The D&I Sunken Place: Suppressed Black Identity in the Diversity & Inclusion Role
Disclaimer: my social construct of race as Black is defined by people whose skin color, hair texture, eye shape, African ancestry, and/or name do not allow us to pass in America for a race other than Black (within a reasonable doubt). I acknowledge that this is not to say that those of African descent who can pass are not Black (but c’mon y’all…hear me out).
My ambition to become a diversity & inclusion manager started in the summer of 2019, when I joined Mailchimp’s Marketing Web Ops team as an MBA intern. During my internship, I produced a 30-minute narrative storytelling podcast on psychological safety as an educational resource for Mailchimp managers. This experience, coupled with my deep-seated passions as a filmmaker motivated by narratives that inspire personal growth for marginalized communities, led me to seek a role leading workplace culture-change.
I decided to make a career pivot in the fall of 2019 from marketing into diversity & inclusion. Around the same time, I came across CEO and founder of Seed&Spark Emily Best’s article, 8 Things Diversity & Inclusion Leaders Need Everyone to Know. In the article, Emily connected the cultural impact of narrative storytelling in film to proactive company culture-building opportunities in diversity & inclusion work. I reached out to Seed&Spark, Emily hired me, and I started working on their new initiative because it promised the chance for me to meet in-house diversity & inclusion leaders across industries and really get an inside look at what their jobs entail.
In the course of the last 5 months, I’ve had the opportunity to listen to more than 50 interviews with D&I professionals. As I listened, I noticed common themes in how Black D&I leaders (specifically) were talking about the challenges of navigating a tricky terrain when championing initiatives focused on racial equality and equity. I wanted to further validate what I was hearing, so I scheduled specific interviews for this article, and a hypothesis emerged as I synthesized their insights with my own experience as a Black male employee:
If the job of the D&I leader is to dismantle structurally inequitable systems in order to build a workplace that provides equitable opportunities to everyone and inspires a sense of belonging for everyone; then, to be effective (and survive) in the role as a D&I leader, Black people must suppress their racial identity, for these reasons:
1. The Obama Syndrome
My goal here is not necessarily to be the Black D&I professional. It’s to be the D&I professional for all employees.
~ D&I practitioner at a medium sized tech company
“I identify as a Black man[…]I’m always thinking ‘I don’t want to give the Black employees too much emphasis.’ I want to have a fair, even-line of distribution of my time and effort… I call it the Obama syndrome. [The point] is not necessarily to come in and be the Black people’s president. His goal is to come in and be the American peoples’ president. And so my goal here is not necessarily to be the Black D&I professional. It’s to be the D&I professional for all employees,” as shared by a D&I practitioner at a medium sized tech company.
If you feel intense pressure as a D&I leader to be the D&I professional for all employees — not just the D&I leader for Black employees — how might it impact your ability to specifically deliver on behalf of Black employees? Especially when this is part of your responsibility as a D&I leader? Will you feel empowered and confident leading this body of work in a workplace where bias is perceived as equal across subgroups?
Conversations with more than one Black D&I leader alluded to a theme of a specific disconnect with their Black identity as a result of the Obama Syndrome:
I am concerned about my Black people cause it’s like ‘okay do they feel I’m not giving them enough time?’ So it’s a constant struggle.There’s a sense where you can’t be yourself because you’re trying to be everything to others.
Imagine how empowering it could be for Black D&I leaders to contribute to belonging initiatives for Black employees under a title like Program Manager, Black Experience. This new role could potentially allow Black people to borrow on our identity and experience as Black people in corporate America, versus masking, covering, or suppressing interests in improving the workplace belonging for Black employees. And why wouldn’t Black D&I leaders want to make workplaces more equitable, to the benefit of Black people (and other marginalized groups)? Black D&I leaders are often simultaneously struggling under the same biased systems they are trying to dismantle.
It’s not about me at all. I do feel things and this work does have an impact on me but what allows me to do the good fight isn’t because I want my own personal experience to change. I mean, of course I do, but it’s about everyone out there… it’s about the staff who I serve.— shared by a Black woman leading D&I at a Fortune 500 company
In this sense, Black D&I leaders’ invested focus in the work to advance the employee experience for Black employees is oftentimes confined to parameters that mandate equal time, effort, and energy allocated evenly across all subgroups of employees — even while we ourselves are experiencing the specific challenges of being Black in the workplace.
The Obama Syndrome describes the pressures facing D&I leaders to balance their work with their identities and experiences as marginalized people when striving to advance representation and belonging for all employees. The Obama Syndrome connects directly to the 2nd predominant reason why Black D&I leaders suppress racial identity in the workplace:
2. The Double Consciousness
“At some point you have to reconcile…do your beliefs match up with your behavior? And when I make it crystal clear that they do not, you either change your behavior or you change your beliefs, but you don’t get to pretend that there’s a bridge connecting those two because there is no bridge.” — Dr. Courtney Cogburn
W.E.B. Du Bois famously coined the term “double consciousness” in 1903 with his groundbreaking publication, The Souls of Black Folk. It describes the feeling of duality facing Black Americans based on(1) how we uniquely view ourselves versus (2) how we view ourselves through the lens of white America (i.e. our white boss and the institutional nature of white supremacy in the workplace).
Tokenism exacerbates the double consciousness: many companies invest in diversity and inclusion for the sake of optics, resulting in hiring token visible minorities into workplaces not built to support them. A company will invest in a one-person D&I “team” and consider their work “done.” This D&I “leader” often has no formal authority to enact change and is expected to lead through influence in an environment where they will likely experience microaggressions and challenges that are a result of leading this work in spaces accustomed to specific leadership and work styles (read: white and male). Companies don’t provide resources to support Black D&I leaders’ mental and emotional health, and before long, D&I leaders can feel like they’re working in the sunken place: “the metaphorical place an oppressed person goes when they have become silent or compliant to their own oppression” (urban dictionary). Their identity might’ve contributed to them landing a role heading up D&I (optics, remember?), but it will not serve them as they do the work of D&I, and they’re better off showing up in a way that makes their homogenous workplace more…comfortable.
Their identity might’ve contributed to them landing a role heading up D&I (optics, remember?), but it will not serve them as they do the work of D&I, and they’re better off showing up in a way that makes their homogenous workplace more…comfortable.
In one of my interviews, one Black female D&I leader at large tech company joked in response to how this occurs in the D&I space:
It reminds me of that stereotype of the Black character in movies who’s always the magical unicorn. It’s like being the magical D&I unicorn. I’m going to come and hold your hand and stroke your hair and make everything better and you’re not racist.
Managers often simply don’t understand gaps in optics versus engaging in actual work of diversity and inclusion. In order to manage up requires (in every D&I leader I spoke to) an outpouring of emotional labor, which can lead to fatigue and eventual burnout, and that’s compounded for Black people in this role. As if to put a fine point on the lack of awareness of D&I leaders’ emotional labor, I heard over and over again from interviewees:
Literally not a single person says, ‘how are you?… no… really… how are you?’
I met with Professor Courtney Cogburn, a PhD in Education and Psychology, and associate professor at the Columbia School of Social Work whose out-of-house D&I positions afford her the opportunity to share more honestly about the work as compared to in-house D&I leaders.
In our interview, she shared about her recent project, a virtual reality tool that allows people to experience anti-Black racism firsthand. Courtney designed the VR specifically targeted at a white liberal audience because they are the group that is often in positions of power yet don’t make critical decisions to actually achieve goals.
In this light, virtual reality is helpful as a mirror:
At some point you have to reconcile…do your beliefs match up with your behavior? And when I make it crystal clear that they do not, you either change your behavior or you change your beliefs, but you don’t get to pretend that there’s a bridge connecting those two because there is no bridge.
Cogburn went on to summarize something I have heard many D&I leaders say: many of their direct supervisors or executive leadership are often trying to do something — anything! — about D&I without thinking about why they’re doing it. Cogburn asks:
You don’t even know what the problem is. Literally have not thought about it… How could you possibly solve a problem the way that you would solve any other business problem strategically, if you haven’t actually sat down to really understand why you have that problem?
At some point, D&I managers have to sit down with their boss and have an honest conversation to determine if the work is truly meant to serve folks or if the work is only about optics. This conversation often happens around a D&I managers’ plans and needs for gathering employee demographic, engagement and satisfaction data. In doing so, I started to see a common theme in reported experiences of D&I managers — gathering, looking at and sharing data becomes really uncomfortable for their supervisors and company leadership.
One D&I manager sat down with her direct supervisor to discuss being more transparent about the current D&I data they had and a desire to gather more to understand how the company was actually performing. Her supervisor was really afraid to examine the data and share what they were learning:
She doesn’t want people to know that we haven’t been doing our job, that we’ve been failing people. To which I said, ‘well, you hired me, which has already proved that we have failed people, and now we’re trying to do the work to fix that.’ And I don’t care about the optics. People can hate me to death. People are going to get mad if I’m doing my job correctly because change is hard… So I can’t be concerned about people getting upset with me or the work that I’m doing because then I would be ineffective.
This anecdote sheds light on what I call the “invisible humanity” that can make D&I managers weary to reveal vulnerabilities surrounding identity that could threaten job security. In other words, D&I leaders may feel required to not be seen as people (with feelings!) in order to be effective in the role. Yet, it is the job of the D&I manager to help change the experience of employees from being seen as a unit of labor to being seen as whole people (with feelings!).
This systemic hypocrisy scared me out of my previous aspirations to become an in-house D&I manager entirely.
Another D&I leader shared about the challenges of data on performance reviews that revealed reporting discrepancies. The reporting discrepancies were between performance self-review ratings of direct reports and performance reviews of their managers. The D&I leader stressed the significance of exploring conflict with curiosity when analyzing data that reveals hard truths and inequitable systems. The significance is daring to ask why we do things the way we do in order to get to the root of the problem:
The part that is extremely difficult to measure is… ‘are we all literally on the same page? Are we thinking about this on shore ground?’ You can’t ask, ‘are you looking at your direct report through a lens of white supremacy?’ Because the answer will be ‘no, of course not. Why would I do that?’… Maybe that’s also a metric.
A Black D&I leader is in a unique position to interpret data based on their expertise and their lived experience which means they’re not only examining implicit bias, but also experiencing it — the double consciousness inherent in the role.
3. The Emotional Tax Levied on Black People in the Workplace
“I’m 6’ 2, 225lbs… My overall stature comes with its own kind of stereotypes and perspective so I’m mindful of how I talk to people. I don’t stand over people. I’m mindful of raising my voice. In order to do this role properly, I have to be mindful of how I’m maneuvering as a Black male in this role so that people don’t feel intimidated or like they’re not being heard.”
Finally, the day-to-day prejudices that Black employees face due to implicit bias creates its own form of guardedness put up by Black people in the workplace.
The aggregate weight of navigating implicit biases is heavier on Black people from the prejudices that come with being Black in the office. This levies a greater emotional tax.
A Black male D&I professional spoke explicitly about the challenges facing implicit biases that require him to navigate in a specific way as to not come off as too aggressive or threatening:
“I’m 6’ 2, 225lbs… My overall stature comes with its own kind of stereotypes and perspective so I’m mindful of how I talk to people. I don’t stand over people. I’m mindful of raising my voice. In order to do this role properly, I have to be mindful of how I’m maneuvering as a Black male in this role so that people don’t feel intimidated or like they’re not being heard.”
This double standard that disproportionately disadvantages Black people was no surprise to hear as this reality is experienced in roles that go beyond just D&I.
In reconciling suppressed Black identity, every D&I leader I spoke with emphasized the meaningfulness of external support structures consisting of therapy, spiritual retreats, and talks with friends & family to help depersonalize the work. Managing the toll of the work by understanding your triggers is another major key to sustainability in the D&I role.
These stories help to illuminate why Black D&I leaders feel like they must suppress their racial identity in the workplace (i.e. restrain vested interest in improving the workplace belonging for Black employees and resist centering their experience as a data point for creating change). Suppressing racial identity is the shield we must arm ourselves with in order to more effectively navigate the tide of microaggressions, outright racist behavior, and bearing witness to senior leaders making decisions that perpetuate harmful systems. And as such, suppressing racial identity is an entirely rational response to the inequitable structures that American corporations thrive in:
Ultimately you are fighting for people to recognize the humanity of people who look like you. Even if you’ve worked to establish cognitive dissonance between your identity and the work you’re tasked with doing, at some point it becomes emotionally challenging, because of the defenses and rhetoric you’ll hear from people across the business. ~ A Black female D&I leader
If you are interested to learn more about the work I’m doing to address structural inequities in the workplace, and increase engagement and belonging for underrepresented and marginalized people, check out the latest product we’re building at Seed&Spark.
