COMMENTARY: What people say behind closed doors

c. 1996 Religion News Service (UNDATED) The more things change, the more they remain the same. Certainly this has proven true in the current Texaco scandal, where three of the oil company’s executives were caught on audiotape deriding minority employees and plotting to destroy evidence in a racial discrimination suit. The resulting public relations nightmare […]

c. 1996 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) The more things change, the more they remain the same.

Certainly this has proven true in the current Texaco scandal, where three of the oil company’s executives were caught on audiotape deriding minority employees and plotting to destroy evidence in a racial discrimination suit.


The resulting public relations nightmare has sent Texaco scurrying to cover its flanks, as its chairman makes all the appropriate noises about righteous indignation and corporate repentance.

Yet, for all of the public bowing to racial diversity and political correctness, Texaco and other corporations must reckon with a fundamental truth: It is easier to change a company’s image than to change its culture. This is because corporate culture is less dependent on its philosophy than on the character of the people whose job it is to make that philosophy real.

For a company to describe itself as an”equal opportunity employer”means nothing if the company is being run by racists. Given the opportunity, those who run the company will simply find a convenient means of getting around the philosophy.

I know. It happened to me.

During the winter of 1991, at the height of the last recession, I was unemployed and began seeking work through a temporary agency. Most of the jobs were of clerical or technical nature, paying from $7 to $10 per hour.

One such position, advertised as”long-term,”involved working in the accounting department of a Fortune 500 subsidiary. My first day on the job, I completed a day’s work in less than three hours.

My supervisor told me that I had done the job well. However, he was busy with a project and had nothing else for me to do. After sitting around for nearly two hours, I was sent home with assurances that I would be recalled after the weekend.

When Monday arrived, however, the temporary agency told me that the job was not available, even though it had been advertised as”long-term.”There were no complaints from the client, no doubts as to my competence, just no job.

I was furious because I realized what had happened. On two separate occasions while at the job site, I had been questioned by managers about my education and experience.


When they learned that I possessed both a master’s degree and administrative experience, the answer was clear: Regardless of promises to the contrary, I would have to go.

Why? Because in a volatile employment market, I think my presence was a threat to their careers.

Such, I suspect, was the case with Texaco. Despite chairman Peter I. Bijur’s statement that he was”ashamed and outraged”over the alleged behavior of his executives, the discrimination suit, filed on behalf of 1,500 black professionals, supervisors and managers, asserts that there was a”pattern and practice of discrimination”exhibited throughout the company.

That the executives discussed destroying documents pertinent to the suit suggests that there was evidence to support the plaintiffs’ claim.

All of which raises an important point: If blacks are inferior, why do companies discriminate against them? And why do they cover it up?

If, on the other hand, their work is equal to or even superior to that of their white counterparts, why not admit it?


The truth is, blacks are often discriminated against because of their race and their skill. The managers at the temporary job site could not accuse me of being lazy or incompetent. By their own admission, I had handled my assignment with excellence.

Yet, lacking an appropriate excuse and intimidated by my presence, they simply chose to renege on their company’s promise of long-term employment. That experience makes me wonder whether Texaco’s executives chose to renege on the promise of equal opportunity to their employees, based purely on the color of their skin.

Why? Because in the minds of many whites, even if blacks are not inferior, they are supposed to be. Lacking a divine understanding of the equality of all men, they simply manipulate the playing field to suit their own purposes.

Thirty years of affirmative action and an atmosphere of political correctness have done nothing to change the insecurity and hatred in men’s hearts. If anything, we as a nation have become more hypocritical.

People smile and say all the proper things in public. But behind closed doors, the polite codes of political correctness give way to the evil they really hold in their hearts.”The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked,”wrote the prophet Jeremiah. Such wickedness cannot be done away with through corporate fiat or press release, but only as people come to know God.

Thus, until the hearts of men change, corporate culture will remain the same.

KC END ATCHISON

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