Practical diversity: taking inclusion from theory to practice | Dawn Bennett-Alexander | TEDxUGA

When I was about 8 or 9 years old, I had what turned out to be a defining moment. For some reason, still unclear to me, 55 years, more than 55 years later, as she was sitting down, I pulled a chair out from under my classmate Rosetta. I was immediately sorry that I did it. She fell into a heap on the floor, everybody laughed, I was horrified. And in my moment of shame, I realized that it was entirely possible to have an idea of who you are and what you're about and do something totally at odds with it. If eight or nine-year-olds had mission statements that talked about what their life was like and what they were going to do to make decisions, mine would have been that I would have been nice, I would have been kind, I would have treated everybody equally, and none of that was reflected in what I did with Rosetta that day. I have come to think of these as Rosetta moments. With the kinds of stuff that I do professionally, I have an interest in mission statements as they relate to issues of employment, workplace discrimination, diversity, and inclusion. With Laura Pincus Hartman, I co-author the leading text in employment law for business in the country that actually established the discipline about 21 years ago. With Linda Harrison, I co-author the only textbook in legal, ethical, and regulatory business, environment of business, that totally incorporates diversity in every chapter because that's how it occurs in life, both from McGraw-Hill. The reason I do that and the reason I engage in the kind of activities I do, the research, the writing, the advocacy, the seminars, the presentations, the workshops, all of it is about trying to make it so that people understand more about diversity and that they can avoid unnecessary workplace liability for violations of Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. As you know, that act prohibits discrimination in the workplace on the basis of race, color, religion, gender, national origin, age, disabilities, genetics, and even to some extent sexual orientation and gender identity. When these claims arise in a workplace, I need to tell you, it drives me crazy because they are so avoidable, incredibly avoidable, and several years ago I came up with the idea of practical diversity. It's a way of training employees and what it does is, the whole attempt is to take it from the theory that may be in somebody's mission statement somewhere in the drawer, to actually practicing it by acting it, and if you do it correctly, and it's not hard to do as you'll see in a few minutes, if you do it correctly, it can inform every single workplace decision that you make that could potentially result in liability, and you can avoid it. One of the things I had to, before I do that, let me just say to you that you recognize practical diversity even if you haven't heard the term yet. You know what it's missing. Last month, there was a case involving a trucking company in Denver. The trucking company had a 15 million dollar judgment against it for race discrimination. 2015, race discrimination, 15 million dollars. I don't know of a workplace that can afford to take that kind of hit for totally unnecessary activity. They segregated their employees by race. They only allowed white employees to be able to work on bonus double paydays. Managerial employees called black employees the n-word, and they allowed white employees to do it also, and when a white employee tried to help, he was terminated. The court said that they had discriminated in every aspect of employment. That's very unusual. They said that they highly regarded their diverse workplace, and that they treated all of their employees with the kind of respect and dignity that they themselves would want. Clearly, there was a disconnect between their theory of diversity and how they acted it. The decisions that were made were absolutely avoidable. I haven't said a thing to you that made you think, oh, there's no way they could not do that. It was avoidable. Fifteen million dollars later, they're dealing with this. One of the things that you probably wonder about when you deal with something like this is, and believe me, after thousands of cases and talking to thousands of employees, managers, supervisors, business owners, students over the years, I've come to understand that what we tend to think of as the reason for why people engage in activity like that isn't always quite what we think it is. Most of us think if people engage in stuff like that, that it tends to be because they are racist or sexist or homophobic. Maybe not so much. When my daughter Jennifer, two weeks after she turned four, we moved from Washington DC, where she was born, to Jacksonville, Florida. One of the first orders of business, of course, was to find a doctor. So we were sitting in an examining room waiting for the doctor to come in. When the doctor came in, he had to immediately go back out to get something that he forgot. So Jennifer said, who is that? Who was that? I said, it was the doctor. She said, no, I mean the person that just came in the room. I said, honey, it was the doctor. She said, but it couldn't be the doctor. I said, why? She said, because he was white. It's okay to laugh. I was as horrified as you are, because we had never had a conversation, I assure you, that said that only black people could be doctors. What I quickly realized was that Jennifer had grown up in DC, which until then was called Chocolate City, because it had over 60% black population. Jennifer had never seen a white doctor, so the message that she took away from that was that doctors had to be black. That may sound ridiculous to you, but we all walk around in that with those things in our head, and it starts as soon as we come out, and they put us in a pink blanket or a blue blanket to send the message that we are a girl or a boy. What I did not tell you about that Rosetta story is that the reason that I did what I did to Rosetta in particular, to the extent you think about it when you're 8 or 9 years old, is because I had gotten a very distinct message from my friends at school that Rosetta was poor, and it was okay to do that to her. Did anybody ever tell me you can treat poor people that way? No, but I got the very distinct message because of things that were going on and the way she was treated in the very limited interactions that we had as kids. So we think we grow up, we think that, you know, these things are no longer an issue by the time we get to the workplace. It's still there. It's amazing what's still there, and part of practical diversity and acting it is discovering what that is and being able to do what you can about it. So I'm in a workplace one day. I'm doing a workshop on diversity, and part of what we're doing is cultural introductions. So we break up into small groups and we talk about these messages that we've received, and they're about, you know, race, gender, a whole list of things, and then we get back together and we talk about what we discovered. So we got back together. The guy gets up as a white, and I asked him what his messages were about race growing up, and he told me he had none. He's like, I don't know what planet you were from, but you would have had some race stuff. So, like, are you sure? So he said, no, I didn't have any messages growing up about race. Of course, we didn't allow black people to live in our town, so, you know, I didn't have any messages. Everybody in the room did exactly what you did, including him. And then his face got really serious, and he said, you know, I feel awful. He said, I'm about to retire, and I have hurt so many black people over the course of my career, and I feel really bad about it because it was because of something that was in my head that I did not even know was there. So the message is real, and they're still there when you're in the workplace, but how can you deal with them if you don't know that they are there? So I came up with this idea of practical diversity to deal with this, and I want you to, I want to be clear that you understand that this is not some, you know, pie in the sky, let's all hold hands and sing kumbaya kind of scheme, okay? I'm a lawyer. I teach law in the College of Business. I don't teach sociology. I don't teach theology. I teach law. That means, and being in a college of business, it means I am all about the bottom line. I want to help you save money by not having to spend 15 million dollars for a really stupid mistake like that that was totally avoidable. So, and the other thing I need to tell you is that I know that it works. I've seen it over the years. I've been doing it for ages. This morning before I left home, I had an email from an old student of mine who said, I hope you remember me, it hasn't been that long, but I wanted to write to tell you that your employment law course that I took serves me every day because what you taught us ends up preventing me from, and he was in a family business, so he really cared about the money, he said it prevents discrimination, he said it prevents discriminatory acts at least three times a week. So this is really serious stuff, but it's so simple that you're gonna say like, okay she's tripping, okay, I'm not, tried and true, it really does work. So three things to it. One, three principles that I'm gonna leave you with, and they are things that you can start doing right this minute as you sit in your seat, and it is amazing what they can do. So the first thing, figure out what your messages are that may have a problem in the workplace and deal with them. Two, stop being so judgmental. Different from does not necessarily mean less than. You don't get to hand-pick your co-workers. Three, do what your parents told you to do. Use the golden rule. Okay, treat other people as you would like to be treated. Be kind, be respectful, be compassionate. You think those things don't have something to do with being in a workplace? Try getting up every day and going to a workplace without them. I'm sure that's how the people in the trucking company felt. Okay, part of what happens when you do these things is that you become much aware of your actions, and you realize, and this is gonna trip you out when I say this, y'all, it truly really is all about love. It's all about love and the way you treat people. We're talking about millions of dollars of claims that could have been avoided because of somebody respecting another person and who they were, and not assuming that just because they were different from them that they were less than. Okay, so I'm in a workplace. I'm getting ready to take to the stage. It's a big auditorium, graduated, like a movie or something. I start down the steps, crowded, full of employees. I start down the steps, and somebody stands up in the room and says very aggressively, very loudly, I hope you're not gonna tell me to love those homosexuals, because my Bible tells me that a man laying with another man is with a woman is an abomination. I think it's disgusting, and I'm not gonna do it. Well, since I had not even said a word yet, the first order of business was, well, good morning to you too, and then I said to him, I've contracted with your employer to come here today to talk to you about some things that are very serious nature for your employer. He's worried because of the potential for liability, so I'm gonna do what I was contracted to do, and if you have a problem with what we discussed by the end of the day, you need to talk to your employer about it. Two, let me be clear from the beginning that this is America. You get to like anybody you want to. No matter what it is, I'll defend your right to do it. What you don't have a right to do is to use those thoughts and translate them into action that then gets your employer in trouble, and they have to pay for. That you don't have a right to do. Three, given your argument, you're gonna have to expand that group some, okay, because it's all going to be sin under your estimation. So let's add in the liars, the fornicators, the adulterers, the drunks, the people that covet their wives, their neighbor's wives, okay, add them all in there, and then maybe it'll be a credible argument. Fourth, you're hired, you're here to do a job, I'm sort of worried about why you're spending so much time thinking about the sex lives of your co-workers, okay, what's that about? They laugh just like you did, and he visibly relaxed, and to the surprise of everybody in the room, he said, I never thought about it like that before. That makes perfect sense. Whoa, thank you for that, and he sat down. So it works, I promise you, if you figure out what your messages are, stop being so judgmental, use the golden rule, you will end up having far fewer workplace discrimination claims, and far fewer Rosetta moments, like Notorious B.I.G. said, you didn't expect me to say that, did you? Now you know, okay, if you didn't know, now you know. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it, thank you.