Coca-Cola and the 'Be Less White' Course: What Happened in 2021

Originally published 2021-02-24.

In February 2021 screenshots spread online claiming that Coca-Cola was telling staff to "try to be less white". The slides came from a short LinkedIn Learning course built around clips of author Robin DiAngelo. Coca-Cola said the video was available to employees through LinkedIn Learning but was not part of its own learning curriculum, and LinkedIn removed the course after the backlash. DiAngelo herself said she had not known her work was being presented that way. So the short answer is: the slides were real, but they were not a Coca-Cola-written programme, and it is unclear how many employees ever saw them.

Below is how the story unfolded, what the slides said, what each party stated, and why the episode became a lasting reference point in arguments over workplace diversity training.

How the screenshots surfaced

On 19 February 2021 Karlyn Borysenko, an organisational psychologist and activist known online as @DrKarlynB, posted images on Twitter that she said came from a Coca-Cola employee acting as a whistleblower. Her post claimed the company was making staff complete the training. The tweet travelled fast, was picked up by conservative outlets in the United States and by tabloids in Britain, and within days the brand was trending under the nickname "Woka Cola" among people calling for a boycott.

🚨🚨🚨 BREAKING: Coca-Cola is forcing employees to complete online training telling them to "try to be less white."

These images are from an internal whistleblower: pic.twitter.com/gRi4N20esZ

— Karlyn supports banning critical race theory in NH (@DrKarlynB) February 19, 2021

The images showed a slide titled "Trying to be less white" with a list of suggestions. According to the screenshots, staff were urged to be less oppressive, less arrogant, less defensive and more humble, and to "break with white solidarity". Another slide, reported by the New Zealand Herald, claimed that people in the US and other Western countries are socialised to feel inherently superior because they are white.

Where the course actually came from

The material was part of a course on LinkedIn Learning, the online training library LinkedIn sells to employers. The course was titled Confronting Racism, with Robin DiAngelo and ran for about 11 minutes. Its video segments were drawn from a 2018 interview DiAngelo gave to the media company Big Think while promoting her book. LinkedIn Learning edited and licensed those clips and added on-screen slides to turn them into a training module.

That detail matters. The "be less white" wording appeared on slides, and DiAngelo said afterwards that she was "unaware that her name, image, and work were being presented in this way" and that the slides did not reflect how she runs her own workshops. LinkedIn took the course down, noting that its library contained more than 270 courses on diversity, inclusion and belonging.

What Coca-Cola said

Responding to questions from British and American newspapers, Coca-Cola said the video and images were not part of the company's learning curriculum. Its own diversity programme, called Better Together, was a set of short videos of a few minutes each. Employees also had general access to LinkedIn Learning, where the DiAngelo course happened to sit among thousands of other titles. The company added that it would keep listening to employees and adjust its training where needed.

In other words, Coca-Cola did not deny that a worker could have watched the course through a company account. It denied that the course was something the company designed or required. No public evidence emerged showing that it was mandatory, although the employee who leaked the images clearly felt it was being promoted to staff.

Who is Robin DiAngelo?

Robin DiAngelo is an American author and academic who works in whiteness studies. She is a former professor of multicultural education at Westfield State University and an affiliate associate professor of education at the University of Washington. She coined the term "white fragility" in a 2011 academic paper and expanded it into the 2018 book White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism, which became a bestseller after the protests that followed the murder of George Floyd in May 2020.

Her work is popular with many diversity trainers and heavily criticised by others. Supporters say it helps white people notice patterns they have never had to think about. Critics, including some anti-racist scholars, argue that it treats people as a group rather than as individuals, can make conversations more defensive, and has little evidence showing that it changes behaviour.

Why the episode struck a nerve

Corporate diversity training expanded quickly in 2020 as companies made public pledges after the Floyd protests. The Coca-Cola screenshots arrived at a moment when that boom was facing a political backlash in the United States, and they became a ready example for people who felt such training had crossed into telling employees what to think about their race.

Other people saw the reaction as overblown: a single third-party module, taken out of context, being presented as company policy. Both readings can be held at once. The slide wording was blunt enough that even its apparent source distanced herself from it, and the company's link to it was looser than the first viral posts suggested.

What research says about diversity training

For anyone weighing up workplace training, the evidence is more useful than the outrage cycle. Studies by sociologists such as Frank Dobbin and Alexandra Kalev have found that one-off, mandatory diversity sessions often have weak or even negative effects, partly because people resent being told what to think. Programmes that do better tend to be voluntary, focus on specific behaviours, and sit alongside practical steps such as mentoring, structured hiring and clear accountability.

Some practical lessons from the Coca-Cola episode:

• Check the source of a screenshot. A slide on a training platform may come from a vendor, not the employer.
• Ask whether a course is required. Library access and a mandatory curriculum are very different things.
• Look for behaviour, not identity. Training that describes what good conduct looks like at work is easier to defend, and usually more effective, than training that assigns traits to whole groups.

Sources: Karlyn Borysenko on Twitter (19 February 2021); New Zealand Herald; Fox News on DiAngelo's response; Wikipedia: Robin DiAngelo.