Isn't a job posting specifically seeking minority applicants unfair?

Dear Diversity Diva: Not to beat a dead horse, but I strongly disagree with your last column. Are you saying that you would not be offended and turned off from applying for a job if it were advertised “we’re particularly seeking white applicants”? — Ticked from Two Weeks Ago
Dear Ticked: Subtlety doesn’t always translate well in print. So, I’ll say it more clearly: Companies that primarily want white employees don’t have to advertise it in their job postings. Minority job applicants can see it when they go to the job interview and fail to see diversity walking up and down the hallways.
If I along with other professional or working-class minorities stopped applying for jobs in businesses where we were the distinct or nonexistent minority, especially in management, then most of us would never have held a job.
Ticked, I would never presume to tell you or anyone else that they should not be offended by companies making an extra push to have minority job candidates. It’s your right to be offended at whatever strikes you as unfair.
But I reiterate that a job posting is nothing more than an advertisement — a recruitment device — to get as many qualified people to apply for a job as possible. Qualified is the key word. And you can’t get qualified diversity without a diverse pool to choose from in the first place.
The big mistake that most people make is assuming that if a company advertises specifically for diversity, it definitely will give the job to a minority. That’s not the case, and I have yet to meet any minority who thinks that color alone is a qualifying criteria.
By encouraging a wider selection process for individual jobs, though, over the course of time, a nondiverse company has a shot at changing. If you think there’s a better, less divisive way, make suggestions to your company or join organizations that address these issues.
I would love to see the day when race is not an issue, when corporate America naturally looks like the crews in the “Star Trek” shows. However, racial diversity in the workplace is still a hot button issue, with no perfect solutions devised yet.
And since, according to the U.S. Census, today’s racial minorities will become the majority by 2042, better solutions will just have to show up because we very well may have the same workplace challenges showing up in different skin tones.
Personally, I’m hoping for ”Star Trek.”

Is it right for a company to encourage racial minorities to apply for a job?

Dear Diversity Diva: The other day while looking at job postings in my field, a top company had a job opening for a midlevel professional, adding that they were encouraging racial minorities to apply. Not only did that offend me, but I feel discouraged from applying because I’m white. — Peeved by Posting
Dear Peeved: I hear you loud and clear.
Basically you’re offended because a company that you really want to work for seems to blatantly be stating that you’re not a desirable candidate because of your race. At least that’s the way you took the posting.
I’m sure that you’re equally offended when you go for a job interview and just about everyone you see is white — with no visible diversity to be found. I mean you are offended by that too, right?
Because while one seeming preference may be openly stated, the other is openly practiced. Whether the lack of diversity within an organization is purposeful, accidental or just due to indifference, in the eyes of the average qualified candidate who doesn’t fit the profile, it can look as blatantly offensive and unsettling as the job posting was to you.
A black man (actually, a biracial man) might be our next president, but CNN has yet to break the news that workplace discrimination and glass ceilings no longer exist.
When companies openly advertise for diversity, by any other name, it still smells like affirmative action. For some, no matter how well they understand the historical and contemporary reasons for extra recruiting, at some level it still feels unfair.
But feelings don’t replace facts.
For example, in the specific posting you mentioned, the company sought midlevel minority candidates, which means they’re narrowing the field of whom they want to apply to not just any old person of color, but for a racial minority with several years of experience in the field. In other words, would you be qualified anyway to apply if the posting said “particularly interested in white candidates”?
Also, when a company goes to that much extra trouble of including wording like that in a job advertisement, it’s most likely because their current work force is so decidedly monochromatic that it has become a problem for clients or customers and members of that work force who care about diversity and inclusion.
For every handful of whites who saw that posting and was resentful that it specifically seemed to target minority applicants, there was a minority candidate suspicious about why the company had to go out of their way to encourage minorities to apply in the first place.

Can I mandate that women employees wear pantyhose?

Dear Diversity Diva: Maybe I’m just an old-fashioned male, even though I’m not old, but I really have a problem with the increasing trend of women not wearing pantyhose with skirts and dresses when they come to work. Would it be sexist of me to mandate that my female subordinates wear pantyhose to work? — Pantyhose in a Twist

Dear Pantyhose: I’m sure that just about every woman reading this column is hoping that I say a resounding “yes” to your question and tell you that you’re sexist. And while you may be a sexist, I’m going to stick to the issue.
The issue is whether a male believes that he has the right to require a woman to encase parts of her body in an uncomfortable material that restricts movement and comfort. Granted, wearing pantyhose can be an effective prophylactic against looking too casual and not sufficiently professional.
But for the average woman who has to wear nylons eight to 10 hours a day, every day, even when the humidity is nearing triple digits, it can seem like an antiquated and rigid expectation that serves no real purpose other than when specific circumstances require that degree of custom.
Deep down, as a boss, you know whether this requirement you have for your female employees is fair or not. For example, if the women are dealing with the public in a formal work environment, then it might be a legitimate expectation to spell out in your company handbook what expectations of attire are.
But if women throughout the organization in other similar departments are walking their bare legs up and down the hallway, maybe you’re the one who has expectations out of sync with your work environment and with changing times.
Also, going back to the sexist question, maybe you do need to ask yourself if you’re being evenhanded in how you expect your male employees to dress compared to the women. I mean if the women have to wear nylons while men frequently come to work without ties or in khakis and polo-type shirts, maybe you do have some double standards that need re-examining.
When it’s all said and done, if you’re a buttoned-up, consistently dapper guy yourself, it could just be that you’re trying to reinstitute decorum and modesty in the workplace, which some would consider admirable.
I still say that you should consider how it would feel to spend just one full workday zipped up in plastic before seriously considering implementing a mandatory pantyhose workplace.

Will my hair be held against me in a job interview?

Dear Diversity Diva: Because I’m a white guy, you may not find this a diversity issue, but it’s an issue to me. Two days after I put blond highlight tips in my hair, I got a call for a job interview. I’m in a fairly conservative industry and am wondering if that will be something held against me? — Highlights Holding Me Down
Dear Highlights: First, let me get out of the way that diversity is not just about minority groups and women. Workplace diversity is about bringing differences to the table and maximizing everyone’s talents.
Diversity, at its best, is about people in the work force getting past appearances to knowing what you can do in the job you’re hired for.
Now you’re probably right that blond, spiky hair will probably not make it to the U.S. Supreme Court as a discrimination issue, but that doesn’t make your issue any less important to you because it’s not a legally protected one.
A few months ago I wrote about the issue of tattoos on job interviews, but this is different, in that, generally speaking, tattoos are permanent and not something you can change the week before a job interview — if you wanted to.
In essence, what you’re worried about is whether an unflattering, mistaken conclusion will be drawn about you based on your appearance. Or it could be that you’re worried that a very accurate conclusion will be drawn about you based on your appearance, but a conclusion that won’t help you get the job.
In either case, the question to ask yourself is whether your hairstyle is a statement of some kind or whether it’s just a hairstyle. If it’s a statement about your individuality or reflects your identity in some key way (for example, you’re a Kansas City surfer boy), then the better question to ask yourself is whether the place where you are interviewing is a good fit for you anyway.
On the other hand, if it’s just a hairstyle, then change it. It’s not an immutable characteristic or a reflection of cultural, religious or sexual orientation, so it’s not like you would be compromising yourself in any fundamental way to have your stylist slap on some hair rinse.
Diversity often is about the large and deep issues that have historical context and emotional relevance, but sometimes it can just be about the misconceptions about people created from small details.
In the case of hair color, this is a detail you can easily control.
Good luck on your interview!

Is Every Personnel Issue a Big Deal?

Dear Diversity Diva: No offense, Diva, but I think you dropped the ball on your last column. It sounded like you were saying that the manager should just blow off two employees getting into it about gay marriage. Shouldn’t someone have gotten in trouble? — Critical in Kansas City
Dear Critical: I can understand how my response may have seemed that I was taking too soft a tone to the manager’s dilemma. However, that wasn’t the case. The manager asked about what he should do regarding two employees in his small retail store who had a spat when one of them mentioned that he/she was about to get married under California’s new gay marriage law. The other employee responded in an offensive way.
Basically, my answer was in response to the very specific question the manager asked (who gave me more details than space allowed), which was wanting to know what role he had in improving the relationship that went awry between two employees.
The manager was asking about an isolated incident in which two people were on opposite sides of an emotionally charged issue. And whether people like it or not, an isolated difference of opinion between two employees does not trigger the need for a companywide diversity training session or the firing of an employee.
If one of the employees had written and told me how this was an ongoing issue of hostility and harassment, then reporting the incident to management would have been the first step I recommended, followed by possibly hiring an attorney to seek legal remedies based on the facts.
If the manager himself had told me that this was an ongoing issue, then I would have recommended that he quickly take this to his human resources department and address this immediately.
That wasn’t the case here. The manager who contacted me had the specific concern of wanting his people to go back to liking each other again in the aftermath of one conversation. The law can address behaviors; it can even address motivations that result in work environment and job decisions. But the law and human resources department can’t legislate how people feel about other individuals or other groups.
Laws and policies help keep the workplace fair, but they can’t eradicate bigotry, because one person’s bigoted comment is another person’s right to have an opinion.
Just like the first fight with a spouse doesn’t require a trip to a marriage counselor, every isolated disagreement regarding diversity in the workplace does not require a trip to the human resources department or to the EEOC.
Additionally, 100 different HR professional will have 100 different takes on how to handle a personnel issue. But all those approaches are imperfect considering that the EEOC last year had its biggest increase in discrimination complaints from the preceding year since 1993.
Thanks for holding my feet to the fire, Critical!