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The Intent vs. Impact Cultural Diversity Challenge: Lessons Learned From the Chimp-Obama Parody

The New York Post wrote an apology a day after printing cartoonist Sean Delonas’ caricature that likened President Obama’s stimulus package to the recent killing of a 200 pound pet chimp by Stamford, Connecticut police. My years of executive level cultural diversity coaching suggests that Sean and the Post were not “intentionally” being racist or suggesting that someone needs to kill the president.                                                                               

However, we can all learn a lot from the incident about how even our best intentions can go awry in cultural diversity matters and how to manage things after stepping on multicultural toes. The impact of even unintentional behaviors is often more important, but this can be difficult for the culprit to initially accept.

There are three cultural competence stages people can go through under the best circumstances after suffering a cultural diversity foible. The first stage is Defensiveness. Most of us view ourselves as liberal-minded and tolerant of cultural diversity. We want other people to see us this way as well. When someone claims that we are racist or sexist, we feel a need to defend ourselves.

The Post's response to public criticism of the cartoon was defensive. The New York Post wrote in their apology that "The drawing is in reference to the mauling of a woman by a pet chimpanzee, which has been killed by police. In the cartoon, one of the officers tells the other, 'They'll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill'." New York Post officials go to say that it is absurd for anyone to really think that they would intentionally make any kind of statement about having the President killed.

My coaching clients frequently describe how they are the victim instead of the people who claim being insulted their actions. The assumption is the response to an innocent act was out of proportion because the presumed victim misinterpreted the facts.

Taking a defensive stance typically makes matters worse. It often takes stepping in deeper for some to realize that another course of action is needed to stop the bloodletting. The first step in recovering is to not only listening deeply to the voices of the victims or targets of your unintended actions, but to take responsibility for it. This does not mean that you need to accept claims that you are insensitive and discriminatory, but to acknowledge that it requires great care in navigating cultural diversity issues and you fell short of it in the incident. To do anything less is to ignore a long history of poor intercultural relations and that most of us have not learned how to adequately navigate cultural differences.

The next stage the culprit tends to go through is Anger. Consider this set of statements in the New York Post apology "However, there are some in the media and in public life who have had differences with The Post in the past-and they see the incident as an opportunity for payback. To them, no apology is due. Sometimes a cartoon is just a cartoon-even as the opportunists seek to make it something else". It reminds me of one white American female coaching clients who got into trouble for recommending the use of a noose in a cultural diversity skit. My client was appalled by her African American colleague's suggestion that her poor judgment was racist. She also felt that the offended colleague needed cultural diversity coaching for escalating the matter to management after receiving an apology. Both the New York Post and my client's angry reaction created more criticism of them.

I help my clients understand the consequences of their actions when they are in this stage. We walk through what happened, who was involved (even bystanders), and the consequences for them, the people offended, and the organization as a whole. By the end of the conversation, they really get that the situation is about more than their ego.

Acceptance is the third stage my clients get to. The New York Post officials are not there and there may insufficient incentive for them to ever get there. If the newspaper executives begin to fear sufficient retribution from readers, they will likely find a way to take the high road towards recovery. In executive coaching the leverage for getting clients past their anger and defensiveness is helping them keep their jobs and improve performance. Under these conditions, reaching the acceptance stage means that they are now ready to take advantage of opportunities to learn what is needed to avoid stepping on multicultural toes and how to recover should it happens again.

I have had the fortune of working with executives for Deloitte, Inc., top-notch universities, the Federal Aviation Administration, and the California Judicial Council-just to name a few in my ten-plus-year experience. They are all good people who did not know how to recover from cultural diversity mishaps. Once they are motivated to learn, they fully commit to getting the most out of our time together. It is the first two stages where most of the work is.

Some people may think that the focus should be on helping people see that even unintended actions suggest hidden prejudice and discrimination. We can have a long discussion about this important issue, but from a practical standpoint it is unproductive chatter.

                                                                                Even when unintended acts are due to unconscious bias, the problem that needs to be solved is getting people to live and work in a civil climate. I focus on helping people work together more productively without changing their prejudice and it works. I don't know of any approach to change prejudice that works as effectively for the range of people I come into contact with. Soft on people, hard on removing barriers to productive intercultural relations is my motto.