Cobb

Before I get further into this, I want to emphasize that although things were good on balance, I don't want to give the impression that they weren't contentious. There were more than a few lawsuits and ugly loud discussions going on. There were entrenched positions on both sides and nothing was conceded without a fight. However there was a substantial critical mass of blacks in management that insured that nobody got away with murder. In the end cooler heads prevailed but all was not wine and roses. When I talk about Affirmative Action as a peaceful concession to a militant demand I mean just that. I don't want to overstate my position as a pawn in this game, but the Compliance Officer was very glad to see my BWF reports. I also want to give the context of the Black Manager's Office, so I posted that from the archives.

So the black employee organizations, having established a large beachhead in Xerox Corporation, like most black organizations were oriented towards giving a helping hand to those on the outside. They raised the question of community representation. Ultimately, the aim was to force the system to overproduce. You see inside the corporation, blacks were somewhere around 7% if I remember correctly. But that was far short of 12% of the American population. When blacks were running things in one of the large sales organizations under a cat named Bernard Kinsey, there were complete blocks of territories that were black controlled. The managers had the ability to recruit, hire, train, groom and promote blacks from the bottom to the top.

The experience of those managers proved a cultural sea change for Xerox, but it didn't change the rules of engagement for the Affirmative Action program. The Sales organization might have had its own independent way of hiring and firing, but they were not using the same rules as the general organization with its structured annual reviews and standardized pay scales. But what the sales organization did know, as they must, is the importance of marketing and networking. So they quickly discovered that their networks were very different than those of the general Personnel. Imagine if you could a corporation that hadn't heard of Hampton Institute. In the Old School, such a thought is unthinkable. And so at the urging of the black employee organizations the question of aggressive recruitment was brought forward.

Understanding the dynamic of overproduction and underproduction of Affirmative Action is crucial. The fact that we knew where the glass cielings were as well as the future prospects for minority representation did not alter the rate of hirings and firings. The system in place for the general corporation worked at one pace, and for the sales organization at another pace. The efforts of blacks in the corporation to influence blacks on the outside in order to prepare them (who wants slackers hired on your rep?) for entry level into the appropriate departments was a constant challenge. Affirmative Action on the inside was hard fought equilibrium, yet there were still many opportunities for improvement. Despite the desires on all sides to do what was on the table (BWF) and bargain against what was still off the table (Aggressive Recruitment) all the parties were subject to the fortunes of the corporation itself. If they had a bad quarter, or were losing money against the Yen (we saw a lot of that), or went through reorganizations, such events completely changed the rate of hiring and reduction in force.

It became abundantly clear to me that Affirmative Action was only going to work in an expanding economy, because when it came to hiring people, there wasn't much objection. But to even suggest that when it came to firing, whites would be fired first to hit the BWF target (even though it happened), people went ballistic. I began to appreciate Malcolm's position more and more. Affirmative Action is often little more than window dressing. Only when you control the business is real change made. Kinsey demonstrated that. College admissions was a walk in the park compared hiring and firing on the job, and even at this level, very few departments were going to reach parity for years. I had quantified the whole thing. And let's not even go there when it comes to blacks vs women and 'are Asians a minority' and blacks vs 'other' minorities.

So when I talk about the very limited ability for Affirmative Action to make a material dent in the lives of African Americans in the aggregate, I say so from the perspective of the insider. I and my colleagues were over in the Inglewood, CA school district teaching night classes in computer literacy. We had to look in those people's eyes and make promises about work over in El Segundo - us with two and three years of seniority. Each one teach one? It's more like teach 50 and hope one of them makes it. Not my cup of tea, especially considering what I'd seen of corporate politics.

That doesn't change the fact that there were and still are a lot folks who can absolutely benefit from the leg up. Nothing can take away from the value of the job in a great company like Xerox was and still very likely is. What I think many people don't realize is that 50 to 1 (maybe I exaggerate) ratio and all the blackfolks who are still waiting on promises we made, black and white, based on the productivity of Affirmative Action at companies like Xerox. It's hard for people to reconcile (or admit) that many of us who zipped through and excelled needed it and there are still those who need it just as badly.

Today, I cannot imagine that the political will of Americans to deal with the complexity of Affirmative Action is sustainable. They look at a guy like me with two car garage and 6 computers in the house and say Hell No. But the guys I grew up with never got their shot. There's a lot of truth-telling that people still don't want to do, like admit the truth that the first generation was cherry-picked and that we ignored the Second World. Like admit the truth that there was often demand without supply. Like admit the truth that only when blacks were 30% of an organization did real, lasting and sustained change happen. Like admit the truth that a less than effective status quo was often a hell of a lot better than a fighting for more. Like admit that there are still millions of blacks and others who need Affirmative Action just as much as 30 years ago. Like admit the fact that Asians often played both sides of the game. Like admit the fact that blacks often bogarded the whole process and judged it based on narrow self-interest. Like admit the fact that white women often bogarded the whole process and got away with it.

Still on the whole this struggle has made American corporations inestimably more robust and has made our society a great deal better equipped to handle upheaval. Not so much of the reasons often quoted in Diversity arguments, but because in the end we had to make it all happen inside the context of the shared goals of the business. I think blacks and whites have learned the most, having been the most entrenched and bitter rivals and that is why our concerns still dominate the thinking and dialog on these matters.

Equality is impossible. Equilibrium changes dynamically. Equity builds over time. Equity becomes inertia, and soon somebody else is knocking at the door.

I've got a little off the point of 'cultural equilibrium'; let me try to close. The first generation of Affirmative Action beneficiaries, engaged as they were in struggles to integrate bore a lot of the burden for their bretheren on the outside. We were the ones who decided to answer our office phones with discernable accents, just to make the point that we were still black enough to check your shit. We were the ones who dared put "What's up with that?" into the white collar lexicon. We were the black men who patiently explained that shaving every day was not an option. I'd say we invented Casual Friday. But the point is now we have changed the texture of what goes in corporate America that we've made it harder to see what's so good about continuing Affirmative Action's unfinished business. Don't get me wrong, I don't expect to be in any way implying that we've stereotypically made corporations less uptight - we've broadened the ways and means of communicating and truly diversified management practices.. I cannot be exhaustive by any stretch or even think of a broad categorization of the changes attributable to inclusion. But the change is real. Look at any corporate website, the black face is there, the woman's face is there. It looks like a fait accompli. We are at a cultural equilibrium - BMW commercials play hiphop in the background. Cadillac commercials play jazz.

Equality is an illusive goal. We are engaged in a struggle for it. The question is whether our perceptions about what we think we can do are in line with the material supply and demand. How tenuous is the balance we have achieved or failed to achieve? What factors affect that percieved balance, and is that balance even real? How much slack is in the system? What incentives do people have to contribute? Is conflict always destructive? What do we upset on the way to a greater goal? How soon can we get there? How many people can get there? How long will it take? What are the overall limiting factors? How much can we deal with overproduction or underproduction? Since I started my career in Decision Support putting numbers (but not quotas or timetables) on the most contentious of issues, I am particularly aware when black vs white comparisons evade other factors in what demands a multidimensional analysis complete with correlations, trends and moments. Now I hope I've passed on some of that complexity to you.