Racism in the Workplace
OD Practitioners’ Role in Change
PEOPLE OF COLOR have often shared that they experience organizational life differently than their white counterparts. Common feedback from people of color includes that they have insufficient access to information, are given titles without real authority, or lack proper funding or compensation. Many people of color talk about feeling isolated and alone in their organization, with few people at their organizational level who are like them to interact with in their daily business routines. People of color often comment on getting busy work—or, paradoxically, the most difficult work with insufficient support.
The “comfort factor” can cause white managers and supervisors to be reluctant to give timely, appropriate, or honest feedback across racial lines. This reluctance hinders people of color from knowing where they actually stand with regard to performance or ways in which they can develop their skills, abilities, and potential for success.
In this article, we outline some of the issues of racism in organizations today and ways in which we as OD practitioners can work to address this critical issue in the organizations in which we work and the interventions we undertake.
Many OD practitioners, whose practice seems to have little to do with diversity, may be asking the question “How does this relate to us personally and professionally?” Through more fully understanding racism in all its forms, including the subtleties of racism, we will be better able to see how racism exists, rather than getting stuck in determining if it exists.
No committed practitioner would support (even unintentional) racism in a client system. Yet racism exists, and, often by our lack of awareness causing inaction and collusion, we may inadvertently be supporting its continuation. Adherence to the OD Network’s “Principles of Practice” encourages all of us to see the potential role we can play to both identify and address issues of racism in the organizations within which we work. Understanding the realities of racism fully supports key values of Organization Development: Respect and Inclusion; Collaboration; Authenticity; Self-Awareness; and Empowerment.
There has been some progress in recent decades. In many (but by no means all) major corporations today there is an explicit emphasis on leveraging diversity and inclusion. Affirmative Action helped grant entry to people of color and white women, who were formerly denied access to organizations. Blatant racism—overt hiring discrimination, denial of promotions, discriminatory policies and actions—are illegal and the exception versus the rule in many organizations. As a result, people of color are more present, more visible, and more invested in organizations than ever before.
But racism has not gone away. The numbers tell the story. The top levels of leadership at most organizations are still overwhelmingly white. The disparity of income between whites and people of color remains. And in the most recent economic downturn (2008), more people of color lost their homes to foreclosure than did whites. Untested assumptions and perceptions, our often unconscious treatment of people, and the resulting actions allow racism to permeate organizations. Exclusion, disadvantage, and tokenism are still operating. In many cases, racism has merely become more subtle, more covert, and more sophisticated. How can this be at a time when so many efforts are being made to level the playing field?
We as OD practitioners must become more aware of the insidiousness of racism—particularly today, as organizations and individuals would prefer to move on and not discuss the issue. We must recognize how systems, structures, and behaviors support the pervasiveness of racism. More importantly, we need to understand the subtle ways in which many attitudes still are based in biased assumptions, and we must work to challenge and eliminate racism within our organizations. We need to be aware of the ways in which racism affects both our practice and the organizations that we serve.
What Is Racism?
Definitions of racism often include reference to power dynamics, historical inequities, and systemic biases. Here we will use a more general definition: racism includes any actions or words that have the effect of privileging some and disadvantaging others based solely or in part on race.
Under this definition, even unintentional acts or words have an effect. As a first step, we need to examine what we do and say—and the assumptions that underlie our choices—to understand how the lens of race/color affects our view of people different from ourselves. Our next step as OD practitioners must be to start seeing how racism is playing out in today’s organizations. Though some believe that organizations have been sanitized by formal policies and legal guidelines designed to ensure the fair treatment of everyone, there are ways in which organizational policies as well as individual actions perpetuate racism. We must be able to recognize the subtleties of racism, so that we can move to correct it. This is one way we can focus on the effectiveness and health of client systems. See Sidebars 23.1 and 23.2.
Seeing Racial Dynamics at Play
Discrimination
The most fundamental decisions in organizations—where to recruit, whom to interview, whom to hire, whom to fire, whom to promote, how to compensate, and how to evaluate performance—are often based on subjective factors. Individuals downplay the extent to which personality, compatibility, “fit,” and other subjective factors influence how they view others and perceive competence. Generally, people are most comfortable with people who are like themselves. This “comfort factor” often goes unacknowledged and ends up having great influence over who enters and who succeeds in the organization.
In another form of subtle racism, leaders give “stretch” opportunities to people with whom they feel comfortable—while others, with whom the leaders are less comfortable, must prove themselves before they get into similar positions. When stretch opportunities are given to people with whom leaders feel less comfortable, it is often described as “taking a risk.” As OD practitioners, we can be mindful of which racial groups or populations are seen as “risky” and which populations are described as “ready” for stretch assignments; then we can help leaders identify and address the impact of their covert biases on their organizations.
• Hiring for comfort or qualifications?
• Who is seen as a “risk”? A “fit”?
• Are policies and practices applied fairly?
• Competence based on past or future?
• Individual focus or focus on patterns and systemic barriers?
• Use of coded language (e.g., “qualified” “articulate”)?
SIDEBAR 23.2 Some Questions for OD Practitioners
Rate yourself on a scale of 0–10 (0 not at all/10 actively pursuing)
1. To what extent have you actively pursued increasing your own knowledge about racism?
2. To what extent have you worked on your own assumptions, language, etc.?
3. To what extent are you partnering with people different from you as you work on change and other OD projects?
4. To what extent are you aware of racism – seeing it and naming it in your organization or with clients?
5. To what extent do you overtly address issues of discrimination in the projects in which you are a constituent?
6. To what extent have you discussed these issues with OD colleagues of different races?
What OD Practitioners Can Do:
1. Examine your assumptions and biases. (Do not assume that if you are a person of color, you don’t have assumptions and biases.)
2. Discuss issues of racism – with the underlying assumption of asking how it exists, not if it exists in your client system or organization.
3. Be alert – pay attention.
4. Look for group patterns, not individual acts.
5. Speak up, speak out, and don’t collude by avoidance or silence.
6. Form alliances with colleagues of other races.
On a personal level, we OD practitioners must also be aware of how, where, and when the “comfort factor” plays out for us. It can play out as we are collecting and assessing data, focusing on systems, intervening in processes, helping leaders select teams, working with organizations in their performance review and planning, and identifying future leaders.
Many organizations describe themselves as a meritocracy or performance-based environment. Often, however, alliances and relationships (“who you know”) play a major role in determining who is successful. Organizations identify rigorous policies and practices and then often apply them in their most narrow form—”just going by the book” or “just following the rules”—to people they are unsure of or with whom they feel uncomfortable. When we feel comfortable with people, we are more inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt, address conflicts and disagreements with them more easily, and feel greater trust with them. As OD practitioners working with organizations, we have an opportunity to identify policies and practices that are unfair, or unfairly applied, and help the client understand the value of having them uniformly applied to all populations.
Many leaders (both white and people of color) do not realize the extent to which their levels of confidence, trust, and definitions of “competence,” “professionalism,” “team player,” and the like are determined by comfort and, therefore, can disadvantage people of color. In many organizations, performance evaluations skew lower for people of color on the whole. Organizations may view this as an individual phenomenon rather than considering it to be a systemic issue. The problem is compounded when those evaluations are then used to determine promotions, salary increases, or layoffs at a time of downsizing; they can have the effect of decimating the diversity of the organization. As an OD practitioner, you can help your client to look for any patterns that may surface in reviewing the results of performance evaluations.
Who is really competent to lead today’s organizations? Do we ask the most important question—whether our current managers and leaders are competent to effectively interview, select, develop, coach, and lead a diverse group of people? Have we included this competency in the criteria we use to determine a person’s qualifications to lead? If we were to include it now, how many individuals who have been promoted to leadership positions would no longer be able to meet this new definition of “competent?”
All too often, organizations look at what happens to people of color on an individual case by case basis, thereby missing the fact that there may be patterns of discrimination, areas or departments where discrimination exists, or patterns of behavior that adversely impact people of color. As OD practitioners, we can analyze and encourage clients to look at group level patterns. Simultaneously, while looking for group patterns, we must reinforce viewing each person as an individual.
Language
Code language that speaks to subtle racism has become prevalent in many organizations. Such statements as “we want to hire a qualified person of color” or “we want a diverse pool of qualified candidates” indicate an assumption that, without adding the word “qualified,” people would recruit, hire, or promote unqualified people of color. These statements can also imply that it will take additional effort to find the “qualified” ones—an effort not needed when finding candidates who are most like the majority in the organization. Code language is also demonstrated with the use of “articulate” or “good communication skills,” frequently indicating surprise at the abilities of people of color in the organization. Sometimes white colleagues tell people of color that they are “different from the rest” or “not like others” of their race.
Often when a person of color is hired for a position or receives a promotion, there are ripples of speculation throughout the organization suggesting that the move could only be attributed to their race—that it was an “Affirmative Action hire.” Sometimes white women collude with this assumption of quota-filling by expresstng these same speculations when, in fact, Affirmative Action has benefited white women as well.
As OD practitioners, we need to call people on such language and assumptions when we hear them, and help people be mindful of their implications. We need to encourage leaders and managers to do the same: to consistently focus organizational communications on what individuals bring to the position, their capabilities, experiences, and qualifications.
Avoidance/Collusion of Silence
Although the above practices may exist in organizations, the hardest issues to address are those of avoidance and the collusion of silence. Many organizations would prefer not to address or even acknowledge the possibility that racism may be a part of the organization’s policies, practices, and behaviors. There may be a fear of finding out the truth, which could lead to lawsuits, and therefore the organization shies away from collecting any data to learn about the current realities or gaps that may exist.
Avoidance also takes place if people of color fail in the organization or choose to leave of their own accord: organizations often avoid any analysis as to what created the situation and how to remedy it. The same companies that strictly monitor sales data and marketplace opportunities for trends and revealing information may neglect to pay attention to the attrition rates or promotion histories of people of color. The patterns that attrition and lack of promotion reveal can tell organizations a great deal about where systemic racism is impeding their performance. This lack of analysis may be an example of the organization viewing the problem as a function of the individuals who failed, not as part of a pattern or something that could be problematic in the system.
OD practitioners can work to assure that if data are collected, they will be examined in demographic groups to learn if there are different experiences for people of color, whites, and other social identity groups. In addition, we can make sure that in our recommendations and strategies, people of color and other populations are fully included in data collection and strategy generation teams with enough critical mass so that their voices, perspectives, and expertise are included and add value. We can help organizations develop the systems to monitor patterns so that they can look at the systemic issues rather than individual failings.
Collusion of silence refers to the tendency of people who witness acts of overt or covert racism (jokes, inappropriate comments, etc.) to do nothing. By not speaking out or acting against it, people tacitly approve it and allow racism to flourish. Most people in our organizations are people of good will who want to speak up against things they consider unfair. The challenge is to create safe work environments where people can speak up without experiencing negative consequences.
Not So Subtle After All
When we look at the ways in which organizations may operate, the conditions that people of color often experience, and the disparity that can exist in their treatment, the term “subtle racism” begins to sound like an oxymoron. What could ever be subtle about systemic exclusion, prejudice, discrimination, and unfair treatment? It is sometimes hard for people of color to know the source of the problems they encounter and exactly what or who in the system undermines their success. When the source seems invisible—or when those engaging in subtle racism have the system behind them to support their denial when confronted—it is difficult to address disparities and perceived inequities.
Through becoming conscious of subtle and not-so-subtle racism in organizations, and through being informed by organizational data about how people of all races experience an organization, OD practitioners can identify racism, barriers that are still in place, and the ways in which they are maintained. Most importantly, we can then intervene appropriately to create a more effective, productive, and healthy organization.
The vestiges of racism are deeply rooted in our culture and therefore in our organizations. As we work with organization leaders to create effective, productive, healthy, and higher-performing workplaces that enable everyone to do their best work, we need to bring a mindset of addressing racism to every intervention we undertake. By looking at the group patterns, assumptions, and biases that may be at play, we can assure that we create more humane workplaces for all people.
References
Davis-Howard, V., & Moore, K. R. (2001). How a person of color experiences the workplace: Subtle racism in action. Available from The Kaleel Jamison Consulting Group, Inc.
Katz, J. H. (2003). White awareness: Handbook for anti-racism training. (2nd ed.). Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press.
Katz, J. H. (1995, November). A white woman writes about affirmative action, Cultural Diversity at Work.