How Business can Neutralize Racism

In the summer of 2006, my passion for developing leaders of leaders brought me to the city of Jos, a town in northern Nigeria. Our team had arrived in West Africa after a long 36-hour flight. As our host began to show us around town, I noticed several buildings riddled with bullet holes and partially destroyed by what looked like explosives. As we transitioned to the residential side of town, I saw what looked more like clusters of small fortified cities with walls topped with broken glass and barbed wire fences. Deeply disturbed I asked our host to explain what I had observed on the way in. His response would forever change the way I would view my role as a business leader.

He explained “Our town has experienced much bloodshed over the years. Fighting had erupted between the two dominant religions; places of worship were burned and neighbors killed neighbors. It was an isolated civil war.” he began to share how he had personally lost friends and family to the recent violence. Moved by this story, I asked why it stopped. Did the UN come to your aid? Did you receive worldwide attention from global leaders who were interested in advancing peace and reconciliation? “No,” he said. “We are at a time of peace for economic reasons”. He could see the perplexed look on my face and continued to explain “The fighting stopped once both sides realized that they were literately killing their own customers”. In other words, despite the hate, they felt towards one another, they were forced to focus on meeting the needs and wants of their sworn enemies. Their operation of hate could only be sustained through the capital gained by the sale of goods and services bought by people to whom they had prejudiced towards.

This concept, that business could be used as a tool to negate the most devastating effects of racism was very much a new one for me. However as I began to consider the impact which global trade has on preventing wars, it made sense. Think for a moment about the process of starting or growing a business. How can you know what your customer needs unless you do market research? How can you do market research without first suspending your own biases in order to get a better understanding of your potential customer persona? For how can one sustain business operations without attracting enough of these customers? You can’t.

For all the negative things said about business, the bottom line is you cannot earn an honest dollar without first identifying a need which you have the capacity to meet. Put differently, no one of their own free will would ever be willing to freely give up their hard-earned capital unless you provided a good or service which gave them greater value than that of the dollar which they held in their hand. The truth is that racism (or any other type of ism) necessarily blinds one from the tremendous economic power one can achieve through subservience to our fellow man.

The effects of prejudice also have an economic impact as it pertains to talent management. Every organization claims that they want to attract, hire, and retain the best talent. For the most part when you break down the objective criteria which determines “the best talent”, it usually is some sort of combination of education, experience or capability. It is not color, race, religion, gender or any other such criteria which determines what is the “best talent” for your organization.

Take for example the most recent sexist comments by James Damore, the former Google engineer. If Mr. Damore had realized that back in the early to mid-1800’s before he was a twinkle in his mother’s eye, Ada Lovelace (a woman) had pioneered the field which would eventually become his occupation, perhaps he would have felt differently about women’s contribution to the field of his expertise. To be clear, I am not making a value judgement against Mr. Damore, rather I endeavor to highlight the way that ignorance, unsubstantiated facts and confirmation biases can hurt our business. Although sexism hurts women, it actually hurts our society as a whole. If we make the mistake of marginalizing this tremendous source of talent, we miss out on a wealth of innovative genius and economic advancement.

For those of us who, as Warren Buffet puts it, won the ovarian lottery and had the privilege of being born in America, it’s easy to over exaggerate our own abilities. Stated differently, for the “bottom billion”, it is not a matter of intellectual or cognitive ability which holds them back. It is simply the lack of opportunity for a solid education, the lack of means to gain experience within significant occupations, and the inability to drive innovation within their communities which has diminished their quality of life. I have heard it said by a Ghanaian community leader “we don’t need aid, we need trade”. I am not implying that by artificially providing opportunity to underrepresented minorities that it will instantaneously provide economic lift, rather I am advocating that if you provide an environment for human flourishing to occur within your organization and community, people will naturally exceed your expectations.

My experience in Nigeria highlights a truth which Economist Thomas Sowell has stated, “you can only afford to be racist, so long as you are not forced to pay the economic consequences for your actions.” The reality is we all are in danger of forming our own prejudice point of view after experiencing the effects of prejudice ourselves. For example, even though I firmly disagree with the views of the Alt-Right, it is only by truly seeking to understand how they came to form their world views that I stand a chance of persuading them to expand their thinking about the contributions made by all man. Said differently, if we can understand how one formed their point of view, then we can identify the real trade-offs between our views and thereby create solutions to problems which are focused on interests instead of position.

We are more than business leaders, we are also citizens within our community and have the power to effect positive change. It is only when we reframe our thinking about the potential of others that we can truly achieve the multiplying effect which diversity provides to our business and community.  

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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.