ACTIVITY 31Don't Believe Your Lying Eyes—Test Assumptions
“The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend.”
—Robertson Davies
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Every culture has career advice passed through the generations. In the Black community, we were taught that we had to know twice as much to go half as far. It was a clear message that we need to outperform White people in every regard to have a chance at a fraction of their success. I've heard from my LatinX friends that they were advised as well to keep their head down and work harder than everyone else. My Asian friends felt pressured from an early age to aspire to attend top-tier universities as a means to acquire wealth and success as there was no other way. There's clearly a pattern of belief that people of color are disadvantaged from the start and must somehow overcompensate to have a chance at success. It certainly helps to have these pearls of wisdom from our loving parents who only want the best for us. Without it, who knows where we would be? So, many of us did exactly what we were told, and, in some respects for a small minority, it paid off as a component of an overall strategy. However, the majority of minorities in corporate America continue to face insurmountable barriers, despite the advice. Research from Statista.com shares, “Out of 500 current Fortune 500 CEOs, just five are Black while 466 are White.” They continue with the facts:
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