Diversity Matters: White men are often missing from discussions about diversity

Sunday, October 12, 2008

By Elwin Green, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

For some, the name of the organization that Bill Proudman co-founded may sound like a joke; others may find it puzzling. It's not because the name is unclear, but because it is so forthright that one looks for a twist, a hidden meaning, maybe even for an apology. In an age of prevarication and equivocation, it is almost too plain-spoken for polite company.

DIVERSITY MATTERS
A Special Report

Exploring efforts to build a culture of inclusion that reflects our community.

But there it is, big as life, on the home-page of www.wmfdp.com: "White Men as Full Diversity Partners."

The Web site lets visitors know that the name was chosen, in part, for its likely impact:

"We want to acknowledge that our name is provocative. We lead with the words 'white men,' as full diversity partners because we know that the way diversity has been practiced in corporations must shift to engage everyone as full diversity partners. White men have often been poorly leveraged in this effort."

Mr. Proudman's keynote address at the Pennsylvania Business Diversity Works Conference showed the same sort of disarming directness.

He began with an interactive exercise, assisted by a Power Point presentation, titled "White Men & Diversity: Is it an Oxymoron?"

The first slide showed three columns, Dimension of Diversity, Focus and Unexamined

Under Dimension of Diversity were three rows, Race, Gender and Sexual Orientation.

Filling in the blank spaces at the intersections of the columns and rows, he asked, "When we discuss diversity, who do we focus on?"

By consensus, the room agreed on the items that emerged on his slide -- discussions of racial diversity generally focus on people of color; discussions of gender diversity generally focus on women; and discussions of diversity in sexual orientation generally focus on gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people.

Left unexamined, he said, both in terms of their issues and in terms of what they may have to offer to diversity efforts, are those who are white, male and heterosexual.

"What's the concern or fear if we start to focus on that right hand column?" he asked.

The next slide showed the front page from a weekend edition of the Financial Times, the British financial newspaper. The single article on the page was illegible, but the picture and the headline were clear. The picture showed a group of white men sitting at a conference table looking at the camera. The headline began with, in giant letters "Stupid white men" and then, in print half the size, "or the true revolutionaries of our age?"

The laughter that the giant headline, "Stupid white men," evoked from the room made Mr. Proudman's point for him: After decades of work by thousands of people to create a more accepting and respectful culture, "It's OK to denigrate this group and then laugh about it."

Bringing white men into the discussion about diversity and inclusion "is an imposing and difficult task to pull off," he said, largely because of a consensus, often unspoken, that white men are the problem. "The assumption is that we're broken and we need to be fixed."

He invited audience members to examine their assumptions; to listen through an "and/both lens," rather than an "either/or" one; to "notice what surprises you"; and to commit to "one next step" to strengthen partnerships across differences, and to "celebrate the good steps you've made to get here."

Finally, he moved from speaking about the exclusion of white men from discussions about diversity and inclusion, to speaking about white men themselves. Asking, "What does it mean to be white, male and heterosexual?"

"White men are like fish in water … we don't even see the water." That is, much of what other people experience as racism or sexism or otherwise insulting or even oppressive conduct, simply escapes their notice.

"White men want to fix and solve things without necessarily understanding them." While "we live in a world that needs lots of fixing and we need more of that," sometimes white men need to work at simply listening to others, acknowledging their issues, or understanding the complexity of a situation before trying to fix it.

For white men, "Work is the primary source of identity," putting them at odds with those whose primary source of identity might lie elsewhere, such as their family, their spirituality, or even their ethnicity.

"White men think of themselves first as individuals, not as members of a group." This becomes a point of difficulty when diversity work leads to them being identified primarily, not only as part of a group, but as part of a group that is the source of other people's problems.

"White men often strive to see sameness and difference as an either/or proposition." For white men, people are either alike, or they're different, while many others see people as being alike in some ways and different in others.

Mr. Proudman offered several reasons to bring white men into the leadership of diversity and inclusion efforts. First, because they "have much to gain," both in personal understanding and in a more productive workplace. Second, because, "When white men begin to do some of their own partnership work, women, people of color and gay/lesbian/bisexual/trangendered people can do more of theirs." Third, because "A lot of white men's work is with other white men."

"Diversity and inclusion efforts without white mens' engagement is not sustainable," he said. When white men are confronted with such efforts -- for instance, a mandatory diversity training in which none of the presenters are white men -- they push back. They resist. When they do see a white man in the leadership of such efforts, it is easier to accept.

Another advantage of having white men visibly engaged in diversity and inclusion efforts is that "We can disagree vigorously with each other and nobody ever accuses us of not speaking with one voice," while members of other ethnic groups often feel that they must silence disagreements among themselves in order to present a united front.

He cautioned those who would focus diversity work on white men that implementing such a focus might not be easy.

"When you start to rattle the cage on this, you're going to have people come out of the woodwork" who will oppose it, he said, including those who have relied on traditional models of doing diversity work.

"It's not a zero-sum game, but a lot of time that's the default that it comes back to."

Elwin Green can be reached at egreen@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1969.

First published on October 12, 2008 at 12:00 am