Racial Bias in the Workforce

India Martin spent two decades in investment banking at Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank, Lehman Brothers, RBS ABN AMRO and JP Morgan before becoming a racial equity consultant to CEOs and leadership teams. In this Inspire Series conversation with Colin Iles, recorded weeks after George Floyd's death, India draws a hard line between racial bias and racism, defends quotas as a legitimate, time-limited tool, and lays out the method she uses to move skeptical executives: building emotional connection before she mentions a single statistic.

Bias versus racism: the distinction India uses to open every conversation

India's starting framework separates a belief from an action. Racial bias, she explains, is holding a belief about a group based on race, for example assuming all young black men are dangerous. Racism is what happens when that belief gets acted on, such as crossing the street because of it. She estimates roughly 80 percent of people operate on unconscious bias rather than deliberate racism, which is why she avoids opening with blame: most people are not choosing to be racist, they are behaving inside a system, or in her words a "container," that they were born into and have little reason to question.

The 2020 timeline: how India gets CEOs to feel the problem, not just hear it

India's core method for engaging leadership teams is building what she calls emotional connectivity, rather than leading with data. She uses a side by side timeline of 2020: the top row shows the general population's experience, lockdown, remote work, financial strain, COVID deaths; the bottom row shows the same period for black Americans, layering in the killings of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor and Jacob Blake, plus five black men found hanged in public places since May that were initially ruled suicides. Most executives already know these events happened, she says. What shifts them is seeing both timelines stacked together, making visible the extra weight black employees carry into work that white colleagues do not.

Equity versus quotas: why India has no issue with tipping the scales

India treats equity and equality as distinct, not interchangeable, terms. Equality, she says, is the eventual shared end state, everyone getting a size 10 shoe. Equity is giving each person the size they actually need to participate, an eight for one person, a five for another, a ramp instead of a box for someone who needs one. On that basis she supports quotas without reservation: if a quota gets someone what they need until the playing field levels, use it, and it does not take anything away from anyone else. She also pushes back on the 'no pipeline' argument some companies use to avoid diversifying senior hiring, calling it untrue, and argues organizations should assess candidates for capability rather than filtering on which university they attended.

Invisibility and disbelief: the themes that surface when India runs roundtables

Instead of relying on HR channels, India recommends CEOs convene small, trust based roundtables, roughly ten black employees at a time, and simply ask about their experience inside the organization. The themes that come up repeatedly, she says, are invisibility (an idea raised by a black employee gets credited to a white colleague who repeats it later) and disbelief (colleagues or HR often respond to reports of racism with 'I'm sure they didn't mean it,' which amounts to not being believed). She also cites her own audit work: in about 98 percent of the organizations she has reviewed, advancement rates for black employees and people of color fall far below their share of headcount.

How India handles calling people out, in the moment and afterward

Asked whether she has ever called someone out for bias or racism, India draws a sharp line between the two. She has never publicly called out bias, because it is typically unconscious, and instead pulls the person aside privately, framing the impact on her rather than judging their intent, which she says produces far better outcomes than a public confrontation. Overt racism she treats differently: she does not engage those conversations at all, since people who are consciously racist already know what they are doing and the exchange tends to become an argument rather than progress.

Why can't companies just say this isn't relevant to their business?

India's answer is that any organization with black employees is already affected, whether leadership recognizes it or not. Those employees carry a bicultural competency white colleagues never have to develop, navigating a world not built for them, and that weight shows up at work every day even when it is invisible to management. Her fix starts with corporations investing directly in the communities they say they want to support, rather than leaving it purely to government or education systems.

Is diversity work an anti-white campaign?

India rejects this framing directly. The goal is equity, not opposition to any group, and disparities in housing, education and income between black and white populations reflect a system of advantages built over centuries, not a zero-sum contest. She separates privilege from blame: privilege isn't the fault of the person who holds it, but the system producing it still needs addressing. She does not personally blame white friends or colleagues for a history that predates them, even while she remains angry about it.

Has India ever been racially biased herself, including toward white people?

She says no. Having experienced bias herself, she was deliberate about building genuinely diverse teams throughout her career without excluding white colleagues from opportunity. She is candid that she has felt anger, particularly at friends and colleagues who stayed silent until George Floyd's death was broadcast on television, but anger is not the same as bias acted upon, and leading with kindness remains her operating principle even when the underlying feelings are difficult.