self to work” was a recent, popular statement encouraging people of different backgrounds to not wear “the mask” that Paul Lawrence Dunbar wrote about in the poem We Wear the Mask.35 Workers were asked to be open, vulnerable, and completely untethered to past unspoken rules concerning assimilating within mostly White corporate environments.
The “bring your whole self to work” era brought neither decreased microaggressions nor increased numbers of people of color to the C-suite and pay parity with White colleagues. Undercutting Blacks' ability to thrive professionally, and using microaggression and intimidation, has been a part of our corporate business culture for decades. This has continued, whether we wear the mask or not. And, as I discussed at the beginning of the chapter, every microaggression—every false allegation about performance, every moment of isolation in a meeting, every condescending comment—comes at the cost of worker confidence, productivity, and even the bottom line.
A 2020 report by McKinsey on 17 leading companies demonstrated a significant correlation between a diverse leadership team and financial performance.36 Leadership representation matters. Increased revenue is generated in these spaces that are diverse at the executive level. In particular, companies that were in the top tier for cultural and ethnic diversity on their executive teams were 33% more likely to have industry-leading profitability. We can add compassion to that metric to ensure that diverse candidates who are recruited are also retained, in part because of a welcoming culture, in the corporate workplace.
Interestingly, many times people of color who experience workplace injustices tend to either overlook them or work through a mental assumption that their race or ethnicity has nothing to do with what may just be a personality difference.
Idris lives in the United Kingdom and describes himself as Afro- Caribbean. His career as a marketing executive for banking firms has spanned nearly two decades. “I'm the first person who really wouldn't use my color in this way. Just speaking to some of my Black friends who are outside the industry, who've looked at my career who have looked at my skill set. My friends keep telling me, you know, if you were this [race], trust me, you would not have these situations. In this case, I believe them.”
The grave mistrust Blacks have pertaining to workplace treatment and corporate establishment may have begun with how their ancestors were treated as forced laborers, but it didn't end there. Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, we can find examples of White-led terror and violence against Black workers and their entrepreneurial endeavors. Today, dealing with the mental impact of workplace microaggression, while simultaneously processing ongoing physical violence against Black and Latinx people in public spaces, continues to take a toll. This sets a backdrop for current racial justice demands in the workplace and beyond. In other words, the pursuit of racial justice is not separate from the compassionate workplace—it is a vital component.
Perhaps most disturbing is the fact that unethical behavior, exclusion, and inequality at work have a long and sordid history—a history that employers don't acknowledge and make no attempt to correct. The fact that we're still fighting for racial justice well into the 21st century confirms those behaviors are still alive and well. To see the link between historic injustices and today's injustices, simply replace discriminatory treatment, lack of pay, and workplace abuse from the past with today's discriminatory treatment, pay inequity, and unchecked microaggressions, and we find a connection. Racial discrimination just takes a different form in the 21st century than it did in the 19th or even 20th centuries.
This is not comfortable work, but it is necessary work. We must acknowledge and learn from history to rectify the present, and then we can build a new workplace culture in which people of color drive innovation, achieve C-suite positions, receive fair pay, and drive revenues without being encumbered by systemic racism.
Chapter 2 Takeaways
Historical events have sown seeds of distrust. Business communities in partnership with employees, vendors, and consumers should educate themselves on this history as a step toward solving present-day issues in the workplace.
For corporations and their leaders to successfully solve issues of racial inequities at work, understanding the history of people of color and work is critical. One way to do this is through a lens of how people of color were treated, valued, and devalued historically.
Distrust by Blacks and other people of color toward old business culture is justifiable, given experiences as employees, vendors, owners, and consumers.
Microaggressions in the workplace are real, even if they are sometimes unintentional. They are not conducive to high productivity, because they have a potential impact to hinder someone's focus, decrease their productivity, and lay seeds of a hostile work environment.
Just because conduct is legal or acceptable doesn't mean it's the right thing to do. This is where a clear dedication to compassionate leadership was missing in the broader culture. Clarity on compassion resolves confusion about tolerating behaviors that are acceptable by society but are unethical, unequal, and hurtful physically or economically. Lead with compassion and the right thing to do is clear.
References
1 1. https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2017-02-07/exploiting-Black-labor-after-the-abolition-of-slavery
2 2. Interview with the author. Chatelain Marcia, Racial capitalism, July 13, 2020.
3 3. http://freedmansbank.org/
4 4. Ibid.; https://www.occ.treas.gov/about/who-we-are/history/1863-1865/1863-1865-freedmans-savings-bank.html
5 5. Interview with the author. Rosenthal Caitlin, Accounting for Slavery: Masters and Management, Department of History; July 16, 2020.
6 6. Ibid.
7 7. https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/1997/summer/american-labor-movement.html
8 8. https://www.nass.usda.gov/Publications/Highlights/2019/2017Census_Farm_Producers.pdf; https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/apr/29/why-have-americas-Black-farmers-disappeared
9 9. https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/1997/summer/american-labor-movement.html
