In my work as a diversity consultant I often hear women and people of color

quietly talking with each other about their white, male colleagues and bosses, saying “Most straight, white guys in the corporate world just don’t get it about diversity.” And although I’d like nothing better than to refute them, to defend my straight, white brethren, I’m afraid I have to agree: when it comes to diversity, we just don’t get it. So, at the risk of falling into the trap of generalizing about an amazingly large and diverse group of white guys, I have to ask: what is it about diversity that we don’t get and why don’t we get it? Click here to read more...

Sometime during the first half of the twenty first century, a profound transition will take place in the United States: white Americans will lose their status as the numerical majority. In a nation where the term “minority” has traditionally meant people of color, this new reality will require a significant rearranging of our psychic maps, particularly for white Americans. How does an historically dominant ethnic group adjust to a more modest and balanced role? How do white Americans learn to be positive participants in a richly pluralistic nation? These questions have always been a part of the multicultural agenda: now they are coming more clearly into focus.

Click here to read more...

Many of us struggle to understand the concept of privilege, the idea that some individuals receive unearned advantages in life solely based on being a member of certain social identity groups. Some of us strongly resist the idea that we have unearned privilege. Part of the challenge in grasping the concept of unearned privilege is to shift from an individual view to a group and systemic level of seeing the world. Although difficult, it is important to engage in exploring the concept of unearned privilege.

Click here to read more...

My own commitment to improving diversity in the legal profession stems from my exposure to the experiences of people different from myself—experiences I have never had. My exposure was deep and eye-opening, and it came in two different ways. The first started in 1995, when I became a member of the District of Columbia Bar’s Task Force on Sexual Orientation and the Legal Workplace. In the course of our work, the task force conducted a survey of two groups of Bar members to probe their assessments of the workplace experiences of gay and lesbian lawyers.

Click here to read more...

Definitions of diversity are elusive. Some popular training materials that are used in businesses and organizations define diversity as "the differences that make each of us unique." That's kind of nice, but vague. In an attempt to not scare anyone, especially white males, some diversity materials are downright bland. In diversity matters, blandness won't do it. When trying to develop a definition of diversity with a large number of first-line supervisors in a Central Pennsylvania manufacturing company, a diversity trainer/facilitator came up with, or distilled, the following:

Click here to read more...

Most organizational demography research has been theoretically grounded in either the similarity-attraction paradigm or social categorization theory (Williams & O'Reilly, 1998). While useful, some of this research has uncovered inconsistent or contradictory findings. the authors suggest that these inconsistent results may arise from assumptions that members of different demographic categories will react symmetrically to variations in work group demography. But, because of historical differences in their status and the experience of being in the numerical majority or minority at work, men and women, for example, are likely to react differently to being members of differently composed groups. For more information on this report: contact the co-author, Charles A. O'Reilly III

Click here to read more...

Work done by Anne S. Tsui, and Terri D. Egan of University of California at Irvine, and Charles A. O'Reilly III, of the Stanford Business School found that men in homogeneous work units reported the highest commitment to their jobs. But, the researchers said, the commitment of white males fell off as work groups became more heterogeneous. As the homogeneous makeup of their work groups eroded, white male workers became less closely attached to their fellow workers; they had higher rates of absence and reported a lower intention of staying with the firm.

Click here to read more...