Religious Diversity Issue -- a problem or an opportunity? TeleSeminar to address this and related issues

New EEOC data shows that religious discrimination claims have doubled in the past 15 years, and the number of settlements has tripled since 1997. That won’t surprise most HR executives for two reasons: First, we’re all seeing a broader mix of religious backgrounds as workforces diversify. Second, employees have become more litigious, and they’re well aware that the law gives them the right to certain “accommodations” based on their religious beliefs. So are you seeing this as a "problem" or an opportunity?

This and related business issues will be covered in an upcoming TeleSeminar I'm giving in July and more information will be coming soon.

Seeking definitions for diversity in the workplace; this one looks good

What is diversity in the workplace? I've been searching for definitions -- and there are many. Recently I ran into this one from Cornell University and I thought it was quite good. What do you think?

Workplace diversity is a people issue, focused on the differences and similarities that people bring to an organization. It is usually defined broadly to include dimensions beyond those specified legally in equal opportunity and affirmative action non-discrimination statutes. Diversity is often interpreted to include dimensions which influence the identities and perspectives that people bring, such as profession, education, parental status and geographic location.
As a concept, diversity is considered to be inclusive of everyone. In many ways, diversity initiatives complement non-discrimination compliance programs by creating the workplace environment and organizational culture for making differences work. Diversity is about learning from others who are not the same, about dignity and respect for all, and about creating workplace environments and practices that encourage learning from others and capture the advantage of diverse perspectives.

The school's Catherwood Library has prepared a guide introducing key library and online resources in the area of workplace diversity, including practitioner resources, journals, consultant directories, and more.

In Starting Points, you will find a link to the BLS - Bureau of Labor Statistics as well as a comprehensive starting point for disability law. The Databases section links to a GenderStats database. Even if you are not a Cornell student and can't use all of the links, there is still quite a lot of information here that is accessible, so it is a good starting place for doing some research.

Spirit of Fannie Lou Hamer Rests With Lone Black Juror in Curtis Flowers's Trial, Winona, Mississippi

OMG.

The record-setting sixth trial of Curtis Flowers will be tried by eleven white jurors and one African-American juror.

"It could have been worse," Dr. Alan Bean blogs from Winona, Mississippi.  "At the conclusion of the jury selection process, only ten black jurors remained standing. The state had fifteen peremptory strikes. Had DA Doug Evans so chosen, we could have had an all-white jury."

I cannot begin to imagine the pressure that will be applied to this lone, black juror.

May the spirit of Fannie Lou Hamer be with him. Amen.

"I'm there," she whispers...

Read about Day 4 of this event --

Today's Winona, Mississippi Blacks Could Draw Strength and Courage From the Late Fannie Lou Hamer

Fannie Lou Hamer, civil rights activist, was known for her singing, especially during some of the most frightening times in the civil rights movement.

Winona, Mississippi is the small town at the edge of the Delta where the trial of Curtis Flowers is taking place this week. This is day two of the historic murder trial of a black man and what makes this event so unique, is that it is the sixth time the state has tried to convict Flowers of the multiple murders of a prominent Winona family. There is no good evidence that Flowers committed this crime, but in Mississippi killing black people or convicting them of crimes they haven’t committed is a blood sport. Today during voir dire, forensic historian Alan Bean describes how Winona’s black community would-be jurors are running a scam because they are running scared. The only way Flowers will be found innocent is if a black person sits on the jury. Everyone knows this, but no black person will take a chance at being seated on this panel.


It is 2010. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 is so far away. Why would a black person today be so afraid to sit on a jury and save the life of a black man? You have to know the history of Winona -- and all of Mississippi -- to answer this question. Those who do know their black history will remember that Winona is where civil rights hero Fannie Lou Hamer was beaten and raped because she used a white rest room at the town’s bus stop. Hamer was coming home from a civil rights training camp in North Carolina when the incident occurred. She later spoke at the Democratic National Convention in the summer of 1964, telling of her experience while at the same time trying to get a black Mississippi delegation seated. Hamer’s speech was eloquent and should go down in history. I wrote about Hamer in “Where Rebels Roost,” back when I lived in the Delta. I just wish the people of today’s Mississippi knew their own history. If they knew about the courage of Hamer and others who were the strength behind the modern civil rights movement, maybe someone would be brave enough today to stand up and do their job.

FANNIE LOU HAMER, a wise civil rights leader, singer, and storyteller, grew up North of Greenville in Sunflower County, and often told how her family stayed alive during the hardest years. In winter months Hamer and her siblings followed their mother from plantation to plantation asking landowners for leftover cotton, the “scrappin’ cotton.”

When the family gathered enough cotton for a bale, these bits of scrap were sold to buy food. On those treks “[Mother] always tied our feet up with rags because the ground would be froze real hard,” Hamer said in an oral history. Undoubtedly music was tied to survival during these treks since Hamer became well known years later for comforting others with soul-filed gospel singing – especially during some of the most difficult moments in the Movement.

When young college-age civil rights workers later moved into Sunflower County they discovered that Hamer had a “unique ability to define the problems that affected African Americans in the Delta in their own vernacular.” The young men and women trusted Hamer instinctively, seeing her as “a leader waiting for a movement [who] believed deeply in the promise of the Bible and in the promise of the United States of America,” wrote J. Moye in “Let the People Decide.”

Mississippi’s leadership did not question the brutal mistreatment of blacks. And today’s leadership looks the other way as events such as the Flowers trial unfolds. The survival of laborers like Hamer as individuals, let alone their comfort, has never mattered to those in control as long as enough people were available during cotton harvest months to labor and keep the money coming in. This attitude of careless regard had carried through generations of planters who have controlled the state since it left territorial status. “Part and parcel of this control is that the Delta returns the same old evil men again and again to the legislature and therefore gets seniority and influence out of the proportion to the rest of the state,” George McLean of the Tupelo Daily Journal once asserted editorially.

McLean’s editorial was hard to counter, since rarely were any fairness or true kindness shown to black tenants and sharecroppers. Instead, white planters, who reasoned that blacks would only squander money given to them, more often cheated them of earnings. If a black cropper did not come to work, performed poorly or violated Jim Crow, he or she might be forced to work at gunpoint, beaten or even lynched – even years after the modern Civil Rights Movement formally ended. All the while, as McLean observed, the “same old evil men” kept making the laws that kept Mississippi at a distance from its needed social change.

Dr. L. C. Dorsey’s parents, like many others who worked the Delta’s cotton, typically fell asleep soon after leaving the fields: “I remember asking questions … and not understanding [it was] just chronic fatigue… . I’m sure some of them were also depressed,” she once told me.

###

I really didn't know much about myself and my core values until I lived in Mississippi on the grounds of a prison in the Delta. My husband's job as chief psychologist bought me that opportunity. But once there, and given the opportunity to learn the history of the people who had lived and died there in a quest for freedom and social justice, I can honestly say that I learned more about myself and values than I had ever learned from living anywhere else in my life. Until then, the people who mattered to me came from my family, my klan. And then Fannie Lou Hamer, Aaron Henry, Cleve McDowell, Birdia Keglar, Medgar Evers, Adlena Hamlett, Amzie Moore and so many others came into my life through the history I gathered. They had all died by then and I often wish that I could have met at least one of these heroes. Still, I had an opportunity to learn about them, meet and speak with family members and other who knew them, and to spend time on the same soil where they had stood. If only their history was better taught to people who could use some of their stories of courage and greatness today. Of course, these hopes only represent my values and in fact may not be shared by others. But I do know that I still cry, especially when I think of Aaron Henry and Fannie Lou Hamer. They brought dignity, honor and hope at a time when it was surely needed.

British Petroleum's Corporate Behavior Perhaps Parallels Employment Discrimination Study Findings

It's fascinating to watch British Petroleum go into overdrive as they spend more on public relations (including the manipulation of Google) than they have so far on reparations to people in the Gulf, let along spending as much on clean-up, etc.

Are we surprised? No. Not if we pay attention to the history of diversity and litigation for other big-time employers like Texaco. Several years back, the Texas Law Review published a research article by Michael Selmi, "The Price of Discrimination: The Nature of Class Action Employment Discrimination Litigation and Its Effects." From his study, several parallels could be drawn.

After building a database for his study using data from publicly traded companies on the NYSE, from 1991 to 2001,Selmi had this to say:

"For many years, it has been argued that the costs of employment discrimination lawsuits are devastating to corporations and should therefore be limited as as to reduce the harm the suits produce. Yet based on the data analyzed here, there is no indication that firms suffer a significant loss of shareholder value as a result of the filing of a lawsuit...firms often react quickly to reduce possible reputational damage that might arise from the lawsuits, and often do so effectively, and their swift actions may limit collateral damage from the suits."

It would seem imaginable that investors would not want to be associated with firms that discriminate, but Selmi says that is not the case. Most see such lawsuits as the "cost of doing business." (Interestingly, management is most concerned over the cost.)

Do the settlement costs affect any corporate change? Selmi says that business simply goes on. The culture rarely changes. But here's the catch. The people who make the real money are the lawyers and the diversity industry.

 "In many cases, it appears that employment discrimination litigation has become a private affair that is largely about money and public relations, and rarely concerned with implementing  broad institutional reform. It also seems that only those cases that include sensational allegations generally involving racial epithets or blatant discrimination, can capture national attention. Under these circumstances, it is possible that a company such as Denny's will seek to transform itself. However, these instances are infrequent, as is the prospect of corporate reform arising from private class action litigation...the cases are primarily about transfers of wealth, transfers that are often channeled to entities other than the parties to the suit. In any event, these transfers are to inconsequential to affect corporate balance sheets."

In today's environment, where true regulation has gone by the wayside and courts appear to be all that is left for demanding change, Selmi recommends that we should "...not rely on the litigation to eliminate or deter discrimination, but instead should see it in a more limited lights as a process of wealth transfers with a substantial public relations dimension that can occasionally lead to significant change, but only to the extent a firm finds that is is in its interest to reform its employment practices.

"In this respect, the litigation has become just another form of tort, which reflects our declining national commitment to eradicate discrimination--discrimination that, based on this study, remains a significant presence in the labor market."

Are we seeing a need for regulation to be strengthened? In employment discrimination laws? On Wall Street? Regarding our environment? It looks to me like Selmi's research presence has a place in these arenas, as well.

Teacher Could Have Learned New Perspective From African Immigrant Youth: When Birds Fly, 4-1 = 0!

Derlad Wing Sue is a professor of counseling psychology at California State University, Hayward and a faculty member for the Columbia University Executive Training Programs. I recently ran across this story he tells online...

A renowned scholar of multiculturalism proposes picturing the United States as a cultural mosaic rather than a melting pot. He calls on counselors of minority clients to take the road less traveled: to rise above racism, embrace ethnic diversity, and employ varied intervention strategies so the needs of culturally different clients can be met.

Several years ago I heard an interesting tale from a Nigerian counselor who was attending one of my multicultural counseling workshops. The tale, often told to Nigerian children, goes something like this.

A white female elementary school teacher in the United States posed a math problem to her class one day. “Suppose there are four blackbirds sitting in a tree. You take a slingshot and shoot one of them. How many are left?” A white student answered quickly, “That’s easy, One subtracted from four is three.” An African immigrant youth then answered with equal confidence, “Zero.” The teacher chuckled at the latter response and stated that the first student was right and that, perhaps, the second student should study more math. From that day forth, the African student seemed to withdraw from class activities and seldom spoke to other students or the teacher.

This story gets to the heart of some fundamental issues confronting the multicultural movement in the United States. If the teacher had pursued the African student’s reasons for arriving at the answer zero, she might have heard the following, “If you shoot one bird, the others will fly away.” Nigerian educators often use this story to illustrate differences in world views between United States and African cultures. The Nigerians contend that the group is more important than the individual, that survival of all depends on interrelationships among the parts, and that individualism should be de-emphasized for the good of the whole.

Wonderful story, isn't it? Do you have a comment to share?

Expanding Speaking Engagements

Tell me about your club! If you are a member of Rotary, Kiwanis, Lions -- any such group -- I would like to know more about it. I've been working to expand my speaking to other groups and organizations like these on the topics of Multicuturalism and Diversity; initially, I'm waving my speaking fee for these groups. If you are a member of one of these clubs, please get with me. I would love to know who to speak with to set up a speech for your organization.