But Where Are the Clients’ Yachts?
2nd February 2021
There’s an ancient Wall Street joke about a visitor to the Hamptons who is shown harbors full of the yachts of stockbrokers and bond salesmen. He naively inquires, “But where are the customers’ yachts?”
We might ask the same question about the clients of diversity consultants.
These days, we are constantly lectured that hiring more diversity is the route to riches. Studies, we are assured, prove that organizations that employ more blacks, women, or whatever will make more money.
Yet the people who get paid to tell us that diversity-inclusion-equity (DIE) is good for us seldom can remember documented examples of organizations that gained an enduring competitive advantage by fighting racism or sexism.
It’s certainly a profitable gig for the Diversity Consultant, who is typically a Fashionable Minority, but there is no evidence that increased Diversity ever helped either the company or the affirmative-action hires.