May 19, 2023

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] This is Carolina Business Review, major support provided by Colonial Life, providing benefits to employees to help them protect their families, their finances, and their futures.

High Point University, the Premier Life Skills University, focused on preparing students for the world as it is going to be, Sonoco, a global manufacturer of consumer and industrial packaging products and services.

With more than 300 operations in 35 countries.

- Diversity, equity, and inclusion, exactly how that is stated, is now embedded in our cultural and business lexicon.

Welcome again to the most widely watched and the longest running program on Carolina, business, policy and public affairs scene every week, across North and South Carolina for more than three decades.

Thank you for supporting this dialogue, in a moment, we will unpack DEI as it is, or really what is rapidly becoming diversity and belonging.

Is this yet another label?

Does this signify some meaningful course correction in the arc of our social canon?

Well, we've convened insiders and experts to help better understand it, and we will start right now.

- [Narrator] Major funding also by Blue Cross Blue Shield of South Carolina, an independent licensee of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association and Martin Marietta, a leading provider of natural resource resource-based building materials, providing the foundation on which our communities improve and grow.

On this edition of Carolina Business Review, John Simpkins from MDC, Dr. Roslyn Clarke Artis of Benedict College.

Aaron Nelson from the Chamber for a Greater Chapel Hill Carrboro and Kelvin Waites of the city of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.

(upbeat music) - Welcome to our program, DEI.

Dr. Artis, let's start with you.

There was a recent article in the New York Times talking about DEI and you know, probably a thousand of them in the last few weeks but, and I was in a conversation about DEI and the counterparty that was talking to me said, actually, it's diversity and belonging.

What does that mean?

- Well, I think it means exactly what it says.

Diversity really is a mathematical function.

It is a function of our demographic.

It's a function of the browning of America in many respects.

It is a function of women joining the workplace, whatever the nature of the diversity might be.

But inclusion really is cultural.

Once you arrive, are you welcomed?

Are you engaged?

Are you able to make a significant contribution and persist?

So we think in the college world, I don't recruit students who can attend.

I recruit students who can graduate, and that presupposes they feel welcome.

A sense of belonging and engagement with the campus that allows them to be successful over time.

We want that in the workforce as well.

- Aaron, what do you think?

- As well said, belonging, the DEI felt like instructions to who is in charge.

You gotta do adversity, equity, and to make sure people feel inclusive, belonging feels are speaking more to the employee, let's make sure that it's a place they feel comfortable and that the DEI isn't just an activity of reading a book or studying a thing.

We gotta make sure that people feel and a sense of belonging, and I think that's a good way to prioritize it.

- John, is this some product that bubbled up from below from employees?

Is this idea that was hatched in more dialogue around a table conceptually, how, why belonging and why now?

- Product is a good word because I think the answer is both.

In some instances this does bubble up from the employee base and in others it's a reaction from management to what they perceive as a problem.

I think I'm getting crankier about this as I get older and my view is, call it what you want.

What are the results?

Do people actually feel like that organization, whether it's an academic institution or business or a governmental entity, do they feel seen, heard and valued?

Is dignity at the core of what your operation is?

I mean, we can call it puppies, lollipops, and rainbows, as long as there's, at the core of the organization's mission, a focus on the dignity of the individuals who make up that organization or the populations they serve.

- I almost wanna say chief, because as former chief of Georgetown County or Georgetown City in South Carolina, you certainly have deserved that opinion, but, or deserve that honor but sir, you are head of diversity for the city of Myrtle Beach now, Kelvin, and as you've heard the dialogue so far, how does belonging, how do you assimilate belonging?

How do you describe belonging beyond DEI.

- I am more inclined to go, go along with my friend that just spoke in terms of, you know, what you call it is what you call it.

But belonging to me signifies that, you know, if I'm including you, I have the power, right.

Belonging to me speaks to the fact that it is a shared responsibility and everyone is is somehow equally on the same playing field, yeah.

and I've heard that from employees.

Employees don't just wanna be invited to the party.

We've all heard it, they wanna be allowed to dance, they want to feel like they belong.

- Was there anything that surprised you?

Feedback, offline comments from employees that you didn't expect around DEI so far in Myrtle Beach?

- Whoa.

- [Chris] That you can talk about, that's fit for broadcast.

- Yes, okay, so, you know, one of the major things we wanted to do is normalize the conversation.

We didn't want people whispering about DEI in the corner or make it seem like it was some taboo or some monster.

So we had organizational-wide conversations, normally groups of 50 to 80, hour and a half to two hours at a time.

Very engaging and so after one conversation, I remember an older Caucasian gentleman walking up to me and he says, "Kelvin, I really appreciate what you had to say."

And I said, "Thank you.

You know, I appreciate that feedback."

And we were holding hands, shaking hands.

This all happened so quick, shaking hands at the time.

And he said, "Because I told my supervisor that if this was some left wing BS, I was gonna walk out."

and we're still holding hands when he said it right.

And so I, it was just that quick opportunity.

I grabbed his hand and pulled him closer and we hugged and I said, "I'm so glad you stayed."

You see what I'm saying?

And so for me, that was a, small as it may be, that was a win, you know, because someone walked into this situation, into this conversation thinking it was one thing, but they realized it was something else.

- Dr. Artis, how does that, not just that example, but how do people of color and how do, just call it white people or Caucasian people, how do white people feel is belonged, do they, so describe those two, belonging for all, I wanna say asset classes because I've been a banker for so long, but how do you describe belonging to everyone?

They all need to feel belonging or belonging of some sort, right, so unpack that.

- So, I think if we consider belonging in the context of being able to make a contribution, being welcomed rather than tolerated, everyone wants to feel as though they are making a contribution.

Each of us around this table is contributing to this conversation from a an individual perspective.

And collectively we value one another's opinions and contributions and I think when you go into the workforce, people don't just want to go in to do a job and go back home, they want to collaborate, they want to engage, they want to contribute, and they want to be valued, as my colleagues said earlier, for the contributions that they make and so I think if we look at it in the context of black versus white, or we look at it in the context of majority versus minority, perhaps that's better stated.

Certainly everyone should feel a sense of belonging.

But I think there is a presupposition that the majority belongs because they've created the context in the first place.

- [Chris] Yes, right.

- Right.

You have created the space by you for you, designed to meet your specific needs, desires, and wants.

For those of us who may be a part of a minority community, coming into those environments that are not necessarily designed intentionally to meet our needs or to stimulate our sensibilities or our sense of belonging and contribution.

I think it's a very different conversation.

So I recognize that people in the majority feel a sense of uneasiness, well, of course you're welcome.

You're here, aren't you?

But that's very, being here is very different than being here, right?

- That's, absolutely.

- John, so a person in a majority won't necessarily feel safe as an individual in the dialogue and whether they're a minority or a minority.

And thanks for framing it that way.

is this about having everyone feel safe enough to have this kind of movement forward as a community?

- It's about moving from an understanding of individual identity to how those individual identities form a collective.

And in order to do that, the writer Chen Wa Chevy talks about a balance of stories and if we're looking at belonging, what we're really looking at for an organization, for a culture is a balance of stories.

If one story has been told over and over and over again, that may be true for some people, but it's not true for everyone.

So if you introduce other stories and eventually you have a balance of stories, then you get actually a more complete picture and it welcomes everyone.

The notion of safety becomes secondary because what we're really looking for is completion.

When we work in communities at MDC, we often begin with the construction of what we call historical timeline.

If each of us shared the history of a certain period of time, say 30 years, 40 years, we would each have different points on that timeline.

But only the collective memory of us creates something that we can then say, oh, well this is how we all see these events.

This is how we all see this time period.

And it's not about inviting some in and rejecting others.

An organization that's all black is no more effective than an organization that's all white.

And what we really want is that balance of stories.

- How's this wash over you, Aaron?

- I think these said that perfectly.

And I think that sometimes white people feel uncomfortable, like, I'm losing something, we're gonna do this DEI, there's something I had.

Yes you did, you had power, and you're sharing it now and so yeah, you're not losing it, you still have your power.

But there's a sharing now and then on the belonging, one, I thought that was wonderful and the inclusion is something that is given, and you're talking about belonging is about feeling someplace but your point about the stories, I think white folk may feel a little uncomfortable.

I used to hear my story all the time.

We always told this from my point of view, and now it's sometimes from mine and sometimes from yours.

If that feels like loss, I'd encourage that person to sit with that a little bit.

you have enough power and influence to share.

And that in belonging, that opening up of that your, it was perfect.

We need to every feel like a part of something, that was very nicely said.

- Kelvin.

- If I had a piece of paper right now and a pen, I would write down balance of stories, I think that's an awesome way to put it.

And so often I've been in a situation during my career, my law enforcement career where one story is always dominated the headlines if we wanna call it headlines.

And so even if there's an amazing story that you have, you put, you know what I'm saying?

You put the muffle on and you don't feel, you know, I didn't, I won't say you, I'll talk about me.

I didn't feel a part of what was going on.

I felt like the narrative was set for a certain thing and I just didn't feel comfortable, go ahead, doc.

- So I think you really begged the question of perspective, and that's really what's being articulated here.

Two things can be true at once.

- Yeah.

- Yes, right, your version of events can be accurate, historically accurate from your perspective, but you don't have a complete truth, the whole story, unless you have it from multiple perspectives.

And so this notion of, I didn't think my perspective would be welcome.

The goal here is to create conditions conducive to sharing.

Right, to absolutely coming to the table in a very meaningful way and feeling confident that your opinion, your contribution, your story, your truth will be received, valued, and included in the greater story, that is the organization.

- But not for its own sake.

It isn't just because that's an interesting way to live.

It's because we are better when we are that way.

Our organizations are more effective, we're better able to serve clients and customers.

We're better, are able to have employees who think our organization is sticky and interesting and want to stay.

We have universities that better educate our people.

Our communities are healthier, it isn't, and it's not just let's all have our stories, when we do that, we're gonna be much more effective, much more powerful.

- Two concrete examples, airplanes and childbirth.

The reason, and there's a case study that that that demonstrates that in the case of an emergency, typically it was the pilots who would seize control, flight attendants wouldn't have anything to do with it.

They realize that there's enough time for everyone to communicate on the flight crew to make better decisions and yield better outcomes.

So even when we talk about diversity in terms of where you sit within your job performance, we get better outcomes when we have more input and there's actually time to get the input.

So time is a false constraint in a lot of instances, even in the case of an emergency, childbirth, medical students who believe that black people have a higher tolerance for pain results in black women not getting the care that they need when they go in to have a baby and results in- - Forgive me.

Is that factual?

- Yes.

- Absolutely.

- And it results in worse outcomes for black women.

The most shocking statistic is that black women with a college degree have worse maternal health outcomes than white women with a high school diploma.

- And it's maternal mortality, dying.

- [Roslyn] Yeah infant mortality.

- [John] Yeah, maternal and infant mortality.

- And worse outcomes in America.

- Yeah.

- Than in some of our third world countries.

- And I knew that, but I didn't know it was tied to the factual evidence that an African American woman has a higher tolerance for pain.

- [John] Well, a misunderstanding of that.

- That's not factual, I mean that's the problem.

- [Aaron?]

It's the doctors thought so.

- It's the assumption of that, right.

- Because they had no black women faculty.

- That black skin is thicker than white skin, that all of these things which are myth, find their way into the scientific.

- So let's talk about myth and fact, you know, as we go through these dialogues, I don't hear politics.

I hear the softer science of human behavior.

I hear compassion, understanding, kindness.

So how do you bring to bear those particular features and aspects of interpersonal communication and almost without regard to the politics.

So how do you separate those out, Kelvin?

How do you do that in the city environment?

- Well, that's a tough question and when you talk about, 'cause what you're talking about, what you're describing is humanity.

- [Chris] Right, yeah, thank you.

- And so many times we lead with other things, religion, politics.

- Right.

- Race, gen, you know what I'm saying?

And the funny thing for me is that, you know, the times that we lead, the times that we step up to the plate and lead with humanity in most cases are during crisis, right?

DeMar Hamlin.

- Yeah, sure.

- Out on the field.

- Right.

- What was everybody, I don't care what you look like, where you come from, what was everybody doing, praying.

Everybody was, everybody was cheering.

It didn't matter who we played for, it didn't matter what color he was, it didn't matter, in the best of us, the humanity, we led with that, you know what I'm saying?

After the murder of George Floyd, I was a police chief during that time.

People came together, people came together, all people, if you saw it, you were traumatized and people came together, so how do, my question is, is how do we, outside of crisis, how do we keep people together and focus on our leaders and our communities local and, you know, across the globe, how do we stay there?

How do we stay in the middle of the ring instead of going back to our corners?

- So is the, is diversity and belonging starting to be driven by the humanity of it all?

And not because a major employer has a box to check, doesn't say it that diminishes it too much and reduces it too much, but is it being driven more from the softer science of being in the interpersonal relationships and not being driven because there's a compliance need for it?

- So the short answer is no, in my opinion, and that may be a jaded opinion, but I think there is a business case to be made for diversity and inclusion and belonging.

I think outcomes are better, solutions are stronger, multifaceted, more thoughtful when you have multiple people contributing.

I think the cost of acquisition in a workforce that is starved for talent right now, post Covid 19, suggests that we need to retain the people that we hire.

And if people don't feel like they belong in the organization, they will not stay.

So the stickiness factor is a business case, right?

We have to make a business case, but we were having a conversation before we went on air about just generational shifts.

Younger people do not seem to have the same constraints that we have in terms of percept.

- [Chris] Bad or good?

Is that bad or good?

- I think it's very good.

I think we will outgrow this problem in multiple generations, not immediately.

And there will always be some bounce back just based on our historic and cultural notions, things that our parents taught us.

But I do see my own children be much more, much less focused on difference, much more focused on engagement with people who are not like themselves.

And I, so I do think the younger generations are successively getting better at this, there is hope, right?

So I think no, those of us who are in business now are still pragmatic and thought and thinking about it in the context of retention of employees, you know, exceeding benchmarks and outcomes and things like that and why that matters.

But I see a future coming driven by a younger generation that is less focused on those business outcomes and much more focused on humanity.

- Yeah, I think there's both, I think there's room for both.

An example speaking globally is Singapore, Singapore is one of the most diverse bodies on the face of the earth, it's a city state and it leverages its diversity, it leverages its difference for its economic benefit.

And it's fascinating in this way because Le Quan Yu, who was this very authoritarian figure, saw that he had real talent within his country across racial groups.

So he wasn't gonna play the game of I'm gonna privilege this race over that race, he thought about how can we be most competitive on a global scale?

And what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna create equal conditions for people as much as I can, everyone gets healthcare, everyone gets access to housing, everyone gets access to education, and then, you get to flourish, so when we talk about diversity, this country's always been diverse.

We haven't always interacted with each other and I think what Dr. Artis is talking about is the emergence of interaction across difference in this country in the last 50 years and it's really been only 50 years.

And especially if we think about it in a southern context.

- Yeah, you earlier talked about outcomes and you don't care what we call it.

We've got to get towards some outcomes and I want us to remain focused there as well.

You talked about what is the language changing and yes, and hopefully it always does.

We change our language all the time because we're gonna, we have to adjust.

Sometimes we're gonna use words over and over again and they stop meaning anything to us.

We now say DEI and it's just letters that roll together.

And by I think now changing our language and talking about belonging, it's a little bit of a reframe, but it shouldn't cause anybody to say, "Oh, what is this thing, I keep changing its name."

No, we are adjusting, we are modifying, we're being clearer, but the outcomes is what we're aiming at and we're aiming at it because it'll make us more successful.

- Do do you feel like the city of Myrtle Beach is spending enough money on DEI, as you look at, is your silo, let's just call it a silo for articulation purposes.

Is there enough money going into that?

Are you always asking for more or you're supporters asking for more as well?

- Well, I can tell you that my leadership is very, very supportive.

And we all realize that even going back to the point of the name changing and the shift, we all realize that that DEI is is not a sprint, right?

I think we all agree, right?

It's not a marathon, right?

Because marathons end at some point, right?

But we believe at the city of Myrtle Beach that diversity, equity and inclusion is a continuous process of improvement.

And so, you know, if you're asking about commitment of the city of Myrtle Beach, I will tell you that our leadership is committed to that continuous process of program.

- At the end of 2020, Global spending in DEI was about seven and a half billion dollars, that was at the end of 2020.

In 2027 it's expected to be about 17 billion.

Now these are global numbers, John, that sounds kind of light for a corporate spending initiative if we boil it down just to that.

- It's always light, it's never enough.

If it's a separate initiative, if it's something that we're going to do, and then we're gonna do business over here.

So we're gonna talk about diversity in the abstract or as it relates to some of the work that we do, but we're not gonna embed it in our operations.

We're not gonna think about how we engage with the communities we serve or bring perspectives that could better inform how we serve all of our client base, all of our customer base.

So unless it's a part of the way that you do business, it's likely to always result in this need to do more.

And Kelvin, I think you're right.

It's not an end point and that's the other part of how we approach some of these issues on all sides, thinking that if only we do this, then we'll have it solved.

It's never gonna be solved because the country's always going to be evolving.

- So we have less than three minutes left.

Dr. Artis is, to stay in the same vein is, and you can't say both.

- 'Cause I only have three minutes.

- You have a JD, are you an attorney?

- I am.

- Okay.

Yeah.

You can't say both but, and I'm teasing you somewhat, but so is this a funding issue or is this just a deployment and an informational issue to get it out further?

- Yeah, so I don't think it's a funding issue.

So I may disagree slightly with my colleagues, but I wholly agree with the notion of it being an embedded part of doing business on a daily basis in every organization, it should not be a separate line item.

- [Chris] No.

- If it is a separate line item.

you've already lost.

If we have to budget for diversity as opposed to embracing diversity holistically as an organization, we've already lost.

And so I think the spending should go down over time.

I think we should stop seeing separate line items.

We should stop seeing vice presidents for diversity, equity and inclusion being hired, it should be a norm.

The HR director is the vice president for diversity, equity and inclusion, right, if we see things and an equitable basis.

And so it would be my desire that spending continued to decrease until it's non-existent as a separate line item.

We shouldn't need a separate African American history class if we were telling the truth in American history, right?

I mean, we have to get to a place where these are not seen as set aside, separate and quotas, but rather as just a normal way to do business.

- 30 Seconds, is that?

- A hundred percent?

I'm with you exactly.

- [Chris] Yeah, same thing Kelvin.

- Balance, I go back to what John's balance stories, that's what it boils down to and that's what the doctor so eloquently just brought to the forefront.

- We've got vice president of environmental issues.

At some point it'll be inculcated into the organization.

We had vice president for corporate social responsibility.

But at some point the organizations behave justly, you put it out there as this DEI, we are gonna put this into our organization's activity and we are, this is how we will operate.

That's the outcomes.

We gotta measure and report on that, that's my hope.

- Any organization will be foolish to let talents sit on the sidelines and that's what we do.

- Well and eventually as it gets more competitive, I think they'll be forced to do it.

If anything else to consider it.

Thank you all for coming and being on the program again, Kelvin, it's your first time.

We hope we get you back and thanks for your leadership in law enforcement all those years as well.

- Thank you, I appreciate that.

- [Chris] Aaron, you too.

Good to have you here.

- It's good to see you.

Thank you.

Thank you for watching our program.

We hope that your weekend is good.

And thank you for listening and supporting the program.

Goodnight.

- [Narrator] Gratefully acknowledging support by Martin Marietta, Blue Cross Blue Shield of South Carolina, Sonoco, High Point University, Colonial Life, and by viewers like you, thank you.

For more information, visit Carolinabusinessreview.org.

(upbeat music)