In a speech that drew national attention and was broadcast on 200 National Public Radio stations, DiversityInc Partner and Cofounder Luke Visconti forcefully spells out the business case for diversity.

Thank you for inviting me; it is an honor to speak in this forum. As a publisher, the history of the City Club and this speaking series resonates with me, as free speech and a free press go hand in hand.

Along with my business partner, Foulis Peacock, I publish DiversityInc, a daily web site and monthly magazine about the bottom-line benefits of diversity. I run the editorial department, circulation and marketing. DiversityInc is written for a line-management audience, and our current online circulation is over 800,000 unique monthly visitors and over 170,000 auditable circulation.

Luke Visconti was the keynote speaker at The Skanner Foundation's 21st annual Martin Luther King Jr. Breakfast on Jan. 15 in Portland, Ore. More than 1,200 people attended. (See also: What Dr. King Really Meant: The Obligation That Benefits Everyone.)

The cornerstone of our publishing cycle is our annual Top 50 Companies for Diversity competition. The June issue is our Top 50 issue and this year we had 317 companies participate—up from 118 in 2003. The list is determined by evaluating data submitted in a 230-question survey, which has questions regarding CEO Commitment, Human Capital, Supplier Diversity and Corporate Communications. There is no connection between being on our list and business conducted with our company—it is not a pay-to-play list.

Most of the companies on our list are what I would classify as knowledge-worker companies, like pharmaceutical companies, accounting firms and banks. There are also labor-intensive companies like Marriott and Sodexho. The accomplishments of the companies on our list are amazing. For example:

• They averaged 43 percent people of color for their new hires compared with the U.S. work force, which averages only 29 percent people of color.

• Although Top 50 companies employ only 5 percent of the U.S. work force, they employ 17 percent of college-educated people of color.

• They averaged 9.9 percent of their procurement budget spent with women and minority business enterprises.

It takes more than a casual effort to accomplish these kinds of results. However, in abstract they're nothing more than interesting. To drive home the bottom-line connection, we convert our Top 50 list into a stock index. Our Top 50 index outperforms the Nasdaq, S&P 500 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average on a 10-, five- and one-year basis, documenting the connection between superior diversity management and superior corporate governance, which returns on equity for investors.

You should be pleased to know that there are two companies from Ohio on our list: Procter & Gamble and Cleveland's own KeyBank.

The reason that vigorous management of diversity returns on investment is the business case for diversity.

We're changing dramatically as a country: By roughly 2040, white people will be the minority in our country. As a frame of reference, the ratio of white people to people of color in 1950 was 9 to 1. Today for Americans under 40, the ratio is less than 1.5 to 1 and for children under ten, it's close to 1 to 1.

Households of color have been increasing their household income at more than double the rate of white households since 1990. And the representation of people of color in getting high-school, college and post-graduate degrees is rising more rapidly than their growth in our population.

It's important to also consider the globalization of business. There are now over 400 million cell-phone users in China—VOIP calls have made it less expensive for people in Mumbai to call Cleveland than it is for people in Cleveland to call Mumbai. The market has responded: According to Rick Santelli's column in Barron's, an astounding 88 percent of mutual-fund inflows went to international funds in 2006.

In my opinion, it is important to understand the science behind the business case for diversity.

Dr. Martin Luther King defined what is necessary for people to be free citizens:

1. Access to the governmental system—or voting rights
2. Access to education
3. Access to capital

The civil-rights movement fulfilled the promises made by our Constitution and Declaration of Independence by giving us the civil-rights and voting-rights acts. Dr. King did this by forcing our government to the bargaining table by systematic peaceful protests on a dramatic scale.

If you think back to 1960, most African Americans in this country could NOT legally vote. Because of segregation, access to colleges was extremely limited and there was almost no access to banking, mortgages or governmental business contracts. The voting-rights act enforced voting rights, the civil-rights act ended legal segregation and other civil-rights programs like the Community Reinvestment Act opened up access to capital.

Interestingly, in 1960, there was very little immigration. Immigration reform, starting in the mid-1960s, opened up access for people to come here, and we now enjoy more immigration per capita than ever in our history. Most of that immigration is not "white."

In short, the civil-rights era—and the civil and human rights in our country—are responsible for the business case for diversity. In essence, because people are created equally, when the playing field is leveled, the entire society benefits by people achieving their human potential.

Or simply: Decrease oppression, generate wealth.

Our country revolutionized the planet by codifying human rights in our Constitution. The Constitution and Declaration of Independence does not mention God, nor does it ascribe rights only to those who have proper documents or live in a certain geographic area. The rights expressed were for all people—self-evident and inalienable.

We have not been perfect at implementing those rights, but we've been on a course of improvement.

As we got better at implementing those rights, we not only attained but retained the world's greatest GDP. Systemically decreased oppression in the workplace is why the DiversityInc Top 50 companies can create relationships across race, gender, orientation, disability and age—and why the Top 50 stock index outperforms the market. It's also why the international market has become so hot; we live in an era of more people having more access to Dr. King's three principles than ever before in human history.

Bringing this back around to you and your company, I can recommend specific things to look at.

Educate yourself. Get some diversity training; read some books. Start with something like Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? by Beverly Tatum or When Affirmative Action was White by Ira Katznelson. Perhaps you can subscribe to DiversityInc. Talk to Margot Copeland at KeyBank. The results she's posted in her direction of KeyBank's diversity efforts document that she knows what she's talking about.

Take an excuse-free look at your situation. The easiest way to do this is to inventory your workplace. Are you as diverse as our population at all levels? If not, keep in mind that people are created equally, and logically, talent is also distributed equally; therefore, you don't have the best-qualified people working for you.

Our data shows that representation is directly linked to recruitment and retention. Diversity management is all about building relationships—across race, gender, orientation, disability and age. If you can't build good relationships internally, I guarantee you your relationships with your customers, suppliers and investors can't be any better.

Take ownership. Don't be like the person who told me in an e-mail last week that "We don't think surveys like yours measure the kind of people who would be attracted to work here." We measure white men, white women, Asian men, women, Latinas, Latinos, LGBT people, people with disabilities and age groups. Who on earth is attracted to work at that company who isn't in one of those groups?

Do business with people and companies that reflect your values.

Don't blame the victim. Think critically. When anti-affirmative-action people tell you that affirmative action forces colleges to admit unqualified people, think about what determines the qualification—oh yeah, a standardized test, which is dependent on preparation—which varies by race and economic level in this country.

Change your behavior. If your last few dinner parties were not diverse, change that. Invite someone new to lunch.

Finally, understand that we have common human failings. We're visually oriented tribal animals. We are psychologically predisposed to trust people who look just like us. But that isn't going to work for business in America of 2007 or in a globe that is 75 percent not white.

Thank you very much.

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