How to Fight Back Against Millennial Racism in the Workplace

Sometimes living in a major city causes you to forget there is an entire country surrounding you with a different social outlook. In Philadelphia, I’m surrounded most of the day by people of color. Our racial makeup is actually made up of mostly minorities, with only 45.5% of my city’s population made up of whites. Integration and inclusion of all races and ethnic backgrounds is commonplace here, and so racism, while it still exists, is a stumbling block of progression in both a business and social sense.

In addition to living in a progressive city, I’m part of the seemingly most progressive generation, the millennials. Saying you are racist could get you exiled from the majority of social circles and fired from most jobs, or so I thought. Which is why I was so surprised when the Oklahoma Sigma Alpha Epsilon racist frat video surfaced.

It made me also realize that these kids would be entering the workforce soon, and infiltrating our biggest firms in high-level positions. And while it isn’t your typical confederate flag toting racists, it’s possibly more pervasive because of their ability to fly under the radar with their beliefs.

The question remains, “are millennials racist?”

Quantitatively, it’s a fairly hard to capture, but that isn’t to say that people don’t try. The General Social Survey conducted by the University of Chicago NORC conducted a survey in 2010, 2012 and 2014 that asked white millennials what they thought of African Americans. The results are telling. According to the survey, 31% of millennials rate blacks lazier than whites, and 23% rate blacks less intelligent than whites. These percentages are just one or two percentage points under Baby Boomer surveyed, pointing to the fact that while our generation loves to tout equality and understanding, some of us still have a pretty dense understanding of it.

These percentages feed directly into our labor market, how it is comprised, and who is actually making money based off their skills. Of all the Fortune 500 CEOs, a little over 4% are minorities, which includes African Americans, Asians, and Latin Americans. If you look at the attitudes of young millennials conducted in the GSS survey and correlate it to this data, we theoretically will see little change as millennials begin to take CEO and other high-level positions.

Are there ways to stop it?

Yes. But it requires a unified effort in order for there to be more equality in the workplace.

One of the easiest steps is to acknowledge that we live in a racist society, and that racism is, in fact, not dead. By admitting to ourselves that systemic racism is an aspect of work life, we can begin to take the steps to drive it back. We don’t live in a post-racist society, and so the idea that we don’t have to acknowledge it in the workplace only solidifies the systemic aspects of discrimination.

As an individual, you should step in when you see racism. As evidenced in the GSS survey, racism is not always explicit, and so when you see or hear your coworker say something that bothers you, you should say something. By allowing implicit racism to exist in the work environment, you are galvanizing archaic ideals. Simply put, in any aspect in the workplace, if your employer or colleague is making you feel uncomfortable and violated, you should speak out against the behavior and not promote it.

Hold team building and networking events. Racism often stems from a lack of exposure to other races. By holding team-building exercises that promote fun between your employees, you are ensuring greater racial cohesion among them. By building strong social bonds, you are reducing the racism caused by lack of exposure to different kinds of people. Working in groups towards goals creates a team atmosphere where all employees have to work equally hard to achieve an end goal that benefits them all.

Promotion of people should be based upon merit and ability, not race or cultural fit. It’s very easy to get in the habit of promoting those you get along with, but this is the wrong way to do it from both a racial equality and financial standpoint. For one, greater diversity at the top of your organization ensures that there will be more diversity at all levels. Secondly, those you get along with often share your ideas and tendencies, and therefore it is not the best for a constructive and objective company that is researching every avenue of revenue. By promoting more minorities, we can make the racial makeup in executive positions more closely reflect the racial makeup of our country.

In the end, racism often begins far before a person becomes an adult and enters the workforce. A lack of exposure to other races and the promotion of racism implicitly or explicitly in your community or family may solidify racism as an accepted practice. The truth is it’s a vile one. It’s one that promotes exclusion of people, not based off their inherent benefit to your organization, but on arbitrary genetic characteristics that determines their appearance. It stifles objective thinking, delays progress, and destroys innovation. Because the practice has gone on for so long, not only in the United States but globally, we must take steps to destroy it retroactively. Until we can truly see everyone’s individual benefit to a company, we will continue to have massive problems that harms the quality of life for all people across the world.