The Pink Elephant: A Practical Guide to Creating an Anti-Racist Organization: A Practical Guide to Creating an Anti-Racist

A Practical Guide

Janice Gassam Asare

• Editorial: BWG BUSINESS SOLUTIONS
• Año: 2020
• ISBN:
  9780578826431
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: Business
• Categoría: Business General

The Racial Revolution of 2020 pushed anti-racism to the forefront of the global conversation. For the first time in history, many companies have had to take an honest look at how little progress has been made in regard to racial equity in the workplace. The diversity, equity, and inclusion industry has been around for decades and strides have been made to create a more diverse workforce, however, more must be done to ensure that people of various backgrounds feel respected, valued and included.

The Pink Elephant is a practical guide to creating a more racially equitable workplace for all employees. This book explores tools for effective racial dialogue, how to unpack and understand our privilege, best practices for anti-racism workshops, and strategies to break the habit of systemic racism in the workplace. For anyone looking to transfer the lessons learned in the summer of 2020 into corporate America, this is the book for you.

Chapter 1

Why is Race so Hard to Talk About?

Race is like a hot pink elephant. Imagine how difficult it would be to ignore a hot pink elephant that walks into a room. You pretend it’s not there and you don’t see it, but you do from the corner of your eye. How silly is it to pretend you don’t see the hot pink elephant? That’s how many organizations operate. Race has become the hot pink elephant that leaders and employees alike pretend they don’t see because they’re “colorblind”. At some point in recent decades, this disturbing colorblind mantra has become the norm. I’m here to tell you that the goal is not and has never been colorblindness. If you have eyes to see, race will be one of the first defining factors that you notice about a person. Saying you don’t see race is simply a fallacy. The goal is to recognize our unique racial differences but not allow these differences to influence our decision-making.

When I started doing workshops and training within corporations, I was almost always steered away from focusing on racial equity, white supremacy, and white privilege. When conversing with clients about what my workshops focused on, there has been a strategic effort by company leaders to direct (or rather redirect) my focus to topics like emotional intelligence, diversity of thought and gender diversity. While these topics are extremely important and necessary to focus on to create a more equitable and inclusive workplace, they are not the reasons we are in the conundrum that is our current reality. We, as a country, have shied away from talking about race and racism. There is an oft-quoted saying that those who do not learn from history will be doomed to repeat it. It is imperative for us, as a country, to learn and understand our history to have a deeper recognition of how systemic and structural racism has manifested for hundreds of years.

At a Black History Month event I attended years ago, one of the speakers said something that I’ll never forget. He explained that he thinks it’s so challenging for people to have racial dialogue because of the lack of relatability that people have towards communities of color. He gave an example that everyone knows someone who is a woman, so having discussions on gender equity is not challenging for people. In addition, many of us have friends or family who are a part of the LGBTQIA+ community, so solidarity and understanding with this community are again, less challenging for us. But when it comes to race, many of us only hang out with members of our own racial group and we don’t have people in our immediate circle who are of different races, which makes racial understanding more challenging.

Corporate leaders may shy away from these particular conversations because of fears of offending others. In speaking with a number of white leaders who share their difficulties in this domain, there are genuine fears of saying the wrong thing and offending members of marginalized groups. These are legitimate concerns. If you have grown up in a society like the United States where anti-blackness and white supremacy have been ingrained into everything we do, it will take many years to unlearn what we’ve been programmed to do. And that is okay. But we have to be willing to engage in the conversation if we are ever going to produce real and long term change.

White privilege is a topic that is sometimes challenging for white people to understand. White privilege can be thought of as the invisible access and opportunity afforded to white people simply because of their skin color. Examples of white privilege come in many forms. One can look no further than the inequities in sentencing rates of white and non-white criminals, the housing discrimination that still takes place in different parts of the country where Black homebuyers experience greater challenges with purchasing homes and securing funding for homes, and even the discrepancies in venture capital funding that business owners of color receive compared to their white counterparts. One of the main reasons why racial dialogue is challenging is because of the lack of understanding in regards to white privilege. Also, the conversation rarely extends further than the discussion of white privilege. In order to understand how to create a racially equitable organization, the conversation must be amended to include discussions about how one’s privilege can be used to impact change (which we will discuss in later chapters).

Acknowledging privilege is hard. And many assume that having privilege means you did not work hard to get to where you are. That is a fallacy. You can still be a hardworking and tenacious individual who has simultaneously benefited from a system that upholds and advantages white people. This is one of the main reasons why white people struggle with conversations about race. Also, accompanied by these conversations may be a sense of guilt. Guilt around what was done to BIPOC in America and the horrible atrocity that was American slavery. Although we are roughly six generations removed from slavery and no one currently alive was an enslaved person, the impacts of slavery are still being felt in America today. Opening up a conversation about race can often spark white guilt which can then lead to defensiveness, denial and disagreements. The goal of racial dialogue should never be to place blame on one group or victimize another. It is impossible to undo the past but the start of change begins with awareness, acceptance, acknowledgment and accountability.

Understand that conversations about race, especially at first, will be challenging. You will likely say the wrong thing. We have to unlearn and undo a lifetime's worth of misconceptions and stereotypes that have shaped our biases and racism. I don’t want you to feel guilty about what happened in the past. But I implore you to engage in dialogue with people from different backgrounds to bridge the gaps of misunderstanding. The similar-to-me effect is the phenomenon where people gravitate toward others who are similar to them. Not surprisingly, this manifests in several ways including our likelihood and propensity to forge bonds with individuals who are the same race as us. What this often translates to is lower numbers of cross-racial friendships and more homogeneity in our circles. If the majority of your friends look, talk, and think like you, it will be harder to break out of these ingrained patterns of thinking.

There is also an expectation that conversations about race should and will be simple. But the reality is that racial dialogue is complex, confusing and can challenge everything you’ve ever known but these conversations are necessary as we strive for greater understanding. I recognize that even as a DEI practitioner who does work around racial equity and inclusion, I still have my own blindspots and I try to adopt the mindset that sometimes, even though some people label me as a subject matter expert I will get things wrong. It’s important to mention that I don’t even really believe that people can be “experts” or even “subject matter experts” in racial equity. Everyone is an expert in their own experiences. What I would love to see more of is BIPOC being asked to facilitate discussions on race. BIPOC and particularly Black people are rarely seen as experts of our own oppression. If you look at many of the popular books on racism and racial bias, many of them are written by non-BIPOC authors. Disrupting racism and bias requires radical empathy and the ability to put yourself in the shoes of others. Without hearing personal narratives and anecdotes of how people experience racism in various forms, it’s harder to empathize and understand another person’s experiences.

When you’re in the midst of a conversation about race, remember a few things: it’s going to be challenging, especially if this is the first conversation about race that you are having with someone. An important point to remember and note is that change does not occur through comfortability. A predecessor to growth and development is uncomfortability. Remove the expectation that the discussion will be easy; it won’t be. There’s also a possibility that it will not be a productive dialogue (we will explore strategies to utilize for more productive dialogue in later chapters). But what you’re ultimately doing is planting seeds, which will hopefully grow and manifest into change. But no change can happen if you’re too afraid, nervous or apprehensive to have the conversation.

The Racial Revolution of 2020 allowed the world, and particularly the U.S., to see that we can’t keep running from conversations about race. You likely picked up this book because you wanted guidelines to navigate racial dialogue at work. Maybe you want to gain a better understanding of how to support your colleagues of color. Perhaps you’re trying to foster an organizational culture that promotes racial equity. Whatever the reason you picked up this book, you must realize that the first part of creating an anti-racist organization is recognizing the history and how racial groups have been systematically and historically disadvantaged in the United States for centuries. We will briefly explore the history and examine how to recognize and be aware of our own biases. We will also explore strategies for effective racial dialogue and examine ways that we can use our power and privilege to create change.

Chapter 2

A Very Brief History of Systemic Racism in the United States

In order to understand how to create a workplace that fosters racial equity and inclusion, it’s imperative to understand how past practices, policies, and laws systematically disadvantaged different racial groups. This chapter examines a few major moments that contributed to the societal racism of different groups. To unlearn our own racial biases, we must first recognize the countless ways that systems have been structured to harm BIPOC. These moments are in chronological order and are by no means exhaustive or extensive. I chose to highlight these particular cases because of the trickle-down effects that they had on different racial groups. I will very briefly describe these moments and highlight their long term implications. I encourage you to learn and read more about each of these.

• Indian Removal Act of 1830: Based on this law, which was endorsed by President Andrew Jackson, Indigenous peoples of the United States were forcibly removed from their lands and had to walk across several states to their designated territory. Many suffered from hunger, disease, and even death on their voyage₁.
  
  Trickle-down effect: Indigenous peoples in the U.S. still currently experience several challenges including poverty, unemployment, and higher rates of adverse health conditions.
• Special Order No. 15: Based on this 1865 policy, enslaved African people were supposed to receive 40 acres of the southern land. When Andrew Johnson became president following Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, this order was rescinded and therefore never came to fruition₂.
  
  Trickle-down effect: Black people in the U.S. never received the “40 acres and a mule” that were promised to them. Black people were unable to accumulate wealth at comparable rates to their white counterparts which contributes to the racial wealth gap. One of the best ways to build wealth is via property. Black people being denied the rights to own property through discriminatory housing practices and being denied land that was rightfully owed to them for centuries of free labor has slowed Black economic progress and has created additional barriers to wealth building.
• Chinese Exclusion Act: Based on this 1882 law, Chinese people were not allowed to immigrate to the United States₃.
  
  Trickle-down effect: Xenophobia and racism against Asian people still takes place and were evident in early 2020 when Covid-19 spread across the United States. East Asians have been labeled the model minority and there is a false perception in society that they do not experience discrimination but in the workplace, they must overcome the bamboo ceiling, which is the invisible barrier that they face in the workplace. East Asians experience challenges when trying to ascend into leadership positions largely because of the false perception that Asians do not possess leadership skills.
• Separate but Equal: Based on the Plessy versus Ferguson case in 1896 where The Supreme Court agreed that segregation was legal because although Black and white institutions and facilities were separate they were “equal₄.”
  
  Trickle-down effect: Although Plessy versus Ferguson was overturned by The Supreme Court, legal forms of it still take place today. Integration was mandated more than 50 years ago, but conditions in mostly BIPOC versus white neighborhoods are not the same. Forced integration gave a false belief that things were going to be equal but they are still inequitable today. Property values in white neighborhoods tend to be higher, on average, than majority-BIPOC neighborhoods. Property values determine how much funding public schools receive, causing obvious disparities in educational funding for certain school districts.
• The Immigration Act of 1924: Under this legislation, which was passed under President Calvin Coolidge,...

Índice

• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Why is Race so Hard to Talk About?
• Chapter 2: A Very Brief History of Systemic Racism in the United States
• Chapter 3: Disrupting and Dismantling White Supremacy
• Chapter 4: Understanding and Unpacking Your Privilege
• Chapter 5: Strategies for Effective Racial Dialogue
• Chapter 6: Racial Dialogue Detractions and Deflections to Avoid
• Chapter 7: Anti-Racism Education in the Workplace
• Chapter 8: How to Support Your Black Employees
• Chapter 9: Breaking the Habit of Systemic Racism
• Chapter 10: Frequently Asked Questions in the Workplace
• The Pink Elephant Quick Reference Guide
• Epilogue
• References