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So it's 2006.
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My friend Harold Ford calls me.
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He's running for U.S. Senate in Tennessee,
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and he says, "Mellody, I desperately need some national press. Do you have any ideas?"
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So I had an idea. I called a friend
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who was in New York
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at one of the most successful
media companies in the world,
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and she said, "Why don't we host
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an editorial board lunch for Harold?
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You come with him."
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Harold and I arrive in New York.
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We are in our best suits.
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We look like shiny new pennies.
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And we get to the receptionist, and we say,
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"We're here for the lunch."
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She motions for us to follow her.
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We walk through a series of corridors,
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and all of a sudden we find ourselves
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in a stark room,
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at which point she looks at us and she says,
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"Where are your uniforms?"
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Just as this happens,
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my friend rushes in.
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The blood drains from her face.
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There are literally no words, right?
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And I look at her, and I say,
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"Now, don't you think we need
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more than one black person in the U.S. Senate?"
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Now Harold and I --
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(Applause) —
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we still laugh about that story,
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and in many ways, the moment caught me off guard,
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but deep, deep down inside,
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I actually wasn't surprised.
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And I wasn't surprised because of something
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my mother taught me about 30 years before.
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You see, my mother was ruthlessly realistic.
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I remember one day coming
home from a birthday party
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where I was the only black kid invited,
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and instead of asking me the
normal motherly questions
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like, "Did you have fun?" or "How was the cake?"
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my mother looked at me and she said,
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"How did they treat you?"
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I was seven. I did not understand.
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I mean, why would anyone treat me differently?
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But she knew.
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And she looked me right in the eye and she said,
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"They will not always treat you well."
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Now, race is one of those topics in America
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that makes people extraordinarily uncomfortable.
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You bring it up at a dinner party
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or in a workplace environment,
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it is literally the conversational equivalent
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of touching the third rail.
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There is shock,
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followed by a long silence.
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And even coming here today,
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I told some friends and colleagues
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that I planned to talk about race,
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and they warned me, they told me, don't do it,
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that there'd be huge risks
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in me talking about this topic,
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that people might think I'm a militant black woman
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and I would ruin my career.
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And I have to tell you,
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I actually for a moment was a bit afraid.
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Then I realized,
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the first step to solving any problem
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is to not hide from it,
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and the first step to any form of action
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is awareness.
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And so I decided to actually talk about race.
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And I decided that if I came
here and shared with you
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some of my experiences,
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that maybe we could all be a little less anxious
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and a little more bold
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in our conversations about race.
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Now I know there are people out there who will say
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that the election of Barack Obama meant
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that it was the end of racial discrimination
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for all eternity, right?
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But I work in the investment business,
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and we have a saying:
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The numbers do not lie.
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And here, there are significant,
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quantifiable racial disparities
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that cannot be ignored,
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in household wealth, household income,
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job opportunities, healthcare.
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One example from corporate America:
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Even though white men
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make up just 30 percent of the U.S. population,
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they hold 70 percent of all corporate board seats.
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Of the Fortune 250,
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there are only seven CEOs that are minorities,
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and of the thousands of publicly
traded companies today, thousands,
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only two are chaired by black women,
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and you're looking at one of them,
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the same one who, not too long ago,
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was nearly mistaken for kitchen help.
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So that is a fact.
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Now I have this thought experiment
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that I play with myself, when I say,
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imagine if I walked you into a room
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and it was of a major corporation, like ExxonMobil,
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and every single person around
the boardroom were black,
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you would think that were weird.
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But if I walked you into a Fortune 500 company,
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and everyone around the table is a white male,
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when will it be that we think that's weird too?
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And I know how we got here.
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(Applause)
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I know how we got here.
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You know, there was institutionalized,
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at one time legalized, discrimination in our country.
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There's no question about it.
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But still, as I grapple with this issue,
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my mother's question hangs in the air for me:
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How did they treat you?
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Now, I do not raise this issue to complain
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or in any way to elicit any kind of sympathy.
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I have succeeded in my life
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beyond my wildest expectations,
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and I have been treated well by people of all races
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more often than I have not.
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I tell the uniform story because it happened.
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I cite those statistics around
corporate board diversity
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because they are real,
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and I stand here today
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talking about this issue of racial discrimination
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because I believe it threatens to rob
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another generation of all the opportunities
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that all of us want for all of our children,
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no matter what their color
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or where they come from.
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And I think it also threatens to hold back businesses.
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You see, researchers have coined this term
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"color blindness"
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to describe a learned behavior where we pretend
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that we don't notice race.
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If you happen to be surrounded by a bunch of people
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who look like you, that's purely accidental.
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Now, color blindness, in my view,
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doesn't mean that there's no racial discrimination,
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and there's fairness.
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It doesn't mean that at all. It doesn't ensure it.
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In my view, color blindness is very dangerous
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because it means we're ignoring the problem.
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There was a corporate study that said that,
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instead of avoiding race,
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the really smart corporations
actually deal with it head on.
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They actually recognize that embracing diversity
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means recognizing all races,
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including the majority one.
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But I'll be the first one to tell you,
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this subject matter can be hard,
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awkward, uncomfortable -- but that's kind of the point.
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In the spirit of debunking racial stereotypes,
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the one that black people don't like to swim,
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I'm going to tell you how much I love to swim.
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I love to swim so much
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that as an adult, I swim with a coach.
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And one day my coach had me do a drill
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where I had to swim to one end of a 25-meter pool
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without taking a breath.
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And every single time I failed,
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I had to start over.
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And I failed a lot.
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By the end, I got it, but when I got out of the pool,
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I was exasperated and tired and annoyed,
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and I said, "Why are we doing
breath-holding exercises?"
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And my coach looked me
at me, and he said, "Mellody,
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that was not a breath-holding exercise.
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That drill was to make you comfortable
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being uncomfortable,
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because that's how most of us spend our days."
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If we can learn to deal with our discomfort,
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and just relax into it,
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we'll have a better life.
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So I think it's time for us to be comfortable
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with the uncomfortable conversation about race:
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black, white, Asian, Hispanic,
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male, female, all of us,
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if we truly believe in equal rights
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and equal opportunity in America,
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I think we have to have real conversations
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about this issue.
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We cannot afford to be color blind.
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We have to be color brave.
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We have to be willing, as teachers and parents
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and entrepreneurs and scientists,
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we have to be willing to have
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proactive conversations about race
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with honesty and understanding and courage,
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not because it's the right thing to do,
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but because it's the smart thing to do,
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because our businesses and our products
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and our science, our research,
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all of that will be better with greater diversity.
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Now, my favorite example of color bravery
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is a guy named John Skipper.
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He runs ESPN.
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He's a North Carolina native,
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quintessential Southern gentleman, white.
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He joined ESPN, which already had a culture
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of inclusion and diversity, but he took it up a notch.
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He demanded that every open position
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have a diverse slate of candidates.
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Now he says the senior people
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in the beginning bristled,
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and they would come to him and say,
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"Do you want me to hire the minority,
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or do you want me to hire
the best person for the job?"
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And Skipper says his answers were always the same:
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"Yes."
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And by saying yes to diversity,
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I honestly believe that ESPN
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is the most valuable cable franchise in the world.
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I think that's a part of the secret sauce.
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Now I can tell you, in my own industry,
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at Ariel Investments, we actually view our diversity
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as a competitive advantage,
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and that advantage can extend
way beyond business.
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There's a guy named Scott Page
at the University of Michigan.
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He is the first person to develop
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a mathematical calculation for diversity.
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He says, if you're trying to
solve a really hard problem,
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really hard,
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that you should have a diverse group of people,
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including those with diverse intellects.
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The example that he gives is the smallpox epidemic.
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When it was ravaging Europe,
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they brought together all these scientists,
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and they were stumped.
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And the beginnings of the cure to the disease
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came from the most unlikely source,
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a dairy farmer who noticed that the milkmaids
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were not getting smallpox.
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And the smallpox vaccination is bovine-based
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because of that dairy farmer.
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Now I'm sure you're sitting here and you're saying,
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I don't run a cable company,
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I don't run an investment firm,
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I am not a dairy farmer.
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What can I do?
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And I'm telling you, you can be color brave.
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If you're part of a hiring process
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or an admissions process,
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you can be color brave.
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If you are trying to solve a really hard problem,
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you can speak up and be color brave.
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Now I know people will say,
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but that doesn't add up to a lot,
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but I'm actually asking you
to do something really simple:
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observe your environment,
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at work, at school, at home.
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I'm asking you to look at the people around you
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purposefully and intentionally.
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Invite people into your life
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who don't look like you, don't think like you,
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don't act like you,
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don't come from where you come from,
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and you might find that they
will challenge your assumptions
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and make you grow as a person.
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You might get powerful new insights
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from these individuals,
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or, like my husband, who happens to be white,
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you might learn that black people,
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men, women, children,
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we use body lotion every single day.
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Now, I also think that this is very important
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so that the next generation really understands
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that this progress will help them,
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because they're expecting
us to be great role models.
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Now, I told you, my mother,
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she was ruthlessly realistic.
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She was an unbelievable role model.
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She was the kind of person
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who got to be the way she was
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because she was a single mom
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with six kids in Chicago.
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She was in the real estate business,
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where she worked extraordinarily hard
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but oftentimes had a hard time making ends meet.
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And that meant sometimes we got
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our phone disconnected,
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or our lights turned off,
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or we got evicted.
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When we got evicted, sometimes we lived
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in these small apartments that she owned,
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sometimes in only one or two rooms,
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because they weren't completed,
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and we would heat our bathwater on hot plates.
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But she never gave up hope, ever,
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and she never allowed us to give up hope either.
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This brutal pragmatism that she had,
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I mean, I was four and she told me,
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"Mommy is Santa." (Laughter)
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She was this brutal pragmatism.
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She taught me so many lessons,
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but the most important lesson
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was that every single day she told me,
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"Mellody, you can be anything."
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And because of those words,
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I would wake up at the crack of dawn,
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and because of those words,
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I would love school more than anything,
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and because of those words, when I was on a bus
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going to school, I dreamed the biggest dreams.
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And it's because of those words
that I stand here right now
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full of passion,
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asking you to be brave for the kids
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who are dreaming those dreams today.
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(Applause)
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You see, I want them to look at a CEO on television
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and say, "I can be like her,"
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or, "He looks like me."
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And I want them to know
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that anything is possible,
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that they can achieve the highest level
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that they ever imagined,
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that they will be welcome
in any corporate boardroom,
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or they can lead any company.
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You see this idea of being the land
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of the free and the home of the brave,
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it's woven into the fabric of America.
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America, when we have a challenge,
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we take it head on, we don't shrink away from it.
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We take a stand. We show courage.
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So right now, what I'm asking you to do,
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I'm asking you to show courage.
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I'm asking you to be bold.
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As business leaders, I'm asking you
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not to leave anything on the table.
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As citizens, I'm asking you
not to leave any child behind.
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I'm asking you not to be color blind,
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but to be color brave,
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so that every child knows that their future matters
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and their dreams are possible.
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Thank you.
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(Applause)
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Thank you. Thanks. Thanks. (Applause)
