A few years ago, Kweku Sapara-Grant had an interview with an unnamed company. He got a haircut “to make myself look sharp.” After meeting his interviewers, an executive told him he looked like DJ Jazzy Jeff.
“Now, objectively, I don’t look like DJ Jazzy Jeff,” said Sapara-Grant, who moderated the panel “AAG Presents Allyship to Advocacy: How the Gaming Industry Can Be More Inclusive” Tuesday during SBC Summit Americas in Fort Lauderdale. “But in that moment, I also realized that your analysis of me was not going to be based on my professionalism at all. It was going to be based on my race, my appearance, my aesthetic, all things that really don’t impact my ability to do a good job.”
Separa-Grant eventually found work as Lotto.com’s Director of External Affairs. But the lesson he learned that day can apply to any group viewed with bias or, sometimes, discriminatory factors.
Sue Schneider, founder of Defy the Odds and a longtime figure in the gaming industry, said she was in college when she joined a group, Women for a Change. Unfortunately for Schneider and her female peers, little has changed.
“What amazes me is that 50 years later, we’re still fighting those same battles and it’s almost daily now,” Schneider said. “I sit there and think we’ve been at this, I’ve been at this, since the early ’70s. And frankly, we’ve backtracked. It’s just a perspective you need to keep in mind, because a lot of us are tired of this.”
Brooke Thomas, Seminole Hard Rock VP People, Equity & Inclusion, said it’s unavoidable that even well-meaning people slip up. Thomas recently talked about how people spoke in organizations, the importance of “giving space and giving grace for moments, and learning, and growing.” But a vice president of her company came into Thomas’s office mortified. She had just told a blind co-worker, “It’s good to see you.
“She’d been carrying it for days, and I knew the blind employee, and I knew the blind employee probably said good to see you too, as a joke, because the blind employee has lived her life blind, so she’s used to our comments not matching her disability status,” said Thomas, also one of the co-founders of the LGBTQ+ in Gaming.
They talked it through and Thomas allayed the vice president’s qualms about the comment. But the bigger issue, according to Thomas, consist of biases and remarks that are purposely hurtful. That kind of rhetoric is not only hurtful, but causes a diminution of a person’s productivity.
“We’re shifting mindsets, but to do that, there has to be individual change,” Thomas said “If you’re a leader in an organization, there are a million studies out there … that explain how much energy your diverse employees waste worrying about if they can bring their full selves to work and how much more they could bring to you.
“If I’m giving you 60%, I’m still killing, for the record with 60%. But think about how much more innovation, focus, work, product, teamwork, you could get from me if I didn’t have to take that energy and put it into potential anxiety.”
