The corner suite has grown considerably more colorful than in 1999, when Franklin Raines became head of Fannie Mae. “When I was appointed, if you looked around and said, ‘Who are the next people to be appointed?’ you might have picked [Chenault],” said Raines; but Parsons and O’Neal, who had not grown up in their respective organizations, seemed less likely, said Raines. That they were chosen, nonetheless, says volumes to Raines, who, not coincidentally, is a member of the board that picked Parsons. Raines sees the selection of the new black chiefs as a triumph of common sense over custom. “Each of those boards was trying to choose a leader to meet [its] needs,” said Raines; they were not trying to make some racial statement. Still, the symbolic importance of the appointments is inescapable. For they suggest a seismic shift in the prototype of a corporate honcho. That development is all the more noteworthy since it was only six years ago that the Glass Ceiling Commission, chaired by the then Labor Secretary Robert Reich, documented the existence of an “unseen, yet unbreachable barrier that keeps minorities and women from rising to the upper rungs of the corporate ladder.” Reich called for bias to be “banished from… executive suites.”
Even Parsons’s most enthusiastic partisans don’t believe that goal has been achieved. Something much more modest, and yet undeniably significant, is occurring. We, as a society, are struggling through the process of redefining a race–a process that began even before Raines crashed through the corporate ceiling. It was marked by the rise of a number of high-profile figures (most notably Colin Powell, but also Raines, a former U.S. budget director) in the governmental arena. The result was a societal “shift in the image of black leadership,” a shift that corporate boards embraced, says Ron Brown, a San Francisco-based corporate diversity consultant.
But that evolution has only taken things so far. Although “it’s a watershed moment,” it will be a generation or so before the ranks of minority CEOs swell, notes David Thomas, a Harvard Business School professor. Sharon Collins, author of “Black Corporate Executives,” wonders whether too much ado is being made over a few appointments. “The boards haven’t changed. The power structure hasn’t changed.” And the top of the corporate hierarchy remains overwhelmingly white and male. Even if you throw in those blacks who have risen to the top at smaller companies, all the black corporate magnates could fit around a single dinner table. So what does their elevation represent, aside from personal triumphs by a small number of talented individuals? They are, in boardroom veteran Vernon Jordan’s words, “a sign of… possibilities.” They let people of color know that dreams don’t have to be forever deferred, that maybe one can get something approximately a fair shake in the mainstream world. That is not an achievement worth shooting off fireworks over; but it is so much more than many ever dared to believe was possible. And in the soil of such slim possibility, life-changing aspirations may bloom.
