Prudential Financial: You May Not ‘Get’ D&I—But You Have To

Creating a culture of diversity and inclusion means including everyone—personally and professionally. That’s the mindset Prudential Financial leverages to create its business case for diversity, explained Michele C.Meyer-Shipp, Vice President and Chief Diversity Officer of Prudential Financial. “For all of us to succeed we have to be able to market our services to diverse communities,” she said. “You might not get it but you have to.”

Altria: Is Diversity a Zero-Sum Game for White Men?

Diversity and inclusion: What’s in it for white men? That’s the question you as a diversity leader need to answer if you’re going to gain buy-in from your white, male senior leaders, said Nancy Adams, Senior Manager, HR Client Services/Diversity/AAP of Altria. She noted that it’s important to shift the conversation away from race and gender toward discussions about how inclusion benefits white men. “But there’s always a small minority of people who just see the world as a zero-sum game,” she says, and the challenge is getting through to them.

Toyota: Attention Straight, White Men—Diversity Includes You Too

Toyota Financial Services’ diversity leaders work hard to get their D&I message out—and a big catalyst for that effort is visible commitment from the company’s senior executives, such as CEO George Borst, Toyota Financial Services. “I had a man come up to me and say he joined the women’s group because ‘I have three daughters and I would want them to have the opportunities they wouldn’t have had if they had grown up in my day,” recalled Stephen Lewis, Corporate Manager, Diversity and Inclusion, Toyota Financial Services.

Cox Communications: How to Begin Diversity Outreach to White Men?

“Everyone has something to share, something to learn from each other,” said Rhonda Taylor, Executive Vice President and Chief People Officer of Cox Communications. Taylor notes it starts with opening up the dialogue around our differences and creating an atmosphere that allows employees to ask the hard questions and share their personal stories to make a connection.

The post Can CEOs, Diversity Leaders Use Personal Examples to Sell D&I to White Men? appeared first on DiversityInc.

“White men in the diversity and inclusion space are much more focused on product over process … but there is no silver bullet,” explained PricewaterhouseCoopers’ Chris Brassell, Director, National Office of Diversity, at DiversityInc’s White Men & Diversity event.

Brassell detailed how PwC takes a straightforward, top-to-bottom approach toward diversity management that allows its diversity leaders to effectively build support and understanding for diversity management among white, male leaders in each of the 20 markets it serves. “We need people to understand what it is, and what it isn’t,” said Brassell. “We want to make this a conversation about listening. This is not punitive.”

PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) is No. 1 in the 2012 DiversityInc Top 50.

The post White Men for Diversity: How PwC Spreads Diversity Messaging appeared first on DiversityInc.

Question:

A colleague recently asked for my thoughts on a George Will column that described several incidents on college campuses where bigotry was directed at white men.

Answer:

George Will lifted a bunch of incidents from one website (thefire.org) that has a specific point of view. In my opinion, they’re using outlier events to concoct a trend. Nationwide, there are millions of college students—more than 800 universities granting doctoral-level degrees, thousands more four-year and two-year colleges—and here we have but a handful of questionable incidents, including some terrible mistakes and errors in judgment. Are there more than what’s reported here? Sure—but given that the entire mission of thefire.org is to bring these incidents to light, it’s still pretty sparse when viewed in context.

How many mistakes were made in the other direction (from white men to everyone else) during the time we’ve been alive? How many mistakes are currently being made? I can’t imagine that the overrepresented white men in academe are the most put-upon group of people—yet, here’s George Will (and Greg Lukianoff) trying to make a trend out of a bunch of unconnected dots.

He—and we—need to start looking forward. Rutgers’ graduating class at its last commencement was less than 50 percent white—and less than 50 percent men. Our future as Americans demands that we older white men understand our obligation to make sure our communications are crafted in a way that is received and absorbed, so we may successfully hand off our knowledge of being a good citizen.

This country has made its mistakes, but we have also liberated hundreds of millions of people in the last 100 years. As a combat veteran, you know this more than most. Was it worth it? Look at South Korea now. I’d say it was.

Korea’s success is a mirror of ours (as well as Germany’s and Japan’s). We have the world’s largest GDP because people can come here and achieve more of their inherent potential than anywhere else on the planet. This is entirely due to our struggle to advance human and civil rights. Our constitution is the longest-lived constitution on the planet, amended over time to abolish slavery and include women in the governmental process. Through legislative acts, our government has also ensured voting rights and civil rights, and included people with disabilities. With the end of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, we’re quickly moving to include our LGBT friends and neighbors in full citizenship as well. The demographics of our country have evolved; the white men of the Boomer and Traditional generations must ensure that our knowledge of the best of what it means to be an American is passed down.

We can’t do that if we’re needlessly obsessing over slights. Almost all of my nonwhite, non-male, non-heterosexual counterparts in business aren’t obsessing over the slights dealt to them—they’re looking forward.

So should we.

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 Ask the White Guy: Are White Men the New Victims on College Campuses? appeared first on DiversityInc.

Generating buy-in from white men is a challenge in some companies, especially for middle management. Even the DiversityInc Top 50 companies are split on strategies, with some choosing to directly focus on white men as a demographic group while others insist they are included in all workplace-diversity efforts.

In Do White Men Really Need Diversity Outreach? DiversityInc’s Barbara Frankel, Senior Vice President and Executive Editor, addresses this issue head-on in a 3,124-word analysis. Frankel interviewed 20 companies to learn how they handle including white men in their workplace-diversity efforts.

Companies include: Sodexo (No. 2 in The 2012 DiversityInc Top 50 Companies for Diversity), PricewaterhouseCoopers (No. 1), The Coca-Cola Company (No. 46), Merck & Co. (16), CSX (No. 23), Aetna (No. 24), Health Care Service Corporation (No. 19), AXA Equitable (one of DiversityInc’s 25 Noteworthy Companies), Harley-Davidson, Ameren, Comerica, Choice Hotels, Staples and the Army & Air Force Exchange.

Readers will also receive need-to-know answers to key questions in workplace diversity including:

• Can white men be diversity leaders in the workplace?
• What aggressive workplace-diversity efforts are companies, such as Coca-Cola and PricewaterhouseCoopers, making?
• Why do you need to keep senior management accountable for diversity efforts in the workplace?
• How can you make a business case for workplace diversity to middle managers?
• How will creating an action plan help make workplace diversity meaningful?
• Should white men have resource groups?

Read Do White Men Really Need Diversity Outreach? at DiversityIncBestPractices.com.

Watch the video below to hear DiversityInc CEO Luke Visconti discuss the business case for workplace diversity and why it is important for ALL groups to be included in diversity efforts.

Read DiversityInc CEO Luke Visconti’s Ask the White Guy column, Can a White Man Speak With Authority on Diversity?, for more on this subject.

The post Workplace Diversity: Do White Men Really Need Diversity Outreach? appeared first on DiversityInc.

A.D. 2041 – End of White America?
Death Knell for the Silent Majority?

Question: Pat Buchanan‘s comments that “‘White America’ Died Last Night” make me angry. What do you think?

Answer: Don’t get angry; take solace in what we are witnessing. Buchanan is a bigot—a racist, anti-Semitic creep. He’s chronologically old, but he’s one of those people who was born a bitter, ugly, little, shrunken, mean, horrid old man.

His white America may have died, but my white America didn’t die with this election—it was strengthened and improved. My white America is the one of Thomas Payne, Franklin, Lincoln, Susan B. Anthony, Franklin D. Roosevelt , Eleanor Roosevelt and Lyndon B. Johnson. My white America may not understand Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. as well as it should, but it knows what side of the trajectory of justice it wants to be on.

My white America is an ongoing experiment in human dignity, freedom of thought and free will. It is evolving. It is struggling to improve itself. My white America knows the wisdom of Frederick Douglass, who said, “No man can put a chain about the ankle of his fellow man, without at last finding the other end of it fastened about his own neck.”

My white America knows when it’s time to pick up a rifle and fight tyranny, even as it struggles with the desire to use the rifle in evil ways. My white America wants to see the time when we can put down the rifle for the last time.

My white America knows that its future is in becoming OUR AMERICA with no adjectives, embracing all, shouldered by those who are strong and caring for those who are weak.

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 Ask the White Guy: Did White America Die With This Election? appeared first on DiversityInc.

Question:
I’m a 21-year-old white male. Why does it seem like I must apologies (sic) for it? I’m not racist, sexist, nor feel any kind of discrimination towards anyone. I respect individuals based upon their character and merit. My parents and extended family share the same attitude and just a few generations ago my family were immigrants to this great country. Why does it seem that many people, like those behind this website and the hypersensitive groups at my University, make the assumption that I have some sort of advantage or I am given a better opportunity or even that I am prejudice because I’m a white male. I would not really notice race or feel uncomfortable around certain other races if I didn’t sense the animosity coming from the other direction. 

It’s hard out there for everyone, my peers and I will have the same opportunity to achieve success, no matter what race or sex or religion or however else you people categories individuals. It will be based upon our character and merit… that is unless this “diversity” stuff keeps holding all of us back. So I ask again, why does it seem like I must apologies for being a white male?

Answer:

If you have a passion in life and are sensitive enough to what is going on around you, patterns emerge to give you clarity. Today, I received your email; yesterday, I was speaking at a conference for the construction trade where I apologized to the mostly non-white crowd when I told them that they, the oppressed, were the ones who had to lead their companies out of oppressive behavior. And two days ago, I received an email from a fan who sent me my own words from this Ask the White Guy column I wrote years ago:

Some non-white people do “play the race card.” However, I’ll point out that white people “play the race card” every day of their lives. They may not know it, but they do. Such is the privilege of being white in this country. 

Also read: Ask the White Guy: Why Whites Can’t ‘Get Over’ Color 

The Legacy of Slavery & Racism

The legacy of slavery has benefited every white person in this country—directly and personally. In a very gross analogy, if you run a series of foot races over 300 years but prevent 13 percent of the participants from learning how to run for 180 years and then give them concrete sneakers for another 80 years—but allow them full access for 40 years—it will take the 13 percent quite a few races to be competitive because the other 87 percent advanced their skills by practice and repetition.

Read: Black History Month Facts & Figures

Life is not a foot race, but it is a fact that the average white person would not economically benefit from switching places with an average Black person (Black households average one-tenth the household wealth of white households. Click the image above to view additional factoids). If you believe all people are created equal, there has to be a reason for this—and there is: racism.

The core aspect of your ignorance is the assertion that you did not have “some sort of advantage” or that you were “given a better opportunity.” You are profoundly wrong in that statement.

The animosity you sense being directed at you is due to your behavior, which is shaped by profound lack of knowledge and perspective on how our current national situation has come to pass. You dismiss the very thing that shapes your entire life: white privilege. The fact that you think you can describe your life in absence of racial terms is the pinnacle of white privilege.

Being white means you never have to think about race; you never consider that your application to college will be treated differently; that the police officer stopping you isn’t out for anything more than how fast you were going; that your boss didn’t really mean to insult you to your core when he said “You’re so articulate” or dismiss your entire being by saying “I don’t care if you’re Black, Yellow, Brown, Green or Polka-Dot …”  Read 10 Things Never to Say to a Black Coworker for more.

Shifting Demographics Bring Awareness for Diversity

I am a baby boomer. My generation could get away with being sharp-elbowed in its ignorance of race, gender, orientation, disability and age discrimination and could maneuver just fine in society because America was far less diverse then and people outside the dominant group didn’t have enough political or economic power. Non-white people didn’t see codification of their human and civil rights until after the last baby boomer was born (1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act).

You, my sheltered friend, cannot maintain willful ignorance without detriment to yourself. Because of immigration reform in the mid-1960s, when non-white immigration quotas were lifted for the first time in American history, your generation is where our country crosses into profound diversity. Less than 50 percent of the children born in our country today are white, in contrast to 60 years ago when only one out of nine Americans was not white. 

Corporate Success Through Diversity Management

My publication exists because corporate America has enough of a thirst to understand how to profitably manage this diversity to keep us economically viable. You are an anachronism, and your attitude will sharply reduce your potential for career success in any well-managed company because progressive company leaders understand their fiduciary responsibility to manage diversity. This accountability is discussed explicitly in our Q&A with Ameren CEO Tom Voss:

You cannot have professional success if you think those around you are “hypersensitive.” Here’s a basic fact of life: Your feelings of discomfort are self-inflicted. YOUR behavior must change to lower the “hypersensitivity” that you think is not coming from yourself. It is your responsibility—and your repercussion—that if you continue on your current track, you will simply be sidelined in any organization you find on our DiversityInc Top 50 list.

As it is your responsibility, I will leave it to you to read up on the three-fifths rule in our Constitution, the Civil War, the Jim Crow era, the civil-rights era, and things such as the Civil Rights Act, Voting Rights Act, Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 and the Americans with Disabilities Act.

I will leave it to you to learn about the prison industrial complex, which, fueled by the 41-year-old “war on drugs,” has resulted in our country imprisoning seven times the per capita average of the rest of the world. Fifty-eight percent of American prisoners are Black and Latino; think about the disproportional impact of this statistic on the families of the innocent.

I’ll leave it to you to read the Pew Research report showing that because of the overt racial targeting of Black and Latino households in the subprime crisis, Black and Latino household wealth (already behind that of white households before the crisis) is now 1/20th and 1/18th the wealth of white households, respectively. I will leave it up to you to learn about the abject failure of public schools that serve the poor. I will leave it to you to discover Frederick Douglass’ wisdom. I will leave it to you to read “The New Jim Crow” by Michelle Alexander.

You are grossly insulting and express profound ignorance when you say that everyone has the “same opportunity” and that “character and merit” are the only determining factors. It’s ironic—you don’t have to apologize for being white, but if you develop an understanding of why you feel that dissonance in your soul, you will gain a powerful advantage as you will be able to build allies and broaden your world.

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

Question:
I have just been invited to (my company’s) first ever Diversity & Inclusion meeting and training pilot tomorrow morning. It will be a 4 hour session managed by an external training vendor. Attending will be several “diverse” and female senior managers in addition to a few HR managers.

Can you give me a couple of bullets on what should be included in a standard session and how is a successful rollout managed? Given that this [is] a first for (my company) I am hoping it is well received and receives C-level support.

Answer:
In my opinion, diversity training that is not immediately tied back to profitability and the business case is doomed to marginalization and/or failure.

Please read this: How Effective Diversity Management Drives Profit

Please read this too: Why Do Diversity-Management Departments Need Budget?

Am I correct in understanding that your diversity training is only targeted for non-white people? If so, white men should be included by mandate (not by voluntary action).

Ultimately, diversity training should help people develop relationships to people who are not like them. This is tied to economics. In 1951, the average bank (for example) could afford to discriminate against everyone but white men because the labor force was segregated and white men had all the high-paying jobs. In 1951, women had the right to vote for only 31 years. “Gay? Good for you, I’m happy too.” You get the point.

Today, the average bank cannot afford to redline anyone from their business operations; without even discussing programs mandated by the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977, the economy has expanded to the point where our workforce will be 70 percent women and/or Black and Latino by 2016, household income for Black, Asian and Latino households is rising at twice the rate of white households (and has been since 1990), more people with ADA-defined disabilities have college degrees than people without ADA-defined disabilities, white people will be less than 50 percent of our population by 2043, and now that DADT has ended and DOMA is no longer being defended by the president, gay marriage and equal rights are right around the corner.

You shouldn’t be “hoping” for C-level support. Any CEO with his/her head out of the sand will be demanding support for diversity-management excellence. Why?

A person’s ability to build equitable relationships is directly relevant to their effectiveness in business.

If you think about it, white men are the LEAST likely to have trusting business relationships with people other than white men. Think about this carefully: A Black woman executive (for example) will HAVE to have built trusting business relationships with many white men to be promoted. The reciprocal is simply not true for the majority of white men; almost every single white man at the top of a Fortune 500 company got there without having to have a trusting, deep business relationship with anyone other than white men (they may have chosen to do otherwise, but it wasn’t necessary to get where they are in the overwhelming majority of companies).

If you consider the rapidly moving marketplace and the condition of white men and their interpersonal relationship experience, the inevitable conclusion is that diversity training MUST involve everyone in the company-especially white men.

I also think language around diversity should be very carefully phrased. Does your company’s CEO have a “vision” for profitability? Does the bearing assembly in the main shaft of a jet engine have an “aspirational” diameter? Does the vice president of sales task her/his salespeople with an “ideal” for a sales goal? Not in any business that’s successful.

Diversity management must be discussed in the same precise terms as any other important business process.

Finally: Please do not use “diverse” as a euphemism for everyone but white, Christian, heterosexual men with no ADA-defined disabilities. If you do, you send the signal that they are “normal” and everyone else needs “help.”

If you’ve read this far and are not bored to tears with me yet, please read this: Why Do ‘Differences’ Matter?

The post Why White Men Must Attend Diversity Training appeared first on DiversityInc.

Question:
I work for a major oil-manufacturing company. I am a Hispanic woman in my mid-40s. My company is very committed to diversity and inclusiveness and we have had a Diversity Council (of which I have been a member for about six years) and we also have various Diversity Networks. We are planning a Diversity Open House later this year to promote our Networks, etc. We are planning on sending out a voluntary survey to all of our 750 employees to gather interesting diverse facts to show that we are a very successful company and that is due to so many diverse backgrounds, etc. Members of our Diversity Council (most of the white ones) want to ask questions like, “What is your favorite ice cream? What is your favorite color?” What? They’re even worried about asking what is your ethnicity? They don’t want to ask what other languages do you speak; they will ask do you speak another language. I don’t get it. Do you have a survey that you can recommend that has been used in other large organizations that has shown good results with true diverse questions?

Answer:

Not only is your company’s survey useless, it takes your company a giant step backwards by trivializing diversity management. As described, your survey will not materially connect diversity with business success. Therefore, it will be correctly viewed as non-professional claptrap by most people at your company.

You might think that it’s self-apparent to believe that diversity is “good” for business. I don’t think that’s true, nor do I believe it’s proper to have a “belief” guide business–a “belief” is an acceptance of an intangible. I leave “beliefs” for religion. Business runs on facts.

Here’s the fundamental fact about diversity: Diversity by itself has nothing to do with business success. A company must manage the diversity it has to produce business results.

The reason you’re getting silly questions from your majority-culture council members is because they are dismissive of the relative value of other races/cultures. This is normal behavior; we all define culture from our own perception. Uneducated perception often leads to incorrect conclusions. For example, people believed for many centuries that the earth is flat. We’re no more intelligent as a species than we were 1000 years ago–but we’re less ignorant. Think about it.

If the white people on your Diversity Council had diversity training, it wasn’t meaningful. That’s not uncommon: Most diversity training I’ve seen is garbage.

From the majority perception, your ethnicity and even your gender are just as meaningful as the flavor of your favorite ice cream. Questions that value other cultures/genders/orientations/age groups or disabilities equally with the majority culture* are usually an insult by the majority. That’s why you often see rage from creepy Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity when people far more educated and accomplished, like Judge Sotomayor, make statements they don’t have the capacity to understand.

The fact that your “Diversity Committee” is sitting around dreaming this stuff up also tells me your company’s management is sitting on a potential publicity disaster. Keep in mind that it was an oil company executive who came up with the dopey “marbles” comment that destroyed more than $1 billion in Texaco market capitalization.

Not only is a potential liability out there, given your question, I doubt your company is reaping the rewards of proper diversity management.

Correctly implemented, diversity management increases the engagement of ALL employees by building the corporate culture that demands equity in outcome. This is because people who feel they’re being treated fairly will be more engaged. Engaged people are more productive–and more innovative.

Engagement, productivity and innovation are measurable and quantifiable. This is how you prove the business case for diversity at your company.

You will note that there are no oil companies in our DiversityInc Top 50 Companies for Diversity. Much like the price of gasoline is apparently coordinated, there seems to be agreement among companies such as Shell, ExxonMobil and Chevron not to participate in the DiversityInc Top 50. So, to answer your question, no, I don’t have a survey I care to share with your oil company.

*In this country, the majority culture is white, male, heterosexual and Christian with no ADA-defined disability.

The post Are White Men Racist When They Ignore Ethnicity? appeared first on DiversityInc.

This reader sent a very good question, but it’s long. Here’s the key part of it:

Question:
When you feel your value to the society and region is dwindling, as a white guy, are you ever entitled to be angry?

Answer:
I’ve received many e-mails about “reverse discrimination” and “tradition” and I think most are tied to the common human tendency to believe that life is a zero-sum game, i.e., if they win, I lose.

There’s good reason to feel this way. The National Geographic Human Genographic project has proven that humans originated in Africa. Although the trappings of life have changed in the past 200,000 years, the reality is that we’re still tribal–and deeply suspicious of other tribes–as was necessary for survival in an environment of limited resources.

If the other tribe kills the antelope, our tribe will go hungry. So we don’t like them–and we may have to kill them.

It is a “zero-sum” error to think that diversity diminishes white men. The actual situation is that preserving white dominance has been proven to diminish white men.

Unfortunately, some people would prefer to attempt to preserve the dominance of their “tribe” even when they understand the negative repercussions of doing so. The natural desire to gravitate to power (or try to become part of the dominant tribe) enables them to coerce other people to join them.

That’s how you end up with the Confederate Army consisting mostly of white non-slave owners fighting for slave-owning wealthy people who wouldn’t socialize with them under any other circumstance–and whose very essence of retaining wealth (owning enslaved people to provide free labor) was exactly opposite to their ability to gain wealth (free white people being paid for their labor).

To answer your question, I think it’s natural to feel that a change in the status quo is a loss for those who are dominant at the time. It’s natural to get angry about it. But it’s counterproductive because success in remaining dominant will result in decreasing wealth and power. You will become a larger fish only because the pond is decreasing. The problem with that philosophy is that no fish survive when the pond dries out.

If you’re a white man in this society, the only logical (and if you’re running a business, the most profitable) course of action is to orient yourself with the stream of humanity struggling to be free and achieve their human potential (life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness). If you’re an American, the only tribe you need to be concerned about is the tribe that supports and defends the Constitution. It’s difficult for the human mind to be that inclusive, but it is the only way for our country to be sustainable.

Full Question:

When I was in Florida, the election of [former] Gov. Jeb Bush, whose wife was Mexican, led to a rule that state documents, especially the homepage for the state, had to be translated into Spanish. Approximately 30 percent of Floridians as of that time spoke Spanish as their first language and some did not speak English. But the state employees doing this work were in North Florida.

I was intolerant of comments such as “If you live here, learn to speak English.” I had grown up in New York, where many folks who once lived in Puerto Rico live, and as long as the U.S. insists it must have that island nation as a protectorate, the fact is not all U.S. citizens speak English.

There is real sadness in some old Floridians, which I can appreciate. Evidently, environmental damage from the creation of Disney, the draining of the Everglades and so on has affected the whole state in a very dramatic way. There has without doubt been a reduction in the quality of life for some residents.

The anger underlying the remarks, invariably made by white men, seemed to have to do with their sense of displacement as the “real Floridians.” The immigrant rarely appreciates that he alters the culture of the folks who lived there before, but in fact each of us who moves does so.

Once, North Florida was a highly insular environment with a common culture. This has evidentially changed in great measure. Such enormous changes in one’s social milieu– all of which must feel like loss–must be extremely hard for the Floridians with family roots there. To have everything you knew as a child swept away, when consistency and tradition are core values for you, must be very painful.

I rather regret being quite so unfeeling. The fact is, Florida is not New York. The things said offended me terribly, but in fact, I never did learn to speak Spanish. The speakers whom I criticized so harshly did not intend to hurt me.

I remain somewhat at a loss about all this. When you feel your value to the society and region is dwindling, as a white guy, are you ever entitled to be angry?

The post Are White Men Entitled to Be Angry? appeared first on DiversityInc.

Question:
I am interested in your thoughts about the following article provided to me by a colleague: “Diversity Programs Look To Involve White Males As Leaders”

“Diversity programs abound at companies across the country, but something new is happening in an effort to get the programs off the sidelines and into the mainstream. More and more companies are turning to white men to champion diversity efforts. Having a white male in charge of diversity efforts lends legitimacy to the effort and brings other white males on board. It is also helpful if the white male in charge is from operations rather than human resources. PricewaterhouseCoopers, Georgia Power and Coca-Cola are three companies that have enlisted white males to manage their diversity efforts.” (The Wall Street Journal, 07-May-2007, Central ed., p. B4)

Answer:
I don’t think that “more and more companies are turning to white men to champion diversity efforts” nor do I think that a “white male in charge lends legitimacy to the effort.”

Pasting a white male head on a program that isn’t respected doesn’t change anything. In my opinion, a company cannot “lend legitimacy” to a diversity-management effort unless there is strong, visible, consistent and heart-felt support from the CEO—along with the CEO holding his/her people accountable and having formalized communication channels, metrics and personal involvement.

Our DiversityInc Top 50 Stock Index documents that diversity management has business legitimacy that transcends human resources as well as the race/culture/gender/orientation/disability or age of the executive leading the program. Over the past three years, we’ve seen an increasing trend toward diversity management being considered a line-management position. However, an organizational-development background is logical for any diversity executive, and we see many very effective diversity executives who report to the senior HR executive.

I’m glad The Wall Street Journal reporter didn’t go as far as to say that Steve or Frank (the long-term white CDOs of and Georgia Power and Coca-Cola) are “articulate” and “clean,” although that would have nudged this article from poorly conceived to comedic.

The post The WSJ Gets It Wrong: White Men Don’t Legitimize Diversity appeared first on DiversityInc.