do is pursue both simultaneously. At least you cannot successfully do that.
I — The standard definition of “inclusion” is “to be included.” That’s not enough for DEI activists. Dr. Peter Boghossian explains: “‘Inclusion’… has the common meaning of ‘all people are welcome’. But it also has the woke meaning of ‘a space that restricts speech’. How can everyone feel included if speech is allowed that causes members to feel offended, and therefore excluded? Not everyone can, or so runs the woke logic. Therefore, to be truly inclusive, speech needs to be restricted.”
Further, “inclusion” to the DEI industry includes literal “exclusion” — good old-fashioned segregation — where whites have been denied participation and opportunities due to their skin color. Reverse discrimination is still discrimination.
B — Belonging is a feeling. It cannot be measured. In the typical (of woke discourse) circular argument, belonging means one feels included. As I cast about the web for the logic of adding a synonym, of all things, to the alpha-string “DEI,” I came upon this:
Author Liz Fosslien differentiates the terms by describing diversity as “having a seat at the table,” inclusion as “having a voice at the table”, and belonging as “having that voice being heard.”
A nano-second ago, “having a voice at the table” meant that your voice would be heard.
The DEI Dilemma
According to the New York Times on March 13, 2025, “So far this year the number of companies in the S&P 500 that used the phrase “diversity, equity and inclusion” in annual reports has fallen by nearly 60 percent from 2024…”
The DEI industry was recently estimated to be in the $8 billion range. Potential Unleashed’s two highest-profile clients, Microsoft and Amazon, are following the trend and backing away from their former commitments. In July, 2024, Microsoft cut the DEI cord:
In a surprising yet increasingly common move, Microsoft has quietly dismantled its team dedicated to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). The decision, communicated via email to the affected employees on July 1, [2024] cited “changing business needs” as the reason for the layoffs.
On February 7, 2025, “Amazon’s annual report filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission for 2024 omitted a section included in the company’s prior annual report, which indicated Amazon has a focus on “inclusion and diversity” in hiring…”
The writing was on the wall before the 2024 election. This article from just a few weeks ago documents the pruning or shedding of DEI by 68 organizations with over 1,000 employees since 2023.
In her book of that same year, The Adversity of Diversity, co-authored with Mike Towle, award-winning political scientist Dr. Carol Swain drops the responsibility squarely in proponents of the ideology’s lap: “… companies and corporations cutting their DEI programs are doing it because they know those programs and trainings are useless. All they really accomplish is to keep conflict going because that’s exactly what their job is…” She continues “If heterosexuals and homosexuals, and Whites and Blacks and Hispanics, get along, there’s no need for a diversity officer…”
2023 looks to have been a watershed year for nudges away from the trend. Undoubtedly, the costly blunder by Anheuser-Busch of having wannabe-woman Dylan Mulvaney promote Bud Lite beer was a cultural turning point. Shortly afterward, the Biden administration’s macabre “Pride” celebration that devolved into something that disgusted many Americans compounded the insult by an order of magnitude.
…Rose Montoya (biological man living as a woman), who was one of the many people invited by the Biden administration, was recorded pulling down his dress and exposing himself while standing alongside two biological females living as men who were doing the same to show off their removed breasts.
Rose Montoya on the White House lawn, June 2023
The pendulum had swung too far. These misguided efforts at psychological manipulation have not gone down well with the vast majority of voters, many of whom turned out last November to say they’ve had enough of woke. The ascendancy of the aggrievement cult looks to be over.
A Cure in Search of a Disease
In the early 2000’s, my partner and I hired an African-American man to join our employees at the gallery we owned on Water Street. He also worked for April Fool and Penny, Too, and was universally loved by his co-workers and the community. He and I often spoke about racism, a matter I’d taken seriously from an early age. He never felt unwelcome in Port Townsend, he reported. He was just another one of ‘us.’ The city was so lily white, it was refreshing to see a brown face. Our gallery represented Native American and Canadian artists who were more likely to be honored than looked down upon.
Has something drastically changed in twenty years? Has a tide of bigotry and intolerance swept through and infected City Hall? Is there a cadre of city employees who staunchly refuse to use preferred pronouns? Unlikely.
Dissatisfaction with the representation of women and people of color throughout the upper tiers of all of society was not new in the first decades of the 21st century. The halls of congress itself have been a glaring example of the lack of diversity in our nation. The 2020 murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis set a ready torch to simmering frustrations coast to coast. The Black Lives Matter activist movement spawned by the 2013 acquittal of Trayvon Martin’s killer, George Zimmerman, had found its new raison d’être (and millions in shadowy funding).
That summer of lockdowns, “social distancing,” and limits on gathering sizes for the majority of U.S. citizens saw dozens of city centers burned and looted by scores of rioters using Floyd’s murder as an excuse to incinerate — in many cases — their own communities. While legacy media, and the Biden administration, largely defended these violent crowds as “mostly peaceful,” damage to hundreds of cities was estimated to be well over a billion dollars. Meanwhile congress, police and college officials were “taking the knee” to demonstrate their virtue, or fealty, to the perpetrators. Thus they were emboldened to press for more concessions.
Many of those cities have not recovered. Most of the vandals were not prosecuted. Very soon, the country saw cities allowing looters to gang-rob downtown stores, promising no prosecution if the valuables stolen amounted to less than $1,000. Those claiming victimhood who victimize are shown limited sympathy by the law-abiding. These felonious episodes contributed to the public perception that the fruit of Critical Race Theory (CRT) and DEI — woke, in other words — had begun to rot.
Port Townsend saw its own BLM actions in 2020, with a willing and apparently guilt-ridden “progressive” white populace in full support. The BLM organizers went looking for their racists, but struggled in vain to find them in this community.
Likewise, a hate-filled mob with a number of violent members was summoned by local gender activists to a “Let Women Speak” rally at the Pope Marine park in August of 2022 (see here, here, here, here, here, here and here). Alas, despite the dishonest label applied by the city administration and legacy media, it wasn’t an “anti-trans protest.” It was a small group of females and their supporters standing up for the free speech and privacy rights of women and girls.
Where are the Metrics?
For many years, analysts have been attempting to qualify and quantify the benefits and risks of diversity training (DT). Does it actually further “justice and liberation,” an expressed goal of Potential Unleashed founder, Jahmad Canley?
Last November, evolutionary biologist Colin Wright penned an article for Reality’s Last Stand titled “Why was this groundbreaking study on DEI silenced?” His question was directed at the New York Times and Bloomberg, two legacy media outlets who are generally known for toeing the establishment line.
The research paper, Instructing Animosity: How DEI Pedagogy Produces the Hostile Attribution Bias, was published Nov. 13, 2024. Colin Wright distills it here:
Through carefully controlled experiments, the researchers demonstrated that exposure to anti-oppressive (i.e., anti-racist) rhetoric—common in many DEI initiatives—consistently amplified perceptions of bias where none existed. Participants were more likely to see prejudice in neutral scenarios and to support punitive actions against imagined offenders. These effects were not marginal; hostility and punitive tendencies increased by double-digit percentages across multiple measures. Perhaps most troubling, the study revealed a chilling convergence with authoritarian attitudes, suggesting that such training is fostering not empathy, but coercion and control.
The counter-narrative issues raised by this study were apparently too hot for the big papers’ presses to handle. Their refusal to cover this news is not an aberration. It’s how we got here.
Another lengthy meta-analysis of available literature was published in the journal Annual Review of Psychology in 2022. The authors report:
In examining hundreds of articles on the topic, we discovered that the literature is amorphous and complex and does not allow us to reach decisive conclusions regarding best practices in diversity training. We note that scholars of diversity training, when testing the efficacy of their approaches, too often use proxy measures for success that are far removed from the types of consequential outcomes that reflect the purported goals of such trainings.
Taken as a whole, our review of the literature on DT reveals that, in light of the overarching goals of DT in these settings, the evidence regarding the efficacy of DT is for the most part wanting.
More importantly, perhaps, their review of the literature revealed a dearth of evidence that DT was solving an existing problem:
…measurements of systemic bias—such as minority representation, prevalence of workplace discrimination, and the promotion rates of historically marginalized employees—were largely absent.
As with the city’s training, the public is right to ask — why are we doing this now? Unless bias and bigotry are a frequently documented problem among city employees, taxpayers should not be funding this “journey.”
Dumbing Down is a Dumb Idea, Not a Solution
Racism and sexism have been a dehumanizing scourge around the planet for just about as long as we’ve been upright. These injustices won’t be remedied by more of the same, simply by trading places, censoring majority views, or shoving DEI struggle sessions down peoples’ throats. Counter-discrimination is backfiring badly, ultimately harming the very people it’s intended to help. Lowering academic standards has been a disaster.
There is growing pressure now to do away with SATs, GPAs and now even any shared conception of Standard English. What kind of world are we creating? In what way could this utter condescension possibly render a historically oppressed people suddenly equal?
— Thomas Chatterton Williams [source]
The mean grade at Harvard and Yale, and many other elite schools, is A-; grade point average (GPA), 3.8. In 1960, the national GPA was 2.4.
Source: Report on Grading at Harvard College • By Elias J. Schisgall
We’re being told that objectivity, punctuality and math are racist (ironic, given that math was apparently birthed in Mesopotamia). Amorphous “feelings” are more legitimate than facts. Guess we can forget about mass transportation like buses and airplanes; they do run on schedules, after all. Should we be thinking twice about that next surgery? “Many have become weary of DEI in medicine, as deviations from merit-based practices can put patients in harm’s way.” The list of occupations that will endanger peoples’ safety if DEI continues to rule the day is long. Contemplate them for a while.
Blogger el gato malo (no capital letters is his personal gimmick) states it succinctly:
any system that is not consciously and deliberately a meritocracy will become an anti-meritocracy.
this is not up for debate. it’s just emergent fact. as soon as you put people in charge of anything for reasons other than “they are good at it” and make the desired outcome of a system anything other than “competence and achievement” you get a system that will focus on creating failure.
vitally, teaching needs to resume moving at very different levels. you cannot teach the best and brightest in a curriculum and pace that the 30th percentile can keep up with. you need to let them run hard and learn fast. it’s the core intellectual capital of america and stifling these students out of some misbegotten fantasy about “equity” is grossly unfair to them. this is why experimentation and leveling and standards based acceptances are so vital here and why DEI has so badly damaged once elite schools. you cannot run them for dimwits without sacrificing the bright lights.
Speaking of lights, there is one at the end of this tunnel — and no, it’s not a train. The North Carolina Community College System (NCCCS) is linking with City University of New York (CUNY) and willing students of North Carolina to kick off a promising program called Boost, which “stands out as an appropriate post-DEI measure that focuses on economic need rather than race…” The model has a history of success elsewhere, demonstrating notable increases in post-grad earnings, sustained full-time enrollment and completed 4-year bachelor degrees.
“Based on a program developed by City University of New York and promoted nationwide by Arnold Ventures, the NC Community Colleges Boost model is recognized as the gold standard in accelerated workforce development in higher education.” You can read more about that here.
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What exactly is the problem that city administrators aim to address with costly DEIB training for all employees of the City of Port Townsend? Was it certain behavior that precipitated it? Is it simply virtue-signaling to their base? Perhaps the unquenchable social-engineering thirst of the devotees that inhabit that building during work hours?
I wonder how the employees feel about having to attend these sessions. By focusing them on a “journey mindset” to “create justice and liberation,” will the public be better served? Do P.T. residents believe DEI “training” to be a wise use of their tax dollars, considering all the rest of what needs fixing here?
It’s time for the city to get back to basics — doing the peoples’ business — FIVE days a week!
