Are We Born Racist? by Jeremy A. Smith

Author:Jeremy A. Smith [Marsh, Jason]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-8070-1158-4
Publisher: Beacon Press
Published: 2010-03-14T16:00:00+00:00

Overcoming Prejudice in the Workplace

Jennifer A. Chatman

In 2007 Intel released a print advertisement for its Core Duo Processor that caused an uproar. The ad, set in an office, featured six African Americans dressed like Olympic sprinters appearing to bow down to a Caucasian businessman. The general public found the ad to be “insensitive and insulting,” according to Nancy Bhagat, Intel’s vice president of corporate marketing. The company quickly terminated the ad campaign and several Intel executives made public apologies for it.

One employee at Intel, a former student of mine, told me the ad was a “big deal” for African American employees working there; understandably, many people at Intel and beyond were surprised that the company, with so many checks along the way, could have been so blind to the insulting nature of the ad.

I’ll be honest: I wasn’t that surprised. For years I’ve studied a variety of American workplaces, and I’ve found that prejudice and discrimination are alive and well within them. Though often unintentional, these prejudices aren’t just a problem because of the emotional toll they take on victims, and they aren’t just limited to discriminatory hiring practices. They can be insidious, creeping into many activities that affect the performance of individual employees, teams of employees, and the organization as a whole.

Take the example of Andrea, someone I met in the course of my research, who is a senior leader of a financial services firm. While serving on a task force with male peers, she noticed that her teammates rarely asked her opinion and didn’t really listen to any of her ideas. After she mentioned this to one of her close colleagues, he confided in her that one of the team members, whom he knew, believed, as did the entire team, that she was appointed to the team for the sake of diversity rather than because of her distinct knowledge of the initiative that the task force was working on. The results: frustration, anxiety, and feelings of inadequacy.

Fortunately, my research has identified three steps managers—or, indeed, anyone in a leadership position—can take to reduce prejudice and its negative effects: publicizing strengths that go against stereotypes, emphasizing employees’ shared fate, and selectively endorsing political correctness.

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