To get started let's talk about the most prevalent discussion taking place in our workplace, the foundational principles of racism and discrimination. So with any discussion it's important to provide some context. The concepts of race more specifically, the state of race relations in this country is important and should be given specific informed and careful attention. Unfortunately, because of its complexity, I cannot do a deep dive on this topic in the short time that we have together. So please do not be offended by my simplicity and covering it. My intention in simplifying the concept into small digestible chunks is for you to be able to use it strategically to meet your DE&I goals. But in order to do this, I have to make a point. So to begin our conversation, let me ask you a simple question about you. Have you ever had a thought, idea or belief that was racist? Be honest. Have you ever thought something that you realized was a racist characterization of someone or a group? Even if it was your own, even if you checked yourself for having the thought, don't be too hard on yourself. After answering that question, you may have realized that it's impossible to control your thoughts, but if you did have a racist thought, my next question is this, did you ever act on it? I asked this because in my years of working in this space, I have never met a person, even people who self identify as having IST ideas ever admit or accept that they have committed an ISM? Even if I or others connect their IST to ISMs, there is always a justification for their actions. It's either contextual, such as "I'm not a sexist, but I do prefer male doctors or female nurses", or "I prefer American doctors over those with heavy foreign accents" or the justifications regard proximity. Like "There's no way that I'm a sexist, because I have daughters" or "I'm a woman. How can I be a sexist?" or if you only knew me or were close to me, like my close friends know me, "I usually don't talk like this or behave this way." These are what I call proximity defenses, and I hear them all the time. Managing IST ideas and ISMs are difficult because people contextualize the two just like I did. They'll say to themselves, look I may have these thoughts, but I'm a good person, so I would never act on them. While they may complete bias training and become aware of their prejudices and acknowledge that they may have them, people refuse to connect their biases to their actual actions or decisions. My point being, while people may readily admit that ISMs exist, they can only see that behavior and other people like their parents, or people dissimilar to them, but they can never see it in themselves. Sad thing is organizations like yours and mine may deal with this issue in the exact same way. So as foundational principles go ISMs such as racism and sexism or phobias such as homophobia or xenophobia regard what someone thinks, feels, values or believes about someone else. IST or ISM are rooted in the belief that different races, sexes or whatever social group they are targeting possess such distinction and characteristics, abilities or qualities that the IST distinguishes those differences from their own group and determines that the other is inferior or themselves as superior to the target. Therefore the IST mindset prioritizes and attaches the reason for one's success or failure to a person's genes or other immutable quality, usually assigned to them at birth. The phobias are a little different, because it's not about being inferior or superior, but about being afraid of the other. For example, the word xenophobia comes from the composite Greek word, xeno phobos with the first component xenos meaning foreigner. And the second one phobos meaning fear. The person with the phobia harbors an excessive fear, dislike or even hostility towards anything foreign or to anything or anybody from an outside group such as someone's orientation, religion, nationality, something different. These might be employees who view diversity from the lens of a zero sum game observer. So when they see that other groups are growing, they feel threatened, or when they are presented with a diversity initiative, they may express that their own cultural values are being replaced with someone else's. So with those definitions out of the way it's easy to understand why terms like IST, ISMs and discrimination are used interchangeably. Each regard a denying of dignity, belonging or a chance to be judged on the merits of one's own actions or accomplishments or aptitude in the same way the in group is judged. For instance, I was once told a story about an employee who was struggling as a young black professional. To build them up another black male told him that as black men, we do not have the benefit of positive presumptions when we walk into a room. We either start from zero, or in the negative and we have to build our way up from there. I mentioned the story because it's important from a DE&I perspective that you understand the difference and distinguish between the viewpoint and the actual decision to keep people out of rooms, classrooms, boardrooms or any space of opportunity. While an organization can exhaust efforts to make employees aware of what negative presumptions they may have of others, as they walk into a room, it must connect that activity. And hold to account everyone for denying a person entry into a room of opportunity, because of the assignments given to them at birth. But the strategic purpose could and should be to provide notice that once made aware, it is expected that a discrimination free environment be built. These environments are built with constant assessment of employment decisions, who was hired, fired, promoted, transferred, etc. Who was led into a room and who wasn't. They are built by constant assessment of climate, equity and removal of policies or barriers to inclusion. They're built by creating diverse hiring committees, hiring matrices and other tools that limit bias. They're built by connecting every DE&I activity to a behavior, an unemployment decision, and by holding members accountable not for the views that they hold of the world, but for what they do. That's how you build it. Just saying, take it from someone who's been on the other side of that door, See you on the other side of this week.
