L.A.’s Diverse Problems Call for More Diversity in Leadership

Nelson Mandela’s recent election as South Africa’s president officially proclaimed the death of apartheid and opened a new frontier of democracy. To further the country’s development, American corporate investment is purportedly necessary. Many U.S. corporate leaders have accepted this premise and strongly advocate such action.

After the 1992 events here in Los Angeles, a similar argument was made--namely, that in order for Angelenos to prosper, corporate America would have to reinvest in the most devastated areas of the city. But this reinvestment never materialized. Why?

Various reasons have been given: The economic climate is not yet ready for major capital investment; prices of goods and labor are lower outside the inner city; operating in crime-ridden areas is not cost-effective. Clearly, all of these factors have contributed to corporate America’s hesitancy to reinvest in cities nationally, not just Los Angeles.

But perhaps there’s another more fundamental reason: the unstated assumption that only whites have economic clout and that “taking care of one’s own” is the best way to improve things.

I suggest the problem stems from a lack of diversity among key decision makers.

Two committee meetings I recently attended illustrate this point.

At one--where all my colleagues were white--we were discussing a multimillion-dollar capital campaign for a nonprofit entity whose constituency had recently changed to nearly 60% minority. One colleague commented, “We all know that it is primarily white males that have all of the power and the financial wherewithal to support sound institutional building.” Implicit in his logic was that those in power and holding the money would not support institutions serving too many people of color.

The second meeting was of all African American colleagues, who were discussing an economic development plan for a program whose client base was rapidly changing from African American to Latino. One possible consequence of this change would be the diversification of the predominantly African American staff and management. The thought of hiring non-African Americans--particularly in key decision-making positions--was clearly an uncomfortable prospect, judging by the looks on the faces of most of the committee members.

What was particularly telling in both cases was that well-educated professionals with good intentions demonstrated that even though there is no apartheid in this country, we nevertheless use apartheid-style thinking to support the status quo. Rudely put, the bottom line appears to be: We have ours; good luck getting yours.

Most of us have forgotten that one of the legacies of de jure as well as de facto segregation has been that ethnic groups develop institutions whose policy they can determine and whose activities they can control. Thus, corporate elites are reluctant to reinvest in inner cities because they cannot see how doing so benefits their primary constituents. Minority entrepreneurs hesitate to venture into suburbia, because they cannot see the “ethnic” niche in which their institutions have heretofore thrived.

Few leaders promote an inclusive sense of well-being--that is, a true democratic notion of inclusiveness, participation and power sharing. Los Angeles has become the world’s most ethnically diverse city, and its institutions should have leadership reflective and inclusive of this diversity.

Some community-based groups--such as the New Majority and the Multicultural Collaborative--have recognized this need. They have begun systematic development of coalitions across ethnic groups to influence public policy so that economic development will more directly benefit a variety of ethnic neighborhoods. The Mega-Cities project is building on these initiatives by regularly convening more than 100 community-based leaders of various ethnic backgrounds and neighborhoods to share approaches to problem-solving. The Irvine Foundation is funding an educational program that provides a four-year scholarship to Occidental College for promising diverse high school students--whites included. The belief is that to invest in Los Angeles, you must invest in its future leaders.

Corporate leadership in Los Angeles should take the lesson. It would be most beneficial if the political and corporate leadership of this city also invested in programs designed to train tomorrow’s corporate leadership.

One of the lessons the United States supposedly learned from our foreign competitors is that we were failing to invest in human resource development. Hopefully we won’t make that same mistake here in Los Angeles.

Limited exposure produces limited thinking and, in the board room, limited decision making. The complexity of the problems faced by so diverse a community as Los Angeles demands the best thinking from all of us.