Legal, Political Analogy

 A friend owns an AR-15 semiautomatic weapon and keeps it in his gun safe. Let's call him Zach (and as far as I know, any Zach's in my family or acquaintances don't own an AR-15). Another friend, who we'll call Adam, wants to see the weapon in Zach's home. Zach shows it to him. Zach even lets Adam fire it in Zach's personal home gun range.

Adam asks to borrow the AR-15 and Zach agrees with the warning that it should be kept secure. Adam takes it home. Later Adam brings it back to Zach's house. He uses it in Zach's gun range again. Adam takes the gun home again. Adam's wife tells Zach's wife that Adam is leaving the AR-15 out in the living room, loaded, unsupervised and the kids could get hold of it. Zach hears this and asks for the weapon back. Adam says, "Oh, I only have the bullets. I'll send them over to you." Zach gets the box of ammo and some bullets are missing. 

"Adam, I need the weapon back and the rest of the bullets. You're not complying with my demand that you keep the weapon secure."

"Zach, I don't have it."

Zach heads over to Adam's house. He looks in the living room. No gun. He goes home. Adam's wife later tells Zach that Adam moved the gun to the garage. Zach heads back the next day to Adam's house and looks everywhere. No gun. Adam had moved it to his parent's house. 

Does Zach stop looking for the gun? They're friends. Might even have brotherly love for one another. Or does Zach keep pursuing the return of the gun so that nothing bad happens to Adam's wife or kids or Adam himself because the AR-15 is not being kept in a gun safe? Should he involve the police so there's more authority behind the return? If Adam still resists the return, what should the consequences be for Adam? Merely a loss of gun privileges, loss of friendship, fine/jail time for reckless endangerment of children?

DEI and All That

 Lately I heard that some conservatives are upset that Chick-Fil-A has a VP of DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion). They’ve had one for many years but Chick-Fil-A has been “outed.” An upcoming book—Kevin Woodson’s The Black Ceiling—could help enlighten us on the issues and options for Black advancement. The author adopts Nancy DiTomaso’s perspective of “racial inequality without racism.”

Woodson provides an important and easily understood contribution for those organizations trying their best to have more diversity and inclusion. Unlike many programs and workshops, he comes from a broad range of exploratory disciplines—cultural sociology, organizational dynamics and social psychology—to go deeper than surface symptoms that hinder Black professionals’ career advancement. Though limited to the legal and financial arenas, his conclusions can be applied to any industry, any organizational tier and any size of business. 

He expands on the insight that the “ceiling” is enhanced by social alienation and stigma anxiety. Everyone will recognize the ensuing reactions when they’ve been in a culture clash. Even White people experience this if they’re honest when they travel from northern US to southern US or vice versa, or travel to other parts of the developing world. We will all have a tendency to develop the coping mechanisms of isolation, seeking out familiar people and situations and disparagingly assessing others without full understanding. Therefore, White people should be able to commiserate with their Black professional brothers and sisters. To overcome the alienation and anxiety, Kevin Woodson provides several effective options for organizations and individuals to dissipate the obstacles for Black professionals. These are not your usual prescriptive tropes you might see in other places.

I did spot one glaring omission in his recommendations. While acknowledging the inaccuracies, biases and damage inherent in performance reviews/appraisals, earlier in the book he fails to call for their “abolishment” as an idea to help Black professionals (and actually all professionals). Confirmation bias, recency bias, (and other prejudices), collaboration inadequacies, timing issues, rating/ranking policies and individual reviewer’s perspectives and preferences conspire to raise the level of inaccuracy and reviewer’s projections to a level of 90 percent. The person’s actual performance provides a mere ten percent influence to an appraisal of a year’s performance or particular project review. This problem is compounded when these faulty reviews are the basis for promotion, wage increases, and other “juicy” assignments that can propel a person’s career. If organizations take this problem to heart and develop different, simpler assessment techniques and reduce the enormous significance these assessments have, all professionals (and other categories of employees) will benefit. Assessed individuals could try to let the reviews not inflate or deflate their egos.