by Carmen Van Kerckhove

I hope you were able to get on my free call last week, as we had over 500 people registered! Thanks to all of you who wrote in to say how valuable the call was for you.

You should know that on the content-packed call, I also made a special invitation for listeners to join me on my one-time-only, 5-part tele-course starting next week called…

Diversity Career Success:
How to Take Your Organization From Culturally Clueless to Diversity Dynamo (and Skyrocket Your Own Career While You’re At It)

If you’re involved in any way with your organization’s diversity efforts – whether you’re the Chief Diversity Officer or simply a volunteer in your organization’s diversity employee networking group – this course is designed just for you.

The fact is, while diversity training for employees abounds, there’s very little out there for those of you who do diversity work. You’re largely left to go it alone. Your boss may give lip service to the cause, but half the time you’re dancing somewhere between feeling completely unsupported and filling a role that’s little more than a legal checkbox.

If you’re sick of the same old CYA tactics, join me as I show you how to get your ideas taken seriously by senior management and share with you sensible, actionable solutions that actually work in the real world.

At the end of the course, you’ll walk away with a blueprint that you’ve customized based on your organization type, your organization’s needs, and your own role within the organization. There’s no one-size-fits-all solution, after all, and what you’re able to accomplish as a junior-level employee is very different than what you can get done when you’re a senior executive.

Many of you already took advantage of our generous 2-pay plan, and while that option has expired, if you’re one of the first 36 people who register, you’ll get as a free gift a 4-CD set of interviews I’ve conducted with some of the nation’s top experts on race and diversity. It’s worth $197, but you would get it with my compliments. I’ll even personalize it for you!

See what I’m offering and reserve your spot now!

by Carmen Van Kerckhove, originally published at CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360 blog

Just one day after Barack Obama’s historic victory, a giddy New York Times declared that his success at the polls was “sweeping away the last racial barrier in American politics with ease.”

With ease? This statement contradicts the tightrope Obama had to walk throughout the election. If he didn’t overtly address race, people of color would have distrusted him and felt he didn’t have their best interests at heart. But had he aligned himself too closely with the race issue, he ran the risk of emphasizing his “otherness” and alienating white voters. There was nothing easy about the delicate balancing act Obama had to perform to win the election.

In the wake of President Obama’s inauguration, more people are starting to question why we still need to talk about race and diversity. After all, our president is black. Isn’t that sufficient proof that racism in America has met its match?

If you find yourself facing this question at work, here are a few talking points you can use to demonstrate that race is not yet an issue we can afford to ignore.

1, There will always be “stand-outs” like Obama who carve a niche for themselves despite institutionalized discrimination.

For example, a black woman named Madame CJ Walker, the daughter of two former slaves, became the first self-made woman millionaire in the United States (black or white) by creating a line of cosmetics and hair care products for black women. She accomplished this feat at a time when blacks were subjected to extreme poverty, segregation, violence, and oppression. Her success during the Jim Crow era did not indicate that discrimination against blacks was nonexistent during this time. Instead, she became successful despite the odds.

Obama, too, is an exception to well-entrenched racism, rather than a symbol of the end of it. Thousands of voters told pollsters outright that they would never vote for a black man. (How many other voters felt the same way but would not go on the record and verbalize it?) Obama won the presidency in spite of racism, not because of its absence.

2. Racial disparities still exist in nearly every aspect of American life.

David Thomas, Harvard Business School professor and author of Breaking Through:The Making of Minority Executives in Corporate America, recently told Human Resources Executive magazine that “although the glass ceiling is “no longer impenetrable, talent being equal, the probability of making it to the C-suite is still less if you are a person of color than if you are a white male.”

Indeed, the Working Group on Extreme Inequality has confirmed that the racial economic divide between whites and blacks is a quantifiable reality: » Continue reading “Why We Must Talk About Race Now — More Than Ever Before”

by Carmen Van Kerckhove

Before you ask – no, that’s not me in the pic.

If your organization is anything like the ones I’ve worked with over the past five years, it’s dealing with a serious case of diversity fatigue.

You probably hear groans of exasperation every time a diversity training session is announced. Your boss, who claims to be so committed to advancing diversity, has somehow managed to skip every single diversity council meeting this year. Your organization’s big diversity event of the year is so old-school and irrelevant (ethnic food potluck, anyone?) that it has become the laughing stock of the staff.

Does any of this sound familiar?

Deep down inside, you know there’s a better way to “do” diversity in 2009. You know the old approach is broken. You know that if your organization truly wants to recruit and retain top talent of color, it needs to overhaul the way it thinks about race and diversity.

But exactly which changes should your organization make? And what can you do personally to help?

Good news: I’m ready to share with you exactly what you need to know on this free first-time teleseminar happening on Wednesday, January 21, 2009 at 5:00 pm Eastern…

“The 3 Biggest Diversity Blunders
Your Organization Could Be Making Right Now
(And How to Avoid Them)”

Sign up to reserve your line for this FREE call today!

On this 60-minute call, you’ll learn:

• Why your colleagues are right to scoff at diversity training — it actually doesn’t work! I’ll show you why not, and let you know what does work instead.
• Why your organization’s executives should never proclaim that they’re colorblind and that they “just don’t notice race,” unless they want to offend a lot of their employees.
• The one thing your organization must avoid at all costs unless you want its diversity efforts to fail spectacularly.

You know by now that I’m not going to waste your time by giving you fluff information.

This free call is chock-full of specific information that will show you exactly why your organization hasn’t become the leader in diversity it wants to be. Then, I’ll give you the resources to change that around so that you can help your organization gain a crucial competitive edge by recruiting and retaining top diverse talent.

No matter what your current situation is, I guarantee you’ll get at least one golden nugget during this never-before-offered call. Remember, it’s FREE – a new year’s gift from me.

Limited lines are available for this call, so you’ll want to make sure you reserve your spot right away.

I was reading BusinessWeek this morning and came across an interesting workplace diversity issue in an article about McDonalds’ attempts to retain valuable managers through an aggressive 401K matching program.

Apparently, the firm is finding that black employees are less likely to be swayed by this benefit than non-black employees. Here’s what the article had to say:

Skepticism about investing runs especially high among African Americans, who make up 15% of the company’s manager pool. Research shows that blacks, in the aggregate, are reluctant to save. According to a 2008 study by Ariel Investments and Charles Schwab (SCH), blacks save an average of $169 a month for retirement, while comparable whites (in terms of household income) contribute about $249 a month. Race and ethnicity trump gender—and even salary—in the factors that predict whether a person will save for retirement.

Why don’t blacks save more? The reasons are complex, but the underlying theme is cultural. “African Americans are distrustful of the financial system because it has excluded them for generations,” says Andrés Tapia, chief diversity officer at Hewitt Associates, the benefits-consulting giant. Hewitt’s research shows that African Americans consistently put home ownership and college ahead of retirement goals. Owning a home and educating children become a huge priority, explains Tapia, “if you are the first person in your family to do it.”

Preparing for the future can also be controversial in the black community. “If your Mama lives with you—and others in your extended community are struggling to get by—putting aside money that you can’t touch for the next 15 to 20 years feels selfish and inappropriate,” Tapia says.

Indeed, for many blacks, retirement is more a dream than a priority. The Ariel-Schwab survey found that African Americans under the age of 50 are nearly twice as likely as comparable whites to say they want to retire by 60, but they are half as likely to cite retirement as their most important savings goal.

Adding to the skepticism, the great market meltdown of 2008 showed that even the most carefully crafted retirement plans can be ruined by forces beyond a person’s control. “This is a big setback that will affect all people,” says Mellody Hobson, president of Ariel, the largest African American-run money manager. “In our community, which has had less exposure to the market, people are especially nervous” about investing. Such reticence has made McDonald’s efforts to sell its perk to employees all the more difficult.

I’m curious to know if anyone else has thoughts on this workplace diversity issue. Do you think blacks are less likely to save for retirement than non-black folks? Do you think it’s true that they place home ownership and college savings ahead of retirement?

Happy new year! I hope all of you enjoyed your holiday season.

I was lucky enough to get away from the snow in NYC for a bit by spending five days in the Bahamas, and discovered a new favorite food: conch!

I’ve never had so much conch in my life: conch fritters, conch chowder, conch breakfast hash, conch salad…

If anyone knows of a spot in New York that offers up good conch, do let me know because I’m going into a bit of conch withdrawal!