Turmoil at ‘Chief’ raises the question: is empowering corporate women enough?
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
For example, black people are the most likely of any racial group to express the traditional view that being able to provide for a family is very important for a man: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/09/20/americans-s.... Among women without a college degree, which disproportionately includes racial minorities, fully 44% would prefer a homemaker role to working outside the home: https://news.gallup.com/poll/267737/record-high-women-prefer.... There’s lots of black women who would prefer the return of good union jobs so that they wouldn’t have to work outside the home. This is not surprising—if a career that confers power and money and social status isn’t realistically an option for you (and it will never be for the majority of people) then your other options look much different!
Whenever affluent white people parachute into stuff like this, the minorities involved inevitably become a canvas for them to project their own interests and motivations. And varying interests within those minority groups get swept aside in favor of whatever happens to line up with those of the white people with money and power. It’s bad and wrong.
The middle paragraph needs a bunch of caveats and explanations and exceptions based on our political views and media we pay attention to, but yes, right on.
White liberals in America actively and passively coopt and undermine non-white minorities in general, and absolutely the black community, specifically. Even FDR screwed black people. Thank FDR for implementing real estate red-lining as we know it, for example, while well-meaning liberals elevated poor white people to the middle class and put them in their own houses.
Yes, these things are bad and wrong. And they're also largely taboo.
That coalition politics is still powerful. Joe Biden is president because Jim Clyburn rallied black southern voters in the Democratic Primary. But to a great degree, the minority politics has been co-opted by white liberals in academia, the media, NGOs, and corporations. Any minority voices in the mix are either hand-picked by white liberals (e.g. professors at prestigious universities) or depend on white liberal donors (e.g. NGOs). Advocacy is coded as "black" or "Muslim" or "Asian" even if it has no meaningful support from black, Muslim, or Asian voters. That advocacy reflects what white liberals already wanted, whether or not it has any nexus to what people in those minority groups want. It also reflects trade-offs in terms tone, willingness to compromise, etc., that reflects the attitudes of affluent white people with no skin in the game.
And often, those efforts are downright self-serving--diversifying the ranks of corporate executives and board members, while continuing to ship the lower-skilled jobs disproportionately held by minorities, to the benefit of overwhelmingly white shareholders.
'The recent turmoil at Chief began on International Women’s Day, in early March, when a member of the network, Denise Conroy, declared on LinkedIn that she was leaving Chief and accused the group of sidestepping political issues and ghosting women of color who applied for membership. (Ms. Conroy, 51, later acknowledged that she had been reprimanded internally for trying to sell tickets on Chief’s platform to an external workshop she was running, which ran counter to the company’s policies.) ....
Rachel Hassall, a supply chain executive, is one of the Chief members who chose to leave the organization this month. She had recently participated in a discussion that Ms. Conroy hosted about the book “White Women: Everything You Already Know About Your Own Racism and How to Do Better"
Seriously. Who signs up for this? Imagine paying to be called a racist all day long, just so you can feel morally superior to others.
Therapy is important but don't discount the power of prayer and community.
Women, specifically the middle-to-upper class ones that take the wackiest university courses, outpace men in grades and graduation rates, are hired preferentially at large companies, completely own the HR departments, and therefore are the ones who determine American Corporate Culture.
It's pretty clear from your comment that you've made up your mind and don't want an actual response, but for anyone who is interested, I can give a real example.
I worked at an agency where the "leadership" was exclusively white, and the lowest paid roles were staffed by people who were mostly black. Licensed professionals were getting passed over for promotions in a way that left no explanation other than race.
Staff complained, and management (to their credit) wanted to address the concerns. So where do they go? To talks like this, etc.
You might think that racism doesn't exist and that there is no value in discussing how to fix it. For those of us living in the real world, these are useful resources.
Honestly this sounds apocryphal.
What is the type of racist that accidentally doesn't promote any black people? Furthermore, what is the subset of those racists that simply stop once they get lectured about their obviously racist practices? If they're promoting the wrong people (ie the ones that don't do the job the best) they get fired.
That said, the anti-racism training classes actually make that sort of racism worse: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/17/opinion/dei-trainings-eff...
There could be barriers like credentials that some groups may have at a lower rate. A hiring manager sees one candidate with a college degree and another without, and chooses the one with, because that is what is “best”.
Have you not heard the term "implicit bias"?
> Furthermore, what is the subset of those racists that simply stop once they get lectured about their obviously racist practices?
The ones operating in a high-turnover field trying to retain their threadbare staff. Part of it was also that there had been some new additions to the management team, and part of it was the national conversation around racism that just made people more aware of it and provided the conceptual framework to understand what was happening.
> If they're promoting the wrong people (ie the ones that don't do the job the best) they get fired.
I can't come up with a polite way to tell you how naive this is.
>Staff complained, and management (to their credit) wanted to address the concerns. So where do they go? To talks like this, etc.
And then you write:
>These are useful resources.
Are you of the opinion that corporate training events matter? I was under the rather distinct impression that corporate training events are for shielding corporations from discrimination lawsuits.
Always. There is money to be made organizing, and delivering that training. Then, the higher ups can confidently report they’ve solved a great deal of cultural and social ills at their company. They get to report it up, and also feel good about themselves. It’s overall a win-win situation.
Yes, they definitely matter. Corporate trainings provide social validation for ideas (good and bad). In my field, managers are herd animals, afraid to disrupt the status quo. Trainings can be a way to break out of group think ruts.
Nothing better than a presumptuous "you are guilty because of your skin color" assessment of a group of people.
What difference does the role make? If I said "lawyer" would that be different than if I said "accountant"?
So ... can we have the "old boys' clubs" back now, for the other half of the species? Somehow I don't think so.
corporations formed for selling shares are simply not formed for these unrelated matters
if you’re in a network for becoming executives at share selling corporations and want to be in a network for a group that does other things, then leave and go to that other network
It seems like people who have tried (and failed) at reshaping the for-profit world are unaware of what actually exists to cater to their sentiment already, social welfare and labor groups
501(c) organizations face more restrictions, especially financially.
regarding the 500-section tax code, there is a way to do anything. 501c4 and above fix most of the issues that c3's have. there is a way to navigate.
For-profit companies only need to focus on revenue if their shareholders want that. It’s perfectly legal to create a for-profit entity and invest capital for the sole purpose of spending it down, never realizing any revenue. Chan-Zuckerberg is probably the most famous example of that.
For-profit companies can also have a mix of goals, for example making revenue and profits, but spending profits on a social mission, like Patagonia.
Class is the true defining factor. Not gender, not race, not anything else. If we want to encourage equality, we need to address the class issue.
Stuff like this is just more class warfare dressed up as empowerment.
$7,900 a year and these folks acting like they're the saviours of the world, lol. To paraphrase the CEO, "We're a club for rich women and will like to remain that way..." which is fine by me.