Seeing Race—Are You Colorblind at Work?
Recently in a group of HR professionals, someone asked how companies under 100 employees (the size a company needs to be to complete the EEO1 demographic filing report) collect demographic data for diversity tracking.
Several people provided good answers:
Collect data at the time of onboarding
Send an anonymous survey to all employees
Collect data from other forms such as health insurance records
However, there were a surprising number of people who said you shouldn’t collect this information, or that it wasn’t necessary. In particular, one person commented to “stay out of [the employee’s] personal life”, that they treat it “as if everyone were purple and from Mars”, and that they didn’t need to know ethnicity or race to do diversity training. Essentially saying, I am colorblind, I treat everyone the same.
But we know this colorblind approach does not work—it’s actually doing much more harm than good. Here’s why:
Unconscious bias
Everyone has unconscious bias also known as implicit bias which are beliefs and assumptions held about certain groups that we aren’t explicitly aware of. They pop up in our brain even if we don’t want them to. Often our practices unknowingly have an adverse impact on specific groups due to our unconscious biases. We cannot find this adverse impact unless we collect data and examine the effects of our practices as they relate to things like gender, race, national origin, age, and more.
I speak more about unconscious bias in our hiring practices on this podcast.
Equity vs Equality
Treating everyone exactly the same doesn’t work, this is why we must strive for equity over equality. This is akin to the platinum rule versus the golden rule. The golden rule says, treat everyone the way I want to be treated, while the platinum rule says, treat everyone the way they want to be treated. Like the platinum rule, equity ensures people have what they need to be successful.
Due to an unjust system built on white supremacy and oppression, people’s experiences are different. The world is designed to advantage people who are white, male, able bodied, cis, and heterosexual as a default. But there should be no default, so how do we change the system where we favor these “defaults” or society preferred traits.
Equity provides people the tools they need instead of the same tools as everyone else. If someone needs closed captions during company meetings due to a hearing impairment, equity provides it. If we choose to treat everyone the same, like they have purple skin, there is no way we can practice equity. We must get to know people as people and support them as their authentic selves.
Data impacts change
If you don’t measure it, you don’t know your needs, where to start, or where you’ve made progress when you do begin.
In DE&I, progress happens when you set goals, and even then progress can be slow. Goals must be periodically assessed to see if you are having the desired impact.
The moral of the story is to identify underrepresented groups and collect the data. In addition to the issues listed above, a 2011 article from Psychology Today simply identifies this colorblind ideology as racist.
We can’t use the colorblind approach because the world is not really colorblind. People have different experiences based on who they are, how they identify, and how the world sees them. We must honor and value each individual’s authentic experience. When we create a workforce that not only allows employees to be their authentic selves, but celebrates it, that’s when we see people really thrive.
