ABSTRACT
Wearing a tie but less often a coat, golden-haired, blue-eyed, jogger-thin Lewis Griggs has more the manner and appearance of a smooth, successful California businessman than a self-described evangelist for workforce diversity. In 1987 he and his first wife, Lennie Copeland, produced the first and best-selling videotape training series "Valuing Diversity," which combined a pragmatic market-based sales appeal with a moralistic, New Age appeal for personal transformation in the cause of diversity. "Valuing Diversity'"s special significance is that its video format gave the producers the chance to breathe multimodal life into their concepts. African American consultant Gerry Adolph introduces a central tenet in most workforce diversity perspectives: equal treatment under values and rules made by and for white males is not truly equal. An entire video, Champions of Diversity, is devoted to a favorite Griggs theme: the conversion experiences of (mostly white) corporate executives.
