Our decision? View one for the win. Even if our clients are fragmented in their preferences, the diversity of our tiny office is already an indication of things that will necessarily come.

The world is becoming incredibly more united in its stand and I believe it is only a matter of time that people of various nations, classes and creeds will come together. Would it not be natural that our vibrant and ever changing world of recruitment would follow suit?

Years ago, at the time of the last U.S. Census, I’d written an editorial in the Arizona Republic about how it’s time to get rid of the check-boxes for “race” – guess because I come from a mixed-race family and subscribe to View #1.

I also see View #2 as the backlash phenomenon and how it operates as the politics of division in the US and abroad. The “us vs them” mentality that creeps into a society or culture – it’s usually fear-mongering and rekindling flames of past hatred by those in power and those with a financial or political interest in maintaining the status quo. Make no mistake, religion is politics and big business.

I believe View #1 will prevail, simply because it must. With the increasing globalization of the world’s economy, we’re all going to have to find ways to work together — or perish.

Second, from that time on, for me, when I see blogs like this I realize that there are still people out there who have not made the change – and that is too bad. As far as I am concerned, diversity views do not need to “evolve” they should not be an issue even open for discussion unless you still have deep set animousities that you are dealing with.

I do find Keith’s third point interesting though. If the recession is long and deep, he states, everyone will be “grateful to be doing ANY kind of halfway-decently paid work”. This, he feels, “may leave a deep mark on the American psyche”.

I whole heartedly agree. Being grateful for ANY employment is something my father taught me. And it came as a direct result of the Great Depression where he worked side by side digging ditches with dozens of others representing races, religions, and nationalities he would have otherwise not been able to appreciate.

Sometimes the simplest answer is the right one. Humility, gratefulness, fairness, acceptance, truth; each one a simple concept, each one diverse in it’s breadth and scope, and not one of them judgemental or discriminatory.

Traditional notions of what diversity is and isn’t, are both absolutely necessary to give us background and at the same time they have necessarily evolved.

Common group identity distinctions (we have all seen myriad diversity wheels if we have ever had a Diversity 101 training) are one part of a set of broader distinctive elements (some emerging and not well understood nor easily discerned) that not only allow us to have a glimpse of who people might be, but in a more substantive way allow us to more effectively manage our enterprises, innovate, and manage talent in a customer-centered fashion, more so than ever before. That is, if we seek to understand the feedback that the so-called Generations M, Y, (or what have you) shares about what matters to them, what motivates/inspires them, and what our future business productivity will be in large part dictated by.

I see a variety of trends:
1) A more tolerantly “diverse” (in the usual sense) society as bigoted geezers die. (Don’t expect ‘em to go down without a fight, though.)

2) A new kind of discrimination- “the hate that dares not speak its name”: Classism. If you insist on hiring people from *Elite and 1st tier schools, you are hiring largely rich and white people.

3) Depending on how long and how deep this recession last, you may not have to worry about having to bend over backwards trying to entice the allegedly spoiled and favored members of Generations Y,Z, M, or WTF, because they will be so darn grateful to be doing ANY kind of halfway-decently paid work. If it is long and deep, it may leave a deep mark on the American psyche.

4) Increasing segmentation of various groups in particular locations based on lifestyle and temperamental preferences, which leads to further concentration of economically advanced and economically depressed areas. (Read Richard Florida’s books.)

Cheers,

Keith Halperin

* http://WWW.Economist.com/printedition/displayStory.cfm?story_id=4148885

Comments:
At university level, the rise in the cost of education has taken Ivy League universities out of the reach of most middle-class and poor families. The median income of families with children at Harvard is $150,000. The wealthy have always dominated elite schools, but their representation is rising. Between 1976 and 1995, according to one study, students from the richest quarter of the population increased their share of places at America’s elite universities from 39% to 50%.
Even outside elite schools, students from poor backgrounds are becoming rarer. The budget squeeze on states in 2001-04 forced them to increase fees at state colleges, traditionally the places where the children of less wealthy parents went. Those children also face increasing competition from richer kids squeezed out of the Ivy League. As a result, a student from the top income quarter is six times more likely to get a BA than someone from the bottom quarter. American schools seem to be reinforcing educational differences rather than reducing them.

As recruiters, we deal with candidates whose attitudes and outlooks encompass the views you have put forth in both 1 and 2. A key concern in recruiting any candidate is understanding how willing he/she may be to embrace a corporate culture and values that may be in varying degrees in agreement or at odds with his/her values. We all don’t have to march in lock-step to achieve a common goal and we have to be willing to accommodate one another’s differences, just so long as we can agree that those differences will not be an obstacle to achieving our goals. Candidates have to understand the culture and values of a firm before signing on and the company needs to embrace the diversity of its candidates, with the focus being on can they get the job done.

Jim

Psychologists see this dichotomy as causing cognitive dissonance. Children see it as lying to ourselves. Is it any wonder that younger people are more disillusioned than ever? To think that we could possibly “master” or “teach” inclusion in a climate of overt descriptive exclusion is just plain silly.

Diversity as we have defined it in the past is becoming less of an issue AND we are becoming more fragmented over narrower and narrower issues. Diversity is not becoming irrelevant and we need to lead our organizations (or our clients) to understand the finer meaning of diversity today. Fortunately the same tools (sensitivity, understanding and communication) will help us bridge the gap to reach that promised land of inclusion.

Gen Y and Gen M don’t pay particular attention to skin color, race, etc. But they do define themselves very specifically in many other ways and we cannot afford to disregard their self-perceptions or we risk disillusioning and losing this valuable sector of the workforce.

Diversity has never been an easy thing to master or to teach and it’s not going to get any simpler.

Thanks for raising this point.
Ron