A couple of days ago, I posted a poll “Would You Sell to a Racist Bigot?” As I expected, there were plenty of people who were either racist themselves, or willing to put their distaste for racism aside in order to make a buck. Doesn’t surprise me a bit. Sadly.
Racism has recently become a big issue for me. Before I explain why, here’s some personal background.
I grew up in areas of the country where racism had no social stigma. For example, the local all-white church put on minstrel shows in black-face to raise money. My sister went to an all-white school where they bused the white kids past the all-black school, while the white kids yelled the “N” word out the windows of the bus. Her classmates cheered when they heard that John Kennedy was shot — because they hated his support of civil rights.
It gets worse. The men who ran the local (all white) Boy Scout troop were also in a group that re-enacted civil war battles… on the confederate side. Years later I found out that, during one re-enactment that involved overnight camping, they ran across a random black youth and beat him up in a way that probably resulted in an inability for him to have children. Apparently in some spirit of sick fun.
Despite my surroundings, I wasn’t raised as an explicit racist. My parents were upper middle class liberals who supported the civil rights movement. As a result, I managed, for years, to minimize all that garbage that went on around me. Because explicit racism became less socially acceptable, I managed, like plenty of other people, to pretend that race really didn’t matter any more.
All of that has changed in the past two years. You see, although both my wife and I are Caucasian, we now have two children who are Black.
Suddenly, I’m extremely aware that there are still people out there — of all skin colors — who are racist and violent (check out the Southern Poverty Law Center). This is serious stuff. There are parts of the country where I would not even THINK of traveling with my family, because I don’t want them exposed to the filth that I saw when I was a kid.
At some point, I’m going to have to explain to my children why the color of their skin (something that’s genetically insignificant) is such an incredibly big deal. The fact that my children will almost undoubtedly encounter racism in the workplace — both for “being black” and “acting white” — makes me want to puke. I don’t have any answers, but I do know this:
There is no way in hell I would EVER have a close business relationship with somebody who promotes the idea that my children are subhuman.
The responses to my original post surfaced three arguments, which I will now answer:
- You unknowingly do business with racists all the time; how is this different? Selling B2B at the CEO level means building a mutually-beneficial relationship. Relationships imply intimacy; buying at a store from a skinhead clerk does not. I’m not going to use my experience and talent to make an evil person significantly more successful. Period.
- You should cut the deal if you need the money to feed your children. That’s an artificial argument. The beauty of knowing how to sell is that you can always find another job. Which means you’ve got the power to decide whether you’re going to sell to somebody or not. If you’re afraid to get another job, then you’re adding physical cowardice to moral cowardice.
- You should cut the deal if it’s the policy of your company to sell to everyone. Once again, that’s artificial. If your company requires you to work in a situation of intimacy with somebody whom you find morally repellent, then you should find another job. Because if they’re doing business with that guy, they’re just as bad as the racist.
There’s a bigger principle here. While I understand that businesses are essentially amoral undertakings, that doesn’t mean that, as individuals, we are excused from the consequences of supporting morally reprehensible business practices. When businesses do amoral things (Yahoo turning in Chinese dissidents comes to mind), the people who made the decision should be held accountable.
If you’re in sales, YOU’VE GOT THE POWER to decide where you work and who you work for and who you sell to. Take that power and use it to make the world a better place.
