The Winding Path to Racial Equity

Recently, I got an inquiry from Lauren, the Executive Director of an environmental organization, to facilitate a strategic planning process that included a focus on equity (Note: names and identifying details changed for confidentiality.).

Within a few days I got a similar request from Jake, the Executive Director of an organization that serves children.

And I am on the board of the Alliance for Nonprofit Management, a historically white-led organization that is doing similar work. We’ve just approved a strategic plan that includes our focus on becoming an anti-racist organization.

From so many different directions, I hear about leaders of white-led organizations considering how racial equity can be incorporated into strategic planning or board governance processes.

I recently wrote a series on strategic planning. While I wrote about how different organizations are incorporating equity into their strategic planning processes, there is more to say about how different organizations are doing this.

Short answer: the process is not a straight line.

And a longer answer, I’ve started talking with clients about the spiral towards racial equity, depicted above.

How do historically white-led organizations move towards equity?

At the most basic level, equity means that:
a) systems are shifted so that BIPOCs (Black, Indigenous and People of Color) who have been historically and systemically disadvantaged in terms of access to wealth, power, education and health have the resources to enjoy full, healthy lives, and
b) the people closest to those challenges have the power to dictate the solutions.

For these types of organizations, the path to equity is a one of behavior change. It is a shift in the way we work together – our policies, practices, even who the “we” becomes.

It’s helpful for leaders to understand that before starting on the journey. There is an intellectual part of this process that organizational leaders go through as they deepen their understanding of systemic racism and how inequity exists in their organization.

But even deeper, this is work that, as Resmaa Menakem points out, happens in our bodies as we understand our own role in perpetuating racism or white supremacy. As I have written before, these are moments of our hearts cracking open as we, white people, understand our society’s historical and current violence against people who are Black, Indigenous, Latinx and Asian-Pacific Islander.

In your mind, take a few minutes to consider a time when you changed your behavior.

Here’s an easy one: One day, you commuted to your workplace and socialized with others in groups. The next day, you learned that, because of the pandemic, we could no longer go to our workplaces and socialize with friends, family, and colleagues in groups.

How did this feel? You were probably disoriented as you experienced a shift in your usual routine. Most of us experienced anxiety and grief through these shifts and the loss of the pandemic. You may still be experiencing anxiety, grief and a longing for greater certainty and clarity.

Behavior change is motivated by vision and purpose. If you have changed your behavior this year, whether socially distancing or wearing a mask or taking other precautions to prevent COVID-19, you did these things because you cared about the health of your family and community.

And the behavior change we need to move towards equity starts with that same kind of vision. Why do we care about moving towards equity?

For two recent clients who focus on the environment field, their answers combined social justice and strategy: staff and board members deeply believed that people of all racial backgrounds deserve to enjoy full healthy lives.

They also saw a strategic advantage in deepening their path to equity, since the work they were doing demanded it.

This clarity of vision gave them the motivation to continue on the path to equity, even when it got difficult.

For the Alliance for Nonprofit Management, our new strategic plan comes after “several years of Alliance conferences that increasingly centered equity and racial justice in capacity building…leading to a recognition that supporting anti-racist and anti-oppression efforts are key to our values and our vision of a better, stronger world.” (From the Strategic Plan Executive Summary.) Toward that end, our first strategic pillar is restructuring the Alliance to align with our values; this is work we’ll be doing for the next few years.

We’re living in prescient moments. Most white people would argue that they are not racist and feel that the current characterizations are unfair, that their intent is not conveyed in their actions and that everything is taken out of context. I wholly refute this notion – if someone shares an offense, then we should not excuse our behavior because we “didn’t mean” it. If someone says they were the victim of a racist act, then it is up to us to recognize our contribution to it. The more of us – white people – that act conscientiously and intentionally to fight the accepted social norms, the more we can affect social change. Truly, we have an opportunity today to move towards an anti-racist society. If we accomplish nothing else, that would already be so much.

Try this:

If you are engaging in a process to deepen equity in your organization, take some time to discuss:

• Why do we want to engage in this process?

• What have we observed, experienced or felt that helps us to know that we need to deepen our commitment to equity?