KUT 90.5 featured a story on Pacific Educational Group’s work in Austin, TX, in which the city’s mayor has advocated for PEG’s Beyond Diversity training for all Austin residents. An excerpt from the story:
In 2016, Austin Mayor Steve Adler convened a Task Force on Institutional Racism and Systemic Inequities after the fatal police shooting of David Joseph, a black teenager.
Task force members became interested in how to talk about race constructively, so they took the “Beyond Diversity” training, which Glenn Singleton of Pacific Educational Group wrote more than two decades ago. In the task force’s final report, released in April 2017, members wrote:
“The impact of the training is of such magnitude that we have to prioritize the importance of the city providing access and support to expand the training across the Austin community.”
The mayor has attended the training, as have most City Council members and some of their staff. (The training is not cheap: The city paid $23,800 for council members and staff.)The city has bought into Singleton’s work so much that the mayor has even challenged him to train all of Austin’s roughly 1 million residents. Leadership Austin now offers the training to community members for $325 each. (The nonprofit does provide some scholarships).
“We will not be able to address affordability in this city … until we address race,” Adler told the 86 participants at a training late last month. “As leaders in this city, this is a conversation that you have to be having, because if you don’t have this conversation, then this community does not have this conversation.”
Check out the full story on KUT 90.5.
