The Token Negro

What happens when affirmative action decides who you can hire.

There is no such thing as affirmative action at the unemployment office.

I n the last 40 years, I have owned and managed a variety of businesses and I have never hired someone because the government told me to. The results of affirmative action on small businesses are rarely positive. I’m not saying we shouldn’t hire diverse applicants. I’m saying if we hire them because the government said so, we end up with The Token Negro. Or Hispanic or Asian, Russian or Iranian, Indian or Syrian, even a woman.

We hired a variety of people to fill the wide range of jobs in my companies. We asked each of them the same questions, gave each of them the same tests, and paid each of them the same salary. If they couldn’t pass the skills test, it didn’t matter what color they were. If they failed the aptitude test, it didn’t matter what sex they claimed to be. And if they couldn’t read and write English, it didn’t matter where they came from.

As businesses, we have a duty to our customers to be able to service and satisfy their wants and needs — their reason for shopping with us. If an employee is not able to do that, our business will fail. How does that help anyone?

There is no such thing as affirmative action at the unemployment office.

The one thing we looked for that transcends any race, sex, or religion, is culture — how we treat each other and our customers. If they had reasonable intelligence and sufficient skills, their personality is what separated us from the competition. We could teach them everything else. That focus resulted in 85% of our customers coming to us because of word-of-mouth, someone referred them to us.

At our peak, we had 150 employees spread over 8 branches in 5 states. Among those employees were Black people, Gay people, Native American people, Hispanic people, Asian people, Middle-Eastern people, Old people, and lots of women — of all ages, shapes and sizes. We didn’t hire them for their political status or because we were told to. We hired them for their personalities and talents. But I must confess, even though our ads were gender-neutral and race-neutral, we did not get many diverse applicants.

There are millions of small businesses with less than 20 employees. Many have less than 10. When they eventually need to hire someone, they want the applicant that will work best for their culture. But when the rule says they must have 5% diversity, they end up with a token employee.

How do we fix this? While I am not naïve enough to think that no company would refuse to hire a person of color, or think women are inferior, or that old people can no longer do the job - I know we were not one of them.

I have always said, “Rules are made for people who need rules.”

I refused to operate under the guidelines of “making our quota”. As the owner, I felt a duty to both our customers and my employees, to provide a safe, fun, profitable environment. I was not going to hire someone just because the government passed a rule. In my mind, that is simply Reverse Racism. Their alleged disadvantage becomes their advantage and they become special, not equal.

So how do we fix this? Another maxim I teach and live by is, “We must lead by example.” The culture of your business, the tenor of your tribe, is going to be a direct reflection of your own beliefs and attitudes. If you were born into a racist family or grew up learning to be racist, when you start your own company, you will most likely take steps to ensure that you only hire people the same color as you. Maybe even more racists. Any rule that forces you to go against your beliefs is just going to make it worse.

Many generations of black kids, immigrants, and women, have lived through the creation of dozens of rules — a plethora of band aid cures. Yet still the problem exists, including a feeling of helplessness. If Success is the Study of the Obvious, then obviously it hasn’t worked. “It” being government intervention.

An article in Bloomberg News discusses diversity at the top. Wall Street’s Campaign to Hire Black Talent Isn’t Going So Well https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-07-10/wall-street-s-campaign-to-hire-black-talent-isn-t-going-so-well

Is it Wall Street’s culture? In the Bloomberg article, Citigroup CEO Michael Corbat says, “If we really go out today and hire a bunch of black talent and we don’t nurture them, we don’t guide them, they don’t have role models — they’re not going to stay.” “Folks are looking for welcome signs,” said Anthony Wright, founder of Diversity Recruiters.

So how do we fix it? The flip side of being raised a white racist is being raised a black racist. The culture in which the applicants are raised is the bedrock of their beliefs. Many if not most minorities, are raised in poverty and despair. They were taught they were not worthy. They were given poor expectations and maybe even poor education. If you tell a child there is no hope for the future, then there isn’t. If you tell a child, “That’s the way it is for us.”, then it will be.

Please note that when I say minorities, I’m including girls. Women in all countries until as recently as the last century and still in many countries, were considered less valuable, less intelligent, the weaker sex. And while government rules have given American Women the right to vote, the right to drive, the right to get an education, even the right to smoke in public, it hasn’t changed the minds of those who still believe otherwise.

Dr. Frances Cress Wesling says in her many speeches, “We are the only people on the entire planet who sing and praise our demeanment — ‘I’m a bitch, I’m a hoe. I’m a gangster, I’m a thug.’ If you train people to demean and degrade themselves, you can oppress them forever. You can even program them to kill themselves and they won’t even understand what happened.” psychcentral.com/blog/what-it-means-to-teach-people-how-to-treat-you/

There are far too many variables in the Environment Solution to make a simple rule. You can’t just declare, “Hire more minorities”. For decades, the liberal government has been throwing money at the problem and decades later, nothing has changed. Again, Success is the Study of the Obvious.

Why doesn’t money make a difference? Because the people in charge of distributing the money were not hired for their talents. Like most governmental departments and many charities, little if any, of the total funds go to the people they are designated to help. There is too much politics and not enough civility. Too many tax-exemptions and not enough accountability.

My companies avoided the environment problems by establishing our stores in middle-class neighborhoods — not upper class, not lower class — The Goldilocks approach. But we never asked nor assumed an applicant was not qualified simply because they may have lived in a different hood. It did, however, possibly, probably, accidently limit the variety of applicants.

We still discounted anyone with their pants hanging off their rear-ends, people who needed a shower, or swore during the interview. Also smoking, drunk, stoned, or unable to understand English were also disqualified. Those aren’t racist rules, they’re common sense and we rarely encountered anyone who could not pass the sniff test.

But those are not the applicants that Black Lives Matter is protesting for. What about the minorities who are aesthetically presentable? How do we get more of them qualified to work in America? How do we get more companies eager to hire them?

First, we need to agree on one thing; It will never happen because of a government rule! Second, it will never happen if we continue to allow adults and their spawn — of any color — to be rude, disrespectful, entitled, and demanding. Manners are the rule! Good manners are not hard to learn or teach.

Last year, a post from Dr. E. Faye Williams talked about where companies spend their advertising dollars; “…the Black Leadership Alliance, Clear the Airwaves, and the National Congress of Black Women began the campaign, RESPECT US, to urge corporations that spend millions of dollars advertising on radio programs that play hate music that disrespects our communities, and in particular, black women and girls, to end their support for such broadcasts. http://richmondfreepress.com/news/2019/may/03/eliminate-demeanment/

While this is a grand and virtuous plan, it won’t change how groups of people feel about themselves and their circumstances. When the first rap songs debuted back in the day, I said no good can come from this. But I think it’s too late now for a boycott. At least two generations have grown up in and around the culture of rap crap. They cannot be told by us or the government to stop listening. In fact, it’s become more common to see White kids, Asian kids, Arab kids listening and mimicking black culture, American Black culture.

In her essay on the blog, Medium.com, Caitlin Johnstone talks about this. She says, “We all slid out of the womb an itty-bitty helpless information sponge into a world full of mentally ill giants who couldn’t wait to fill our tiny skulls with all of their inner demons. And now everything, understandably, is fucked. That’s basically our whole entire situation in a nutshell. You can add on as many extra details as you like — plutocracy, corruption, mass media propaganda, billionaire wine cave fundraisers, whatever — but ultimately our plight is due to the fact that every single human showed up on this planet completely helpless and knowing nothing, forced to trust crazy giants to give them the grand introductory tour.” @caityjohnstone/why-everything-is-fucked-cebb03cced5f

You probably have your own examples of writers and saviors who understand the problem, both radical and conservative. Unfortunately, no one has the simple answer. An old, smart, white guy named Dr. Seuss once said, “Sometimes the questions are complicated, but the answers are simple”. An old, smart, black guy named Charles Mingus said, “Anyone can make the simple complicated. Creativity is making the complicated simple.”

Our government thinks the simple answer is another rule, more rules. And taxes. Our charities think they should just get more donations. Our businesses think it’s not their problem, if someone wants a job, just do the work to get one. Our teachers think, well, I’m not sure what they think. We all have our own stories about the good and bad teachers we had growing up. And our parents think whatever their parents thought. Or whatever their friends think. Or whatever they hear on whichever news channel they listen to.

My hope is if you read or listen or watch any news channel, you know in your heart that most of it is B.S. designed to get ratings to attract viewers and advertisers. The same advertisers that Dr. Faye Williams wants to boycott.

I read the Sunday Sacramento Bee for fun since it is the most liberal news rag in the country, and I always laugh when a writer uses the phrase, “We must!” or “They need!”, like that’s all there is, like they know all we need to know and we must do whatever they say.

But the truth, the simple solution, lies in the future and the future is connected to and driven by the past. Here again is Charles Munger, the jazz musician; “Had I been born in a different country or had I been born white, I am sure I could have expressed my ideas long ago. Maybe they wouldn’t have been as good because when people are born free, I can’t imagine it, but I’ve got a feeling that if it’s so easy for you, the struggle and the initiative are not as strong as they are for a person who has to struggle and therefore has more to say.”

Some of the most incredible, fascinating, inspiring rags-to-riches stories are about people who were born into discouraging home environments and fought through numerous odds and obstacles to get to the top. (If you haven’t already, watch the movie, “Trading Places” with Eddie Murphy, Dan Akroyd, and Jamie Lee Curtis.)

What those stories tell us, what they teach us, is that doing the hard work is absolutely necessary if you want the easy life. There are no free lunches. Equally important is change, more specifically, the ability and desire to change. Where you were born, to whom you were born, how you were raised, are simply where you are now. You can change that!

Zig Ziglar, my most favoritist old white guy from the deep south, says; “If you always do what you’ve always done, you will always get what you’ve always got. You don’t have to be great to start. But you have to start to be great. You were born to win. But to be a winner you must plan to win, prepare to win, and expect to win. There are no shortcuts to anyplace worth going.” Zig is my favorite Rags-to-Riches author. Born number nine of eleven children in a poor town in Yazoo City, Mississippi. His timeless best-selling classic, See You at the Top, starts with this quote, “Your child might make mistakes, but your child is not a mistake!”

So how do we fix this? Obviously, the simple answer is education. And communication. Which are sort of synonymous. We can lecture to the older generations. We can cajole and coerce the middle-age generation. We can entice and entertain the younger adults. But the absolute first step is to start teaching respect to our kids — respect for ourselves and everyone else.

Please note that when I say “We”, I mean you and I and our kids and our grandkids. I mean our neighbors, our friends and our enemies. I mean our companies and our churches and our schools. I do not mean our government, although they do need to be reigned in. If I’m right, the next two generations will grow up and replace the self-serving swamp that is our current government.

In my essay on Medium.com, I address the role of our government and the consequences of their rules; “…You cannot legislate human behavior. Abraham Lincoln, The Bill of Rights, the Civil War, JFK, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, Affirmative Action, Obama, ad nauseam, all tried to regulate human behavior. People are not born racist. They are taught. And in some families, they are encouraged. What happens when you try to regulate it? Instead of making everyone equal positively, we end up making everyone equal negatively…” @RockerFeller/racism-is-not-a-white-people-privilege-3fb01620d4fa

Ask any teacher, the good ones, and they will tell you that education is a two-way street. All this will be for naught if we don’t have the desire to learn, if we don’t want to change. You can’t help someone who won’t help themself. You can’t teach someone who doesn’t want to learn. Ask any addict or alcoholic or racist.

In a recent book by Jodi Picoult, Small Great Things, she tells the story of an African American woman who is a Labor and Delivery Nurse tasked with the care of a White Supremacist couple’s newborn son. The racism surrounding her riveting story is shown to readers through the different lives of each character — White, Black, Business, Government, all of them; “…As the trial moves forward, Ruth and Kennedy come to see that what they’ve been taught their whole lives about others — and themselves — might be wrong…” https://www.jodipicoult.com/small-great-things.html

The simple answer may be education, but the complications start to boil when we hear about teachers teaching anti-Trump, anti-capitalism, anti-confederate, anti-culture, anti-anything. Nothing will fix our problems if the people causing the problems are teaching our kids. If a liberal teacher or a sexist teacher or a Jew-hating teacher, is instructing a class in mathematics or history or English, and they impose their one-sided views on the students, the odds of some of those students learning to agree, are very high.

When one ideology controls our campuses, there is no room for independent thinking or creativity. If it happens to be your ideology, then it’s great. But that’s not how the world works. Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness — your definition of those three things may be different than mine. And your right to pursue them stops when you prevent me from pursuing my own.

Colleges and Universities, grade schools and high schools, have entirely too much government intervention in the form of free federal grants, tax-exempt status, unions that protect worthless teachers, and tenure that gives teachers life-time jobs with no consequences or accountability.

Teachers have the most important job in the world. Since life first formed on Earth many millions of years ago, teaching the next generation how to survive and thrive has been job-one. As we’ve “progressed”, we have allowed the government to take over the raising of our children via public schools and rules that punish parents for doing it “wrong”. The parents and grandparents and other elders in the village have become less important and less involved.

One consequence of the lack of village mentors is manners. More specifically, lack of manners. And respect for others. Kids today, as observed in grocery stores and restaurants and other public places, are embarrassing at best, dangerous at worst. Why are kids today progressing the wrong way?

According to Caitlin Johnstone, “…This heritage of madness is funneled straight into our sponge-like brains from the moment we emerge from the womb and all the way through an extremely traumatic and confusing ordeal known as childhood, after which we are handed the keys to the world and told “You’re an adult now. You’re in charge. See if you can figure out how to run this place better than we did…”

So how do we fix it? A phrase I learned at one of many business seminars I’ve attended, is C.A.N.I. Constant And Never-ending Improvement. In other words, time and persistence. Constantly consistently improving day by day, week by week, year by year. You must believe you can make a difference. You need to try — one child at a time if necessary. One Senator at a time, one Congress member at a time. One Governor, one Mayor, one Sheriff. Anyone who seeks to control or abuse or harm another human needs to be stopped, voted out, or re-educated.

“The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil. It will be destroyed by those who watch and do nothing to stop it.” Albert Einstein

Many problems we have today stem from children being raised in broken homes, broken as in little supervision, poor education, not enough education, domestic abuse, drugs or alcohol, bullying, and ennui. Asking the government to fix it is like making it illegal to sell cigarettes but not illegal to smoke them. Illegal to buy drugs but you can get free needles to inject them. Illegal to drive drunk but not illegal to drink.

When the government makes something illegal, that something becomes even bigger. The war on alcohol in the early 1900’s, the war on drugs in the ‘60’s, the war on poverty and the war on civil rights. None of those issues has gotten better. The war on cigarettes has made it illegal for minors to buy them and illegal for magazines to accept ads from them, but hasn’t stopped Hollywood from making every character in every movie a chain smoker!

No, the government is not the answer. And neither is Hollywood.

You need to get involved but you do not need to burn people’s property or maim bystanders in the street. You need to join in the cure. The symptoms are not the cause, they are simply the effects. The cause is family values, human values, manners and respect. When people with poor values start companies, we get companies with poor values, companies that refuse to hire people based on personal biases. Don’t be those companies and don’t work for those companies.

Use your voice and your feet to make a difference. But don’t be fooled by charlatans claiming the boss is racist for their own political bias. If you can see the variety of people working there, and they’re happy and you don’t see them being mistreated, then make your own decisions, form your own opinions. Do not be a follower just because you saw it on the news. The news is Hollywood — fake and greedy. They don’t publish news for free. They publish news for the highest bidder.

If you still think the government is the cure, then push to make education illegal for everyone. In five years we will be the most educated society in history.

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Thanks for reading!