It’s going to be quite a week.

Today, of course, is the national holiday that celebrates the birth of the legendary civil rights leader, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Tomorrow, the nation and the world will witness history in the making as the first African-American is sworn in as President of the United States. Looking at these two events together, one can’t help but appreciate how far this nation has come as the last racial barrier in U.S. politics comes crashing down. However, we must be mindful of the fact that the road to full equality is still ahead of us, and it’s quite long — especially in the U.S. workplace.

If you have any doubts about this premise, take into account that as of January 1, there were only 13 female CEOs running America’s largest 500 publicly traded companies. According to the research firm Catalyst, women receive six in 10 college degrees, yet there are fewer female directors and officers.

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When Patrice Hall sat in Denver’s Mile High Stadium listening to Barack Obama’s acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention (DNC) last August, she had never felt so inspired and hopeful.

After almost two decades in line management, Hall has spent the last 13 years as a diversity executive, most recently as head of the Global Equality, Diversity & Inclusion Practice for ORC Worldwide, a leading HR consulting firm. Before that, she spearheaded the diversity efforts for both the retail division of Chase Manhattan Bank and the Global Investment Bank at JPMorgan Chase.

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Talk about juxapostions: The birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. with the inauguration of Barack Obama. From being hosed in Selma, Alabama, to taking the oath of the Presidency.

We all applaud this progess. From a macro view, it gladens my heart. But I am an employment lawyer, and the micro view saddens me.

Why should this be? A President Obama reminds me that we too often look to who fills the top slot to guage if progress is being made. VP of Human Resources is black? Check. Operations Manager is Hispanic? Check. All is in order, right? Not really.

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A Q & A with Georgetown University’s Christopher Metzler

In a way, Christopher Metzler is responsible for diversity increasingly being taken seriously as an integral part of any organization’s business strategy. After all, while at Cornell University, he created the nation’s first certification program for diversity professionals. And as associate dean at Georgetown University’s School of Continuing Studies — the position he currently holds — he created the country’s first master’s degree in diversity. On top of that, he’s authored many books on the subject, including The Competencies of the Chief Diversity Officers and The Construction and Rearticulation of Race in a Post-Racial America.

We asked Metzler, who is also director of the Diversity and Inclusion Practice at F&H Solutions Group, an affiliate of Ford & Harrison LLP, to respond to the notion that Barack Obama’s election will force a new definition of organizational diversity (and one less about race).

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When Tanuj Gupta joined AstraZeneca in 2006, she didn’t know many of her coworkers. “When I found out there were Employee Network Groups, I thought it was a great way to meet more people within the company,” says the executive director of external medical relations. And it was: “I met a fantastic group of people and got involved in the core activities of the group.”

In 2007, those people asked Gupta to help lead the group, the South Asian Network, and she continues to do so today.The South Asian Network is one of AstraZeneca’s 16 Employee Network Groups (ENGs), which include several ethnic groups, an Eldercare ENG, a Military Support ENG, a Gay, Lesbian, or Bisexual ENG, and a Special Needs Advocates ENG. (Incidentally, the groups with the highest memberships are the Women’s, African-American, and Chinese-American ENGs.)

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Margaret Rivera, AstraZeneca’s senior manager of diversity, helps oversee 16 successful employee network groups. Here are her tips for making such affinity groups work:

1. Don’t force it. “Companies . . . should understand that the most successful employee groups often start out as grassroots organizations — they are volunteer organizations,” she counsels.

2. Make sure they’re tied into the overall diversity strategy.

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The December Dilemma: practicing inclusion during the winter holidays. The top religious accommodation companies have made in the past 12 months? Considering different religious beliefs of employees when planning holiday-related events, according to the Society for Human Resource Management’s (SHRM) “Religion and Corporate Culture Accommodating Religious Diversity Survey.”

Taking differing beliefs into account is never more necessary than in December. “For our many colleagues who celebrate Christmas, December is a time filled with happy reminders as well as the usual daily pressures. But for those who don’t celebrate, that same drumbeat of Christmas images and messages can be uncomfortable, both in and out of the office,” says Joyce Dubensky, executive vice president of the Tanenbaum Center for Interreligious Understanding.

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A federal jury in Portland recently awarded $19 million to four African-American former employees of Asbury Automotive Group, LLC ? the former corporate owner of Thomason Toyota in Gladstone. The workers alleged they were forced to endure a hostile, racially charged work environment.

Four salesmen, Carlos Barfield, Marcus Arnold, Jahaeel Hardy, and Kent Paul, sued Asbury Automotive in 2006. They alleged that managers and other workers at the dealership created a racially hostile atmosphere and that management failed to take action to remedy the situation. According to the four men, managers and coworkers used highly offensive and hostile language in their presence, including terms such as “redneck,” “nigger,” “black slave,” and “half black bastard.”

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Christmas Day   99%
Christmas Eve    44%
Good Friday       29%
Easter                19%
Yom Kippur         2%
Ash Wednesday   1%
Passover             1%
Hanukkah           1%
Rosh Hashanah   1%
Other                   4%

Source: Religion and Corporate Culture Survey Report
(SHRM, 2008)

The early bird catches the worm — and the best employees.

At least that’s the thinking of the Association of Corporate Counsel and the Street Law organization, which are working together to encourage young people of color to extend their educations and consider law-related careers. Among other things, their Corporate Legal Diversity Pipeline program pairs teachers at high schools with corporate lawyers to provide law-related education, role models, and mentors.

“The ACC/Street Law Diversity Pipeline program is [a] wonderful initiative that targets diverse high school students and offers them positive contact with corporate lawyers and insight into the challenging and engaging work that they do,” says Laura Stein, ACC’s outgoing board chair and senior vice president and general counsel of the Clorox Co.

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