Last week
I had an afternoon meeting scheduled with a new colleague. We had planned to meet at the Equinox cafeteria at Rockefeller Center, but because of all the police security in place
for the tree-lighting ceremony that night, we relocated to a restaurant opposite Grand Central Station instead.
As we wrapped up our meeting, I looked at my phone and learned that the
Staten Island grand jury had not indicted the police officer accused of killing Eric Garner. From the window I could see floods of policemen around Grand Central. After paying, I crossed the
street to catch a subway home. Instead I walked in on a live demonstration of protest.
Seeing a live protest is stunning. You can feel the weight of emotions. Bodies,
mostly white and all young, lay on the floor in the middle of the world’s most famous train station. No one on the ground said a word.
I walked away shaken, unable to look in
the eyes of the black people I passed I noticed the ironic hypocrisy of all the police officers in the station ready to protect us. The tension in the air was thick and caked onto
everyone’s faces. My commute home reminded me of 9/11 because a single emotional topic was on all our minds while we remained oddly silent.
Unlike my last column, where I buried my
lead in a bowl of oatmeal, here are my two points: First, on this day Twitter established itself again as the single most influential “platform” in media. Not only did Twitter take
an essential role in the organization of the protest, it also elevated the conversation into a revealing display of truth shared all over the world via the hashtag #crimingwhilewhite. Other social
media platforms capture human behavior. Twitter mobilizes it.
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Second, our entire industry is embarrassingly white.
I started selling ads in 1994 at Newsweek magazine. I
started my digital ad sales career in 1999 at Snowball.com (later renamed IGN Entertainment). I started my media ad sales consulting practice in 2005, which affords me the opportunity to work with
many different media publishing entities.
Here is the breakdown of my personal experiences working with African Americans throughout those years:
Number of black coworkers on sales
team: 1
Number of black sales managers I worked for: 0
Number of black people I hired when building out a sales team: 0
Number of black
C-suite executives I worked for: 0
Number of black executives involved in hiring me as a consultant: 1
Percent of black salespeople who have sat through my
workshops: < 1%
Number of black panel speakers seen at industry conferences: 1
At your next weekly status meeting or the next 100 sales calls you make,
look around the room. I guarantee it'll be a complete whiteout.
Working almost exclusively with other white people causes our racial divide to widen as a society. We spend
most of our waking hours at work. It’s where we get to know, and must learn to work with, people we would otherwise never talk to. It’s where friendships are often formed,
compassion grows, and teamwork is framed.
Close your eyes and imagine what it would be like if the conference room meetings you attend were 50% white and 50% non-white. Sit with
that vision for a few seconds.
If this ratio became the new reality, our ability to truly relate to people without the identifier of color would increase, forming the foundation for positive
change. Color would matter less when seen more often.
I recently discussed this sensitive issue with another colleague in our business. He shared a story about an HR meeting that
took place years back. After a presentation stressing the need to increase the diversity of the company, he said someone in the room bravely asked, “What’s the goal?”
They were asking what percentage or number would be considered the right mix. The question was met with resistance and awkward silence.
My answer will incite the problem of reverse
discrimination, but I don’t know how else to fix this math problem. To me, 50/50 sounds about right.