Raising the Stakes from Jobs to Justice

The launch of the public/private New York Jobs CEO Council is undeniably a sign of progress toward more access to opportunity. At this unique moment in this country’s fight for racial justice, the 27 CEOs and companies have a calling to answer: Are they ready to raise the stakes from jobs to justice?

For far too long, the burden has fallen on workers of color to assimilate and to uncover and abide by the hidden rules of work, including how to monitor their “tone,” what to wear, how to do their hair, and what jokes to laugh at. In doing so, workers of color traded their identities in for a job, especially jobs with family-sustaining wages. New York City only just banned discrimination based on natural hairstyles in February 2019, followed by New York State in July 2019 — merely 13 months ago.

These 27 CEOs have come together, ready to hire 100,000 traditionally underserved New Yorkers by 2030. But are they ready to unconditionally welcome their full identities too? Will they seize this historic moment and leverage this partnership to have ambitions beyond access to jobs but also conducting business differently once those jobs are filled? Will they hold themselves accountable to measure their success after job placement to include the quality of those jobs and the continued opportunities for workers of color to thrive on the job?

The Opportunity Network, where I am President and CEO, works with students of color and first-generation college students to give them the tools and training to have every college and career path open to them that they want to pursue. We see them as their fullest selves, with inherent power and agency that doesn’t require permission. We have worked with thousands of talented young people of color in our 17-year history… and it hurts every time when we have to outline the racist realities of the perceived threat of their authentic identities in predominantly white spaces in corporate America. We’re done hurting. So much so that at OppNet we’re harnessing our students’ collective experiences to inform and advise corporations on how to take on the full burden of building inclusive internship programs and workplaces. We call on these 27 CEOs and companies to bear the full responsibility for being “diversity ready.” A good place to start: interrogate their own institutional history and their contribution to the root causes of the exact disparities they are trying to solve.