LS 450/650 - Employment Law ..........................................Dr. Bennett-Alexander

University of Georgia

Terry College of Business

The rule would essentially combine the existing regulations regarding harassment against groups included in Title Vll Or the 1964 Civil Rights Act into one guideline, and leave separate the existing guidelines on sexual harassment because of the special considerations in that area. Title Vll prohibits employment discrimination on the basis of race, color, gender, religion and national origin for employers with 15 or more employees.

The California group has persuaded n ore than 40 members of Congress to sign a letter to the chair of EEOC, Tony Gallegos, "urging him to delete religion from the proposed guidelines." They opine that if religion is included in the harassment guidelines, no longer will employees be able to practice their religious tenets in the workplace, despite their constitutional right to do so.

Further, since Playboy-type pinups posted in the workplace are the basis of an action for hostile environment sexual harassment, hanging a crucifix in the workplace would have the same result for religious harassment.

In the 12 yeas that I have worked with Title Vll, including authoring the first textbook on employment law for business, due out July 18, I have never seen anything in the law or court decisions which would lead me to believe that the analogy is a fitting one. It is drastically over simplified and dramatized. I have never seen a case in which pinups alone served as a basis for liability for sexual harassment. It is much more involved than that. And by and large, having a crucifix in one's office generally would not carry with it much of the anti-Christian animus that having pin-up6 does with antifemale animus.

In addition, as with any of the harassment guidelines, it is only when the activity directed at the complainant 1- severe and pervasive and unreasonably interferes with his or her ability to perform the job, that it is actionable. A crucifix hanging on the wall would hardly meet that criteria.

However, having a supervisor persistently badger a supervisee to come to his or her church, and having the supervisee turned down for training, promotions or raises if he or she does not, is quite a different story and should be addressed as religious harassment under the EEOC guidelines.

Dawn D. Bennett-Alexander, esq. is also an attorney, and a founding partner of BJD Consultants, consultants on employment law issues and a published author.

Last updated March 17, 1997 by Dawn D. Bennett-Alexander

The other morning I was, unfortunately, trapped in an auto dealer's waiting room, Geraldo Rivera on the television. Since several people were already there watching it, I could hardly walk in and tum, so there I sat, crocheting a sweater for my daughter and bearing witness to the unbelievable stuff they can put on TV and try to pass off as worthwhile.

Geraldo's program involved several previous young female guests who came in for a make over. The guests had all been on shows in which they demonstrated, in some way, shape or form, how rough and streetwise they were They were given professional make overs, including make-up, clothes, shoes and hairstyles. They were then presented to the audience along with a clip taken from the previous show on which they had appeared.

Aside from all the ridiculous assumptions inherent in the piece, what bothered me most was Geraldo's comments and reactions to the women. He repeatedly talked about how beautiful and sexy they now were after the make-overs.

Geraldo said that the point of the show was to show the women how different they could look and: see if they felt any differently, with an end toward changing their lives from being roughneck to more traditional people. My question is if his point was that the way they now looked better positioned them for Job interviews, jobs, and other aspects of life which could change their behavior from hoodlums to productive members of society, then what does beautiful or sexy have to do with anything? Besides, his responses gave the impression that in order to be acceptable as a female one must be one, the other, or both.

What does this say to their worth or that of females in general? Their potential? Their role as productive members of society? Their role in the workplace? And what, pray tell, does it say about those females who may not be society's traditional idea of beautiful or sexy, even though they are working, regular members of society?

I have three daughters. I think that it is ridiculous and supremely wasteful to view females only in terms of their looks or sex appeal. I am not bringing my daughters up to be sexy. I'm bringing them up to be concerned, involved, productive, contributing, members of society. If someone happens to think they are good looking or even sexy, I want my daughters to appreciate the fact that this is merely someone's opinion, which they are entitled to, but that it is an add-on. An extra. Not a goal to shoot for. I want people to look at them in terms of what it is they can bring to a situation, not whether they will be a nice-looking centerpiece or mannequin on someone's arm. I have taught them that they were not put on earth to be an adornment in any way, shape or form.

Things like this Geraldo show make it difficult for parents to get the message across that things like beauty and sexiness should be extremely low on their daughters' lists of priorities. Not only are those things personal, subjective and temporal, but they should also be irrelevant to their quest for acceptance as productive contributors to society and to the workplace.

What can we do about it? Put less emphasis on it. Check our thinking about it. Make sure we are not looking at females in traditional ways which downplay their worth as human beings. If Geraldo thought these women looked better positioned for jobs or workplace acceptance, then that is what he should have said. Not that they were beautiful and sexy, as if that is what they should shoot for in the workplace. I'm not saying to never tell females they are good looking, or even, if appropriate, sexy. I tell my girls they are beautiful all the time. But I also tell them how intelligent they are, how creative, imaginative, thoughtful, bright, hardworking and fun. I've done this from the time they were born, long before they could ever understand what was being said. I can't control what others do, but I could control my own actions, and I knew that a lot of what they took into the world with them would be what they got from me.

The result is that they know they have worth far removed from their looks. Their looks are in perspective. They know that their looks are not the most important factor about themselves. I wish Geraldo could have given that same message.

Dawn D. Bennett-Alexander, Esq., is an associate professor of employment Law & Legal Studies at UGA and a founding partner in BJD Consulting Diversity Consultants The opinions expressed in this column are not necessarily those of the Athens Observer.

Last updated March 17, 1997 by Dawn D. Bennett-Alexander

Cultural Etiquette is intended for people for all "races," nationalities, and creeds, not necessarily just "white" people, because no one living in Western society is exempt from the influences of racism, racial stereo types, race and cultural prejudices, and anti-Semitism. I include anti-Semitism in the discussion of racism because it is simply another manifestation of cultural and racial bigotry.

All people are people. It is ethnocentric to use a generic term such as "people" to refer only to white people and then racially label everyone else. This creates and reinforces the assumption that whites are the norm, the real people, and that all others are aberrations.

"Exotic," when applied to human beings, is ethnocentric and racist.

While it is true that most citizens of the U.S.A. are white, at least four fifths of the world's population consists of people of color. Therefore, it is statistically incorrect as well as ethnocentric to refer to us as minorities. The term "minority" is used to reinforce the idea of people of color as "other."

A cult is a particular system of religious worship. If the religious practices of the Yorubas constitute a cult, then so do those of the Methodists, Catholics, Episcopalians, and so forth.

A large radio/tape player is a boom-box, or a stereo or a box or a large metallic ham sandwich with speakers. It is not a "ghetto blaster."

Everybody can blush. Everybody can bruise. Everybody can tan and get sunburned. Everybody.

Judaism is no more patriarchal than any other patriarchal religion.

Koreans are not taking over. Neither are Jews. Neither are the Japanese. Neither are the West Indians. These are myths put out and maintained by the ones who really have.

All hair is "good" hair. Dreadlocks, locks, dreads, natty dreads, et cetera, is an ancient traditional way that African people sometimes wear their hair. It is not braided, it is "locked." Locking is the natural tendency of African hair to knit and bond to itself. It locks by itself, we don't have to do anything to it to make it lock. It is. permanent; once locked, it cannot come undone. It gets washed just as regularly as anyone else's hair. No, you may not touch it, don't ask.

One of the most effective and insidious aspects of racism is cultural genocide. Not only have African Americans been cut off from our African tribal roots, but because of generations of whites pitting African against Indian, and Indian against African, we have been cut off from our Native American roots as well. Consequently, most African Native Americans no longer have tribal affiliations, or know for certain what people they are from.

Columbus didn't discover diddly-squat.

Slavery is not a condition unique to African people. In fact, the word "slave" comes from the Slav people of Eastern Europe. Because so many Slavs were enslaved by other people (including Africans), their very name came to be synonymous with the condition.

Native Americans were also enslaved by Europeans. Because it is almost impossible to successfully enslave large numbers of people in their own land, most enslaved Native Americans from the continental U.S. were shipped to Bermuda, and the West Indies, where many inter-married with the Africans.

People do not have a hard time because of their race or cultural background. No one is attacked, abused, oppressed, pogromed, or enslaved because of their race, creed, or cultural background. People are attacked, abused, oppressed, pogronled, or enslaved because of racism and anti-Semitism. There is a subtle but important difference in the focus here. The first implies some inherent fault or shortcoming within the oppressed person or group. The second redirects the responsibility; back to the real source of the problem.

Asians are not "mysterious," "fatalistic," or "inscrutable. "

Native Americas are not stoic, mystical, or vanishing.

Latin people are no more hot-tempered, hot-blooded. or emotional than anyone else. We do not have flashing eyes, teeth, or daggers. We are lovers pretty much like other people. Very few of us deal with any kind of drugs.

Middle Easterners are not fanatics, terrorists, or all oil-rich.

Jewish people are not particularly rich, clannish, or expert in money matters.

Not all African Americans are poor, athletic, or ghetto-dwellers.

Most Asians in the U.S. are not scientists, mathematicians, geniuses, or wealthy.

Southerners are no less intelligent than anybody else.

It is not a compliment to tell someone: "I don't think of you as Jewish/Black/Asian/Latina/Middle Eastern/Native American " Or "I think of you as white."

Do not use a Jewish person or person of color to hear your confession of past racist transgressions. If you have offended a particular person, then apologize directly to that person.

Also don't assume that Jews and people of color necessarily want to hear about how prejudiced your Uncle Fred is, no matter how terrible you think he is.

If you are white and/or gentile, do not assume that the next Jewish person or person of color you see will feel like discussing this guide with you. Sometimes we get tired of teaching this subject.

If you are white, don t brag to a person of color about your overseas trip to our homeland. Especially when we cannot afford such a trip. Similarly, don't assume that we are overjoyed to see the expensive artifacts you bought.

Words like "gestapo," "concentration camp" and "Hitler" are only appropriate when used in reference to the Holocaust.

"Full-blood," ''half-breed,'' ''quarter-blood.'' Any inference that a person's "race" depends on blood is racist. Natives are singled out for this form of bigotry and are denied rights on that basis."

"Scalping": a custom also practiced by the French, the Dutch, and the English.*

Do you have friends or acquaintances who are terrific except they're really racist.? If you quietly accept that part of them, you are giving their racism tacit approval.

As an exercise, pretend you are from another planet and you want an example of a typical human being for your photo album. Having never heard of racism, you'd probably pick someone Who represents the majority of the people on the planet-an Asian person

How many is too many? We have heard well-meaning liberals say things like "This extent is too white We need more people of color Well, how many do you need? Fifty? A hundred? Just what is your standard for personal racial comfort?

People of color and Jewish people have been so all their lives. Further, if we have been raised in a place where white gentiles predominate, then we have been subjected to racism/anti-Semitism all our lives. We are therefore experts on our own lives and conditions. If you do not understand or believe or agree with what someone is saying about their own oppression, do not automatically assume that they are wrong or paranoid or over sensitive.

It is not "racism in reverse' or "segregation" for Jews or people of color to come together in affinity groups for mutual support. Sometimes we need some time and space apart from the dominant group just to relax and be ourselves. If people coming together for group support makes you feel excluded, perhaps there's something missing in your own life or cultural connections.

The various cultures of people of color often seem very attractive to white people. (Yes, we are wonderful. we can't deny it.) But white people should not make a playground out of other people's cultures. We are not quaint We are not exotic. We are not cool.

Don't forget that every white person alive today is also descended from tribal peoples. If you are white, don't neglect your own ancient traditions. They are as valid as anybody else's, and the ways of your own ancestors need to be honored and remembered.

''Race" is an arbitrary and meaningless concept. Races among humans don't exist. [f there ever was any such thing as race, there has been so much constant crisscrossing of genes for the last 500,000 years that it would have lost all meaning anyway. There are no real divisions between us, only a continuum of variations that constantly change, as we come together and separate according to the movement of human populations.

Anyone who functions in what is referred to as the "civilized" world is a carrier of the disease of racism.

Does reading this guide make you uncomfortable? Angry? Confused? Are you taking it personally? Well, not to fret. Racism has created a big horrible mess, and racial healing can sometimes be painful. Just remember that Jews and people of color do not want or need anybody's guilt. We just want people to accept responsibility when it is appropriate, and actively work for change.

Amoja Three Rivers, a cofounder of the Accessible African Herstory Project, is a lecturer, herstorian, and craftswoman.

Excerpted with permission from Cultural Etiquette: A Guide for the Well-Intentioned: copyright © 1990 by Amoj; Three Rivers. Copies are available for $6 from Market Wimmin, Box 28, Indian Valley, Va. 24105. Reprinted with permission from The Pathfinder Directory, by Amylee. Native American Indian Resource Center.

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Last updated March 17, 1997 by Dawn D. Bennett-Alexander

Thaddeus Garret Jr. was walking to a corner store in 1982 when he was stopped by Washington, D.C., police, who said he fit the description of a black man who had just mugged an elderly white woman. They demanded he come to the station for a lineup. He refused. He was angry and upset, but didn't mention the incident to his boss: then Vice President George Bush.

"To share it would not have made the situation any better,": says Mr. Garrett, then Mr. Bush's domestic policy adviser. "There's a tendency to want to put it behind you."

Mr. Garrett's decision to remain silent reflects a chasm that continues to separate whites and blacks even as they work, play and live more closely together than ever. Although blacks have made big inroads over the past 20 years, particularly in the workplace, a wall of silence still separates the races. That helps perpetuate distrust, misunderstanding and hurt.

'Microinsults'

For a variety of reasons, blacks often don't share their experiences and feelings with whites. In someways, the difficulty they face in talking is like that of war veterans who find it hard to share their combat experience with civilians.

Black attorney Dwayne Morris, who works at a Fortune 500 company, calls it "a code of silence" among blacks, in unspoken understanding that there are certain experiences you do not relate to whites. For instance: While at a large Chicago law firm, Mr. Morris spent two months putting together an acquisition only to be mistaken for a messenger when he finally met his client. The humiliation of the incident was all the more painful, he says, because he felt he couldn't share it with any of his white co-workers, many of whom he considered friends.

"Frankly, I just don't expect a white person who has not had my experiences to quite understand what goes on in terms of my emotions," Mr. Morris says. He did share the incident with black attorneys at the firm.

Indeed, many African-Americans in this country live with a surging river of indignities dammed in inside, a deep reservoir of what one psychologist calls "microinsults."

'Grin and Bear'

But many blacks suffer these everyday sights privately. They offer many reasons for their silence. Some simply assume that whites will be insensitive to their stories. In other cases, blacks feel that whites won't believe them or that simply bringing up issues of race is too explosive. And some are concerned about whites considering blacks hyersentitive. "You want to be open, but you don't want to present yourself as the victim," says Charles Branham, an assistant professor of African-American studies at Northwestern University. "It can sound like you're making excuses.

"A lot of things we experience as people of color we grin and bear, when we explode and white ethics ask, "Why are you so angry?" says Kesho Scott, who teaches sociology at Grinnell College and conducts workshops on race for corporations.

For their part, whites concede that such issues are often difficult to discuss. "Part of what we do as whites, particularly as professionals and liberals, is we want to say, 'Oh, but it's not race, it could happen to anyone,'" says John a. Capitman, a professor at Brandeis University. "I don't think we listen because I think we feel helpless."

Some whites hesitate to talk about race for fear of being taken the wrong way. "I'm always afraid that some things I say may be taken out of context and called racist," says Greg Fobare, a materials analyst for a Detroit-area company. He sometimes discusses racial affairs with one black colleague, but "I'm careful to keep my voice down so I won't be taken out of context" by others listening, he says.

Followed by a Guard

Of course, many people are reluctant to share their personal or work-related experiences in the office whether it's with someone of another race or not. But it becomes a problem between the races because there is less understanding and less natural empathy to begin with. While there are authentic bonds between blacks and whites, blacks interviewed for this story suggested that there was much they didn't share with their white friends.

Timothy Alston, formerly a commercial lender at a Boston bank, felt good about the response of one white co-worker. He spent a lunch hour with the friend shopping at a department store. The two split up for a while and Mr. Alston says he was then followed by a security guard. He became so enraged that he found his friend and suggested the two should leave. His friend's initial reaction, Mr. Alston says, was to suggest that maybe it was an

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Last updated March 17, 1997 by Dawn D. Bennett-Alexander

Have you ever found yourself up against the old double standard at work? Then you know how annoying it. can be and how alone you can feel. Supervisors and co-workers still judge us by old stereotypes that say women are emotional, disorganized and inefficient. Here are some of the most glaring examples of the typical office double standard.

The family picture is on HIS desk: The family picture is on HER desk:

He's a solid, responsible family man Her family will come before her career

HIS desk is cluttered: HER desk is cluttered:

He's obviously a hard worker and a busy man She's obviously a disorganized scatter-brain

HE'S talking with co workers: SHE'S talking with co workers:

He must be discussing the latest deal She must be gossiping

HE'S not at his desk: SHE'S not at her desk:

He's meeting customers She must be out shopping

HE'S having lunch with the boss: SHE'S having lunch with the boss:

He's on his way up They must be having an affair

The boss criticized HIM: The boss criticized HER:

He'll improve his performance She'll be very upset

HE got an unfair deal: SHE got an unfair deal:

Did he get angry? Did she cry?

HE'S getting married: SHE'S getting married:

He'll be more settled She'll get pregnant and leave

HE'S having a baby: SHE'S having a baby:

He'll need a raise She'll be costing the company money in maternity benefits

HE'S going on a business trip: SHE'S going on a business trip:

It's good for his career What does her husband say?

HE'S leaving for a better job: SHE'S leaving for a better job:

He recognizes a good opportunity Women are undependable.

Last updated March 17, 1997 by Dawn D. Bennett-Alexander

White Man Who Altered Himself To Look Black Reveals Chilling Accounts Of Racism, Oppression

The man who took pills to alter his skin color so he could live as a Black person perhaps learned a lifetime of lessons about racism in just one week's time.

Joshua Solomon, a White 20-year-old University of Maryland student, took six Psorlen pills a day to add melanin -- the substance that gives Black people dark skin -- so he would have the complexion of a Black man.

The major question Solomon proposed to answer: Are Blacks really discriminated against as much as they claim they are?

"Like all White folks -- like my friends and myself -- we played the sympathetic role, but deep down, I had my suspicions. I just had to know which was right. Was it really that bad," Solomon explained to JET in a telephone interview.

After his ordeal he concluded, ". . . It (racism) is considerably worse than I thought it would be."

Solomon, who said he wanted to sift through the inconsistencies he heard from both sides of the color barrier, lived as a Black man for a week, venturing forth in the Washington, D.C., Atlanta and Gainesville, GA., areas. Two days of that week were in the South. His two days in the South quickly ended his adventure.

He told JET that he originally intended to do it for a semester, "but I just couldn't take being constantly pounded with hate. It never seems to stop."

Appearing to be a Black man was a shock to the young man's system. His dress remained the same -- polo shirts and khaki slacks -- and so was his demeanor. But he could not deny that his sudden change of complexion changed the way he was treated in the world. Privileges that Solomon took for granted were suddenly denied.

And he wrote about them in detail in the Oct. 30 edition of the Washington Post.

Among Solomon's experiences: restaurants claimed he had to wait for a table when he saw numerous open tables; storekeepers followed him around and were uncharacteristically rude; women locked their car doors and rushed into their homes as he innocently passed by; and Whites refused to help him when he needed assistance finding a friend's apartment.

Although these were experiences that affect countless Blacks daily, Solomon maintains he still does not know what it is to be Black.

"I don't claim to know what it is to be Black -- that's not what happened here. What I kind of did was cross the color line for the White folks. What I got was a taste of White racism, not what it is to be Black. You don't learn that in one week," he said.

Solomon used the popular John Howard Griffin book Black Like Me, which was published in 1959, as a model to see how -- if at all did racism change. He wanted to travel to Gainesville like Griffin, and to Massachusetts and other places throughout the country to get answers to some nagging racial questions but his emotionally draining journey ended after two days in the South.

"It's a sad commentary for America, Whites in particular -- when you look at ,some of the eloquent writers like Langston Hughes and Cornell West -- that the word of a Black man just isn't enough for us (Whites) . . . It has to be validated by a White person," he concluded.

GRAPHIC: Picture, Joshua Solomon, a 20-year-old White college student, changed his skin color to experience life as a Black man. As a Black man, Solomon realized almost instantly that his soulful appearance altered the way he was treated by Whites.

Last updated March 17, 1997 by Dawn D. Bennett-Alexander

Corporate and high-level government interest in diversity management policies has been rising rapidly. For fees ranging from about $3,000 (for a one-day workshop) to more than $200,000 (for a complete cultural overhaul), diversity consultants offer to create workplace conductive to retaining and promoting culturally diverse employees.

Testimonials abound, even though there is little systematic evidence to demonstrate long-term results. Diversity workshops may impart cultural sensitivity, but they can also generate alienation or bitter, lasting divisions. One sure benefit is that sponsoring such programs shows that the employer is "doing something" about diversity - a savvy legal precaution as sexual harassment charges proliferate and with the labor Department's "Glass Ceiling Initiative" push for promotion and retention of female and minority employees.

Managing diversity is no fad; the various programs from a powerful ideological machine that would extend proportional representation and Multiculturalism far into personnel practices. The policies target "invisible" institutional racism and sexism and the allegedly monolithic white-male corporate culture. Managers are urged to "value differences," and gain greater productivity by letting women, immigrants and minorities "be themselves."

The recession has had minimal impact on diversity management's momentum. Late May's Second Annual Diversity Conference in Washington, D.C., was even more successful than last year's session. Consultants and policy experts joined individuals and groups sent from more than 60 corporations, 23 federal agencies and dozens of smaller employers.

A 1990 Towers-Perrin/Hudson Institute survey of 645 organizations found that the overwhelming majority of surveyed firms were concerned about work force diversity and many were already grappling with the reality. Forty-two percent took special steps to recruit minorities, 29% trained managers to value diversity, 12% trained minorities for supervisory positions and 10% had begun mentoring programs. (Fifty percent of utility companies provided diversity training to managers.) A 1991 follow-up survey found that the number of existing or planned programs aimed at dealing with work force change has doubled or even tripled.

In selling their programs, diversity consultants usually mute multiculturalism. Instead, they stress "dollars and demographics." Successful businesses, it is argued, will anticipate and capitalize on the swiftly rising proportion of minority, immigrant and female workers - Hispanic workers will be more in tune with Hispanic workers will be more in tune with Hispanic consumers. Asian managers will better manage Asian workers, etc. ("We've got to get right with the future!" urges Miami Herald Publisher David Lawrence, a corporate convert).

Besides the ubiquitous "valuing differences" workshops, managing diversity has spawned several additional strategies: Digirtal, Hughes, Du Pont, Avon and several other corporations have mad work force diversity an explicit corporate goal, Hughes has a vice president, work force diversity, and Motorola has a director, human resources diversity. Corporations may establish diversity goals for all levels of the organizations - such as Xerox's Balanced Workforce plan. Prudential Insurance is one of several corporations that has linked exectuvies' performance evaluations (and/or bonuses) to their records on promoting female and minority employees. NYNEX is among those organizations that have surveyed employees ("cultural assessment") with an eye toward uncovering bias barriers.

Some consultants urge corporations to follow the lead of major universities, such as the University of Michigan and the University of California, to use set-aside, "targets of opportunity" positions to increase work force diversity. Many corporations have tried formal or informal mentoring and some have encouraged the formation of minority employee support groups - such as Security Pacific Bank's BOSS (Black Officers Support System), HON (Hispanic Officers Network) and SPAN (Security Pacific Asian Network). Digital inaugurated "core groups" to discuss diversity issues - led by employees who had graduated from two-day workshops nicknamed "Affirmative Action University."

Whatever the merits and legal risks of their methods, the diversity meisters' futurology is proving suspect. Projections of ballooning ethnic diversity and labor shortages are increasingly criticized as exaggerated or inaccurate. Assimilation continues to melt ethnic separatism. And, ironically, the very growth and success of diversity management is fostering internal conflicts.

One major rift results from efforts by "new breed" consultants to distance managing diversity from affirmative action's backward-looking, strident, social-work style. These tactics anger veterans with backgrounds in Equal Employment Opportunity enforcement. They bristled when diversity guru R. Roosevelt Thomas, addressing the Second National Diversity Conference, said that efforts should now focus upon educating managers and changing corporate culture. Critics fear Mr. Thomas will expand diversity's focus to include disability, generational styles, and work-family conflicts. (Sexual orientation is one dimension of "difference" gingerly approached or simply avoided by many market-wise consultants and nervous corporate clients).

Convention keynoter Lewis Griggs, producer of the huggely successful "Valuing Diversity" training videos, sparked debate in my convention focus group over whether white males should do diversity training. On the other hand, political correctness posits that only minorities and women know "what it is like" to be members of oppressed groups: therefore, women and minorities are best suited to do "diversity work." On the hand, there were objections that a field already bereft of white males may be devalued as yet another interest-group ghetto.

White employee resistance to diversity management was much discussed at the National Diversity Conference, and "defensiveness, resistance, backlash, scapegoating" emerged as a top problem area in a recent Cultural Diversity at Work newsletter survey.

Many consultants would like to expand the diversity agenda to include white males. But political correctness prevents diversity advocates from openly admitting that white hostility may result from reverse discrimination and that, therefore, whites may have good reason to suspect more calls for diversity-tuned "fair treatment, not equal treatment." And everyone should recognize the dangers in arguing that an individual's educational and occupational opportunities should be based upon the projected growth of his ethnic group - or his ethnic "fit" with employees or customers.

Still, be prepared to hear that hiring or promoting an Hispanic because he is Hispanic is not discrimination against non-Hispanics. In an ironic twist to the 1991 Civil Rights Act, "selecting for diversity" may be pitched as "business necessity."

Mr. Lynch is a visiting scholar at Claremont McKenna College and the author of "invisible Victim: White Males and the Crisis of Affirmative Action" (Praeger Paperbacks, 1991).

Last updated March 17, 1997 by Dawn D. Bennett-Alexander

To the editor,

Elliot Wigginton is usually referred to as "Foxfire's Founder," or "The child molester." He would be more accurately described as what he is - a homosexual. Wigginton is a "gay" who preys on young males.

In all the happy chat on TV talk shows and in endless panel discussions about the homosexual "lifestyle," no reference is ever made as to the repulsive activities of homosexuals. Nothing is ever said about what homosexuals like Wigginton actually do. The debate is framed as if it were a question of the difference between people who prefer to live on the East Coast versus the West Coast.

Most homosexuals lead anything but a normal life. Their activities are so bizarre, shocking and vulgar they can't be repeated in print even using the softest euphemisms or clinical terms.

Between daily partners and midnight bus station toilet patrol, most homosexuals seem to spend their time looking for their next "trick." Every waking moment seems to be obsessed with sex. A profound sense of guilt is probably behind the drive to acquire social approval.

Part of that disapproval is based on the fact that homosexuals run a high risk of contracting and spreading serious, sometimes fatal, venereal diseases. Homosexuals are reservoirs of various social diseases passed on by their incredible sexual promiscuity.

Many of these diseases can be ransmitted non-sexually and are therefore a clear threat to public health.

There's little question among medical experts that sexual deviates such as necrophiliacs, pederasts, transvestites, pedophiles, homosexuals, sado-masochists and the like have mild to serious personality disorders.

I try to be understanding and forgiving of all human frailties, many of which I share. But to the charge of "homophobia" I readily plead guilty.

Children especially should be protected from people with undisciplined urges to sexually gratify themselves at the expense of helpless and innocent lives being ruined.

It takes no great leap of wisdom to figure out that the last place a "gay" teacher should be allowed is in a schoolroom filled with young boys.

Wigghlton's sentence is already absurdly light. He should at least serve it out.

Jack Chesney

To the editor,

This is in response to the letter from Jack Chesney (May 28) which concluded that because Elliott Wigginton molested young boys, all gays and lesbians engage in such behavior and are thus, not "normal." This can no more be truthfully said of this group than it can be said that because the Son of Sam, was a rapist, then all men are rapists.

I am sure the failure of Mr. Chesney's logic is apparent to most, but because his letter contains some common misconceptions, I would like to address it. I contend that many of the misconceptions are caused by myths and the media choosing to sensationalize coverage of gay and lesbian issues (which, thankfully, The Athens Daily News by and large did not do with the recent March on Washington).

As an attendee who saw firsthand the recent March on Washington for Gay, Lesbian and Bi Equal Rights and Liberation, I was extremely disappointed with most of the coverage in the press. To look at the pictures chosen to represent the flavor of the March, the March appeared alternately as some sort of "love-in," bodypiercing convention, or an angry lop-sided face-off between marchers and March protesters.

What a travesty to have minimized the efforts of so very many people and reduced this important and unprecedented gathering to such a ridiculous and unrepresentative scenario. I can only think that the depiction's are due to insensitivity and ignorance, or the wish to pander to sensationalism.

The fight for basic civil rights for gays and lesbians is much too serious to be trivialized. It is not about sex. It is not about sensationalism, hysteria, special privileges or forcing anything on others. It is not even about religion or morals, for those are something each of us must choose for ourselves rather than have imposed upon us by others.

The reason I volunteered my time in helping with the March is because it was about being truthful about who we are and substituting that truth for the myth and sensational pandering which has taken place for so long. Myths and sensationalism which would cause Mr. Chesney to make the kind of grossly inaccurate statements made in his letter and, sadly, believe them with all his heart.

I volunteered during the March because it was about millions of the productive, decent, hardworking citizens you know who daily go about their lives quietly, hiding a part of themselves from their families, their friends and their co-workers out of fear of not being accepted for who they are because of the myths and sensationalism surround them. It is about the angst, the loss of job productivity, friendship, and closeness that pretending to be someone other than who you are produces a !loss for us all.

The truth is much less dramatic, much less sensational, and much more compelling. We are simply your family, your children, your neighbors, friends, doctors, lawyers, judges, professors, ministers, trash collectors, research scientists, your secretaries and others. You come into contact with us every day and don't realize it.

The unsensational fact of the matter is there is no gay "lifestyle". The much less dramatic truth is that there's just a life. Plain and simple. Just like everyone else's. We are millions of people who worry about the same things everyone does: interest rates on mortgages, how to keep our kids in check, the economy, war, stubborn crabgrass and whether the car will start. We are people who get up and shower, brush our teeth, go to our jobs, shop for groceries and pay taxes just like everyone else.

It is far more sensational to feed into the old stereotypes which tug at the deeply rooted ignorance and fear victimizing us all. But it is irresponsible if one is a journalist whose job is to accurately report events to those who were not present and wish to find out what occurred and to contribute to negative perceptions of a group which may be physically or emotionally harmed by it.

As unsensational as it is, and as much as it seems to go against what we've been taught all our lives, sex is such a minimal issue in this fight for human rights as to be a non-issue and I refuse to expend precious time and energy on it. Anyone who attempts to make it more is simply uninformed or mean-spirited.

It is also an injustice to the readers who trust the press to be responsible, accurate purveyors of the truth, so that they can have solid information upon which to base decision. These are people's lives we are dealing with here. It cannot be reduced to sexual activity any more than anyone's life can be reduced to that. As for the March, while I am sure the media depiction were real, they were such an insignificant part of the March and its related events, until it does the reader an injustice to imply that that this is what the March was about or representative o what went on.

While in D.C., I participated in the March's lobby days in Congress. As I sat in one Congressman's office with about 2 other gays and lesbians of color and lobbied for the lifting of the military ban on gays and basic civil rights to protect us from, among other things, unwarranted job and housing discrimination, I was overcome with emotion; 30 years ago, participated in the 1963 March on Washington at which The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his famous " have a Dream" speech. I was only 12 years old at the time, but I vividly remember how strange it felt to have to do something like have all these people come from all over the world to march in order to convince a government that we were human beings worthy of having basic civil rights like job protection and education. Here I was 30 years later, sitting in a Congressman's office along with a room full of other bright, capable, accomplished human beings again, feeling like I was on my knees begging for basic civil rights. Here I was, again, trying to convince national legislator that I was just another human being worthy of the promise of liberty and justice for all. How in the world can it make sense to discriminate against a person based upon the very personal matter of who they feel drawn to emotionally?

As I sat there on Capitol Hill looking at the faces of these people and thinking about this, the weight of the ridiculousness of the situation was crushing.

There is a story from the March that still sends chills down my spine ever time I hear it. One of the gay men's choruses which came to the March was riding the Metro subway system to the March and spontaneously broke into song along the way. A couple with a young son was in the car with them. The young boy asked his father what the men were doing. His. father looked at the sea of faces singing earnestly in the subway car, turned to his son and said, simply: "They are singing for their freedom." Not one among them could have given a better answer greatly hinders this cause to have our accomplishments and who we are trivialized, mythologized and sensationalized t irresponsible media coverage which then taken as fact, picked up, then pass on by people like Mr. Chesney. I do not mind us disagreeing on the issue of gay and lesbians, but we should base that disagreement upon reality not myth and sensationalized depiction's.

Dawn D. Bennett-Alexander


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Last updated March 17, 1997 by Dawn D. Bennett-Alexander

If you were educated in U.S. schools and say you are not racist, you weren't listening, according to a renowned researcher.

"Education in this country is about how to maintain the status quo and to perpetuate racism," said Jane Elliott, a former elementary school teacher, to University students and community members who packed Lincoln Hall Theatre Thursday night.

"I'm a racist," gray-haired and fiesty Elliott told the students. "If you want to see another racist, turn to the person to your right....Now look at the person to your left."

Elliott is best known for her "Blue eye/Brown eye" experiment, which she conducted with her third-grade class in 1968, following the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Elliott said she wanted to teach her class about racism by picking a characteristic her white students had no control over - eye color. She said she treated some children worse than others for a number of days based solely on the color of their eyes.

Elliott said the experiment demonstrated to her that she and other white people must look cruel and arrogant to people of color.

Elliott said the experiment caused much controversy and pain for her and her family in their small, all-white Iowa community, but it also made her decide to challenge racists throughout the country.

"I may not be able to change them, but I can challenge them. You have to prove to me that white people are superior, but you can't do it, because it's not true," she said.

"Racism is really skinism," Elliott said. Dark skin "is an adaptation to the natural environment. It has nothing to do with being God's chosen people."

Elliott said she is tired of those who tell people of color, "If you don't like it here, go back where you came from."

African-American students on this campus had ancestors on this land 15 to 19 generations ago, while white students' ancestors came to the United States three or four generations ago, Elliott said. "And you have the gall to say, 'Go back where you came from'?"

Elliott said people who disagree with her can write her a letter, but those who are truly racist might have some difficulty.

"You'll have to wait until morning because you must turn off all electricity components invented by black mates," she said, adding that candlelight will not be sufficient because "people of color had fire first."

And don't take out a pen, write on paper, use the alphabet or numbers in your letter because people of color invented al those things too, Elliott said.

People of color also invented rubber, the first bicycle frames, aspirin, peanut butter and the process for using blood plasma in blood transfusions, she said.

Racists also should not say prayers, Elliott said.

"No white group has founded a major religion on this planet. The major religious were started in the Orient and the Middle East, not in Greece and Rome," she said. "I always knew you racists didn't have a prayer."

Elliott said racists are "lucky (that) people of color are more forgiving than white people are."

Women and people of color have been waiting for equity for more than 400 years; "we don't have to beg for it. It's in our Constitution," Elliott said. "Live up to that damned document or change it."

Last updated March 17, 1997 by Dawn D. Bennett-Alexander

The magazine made its discovery through a mail survey of student newspaper editors. I made mine at first hand: more than two decades of watching, talking with and listening to students at campuses across America.

At one school I visit every few years, I've gotten used to looking at the left side of the auditorium, a few rows from the front, to get a quick count of the black enrollment. No matter that seating is free, white students at these assemblies avoid these "black" rows, and black students won't sit anywhere else.

At other universities, the self-segregation happens in the dining hall, or at the student union. Sometimes it happens at social functions, notably dances, where the decision of whether to have a "black" dance or a "white" one is determined by choice of band or deejay.

The self-segregative phenomenon goes beyond the natural desire of young people, many of them away from their hometown networks for the first timie, to gravitate to those groups with whom they expect automatic, welcome. That's part of it, of course. But much of the segregation is enforced by code expressed in some form of the query: You gonna hang with us, or you gonna hang with them?

What of black students who don't want to play the segregation game? The general trend, apparently, is that no matter what interracial ideals they may have brought from home, they have, by their sophomore year, pretty much bought into the us/them culture.

But not always. I'm thinking of one young black man whose adoptive parents are white but who grew up in a racially mixed neighborhood. when he got to college, he told me, he found himself perfectly at ease on both sided of the racial divide. He could talk with, hang with, dance with white kids, because he'd done it before, and to their music. He could study with, party with or bang bodies on the basketball court with black kids, because he'd done that too. His biggest struggle, he said, was making students understand that he could be cool and comfortably African American even while refusing to be segregated.

Another young man I met on a recent college visit - Jason Small of DePauw University - is more philosophical about it.

"My world is not the place I want to be," he said, and the nature of the university - "one great sociological experiment" - should provide "a unique opportunity to get it right."

This 20-year old sophomore would recognize the world revealed by U.S. News. Three-quarters of the student editors - more than nine-tenths of the editors at schools with enrollment above 10,000 - report that self-segregation among blacks is common on their campuses. Fifty-three percent of the editors at the larger schools - 37 percent overall - agree that black students tend to feel that "white students are hostile and aloof." Between a quarter and a third of the editors said most white students are physically afraid of blacks on their campuses.

How did campuses come to be in such awful shape? This young man blames racist whites, insecure blacks - everybody, including himself and his peers.

And parents. He showed me a draft of an editorial he's been working on in which he takes parents to task.

"We use your epithets to generalize about the people we live with here," he wrote. "Sure we all have friends who differ from us, but they are obviously exceptions to the rules of hatred laid out by our elders. We still buy into all the generalizations, and still sling all the epithets in our private lives. ... We begin to treat our peers with the contempt you felt for yours. We get disillusioned, and things stay bad. White people stay in the suburbs, black people stay bitter, and we all just suffer."

These two young black men aren't typical; far from it. Still, my sense is that their ideals are not far removed from the ideals of the youngsters I encounter in the black student unions and other ethnic havens. There are few separatists among these self-segregated youngsters. Most would welcome a world in which color was an irrelevancy. They'd like to be free to choose friends on the basis of interests and not just color. But they don't want to seem naive, or out of step. And they don't want to risk rejection by either group.

I understand those feelings. But I also understand and appreciate those brave and principled young people who doubt that you can achieve interracial harmony by perfecting racial separation. They may be naive, but at least they dare to model the ideal they espouse.

The rest of us could do a lot worse.

William Raspberry writes for The Washington Post.

Last updated March 17, 1997 by Dawn D. Bennett-Alexander

"If the NAACP is not communist infiltrated, and I strongly believe it is, it is a perfect situation for the communists to use...They have men specially trained in knowing how to incite riots and cause other types of trouble. What better situation could they ask for than this?"

"Many students, parents, and Georgians feel hurt because our federal government...has shown us that it (fed. govern.) can force people to do things which we dislike...Perhaps in another hundred years integration would have come about voluntarily in the South but why must something we resent be crammed down our throats?"

An article in the fall issue of the Georgia Historical Quarterly offers the first in-depth exploration of the attitudes of white UGA students during the desegregation crisis of 1961, when Charlayne Hunter and Hamilton Holmes enrolled at UGA.

The student body made headlines during that crises when more than 1,000 students participated in a segregationist riot outside of Hunter's dormitory on Jan. 11. though similar riots occurred at the University of Alabama in 1956 and Ole Miss in 1962, historians have so far devoted little attention to the attitudes which fostered such violence.

"Consequently, to this day we know almost nothing about the racial ideas that prevailed among white students (or their teachers) at Southern campuses during the era of desegregation," says Robert Cohen, an adjunct professor of history.

Cohen examined essays written by 35 UGA students who were enrolled in a calculus class in January 1961. The professor, Thomas Brahana - president of the campus chapter of the American Association of University Professors a prominent advocate of the reinstatement of Holmes and Hunter-filed the essays in the UGA archives, calling thema "peaceful demonstration of student opinion."

"This could be called a case study in ignorance," says Cohen. "Here is an example of what happens when you don't have multicultural education. These students are acting on fears and sterotypes."

Cohen's article is part of a larger project examining attitudes toward desegregation at UGA. He is also looking at letters written to the university and at editorial cartoons from around the country.

As an associate professor of social science education, Cohen is interested in how people learn - and unlearn-racism. The essays illustrate that the students formed their opinions about race from information passed along by family members, politicians and teachers.

The students demonstrate no awareness of research which had challenged the notion of white supremacy since the 1930s.

"If you dig below the headlines, you see a failure of our educational institutions," Cohen says. "The scholarship was there, but the students were not being exposed to it."

Only one student essay acknowledges "that the men of the white and black race have equal potential to accomplish intellectually... In conclusion, and I must admit that this is a statement that is quite hard to write, I believe that the only way the Negro will be able to climb up from the hole that we have thrown him in is by his being permitted to secure an education which is exactly that of the white men."

"Comments such as these suggest that though segregationism predominated, it was not universal among UGA students in 1961," Cohen writes.

"I don't have all the answers," Cohen says. "But it's clear that the university was not doing much to challenge the old ways of thinking about race. The purpose of this scholarship is to promote critical thought about race in ways that did not occur in 1961."

Last updated March 17, 1997 by Dawn D. Bennett-Alexander

I recently had the occasion to talk to a graduate class in social work about gay and lesbian issues. Laudably, the professor realized that these students are going out into a world in which their work would bring them into contact with all types of people, and the more they knew about the various kinds they might have the occasion to assist, the better they could deliver services to them.

I squeezed the class into my crowded schedule because I understood that as unfortunate as it might be, I might be one of the only sources of information that any of the students may have. I understand the importance of countering the misinformation they have probably received up until now and placing the issue in the proper perspective for them to be able to address it in their professional (or personal, if the occasion arises) lives.

So I went to the class and spoke with the students and had a wonderful time doing so. I made it clear that from the start that I wasn't there to change their minds about gays and lesbians. I was simply sharing information, and what they did with it was up to them. All I did was talk about the wonderful mundanities of life.

I shared with them the story of a friend of mine who teaches at a university in Florida. As a part of their cinematic arts program, the university's programming committee was scheduled to show a film called "What Lesbians Do." The response of the community was swift and fierce.

Incensed citizens who had never before set foot on campus showed up to protest the screening of the movie. Before it was even shown, they were out in force speaking about how ridiculous it was to show the film, and how state funds were being used for immoral, and, they were sure, illegal, purposes. The protesters refused to go to the movie, feeling it contemptible and heinous.

Well, those who went in for a "thrill" were sorely disappointed. The protesters were sorely embarrassed. The movie, "What Lesbians Do" was composed solely of shots of them knitting, rocking in their rocking chairs, tending to their plants, playing with their cats, doing their jobs, visiting their parents, eating at restaurants, playing with their children, talking to their significant other, etc. Sound familiar? It should. It's the usual stuff life is made of. There was little difference in their everyday lives and those of differing affinity orientations. Surprise!

It was clear from the expressions on the faces of some of the students in the class Ispoke to that they clearly had a problem wth the idea of anyone's affinity orientation being different from their own. No problem. They're entitled. They can feel however they want to feel personally about the issue. But this was not simply a personal matter. I had not been invited to their class to deal with their personal opinions. I was there to provide insight into a "group" (though we are not a monolith) they may know little or nothing about, to whom they may have the provide services during their professional lives. What did they need to know about that? How were they to handle their own personal feelings when they conflicted with their professional duties? How could they provide professional services to someone whom they thought of as an "immoral" person?

Two things: One is that it is important for them to know and understand that the ideas they may have about who gays and lesbians are may be composed entirely of misconceptions rampant in our society about them. Thinking of us only in sexual terms is simply silly. That's the truth, pure and simple.

Sex does not any more define who we are in our everyday lives than it does for anyone else. What has sex got to do with feeding the kids, paying bills, doing a good job at work, reading your favorite book, raking the leaves, spending time with your family, worrying about taxes, politics, or what to cook for dinner, or any of the other things that occupy us during the day? And that stuff that occupies us is what life is about, sensationalized media depictions notwithstanding.

The second thing is that their clients are there to have them provide their professional services. They are not there to be judged, any more than they would feel entitled to judge anyone else who came to receive their services and may be different from them.

A few days later I got the nicest card imaginable from the student who invited me to the class. I had to leave before the two hour class was over, but he said he was sorry that I was not able to stay. He said that students loved my talk and discussed it a great deal after I left.  He said that students who had given no indication they would speak, did so, and were quite moved. I think it was scary for them to see that something could be so different from what they had always thought. I'm just glad to have been able to help them in their pursuit of professionalism. Treating everyone with dignity and respect has to be the cornerstone of whatever services they deliver. Gays and lesbians should be no exception. Somehow, with this goup, I get the feeling it won't be.

Dawn D. Bennett-Alexander, Esq. is an associate professor of Employment and Business Law at UGA's Terry College of Business, and founding partner in BJD Consulting, Diversity Consultants.

In the past few days, I have come across the same situation several times. Since I think it is basic to an understanding of differences among people, as well as my experience indicating that it is a common occurrence, I think it should be addressed.

I work hard to try to help shed light on racial, gender affinity orientation, and other diversity issues. I start with the assumption that most people do not intentionally try to treat others differently, but it happens nonetheless. I further assume that if someone does not want to treat others differently (generally less well) and their attention is brought to the fact that they may actually be doing so, they will likely stop doing it. Following the logic of this and dealing with it in reality are two very different things. This is especially true when it comes to racial issues.

I have found that many whites, when shown how they may be treating non-whites differently, are unwilling to believe the difference may be race-based-or even that there are differences at all. If we can't even begin to deal with how to remedy the problem. More specifically, if whites cannot agree that blacks in this country do not live a life of equality, then they will never be able to get to the issue of how to remedy this situation they say they do not want to exist. Many can acknowledge that blacks had previously had a hard time of it, based on laws requiring or permitting discrimination or based on social custom, but they seem to think it has all disappeared and we're all over that part of our history now. Let me give a couple of examples.

I conducted a diversity session recently in which I asked attendees what messages they received growing up about race (and other issues not here relevant). Virtually all whites said they received the message (though, they were careful to say, not from their parents) that whites were superior to blacks and that they should not mix racially. We then viewed a video clip of :True Colors," a CBS Prime Time piece on how differently similarly-situated blacks were treated from whites. The experiences of a black male and a white male were videotaped with tiny cameras attached to their hats. The differences went from rather innocuous to quite startling. From it taking longer for the black to be waited on in a store to him being quoted higher prices and downpayments for the same car; from the black being followed around in a record store as if he were stealing (the white was not), to being told no job or apartment was available, while the white was told exactly the opposite moments later.

Even though the young, white attendees had said they were brought up to believe that they were superior to blacks and shouldn't mix, they offered up virtually every excuse other than race for the difference in treatment between the two similarly situated men. How did they think the same feelings of superiority that most whites receive in a myriad of ways growing up manifests itself? Does it just stay a concept and is never acted on?

Of course not. It is manifested in a zillion ways every day, many of which were demonstrated on the CBS piece. If we keep looking for big manifestations like open, derisive, hostile discrimination, we'll miss most of the discrimination that takes place.

I've had whites come up to me and say that they have experienced the same thing I have, but it couldn't be race because they were white. The implication is that I am wrong in thinking what happened to could have been based on race. Saying it happened to them only says it happened to them and race wasn't the reason. That doesn't mean that in my case it also wasn't the reason. Makes Me Wanna Holler by Nathaniel McCall and Rage of the Privileged Class by Ellis Cose are two recent books that are excellent sources shedding light on why blacks could conclude race is still a factor in their everyday lives. Saying race has nothing to do with something doesn't make the race-based differences nonexistent. It merely makes it impossible to work to make things right. Unless that's what we want, we'd better be more open to trying to understand and appreciate the experiences of others.

Dawn D. Bennett-Alexander, Esq., is an associate professor of employment law and legal studies at UGA's Terry College of Business and a founding partner in BJD Consulting, Diversity Consultants.

Last updated March 17, 1997 by Dawn D. Bennett-Alexander

A few weeks later, William's was surprised to learn that his experience isn't uncommon. When talking with a friend, who also is a white male, he discovered that something similar had happened to him. In inquiring about a job, the friend was told that the company wanted to hire a minority, but the right candidate hadn't yet been found. So the recruiter encouraged him to send in a resume anyway.

"The goal of affirmative action, the EEOC, and the 1964 Civil Rights Act was that people would be judged and hired solely on their qualifications for the job. Race and gender would become a non-issue in employment," says William's, who is 36. "It's ironic that almost 30 years later, it's kind of flipped the other way.

"I'm not bitter; it's just reality. If you're any sort of thinking person, you understand the motivations, the good intentions behind it," he says. "But, right now, society and business are trying to correct 100 years of wrongs in one generation. We're paying for the sins of our fathers.

William's articulates an often-heard lament. It's one facet of the thorny question regarding white males in today's corporate environment: How do you ameliorate past inequities toward women and minorities without penalizing and embittering another very important component of the work force?

Even more complex, if you ask four white males about their experience in the workplace today you'll get four entirely different answers. One will give you William's' answer. Another will complain about "strategic" hires and unfair practices benefiting women and minorities for summer jobs and promotions. An third will explain that he now feels more comfortable revealing his parental responsibilities and will recount lunches with female colleagues during which time they talked about balancing work and family. A fourth may admit to confusion and discomfort at having to manage and mentor people of different backgrounds.

This isn't an easy period for white males or the human resources professionals who must manage them. American men recently have been described as "troubled" and "restless," searching for answers. "What Do Men Really Want"? was the cover story of the June 24, 1991 Newsweek and Robert Bly's Iron John (which some dub the manual of the men's movement) was on the best seller list for 30 weeks.

What's going on?

In the workplace several factors are coalescing: In corporate America's attempt to downsize, management levels have compressed: at the same time more people are primed to move up the corporate ladder. There are fewer jobs, not more, and this comes just at the time when a greater awareness of diversity issues is suffering. Many white males are coming to terms with the realization that they may not be able to achieve what their fathers had, or what they themselves expected to achieve just a few years ago.

In fact, talk to human resources experts, and you'll get a conflict of opinions: It's easier on younger men who have been schooled with women and minorities and have more realistic expectations of today's business eliminate; no, it's easier on older men who aren't directly competing in this intense environment; yes, white males have legitimate gripes; no, men have selected perception (they choose to notice the jobs that white males lose and ignore the hard work of women and minorities who are promoted).

No one really knows.

Although it's obvious that white males are still the dominant culture in numbers and power, and in organizational settings it's this very culture that needs to be altered to effectively accommodate other groups progressive human resources experts are looking at white males in a new way: Have some of their needs been left out of the diversity quotient? And, how can companies address their concerns without minimizing the problems of minorities and women?

"The sense I get right now is that white males are somewhat frustrated," says Clifford M. Koen Jr., assistant professor of business law at the University of New Orleans and a human resources manager in various businesses for 10 years.

In recent years there's been an unprecedented explosion of issues concerning worker rights: wrongful discharge, defamation, privacy, discrimination and reverse discrimination. This wave of employee rights issues had hit employers right between he eyes and the white male has found his rights overshadowed. Concerns for the white male simply haven't been factored into the workplace equation."

An outspoken champion of women's and minority rights for many years, Koen believes that men just want a level playing field precisely what women and minorities have wanted in the past.

"I think we're on the bring of seeing a greater awareness on the part of employers to address the needs of all employees, including the white males, as far a equality. With the cutbacks we're seeing in the work force today, employers are going to have to deal with this issue; they can't put it off any longer. The rights of white males are being stepped on as much as those of anyone else."

It brings us to the question: Where do white males fit in? Are they being treated fairly? Have we been defining diversity too narrowly? Indeed, experts in the area of diversity are wrangling with this notion. In fact, R. Roosevelt Thomas Jr., executive director of the American Institute for Managing Diversity Inc. at Morehouse College in Atlanta, believes this is the new wave of this issue.

He offers the following metaphor. Consider a jar of balls. They're all red. Then we inject green balls and yellow balls. The way we normally define diversity, the green and yellow balls would be labeled diverse. "We argue that the real diversity is the mixture of the red, yellow and green balls," says Thomas. "If you define it that way, you're talking about whoever is in your work force. It's a multi-dimensional mixture."

In the U.S. we've focused primarily on race and gender, he says, but there are infinite other possibilities, such as age, tenure with the organization, educational background, functional background, union, non-union or sexual orientation. "It isn't that we've failed to manage diversity," he says. "It's that we haven't even placed it on the agenda. Until we do that, we're going to be caught in this cycle of excluding people - focusing on one group and not focusing on another."

One of the Institute's goals is to learn more about the white males' perspective so that it can operationalize the notion that managing diversity includes everyone, even white males, in an attempt to create an environment that works for everybody.

Creating this type of environment is indeed a challenge. Most companies have approached the diversity issue as getting ready to accommodate minorities and women As a result, there's defensiveness, concern and backlash on the part of white men, says Thomas. Some of the blame can be placed on the approach many businesses have taken to the diversity challenge.

Just ask Patricia Pope, executive vice president of Pope & Associates Inc. in Cincinnati, personnel diversity consultants since the early 1970s. "I think it's safe to say that white males typically have the power and the control in most organizational settings. So, if you want to affect change, you somehow have to change their minds set. You have to show them it's their self-interest.

Furthermore, some mistakes have been made during the past years. "Well-intentional companies and managers without really understanding what it was they were trying to accomplish, simply wanted to meet some things worse," says Pope.

She refers to the possibility of lowered standards because of external pressures to meet hiring targets, without differentiating well between candidates. It creates a great deal of resentment among other employees. Says Pope, "Most employees would say they are for equal opportunity as long as there's fairness. If they perceive things as being done unfairly, that's when they feel resentment."

For example, one of Pope's clients had a policy that any promotion above a specific level in that company had to be signed off by a vice president, if it was someone other than a woman or a minority. This kind of policy has the potential for disastrous consequences because it gives the impressing that everyone isn't being treated equally.

Another example is in the area of mentioning. Most organizations recognize mentioning as an important part of the developmental process, especially as people move into higher levels. Oftentimes, however, women and minorities don't develop those relationships in which they could get mentioning as easily as a white male would.

"Some well-intentioned companies recognize the problem and decide to give them mentors," explains Pope. "They identify their high-potential candidates and identify the vice presidents as in their organization. They assign a woman or a minority to each vice president and tell what person that it's his or her job to mentor the individual and at the end of two years, they want the individual ready to be promoted into a director-level position."

The potential problems are obvious. There may be no natural chemistry, no bonding. They're just trying to get through the hour. At the end of the two years, not only are these women and minorities not ready to be promoted to director level positions, but many are worse off then when they started because of the resentment that it created among their peers. It defines the basic process of mentioning, in which an individual sees something in someone that reminds him of himself and makes a personal commitment and investment of time in that person's development.

Although Pope believes these in stances are uncommon, these well-intentional but misguided organizations can create major problems. A company could use affirmative action in this way and call it diversity. And basically, if we call this diversity, in five years, diversity will have the same bad name that affirmative action has now," says Pope.

The mentoring issue, however, is also a good example of the many situations in which white males can relate to the issues that concern women and minorities. The bottom line on diversity, says Pope, is that if diversity programs are as effective as they should be, white males should be some of the biggest benefactors because everyone profits from an inclusive attitude. "If white males aren't benefiting from diversity efforts, then there's something wrong with those efforts," she says.

For example, some white males, like women and minorities, have poor managers. Sometimes their careers get side-tracked, because they aren't being effectively developed. They can benefit from better career pathing, improved feedback in the environment and improved performance appraisals. Again, diversity relates to white males as well.

According to Thomas, corporations always have had diversity, even when there were only white males. "In the past, these individuals have suppressed their diversity: age, lifestyle preference, priorities with respect to families."

In fact, at one meeting, a 65-year old white male came up to Thomas and told him he resented it when people said that they didn't have diversity until minorities and women appeared in significant numbers. "We've always had diversity," he told Thomas, "but we've always had to suppress it. Because we've suppressed it, we're having race and gender issues."

How then can white males be factored into today's definitions of diversity? As complicated as this issue is, it's solution is even more so, because no one is quite sure what men want. The push to accommodate women and minorities, combined with the fact that white males still dominate the corporate sector, in terms of numbers and management power , may make it seem as if they don't have a right to speak up about what their concerns or needs are.

Consequently, little is being done with white males specifically in mind, but the brunt of this task will undoubtedly fall on the shoulders of the human resources department. The solution, according to Joan Green, director of affirmative action at Chicago-based Quaker Oats, my lie in how diversity programs are communicated to all employees, including white males.

"I think white males who have been people in the power positions may perceive themselves as potentially losing something," says Green. "We need to care for them, as well as women and minorities, in a positive way, to be careful that we don't represent to them that we value them less than anybody else. As contributors presently and potentially, their ability to grow and develop in our workplace is valued. That's a very important part of the message."

Until this point, the programs that human resources departments have developed in response to diversity are geared toward women and minorities. A classic example (although males of any race can relate to it) is the issue of balancing work and family responsibilities. Like women, some men may be hesitant to take advantage of work and family benefits for fear of being placed on a "Daddy Track." Companies have made an effort to assist employees in this area through extended family leaves or flexible work schedules, yet it's unusually the women who are able to take advantage of these programs.

A step in the right decision would be for companies to look at male needs with regard to work and family issues. And indeed, some companies, such as Du Pont, have begun doing this. A 1990 study by Du Pont revealed that men are interested in flexible work hours and sick child leave policies, that men and women were equal in the percentage who decline jobs requiring relocation and heavy travel, and that 40% of the men had considered another employer who offers more job flexibility.

Another solution is offering programs that are geared specifically toward men. This is the approach the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power has taken. Among other progressive programs, it offers a fathering course that has proven to be popular.

St. Louis-based Monsanto Chemical Co. took a positive step forward in its approach this year when it named tom Cummins, a white male, as its manager of diversity development. "It was an interesting phenomenon because there was no defensiveness and no need to apologize for placing a white male in that position," says Nancy Ghenn, Monsanto's director of human resources for finance and planning (and formerly manager of personnel planning and work force diversity.)

This sends out the message that white males can be fair, too. In addition, the involvement of white males in managing diversity perhaps could have the greatest effect in changing their attitudes toward the subject, especially in the area of selective perception. As Pope points out, during their careers, most men have lost promotions they thought they should have had to other people. "But with diversity in the workplace, it's much easier to say. "I didn't get the job because of special treatment to a woman or minority." says Pope.

The companies most successful at managing diversity have found that once fear and resentment are removed, white males indeed have found diversity to be a positive factor in the workplace. Such was the case for Burke Stinson, district manager of AT & T media relations. In 1973, Stinson recalls that there was an affirmative action agreement between AT & T and the government, which said it wasn't enough to simply hire women and minorities. Rather, the company had to hire and promote, thereby opening up the "fast tract" to a much broader scope of people.

"It was quite a human reaction for many white males to interpret that as meaning that some women and minorities would be moved up faster than some white men," says Stinson. "There was grumbling over coffee and at water coolers. There was a 'show me' attitude for some, and perhaps some despair by some men who thought their careers weren't moving as fast as they wanted and now would be slowed further."

However, with the company's valiant attempt to manage diversity, the tension began to build, as more white males began to see qualified, competent women and minorities move up based on abilities. Since the breakup of AT & T in 1984, the company lost more than 100,000 people. It became a matter of survival as well as promotion.

"I think white men felt in their bones that a company isn't going to show favored treatment to less-than qualified people in times like this. It was a time when everyone was trying to survive the challenges and dangers the company faced. It brought people of all races, creeds and colors, and both genders together under the umbrella of surviving and thriving. Some of that resentment and anxiety evaporated because everyone's talent became the focus," says Stinson.

"You become very pragmatic when the shop you're sailing begins to hit rough seas. You don't care if the members of the crew are white or women. If they're doing this job, if they can help save the ship, that's what you really care about."

As with most of the changes that have taken place in the work force, the issue of white males and diversity won't be solved anytime soon. In fact, Thomas says it could take 15, even 25 years, before diversity is managed s effectively that affirmative action won't be necessary. "You're talking about major changes in the way that we think," he says. "But if we can get to the point at which we tap the potential of everyone, avoid fracturing the organization and obtain the full potential of all employees, it can't be anything but a positive change for corporate America."

Charlene Marmer Solomon is a free-lance writer.

Last updated March 17, 1997 by Dawn D. Bennett-Alexander