Diversity & Inclusion or Diversity Illusion: Why Organizations Are Further Behind Than They Think

“We are an Inclusive Workplace and will hire the most qualified candidate period.” Sound familiar? By its very nature, this statement is a contradiction in and of itself. You can’t hire the most qualified candidate without he or she first having the opportunity to acquire the right balance of experience, education and social network. As such, this necessarily excludes a majority of Black and Brown contributors from the Diversity & Inclusion conversation. How so you may ask? The biases which created a need for the D&I division within organizations are in fact the very cause of their lack of effectiveness. This article highlights 3 main reasons why many D&I initiatives fail to make significant progress for People of Color. Moreover, it provides strategic insights that organizations can use to increase the effectiveness of their D&I initiatives. Let us start by unpacking the first cause of failure, Premature Diagnosis.

Premature Diagnosis 

Oftentimes D&I initiatives fall short because they start off with the wrong set of assumptions. Asking “How do we attract and retain top underrepresented talent” leads organizations to premature solutions such as measuring Diversity as a singular KPI. Put differently, leaders are settling for check the box diversity compliance rather than digging deeper to understand the barriers preventing underrepresented contributors from becoming the “most qualified candidate”. Take for example the development of experience and the critical first-time job. According to data provided by the US. Bureau of Labor Statistics in 2018 the unemployment rate of African Americans between the ages of 16-19 years old was 24.8% (double that of their white counterparts at 12.1%). Moreover, today in 2019, the unemployment rate of African Americans between the ages of 20-24 is 14.3%. To put these numbers in perspective, the highest rate of unemployment in America during the Great Depression was 24.9% and hovered around 14% from 1931-1940. Why is this number significate? Without experiencing creating first-time jobs Black and Brown contributors are failing to gain the necessary work experience which leads to higher salaries. Before we jump to conclusions of the causal nature of these huge employment gaps in Communities of Color, let us explore the second reason for D&I failure, Racial Discounting 

Racial Discounting         

According to a study published in 2017 by researchers at Northwestern University, Harvard and the Institute of Social Research in Norway, racism was still a problem as it pertains to hiring top talent. For example, in one experiment researchers sent out resumes with similar levels of education and experience. One set of resumes were sent out with stereotypically Black or Latino names and another set were sent out with stereotypically White names. What they discovered, unfortunately, was that anti-black racism in hiring had gone unchanged from 1989-2015. The cause of this discounting could be best understood through the lens of Racial Economics, that is, the study of racism which builds on behavioral economics, the groundbreaking work of cognitive scientist Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman. Racial Economics focuses on the implications of concepts such as bounded rationality (i.e. the cognitive limitations on decision makers) and confirmation bias (i.e. a cognitive bias to support beliefs already held) on the economic flourishing of Communities of Color. For example, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, in 2016 Black women officially became the most educated group in America. However due to racial and gender discounting, in 2019 unemployment amongst African American women between the ages 20-24 still hovered around 11.4%. In other words, despite having similar qualifications and education; Black and Brown professionals are being excluded from consideration of entry-level positions. Let us consider now the final failure of D&I, Strategic Misalignment. 

Strategic Misalignment  

One Black Executive I interviewed stated, “Upper Management used to be a “Good Ol’ White boys club”, then companies gave us a little hope by implementing Diversity & Inclusion programs. What we got instead was a “Good Ol’ White girls club”. What this statement highlights, is that the strategies used for promoting gender equality have made noticeable progress. Although this progress is a step in the right direction as it pertains to the Diversity & Inclusion conversation if organizations fail to customize their strategies to address barriers such as racial discounting than what they will get instead is Diversity Illusion, that is, the false sense of D&I progress within their organization. The reality is that each underrepresented group has a different set of Ism’s in which to overcome and as such, requires a different set of strategies to make meaningful progress. 

In conclusion, if leaders truly want to increase the opportunities for underrepresented contributors, then they must first stop attempting to address the symptoms of inequality and strike at its root. Meaning, we must move beyond policy formation and design talent acquisition and talent development systems that neutralize racial, gender, and other such biases. This is going to require a radical approach to Diversity & Inclusion. Organizations will need to form robust experience development initiatives in underserved communities. It will also require leaders to think through how racial discounting is affecting their bottom line or their organization's ability to hire and retain top talent. Finally, it will require leaders to create newly tailored designed KPI’s which objectively move the needle for all underrepresented contributors. The bottom line is, we will never move past the Diversity Illusion without intentionally designing systems which neutralize cognitive biases.

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About the Authors:

Dr. Paul Campbell is one of the co-founders of Brown Venture Group, LLC. Launched in 2018, Brown Venture Group, LLC is a venture studio venture capital firm exclusively for Black, Latino, and Native American technology startups. Brown Venture Group is writing a new playbook for both those interested in launching a minority-owned technology startup and those interested in investing in new technologies. For more information go to brownventuregroup.com.