Diversity employees should work to make their diversity not matter

Earlier this week, Stan O'Neal, the CEO and Chairman of the Board of titan investment bank Merrill Lynch resigned. O'Neal, a graduate of Harvard Business School’s MBA class of 1978, was one of the only Black CEOs of a Wall Street investment firm.

O'Neal joined Merrill Lynch in 1986 in a time when there were very few Black associates on Wall Street, let alone at Merrill Lynch. By the early 1990s, he was running the company’s leveraged finance division. After spending some time as the global head of capital markets and the co-head of the corporate and institutional client group, he spent two years as CFO. Before becoming president of Merrill Lynch in 2001, he was president of Merrill's U.S. private client group, and in 2003, he became CEO and chairman. Last year, he earned $48 million, and upon his resignation on October 30, he walked away with a whopping $160 million.

What's intriguing about O'Neal is where he came from. As a child in the tiny rural farming community of Wedowee, Alabama, this son of a farmer and grandson of a slave picked cotton on the farm. From these humble beginnings, O'Neal rose to the top of the financial world. And he got his start, not because of diversity policies that were being implemented at the time, but because he was the best man for the job at each step upward in his career.

Despite general public opinion about the racism that exists on Wall Street (and don’t get me wrong; I am not disputing that allegation) it is in this type ultra competitive, cut throat environment where absolutely no one can accuse a person of color receiving special favors because of their race, culture, ethnicity, etc.

The individuals who work on Wall Street and rise to the top of the heap in such a challenging environment do so by merit alone (for the most part). And though diversity has begun to level the playing field on Wall Street since O’Neal’s entrance into the lions den, he clearly made it to the top the old fashioned way, like other Black titans of industry. He fought his way to the top.

When it comes to Black power brokers such as Stan O’Neal, Dick Parsons (CEO of Time Warner), Ken Chenault (CEO American Express), and Bob Johnson (founder of Black Entertainment Television and first Black billionaire), no one should be so naïve (or insulting for that matter) as to assume that the main (or the only) reason why they were able to reach such heights was because of their companies’ commitments to diversity.

They got there because they performed better than the other choices around them at each milestone in their careers. But the unfortunate thing is that these Black gentlemen are more the exception than the rule.

Diversity polices, more often than not, serve to open a door that might otherwise have been shut to qualified African-American, Hispanic, Asian, Female, LGBT, disabled and other diversity candidates. But once you’re in the door, diversity should not matter. Your accomplishments alone should determine how far you go.

If we learn one thing from the rise of Stan O’Neal, it should be that we as diversity employees should work our hardest to make diversity not matter. We should be the best workers, the most efficient, productive, over delivering employees. By being the best, diversity effectively won’t matter, as directors and managers will be more willing to entrust the higher responsibilities to their best employees, regardless of race, ethnicity, culture, or any other diversity attribute.

Because in the end companies are much more interested in the green, not the Black, White, Yellow, or Brown.