New Bias Seen In Workplace: Treating Race As A Qualification

MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: This is KPBS Midday Edition, I am Maureen Cavanaugh. The San Diego Unified School District is the latest local organisation to acknowledge a need for more diversity. The district wants its teaching staff to wear adequately reflect the growing nonwhite student population. But is that it really a good idea? Some doubt has been cast on this concept of racial realism, by UC San Diego sociology professor John Skrentny. In his recent op-ed in the New York Times, he warns that too much reliance on matching race and ethnicity between employees and customers, or teachers and students, could lead to a new form of racial discrimination. I would like to welcome my guests, John Skrentny author of the recently published book After Civil Rights: Racial Realism in the New American Marketplace. John, welcome. Andrea Guerrero is the Executive Director of Alliance San Diego. You wrote a book on the end of this affirmative action at the University of California called Silence at Boalt Hall: the Dismantling of Affirmative Action. Welcome back. John, as you noted in your editorial in the New York Times, this year marks the fiftieth anniversary of the Civil Rights Act. Which prohibits racial dissemination in hiring. But what you write about is a subtle form of using race as a qualification, tell us about that? JOHN SKRENTNY: I think it is important to keep in mind that there are three different strategies that employers make use when managing racial difference in the workplace. The first of these is the good old-fashioned civil rights, that is the part of the so Civil Rights Act title seven that says you cannot hire, plays, promote employees on the basis of race, sex, national origin, and religion. That law basically tells employers don't look at risk, don't even think about it, this is the law that is the basis of the view that the workplace should be colorblind. That law was passed in 1964 and came became effective in 1965, but only took a few more years after that. We started to see a new strategy of managing race in the workplace, partly encouraged by the government and part rising from the ground up from employers. That is what we think of as affirmative action. Affirmative action and civil rights are both about the employee, they're both about equal opportunity, they're both about bringing justice to the workers. Affirmative action is different from colorblind civil rights in the sense that affirmative action says we will take race into account, only to make sure that our workforce is representative of the job applicant pool. It is not about anything other than bringing equal opportunity to minority workers. But what I wrote about in the op-ed and what I wrote about in the book is a new form of managing race in the workplace, new strategy. Rather than being about individual workers it is about the organization. It is about employers using race, manipulating race strategically in order to improve the functioning of the organization. If it is a business it is about increasing profits, if it is a government employer it is about delivering services to people. It is different, it is about the organization rather than the people. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: Tell us about where we see this happening. JOHN SKRENTNY: You see it in a lot of different areas, and that's why in the book I go over the most salient paces. You mentioned schooling, that is is a big one, another big one is policing. Police Department ever since the racial violence of the 1960s have been hiring and placing officers on the basis of racial backgrounds, typically trying to match officer's race with residents of the neighborhood. But we also see in the private sphere as well. When firms are trying to develop marketing campaigns there is a widespread belief that the best person to design a marketing campaign to reach an African-American consumer market or Asian-American consumer market is going to African-American or Asian-American themselves. We also see it in medicine. The stakes are high there, there's a widespread belief that the best way to provide health care for Americans is to match the race of the physician with the race of the patient. And all of these instances, there are two different ways that race can be helpful for the employer. One is that some employers will actually believe that different races have different abilities. For example, an African-American teacher will understand the learning style of an African American child, and can develop curriculum that is catered to that child's learning style. That is the notion that this teacher will actually be better at teaching. But there is another way that employers can use race and leverage race, that is more of a signaling dynamic. In this case, there is no belief that workers will vary in their ability to do do the job, but customers, students, but or residents in the community will view the race of the employee differently and respond differently. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: That we bring Andrea into the conversation, because as John mentioned, since the civil rights act, using race as a basis for hiring is illegal. So if this is happening, and I think you can look to certain organizations and see that there is at least evidence of this, how are employees doing employers doing this? ANDREA GUERRERO: They are not doing it, Maureen, I think there is some confusion here. In 1992 the voters of California outlawed affirmative action. Obviously the Civil Rights Act prohibits a consideration of race, ethnicity, etc. What companies and government agencies are doing is seeking cultural competency. That is a legitimate requirement of any candidate if you are trying to provide services to, market to, or engage with a diverse community. You are going to need cultural competency, and sometimes linguistic competency or fluency to engage a community. As we have not arrived to the place where we have cross-cultural or multicultural competency among us, then we do rely on individuals from the same ethnic group to have cultural competency. I agree with John, we should not make assumptions that people have cultural competency because they are of one ethnicity or not. No, we should not assume that in the least. But we should be very clear about what the requirement is, and why we're trying to engage that diverse workforce. It is because our population is diverse, and to effectively engage them we need to have that cultural competency. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: Recently in our program on San Diego unified efforts to provide promote more diversity in hiring teachers, the district was clear that racial preferences in hiring is illegal. But this is how Joe Johnson, Dean of the SDSU College of education described the need for more diversity among teachers. Okay, we are not getting that clip right now. What he said is that backgrounds, communities and all of that is going to be adding to the way that they can connect with each individual student, and Dean Johnson goes on to explain the idea of cultural competency that you just did. Doesn't it stand to reason that most people who are culturally competent in a particular ethnicity will also be of that ethnicity? And John, isn't that basically why employers sort of skip a step? They sort of look for a person that looks like the people they are trying to reach? JOHN SKRENTNY: I think that is occurring. Andrea is right, they are hoping for this kind of cultural competence, but qualifications or proxy for that cultural competence is often the race of the job applicant. For example, there was a situation where there was a firm operating mainly in the South, it was affirmed that its mode of business was to be hired by political campaigns to get out the vote for different candidates. They were hired guns, they would work for anyone. They were not aligned with any political party. If the candidate wanted, they would operate in a way that would have African-Americans call African-American voters and they would have whites call white voters. A woman at the end of the campaign was let go, and she sued and said you let me go because of my race and you segregated me at the workplace because of my race. And she lost that part of her litigation about being let go because of her race, because the campaign was over and they let go of a lot of people. But she won when she challenged that firm's racially discriminatory placement of her. That firm is basically using this racial realism, treating race as a real aspect of her that was something that could be strategically manipulated. And they did it on a basis of the belief that, a stereotype if you will, that she would be more effective at getting the vote out from African-Americans than whites. When the court looked at this case they ruled in favor of the woman who challenged this practice and they said, this is stereotyping. This is what the Civil Rights Act was meant to prevent. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: In your op-ed in your book you make the case that it is not simple. Some people might say great, hire me if I am a certain ethnicity. I get a job and I can relate to the people I am hired to. But you say this will hurt some people's careers, how does it do that? JOHN SKRENTNY: The metaphor I use, I talk about racial realism providing golden doors of opportunities but also providing glass ceilings of limitations. And so, a firm that is practicing racial realism, or a government that is practicing racial realism, they will look for nonwhites to field different positions and I can offer a lot of openings, a lot of opportunities for people to get jobs. The problem is when those workers want to move out, there sometimes limited and cannot be moved out. For example, some police officers in New York City. Some of your listeners might remember Abner Louima, a Haitian immigrant was brutally beaten in Brooklyn. After the beating occurred, some civil rights leaders met with Mayor Giuliani, and said what will we do about this situation? This is a great racially tense situation in Brooklyn now. And they said, let's move large numbers of African American, like officers, actually moved Jamaicans and African-American officers, anyone who looked black, they moved him to a neighborhood and those officers stood. After a while, they said this is great, maybe some of them felt comfortable policing and neighborhood of people who look like them or shared culture, it after a while they wanted to get out of there. They sued and the court ruled, this is one of the few instances where racial realism has been authorized by courts, the court ruled sometimes police departments have operational needs that justify the use of race. However, and I thought this was a very smart decision by the judge, the judge said you have to let people opt out of this at least after a certain time period. And that was really instructional for me. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: Now Andrea, even if the employer is hiring for cultural competency and not just the way that someone books, can't that be a trap for someone down the road if you are hired because you can connect to a certain ethnic group? Shouldn't it be that companies can move you around to various areas, other areas where you might also be competent? ANDREA GUERRERO: This has to do with the job description you are hired for. They are not allowed to just move employees around, did you different kinds of jobs. They are hired for a specific job and that is the job they are meant to do, if there is another job that they would like them to do than they have to negotiate that with employee. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: For instance, if you can connect with the specific ethnicity where a certain chain store is located, and you're the manager. You want to move to a different neighborhood. Sometimes if you can speak a certain language or connect in certain ways, you will stay at that chain store. And so, the ability to move around within an organization can be compromised. ANDREA GUERRERO: We are naÔve and superficial about race and ethnicity in this country. We all need to become more sophisticated about it. When we talk about cultural competency, we need to mean it. We need to understand why it is important, because of the constituency we're trying to engage or serve. We need to include it in job requirements and hire according to it. I have hired in my organization and in my law office, I have hired people based on cultural competency that were surprises, not people of the culture that I was engaging. Because I opened the door, and said this is exactly what I need, I need you to be fluent in this language and need to to be a you to be familiar with and have experience with this culture, and I've been surprised by who has met this requirement. I think employers need to be more sophisticated about it, the public needs to be more sophisticated about it, and we need employees that have that set flex ability to decide whether they want to apply for a job like that or not. I can speak to personal experience as a Latina, everywhere I have gone, every job that I have ever had, I've been expected to speak Spanish. No one has asked me if I spoke Spanish in the job interview process, but it has been assumed. That has led me to turn around and mentor other individuals and Latinos in particular, and say you are going to be expected to speak Spanish whether that is fair or not. That is something that you will be expected to do and that is something that speaks to the naivety, the superficiality that we still hold about race and ethnicity. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: So how do we raise cultural competency, sophistication and education, how do we get there? ANDREA GUERRERO: Part of it is living, studying, working, praying with people of different cultures. The more that we interact with one another the more that we understand one another. But it is not enough to be in each other's presence, we have to have intentional conversations to get to know each other. When I was in college there were battles raging everywhere year about whether it was appropriate to have students take these courses that would expose them to other cultures. With the majority of the backlash coming from why community saying our children don't need that to be a doctor, lawyer, etc. It turned out they were wrong. We all need that, we need it in all directions. Those battles are still going on, and we still need to lift up those kinds of courses, those kinds of environment, that kind of professional development in the workplace, that lives up to intentional conversations and build cultural competency and language competency. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: John, I'm interested, what kind of reaction have you got from your editorial and your book? JOHN SKRENTNY: It has been interesting, people are troubled by this. They want to aspire to this notion that we can have colorblind society, and they almost don't want to acknowledge that these practices are going on, or are being inspired to by a lot of progressive foundations and government leaders and corporate executives. People are uncomfortable with it. But I think that it is important to acknowledge it, and to look at what is going on, and take the blinders off and understand that this is a society that is very diverse, as Andrea saying. It is hard to do diversity and I think in order to do it right, we need to be honest about what we're doing. I remind people about the studies that have been done, of African-American executives for example, who find that they are placed in these kinds of racialized jobs, where they can be displayed to the public so that these firms can show how different they are. And interview studies with these employees will talk about how they are withering on the fine, how they are not in the mainstream on the firm, not in the profit making part of the firm, because they are being paraded around on display for diversity all the time and that is where it there are limits to this cultural competence and training we can do. If people are responding to the way that employees look, that is a really a limit. You cannot train someone to look African-American or Latino. And I will give you an example, there was a study done in Houston of race and policing there, and it found that some of the Latino residents would wait for days if needed before they reported the crime because they were waiting to see some cops who looked Latino. Someone they felt they could trust. Even if there were white or American African-American officers who spoke Spanish brilliantly, or studied abroad in Mexico or something, they did not look Latino, so these Latino residents who had been victimized by crime, they did not feel comfortable talking to them. And that is where this gets really tough. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: A fascinating discussion. Thank you both very much.