Racism and Sexism.

Attention grabbing words in this day and age.  Reality as well. 

How can we become more comfortable and honest in these discussions?  How can we affect change?

I was in Detroit last week at the annual National Association of Black Journalists convention.  Detroit wonderfully hosted the nation's leading journalists, media executives and PR professionals for the 2018 NABJ Convention and Career Fair.  Over the course of five days, there were networking events with colleagues, great panels featuring prominent keynote speakers, breakout sessions to learn about emerging industry trends, discussions to better understand the challenges and opportunities facing women and people of color in our world today, AND there was great talent to hire.

Enlightening and engaging.  Dab Gilbert and Dhani Jones were there.  David Aldridge and Jemele Hill were there.  Isiah Thomas, Deanna Nolan and Steve Smith were there.  James Brown (CBS), Tyler Perry and Soledad O’Brien were there.  The list goes on.  Incredible talent all around.  Pretty cool to be there.

The 2018 NABJ Annual Convention & Career Fair is the premier venue for journalism education, career development and networking opportunity that draws leaders in journalism, media, technology, business, arts and entertainment. Over 3,000 of the nation’s top journalists, media executives, public relations professionals and students gathered in Detroit.

I had the opportunity to not only recruit some great talent to hopefully choose Gannett as their next place to work, but I also was able to sit in on some very powerful panels.  The most riveting panel I sat in on was about racism and sexism in sports today – The Intersection of Racism and Sexism in Sports.  It really was not about sports, it really was about our society.  150 minutes and it seemed like 10 minutes.

Listening to the experiences and events that are happening (in 2018!) from noted celebrities like Jemele Hill (Reporter for ESPN and The Undefeated) and David Aldridge (TNT Sports) was certainly a sad reminder that racism and sexism continues to plague our country – every company, every school, every team in more ways than most of us truly understand.  The stories about the trolls, the hate mail, the bosses behavior, the peers – the ugly side of the world we live in today.  It was eye opening, to say the least, and I am not naïve about these issues.

As Jesse Myerson wrote back in February of this year, “… racism is not an individual quality; it is a hierarchical system of distributed power that gets mediated through people’s acts.”  What I took away from this panel was that we need all people (not just people of color) to come and work in the trenches and be there alongside progress. It’s not about being on the outside and saying “I support this!”.  It is about being in it “not only do I support you, but I am here with you, I am rolling up my sleeves. What do I need to do?”.  This is a national problem facing all of us.  It impacts someone we know every single day.

Racism and sexism is not a problem just for people of color and females.  It is a problem for our country.  It impedes progress, impedes success, impedes fairness.  Creates mental health issues, anxiety, stress, anger, resentment.  The list goes on.  It is essential for us as leaders to start taking further action to promote social justice.  Research shows that a senior leader’s actions can influence consumers and political opinion, creating a strong ripple effect. Executive activism even increases retention and recruitment within that company, as both current and potential employees feel more connected to the company’s mission.  We can no longer be complicit.  We have to act – and at a minimum, have conversations – more conversations.

The recent news involving Starbucks and their training of over 175,000 employees and store managers and shutting down 8,000 corporate-owned stores was met with mixed reviews. Some people are applauding CEO Kevin Johnson for what they called a “bold” step in the right direction while others said it was “too little, too late” and question whether this was merely another PR stunt to please Starbucks consumers and Black Twitter.  Either way, it was a step in the right direction.  Companies can always do more, but it is certainly better received when it is proactive versus reactive.

Our Go Forward (our diversity team) initiatives at Gannett are moving us in the right direction, but there are so many aspects to review and update.  And we never seem to be moving fast enough or doing enough.  We use data and feedback from monthly pulse surveys, we change processes and build inclusion into the DNA of succession planning, promotion, salary reviews, and focus groups.  We are building Employee Resource Groups covering a wide variety of focus areas: veterans to women to millennials to LGBTQ+ to people of color to interfaith.  We are training all employees on unconscious bias.  We are monitoring our hiring practices – including our candidate slates and ALSO the panels who conduct the interviews.  We are trying to build an ally culture where all of our employees can feel comfortable and safe being themselves.  But guess what, this is not enough.  We need to continue to listen more, learn more and be open to changing the ”system”.   

There are still too many people being harassed, discriminated against, criminalized and… sadly killed.  Motives and intentions should not really matter – it is occurring at an alarming rate. And if this really mattered to us as leaders, our outcomes would reflect our focus on change. 

Racism and sexism wasn’t built in a day, and it won’t be solved in one. We must demand more from ourselves, our leaders, our peers.  Many leaders avoid conversations about race out of fear of “saying the wrong thing.” And many people of color in predominantly white companies may avoid these conversations out of fear of being viewed differently, or as a complainer — or worse. But pretending the elephant in the room isn’t there won’t make it go away.  Today, minorities make up 37% of the United States population and will climb to 57% by 2060. The U.S. Department of Commerce projects nonwhite ethnic groups will represent 85% of U.S. population growth between 2011 and 2050. As these changes transform the workplace, being comfortable talking about race will become increasingly important.  As leaders, we need to make inclusion a long-term investment which includes regular discussions about why it is important to our business growth strategy. 

I think we also need to better understand conflict and reframe it where possible.  Reframing the conversation toward solutions versus issues is an important step to making progress.  We need to be realistic and expect conflict – and then listen, learn and reflect in order to make lasting change for the better.  Finally, we need to be more proactive in our inclusion efforts.  We need to ask our employees more, ask our employees when we do not have a pressing issue, ask our employees when there is NOT a major issue in the news (not sure that is possible anymore…).  Do we understand barriers to success from all employee lenses?  Do we understand the biases that exist in our culture and what we can do to mitigate those?

Finally, there is a line between political views with which we can politely disagree, and the dangerous, offensive sexist and racist rhetoric which we must stand up to challenge. Regardless of your political persuasion, all Americans should be in agreement that there is no room for hateful, sexist or racist speech.  We need to stand together on this.

I realize I do not have all the answers, but I do realize we need more discussion, more comfort in having discussions, and more honesty about what our culture is really like (in our country, in our workplace and in our personal lives).

Together.  We.  Win.

Dave Harmon
People Division
“Kindness is Currency”
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/davidharmonhr

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