ESSENCE ‘Coming Together IRL’ Panel Gets Honest About Black Women & Workforce Diversity

by RACHAELL DAVIS, ESSENCE 12/21/2017

GDN drew inspiration for this article from RACHAELL DAVIS‘s article, “ESSENCE ‘Coming Together IRL’ Panel Gets Honest About Black Women & Workforce Diversity “

Hosted by ESSENCE and sponsored by Wal-Mart, the 2017 “Coming Together IRL (In Real Life)” panel brought a handful of the brightest minds in the business and media industries together for an honest dialogue about the unbalanced representation of people of color in today’s workforce. Topics discussed included systemic racism in the workforce, the intersectionality between the gender and race wage gap for Black women, and why corporations suffer by not diversifying their workplace.

“Over the past few years, the concept of diversity has become a hot-button topic and a marketing buzzword,”  moderator and ESSENCE Editor-in-Chief Vanessa De Luca said before introducing the panel. “Yet, unbalanced representation in the work place continues to be an issue.”

“I think if you look at the progress that has happened with white women, to me, there’s a silver lining there; it shows that [inclusion] can happen,” Butterfield said. “So, what I do is always challenge the intersectionality piece. Ok, if we’re talking about women, where are Black women? Where are Latino women? Where are Asian women? How are we showing up in those conversations and in those rooms? Becase, you cannot have a conversation about women if you’re isolating certain groups and segments within that populations.”