Can We Talk About Corporate “Culture”?

I had a conversation with a friend recently. She was upset because she had been pulled into a meeting with her supervisor. She sat down, not fully aware of what the meeting was about. Her supervisor began the meeting with the question, “Do you like working here?”

As a matter of context, my friend is a Black woman. She is a brilliant web designer, programmer, musician, and artist. I have worked with her directly on projects and watched her manage both clients and deliverables with aplomb. She works full time, despite being headquartered in Atlanta, which is over fifty percent Black, has only one Black employee, her. To be fair, there was one other Black employee, but they were fired weeks before my friend started.

Every Black History Month, corporations make a habit of trotting out their diversity and equality initiatives draped in Benetton-like photo spreads that all seem to hit the golden ratio of multiculturalism and Martin Luther King quotes. But for most marginalized people, the image and the reality often don’t mirror one another.

“Do you like working here?” My friend said yes, of course. Her supervisor then asked why her coworkers felt otherwise? It turned out that my friend’s contemporaries commented to her supervisor that she seemed disengaged during meetings and seemed “unapproachable.” She often sits in meetings…