Cover Photo: On the left hand side a panel of faceless white figures sits at a desk while on the right side a black woman stares towards them
Illustration by Sirin Thada for Catapult

Hiring a Chief Diversity Officer Won’t Fix Your Racist Company Culture

Racial equity must be a top priority for everyone, incorporated into how a company hires, makes decisions, and approaches all of its objectives.

This is Exit Interviews, a column by Nadia Owusu on the experiences of women of color in the workplace.

claimed

Sandra told me that the foundation had hired her “to solve their racism problem.” I asked how that was going. “Not great,” she said. 

Decolonizing Wealth,

white


The organization’s leaders can say that they tried, that they are still trying, as the gap between what they commit to on their websites and how employees actually experience the workplace continues to widen. 

everyone’s everyone’sall

only

Nadia Owusu’s essay “The Wailing” is included in the anthology forthcoming from Catapult in February 2020.

NADIA OWUSU is a Ghanaian and Armenian-American writer and urbanist. Her first book, Aftershocks, topped many best book of the year lists, including  Vulture, TIME, Esquire, and the BBC. It was a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice.

Nadia is the recipient of a 2019 Whiting Award. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in The New York Times,  The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal, Slate, Bon Appétit, Travel + Leisure, and others.

She is Director of Storytelling at Frontline Solutions, a Black-owned consulting firm working with social change organizations.  She  lives in Brooklyn.