Thread by @bopinion

A lot of companies say they stand in solidarity with black Americans and oppose racism.

Super, glad to hear it. But what’s the racial makeup of your board? Who succeeds in your organization? Who gets promoted? bloom.bg/3d0qxH1

The display of empathy is a good first step, but it’s time for corporations to do more.

The experience of black professional women diverges dramatically from that of white men bloom.bg/3d0qxH1

Only 15% of white male architects feel they have to work twice as hard to get the same level of recognition as their colleagues; 71% of black women do.

There’s plenty of hard data out there to show that black women’s perceptions are correct bloom.bg/3d0qxH1

Perhaps not surprisingly, black professional women are more likely than any other group of women to say they are treated unfairly with respect to:

🤝Hiring
📋Assignments
⬆️Promotions bloom.bg/3d0qxH1

Office politics also are more complicated for black women.

Organizations accept a narrower range of behavior from black women, who are the group most likely to report pushback for showing anger bloom.bg/3d0qxH1

The workplace is lonelier for black women. In a survey of science professors:

➡️76% of all women felt that women support other women
➡️56% of black women agreed

One biologist described her experience as isolating: “You don’t know who you can trust” bloom.bg/3d0qxH1

There’s been a lot of corporate hand wringing about how hard it is to produce a level playing field, spurred by research that shows that most diversity initiatives are ineffective.

It’s not that hard bloom.bg/3d0qxH1

If a business had a problem with sales, they would gather the evidence, establish metrics, and keep trying different things until it achieved its goals.

That same data-driven, experimental approach can be used to fight racism and sexism in the workplace bloom.bg/3d0qxH1

There’s 40 years of social science data documenting the patterns of bias that affect women and people of color.

Use this data to pinpoint where bias plays out in business contexts and then interrupt that bias with new, evidence-based processes bloom.bg/3d0qxH1

Tweaks to hiring, evaluations, and other HR systems are called “bias interrupters.”

They don’t require changing how people think, as so much implicit bias training tries (and fails) to do. Instead, they interrupt bias by changing business routines bloom.bg/3d0qxH1

A company facing diversity challenges in hiring should be keeping metrics:

➡️Tacking the demography of the initial applicants
➡️Monitoring which resumes get to the top of the pile
➡️Logging who gets interviewed and who gets offers bloom.bg/3d0qxH1

Knowing exactly where underrepresented candidates are getting pushed out of the process matters.

The fix for diversifying the initial pool is very different from the fix when only well-connected white men are getting high marks for interviews bloom.bg/3d0qxH1

Changing these business systems is how we turn lofty CEO statements into real progress.

White-led organizations feel uncomfortable about racism. But this is not about white people’s emotions. This is about finally delivering on racial equality bloom.bg/3d0qxH1