Is it Racism or Just Laziness?

If systemic racism didn’t exist, the workplace would be much more diverse than it currently is. The easy explanation is that this the result of racism and white supremacy. I’m not convinced, however, that explicit racism is the predominant force perpetuating workplaces in which black and brown people are vastly underrepresented. Instead, I believe a lack of change is often the result of sheer laziness.?

When it comes to hiring practices in corporate America, laziness enters the equation in two major ways:

1)????Hiring managers want their jobs to be as easy as possible. What this means is that the less they have to train a candidate for a role, the better. As a small business owner, I understand this desire as well as anyone. We are all fighting for time in the day. But while this approach succeeds in delivering candidates that are ready to hit the ground running at day 1, it also comes at a major cost: it limits the candidate pool to those who are already old pros in corporate America. And guess who the old pros in corporate America are? White people, predominantly men, predominantly of means. This plug-and-play approach maximizes short-term gain, but it sacrifices long-term payoff and makes it so that systemic change is all but impossible. Harvard Business Review cited a disturbing statistic in an article Toward a Racially Just Workplace that “of the 279 top executives listed at the 50 biggest companies in the S&P 100 […] 5 are black”.

2)????In making judgement calls, people often fall back on association and familiarity over objective merit. What we associate to be the?image?of success will often instill confidence in us over the underlying characteristics that actually deserve it. Hiring managers are not immune to this logical fallacy. When we are unexamined in our internalized white supremacy or uneducated to the mechanics of systemic racism, it’s easy to mistake an “easy?fit” for the “best?fit”. In reality, the best fit and the candidate who may bring the most value to a team may not fit a hiring manager’s image of the ideal hire, especially if that manager is white, as most are. That’s why it’s so incredibly important that people in positions of leadership do the work to educate themselves about race and white supremacy and dig below the surface to the fundamental qualities they are looking for in a hire, not just her/his superficial presentation, and to hire based on facts, not feel, and certainly not “fit”.?

We are all programmed to see and judge the world through a specific lens. Hegemonic powers of our society enforce their own lenses. If we don’t do our due diligence to become aware of the lenses we have inherited and dismantle the ones that don’t serve society or humanity, we are guaranteed to fall victim to them and repeat the same mistakes our country has made time and time again.?

So what can we do about it?

1)????Normalize training in the workplace again. Hire people based off of their character and their innate skills and capability, not off of “cultural fit”, how seamlessly they’d blend into an all-white workforce, or how little time you’d have to spend showing them the ropes.?

2)????If you’re a hiring manager or are in a position of leadership in your company, use your power to extend hands to those who may need mentorship to realize their potential. Everyone in corporate America has had someone show them the ropes, whether that’s happened over drinks with new co-workers (social events that black people may be excluded from on account of social discomfort) or across the dinner table as a child (which happens disproportionately in white families than black families). You’ve been shown the ropes. Now’s your turn to give back. This can be as simple as having lunch with a new black co-worker and asking how her first few days have felt.

3)????If you are in a position of leadership in your company, don’t shy away from your power. Use it to make positive change. If you’re white, don’t leave this job to other people of color because you feel awkward, uncomfortable, or out of your element. “Research has indicated that the only CEOs and lower-level managers?not?penalized for championing diversity are white men.” (Harvard Business Review) Racism is a white problem and it requires a white solution.?

4)????Do the work within yourself to become aware of the lenses you’ve inherited. You may have the best intentions in the world, but until you address the racial biases you’ve inherited from a deeply ill society, you will fall victim to perpetuating them.?

So: is it racism or is it just laziness? In terms of one’s moral imperative, one is no better than the other. Laziness, although less morally reprehensible on the surface, is just as urgent of an issue as racism because at the end of the day, the result is the same: complicity in an ongoing legacy of white supremacy. However, it’s important to differentiate between racism and laziness because a different diagnosis requires a different treatment. And it’s about time that we get to fixing this thing.?

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Booker T. Washington is quoted to have said:

“Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which [one] has overcome while trying to succeed.”?

Those who understand this tenet are those who have, in their own life, overcome tremendous obstacles to arrive where they currently are. In this vein, a single Hispanic mother who is barely making ends meet by working a humble blue-collar job in America may be more successful than a white man with a NYC penthouse working in a Wallstreet job that he was all but born into. Corporate America would benefit from a similar readjustment of its definition of what makes a candidate qualified.

This point is perfectly illustrated in a poem by a man who needs no introduction: the late, the great, Tupac Shakur.

The Rose That Grew from Concrete

Did you hear about the rose that grew

From a crack in the concrete?

Proving nature’s law is wrong it

Learned to walk with out having feet.

Funny it seems, but by keeping its dreams,

It learned to breathe fresh air.

Long live the rose that grew from concrete

When no one else ever cared.

While this rose may look ordinary among other roses that were grown and preened in environments catered to their development, this particular rose is extraordinary. The only people who are able to identify that are those who glance down at the concrete, see no dirt, no water, no fertilizer in sight, and wonder how in the world this rose managed to grow at all. And what a gift to the concrete this rose is. We would be fools to not see it.?