The senseless murders of George Floyd and others have sparked outrage across
the US, as African Americans are tired of funding and being subjugated to
institutional racism. African Americans are tired of paying taxes for police
departments and schools, only for those institutions to abuse them and their
children. African Americans are tired of buying products and services from
corporations who refuse to hire them beyond "essential worker" level or contract
their companies for lucrative consulting services. African Americans are tired
of being stereotyped as lazy, hostile, dumb and criminal. African Americans
know they have unleashed significant economic growth and buying power the past
40 years; yet, to this day they are treated less than human by every section of
society.
Institutional racism can end just like it began, as a STORY — it is a story of
white supremacy and privilege granted through the violent torture of Blacks to
secure free slave labor. Labor is the largest expense for every enterprise —
imagine the profitability of an enterprise if there was no labor expense.
Southern leaders amassed incredible wealth as African Americans worked in
skilled jobs for hundreds of years, for FREE. My book, Invisible Talent
Market, quotes Booker T.
Washington, who pointed to “slavery plantations as the industrial training
that left African Americans after the Civil War” in possession of nearly all the
common and skilled labor in the South. He stated, “In most cases, if a Southern
White man wanted a house built, he consulted a Negro mechanic about the plan and
about the actual building of the structure. If he wanted a suit of clothes made,
he went to a Negro tailor, and for shoes he went to a shoemaker of the same
race.”
The Civil War achieved its goal — the release of Black labor. Slavery ended in
1863, the same year the Industrial Revolution began. Northern leaders, desiring
to access slave labor, executed a compromise — the Morrill Act of
1862, which created
land grant colleges to educate whites with the skills African Americans
possessed. This compromise satisfied Southern leaders, who were intent that they
were not going to pay African Americans for their expertise as they stereotyped
them as "lazy, hostile, dumb and criminal." Southern leaders even went so far to
create Black codes that imprisoned African Americans who had no job, forcing
many to work for free to escape prison — which led many African Americans,
unable to secure a job in the South, to migrate to Northern cities to work as
production workers in industrial factories.
A person, community or society is a sum of stories — a narrative of facts to
explain behaviors and actions. The Atlantic
Magazine
highlights, “Once certain stories get embedded into the culture, they become
master narratives — blueprints for people to follow when structuring their own
stories, for better or worse." While African Americans built the Industrial
Revolution, the story of them as being “lazy, hostile, dumb and criminal”
continued, encouraging the passage of Jim Crow
laws to maintain a separate and
unequal society "containing" African Americans to a system of servitude. Jim
Crow laws officially ended in 1964, 100 years after slavery, with the passage of
the Civil Rights Act.
Changing the narrative of a story changes the behavior of a person, institution
and society. Despite the administration of racist Jim Crow laws, many African
Americans refused to buy into the White society narrative of them. African
Americans, once forbidden to read and write English, matriculated to elite
universities, such as Harvard and Yale, as masters of the English
language. African Americans carved successful careers in manufacturing, music,
sports, legal, education, healthcare and construction; and built businesses
around products/services patents — including dry cleaning, stoves,
refrigerators, gas furnaces, hoisting and loading mechanisms, dough-kneading
machines, typewriters, crank shafts and hundreds more. African Americans,
inventors for centuries, finally were benefitting from their creativity and
ingenuity. But that story of ‘African Americans as Inventors’ is never told.
I remember sharing that story with Gayle, a mortgage banking colleague. It
is a wonder we even had a decent conversation, as Gayle called me a "nigger"
when I first met her — as I was the Bank’s 1st Black mortgage loan officer. She
asked why I worked until 8pm every night. I told her, "I needed to meet my loan
quota of $1 million a month.” She looked perplexed, as that was her quota, too.
The difference — my territory was Detroit, where the average loan was
$50,000; and hers was Western Wayne, PA, with an average mortgage of
$150,000. It took me 20 loans and her 7 loans to make our quota. She bluntly
stated, "You are insane to think you can make that goal!" I told her I exceeded
it every month by being creative and inventive, like my ancestors. She stated.
"You are a very different Black, as most are lazy." I asked, "Where did you
learn that?" She stated, "My family." As I listened to her story, I realized she
had never interacted with a Black person before me. By sharing our stories,
Gayle and I became the best of friends, moving beyond racism.
Corporate America, through storytelling, can eliminate institutional racist
policies and laws to create economic opportunities for African Americans; and
hence, themselves. Storytelling is the foundation of every business startup and
the solution to every problem. Storytelling touches hearts and minds. It creates
healing cultures that nurtures everyone to be vulnerable, open and creative,
without fear of retribution. Storytelling creates understanding and personal
human connection that builds relationships. It provides excitement and fun,
making professional development more engaging and effective. Storytelling causes
aha moments — which leads to brainstorming, inventions and innovations.
In his 2011 article, “Invention Is the Mother of Economic
Growth,”
Nathan Myhrvold, former Chief Technology Officer at Microsoft and
co-founder of Intellectual Ventures, states, “There is a magical engine for
economic growth. It is invention — the process by which the human mind creates
new ideas with practical consequences. Invention and its weaker cousin,
innovation, are ultimately the source of all wealth and luxuries.”
Storytelling can do what laws have not. I urge every corporation, led by sustainability
officers, to create storytelling programs to weave your employee/client/supplier
base into a seamless diversity quilt. Research
shows
that companies with diverse populations at every point, including your supplier
base, are significantly more profitable in the long run. Increase your corporate
economic growth and profits by eliminating racist beliefs. Let the storytelling
programs begin.
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Ida Byrd-Hill, an urban economist and futurist, is the President of Uplift, Inc. — a nonprofit idea incubator that creates ideas to reinvent urban cities. She founded and is expanding the Automation Workz Institute — a game-based, post-secondary tech school that won the Cisco Networking Academy Above & Beyond Award 2019. Ida is the author of 8 books, including Invisible Talent Market — a Diversity & Inclusion guide based on Black economics history. She holds a BA in Economics, from the University of Michigan – Ann Arbor; and an MBA from Jack Welch Management Institute at Strayer University.
Published Jun 15, 2020 2pm EDT / 11am PDT / 7pm BST / 8pm CEST