More than two decades have passed since affirmative action became law, thrusting the issue of racial diversity in the workplace into the open—and often into the crossfire. Today both government statistics and anecdotal evidence suggest that people of color make up a larger percentage of senior managers than at any point in the past. Nevertheless, it remains unclear if the underlying goal of affirmative action—equal opportunity in the U.S. workplace—is being met satisfactorily. Many companies still struggle to increase the numbers of people of color in management. Many still struggle to find ways to leverage the talents of people of color and to make their experience one of inclusion rather than disenfranchisement. And many people of color themselves still struggle with the closed doors of institutional racism—often subtle in its manifestations, sometimes not. Indeed, the infamous Texaco incident, in which executives of the oil company were recorded making overtly racist remarks, was a painful reminder that ignorance and prejudice have by no means disappeared from the U.S. workplace. And yet there are signs of headway. Kenneth Chenault, an African American, is president of American Express Company and its leading internal candidate to succeed the current CEO. A Mexican American, Solomon Trujillo, is president and CEO of US West Communications; Lloyd Ward, another African American, is CEO of Maytag Corporation. Indeed, the consulting and research firm Korn/Ferry International reports that the number of African Americans and Hispanics in executive positions within Fortune 1,000 companies increased 200 % between 1979 and 1989. The flip side of that news: African Americans and Hispanics still make up less than 2 % of the total. The picture of racial diversity in American business, then, is at best a mixed one. But how mixed? Is there reason for optimism, or are most symbols of progress simply that—symbols? Other pressing questions also call out for discussion. What lies ahead? That is, what should American companies do in the future to promote real advances in diversity? Which programs work, and which fail? Who is primarily responsible for changing the picture: people of color themselves or the organizations they work for? For this seventy-fifth anniversary issue, HBR asked executives on the front lines of the racial experience in the United States to address these questions. In doing so, we continued a tradition that began 40 years ago with the publication of HBR’s first article on race in the workplace, entitled “American Negroes—A Wasted Resource,” by J.J. Morrow (January–February 1957). The Participants John Arrington was appointed vice president of human resources at US West Communications in Denver, Colorado, in 1995, following a 22-year career in human resource management at General Electric Company. Ken Bacon is senior vice president of the Federal National Mortgage Association’s Northeast Regional Office in Philadelphia. He has also held senior management positions with Resolution Trust Corporation and worked on Wall Street as an officer with Kidder, Peabody & Company and Morgan Stanley. Ted Campbell, U.S. employee relations manager at Digital Equipment Corporation in Maynard, Massachusetts, has designed and managed corporate-recruiting, development, training, and diversity programs for 26 years. Elsie Y. Cross is president and CEO of Elsie Y. Cross Associates, a consulting firm based in Philadelphia. She is author, with Margaret Blackburn White, of The Diversity Factor: Capturing the Competitive Advantage of a Changing Workforce (Irwin Professional Publishing, 1996). Louis W. Hoyes has been senior vice president of Multifamily Lending and Investment at the Federal National Mortgage Association in Washington, D.C., since 1995. He previously spent 20 years in managerial positions at Citicorp and Citibank. John R. Jenkins is vice president of Consumer Imaging Manufacturing at Polaroid Corporation in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He is also president and chairman of the board of Inner City, a wholly owned subsidiary of Polaroid that has provided job training to Boston’s unemployed and underemployed workers since 1968. Santiago Rodriguez was the director of multicultural programs at Apple Computer from 1988 to January of 1997 and affirmative action officer at Stanford University for the decade before that. He is now an independent consultant in San Francisco. Gail Snowden, who joined BankBoston (then Bank of Boston) as a branch officer in 1968, was in 1990 appointed president of the company’s multistate urban banking and community lending unit, First Community Bank. Lloyd Trotter, a manager with several divisions of General Electric Company since 1970, is currently president and CEO of GE’s $ 2.5-billion Electrical Distributions and Control business, based in Plainville, Connecticut. Ed Vargas, formerly president of Vargas & Associates, a strategic planning and communications consulting group based in the San Francisco Bay Area, now directs the Pacific Bell Hispanic consumer-marketing program, a subsidiary of SBC Communications. What follows is the edited transcript of a roundtable discussion held earlier this year. It was attended by ten senior managers selected because they represent a group seldom heard from or even acknowledged to exist in the media: executives of color. Moreover, by virtue of their authority and leadership, they are as much responsible for the culture, policies, and performance of their organizations as their white peers. The roundtable was moderated by David Thomas, who for the past decade has studied the impact of race on managers’ careers. At the discussion, and in subsequent follow-up interviews, the territory covered was wide but generally coalesced around two issues: How far has American business come in terms of racial equality and inclusion, and what does—and should—the future hold for people of color in business? Just how far corporate America has come in creating a fair and equal workplace for people of color was among the first topics discussed by participants at the roundtable—and was perhaps the one that generated the most consensus. There has been progress, most participants agreed, but… But they also agreed that most white Americans still consider effective or intelligent people of color to be an anomaly. A successful person of color is startling—the subject of skepticism. The result: people of color must work much harder to be accepted or devise other methods to make corporate America comfortable with their ideas and actions on the job. Even with their increasing numbers in the workplace, the participants said, people of color believe they are still not considered real insiders, a perception that continues to make inclusion an uphill battle. Ken Bacon: What I have encountered many times is surprise—surprise that a person of color in authority like myself is the analytical, academic, or intellectual equal of my white peers. I link it to the image of black people that’s presented on television. Every time you see one of us, we are singing, blowing a horn, or dribbling a ball, but we’re not portrayed as businesspeople. So when we are working as managers in real life, it makes people uncomfortable. They can’t believe it. Ed Vargas: The media do have an enormous impact. It’s one thing to be in a corporate environment and to deal with the impact of politics, competitive demands, and downsizings on the corporate culture. But the media perpetuate images about Hispanics that create very subtle challenges that can be incredibly hard to tackle. Because of the media, for instance, people are bombarded with images of gangs and poor immigrants, and therefore many people perceive that all Hispanics are the same. In the workplace, there are executives who do not value Hispanics as business leaders because of those stereotypes. These executives have made up their minds even before they get to a Hispanic person’s résumé or qualifications. It doesn’t even dawn on people that there are a large number of Hispanic entrepreneurs or consumers with strong buying power. The U.S. Hispanic population is larger than the population of Canada; it has an annual purchasing power of $ 300 billion. And Hispanics represent the fastest growing segment of ethnic entrepreneurs in the country. Santiago Rodriguez: I don’t know what is expected of us, but it is not success. I remember when I was a child, a teacher telling me, “Oh, Santiago, you can’t be Mexican, you’re too smart!” And that was in front of a class that was 95 % Mexican. Not a lot has changed. Let me tell you what happened at Stanford Business School, which is one of the best, right? When one of the few Chicano professors got tenure, two of his white male colleagues went to congratulate him. “You see,” they said, “affirmative action works.” When in fairness, by any objective standard, he was the superior scholar of the three. And they weren’t being malicious—and neither was the teacher I mentioned. Like my teacher, those two academics believed they were complimenting the man who had just received tenure. I think that is the biggest problem any of us here have—the assumption that we are not competent. In other words, why shouldn’t we be good at what we do? Because we’re not expected to be good. And from this assumption comes an entire dynamic. You remember the logic of Pygmalion. If you subconsciously expect someone to succeed, they’re likely to do so. The opposite is also true. People of color are often expected to fail—subconsciously. Does that mean they all fail? Of course not, but it takes a unique individual to overcome that expectation. People of color face this pressure every day in corporate America. Gail Snowden: To this day, because of my position and my background—an M.B.A. from Simmons College and so on—people still comment to me, “Gail, I just don’t think of you as a black woman,” and I always respond, “Gee, isn’t that strange, because that’s how I think of myself.” If the preceding stories suggest that many white businesspeople feel uncomfortable with people of color in a professional context, there remains the question of why. Is it because of racism or something less malignant? On this matter, the roundtable’s participants held a variety of opinions. Ken Bacon: Maybe because I was an anthropology major in college, I’m very careful how I describe things. Racism? That’s a complicated word. The problem is that people always think of racism as something aggressive and active. Sometimes it is. Sometimes it is very subtle. I mean, I’ve never encountered any situation in which a company’s managers have all been sitting in a room and have decided, “We’re not going to let any niggers in here.” But they may decide not to promote an African American man as early in his career as a white man; they may not take that risk. With a white man, they may say, “This guy has promise. Let’s give him a stretch assignment.” The black man has promise, but he has to prove himself to get the next assignment. Now sometimes, the fact that people choose to be separate has nothing to do with racism. I regard it as human nature for people to want to be with others like themselves. That’s true for blacks and whites, men and women. If I like hockey and drink beer and you like golf and drink wine, we aren’t going to be spending a lot of time together. Or say you go to a social gathering at someone’s house and all the men suddenly end up in one room watching the game. Are they all sexist, or are they just bonding because they like watching a particular sport? The same kind of separation can happen between blacks and whites. A distinction has to be made, however, if people are excluding others not because of different interests but because of prejudicial attitudes. That is a hard call because, as I said, even if there is racism in an organization, it’s very seldom expressed in anything the company does officially. It’s the little things that happen. Like I remember when I was an investment banker. I sat there while an executive asked two associates who worked for me to go out and play golf at his country club—where there were no black members. And I didn’t play golf. But I remember thinking, “He doesn’t know that. He never asked me if I could play.” And a lightbulb went on: I realized these guys were going to be out there together for four or five hours without me, bonding. This is the stuff that I find to be the big barrier. It’s the subtle social stuff that blocks us. It’s the fact that I’ve seldom had a white male mentor during my career. Mainly, my mentors were women. It matters. Because it’s the little social stuff and the mentors—they are what pull you along. When someone invests in you personally, you advance. It has nothing to do with the official diversity policy of an organization. My basic belief is that very few organizations are user friendly, but they are even less so to people of color. Elsie Cross: You’re not naming the real problem; I want to name it. The problem is the system of white supremacy. Every company contains norms that were built into its culture long ago. It is those systemic norms that create an environment in which a white person doesn’t invite a person of color to the golf course—the white man doesn’t even think about it. A company is built on informal relationships. Those informal—but powerful—sets of relationships create the tracks that move people into senior management. They determine how senior management feels about people. Informal relationships are all about who feels comfortable with whom: Have I had dinner with this person or attended school with her? Does she live in my neighborhood? People of color don’t have easy access to these informal relationships. In the eyes of white management, the person of color doesn’t look quite right, or has too much hair on his face, or is too dark skinned—somehow he or she just doesn’t have the right image. And nothing the person of color can do will change that image. That’s how white supremacy functions, and it’s built into all our corporations. Gail Snowden: Yes, but it’s an attitude that is so unconscious to most people. Senior management takes white people’s careers and massages them; it sends white people around to get other experiences, but it doesn’t do the same for people of color. They’re not even aware of the double standard—it’s just the way they’re used to doing things. I think racism is the elephant in the middle of the room. Santiago Rodriguez: We don’t have the conversation about race in the United States—either between groups or among groups. We often have it by race within our own groups. And by the way, brown and black people talk about race a lot more than white people do. White people rarely talk about race, believe me. We don’t have the conversation about race in the United States—either between groups or among groups. But is this racism? Probably, but it is also a matter of culture. The point is, American society has a really hard time with the mixture of races. Mixture is a hot button for many people, particularly mixture involving people of African American descent. Why is Tiger Woods, who is part black, part Asian, part white, and part American Indian, always referred to as black? That’s not how other cultures deal with mixture; the Caribbean culture, for instance, is a lot more accepting of it. In Latin America, it is even seen as a benefit. But in the United States, as soon as you have some African American ancestry, you are categorized as black. I have some black heritage, and I have been told I am black. So you can see, the issue of race has very little to do with appearance. Lou Hoyes: I’m not going to deny there is racism out there, because to state that race has not had an impact on my career would be naïve. But I have also noticed along the way that sometimes whether or not groups mix is a function of logistics more than anything else. In New York, it is very hard to socialize outside the office because of the train schedule and all types of commuting problems. In Miami and Chicago, I knew people of different races who played golf and tennis together all the time. The commuting was easier, and in Miami the weather enabled people to get around easily. Chicago tends to be a city of divisional managers—people on the road to somewhere else in their careers. Everyone is just arriving, so there are no set patterns of behavior. You form your golf foursome from your neighbors. So I’m not ready to say that racism keeps people apart, and that’s all there is to it. Regardless of the underlying causes of discrimination, some form of exclusion in the workplace had affected the careers of every participant at the roundtable. Interestingly, most worked well within the system to cope with, and overcome, this reality, either by accommodating white expectations about people of color—adapting their own behaviors to fit in with the white world—or by adopting “Teflon” attitudes that helped them deflect doubt and discrimination. A story told by one participant vividly illustrated the first strategy. In it, Gail Snowden described what happened when her department—which is 45 % people of color—wanted to persuade senior management to approve a large commercial loan. Gail Snowden: We were doing a $ 3 million deal right after my business unit was formed six years ago. I looked around the room, and it was the first time in my life in which every loan officer who worked on a deal was black. And we were going to the management committee that has to approve all loans above $ 1 million—which happens to be all white—and we realized, “This is going to be unusual for the committee. Would they be more comfortable with a mixed team?” Because a fundamental assumption in this country is that African Americans can’t possibly be smart enough to figure everything out themselves. That’s sad. A fundamental assumption in this country is that African Americans can’t possibly be smart enough to figure everything out themselves. That’s sad. But I was pragmatic. The committee was not used to seeing three or four black folks doing a $ 3 million deal. It just didn’t compute. But I wanted to get the deal done for my customer, so I did what I had to do. We fielded a team that included a white guy, and we got the deal done. Today, I might add, I would do it differently and confront the issue directly. My unit has a solid reputation now as a good lender. But six years ago, it was new, and perhaps I was too risk averse. Returning to his story about the golf invitation that was not extended, Ken Bacon described the second strategy of adapting. Ken Bacon: They came in the next day; they had been out drinking after the golf game until 10:00. I had been working all night. They were tanned and relaxed and laughing together. And I said, “I’m going to learn how to play this game. I’m going to learn golf.” I felt, basically, that if they’re having experiences I want to be a part of, well, I can ask them to accommodate me to some degree. But I also think it becomes incumbent upon the employee to say look, this is the culture of this place. Let me do some things. John Jenkins: That’s right. I tell young people to take the initiative; nothing is just going to come to us without effort. It’s like what Ken did. Do you want to play golf with other people in the company? Go out and play golf. Go and learn the game if you have to. I happen to be a tennis player. We have a league. I joined the league. Nobody asked me to join. I saw it as an opportunity. It puts me in the locker room with other guys, and I get to participate in all the small talk that goes on—about what is happening in other parts of the company, rumors, all that stuff. Now, everyone has a different approach to this. But to wait for someone to come to you and ask you to play golf or tennis is to be the victim as far as I’m concerned. And I will not be a victim. John Jenkins went on to address the type of attitude needed to cope with the challenges of working in a predominantly white corporate world. John Jenkins: I’ve always taken responsibility for my career—I sought out mentors all the way. I asked for their feedback, and I made it clear to them that I was open to criticism. Frequently, white supervisors are reluctant to give negative feedback to black employees because they are afraid it will end up in a lawsuit or be misinterpreted as racism. But I signaled that it was okay—I would hear what they had to say, and I would act on it. I’m not going to say there aren’t differences among people. But I always thought we could celebrate them instead of letting them tear us apart. My attitude always was, We’re all people. We have things in common. I’ve got kids. I worry about them the same way white people do. I worry about my aging parents the same way white people do. I didn’t fixate on differences. I thought, It doesn’t matter if you are white, black, green, or red, we can all get along. Now, I’m not going to say there aren’t differences among people. But I always thought we could celebrate them instead of letting them tear us apart. I wasn’t going to let the differences among people hold me back or make me resentful. Can We Talk? When we invited this group of senior executives to participate in a discussion about race relations in the workplace, our hope was that each would bring his or her perspective and experiences to the table for a dynamic and candid conversation. We had no agenda, only a destination: increased understanding of a complex and urgently important topic. Having completed the article, we realize that the conversation that emerged from the roundtable is susceptible to two legitimate critiques. First, it does not explore any of the topics raised in great depth. This is true. The roundtable lasted three hours, and the quality of the engagement was such that the participants refused to take a break lest time be lost. Without a doubt, any one of the topics discussed could sustain a three-hour discussion in and of itself. We therefore must consider this conversation a starting point for more conversation, not the final word. Second, we acknowledge that we neither provide an answer nor advocate a particular solution for addressing the problems of race relations in the workplace. That was not our intent. Instead, we hoped this conversation would be used to launch a dialogue within organizations, where solutions could be forged by those who would implement and experience them. With that said, we also believe that the themes raised by this article do suggest an agenda for moving forward. First, we must recognize that race matters. It influences every individual’s experience within an organization. To the extent that the experience is negative, it hurts business. The time people invest in worrying about how to avoid or minimize their differences is time not used to produce results. Second, our efforts in the future must look beyond simply recruiting people of color into an organization. They must seek to create conditions that allow all people to contribute fully and benefit from their experiences. Finally, the article suggests that responsibility for change lies with both people of color and the white majority, but especially with those who occupy positions of leadership and authority regardless of race. A business environment of true inclusion will require a quality of conversation within and across lines of race and hierarchy that is not present in many organizations today. We hope this article contributes to stimulating that conversation. When reacting to the words of these ten executives, we hope our readers stop to reflect on and clarify their own beliefs about race and diversity in the workplace. And then we urge you to share those thoughts with others in your organizations, pushing the topic of race relations into the forefront, where thoughtful, constructive discussions, like the one here, can flourish in ways that increase understanding and promote meaningful change. Other participants also commented on the importance of an unyieldingly positive attitude in their careers. Ken Bacon: I remember when I got to the Harvard Business School. I said, I’ve been to Stanford, I’ve been a Marshall Scholar, now I’m at Harvard. I can relax. Then I went to work for a large consulting firm for the summer. And I happened to work with a partner who told me I couldn’t write. I said, “But the customer adopted my recommendation. They closed the plant.” But he didn’t care. I was a black man, and he was going to look at me as the glass that was half empty instead of half full. The experience woke me up. I said, “I forgot—I can’t let down my guard.” I said, “I’m never going to have anybody do that to me again.” So this is what has made the difference for me: I always knew I had to believe in myself, because I couldn’t assume that anybody else was going to believe in me. Now, I couldn’t be overly confident and tell myself I was the smartest person in the world. But I really had to always have that feeling that I was smart. I would not be outworked. I would not be outsmarted. And if someone didn’t value me, I didn’t get angry about it. I would not get mad. I would not protest. Instead, I would go to work someplace else where I would be valued. You almost have to feel like Muhammad Ali did: proud and unbeatable. Because that’s the only way you are going to keep going. I have always tried to keep positive. I really believe that there are a lot of destructive traps out there for people of color. And if you fall into them—if you become angry or vengeful or defeated or complacent—you lose. You know, you almost have to be like Muhammad Ali. You almost have to feel like he did: proud and unbeatable. Because that’s the only way you are going to keep going. The discussion of coping strategies brought another theme to the surface: how emotionally draining it can be to exist in a near constant state of adapting to another culture’s view of the world, or of having to keep an upbeat attitude in a sometimes hostile environment. In addition, many spoke of the difficulty of bringing one’s whole self—one’s true self—to work, in terms of speech, dress, and other cultural customs. Many said that the most fulfilling and effective coping mechanism in their careers has been joining professional networks—communities of people of color that span companies or industries. John Arrington: You can’t underestimate the power of professional networks, because when they are positively focused, you no longer feel alone or isolated. You are connected with people of power in the organization in a way you have never been before. Instead of always feeling like an outsider, you feel as if you belong. You are not alone, and that can be tremendously helpful both personally and professionally. John Jenkins: At Polaroid, we have a group called the Diversity Network Alliance. The alliance is in all parts of the company and includes blacks, Hispanics, and gays, and it’s truly not a senior-management movement. It’s an initiative run by and for the people at every level of the organization. It’s everywhere, and it’s great. Another thing is that people of color have a buddy-mentoring program for recent hires. They get to meet executives with a lot of influence in the organization. But equally important, they have a chance on a regular basis to talk about their careers with people like them who have been there and know the ropes. As the participants used personal strategies and networks to cope with discrimination in the work-place, did affirmative action help? Only at the entry level, most agreed. Indeed, the consensus was that affirmative action is a program limited in scope and impact. It began, participants agreed, as a mechanism to overcome prejudice, but over time it has been transformed into a system that some people believe grants unfair advantage and leads to an overall lowering of standards. Ted Campbell: In some companies, affirmative action has become like the ugly stepchild—something they keep in the basement. Diversity programs, meanwhile, are trotted out to meet the relatives. In practice, they’re the same things. Companies just don’t use those words—affirmative action—anymore. They dig a hole and then bury it, or they dress it up a little and call it something else. The term diversity just sounds sexier and more glamorous. It’s doesn’t sound like a numbers game the government has put you up to. Affirmative action has become like the ugly stepchild… The term diversity just sounds sexier and more glamorous. It doesn’t sound like a numbers game the government has put you up to. Ed Vargas: Affirmative action has become like a heart monitor in a hospital. When you’re getting a flat line, you know you’re losing the patient, and you try to put some energy back in the body, shock it back to life. Then you have a body that is not particularly healthy, but at least it’s functioning. That’s how affirmative action is used today. At least affirmative action keeps tabs on a company’s vital signs. But there are a lot of other things you need to do besides watch for the line going flat. I wouldn’t say that’s all bad, because you have to have something in place, something that at least keeps tabs on a company’s vital signs. But if you really want to keep a company healthy, there are a lot of other things you need to do besides watch for the line going flat. John Arrington: It’s true: affirmative action has a role. At least managers know there is some kind of control out there, and they have to pay attention to it. They can’t just willy-nilly hire whomever they like. They can’t have an organization that is not diverse, because looming in the background is the threat that some HR person or their boss is going to come to them and say diversity must be attended to. It cannot be ignored. So that’s affirmative action’s value. And I wouldn’t be sitting here—and probably many of you wouldn’t be sitting here, particularly if you were hired in the mid-1970s—if not for affirmative action. Santiago Rodriguez: Affirmative action, to my mind, has been most successful in recruitment—which academics euphemistically call “casting the net widely.” It has been singularly unsuccessful, at least in my experience, in promoting upward mobility—diversification of the upper levels. And remember, affirmative action wasn’t meant to measure the quality of an environment. Ken Bacon: That’s right. Affirmative action doesn’t do anything for upward mobility, and it doesn’t measure what it feels like to be a person of color working in a corporation. I’m not sure, though, what would work better. But I do know that if you don’t measure something, it doesn’t count. You measure your market share. You measure your profitability. The same should be true for diversity. There has to be some way of measuring whether you did, in fact, cast your net widely, and whether the company is better off today—in terms of the experience of people of color—than it was a few years ago. So when people criticize quotas, I say, “I measure my market share and my profitability. Why not this?” It’s not as if I’m sitting around counting the numbers of blacks and Hispanics every day, but if I see a department with 100 people and no people of color, I get concerned. I take action. The Texaco incident shows what happens when people stop paying attention to the numbers. The senior managers there weren’t dumb. But they didn’t compare themselves with the rest of the industry. Granted, there are not a lot of black petroleum engineers coming out of graduate schools. But if they had looked around and compared themselves to other companies in their industry, they would have seen that their numbers were very low. And they could have asked, “Why are we so much lower?” The answer to that question—a question raised by the numbers—might have led them to learn about the attitudes in their organization. Most participants agreed that for affirmative action to fulfill its promise, it would need more bite. Gail Snowden: There’s no accountability in the system. Affirmative action is perceived to be separate from the business. If you make your financial goals but not your diversity goals, well okay, you’ll make them next time. Santiago Rodriguez: And legally, as you’re suggesting, affirmative action is no more than a good faith effort. Many companies are very good at demonstrating good faith. They say, “We really tried hard,” and they believe they really did. If affirmative action doesn’t have much of an impact above the entry level in most companies, what can be done to make corporate America reflect the nation’s demography? As the conversation continued, a debate emerged over whether personal initiatives and networks were enough. Should corporate America’s management also shoulder the burden? Yes, said some participants, who attributed the current lack of diversity to corporate America’s racism. Nothing significant will change unless racism is eradicated, this group said, a burden that can and should be borne by white people. Elsie Cross: It is not effective to work only at the individual level when you are trying to reduce oppression and discrimination in organizations. As a person of color, I can’t expect that having cordial conversations with white people will change the corporation. You have to look at what happens at the systemic or institutional level. The reason that organizations have to keep returning to this work year after year after year is because they never address it on the institutional level—the belief systems, the norms and the attitudes, the biases and prejudices, and the policies and practices that operate to the advantage of white men and to the detriment of everyone else. If you don’t attack those, then you never bring about fundamental change. That attack has to be led by the leader of the company: the white CEO. If he is committed—and the CEO is almost always a “he”—change will happen. Asked later for an example of such change, Elsie Cross cited Terrence A. Larsen, CEO of CoreStates Financial Corporation of Philadelphia. Over the past eight years, CoreStates has invested millions of dollars in the company’s diversity culture-change initiatives. Every employee in the company participates in a three-day diversity-education and awareness-training program. The CEO’s direct reports attend additional seminars and classes. In addition, Larsen released 30 line managers from their duties for nearly a year to commit 100 % of their time to making CoreStates a more inclusive environment. Finally, Larsen ties compensation to diversity goals. Elsie Cross: All of Larsen’s direct reports are accountable to him for progress in the company’s culture-change effort. As in any other important corporate initiative, managers must establish targets and goals, both numerical and behavioral. If they miss their goals, they may not get the bonus or the promotion they expected. That’s very unusual in my experience. Lots of CEOs say they want change—they want diversity in their organizations. But they don’t understand that there has to be basic change in the culture of their organizations and that they have to make a major financial commitment to accomplish such change. They have to hold people accountable for making it happen, just as they do for any other business goal. At CoreStates, a very committed CEO has pushed through really monumental change. People of color there feel included; they can be themselves at work. They don’t have to look white or act white. They feel as if their ideas are taken into account. They are promoted, and as a result retention is much higher. And all of these things have had a very positive business impact—CoreStates is one of the most successful banks in the region. But the change there couldn’t have happened without a really focused, passionate CEO who was willing to put his money where his mouth was. Other participants agreed that a committed CEO was critical to improving the climate of an organization but strongly supported another approach to improving inclusiveness. People of color who have succeeded—rising into the ranks of senior management, for example—must use their positions to act as advocates for meaningful change. John Arrington: Ultimately, the way to do away with institutional barriers is to get people of color into key positions in the organization, where they can start making the calls—deciding who gets hired and influencing the kind of policies and practices the company is going to have. Arrington went on to say that this dynamic is already at work in his company to some degree, a point others echoed. John Arrington:I had a revelation one day: Them is us. We can drive change when we’re in charge. And we have changed the system. I had a revelation one day: Them is us. We can drive change when we’re in charge. For example, sometimes we skip the main successor-rating system. We go in and identify talented minorities and women and maybe give them a little extra attention. We give them exposure to the CEO off-line. We provide them with special training. We pull them out of the regular system, sit them down, and talk to them about their careers. Some people may complain that we are giving preferential treatment. However, I believe that, as it stands, the organization is concerned predominantly with meeting the needs of the majority. You only need to look at the numbers to see that. We’re trying to level the playing field for minorities and women. And once the numbers are more representative, we will be happy to work through the system the majority uses. Lloyd Trotter: At one point, John [Arrington] and I were critiquing ourselves and asking, Are we really proud of how much energy and skill and strategic planning we have put into helping African Americans in our company? And the answer was no. So we said, Let’s talk about the game, what’s important in the game, and what we can do to redirect people of color so they have a better shot at winning the game. So we started a group with the senior African American leadership team called the African American Forum, in which people meet on a quarterly basis to talk about the game. What does that mean? It means we talk about understanding who controls your career. The answer is, you do. You say, “My most valuable asset is myself,” and you focus on caring for and feeding that asset. The second topic the forum addresses is helping African Americans in the company realize that they need to interact with the bigger group—the power group—in a way that says, “We’re here.” That means you go out and actively find mentors for new or rising people of color in the organization—you find sponsors in the power group who are willing to stand up along the way and say, “This person will do a great job if she is given the opportunity.” We’ve been running this forum for five years. Every year, 4,000 African Americans meet around the corporation, and once a year we have a national meeting where we bring in people from all the businesses and let the networking happen. It’s worked very well. Here’s another simple change we brought about that made a big difference. We stated, you cannot start a candidate slate without a minority individual on it. And if you can’t find a minority, come see us. It’s amazing how quickly candidate slates became diverse. Really amazing. By the way, the corporation thought that was a great idea, and all of a sudden it got adopted throughout GE. John Jenkins: I’ve got a plant manager’s job that’s open. And we’ve looked around the company’s worldwide operations and found there aren’t any black plant managers. We used to have two, but one retired and one was promoted. Now there are none—no black plant managers. And we’ve decided we are going to go outside the organization to find a black person to run this plant. Is everyone happy with this plan? Obviously not. There are some people who wish the position would be filled with someone from inside the company. They feel as if an opportunity is being taken from them. They’re thinking: That’s a plum job that could have been mine. I understand that sentiment; I’ve had it myself. But the only way we are going to have a truly diverse workforce is if we seize the opportunity when it comes up. A diverse workforce is a goal of this corporation, and it’s not going to happen unless we make it happen. Even with its variety of opinion on who should take the lead in increasing diversity, the group largely agreed that certain types of “official” programs do work in promoting diversity and that others do not. The ones that work include those that link achieving racial diversity goals to compensation. In short, the most effective programs, the participants said, enthusiastically encourage diversity efforts, measure their results, and then reward those responsible for hitting the numbers. As for the programs that don’t work, participants offered the following views: Lou Hoyes: One of the biggest errors is staging high-profile publicity-seeking events. Another is tokenism, as in announcing, “We have x number of women and blacks on the board and one or two black senior executives.” It’s just lip service. All across corporate America you see blacks on boards, but they are just sprinkled there. I mean, you see the same black person on board after board. In a company that is truly inclusive, when you walk around you see people of color at all levels and in all areas of the company. And when a Texaco-like incident occurs, it is dealt with seriously and immediately. So what I’m talking about is a pattern of deeds, not words. Elsie Cross: I see a lot of companies having activities to address diversity—I call this approach the activity trap. They might sponsor an ethnic dinner and celebrate Black History Month. They do a lot of symbolic busywork. But they don’t do a thing to change what’s fundamentally wrong within their organizations. Companies might sponsor an ethnic dinner and celebrate Black History Month… But they don’t do a thing to change what’s fundamentally wrong within their organizations. Many participants agreed that institutional diversity programs, while useful, are misdirected. They suggested that companies truly seeking a diverse workplace should focus instead on creating opportunities for people of color to make an impact on the real work of the business. Once that happens, racial diversity will make its own case. John Jenkins: When organizations see that diversity is legitimately good for business, it becomes institutionalized. As long as people see it as something the government imposes, they’re not going to be happy about it. Sometimes it just amazes me that people don’t see the business argument for diversity. I was reading statistics the other day that show that African Americans buy 30 % of the movie tickets in the United States, 20 % of the portable television sets, and 32 % of all malt liquors. There are many products out there that African Americans buy in greater proportion than their numbers in the total population. And if I were selling one of those products, I sure would want an African American in the room during marketing discussions, planning sessions, and strategy decisions. I’m not saying a white person couldn’t make an intelligent contribution to the process, but I’m going to bet you—say you take the case of portable TVs—that a white person hasn’t been into a whole lot of black households to know what the people are watching. They might be totally out of touch with the black experience. And I’m not saying that’s bad. It’s reality. I haven’t spent a whole lot of time in Italian households. I’m not going to tell my company how to sell cameras in Italy. We need Italians doing that. Gail Snowden: I think we have to be able to show that having a seat at the table has a business payoff, that by bringing a different point of view and a different kind of knowledge, you open things up. I’ve seen so many times that having people of diverse backgrounds working together makes conversations so much fuller and richer because there are so many more perspectives—there’s less groupthink. People challenge assumptions and beliefs, and the company ends up benefiting. I remember a few years ago when we started talking about selling more business to small companies, and the conversations about marketing kept focusing on men. And I said, “Everything I’m reading and hearing and seeing tells me that women are starting businesses at a faster rate than men. Let’s do some research and find out.” It turned out I was right, and we ended up creating a task force on how to serve this market best. Here’s a great example of how openness to different worldviews makes good business sense. In Caribbean cultures, there’s a practice called su-su. Basically, it means a group—typically an extended family—saves money collectively. Well, banks have been thinking about individual families for a long time—a mother, father, two kids, a dog, and a cat. And they base their lending practices on that model. But in some cultures, the family unit is larger, and it saves money differently. You need to know about that in order to make intelligent mortgage-lending decisions, for example. So here’s a market that most banks probably don’t want to lend to, but actually it is an okay credit risk. There is such a thing as northern European culture, but other groups have cultures, too. And they’re different. Santiago Rodriguez: If you don’t have us at the table, you get products like the Nova, which didn’t do too well in the Spanish-speaking world. You know—“no va”—no go, in Spanish. Not the best name for a car. Other participants agreed that diversity was good for business but offered other reasons why racial inclusiveness should be an objective of U.S. corporations. Lou Hoyes: Increasing diversity is the right thing to do, but not only because it can be financially justified. Every time I hear it described as a market-share issue—as in, we have 20 % minority customers so we need minorities in marketing—I just sigh. It’s bigger than market share. Every company today, to succeed, has to bring in the best and brightest minds. I don’t know who is going to cure cancer. I don’t know what color, shape, creed, or gender that person is going to be. Why limit the opportunity to bring that person into my company? If Colin Powell had not been allowed into the army because of his color, the whole country would have missed his leadership. Every time I hear diversity described as a market-share issue—as in, we have 20 % minority customers so we need minorities in marketing—I just sigh. It’s bigger than market share. Ken Bacon: I also don’t particularly see this as a marketplace issue. Sure, diversity can be good for business. But I see this as a moral issue. Business has been able to thrive in this country because it reflects American values. Capitalism has given people freedom; it’s given them hope. And when hope dies, people feel resentment, and that’s bad for civilized society. Frankly, I think businesses should be able to say, we are made up of good people. For example, some people won’t work for tobacco companies because they think selling that kind of product is wrong. It has nothing to do with dollars and cents. And neither does diversity for me. It’s just about doing the right thing. Yet even if corporate America were to embrace the cause of racial diversity, many participants at the roundtable noted that businesses do not exist in a vacuum. They are part of a society that as a whole has yet to address the problem of racial inequality adequately. Lloyd Trotter: I firmly believe that you can’t fix corporate America without fixing the neighborhoods that surround corporate America. Nothing is going to get fixed unless the whole U.S. structure is changed—you can’t have an environment outside the office door that is hostile to African Americans and then expect to walk into a fantasyland for eight hours a day. Society’s baggage comes with us. Santiago Rodriguez: My heart breaks when we try to recruit. What do you do in electrical engineering and computer sciences when the colleges and universities are graduating maybe 2 % African American and Hispanic students in those fields? There is no way you can get around that fact. Asians make up 15 % of the workforce in those fields, and women now probably make up 25 % of it. But the African American and Hispanic communities continue to be a disaster in terms of producing the talent. In both these communities, we’re losing two-thirds of our kids. We don’t even get far enough with them to worry about affirmative action in corporate America. We have to get back to what is going on in these communities and give help where help is needed. Ted Campbell: I’m working with a group of college students in New Hampshire, mentoring them, helping them understand the system—what you do, what classes you take, where you work. And they are raw. Nothing has really prepared them for school or careers. It makes me realize we have to start sooner, catch them in high school and junior high, because they don’t have a lot of support in their neighborhoods to help them survive in the working world. There’s a crisis out there that is larger than what we’re talking about in this room. Finally, as the roundtable discussion came to a close, participants were asked to reflect on the course of their careers. “If you knew then what you know now, what would you do differently?” Some of the participants answered that they had no regrets. Ted Campbell spoke for many in saying that he had surpassed the wildest dreams of a child born of deep poverty in a country entrenched in racism. There had been struggles along the way, but they had been only a small part of an unexpectedly successful journey to the top of the U.S. business world. But another answer was more common. I would have challenged the system more, and earlier, many said. In other words, I would have been less patient. I would have risked more. Gail Snowden: I would have tried to work less within the system. Because even with the best intentions at my company, which has diversity as a core value and a CEO who is a real leader on this issue, we still do not have many people of color in very senior positions. I would have pushed harder. But I was trying to play internal politics, trying to advance my own career goals while at the same time advancing the issue of diversity in general. I was trying to balance my role as an advocate with my role as a corporate citizen. I always thought things would get better. I had a lot of hope. I certainly hoped that when my daughter was ready to seek employment, she wouldn’t have to face the same things I did 30 years ago. But she did. People still asked if a black person could be smart, if she could write and speak well. So that leaves me thinking, I should have pushed harder along the way. On the other hand, when I see a person like me, I know that progress has been made. But it’s still an uphill battle. John Arrington: When I walk around my company, people are still surprised to see a black face—and we have a Hispanic president. And there are still areas of the company I can go into where there are no minorities to speak of. Now, it’s not like ten years ago when I was a labor relations specialist in Vermont, and in a plant of 2,500 employees there were two people of color. Changes are happening or I wouldn’t be here. US West now has five or six black officers. But I’m waiting for the day when people don’t look up when I walk by. I’m waiting for the day when I’m not an oddity. Lloyd Trotter’s closing remarks spoke for many at the roundtable in their mixture of hope and dismay about the future of race in the U.S. workplace. Lloyd Trotter: When I entered corporate America in the 1970s, the playing field wasn’t very level. There were very few people who would accept you based on the skills you brought to the table. Along the way, I think I underestimated how hard it would be to get a company to a level playing field. I look around today, and I see the issues are still there. And so the only thing I would have done differently is to have hit the walls harder and faster and faced the issues a lot quicker. I know no one is going to cry for me… But there has been too little change for the length of time that the struggle has been going on. There have been successes. There has been change. When I look at companies like GE and when I look at corporate America, I know that is true. I know no one is going to cry for me: I’m a CEO at GE, and there are only 12 of us. Most people would argue that I haven’t been discriminated against or I wouldn’t be here. They would argue: You’re a success story. We all are successful, all of us at this table. But there have been too few successes and there has been too little change for the length of time that the struggle has been going on. We’ve been at this a long time.
