in C-suite leadership and company boardrooms. People of color in corporate America are still largely invisible. According to the report, only 16.1% of board seats in the Fortune 500 are held by people of color.23 See Table 2.1.
Furthermore, the wage gap between White senior-level executives and other groups is significant. On average, Black men earned 87 cents to every dollar earned by a White man in 2019; Black, Latinx, and Native American women earned 75 cents for every dollar; and Asian women earned 93 cents.24 Hispanic men earned 91 cents for every dollar earned by White men and White women earn 81 cents for the White man's dollar. Interestingly, Asian men earned $1.15 for every dollar earned by a White male in 2019.25
Table 2.1 Breakdown of Fortune 500 Total Board Seats by Race/Ethnicity: 2018
Source: Data from DeHaas, D. (2019) Missing Pieces Report: The 2018 Board Diversity Census of Women and Minorities on Fortune 500 Boards, The President and Fellows of Harvard College (February 5, 2019).
| Race/Ethnicity | Percentage of Fortune | 500 Board Seats |
|---|---|---|
| Caucasian/ White | 83.9 | 83.9 |
| Black | 8.6 | 16.1 |
| Latinx | 3.8 | |
| Asian/ Pacific Islander | 3.7 | |
| Other | 0.1 |
The lack of diversity at the senior level creates an environment in which people of color must deal with mental gymnastics not required of their White peers at work. They are not represented, they are paid substantially less than their colleagues, and they often feel that managers don't even put forth an effort to understand their points of view. If you think about what it's like to deal with these inequities, combined with such psychological mistreatment as being isolated by colleagues or having your insights and contributions to meetings ignored, it's obvious how an employee's sales and production numbers can be negatively affected.
Looking at the data makes it clear that a compassionate culture where leadership and employees actively promote inclusion is necessary for a firm to keep pace and lead in the new evolving global corporate era. Compassionate culture today is a necessity, not a luxury.
Colorism Infiltrates Global Corporate Environments
In the United States, we're dealing with the remnants of centuries of slavery, resulting in systems designed to oppress people of color socially and economically. Fruits of that system continue to thrive today. For starters, let's take the stratification of races based on a color hierarchy and differential treatment based on skin color. Known as colorism, this prejudicial or preferential treatment of people occurs solely based on their skin color. And although the Black Codes and Jim Crow laws may be unique to the United States, colorism definitely is not. In Westernized societies well beyond the United States, color and colorism is intricately related to race and racism.26 If there is a hierarchy, then darker-hued people fare worse than lighter-skinned people, regardless of their ethnicity. Where a person lands on the “Blackness” scale could determine social and economic standing. This is our backdrop for disproportionate bias, microaggressions, and racism filtering down to current corporate culture.
Taking this a step further, Blacks have often been set against other minority groups. Most notably, the model minority myth used to wedge a divide between Asian Americans and Blacks. The perceived high level of success among Asian Americans is used as a weapon to downplay racism and the struggles of other minority groups, especially Black Americans.27 In other words, if “they” (who may be defined Asian or some other ethnic group) can be successful within a certain system, then the problem doesn't lie with a racist system but rather with the groups who are not as successful.
In her famous book, The Color of Success, historian Ellen Wu explores the model minority stereotype.28 The stereotype is used to cherry-pick the prosperity of some professionally successful historic ethnic minorities. More nefariously, it is used to avoid taking responsibility and making changes toward racial progress in the United States. This continual racism increases the exclusion, lack of compassion, and immobility of Black Americans in the workplace.
Although all historically marginalized groups have unquestionably experienced discrimination and oppression, these experiences can be completely different and unique. We can't have a view of corporate and business success that negates centuries of slavery and the economic loss experienced by Blacks in America.
What is the result of this lack of historical awareness? One impact has been the fact that people of color are tremendously underrepresented in senior roles. There is a sinister scale that weighs who may have it “worse” and why. A study by economist Nathaniel Hilger of Brown University indicates that upward mobility among Asian Americans from the 1970s was due less to the stereotype that Asians “take education more seriously” and more to the simple fact that their fellow Americans became less racist toward them.29 This shift in public perception and image as nonthreatening, industrious, and law-abiding citizens who seldom complain provided a pathway up the professional ladder.
You can see the same phenomenon at work when the spectacular success of individual members of a minority group is, essentially, weaponized against the group as a whole. Most obviously: “Clearly the United States is not racist because Barack Obama was president for eight years.” This laser-like focus on the individual—so-and-so did it, so why can't you?—is sometimes used as a smokescreen to disguise the many structural obstacles that stand in the way of Black Americans as a group. The idea that Black failure and grievance are not due to racism and structural inequities allows for a segment of White America, including sectors of the corporate world, to avoid the responsibility of addressing racism both inside and outside the workplace.30
Corporate America's Workplace Racism, Rooted in Slavery
Corporations hoping to understand parallels and patterns between historical dynamics for people of color at work then and now must take a critical look at conduct that may be legal but is still unacceptable. Although some of these behaviors are legal, none of them are ethical. This is where compassion comes into play. Just because something is legal, or even acceptable at one point in time, doesn't mean it's the right thing to do. When corporations and their employees create cultures that accept despicable and pedestrian conduct, despite its legality, it breeds mistrust in the organization specifically and in the institution of business in general.
Large numbers of Blacks and other people of color would likely agree that the words compassion, equality, and inclusion do not accurately reflect their historical or present working experiences. There are too many stories of being systemically shut out of C-suite corporate structures or having to master processes, knowledge, and people management with a humbleness and adroitness not required of their peers. Frustration kicks in when White managers and colleagues are oblivious, or claim to be oblivious,
