Question:
Suppose someone possesses some of the stereotypes that are attached to their race, gender, orientation, ability and/or age. Do you think this person should embrace or deny these qualities, especially regarding perpetuating stereotypes and advancing in careers?

Answer:
Stereotypes are used to fit people into limitations comprehensible to the majority culture. Small-minded people cling to them as a means to make the large world digestible to their limited perspective. Even stereotypes that might seem somewhat positive—the “studious Asian,” for example—end up being self limiting: “studious but not leadership material.”

If you’re in an environment where the leadership embraces stereotypes, playing into that will only lead you down a cul-de-sac. If you have the means to leave, I suggest you do so—even if you’re a straight, able-bodied white man. Retro environments bring retro results.

If you’re in a progressive environment, playing into a stereotype is probably not going to mesh well with what the leadership is trying to accomplish.

My feeling is that people should embrace culture and celebrate differences. That is based on respect and appropriate treatment..

Luke Visconti’s Ask the White Guy column is a top draw on DiversityInc.com. Visconti, the founder and CEO of DiversityInc, is a nationally recognized leader in diversity management. In his popular column, readers who ask Visconti tough questions about race/culture, religion, gender, sexual orientation, disability and age can expect smart, direct and disarmingly frank answers.

The post Stereotypes: Embrace Them or Deny Them? appeared first on DiversityInc.

Question:
Do all white men think all Black women are hoochie mama, welfare, child bearing, uneducated b******?

Answer:
No, I don’t think all white men feel that way about Black women. However, media images and the lack of interracial socializing have led to a situation where the distinct minority of white men can say that they truly know a Black woman. Even fewer can say with conviction that they trust a Black woman in either a business or personal relationship.

My friend, former Rutgers Business School Professor Dr. dt ogilvie, co-authored a phenomenal paper about African American Women Executives (AAWE). Her paper documents how AAWE leadership traits are very different from white women’s. They’re actually similar to white male leadership traits. This creates a conflict with many white men, especially those from my generation (age 47) or older. It comes from a mix of racial AND gender stereotyping. You’ll hear that expressed in terms like “You’re so articulate” or “Can you believe that this ‘little lady’ can do (insert normal business function here).”

Ignorance and confusion are hardly conducive to a good relationship. The good news is that there are a growing number of white men who know, trust and rely on their black women colleagues. By the way: If you are unsure of what a “hoochie mama” is, I recommend www.urbandictionary.com. It is a useful tool, especially for white men.

Luke Visconti’s Ask the White Guy column is a top draw on DiversityInc.com. Visconti, the founder and CEO of DiversityInc, is a nationally recognized leader in diversity management. In his popular column, readers who ask Visconti tough questions about race/culture, religion, gender, sexual orientation, disability and age can expect smart, direct and disarmingly frank answers.

The post What Do White Men Think of Black Women? appeared first on DiversityInc.

The repeated depictions of Obama as a monkey or hoodlum and other derogatory Black stereotypes are likely to occur more regularly as Election Day nears.

The stereotypes circulating on social media today frequently rely on historical representations of Blacks as “animalistic,” “deviant” and “inferior,” finds the report that analyzed the occurrence of “hate,” “Barack Obama” and “Michelle Obama” on more than 20 Facebook groups and pages.

The images commonly depict Obama as a chimp or in blackface with inflated facial features, such as exaggerated lips, buckteeth and an oversized nose. Other stereotypical pictures feature the president donning a do-rag and gold teeth or smoking a joint. Another image superimposed his head onto the body of Golem from “Lord of the Rings.”

Michelle Obama repeatedly is shown as an angry Black woman with masculine features and is referred to as “Moochelle,” a direct attack on her campaign to end obesity. These slurs are similar to the hate speech that flooded Michelle Obama’s Twitter page when it launched last January.

“Most photo captions do not attack the president and first lady’s political views; instead, they attack them personally with racial slurs … The shocking nature of these pictures spurs numerous comments and likes,” says study author Dr. Mia Moody, professor of journalism and media arts at Baylor University. “Photos are often more effective than words as one can look at a picture and almost instantly understand the views held by group members.”

Comments on the Facebook images on the “I Hate Obama” page (18,189 likes), which frequently contain the N-word, include: “Frobama,” “hahaha he looks like a monkey with large ears” and “I’m just ready for him to throw poop at me.”

Is Racism & Hate Speech Allowed?

Although Facebook’s policy states that users can’t “post content that: is hate speech, threatening, or pornographic” and asks its users to help police content, many hate groups find ways to skirt the restrictions. If a slur is not in the page’s official title, for example, the group can avoid being flagged as inappropriate. Also, pages that are indirectly “hateful,” such as those with a celebrity or other famous icon’s name, are less likely to be removed.

“The definition of hate on Facebook is further muddied because there are many groups that have the word ‘hate’ in the title but are not actually ‘hate groups,’” explains Moody, such as “I hate to go to bed.”

Twitter has less restrictive posting regulations. Upon joining Twitter, users agree that they may be exposed to content that “might be offensive, harmful, inaccurate or otherwise inappropriate, or in some cases, postings that have been mislabeled or are otherwise deceptive.” Twitter renounces all liability in such cases.

Since Moody’s report was released, the “I Hate Michelle Obama” group has been removed from Facebook, along with “Dear Lord, this year you took my favorite actor, Patrick Swayze, my favorite actress, Farah Fawcett, my favorite singer, Michael Jackson. I just wanted to let you know that my favorite president is Barak Obama.”

However, multiple pages are still active. The most popular is “I hate it when I wake up in the morning and Barack Obama is President,” topping its reach at 787,574 likes. “Obama sucks” totaled 38,376 likes, while “Woah, Bob the Builder and Barack Obama have the same catchphrase!” has 25,663 likes and “I hate Barack Obama” has 7,356 likes.

Stereotypes Threaten Diversity in the Workplace

The prevalence of social media today poses a unique challenge for companies’ diversity-and-inclusion efforts. A majority of corporate employees participate in some form of social-media exchange on sites including Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and Pinterest. This means that negative stereotypes and images can easily resurface in the office and be shared in coworkers’ emails and water-cooler discussions. These communications, according to diversity experts, elicit negative repercussions on engagement and productivity.

At a DiversityInc event, Dr. Claude Steele spoke to the negative impact of stereotypes on workplaces. “Diversity in the workplace is about making a place comfortable enough to flourish” by removing the fear of judgment and discrimination, says the Stanford University School of Education dean and former provost of Columbia University.

He explained that this “stereotype threat” creates a “self-handicap” that reduces engagement and productivity, especially among Blacks and other underrepresented groups. “In a situation like this, it takes cognitive resources away from a relaxed engagement with the task at hand and that undermines your performance,” says Steele.

Employers have a responsibility to create a favorable work environment and generate an atmosphere of safety for all employees. That means taking a firm stand with a no-tolerance policy for those who participate in behavior that promotes stereotypes, bias or microinequities, both inside and outside the workplace.

Best practices for promoting diversity in the workplace to ensure an inclusive environment include:

1. Communicating corporate values. CEOs need to take the lead in being visible and proactive advocates for diversity, in particular by holding their executive team accountable for diversity results. The corporate website also should feature the company’s values on diversity and inclusion prominently and highlight the company’s successes in diversity and inclusion. An excellent example of this is jcpenney CEO Ron Johnson’s support of Ellen DeGeneres as company spokesperson. Watch Johnson discuss the controversy on CBS News.

2. Leverage mentoring and resource groups to teach cultural competence. These relationships allow employees to develop their skills and gain exposure to management, and they also generate awareness and understanding for differences in race/ethnicity, religion, orientation, etc.

3. Mandate diversity training for your employees, especially at the manager level and above. This will help educate employees about the negative business impact of stereotypes and allow them to recognize existing gaps and biases. Sixty-six percent of the DiversityInc Top 50 require diversity training for the entire workforce, up 13.8 percent from five years ago (58 percent).

Discrimination: From Social Media to Society

The political arena reflects the continued racial tension in the United States. Most recently, the passing of voter-ID laws in 33 states, which require that all poll-goers show government identification before they can vote, has sparked controversy.

While advocates say the voter-ID law is meant to reduce fraud at the polls and improve the electoral process, opponents argue that the laws are a type of “voter suppression” and will prevent ballots from many Blacks, Latinos and poor people, groups that typically vote Democratic and most likely supported Obama’s re-election.

A national poll suggests that the issue may be influenced by racial tension. The University of Delaware’s Center for Political Communication found a correlation between American’s attitudes toward Blacks and their support of voter-ID laws: the more “racial resentment” a person had, the more likely it is that they support legislation.

Results were mainly divided along political party lines: Democrats had the lowest resentment rating overall; Republicans had the highest. Democrats’ support of voter IDs was most likely to coincide with their racial attitudes. Those with high racial resentment had greater support for the laws. Republicans tended to support the policy regardless of racial resentment.

Paul Brewer, the center’s associate director for research, says, “These findings suggest that Americans’ attitudes about race play an important role in driving their views on voter ID laws.”

For more on racism and stereotypes, read:

Diversity-Management Fail: Racist Prank Escalates to Lawsuit at UCLA

Racial Discrimination: Black Employee Fired After Being Called the N-Word

Ask the White Guy: ‘I’m a Young White Male; What Do I Have to Apologies (sic) For?’

‘Blacks Should Not Be Satisfied With Food Stamps’: The Danger of Stereotypes

NBA Star John Amaechi on Diversity & Inclusion: Hate Speech Goes Beyond N- and F-Words

The post Racist Obama Facebook Pages & Your Office: What Do You Need to Know? appeared first on DiversityInc.

A petition on change.org, started by NAACP national board member Willis Edwards, is rallying the community to support Dr. Head. As of this morning, 83,534 signatures had been collected.

Joking Gone Too Far? Or Racism & Retaliation?

As part of an annual “roast” at UCLA, medical students created an image of a gorilla on all fours with Dr. Head’s face. A naked white man—with supervisor Dr. Gerald Burke’s face superimposed—was pictured sodomizing the gorilla.

This photo was displayed at a school-sponsored graduation event in 2006 to more than 200 people, which included faculty, professional peers, students and visiting guests. Other slides were also shown that implied Dr. Head was underperforming as a professional.

“I’ve never had to think about things before, the racial aspect, in terms of white and Black before, especially at work,” says Dr. Head in the video. After the image was displayed, “I pulled [the supervisor] aside and I said to him, ‘How can you let this happen?’… and he just smiled and chuckled.”

Want a Career? Keep Quiet

Other UCLA officials also were quick to dismiss Dr. Head’s requests for disciplinary action against the students. He was told by fellow faculty members: “If you want tenure and you make a big stink about this, they’re going to crush you.”

Dr. Head did receive tenure during this time period. He is the first Black professor to receive tenure in the Head and Neck Surgery department and one of only two Black teaching surgeons on staff. However, his pay subsequently was cut and he claims he was denied prime teaching opportunities that could have advanced his career.

He filed the lawsuit in late April in Los Angeles County Superior Court against The Regents of the University of California, a 26-member board that appoints and governs the university leadership. Foley Lyman Law Group is representing Dr. Head.

UCLA’s response to the lawsuit in the Los Angeles Times featured a statement from spokesman Phil Hampton: They had “investigated this matter and found that the evidence does not substantiate the claims of unlawful activity.”

Diversity in the Workplace: 3 Ways to Stop Racial Bias

It was UCLA administrators’ “lack of action” that hurt the most, explains Dr. Head in the video above.

This need for accountability and mindfulness is just as critical to corporations that are looking to build more diverse and inclusive workplaces for employees.

• CEO Commitment: Hold everyone accountable with a no-tolerance policy for bigotry. Generating buy-in for diversity-management values starts at the top of an organization, most frequently exemplified by CEO commitment. These values are essential to maintaining an inclusive environment, including by race, ethnicity, religious background, gender, orientation and disability. Watch our diversity web seminar on CEO commitment for more best practices.
• Diversity Training: Workplace diversity includes ALL employees, so providing mandatory diversity training is critical. This is especially important for showing white men how they fit into diversity. Eighty-six percent of The 2012 DiversityInc Top 50 Companies for Diversity now require diversity training for managers, compared with 78 percent five years ago. Sixty-eight percent require diversity training for their entire workforces, compared with 58 percent five years ago. For more information, read about our diversity-training courses. Also read Black History Month Facts & Figures, which you can use for educational purposes.

• Resource Groups: These business resources are the most proven way of increasing diversity-management results. “Diversity in the workplace is about making a place comfortable enough to flourish” and removing fear of judgment and stereotypes, said Dr. Claude Steele, Stanford University School of Education dean and former provost of Columbia University, at a DiversityInc event. (Watch the video above.) Reducing feelings of threat and isolation allows all employees to feel included and improves employee engagement, productivity and, ultimately, innovation. For more on stereotypes, read Challenges in Diversity Management: How Do Stereotypes Affect Us? and Jeremy Lin & Racism: 3 Ways to Stop Dangerous Stereotypes.

For more on diversity management best practices, read Diversity-Management Case Studies Reveal Why Companies Rise & Fall in the DiversityInc Top 50. Also, read DiversityInc’s Black History Month Facts & Figures and The DiversityInc Top 10 Companies for Blacks.

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Talent-development doubts? Michelle Lee’s extraordinary story is a testimony to mentoring and teamwork.

With all intentions of following a career in music, she took a job as a bank teller to have something to fall back on. She fell in love with banking and, through support, perseverance and an innate ability to bring people together to work collaboratively, rose to the top of Wachovia, now a Wells Fargo company. Wells Fargo is No. 33 in the 2012 DiversityInc Top 50.

As the executive vice president and Northeast regional president, she is responsible for more than 460 branches, nine business banking teams, approximately 5,500 team members, and about $100 million in revenue.

DiversityInc CEO Luke Visconti sat down with her to discuss her personal story, including the racial stereotypes she had to fight as well as her deep faith in Wells Fargo’s corporate values and inclusive culture in the workplace and the marketplace.

Read When Will There Be More Women CEOs? for more on women and talent development. For more on stereotypes, read ‘Blacks Should Not Be Satisfied With Food Stamps’: The Danger of Stereotypes.

Luke Visconti: You mentioned that you didn’t intend to be in banking and that it was kind of a mistake.

Michelle Lee: From the age of 5, I never considered doing anything other than music. I think I was born singing. I had this great dramatic soprano voice and ended up going to Boston Conservatory. I graduated with a degree in music, applied voice.

My mother is from Cleveland, my father from Blakely, Ga., and they came to my recitals and asked, “Why don’t you think about teaching or something a little more conventional?” To get them off my back, I applied for a job at the bank. I thought that was a nice, respectable career. I started as a teller.

I had this inquisitive nature about banking. I wanted to understand how it worked. There was this woman in the back room who basically did all of the proof work. I ended up taking on little tasks for her, running numbers and learning. Here was this informal mentor. She was willing to train me to be the backup person when she was on vacation or when she had a day off.

I started attending the American Institute of Banking, taking classes after work. I had this hunger to learn. I think it’s the same side of the brain that makes music theory fascinating to me. Mathematics, numbers all appeal to me.

I eventually got into the bank’s management-training program. I remember talking to my assistant manager. She’s an African-American woman and she gave me an example of another really talented African-American woman who had applied for a similar program years before and didn’t get into it. She said, “I’m just trying to give you a reality check. They’re never going to take a Black girl in that program.”

I was accepted into the program. I was the only African American and probably was the only person who wasn’t just out of college.

Luke Visconti: Why do you think they took you?

Michelle Lee: My work history, references that I received. It probably was the first time in my career that I really got a sense of what other people thought of me. They were willing to recommend me; other people saw potential in me. That’s the first time that I really understood the importance of having an advocate.

A Learning Curve

Michelle Lee: There were probably 25 people in the class. They were all white men and women just graduating from Ivy League schools.

I show up for class. I have on my very best Sunday dress. I’m in a royal-blue dress with flowers on it, and I walk into this class with this sea of dark navy, dark brown, dark gray suits. I knew immediately one of these things is not like the other.

Luke Visconti: Where did you get assigned to after this class?

Michelle Lee: There was an assistant manager at a branch in downtown Newark who had a heart attack. They actually pulled me out of the class a little early. From there I got my first management job in northern Newark, which was a predominantly Hispanic neighborhood. No one wanted to talk to me. Trying to bridge the communication gaps that we had, connect with people and establish relationships with them—it was my first lesson as a manager.

Someone approached me about a branch in East Orange, N.J. It was much bigger, much busier, a very challenging community to work in.

I spent about five years at that branch. That was really where I think I cut my chops in managing people. That branch had failed its audit. The previous manager had been fired. The head of operations said, “You’re green. I have no idea why they put you here and I think you’re going to fail.”

On the one hand it scared me, but it motivated me. Three years later, we passed our audit with flying colors. We’re a top-performing branch with the same group of people.

I think about what made this team not behave like a team—they didn’t care, didn’t align with the company’s vision and philosophy around serving our customers. It really was about helping them see the value that they could bring to work every day.

I didn’t think that I was doing work around diversity because that was before all of the focus on diversity and awareness training. But when I think back on it, it was about the same core values.

Luke Visconti: When you think back on those traits that you used to make this branch successful, can you distill them down into bullet points?

Michelle Lee: Part of it was sharing, creating a vision for the team. We knew why we were coming together every day. We came to some common agreements around how we wanted our customers to feel and how we wanted our customers to experience us and what we wanted our work environment to be like.

Then celebrating success; giving people candid feedback; letting them know here is what’s standing between where you are and where you’re trying to go; being a great coach, mentor and not shying away from giving people tough feedback. 

A Seat at the Table

Luke Visconti: Tell me about the scope of your responsibility.

Michelle Lee: I’m responsible for New Jersey, New York and Connecticut, all of community banking—over 460 branches, nine business banking teams, about 5,500 team members in total, about $100 million in revenue.

There are 11 lead regional presidents in Wells Fargo with the acquisition of Wachovia. I report to Laura Schulte, who is the president of Community Banking for the East Coast. She reports to Carrie Tolstedt, who is the head of Community Banking for the company. On my expanded leadership team, there are 21 people: 12 are women and four of those women are African American.

Luke Visconti: What do you think about the bank and its ability to relate to people, to be successful in a very demanding marketplace?

Michelle Lee: One of our key priorities is our focus on our communities and stakeholders. In order to be successful, our workforce has to reflect their diversity. Wells Fargo having so many women in senior management roles helps us interpret and form the company around what’s important to our stakeholders.

When I go into my stores, I don’t just see white men as my customers. I see their wives; I see single women; I see single mothers; I see working women; I see women in business.

John Stumpf, his leadership team and his direct reports are very deliberate about getting the voice of our team members. It’s not about having more people than the next organization; it’s really about having more engaged people.

People are engaged when they feel like they are valued, that a company gets them and that we’re not trying to homogenize everybody. When you feel that your leaders, your mentors, the decision makers of the company value your opinion, they seek it out.

Ultimately, that leads to helping our customers succeed financially. [For] any company, regardless of the industry that figures that out, I think it’s a difference maker.

Luke Visconti: I’ve seen the results of Wells Fargo’s engagement surveys. How deep down do they survey the people who report to you?

Michelle Lee: We survey down to every team member that is part of the organization.

Not only do we assess where we are but then each team builds an action plan to address areas where we could do a better job.

What I really like about our process is that we get the opinions and voices of our team members, ultimately solving for areas where we have opportunities or building on strengths. The team members are engaged in figuring out what the action plan is and then holding themselves and each other accountable to it.

Diversity-Management Success

Luke Visconti: Let’s talk about diversity management. What are the things that have struck you as being particularly effective?

Michelle Lee: Building competency around diversity—it’s a skill that you build. Where you are along your journey is so colored by what your background is, what your culture is.

We’re willing to apply some resources around developing leadership skills, to set expectations with leaders that they become competent as it pertains to diversity and inclusion. Not to have it be this sort of separate thing that we do because it’s the right thing to do but making it an integrated part of our business practices.

Most corporations will say that our ability to grow, our ability to sustain, is tied to our ability to create a diverse and inclusive environment. How does that actually translate to the bottom line? How do you build it in to your day-to-day business practices?

Understanding demographics, the different needs of your customers, how their backgrounds and culture might drive their needs and desires differently—how as a company, regardless of your product, do you respond to those needs and not have diversity be this thing that’s sitting off on the sideline?

Is it in your recruiting practices? Are you looking to attract diverse talent? How do you on-board a person with a diverse background differently? How do you support that person differently so that they can be successful in their roles.

Luke Visconti: Your organization realized it. How did it happen here? Why was it successful?

Michelle Lee: The one that rings in my head is that every day we come to work to help our customers succeed financially. It’s at the core of everything that we do, including all of our efforts around embedding diversity into our business practices.

Wells Fargo is grounded in its vision. If you were to read, interview after interview, leaders across all different business lines, I guarantee you that somewhere in that interview you’re going to hear the words “We want to help our customers succeed financially.” It’s the pillar upon which the success of the company is built.

If our vision is to help our customers succeed financially, we need to understand who our customers are. Our team members need to reflect the communities that we’re serving. That will be our competitive advantage.

It’s not about whether the vision statement is good. It’s not about the words or that internal guilt that makes you go apologize to someone or do something to correct it.

We bounce decisions that we make against our values system. I’m not saying we get it right 100 percent of the time. When it doesn’t align, we go back and ask how we get this in line with what we believe.

Everyday Accountability

Luke Visconti: You see in great detail what’s going on with the economy from a very feet-on-the-ground perspective. How do you see things going right now?

Michelle Lee: The economy is still sluggish. Our movement out of it is really tied to jobs. Businesses are still hesitant, people are still hunkered down, not willing to grow or build until there is more certainty. I also sense that people want to be hopeful. As a society, that will help the trajectory of the upswing.

Our value-add as a bank is to understand that that’s on your mind, to help you, to provide you with some expertise around how you’ve invested. Helping you do the math on “Do I really need to work until I’m 75 now? What can I do differently today that will help remedy or resolve some of that?”

To me, it’s our time to step up … I’ve got to know the customer who is walking into my branch. They are just trying to figure out how they’re going to make the rent, the business customer like you who is not just thinking about impact to his business but impact to his personal livelihood and retirement needs.

Luke Visconti: I find this to be a very consistent beam across industries: Companies that are focused are successful and the value statement is extremely important.

Michelle Lee: How are we going to hold ourselves accountable to it? Having a vision is part of it. That’s what breathes life into it, moves it off the brochure, off the page, into action.

How was it ingrained into our business practices? It’s in our recruiting practices. I require my recruiting team to make sure we’ve got a diverse candidate pool before we interview. We’re starting to get our team-member networks up and running: we’ve got five here in my region. It’s in our diverse-supplier strategy, where I make an effort to meet diverse businesses who could potentially become vendors and champion beyond those.

Doors for Those Like Me

Luke Visconti: Do you think that having a diverse leadership team creates the kind of environment that encourages good decisions around diversity?

Michelle Lee: Absolutely. We’ve got this pool of talent that we’re developing. These people will be future leaders who’d take our roles. People want to look up and see that somebody looks like them and that they made it. It makes it feel tangible for them; it makes it feel possible.

I’ve been in banking 28 years. When I started as a teller and really had the epiphany that I wanted to be a banker, my goal was to be a branch manager.

No one said “You’re never going to be anything more than a branch manager.” I said “If I could just be a branch manager” because it’s all I could see; it’s all I could envision. But when I saw other women or I saw other African Americans, it made me think “I can do that too; that’s not a road I’m not allowed to go down.”

It probably was 15 years before I started thinking [about] what’s next for me, before I started to take the cap off my career opportunities, take the chain off my own brain around what I am able to do or what I can achieve.

I represent that to a lot of people. I don’t just think that, I know that. People take time to tell me that.

The post Talent Development Takes Wells Fargo Leader From Teller to $100M in Revenue appeared first on DiversityInc.

Photography by Gary King

An emerging Asian superstar in a Black-dominated sport, basketball wonder Jeremy Lin is suddenly the subject of stereotypes, jokes and racism. Why do fans, commentators and journalists think it’s funny to make Asian jokes? Is Lin’s celebrity at least in part due to his “difference”?

Bigotry in sports is nothing new. From Don Imus’ rant about the Rutgers women’s basketball team to Jimmy the Greek’s infamous claim that Blacks were naturally superior athletes, we’ve seen the furor erupt and the marketplace repercussions.

But this one’s a little different. Lin, if you’ve somehow missed the excitement, is a point guard with the New York Knicks. Despite the presence of big-name athletes like Carmelo Anthony and Amar’e Stoudemire (both Black in a sport where Black players are the majority), the Knicks have been struggling this year. Enter the previously unknown Lin, the American son of Taiwanese immigrants. His heroics, including some amazing last-minute plays, vaulted the team to a seven-game winning streak that ended Friday night and excited fans and sports followers. Yesterday, he led the team to another amazing victory, which has the sports world buzzing.

The controversy erupted when boxer Floyd Mayweather tweeted: “Jeremy Lin is a good player but all the hype is because he’s Asian. Black players do what he does every night and don’t get the same praise.” FOX Sports columnist Jason Whitlock has already apologized for his tweet, which insulted Lin’s sexual ability, using a negative stereotype about Asians.

To top all this off, Madison Square Garden showed a fan’s video of Lin’s head popping out of a fortune cookie, and fans have taken to calling him “Yellow Mamba,” allegedly a play on Kobe Bryant’s nickname of “Black Mamba.”

And then early Saturday morning, an ESPN commentator and the ESPN mobile website used the phrase “Chink in the Armor” regarding the Knicks’ loss to the Hornets Friday night. ESPN immediately pulled the headline and apologized, but the damage was done. (The ESPN commentator was fired Sunday.)

This was their apology: “Last night, ESPN.com’s mobile web site posted an offensive headline referencing Jeremy Lin at 2:30 am ET. The headline was removed at 3:05 am ET. We are conducting a complete review of our cross-platform editorial procedures and are determining appropriate disciplinary action to ensure this does not happen again. We regret and apologize for this mistake.”

What’s going on and why are stereotypes so dangerous? What can your organization do when someone who’s very different from the majority takes on a major role?

Don’t Wait on Teaching the Power of Words 

As former NBA player John Amaechi, who is gay, told DiversityInc’s audience this fall: “In a world where diversity is important, sometimes people wonder about all the initiatives you can do for diversity, but what you can really do is teach people to really be there when they are talking.” This becomes the opportunity for an understanding that goes beyond stereotypes. Sixty-six percent of The DiversityInc Top 50 Companies for Diversity have mandatory diversity training for all their employees.

In other words, don’t wait for an incident to occur. Make sure ALL your employees have mandatory cultural-competence training and that managers are vigilant in creating an atmosphere that’s always inclusive.

Education Is Your Most Valuable Tool

Stereotypes are dangerous in every way. They destroy confidence and the ability to work and function successfully. They damage relationships, in the workplace and outside.

The greatest danger is in people accepting these stereotypes, making them “a normative behavior. That’s what happens eventually; behavior shifts and these are no longer the norm,” says Dr. Claude Steele, former provost of Columbia University and now dean of Education at Stanford University.

The best way to diminish the power of stereotypes is by education. As our recent panel on Muslims and stereotypes demonstrates, understanding the reality often changes perceptions.

Values Emanate From the Top 

Your organization’s values must be consistently and emphatically stated from the top. Take the recent example of JCPenney CEO Ron Johnson standing up proudly for the organization’s decision to hire Ellen DeGeneres as a spokesperson.

The organization’s values and mission should be expressed clearly on the website in the mission statement and in the CEO’s statement.

The visibility of the CEO—and the leader’s ability to hold people accountable for results—is most essential in ensuring everyone in the organization understands what’s acceptable and what’s not.

Learn more about what everyone’s been saying about Jeremy Lin and racism:

Jeremy Lin And Racism: Frequently Asked Questions
An SB Nation editor explores the psychological sources and differences in connotations and racial history.

Is This Jeremy Lin Fortune Cookie Graphic Racist? Knicks, MSG Didn’t Think So
Here’s a screen grab of Madison Square Garden’s depiction of Jeremy Lin as good luck in a fortune cookie.

Asian stereotypes appearing in coverage of Knicks’ Jeremy Lin
Madison Square Garden responds to the fortune-cookie image of Lin, saying it was created by a fan, while TV personalities such as David Letterman and Jon Stewart and a FOX Sports columnist also are cited for instances of racism mixed with humor.

Video: David Letterman’s Top 10 Worst Jeremy Lin Puns
From “Super Lin-tendo” to “Amasian,” Lin puns and references are everywhere in the media, many of which tie into his Asian heritage.

Columnist apologizes for racist Lin tweet; is that enough?
A complaint by the Asian American Journalist Association prompts FOX Sports’ Jason Whitlock, a Black man who tweeted a racist Jeremy Lin comment, to give an apology. A reader poll asks, “Is it enough?”

Is Knicks Jeremy Lin Overhyped Because He’s Asian? Floyd Mayweather Thinks So
A part of “Linsanity” is based in Lin’s ethnicity. But is the hype really because he’s Asian, as boxer Floyd Mayweather tweeted, playing a sport that has typically been dominated by Blacks? OpposingViews argues that it’s not.

Jeremy Lin and race: Bigotry in sports is nothing new
From Floyd Mayweather’s tweet to fellow teammates bowing karate-style to Lin after a game-winning shot, the racism toward Lin is nothing new among sports players—and Lin says he’s used to it.

Reaction to Lin’s success shows underlying racism
A San Francisco Gate blog discusses Asian stereotypes and whether Lin’s breakout can change social perceptions of the race and culture.

The Article I Didn’t Want To Write: Jeremy Lin & Racism
Are people more comfortable making puns about Asians than other racial groups? A blogger explores why as well as why people don’t seem to understand the implications and offense it can cause.

Linsanity May Reinforce Racial Stereotypes
Is Jeremy Lin’s story one of an underdog rising to the top, or is it an example of the problem of continuing stereotypes toward what is considered to be racial norms?

The post Jeremy Lin & Racism: 3 Ways to Stop Dangerous Stereotypes appeared first on DiversityInc.

What should you do if one of your executives uses a negative stereotype, especially in a public forum? How can you make sure your workplace doesn’t tolerate these types of damaging misconceptions, which impact morale and productivity? Learn a lesson from recent verbal missteps by presidential hopefuls Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum and see what Dr. Claude Steele advises you to do.

Gingrich announced that “If the NAACP invites me, I’ll go to their convention and talk about why the African-American community should demand paychecks and not be satisfied cultural competence with food stamps.”

NAACP President and CEO Ben Jealous called the statement “inaccurate and divisive.”

Santorum said at a campaign stop in Iowa: “I don’t want to make Black people’s lives better by giving them somebody else’s money. I want to give them the opportunity to go out and earn the money.” After getting national criticism for the remark, he said he was “pretty confident that I didn’t say ‘Black,’” but the video shows that he did indeed say that. Watch the video.

Dr. Steele, dean of education at Stanford University and former provost of Columbia University, is the author of “Whistling Vivaldi: And Other Clues to How Stereotypes Affect Us.” Dr. Steele, who analyzed these stereotypes at a DiversityInc event, told us that statements like these have long-term impact on workplace engagement and productivity. Watch the video.

“As my work has taught me and illustrates, stereotypes are not innocent or easily ignorable. They create pressures on people to see others in those stereotypes and degrade the quality of life for people who are stereotyped. They have a profound effect of creating discomforts that are attached to our identities,” he said. “Politicians resort to reinforcing old stereotypes about groups because it gives people belief that these things still are true … it creates a sense of social reality. Even though Obama’s the president, it keeps them alive.”

What would he recommend you do if someone in your organization perpetuated a stereotype? Be true to your values. “If I were leading an organization and this happened, if the opportunity arose in a naturalistic way, I’d condemn it and say this is something to be ashamed of. That’s what happened in the civil-rights movement; I’m old enough to remember when you could use the N-word in Congress, and that’s not acceptable anymore,” Dr. Steele said. 

For more on clarity of values, read CEO Commitment: Why Visibility & Accountability Matter and Why Julie Goodridge Might Be the Scariest Person in Investment Banking. Also read Ask the White Guy: Decision Making, Clarity of Values & What to Do When It Goes Horribly Wrong.

The real danger, Claude emphasized, is in people accepting these stereotypes. “These people are dangerously trafficking in stereotypes and making this a normative behavior. That’s what happens eventually; behavior shifts and these are no longer the norm,” Dr. Steele said.

And people often accept these statements without checking the facts. For example, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, known as SNAP, offers food stamps. PolitiFact says participation is high, but that’s because of efforts since the Bush administration to increase participation. The largest group of SNAP recipients is white people, and most SNAP participants are younger than 18.

Facts are important in diversity work and in destroying stereotypes. Here are some diversity-management lessons demonstrated by companies in the DiversityInc Top 50 to address stereotypes in your organization. 

Ensure Diversity Training Is Mandatory

Seventy-eight percent of the DiversityInc Top 50 require mandatory cultural-competence training for their managers, and 66 percent require it for their entire workforce. While one can’t regulate what comes out of an employee’s mouth, teaching people about the need for respectful speech, as well as what type of speech is hateful, goes a long way to avoiding these types of hurtful communications.

Former NBA star John Amaechi addressed the power of hateful words recently when he keynoted DiversityInc’s special-awards ceremony. Read highlights from John Ameachi’s speech and watch the video.

Get the Message Out Externally and Internally, Starting at the Top

From your CEO’s statement on diversity (which should be on your corporate homepage) to your mission statement to all your external and internal communications, the message of respect and inclusion has to be clear and constant. Allowing any stereotypes for any group, including white men, to be perpetuated in any way by your company opens the door for these kinds of comments. A no-tolerance-for-disrespect policy, from the highest ranks of the company on down, must be clearly and consistently articulated.

Mandate Cross-Cultural Mentoring—Allow Senior Leadership to ‘Walk in Others’ Shoes’

Formal, cross-cultural mentoring relationships enable people from different backgrounds to really get to know each other and enhance cultural awareness, especially for senior, white, male executives. The one-on-one nature of the relationship, both studies and DiversityInc data show, are critical to that increased knowledge. Progressively more companies also require both mentors and mentees to undergo cultural-competence training before beginning the formal mentoring arrangement. Ninety-four percent of DiversityInc Top 50 companies now have formal, cross-cultural mentoring programs.

Expose CEOs and Senior Executives to Different Employees Through ERGs

Ninety percent of DiversityInc Top 50 CEOs now meet regularly with leaders of employee-resource groups. That connection, one shared by other senior executives, is invaluable in developing understanding of the group’s constituencies. For more on the positive effects of CEO commitment on talent development, read Increasing Diversity in Talent Development.

Related stories/videos:

The G.O.P.’s ‘Black People’ Platform
New York Times’ op-ed columnist Charles M. Blow comments on and debunks the rhetoric from GOP candidates Santorum and Gingrich and how they play on existing racial anxieties.

Gay, Black Aide Defends Santorum
One of Santorum’s former aides, Chris Matthews, a Black and openly gay man, defends the candidate. Here’s what he said.

NAACP Blasts Santorum for Targeting Blacks in Entitlement Reform
A CBS news video shows Rick Santorum’s comments that single out Blacks as recipients of federal benefits. The NAACP says his remarks are “inaccurate and outrageous,” while Santorum denies he said “Black.”

NAACP Leader Blasts Gingrich’s Food Stamp Comment
Gingrich’s comments, as shown in a CBS news video, positions Blacks and other traditionally non-represented groups as jobless people relying on food stamps. NAACP refutes the inaccuracies and Gingrich denies his remarks were racist.

Newt Gingrich ‘Irritated’ By Outrage Over His Comments On Food Stamps
A Black person, Yvan Lamothe, speaks up to Gingrich at the candidate’s town hall in New Hampshire, and Gingrich aims to clarify his original remarks.

Black Woman Confronts Santorum Over Comments: ‘Why Do You Have A Problem Against Black People?’
At a campaign event in New Hampshire, a Black woman confronted Santorum on his racist remarks. A Think Progress post provides an audio recording and a photo of the exchange.

Why Santorum’s Comment Isn’t Racist
An article on The Root calls attention to how the comments take root in a deeper fear by GOP members to discuss issues of race and truly connect with Black voters.

Rick Santorum To John King: I Didn’t Say Black People, I Said ‘Blah’ People
What did you hear Santorum say? “Blah,” “Black” or something else? Mediaite.com offers readers a “What Did You Hear Rick Santorum Say?” poll and a video from the candidate’s appearance on John King USA where he tries to defend his statements.

Did Newt Gingrich really say Blacks should “demand paychecks and not be satisfied with food stamps”?
Gingrich said that his comments aren’t racially charged if you look at them in context. Metro posts the full text of what he said for readers.

Rick Santorum, Racist—It’s a Lie
National Review blog defends Santorum, saying he did not say “Blacks” and upholding that he is not a racist but honest about data facts in American populations.

The Slanders Against Santorum Clarify the Real Conflict
This blog defends Santorum, saying NPR and leftists “manufactured a controversy” to slander “a man who’s one of the nation’s leading advocates for rebuilding African-American families.”

Sarah Palin defends Newt Gingrich: David Gregory of ‘Meet the Press’ asked ‘racist-tinged’ question
Palin says the “Food Stamp President” line wasn’t racist—it was an answer to a reporter’s question that was tinged with racism. Was it a set-up?

The post ‘Blacks Should Not Be Satisfied With Food Stamps’: The Danger of Stereotypes appeared first on DiversityInc.

The post NBA Star John Amaechi Says ‘Hate Speech Goes Beyond N- and F-Words’ (VIDEO) appeared first on DiversityInc.

Reprinted from WHISTLING VIVALDI: And Other Clues to How Stereotypes Affect Us. Copyright © 2010 by Claude M. Steele with the permission of the publisher, W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. This selection may not be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher.

This book is about what my colleagues and I call identity contingencies—the things you have to deal with in a situation because you have a given social identity, because you are old, young, gay, a white male, a woman, Black, Latino, politically conservative or liberal, diagnosed with bipolar disorder, a cancer patient and so on. Generally speaking, contingencies are circumstances you have to deal with in order to get what you want or need in a situation. In the Chicagoland of my youth, in order to go swimming at the public pool I had to restrict my pool going to Wednesday afternoons. That’s a contingency. What makes this an identity contingency is that the people involved had to deal with it because they had a particular social identity in the situation. Other people didn’t have to deal with it, just the people who had the same identity I had.

How do identity contingencies influence us? Some constrain our behavior down on the ground, like restricted access to a public swimming pool. Others, just as powerful, influence us more subtly, not by constraining behavior on the ground but by putting a threat in the air.

Consider the experience of Brent Staples, now a columnist for The New York Times, but then a psychology graduate student at the University of Chicago, a young African-American male dressed in informal student clothing walking down the streets of Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood. In his own words:

I became an expert in the language of fear. Couples locked arms or reached for each other’s hand when they saw me. Some crossed to the other side of the street. People who were carrying on conversations went mute and stared straight ahead, as though avoiding my eyes would save them … I’d been a fool. I’d been walking the streets grinning good evening at people who were frightened to death of me. I did violence to them by just being. How had I missed this … I tried to be innocuous but didn’t know how … I began to avoid people. I turned out of my way into side streets to spare them the sense that they were being stalked … Out of nervousness I began to whistle and discovered I was good at it. My whistle was pure and sweet—and also in tune. On the street at night I whistled popular tunes from the Beatles and Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. The tension drained from people’s bodies when they heard me. A few even smiled as they passed me in the dark.

Staples was dealing with a phantom, a bad stereotype about his race that was in the air on the streets of Hyde Park—the stereotype that young African-American males in this neighborhood are violence prone. People from other groups in other situations might face very different stereotypes—about lacking math ability rather than being violence prone, for example—but their predicaments would be the same. When they were in situations where those stereotypes could apply to them, they understood that one false move could cause them to be reduced to that stereotype, to be seen and treated in terms of it. That’s stereotype threat, a contingency of their identity in these situations.

Evidence of the Strength of Stereotype Threat

We aren’t islands: Our life-shaping choices and critical performances can be affected by incidental features of our environments, even as we have little awareness of those features.

We had evidence that these cues, and the threat they caused, could impair performance and even make a person less interested in a career path. But we lacked direct evidence that incidental cues make people feel they don’t belong in an actual setting, or that they can’t trust the setting.

My colleague, Valerie Purdie-Vaughns, and I came up with a simple experiment to find out. We gave samples of Black and white respondents a lifelike newsletter ostensibly from a Silicon Valley company and asked them, after they’d read it thoroughly, to rate how much they felt they would belong in a company like that, and how much they would trust it. To see whether incidental features of the company, presumably by signaling possible identity contingencies in this workplace, would affect people’s sense of belonging and trust there, we made up different newsletters—newsletters that included different company features—and then compared their effect on people’s sense of belonging and trust.

Some of the newsletters included photographs of daily life that depicted a small number of minorities (Blacks, Latinos and Asians) in the company. In other newsletters, these photographs depicted a larger number of minorities in the company. We wanted to learn the effect of another cue as well: the company’s stated policy toward diversity. Some of the newsletters therefore included a prominent article stating that the company was strongly committed to “color-blindness”— defined as treating people, and trying to foster their welfare, as individuals. And some of the newsletters included a prominent article stating that the company was strongly committed to “valuing diversity”—defined as valuing the different perspectives and resources that people from different backgrounds bring to the workplace.

It was a simple procedure, and portable, too. We could hand out the newsletters to different samples of Black and white respondents—to college students in the laboratory for sure, but also to business-school students in a cafeteria, to an organization of Black professionals at a TGIF mixer and to perfectly innocent people riding the commuter train between Palo Alto and San Francisco. We used all of these different samples, and for all of them we examined the effect of the same two cues—critical mass of minorities and diversity policy—on how much they felt they would belong in the company and trust it.

The results were strong for virtually every sample we studied. White respondents (depicted as the majority group in our newsletters) felt they would belong in the company and trusted the company no matter what cues the newsletter contained—regardless of whether it depicted a small or moderate number of minorities in the company (the highest percentage of minorities we depicted was 33 percent) and of whether the company had a color-blind or valuing diversity policy. Majority status, inside and outside the company, allowed a sense of belonging.

Black respondents, however, counted. When the company was depicted as having a moderate number of minorities, they trusted it and felt they would belong in it as much as white respondents did. And they felt this way regardless of the company’s diversity policy. Critical mass laid their vigilance to rest.

But when the company was depicted as having a low number of minorities, Blacks’ trust and sense of belonging were more conditional. Diversity policy became critical. Interestingly, the color-blind policy—perhaps America’s dominant approach to these matters—didn’t work. It engendered less trust and belonging. It was as if Blacks couldn’t take colorblindness at face value when the number of minorities in the company was small. But importantly, and just as interestingly, Blacks did not mistrust the company when it espoused a valuing-diversity policy. With that policy in place, they trusted the company and believed they could belong in it, even when it had few minorities. The practical lesson here is that both critical mass and an approach that values what diversity can bring to a setting may go some distance in making minority identities feel more comfortable there.

The findings also reveal something more general: When people are appraising identity threat, one cue can shape the interpretation of another. A policy that explicitly valued diversity led Black respondents to overlook the low number of minorities in the company, a cue that otherwise bothered them considerably. And depicting a larger number of minorities in the company led them to overlook concerns they would otherwise have had about a color-blind diversity policy. The meaning of one cue, then, depended on what other cues were also present.

Herein may lie a principle of remedy: If enough cues in a setting can lead members of a group to feel “identity safe,” it might also neutralize the impact of other cues in a setting that could otherwise threaten them.

The studies Valerie and I did opened a possibility: to make a setting identity safe, perhaps you don’t need to change everything, eradicate every possible identity threatening cue, for example. Perhaps you could do it with a few critical changes, which by assuring a critical degree of identity safety could reduce the threatening meaning of other cues.

WHISTLING VIVALDI: And Other Clues to How Stereotypes Affect Us by Claude M. Steele was published in May by W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. It is available at Amazon.com or wherever books are sold for $25.95.

The post Challenges in Diversity Management: How Do Stereotypes Affect Us? appeared first on DiversityInc.

For acclaimed social psychologist Dr. Claude Steele, the numbers just didn’t make sense. Why, he wondered, was the national college dropout rate for Black students 20 to 25 percent higher than that for whites even when those students were just as well-prepared for college, had no socioeconomic disadvantages and managed to get excellent SAT scores? And among those Black students who did finish college, why was their grade-point average consistently lower than white students?

Drawing from his new book, “Whistling Vivaldi,” Steele offered corporate leaders and diversity executives attending DiversityInc’s global diversity event in Washington, D.C, this week an insider’s look at his groundbreaking research on stereotypes and identity and the role they play in academic achievement and underachievement among Blacks and women. 

“You must read this book,” Luke Visconti, CEO of DiversityInc, told the audience. “You will end up buying boxes of it for your corporation. Make sure your white men get a copy of it. Why do you think the educational resources aren’t there in the inner-city schools? Society believes those children are not capable of learning. Now we are aware of this. Think about mentoring. Think about employee-resource groups and the role [this information] can play in getting people to perform and eliminating bias.”

According to Steele, one of the major barriers holding back the achievement of Blacks, women and other underrepresented groups is a phenomenon he calls “stereotype threat,” the threat of being viewed through the lens of a negative stereotype or the fear of doing something that would inadvertently confirm that stereotype. Call it subconscious self-handicapping.

In his insightful and engaging lecture, Steele, who at the time of the event was the provost at Columbia University, said that overcoming stereotype threats is key to removing barriers to achievement that currently hinder Blacks, women and other underrepresented groups in school and the workplace. Steele is now the dean at Stanford University School of Education.

“Over the years, studying this problem of underperformance has morphed into solving the diversity problem,” said Steele, who taught at Stanford University as a professor in social psychology before joining Columbia last year. “It’s one thing to numerically integrate a setting. It’s another thing to make that place a place where everyone feels comfortable and can flourish.”

Steele’s theory starts with the concept of social identity, which he defined as group membership in categories such as age, gender, religion and ethnicity. Blacks constantly face the threat of being considered racially inferior, a stereotype that has long been entrenched in American society. As such, Black students quickly learn that their acceptance will be difficult to win.

Steele said anxiety about being judged stereotypically as a woman, Black, even a white male—particularly when that stereotype is negative—can seriously hinder performance on important tests like the SAT. For example, Steele noted that when Black students are told that they are taking a test to measure their intelligence, it can bring to mind rather forcefully ugly, untrue stereotypes about Black intelligence as it compares to whites.

Systemic Underperformance

Steele became interested in the topic shortly after he joined the faculty of the University of Michigan in 1987 and was tapped to join a committee to study the university’s student recruitment and retention. The data he saw was baffling: high dropout rates for Black students and lower grades across the board when compared with whites, regardless of how high their SAT scores were or whether they came from privileged socioeconomic backgrounds.

He said Black students earning lower grades than white students wouldn’t have surprised him in and of itself. “The differences in educational opportunities tied to race lead one to expect that kind of difference,” he said. But what he saw was far more systemic.

“What I saw was this slide at every level of SAT scores and regardless of preparation for college work,” he said. “Someone coming in with a 1,500 SAT score was getting lower grades than other students, and I wondered what could be causing that. Why would students that good underperform? Why were they underperforming in an environment like Michigan, which had a set of programs in place to welcome them and support available to them? That was the puzzle that got us started.”

Over the past 20 years, Steele has conducted numerous studies to test his theory of stereotype threat. In one study, he asked two groups of Black and white college students to take a 30-minute test made up of questions from the verbal section of the Graduate Record Examination (GRE). The test was designed to be difficult and the results were shocking.

When one group was told the test would measure their intellectual ability, Black students underperformed dramatically. But when another group was told the test could not measure intellectual ability, Blacks and whites performed at virtually the same level.

“When you get ride of the stereotype threat and tell the students this is not a test of cognitive ability, it’s just a puzzle, have fun—that small instruction makes the stereotype irrelevant,” Steele said. “When you create that situation, their performance goes up to match that of white students.”

Feeling Threatened

The same effect also holds true when women take a math test that supposedly measures cognitive differences between the genders, or even when white males are exposed to stereotypes about the academic superiority of, say, Asians, Steele said.

“When you feel under threat, you know that based on an identity you have, something bad could happen. You don’t know whether in fact it will happen. You don’t know precisely what could happen or when or where it could happen,” he said. “It’s like having a snake loose in the house. It’s a terrible feeling. When you are in this situation, most of your cognitive resources are devoted to vigilance.”

Steele said this anxiety often manifests itself in psychological and physiological ways, including distraction, increased body temperature and increased heart rate, all of which diminish performance levels.

“If you care about what you are doing, the prospect of being judged is upsetting and distressing and disturbing,” he said. “In a situation like this, it takes cognitive resources away from a relaxed engagement with the task at hand and that undermines your performance.”

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