Subtle Yet Harsh
Discrimination is everywhere. It’s in our workplaces, in the news and on our minds. Discrimination affects every one of us in multiple ways. As corporate and community leaders grow increasingly unwilling to downplay or ignore discrimination within their organizations, we all become increasingly unsatisfied with “best practices." Implicit bias training, for example, raises awareness without necessarily changing behavior. We simply must do better, and to improve, we must stop oversimplifying the matter. Research from the social and behavioral sciences helps us dig into pertinent details. Here we consider four nuances of discrimination:
Acts of discrimination are often quite subtle
We often discriminate without intending to do so
Perceptions of discrimination are based largely on past experiences
Victims of discrimination can also be offenders and vice versa
When we consider these nuances in designing and shifting corporate ecosystems, we are almost guaranteed to think more deeply and more clearly about what it will take to make progress toward inclusive, fully engaged teams.
Acts of discrimination are often quite subtle.
Discrimination refers to disparate treatment based on perceived affiliation with a given group (e.g., when a woman is paid less for doing the same job with the same ratings and levels of experience). But much, if not most, discriminatory behavior is quite subtle:
“He keeps mispronouncing my name -- even after I’ve corrected him.”
"They expect women to do all the administrative work.”
“The things that matter to us are never on the agenda.”
“My boss dismisses everything I say.”
Are these experiences genuinely the result of discrimination? To answer that question, we would have to understand where the behavior is coming from. For example, why would a boss dismiss what one of their employees has to say? Clearly, there are many reasons -- both reasons that involve the employee’s gender, age, race, appearance, etc., and those that do not. Subtle discrimination is particularly destructive because it can paralyze victims with uncertainty. As a result, employees may stay in toxic work environments while leaders get away with less-than-fully-respectful behavior.
We often discriminate without intending to do so.
I’ve worked with a number of leaders who were stunned by accusations of discrimination. Unfortunately, unintentional discrimination is still discrimination. Just as ignorance of the law is no excuse for breaking the law, ignorance of one’s biases (even those baked into business practices) is no excuse for biased actions. The question is not whether you intentionally discriminate against someone; the question is whether your brain (consciously or unconsciously) skews your perception of someone based on their affiliation with a given group. Likewise, the question is not whether your company intentionally discriminates in its hiring, compensation, etc., practices but, rather, whether decision making processes are skewed to favor any given group.
Perceptions of discrimination are based largely on past experience.
Discrimination is further complicated by the role of the perceiver. Chris Argyris’s classic Ladder of Inference shows how our past experiences impact our interpretations of future events. As such, it makes sense that each of us has different discrimination triggers. In my earlier example of the boss dismissing his employee’s input, the employee rather quickly decided that his boss didn’t care what he had to say because of his age. Of all the possible explanations (e.g., being distracted or overwhelmed), why did the employee attribute dismissive behavior to age discrimination? One explanation is that this employee is especially sensitive to age discrimination as a result of past experiences (e.g., having a parent or friend affected by age discrimination, being stereotyped as “too old”/“too young” for other activities). As such, while others in the office assume the boss is simply distracted or overwhelmed, this particular employee feels discriminated against.
Victims of discrimination can also be offenders and vice versa.
It’s tempting to think that some groups are victims of discrimination while others are the offenders who (consciously or unconsciously, intentionally or unintentionally) discriminate against them. This is a gross oversimplification of the human condition. As humans, we harbor biases; thus, as humans, we discriminate. And if we dig a little deeper, it’s easy to see how acts of discrimination are often the direct result of being discriminated against. For example, the gentleman who feels invisible due to his age runs a very real risk of discriminating against those who make him feel invisible. It is far too easy to wound others when we’re hurt. As we can see through the lens of each of these four nuances, discrimination is not only real, pervasive and toxic -- it’s also complex. Certainly, this is why even the interventions designed to address root causes are not always effective.
Moving beyond zero tolerance, implicit bias and sensitivity training.
Organizations have been striving to address discrimination for decades, primarily through implicit bias/sensitivity training and zero-tolerance policies. If any combination of these interventions reliably created the change that companies are looking for, we would have declared success long ago. So how do we move beyond such noble interventions? When we consider research showing that we are all both victims and architects of discrimination, humility becomes perhaps the only option with integrity. In other words, the alternative to zero tolerance is not tolerance it's humility. The challenge is to bake humility into policies and practices — to make it clear that discrimination is both unavoidable and intolerable. The conflict created between holding these two truths together must lead to generative conversations. Indeed, programs designed to create honest conversations and empathetic responses show promise in terms of reducing discriminatory behavior. Organizations are wise to build on such insights -- to take them to the next level. From training to reporting practices and conflict resolution policies, we must find ways to make it safe to talk about discrimination. None of us are perfect. We all discriminate. We are all wounded from being discriminated against. Yet neither our wounds nor our wiring excuse us from fueling the cycle. We can learn from our mistakes; we can learn from others’ mistakes. Freedom and dignity hang in the balance. Note: This article was originally published via Forbes.com.
