On today's Diversity Inc.com
I'm a member of the diversity council in my company - one of few white folks - and I'm often called on for my opinion. Now granted I've done over 10 years of diversity work, but why are you assuming the guys on the regional councils are naive?
I'm also a member of a diversity organization that holds an annual 4 day conference, and we always try to find a frame to discuss whiteness. Last year was most successful. Again, white folks are in the minority, so the four or five women launched a workshop we called, "Everything you ever wanted to know about white people, but were afraid to ask."
It was a hit. We were asked pertinent questions, not jabs, and the most interesting question, that actually stumped us, was "what about being White brings you joy?" Everything we named was either a class thing or was about avoiding what People of Color face all the time (being stalked in stores).
I think you are way too isolated as a white guy - WACAN is forming an on-line dialogue for folks who've attended the White Privilege Conference - there were 900 folks, and probably 300 or more white folks, and all of them that I met have done their own work and are savvy. You really have to reach out more to realize you aren't the only cool white person around.
--Nancy Arvold
DiversityInc partner and cofounder Luke Visconti responds:
Comparing average business white men to people who have sought out WACAN is apples and oranges.
Yes, I'm assuming a company that doesn't even apply for the DiversityInc Top 50 has low quality training and "diversity councils" with very little structure and business planning. That's based on my eight years of experience running the Top 50 competition, benchmarking hundreds of companies and presenting to hundreds of "diversity councils."
Most white people in corporate America have no idea what they're talking about when it comes to "diversity" and succumb to making statements that express ignorance to a degree that is detrimental (i.e. "it's all about parenting" or "those people don't value education").
Your mention of being "cool" is interesting. "Cool" has nothing to do with this. If you think you're "cool" and find yourself speaking in "vernacular" or shaking hands in any way but the (white) traditional way, you may want to think again.
Although blacks are 12% of the population blacks commit 50% of the murders and a greater percentage of other crimes. Consider: black females - 6%. Blacks from zero yrs. to 12 yrs. and black males from 50-100 years commit an infinitesimal percentage of the crimes. Therefore we are left with two percent. If we eliminate crimes committed by this two percent from the U.S. statistics our country compares very favorably with all Western countries. Fact -- blacks kill 7 times more than whites kill. Fact -- blacks kill whites 20 times more than whites kill blacks. Fact -- blacks mug or commit group crime against whites 50 times more than whites commit against blacks. Fact -- blacks rape white women 2000 (yes 2000) times more than whites rape black women. In New York City, about 300 white women are raped by blacks every year BUT there has not been a black woman raped by a white male in anybody's memory (going back over 20 yrs.) Consider: Al Sharpton had to go upstate New York to find a hoax and that was almost 20 years ago. (Source NYT 4/22/05)
According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics 2004 report (released May 2006), blacks commit 54 percent of the homicides in America even though they constitute only 12 percent of the population.
An individual black male is seven times more likely to commit murder than an individual white male. It so happens that black felons commit 43 percent of aggravated assaults, 66 percent of armed robberies, 27 percent of rapes and 85 percent of interracial crimes of violence, mainly against whites (this last figure from a Justice Department report 2003). However, it's not just in the United States. The greatest dicators in recent years have emerged in Africa. People like Idi Amin of Uganda, Hastings Kamuzu Banda in Malawi, Mobutu Sese Seko, in Zaire, self-anointed Emperor Bokassa of the Central African Republic, Mohammed Saidi Barre in Somalia, Sani Abacha of Nigeria, Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe -- the list is endless.
Blacks are dumber as well, statistics analyzed by the New York Times (July 4, 1999) dispel the poverty argument by establishing that impoverished white children whose parents earn less than $10,000 a year score higher on standardized SAT tests than black children whose parents earn more than $70,000 a year. Also, nearly 70 percent of black children are born out of wedlock.
Posted by: Josh | December 20, 2008 at 05:06 PM