Despite her smile and friendly demeanor, Cheryl (pronounced “Chair-roll”) Hall-Russell sounded both wistful and more than a little frustrated just before our interview.
Because she has moderated Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) forums as a consultant in Pittsburgh and across the country for over a decade, she resents being on the defensive against a deluge of lies questioning the very idea of progressive corporate change.
“For DEI in particular, what we anticipated is happening,” Hall-Russell said when she saw all of the vice president of diversity positions opening in corporate America two years ago in response to the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer.
“Most of us in the field knew there was going to be a backlash. There was no doubt in our minds that those positions were going to disappear.”
Hall-Russell, president and chief cultural consultant for BW3 (Black Women, Wise Women LLC, a national consulting firm), watched in dismay as Black women who got DEI positions became the face of a company’s response when a crisis arose. The CEO, the board of directors and other folks in positions of responsibility were happy to defer long enough to let a woman or a minority sit in the hot seat of local and national scorn.
“I’m a consultant because I didn’t want one of those [full-time corporate] positions. I have been offered those positions. I think some of the best and brightest got those jobs. I also know that they were not resourced well. As soon as politics got involved, those jobs were going to be at risk.
“People were uprooting their lives [and] getting six figures, but the security in those positions was always a question.”
Having also run at least six organizations over the last 20 years, Hall-Russell has become a fairly savvy observer of corporate governance and maneuvering, so she knows what the most cynical games look like up close.
“Being a Black woman watching the hoops as they get higher and higher … ,” she said, before describing the conversations she and other Black women have while comparing notes about their experiences conveyed the pain of navigating these spaces.
“Most of us, especially Black women, have way more education than is necessary for the jobs we’re taking on. We tend to be a very over-educated demographic if you look at who’s getting doctorates. We’re also the fastest-growing group of entrepreneurs in the country.”
That’s why the current assault on DEI is repugnant to her. The attempt to turn a tool of genuine organizational and employee uplift into the latest iteration of Critical Race Theory, political correctness, affirmative action or Ronald Reagan’s welfare queen slur has left Hall-Russell flabbergasted given the accomplishment of minorities and women in recent years.
“Anybody that’s Black that has a job basically is a DEI hire,” she said with a laugh that would punctuate much of the interview.
Hall-Russell has seen the skepticism on the faces of those attending seminars mandated by often-embarrassed bosses bemoaning the lack of creative thinking on teams where there is minimum diversity of thought, background or people.
In recent months, she’s watched in dismay as DEI has become synonymous with reverse discrimination. Over 80 anti-DEI bills have been introduced in nearly 30 state legislatures with more on the way. On the campaign trail, former President Donald Trump is now telling his followers that white people face more discrimination than Blacks in America, a grievance he has been fomenting since the 1980s.
Overturning DEI has become the low-hanging fruit of lazy congressional candidates and cynical pols who know that exploiting the fears of white citizens pays powerful electoral dividends.
Recently, playwright David Mamet, one of the most nuanced and sophisticated voices in American theater in the last century, complained that DEI efforts on Broadway and beyond amounted to “fascist totalitarianism.”
Not to be outdone, conservative pundit and podcaster Ben Shapiro admitted that whenever he gets on a plane and sees a Black pilot, he wonders if his life is in the hands of “a DEI hire.” Never mind that the pilot has never crashed a plane and has gone through the same rigorous training as his or her white colleagues.
Even Charlamagne tha God, a prominent African-American pundit, said on a recent episode of Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show” that “the truth about DEI is that although it’s well-intentioned, it’s mostly garbage … and you know I’m right because every one of you has sat through one of those diversity training sessions and thought, ‘this is some bullshit.’”
Though her ability to tap into a vein of dark gallows humor about the subject is always on display, the fake reverence for a mythical American meritocracy is what infuriates Hall-Russell. She is trained to read and interpret the data. She knows better than to believe the negative hype and she knows that many critics of DEI know better, too.
Even though there are reams of studies outlining how the principles of DEI are overwhelmingly positive and profitable for corporate America when instituted in good faith, the counter-narrative of the last two years that it is an unmitigated failure is taking hold and moving legislation that negatively impacts workplace practice.
As a Black woman working in corporate spaces once reserved for others, Hall-Russell has observed that DEI’s biggest critics never question their right to ascend several rungs higher than where they happened to land in an organizational hierarchy regardless of their actual skill level.
Instead of thoughtful reflection generated by their successes or failures, these critics question whether a Pittsburgh-based DEI consultant like Hall-Russell and those who look like her have come by their influence in the city’s corporate environment honestly.
This isn’t anything new to her.
“That has always been at the underbelly of America, right?” Hall-Russell, a former award-winning columnist for the Indianapolis Star, said, reaching back several decades to when she was first on the front lines of this contempt.
“Whenever I wrote a column that pissed off white people, there would just be this huge thing about how [and why] I was given this column, and it was just insane.”
“There’s an idea that successful Black people would have never been successful on their own without somebody just ‘letting’ them. The fact that we are that capable pisses people off.”
For the past few years, Hall-Russell has been conducting extensive research on the toll Black women in particular pay as they ascend to greater positions of responsibility in the corporate workplace.
“Given these jobs and these opportunities, we usually perform through the roof. [Still], these women often feel isolated, lonely and not trusted. People are proud of them but don’t get super close to them because they’re considered pretty aggressive.
“I have friends in philanthropy who talk about the $20,000 grant to a Black woman versus a $22 million grant to a white male and the over-management of that money because there’s a base lack of trust for Black women.
“This is my life. I have a master’s in philanthropy and a master’s in nonprofit management and a doctorate in leadership, but still I couldn’t be trusted with strategies; anything I wrote had to be examined by the new 27-year-old graduate who was telling me what the Hill District needed. All this mess.”
When she worked on her doctorate from Point Park University, Hall-Russell focused on intersectional leadership: what it looks like to lead as Black and gay or Black and female.
“Those women who were successful, what did that look like for them in the for-profit, nonprofit, university sectors? I tried to figure out how they had navigated and what their suggestions were for the people who came behind them.”
Hall-Russell said certain terms kept bubbling up repeatedly during her research. “Loneliness and isolation were my two top words.”
“These were women who were highly successful. They mostly talked about how lonely they had been, how isolating it had been. How there was a part of them that really loved their work, so they weren’t willing to walk away from it.
“They had trust issues because of the number of times the rug had been pulled out from under them. They talked about the number of times they thought they had built these trusting relationships at work only to be waylaid.”
Asked if she thought corporate DEI efforts still had a future given the challenges in recent years, Hall-Russell was surprisingly positive.
“I think there is. My practice has changed over the last seven years from helping set up DEI plans and putting in accountability stuff. I still do a lot of that work, but a lot of my work now has gone more toward the culture. When you set this up, the [workplace] culture sustains it.
“When your organizational culture evolves to the point that it can sustain DEI practices, then you have a long-term victory. You’re going to be all right because when people walk in there, they’ll be acculturated to it. They’ll be on board to do it. The expectations are there and you’ll be evaluated according to it.
“Fairness and equity become a part of the culture, so when that happens I think you’re successful. There are plenty of organizations and corporations who actually want to be that.”
Fifty-six years ago, Julius Lester, the Black intellectual and convert to Judaism, penned a book of essays with the sarcastic title: “Look Out, Whitey! Black Power’s Gon’ Get Your Mama!” It wouldn’t be anachronistic if the title were updated to refer to DEI instead.
For a more comprehensive and detailed take on Hall-Russell’s thoughts on DEI, see “Placing DEI initiatives on broken cultures: Slow your roll!”
Tony Norman’s column is underwritten by The Pittsburgh Foundation as part of its efforts to support writers and commentators who cover communities of color.