When Your Employee Makes Racist Comments, You Should…

Photo: Los Angeles Times

What do you do when your employee makes racists remarks?What is required for recompence?Come take this walk with me.

Shaun Harper, an author I enjoy reading, shared a Forbes piece on the microcosm happening w/ the L.A. City Council racist recording leak.

"This latest failure to properly address public outrage about racism isn’t exclusive to one city council. It presents a learning opportunity for leaders and organizations across industries."

While Shaun graciously tells leaders the "what" to do, when an employee makes racist remarks, I’m going to impress to teams "how" to do it: swiftly.

1. Separate. Understanding comes later.

Racist employee? Fire them. The concern with elected officials is that their role lacks an ethical clause that makes it more possible for them to be fired by their constituency. Public servants, serve. They are employed — meaning paid — by voters to serve.

They are employees.

They receive benefits.

Yet, we have little sway over their performance once they are hired. That is entirely a systemic challenge. I’ll tell you where it is not a system challenge: in the private sector.

Where boards and appointed leaders can control corporate policy, they must protect their companies and clients from racism by separation. Understanding comes later.

Why Amputation Must Occur

Okay, so amputation is a strong word but that’s what the separation must be: the removal of an ineffective limb (I’ll discuss this in a future post about Ye West). Retaining the employee, or limb, affects the entire system’s performance. The leaders performance is tied to the system’s performance.

Offended persons are not required to be understanding of hate, bigotry, political violance, or the deprivation of their inalienable rights. Especially, if you work for me. In what universe does one need to be “understood” when breaking corporate policy? Yet, we so often hear about apologies and discourse. Racism is a toxic fruit from a poisoned tree. Cut the entire branch off, swiftly. Medicate the tree, later.

“To realize our nation’s promise of being a place for liberty and justice for all, we must acknowledge and address the systemic racism and white supremacy that have been with us since our country’s founding and continue to persist in our laws, our policies and our lives to this day,” said Senator Booker.

It is systemic. And because it is systemic, we cannot treat the system while the cancer is still present. We are not talking about a stage 1 discovery of malignancy. This is our home of America. The malignancy of hate runs deep, is evident, and is advanced.

2. Stay Ready. Who is training you to be anti-racist?

The lack of training in anti-racist intolerance is creating a dangerous hesitation to act. One that leaves marginalized ethnic groups as victims.

And hesitation, while it may be forgiven, will not be forgotten. We saw this with the Uvalde school shooting in Texas. In reverse, we see the urgency to not hesitate to respond to natural disasters through constant lobbying for preparedness from federal agencies like FEMA.

Who’s preparing you to act swiftly?In the body of an immensely connected age, hesitation is tolerance. It occurs because a leader or group of leaders are not trained. It costs lives and revenue.

Our United States Military train constantly to address natural and man-made threats. “Rigorous, realistic training is key to military readiness,” according to the US Government Accountability Office.

They continue to explain that all U.S. military forces conduct frequent training exercises to hone and maintain their war-fighting skills. Combat units stationed outside the continental United States, while able to meet many of their training requirements, face constraints. Training constraints cause adverse effects, including requiring workarounds that can breed bad habits affecting combat performance. Not my words, but the U.S. Government.

The desire to talk out the cancer exposes consumers, society, and organizations to the terrifying complacency of tolerating hate.

3. Act. Action defines position.

If your initial thought is to serve someone who is an offender of racist policy (hopefully, you’ve moved past dialogue and have antiracism policies) by treating them instead of the system you are charged to serve, you have a serious moral and potentially legal problem.

Why are you not running to protect your harmed employees, your fractured work culture, or your mass constituency? The distress and distraction experienced by your power-lending stakeholders will not allow room for you to lead them. They will and should withdraw the power they give you.

But, I apoligized.

Shaun Harper says "leaders stand a better chance of not permanently ruining their professional reputations and careers when they immediately acknowledge their wrongdoings, sincerely apologize, and hold themselves accountable."

(For my screenreader friends, Nah — a Rosa Parks tee shirt.)

If I could insert the meme I would but 🤌🏾 “it’s the accountable for me.”

Your apologies mean nothing without accountable restitution on your or your organization’s part. Demand painful accountability. It must be felt.

4. Fix it. The Case for Restitution

In the American legal system, an "Order for Restitution," is rendered as part of a judges decision for lost income, wages, property damage, counseling, medical expenses, funeral costs or other financial costs incurred by victims (justice.gov).

Race, as a construct, is about money. Racism acted upon is illegal. Racism acted upon requires course correction which costs taxpayer and organizations revenue. Any decision, and I mean "any" decision about how to manage fallout requires restitution. Because correction requires the loss of wages, productivity, and revenue, restitution repays that which is lost.

In court, compliance with an Order of Restitution automatically becomes a condition of an offender’s probation or supervised release. That’s what leaders who use company and public-sector resources are when they are publicly found being racist and making space for racism: offenders. I know how the American Justice System treats offenders. Keep 👏🏾 that👏🏾 same👏🏾 energy.

Listen, why do we have so much dialogue around forms of antiracism and yet are slow to act on racism as it harms Black people? We’ve come further in identifying and not tolerating antisemitism but still struggle with antiracism in all its forms. It is all racist. What do we need to still learn to be swift in antiracist response across public and corporate channels? I worry that the deep-seeded hesitancy to race discrimination is that we’ve left in place leaders who need to be subject to separation and restitution themselves.

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