President Obama made
history again with his re-election. But his second term has been scrutinized by
the left and the right. In his second term, his first round of nominees for his cabinet was
white males. This caused some to question his loyalty to the millions of
minorities, women, and members of the GLBTs who elected him. When
another Black business owner asked my thoughts about the lack of minorities
being considered or appointed, I replied, “The issue is much bigger than black or white.
Black Americans have allowed ‘white is right’ to become systemic in thinking.
We, like White folks, have failed to embrace diversity or to accept our own for
one reason or another. We have forgotten to look back at history and note that
we did NOT overcome by ‘black is
maybe but white is right.’
Let us take a look at
how we arrived at the dilution of diversity by first looking at Affirmative
Action. In the 1960s, at the height of the Civil Rights movement, we called on
our elected leaders to challenge the country’s acceptance of the discrimination
of Blacks in all areas of government contracting agencies. President Kennedy
answered through his executive order, 10925, mandating “affirmative action to
ensure that applicants are employed and those employees are treated fairly during employment, without
regard to race, creed, color, or national origin.”* Although a presidential
executive order was being implemented and, in many cases, being enforced, Jim
Crow, the law of the land in the Old South did not roll over and die. It took
on a more covert way of staying a live by heavily saturating its principles of white
is right into the enforcement of the new policies.
In the Old South, Jim
Crow laws, written and unwritten, mandated where a Black person could sit,
shop, eat, or use a restroom. Also, Jim Crow laws dictated how a Black person should
look at a White person and how closely he should stand next to or walk beside a
White person. Though Jim Crow was not the law of the land in the North, the
North had its own insidious version. Blacks were systematically siphoned into
areas of cities that were expressively ‘black’ and into jobs, schools, and the
like that were considered ‘black’.
With dueling sets of
laws--federal vs. state and local--once again our country found itself at
war. Although an undeclared war, our
country was still fighting President Lincoln’s war a hundred years later.
Instead of Confederate soldiers with cannons fighting for state’s rights to retain
slaves in cotton fields, laws were instituted to confine Black people to
horrible economic conditions equivalent to slavery with an invisible master.
After the death of President
Kennedy, a new president, President Johnson addressed affirmative action. He
stated, “Nothing is more freighted with meaning for our own destiny than the
revolution of the Negro American...In far too many ways American Negroes have
been another nation: deprived of freedom, crippled by hatred, the doors of
opportunity closed to hope...But freedom is not enough. You do not wipe away
the scars of centuries by saying: Now you are free to go where you want, and do
as you desire, and choose the leaders you please. You do not take a person who,
for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the
starting line of a race and then say, 'you are free to compete with all the
others,' and still justly believe that you have been completely fair...This is
the next and the more profound stage of the battle for civil rights. We seek
not just freedom but opportunity. We seek not just legal equity but human
ability, not just equality as a right and a theory but equality as a fact and
equality as a result...To this end equal opportunity is essential, but not
enough, not enough.**
Every President has
served a racially divided country. And rules are not always the same for every
racial group in interpretation and implementation. There are racial divisions,
in spite of all of our accomplishments as a nation; and these divisions seem to
pull at the fibers of our country despite our ever increasing growth of
minorities who have become national leaders, business owners, college
presidents, astronauts, and even pest-control operators. In every genre, great
men and women from every ethnic background have defied odds to add to the rich
diversity of this nation, even electing a President whose parents are members
of two races, not once but twice. Yet the President struggles with an issue
inherent in the belief of a very large number of folks in this country: white
is right, that is, white American male is right.
Under President Obama,
the unwritten rules of how business gets done in our country have not
changed. While these unwritten rules present both opportunities and obstacles
for working with congressional and business leaders, the President must deal
with perception just as much as reality. In reality, a majority of voting Americans
voted for President Obama. But the perception is that more did not vote for
him. No matter how many numbers show the wide margin of his win, by design, the
President’s opposition rack up more air time on cable news shows than those who
support him.
Along the same lines of
reality vs. perception, because a corporation says it believes in diversity or
has a minority supplier program does not mean that the culture of the company
is accepting of diverse individuals, which includes Congress, an entity that
governs the business affairs of our country. Although our country has become
more diverse, there are members of Congress who struggle with the idea of
diversity. One reason, diversity cannot be pigeon-holed into the paradigm,
“American white male is right.”
At one time, Black
Americans were the largest minority group. When diversity programs were
mentioned, it was the code for “We do business with Blacks.” But in the last
decade, doing business with Black Americans was no longer a litmus test for
diversity. Diversity has grown to mean global inclusiveness. Women, individuals
with physical disabilities, and members within the GLBT communities are all
part of diversity inclusion. Many are CEOs or senior management decision-makers
for global corporations.
Because of global
diversity, minorities, who may not even consider themselves as a minority, are sitting
at the table as decision-makers and do not need executive orders to be given
access to employment, housing, or an education. By the way, Hispanics/Latinos
are the majority of the minority groups. But Asian business owners are the
fastest growing in our nation and are one of the highest income earners.
Culturally speaking,
most minority groups turn first to each other’s businesses for goods or
services before venturing outside of their communities. By being intentional
with their spending dollars, these communities are strengthened economically
and engender more buying power. Local power combined with fiscal numbers gives
them a seat at the table for national dialogue. These communities become
producers vs. consumers. When communities are strong producers of their own
wealth by doing business within their communities, they can intimidate or
become intimidating to outsiders.
If a community allows an
entity to divide and conquer it without much opposition, the community soon
becomes a doormat and gets very little to nothing in return from the entity.
Instead, the community should take a page out of the book of another community
that appears to have successful business practices, especially of diverse
ethnic groups, and demand reciprocity at a comparable rate. Black Americans are
slow in accepting this concept.
Some local Black
business owners rarely have a community-first mindset. In Nashville, Black-
owned means ‘last-selected’and 'less-than-your-quoted-price' to other Blacks when
buying. It does not matter what area of town one may in reside; it seems to be
the prevailing thought. “Nashville’s Black Elite” can be the worst offenders
while screaming for economic inclusion from corporate America. When asked about
this practice, “You know how we are,” is the standard reply. As far as Blacks
have come in leading the way to gain equality for others, we are often last in
helping one another to achieve or maintain economic stability in our businesses,
to support our families, to give back to our communities, and to prepare to
contribute to national dialogue, not photo opportunities.
Our national leaders
have much work to do, both moral and legislative work. Our country issues are bigger
than Black and White issues, much bigger. As the President works through years
of systemic racial biases [he must do] that are woven into the fibers of our
country, he must intentionally choose leaders who will embrace our growing
global diversity and who will practice inclusiveness. In the same vein, Black
business owners must work through years of being treated as inferior. For many
have begun to believe that the goods and services of our own people are ‘less
than.’ Hence, Black business owners [as a whole] need a new paradigm shift that
can remove the systemic thinking that has inculcated and has embedded into the fibers
of the community.
To make the shift, Black
business owners should begin to intentionally seek out goods and services of
one another. This action will help strengthen dialogue within the Black
community. They have to become educated in the ways and means of the global
marketers and use the finesse of the dialogue of the smaller community to
access the larger global market. They must keep in mind that this training is
pertinent to opening the doors to financial empowerment.
If Black Americans do
not embrace and complement each other like leveling compounds running on an
uneven floor, we will continue to be overlooked at the table for national
conversations and leadership roles and will continue to be stepped on or
stepped over. But in order to change this, we must start with the man or woman
in the mirror, not the President. Economic empowerment starts in your neighborhood and local communities not in Washington, DC.
*President John F.
Kennedy’s Executive Order 10925 was signed March 6, 1961
** President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Commencement Address at Howard University
Commencement June 4, 1965
