This week a friend of mine had an experience that opened my eyes to a huge injustice in the United States that we hardly pay attention to! My friend is in a sorority, and last year when all the Black Lives Matter protests were at their peak, her sorority added a diversity and inclusion chair, which she was selected for in its first year. As a Puerto Rican latina who has the physical features of a Puerto Rican (black hair, brown skin), she has experienced injustice first hand and knows what she as a person of color can do to help fellow people of color. Greek life is predominately white, and when this year’s elections came around, her white peers elected a white counterpart to take over the position this year.
I looked into national statistics to see if this unacceptable injustice is happening on a larger scale. I found out that while many companies have made a public effort to increase their diversity efforts, the corporate workforce is still headed by nearly all white people. 85% of executive positions were held by whtie people at the company Mercer in 2020. (Stevens, CNBC). These statistics are representative of a general promotion gap that exists in the corporate workforce. A promotion gap can be historically explained, as when slevery was still legal white people literally were the executives and black people were their workers. It took us centuries to even recognize that forcing people into slavery positions based on their skin color is incredibly cruel, unethiucal, and inappropriate. However, when slavery was abolished, people of color still had to fight for their rights. While we have made a lot of progress, there is clearly still a large gap based on skin color that’s represented in systemic issues like a promotion gap.
Click this link to learn more about the history of slavery:
https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/slavery
In class, we have discussed the master-slave dialect that can be seen between different identities and groups. In the United States, I think we naturally have a master-slave view between white and black people because of slavery, which was present in Great Britain and the thirteen colonies, and not abolished until the nineteenth century. Slavery has been legal in the United States longer than it has not been, so we really have not had as much time as we think the break this master-slave view. This may be why white people are often seen in executive positions more commonly than people of color in general, and especially black people. The image below provides statistics that highlight discrimination people of color in the workplace, which can be accredited to the master-slave dialect and its associations with a white master and black slave.
The issue of discrimination and its impacts on people of color is large. People of color are statistically lacking in executive positions where they can have true influence on diversity and inclusion efforts. As a caucasian person, I know that I am naive to what the best way to handle these kinds of issues are, simply because I have not experienced the injustice that people of color have. Regardless, white people are still making decisions for their companies/organizations people of color. Specifically, white people are in power positions related to diversity and inclusion, when they should not be making those decisions for people of color.
Hello, I found your Context presentation to be interesting. It is crazy because of how close it is to you as he was your friend. I totally agree with what you presented and how it is hard to be a person of color and how the issue of discrimination is very big.