I am hopeful that Obama's speech on race issues will be remembered as the start of something new. For a generation, the United States has used regulation and coercion to try to solve a serious problem. Equal citizenship under the law required serious arm twisting including penalties and quotas. In order to teach a new and better way of doing things, the government intervened.
The combination of 40 years of regulation and the march of demographics delivers us to a new starting point. Fully 33% of the under 40 set (Gens X and Y) consider themselves to be of mixed race. There is some evidence that regulation allowed the glass ceiling to be moved up a couple of inches.
It's hard for me to imagine how any thinking white American adult would have a problem owning the remnants of racism in their position. The remnants of our history are rapidly evolving away from discrimination based on skin tone. They are evolving towards discrimination based on social class. Listen closely to the way that people who dreamed of home ownership for their families are being blamed for the sub-prime problem.
There's more than a little overlap between the two.
The ongoing demographic shifts (labor shortage, aging of the population and so on) make it clear that our problem is how to harness the resources that we have. Discrimination based on anything other than performance comes at the cost of organizational effectiveness. Shortage and right sizing conspire to make us all stewards of scarce human resources.
Over the past twenty years, the diversity drumbeat has been persistent and intensifying. On many levels (there's still work to be done), the physical problems are resolving themselves. What hasn't been addressed by regulation will be addressed by time.
Our job is to harvest the bounty we've been given.
It's weird to say this. When I speak to groups of recruiters, it's clear that the gatekeepers of our organizations are significantly whiter than the population. Even so, the problem is harvesting, not planting.
To be less obtuse, the problem has shifted from being a question of numbers to being a question of attitudes. We're closing on on the numerical problem. Diversity is, at the root, about strength that comes from differing viewpoints. Getting a little more honest about the racism in our culture helps open that door to productivity.
John Sumser .-. ©2008 Two Color Hat, Inc. Santa Rosa, CA
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