One of the most puzzling things I’ve seen over the past few weeks is the immense outpouring of racial justice support from brands. Between the corporate statements and the Black squares on Instagram, my hopeful self is working to reconcile what I’m seeing online with what I’m seeing in the workplace.
While it’s important to see such support, I wonder: will our workforce look any different in one, two, and 10 years from now because of it? Will anything have changed? Will Black people still represent less than 1 percent of all Fortune 500 CEOs—none of whom are female? Will Black women continue to earn 61 cents for every one dollar their white male colleagues earn? Will they continue to represent less than 0.2 percent of venture-backed founders?