I sense a problem in that she actually "belongs" to a minority - meaning how can she expect not to be a minority at work? Or at least, why blame the workplace? If it bothers her, maybe the only option really is to move to a place with different demographics?
Edit: thanks for the downvote. My question is serious. Since she is part of a minority, even in a perfectly diverse workplace she will still be in the minority. Hence the diversity movement won't fix her problem. (Just looked it up: "Blacks and African Americans" are 13.5% of the US population. So in a SCRUM team of "normal" diversity she will be the only Black woman. According to Wikipedia, a SCRUM development team consists of 3-9 individuals: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrum_%28software_development%...).
The author isn't asking for a place where she isn't a minority. The author is asking for a place were there isn't additional pressure on her to conform because she is a minority in a cliquish or racist work environment.
"After The Home Depot, I took a position at a lottery/parimutuel company. I returned to being the only black woman, but the team there wasn’t very close knit so everybody did their own thing, did their job, and went home."
Most of the places she has worked/lived as a minority have been cliquish and/or racist. It makes sense that to avoid that she's been happy in places where she is not a minority.
However, the problem that needs to be fixed is not the existence of minorities, the problem is the culture around how we treat those minorities. The kind of culture that leads to her being transferred to protect her overtly racist co-worker. The kind of culture that does this: "I remember asking if we could do other outings that didn’t include beer and getting voted down." The kind of culture where she is "mistaken for an administrative assistant more than once. I have been asked if I was physical security (despite security wearing very distinctive uniforms)."
I suspect you were down voted because you assumed that "The other side of diversity" was saying that more diversity was needed. The article is clearly about how more than just diversity is needed.
"I don’t need to change to fit within my industry. My industry needs to change to make everyone feel included and accepted."
I don't have enough karma to downvote, but I can wager a guess as to why the person who clicked that arrow did so:
Your post, as it is worded, can be misconstrued to sound like otherism. "You'll always be different, minority!" And you prefaced it with "I sense a problem in that..." so it can be read as blaming her for what race and gender she was born as.
Or I'm totally off-base. But since the person(s) who downvoted didn't comment, I guess we'll never know.
Thanks - that is of course not at all what I meant. I actually checked her article to see which word she used (which is minority) because I am not sure what is correct in the US. I meant minority strictly in a mathematical sense.
In the United States, "minority" is often used as a crude stand-in for "against which society is often biased". For example, "women and minorities" is a common grouping-together despite women having a percentage majority in the country.
This is actually so prevalent I've heard people say "minorities, like women" in contexts where the term "minority" is definitely not used in a relative sense (i.e. they were really referring to a group that represents roughly half the population as a "minority"). It carries a lot of political baggage.
Edit: thanks for the downvote. My question is serious. Since she is part of a minority, even in a perfectly diverse workplace she will still be in the minority. Hence the diversity movement won't fix her problem. (Just looked it up: "Blacks and African Americans" are 13.5% of the US population. So in a SCRUM team of "normal" diversity she will be the only Black woman. According to Wikipedia, a SCRUM development team consists of 3-9 individuals: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrum_%28software_development%...).