Dismantling White Supremacy Values
I have been on quite the journey in the DEIB space. I have had the great fortune over the last several years to participate in monthly dialogue and workshops via the Executives Undoing Racism workgroup. I have engaged in all day trainings with folks from this group who lead the People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond. I have sought counsel from colleagues and consultants relative to leadership in an agency’s work towards becoming an antiracist organization. I have participated in and led, affinity groups. Still, until recently, I felt a bit directionless as a white-identifying, cisgender male leader looking to grow in his self-awareness of his privilege, particularly in professional spaces, and become a leader who could truly contribute to anti-racist change in partnership with the wider organization.
In the wake of George Floyd’s murder, the organization at which I was working launched a very organic response, polling the entire employee community as to the levers that would affect antiracist change within the organization and then providing opportunities for all employees to join focus groups centered on the levers identified. Unfortunately, though the initial response was robust, interest waned quickly, and the work ultimately, and in my opinion as is too often the case, rested on the shoulders of two black-identifying women. These leaders carefully elevated monthly recognition celebrations of one marginalized community after another. In the words of one of these leaders, the work quickly began to look like a celebration of “All Lives Matter.” While I believe these efforts positively impacted the organization, we were still left wondering if there wasn’t more we could be doing to affect deeper, more impactful change. Additionally, and perhaps equally important and daunting a question, how did we go about getting a sustained response from a larger, more diverse cross section of the organization?
More recently, I have had the great fortune to be involved in human resources work looking to reduce barriers for a more diverse workforce to gain entry into and achieve promotion within, an organization. Concurrently, I have participated in employee work groups that have focused on removing values of white supremacy within the agency’s organizational culture and replacing them with values that resonate with a diverse workforce and consumer base. This work has truly moved the organization toward a more welcoming culture in which diversity, equity, inclusion, belonging, and advancement can truly grow and flourish, so I thought it worthwhile to share a few of the key values typically in need of replacement in a nonprofit.
Perfectionism: I very much get it; there is so much riding on the quality of program performance and reporting to every funder. However, in white supremacy culture, there is tremendous emphasis on what is not working and mistakes that are made, versus building upon what is working and seeing mistakes as both an inevitability and opportunity for growth. Further, when things do go well, white supremacy culture lauds those at the top, more often white, even in nonprofit spaces, rather than elevating all the hard workers in the celebrated program, more often a much more diverse group of folks. I would suggest that leaders interested in shifting an organization toward antiracist values should be showing daily appreciation at every opportunity and partnering with program staff to enact their recommendations for program improvement, recognizing their proximity to the work, expertise, and the incredible responsibility placed on them every day.
Quantity over Quality: Aligned with a longstanding white supremacy value that “bigger is better,” a very common word in the nonprofit space these days is scalability. How do we or how fast can we, bring a program to scale is a common question in leadership circles. Further, in the nonprofit funding world that works on a principle of “do more with less” and spend a higher percentage of every dollar in program, leaders are driven to find more and more funding streams to ultimately fund the larger organization’s operation. Staff are stretched thin. Quality becomes compromised. This approach creates a very unwelcoming environment. I would suggest that leaders looking to make a shift to a more inclusive, welcoming organizational culture should focus on funding opportunities that enhance the services within current programs and add critical administrative dollars versus seeking brand new funding streams for new programming or even tangentially-related programming.
Paternalism: Nonprofits are very often just as top down as the corporate world in their decision making. This is not reflective of a culture built on equity and inclusion. Some agencies do take steps towards inclusivity by creating employee work groups but fail to establish how the product of these groups will be definitively incorporated into agency advancement versus just considered. Further, in most organizations, despite the incredibly intense, difficult work of moving an organization towards more equitable, inclusive, welcoming, anti-racist policies and practices, those in these work groups are expected to participate without any form of compensation or remuneration. Isn’t free labor at the core of this country’s white supremacy history? I would suggest that leaders must devise meaningful group work experiences so that all levels of staff within the organization can contribute to the development of new policy and procedure and be compensated and recognized for their contributions.
Fear: I was most recently introduced to the use of fear as a white supremacy value. While this makes clear historical sense, it was very eye opening to explore with co-workers. In the often data-driven nonprofit work space, management by fear pervades. Weekly, monthly, and/or quarterly performance targets or benchmarks must be hit. In those nonprofits in which leaders may not rely on fear, they are likely funded by at least one funder and/or government agency who does. I would suggest that leaders need to advocate with funders around outcomes messaging to program teams and take a more data-informed, versus data driven, approach to the work. Some of my best staff meetings have been those in which teams come around a table (or Zoom room) to analyze data points and together develop theories related to what the data is saying and create a collective response.
Individualism: I have a whole soapbox speech about how individualism will eventually lead to the demise of this country, and I believe the same can be said for a nonprofit. It can stand alone as a white supremacy value, but individualism also really sits at the foundation of the other values I have reviewed in this piece - the need for everything to be all about me, to get individual recognition and credit, and to maybe or maybe not consider the input of others. The work faced by nonprofits is daunting, largely due to the individualism that pervades American society and its economic system – a sneak peek into my soapbox speech – so there is a need for nonprofits to recognize the greater power in the collective. I would suggest that leaders learn to celebrate how the power of numerous and diverse folks working in unison can bring the skills, perspectives, lived experiences, languages, and dare I say, magic necessary to truly help a program’s participants succeed.