April 21, 2005

EDITORIAL

San Jose needs to diversify senior staff to better reflect city’s ethnic constituents

The higher you climb San Jose’s government leadership ladder, the whiter it gets as ethnic diversity in its senior staff does not parallel the city’s multiracial face.

And although the city’s 6,700 public employees are diverse, mirroring the city’s multi-ethnic census figures, we say this is not enough. We believe those at the top must set the example.

This glaring disparity was brought to light by a series of articles written by Times Community Newspapers staff writer Sheila Sanchez, which wrapped up two weeks ago in the Almaden Times Weekly.

Only two of the 25 profiled department directors and appointed officials—who represent the city’s executive and senior staff—are minorities. They are Retirement Services Director Ed Overton and Employee Relations Director Alex Gurza; and only seven of the 25 were women.

According to the city’s corporate database, which codes the ethnicities by numbers, 46.87 percent of public employees are white, 4.87 percent are black or African American, 26.4 percent are Hispanic or Latino, 13.36 percent are Asian Pacific Islander, 0.92 percent are American Indian/Alaska Native, 4.18 percent are Filipino and 3.4 percent are unknown representing employees who have declined to give their racial background.

City officials stressed this to us as we researched the statistics to write this editorial, particularly those in the Employee Services Department. They say looking at the latest U.S. Census Bureau statistics for the city and the County of Santa Clara, the city’s lower- and mid-level workforce demographics are praiseworthy as they’re relatively close to citywide demographics. The city’s ethnic population makeup is 47.49 percent white and 52.51 percent non-white. Similarly, the city’s employee ethnic makeup is 46.87 white and 53.1 percent is non-white.

We applaud this diverse employee pool at the lower and middle levels of the city’s public workforce, but we also believe such diversity must exist at the top level of its executive branch.

Lack of minority representation in the city’s senior ranks shows that the city lacks a strong minority recruitment policy. As our mission statement indicates, we care about diversity because efforts to bring more minorities and women into top management levels of government rectify old inequalities and years of institutional discrimination against people of color and female employees.

We believe our city must continue to pursue this effort with a passion. We believe it will increase the city’s credibility with its diverse electorate. Efforts to correct this lack of ethnic representation in the city’s senior ranks will increase constituents’ trust in their government entity. We believe it’s difficult to even begin to understand the needs of multicultural constituents when its top leaders are of one predominant race, often unable to see needs through multicultural eyes, which can enlighten others about services desperately needed to help minority groups fully assimilate into society.

We, at Times Media, promote diversity. While we believe that the city has an obligation to consider candidates’ qualifications for top-level management, we also believe it should strive to find applicants that can bring both strengths to its departments and offices. Our ideal is that diversity and competence will become synonyms one day.

San Jose Employee Services Director Mark Danaj concurs that the city can do better to have more top-level senior staff reflect the ethnic makeup of the city. He assures us that with each one of the 25 senior jobs, the city conducted an aggressive diversity campaign, publishing a profile on what the city was looking for, recruiting candidates nationwide making sure they established diversity in the pool of those considered.

The city needs to be commended for beginning last August a senior leadership development program to better prepare its existing bottom-level employees to assume the top-level leadership positions.

An internally diverse city will naturally create a diverse senior and executive staff pool if it makes a commitment to nurture, strengthen and mentor its employees from the onset. San Jose will then only have to look within to draw qualified diverse candidates. The employees are there ready for the training and the promotions and San Jose can become a role model for the world. With such a strong diverse community San Jose has potential.

The city boldly declares on its Web site that it is proud of its population and workforce diversity and the rich cultural identity of its many neighborhoods. The city’s residents speak more than 52 different languages. Japantown and Little Saigon are popular tourist stops representing neighborhoods full of tradition. Biblioteca Latino Americana, one of the city’s innovative library branches, boasts one of the largest collections of Spanish-language materials in Northern California. The city sponsors many cultural festivals and numerous ethnic chambers of commerce are active in the community.

And we’re happy our mayor, Ron Gonzales, is Hispanic and that three of our council members, Cindy Chavez, Nora Campos and Forrest Williams are minorities, but we recently lost our fifth minority voice on the city council with the resignation of Terry Gregory, who is African American.

So we suggest that San Jose expand its newly created professional development program and begin a more aggressive minority recruitment effort and in order to increase diversity within its senior and executive staff.