Cobb

Your deal makes you Group VP and GM of the Ethnic Products Group, whose total revenue is now 3% of the corporation's topline. In five short years, with a new high profile marketing campaign you have tripled revenues, blown the small black companies out of the water and increased overall market share for your parent company. That's the good news. The bad news is that a lot of the people you brought with you, all competent and professional hate the new parent company culture. Your senior managers are constantly being mistaken for mail clerks, your female managers are thought to be secretaries, and you yourself always have to introduce yourself by your title and not just your name. This big company needs Diversity Training, and so you demand it.

It happens because the CEO realizes that if his Group VP who he is thinking about promoting is not happy and comfortable, he will lose a great deal. How is it that this black woman is disrespected when she has revitalized the company? Not only that, her prominence is making the company very attractive to a lot of young blacks, women, latinos, asians and others not from the old boys network. When this company markets to African Americans and Latinos, they have real credibility. The numbers prove it. He orders diversity as part of a cultural change in the corporation.

This is what has been going on in Corporate America for the past 20 years over and over. Clairol, Kraft Foods, Johnson & Johnson, every consumer products company markets an order of magnitude more smartly to non-whites. This came about because of the work of non-whites, not anthropologial focus groups in the 'hood. Not only that, diversity training keeps white managers and their corporations from being sued. Sports metaphors don't work any longer. Senior staff say 'What's up with that?'. The culture is changed.

Nobody likes to hear it, but that GVP is an example of what we in the old school call Black Power. (gasp!) Black Power is working and has long worked in the corporate corridors, the black consumer is not condescended to. Black radio stations get big media buys, etc etc. But everyone should also know that black pioneers kicked down doors for everyone. This is our legacy and America often acknowledges it in an ass-backwards way. But the reality is what it is and has become self-evident in the amicus briefs attending this Supreme Court decision.

So let's come back to George's quote:

The clock is ticking on the diversity industry. It's up to liberals and civil rights activists to figure out how to address minority under-achievement in education over that time.

So what do the conservatives do? They are fired up at O'Connor's seeming betrayal (which will make them even more energized when the next Court opening comes up). But, the truth is that they are very much alone here. While most whites oppose racial preferences—especially when nightmares like Jayson Blair pop up—in general, "diversity" is supported across society.

What George and many others fail to realize is that the heart of diversity training was born in the efforts of corporations to get their leaders to stop disrespecting 'minorites' on their payrolls and in their markets. Corporations value diversity because it was the only way to increase their market share, it was the only respectful way to sell to African Americans and to employ them. Their tip of the hat to Affirmative Action programs is a testament to the fact that they could not do it as all-white enclaves. In other words it was blacks and women working in corporate america which changed the culture of corporate america and opened up greater markets to corporate america. They couldn't have done it without them. Why else would a corporation talk about 'respecting communities'?

This is the principle that everyone seems to be missing in talking about 'fairness' without logic in O'Conner's finding for the majority. But is that any surprise when black conservatives who work in corporations, such as myself, are considered so rare as to be non-existent?

Diversity training remains for the benefit of people who still can't get over their ghetto mentality. Anyone who thinks Affirmative Action is all about getting unqualified blacks an unfair leg up is a perfect candidate and an excellent example of why it needs to continue.