America Has A Dirty Little Secret
On June 25th Darren Walker, the President of the Ford Foundation published an opinion piece. The title of the peice was “Are You Willing to Give Up Your Privilege?”. Mr. Walker is a black man in America.
America’s dirty little secret is that there are far to few Darren Walkers and the pipeline for creating others is woefully anemic. To understand the pervasive nature of racism in America and how it perpetuates inequality you simply have to observe how corporate America operates.
Let’s start by taking a look at the fortune 500 companies. How many of those companies are led by a black, brown, or yellow person? How many of the fortune 1000 companies are led by a black, brown, or yellow person. The answer is simple not nearly enough. There will be people who will be quick to point out that this is only a fraction of the jobs in these corporations. Fair enough. How are black, brown, and yellow people represented in senior leadership ranks. The answer isn’t pretty or hopeful.
Look at IBM, DELL, Facebook, and Google and the absence of diversity and inclusion in senior ranks is shocking. You may be asking yourself why this matters. The answer is that it matters because it makes the economic disparity an ever growing problem. If there is no one there to make sure that black, brown, and yellow people have the same kind of opportunity as their white counterparts the inequality gulf grows even wider.
If the fortune 1000 companies actively attacked racial inequality America could take a giant step towards riding the nation of systemic racism. It doesn’t happen because CEO’s and Boards of Directors aren’t measured on how well they foster diversity and inclusion. They don’t have bonus targets based on measurable targets.
In the wake of George Floyd corporations are making a great show of trying to appear sensitized to the growing racial divide. We been down this path before. If things are really going to change American business must take a leadership role in ushering change in. We have a plethora of community based organizations. The NAACP, The Urban League, The National Action Network need to be leading the charge. They need to be meeting with the leadership of every fortune 1000 corporation and working with them to develop a 5 and 10 year plan with measurable objectives.
If people are interested in dealing with America’s dirty little secret we need to be prepared to hold the chief purveyors of America’s inequality accountable. Just my humble opinion.
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