Jean speaks with Dr. Myrtle Bell about the enduring value and strength of diversity.
Jean interviews Dr. Myrtle Bell, a renowned researcher and professor. She authored Diversity in Organizations
Jean 0:11
Hello, everybody. Meet Dr. Myrtle Bell, a renowned researcher and professor. She authored Diversity in Organizations, now in its fifth edition. Her book is both comprehensive and research based. If you want one resource for teaching and learning about diversity, this is the book to get.
She looks at specific groups; look at this list: Blacks, African Americans, Latinos, Asians, Asian Americans, White Anglo Americans, Native Americans, sex and gender, work and family, sexual orientation and gender identity, religion, age, physical and mental ability, weight and appearance.
Jean 4:39
Why do you think this book has been so successful that you're now into the fifth edition?
Myrtle 4:45
The timing was such that society realized we need to be investigating this stuff. We need to be talking about it, and we need something research based.
Jean 5:26
Why do you think this book has struck such a chord?
Myrtle 5:36
People don't know what they don't know. Once they look at some data -- because the book has history -- and so for every group, I talk about some of the history that really has mattered.
People know about the history of slavery, but they don't know about the history of women not being able to have the right to vote till 1920. They don't know about Native Americans and certain things that happened to them, about Latinos also being lynched.
I also have in their myths and misperceptions -- and a lot of things that we believe we know -- are just
Jean 8:13
How did you get into this?
Myrtle 8:31
I grew up in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, the Deep South. I grew up in a very segregated neighborhood called Southern Heights, and it is associated with Southern University, which is an HBCU in Baton Rouge. Many of the kids who lived there, their parents worked at Southern, my mom worked at Southern. Many of the kids went to Southern. We called it Southern High, that was the neighborhood.
All-Black schools for Black children are nurturing environments, wonderful environments. You don't get the "you're not good enough" socialization that brings you down.
But in seventh grade, I moved from Southern High to University High, which is an all-White school at LSU. I went from being one of all the Black kids to one of two Black kids in a class of 60.
Myrtle 11:29
I also remember that, in the cafeteria, most of the people serving the food were Black women. But the dietician, the boss, was a White woman. And everybody called her by her [last] name, which I know now. But the other people were their first names.
The students called them by their name and these are old people like 50 and 60 years old. Why are these children calling them Mandy and Solomon, like, what is this?
In the South, you don't call any grown person their first name, you ask them, "Mrs. so and so." And that's what you call them. I did that and I modeled that.
Jean 13:21
A lot of people when they try to institute change, they aim for everyone, they don't know the power of changing just a few minds.
Myrtle 13:37
That's what I think about in teaching -- they all won't get it. But if some get this and some get that and they go out and spread it, you know, the message gets wider and wider and wider, and that's all we can hope for. You might not change the world, but you can change parts of it, you can.
I remember distinctly being a little kid, my mom and her sister decided they were going to integrate a laundromat that was near our house. They took us to the laundromat and they started washing the clothes.
The owner came out red faced and he's yelling, and he says, "Can't you read? The sign says 'Whites Only.'" They held up their laundry, which was white underwear and towels, nothing but whites.
They figured out what to do and they did it. I remember being afraid. They kept doing their laundry and finished and left and from then on, the place was integrated.
Myrtle 15:52
I had such a good model, I learned that sometimes even if you're scared, you have to step up for change and change will come.
Myrtle 18:39
My mother also was a professor when I was growing up and our home was home away from home for international students. We had people from Ghana, Nigeria, Malaysia, China who would spend Christmas sometimes with us because they couldn't go home. Some of them would spend the whole summer with us because they couldn't go home.
I learned we're all the same.
Jean 21:30
I can see now why you had the patience to write this book, and why you covered all of those different groups -- because this is what you knew. You knew not to leave anybody out.
Jean 22:39
Which chapters were the most challenging?
Myrtle 22:55
As a Black person, it was most challenging to write the chapter on African Americans. Just going through and knowing that this is happening to people all around the country because of the color of their skin, because they were enslaved in this country, that was the most painful to write.
I would say probably the second most painful one was the one on sexual orientation.
Jean 25:43
There's controversy about whether diversity by itself is effective, what good does it do? And then on top of that, what is diversity training's effect?
Myrtle 26:20
When we think about advantages of diversity, I want to first say the most important thing, in my view, is that it's right. It's right to allow people to work and thrive and grow and contribute and not keep them down because of their race, which is socially constructed, because of their sex or gender, because of their age. It's just morally wrong.
Myrtle 27:03
Done right, diversity makes organizations function better. Diverse groups come up with better solutions to problems, more solutions to problems. Diversity makes us smarter because if we're in a group with people who are not all like us....
People think diversity is Black people. You can have a homogeneous Black group of people, that's not diversity, that's a homogeneous group, like a homogeneous White group of people.
Diversity is Black people, White people, Latinos, Native Americans, old people, young people, people with disabilities, it's all of us together and that makes us smarter.
Jean 29:54
Diversity training -- what works and what doesn't work?
Myrtle 30:02
What doesn't work is mandatory training for people who really don't want to go, who really don't want to learn, they just shut down.
I'm not saying don't institute mandatory training, because there's research that says that, if the leader goes, and the leader embraces it, that can help make resistant folk go and try to learn or at least go and listen. I do believe that people can learn, even if they're resistant to learning. They might not learn 100% of what you give them, but if they learn 3% of it, that's 3% they didn't know.
I think it helps to have the leaders go in, there's research on that to have the leaders go first and then the leaders can model, "I've gone, I've learned.”
Jean 32:56
This is the section where you talked about nondominant groups in other countries. We in this country seem to treat race as the only area of difference that promotes discrimination or that requires awareness of diversity. What's happening in other countries?
Myrtle 33:23
We can't just take what's here and apply it anywhere else. But everywhere there are nondominant groups. There are women everywhere, but there might not be Jews everywhere. There might not be Muslims everywhere.
But the nondominant group has to be identifiable, because if they're not identifiable, if they blend in with everybody else, how then can you single them out for differential treatment.
In any setting, you would see who doesn't have the right to vote? Who makes the lowest wages? Who lives in the shantytowns, those are the people who are the nondominant groups in this setting. You can go all around the world and find the nondominant groups in different settings, who doesn't have the right to vote, or who just got the right to vote, but who is harassed at the polls?
Jean 35:52
Is this tendency to discriminate to look down on, you hear a lot of Black people say that's the propensity of White people. What's your response to that?
Myrtle 36:22
We tend to prefer people who are like us naturally, but without the power to discriminate it doesn't matter who we prefer. There's research on similarity effect, and what it shows is that White people tend in organizational settings to choose White people, they'll pick them over a person of color. But minorities don't tend to do this.
internalized racism is a real thing. There are Black people who think White people are better than Black people, who think Black people are lazy, who think Latinos are lazy. There are Latinos who think White people are better than Latinos, Black people are lazy, Latinos are lazy. Internalized racism can get into our own bodies and psyches.
To answer your question about internalized racism, that affects a lot of people. I had a student recently who talked to me, it was a Latina, about internalized racism and how she was going to talk to her family about that.
She'd never heard about that. She'd never seen the research about that. But when she read it she was like a light bulb turned on in her head. And she was going to talk to her family about that and what that does to the little children in the family.
Jean 41:12
There's a tendency now, for some Whites to say they are more likely to be discriminated against than people of color or women or whatever, White males are saying they are more subject to discrimination.
Myrtle 41:37
It's not even close to being true. Some years ago, there was somebody who looked at thousands of cases, discrimination cases. They found six that alleged what people call reverse discrimination, discrimination against a White person, or a person of color, only six among thousands.
Myrtle 44:34
One of the things I recommend that leaders institute in organizations is when you hire somebody, send an email out to the group and say, "This is their background, they have their MBA from somewhere, so they had eight years’ experience in so and so company and they're coming here in this role."
Jean 45:44
What should companies do who want to have a diverse workforce, but they can't do quotas? What's the prescription to make it happen?
Myrtle 46:10
Change your sources of applicants, just change where you recruit. If you want to get people who are diverse, go to a school that has diverse applicants.
Myrtle 47:53
On name-based discrimination, you should assign every resume numbers, don't have their name be identifiably Black, identifiably Latino, where they can get ruled out of the pool.
The next thing into recruiting selection, you should really have structured interviews where everybody gets asked the same questions that are based on a job analysis, what do we want this person to do?
And then have questions that ask your background, whatever will make sure you think this person can do it. Ask everybody the same questions.
Jean 50:44
How can a manager introduce this person to the team in a way to up the likelihood of them being accepted and welcomed?
Myrtle 51:09
You might have somebody on the team be their buddy, the person who helped interview them, brought them in, be their buddy. Make sure they get invited to lunch regularly. Make sure they get their stuff all set up on their computers and their workspace.
You can also -- if you have a formal mentoring program -- assign them a formal mentor,
Inclusion is where they can bring themselves to work too. If they're a gay person, can they bring their partner's picture to the office and put it on the desk? You know, just like a straight person would bring their partner's picture to the office and put it on the desk. Can they do that?
Jean 53:23
On the one hand, we want the diversity for the additional brain power and all of that, different perspectives.
On the other hand, there is something called cultural fit. That's the person fit in with the way things are working in the organization. How do you recommend managers reconcile that tension?
Myrtle 54:02
Fit is often a code word for racism or sexism, "They won't fit in here." Well, why don't they fit in? What is it? Do you tell racist jokes? Do you tell sexist jokes? Do you tell heterosexist jokes? Why won't they fit in?
Does the culture perhaps need changing? Is the culture just something that we've always done it this way, and we do need to change it?
Something that people are wrestling with now is trying to bring everybody back to the office. There's research on work from home helps people with kids, it helps people with disabilities, it helps people with parental responsibilities. It helps people with productivity because they're not sitting in traffic a long time, spending money on gas. But we've always had the office full, well, maybe we don't need to do it this way anymore.
Jean 58:49
Because I do coaching, I literally can sometimes get tangled up in how much should the person accommodate the situation or the situation accommodate the person? You're saying, always put racism up, put the structural impediments there first, address them first.
Myrtle 1:01:46
We need to start by recognizing our common humanity, and if we can do that, that'll help resolve a lot of the problems that we have.
I would also say recognize that we have so much to learn about each other, and about this world and about society, and be open to learning.
Myrtle 1:03:59
Diversity work has made me ill. I have a chronic illness and it's related to diversity work.
Sarcoidosis, S-A-R-C-O-I-D, it's where the immune system attacks organs. Bernie Mac had it. Reggie White, the football player had it.
Jean 1:05:12
Well, I have an invisible illness also. I have arthritis. I will just flare up under stress, it's hard.
Myrtle 1:05:43
It's hard, but we can't let it kill us. That's the thing.
Jean 1:05:47
What do you want listeners to know about our book Conscious Change?
Myrtle 1:06:12
I would like for readers to know that it's for everybody.
There's something in there for you. And I am buying it for folks trying to figure out how I can incorporate it into what I do, because there's something in it.
Jean 1:08:32
How can people reach you?
Myrtle 1:08:36
They can reach me on my personal email myrtle.p.bell@gmail.com.
Jean 1:08:57
Thank you for listening. If you haven't already preordered Conscious Change, please consider doing so. You can just go to our website, www.leadingconsciously.com, and you can find the information on how to preorder. We also have what we call an early look where you can look ahead and read a chapter. Thanks for listening.
 Myrtle P. Bell, PhD. CEO, Center for Mentoring Excellence Myrtle P. Bell, PhD., is a diversity researcher, professor, and author of Diversity in Organizations (5th edition), a comprehensive, research-based book for teaching and learning about diversity. Her ground-breaking work appears in a variety of social science outlets, including Harvard Business Review. She has received numerous diversity-related honors and was twice recognized by the Society for Human Resource Management as a distinguished global thought leader. |
Questions to ask yourself:
|
We are a leadership development firm that helps people and organizations create resilient, sustainable, multicultural, and inclusive settings. The ability to lead consciously can help you gain true awareness and earn the respect and trust of others.
It’s the assumptions we have about people’s lives that are the biggest obstacles to growth, awareness, and success. We help you understand how those assumptions are preventing you from becoming the best you can be as an organization, an inclusive leader, and a person.
