Welcome to the enduring phase of your allyship journey!

We know how overwhelming this can be, so congratulations! Pat yourself on the back for coming this far, and acknowledge that you will have to continue to self-lead through the rest of your journey.

At this point, take some time to assess your mental health. Do you need a break? Do you need some down time? In your journey of allyship, you will experience ebbs and flows, and it’s just important to keep tabs on how you’re doing. Remember, you can’t be there for anyone else, until you’re there for yourself.

Let's review what we've learned:

• The status quo benefits white people, because those are the people who created the systems.

• Diversity is the awareness of differences among people, including race, age, gender, etc. On it's own, diversity is not a good strategy for companies.

• Inclusion focuses on feelings of belonging and kindness, where people feel as though they are accepted for who they are.

Harvard Business Review went on to say that if we truly want to achieve equity in the workplace, "Instead of trying to change some people to fit the organization, we must focus on transforming our organizations to fit all people."

Where do we see this happen a lot? Well, have you ever heard of hiring for culture fit? Most likely you have heard the term “culture fit” in regards to recruiting and hiring, and it’s likely that most of us have participated in this type of interview before. You’re given questions that ask a candidate about how they have worked on a team, how they make decisions, and other things to help you learn about how they would “fit into the organization.”

Here lies the problem.

If you’re seeking a “culture fit,” you’re innately eliminating diverse candidates.

You're effectively looking past diversity and inclusion, and are perpetuating the same issues as before.

We need to focus on giving equal opportunity for Black and POC. When we achieve racial equity, CSI says you’ll be able to see things like:

• People, including people of color, are owners, planners, and decision-makers in the systems that govern their lives.

• We acknowledge and account for past and current inequities, and provide all people, particularly those most impacted by racial inequities, the infrastructure needed to thrive.

• Everyone benefits from a more just, equitable system.

Action Items

• Read this article from CSI to learn about 4 actionable things that can be done to move the needle towards equity.

• Identify 5 people who you want to take with on this journey of allyship and invite them along.

You’ve done the work to understand what influences your decisions, how they impact others, and ways to be aware of how you’re coming off to others. But what actual changes are you going to make to hold yourself (and others!) accountable?

An article by John Rice identifies that in order to be able to effectively address racist behaviors, we must define them. Let’s identify some concrete, real-life scenarios that you can commit to as part of this journey:

• Stand up for what is right – even in uncomfortable situations like your workplace.

  • For example, companies usually promote a ‘meritocracy,’ because it is comfortable and appears inclusive on the surface. John Rice writes about this, saying:

    • “Organizations cannot be meritocracies if their small number of Black employees spend a third of their mental bandwidth in every meeting of every day distracted by questions of race and outcomes. Why are there not more people like me? Am I being treated differently? Do my white colleagues view me as less capable? Am I actually less capable? Will my mistakes reflect negatively on other black people in my firm? These questions detract from our energy to compete for promotions with white peers who have never spent a moment distracted in this way. I wager that 90 percent of the white executives who read these last sentences are now asking, particularly after recent events, ‘How did we miss that?’”

  • Boiled down: see something, say something. If you see something racist happening in your workplace, CALL IT OUT. And then, hold the company accountable to change.

  • Ask for concrete numbers, studies, data, anything. Put pressure on your organizations doing the work, instead of just paying lip service.

• Be the enforcer, especially in public.

  • If we’re talking about unconscious biases, let’s acknowledge that generalizations are dangerous.

  • Let’s say you’re a protester, marching the streets for change. You firsthand know about the goal of protesting, but often see others inciting violence, clashing with police officers, and breaking off from the main group. This is your opportunity to step in and diffuse the situation. Take for example:

    • “Stanford Sociologist Robb Willer studied violent confrontations between white nationalist protesters and anti-racist counter-protesters in both Charlottesville, Virginia, and Berkeley, California, and found that violence by anti-racist protesters can lead people to view them as unreasonable, which may, in turn, lead to people identifying less with the group.”

• Keep the pressure on.

  • We know things need to change, but we also know that it’s our responsibility to make these changes happen. Change, specifically in terms of systemic racism, will not change over night, so do your part to keep the pressure on decision makers and those in charge,

    • “Structural changes are very expensive to implement, and they involve a zero-sum logic that places powerful institutions on the wrong side of history. They involve transferring money currently earmarked for police weaponry to underfunded schools in Black communities; slashing the military budget to finance low-income housing; and taxing obscene levels of executive pay and bloated corporate profits to make the minimum wage a living wage. To achieve structural changes, widespread and sustained social disruptions must continue until the powerful people and institutions whose funds are needed for equalization are ready to negotiate.’

    • Call you representatives and call for change. There’s a reason that we sign petitions and lobby our congresspeople for change – because it works!

Action Items

• Identify 3 issues you can call your representatives about, and contact them to talk about the issue.

• Send this site to three of your friends and offer to be a point of contact throughout their journey.

Take this example from this Vox article: “An African-American man is going to experience the world differently than an African-American woman. Somebody who is LGBT is going to experience the world differently than somebody who’s straight. Somebody who’s LGBT and African-American is going to experience the world differently than somebody who’s LGBT and Latina. It’s sort of this common sense notion that different categories of people have different kinds of experience.”

Reading this example, intersectionality makes sense, right?

Based on our experiences, our opinions, our beliefs, and our behaviors, we all experience the world in different ways. So as you could imagine, being Black in America is hard enough, but then we get into these different dimensions of who we are, and that’s where it gets complicated.

• Intersectionality for Black people is a hardship in everyday situations:

  • Psychology Today notes: “There can be far more dire consequences when certain identities intersect. Transgender women of color, for instance, have three targets on them because of societal prejudice: being trans, women, and non-white — and they suffer from the highest murder rate in the nation. “

  • RacialEquityTools.org notes: “The concept of political intersectionality highlights the fact that women of color are situated within at least two subordinated groups that frequently pursue conflicting political agendas. The need to split one's political energies between two sometimes opposing political agendas is a dimension of intersectional disempowerment that men of color and white women seldom confront.”

  • The National Association of School Psychologists notes: “In many cases, implicit bias and stereotyping contribute to educators' perceptions that Black girls' behaviors are in opposition to institutional norms (Crenshaw et al., 2015). This results in systemic discrimination that leads to negative outcomes for Black girls, including underachievement, school dropout, and increased marginalization within the school setting via suspensions, expulsions, and involvement with the criminal justice system (Crenshaw et al., 2015).”

Take 3 minutes to watch this video about the intersectionality of being Black and female, and how it compounds with other elements of identity.

All of the systems that this country are built on are geared towards white men, all of our structures identify them as superior.

Action items:

• Read Kimberlé Crenshaw’s full publication about intersectionality.

• Read this article by Roberta Timothy.

• Do this activity.

• Sign up for Rachel Cargle’s 30 day “The Great Unlearn”

While we’re all stuck inside quarantining, we might be wondering how we could possibly work on building our empathy during this time of isolation. It may seem harder than it sounds – but you just have to be creative!

Let’s think about one really important piece of empathy and white privilege. We know that empathy is the practice of putting yourself in someone else’s shoes, but as allies, we have to make sure that we are not centering on ourselves. Instead of wanting to share stories or talk about your experiences, make it a point to just listen. Listen with intent, with gratitude for them sharing their story, and listen to grow.

Verywell has identified some ways to continue working on your empathy during quarantine:

“i” statements

We’ve finally reached the end!

This section is pretty forward and isn’t too complicated: We’ve spent a lot of time identifying how often we are centering the conversation of racism on ourselves as white people, and ways to over come that. So, what’s next?

Keep. It. Up.

Continue having hard conversations. Continue keeping yourself accountable to listen and support. Continue to learn, to grow, and to be a better ally. Continue to inspire others. Continue to fight for justice.

Allyship is a lifelong journey, remember?

continue expanding your knowledge

In order to continue growing and challenging yourself, you need to put work in to continue the fight. This includes changing where you get your information from, and we suggest reading through the following posts below to keep yourself moving forward.