The NYT magazine’s Ethicist columnist, Kwame Anthony Appiah, on where the onus of diversifying the work force should fall.

I lead a department within a medium-size company, where we’ve had a lot of discussions about making our hiring practices more inclusive. Although we do well on the gender front, we are about 85 percent white. Our motives for pursuing more diversity are somewhat altruistic — we pay very well, so hiring minorities makes a small contribution to evening out the wealth gap — but also business-related, as our client base is becoming increasingly diverse, and a more diverse work force might help us to better meet their needs.

We work in a niche industry, and our company has little name recognition outside it; very few minorities apply for open positions. When we hire, we encourage current employees to reach out to their social, professional and alumni networks and spread the word. The trouble is that our mostly white employees have mostly white networks. So we’ve begun to recruit at colleges and universities that historically have more minorities, and also via minority-focused organizations and networks. I’m attending several recruitment events via these organizations and will speak with potential candidates and collect résumés. I usually am allowed to bring one or two other people. When I asked one of the Black women who work for me to come along, she declined. She complained that I’d be parading her around as proof that we have minorities at the company (which felt insulting to her) and that it was dishonest to imply to potential candidates that we have more Black employees than we do.

Should I ask other minority colleagues to join me? I don’t mean to misrepresent our company, yet showing a more diverse group of people at these events could help us increase diversity. When I was graduating from college as a female engineer 25 years ago, many employers were represented only by men, and it was hard for me to see where a young woman fit in. The companies that sent female representatives instantly felt more welcoming to me. I was not surprised to learn that most of the companies were majority male. And though I didn’t make job decisions based simply on who was sent to recruit new hires, first impressions do count, and I’m sure they influenced my decisions about where to apply. Name Withheld

Your own experience as a job candidate is telling. Seeing a female engineer at the recruitment event didn’t mislead you about the makeup of the company. It did suggest that the company was making an effort — that there was thought given to the concerns a female prospect might have had about being a woman in a male-dominated profession. That’s why I don’t accept the imputation of dishonesty. In the course of conversation with a potential candidate of color, you and your colleague could say that you have fewer minority employees than you’d like and that the company wants to do something about that. You don’t want to give people the impression that their contribution to racial diversity is all you care about, of course. Yet many Black job prospects will find it helpful to have someone of their racial identity who’s able to discuss what it’s like at the workplace.

Maybe she felt that the onus of diversifying the work force shouldn’t be borne especially by Black employees.

Does that make your Black colleague, with her resistance to your diversity-promoting efforts, part of the problem? Let’s see what else might be going on here. Maybe she felt that the onus of diversifying the work force shouldn’t be borne especially by Black employees. Maybe she has already been asked, as a member of an underrepresented group, to do a bunch of things that place extra burdens on her. Or maybe she would like to have been consulted on ways of diversifying the work force rather than being pulled into an initiative that she had no part in designing.

I can’t say whether any of this is right. But these sorts of thoughts arise from the fact that in a racially divided society, workplace conversations about how to reduce disparities can be sensitive. How do I know? I’ve often been the only nonwhite person in a philosophy department, and that has meant being asked to participate in activities aimed at helping diversify a rather white profession. So such thoughts have occasionally crossed my mind. But like you, I think that the goal here is a worthwhile one, and I share your instinct that your recruiting efforts might be helped by making Black employees visible. Despite this one rebuff, you should keep trying.

Kwame Anthony Appiah teaches philosophy at N.Y.U. His books include “Cosmopolitanism,” “The Honor Code” and “The Lies That Bind: Rethinking Identity.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/12/magazine/diversity-recruitment-ethics.html

Illustration by Tomi Um

Column By Kwame Anthony Appiah

Published Oct. 12, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ET