The Future of Diversity and the Work Ahead of Us
-A New Map and Compass for the Journey

As you know, in some parts of the country, people use the expression, "Don't be a stranger." That could be the slogan for diversity work. Diversity has to be about getting to know people. Would you say hello to the person next to you -- namaste, dobri den, buenos tardes, al salaam aleikum.
You're sitting at a table of 10---there are 45 one-to-one relationships at each table. In this room of 850 people there are 360,825 relationships waiting to happen. Let me ask you, what do you think are the chances that two strangers know people who know each other? Better than 99%.
Let me give you a definition of diversity -- Diversity is the presence and interaction of unique people -- Diversity is the acceptance of our humanity. So Diversity should focus on making people real to each other, not on labeling them. I think we need a new scale for diversities. The one we have been using was based on W.E.B. DuBois's famous statement in 1903 that the problem of the 20th Century is the problem of the color line. And we have been playing that one out with a vengeance, haven't we?
We need a scale suitable and appropriate for the 21st century. It is about our relatedness, our connectedness, our interactions, where the lines cross. We need to move from assigning people to categories to getting to know them. Diversity work has to get personal.
What is our unfinished business? Liberty and justice for all, to begin with. The work of diversity is simply being equipped to live together in the world for the rest of our lives. How are we preparing ourselves and our children for so many new conditions? Why do some places think they can have just one session on Diversity in a society where people have not developed capabilities to live and work together?
We keep learning geography the hard way, in a world with so many civil wars and border wars and struggles for recognition-- India and Pakistan missile tests, Northern Ireland, China and Tibet, Palestine and Israel, Ethiopia and Eritrea, Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda, and Eastern Orthodox Christians, Catholics, and Moslems in the Balkans. Slavs, Serbs, Slovaks. Where is our 7th grade social studies when we really need it? Don't we remember that all the peoples of the Americas are Americans? Our knowledge of geography is the worst of all industrial countries. One in seven US adults could not locate the United States on an outline map of the world. When will we stop counting people by what continent they came from? Don't we know all the continents were once connected?
"There be monsters here" said the old maps, warning that you could get lost and never be heard of again -- which means that we have to go toward the unknown and meet our monsters, maybe they are real, maybe they are inside of us.
It used to be that if you wanted to see people with different cultures, you had to travel around the world; now you can stay where you are and the world will come to you. This throws the old order of society out of balance. The world won't leave us alone. We can't have human relations on our limited terms any more --confined to our inner circle. Our destiny as Americans is to keep meeting strangers from all over the world. The world won't stand still while we work on our own problems -- it's all going on at once.
Some people are more comfortable with a wide range of strangers than others are. They take it in stride, take it for granted. Some places accept and accommodate strange differences more easily than others. We have our tribes and clans and clubs. Diversity is the map and compass of our experience in the world. Most people have a close connection to diversity in their personal life, which isn't reflected, represented or translated into their worklife. A company cannot afford to be a community of sameness while the world around it is increasingly a community of differences. Diversity has to be a business plan, a strategy for success, not a gimmick.
Last year, in one school I know about, first grade children celebrated Thanksgiving with their annual drama about the Indians and the Pilgrims. As the children acted it out, the Pilgrims generously shared their food with the Indians. What's wrong with this picture? Well, the English settlers were starving and until the Indians brought food to them it looked like they would be wiped out by famine. The turkey did not come over on the Mayflower. Check out Massasoit and Squanto. So we are still getting the story wrong, backwards. We are still teaching children lies about who they are and who other people are, about their culture, heritage, identity, and about the history of relations between cultures-which is sometimes called the"baggage" we carry.
Have you heard the one about Columbus discovering America? These stories build up into world views, political perspectives, personal biases and carry over into adulthood and soon we have people believing things about themselves and others that are false and divisive. Twenty or fifty years later, they might get an hour of what we call diversity training. It seems to be too little too late. It really takes a while to offset the repeated miseducation everyone is brought up with, the indoctrination in the superiority of a particular cultural perspective at the expense of all others. We are still skimming the surface with diversity. Programs are too brief, superficial, mild. They are too much like announcements which don't change anything. They often let people continue doing business as usual, which indicates they have not conveyed the special nature, urgency, and implications of diversity work.
When people talk about diversity awareness, I think the focus should be on self-awareness. The awareness that is needed is an awareness of how inbred, artificial, ethnocentric, exclusionary, and hostile, a work environment can be. The awareness should be about the line an organization has drawn between those who feel at home the way things are and those who are treated like aliens, misfits, trespassers, outcasts-those who are ignored and made invisible, who are stigmatized and marginalized. Diversity is a movement to redefine who belongs, who is one of us, who is an insider. It is inherently a liberation movement on behalf of those who have been left out.
In too many cases, diversity remains just a topic of presentations. I'm sorry, but that's not the way it works. We've got to move to another level. Diversity means becoming open to whatever has been shut out. And it means dealing with the politics of the workplace. One thing to look for is whether people feel free to speak their mind and their heart openly in public. I call on you to move beyond the present noise level. Look at the many dimensions of diversity -- the individual and the organizational, the public and private. The old compass has gotten stuck.
Some people think diversity came out of nowhere, but that's not true. Diversity builds upon the great pain, abuses, suffering, and the great freedom movements of our history. The USA is a very young country, and work on making ourselves safe for diversity has been going on for as long as the country has. In modern America our rituals of separateness are better developed than our rituals of togetherness. We learn early to work on our own, that we rise or fall by ourselves, as if we were alone. We learn this individually and as separated subgroups. It may be rare to come together across those dividing lines, to find we've been sorted to our mutual disadvantage and misfortune.
The lessons of coexistence are that this is not easy, it takes some effort to counter these forces of division, but it is worthwhile. I think we conclude that the work is more mysterious or unmanageable than it is. We should be training people in intercultural competency, inter-language, interfaith, interethnic, competency. This means giving people more confidence, tools, practice, and ability to cross various interpersonal and intergroup lines. It involves teaching people about listening and how to tell their own story.
Along the way, we need to do work on reconciliation and healing. Most groups do not use their existing diversities very much at all. Most groups have great gaps between the rhetoric about diversity and using it. In automotive terms, they're misfiring, running on too few cylinders, sputtering and stalling out.
I know there are people who think diversity began ten years ago when the political language of affirmative action became unpopular. In one sense diversity begins for each person whenever he or she encounters it in his or her life. But in another sense, diversity has always been there, waiting for us to make it ours, to take care of it while we can.
I am often asked, when did you get involved in diversity? It would probably sound too smooth to say --when I was born. But I was born between Auschwitz and Hiroshima. That is my birthmark. I was born into a segregated country, with its own apartheid system. That is my birth defect. I was born into the Cold War, dividing the world between two teams, the Reds and the Red White and Blues. So from my perspective, diversity has been my birthright and my lifeline.
Here I am, half my family are Chinese, half are Russian, 3/4 of my people, my cultural relatives, Jews, were slaughtered because they weren't scientifically white. I have been single married divorced widowed adopted and orphaned. I went to a one-room schoolhouse, raised chickens in the 4-H, taught poetry on Indian reservations. And people who know none of that say oh you're just a white male, you have nothing to offer about diversity.
Some people think diversity began in 1987, with the publication of a report called Workforce 2000. Some people think it's left over from the 60s. But the Montgomery bus boycott and Rosa Parks was 1955. Truman's order desegregating the Army was in 1948. Labor organizing took place in the 1930s, and 20s, and teens; think of Mother Jones. The removal of Native Americans from their homelands occurred throughout the 1800s. And the abolitionist movement came in the 1830s. And the women's suffrage movement developed since 1848 or 1792 in England --So I just say diversity has been an issue throughout the history of the US. It's not new and we're not through.
Well, its not the 60's anymore-- First, there are twice as many people in the world--if you were born before 1960, world population has doubled during your lifetime. Immigration to the US has increased and it's from different parts of the world than it used to be. We should remind ourselves that the US is only 4% of world population. African Americans are no longer the primary minority in this country. There are more than twice as many countries in the UN as there were in 1960. The fastest growing groups in the US are prison inmates, people over 65, people who used to work for large corporations, and people with multicultural heritage. Islam is the fastest growing religion in the country. The average married couple for the first time has more parents than children. Telecommuncations systems connect the world. Refugees have increased enormously -- there are now more than 45 million people forced from their homes. We've seen people land on the moon and die from AIDS. We finally realize we are intimately connected to the natural environment. All the largest school districts have majority minority enrollments: in my son's high school, the students are from 60 countries and speak 45 languages.
When I talked to Malcolm X and Martin Luther King there was a Cold War with the Soviet Union. Just as the world is no longer polarized between the Soviet Union and the US, the US is no longer polarized between white people and black people; there's a lot more to it than that.
We have learned that diversity is good for your mental health, whether you're an individual, a company, or a country. Dehumanizing people, categorically and systematically excluding people, is an unhealthy situation. Once you open the door to diversities, all kinds will come through that door.
Looking at all the work on diversity in corporate America so far, I'd give it a C-, for not following through and for not aiming high enough. My dream is to reach higher. If we were farther along, we wouldn't be asked to keep making the case for diversity, it would be a given it would be a priority it would have a bigger budget. We would have trained thousands of facilitators, mediators, and guides. We would have a clear idea of the benefits and advantages of promoting diversity. We would know the tune as well as the words, we would walk the talk. There would be more conflict prevention, resolution, and transformation. There would be more alliances between groups that are good at diversity and those who want to get good.
I think a lot of programs have avoided dealing with the dark side. We've got to deal with the dark side. "Star Wars" is coming out next month, so maybe that will let us look at that more seriously.
Some people have lived with diversity all their lives, others were introduced to it rather recently. If you have heard anyone speak English with an accent the only thing you can say about them is that they know twice as many languages as you do they know things you could learn. Diversity is a kaleidoscope, a tightrope. We segregate by economics, education, health. The largest minority in the country are people who are covered by the Americans with Disabilities Act. The numbers are manipulated. In a system where the numbers matter, where headcount organized by EEO code has an impact, it makes a difference. In the meantime, California became a post-Anglo state two years ago. Whites are now the minority in New Mexico, Hawaii, New York City, and more than 2000 other cities and towns. This calls into question the term "minority." Do we mean people who are less than half of a group, or do we mean people who are not from Europe, no matter how many they are? Do such terms even make any sense? We have to keep desegregating ourselves.
What's the profile of a person we want to work with? Someone who knows their stuff, who contributes to what we do -- whom we can learn from, who stretches us -- who is an interesting character to spend time with. That leaves a lot of things wide open. And it puts the burden on each of us to be able to assess someone's contribution and potential for contributing, and to determine whether there's anything that we are doing that might be making it harder for them to give everything they've got. Our job is to give each other all the support and tools we need to add our value to the equation, That means doing away with hazing, harassment, and hostility.
You can't sit on the fence -- if you do nothing for diversity, you are rejecting the ideals of America, all the things we teach our children in school every day, about valuing and respecting other people, about equality. So the question is how much and how hard are you working for diversity, insisting on it, building it in to your job description. It's a matter of collective bargaining with ourselves and our ideals. How much diversity are we holding out for? How much is enough?
People ask me, What is the future of Diversity --I can answer that in several ways. Diversity is the untapped potential of you and everyone around you and the means for tapping it. I can guarantee doubling a group's productivity -- but it means doing things differently. It means leveraging your qualities, making room for everyone's uniqueness, eccentricity, individuality, strangeness. It is the measure of our social intelligence--What will it take to set free our actual capabilities? Oh, we don't usually ask that. That's why I say it's an R&D project.
There are a few things I can tell you about the work ahead of you: Diversity expands your horizons-it's not US only--even in the US it's international...even if you don't have a passport, diversity is your window on the world. Doing diversity work is not like other activities you get roped into. It's not like a committee assignment-it will get to you. It will take a lot out of you and it will fill you up. Let me tell you, if you get involved in diversity, it will change your life. Dealing with diversity is real work, it is a legitimate activity to do on the job. Don't put it on the agenda if you don't mean to see where it takes you--you'll only alienate people who thought you were serious. The main thing is you have to keep at it-especially when people get upset, especially when people are uncomfortable, especially when someone says it seems negative, or when it looks like you're not getting anywhere...don't give up.
Diversity is a change project...it changes your social policies and practices, it changes the norms of your organizational life, it changes the houserules under which you work with other people--all other people--coworkers, vendors, suppliers, subcontractors, customers, dealers, competitors, partners.…
And the future of diversity is our children. In many ways, they are already where we need to be--like Picasso's comment, when he said his whole life he has been trying to draw like a child. Diversity is a form of learning, knowing and believing. It is a way of life for many people. Doing this work has to come from the very bottom of your being, as Gwyneth Paltrow said when she got the Academy Award last month; you have to bring all you are to it.
I hear from many companies they want to move from Awareness to Action. I don't know how the idea got going that you should start with something called awareness, and in too many cases, not go any further. But action leads to awareness more often than awareness leads to action. Should I say that again? We need actions for diversity, commitments, initiatives, boldness, adventures. We need to have organizations make their space safe for diversity-one way to do that is by increasing democracy. But is this just a numbers game? Of course not. The people within any group don't all think alike.
Don't make fun of my family tree and I won't make fun of yours, because if we go back a few generations, we're cousins. What goes around comes around, we say. So the world is spinning and it's making some people dizzy. We will get to the future together, because it would be too lonely otherwise -- because we would be ignoring the 6000 generations that came before us, that's right there have been 6000 lifetimes. We need a new approach. We need conditions which support honesty and kindness. But here's the thing. Honesty and kindness create those conditions. We need an atmosphere that promotes respect. But we know that respect creates that atmosphere. Be the change you want to see, said Gandhi. So it doesn't matter where you start. You don't need to wait for someone else. You don't need official permission. If Diversity is your theme you can't be short-sighted. If you do business all over the world and people from all over the world do business with you, you can't be small-minded. Diversity is our conscience as Americans.
It's OK to bring your personality to work. Ask yourself, Is there a gap between Diversity in the Workplace and Diversity in my life? In some ways diversity is just being honest. Diversity releases energy so you need to get prepared to deal with it. The demographics are more dramatic than many people realize. We are coming to the end of the White Ages in American history. The older you are, the more women outnumber men -- older women are the future of America -- if you're not going to be one, get to know one.
There are over 5000 human cultures in the world. The US government has boiled them down to five. There is a confusion in this country between ethnic group, nationality, race, culture, and language. We mix them all up. Each of us is supposed to check one as a marker of who we are. This over-simplifies everything. And at the same time it complicates things. We don't know how to count each other, or ourselves, as citizens, as members of a community. It used to be that a nation was a single nationality. We can see that changing all over the world. The USA has always been a nation of endless nationalities. Officially, we want to be One America. But that's a slogan that hasn't been earned yet.
In the Census next year for the first time people will be allowed to check as many boxes as they want, rather than just choose one. If people are truthful, there will be an explosion of African Americans who also check Native American, there will be a huge increase in the number of people who don't fit in a single small box. It's time to get personal. We've got to let people express themselves as people with multiple identities, changing identities, and as people of difference, including white men. What people have in common is that they are each unique; everyone is a minority of one. There has been such emphasis on grouping people with categorical, abstract statistics, and not on helping them define themselves and their actual experiences, communities and relationships. A lot of diversity work has been impersonal. But remember Sussman's first law: you don't get to tell people who they are, they get to tell you.
Reality is a tough concept for people who are stuck in their tracks. But the reality is that life is varied, mixed-up, and far more interesting and weird than most diversity programs give it credit for. We need to create places where people can be who they are. And that can't happen until we find out something about them. In their own terms, not in order to fit some predetermined code. Otherwise, this work is sterile and stalemated. I've said it before and I'll say it again. You can't value or manage diversity until you can experience diversity and you can't do that until people will reveal or express themselves, and they won't do that if you won't let them. We've got ourselves tied into knots over this. So, can we take a new look at how we and our organization approach the work of becoming more open to a greater range of diversities? Can we move into new territory by opening ourselves first? How can the organization change if we can't?
Obviously I feel that Diversity work has to go much further than it has up to now. Luckily we have models of the tactics and tools for successfully creating a culture of diversity. But people in various industries, disciplines and sectors don't build on each other's work, often because they don't know about it. There needs to be a better exchange of methods that are effective. We need to invest in significant learning experiences, like this conference. We need continuing opportunities and encouragement. Arrange a time, reserve a place, for conversations. This can be a table at lunch, it could be a small conference room, schedule it once a week, no matter how many or how few people show up. You've got to develop some consistency, establish new habits and customs.
We've been ignoring some things and blowing other things out of proportion. Don't settle for less than what you need based on who you are and where you are in your journey--use yourself as your map and compass. Your efforts should go way beyond the standard diversity menu--use each other as your map and compass. Don't stand for anything which is patronizing, demonizing, condescending, timid, self-serving, too simplistic, too slow, too narrow, too shallow, too neat, too safe, too comfortable: that's not going to be good for you in your life or in your work. When we accept Diversity as our orientation and our creed then we will allow ourselves and everyone else to be fully 100% human. Otherwise we sell ourselves short, leave ourselves out, settle for less. We can't afford to do that. That is our social contract, it is what we have learned from each other over the years and it is our legacy. The future is waiting for us with great anticipation. Let us go there together, with everything we've got, with all of who we are. That's my message today.


--Delivered as Keynote to first UAW-GM joint conference on diversity, Detroit, April 20, 1999