The Wave

Diversity Is Here To Stay, All Over Again

During the civil rights movement, the country used legislation, the courts, the police and military to change American society, to push through the barriers to equality for women and people of color.  It was a tough, bloody fight and almost everyone came out of it battered and bruised.

    Then, during the 1980’s as the composition of our workforce began to shift noticeably, corporate America began to take on board diversity from a moral and “right-thing-to-do” angle.  The changes that resulted were less riotous, more subtle, and took a very long time, but the focus on breaking down barriers remained the same.  Of course, some people resisted and denigrated the effort, but most said either “finally,” or “OK, whatever: as long as I don’t lose my job.”

    And finally during the late 90’s and into our current time, organizations of every stripe started to wake up to the fact that there’s a lot of bottom line benefit from valuing and leveraging diversity.  And so, once again, our leading organizations are breaking down barriers to equality; trying to create inclusive, respectful workplaces where everyone can be themselves, help capture diverse and elusive customers, and still have a shot at the brass ring.

    Of course, not every company is on board with these ideas – in fact, from what I can see, the smaller the company, the less likely they are to value and leverage diversity (unless they’re minority-owned firms going after government set-aside contracts; cynicism intended).  Still, if we look closely enough, we can all see the clear business case for diversity –breaking down barriers has a measureable financial upside.

And here we are: about to swear in our first black President.

  Holy Cow.  The last redoubt of straight, white, male dominance – the US Presidency - has been surmounted and won by the ongoing march of diversity!  And, almost everyone agrees that on the face of it this is a good thing.  And the only naysayers to the idea of a black President are racists or extremist nut-jobs.

    So, everything’s fixed, right?  All the barriers are down, right? We can all pat ourselves on the back and say “look what we did!,” right?  Hmmmm.  Don’t think so.

    If I’ve realized just one thing over the 15 years I’ve been working in diversity, it’s that this learning and changing and growing ourselves on diversity are ongoing efforts – it never ends. Sorry.  We can’t just assume that just because we won a big battle, or even a number of really big battles, that we have won the proverbial war.  No, this diversity thing is a big, amorphous, living, breathing ball of complexity rolling right through the 21st century, and it’s still rigged to explode if conditions are right (or wrong as the case may be).

    But sure. This is, like…dude… a totally good time to celebrate: let’s pop some champagne, dance at the inaugural ball, hug and kiss and congratulate one another for a great American achievement.  But, then let’s get back to work, and refocus our efforts once again on the barriers to equality that still remain - for there are many yet to be torn down.

Racial Politics

The whole race argument around Governor Blagojevitch’s  appointment of Illinois Attorney General Roland Burris to the US Senate is tiresome and unfounded.  Even Burris himself was quoted by Senator Harry Reid as saying “Hey, this is nothing racial. Do you understand that?”

So, why is there this mist of racial politics hanging around this thing?

Well first of all, part of this has to do with the media, which are always looking at news through the lens of racial conflict which tends to draw eyeballs whenever mentioned.  I’ve bitched and moaned about this media bias ever since I was a freelancer for the BBC and British newspapers in the late 1980’s.  But rational arguments on behalf of balanced coverage be damned – “if it bleeds, it leads” as newspaper editors like to say.  And nothing bleeds like racial conflict.

It’s also really easy for cable news talking heads to ask the question “is there a racial component to this problem?” and punt it around with grave seriousness for a few news cycles without any definitive yes or no conclusion.

But, the question of the Senate having a racial bias against Burris also has a hell of a lot to do with who brought it up in the first place; none other than Illinois Congressman Bobby Rush, who used the racial hot-button codeword “lynching” in Burris’ press conference.

(email continues here...) Now, I have nothing against Rush at all and apparently he’s been serving his constituents in Chicago’s South Side – which has a higher percentage of African Americans than any other congressional district in the nation – very well. Hell, they’ve been returning him to Congress every two years since 1993.

But, we should also take note that Rush was co-founder of the Illinois Chapter of the Black Panther Party and very active in the civil rights movement.  And, right before the Burris appointment, he also made it abundantly clear that an African American – not just any old qualified candidate, but specifically an African American - should fill Obama’s vacant Senate seat.

Basically, what I’m saying is that Rush, like each of us, looks at life through a number of different lenses – one of which is most certainly about how African Americans have gotten the proverbial shaft every which way to Sunday since the founding of this great country.  And the fact the nation’s most exclusive club, the US Senate, could really benefit from more diversity, adds some fuel to this fire. Fair enough.

But, on his own merits, and according to everyone who knows anything about these things, Roland Burris is eminently qualified to replace Barack Obama in the Senate.  If Gov. Blagojevitch wasn’t such a fool (see my previous post: Stickier and Stickier Fools) then we wouldn’t be discussing Burris’ appointment at all.  It would have been a done deal last year and we’d be on to other nonsense.

So, if we’re going to ask “Who’s behind the racial debate around the Burris appointment?” it’s just really important for us all to bear in mind that old saying… “Consider the source.”  In this case, it’s the media and Congressman Bobby Rush.