Can a White Man Speak With
Authority on Diversity? BY LUKE VISCONTI
QUpon returning to my office, re-energized by the DiversityInc event in March, I shared the information you addressed during your talk [when you] spoke about DiversityInc and mentioned your Ask the White Guy feature. When mentioning your feature to a group of white female colleagues, one responded by saying, what does he (a white guy) have to do with diversity; how does he create something like DiversityInc and how
could he possibly speak with authority about diversity?
Icreated DiversityInc as a consequence of having my consciousness raised by a friend, Tony Cato—at the time, a fellow Naval Aviator. He helped me start
the thought process that led me to
where I am today. He didn’t have an
agenda; we were simply swapping
stories as we worked together, a
consequence of his volunteering to help
me when I was assigned to be the
Minority Officer Recruiter in Naval
Recruiting District New Jersey. Tony is
not a go-along-to-get-along guy; he’s
tough, disciplined and very smart. He
told me stories of being denied fair
treatment because he’s Black. It took
me awhile to understand how profound
those stories are, but it did
sink in eventually. I learned
to share his indignation at
poor treatment meted out
as a result of discrimination—and the damage it
does to our country.
White men are a part
of diversity and there is
a great deal of diversity
among white men. I recent-
ly spoke to a group of 900
police and fire chiefs in
Oregon— 97 percent white
men. I made the point that they might
not think they have diversity as they sit
around the fire house or police station
and see nothing but white men—but
some of those white men grew up in sin-
gle-parent households, some grew up in
large families, some went to college on
athletic scholarships, some worked their
way through, and some didn’t go at all.
Some have a gay brother, some are gay
themselves (and perhaps closeted). I
told the chiefs that they could utilize the
diversity they already have to gain new
perspective on problems and in doing
so would better fulfill their missions: to
save lives. My point is that it is not skin
color, gender or orientation that makes
one “good at” managing diversity; it is
mindset.
HISTORIC PERSPECTIVE
Anyone can become “authoritative”
about diversity. Nobody comes to the
table that way. How you get there, in
my opinion, starts with understanding
history. I’ve gained a lot of perspective
by reading books like Beverly Tatum’s
“Why Are All the Black
Kids Sitting Together in
the Cafeteria?” as well
as Iris Chang’s “The
Chinese in America,”
Isabel Wilkerson’s “The
Warmth of Other Suns,”
Douglas Blackmon’s
“Slavery By Another
Name,” Ira Katznelson’s
“When Affirmative Action
Was White” and Taylor
Branch’s trilogy on the
civil-rights era.
History is important, but what
I’ve found transformative is personal
involvement in organizations that do
not serve you directly (by “you,” I mean
loosely you as defined by gender, race,
orientation, etc.). For example, I’m a
trustee of Bennett College for Women,
a historically Black college, and I’m
on the foundation board of NJCU, a
Hispanic-serving institution. At Rutgers
University (where I am also a trustee),
I co-chair the fundraising committee
for Rutgers Future Scholars. We have
raised $2 million in the past three
years. I donate all of my speaking fees
through the DiversityInc Foundation,
which has distributed more than
$500,000 since 2006. The life experi-
ence I’ve gained by serving these
institutions has been invaluable.
‘DIFFERENT LIKE YOU’
I will note that people who are not in
the majority culture must deal with
the majority culture as they try to
retain their own identity, but those in
the majority culture do not really have
to deal with anything BUT the majority culture (doesn’t make it right, but
this is the reality). In this country, the
majority culture is defined as white,
male, heterosexual, Christian and not
having an ADA-defined disability. But
just because a person in the majority
culture starts out with a much wider
“blind spot” than people not in the
majority culture doesn’t mean it’s
impossible for white men to become
open advocates for diversity and
inclusion. It also doesn’t mean that
a Black woman (for example) comes
with an automatic Ph.D. in diversity
management (it’s just a lot easier for
the Black woman to see the problem
in the first place). We must all come
to the realization that, as a reader put
it nicely, “I am not different than you, I
am different like you.” DI
