Are you willing to consider a different take on your experience?

Is it possible you were receiving the promotion because you were well connected? That you assumed you could bypass the HR department by cultivating the hiring manager? Very likely you and your mentor are similar. Could he have wanted to populate the organization with more people "like me?” This bias is called “the affinity bias.” I see this frequently in my work “so and so reminds me of me when I was a young(er) go getter.”

Remember, that for many people “birds of a feather flock together,” “apples don’t fall far from trees,” “it takes one to know one,” “it’s not what you know it’s who you know.” Bonded social capital is much easier than bridging social capital to cultivate.

You've stated that Josh was similarly high performing to you with very similar resume and performance. Do you know if he was afforded the same opportunities to be cultivated and mentored as you were? Were there any people in the sale’s department that would say “he’s like me when I was younger” to take him under his wing?

What you described as the “determining qualification”sounds to me like it was your social capital not your intellectual or human capital that you assumed was your ace in the hole.

Does your organization serve a diverse marketplace? Are there m/any senior level Black executives at your organization?

If you have not done so already, please go watch/rewatch three films:

1. HBO's The Tuskegee Airmen

2. Hidden Figures

3. The Six Triple Eight

Please note how the public policies, laws, and social customs were intentionally designed to deny equal access and opportunity. Notice that a “free market” didn’t actually lead to the “best and brightest” being rewarded.

If an organization seeks to serve a broad cross section of the public, it is reasonable that a broad cross section of the public be considered to work and rise in such environments. It is also important that those working in such environments be responsive to those whom it is their job to serve. That's why LBJ's 1965 executive order required that all entities benefiting from taxpayer dollars must "act in the affirmative" to ensure that taxpayers of all ethnicities were considered to work for those entities.

This 2014 ABA Study clearly demonstrates my point very effectively:

22 errors were inserted into a memo. Seven were minor spelling or grammar errors, six were substantive technical writing errors, five were errors in fact, and four were errors in the analysis of the facts, according to a summary of the study.

Sixty partners from 22 law firms who agreed to participate in a “writing analysis study” received copies of the memo. Half were told the memo was written by an African-American man named Thomas Meyer, and half were told the writer was a Caucasian man named Thomas Meyer. Fifty-three partners completed the task.

Of those, 29 received the memo supposedly by a white man and 24 received the memo supposedly by a black man.The reviewers gave the memo supposedly written by a white man a rating of 4.1 out of 5, while they gave the memo supposedly written by a black man a rating of 3.2 out of 5.

The white Thomas Meyer was praised for his potential and good analytical skills, while the black Thomas Meyer was criticized as average at best and needing a lot of work.

Reviewers found an average of 2.9 out of seven spelling and grammar errors in the memo by the white Thomas Meyer and 5.8 out of seven errors in the memo by the African-American Thomas Meyer. (In other words, they scrutinized the Black Thomas Meyers work more closely seeking to find fault than they did with the White Thomas Meyer).

Why was the White Thomas Meyer viewed as “more meritorious?” Why was the Black Thomas Meyer deemed only average and “less meritorious?” Can you see any ways that such decision making would impact the futures of these two Thomas Meyers even though they are the same person? One was judged deserving and worthy—“meritorious.” The other deemed “average at best, needing a lot of work.”

Given that this is a well-documented pattern in many dominant culture educational spaces and workplaces is it possible that Josh was more qualified than you, he was viewed as being comparable to you? That you assumed were you comparable to each other.

I'm a senior OD professional who is an expert at experience engineering and bringing people together across difference. Our company frequently gets hired to design and deliver a lot of professional development adult action learning. We have an IRL sim game called NaviGate we deliver in corporations. It helps employees and their senior managers learn what sort of attributes and qualifications help their teams move laterally or up the corporate ranks. (Often to get to the C-Suite it is required that people have operations experience). It’s a very effective simulation to uncover how people think about themselves and their own qualifications as they also practice asking for sponsorship, championship and mentorship. It also helps the hiring managers uncover and practice working with different types of employees / team members than they would ordinarily cultivate opening their eyes to better candidates that may be excellent but have different strengths/styles than the hiring manager. Each participant has to pick up different kinds of experience in order to be ready to make their moves. Education. Social Capital/Social Networks. Professional Experience. Community/Culture. Each participant is assigned an identity / life story. They are not told how many stickers they need to acquire at each station to be ready for advancement. They have to pay attention to the action in the room. Having run this sim for years for thousands of employees we have learned that pretty routinely that white men assume that they are ready for advancement having only 2 to 3 stickers. Women and people of color regardless of ethnicity or culture of origin frequently wait until they have 15 to 20 stickers. The qualifications required are 7 - 10 stickers in order to progress. It is really eye opening for everyone. Frequently, they had been cultivating “the boys network” and not realizing that they were engaging in affinity bias. The exercise wasn’t about bias. It was about skill development. People got really engaged.

In addition to my professional experience, I'm the parent of three men. Two are white, one is black. Their educational and professional experiences have been night and day. I got to secret shop the difference. My Black child with the 35 on his ACTs and 4.0 at Brown University never received the opportunities that his “twin” who was two months younger with a degree from St. Olaf and a 26 on his ACTs received. I had to continually advocate on behalf of my straight A Black child. For my White children teacher’s routinely said “we want to ensure that they aren’t denied any opportunities.” I too wanted my children to be accepted for their excellence. But often it was really about what White leaders and managers viewed as affinity. The presumption of deficiency and incompetence of Black people was so deeply ingrained in our culture. It was hard to surmount. I thought being brilliant, hardworking, ambitious would be enough. It simply was not.

I respectfully request you pay attention to what you are paying attention. DEI isn't just about who we hire. I have had to go to an emergency room 7 times in my life. 100% of those times my doctor has been a White person. Six out of seven of those times the White doctor treated me as though I were a drug addict and under responded when I was in a medical crisis. You misunderstand DEI. Once the ball in my shoulder socket was literally exploded. The only person who got it right was the Somali radiologist who demanded that I be allowed to lay down for my x-rays. The doctor only started to treat me as though I deserved his care after he saw the films and decreed my shoulder “the worst shoulder break I have ever seen.” Until then they had refused me pain meds and were trying to make me stand up and pushed me back against the wall to take my x-rays.

I am tired of having to "get dressed up" when I'm in the middle of a medical crisis because of the treatment I receive from too many White doctors. Until 20 years ago medical schools actually taught that Black people felt less pain than White people.

DEI encompasses so much more than just the employee pool and cultivating talent. This isn't about "charity" or bleeding hearts. It's focused on practical considerations. Learning consideration and empathy for different people and different ways of showing up in the world is a strength and not a weakness.

My final thought: Because of not getting that one promotion you stopped being in touch with your mentor? I strongly recommend since it sounds as though you are very ambitious and talented that you step outside of that transactional conception and move to transformational relationships. There will be many more opportunities that will come your way. Don’t give up.