Editor’s note: This commentary is by Tiff Bluemle, executive director of Change The Story.
Recently I learned from Facebook that a colleague had moved out of state. My spirits sank. I’d known her only 12 months, but I’d begun regularly seeking her advice and advocacy, her intelligence and perspective and her unbridled resourcefulness. She was a dedicated community volunteer, an involved school parent, and a dynamic professional with significant responsibility and influence.
And she is a woman of color.
Months before posting news that she had left Vermont, she told me a little about her experience in Vermont, about the racism her child experienced at school, and about the pushback she often encountered at work. Mostly she talked about the energy it took to be black here, to weigh every word she said to colleagues or even friends, and to advocate for her child – again and again – in the face of school resistance.
I have often wondered how many people of color Vermont loses, how many never consider moving here, and the related social and economic costs. I’d argue that Vermont’s future hinges on knowing those numbers.
We talk a lot about the need to attract young talent to fuel economic growth, replace a labor force that is aging, and pay into the tax base. As do our neighbors in the Granite State, whose racial demographics are close to those in Vermont. New Hampshire recently elevated diversity and inclusion as key priorities. In late July, Governing.com posted a piece about the state initiative, calling it the “first large-scale effort to consciously diversify a state in New England, and perhaps the country.” Fueled by leading businesses, state agencies, nonprofits and the NAACP, the initiative isn’t just focused on in-migration but on developing a social infrastructure that reflects and supports diversity of varied kinds, but particularly racial diversity.
If Vermont were to follow suit, where might we begin? First, by acknowledging the diversity that’s already here. There are over 35,000 people of color living in Vermont. When many of us talk about Vermont’s demographics, we often fall back on percentages: 94.5% white and 5.5% non-white. A friend recently noted that the difference between 5.5% and 35,000 is that the percentage is expressed as just a fraction of a bigger, more significant whole. The number, however, conjures up a picture of actual people in a state where many of the biggest towns have no more than 10,000 residents.
For attracting diversity to be a topline priority, we’d have to develop better data. Through the philanthropic support of the Vermont Women’s Fund, Change The Story has spent the last four years teasing out and publishing data related to the economic status of women. When we began our research we discovered that very often gendered data isn’t the default; it’s optional, available upon request, or it doesn’t exist.
In doing our research we have also learned how little information is available about the experiences and economic status of women of color in Vermont – where they work, how much they are paid, how many leave or why they may stay. We know very little about how experiences differ among the state’s varied, diverse communities of color.
The relevance of gendered and race-based data to economic growth is indisputable. We know a lot about where we’re short on labor: construction, manufacturing, health care, technology. We know much less about who we are attracting or training for these jobs. We seek to nurture entrepreneurs but haven’t changed venture capital norms that favor pitches by white men. We don’t know how many businesses in Vermont are owned by women or people of color, nor do we know their share of state contracts.
Collecting and publishing data makes a statement – about what we value, who is visible, and the priorities that drive our decision-making. If we’re serious about attracting and nurturing diversity, we’ve got to stop wringing our hands about the limits of the Census and pursue and make public the data that public and private organizations can collect. To compete for talent, companies like Buffer now publish corporate diversity stats on their websites. The City of Boston built and maintains a public dashboard that reports on employee diversity. In 2011, the state of New York committed to increasing the percentage of state contracts with women- and minority-owned businesses, which at the time was about 10%. By 2018, that percentage had nearly tripled to 29%. We could be doing these things, too.
Creating a climate and culture that values and supports diversity systemically is among this state’s greatest challenges — and, I’d argue, its greatest opportunity.
