Does workforce diversity live up to its promise?

Yes

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by Angelica Weathersby

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I am surprised when I hear or read how outraged a white person gets when affirmative action, in its effort to create opportunity for a more diverse cross-section of the population, causes them to lose a job opportunity to a person of color. Where was the white passion for justice during the 245 years of slavery in this nation? Where was it in the following 100 years when legalized discrimination prevented qualified African-Americans from being even considered for white collar jobs or entry into the best universities?

Only during the past 40 years has the law begun to protect their right to function on an even playing field with other Americans. Even during that 40 years and on into the present, many schools and employers resent Americans who continue to fight for justice and equality for all citizens of our nation. I doubt that those who are accustomed to privilege gave a second thought to the fairness or unfairness of educational and employment opportunities in America as long as they were the ones who benefited from the fact that everything was stacked in their favor.

Workforce diversity lives up to its promise, only to the extent that employers actually have followed the law, and only to the extent that the law has been enforced. Without these laws, many employers of all races and ethnic backgrounds hire their own kind rather than a person of a different race or ethnic group, even if that person were better-qualified, without even thinking about why they do it.

An example of unconscious discrimination comes to us from a study done about 10 years ago in math classrooms. First, the classes were videotaped without the teachers being told the reason. When the teachers asked a question and students raise their hands, they called on the boys almost exclusively. When asked later why they had done this, they said it was because boys are more likely to get the answer right, and they didn't want their students to come off badly in the video.

Next, in another school, teachers were TOLD that the videotaping was being done to see whether girls or boys got more teacher attention in math classes. Even when they knew that they were being watched for this favoritism, and made an obvious point of including girls, they called on the boys much more often and made much more encouraging comments to them.
When shown the videotapes after the classes were over, the teachers were astounded. One of them said ruefully, "I guess I'm so unaccustomed to calling on girls that even calling on them once or twice seemed to me like a lot."

The teachers were unconsciously accepting the age-old perception that girls are just naturally not good enough at math to merit much attention beyond being counted as "present" at the beginning of the class.
In just such a way, employers continue to act out long-disproven ideas about which kinds of work or educational opportunities are more appropriate for which kinds of applicants. An employer does not have to be consciously bigoted to choose white people over minorities for job opportunities; many do it without thinking.

Employers and school Admissions Boards also discriminate against minority applicants because of the perceptions they've been fed by a slanted justice system, (which falsely convicts far more blacks than whites) and media that is 66% more likely to show the picture of a black person in custody, than of a white person in the same situation.

From RACE, the DEATH PENALTY, and WRONGFUL CONVICTIONS" by Karen F. Parker, Mari A. De Wees, and Michael L. Radelet, we learn what happened when DNA evidence proved the innocence of many prisoners. To analyze the findings, "Barry Scheck and associates examined 62 cases in which prisoners have been cleared by DNA evidence in the Actual Innocence project (2000.) Of the 62 cases, 29 percent of the defendants were white and 57 percent were black. Like the preceding studies, they found that miscarriages of justice and wrongful conviction fall disproportionately on blacks as compared to other racial and ethnic groups."

In another study, "...among 182 exoneration cases, where the race of wrongly convicted people is known, nearly 75 percent are men of color. No two cases are alike, but in many of them, police focused on an African American man immediately and ignored information that might have led to other suspects. In some of them, police coerced confessions, prosecutors concealed evidence and defense attorneys for poor defendants failed to challenge faulty evidence and law enforcement tactics."

In a study of how Americans perceive the danger they face from minorities, "Americans... are more likely to exaggerate the threat of victimization by minorities. Twice as many white Americans believe they are more likely to be victimized by a minority than (by) a white, despite the fact that whites are actually three times more likely to be victimized by whites than by minorities."

When you see a local news story on a special program in a local school, the stories featureing ENHANCED programs (for advanced students) focus on white children almost exclusively even though minority children attending the program are visible, out of focus, in the background, while the televised REMEDIAL programs (for helping kids catch up to grade level) focus almost entirely on minority children, even though white children attending the same program are visible, out of focus, in the background.

What does all of this have to do with laws that make an effort to increase diversity in the workforce? It demonstrates that in spite of the certainty amongst some white people that Afro-Americans and other minorities are getting privileges over white people, the fact is that discrimination against minorities, especially Afro-Americans, continues to make it much harder for them to advance, overall, than it is for their white counterparts.

If you are more likely to be arrested and convicted in spite of being innocent; if you are more likely to be seen in police custody in news stories before you've even been tried; if your children are more likely to be portrayed by the media as "slow;" and if all of these things are based on false assumptions and slanted perceptions, how can you possibly have an even break when applying for a job? Remember, the person doing the hiring almost invariably believes AT SOME LEVEL of his/her consciousness that the false stereotypes are valid.

As long as this continues to be true, the only way African-Americans and other minorities have anywhere near a fair shot at a decent job, is through laws requiring that the workforce in a given company, represent the population in which the company does business.

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