James T. Carter’s research while affiliated with Weill Cornell Medicine and other places

Diversity initiatives are designed to help workers from disadvantaged backgrounds achieve equitable opportunities and outcomes in organizations. However, these programs are often ineffective. To better understand less‐than‐desired outcomes and the shifting diversity landscape, we synthesize literature on how corporate affirmative action programs became diversity initiatives and current literature on their effectiveness. We focus specifically on work dealing with mechanisms that make diversity initiatives effective as well as their unintended consequences. When taken together, these literature point to several inequality‐specific omissions in contemporary discussions of organizational diversity initiatives, such as the omission of racial inequality. As we contend in the first section of this review, without affirmative action law, which initially tasked US employers with ending racial discrimination at the workplace, we would not have diversity initiatives. We conclude by providing directions for future research and elaborating on several core foci that scholars might pursue to better (re)connect issues of organizational diversity with the aims of equity, equality and social justice.

History can inconspicuously repeat itself through words and language. We explored the association between the “Black” and “African American” racial labels and the ideologies of the historical movements within which they gained prominence (Civil Rights and Black Power, respectively). Two content analyses and two preregistered experimental studies ( N = 1,204 White American adults) show that the associations between “Black” and “bias and discrimination” and between “African American” and “civil rights and equality” are evident in images, op-eds, and perceptions of organizations. Google Images search results for “Black people” evoke more racially victimized imagery than search results for “African American people” (Study 1), and op-eds that use the Black label contain more bias and discrimination content than those that use the African American label (Study 2). Finally, White Americans infer the ideologies of organizations by the racial label within the organization’s name (Studies 3 and 4). Consequently, these inferences guide the degree to which Whites support the organization financially.

Purpose The current piece summarizes five critical points about racism from the point of view of black scholars and allies: (1) black people are experiencing exhaustion from and physiological effects of racism, (2) racism extends far beyond police brutality and into most societal structures, (3) despite being the targets of racism, black people are often blamed for their oppression and retaliated against for their response to it, (4) everyone must improve their awareness and knowledge (through both formal education and individual motivation) to fight racism and (5) anti-racist policies and accountability are key to enact structural reformation. Findings The first three of these points detail the depths of the problem from the perspectives of the authors and the final two lay out a call to action. Practical implications This viewpoint is the joint effort of 14 authors who provided a unified perspective. Originality/value This was one of the most original experiences the authors have had – working with 13 former/current students on joint perspectives about police brutality and racism more generally. The authors thank for the opportunity.