What About White Guys?
When I first raised my hand and volunteered to lead our company’s efforts on Diversity & Inclusion (D&I), I didn’t give a great deal of thought to how strange that might seem to some people. Shortly after volunteering, however, I started to do some research, and experienced something that was new to me. In several discussion, including a D&I conference in New York, I was part of a very small minority. The fact is that I wasn’t encountering a large number of white men in the diversity practitioner space.
That’s not to say that white men don’t or can’t care about D&I. But I have had a couple of people ask me why I am involved with, and passionate about, diversity and inclusion. The subtext of the question is the misconception that, as a white, heterosexual, cisgender male, diversity is not an issue. The subtext is that diversity doesn’t really seem to apply to me.
In May, I had the privilege of participating in a panel of D&I at the Skillsoft Perspectives conference. Toward the end of the panel, I raised the issue of including white men in the work of D&I. This is a particularly important topic for me, not because of my own gender and skin pigmentation, but because of the makeup of the workforce at my company, Joy Global.
Like many of our peers in the heavy manufacturing and mining industries, our workforce is overwhelmingly male (88%) and, in the United States, overwhelmingly white (95%). Since the very first discussions we’ve had about D&I at Joy Global, I’ve known that an essential part of our work needs to include the organization’s white male majority. There are two important reasons for this:
Given the multitude of dimensions of diversity, D&I absolutely includes white men. We’re not excluded or excused because of our maleness or our whiteness.
As we work toward inclusion and equality for every employee, white men have a role to play. We need to be ready to be sponsors and mentors and advocates for those who are facing subtle and not-so-subtle barriers when it comes to opportunities, development, and advancement.
The first item is fundamental, and critical. If white men in the organization can’t see that D&I efforts include them – if they see D&I programs as being “for everyone else” – then we’ve failed before we even get started. Those of us working in the D&I space know that every individual’s identity consists of an intersection of diversity dimensions. I’m white and I identify as male. I was also born in 1970, making me a member of Generation X. I’m heterosexual. I have the advantage of having been born into a middle-class family, and that socioeconomic status carries with it certain privileges and learned perspectives that I need to be aware of. I’m married. I’m a native English speaker. I’m a Midwesterner. I’m part of the Protestant faith tradition. I vote Democrat. As a cancer survivor, I have, according to the U.S. Federal government, a disability. I’m an introvert, and I’m characterized by “Steadiness” on my DiSC assessment. And I could go on. But the fact is that is that who I am, and how I show up day after day in my workplace, is influenced by every one of these factors. They make me unique, and they shape the way that I approach the challenges and opportunities of everyday life.
Knowing this, it’s clear to me that the D&I efforts that we undertake at Joy Global need to be overtly inclusive of white men. Two of the basic tenets of our D&I business case – cultivating innovation and enhancing cross-cultural competency – are all about educating ourselves and including everyone.
So we’ll work on diversity of thought, and generational diversity, and gaining a better understanding of how we come together as equals across functional, geographic, and organizational boundaries.
That said, we also need to consider those groups who have been historically under-represented in our workforce. In the traditionally male-dominated industries of Manufacturing and Mining, we have work to do to make sure that women, people of color, and members of the LGBTQ community see us a viable, safe, welcoming place where they can grow and contribute. And the business case for this is all about talent management. If, as a company, we choose to recruit, develop, and promote in the same ways that we’ve always done, then we’re missing out on opportunities to bring in talent from some of the fastest growing segments of the global workforce. Why would we choose to limit ourselves in this way, when such rich opportunities for innovation and equity are right in front of us? True, it will require that we look for talent in places where we might not have looked before. It will require that we address implicit bias in our processes and in our ways of thinking. But don’t the benefits clearly outweigh the cost of that work?
In her book, Waking Up White (and Finding Myself in the Story of Race), Debby Irving writes:
“What I’ve learned is that thinking myself raceless allowed for a distorted frame of reference built on faulty beliefs. For instances, I used to believe:
Race is all about biological differences.
I can help people of color by teaching them to be more like me.
Racism is about bigots who make snarky comments and commit intentionally cruel acts against people of color.
Culture and ethnicity are only for people of other races and from other countries.
If the cause of racial inequity were understood, it would be solved by now…
This widespread phenomenon of white people wanting to guard themselves against appearing stupid, racist or radical has resulted in an epidemic of silence from people who care deeply about justice and love for their fellow human beings.” [1]
What Irving says here about race can be applied to gender, sexual orientation, other dimensions of diversity as well. Essentially, she’s talking about the role that those of us in the majority have to play in understanding not only how our privilege creates advantage for us, but how it creates disadvantage for others. And we need to be willing to share. We need to be willing to share resources, experience, control, and power. That’s not easy. But it’s work that the majority needs to undertake if we want to see a more equal world and a more inclusive workplace.
So what does this look like?
It looks like sponsorship of talent from all sorts of backgrounds. It looks like taking the time to mentor people even (or especially) if they don’t look like us. It means making sure that opportunities for development are extended to everyone. And it means being willing to interrogate ourselves and our processes to better understand where unconscious bias is impacting our decision-making.
That begins with educating ourselves, and so our D&I strategy at Joy Global includes training opportunities that we’ll be actively promoting in the coming months. And my intent is that those training opportunities will include and lead to conversations and relationship-building that might not have happened otherwise.
This is a journey, and it’s a journey that needs to include everyone. Because every single one of us is diverse. Every single one of needs to be included. And those of us with a greater opportunity to drive diversity and inclusion need to involve ourselves in that work.
[1] Irving, Debby, Waking Up White and Finding Myself in the Story of Race, Elephant Room Press, 2014.
