Who Else Wants To Make MLK’s Dream A Reality? A Conversation With Robert Livingston Rita McGrath
As we conclude this year’s holiday in honor of the life of Martin Luther King, Jr., many people are still wondering whether his dream of true equality between races will ever happen. My Friday Fireside conversation with Harvard’s Robert Livingston offers an optimistic approach.
Figuring out where to start When I invited Dr. Livingston to join me by the fireside, he said he’d be happy to do that, but only under one condition: that I’d read his book The Conversation first. In approaching the book, he instructs readers to move through it the way it was written, beginning with the acknowledgement that structural racism even exists through stories about how to address it to actions that anyone can take. As he points out, so often when he consults with organizations about how they can constructively improve their diversity, equality and inclusion initiatives, they want to jump straight to the solution, as in “just tell us what to do!”. As he points out, that is as silly as going to a doctor and saying “just prescribe me some pills.” Before we can even get to figuring out where to start, we need to diagnose the conditions first.
Figuring out where to start
P
Problem awareness Do you understand the real problem?
R
Root cause analysis Do you understand why the problem was created?
E
Empathy Do you care?
S
Strategy Do you know what to do?
S
Sacrifice Am I willing to correct the problem?
Structural racism hurts everybody One of my favorite stories in the book has to do with a guy Livingston calls “Ted” – a White man from the middle of the country who grew up in a town with zero diversity. Ted ended up in his Harvard class by accident, due to a registration mishap. It turned out to be transformational for Ted, who had never given much thought to racism (and definitely didn’t go to Cambridge to be enlightened on that topic). In the course of a week, the conversations he had and the connections he made to people he would never otherwise have met proved transformational. Ted is now a full blown warrior for the DEI cause. He’s a great symbolic messenger to make the point that racism hurts everybody.
Racism resides in the delta So we start off with “is this even a problem?” Many people in America don’t think that racism is a real problem, or that it has been resolved by now. Or that racism is only present in extreme acts, such as the killing of 9 worshippers at a church in Charleston in 2015. Or that racism requires a malignant intent.
Drawing a distinction between stereotyping, prejudice and discrimination
Stereotyping
Prejudice
Discrimination
refers to a belief. “Blacks are athletic”, or “Asians are good at math” might be examples. These are cognitive factors.
refers to a feeling, attitude or emotion. I like (or don’t) members of this or that group. These are not cognitive factors, they are emotional.
is behavioral. It’s how you act, regardless of the stereotypes in your head or your emotional preferences. So how you treat people is where discrimination exists, or not.
People forget that D E and I are equally important We see this scenario all the time – some organization proclaims that they want to increase their diversity, so they go out and bring in a bunch of diverse talents, only to carry on exactly as they did before, without giving that person a voice, equal representation or including them in key decisions. The result? Diverse talent walks right out the door again, defeating the purpose of the whole exercise. As Livingston points out, plantations in the south were very diverse places, but they were definitely not ones of equality!
The difference between equity and equality Livingston tells the story of a visit he made to attend a track meet at which his cousin, Terry, was competing. From the bleachers, he was outraged that the runners were set at different starting points in their lanes on the oval track. “I said, Look, they’re cheating – they’ve given everyone a head start over Terry!” Terry happened to be on the inside lane, and to Livingston’s eye, that looked unfair. His family members tried to explain to him that the runners on the outside lanes had to travel a longer distance, so the different starting points compensated for that, but he acknowledged, “at that time, I just didn’t get it.”
Structures and systemic racism 1 Voting rights
3 Public education
5 Health care disparities
2 Economic inequality
4 Criminal justice
Company examples One of the companies that Livingston cites as an example of taking action to make a real difference is Massport, the Massachusetts Port Authority. In evaluating bids, the company changed its criteria to weight diversity at 25% of the components necessary for a firm to succeed in doing business with it. As Livingston points out, before that, people simply used their existing network and processes to find contractors and other suppliers. “It isn’t that we were racist, its that we were busy!” one operator reported. After the new criteria went into effect, they had to do the work to broaden their networks and find diverse talent for roles they might not have considered before.
What to do next As the book suggests, a great next step is to engage in conversation. Conversation is one of the most powerful ways to build knowledge, awareness and empathy and ultimately to affect change.
To end on an optimistic note:
Racism is a solvable problem.
To revisit this conversation and my other recorded fireside chats, visit my YouTube channel: Rita McGrath
https://thoughtsparks.substack.com/