Title says it all. Should I or not?
Are these groups good networking opportunities? Do people even care?
One part of me is just sick of all the "diversity yay" frivolity (I'm just a person and doesn't want to be constantly identified by my heritage, but my work and character). But realistically I'd like to meet other people in the company.
Any insights would be appreciated. Thanks.
Contacts within the company are generally useful. doesn't matter if they are diverse or not. the more people you know in your company, the more opportunities may open up.
full disclosure: I'm couching my words because if this ever gets out, I want to be comfortable having some higher up read it back to me.
I'm a member of these groups within my company and on the board of a local diversity council. I am heavily involved in our local efforts and am a regional representative of the same. it's a passion project of mine not because of diversity in and of itself, but because I love mentoring young people and helping them out, and if it leads to someone of a different background coming to my firm, so be it. part of this is because within the black community, finance is not widely thought of as a career option and so I simply wanted to show people that it can be, but not just because you're black.
the difficulty I have is what you express - the ideology. I vehemently disagree with much of the wokeness today, and while I don't want to get into specific issues (we can discuss over PM), what I will say is this - it's hard to separate the good work that can be done from the ideology du jour, but it's possible. if you stay focused on the mission, you don't have to get involved in the politics, so long as you're doing something you care about, it doesn't matter if your motivation is "equity" or whatever other word they're using or you just like to give back.
I will say this - a great byproduct of raising your hand for stuff like this is making large firms seem smaller. it's nice to make connections in parts of the firm I would've never trafficked in, it's nice to get noticed by higher ups, and when you need something, you now have some chits in the bank that you can cash in if need be.
finally, almost without exception I've noticed that the people in these groups are nice to be around. if you care about networking and diversity enough to be active in a group, you're probably a sociable person, and while I'm sure some of these people's personal facebook accounts would make my skin crawl, I've had nothing but positive professional conversations in these groups.
I like brofessor's comments about separating the good stuff from the wokeness. I think by joining you could do a lot of good, both by giving a leg up to people otherwise overlooked and by breaking the toxic woke group think. I'm actually considered joining a local industry group's D&I committee for these same reasons.
I'm afraid you don't belong to the groups that get the special treatment, but you can always try.
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