Last week’s column used MSNBC commentator Tucker Carlson’s Hillariphobia to introduce the subject of persistent sexism in the workplace(“Managers who have discriminating tastes,” Keep the Joint Running, 5/12/2008).

Last week, MSNBC commentator Chris Matthews provided more Hillariphobic drivel to help introduce this week’s column: “It’s almost as if Hillary Clinton is the Al Sharpton of white people.”

Clearly, the Fifth Amendment should override the First. As the t-shirt says, “You have the right to remain silent. Please exercise it.”

We need to continue last week’s discussion, to help out MSNBC if for no other reason.

Among the many e-mails I received were some that changed my view of the subject:

• An African-American IT professional described his experiences. He did not describe overt racism. What he told me is that over a long career he never stopped being an outsider, and it hurt his career.

• Another correspondent, Roy Schweiker, pointed out that some women, as well as the boss, like watching professional sports. Not all men do. “Of course,” he said, “if a man fails promotion for not talking sports he can’t file a discrimination suit.” Mr. Schweiker recommends calling the boss a “sportist.”

• Then there was this: “In my workplace, to ‘be one of the boys’ apparently requires a sincere dedication to video games and movies. This is all my manager and ‘his boys’ talk about, sometimes for hours on end while the rest of us do the work.

Needless to say, the interesting or prestigious projects, and the promotions, go to those employees who are most like the manager, or play ‘World of Warcraft’ with the manager.”

• And one more: “I’ve been working in corporate America for close to 25 years, in major corporations, including 5 years in Israel. I’m an Orthodox Chassidic Jew and have never been ‘one of the boys’ nor did I want to be.

Did it adversely affect my career? Of course it did. But I chose to be this way and I chose not to join the ‘boys club.’ Did I suffer financially? Of course I did.

Were all these corporations anti-Semitic? I don’t think so. But even if they were, does it really matter? I wish there weren’t anti-Semitism in the world. I also wish we lived in a perfect world. We don’t — we live in the world as it is, and have to deal with it.”

Until this week I considered “diversity training” to be a code phrase for “going through the motions to avoid legal liability.”

That does happen. There’s no excuse for it.

Diversity training has a vital role to play in every company big enough to have a diverse workforce. That role is to help managers especially, and also every employee, recognize how easily employees can divide into insiders and outsiders.

It doesn’t really matter whether the cause is a shared appreciation for sports, video games, soap operas or romance novels. Shared interests help build the trust needed for effective teams to function. When they cross the invisible line where building trust stops and making the workplace exclusionary starts, everyone has work to do.

Leadership has to (of course) take the lead. If a manager loves baseball, and enjoys talking about it with those employees who share her interest, that’s fine … so long as the manager shows just as much interest in talking with other employees about what interests them.

Employees also have a role to play, on their own initiative regardless of how their manager behaves. That role is to recognize outsiders and help them feel included. Not everyone is comfortable barging into a conversation among people who are talking about a subject that’s of intense interest to the group but not to themselves. The group can help by inviting them in.

The group can also help by expressing interest in the outsider: “You don’t talk much about yourself, Howard — what do you do when you aren’t busy writing code?” is a decent, if obvious icebreaker.

This isn’t the tyranny of the minority, and outsiders can help themselves by expressing interest in whatever it is that the insiders find so fascinating. Who knows — even if knitting is your hobby, you might find World of Warcraft has some possibilities, too.

Diversity means we understand that our differences make life more interesting, that we all have common ground if we look for it, and that we turn our understanding into action.

Appreciating differences while finding common ground isn’t political correctness.

It’s simple good manners — no small thing in a team environment.

I like working with women.

When I treat men as equals and respect them as professionals, it’s routine and unnoticed. When I work with women and treat them the same way, a common response is relief, perhaps appreciation, and usually cooperation.

This is, of course, a gross generality. The worst corporate backstabber I ever ran afoul of was a woman. Or, rather, the best — she was a very talented backstabber.

Two recent Advice Lines came from women who have experienced sexism in the workplace throughout their successful careers (“Does gender matter?” 4/12/2008 and “Gender does matter, and it doesn’t matter,” 4/30/2008).

As usual, most of the comments posted in response were interesting, relevant, and perceptive. Then there were the other kind — the ones that worried most about “reverse sexism” and “playing the gender card.”

It is true that in some companies and some situations, less competent women are promoted over more competent men. In my experience it’s more common that men assume a woman has achieved her position because of reverse sexism … or worse … and not because she is very good at her job.

Sexism has always been a more difficult subject than racism. Here’s how far we’ve come when it comes to race: When, in 1967, Sidney Poitier dated a white woman in Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, the controversy was huge and enduring. When, in 1998 … just thirty years later … Wesley Snipes dated a white woman in U.S. Marshals, nobody even noticed.

Yes, there are still some antediluvians who think African Americans are genetically inferior. There are also some who think the earth is flat. (A different question for a different time: Whether American society continues to suffer the social residues of past racism. It does, creating serious challenges for us all.)

In 1967, many men considered feminism to be disturbing and unnatural. Forty years later this has changed much less. Example: Last year, when MSNBC’s Tucker Carlson said of Hillary Clinton, “[T]here’s just something about her that feels castrating, overbearing, and scary … I cross my legs involuntarily every time she comes on the air,” it barely created a stir.

Had he made an equivalent comment about Barack Obama (what would it be? Perhaps, “His ties look like gang colors — they make me want to hand over my wallet,”) it’s safe to say it wouldn’t have gone unnoticed.

Sexism is a more difficult subject than racism for several reasons, among them:

• The racial differences between people are, almost literally, skin deep and little more. The gender differences between people are inescapably profound and extend far beyond both appearance and anatomy.

• Women have babies. Men don’t. So while it is possible to insist that society treat people of different ethnicities exactly the same, the same insistence applied to men and women isn’t entirely meaningful.

• Women are more likely to take time away from their careers while their children are young than men. As a result, the statistical demonstration of sexism is a more complex task than the statistical demonstration of racism.

• Amateur biologists commonly engage in junk science, overstating the cognitive and behavioral impacts of estrogen and testosterone, based on third-hand accounts of research whose interpretation is not yet certain.

As a manager, start by paying attention to what the women actually said in Advice Line. Two snapshots:

“My problem is, I’m not “one of the boys,” and don’t want to be one of the boys. Throughout my career, though, being one of the boys has been at least as important as my actual performance.”

And,

“Most male managers are not sexist, at least not consciously. There are many, however, who do discriminate without even realizing it. The interesting or prestigious project usually goes to a male employee who is most like the manager, or plays golf with the manager …”

I’ll add to this a sadly common experience for women: The boss invites his cronies, including many direct reports, to a local strip joint. Anyone is welcome to join them, of course.

This leaves the women with no good choices. They either don’t join the guys, which increases the extent to which they are outsiders; they do, which gives their tacit approval and which some men might interpret as an invitation to make a pass; or they complain, which creates friction, tension, and hostility.

Why is this okay?

Leaders are responsible for building team identity.

Those who equate a sense of team identity with “being one of the boys” do discriminate against those who aren’t boys.

By definition.