We write weekly on the issues that are top of mind for us as we do the work of driving equity, shifting culture and co-creating inclusion with our clients. To receive these posts via email, join our free weekly email series, Self-coaching for DEI advocates and leaders.
We talk a lot with our clients about slowing down to speed up.
Spoiler alert: it’s a little bit of a brain hack because ideally the goal isn’t to speed up at all, at least not purely for the sake of speeding up.
However, we are so deeply socialized into the idea that “progress is bigger/more” and into a “sense of urgency” that the idea of slowing down seems so deeply impossible, ill-advised, and unsafe to the point of being ludicrous.
Read MoreSomething that has been particularly striking to me recently in our work is how white people often have a hard time understanding what they have to gain from dismantling white supremacy.
There’s a certain approach to DEI that is about white people recognizing their privilege and that they need to give it up in order to “do the right thing.”
Often white folks have no idea what they themselves have given up or how they have been harmed in aligning with whiteness.
Read MoreFor those of you following along at home, NYC public high school decisions came out this week (on Thursday after school). Miraculously and unexpectedly, decisions were released in a relatively thoughtful and orderly fashion although not without various mishaps - I’m just saying, it could have been a lot worse after going through what was for many a harrowing, complex and inequitable application process.
One discussion struck me today though and reminded me that I feel like what is often not taken into account is that some kids work hard and don’t get good grades, and some don’t work hard and do get good grades
Read MoreSomething we encounter in our DEI work with client organizations is what we have started calling “willing but unable” - folks who really want to do the hard work of integrating DEI into everything they do but are unable to do so.
Of course, every time we say that, I find myself thinking, but are they really willing, though?
And if they are so willing, what is getting in the way?
Read MoreI’ve been experiencing a huge wave of grief lately.
Some of it is personal, some of it is systemic.
It’s painful, this deep and abiding grief.
Read MoreThe topic of invisible work has been coming up a lot lately.
Invisible work has been an undergirding principle of capitalism, patriarchy and white supremacy since the beginning of time immemorial - and it is deeply embedded into every aspect of US history and the ongoing legacy of a country founded on slavery, genocide and colonization.
Of course, at the inception of this country, it wasn’t just invisible work, it was the violently coerced labor of chattel slavery without which this country could not have built a viable economy, infrastructure or culture.
That legacy lives on today - we no longer have slavery but we still have invisible work.
Read MoreCan we talk about white violence?
Can we talk about white parents who bought their son a gun as an early Christmas gift?
Can we talk about the kind of white entitlement where a parent either assumes their son won't harm others or doesn't care that he might?
Read MoreI'm still in a space where I am thinking a lot about grief and trauma, and not just thinking about it but feeling it myself at a variety of different levels
Maybe the grief of the pandemic is making all the other grief feel closer to the surface and easier to access, but I'm seeing so many layers to my own grief and to the grief of others. In many ways, the work of diversity, equity, and inclusion is the work of holding space for the hurt and harm of white supremacy and other systems of oppression while also figuring out how to create space for healing, recovery, and growth.
Read MoreA friend shared a link to Gabrielle Union-Wade's Instagram post of an interview with Venus Williams at age 14.
Says Gabrielle:
Speaking up for yourself, for a cause you believe in, for your co-workers, for what's fair and just, or even for your children can be scary. The fear of backlash, the fear of being labeled "difficult" or "aggressive" or being othered is ever present and real.
Read MoreWhite supremacy (not far-right extremist groups but the mainstream system embedded in every aspect of our systems and culture here in the US and across the globe) deeply entrenched in people and organizations that are supposed to be there to help, that are the "well-intentioned" ones - I've come to expect it, yet it still cuts deep, so maybe I'm not as prepared as I tell myself I am.
Or maybe the day it doesn't cut deep is the day I lose touch with my own humanity - I don't know. It's a fine line.
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