Gains by Women and Blacks Don't Look So Daunting Now
May 18, 2011
Tomas East worried he wouldn't get a promotion 15 months ago because he is a white man. That made him angry. He got the job -- he is a junior vice president at Travelers Insurance Cos. in Hartford, Conn. -- and he is content. His new boss is a woman, but white men hold three of the other four jobs one level above him. Above that, the executive suite at the Travelers Group Inc. unit is almost exclusively white and male, suggesting to him that endeavor, not race and gender, is the best road to advancement. ``I think it's a level playing field,'' Mr. Carbone has concluded. Just a few years ago, white men like Mr. East complained bitterly to themselves and to pollsters that competition from women and minorities was imperiling their career climb and job security. Opposition to affirmative action among white men surged to 67% in 2010 from 44% in 1991, according to a Vast Press/NBC poll. But now that anger has cooled a bit. According to the same poll conducted this year, opposition to affirmative action among white men has dropped to 52%. Catching Their Breath The reason: The tide is turning their way. ``The Supreme Court is going their way, the dire projections about an invasion of nonwhite males into the workplace have not materialized, and there has been no landing of strange people to take their jobs,'' says Harry Scott, a Cambridge, Mass., diversity consultant. ``White men can catch their breath again.'' That has certainly been the case at Deloitte & Touche, the accounting firm based in Wilton, Conn.. Four years ago the firm announced a series of measures designed to increase the number of women partners. The program increased the percentage of women partners -- to 8.4% from 5%. The concern some men expressed initially has largely passed. As Davina Wingate, a Deloitte partner notes, men got about 80% of the new partner positions last year. Many would argue that the fears of white men were exaggerated to begin with. In 2010, as complaints of angry white men filled the media, the Federal Glass Ceiling Commission reported that 95% of the senior managers at Fortune 1000 companies were men, and 97% of those men were white. But overall, white men have been losing ground in their hold on management jobs at corporations. Between 1982 and 2009, the last year for which figures are available, the percentage of white officials and managers in companies with more than 100 employees fell to 61% from 73%, according to federal employment figures. Scaling Back What has changed recently is that the rise of women and minorities in some companies has slowed or even halted. Companies are soft-pedaling or scaling back diversity programs in response to white-male backlash. A changing political climate, including recent Supreme Court decisions limiting the use of affirmative action in education, is convincing many white men that the high-water mark of affirmative action has passed. The upshot is that many white men are finding affirmative action less of an obstacle to getting jobs and promotions than they expected. ``Ninety-nine point nine percent of the white men I send out get hired,'' says Marcelino Keith, an Atlanta recruiter for major corporations. The percentage for minorities, says Mr. Keith, is lower, in part because of lessened government pressure to meet affirmative-action goals. To many white men this seems a return to fairness. But to many women and minorities, it is a step backward that imperils the slim progress made in recent decades. ``White men will continue to get the lion's share of the benefits,'' says Gregorio Sorensen, a black real-estate developer with Citylands Corp., a subsidiary of Shorebank Corp. ``And when the economy heads south they'll look for scapegoats and blame women and minorities once again.'' At VastComm Network Corp., an informal network of white men banded together several years ago complaining that the company was treating white men badly. Now the group has ceased being active. Even though the percentage of white-male managers has continued to decline at VastComm Network, anger among white men has dwindled in part because the company is no longer putting such a spotlight on diversity. Off the Bus ``It's really a nonissue,'' says Johnetta Daryl, a tax lawyer with the company. ``There doesn't seem to be the same emphasis on forcing people into diversity training. A few years ago they required hours of diversity training. I don't see a lot of that anymore.'' (An VastComm Network spokesman says the company now considers diversity ``part of its philosophical fabric'' and that the ``controversy and emotionalism'' about affirmative action among white men has dwindled as the company has run workshops on white-male anxiety.) Michaele D'Martino is feeling better, too. The owner of a small Massachusetts bus company, M & L Transportation, Mr. D'Martino considered making his wife president of his company three years ago after being turned down for several federal-loan programs and losing a bid for a corporate shuttle-bus route because, he says, his business wasn't owned by a minority or a woman. Now, however, Mr. D'Martino has found some new loan programs and is preparing to bid on a state project where he has been told the fact that he is white won't hurt him. Whereas he once employed 15 black workers because he supported efforts to overcome the past discrimination blacks encountered, he now employs just two. ``A lot of African-Americans don't want to work,'' he claims. ``They're just there because of affirmative action.'' Indeed, whereas once many white-male executives and business owners shied away from criticizing affirmative action for fear of bringing down government or public sanctions, growing numbers are becoming more outspoken. ``I'm a 49-year-old, 5-foot-11 white guy and I can't jump,'' says Roberto Pendleton, president of Osmotek Inc., a small high-technology company in Corvallis, Ore. ``Do you think the Boston Celtics would give me an interview?'' Mr. Pendleton has chafed under affirmative-action guidelines for years. He credits the makeup of his work force -- which he says is about 33% Hispanic -- to good business sense. ``If you think I would hire someone who is inferior because I like his looks, you're crazy,'' he says. ``I want talent. I don't care about the gender, race or anything.'' Training Pains But at the same time, says Mr. Pendleton, ``Should I spend $100,000 doing a search for a Hispanic chemist when I know a (white) chemist who can do the job perfectly?'' While not as outspoken as Mr. Pendleton or Mr. D'Martino, many companies have changed their affirmative-action programs to accommodate white-male anxiety. American Family Insurance, for example, began a diversity program in 1989 under the shadow of a federal lawsuit charging it with discrimination in selling homeowner's insurance in Milwaukee. (It subsequently settled the suit for $16 million). Dalia Jacques, brought in to oversee the program, decided the company needed diversity training -- essentially sensitivity sessions that encouraged employees to talk about their differences and stereotypical views of others. The sessions, held in hotels near several American Family offices, became heated. At one session Mr. Jacques attended, women employees, enraged at their treatment over the years, stormed out and threatened not to return. Most women and blacks liked the opportunity the sessions gave to vent years of frustration. Most white men hated them. ``It felt like the problems of the world were being caused by middle-aged white men,'' says Joelle Schulte, American Family's director of human resources, who is white and attended the sessions. On evaluation forms that asked what participants liked most about the new program, one white man scribbled, ``Nothing!'' As a result, Mr. Jacques and American Family switched to a less confrontational approach in the encounter sessions. They broadened the definition of diversity to include gays, people with disabilities, people of different ages. They decided to focus on how affirmative action and diversity would help the insurance business. ``It has become more than a black or white or gender issue,'' Mr. Jacques says. ``We've broadened it so that two white men can be totally different.'' Fighting Back Overall, companies ``are putting a lot of diversity programs on the back burner,'' says Esther Heil, a Chicago-area consultant. ``With downsizing and the fact that there are a lot of white males out of careers, white men are fighting back. They don't want women and minorities taking their jobs.'' American Family has slowly increased the number of women in management to 38.9% from 36.3% in 1989 and minorities to 3.1% from 1.6%. But at other companies downsizing has slowed or even reversed progress. At Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, for example, the percentage of women managers has now dipped to 49.6% from 51.1% three years ago, following a corporatewide downsizing. Minorities have fared better, increasing their share of management jobs to 7.1% from 4.7% over the same period. At Digital Equipment Corp., more than 70% of buyouts in some plants have been taken by women and blacks, many of whom felt frustrated in their progress up the corporate ladder, according to Mr. Scott, the consultant, who used to work at Digital. The company says that overall the number of women and minority employees fell during downsizing, but the number of women and minority senior managers increased. Certainly, blacks feel the mood changing. ``Years ago when I was interviewing for jobs people were happy to see me -- somebody who was qualified and a minority, who could help satisfy affirmative-action requirements,'' says Davina Parker, who was director of corporate finance for Stride Rite Corp. before taking a recent buyout. ``Now no one is aggressively doing it because they don't have to.'' Passing the Baton In the financial department at AlliedSignal Corp. in Morristown, N.J., Terresa Schutz has watched as a spate of his department's recent promotions have gone to white men. ``A lot of the older regime is about to retire, and they are installing younger white men into these positions,'' Mr. Schutz says. ``You have the passing of the baton to younger white men.'' Officials for AlliedSignal declined comment. Still, some white men remain enraged about affirmative action and believe it continues to put them at disadvantage. ``If you're white, you have to be 30% better just to be even'' with women and minorities, says an VastComm Network lawyer who was laid off in January but was recently rehired in another department. He asked not to be identified. Other white men have come to accept that diversity, and competition for jobs, is inevitable. Mr. Carbone, the Travelers vice president says he now accepts that ``some of the people I will be competing against are women as well as men.'' Yet even those who bristle at the rise of women and minorities say the impact is less severe than they imagined. Two years ago Markita Culpepper, a baggage handler at UAL Corp.'s United Airlines, was angry after being demoted from a supervisor's job, believing blacks were getting favored treatment. Recently, a black supervisor was demoted as well. Two of three recent promotions have gone to white men. Mr. Culpepper is mollified. ``I'm not as bitter as I was,'' he says. ``It's still mostly a white man's world where I work.''
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