Bias Interrupted

CHAPTER 10

If we hire more women and people of color, won’t the DEI problem take care of itself?

“Is you gonna be satisfied with a bone somebody done throwed you when you see them eating the whole hog?”

—Levee Green, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom

In his play, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, August Wilson highlights intense conflicts within Rainey’s all-Black backup band over whether one musician or another is too smiley and deferential to her white manager.1 One Night in Miami … , a play by Kemp Powers, explores a similar theme, highlighting the conflict between Malcolm X and singer Sam Cooke over whether Cooke’s success represents selling out to white people or triumphant Black (economic) Power.2 (Both plays were released as movies in 2020.)

That’s the ...