for one of the world’s most iconic car makers. In early 2020, Maserati had finished designing a new sportscar, its first in 15 years. The over-100-year-old company now
needed a complete rebranding that would be ready to complement the car. But as everyone knows, that was just when the pandemic hit, and Maserati, like every other auto mobile manufacturer, found itself facing a world where car driving—and buying—hit the brakes. In that environment, the question was painful but obvious:
the moment of truth
It was
Now what?
been 12 months since a White police officer kneeled on the neck of George Floyd for almost 10 minutes, killing the 46-year-old father of five and spurring a racial reckoning that rivaled some of the country’s most formative civil-rights confrontations. In the aftermath of Floyd’s murder and a string of other highly charged deaths of Black people last year, businesses pledged tens of billions of dollars toward racial equity and inclusion. Never before has corporate America taken such a strong social and financial stand. And for a while, there was the possibility of hope.
In the aftermath of George Floyd’s death, has corporate America followed through on its promise to pursue racial equity?
Meet the woman keeping track.
BY DANYA STEELE
That hope was backed by serious investment. Companies collectively pledged upward of $60 billion, according to some estimates. This money was earmarked to establish pipeline programs, support entrepreneurs of color, and whittle down the wealth gap. Leaders earnestly promised to diversify their ranks. And yet the results haven’t matched the largesse of such public commitments.
While companies have begun to make headway toward gender parity, race is proving more obstinate. There are only four Black CEOs on the Fortune 500 list. The ladder leading to the top is almost just as White: within US companies of more than 100 employees, Black leaders occupy just 3 percent of executive and senior-level roles, according to Equal Employment Opportunity Commission data. Companies pivoted online overnight during the pandemic; why can’t they seem to figure out diversity?
May
A video of George Floyd’s death goes viral, igniting a racial reckoning across the world.
Firms pledge tens of billions of dollars to racial equity. Major banks are behind some of the biggest investments, including contributions of more than $1 billion.
Artificial intelligence companies announce they will no longer sell facial recognition software to police.
Google leads tech firms by dedicating $175 million to anti-racism work, in addition to a
$100 million YouTube fund for
Black creators.
June
Production companies allocate script budgets to projects created by people of color, strengthen racist warnings on old movies, and pledge to make reality TV more diverse.
July
A report shows 41 percent of Black business owners went under during the first few months of the pandemic, compared to 17 percent among White business owners.
August
California signs into law a ban on chokeholds, joining at least half of the nation’s largest police departments that have done the same since Floyd’s death.
September
JPMorgan Chase says it will lend $30 billion over five years to Black and Latinx borrowers to narrow the wealth gap.
More than 130 public figures from business, tech, and finance create the 100kPledge to track social justice commitments.
October
The unemployment rate for Black Americans stands at nearly 11 percent, compared to 6 percent for White Americans.
Johnson & Johnson dedicates $100 million toward eliminating health inequities for people
of color.
November
A coalition of 30 CEOs launches a $100 million start-up to connect employers with Black workers, aiming to create 1 million jobs over the next 10 years.
Nasdaq proposes a rule change to require listed companies to have at least two diverse board members and publicly disclose board diversity statistics.
December
Facebook pledges to spend $100 million annually with Black suppliers, almost tripling previous commitments, while Apple launches the Propel Center, a learning hub for historically Black colleges and universities.
January
A jury finds former police officer Derek Chauvin guilty of murdering Floyd.
April
More than 73,000 Black Americans have died of COVID—a death rate twice that of White Americans.
May
Why the
Black Dollar Index?
One of the big things for me and my team is corporate accountability and holding feet to the fire. We’re tired of asking. So our solution is, let’s stop asking. You start forcing it. OK, you don’t want to be transparent—well then we’ll tell the customer that. Let’s let the consumer make the decision. If you want to put out a campaign because it’s Black History Month, we’re going to be there to say, according to your data or lack thereof, you still have work to do. There are a lot of corporations pushing back on diversity audits saying, “We’ve done enough.”
Why the Black Dollar Index?
One of the big things for me and my team is corporate accountability and holding feet to the fire. We’re tired of asking. So our solution is, let’s stop asking. You start forcing it. OK, you don’t want to be transparent—well then we’ll tell the customer that. Let’s let the consumer make the decision. If you want to put out a campaign because it’s Black History Month, we’re going to be there to say, according to your data or lack thereof, you still have work to do. There are a lot of corporations pushing back on diversity audits saying, “We’ve done enough.”
What are some
of the things you’re asking for?
Equity and inclusion. Being denied access to jobs and critical resources is not equity. Equity is fair access. Equity is “I have ownership in this, too.” And it’s not just about hitting quotas; you have to include people—and their voices—in decision-making. The need for this is so dire that we launched this out of our own pockets. There were nine of us that brought this to launch. At this point, nobody is getting paid. All of us have day jobs. We’re folks of color, specifically Black, who are tired of asking for racial equity and hoping that a corporation sympathizes.
What personally
led you to be a
part of this project?
Everything about my life, from childhood to working in corporate America, has led me to this project. Growing up biracial, I experienced a lot of things on both sides. I’m from the Midwest, and it’s still one of the most segregated places in this country. Black and White, it is very divided. When my parents divorced, I was living with my mother and experienced an all-White school. Eventually I moved with my dad and went to an all-Black school.
Being in places where at times people didn’t know what my race was, I was privy to information or I received different treatment. In and outside of corporate spaces, I’ve sat in rooms with people who will tell you they’re not racist, but if you were to ask something like, “Have you spoken to your Black friends about this?” there are no Black friends. That’s what’s alarming—you have people who have grown up in these environments that are not diverse making decisions that impact Black America. They may not be outright racist, but there clearly is a lack of perspective and unconscious bias—and there’s no other voice in the room to say, “No, that’s not how it goes, you’re not understanding this correctly, you have only one side of it.” Look at the voting bills in Georgia—that’s a prime example. How many Fortune 500 companies or leaders had a hand in funding the sponsors of these bills that negatively impact majority Black voters?
Tell us more about your experience in corporate spaces.
As I got older, being in a corporate environment I experienced unconscious bias in the form of microaggressions, like having a White woman who saw my hair straight one day tell me I should do it like that more often because it looks professional. And I’m like, “Why would you tell somebody that when their hair is naturally curly?” It’s because of unconscious bias. There are some people who are outright racist. And there are some people who don’t realize that they have these biases. So I think that there are levels, but in the end it all shows up in a way that Black people don’t have representation in these corporations that run so much of this country.
Explain how the
index works.
The index is based on ranking. The actual score comes down to 80 percent public diversity data: corporate governance, boards of directors, the senior/executive level, and the total US workforce, all measured against the 13.4 percent Black population in the US. And then 20 percent of the score is qualitative and includes significant initiatives, negative claims, supplier diversity, and DEI efforts.
So companies need a score of 71 or higher to be approved?
Most of the companies fall within “not yet approved.” There are probably 14 or 15 out of 105 that we consider approved. That’s not to say that every single company is not doing the right thing. The problem is that a lot of these companies aren’t transparent about it. There are companies that are at the bottom of this list that are very much not surprising because they’ve never really been engaged, or they’ve always had a more tumultuous relationship with the Black community. But there are some that I was like, wow, you know, we spend a lot of money with you or we use your service a lot or you advertise to us a lot.
What are the companies at the top of the index doing right?
UPS is the top-rated company. When you look at their workforce representation and how they’ve given back, they’re what we would consider great. They over-index across the board, corporate leadership, senior/executive level, and total Black workforce representation. They also have a supplier diversity program—an opportunity for Black entrepreneurs to get corporate contracts. That’s important. Allstate is another company that’s up there. Again, they have representation across all levels, and they have a history of investing in Black causes over the last five years. This is proactive, not reactive.
It’s difficult to even answer that question, because while the dollars are flowing, transparency is not.
There’s little in the way of direction when it comes to what leads to equity and what dead-ends at naivety, partly because there’s no accountability. The Securities and Exchange Commission doesn’t accept good intentions, it requires hard numbers. But there are no tools or authorities to track whether leaders are following through on their diversity commitments, let alone the impact of those efforts. Without measurable impact, experts say, we’re right where we started. “Diversity means a lot of different things to a lot of different companies,” says Kelle Rozell, who founded the Black Dollar Index, a first-of-its-kind online consumer-advocacy tool committed to holding Fortune 1000 companies accountable for racial equity performance. “We have to be very intentional with our words and we have to ask the right questions—and it’s going to take full manpower and resources to get this to where we need it to be.”
Rozell describes the platform as the Better Business Bureau meets Consumer Reports meets the Green Book. An ABC News marketing director from Brooklyn, Rozell launched the advocacy index in February with a small team of other Black professionals. It builds on the Buy Black movement by ranking companies on their diversity numbers, empowering consumers to spend their money with organizations that are truly committed to positive impact.
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There are so many people who are saying, OK, a year later, where are we?
This didn’t just come out of nowhere. This has been building for years upon years. Going back to 2016, with Philando Castile, we started to see statements from companies in support of the Black community. Then George Floyd happens. And companies took it to the next level. All these roadmaps started to roll out—what they are going to do over the next five years. What’s performative and what’s not? We need to be able to look back and see what actually happened. There’s still so much information that these companies are not being transparent about, like when they’re pledging these millions of dollars, who on the inside is actually keeping track of this? We don’t want this to die down and take another killing to revive this movement.
What are some of the things you’re asking for?
Equity and inclusion. Being denied access to jobs and critical resources is not equity. Equity is fair access. Equity is “I have ownership in this, too.” And it’s not just about hitting quotas; you have to include people—and their voices—in decision-making. The need for this is so dire that we launched this out of our own pockets. There were nine of us that brought this to launch. At this point, nobody is getting paid. All of us have day jobs. We’re folks of color, specifically Black, who are tired of asking for racial equity and hoping that a corporation sympathizes.
What personally led you to be a part of this project?
Everything about my life, from childhood to working in corporate America, has led me to this project. Growing up biracial, I experienced a lot of things on both sides. I’m from the Midwest, and it’s still one of the most segregated places in this country. Black and White, it is very divided. When my parents divorced, I was living with my mother and experienced an all-White school. Eventually I moved with my dad and went to an all-Black school.
Being in places where at times people didn’t know what my race was, I was privy to information or I received different treatment. In and outside of corporate spaces, I’ve sat in rooms with people who will tell you they’re not racist, but if you were to ask something like, “Have you spoken to your Black friends about this?” there are no Black friends. That’s what’s alarming—you have people who have grown up in these environments that are not diverse making decisions that impact Black America. They may not be outright racist, but there clearly is a lack of perspective and unconscious bias—and there’s no other voice in the room to say, “No, that’s not how it goes, you’re not understanding this correctly, you have only one side of it.” Look at the voting bills in Georgia—that’s a prime example. How many Fortune 500 companies or leaders had a hand in funding the sponsors of these bills that negatively impact majority Black voters?
Tell us more about your experience in corporate spaces.
As I got older, being in a corporate environment I experienced unconscious bias in the form of microaggressions, like having a White woman who saw my hair straight one day tell me I should do it like that more often because it looks professional. And I’m like, “Why would you tell somebody that when their hair is naturally curly?” It’s because of unconscious bias. There are some people who are outright racist. And there are some people who don’t realize that they have these biases. So I think that there are levels, but in the end it all shows up in a way that Black people don’t have representation in these corporations that run so much of this country.
Explain how the index works.
The index is based on ranking. The actual score comes down to 80 percent public diversity data: corporate governance, boards of directors, the senior/executive level, and the total US workforce, all measured against the 13.4 percent Black population in the US. And then 20 percent of the score is qualitative and includes significant initiatives, negative claims, supplier diversity, and DEI efforts.
What are the companies at the top of the index doing right?
UPS is the top-rated company. When you look at their workforce representation and how they’ve given back, they’re what we would consider great. They over-index across the board, corporate leadership, senior/executive level, and total Black workforce representation. They also have a supplier diversity program—an opportunity for Black entrepreneurs to get corporate contracts. That’s important. Allstate is another company that’s up there. Again, they have representation across all levels, and they have a history of investing in Black causes over the last five years. This is proactive, not reactive.
So companies need a score of 71 or higher to be approved?
Most of the companies fall within “not yet approved.” There are probably 14 or 15 out of 105 that we consider approved. That’s not to say that every single company is not doing the right thing. The problem is that a lot of these companies aren’t transparent about it. There are companies that are at the bottom of this list that are very much not surprising because they’ve never really been engaged, or they’ve always had a more tumultuous relationship with the Black community. But there are some that I was like, wow, you know, we spend a lot of money with you or we use your service a lot or you advertise to us a lot.
There are so many people who are saying, OK, a year later, where are we?
This didn’t just come out of nowhere. This has been building for years upon years. Going back to 2016, with Philando Castile, we started to see statements from companies in support of the Black community. Then George Floyd happened. And companies took it to the next level. All these roadmaps started to roll out—what they are going to do over the next five years. What’s performative and what’s not? We need to be able to look back and see what actually happened. There’s still so much information that these companies are not being transparent about, like when they’re pledging these millions of dollars, who on the inside is actually keeping track of this? We don’t want this to die down and take another killing to revive this movement.
There are so many people who are saying, OK, a year later, where are we?
This didn’t just come out of nowhere. This has been building for years upon years. Going back to 2016, with Philando Castile, we started to see statements from companies in support of the Black community. Then George Floyd happens. And companies took it to the next level. All these roadmaps started to roll out—what they are going to do over the next five years. What’s performative and what’s not? We need to be able to look back and see what actually happened. There’s still so much information that these companies are not being transparent about, like when they’re pledging these millions of dollars, who on the inside is actually keeping track of this? We don’t want this to die down and take another killing to revive this movement.