Elusive Equality

Rodney Webb isn't your typical home improvement salesman. He has played professional basketball in Europe. He spent two years playing blackjack for a living. He boasts a 91% close rate. He has sold $3.6 million of replacement windows and siding in a single year.

He's also black, and that sets him apart in the industry almost as much as his varied work history and remarkable accomplishments as a salesman.

Here's an exercise. Take a moment right now to think about your competition. Now picture the other remodelers in your peer group, or the attendees at the most recent trade show. Flip through a couple of back issues of REMODELING and look at the pictures. Notice anything?

If you're a Caucasian male, you'll notice a lot of guys who look just like you. If you're not — if you're a woman, or Asian, or black, or Hispanic, or any combination thereof —it's readily apparent that you don't have many counterparts in the industry.

In the United States, the long history of institutional prejudice — in schools, in government, in trade unions, even in churches —has prevented minorities from achieving equality in many facets of life, and remodeling is no exception. Majority-owned businesses have dominated for so long and are so well established in most communities that it is increasingly difficult for minority businesses to get started. This might help to explain why so many roofers, framers, and other specialty contractors with low entry barriers are minorities, but so few minorities are general contractors. “It's the natural progression of a contractor,” says Cesar Santoy, executive director of the Hispanic American Construction Industry Association (HACIA). “The majority-owned general contractors have a tremendous head start, in terms of generations of ownership, in comparison to the Hispanic community.”

Out and out racism has diminished in recent years, says Jerry Liu, but prejudiced attitudes still exist.

Photo Credit: Greg Hadley

Another obstacle is the amount of training and preparation required to become a successful GC. “There are a lot of things you need to do before you can get your license: legal aspects, taxes, education,” says Michael Lee, president of EthnoConnect, a consulting group specializing in cultural awareness. “If I'm new to this country and I need money right now, I need to pick up a hammer and get to work. I don't have time for the other stuff.”

Santoy says that the primary issue facing Hispanic contractors is the “lack of information and lack of access to information. That's the first step to developing your business and growing it.” To that end, HACIA has worked with officials in the Chicagoland area to ensure that minority-owned businesses are now considered for large, government contracts. “We've come a long way in 25 years, but there's still a long way to go,” Santoy says. He adds that HACIA is currently looking to expand its influence into the private sector.

Similar issues affect all minorities, not just foreigners. “We've got to educate [blacks],” Webb says. “Once you know the rules of the game and decide that you're going to play it, anyone can be successful.” The state of minorities in the home improvement sales business is such that Webb's entire 12-person salesforce is white. “I don't know of [another] black of any prominence in the direct sales home improvement industry,” he says. “It's an industry dominated by Caucasians.”

Not all prejudice is institutional and abstract. Mark Scott, owner of Mark IV Builders in Bethesda, Md., has seen prejudice and discrimination from clients firsthand. On a recent job, the homeowners spent much of the first three weeks of the job complaining that the black supervisor assigned to their job was incompetent. Finally, they made it clear — using a racial slur — that they wanted the super pulled off the job.

Such instances of open racism, although they suggest a more widespread underlying prejudice, are rare. Webb has driven past more than his share of Confederate flags and Ku Klux Klan bumper stickers on his way to sales calls in rural Georgia, but can recall just two times when he was asked to leave a house. Even so, Webb says that he knows he's lost other sales solely because he is black. And as the owner of The Real Gutter Protector, a business he started after a distinguished career at Atlanta-based Dixie HomeCrafters, Webb says that he sees prejudice from his customers against other ethnic groups. “I've got two jobs right now where it says on the work order, ‘Do not send a Mexican crew,'” Webb says.

But prejudice isn't always overt. Many people argue that, as a society, we are as prejudiced today as we were years ago, during the times of segregated restaurants and drinking fountains, but that pressure to be “politically correct” has pushed prejudice underground.

True, almost everyone recognizes that certain behavior and language is unacceptable, but prejudiced thoughts and perceptions, as well as institutional policies, still exist, and because they aren't out in the open or immediately obvious, they go ignored and unaddressed. As Scott puts it: “Just because everyone drinks from the same water fountain now, it doesn't mean that we're not racist.”

One aspect that still lingers is the notion that minorities aren't as capable of succeeding as the majority is.

In remodeling, an industry traditionally employing few women, a growing number of successful women have finally cleared this hurdle, proving that they can do the job as well as — and often better than — their male counterparts.

Significantly less progress has been made by ethnic minorities in the industry. Webb began his career in home improvement as a telemarketer. When he applied for a sales job at Dixie, his interviewer hired him, but warned that there had never been a successful black salesperson in the organization.

Scott, who is white, is troubled by the racism of some of his past actions. During the mid-1980s, when he was in new construction, he and his partner were building a custom home for a banker on a lot adjacent to a home that was for sale. A black couple bid on the existing house, and when the banker found out, he cancelled the contract and put his lot up for sale.

Some time later, a man of Korean descent came to Scott looking for a sales job. “I really liked him,” Scott says, but, tainted by the previous experience, he was hesitant. “I was afraid,” he adds. “Subtle racism kept me from hiring him.” The man eventually found another job, but the experience still haunts Scott. “That's always bothered me,” he says. “I wouldn't make the same decision if it happened again.”

Although overt racism is rare, it does happen, and how you handle it when your employees are discriminated against has a lot to do with your company culture and the employees themselves.

When Scott's clients requested that the black super be taken off the job, Scott called a special company meeting to explain the situation and to get feedback from his employees about what course of action to take. “We were seriously discussing walking away from the job,” Scott says. He made sure to show the super in question that the company supported him. And, as a group, the company ultimately decided to switch supers and keep the job moving forward.

It was a mistake. The clients, as Scott feared, turned out to be extremely difficult.

Rodney Webb says that a black salesman has to be three times better than his white counterparts to make the same amount of money.

Photo Credit: Ann States

Lee, for one, isn't surprised to hear that. He advises that if a client shows any signs of prejudice — such as specifically asking that their work crew not include members of certain ethnic groups — the contractor should cut the cord as quickly as possible. “These are unhappy people,” Lee says. “They build themselves up by putting others down. My suggestion is to avoid them like the plague.” When he was a contractor, Lee — a fifth-generation Chinese-American — recalls homeowners who, instead of requesting a work crew of a certain ethnicity, would ask thinly veiled questions such as, “What type of people work for you?” One homeowner actually asked, “If there were five of them, would they be a decent basketball team?” Generally, he passed on those jobs.

Webb, on the other hand, handles these situations a different way. At The Real Gutter Protector, he has three crews of Mexican workers, but if a client specifically requests that Mexicans not work on their house, Webb will send a Caucasian crew. “This is America,” Webb says. “If that's what they want, that's what we'll do.”

Webb also doesn't advertise that his company is owned by a black man. He doesn't go out of his way to hide it, but he only tells callers if they ask. As a result, he estimates that 99% of his clients don't know that the company is minority-owned. Webb is confident that this is good for business. “We'd have less sales if every one of our customers knew I owned the company.”

Times are changing, if slowly. Minorities now make up the fastest-growing segment of homeowners, as well as an increasing portion of the labor pool. To thrive in this era of new demographics, it's important that your company be what Lee terms “culturally competent.” And company owners and key personnel need to lead by example.

Even those remodelers who consider themselves enlightened individuals may inadvertently say or do things to show that they are not. For instance, people still use the term “Oriental,” but it's considered derogatory; “Asian” is preferred. And while “Jew” is a perfectly acceptable word when referring to an adherent of Judaism, using phrases such as “Jewing down the price” is offensive and racist.

Even if the person who hears these and other such comments isn't a member of the ethnic group in question, they may still be offended or feel uncomfortable. “Mentally, I just disassociate from people who use inappropriate words to refer to people,” says Jerry Liu, of D.G. Liu Contractor, Dickerson, Md. “I look ethnic,” Liu continues. “If they are going to talk that way about black people in front of me, what are they saying about Chinese people behind my back?”

Liu is also Jewish, which few, if any, people suspect. Because his features and his surname clearly indicate that he's of Eastern descent, he rarely hears derogatory remarks about Asians. However, people will make disparaging remarks about Jews in his presence without a second thought.

Lee points out that if you say things like, “I have no problem with those people” in reference to a specific ethnic group, you're actually indicating “that you feel they are different somehow, and possibly not equal.”

A particularly burdensome byproduct of America's history is the tendency that many Americans have to expect people from other cultures to adapt to their customs and language. In an effort to find a Spanish-speaking employee to help his company relate to the growing Hispanic population in his area, Liu heard some employees grumbling that “they'd better learn English first.” Liu put a stop to that immediately. “I told them, ‘Let's knock that off. This country was built on the backs of people from other countries.'” Lee points out that some Asian and Middle Eastern cultures have been around for 5,000 years, far longer than American culture.

Another potential sticking point is the tendency of people — particularly men — to joke about one another's ethnicity. Remodelers' opinions vary on whether this locker room-type humor is acceptable, and how much is too much. Scott, for one, doesn't want to hear it at all, and told his employees to stop the first time he heard such talk. For his part, Liu considers the friendly joking to be bonding, explaining that “in the doing, there's some understanding.”

Ultimately, it's up to you to consider your comfort level and the personalities of the employees involved, and to then decide to what extent this type of banter is acceptable. However, you should make it clear to your employees that such talk must stop when clients or subcontractors are present.