City of Diversity Suffers Inclusion Delusion

Community Comments

By Stephanie Flores

Six months pregnant and not wanting to stay home after the baby was born, former banker Saori Chowlos searched for a part-time job in customer service. The biracial, Japanese-speaking Chowlos had worked on the California coast for 10 years, building relationships between the banks where she worked and the Japanese business market.
     In Ohio, Babette Blackford had a six-month-old baby. She wanted a new job that would be more accommodating for her family. Less than 5-feet tall, the biracial, asthmatic Blackford and her husband worked the same night shift at a logistics company.
     The likelihood of these women crossing paths seems slim, and the chances of them sharing their stories with each other even slimmer. But they have more in common than one might think. For starters, they found work with Rancho Cordova-based Vision Service Plan, have stayed with the company nearly 10 years, and currently serve on its diversity awareness team. Blackford, using a conference call, sits in on the meetings from the company’s eastern operations division in Columbus, Ohio.
     Many big companies in the region, such as VSP, use diversity teams to spread awareness inside the company and to reach outside the cubicles to tap diverse communities. These companies each have their de?nitions of diversity, which include the traditional (race and gender) but also the less traditional (technological pro?ciency and rank in the corporate chain). But a trait that VSP also shares with local businesses is a disparity between the diversity of its worker bees and that of its executives.
     Many large companies tout their stats on women and minorities in the workplace, and even use them as a marketing tool, but executive positions in the region lag in diversity more than entry-level and middle-management positions. James Shelby, head of the Greater Sacramento Urban League, can’t think of one local company with a true commitment to diversity and says companies that don’t pay attention to diversity won’t be able to compete in the Sacramento-area market. “Diversity isn’t hiring a bunch of people (of color) at the bottom,” he says.
     Shelby says he can, however, think of a handful of national companies doing business here, such as AT&T. The company’s executives in California are 75 percent women and more than 50 percent people of color, according to a representative of the company.

No Boat Rocking
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