How to Be an Ally to the Black Lives Matter Movement
WE GRIEVED, WE MARCHED, WE LISTENED, WE LEARNED.
NOW WHAT?
NOW WE TAKE ACTION
There’s been a lot of talk about diversity programs “not working” lately. Just google it and you’ll see hundreds of articles criticizing implicit bias, diversity and inclusion training.
Stacy Gordon of Rework/Work
For all your diversity, inclusion and career needs
A long time friend and ally of She Negotiates Stacy Gordon of Rework/Work - herself vilified by the National Review for daring to speak on diversity and inclusion issues to State employees - states the obvious.
“Training,” Gordon says, “awakening consciousness, is just the beginning, not the end of diversity and inclusion. To move the needle, institutions and businesses of all kinds have to implement” the lessons they’ve learned.
So how does a small business like ours implement diversity and inclusion. Here’s the easiest way to start. More suggestions will be forthcoming.
Diversify Your Social Media Channels
Two years ago, LinkedIn featured an article by recruiter Bob Spoer, who noted that nearly 50% of all hires at top companies come from employee referrals. This, my friends, is the social capital of white privilege. As Spoer notes in his article Want to attract diverse talent? Diversify your own network,
in reading the blog posts from Google, Microsoft, Apple on the topic [of recruiting], not a single one of them encouraged their employees to find ways to diversify their own connections. If such a significant and potentially increasing percentage of hires come from employee referrals, if we don't diversify our networks, we will not make much progress.
And “much progress” has indisputably not been made to this very day.
I’ve experienced this problem first hand. It is my practice to only speak on panels that include women of color. When I speak on the pay gap, I will not speak in the absence of a Black participant because the delta between white women’s pay and Black women’s pay is shocking. While all women, for instance, are said to make somewhere around 81 to 82% of white men’s compensation, for Black women the percentage is 62%. Every wage gap panel needs to have a Black woman on it for the Black attendees at every women’s conference to speak to the entire diverse cohort of business and professional women. .
Two years ago, when I told a women lawyers’ group that I couldn’t speak on their wage gap panel in the absence of a Black woman, they said they “didn’t know anyone qualified.” I considered this a shocking thing to say in 2018, i.e., their failure to diversify their networks was being blamed on the presumed absence of qualified Black women.
I told this organization could get them the names of half a dozen local Black women who were eminently qualified and that I could do so on the same day. Which I did. When I returned to the panel’s organizers with recommendations on that same day, they told me that given my practice to refuse to speak on a panel in the absence of a Black voice, they took me at my word and were replacing me.
This should never happen again. It is one of the many reasons why Black women find it so much more difficult to succeed in the legal profession. They remain sidelined and “unknown” despite the apparent ease of searching for them via google. We can talk about inclusivity until we’re blue in the face, but if we don’t INCLUDE Black business people and professionals in our social media networks, we will continue to be blind to their presence among us.
But, how? LinkedIn has many Black Professional groups like this one. Regardless of your race, gender or ethnicity, join one or two of these groups in your field so you can see what your Black sisters, brothers and colleagues are talking about and what impressive credentials they have. If someone catches your interest, ask to join their network or simply follow them. For awhile, one of LinkedIn’s pages recommended Black influencers and professionals/business people to follow.They appear to have stopped doing this. Please ask LinkedIn to reactivate that policy.
The time for talking and teaching is over. For those people who don’t believe discrimination against the Black community exists, there’s extremely little chance for change within that group. For those of us who believe the science of implicit bias, the history of racism in this country and the evidence all around us that too many of our professional and business circles are largely or entirely white, its time to take the lessons learned and do something positive.
Rachel Rogers
This is not diversity and inclusion.
This is anti-racism. A long time friend of She Negotiates, Rachel Rogers, devised an anti-racist pledge for small business last month. I encourage you to take a look at her call to action.
As I dig more deeply into anti-racist business practices, I’d like to make a modest proposal. That organizations who haven’t developed one or more of those practices should stop giving diversity awards, particularly diversity awards to white men. It’s time white America stopped giving participation awards to people and organizations that aren’t moving the needle.