It’s Just a Hat

Swag can be fun... and it can boost consciousness. Yet it can also be a distraction. Follow this story and ask yourself, “How could we welcome the trouble the DEI movement finds itself in... as an opportunity to dialog with those who differ when it comes to creating workplaces where ALL feel safe and included?”

When I was a little boy I loved anything my Dad would bring home with a company logo on it, usually from Santa Fe Drilling (his employer) or an adjacent company like Schlumberger. My childhood collection included belt buckles, hats, key chains, money clips, and even a Zippo lighter that was especially prized. The Zippo was probably not age-appropriate but as my Mother would say, “It was the 70’s, we didn’t know any better.”

When I went to work in “Corporate America” my love of swag was reignited. Being in sales, the things a customer would keep on their desk were the best reminders of you, so I’d bring along mouse pads, coffee cups, post-its, etc. to leave behind. Then I joined HP where long-time employees would joke, “It’s not just a job, it’s a wardrobe.”

Over 16 years I accumulated quite a collection. When I got involved with the Pride group, rainbow swag became the dominant theme. It was a very big deal when the Pride group finally convinced HP marketing to make the HP logo rainbow-colored for Pride month. The HP brand is sacrosanct so we took great pride (no pun intended) in that accomplishment.

The biggest LGBTQ+ event that I would attend each year is the Out & Equal Workplace Summit where thousands of people from hundreds of global companies gather each year to share best practices for advancing the cause of LGBTQ equality in the workplace and collect rainbow…. everything. The exhibit hall each year is a bazaar of branded rainbow merchandise from HP, Boeing, JP Morgan Chase, Oracle, Northrop Grumman, etc…. One of my coworkers (who shall remain nameless, but you know who you are, M.) was infamous for bringing an extra suitcase to cart her haul of rainbow swag back to Germany.

Eventually, between reading Marie Kondo and becoming aware of the environmental impacts of fast fashion, I decided to stop bringing home unnecessary plastic objects and reusable shopping bags that I’d never use. I made an exception at last year’s Out & Equal for what is perhaps my favorite piece of rainbow swag ever, a John Deere baseball cap with rainbow-colored stitching and “We Run For ALL” printed on the back. The John Deere folks were bubbling over with excitement to have gotten approval to have them made (although they wouldn’t be sold in the John Deere store for the general public) and these hats were perhaps the hottest ticket in the exhibit hall.

Why? The business rationale shared by the Deere Pride ERG would be familiar to anyone working in the field of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. To roughly paraphrase: John Deere is no longer just a manufacturer of tractors and heavy equipment, they are a global technology company using automation, robotics, and AI to make agriculture more productive at scale. Their reputation as an “old” company was a barrier to recruiting the young, talented engineers they needed to thrive, and John Deere wanted to let the world know that everyone was welcome.

Coming from HP, this was a familiar story for me. HP’s Gay and Lesbian Employee Network (GLEN) was started in 1978 and HP was the first major Tech company to provide its Gay and Lesbian employees with domestic partner benefits in the 90’s. HP is no slouch in the diversity department and this goes back to its earliest days. A Black employee was on the HP company softball team before Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in professional sports and it has a long history of hiring and promoting women. Still, friends who worked at Google or Facebook would see me wearing an HP Pride t-shirt and express their surprise that such an “old” company was LGBTQ-friendly. The swag was a great conversation starter.

Which brings me back to my fondness for my John Deere baseball cap. Just as my friends found it encouraging that the company that birthed Silicon Valley was LGBTQ-friendly, it overjoyed me to see a company woven into the very fabric of Americana declare “We Run For ALL”. In this age of the “culture war” it felt like a victory, and gave me hope.

And so when I read in the Washington Post that John Deere was scaling back its DEI initiatives and that my beloved hat probably had something to do with that, it felt like a gut punch. I feel a great deal of compassion for the Deere Pride community who are likely feeling a bit discouraged but who I’m sure will redouble their efforts and persevere, because that’s what Queer people do.

And so, my hat becomes an artifact of the great Rainbow Wars of the early 2020’s. It seems so silly to me that anyone would consider it a threat to the foundations of free enterprise capitalism to welcome ALL, but here we are. As DEI practitioners it seems important to notice our own judgments and biases (e.g. the word “silly”, above) and ask how we can welcome the trouble that the DEI movement finds itself in as an opportunity to be in dialog with those who believe that Diversity and Inclusion are not useful or worthwhile business objectives.

We might also wonder if we’ve gotten caught up in consumerism and if that’s a distraction from the task at hand; creating workplaces where ALL feel a sense of safety and belonging. Less emphasis on the rainbow swag might be alright and the lessened environmental impact would be a helpful side benefit.

It’s just a hat, after all…