Little White Truths

Whites are ironically underserved in many diversity and inclusion efforts. This post is the first in a series on how we might address this.

One of the central assumptions of Middling to Fair is that the primary responsibility for ending racial inequity lies with Whites because it is we who run the systems that perpetuate it. Though many of the overt forms or racism that have existed throughout our history have become socially unacceptable for all but hardcore White supremacist, and in fact have been made illegal by laws such as the civil rights act, there is still a great deal of racial inequity in the US.

To combat this inequity we well-meaning Whites often engage in diversity and inclusion initiatives, especially in the business setting. The typical way this works is something like this: a member of one or more non-dominant groups will be hired to a position like “Vice President of Diversity” and it will be that person’s job to hold the task of “diversity” in the company. For example, a company with a mostly White, mostly male executive committee will hire a Black female to hold the diversity function for the company. She will be expected to create programs that highlight the “minorities” who work for the company, to help those people build skills so that they can be successful in the company as it is, and to recruit other members of non-dominant groups to help the company become more “diverse.” The mostly White, mostly male leadership of this company will openly support these efforts and join in on them when it’s deemed appropriate. Often there will be group work in which all are expected to contribute to the conversation and the people who are not considered “diverse” are expected to appreciate the people who are. The White male leaders will return to their day-to-day work having met their commitments to diversity and sometimes feeling good about having done it. The Non-White and non-male participants will be given continued remediation if it’s deemed necessary to help them be successful in the company. Power in the company remains with the same groups and meaning schemes don’t change.

There are a lot of problems with this model. While it is basically a continuation of the experience of inequity that members of non-dominant groups experience, and while ending that inequity is the goal of my work, their experience is not where my focus lies. It lies in how inadequate this model is at helping Whites learn how to view race and other aspects of identity differently.

Let’s use a very basic example: Bill is a straight White male who has worked pretty hard all his life and has the 80-hour workweeks behind him to prove it. He has finally achieved a leadership role that all would say is appropriate to a person of his career and skill level. He feels like no one has ever handed him a thing. He’s got a lot of people listening to him and not all of them for direction. As is inevitable, some people disagree with Bill’s methods and don’t think he should be in charge. Some want his job. Bill also doesn’t know what all the fuss is about when it comes to diversity. America is the land of opportunity and if you’re willing to work hard you’ll get a fair shake. People should stop complaining.

But Bill knows how even the simplest comment can get taken the wrong way. Joe Biden simply said Obama was clean and it almost ruined him. Bill is not going to make that mistake. So Bill goes diligently to the diversity seminar, listens to people talk about themselves, and nods approvingly. He never, never, would say, “I really don’t see what all the fuss is about.” The “PC Police” would surely come and take him away for that. Bill leaves the seminar without incident and doesn’t have to worry about diversity until the next round of seminars, hopefully not for a couple of years. The diversity manager can make sure the company hires enough of whatever minorities it needs to hire to avoid lawsuits.

It would be outrageous for me to tell people who are targets of identity inequity that they should be patient with “poor Bill” because he just doesn’t know any better. Bill makes decisions that materially impact people in profound ways and he doesn’t get a free pass for ignorance or good intentions. I respect and empathize with those who simply want a revolution to take the power away form those who have it and give it to those that don’t. The centuries that their people have waited for society to change is a compelling argument to which I relate. But the two extremes, the one where we Whites silently do nothing and the one where we Whites become silenced nothings, are flawed. Though it may seem fair to place Whites beneath other groups, to do so would not create an equitable society. It would simply shift the roles of oppressed and oppressor.

If White males are to be engaged fully in diversity, practitioners have to find ways to uncover and focus on Whiteness and maleness that respect and address their fears and concerns and also respect the content of Whiteness. This does not mean catering to their opinions. It means creating interventions that are culturally appropriate and empathetic. There are ways to measure identity awareness in Whites. In the next few posts I will discuss some of them and how they might be used. My own research (though yet incomplete) looks at the facilitators to racial awareness development in White males in an attempt to create better ways to help them move toward greater understandings of the role of Whiteness in their lives, work, and society.

I strongly advocate for an approach that, while it includes working in groups that are diverse, also offers White males the opportunity to connect with coaches who are also White males so that the men doing the developing are more likely to feel comfortable being honest and have the experience of other White males who can challenge their assumptions about themselves and about race. The role of “racial identity” coach or therapist is not one that can be taken up lightly by White males and such men would have to undergo a great deal of training, learning, and/or surfacing of their own racial identity development issues and have profound connections with people of multiple identities to help guide them away from falling into privileged thinking.

Most people want the system to be fair. We Whites are often mortified when we discover how unfair it is and how we benefit from that inequity. None of us were born wanting to be socialized into an unfair system. We are in the odd position of receiving both benefit and harm from the racial socialization of the US (as opposed to other groups who receive only harm). While growing up we have been acted upon by a system that was beyond our control. One of the differences between us Whites and Non-Whites is that, whether we know it or not, the system is in our control.

Equity’s ROI

There is a business case for equity, but do we really need one?

In a recent conversation a fellow diversity practitioner put forth the proposition that to be successful, diversity and inclusion efforts in organizations must be connected to the bottom line and deliver Return on Investment. Otherwise, the argument goes, there is no business case for diversity and inclusion. I find this argument interesting on a number of levels.

My first response is my most basic: at which point does maximizing profit become a liability? As I write this, the already ecologically compromised waters of the Gulf of Mexico are replete with the catastrophic fallout of oil company BP’s failures to stop one of its oil wells from spewing raw crude. This oil spew was the product of corner-cutting that BP did, using seawater instead of heavier sludge to manage the pressure of the oil well. Of course, this disaster is going to cost BP immense amounts of money in clean-up costs and public relations efforts, but what if that was not the case? What if BP could have somehow kept the disaster secret and the government was forced to pay for all the clean-up efforts and no one would know that it was BP’s responsibility? Would BP’s actions in cutting costs that led to this oil spill be considered a good thing? Is the business case of maximizing profits the only case for action in this instance? I find it hard to believe that the majority of executives, when faced with a moral dilemma this clear and simple, would say, “Yes, the profits in this case are what matters and the natural disaster that ensues is irrelevant.”

And in regards to the few who might respond so, how do the rest of us respond? Are we comfortable keeping people with that kind of decision making process in control of our businesses if we have any say at all in the matter? Or do we not feel justified, even compelled, to act to stop people like that from having decision-making power?

I know this is an extreme argument, but looking at the pervasive and destructive impact that social and economic inequity has on the groups who are the targets of it, is it that far fetched? In the US in 2010, we Whites often believe that other people do not have the same opportunities as we do. But we stop our analyses there. We don’t explore the systems that are in place that perpetuate that unfairness, and we have an even harder time seeing how that unfairness gives us Whites advantages, one of the biggest of which is the power to decided what the criteria for success will be many areas, including, ironically enough, our diversity and inclusion efforts. We are often the people who have the power to say, based on an incomplete understanding of the impact of race on People of Color, what inclusion will look like. And we Whites seldom ask ourselves “included into what?” If we are deciding what inclusion is then it goes without saying that we are already “included.” We seldom look at that directly - our own sense of inclusion, versus others’ being excluded. We focus on “helping” the excluded to be more like us rather than on our own development, on how often even our attempts at inclusion are exclusionary because they are efforts to make others be like us rather than make the system more welcome to difference.

The idea that companies need to have and pursue a moral purpose is nothing new, nor is it specific to racial equity in organizations. In its groundbreaking study of Sandler O’Neill Partners’ powerful response to their devastating losses on 9/11, TRIAD Consulting Group found that having a moral purpose was central to the company’s success in the aftermath of that disaster. And while these successes did show a remarkable return on investment, they did not occur out of the drive for ROI. ROI was a by-product of the surviving leaders’ need to do what was best for the members of their company, to care for them.

The book The Puritan Gift by Hopper and Hopper discusses at length the sense of working for the greater good that pervaded the US business mindset from the 16^th century onward (as destructive as US business was to racial, ethnic, gender, and sexual orientation equity).

Both of the examples listed here are not divorced from ROI. Moral purpose and the greater good do show return on investment. I use these examples, however, because they show how ROI isn’t the only, or even primary, goal of healthy businesses. A striving for what’s best for everyone can be primary in robust, lucrative businesses.

I’d also like to point out that ROI is in the eye of the beholder. Let’s say for a moment that we could measure equity with a number. Let’s say that my company was at 85% equity—85% of what happens in my company turns out fairly for all people regardless of their identities. What if I could spend 1% of my profit this year to make my company 100% equitable? Isn’t that ROI? I’d bet the people who would have ended up in that unfair 15% had I not invested in equity think it is.

The irony of what I’m arguing here is that the real struggle in all of this in not about the kind of “return” we are getting but the kind of “investment” that needs to be made on the part of us Whites in order for equity to have a chance. Learning a new way of seeing something as profound as the impact of race on people in the US is an intense, personal task that may offer many benefits and successes along the way, but never really ends. Much like People of Color often report never being able to fully let their guards down, that some form of racial inequity is often lurking in the most innocent of situations, we Whites likely never completely unlearn the racially limited socialization that we are subjected to in the US. The business of becoming an ally in equity is a lifelong investment.