Equality Forward: Howard Ross

A National Conversation about Race, Sexuality and Gender
The Equality Forward essays are a collection of stories about race, sexuality and gender from some of today’s most distinct voices in the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender-rights movement. Read their essays. Share your own story. Join us for a national conversation on August 13. And read more about Equality Forward.

This essay in the series is submitted by Howard J. Ross, founder & Chief Learning Officer of Cook Ross Inc.. 

Simply put, we are suffering from diversity fatigue. Our national diversity dialogue is trapped an unproductive old framework of “us versus them.” Dominant groups spend a great deal of time and resources defending their “traditional” culture and “merited” entitlements from perceived threats by groups of others. Instead of creating alliances that might support everyone, we create a hierarchy of pain and disenfranchisement in which we can only fully support the “other” when we believe our needs have first and fully been met. As examined throughout the Human Rights Campaign Foundation’s fascinating new study, At the Intersection: Race, Sexuality and Gender, basic and fundamental human rights are far from complete regarding either race or sexual identity.

As a tall, straight, white man I have little experience with the kind of present and persistent issues of oppression highlighted in the powerful new study. My Judaism gives me my only non-dominant group identity, and even that has cost me little in the way of “oppression” through my 58 years.

I am struck by the familiarity of the background through which the tensions between race and sexual identity are seen. The “us vs. them” phenomenon has created what I call a “conversational network of contention” regarding diversity issues. We see our identity, in diversity terms, in opposition to the “other,” however that “other” is defined. Naturally – and quite unconsciously in most cases – we inherit beliefs, behaviors, and positions that defend our seemingly separate identity, often in opposition to others whom we might otherwise logically align with, and from whom we most certainly would gain from beneficial common cause. We become identified with, and as such attached, to our point of view. It defines not only what we believe, but also how we act on those beliefs. Without realizing it we become inexorably co-dependent on the very things we are fighting against.

This dynamic is, unfortunately, not a new one. In the 19th century it existed between the women’s suffrage movement and the abolitionist movement; it has existed between Blacks and Jews at other times; and we certainly have seen it as recently as during the last presidential campaign in the tension between Clinton and Obama supporters.

In addition, we often assume that because we are “the other” to some, we inherently understand diversity. As such, we often can miss the need to continue to do our own work on understanding our biases towards those who are the “other” to us. I know Jewish people who rail against anti-Semitism but make questionable racial comments, African Americans who rail against racism, but make questionable comments about LGBT people, and LGBT folks who are offended by heterosexism and yet make comments about others. I have yet to find the person who doesn’t have some bias against some “other” group.

I have for years listened as LGBT people of color have described their frustration with the “whiteness” of the sexual identity movement, and also listened to the frustration of people of color, at that movement being described in terms reminiscent of the African-American Civil Rights movement. I hear LGBT people broadly discussing African-American attitudes about sexual identity in stereotypical ways. And of course, there is the persistent conflict between the “religious” point of view about issues related to sexual identity and the moral or social justice point of view.

What is rarely discussed, and I think needs far deeper inquiry, is our ease in slipping into the “conversational network of contention” and the polarity it creates. We listen to each other with a need to convince the “other” to change rather than with an ear to understand where they are coming from, and find the shared ground that we can stand on joined in common purpose and common grievance. Civil rights breakthroughs were fundamentally based on this practice of finding a “center that can hold,” as were most social breakthroughs in history.

My viewpoint is one of a practitioner. I have spent the past 40 years as an advocate for human rights in my various communities, and the past 25 years as a professional diversity, inclusion and cultural competency consultant. I have had the privilege during that time to see the world from some rather interesting points of view: for example, as the first white male Professor of Diversity in Residence at a Historically Black Women’s College (Bennett College for Women), and as a member of the Human Rights Campaign Diversity and Inclusion Board. Yet I am very clear that I have the luxury to view these issues from the safety of having them not create the kind of disruption in my life that they do every day in the lives of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender people, and in the lives of people of color across this country.

It is time to question our unexamined and unquestioned narratives, the very stories we tell ourselves about who we are and who we aspire to be. It is time to question the paradigm itself by looking at where our beliefs and our reactions come from, inquiring deeply into how we unconsciously think, feel, and act, and studying the way we interact with each other, rather than only debating the issues themselves.

We are on the cusp of a historical breakthrough. I believe that the direction of history leads us today to unprecedented transformations, not just regarding marriage equality, but true understanding of how we think, feel, and act towards each other. If we are to achieve that common destiny we have to lift ourselves above our opinions and strive to understand our fears, our points of greatest resistance, and our hidden biases. The fault, as Shakespeare said, lies not in the stars, but in ourselves.

Howard J. Ross is founder & Chief Learning Officer of Cook Ross Inc. and an advisor to major global educational, corporate, philanthropic, and governmental organizations. Howard is an advocate for high-performing organizational cultures that advance people, performance, and measurable success.

A former Chair and long time Leadership Greater Washington Member, Howard has served more than 25 years as an influential business consultant to hundreds of organizations across the globe, specializing in leadership, diversity, and organizational transformation. He is the architect of award-winning diversity and leadership education programs including ReInventing Diversity, the Diversity Toolkit, CultureVision, 21st Century Leadership and Inner Journey Seminars DC. Howard was the 2008 Dr. Johnnetta B. Cole Professor of Diversity in Residence at Bennett College for Women in Greensboro, NC. He can be heard on National Public Radio the first Monday of every month at 1pm EST, as a regular guest on The Kojo Nnamdi Show.