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Corporate DEI loves heritage month celebrations, culturally sensitive calendars, implicit bias training and the like, but actual education about America’s racial history…not so much.
The former feels so much easier. It’s like giving up plastic bottles and bags as one’s sole environmentalism strategy but refusing to really understand the climate crisis or make any real personal sacrifice in order to realize measurable impact. The unspoken truth for many organizations is that America’s racial history feels like too much of a downer—and is perceived as too threatening to many white professionals—so they’re willing to skip over the requisite education piece and jump right into surface level performative activities to get credit for doing something at the expense of doing something impactful.
The inconvenient truth is that the glaring racial disparities that we still face today are the cumulative result of centuries of history, and unraveling those inequities will require a thorough, methodical, intentional approach that starts with fundamentally understanding how we got here. The key to solving any complex problem rests with first understanding it, and this one is no different. While defensiveness is a visceral response for many, the truth is that learning America’s racial history isn’t about punishing white people. It’s about understanding the complicated, systemic architecture of racism and how it was constructed so we can equip ourselves to actually dismantle it.
Unfortunately, many organizations are hopelessly tethered to their safe implicit bias trainings and remain uninterested in delving into any real discussions around America’s racial history. Here’s why that mentality is not just misguided but also potentially costly and counterproductive.
Workplace professionals (including many DEI leaders) remain ill-equipped to have productive, informed conversations about race and racism.
One has to be knowledgeable about something to have a productive, insightful conversation about it, and most professionals simply don’t have the requisite racial literacy to participate in informed conversation about race and racism much less cultivate innovative, actionable solutions. The simple fact is that America’s racial history is both complex and nuanced and while most of us wouldn’t dare attempt to address an IT or product design problem without sufficient relevant background knowledge, most workplaces simply assume that the most cursory understanding of Indigenous people, the African American slave trade and Jim Crow is a sufficient basis for informed workplace discussion about race and racism. It’s not.
While everyone certainly isn’t expected to become an historian, it’s critically important to not just dispel common myths but also connect the dots of history in a way that illuminates and explains the reasons behind persistent gaping racial disparities. Without this historical context, it’s simply too easy to view racism-fueled disparities as evidence of true racial difference. While that might sound stark, it’s perfectly logical. For example, when we rarely see Black women in executive roles within the tech industry and instead see white and Asian men overrepresented, it’s easy to see how some might (consciously or otherwise) begin to connect race with intellect, capacity and merit.
Arguably, most adults today (of all racial backgrounds) don’t have a strong command of American history much less its racial history. Most don’t have the specific understanding of how the system of racial apartheid was carefully constructed and maintained for centuries. They don’t understand that while laws slowly evolved, Black and Indigenous people (with only a few exceptions) did not receive any tangible remuneration for centuries of government-sanctioned injustice. They don’t understand the critical role that slavery (and continued slave-like oppression after so called emancipation) played in wealth building for corporations and state economies, many of whom thrive to this day. They view African-Americans as the sole (or primary) beneficiaries of affirmative action initiatives and fail to recognize how such initiatives have more significantly benefited white women, and they certainly fail to realize that historically white men have received more preferential treatment than any other demographic group. They fail to understand that New Deal programs were specifically designed with exceptions to exclude most African-Americans, putting the burgeoning middle class out of reach for Black and Brown families. They don’t realize that government supported redlining policies and practices created racially segregated neighborhoods and schools that largely persist to the current day.
This history matters. It provides critically important context that explains racial disparities as a very logical output of a society defined for centuries by racial apartheid, not the result of racial inferiority.
Individuals lack authentic, internal motivation.
Every leader has witnessed the tremendous difference between someone doing something because they’re expected to do it instead of being driven by a burning internal desire. That difference is a key reason why so many organizations conduct DEI initiatives year after year with little resulting improvement in racial disparities. Arguably, most professionals are going through the motions of DEI or antiracism work in order to check a box or bolster their antiracism street cred, not as a result of deep personal conviction and motivation.
This powerful quote cuts to the core of the problem:
“White supremacy won’t change until white people begin to see it as a white problem they need to fix instead of a Black problem they need to empathize with.” (author unknown)
This distinction highlights a fundamental flaw in the prevailing attitude and approach towards racial equality, namely that it’s primarily a Black and Brown problem that we need to convince white people to care about. The truth is that equality as a value should be race agnostic. It should be something that everyone values and supports with action. In particular, American white supremacy has a long, horrific history that many would argue white people shouldn’t be convinced to learn, but instead, they should be leading the charge to understand and dismantle.
When asked about motivation techniques, perhaps it was Dale Carnegie who first said, “The best way to get someone to do something is to get them to want to do it.” That nuance strikes at the heart of why many antiracism efforts sound lofty yet yield so little result. Arguably, those who must be cajoled, lured, coaxed or coddled into addressing racism and racial inequities will never be the ones to confront it head on and demand radical change. The ones arguing over the semantics of using the term “privilege” vs. “advantage” or pleading for calling in instead of calling out won’t be the ones challenging long-standing policies or revamping widely accepted processes. To ignite that type of sustained fervor, one must have their own why, their own drive and passion. Just as with committing to a healthier lifestyle or giving up smoking, they can’t be doing it to please someone else. For it to be a lasting change, they must be doing it for themselves, to satisfy their own value system, and educating the masses on the truth behind racial inequities can be the spark to ignite that personal, individual motivation.
The omission sends a reckless, dangerous message to Black and Brown employees
Make no mistake. When companies twist themselves into a pretzel to avoid discussing the truth of racism in this country, Black and Brown employees absolutely notice. What is interesting is that when the issue of “feelings” is raised, it’s almost exclusively focused on white feelings. But what about Black and Brown feelings? Typically, there’s little if any focus on how the conspicuous omission of these topics makes them feel.
These are among the subtle messages many Black and Brown people receive when organizations avoid training or content around America’s racial history:
- Your history is not that important.
- We will only focus on your history to the extent that we continue to feel comfortable.
- Our potential discomfort overrides any benefit of validating and elevating the truth of our collective American experience.
- Our version of “American history” is really white American history. Any significant discussion of the experience of Black people in America is deemed Black history and ceases to be American history.
- We don’t consider this a serious problem; therefore, its analysis is not required.
- We value equality but not enough to withstand any significant discomfort.
In some ways May 25, 2020, the day of both George Floyd’s murder and Amy Cooper’s notorious Central Park racial incident, marked the nadir of modern American racial relations. Within days corporations responded with emphatic, determined pledges to not just be “non-racist” but become “anti-racist” echoing the words of historian and How to Be an Antiracist author Dr. Ibram X. Kendi (and Angela Davis before him). But slowly, predictably, calls for radical, decisive focus on antiracism soon gave way to much more palatable, inconsequential DEI initiatives that seemed more like a performative shell game designed to distract and entertain, not disrupt and transform.
Admittedly, training and discussions around America’s racial history must be handled responsibly with great care and should be addressed through a historical lens, not a political one. Fortunately, fact-based, credible resources like the Equal Justice Initiative, PBS, history.com and others are readily available. While there’s much hand wringing these days about how to discuss America’s racial history, it’s increasingly clear that the problem is not one of ability but will.
