It’s Time To Burn The Table
Welcome to the 70th installment of This Black-Ass Life! A lot of us are doing triple labor right now in our schools, offices and everywhere else doing “diversity & inclusion” work, so this week we want to explore the history of “inclusion” in corporate America. Also a specific shout out to Black womxn. We love you, we’re here for you and we’re sorry this world fails you so often.
Don’t forget: We've managed to grow this list thanks to y'all forwarding to friends so please keep it up! Forward this link to subscribe to five friends. And send us topics you'd like to see covered, texts from your Black-ass people, and any Black-ass anything from around the world and web.
l. The Facts
Diversity & inclusion (D & I) is corporations protecting themselves because they can’t help their garbage instincts. A history lesson.
After offices were forced to integrate in the 60s and 70s, workplaces were SO TRASH that a number of discrimination suits were filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). Companies needed to act fast because they were losing cash to people they’d abused.
In the beginning, most training focused on the law, company policies and general do’s & don’ts with some case studies to help explain these scenarios.
In the 80s, Reagan’s deregulation coupled with known shit human Clarence Thomas running the EEOC led to D & I shifting from teaching abusers to generally abide by nondiscrimination practices to teaching women and people of color in the office to assimilate.
Then Roosevelt Thomas Jr. pioneered the modern D & I we’re familiar with. He published this paper in the Harvard Business Review in 1990 to challenge companies to more greatly prioritize inclusivity.
From the 2000s through now, companies found a renewed passion (?) for diversity after realizing more representative offices literally perform better.
Why does it matter?
If the genesis of D & I was corporations looking to cover their asses to avoid lawsuits, we can conclude that it was never meant to establish equity.
Corporate support for D & I also relies on the fact that diverse companies outperform industry norms and generate higher profit. That’s nice, but again, doesn’t get to what’s really at stake when we undervalue Black workers.
Most importantly, D & I doesn’t work, and the responsibility of changing white behavior tends to fall on Black people. Studies have also shown that diversity training can actually trigger biases, make managers more reticent to hire women and people of color and generally increase hostility in the workplace.
If we are truly serious about dismantling structural racism in the workplace, we must first abandon the piecemeal approach of D & I. Simply, it’s not about creating more seats at the table. It’s about burning the table down and starting all the way over.
What can my Black ass do?
We have heard a near-constant stream from friends who have been appointed The Black Voice™ for their offices as their companies respond to the global Black Lives Matter movement. We urge you to disengage if you can and if you can’t, ask to be paid for that additional labor.
ll. Other Things
Black womxn, we love you. Cishet Black men, do and be better.
A reminder from one of yours, Damon Young: Straight Black Men Are the White People of Black People.
This is the only J. Cole take we need.
This is one of my (Mitu’s) favorite songs of all time. No joke. I love it with my whole heart: A study of Will Smith’s CLASSIC ‘Just the Two of Us.’
The only Fathers Day read we need is this thread from Roy Woods Jr.
Rap icon who is your favorite rapper’s favorite rapper Alaya “That Girl Lay Lay” High signed an overall deal with Nickelodeon.
Thank you, Alicia Keys and John Legend.
Also, y’all need to listen to Bigger Love. A review here.
Girl I like that new top know yo momma got it out of rave.
A special note: at every turn, each and every one of us failed Oluwatoyin Salau. Black womxn and girls deserve better.
Our Black-Ass song(s) of the week (Jumoke):
To Black womxn, a love song: I Love You For Sentimental Reasons. I’ve been playing and thinking about the preciousness and perilousness of Black womxnhood all week. I just want Black womxn to be held and loved and know that they are wanted.
Things we are looking forward to / things we are not looking forward to:
I (Jumoke) look forward to disengaging. I know some people are ready for COVID-19 to be over and already acting as if it is. It’s not. Instead of shaming y’all, I’m deciding to lovingly disengage.
I (Mitu) ditto Jumoke from inside my house.
lll. Text from a Black-Ass Zoom Mama
Y’all, I (Jumoke) tried to hook my mama up with my Zoom account and told her to send me ‘addresses’ so my dad and uncles can see each other on Father's Day. The lady sent physical addresses, not emails.
Stay Black, thrive and demand pay for the additional Black-ass labor you’re being asked to perform! We’ll hit your inbox next on July 6.