Arbitration & Mediation

Negotiating Diversity: What's ADR Got to Do with It?

By Victoria Pynchon

I'm asked this morning by an ADR colleague whether we can criticize diversity without sounding like racists.  The question itself is problematic because it not only assumes a racial divide, it places "us" on the "white" side of it. 

The question arose from a recent press release by local mediator Elizabeth Moreno -- Is Mediation Losing Its Effectiveness:  Lack of Diverse Mediators.  The release describes an ADR diversity initiative being pursued by Shell Oil.  Shell, noted Moreno, is  

 introducing supplier diversity to the ADR profession [by] extend[ing] business opportunities to certified minority and women ADR neutrals. These efforts, coined as "second tier," allow Shell to influence prime or majority ADR firms, with whom they do business, to also contract with minority and women owned ADR firms within the business community.

In the upcoming months Shell will be targeting  . . . ADR services to participate in second tier efforts. Shell astutely recognizes that by embracing the concept of inclusion, the company will rise to a higher level, reflecting its belief that it "will benefit from diversity through better relationships with customers, suppliers, partners, employees, government and other stakeholders, with positive impact on the bottom line."

I'm assuming that my questioner does not agree with the "affirmative action" aspect of this program.  Having debated the affirmative action issue since I began law school at U.C. Davis where the Supreme Court Bakke decision originated, I know well how divisive this issue can be.  But it is an important issue -- an issue critical to a nation not only "conceived in liberty" but "dedicated to the proposition that all men (sic) are created equal."

So Let's Take a Look at ADR and Diversity

I'll ask the academics over at the ADR Prof Blog to correct me if I'm wrong.  

I understand the academic criticism of mediation to be this:  in the immediate post-civil rights era while greater legal protections have been afforded to women and under-represented minorities, the "people" have been channeled into a system -- mediation -- that lacks the prejudice-flattening constraints of the rule of law.  More disturbing, say critics, is the fact that this "lawless" system is largely presided over by -- excuse me if this offends anyone -- OLD WHITE MEN.

I've learned more about racial bias talking to my liberal (white) "unprejudiced" friends this election season than I have since I participated in the "second wave" women's movement in the early nineteen seventies (remember consciousness raising?)  I do not judge them, nor myself, for our necessarily limited view which just happens to be that of the dominant culture.

I know we still have a serious racial divide because when I talk to my educated and liberal African American friends they say things that shock me. Things like -- the U.S. may have started the AIDS epidemic to rid the world of Africans. OK. I get it.  There's something about their experience of America that is so radically different from mine that I think their point of view is, frankly, just a little nuts.  This is what I do know -- I will never truly be able to see the world from their point of view.

That said, I do think we can criticize people for taking advantage of "diversity" issues to forward an agenda -- or their own personal advancement -- other than forwarding diversity itself. We can criticize those who would deepen the divide to profit from it.

I think Obama is modeling the correct response to racial divide, which is one of the reasons his candidacy impresses me so.  There haven't been many public figures willing to talk about the elephant in America's living room -- racism.  Nor has anyone on the national stage in my memory ever said "your dreams do not have to come at the expense of mine."

If I could write a sentence in a circle at this point, instead of linearly as the language requires me to do, I would do so.  Here is what I understood Obama's response to the question of the racial divide in America to be.

Acknowledge it Heal it Move on Heal it Move on Acknowledge it Move On Heal it Acknowledge it

There are no periods in this sentence because this activity needs to be constant and on-going.  Because we will always be stuck in our own point of view.  Because in-group and out-group prejudice will always be with us. And because the more visible markers there are for "otherness" in others, the more prey we are to the error of dividing the world into "us" and 'them."  

The answer?  Diversity.  Vigilance.  Acceptance.

Accepting the things we cannot change. Changing the things we can. Having the wisdom to know the difference.

Full post as published by Settle It Now Negotiation Blog on May 08, 2008 (boomark / email).