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From affirmative action to affirming diversity.
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1990
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DiscriminationOpenly Multicultural WorkplaceRacial PrejudiceEducationRacial Segregation StudiesSocial SciencesRace30-Year-old PremisesGender StudiesAfrican American StudiesCultural DiversityManagementDiversity SensitivityRacismRacial EquityAffirmative LitigationRacialization StudiesAffirmative Action StudiesRacial ViolenceGenerational DiversityRace RelationSocial Diversity
Affirmative action rests on 30‑year‑old premises that no longer hold; the melting‑pot model is invalid, and firms repeatedly cycle through attempts to assimilate diversity in a skills seller’s market where workers resist being melted down. The goal is to move beyond culture‑blindness toward an openly multicultural workplace that fully taps every employee’s potential without artificial programs or barriers. The author offers ten guidelines that help managers understand and modify their company’s culture, vision, assumptions, models, and systems to manage diversity. White males are no longer dominant, and while affirmative action creates a gender‑, culture‑, and color‑blind intake environment, minorities and women often stagnate or quit, causing corporate frustration and cycles of crisis and recruitment.
Affirmative action is based on a set of 30-year-old premises that badly need revising. White males are no longer dominant at every level of the corporation (statistically, they are merely the largest of many minorities), while decades of attack have noticeably weakened racial and gender prejudices. At the intake level, affirmative action quite effectively sets the stage for a workplace that is gender-, culture-, and color-blind. But minorities and women tend to stagnate, plateau, or quit when they fail to move up the corporate ladder, and everyone's dashed hopes lead to corporate frustration and a period of embarrassed silence, usually followed by a crisis-and more recruitment. Some companies have repeated this cycle three or four times. The problem is that our traditional image of assimilating differences-the American melting pot-is no longer valid. It's a seller's market for skills, and the people business has to attract are refusing to be melted down. So companies are faced with the task of managing unassimilated diversity and getting from it the same commitment, quality, and profit they once got from a homogeneous work force. To reach this goal, we need to work not merely toward culture- and color-blindness but also toward an openly multicultural workplace that taps the full potential of every employee without artificial programs, standards, or barriers. The author gives his own ten guidelines for learning to manage diversity by learning to understand and modify your company's culture, vision, assumptions, models, and systems.