How Organizational Diversity Initiatives Lose the Plot

Contrary to popular opinion…

Diversity is not an initiative. It is not an imperative. It is not a strategic priority.

Diversity… is a fact.

You see, nature tends toward abundance and redundancy. When nature is left to its devices, not only is there enough, there’s also a variety.

Not just one type of cloud

Or grass

Or cat

Or human.

But many. And for no more apparent or justifiable reason than survivability. Of the whole.

Nature: Better make sure we have a lot of different types of these, so if something happens to one of them, at least we’ll still have the others:

Humankind: Oh, so you mean, ‘survival of the fittest?’ 

Nature: Um, no. That’s not at all what I mean. 

Where there is either lack or ‘excessive sameness’, there is usually an unnatural and / or external cause.

An Impact on Diversity

Decreased genetic diversity in plant crops puts the entire ecosystem at risk.

A dam constructed.

A toxic chemical introduced.

A meteor fallen from the sky.

Something happened to cut off the naturally abundant and redundant supply. And it remained. Continued. Settled in. Permanently changing the landscape.

Later, someone with short sight or memory will come along and wonder, ‘Why are there none of that particular flower here? Is this not its natural habitat?’ 

A committee will be convened, monies will be raised, campaigns will be launched. The naturally abundant flower will be trucked in from its natural, undisturbed habitat and planted in this place with its nearby dam or insidious chemicals. 

Over time, most of the flowers will wilt, die off. A constant committee will be needed to transplant a new batch every growing season.

Annuals.

Not perennials.

And the numbers are reported out at the height of the growing season. “We have hundreds of them here, thriving!” 

But no one ever stops to ask the flowers.

****

If the idea of solving the wrong problem could be summed up in a word, that word would be, ‘diversity’.

I’ve been involved in diversity initiatives at work in one way or another since I started working over 2 decades ago. 

I myself was what you’d call a ‘diversity hire’. Young, inexperienced, plucked directly from the natural habitat of an Atlanta HBCU thanks to a Big 4 diversity recruiting initiative. I was a lucky flower. I got transplanted into a patch with some experienced and invested black women who ‘understood the assignment’ and took me under their individual and collective wings, giving me the ability to take root in unfamiliar terrain with the aid of familiar associations.

This is an uncommon story. 

The more common one?

A ‘different flower’ is brought in as a transplant. She may thrive initially, but soon the toxic cultural norms of ‘one-size-fits-all’, ‘when you’re here, you’re family’, ‘it’s a lifestyle, not a job’ creep in. She realizes that there is no such situation as thriving here, there is: ‘conform and constrict’, ‘grin and bear it,’ or ‘wither and shrink’. Her other flower-friends, once she finds them, are usually the ones to inform her of her choices. After all, these are the choices they have made.

And so the flower makes a choice: survive, wilt… or grow feet.

In short, the story being told about organizational and corporate diversity is a narrative missing perspective. A thin plot hurtling toward a flimsy ending. 

Diversity initiatives don’t just need a rewrite, they need a whole new editorial team.

colored

I’m at a bar with my Cape Town host, Lionel. In the course of our conversation, I hear him use the word, 'colored' multiple times. Finally, I ask, 'You keep saying that word, what exactly do you mean when you say it?' Lionel: 'It means mixed race.'

Me: 'Ohhhh... ok. We use that word at home, but it's just another way to refer to black people. It's antiquated, so it's mostly an in-group term.'

I continue, 'You know, I did notice when I arrived here that there was a whole set of people in CapeTown that I didn't really see in Jo’burg.'

Lionel (laughing): 'Yeah, in Jo’burg, you'd be hard pressed to find 3 colored people in any place. Hell, you'd be hard pressed to find 3 white people!'

He 's exaggerating... but only slightly. Later, we are at a bottle shop, where i'm purchasing 'supplies' (cuz, #RetailDrinkingIsForSuckas). A clearly inebriated, but totally harmless brotha strikes up a slurry convo with us. After a few exchanges with Lionel, in which he reveals he's from Congo, then declares, 'All Africa, one love!!' he turns to me. 'So, my sister, you're from here? You speak Zulu?' Lionel jumps in, protectively. 'She's colored. She speaks Afrikaans.'

Wait. What?

why travel to europe when you're black?

Why Europe?

It’s a question that many a black person who has travelled extensively or lived in Europe is likely to get from other black people. What you’re really being asked when you’re asked this question is, “Why would you, as a black person want to live in a place that’s so full of white people?”

In America, the ground, the very earth that i walk on is soaked and layered with generation after generation after generation of blood and suffering an oppression of people who look like me, people who i came from. There is a history of fleshly violence whose remnant energy radiates up from where the soles of my feet fall each day all the way up to the very top of my head. This is not something to be dismissed, even though i doubt that many ever consider this. I, and those like me, have been unwittingly surrounded by, inundated with and permeated by this energy since we were conceived. The cells and dna of those who made us carried this energy.

Imagine growing up in a house. A house where your loved ones live. Your mother, your grandmother, your great grandmother. They love you, care for you. But they have suffered, and they are depressed. The pain of whatever caused them to be in this state of depression has never been remedied or resolved, so the air of the house you live in with these people you love is filled with this heavy depression. It is the only thing you've known all your life. So of course, you too, will feel this depression. You will know it as normal, as just how things are.

Imagine then, that you have the opportunity to leave this house where you’ve always lived. To go away for 2 or 3 or 6 months, perhaps. To live among people who may not love you like your family, but are not depressed. For you, this may feel like breathing fresh, clean air for the very first time. For me, this is what Europe was like. At first, the untainted air in my lungs was too much, too odd, too open. But soon, I began to feel a stirring in me that I'd never felt. This fresh new untainted air was changing me. My lungs grew stronger, my skin glowed, I developed new nerves, new muscle. My breasts firmed, my sex hummed. the feeling of my womanness was heady and intoxicating to me. I was filled with such a sense of joy and wonder... it brimmed within me... oozed from my eyelashes, my fingertips, my toenails! I had feelings and sensations that I would never have dreamed were accessible to me... passion, romance and adventure that I could actually reach out my hand and grasp, draw to my lips and drink until I’d had my fill. I became a woman I could not have become if I had stayed in that depressed house. My limbs and leaves stretched and unfurled. In that other place, I would have been a bonsai woman... beautifully disfigured and dwarfed. Here, I flourished unfettered.

Still, I knew instinctively that this was not a forever place. I knew that I would eventually have to return to my loved ones. Was it not then my duty to stuff my pockets as full as I could of this new air, this fresh life, in the hopes of bringing it back home and sharing it with them? In returning to that place with enough light and nerve and muscle to do the work of healing even some of those old pains? Of drawing aside the heavy, dusty curtains in that depressed house and pointing out the window and saying to my loved ones... look! There is more out there than what we know in here. See! I have brought some of it back. Go out and fetch more of it for yourself. We will always have this house to return to, but we aren't trapped here. We aren't doomed to breathe only this air forever. So, when I went to Europe to live the for 6 months... just enough time 2 begin this becoming, Iknew i had not yet had enough. And so I went again. This time for 11 months. And then, a third time, for what I thought might be forever.