UPDATED, late on 02.21.2018 -- Mr. Frazier also spoke about his experiences, in a more fullsome way, to the Harvard Business Review -- just published this week. Do go read or listen to it all, at that link. But consider this: ". . .[Being black] absolutely is different. As a young lawyer in a law firm, very large Philadelphia law firm, I had to learn how to become user-friendly for partners and clients who are not prepared to understand really who I was or where I came from or my experiences in life. And you know, I’m not saying that’s fair. But learning how to get along with people who are white was a critical success factor in my life. . . .
I needed to learn how to socially integrate myself into the firm, because law is a relationship business, at the end of the day. And you never get those relationships of trust and confidence if people are not at ease with you socially. I think it’s fascinating to look at investment banking firms. You look at the people who are on the public or municipal finance side of the house, there’s a lot of diversity. Why? Because the mayors are diverse. You look on the private side, it’s not diverse at all, because the clients on that side tend not to be diverse, and they don’t demand diversity in the people who are servicing them. . . .
[W]hy is it the case that most people, if you ask them, who their friends are, I think most people who are white in this country, if they were honest, would say, I actually don’t have many friends who are African American. And so you bring that to the workplace, or your experiences socially become your experiences in the workplace. Most of my diversity conversations are had with the majority population, because frankly, those people are the people who have the most influence over everybody’s career. . . ." [Ed. Note: end update -- but quite heady stuff. This (below) was originally published on the morning of February 19, 2018.]
I won't spoil it -- use one of your free articles each month to click this link, and read the story of Ken Frazier's decision-making this past summer. [And we will reprise our masthead, from that time in August 2017, for today -- as our nation celebrates three great Presidents. Appropriate.]
Do go read it all -- it tells a series of truths far too few high-end US based business executives have the courage to voice.
. . . .Mr. Frazier, the grandson of a man born into slavery, was the first of a series of chief executives to distance himself from the president. “I feel a responsibility to take a stand against extremism,” he wrote on Merck’s Twitter account at the time. . . .
The events that led to Mr. Frazier’s confrontation with the president unfolded over a tense summer weekend, as white nationalists gathered in Charlottesville to protest the removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee. Bloody fighting broke out as they clashed with counter demonstrators, one of whom was killed when a self-described neo-Nazi drove his car into a crowd of people.
“I saw what was happening on that Friday night, and then I heard the horrible news about what had happened on Saturday with the young woman being killed, and others being run down by a person who was sympathetic to people who held views that I consider personally noxious,” Mr. Frazier said. “And then I heard the president’s response.”
Mr. Trump, speaking at a veterans’ event at one of his golf clubs, condemned the violence but did not criticize the white nationalists chanting neo-Nazi slogans, blaming “hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides, on many sides.”
“In this case, we were not talking about politics. We were talking about the basic values of the country. . . I think words have consequences and I think actions have consequences. I just felt that as a matter of my own personal conscience, I could not remain. . . .”
“What happened that weekend I think was not a Democratic issue or a Republican issue,” he said. “I think that really went to the core of who we say we are as Americans. . . .”
Axios has chunks of it as well, if you have used up your ten free articles at the NYT for the month already.
It is now time -- for the sake of the sheer survival of our democratic republic way of governing -- for all people of good will (regardless of party affiliation) to rise up and peaceably resist 45. Trump is a man who, this past weekend, faced with overwhelming evidence that Russian state actors tampered with our electoral process -- chose to say the Russian state actors are "are laughing their asses off at us" (and quickly deflect blame, to others) -- rather than defending his own democracy. [This fits the pattern in the article, above.] Where, indeed is HIS condemnation of what the Russians indisputably did from 2014 to 2018? Where?
What exactly does he owe Mr. Putin's cut outs?
नमस्ते
No comments:
Post a Comment