The Cuyahoga County administration building is abuzz with activity, these days. Office spaces are being remodeled to make room for dozens of new employees. Decisions are also being made about how to rebuild a government that was rife with patronage and nepotism. Many long-time office holders were cut. LaJuan Flores is one of the few high ranking members of the old guard who were retained by the administration of County Executive Ed Fitzgerald. Flores was hired three years ago to create a diversity program. She says she wasn't greeted with open arms.
LAJUAN FLORES: When I came in there was a lot of push-back from the employees who assumed that diversity means, "Oh gosh, I'm going to lose my job to someone who's different".
Flores says that never happened, but such a fear speaks to the fact that, for some, diversity programs spark suspicion because of the perception that they smack of a quota system. But Jessica Daigler, who directs a training program at the Diversity Center of Northeast Ohio, says being diverse is more than just checking a box.
JESSICA DAIGLER: It's not looking and saying, "Oh look, we have a person of color: CHECK. We have a woman: CHECK, CHECK". It's really about valuing diverse people and their experiences. For me, it's getting diverse voices to the table.
Still, the way most workplaces track diversity… what counts most… is race and gender. Two years ago, the city of Akron examined the makeup of its police department and found a bunch of white guys sitting around the table. Comparing the law enforcement workforce to the local labor market, the study found an under-representation of black males, Asian males, and both white and black females. As a result, a recruitment campaign has been launched targeting minorities and women for new openings that might occur in the department. Akron is reaching out to women's organizations, as well as college fraternities and black church groups to encourage more in the under-represented groups to apply. And the police say the diversity they are trying to achieve is about more than race and gender. Lt. Charles Brown heads Community Relations for the Akron Police Department.
CHARLES BROWN: We look around Akron, we see people with different sexual orientations, we see different religions, we see different races, we see blended races --- and we want to try and include them as much as we possibly can in our police force.
The Akron diversity outreach initiative is on the books as official city policy, though there are no benchmarks attached to measure progress. Other government sectors in Northeast Ohio though show strong signs of diversity…at least in the limited sense of race. Elise Hara, the new head of Human Resources for Cuyahoga County, says 63% of the workforce in county government are members of minorities, according to a study conducted two years ago.
ELISE HARA: That was actually much higher than other organizations within the Greater Cleveland area, so we're starting at a pretty good place. And I'm confident that, once we get the data for 2011, we'll be able to expand on that.
New census numbers will help shape that effort, though Hara says the point is not to mirror the demographics of Greater Cleveland.
ELISE HARA: You need to just make sure that your pool of candidates is all inclusive.
So, is diversity …in practice…really much more than race and gender? Is a more inclusive pool of applicants the same as having a more inclusive workforce? Does having more minorities and women, in itself, increase the diversity of voices and views being heard? These are not easy questions to answer. Even though the phrase “a more diverse workplace” has been in the lingo for decades, we still wrestle with exactly what it means.
Some champion tolerance for our differences --- where people feel safe to actually be different --- with all the messiness and discomfort that implies. Others cringe at the thought. They say diversity is about embracing and affirming others, not just tolerating them. And others --- admitting it or not ---just “do the numbers” and stop there. The brief flare up around Governor Kasich’s appointments…if nothing else…gave us reason to ponder such questions.
