At the Harvard Business School’s 2019 Gender & Work Symposium, Dr. Kira Hudson Banks, co-founder and principal of The Mouse and the Elephant and Associate Professor of Psychology at St. Louis University, talks about how self-awareness is important to social change, how being a privileged ally improves our understanding of our own identity, and the importance of teaching kids about systemic oppression from an early age.

Howard Schultz during a CNN town hall, February 11, 2019. Photo: CNN

Last week, in a town hall with CNN, potential presidential candidate Howard Schultz was asked about the incident at a Starbucks in Philadelphia last year in which two Black men were arrested. As part of his answer, he said, “I didn’t see color as a young boy and I honestly don’t see color now.”

But as Zak Cheney-Rice writes, “To not ‘see color’ is to not see America — who controls its government, who owns its companies, who amasses the bulk of its wealth, and whose presence is deemed a threat to its status quo.”

Because you know who does see color?

Banks and other business lenders.

In fact, a report from the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Minority Business Development Agency states that, “Inadequate access to financial capital continues to be a particularly important constraint limiting the growth of minority-owned businesses. The latest nationally representative data on the financing of minority firms indicates large disparities in access to financial capital.”

The report adds that minority-owned firms:

• Are two to three times more likely to be denied loans than non-minority firms
• Receive average loan amounts that are less than half of non-minority firms
• Are more likely to not apply for loans due to rejection fears
• Pay higher interest rates on business loans than non-minority firms
• Receive equity investments less than half of non-minority firms

This last point should be particularly relevant to Schultz, who funded both his start-up of Il Giornale, the prototype for the modern Starbucks, and then his 1987 acquisition of the six-store Starbucks chain, through equity investments.

What’s odd is that as Starbucks CEO, Schultz hasn’t been shy about acknowledging and attempting to address issues of race, even before the incident in Philadelphia. So why suggest he is “color blind” now?

Cheney-Rice writes that, “historically, the currency of this ideology has come from its ability to obscure racism itself — a valuable quality for anyone seeking to assure others, and themselves, that they are not racist.”

While “More likely, claiming not to see color was a reflexive attempt to profess his own righteousness, rather than an honest assessment of American society, or a calculated effort to hide an insidious agenda,” claiming color-blindness nonetheless aligns Schultz with some of history’s most notorious racists, who also claimed color-blindness. “Schultz’s intentions may diverge from [David] Duke’s and [George] Wallace’s, but they are united by a shared willingness to prolong the charade that racism is a matter of personal animus, of a rotten heart, from which they are personally exempt.”

If you’re Steven Colbert, claiming to not see color is satire. But for anybody else, it’s either naïve, disingenuous, or a manipulative attempt to be seen as not racist.

More importantly, it suggests a belief that simply treating individual people equally today is enough.

But if we are ever to balance out the dramatic inequities that centuries of racist systems, structures, and policies have created, we need to acknowledge, understand, and reckon with the ways that race and power have shaped this country and its history.

Anyone who is blind to that — or who even claims to be — isn’t fit to lead.

This post originally appeared in The Mouse and the Elephant Resource. Read the full email here, and subscribe to receive future emails with diversity, equity, and inclusion resources using the form on our home page.

Virginia Governor Ralph Northam. Image: Alex Edelman/Getty

Despite calls for his resignation since racist photos in his medical-school yearbook came to light last week, Governor Ralph Northam of Virginia has not yet stepped down. But Theodore R. Johnson, a Senior Fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice, argues that despite the moral indignation in those calls to resign, “in politics, resignations—like apologies and impeachments—are political acts, not moral ones.”

Johnson writes, “If this was really the beginning of the ever-elusive national conversation on race, the focus would not have immediately gone to Northam’s elected office. Instead, it would’ve centered on why blackface is hurtful, an exploration of why white Americans continue to engage in it, an understanding of how such racist depictions have real socioeconomic consequences, and a commitment to social education and change enacted through a concrete policy agenda.”

Of course, that has not been the focus. But the incident serves as a reminder that in the culture today, “Racial norms are shaped by the consequences of violating them. This is why Jim Crow laws and vigilante lynch mobs went hand-in-hand. And it is why blackface went from America’s most popular form of performance to a political and social death knell. As evinced in the Northam episode … the offenders, no matter the party, are too much of a political vulnerability for their actions to be forgiven. The public shaming and chastisement of those individuals communicates to others what is acceptable and the associated penalties.”

Ultimately, Johnson concludes, “America’s conversation about racism isn’t so much about race or morality as it is about what we’re willing to tolerate or not in our public life. If this was strictly about morality, disassociated from any political implications, then Northam’s contrition, disgust at his old self and vow to be a better man would’ve been enough for everyone to move forward. It is not and was not, and that fact is revealing.” (HT @GeeDee215)

Further Reading:

Historian Robert Greene has compiled a list of “links to valuable essays and resources that can help us think harder about blackface and its centrality in American society.” (HT @KeishaBlain)

This post originally appeared in The Mouse and the Elephant Resource. Read the full email here, and subscribe to receive future emails with diversity, equity, and inclusion resources using the form on our home page.

Image: gregobage/Getty Images via Harvard Business Review

Being demanding yet caring. Being authoritative yet participative. Advocating for themselves yet serving others. Maintaining distance yet being approachable. In the Harvard Business Review, Wei Zheng, Ronit Kark, and Alyson Meister identify these “four paradoxes, all stemming from the need to be both tough and nice,” that women leaders regularly confront.

“The problem,” they write, “is that these qualities are often seen as opposites. This creates a ‘catch-22’ and ‘double bind’ for women leaders.” To navigate these paradoxes, “women leaders first need to become aware of them, teasing out the different tensions rolled up into the central nice/tough double bind. Then, they can develop and customize a repertoire of strategies to manage, thereby enhancing their effectiveness and resilience.”

The authors offer sound suggestions for managing these tensions, which can prove valuable for any leader.

But it would be even easier for women to navigate these paradoxes — and spend less of their time and energy trying to thread the needle between nice and tough — if more men were aware of this double bind and their role in enforcing it, and took ownership for changing the leadership norms that anchor it in place.

All the women the authors interviewed are senior leaders —VP level or higher — yet despite the power their positions confer, they still go to tremendous lengths to walk that fine line between tough and nice, sacrificing some of their power to the entrenched gender norms that favor traditionally male leadership styles.

What would it mean to an organization if the time, brainpower, and energy these leaders spend navigating these paradoxes could be focused on solving complex problems, accelerating important projects, or mentoring the next generation of leaders — in other words, focused on what these leaders actually were hired to do?

This post originally appeared in The Mouse and the Elephant Resource. Read the full email here, and subscribe to receive future emails with diversity, equity, and inclusion resources using the form on our home page.

My friend Chad has worked in consulting for more than 20 years, so when he dialed into a conference call with the head of his national consulting group earlier this week, he expected a business conversation like the hundreds he’d sat through before.

But this call was different. The call leader didn’t get right down to business. Instead, Chad wrote, “he spoke about the current state of hatred in our country and our company’s commitment to diversity and inclusion. He then asked for a moment of silence to reflect on the tragedy in Pittsburgh before talking about business. I’ve never experienced such a powerful and touching business call before! I’m so happy to be at Accenture.”

In many ways, the leader’s choice to acknowledge the news at the start of the call was easy. After all, hate-driven news — about the synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh, the shooting in Louisville days earlier where two Black people were shot at a grocery store just minutes after the shooter tried to enter a predominantly Black church, and word from earlier in the week that the Trump administration is considering rolling back recognition and protections of transgender people under federal civil rights law — has dominated the headlines once again.

Yet it might have felt even easier to say nothing — because it is often easier, in the moment, to avoid the elephant in the room and say nothing.

In the early years of Chad’s career, he was still coming out to himself. Even after he took that step, he was still closeted at work, separating part of himself from his co-workers. Gradually, he felt comfortable enough to come out at work, too. But even as he did, he still wrestled with the fear of being judged, penalized, or discriminated against for who he was.

He’s still coming to terms with the consequences of that fear. He’s only now starting to see how because of that fear, he held back his full self from people he worked with, which kept him from contributing his full self to projects he has worked on — and how that may have held him back in his career.

So while he is not a member of the groups targeted in Pittsburgh, Louisville, or by the White House, seeing a leader in the company he now works for demonstrate inclusion in action — as something more than just nice words on the company website — was meaningful. It made him feel he could be a little more himself at work. It made him feel a little more safe.

As a leader in your workplace, you help to set the tone of what is acceptable and what is expected. With your words and deeds, big and small, you help define the culture. That culture tells people whether they can bring their full selves to work. It tells people whether or not they can feel safe.

If you’ve already acknowledged the acts of hate we’ve seen the last few weeks with your team or co-workers, thank you. Your words make a difference.

And if you haven’t yet, maybe you could start today, with something as simple as, “You know, I’ve been thinking a lot about some of the awful news stories from the last few weeks, and I’m sure many of you have, too — and I feel like it’s important to say something. Inclusion matters here, and it matters to me that you can bring your whole self to work. If you’re having a hard time, or want to talk, I want to listen.”

You don’t have to be an expert on anti-Semitism, racism, or LGBTQ issues to say something. You just have to be human, at work. 

And if you need a nudge, remember the impact such a simple, seemingly small gesture had on Chad, what it communicated to him about inclusiveness at his company, and how it made him feel about working there. 

It’s a safe bet he’s not the only one who would appreciate that kind of leadership.

Photo credit: Pexels

This originally appeared in The Mouse and the Elephant Weekly. Read the full email, explore other resources, and subscribe at https://tinyletter.com/mouseandelephant/.