The uprising against police brutality kicked off by the police killing of George Floyd – considered by some estimates to be the largest mass protest movement in American history – captured the national imagination like no protest before it. Around the country, many businesses have felt pressure to show support for the Black Lives Matter movement.
Many brands have made statements about “diversity and inclusion,” but activists and consumers alike are skeptical about whether anything substantive will actually happen, reports Vox.
Vox notes that only four years after blacklisting Colin Kaepernick for protesting police brutality, the NFL recently posted messages in support of BLM on their social media – an ironic and hypocritical move to many.
Many brands participated in #BlackOutTuesday on social media, but was it sincere?
“Across many social media platforms, the black square has become a virtue signal of solidarity by brands, corporations, and influencers. To many activists and even consumers, the square is seen as a cop-out and counterproductive to spreading resources related to the nationwide protests,” Vox explains.
So how can companies who genuinely support the movement do so sincerely?
One way is by hiring a more diverse leadership team – or even hiring an executive whose explicit role is to champion diversity and inclusion within the organization. Sometimes called Chief Diversity Officers, this role is intended to increase diversity in the organization and help align the organization’s policies and strategies to diversity, equity, and inclusion goals.
There’s currently a hiring spree happening as many brands hope to make anti-racist changes at their organizations – or at least, to appear to be doing so. Can a CDOs successfully turn around an organization and make it more diverse and inclusive?
Unfortunately, not usually. The Wall Street Journal reports that while demand for CDOs is high, turnover is also high. Pamela Newkirk, a diversity researcher, notes that while these executives often have high hopes, “[w]hen they get in these institutions, they can find they don’t have the ability to effect change.”
CNBC also reports that they are often overworked and underpaid.
Major corporations in America lack diversity because of decades of policy as well as long-lasting legacies of segregation, educational inequity, and nepotism, among other issues, that can’t be easily solved by one person. So is trying to move corporate America in the direction of racial justice hopeless?
According to Toby Egbuna, editor of Dyversifi, a career insight platform for people of color, it might be. Hiring a CDO has a host of drawbacks: it puts too much pressure on one person to solve potentially decades of systemic and cultural issues, and it can be used to try and smooth over a racist past or pretend to be supportive without actually investing in substantive change.
With that in mind, it may take a broader cultural shift for corporate America to truly tackle anti-Black racism.