Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and
Speaker 2: Tim Stenoveek on Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 1: Well, let's bring in Jeff Green. He's Bloomberg News Management
Speaker 1: and diversity reporter. He joins us from Detroit. Hey, Jeff,
Speaker 1: good to have you on. It's always good to talk
Speaker 1: to you. You know, Carol and I've been doing this
Speaker 1: together for over five years. What we used to have
Speaker 1: you on the program, the conversations were a lot different.
Speaker 1: It was about, Okay, these are the companies, these are
Speaker 1: these are the this is the makeup of the com
Speaker 1: of the workforce of a certain company. These are the
Speaker 1: goals that a company has put out there. You guys
Speaker 1: were the ones that were crunching the numbers and seeing
Speaker 1: if the companies were actually meeting those standards. Your beat
Speaker 1: in recent years has really shifted with the way that
Speaker 1: I think a lot of corporate America and politics have shifted.
Speaker 1: Before we get to the individual stories that we want
Speaker 1: to talk to you about, can you just talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about even though your title is the same,
Speaker 1: the way that you cover management and diversity in this
Speaker 1: environment has changed completely.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, it's kind of interesting each of these situations.
Speaker 2: You're kind of watching companies be pushed and pulled into
Speaker 2: directions they're not necessarily comfortable with. It's kind of like
Speaker 2: this process where they start out, you know, resisting talking
Speaker 2: about the diversity of the workforces and not wanting to share,
Speaker 2: and then they're sharing it all and they're headlong in
Speaker 2: one direction, and then now where we are now, they're
Speaker 2: sort of trying to find their way back towards something
Speaker 2: undo some of what they've done. So they're in this
Speaker 2: weird position that it's really hard as a corporate CEO
Speaker 2: to figure out where you settle in where you stay
Speaker 2: out of trouble, Like what's the least risk position to take,
Speaker 2: and clearly they've been wrong repeatedly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's really tricky, and I know that we've talked
Speaker 3: to various leaders, Jeff, and they're saying, you know, we
Speaker 3: got to think about our own employee base and the
Speaker 3: culture of our company and what employees expect, especially a
Speaker 3: younger employee. Having said that, let's get into this story
Speaker 3: that you put out. We've been talking about it in
Speaker 3: the newsroom. It involves Jeff on and what happened to
Speaker 3: him and what he learned tell us a little bit
Speaker 3: about his story.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, initially we thought we should just write
Speaker 2: a story about our more white men suing and what
Speaker 2: does that mean. And part of the problem is it's
Speaker 2: really difficult to determine that we don't really have a
Speaker 2: good sense of what kind of court cases are happening
Speaker 2: and who's making them. Grace is not something automatically gathered.
Speaker 2: So as we were kind of talking to these guys
Speaker 2: and looking at it though, and even looking at the cases,
Speaker 2: it became clear it's interesting. They're really no different than
Speaker 2: anyone who takes on corporate HR. You stand up and
Speaker 2: you say you think something is wrong, and then you
Speaker 2: cease to have work and that you know. So at
Speaker 2: the same time we're talking about how there's this push
Speaker 2: for more white guys to show up, there's also the
Speaker 2: same reality that the system is maybe broken by which
Speaker 2: we hold corporate HR accountable for how they are treating
Speaker 2: their employees.
Speaker 1: So what did you find when you initially wanted to
Speaker 1: go out and write this story about this demographic that
Speaker 1: is suing. What did you find?
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, clearly there's more permission as a white
Speaker 2: male to say I feel like I was discriminated against
Speaker 2: than there was, you know, in twenty twenty, and for
Speaker 2: a large segment or you know, significant segment of the population.
Speaker 2: It's still kind of an insulting proposition. But there's also
Speaker 2: been a lot of sort of I don't know, soul
Speaker 2: searching on this topic. The Supreme Court ruled unanimously basically
Speaker 2: there's no such thing as reverse discrimination and people need
Speaker 2: to stop thinking that way. And I mean not just
Speaker 2: a unanimous decision, but written by the minority of the court.
Speaker 2: So it's like been the shift toward trying to think
Speaker 2: about these in a different way. We're talking about belonging
Speaker 2: instead of diversity. We're doing all these sort of shifts
Speaker 2: in approach to try to get to something that is
Speaker 2: somehow less controversial and moves us forward. And I don't
Speaker 2: think we've come even close to figuring out what that
Speaker 2: looks like. Yeah, but clearly there's chaos and struggle as
Speaker 2: we try to do that.
Speaker 3: I love though this stat you know, it's this is
Speaker 3: this is a great story for like debate and just conversation.
Speaker 3: You say, so, here's here's a white man who sued
Speaker 3: for discrimination. But as you remind us in the story
Speaker 3: men still white men are discriminated against our guests, some
Speaker 3: of the claims of that white men are discriminated against
Speaker 3: our confounding men still make up ninety percent of chief
Speaker 3: executive officers of S and P five hundred companies, largely white.
Speaker 3: I would kind of add, I think, based on research
Speaker 3: as well as about three quarters of all C suite
Speaker 3: employees and the proportion of black men are when men
Speaker 3: who have held the top job is extremely small, currently
Speaker 3: hovering at about one percent. But to be fair, and
Speaker 3: I think we try to figure out what's going on
Speaker 3: in society Jeff, that there is a younger or white
Speaker 3: male population that feels like they have been left behind.
Speaker 3: I know people who feel that way, who had opportunities
Speaker 3: and so on and so forth, but things just didn't
Speaker 3: work out, and they feel like, wait a minute. You know,
Speaker 3: society was supposed to promise me certain things if I
Speaker 3: did this, and it didn't happen. So is there something
Speaker 3: to this that there are some white men with the
Speaker 3: rise of diversity issues that maybe were left at I'm
Speaker 3: not quite sure how to deal with this.
Speaker 2: Well. The challenge is that what we see when we
Speaker 2: look at the S and P five hundred CEOs, and
Speaker 2: we look at the c suite, we're seeing the past.
Speaker 2: Those are the men who got ahead when things were different. Yeah,
Speaker 2: where people like Jeff Vaughn come from is in the
Speaker 2: messier spot where things are actually changing and shifting more
Speaker 2: than you can see. The demographic of the whole country
Speaker 2: is changing where you can't really see it because you
Speaker 2: see those powerful white faces. And so it's hard when
Speaker 2: you see those powerful white faces to really recognize that
Speaker 2: there's something else happening at people who are closer to
Speaker 2: where the churn is. It still doesn't say that, like
Speaker 2: if you're a black woman, you know you're not in
Speaker 2: a worse situation. There's no, no, no, I'm not trying
Speaker 2: to say that. I'm just saying there is something happening.
Speaker 2: As you said, you know, the stay at home sons,
Speaker 2: the neats that not employed, educated or in training, young
Speaker 2: men who are having a different lived experience, but you
Speaker 2: can't see them. What you see is what ten, fifteen,
Speaker 2: twenty years of power for white men allowed to happen.
Speaker 2: And so that's what makes it hard for people.
Speaker 3: It's fascinating. You do also say that President Trump's Deputy
Speaker 3: Chief of Staff, Stephen Miller, co founder of America First Legal.
Speaker 3: It's a conservative not for profit, is representing Vaughan and
Speaker 3: other white men in cases against companies including Meta, IBM,
Speaker 3: and sheell so a lot. More on this story head
Speaker 3: to The Bloomberger Bloomberg dot Com. Jeff Green, thank you
Speaker 3: so much, Bloomberg News Management University reporter, Glad we could
Speaker 3: get to this story.