THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, March 25, 1995 TAG: 9503250305
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: D1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MAIDA ODOM, KNIGHT-RIDDER NEWS SERVICE
LENGTH: Long : 117 lines
Lawrence Otis Graham set out to find the 100 best companies for minority employees. He said he had to settle for 85.
The conclusion Graham reached in gathering data for his book, ``The Best Companies for Minorities,'' published in 1993, is that ``no place, no corporation is great for minorities.''
Graham set out to give racial-minority job-seekers a guide so that they wouldn't waste time and effort applying at businesses where chances of success were slim. He started out thinking there would be so many qualified companies that his main job would be narrowing the field to 100.
Wrong.
Instead, he had to lower his expectations. And cut the size of his list.
Graham spent 22 months on research, beginning by sending out detailed, three-page questionnaires. Graham's first shock, he says, was that many of the 625 public corporations and private firms he initially queried did not want to answer the survey questions and were wary of sharing data on their track record with minorities.
Graham said that over the course of interviews, he found a lot of companies wanted to be included in the book because of their success in recruiting minorities into entry-level jobs or because they donated to charities.
But those factors alone were not enough to make a company a good place for a minority employee, according to Graham, who wanted to produce a guidebook to help minority workers find places where they could expect to succeed and live up to their potential. To gauge the chances for such success, Graham used a mix of criteria.
Questions put to the corporations covered annual revenues, percentages of minority employees and managers, salary scales and minority membership on boards of directors.
He lists responses in the company profiles that make up most of ``The Best Companies for Minorities'' (Penguin; 448 pages).
After his initial disappointments, Graham decided to add a couple of other features to the book: interviews with experts in the field of minority employment and 11 principles for responsible corporate diversity, which he developed based on what he'd learned.
Few minority-owned firms were included because he limited his research to national or multinational corporations. All the minority-owned companies large enough to be included chose not to respond to his inquiries, according to Graham.
Graham also asked about minority recruiting, contributions to minority organizations, minority employee groups, diversity and sensitivity training, minority supplier and vendor opportunities, mentoring programs, management training, internship opportunities and the number of minorities who were top executives.
In addition, he interviewed outsiders with some knowledge of the companies, as well as current and former employees.
``It doesn't take a bigot to create a negative environment for minority people,'' Graham said in an interview. ``Many people don't understand that white male managers don't mentor minority people. He (the interviewer) just picks someone who reminds him of himself.''
To Graham, ``passive bigotry is worse'' than active discriminatory behavior because those who are doing it don't even acknowledge a problem.
``These people honestly believe they are fair and open-minded. You have to show them how so many of their decisions and attitudes are based on racist beliefs.''
Researching the book led to the experience that first gave Graham, now a New York City attorney, wide public attention. In 1992, he took a job as a busboy at an all-white Greenwich, Conn., country club to see what it was like at a place where professional connections and deals are made and minorities have no influence or access.
His experiences were recounted in the August 1992 issue of New York magazine, and Warner Bros. has purchased the movie rights to the story. Although the busboy experience was not part of the book, Graham stresses that minorities' being shut out of old-boy social networks is an impediment to their promotion opportunities.
During his research, Graham says, he discovered that those companies dependent on a broad consumer base and a good public image have better track records with minority employees. Those that rely on minority consumers, he concluded, had a greater concern for diversity because it could impact sales. Companies that specialized in financial services were the weakest, Graham said, but he included some firms in the book anyway for people seeking jobs in that field.
Graham won't name the companies he rejected, but cites Xerox, Bell Atlantic, Avon and Polaroid as companies with good records. DuPont, Campbell Soup, American Express, Atlantic Richfield Co. and Procter & Gamble Co., made Graham's cut as well.
The idea for the book first came to Graham while he was interviewing for a job at a prestigious Wall Street law firm in 1986.
According to Graham, who was then at Harvard Law School, ``for each question I raised, there was another that I considered, but dared not ask. The information I was desperate for - but too intimidated to address - centered around one simple issue: `Would a minority person like me be accepted and be treated fairly by this company and its co-workers?' ''
He says that after he heard his interviewer make a couple of anti-Semitic remarks, he summoned the courage to ask whether a black person could expect to become a partner.
The question, according to Graham's introduction in the book, was met with a blank stare; so he pressed: ``Well, I mean, how many of your attorneys are black?'' The interviewer, a partner in the firm responded, ``Why should that matter?''
Graham said he didn't know what he was expecting to hear, but that was the wrong answer. MEMO: Lawrence Otis Graham will be the featured speaker during the Alpha Kappa
Mu Honor Society's 53rd National Convention Convocation at 11 a.m.
Friday in G.W.C. Brown Memorial Hall Little Theater on the Norfolk State
University campus.
Principles for Fostering Corporate Diversity
For full text of suggestions see microfilm
ILLUSTRATION: Photo
Graham
by CNB