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DIVERSITY OF MEANING
The convoluted world of EEO policy
My employer is a large news company -- one of a dwindling number of such companies, but that's a column for a different day. I work in human resources, in a division called Staffing & Diversity. The Staffing part is my speciality and my preference, but lately I've been spending a lot of time on the word after the ampersand.
Diversity is a big HR buzzword. Technically it means "the condition of being composed of distinct or unlike elements or qualities," and HR professionals hold with Merriam Webster. There is a misconception, they will tell you, that diversity is a synonym for affirmative action. Affirmative action refers to a government-sponsored plan to ensure that employers recruit and hire a requisite number of minorities and women. Diversity, on the other hand, goes beyond race and gender, and means embracing differences, whether of race, gender, sexual orientation, educational background, or opinion concerning the best Elvis Costello album. That said, most people equate the one with the other. When CEOs speak of "valuing diversity," this is a euphemism for "hiring, retaining, and promoting people other than white men."
A bit of background. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 says that it is unlawful to discriminate on the basis of race, color, sex, religion, or country of origin. The Equal Opportunity Employment Commission enforces the Civil Rights Act, ensuring that companies do not discriminate. One of the ways this is done is to promote affirmative action, which mandates that preference be given to equally qualified minorities and women in the selection process.
The government, in effect, tells us that in order not to take race, color, sex, religion, or country of origin into account when making hiring decisions, we must take race, color, sex, religion, and country of origin into account when making hiring decisions. Who was Secretary of Labor in 1964, Joseph Heller?
These seemingly contradictory directives are well-intentioned, and have been effective over the years in allowing minorities and women to enter and thrive in a workforce still dominated by white men, especially at the senior management level. Many, many companies have lost discrimination claims in the last 35 years. But the powers that be have grown weary of affirmative action, and the '64 vintage had to be transferred to a new bottle. Hence the appropriation of diversity.
The word is vague, and clever HR professionals have a field day contorting its meaning. Progressive companies have literature concerning their diversity policies and initiatives, extolling the diversity of their corporate culture. Texaco, for example, touts its "diversity of opportunity," which means there are many different jobs offered there. Even I, in my recruiting rounds, have been known to use the phrase "diversity of geography." This Orwellian usage diverts attention from ethnic and sexual diversity, which is what the government cares about, and true diversity, which the government clearly does not.
Much has been made of the "diversity" of President George W. Bush's Cabinet because it includes blacks, Asian-Americans, Hispanics, and women. But does the inclusion of Colin Powell and Christine Todd Whitman really further diversity? Affirmative action diversity, perhaps, but true diversity? After all, the Cabinet is composed in the main of rich, conservative Republicans. How much does Colin Powell have in common with the average black man? After all, he's serving in the same Cabinet with John Ashcroft for a president who 90% of blacks voted against (the ones who were allowed to vote, that is). As for Whitman, she governed the state (New Jersey) where racial profiling on the highways regularly occurs. Suddenly she's a poster child for diversity?
More doublespeak from the government: Companies, when placing ads in newspapers, are required to avow that they are Equal Opportunity Employers. That's like all the other Puritan women wearing scarlet letters except Hester Prynne. Or Thurman Thomas introducing himself as the former Buffalo Bills All-Pro running back who did not commit double murder. You should not have to declare that you are in compliance with the law; compliance with the law should be assumed, and assumed tacitly.
Diversity is especially important in the news industry. As the demographic makeup of the country grows more ethnically diverse, it is essential that there is adequate representation among the journalistic ranks of these demographic groups, in order to not bias the coverage.
Coverage is always biased, of course, no matter how pure the intentions of the journalist. It has to be, because newspapers and broadcast stations depend on advertising to make their money, and advertisers are megacorporations with government contracts who, nine times out of ten, are going to suffer if The New York Times ever printed a more objective story on, say, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, or U.S. involvement with the Iraqi government, or the so-called War on Drugs. Noam Chomsky and others have written volumes on this subject. Michael Mann made a movie about it last year.
That said, diversity, true diversity, can make a positive difference in the media's coverage of certain stories. Take the Kurt Cobain suicide. My company came close to not reporting that story -- an important, important story to my generation -- because the editors working that night were too old to understand Cobain's significance. Were I, a Gen Xer, to join the editorial ranks, I would add to the diversity, the true diversity, of a group that is mostly Baby Boomers.
But the government is not interested in true diversity. The government is interested in race and gender and numbers. Lots and lots of numbers.
My employer plans to launch a company-wide diversity initiative. This week, my boss and I met with a specialist in diversity training. Call her Dolores. Dolores has a doctorate in psychology, black skin, and an axe to grind. Her training program ("I call it an intellectual approach to diversity") involves taking a group of (presumably white) senior executives, giving them something to read, and conducting a no-holds-barred discussion. In a recent training, she led an incendiary debate about the O.J. Simpson verdict, which she claims caused a rift between blacks and whites that remains unhealed.
That Dolores sought to distill the Simpson verdict to race was enough to raise an eyebrow. Yes, Mark Fuhrman is a bigot and a buffoon. But his prejudice was incidental to the murders that took place, murders O.J. almost certainly committed. Today Simpson chases the real killers across Brentwood golf courses. Perhaps this is for the best. The verdict saved Los Angeles from riots not seen in this country since the Civil War. And we now know that a rich and famous black man can pay his way out of jail just like a rich and famous white man. Money, the jury determined, is color-blind.
"My program consists of making white people uncomfortable," Dolores continued. "What I tell them is, I don't want to join your country club, I don't want to move into your neighborhood, I don't want to socialize with you or be your friend. I just want to be promoted." She went on to explain that when you boil down diversity problems in American society, it invariably becomes a black-white issue. She did not recognize shades of gray, or other skin colors, for that matter.
Then she told a story about a client of hers, a white man, who was disliked by his peers and could not figure out why. "I know why," she told him. "You act like an uppity Negro." My (black) boss added, "He wasn't out in the field." And the oh-so-subtle Dolores said, "No. He was a house nigger."
In a business meeting, and in front of me, Dolores used the n-word! And succeeded in proving to my boss that she is adept at making white people uncomfortable. What can I say to that? It's a lose-lose situation. If I say something, like, "I find that language offensive," she'll respond, "Of course you do. And that's the point." And if I'm silent, I betray my value system. Either way, I am powerless. Not wanting to cause trouble, I kept quiet.
White people don't need to be made to feel uncomfortable. We already are uncomfortable. Especially young white men who never benefited from our allegedly privileged status and who have no reason to feel guilty. We applied to college at a time when schools sought out minorities. And we entered the job market at a time when "minorities are encouraged to apply." My company spends the bulk of its staffing budget on minority recruiting, largely for an internship program exclusive to people of color. How does it make me feel, Dolores, when I tell a younger version of myself that he is not eligible for this program because of the color of his skin? How does it feel to know that I will likely never head up a Staffing & Diversity department, at my company or anywhere, because my great-grandparents immigrated from Italy and not, say, Japan?
I don't need your help to feel uncomfortable, thank you very much.
Ultimately we decided not to use Dolores. A diversity program, after all, should not make anyone uncomfortable. That defeats the purpose, which is not to divide but to unite; to celebrate differences, but also to find similarities, to build common ground. Until companies strive for true diversity, in the spirit of faith in all that true diversity adds and not in fear of government reprisal, all their talk will be just lip service.
By Greg Olear
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