The term 'token" has been used for many years to describe a person hired to fill a racial quota. It is time to put that idea to rest and with it we should also retire the term token. Perhaps in the past, the idea of diversity was confused with quotas. That confusion led to a backlash against the people of color in the workplace who were perceived to be seat takers. I could spend all day writing about how misguided the perception is, but I would rather spend the time and space on a more productive pursuit: explaining why you need a token. The first thing we are going to do is change the dialogue a bit. I think that using the term token obscures the real issues so I will use the term "cultural translator" instead. In doing so, I am also changing the meaning of the term. A cultural translator is not a person hired in a company's effort to say "we celebrate diversity." A cultural translator is a person who adds value to the organization by sharing their particular skill set as well as a willingness to share their insight on their own culture.
In today's globally diverse society, any company that does business probably needs several cultural translators. Why? Because it makes good business sense. The fact is that very few businesses can survive in today's global marketplace if they are not sensitive to cultural issues. I first began thinking about this when I took my first job out of Law School. When I left law school I worked as a litigator at a law firm specializing in employment defense. My job was to help defend employers against charges of discrimination. As I worked on the cases I began to realize that there was often a disconnect between the company and its employees of color. The most obvious evidence of this disconnect was a simple as understanding how African-Americans use English differently. I am not talking about sentence structure; I am talking about how common words sometimes have a different connotation in African-American culture. One example that could come up in a sex harassment case would be the use of the term "friend.' If I was investigating charges of sexual harassment in the workplace and I asked the alleged victim about the nature of her relationship with the alleged harasser, an African-American person might answer, "he was my friend." Taken in normal context that would mean a platonic relationship, however because I know that African-Americans sometimes use the term friend to mean a romantic friend, I would know to probe a little deeper. If you have a significant number of employees who are of a different cultural background than you it makes sense to have a person you can trust who understands the cultural dynamic.
The purpose of this person is not to spy on your employees or to infiltrate "the opposition". Rather, the purpose is to help you gain insight on what it will take to motivate those employees and to help you diffuse potential misunderstandings. In fact, to expect the cultural translator to spy will likely cause problems. Another key point is that the cultural translator must have a role other than being a cultural translator within the company because a good cultural translator brings much more than skin color to the table. A successful cultural translator knows enough about the business and their culture to be able to find solutions to business problems. For example, before I went to law school I worked for a major bank. At the time I was working on a merger team that was in charge of facilities realignment. The head of the project was an older white gentleman with years of experience at the bank that bought my employer. During the merger, the bank made a decision that only people at a certain level within the bank would have offices. When we came to one facility we were having a hard time with the configuration and it appeared that we needed one more office. The leader's first reaction was to pick one person who should have had an office according to the rule and determine that she would have to move into a cube. When I looked at the floor plan I noticed that the person he picked also happened to be the only black person in the building at that level. I knew that the decision was not racial, but I also saw that the decision would not go unnoticed. So I called the project leader up and advised him of the potential ramifications of the decision. As I said before he had no racial motivations, he simply never thought about race in that context. With a little "inside information" he was better able to make an informed decision because he had a heads up about how some people would react.
Wouldn't you like a heads up?
