Dr. Shirley Davis - Diversity, Equity & Inclusion For Dummies

1964 — United States Civil Rights Act (United States): This landmark policy put into law the prohibition of discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. It also banned racial segregation in schools, employment, and public entities and unequal voter registration requirements. This act has been amended to include those with disabilities and the LGBTQ community.

1965 — Executive Order 11246 (United States): This order signed by U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson became a key milestone in a series of federal actions aimed at ending racial, religious, and ethnic discrimination. Also known as Affirmative Action, it protects the rights of workers employed by federal contractors to remain free from discrimination on the basis of their race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, or national origin and opens doors of opportunity through its affirmative action provisions.

1965 — United States Voting Rights Act (United States): This law prohibits racial discrimination in voting, as well as acts that prohibit a person’s ability to vote.

1965 — United Kingdom Race Relations Act (United Kingdom): This act was the first kind of legislation in the United Kingdom to ban discrimination on the basis of color, race, and ethnic and national origin.

1969 — Stonewall Riots (United States): In response to a police raid at the Stonewall Inn (a gay club in New York City), members of the LGBTQ+ community held a number of violent protests.

1976 — Soweto Uprisings (South Africa): Black schoolchildren held protests in response to the government’s announcement that schooling would take place in Afrikaans, the language based on that of South Africa’s European Dutch settlers.

1987 — publication of Workforce 2000 (United States): Among this book’s predictions was that the future U.S. labor force would include more women and underrepresented groups. Many experts used it as the impetus for creating and making a business case for diversity training.

1994 — Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (United States): This U.S. military policy prohibited gay, lesbian, and bisexual people from openly serving in the military. In 2011, this policy was dismantled.

2006 — Civil Union Act (South Africa): This South African law established legal civil unions for same-sex marriage and civil unions for unmarried opposite-sex and same-sex couples.

2013 — Marriage Act (United Kingdom): Established legal same sex marriage in England and Wales.

2015 — Equal Marriage Act (United States): The U.S. Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage in 50 states and required that all states recognize out-of-state same sex marriage licenses.

2020 — Crown Act (United States): This law prohibits discrimination against hairstyles and textures in the state of California.

2020 — George Floyd murder (United States): George Floyd, a Black man, was murdered by a white police officer who held his knee on George Floyd’s neck for more than nine minutes, cutting off his ability to breathe. This event triggered massive outrage, outcries, and international protests for social justice reform and for greater equity and inclusion.

The laws (from various countries across the globe) have evolved in a sequential process from basic human and civil rights to matters of compliance and then the moral and social imperative. As this book explores, organizations’ policies and practices related to DEI matters tend to follow a similar evolutionary process. This similarity leads to a universal experience for diversity, equity, and inclusion programs: They’re normally initiated with awareness and affinity programs, followed by the establishment of the business case for diversity practices. Keep in mind the local, regional, and national laws vary depending on your location.

Also consider that these social movements, those of the 1960s especially, strived more for racial and gender equality, but not within the specifics of diversity, equity, and inclusion. Therefore, examining these terms (as I do in the following section) and how they’ve evolved into workplace standards and benchmarks is important.

Considering the social and political climate since 2011, diversity, equity, and inclusion are now terms that are part of the vocabulary of business, educational, and political systems. But the conversation surrounding DEI has become quite muddled because people often use the terms interchangeably without specifying each term’s own unique identity. Like most, you may ask these common questions: “Are these terms one and the same?” “How different and similar are they?” “What do I really need to know and do about DEI?”

I address these questions and concerns throughout this chapter and the book. But in the following sections, I discuss and define the relationship between diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Simply put, diversity is the collection of unique attributes, traits, and characteristics that make up individuals. They include values, beliefs, experiences, backgrounds, preferences, behaviors, race, gender, abilities, socioeconomic status, physical appearance, age, and so on. Some of these traits are visible, and many others are invisible.

For decades, I’ve been defining diversity as being comparable to an iceberg (see Figure 1-1). Scientists say that 90 percent of what makes up an iceberg is invisible or below the waterline, and only 10 percent is above it. Think about diversity. People can only see about 10 percent of visible traits that make you diverse. The rest is invisible (beneath the surface). Sometimes you can see the diversity, and sometimes you can’t.

Diversity also has different meanings within various cultural contexts. For example, the U.S. perspective of diversity suggests all the various ways you can see or describe people. But in some European countries, diversity leans more toward gender differences. In Middle Eastern countries, diversity often speaks to religious beliefs.

Courtesy of Dr. Shirley Davis

FIGURE 1-1:Just like an iceberg, most diversity traits are below the surface.

Generational differences are also a key component of diversity. Much like people born within the same time frame share so many coming-of-age experiences (such as music), generations tend to understand and view diversity similarly as well. For example, Generation X (born between 1965 and 1981) and baby boomers (born between 1946 and 1964) lean toward describing diversity in terms of race, gender, and ethnic background. On the other hand, millennials (born between 1981 and 1996) think of diversity beyond demographics to the manner in which people think, learn, and have various experiences. I talk more about generational diversity in Chapter 2.

In 1990, well-respected diversity pioneers Marilyn Loden and Judy Rosener developed a framework for thinking about the different dimensions of diversity within individuals and institutions. Depicted as concentric circles, their diversity wheel has been used in many different ways to encourage thinking about values, beliefs, and dimensions of identity for people and organizations. It defines the various dimensions of diversity, dividing them into four layers: