Devalued by diversity: the answer lies in whether this business imperative empowers or excludes blacks.

The meaning of diversity over the last few decades has morphed from an altruistic opportunity to right the ills against black Americans in this country to a business imperative that is all-embracing of other cultures, walks of life, and sexual preferences. In many cases, the broad definition has left African Americans in corporate America feeling marginalized. At the same time, roughly 75% of the largest Fortune 500 companies have developed some sort of diversity initiative, but many are still struggling with implementation and success. According to a recent study by the non-profit women's organization Catalyst called Advancing African American Women in the Workplace: What Managers Need to Know, black women "judge diversity policies as having limited benefits and are pessimistic about their own opportunities to advance to senior management." How do black employees and candidates determine whether a firm is a right fit?

Marlon D. Cousin, managing partner of the Marquin Group, an executive search firm specializing in diverse talent, offers several key factors in determining how efficiently diversity is managed in an organization. Typically, he says, the focus is on how many diverse people a company hires, but there are several other components below to consider:

   Top-level positions. How many African Americans hold senior
   executive positions or manage large groups of people?
   "Typically, you hit a glass ceiling when you talk about
   [diverse] senior executives within an organization."

   Diversity of spending. How diverse is their marketing
   program and who are their vendors?
   How much business do they do with black
   companies?

   Board of directors. "How many African Americans are on the board?
   That sends a very strong message that it's part of their overall
   business strategy to lure and retain diverse talent," Cousin says.

   Cousin believes that companies do a poor job of managing
   diversity because they don't hold employees accountable. "To get
   the majority of the people to react to diversity, you've got to make
   it part of a performance appraisal, or something that is tied to
   either compensation or how they're being rated.

   Otherwise, there's not going to be this aggressive mission to do
   diversity."

   A legal resource.

   Vault/MCCA Guide to Law Firm Diversity
   Programs (Vault Inc.; $39.95) offers
   diversity profiles on 150 top law firms
   as well as descriptions of the firms'
   diversity initiatives for recruiting and
   mentoring. The book makes
   the distinction between white
   women and minority women,
   but there is no break out of
   minority numbers (black, Hispanic,
   Asian, etc.), The Minority
   Corporate Counsel Association
   (www.mcca.com) is
   an advocacy group for
   minority attorneys founded
   in 1997. The Vault
   (www.vault.com) is a career
   resource guide.