SHAKEUP, NOT SHAKEDOWN
BY JULIANNE MALVEAUX
Go along to get along is the great American way. Most of us get into a groove,
and do the same things the same ways until something comes along to rock our
world. Maybe it's the bacon and eggs for breakfast until the
cholesterol patrol lets us know that oatmeal or fruit is a wiser choice.
Maybe it's AT&T until we find a greater, cheaper deal with another carrier.
Until we get that push, though, we're happy to stay in a comfort zone. We do
business with the same people, drive to work the same way, go to the same
machines at the gym, until something nudges us to do better.
Corporate America is no different than the rest of us. They contract work
out to the same lawyers and accountants they've been working with for decades
unless someone is indicted or they are nudged to make a better deal. They go to
the same schools to recruit staff because they are happy with those they've
hired from that school. From the inside it seems understandable.
From the outside it can be rather frustrating, especially if one is trying to
get a foot in the door. It can be especially frustrating when one
understands that comfort frequently trumps the economic theory that says a
corporation will shop for the cheapest, the best, and the most efficient.
And it can be more than frustrating, bordering on discrimination, when people of
color, who came late to the corporate table, find doors constantly slammed in
our faces.
Who shakes corporate America up? The Rev. Jesse Jackson, founder of the
Rainbow PUSH Coalition, is among the best. He does it both with a carrot and
with a stick, on one hand creating synergy and dynamic opportunities for young
African Americans to network with those corporations who used to hire and
contract only through the "good old boy" system. And he does it with a
stick that rarely comes out, that stick being called the boycott. Jackson
learned at the feet of the best, the Rev. Martin Luther King, who said, "If
you will respect my person, you must respect my dollars". The Montgomery Bus
Boycott was an example of an effective boycott that had profound economic
consequences, but King's Operation Breadbasket also targeted supermarkets and
others who did business in the African American community without hiring African
Americans. Jackson has pretty much done the same thing, with the boycott threat
lurking behind his negotiation attempts.
Is there anything wrong with Jackson's efforts? I don't think so, but
Kenneth Timmerman, author of Shakedown: Exposing the Real Jesse Jackson
(Regnery Publications) has all kinds of issues with Jackson. Mostly,
he says that Jackson's corporate negotiation amount to little more than a
shakedown. He takes great pains to "prove" that Jackson is less a change
agent than a con artist. Unfortunately his "proof" relies on shoddy
research and innuendo. Still, it is easy to see why Timmerman's book has
sold enough copies to earn a place on the Los Angeles times Best Seller list.
Someone as effective and controversial as Rev. Jesse Jackson can't help but
attract critics. Would that this critic were accurate. Something got stuck in my craw when
Timmerman described African American Melody Hobson, President of Ariel
Capital Management, as a white assistant to Ariel CEO John Rodgers. I
suppose that error hit me hard because I've been so proud of Hobson's
success. African American women are so underrepresented in the financial
services arena that I think folk like Hobson need to be celebrated, not
maligned by a shoddy researcher like Timmerman. Further, Hobson is so
frequently on CNBC as a financial commentator that one wonders where
Timmerman has been.
That's a minor error, but a telling one. I could spend this whole column
detailing others. The bottom line, though, is that Timmerman doesn't like
Jackson's way of doing business and he goes to great pains to say so. He
does not admit that African Americans are so underrepresented in corporate
life that the intervention of Jackson is necessary. Instead, he suggests
that there is sufficient African American success and Jackson just gets in
the way. But if he queried some of the people who attend Jackson's
conferences, he'd find success stories that suggest that Jackson's
intervention has been important in developing deals and providing access to
folks who might otherwise be locked out of corporate boardrooms. To be sure, a
handful of black men now lead Fortune 500 companies, but African Americans still
represent fewer than one percent of corporate directors, and two percent of
senior corporate management. If a few more get opportunities because of
Jackson, that's a good thing. It's a shakeup, not a shakedown.
The fact is that our nation has been re-examining "business as usual" for at
least two decades. More African Americans and women are players, but these
players would be the first to say the playing field isn't level. They would
share that corporate American is in the middle of a shakeup, and that Rev.
Jackson work has been an important part of the quest to make Wall Street more
representative and more diverse. For people like me, that's a good thing. For
Timmerman, it's a shakedown.