EPISODE 10: PAMELA NEWKIRK
MARY MORTEN: Hi, everyone, I’m Mary Morten, and welcome to another episode of “Gathering Ground.” We recorded the following conversation at Women & Children First, an independent feminist bookstore in Chicago’s Andersonville community. Women & Children First is one of our city’s treasures and is one of the largest feminist bookstores in the country. The bookstore recently celebrated its 40th anniversary with a fabulous block party, and we encourage you to support this bookstore and all independent bookstores.
This conversation took place on a Friday evening, and I will add that on just about every Friday evening you will find a group gathered to listen to an author at the weekly book reading. So many interesting and fascinating authors make this bookstore a priority stop on their tour, whether it’s Hillary Clinton, Samantha Irby or, in this case, Pamela Newkirk.
Pamela Newkirk is the author of Diversity, Inc: The Failed Promise of a Billion-Dollar Business. Pamela Newkirk has devoted a considerable portion of her life to journalism and higher education, both fields in which people of color are radically underrepresented. In three of four newsrooms, she was the only African-American news reporter. She would later become one of two people of color on New York University’s tenure track journalism faculty and, for a time, was one of the few tenured African-American female professors on the entire faculty of the university’s Faculty of Arts and Science.
During more than three decades of her professional life, diversity has been a national preoccupation. Yet, despite decades of hand-wringing, costly initiatives, and uncomfortable conversations, progress in most elite American institutions has been negligible. While racial, ethnic minorities make up roughly 38.8 percent of the national population, they comprise just 17 percent of full-time university professors, which includes faculty at historically black colleges and universities, or HBCUs.
As Paula Giddings, the Woodson Professor Emerita at Smith College, states: “With revealing statistics, a compelling narrative, and conclusions about our liberal institutions that will shock but perhaps not surprise, Pamela Newkirk’s Diversity, Inc is a must-read for our times.” And we absolutely concur. Here’s Pamela Newkirk on Diversity, Inc.
Tonight we’re in lovely Andersonville at Women & Children First, so we’re very excited, and very excited to have this opportunity to talk with Pamela Newkirk.
We, as you heard, do a lot of work through Morten Group in this realm, and so I’m excited to talk to you about all kinds of things, some of them which we probably won’t get to in the next hour. But we’re going to have Pamela — she’s going to read a small section from the book, and then we are going to have a conversation. And then, of course, we’ll open it up for some questions and answers, and we’ll go about an hour. OK?
So what section would you like to start with, Pamela?
PAMELA NEWKIRK: I usually don’t read, but I’ll read a little.
MM: (Laughs.) OK. All right.
PN: I’d rather have a conversation —
MM: Yes. OK. OK.
PN: — because, you know, you can read.
MM: (Laughs.)
PN: You guys can read it. But I’ll just read a little.
MM: OK.
PN: [Reads excerpt from her book, Diversity, Inc.]
MM: Great. Thank you so much.
So, that is a wonderful starting point for our conversation.
This is not your first book; it’s your fifth book. And all of your books have had some thread of race running through them, and why is that?
PN: Well, most of my research — most of my work concerns itself with depictions of African-Americans and other marginalized groups, because I believe that many people see film portrayals or portrayals in literature as just, you know, no big deal. But I think you can draw a straight line from the cycle of demeaning depictions of African-Americans in particular to what happened to Trayvon Martin, what happened to — you know, I could go on and on — Michael Brown. I just think that these depictions have created a bogeyman where people of color, particularly African-Americans and other dark-skin people, have been so demonized that many white Americans, and even some people of color, believe the fiction of black life more than they believe the reality of it. So I have invested a lot of my time as both a journalist and a scholar to depicting multidimensional portraits of people that give you a better sense of who they are and of their humanity that I think is devoid in so many of these depictions. Yeah.
MM: This book is just full of extraordinary information — in particular, statistics. I mean, it’s so well researched; it’s certainly a book that we will start to use in some of our work because you’ve done an extraordinary job in just bringing forward information that I think people aren’t aware of. And the numbers do matter. We can see it, but the numbers do matter. And why was that important to you?
PN: Well, I think many people in this country look at the progress that has been made on race as if it’s a linear, forward movement, and as if it doesn’t mean that, you know, we go forward and we go back and we go forward. But people focus on the progress, but they don’t look at how much of that progress gets erased because there’s often a backlash to progress. So, you know, with — after Emancipation we had Reconstruction and you had black governors and senators and members of Congress, and then you had the backlash. You had the Ku Klux Klan. You had black codes, which stayed with us for like a hundred years. Right? And then we had the civil rights movement and we made tremendous progress. We had begun to close the racial gap in education, in poverty rates. I mean, really, really like amazing progress, and then we had the backlash in the 1980s that erased many of the gains that were made. Our schools are pretty much as segregated as they were in the 1950s, before Brown v. Board of Education. But what we do in this country, or what we tend to do, is we focus so much attention on the symbolic progress that we don’t look at what’s actually happening after that progress has been made. And so if you look at the numbers — right? — the gains are not nearly as dramatic as many Americans think, and, you know, it didn’t help that we had this amazing president, Barack Obama.
MM: I was just going to say — exactly, and that gave people —
PN: That gave people —
MM: Right.
PN: — you know, an even more false sense of —
MM: Exactly. Right.
PN: — of how far we’ve come in closing the —
MM: And that we were post-racial.
PN: Right! We were just post-race like two years ago. (Laughter.)
MM: Yeah. In case anyone didn’t know that.
PN: No one even says that anymore.
MM: Yes, right.
PN: Right?
MM: Right.
PN: But everyone said it. Like, if you Google “post-race,” like, or if you go on LexisNexis, as I do to do my research, like The New York Times alone must have said it thousands of times: post-race, post-race, post-race, you know. And now no one says it anymore. It’s like we forgot that we had been post-race, but we weren’t then and we never have been.
MM: Right.
PN: And so I just think it was really important for me to look at the numbers and not the mythology around the progress that’s been made. Yeah.
MM: And when we think about the election of Barack Obama, you have those numbers, and I think — I didn’t realize — I worked on the campaign — that he solidly carried certainly every — you know, when he ran in 2008 and 2012, he gained more votes in people-of-color communities, but I think people will be surprised to know where he topped out in white communities.
PN: Precisely.
MM: Yeah, I think it was maybe not even 50 percent.
PN: It was about 40 (percent), and it was even less the second time.
MM: Exactly.
PN: The second time it dropped.
MM: Exactly. Right. Right.
PN: So, you know, African-Americans over-performed; Latinos over-performed; Asians over-performed; young whites over-performed. You had this — you know, you had an unusual outpouring.
MM: Right.
PN: But white America — he lost white America both times, and that’s not to say that it wasn’t impressive, the percentage of whites who did vote for him, but they were not in the majority.
MM: Exactly.
PN: Right.
MM: And I don’t think anyone really understands that because that was not the sentiment; that was not what was being expressed at the time.
PN: Precisely.
MM: So you picked three areas: You picked academia, you picked corporate America, and journalism. And why did you pick those —
PN: Film.
MM: Film. I’m sorry.
PN: I picked Hollywood.
MM: Yeah, Hollywood. I mean, why did you —
PN: Because my first book was about journalism —
MM: That’s what — yes. Media.
PN: — so I thought that I pretty much had told that story and it hadn’t changed that much in the 20 years since that first book was published. (Laughs.)
MM: Wow.
PN: So it’s like read my first book and it’s pretty much the same. (Laughs.)
MM: Yeah. That’s really unbelievable and sad, in many ways. Absolutely.
PN: Yeah, in fact, African-Americans have lost ground since my first book on race and the media. So yeah, I looked at Hollywood, corporate America, and academia because, first of all, they are such different realms of American life and you would think that you’d find, like, vastly different things happening.
MM: Right. Right.
PN: And in some cases, they were. But what I — you know, Hollywood, because of the way it kind of helps us imagine how people are —
MM: You mean in terms of people assuming that in Hollywood people are more progressive?
PN: Well, yeah, and the fact that they are image-makers, and so the way it has depicted black people for more than a hundred years is the way most people in this country, and throughout the world, think they know black people.
MM: Right.
PN: So I thought Hollywood was really important, corporate America, obviously, and academia, because the same thing: What we know about people — you know, people like to think of racial bias as something that swells up from the ground up, but many of the ideas around race were codified in the academy. Right? It was at Harvard, Princeton, Yale where anthropology and all of these fields were telling us what people still think they know about people — who people are based on this hierarchy of race. I even remember as a kid, that’s what we learned in science. You know? You had Africans and you kept moving up, and so there was this hierarchy — right? — around intelligence and ability. So all of these fields have a lot to say about the experiences of people based on their race.
And another thing about those three fields is that President Johnson’s National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, which was commissioned after the uprisings in urban areas in the 1960s, it called on all of these fields to open up. These were fields that were pretty much closed to blacks and to other racial minorities, and so I wanted to look 50 years later how much progress had been made in those fields.
MM: And so when you look at academia — let’s just take them one by one — what did you find? Because, again, this is a place where, as you said, some of these ideas were codified.
PN: Right. Well, the numbers have not changed much, in decades. African-Americans, as I said — like four percent of full professors in the academy. And if you look even more closely, many of them are at two-year colleges and, you know, not in the most elite schools. (Laughs.) So in many schools, African-Americans are like two percent. And that four percent includes black professors at historically black colleges and universities.
MM: Which is really, really shocking, I have to say.
PN: Right. So when you look at, when you drill down on the numbers, it —
MM: Tells a story.
PN: It tells a story. The numbers are illuminating in their own right. And I just think it dispels the mythology that we have around this, like, you know, incredible progress. Yes, we had begun to make that progress, and then it stalled, and now, in many cases, it’s in retreat, diversity. So yeah.
MM: So when you look at entertainment and when you look at Hollywood, there are a number of examples — as I was saying right before we started, I consider myself someone who stays, you know, sort of up on what’s happening. I did not know about the deal that Issa Rae had made with — is it —
PN: I don’t want to say. It’s Paramount or Universal.
MM: It’s one of the two. Right. She’s just made this incredible deal to have her own production company, which is incredible. She is the author of Awkward Black Girls, and her show “Insecure,” of course, has been on; I think it’s in its third season, maybe, on HBO. But that’s extraordinary.
PN: Right.
MM: Ava DuVernay has — so those kinds of things are happening.
PN: Right.
MM: It seems as though there has been —
PN: But I mean, we’re talking about a — you know, the most surprising thing to me about doing the research on the Hollywood section is just how acutely underrepresented people of color are, not just in front of the camera, where they’re more visible —
MM: But behind, yes.
PN: — but behind the camera, where the —
MM: Where the decisions are being made about who’s going to be up front.
PN: Exactly.
MM: Right.
PN: It’s like something like 90 percent of directors, 90-plus percent of directors, screenwriters, producers, like all of the influential roles are still, like, overwhelmingly held by white men, for the most part; even white women are not really represented —
MM: Represented. Right.
PN: — in those fields. And then when you look at who green-lights films, it’s like 95 percent, you know.
MM: Right.
PN: Yeah. So it’s — you know, I think it was 2015, when for the second year in a row, none of the nominees for Oscars were people of color.
MM: Yes. Right.
PN: Right? So it was the second year in a row. But then when you look at those numbers, it helps explain everything. It’s not just who’s making the films and who they imagine the audience to be, but who was voting for the films.
MM: Decision-makers.
PN: I mean, that was also 90-something percent white.
MM: Right.
PN: So we like to think of ourselves as a diverse society, but when you look at who has — who still has the influence, people of color have not really cracked that ceiling.
MM: And when you think about the Oscar situation and the whole hashtag #OscarsSoWhite — which I didn’t realize how that started either; I think I thought, you know, Jada Pinkett Smith had something to do with that, for some reason! (Laughs.)
PN: (Laughs.) No, it was just a lawyer.
MM: Yeah, just a lawyer who decided to send out that tweet.
PN: She did that one tweet and it just went viral, and —
MM: Next thing you know.
PN: Right. She started a movement.
MM: It’s incredible.
PN: Right.
MM: And that’s how we see change happen, though. Right?
PN: Right.
MM: What has been your experience in terms of where you have seen some movement? How does that come about?
PN: Well, in pretty much all of the situations that I have found in my research, they were prompted by either some scandal — you know, someone used the N-word and then they hired a diversity czar or — (laughter) — you know. You know, Prada does a line with blackface; oh, they hire a diversity czar — (laughs) — and then they —
MM: Yeah, and they hired Theaster Gates as one of those folks, who’s here in Chicago.
PN: And then they get Ava DuVernay to become sort of like a spokeswoman for Prada. It’s like, so black face to cover blackface. It’s like this is what it’s — so usually — Starbucks: They have the episode; they close their stores, and they bring in the, you know, NAACP Legal Defense Fund head.
MM: Yes. Yes.
PN: Like so — but it becomes symbolic change, for the most part, like very rarely do you see institutions really go beyond a public relations phase of the diversity movement.
MM: And something that we often will say when we’re doing workshops, and people do want you to come in and do a one-off, if you will, or — we really insist on doing an assessment. Like, we won’t walk into an organization and just do a training.
PN: Right.
MM: We think it’s really important that we take the temperature of what’s happening so we can customize it. But people really feel like, you know, “We can check that off. We did that. We had a session.”
PN: Right.
MM: And the reality is the real work happens after the session.
PN: Precisely.
MM: It’s not in those sessions. Right?
PN: Right.
MM: How are you going to operationalize this? How are you going to center this in your organization moving forward?
PN: Right. Right.
MM: And what we don’t see, to your point, is organizations taking the next step.
PN: Yeah. They want to do what Cyrus Mehri, who’s one of the lawyers who — he was the lead counsel in the discrimination lawsuits against both Coca-Cola and Texaco, both landmark settlements. And, you know, everyone wants to do drive-by diversity. You know?
MM: Yes. Yes.
PN: They want to check the box. Everyone wants to do climate surveys and they want to, you know, test the temperature, but they don’t want to do the interventions.
MM: Right. And a lot of that, we find, is really fear of losing power. Right? People are concerned they’re going to have to share power, that they’re going to — that it’s going to upset the status quo, and we tell people we are trying to upset the status quo.
PN: Right. And I guess I don’t even go there because I did not put any of these institutional leaders on the couch. (Laughs.)
MM: Right. Right.
PN: And I’m not even qualified to do it. All I can look at is what they’ve done —
MM: Right. Look at the outcomes.
PN: — and what they haven’t done. Right.
MM: That’s right. And that’s the numbers.
PN: Precisely.
MM: You can’t argue with the numbers. Right?
PN: Yeah.
MM: So diversity, really, though, is at least getting people in the door and creating this picture.
PN: Right.
MM: As you know, more recently, we’ve really started to talk about inclusion and equity. And where do you see that fitting in?
PN: Well, I treated them all as the same, because I don’t think you can have diversity without having inclusion and belonging.
MM: Right. Exactly.
PN: I mean, it’s not going to work.
MM: Right.
PN: It’s not sustainable. Right? So you — people have to feel a part of the place and you have to accept the whole person and not, you know, just their skin — (laughs) — and then nothing else. Right?
MM: Exactly.
PN: Not their ideas, not their —
MM: But that’s what happens.
PN: But it happens.
MM: That’s why people don’t stay.
PN: That’s why people don’t stay.
MM: That’s exactly why people don’t stay.
PN: Yeah, yeah.
MM: I work — you know, primarily we work with nonprofits and foundations, and what we see in the foundation world is that foundations are still 80 percent or more run by white folks, and in particular, white men. And when folks of color are coming into the foundations, they’re not feeling welcome.
PN: Right. Right.
MM: They’re not feeling validated, and they leave.
PN: I mean, until, like, recent years, a person of color, African-American, could not wear an Afro or have braids or have their natural hair — (laughs) — in the workplace!
MM: Isn’t it absurd that California has had to pass legislation —
PN: Yes!
MM: — around someone being able to wear their hair in a natural style?
PN: Yes!
MM: I mean, it’s absurd.
PN: I mean, I know so many people in journalism who, like, either lost their jobs or were suspended or demoted because of their natural hair. (Laughs.)
MM: It’s just unbelievable.
PN: So yeah. So we’ve made some progress in that regard.
MM: Right.
PN: In fact, I was on the — I was telling my sister coming from New York on the plane, both of the flight attendants had natural hair. I was like, wow! (Laughs.) But the fact that that’s even noteworthy is —
MM: Exactly.
PN: — you know, it would be like being a white person and being required to perm your hair, like, into an Afro to hold a job, to go to an interview, to just be accepted.
MM: Exactly. Exactly.
PN: You know? Yeah.
MM: And so this idea around inclusion and then, of course, equity: What we find when we are doing work with organizations and they say, “We just couldn’t find any folks of color” —
PN: Well, that’s the —
MM: — what they really meant was that “We couldn’t find anyone who was a person of color who also, by the way, didn’t think exactly like we do.”
PN: Well, and you hear, “Just not a good fit.” (Laughs.)
MM: Oh, yes. Culture fit.
PN: “It’s not a good” —
MM: We do executive placements, and when someone says that, I say, “You do realize that that is a way that people of color are kept out of positions —
PN: Right.
MM: — by talking about the fact that there’s no culture fit.”
PN: “Not a good fit.” Yeah.
MM: Right. Right. All that coded language that is used.
So when you think about corporate America — let’s talk about corporate America, and then we’re going to open it up shortly for questions. What did you learn there that you wanted to raise?
PN: I guess the most surprising thing to me in the book is that corporate America has made far greater strides than many of the fields that are considered more progressive, like Hollywood, like journalism, like higher ed, like fashion, like — I mean, I can go on and on. So the fields that are considered the most progressive fields are the least diverse, and corporate America is the most, for the most part, diverse. And it still has challenges, particularly at the upper echelons of it.
MM: Exactly.
PN: We still are in the, you know, handful of, you know, CEOs of color —
MM: Right and Fortune 500 companies.
PN: Fortune 500, Fortune 100. In fact, we’ve gone —
MM: Down a little bit.
PN: — in reverse. I think the highest was five or six, and now we’re down to three.
But in terms of overall representation in management and across the board, corporate America has made far greater strides. And I think it has a lot to do both with many of the rules and regs of corporate America, like anti-nepotism policies — you know, just, there’s more scrutiny on the process. You know, you have EEOC —
MM: Right. Right.
PN: You have a lot of things that —
MM: They’re regulated —
PN: But the more creative fields can get away with that whole culture thing and, like, they’re very closed. You know, the more elite, the more exclusive the field, the less diversity you’ll find. Museums are probably the least diverse field.
MM: Yes.
PN: And, you know.
MM: And there’s been a whole sort of reworking of some of the museums.
PN: Oh, big. Just reopened.
MM: I know MOMA just reopened —
PN: Yes. just two weeks ago.
MM: Just reopened a couple weeks ago.
PN: Yeah, and it’s amazing.
MM: And tell us what you know about that.
PN: Well, you know, they have artists like Betye Saar, who’s, like, I think like 90 years old. (Laughs.)
MM: Yes. Yes.
PN: And she’s finally getting, you know, her due.
MM: Due.
PN: You know, there are, you know, legions of amazing artists who have just been excluded by virtue of their race.
MM: As well as professionals in the museum field, like Lonnie Bunch —
PN: Oh, please.
MM: — just became the head of Smithsonian.
PN: Exactly.
MM: He spent time here in Chicago at the Chicago History Museum.
PN: Right.
MM: And he’s 66.
PN: Yeah.
MM: And he just became head of the — the first African-American.
PN: There are still so few. So few. Yeah.
MM: So there’s a lot of work to do. And so your overall impetus for writing the book was to — and this title, in particular?
PN: (Laughs.) Well, I was on an Amtrak heading home from D.C., and I was reading yet another article about yet another disappointing diversity report. It was one of the tech companies. Every year — they’re transparent now; they release their reports. And every year, you know, it’s like Google, I think blacks in tech are like two percent, you know, Latinos like three, four percent. And every year it’s about the same. (Laughs.)
MM: Right.
PN: And every year is disappointing.
MM: Yeah.
PN: And it’s like — and then I read Google alone every year spends more than a $100 million on diversity initiatives. And it’s like, OK! (Laughter.)
MM: To do what?
PN: To keep it at two, three percent? (Laughs.)
MM: Unbelievable.
PN: So I wanted to interrogate that tension between the expenditure and the hand-wringing and “Oh, this is so bad,” and like, well, why is it so bad? Like, what are you doing with that money and what, like — and so I wanted to look at just the what was happening, what they do, what all these companies are doing, and they’re all pretty much doing the same thing. They’re hiring czars and consultants. (Laughter.) Yeah. And I have friends who do it.
MM: Right. Right. Right.
PN: And the needle doesn’t move, for the most part. And there seems to not be much accountability. Heads don’t roll. And I just wondered, if you were spending billions of dollars on anything else and have so little to show for it, would these people stay — like, would they be able to, like —
MM: Why are they still in place?
PN: — keep their jobs? (Laughs.)
MM: Exactly. Exactly.
PN: So I just wanted to like look closely at what that looks like. And, of course, we know that many of the strategies that are used don’t work. And if you keep doing the same thing and expect different results, what does that mean? (Laughs.)
MM: Exactly.
PN: Like, why aren’t you changing course?
MM: Right.
PN: But the good news is that there are strategies that have been shown to be effective, but they’re not the ones that are usually used by most companies or most institutions.
MM: Give us a couple examples.
PN: Well, I do a chapter on Coca-Cola —
MM: Right. Yeah.
PN: — and what happened after, you know, they settled that $100 million discrimination lawsuit. So there were very few African-Americans in management. In fact, there was only one at a senior level, out of like 25 in the company. And so anyway, so after the lawsuit, they had a task force that was charged with overseeing what they were going to do to deal with the problem they were having.
MM: Right.
PN: What they found was, like — among the things they found were that even when African-Americans and whites had the same job title, blacks were paid much less.
MM: Yes.
PN: They found that, you know, there were problems with promotions and, you know, they weren’t getting the bonuses that — there were, like, extreme disparities, and glaring disparities, along racial lines.
So what they did is they hired someone who was charged with looking at the metrics across the country. Anything that concerned an employee, whether it’s, like, who were the candidates for a position? Like, what did the candidate pool look like? Who was offered a job? Who wasn’t offered a job? What was the salary scale along racial lines? So what they were able to do over time is to detect patterns of bias and to disrupt those patterns. And over five years, they made, like, just staggering progress in kind of leveling the field. But it took a lot of not just intention, but you couldn’t, like, have progress and say, “We’re done! Stick a flag! Yay!”
MM: Right. Exactly.
PN: “We’re post-race!” (Laughs.)
MM: Exactly. Right.
PN: You know? Like, they had to be vigilant.
MM: Keep at it. They had to keep at it.
PN: And you have to continue to be vigilant.
MM: That’s right. Right.
PN: And so, that was one model. Another model that some institutions are now trying to employ is the Rooney Rule, which was adopted by the NFL after Johnie Cochran and Cyrus Mehri did a report showing that while the NFL, the players were 70 percent black, they held, I forgot what the percentage was, but a very small percentage of front-office jobs, and head coaches weren’t African-American. And so the Rooney Rule required that at least the candidate pool be diverse, you know, for every front-office and coaching job. And over time, that increased the number of black and Latino coaches in the NFL.
So it’s something that some institutions have talked about. But you can’t just do it. You have to, like, really stay on it, be vigilant. Yeah.
MM: And I think that’s what we see. I can count on one hand the number of client partners we have who will do more than the initial workshop.
PN: Right. Because they’re checking a box.
MM: They’re checking a box, in some cases, and not understanding — even though we say it repeatedly — that this is going to be ongoing.
PN: Right.
MM: This is a journey.
PN: Right.
MM: This is a process. And there is no end destination.
PN: Right.
MM: And so you must — to your point, Coca-Cola I think is a great example.
PN: Yeah.
MM: They really invested time —
PN: Oh, a lot of time.
MM: — and dollars —
PN: Yeah.
MM: — and resources —
PN: Right.
MM: — so that they could do something different, to disrupt what had been the status quo.
PN: Exactly. And they continue to monitor those numbers.
MM: Right. Exactly.
So that’s always a part of what we say people should do.
PN: Right.
MM: It’s really whether or not organizations will do it.
PN: Well, you know — what a lot of institutions do is they farm diversity out.
MM: Yes.
PN: They think you’re going to fix it. You know? Or the diversity czar’s going to fix it.
MM: Right.
PN: As if you can make this kind of change without buy-in from the leadership on down.
MM: It has to be.
PN: It has to be incentivized.
MM: That’s right.
PN: It has to be something that people know is real in that institution, or it’s just not going to happen.
MM: Right. It has to be a commitment, and so when we go in and do a workshop, we ask to be introduced by someone from the executive team.
PN: Precisely.
MM: We don’t people just to think we just showed up this morning to do a session and no one wanted us to come in. (Laughs.)
PN: Right.
MM: You know, we have an assessment we’re going to review with you. Yeah.
PN: Well, I know in many institutions they don’t even do the training for the executives. It’s for the “underlings.” (Laughs.)
MM: Oh, yes. Yes. Yes! Yes.
PN: They need this. (Laughs.)
MM: And we have to do some talking to make sure the people understand, you need to know what your staff will be experiencing.
PN: (Laughs.)
MM: You must have a session, even if we have to do it for you alone.
PN: But it just shows there’s no buy-in.
MM: Absolutely. There’s no commitment.
PN: Right. It’s just like yeah, it’s farmed out.
MM: Let them go ahead and do that work. That’s exactly right.
PN: Yeah.
MM: And that — those are the places where you will not see any real systemic change.
PN: Right.
MM: It will just continue.
PN: Which is most places. (Laughs.)
MM: Exactly. It’s true! And to understand that it’s going to take a while to undo how we’ve been socialized.
PN: And what I didn’t want to do is to vilify the people who do the diversity work, because many of those people are change agents.
MM: Right.
PN: Like, they went into it because they were motivated to do something that they thought was useful to society —
MM: Exactly.
PN: — to change the game.
MM: That’s right. (Laughs.)
PN: And they can’t, because they’re not the ones who can do this.
MM: Right.
PN: They can guide. They can consult.
MM: Advise.
PN: Right. But this has to be something institutions are serious about. One of the people who I interviewed was Lee Bollinger, who’s the president of Columbia University.
MM: Yes.
PN: And I interviewed him because he was named in two lawsuits while he was president of the University of Michigan, which became, like, landmark discrimination, reverse-discrimination lawsuits. And it’s something that he really, really committed himself to this fight, and even when he went to Columbia, he has continued to make this a priority — before the unrest; before the campuses were like, you know — remember 2015 —
MM: Yes.
PN: — was when a lot of these campuses kind of went up in flames.
MM: Exactly.
PN: But not — because Columbia — he had been doing that work.
MM: Laying the foundation.
PN: Yes, and has shown a real passion and commitment. But, you know, like he says, this doesn’t happen by accident. It’s only going to happen when you have that kind of intention and commitment to make it happen.
MM: Absolutely.
PN: Yeah.
MM: Well, we’re going to pause there and see if any of you would like to ask any questions.
Yes?
Q: I come from, like, a poor community, very poor community, and what I personally experienced is that even though there’s a large portion of us that might be really intelligent, there’s no path to higher education. And I think if we created more of a path for that, we’d have more, like — I interview people all the time, so — but the pool — the pool itself is small. So if we increase the pool — in other words, create more opportunity for people to get — from these poor communities to get educated, I think —
PN: I know, but — so you’re speaking of a pipeline. And it’s something that I address in the book because I think oftentimes the pipeline is not why Hollywood doesn’t have directors of color. It’s not why dance companies are not diverse. It’s not why — like, we always like to think of the most elite stations. Think about it. Most of these fields are like that because people are self-replicating their social worlds. You know, we live in a very segregated society. You hire who you know, who your friends recommend.
MM: That’s exactly right.
PN: So it’s less — I mean, and it’s not to say that more people need greater opportunities. I mean, that’s a given, that we need that for — particularly for people of color. But that is not why many of these fields lack diversity. If you — like, in my field of journalism: If you only hired blacks and Latinos who graduated from Columbia University, which is the most elite journalism school in the United States, you could diversify newsrooms. So we like to think that it’s the pipeline, which may have been true in the 1960s, but in most cases, the pipeline is not why many of these fields — especially the most elite fields — you’re talking about small numbers of people. You’re not talking about — you know, corporate America can hire hundreds, thousands of people. Museums? Like, you know, the Hollywood studios? These are small places. They can diversify overnight if they wanted to. There are qualified people who could take those jobs and run with it overnight.
True. If you have a pathway, meaning you know someone, you know, that’s how many of these businesses run, is who you know.
MM: Relationships.
PN: It’s relationships. So yeah, we’re shut out of those relationships. So yeah, I think our social spheres are partly the reason why many of these workplaces are so segregated, because that’s the way we live in this country. Our churches are segregated. Our schools are segregated. Our neighborhoods are segregated. It’s like — so, of course. The workplaces are reflecting that, which is a bigger problem. And it’s not to say that we don’t have problem with schools — you know, that we don’t need to make greater investments in our schools. But it’s not the only problem, and it’s not even the biggest part of the problem.
Q: So I was a Cook County public defender for 27 years. I worked with legal aid for incarcerated mothers. I went into Dwight and did training. I had Gail, who was their executive director, do training. I also was trained to be, quote, a “diversity trainer.” You know, I don’t think there was buy-in from the Cook County board or anything. So now what you said is going to make what I’m saying a little less controversial. I mean, how do you get around bringing in a one-off person, like, to a corporation and that person probably makes 70, 80 thousand dollars a year and they’re lecturing the minimum wage white workers about white privilege? How does, then, that not lead to resentment?
PN: You lost me.
MM: Yeah. Tell us — just re-frame your question again.
Q: How can you also take into account economic and class differences? Because you have someone who’s very well paid coming in from the outside and they do a whole lecture about racism and white privilege and the audience is largely white people making minimum wage.
PN: Doesn’t sound like a very smart thing to do. (Laughs.)
MM: Right. Right.
PN: I mean, you know, we have to be real about resentment. Right? I mean, there is — in fact, many of the studies — there was one very influential study out of Harvard that showed that most diversity training makes the problem worse. It causes white resentment. The way that many white men in particular read it is that they can’t say anything, they have to walk on eggshells to survive the environment that is so — so a lot of the ways in which we deal with the diversity question are just badly done. I mean, it’s just not — like, that didn’t sound very smart. (Laughs.)
MM: Right. And I would say in our workshops, we really try — first of all, we only train in multiracial teams. That’s intentional, because there are some things that we want white people to say to other white people, because we know it’s going to land in a different way.
PN: Yeah, like you have to be mindful —
MM: Let’s just be strategic about that.
PN: Yeah.
MM: And that really good facilitators or trainers really do understand how to relate to the people in the room, and that’s why we actually do an assessment, so we don’t walk in —
PN: Right. Cold and just like one size fits all.
MM: Exactly. Exactly, because one size does not fit all. Absolutely.
PN: Right. Right.
MM: Yes. I saw another hand somewhere over here.
Yes. Go ahead.
Q: Where do you think the changing of how we teach our children history comes in here? Because I am a parent of young children and looking at these books that are behind you and we have read a number of these, because I’m intentionally diversifying my children’s bookshelf.
PN: Yes. I think it’s a big part of it.
MM: Absolutely.
PN: I think our educational system has done more damage by not teaching people the reality of race in this country, and then people — there’s just this disconnect between where we are now and the history, as if they’re not connected — (laughs) — as if the ideology and the ways in which we think of people is not rooted in our education system. And it is! You can’t pull them apart. And, you know, between film and television and the educational system, I mean, everything that I learned about African-American history I was fortunate to learn at home, because my father made sure that we knew the history of African-Americans in this country, that I didn’t feel like I was some one-off, “less-than” person, some accident, some problem, which is what you would think if you only had most of our schools. You don’t learn about the contributions most other people made. You’d think that science was somehow the invention of Europe, and you don’t know the contributions that were made by people around the world. The human experiment implicates all of us. But we have a system that has taught all of us that there is a hierarchy of intelligence, of ability, of status, of — and for many people that’s real. They believe it. They really, really believe it. And unfortunately, many of our kids believe it. And that’s the most tragic part of all. So if you don’t have some kind of intervention, starting in kindergarten or preschool —
Q: (Off mic.)
PN: Yeah. But, you know, here’s the problem: Where are people learning it? It’s like we have to — it’s almost like you have to just start all over with the curriculum in most schools. And talk about a fight. Ooh, man! (Laughs.) Because people see it as something other than an intellectual exercise, to challenge all of these preconceived notions that were mostly based on propaganda about who people are. But they don’t see it as that. They see it as like the truth, because this is what the scientists have said from Harvard and from Princeton.
You know, my last book was about a young African who was exhibited in the Bronx Zoo Monkey House in 1906 and how this was supported by all of the top scientists in New York, the mayor. The New York Times wrote editorials supporting this, because that’s the understanding that most white people had of an African person. “We can learn from him being in the zoo. What’s the problem? He’s barbaric!” He was a sweet little — somebody’s child, who was in the zoo with an orangutan. Where do those ideas come from? They come from textbooks. They come from film. They come from literature. They come from — it’s in the air we breathe. And not to disrupt that is like putting lipstick on a pig. “We’re going to have diversity initiatives.”
MM: Right.
PN: How are you undoing all of this damage with a diversity training session? What can you teach in that time?
MM: And Pamela, we’re not born knowing that. We’re not born with that information. We’re taught that.
PN: Precisely.
MM: You know, we’re not born knowing the difference between white or black, or straight or gay. Those are things that we’re taught.
PN: They’re taught.
MM: In Illinois, we’ve just passed an LGBT curriculum bill that is now law.
PN: Right.
MM: And so that will be part of it as well. I think sometimes people are worried that when we go in and talk about race, we're not going to talk about any other systems of oppression.
PN: Right.
MM: But we start with race because that is still the number one indicator of success in this country.
PN: Right.
MM: You had your hand up.
Q: (Off mic) — about whether or not in your experiences and research and the breakdown of the industries you would generalize differences between urban and rural America.
PN: In what way? What do you mean?
Q: I’m just wondering if you’re noticing when you talk about white America and the stagnation, has there been perhaps some change or difference or progress in urban areas versus rural areas?
PN: Well, I guess just by virtue of the professions that I’m writing about, I would say most are in urban areas. (Laughs.) And like I said, I’m talking about the most progressive realms of American life. I’m not talking about, you know, people who live in Appalachia. I’m talking about New York City. You know, I go to many events. You know, I’m a professor. I’m an author. I’m in these worlds. Right? Publishing, journalism. I’ve been in so many rooms, even recently, where I’m the only African-American. It could be a hundred people and the only other black people will be the ones holding trays. You know, this is just normalized. I don’t think — and these are the progressive people.
MM: Right.
PN: So that’s why — I guess, to answer your question more clearly, I wanted to focus on the more progressive populations because they think they’re over — they’re beyond this; they don’t need to hear this. But I’m talking to them because I know them best, because they invite me to these things and I’m it. And they think it’s OK. I’m the diversity! It’s not OK. And it’s not OK because I need friends. It’s not OK because I know other black people who just need to be friends with white people. It’s not OK because this means that we’re going to continue this cycle of exclusion. We’re going to continue to maintain these homogeneous spheres of influence in this country because it’s a natural progression of your friendship circle, the people you have dinner with, the people you play golf with, the people who you go to a book party with. That’s who’s going to get the job! That’s who you’re going to recommend. And you’re not going to know people who look like me because you don’t — there’s no contact. There’s no — you know, every time I have served on a search committee at NYU, because they somehow can never find people of color in New York City — never understood that! I find them, and it’s not hard. We’re journalists. (Laughs.) We’re trained to look for things. And yet, journalists can’t find journalists of color. This is at — I’ve been at four news organizations. I was the only African-American in three, and one was in Washington, D.C. What do you mean you can’t find any — (laughs) — like what is that? That’s insane.
So I think, you know, this maintenance of this — I don’t know. You know, part of it is just natural. Right? People gravitate to what they know, what they feel comfortable with. But because it’s having an effect on the whole issue of justice and equality, it kind of matters that we interrogate how this is continuing. Right? Because OK, if you don’t want to have friends that don’t look like you, that’s fine. But you need to at least expand your Rolodex. You need to figure out what are the professional organizations of color where you may be able to find a journalist of color. You know, where might I — where are the, you know, institutions where they may gravitate, where they have the training? I could tap into something that expands my own, you know, little field that’s very small. We’re talking about fields that like the small, elite status that they have. It’s elite. And what does elite look like to many people? How do they imagine that to appear? And so all of that gets back to “cultural fit.” You know?
MM: Right.
PN: And I’m sure that, you know, that I have had an easier time because to some people I’m a cultural fit because of appearance. And that’s a very difficult thing for me to even admit, because that — you know, it’s like, “You look acceptable.”
MM: Right. That’s right. Right.
PN: Like, “Are both of your parents black? Do you have a white parent?”
MM: That’s right.
PN: No.
MM: Colorism.
PN: Colorism.
MM: Absolutely. It’s alive.
PN: Right. Yeah.
MM: I wanted to get this woman’s question in. Yes?
Q: Hello.
MM: Hi.
PN: This is Michelle Duster, who is the great granddaughter of my idol, Ida B. Wells.
MM: Oh, wow. My goodness! (Applause.) Great to have you here.
PN: Yes.
Q: I had two questions. One is: What effect do you think that having this sort of exceptional black person be used as excuses for the idea that we’re over race? I mean, and I know we have all probably experienced that, like, “What do you mean there’s racism? Look at Oprah!”
PN: (Laughs.)
Q: “Oprah and Tiger Woods and Obama — what else do you all need?” (Laughter.) That sort of attitude. I mean, in some ways it almost feels a little damaging, because then it’s like, well, they made it — especially Oprah’s story. She was poor and this and that and she made —
PN: But I think —
Q: That’s one question —
PN: Yeah.
Q: — the exceptional Negro as the excuse of “What is wrong with the rest of you people?”
And the other is: When it comes to diversity, equity, and inclusion, I’ve been around in the workforce for a while and I have seen so many different situations where these companies — almost the only black people they have work in equity —
MM: Yes.
PN: They are, oftentimes, the diversity.
MM: And they’re carrying that load.
PN: Especially in the senior executive — at that level, yeah.
Q: So that is used as a “What else do you people want” attitude because we have four black people working here. So, I mean, I’m just — you know, we all — (inaudible) — I don’t even need to explain to you, but it’s just this almost like perpetual kind of —
PN: “Well, you made it, so what’s the problem?” And I made it because I had the opportunity, and I know I stand on great shoulders. I know Ida B. Wells didn’t have the opportunities I have. And I have opportunities because of Ida B. Wells, because she fought that fight. And I know many of us, we’re standing on these shoulders of people who couldn’t go through those doors. Right? And so those of us who managed to get through the doors have to — remember, we have to keep prying it open further for other people to get through the door and not just, like, roll up the ladder because we’re there. Right? So that responsibility falls on those to whom have had that opportunity, because Pamela Newkirk is fine. I’m a full professor. I’ve paid my dues. I did all those things. But I still see the injustice. I see the inequities. I see the disparities in just, you know, opportunity. So that’s my answer. I just think people who have been fortunate enough to be there can’t look at it as, like, “I’m there because I’m the greatest thing that ever lived and if only people did what I did.” Well, many people are not going to get there because you’re there. (Laughs.)
Q: I’m talking more about the attitude of the company culture —
PN: Oh, no, well, we know there’s symbolic diversity. Yeah.
Q: So it’s like, “Well, what else do you people want? We have —
PN: Well, we — well —
Q: — black people here, so what else do you people want?”
PN: But I think it’s the numbers. When you have 40 percent of the population of color holding two, three, four percent of positions in society, we need to look at like what’s going on. That’s all.
MM: We have time for one more question, and then we’re going to have to close. Anyone have a burning question?
OK, I’m going to go in the back there.
Q: So I am proud to say that I am one of the aforementioned change agents, both for my work in corporate America and then for a national sports organization.
PN: Wonderful.
Q: It’s fairly recent and I heard your interview on NPR, got the book yesterday. The cashier told me you were going to be here today —
PN: Aw, thank you!
Q: My question for you is: Assuming that you have top-down support as a change agent, in your studies across industry organizations, what makes change agents most successful?
PN: Well, that. Having that top-down support, actual resources to be able to be successful. One of the things that I found was that there was a study that came out, in fact, this year that — they surveyed diversity professionals at, like, the S&P 500 and they found that most said they didn’t have the resources or support to be effective in their job, and only 35 percent had access to the metrics that could even allow them to see where the problems are. So if you don’t even have baseline metrics to look at, there is no way you can be effective in your job, because then you can’t do the assessment, and so you can’t do the intervention. So yeah. I would say having that kind of access, transparency and a person that you’re — the chief person allowing you then to do what you need to do, to disrupt those cycles of inequity. Yeah. Good luck.
Q: I’m just going to read this last section here, because I think it’s a great way to end.
[Reads excerpt from Diversity, Inc.]
Thank you very much, Pamela. (Applause.)
PN: Thank you. Thank you.
MM: We are so pleased to let you know that you can now find “Gathering Ground” on iTunes, in addition to SoundCloud, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Breaker, and Radio Public, and at gatheringgroundpodcast.com. I’m Mary Morten, and this has been another episode of “Gathering Ground.”