#InvestInEquity
Wanted: A Few Good Black Men and Women- The Myth of “Missing Black Talent”
Fighting to be seen, heard, and hired
Updated July 2022
When the CEO of Wells Fargo blamed his lack of employee diversity on a “limited pool of Black talent”, he forgot three big things:
1. There are 6 million Black STARS “Skilled Through Alternative Routes” according to Opportunity@Work and Forbes Magazine
2. There are thousands of unemployed Black people with traditional associate, undergraduate, and advanced degrees who can’t get an interview.
3. Black candidates are often ignored, underutilized and are a massive and virtually untapped resource of talent in every business and nonprofit.
Finance, science, and tech industries are some of the biggest culprits that have historically and continue to keep their hiring pool closed or segregated with various systems and networks that ignore, disqualify, dismiss, diminish, or eliminate Black talent.
The myth of “missing Black talent” is also in nonprofit, philanthropic and community-based civic and cultural organizations. Thanks to the social justice movement, companies, and nonprofit organizations can no longer use the lazy excuse of “we can’t find them” to explain their lack of diversity and representation. The truth is a lot of businesses and nonprofits haven’t been looking for Black talent even though we keep banging on the doors.
I know so many unemployed and underemployed Black people who can’t get interviews. It’s really disheartening that educated African American people are still struggling for job opportunities in every sector from corporate media companies to higher education. Inside Higher Ed quoted a 2017 Pew study that says only 6% of full-time, tenured professors are Black in contrast to the 14% Black student average.
I like the STAR acronym because it lessens the sting of being a smart, hard worker who’s been forced to constantly adapt, pivot, be resourceful and resilient when traditional routes to education and employment haven’t and still aren’t an option. I am a STAR — I talk about my past and current struggle in my story in previous articles. STARS like me have associates degrees, “some college” or received professional certifications from colleges, and on-the-job training (OJT) programs in addition to invaluable years of real knowledge and experience in our respective fields.
According to Epi.org, the “first quarter [Black employment rate] of 2020 was at or below its pre-Great Recession level in 16 states”. It should be noted that only 22 states and the District of Columbia report the racial breakdown of their unemployed and unemployment statistics primarily from new or current unemployment claims. People who have exhausted their unemployment benefits or underemployed individuals aren’t included.
The myth of limited or missing Black talent is wrong and feeds racist stereotypes of lazy, unworthy Black people. Not to mention, it’s hurtful to the country and a major impediment to Black success and leadership aspirations. This is a huge blind spot and deficit for businesses considering a McKinsey diversity report of 366 public companies in North and South America and the United Kingdom showed that companies with the top “quartile” of diversity perform better.
There isn’t any logical, financial, or ethical reason not to hire Black and brown people. This is a perplexing and frustrating situation.
How do you fight being invisible? There are highly talented and educated Black people from various cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds (like me) who apply for jobs everyday and don’t get picked by biased resume’ systems and algorithms or implicit and explicitly biased or prejudice HR departments and hiring committees.
I can’t speak for all Black people, but I haven’t met a Black professional who hasn’t had to fight to get to their position or had to create an opportunity just to get a seat at the table.
So America, to be clear: Black people are ready, willing and waiting to work. If you can’t find Black talent — it’s not due to the lack of talent or effort on our part; it’s because you’re not trying to find us or your hiring practices and criteria are biased.
The tech connection to bias
Technology and AI has added another layer of bias that is hard to fight and win. Most companies use HR software or online companies like Indeed.com to collect and review resumes giving the false assumption that they’ve eliminated “personal” bias from their hiring process.
Yet, according to HRTechnologist.com, “AI doesn’t guarantee an objective picture or biased-free system”. We forget most programs aren’t created by a diverse group of people. The latest Facebook, Amazon and tech company hiring data shows that 70% of the people in leadership and the “back rooms” are white males, less than 1% are Black. More bias and racism safeguards should be part of the system requirements or quality tests. However, at the end of the day, it’s the HR managers that provide the screening criteria and job descriptions — which can be biased and “skew” the candidate pool. It’s suggested that HR managers use “human potential quantifiers” in addition to traditional job qualifications like education to address and combat race and gender bias (that give STARS like me a chance to compete). The people and the systems need to be culturally competent and prove they aren’t biased. It should never be assumed that it’s not.
Spotlight on education and nonprofits
I’ve worked in K-12, higher education and juvenile and adult criminal justice systems and nonprofits and I’m amazed at how many white people I’ve met that didn’t meet their position’s credential requirements. Yet, they were hired and maintained their positions for years. Some of these same people scrutinize and dismiss Black and brown candidates for not meeting the same standards.
Nonprofits aren’t any better than the private sector and I’ll include education and community organizations to this conversation. According to Philanthropy News Digest, 87% of nonprofit directors are white and only 6% are Black. Think about that and I speak from personal experience in saying that nonprofit and education programs are some of the most discriminatory and hostile environments for Black and other people of color.
You’d think nonprofits are better with all the scholarly work on critical race theory (CRT), DEI research and trainings, thought leader initiatives and buzz word filled pledges. Couple that with the communities they (save) serve — Black and brown people should thrive, but that’s not the case. Nonprofits and education are historically embedded with racism, elitism, questionable ethics, conflicts of interests, savior complex and legitimized appropriation.
I get it. Most people find comfort and pride with their own ethnicity, culture, class, and social circle. I’ll go a step further by saying it’s perfectly normal to have cultural and ethnic pride, form civic or social organizations and advocate for your group’s needs and the betterment of your community. If you’re not targeting or hate another group, it’s ok.
However, way too many nonprofits and academic departments raise billions of dollars to study and serve in Black and brown communities. Yet, they make a million excuses why they won’t or can’t hire or promote from the same communities. Black and brown people offer lived experience, and much needed cultural competencies in knowing the best strategies in recruitment, retention, and best practices. Yet, most outreach teams and direct service providers remain low paid, part-time positions solely comprised of Black and brown people with white supervisors and administrators.
Lack of representation in Black organizations
I recently joined a local African American business organization and was surprised to see that only one Black/African American person was in a supportive role. Yet, Latino, and white people were in top leadership positions and key partners.
I want to be clear; I am happy to see Black and Latino people working together and I’m aware that some actually identify as Afro Latino/a and face similar racial bias, injustice, and oppression. Secondly, I am not saying that Black/African American organizations should be exclusive to Black/African American members. I’m simply asking why are Black people the ONLY ethnic group that is criticized, villainized, and forced to be inclusive?
It’s a joke within the Black/African American community that if you want white people to join your organization — tell them it’s ONLY for Black people and at least one white woman and her dreadlock-wearing (white) boyfriend will literally bully her way in and have a tantrum if they’re not welcomed as our great white hope and savior (because they read a book or had a Black friend in college). I’m being a little facetious to lighten this heavy subject, but this happens a lot. It’s funny, but obnoxious and invasive.
For example, there are Latino, Italian, Greek, Irish, and various Asian business and civic organizations, and NOBODY questions why they don’t have other ethnic groups in leadership roles. It makes sense and it’s culturally appropriate and a competency expectation. A person from that group who was born, identifies as, and has lived in that community, knows the history, and can authentically speak to that group’s cultural and/or ethnic norms, traditions, needs, and expectations. If they aren’t bashing or plotting against another group — I’m all for everyone having ethnic or cultural pride.
I’ve looked at other ethnic organizations and I don’t see Black/African American people in ANY of these groups as members or in a leadership role and they shouldn’t be just for the sake of tokenism or performative diversity.
Yet, this African American group has very little African American/Black representation in leadership roles, partners, and vendors.
Now mind you, I’m in an area that’s not that diverse, but I know several Black and Latino entrepreneurs and my Latino associates are part of their own coalitions and their leaders, partners and vendors are Latino — not Black or from any other ethnic groups.
#RepresentationMatters because business like everyday life is relational. You network and build partnerships with the people in your circle. For example, I reached out to this organization to network with other Black/African American business owners and I’ve only met one — the rest of my referrals for coaching and professional services were white and Latina. This is problematic.
As a matter of fact, this African American organization is hosting an award ceremony where 4 white men and only 1 Black woman is being honored and when they held a 2-hour workshop, a Latina woman and her white relative gave an African American member 5 minutes to speak.
Now, if you were German and joined a German organization and they rewarded only 1 German person out of the 5 awardees and only had other ethnic groups teaching workshops on German food, traditions, etc., wouldn’t you find that odd?
This false narrative that NO ONE can seem to find Black talent or everyone is an expert on Black/African American people and our culture except Black people is a serious problem!
I’m all for being inclusive, but when we allow everyone ELSE to advocate, interpret and tell our stories as subject matter experts on our culture and traditions we allow others to invalidate and strip away our authenticity, authority, agency and voice as Black people.
Black Hollywood
Black Hollywood is guilty of it, too. As much as I love Red Table Talk, they can do better, in having African American/Black therapists as part of their healing conversations ESPECIALLY when they’re specifically talking about Black women’s issues. Once again, I’m all for allyship, but during recent episodes, they’ve exclusively used an Asian American therapist who spoke about the challenges of Black women with motherhood and in conflict. She was the only “expert” at the table and that was not ok. There are plenty of Black or African American therapists that could and should have been part of that discussion and could speak from the lived experience as a professional Black/African American woman.
Our struggle and experiences are unique and deserve to be presented and examined by Black professionals and scholars. If we, as Black people don’t respect and expect each other to be our own experts — how can we expect others to do so?
I’m tired of everyone using the same excuse from the government to industry leaders in the media, science and medical fields, technology, K-12 and higher education, food and hospitality, Fortune 500 companies, CBO’s/nonprofits, banks like Wells Fargo and finally the arts: theatre, dance, music, and Hollywood, etc. Please read and hear me: THERE ISN’T A SHORTAGE OF BLACK TALENT OR EXPERTS! However, there is a MAJOR shortage of more inclusive professional and community-based networks, access and entry points and networking opportunities in and outside of our community.
If your professional and personal and circles don’t include Black people — never have and probably never will; you will never find Black talent.
I beg people like Jada Pinkett Smith and everyone in our community to do a better job of representing ourselves in our personal and professional lives. We can include other cultures in our celebrations, and they can help us do the work, but if Black/African Americans don’t lead and guide the discussions, and initiatives how can we expect real change?
#RepresentationMatters! Black folk step up, lead, and speak out if we’re being silenced or dismissed in our own organizations. Make room for each other, be patient and support our fellow Black talent, scholars, artists, and tradesman. We deserve a seat at every table that values good work!
Thank you for reading.
Sources:
https://www.epi.org/indicators/state-unemployment-race-ethnicity/
https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/organization/our-insights/why-diversity-matters#