No matter how well-intentioned your company’s diversity efforts are, they will always fail to retain people of color until you eliminate your cultural bias toward white supremacy. For several years now, well-intentioned companies have been focusing ( with limited success ) on changing the ratio of the racial makeup of their companies. But even if a company manages to have more equal representation, people of color, and often specifically Black, Latinx, or Indigenous employees, still end up feeling like outsiders. Read Full Story

The track record for various forms of diversity training shows how difficult it is to change people’s deeper attitudes and behaviors. Since the police killing of George Floyd and Black Lives Matter protests, companies are looking for ways to combat racial bias and discrimination at work. The stats are jarring. In one 2009 study , hiring managers were 74% more likely to hire candidates with white-sounding names when their résumés were identical. Despite evidence that teams with more diversity perform better than more homogeneous teams, Black and Latino workers remain underrepresented in STEM. Read Full Story

The Capitol Police had a decidedly different approach to previous protestors. What can one say, really, in the wake of the unprecedented insurrection taking place in Washington, D.C., as a mob of Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol? Well, one thing that did not elude the notice of many , many people was that the Capitol Police had a decidedly different approach to previous protestors in and outside the home of the U.S. Congress—as recently as last summer during Black Lives Matter protests for racial equity in the wake of the killing of George Floyd and too many other Black people around the country. Read Full Story

Companies made a lot of promises after the George Floyd protests. Will they actually follow through? Over the summer, as police shootings and protests put a new spotlight on racial injustice, corporation after corporation announced that they would donate money in ways meant to solve racial inequalities. Walmart pledged $100 million to create a new center on racial equity; ClifBar announced a donation of $100,000 to Color Of Change and the African People’s Education and Defense Fund; Gap said it would make a $300,000 donation to the NAACP and EmbraceRace. Read Full Story

A marketing executive of color urges executives to get to know their employees where they live. Given the challenges Black Americans have been facing, my mood is tempered this Black History Month. I’m treating February as a reminder that achieving racial justice and equality with fierce urgency has got to be the goal. We’re seeing some positive signs in the workplace: Reuters recently reported a surge in companies pledging to hire more Black employees. It’s a start. But corporations that are serious about increasing diversity numbers also need to encourage employees of color to “bring their whole selves to work,” as culture experts like to say. Read Full Story

Moving pictures from a summer in the streets. The Black Lives Matter movement was not new in 2020, but it was the year it took over the nation and reached across the world. The death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police on May 25 spurred protest not only in that city but all around the U.S., and those protests continued for days, and then weeks. When the death of Breonna Taylor gained nationwide attention—she was killed in may by Louisville police who raided her home, but the case didn’t become a national story until March—it became yet another reason for people to keep taking to the streets. Read Full Story

Color wields enormous sway over our attitudes and emotions. When our eyes take in color, they communicate with a region of the brain known as the hypothalamus, which sends a cascade of signals to the pituitary gland, on to the endocrine system, and then to the thyroid glands. The thyroid glands signal the release of hormones, which cause fluctuation in mood, emotion, and resulting behavior. What is even more interesting is that a case study showed that adjusting color, among other elements, can increase conversion by as much as 24%. The study of all this is called color psychology, and the bottom line is: use the right colors, and you win. What is Color Psychology? Color psychology is the science of how color affects human behavior. Color psychology actually is a branch of the broader field of behavioral psychology. Suffice it to say that it’s a pretty complicated field. Some …

City officials are saying one thing about Black Lives Matter, but the actions of their police forces are doing another, as this expertly edited video reveals. The irony of protests against police brutality being met with police brutality has not been lost during this current global outcry for racial equality sparked by the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Tony McDade, and more. Read Full Story

Cloudflare, which filters out attacks on websites, saw big jumps in digital attacks on advocacy groups after Floyd’s killing. Protests have emerged across the country after the death of George Floyd, who was pinned to the ground by a Minneapolis police officer and died on May 25. Read Full Story

The insensitivity wasn’t confined to employees, but included management too, our source says. Audio recordings have leaked of LinkedIn’s racially-charged employee town hall meeting on race and diversity on Wednesday. As first reported by The Daily Beast’s Maxwell Tani , during the meeting, some LinkedIn employees made racially insensitive comments about minorities, protests, and the Black Lives Matter movement. Read Full Story