Diverse perspectives on hiring: Race | Torin Ellis

Sam.

Hello. You're very welcome to episode 71 of the Shortlist. My name is Johnny Campbell. I am your host for today's episode. I'm also the CEO and co founder of Social Talent. And if you're missing last week, my fantastic colleague Holly Fawcett jumped in and took a show. And we're hoping Holly will jump in and take a few more shows in the future. So really hope you enjoyed her chat with Rupesh. If you didn't catch it, you can catch up on our podcast, available on Apple and Spotify, wherever you find your podcasts, or you can find more in terms of the recording on LinkedIn, YouTube, or any of those links, or all of those links can be found at SocialTalent. So today for episode 71, we're going to be discussing diverse perspectives on hiring, and we're particularly going to cover the perspective of race. Let me just roll back and talk a little bit more about the broader issue here, because this is something that we are very passionate about here at Social Talent. And if you're in hiring, you are no doubt very passionate about it as well as to what are those diverse perspectives when you look at hiring and the different communities that we hire from and the challenges in being more diverse and being more inclusive in our hiring processes. And this drive for diversity, more equity, more inclusion in the workplace, has become so much more important for every organization over the last 18 months. While progress has, of course, been made since the summer of 2020, the death of a murder of George Floyd, since that ignited more conversations about inequality and race, particularly in the US we haven't made enough progress. We'll probably never make enough progress, certainly not the next couple of years. But the fight to make progress is what we're here to discuss. And racism isn't just about the U.S. it isn't just about black and white or brown. It is a global concern, one that every company should consistently look to address. And the recruiters as the kind of vanguards of talent in organization, they're arguably at the cold face of this. They're at the front door deciding who gets in, who doesn't get in, who's on the shortlist or not. And it's imperative that they in particular understand the importance of lived experience, really get a perspective from the communities that they're looking to hire from to make a kind of dent in removing bias and prejudice and discrimination. So joining us on today's show to discuss this is no better person than Torin ellis. It's his third time joining us on the show in 71 episodes. He's a longtime collaborator, mentor, and friend of social talent. He's going to be sharing with us his insightful perspective on race in the hiring process. But some of you will hopefully, for your sake, perhaps be listening to him for the first time. Because to listen to Torn for the first time is a joy. So you. So just in case it's your first time meeting or listening to Torrent. Torrent, perhaps you'd introduce yourself or reintroduce yourself to our audience.

Mike Chat, can you hear me?

I can hear you.

Great. Awesome. So for those of you who are not familiar with who I am, diversity strategist, risk mitigator, I have been dedicated to the space of diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging for the better part of the last 12 years. I share that with you because there were times where, Johnny, I would go to the gas station and I couldn't fill up my vehicle. I could only put in $3 or $7 or $10. And you, you've been here in D.C. you know, I drive an SUV, so you're not going to get too far on $5 worth of gasoline. There have been times where I didn't have money to purchase groceries for my family. Times where my lights were cut off in my home because I hadn't made enough money because clients said that you were too forthcoming, you were too direct. They didn't like my style of delivery. They didn't like the truth that I was telling. And now here we are, 18 months or so, you know, into this pandemic and post George Floyd, and every single thing that I've been saying for the last 23 years have come to pass. And so I'm happy that you have allowed me to come back a third time so that we can have a more fruitful and, you know, aggressive conversation. Thank you ever so much, Torrent. You're very welcome.

And I want to start with what we always start with in the show is some news. And I'm going to start with an article that you encourage us to look at. Not really an article, more of a report. But give me two seconds. We need a jingle for this week's news. So, Torren, this goes back, actually goes back six, seven months. And I want to try and broaden the perspective, as per my intro, beyond the US as do you, and talk about other, other parts of the world. Because racism is not just something that's unique to the US unfortunately. And, you know, we wanted to discuss or start discussion today with a report that came out in the UK more than six months ago. And it was, it was initially commissioned by Boris Johnson immediately after the murder of George Floyd. And at the time a commission was set up called the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities in the UK and they published their report, several hundred page report, back in March, I believe of this year, end of March and we'll put a link out for those of you listening live on LinkedIn or YouTube. We'll put a link out for you and we'll also put it in the show notes for those interesting on the podcast. I was wondering perhaps Torn, because I know you're an individual who's really dug into this and you've analyzed this and looked at this. What are your thoughts on this report? Because it did create some controversy, controversy at the time it was published in the news. But looking back at this six months later, what are your thoughts on this?

Yeah, so before I even hit this particular report, there was one that came out in September of 2020 from Citibank here in the US and what that report said, I'm synthesizing it, but it simply said that we have not addressed racism in four areas we didn't address or we have not as a country addressed racism in education, in housing, in compensation and in health care. Education, housing compensation and health care. Because we haven't addressed it, we've lost $16 trillion in GDP and that if we continue on the same path will lose an additional $5 trillion by 2025. That was September of last year. And then when this report came out in March of this year, I said to myself, here's the original pandemic racism. It's the original pandemic. It's the one thing that we have not as people been able to shake. And it's amazing to me that some of us would still attach our wagon as they would say to hating other individuals because of the color of their skin. Like it's amazing to me. And so this report was helpful in a way that allowed us to put a flag here in the US allowed us to put another flag over in Europe and we could probably play some.

I'm going to pause you there because the quality unfortunately of the the feed has dropped. So I might just pause because I do want our audience to be able to fully hear what you're sharing. We just have a drop in your feed column. You're there for a second, Torren. So we might try and get that fixed and see if we can bring you back to share with that comments on that particular UK report. So Torren I can see that the fee quality is still not perfect on your site, so I might just ask you for 30 seconds to try and see if you can reconnect there. What I might just do whilst Torren's reconnecting is share with the audience just a quick summary from the UK report that Torren was referencing, which kind of had four recommendations and it kind of had 25, I think recommendations before, let's say overarching themes of those recommendations. And it said that to address inequality, you need to build trust, promote fairness, create agency and achieve inclusivity. So we're going to get Torrin's opinion on those four in just a sec. But Torin, welcome back. And you might continue or restart your comment on that UK report when that come out compared to the original US report that come out maybe 9 months prior to that.

Yeah, just to synthesize it. And again, I apologize for the technical difficulty. What I saw in that particular report is how it amplified the need for us to address humanity not just here in the US but also and globally. We absolutely have an issue around racism and something that we can't continue to deal with.

I totally, I totally agree. And one of the I guess criticisms of the UK report, whilst we just try and maybe perhaps might have to lose your camera for the live audience enforcement Torrent for a few minutes to see if we can recover the quality of the Internet speed. Perfect. Before we went on there, as typical goes off when we go off air, the UK report came into a lot of criticism because it felt that the media felt, I should say that it tried to soften racism in the UK and tried to overplay the positive developments over the last number of years. And in particular the report was attacked from for trying to claim that institutional racism no longer exists in the uk. That's certainly not the rhetoric in the us there's certainly an exception. It seems to me that in the US there very much still is institutional racism, an absolute fight to remove it for sure. And I think most of the rest of the world accept that there is institutional racism still in place. But the UK in this report seemed to claim that they're, they're clear now. They're all good. What are your thoughts on, on, on that particular point?

You know, I, I wish I had access to a particular report, even something that was done outside of the commission again earlier in the year. And an incredible person over there in London, John Amici, actually shared this on Twitter earlier in the year. And so the bottom line for me is I think far too Many individuals are trying to divorce themselves from history. They want to live a different or an alternative reality. And we're not willing to face up to the fact that we have just done a poor job of acknowledging that we have been racial, we have been prejudicial, we have been egregious, we have done so many things to so many different people, we don't really want to face that truth. And so I think part of progress for all of us is that we must be willing to face that uncomfortable truth. That doesn't mean that you as an individual did it, but it does suggest that you as individuals are benefiting from it being done. And that unless you do something different to change it, to change the trajectory of it, to change how often it happens, it. Listen, Johnny, we have reports right here in 2021 that say that women are, are experiencing heightened levels of aggression in Zoom meetings. Why? Because people are doing things. And so I say it often, and I'll continue to say it, the reason we are where we are now is because too many of us have been silent in the face of injustice. You have to speak up.

So I totally agree with you. And when you look at the acceptance of institutional racism, it's important to probably dig into what it means and doesn't mean. I know in the uk, again where this report was commissioned, the Guardian reported back in January that black women in the UK are four times, four times more likely to die in pregnancy or childbirth than white women. And you know, to, to commission a report and issue it only several months later, to say that there is no institutional racism, no systematic racism in the UK is kind of alarming because then how do you explain 4x increase? Because you mentioned healthcare has been one of those four tenets that was identified in the US where not enough progress has been made. And it seems to be the case in the UK and I suspect many other parts of the world. And I know a good friend of ours, Salma Awardani, friend of yours friend of ours reported on recent training that we released from the socialtown platform. She reported this, this stat and made the point that probably nobody in the, in the entire chain of health care is racist. You know, there's no, no doctor, no surgeon, no nurse involved in caring for a pregnant woman who is, you know, overtly racist or are likely to perhaps likely to be happy or even, even agree with this report, although it is true. Yet what happens is that, you know, you have a sheet. Put it in her own words. I'm paraphrasing Salma here. Did you have somebody who faced with, you know, a busy room and people shouting for health, for help. And what tends to happen is the white woman gets the help over the black woman. And it's, you know, it might not happen every time, but it would happen more times than not. And it's those small things that happen over the course of a child, you know, nine months of pregnancy, in a childbirth. And not one thing that causes perhaps that 44x mortality rate, but lots of small things that are just have been institutionalized for hundreds of years. Many, many years are there that cause such an alarming, alarming rate of mortality, which is just unacceptable in the modern world. So when you look at the other areas, because you mentioned education, health care, income, and what was the fourth one? Tornado?

Housing.

Housing. So basically it's life, right? Because you need to live somewhere, you need to be healthy, you need to have income and education to prosper. Like you couldn't get four more important elements of society. Like they're at the bottom of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. If I'm not mistaken. This isn't about self actuation or your, your access to the nice things in life. These are the most basic things. And what you're saying is the report issued in 2020 in the US said that there are challenges still in those four blocks. I would seem it's not just the US yeah.

And when you talk about it being institutionalized, I can't, I just can't ignore history. I think back to, you know, early, I mean, hundreds of years, well, not even hundred, but tens of years ago. You know, in the early 19th century, they were performing hysterectomies on black women with no anesthesia, with no drugs. And why were they performing that? Because they felt like black women were able to absorb more pain that comes from slavery. You know, where they are knocking slaves teeth out and forcing them to eat and doing all types of incredibly atrocious things to this, just treating them like animals. And so that has been passed down. So it has entered into our medical system where even today we have Alex Hoanian, co founder of Reddit, who, who, who really didn't recognize the disparity that black women were going through until his wife, Serena Williams, had to give birth and almost died in the process of giving birth because the doctors didn't listen to Serena Williams. Serena Williams. They didn't listen to a person with all sorts of access and, and means and stardom and fame and recognition. They were willing to discount her complaints while having a birth while, while, while Giving birth. And so this, this history, this relationship with black people and healthcare is not something that is new. This demonstration of discount is not something that is new. And we have a problem. I said slightly disagree with you, Johnny, in the sense of we don't have people that are racist in the healthcare system.

We do.

We have people that are racist in healthcare, we have people that are racist in finance. We have people that are racist in philanthropy. We have people that are racist in politics and good legal and government and farming. I mean, every single industry, every single institution, it has been systematized. One book that I want your listeners to and viewers to take, in the Color of Law by Richard Rothstein. I've said it before, I'll say it again. I want your listeners to take in a book by Richard Rothstein because it gives you a different relationship with that phrase. Pull yourself up by your bootstraps. And so we just got to. In simple terms, we have to do what Marc Benioff did. Mark Benioff was willing to go through a salesforce organization not once, twice, three times and look at compensation for people in his organization. And it cost him about $3 million. But he brought people up to parity. Folks, for the most part are earning the same as their colleagues across the entire franchise. We just have to be intentional about what it is we do and where we are doing it.

Speaking of being intentional, another element that the report in the UK brought up was the use of different initialisms and acronyms. And the one that they pointed out, which those of us on this side of the Atlantic might be familiar with, is bame, B A, M E. Perhaps you can share with our audience what the report said about the use of the term bame, what it means and then what your thoughts are on its appropriateness.

Yeah, absolutely. BAME for those in Europe, is very much so similar to BIPOC as is used here in the us. Black Indigenous People of Color. Black Indigenous People of Color bipoc B, I, P O, C. And basically inside of the report, the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities, that report that we mentioned, they said, nah, we really don't need to be using that. In short, they said it's really demeaning to categorize and to group people together. Because for me, Johnny, the simpler term is we're just being lazy. Like if a person is black, call them black. If they're Afro Caribbean, call them Afro Caribbean. If they are Parisian or are Dalit, call them by or who they are, if you will. Don't be lazy about it and so Bame, I'm sorry, what the report categorizes is why it's so dangerous and lazy for us to do that. But here's what's interesting. They also said that it's lazy to use white as a standalone. You can do it. It's on page 32. They said using white as a standalone term is also unhelpful because it masks the diversity even within that color group. You have white Irish, you have gypsy, you have Roma, you have travelers, and you have Eastern Europeans and more. And so I think what the report is attempting to do is keep all of us honest, once again, keep all of us human. I want people to recognize me for who I am. I want you to be genuinely and authentically concerned and curious about who I am, because that's what I'm going and that's how I'm going to show up when I'm engaging with you. So I appreciate the recommendation of the report for us to get rid of, you know, catchphrases, lazy phrases like bame and bipoc and some of the others that exist.

It's really important point because language informs our behavior. It's often said. It's one of the first things, the easy things you can do to make progress and change is be intentional about the language you use. Be more inclusive with the language which starts with education, starts understanding what is acceptable is not being open to ask others what are they comfortable with, what they're not comfortable with. I want to move on to a second article because I think it's pretty important in terms of in the context of racism today and how it affects organizations. And it's an article that was reported about a lawsuit against Tesla. And this is particular link we have here is from Fast Company and it highlights why the verdict in this lawsuit is a big deal in the fight against forced arbitration and also racism. Wonder perhaps if you wouldn't mind summarizing the lawsuit for our audience who perhaps don't know about it. As one of the tweets mentioned in the article says, unfortunately people will know more about space, SpaceX launches, launches, then this landmark lawsuit. And that's unfortunate, but perhaps you could share with our audience what this lawsuit was all about.

Yeah, absolutely. So this lawsuit here was in reference to a gentleman. His last name was Diaz. I can't remember his first name, but he was an elevator operator at one of the manufacturing plants in Fremont, California. Now, first of all, I smiled when I saw the article, Johnny, because I got to tell you, how large is the building where we have an elevator operator inside of, of the facility. But nonetheless, this person is an elevator operator and in, in short, had to deal with racial epitats being scribbled on walls in various places inside of the facility. He had to deal with racial language inside of the facility. Demeaning, degrading racial language in the facility. So much so to the point in over time that Tesla was fined and he won a lawsuit of 130 million. And so here's what's amazing to me, what's amazing to me is that to your, to the comment that you said we'll know more about SpaceX than we'll know about this, I have a friend, personal friend, who was asked to go in and speak for free in Tesla around diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging. And the disappointing thing is that you could have paid my friend a couple of thousands of dollars, maybe tens of thousands of dollars, and it could have put you on a path towards doing better that would have saved you a whole lot of money in the long run. And so I think this is an educational example for organizations to understand if we don't attack and address the individuals that are toxic in our workplaces, that they are going to in effect, impact our bottom lines negatively.

Yeah, it's hard to believe in this day and age that this type of behavior happened. And you know, stunned me was that on Diaz, who was the gentleman who won the case? And by the way, he didn't ask for $137 million. He would ask for a lot less than that. But he was awarded much more than he expected and he was awarded it fast. It didn't take long for the judge to make that decision because, you know, in the judge's opinion, the treatment of this individual wasn't isolated. It was, it happened before in that factory. It was two bosses who were engaged in this. And it wasn't until Diaz's son came to work in the same factory and became subject to the same racism that he actually did something about it. He wasn't, wasn't going to allow another generation to go through this. This is in the modern day, in one of the most modern tech companies in the world, one of the most established brands, and not to pick on Tesla because unfortunately it probably happens in many other companies. But one of the things that the article pointed out, which is perhaps not familiar to those listeners outside the US is this concept of forced arbitration which has snuck in a lot of tech companies and big companies around the world, where on issues such as racism or sexual discrimination, you cannot take a court case, you're bound by a concept called forced arbitration, which is a private process where an arbitrator is brought in and makes a decision to. And you are stuck with that decision. You cannot go public with any of the details of the case. And companies are being massively put under pressure, I think quite rightly so, to end forced arbitration, by the way, which Tesla has not done yet. But other companies like Microsoft and others have begun to end this practice because it's claimed it hides what happens to the benefit of the organization, but not the benefit of the people. So what is your sense of, you know, issues like forced arbitration and how, how much damage are they doing or how much are they holding us back from really kind of making progress on issues like racism and sexism?

Yeah, my sense is the, the poster that's over your shoulder like, like just simply do the right thing and then we can avoid these situations altogether or certainly we can mitigate them in a major, major way. I think about, you know, Tim Cook from Apple, although he's not on the docket. I'll put him on the docket. I think about a comment that he made a couple of weeks ago and he said, whistleblowers have no place here inside of Apple. Yes, they do. Yes, they do. And he made that comment because of the young lady that was a former Facebook employee testifying in front of Congress. Yes, whistleblowers do have a place. And what this story right here with Tesla underscores for me is that this generation is going to do more in terms of exercising their voice. They're not going to put up with what we put up with in the 60s and what we may have put up with in the 80s and what we may have put up with in the late 90s. This generation is going to be a bit more vocal about the egregious activity that is taking place inside of workplaces. I think of stories in 2019 where FedEx in Ohio had nooses hanging in the facility. And, and people, instead of turning those images and pictures over to hr, they turned it over to security. No, that's not the way we, we are showing you now as a result of George Floyd. And by the way, Johnny, I want to. I don't know. We made progress when we are not referring to the event of George Floyd. I'll know that organizations have made progress when they can start referring to the great work that they are doing in 2022 and 2023. And not looking back to something that happened that the death of an individual that happened in 2020. So my, my, my issue with forced arbitration is that we absolutely need to get away with it, because what it does is hampers or dismisses the account of women and others inside of organizations. And we cannot afford that. If we want true let me use one of the phrases people like if we want true employee engagement, just be good people.

I want to bring up on this point something that is a bit controversial at the moment. Torrent. It's very much in the news. It's been discussed a lot in the US I want to cover the US But I also want to talk about other parts of the world, over here in Europe and others. And it's the issue over vaccinations. And, you know, I talk to a lot of clients of ours.