Even as racial barriers continue to fall, progress for African-Americans over all has remained slow — and in some cases appears to be stalling.
And this surprises who?
“You don’t want to be a diversity officer who only buys tables at events and seats people,” Ms. Higgins said recently. “It’s about recruiting and inclusion and training and development, with substantive work assignments.”
See how in an article discussing the lack of 'racial diversity" the person responsible here is responsible for "diversity"? You may ask why that's a big deal since it's diversity. Remember that Affirmative Action, the ball that started the whole diversity thing rolling, was meant to be a means for black folks to get into positions with companies that previously barred them. Then everybody who was not a white male, excuse me, white, heterosexual male got on board.
If the NY Times wanted to address what I believe is the number ONE reason for the "stalling" of blacks in various companies they ought to look no further than the number ONE beneficiary of Affirmative Action policies:
White women.
I would put down cold hard cash in a bet of what the percentage of the companies discussed in the article have had a near exponential increase in the number of white women (or women in general) while the "stagnation" or "reversal" of African-Americans.
Secondly, I said right at the election of Barak Obama that Affirmative Action as a policy was on its deathbed.
There’s no question there’s been some pullback,” said Ms. Tatum, who works in San Antonio. “There are some firms that look at what they have done, they look at President Obama, and they say we’re there.”
After all once you have an African-American holder of the highest government office in the land, you are hard pressed to make "I didn't get it because I was black" argument. The rebut will go something like this: What have you
done? What is wrong with you? If Obama can...
Lastly though we have this:
erald Roberts, a black lawyer who was a partner at Thompson & Knight before leaving in 2010, said that social relationships left some black lawyers at a distance from their white colleagues and potential clients. “For the most part, they don’t go to church together on Sunday enough, they don’t have dinner together enough, and they don’t play enough golf together to develop sufficiently strong relationships of trust and confidence,” he said.
Well why not start and do business with those persons who you DO gold, church and dine with? What's that? They don't have the kind of business you want? They don't have the deep pockets? And why is that? Oh right, integration. Black folks being hell bent on being where the white folks are rather than build their own. I'm not saying to do exclusive business with African-Americans but you do like everybody else: Start in your own yard and expand from there. Instead of this:
“Being an equity partner means you’ve arrived, that you have clout,”
Up and take those client to a black run firm, be equity partner and arrive with the next generation in tow and spread the clout.
