I was chatting yesterday a bit with my South African friend, he reminded me of one "diversity training" we both attended where we were asked to write on a board everything we had "heard" about black folks. They were largely pejorative items, to some extent, like they didn't swim well, etc. The "moderator" used that to "prove" we were all racist. Fortunately I wrote some positive things sensing where he was headed but most of the items we had HEARD others say were negative.
Then we were to write "bad things" in history that our government had done to black folks, starting of course with slavery. By then, the group (of managers mostly) were twice shy and wrote little down so the moderator had to write HIS items. The "conclusion" was government is racist, so everyone in the room AND government was racist and keeping the man down. By then we all were just sitting there with arms crossed hoping it would end soon. The dude then wanted us to do "role playing" (a tactic I utterly despise) and a couple of the more junior folks complied and the session got even more ridiculous.
This was one event of course, in a large company, and I seriously doubt other large companies were not hiring the same outside groups to do the same things. One thing I learned was whatever silliness happened at our company was happening at other large companies as well.
When I reached a certain point in my "career", I stopped attending these "mandatory" meetings. I figured I'd get a call at some point from some Admin, but it never happened. Nobody really cared whether we went or not. I had another friend who was a director, he told me they all got $X for diversity training, and they had to do something, so they'd have their Admin call around to find some outfit to do something once a year, or twice perhaps. Whether it was effective or useful was unimportant.
We were of course adults, most of us, and by then we knew to brush off most of the yaya the company would foist off on us. I found once I eliminated the yaya, there was very little left.
