CHAPTER 1
The Myths of Meritocracy and Color-Blind Corporate Cultures
Cuando estás convencido que una causa es justa, continua luchando.
When you are convinced a cause is just, keep fighting.
—Rigoberta Menchú, Guatemalan human rights activist 1992 Nobel Peace Prize
Meritocracy—that uplifting concept defined as a workplace ethic that rewards those who show talent and competence as demonstrated by performance—is one of corporate America’s most cherished ideologies. According to this value, getting ahead in the workplace is based solely on individual merit.
Latinos and other traditionally underrepresented groups buy into the idea of meritocracy, often pursuing corporate careers precisely due to its promise. The trouble is, when companies consider Latinos and other minority groups, they fall seriously short of living up to this ideal.
Why does this happen? To explore the causes of any system failure, we first must understand how the system is supposed to work.
Meritocracy Design
Merit is generally viewed as a combination of innate abilities, hard work, and intelligence.
The meritocracy ideology is very much aligned with the “American Dream”: the U.S. as the land of limitless opportunity where individuals can go as far as their abilities and desires will take them. When placed in a work context, supporters speak glowingly of a singularly meritocratic environment where everyone has equal opportunity and where the workplace is a level playing field. The tenets of meritocracy put work environments on a path that is supposed to be color-blind and gender neutral.
In a meritocracy, a fair and equitable work environment creates a competitive system. Those who outperform their peers get promoted. In a meritocracy, hard work pays off, and each person, judged solely on results, rises to realize their fullest potential. Proponents of a meritocracy say the issues of race, ethnicity, and gender do not matter because merit is all about performance.
Ask most Latino leaders and executives, and they’ll tell you they too believe in the meritocracy ideology. In fact, that is what Latinos want. They do not want to be promoted because of their Hispanic ethnicity; rather, they want to get ahead based solely on their capabilities.
Meritocracy Illusion
However, a review of the top of the organization charts and the profile of most corporate boards tells us something is not quite right. If the level playing field is indeed as equitable as meritocracy proclaims, then corporate leadership should mirror the racial, ethnic, and gender makeup of the available labor force. A true meritocracy should espouse proportional representation of all kinds of talent, because the law of averages would be at work. When a meritocracy is real, there should be no shortage of women and people of color in top leadership positions.
Ask any corporate executive—or most members of our society for that matter—if they believe that women and people of color are inherently inferior to European-American men, and the answer is a resounding “no.” Indeed, to admit to believing otherwise would be to admit they are racist and sexist.
However, if we as a society don’t believe women and racial and ethnic minorities are inferior, and if we believe that a meritocracy is fair and based solely on performance, how then do we explain the paucity of women and people of color in top corporate roles? What could be holding our organizations back from delivering on the promise and the value of the intended outcomes of a meritocracy?
This gap between how society believes people are promoted in our organizations and how organizations actually promote people unveils what we, and various other writers, refer to as the myth of the meritocracy.1 While considerations of merit do affect some who advance and receive promotions, other forces vastly diminish the perception of merit.
For Latinos in the workplace, the reality is that they don’t tend to come from the same backgrounds as the majority culture. In fact, Latinos face different types of headwinds that create a drag on their ability to progress. This and other non-merit factors suppress, neutralize, or even negate the effects of merit, creating barriers to individual Hispanic mobility in corporate America. We must recognize those forces that keep Latinos in roles and positions that they currently occupy regardless of the extent of individual merit.
The 5 Percent Shame
The myth of meritocracy holds that those who “make it” do so because of their excellent ability; in a true meritocracy, what you do, and not who you are, is what matters.
As the HACR 2019 Corporate Inclusion Index (described in the introduction) documented, Latino representation in top roles in corporate America proves that meritocracy is not fulfilling its true promise. Only a little over 5 percent of executive officer positions in Fortune 500 firms are held by Hispanics. Worse news is that Hispanic females hold just 1 percent of those positions. Further, HACR research shows little movement at all in the representation of Hispanics over the past several years.
The myth of meritocracy continues for Hispanics when you review their representation on corporate boards of directors. While HACR’s index of participating companies came up with an 8 percent representation, the Alliance for Board Diversity reports that Hispanics/Latinos held only 3.5 percent of Fortune 500 board seats in 2016. In either case, whether 3.5 or 7 percent, this is a woeful gap from the 17 percent representation of Latinos in the U.S. population. This is not to suggest that the percentage of board positions needs to be 17 percent at this time, since we do need to account for an eligible pool with certain educational and leadership credentials. However, while we must still address the legacy of educational disparities, this yawning 10 to 13.5 percent gap cannot be explained away simply with the “there’s not an available labor pool” argument.
If a meritocracy is supposed to result in a normal distribution of leadership opportunity based on merit, then companies must address what we refer to as “the 5 percent shame.” Something besides merit is preventing Latino and Hispanic advancement to these executive officer positions in Fortune 500 firms. The gap points to the existence of favoritism, discrimination, and bias in most corporate cultures. Supporters of a meritocracy don’t realize that the current system reinforces ideals that shore up existing power structures and privileges.
We must also think through the pressures faced by those 4 percent of Hispanic and Latino executives who have demonstrated merit and moved to the very top of the corporate ladder. Their relative scarcity at the top of a meritocracy system places them under a microscope for other Latinos in the workplace who are desperate for role models who look like them. Many of these Latino executives may prefer to simply not be identified by their ethnic affiliation so they can avoid being associated with what they perceive as negative stereotypes that members of the majority may have of Latinos. At the same time, the organization is eager to highlight their presence in leadership ranks as what turns out to be false evidence that the meritocracy system does indeed work for Latinos.
Latino executives who do not appear to connect strongly with their ethnicity or who are not seen actively advocating for Hispanic issues may be inadvertently sending a message to younger Latinos that the road to success within a meritocracy requires assimilation and the denial of their Hispanic heritage.
Data suggests that this phenomenon is already happening. In the 2016 study conducted by the Center for Talent Innovation (highlighted in the introduction), we saw that more than three out of four Latinos expend energy repressing parts of their persona in the workplace, downplaying their ethnicity. Having to expend energy related to their identity means that energy is not available for use in improving their workplace performance, thus lowering their chances of success. Some could conclude that Latino executives who chose not to connect visibly with their Hispanic identity in the workplace are unintentionally complicit in the myth of meritocracy.
Conscious and Unconscious Bias
These realities of Latinos experiencing discrimination and bias in the workplace undermine the promise of meritocracy. Several of the Latino leaders interviewed for this book described experiencing conscious bias in the workplace. As an example, one of our Hispanic executive interviewees described an outing with an executive from a previous employer:
We went to this Hispanic event together, and at the event we were selling our product. As he was walking around he said, “What are these people wearing? Do they even have cars to drive?” So, I said to him, “You know I think it’s best you leave because you’re probably going to do more damage to our company’s brand than good at this point, and what you said is extremely offensive.” So he left the event. Fast-forward a week after and he announced a reorganization, and the result of the whole reorganization was the elimination of just one job—and that job was mine.
Darren Rebelez, current president and CEO of Casey’s General Stores, recalls working many years ago at a different company whose leader was in his mid-seventies. While at an informal work gathering, someone innocently asked Darren about his ethnicity, to which Darren responded that he was Mexican. He described this leader’s response on hearing his answer:
He said, “No, you’re not Mexican.” I said, “Well, sure I am.” Again, he said, “No, you are not a Mexican.” I didn’t realize it until that moment, but he was a bigot. The notion that a Mexican could have risen to such a high level within the company, it just blew his mind.
Luis Ubiñas, former senior partner at McKinsey & Company, past president of the Ford Foundation, and current corporate board member and advisor, adds this experience:
I say this with no bitterness, but what you need to remember is that we don’t come from a place where race doesn’t matter. I remember being at a meeting, as one of McKinsey’s leading experts on newspapers, where the head of a small regional newspaper turned to the senior partner who’s introducing me to them and said to my face, “Is this the best you can do?” All he knew about me was that I was Hispanic.
While examples of conscious bias such as these may not be rampant, their negative impact on Latino upward mobility in the workplace can be formidable. Just a handful of stories become part of the corporate lore, which then gets repeated a hundredfold.
Equally impactful is the unconscious bias Latinos face at work. That bias permeates the workplace at all levels because we all have prejudices. Numerous studies confirm that people harbor unconscious bias even when they explicitly believe that prejudice and discrimination are wrong.
Unconscious bias is subtler but often no less corrosive to Latinos attempting to reach the fullness of their own potential. Even well-intentioned people who wouldn’t say they are biased sometimes display unconscious bias against Latinos, assuming certain inaccurate stereotypes, and potentially hurting Latinos’ career advancement. Victor Arias, managing director at Diversified Search, recalled a meeting he had with a previous employer earlier in his career. The meeting, scheduled in a conference room, was with the CEO of the company at that time:
I walked into the meeting at the appropriate time and on the table there is a meal place setting. Then the CEO came in and he said, “Well, I think it’s really important that we teach you how to have lunch.” I was very insulted. I just said, “You are making the assumption that I don’t know this already.” “No, no, no,” he said. I asked, “Do you do this for everybody?” His response? “No.”
And there was the time he walked into the locker room of the upscale health club he belonged to and another member attempted to hand him some wet towels and asked him to bring some dry ones. Victor set him straight.
Acts of unconscious bias lead people to wrongly assume that Latinos are not leaders. One Latina executive interviewed for this book describes some of the meetings she attends where such bias is still on display:
I’ve had vendors come and present to me and to my team, and these vendors assume that I’m not the one making the final decision. When they present, they looked at everyone else but me. When I ask questions, they would look at others and answer the question. That’s usually when I just get up, walk away, and not finish the meeting.
These biases create additional headwinds that some Latinos are not able to overcome because it saps their motivation. Misunderstandings may arise when cultural differences in how Latinos respond to feedback, prefer to complete their tasks, and express emotions may make their non-Latino managers uncomfortable because those managers come from different sociopsychological backgrounds. (We will look at these specifics in chapter 4.)
The Shadow of Anti-Immigration Walls
The current sociocultural environment in the U.S., which has deliberately stirred up anti-immigrant sentiments and policies, makes it even more difficult to overcome the myth of meritocracy. Most Latinos will not soon forget the statements Donald Trump made during his announcement speech for his candidacy for U.S. president in June 2015:
When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. . . . They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.
This set the tone for YouTube video clips capturing incidents across the country of people telling Latinos to “Go back to where you came from,” or demanding “Why don’t you learn to speak English?” Newspapers routinely publish stories of increased violence about Latinos or Latino schools being vandalized with graffiti that reads, “Build the wall higher.”
These sentiments also convey perceived negative economic costs associated with job competition and an undue burden on education and social services. While some anti-immigration advocates won’t admit it, there is a concern that Latino immigrants will cause a change to traditional American identities and values.
Anti-immigrant legislative bills are being driven by isolated incidents of crimes committed by undocumented immigrants (which, by the way, are at half the rate of those committed by citizens)2 as justification to eliminate sanctuary cities and to enforce harsh immigration policies. The increase in immigration raids is creating fear and stress within the broader Latino community. A recent study by Dr. Edward D. Vargas, published in a 2017 issue of the Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law,3 found that Latinos who believe that where they live is unfavorable toward immigrants are 70 percent more likely to report poor health, regardless of their own legal or immigration status. Additionally, the study found that Latinos who know about a family member or friend being deported are one and a half times more likely to report needing to seek help for emotional or mental health problems such as feeling anxious, sad, or nervous.
Arrests happen while people are at home, when they drop off their children at school, or when they receive a speeding ticket. Planeloads of deported Latinos regularly land in Mexico City; these are people who came to the U.S. when they were very young; they don’t know Spanish, and culturally they see themselves as Americans.
This anti-immigrant sentiment is definitely being noticed by Hispanic executives. Grace Lieblein, former president of General Motors Mexico and current director on the boards of Southwest Airlines and Honeywell, told us:
I think it’s scary. It [anti-immigrant sentiment] worries me, it really does. It worries me from a lot of different perspectives. It makes me feel very unsettled… and I think it’s very sad.
Many Hispanic executives fear that such negative sentiment may make it more difficult for Latinos to advocate for Hispanic inclusion and equality in an increasingly polarized country. Such sentiments may make even more Latinos want to downplay or hide their Hispanic heritage, because a growing number of people in the U.S. are equating being Hispanic with being somehow “less than.”
Latino Response
Even though anti-immigrant rhetoric appears to undermine Hispanic achievement and progress, conscious and unconscious biases still create obstacles to overcome, our corporate cultures are clearly not color-blind, and meritocracy has its limits, Hispanics are not giving up hope.
Luis Ubiñas reminds Latinos not to let bias or discrimination beat them:
Any Hispanic who tells you they haven’t been exposed to moments of inequity is not telling the truth. The question isn’t “Are you going to face moments of discrimination?” but rather “What are you going to do when you do?” Are you going to let them be barriers, or are you going to let them be a motivation? Of course, I’ve faced discrimination; of course, every Hispanic has faced discrimination. Is that a problem? Of course! Is it something that should be a barrier to Hispanic success? Of course not! Latinos need to ask themselves if they will use discrimination as an excuse to lamely lie down and fail, or are they going to use it as motivation? Remember, at the end of the day this country has been built by people who were first excluded and then led.
In spite of all this, today’s Hispanic executives still believe in the power of meritocracy and of the American Dream. Their grandparents, parents, and even some of these executives themselves gave up too much in their immigrant journey in a quest for success to simply stand by and let those dreams be denied—or taken away.
The setbacks have made them more determined than ever to hold corporate America accountable to the idea that Latinos can reach positions of leadership.
