Diverse friendships may be drying up in virtual workplaces
An ocean of water cooler talk has permanently dried up.
To put it in more modern terms, the office Keurig coffee station will be the site of a lot less chit-chat going forward.
Companies around the nation are reevaluating the need for physical offices.
Right here in Columbus, state “agencies are implementing a combination of returning to office, hybrid schedules and telework,” a spokeswoman for administrative services recently said.
Comradery, gossip, and huddles about the latest episode of “The Bachelorette” are not the only things at risk. So are the daily doses of diversity the fortunate among us get by working side by side with people of different racial backgrounds.
The office and the factory floor are among the few places many people regularly experience diversity.
Experts say America is more racially diverse than ever. Four out of every 10 residents are projected to identify as a nonwhite when the next U.S. Census numbers are released, but the vast majority of people still live in racially homogeneous neighborhoods: White people surrounded by other white people, and Black people with Black neighbors, etc.
Connections certainly aren’t being made in schools the way people who believe diversity makes us better would hope.
In the fall of 2018, the National Center for Education Statistics says, 60% of Hispanic, 59% of Black and 54% of Pacific Islander students went to public schools where enrollment of minority students was at least 75%.
Far too many of us do not regularly break bread or worship with people who do not look or think the same way each of us does.
Eleven a.m. on Sunday remains the most segregated hour of Christian America 61 years after Dr. Martin Luther King called that fact appalling on “Meet the Press” in 1960.
There is far more diversity at work. Workplace Black-white segregation is half the level of Black-white segregation in housing, according to a study in 2019 in Population Research and Policy Review.
There is little denying that work relationships matter.
You often spend more time with them, so it is no wonder that work friends can make a bigger impact in your life than the pals you have known since high school.
Your kids and those of your work friends may not go to the same schools, but you know their names. You’ve seen their baby pictures and hand-drawn dinosaurs.
This is not to say that workplaces are wondrous bastions of diversity.
A 2018 study by sociologists from Stanford University and Harvard Business School found that racial segregation in U.S. workplaces is greater today than it was in the 1970s.
Things can get better, but chances are good that the growth of working from home that took off during the pandemic will make them worse. Gone will be the true friendships that are built during in-person, face-to-face interactions that show humanity comes in all shades.
You might not have your work friend over for dinner, but you eat in the same breakroom and talk about why the Browns lost the previous Sunday. (I am originally from Cleveland, I can say that.) No, it’s not perfect – many Black kids still feel more comfortable sitting together in the school cafeteria nearly 25 years after Beverly Daniel Tatum brought up the topic in her bestselling book – but being in the same place presents an opportunity to step out of our boxes and connect.
This goes beyond racial identity, of course. The workplace is one of the few places a conservative can sit across from a liberal and have a meaningful conversation about common issues.
Collaborative work can happen remotely through video conferences and other technology, but at the end of the day, we are just heads stuck in our separate tiny boxes.
Amelia Robinson is the Dispatch’s opinion and engagement editor.
ameliarobinson@dispatch.com