When Comedy Meets Workplace Diversity

Last week, as I was piecing together a diversity training presentation, I came across my “Two Wongs Don’t Make a White” slide. This corny play on words was used as a t-shirt graphic by the clothing company Abercrombie & Fitch in the earlier part of this decade. Thank goodness those t-shirts didn’t get much play and were dragged off of the market, along with Abercrombie’s image as an equal opportunity employer. (The retailer has also faced failure to hire and promote discrimination lawsuits.) Although the retailer, today, is making an effort to redeem itself, I couldn’t help but wonder what they were thinking when they exposed the market to those t-shirts. Have the lines of culturally insensitive jokes been so drastically moved that even a large retailer doesn’t know the difference between wrong and right?

With the advent of diversity and multi-culturalism, many of the invisible racial barriers in society are slowly fading away thanks, in part, to entertainment. With Justin Timberlake and Amy Winehouse producing some of the best R&B music, it’s hard to have white radio stations and black radio stations. Reality television shows openly parade mixed race-couples, making them less of a taboo or head turner.

Comedians, especially, have been the greatest catalysts for making other cultures less mysterious by lifting the lid off of what were once private inside jokes. You have Rex Navarrette openly joking about Filipino time (that is, being 20 minutes late to everything). George Lopez pokes fun at his Latino brothers and sisters on HBO specials and his network television show. Larry the Cable Guy gives Northern urbanites comedic insight to redneck life.

What happens when people at work decide to re-tell a joke they heard from Navarrette, Lopez, or Larry? Is it ok to laugh at or make a joke about another race, culture, or religion? These were the questions underlying my reasons for not watching the Dave Chappelle show.

Now, I never started a mass boycott against the show, but I was vocal about why I didn’t tune in. While I never judged anyone for watching the show, I just couldn’t support a show that profusely overuses the “N” word on national television. I felt that his show, which was written by a multi-racial staff, could be used to defend the use of the “N” word. I knew that some would argue that the word had evolved to the point where it was no longer an offensive racial epithet to denigrate black people and could be used by any and everyone. I was not ready for that level of evolution.

Comedy is tricky. The same slurs, epithets, and offensive language that comics use to get laughs, can create disrespect in the workplace, school and in other social settings. I’m sure that some snarky designer at Abercrombie & Fitch probably thought he or she was appealing to the public’s sense of humor about Asians with the hideous “Wong” t-shirts. As Abercrombie reminds us, context matters. Material that works in a nightclub often falls flat in the office.

Workplace Diversity: What Happens When White Men Don't Want It

Thomas Friedman probably did not intend to offer any insights about white-male bias in yesterday’s New York Times Op-ed “59 is the new 39,” but the diversity consultant in me could not ignore how his underlying theme explained why diversity is a dilemma in Corporate America and law firms: diversity efforts fail when white men don’t give a damn about their employees of color.

Yesterday, Friedman gushed about how he identified with a 59 year-old golfer and how this affinity engendered a personal stake in the golfer’s tournament, writing, “…if you are a baby boomer you could not help but look at him and say something you would never say about Tiger or Kobe: ‘He’s my age; he’s my build; he’s my height and he even had his hip replaced like me. If he can do that, maybe I can do something like that, too.”

To a certain extent, we are all guilty of identity-bias. Friedman and I share a healthy bias in wanting to see those who we identify with succeed. (I’ll admit that every time I see President Obama’s popularity poll numbers slip, I wince.) However, white men, who are still the majority of executives and partners in corporations and law firms, can kill a diversity initiative if their identity bias is only based on physical affinity.

Almost every professional of color I featured in my book, “Recruiting & Retaining a Diverse Workforce: New Rules for a New Generation,” watched their senior-level white supervisor champion the success of a lucky-to-be-white guy. Whether senior white male executives identify with junior-level white men because they are reminders of their more youthful days or reminders of their children, the result is the same. Junior-level white men are getting better access to informal and formal mentoring.

A few years ago when I was giving a diversity presentation to a group lawyers, an earnest white male partner asked why associates of color tend to leave law firms after a few years. A recent study by Catalyst, the non-profit that conducts research about race and gender issues in the workplace, released a study last week that put statistics to the partner’s retention quandary. According to the study, 86% of women attorneys of color leave their law firms by their seventh year. Even more startling, all of the firms that participated in the study have diversity and inclusion programs. Why aren’t these programs working? It’s simple. Until senior-level white men take a stake in the success of their employees of color, their organizations’ retention and promotion efforts will fail.

When white male executives sincerely ask how they can keep more of their Black, Asian and Latino talent, I ask, how much do they really want them? If senior-level white men siphoned some of their identity bias toward the Asian man or Black woman in the office, racial diversity wouldn’t be an issue. More white male executives have to want their employees of color to succeed. More white male executives need to stop by the offices of their employees of color to check in and see how they are doing; give unsolicited and invaluable advice about career tracks; or make it their business to assign the next high-profile matter to a person of color. White men are capable of this type of obsession with another’s success. If you don’t believe me, just ask Thomas Friedman.