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Mind over minority

By Chris Thompson

Diversity is a fact. It's not a charity. It's not a goal. It's not even a choice.

Striving for diversity is like working for the weekend. It's going to be there no matter what we do. But our state of mind when we get there relies entirely on how we prepare for it.

The U.S. Census Bureau projects that by 2050, the country's white population will have grown by 7.4 percent. By contrast, the country's black population will have increased by 71.3 percent, Asians by 212.9 percent and Hispanics by 187.9 percent.

It doesn't seem like a stretch to argue that populations in specific industries will, to one degree or another, reflect those figures in the years to come. With a finite number of career choices, the coming generations should be expected to filter themselves out based on the economic trends of individual industries.

Assuming that construction doesn't completely go in the tank in the next 40 or so years, it's a safe bet that the current white majority in the industry will be on its way to becoming a minority. Theoretically, there will come a point, at the intersection of the dwindling majority and rising minority, where pure diversity will exist without the support of social mandates.

But there's more to the story than numbers and projections. The wild card in all of this is mindset. And that's where the industry finds itself discussing recruitment practices, development of minority firms and participation percentages on projects. The programs that support these discussions don't exist to ensure diversity. They exist to help the industry recognize that diversity is inevitable, and, more important, that it's right.

There's going to come a day when even the concept of a minority firm loses its meaning. The rising star and next owner of a major construction company in Wisconsin could be a person of color. Does that company then qualify as a minority firm? Wouldn't that upend the idea that minority is somehow synonymous with struggling?

That's the idea that this industry needs to get past. Minority is a classification of numbers, not people. Any struggles associated with those in the minority have more to do with how they're viewed than who they are.

This industry rightfully spends a lot of time discussing majorities and minorities. You'll know you're ready for diversity when you can't tell the difference between the two.

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