Dr. Rupert Nacoste headshot
I have been on the NCSU faculty since 1988, so I know a few things about the kinds of conversations NC State students have had about diversity issues. I know some members of the Wolfpack say our University is too politically correct (PC). Some on our campus think they should be able to use whatever language labels for other people pops into their heads and the University should have nothing to say about that.
Well here is how that is a wrongheaded idea. Elon Musk’s company Tesla just lost a racial-language discrimination court case. It seems that Tesla let some of their workers speak to Black employees using racial slurs, and at least one of those employees went to management to get this racial bullying stopped. To defend itself in court, amazingly Tesla argued that yes, their managers heard the N-word being used but thought it was being used in a “friendly” way.
If we let you try to live and interact on campus with that wrongheaded belief, we, the University, would be failing in an important part of our educational mission. If we do not do that part of our work to educate the Wolfpack, we would fail you by sending you out into the “real” world unprepared. We would have left you unprepared in the same way former professional football coach Jon Gruden was so unqualified for a leadership role in the 21st century NFL.
When it comes to an organizational leader, the managers at Tesla-Fresno were untrained to manage the social interactions between their employees from different racial backgrounds. Now, Tesla must pay $137 million dollars to their former Black employee who reported the anti-group language as a problem. Why? Well, not because CEO Musk is prejudiced. When it comes to the case, we don’t know anything about Musk’s feelings about Black people. Never was the issue about any individual being prejudiced.
Understand this: Prejudice is not bigotry is not racism. Prejudice is anti-group feelings. It is prejudice because it is a pre-judgment. No one, you see, can interact with and know a whole group of people.
Bigotry is the behavioral expression of that anti-group prejudice. Bigotry is an individual enacting negative word or deed behaviors toward members of a group based on a person’s group membership.
Racism is institutional or organizational systems (e.g. formal or informal policies) that support and authorize individual bigotry toward members of one or more racial groups.
In my “Interpersonal Relationships and Race” class, I have introduced the concept of neo-diversity; I make the strong distinction between prejudice, bigotry and racism because in this 21st century, we live in a neo-diverse America: a social world in which we all have to encounter and interact with people not like us on some group dimension. Race yes, but also sex-or-person, religion, political-affiliation, sexual orientation and on and on.
For that social context of our lives, I make the distinction between prejudice, bigotry and racism so that if there are interpersonal-intergroup problems of interaction between people we can identify the real issue to be managed. Is Person A just a pain or is this a neo-diversity problem; an interaction problem because the two people are of different group memberships.
As a social psychologist, I know that our interactions with other people are the bedrock of our social lives. In our complex neo-diverse America and campus, not everyone interacts with (or knows how to interact with) people “not like them” with respect. In one of our social interactions, we may be confronted with Person A’s negative feelings (prejudice) about a group that comes out in Person-A’s verbal or non-verbal behavior. That behavior is bigotry and as an individual we each must decide whether to support that bigotry of another person by letting it pass or speak up against that bigotry.
Turns out that the same bigotry behavior at work moves the issue from a personal or interpersonal level to a work environment level. At work, if that same behavior is not addressed and prohibited by the employer, that becomes a problem of organizational mismanagement. At the organizational level, anti-group language is a problem of racism or sexism or religionism.
In that light, the court ruled that at Tesla-Fresno, the managers did not address the complaints about inappropriate racial behavior either in meetings or as a policy. Hence the organization allowed employees to engage in behavior that created a racially hostile work environment. For those who might not know, it is a legal reality that based on the 14th Amendment of our Constitution, there are equal opportunity laws and statutes that plainly prohibit an organization from creating or allowing for a hostile work environment.
Tesla, like many organizations (including the NFL) is learning that letting employees use anti-group slurs toward any group will affect their reputation (brand), not to mention have them end up in court and possibly lose a lot of money. So, to those who think NC State is too PC, guess what? A company like Tesla or the NFL is not going to let you cost them money. You can ask Jon Gruden about that.