#workplace antiracism experts

[camp-counselor-life]

Someone I follow on Instagram (Teach and Transform) has it in her new followers highlight story that if you want to see some specific content, you should be the one to make it rather than requesting it from someone else (for free). This really resonates with me because a lot of the things I write for this blog just don't exist in other places. ACA is great, but their resources are different. Ultimate Camp Resource is great, but their resources are different. And I think that's pretty special, to have a unique resource out there in the world, which is why I'll probably never fully delete or deactivate this blog.

But, there are some things that I struggle with providing resources and content about, and mostly because they're areas that I'm new(ish) to, like diversity and antiracism. So I haven't been posting those as much. But I'd like to. You can find existing posts in the "diversity equity and inclusion" tag (I abbreviate as DEI). I hope to add more to this tag in the near future, and could quite possibly change the tag to address updated language, as I think that it's important to have the resources there, even if nobody interacts with them publicly.

Intersectionality tells us of intersecting identities: race, gender, sexual orientation, ability/disability, etc. One reason that I don't write a lot about DEI is because some of my identities are more prevalent than others in camp, but also my experiences are not diverse. I will never experience racism, even if I can still face racial bias. My camps and most workplaces have not been in racially or ethnically diverse areas and I have only worked at "single" gender camps (we all know GS camp is not actually single gender). I've never been "out" as a genderqueer staff at camp, navigating expectations of trans adults in a youth setting. I do not visibly present as disabled, or have high support needs, and haven't identified as disabled until recently. Not to play identity politics, but I'm not coming from a place to speak from experience about diversity or antiracism.

This got ramble-y, but I guess here's what I want to say. I do want to try and I do want to produce the content I want to see in the world. I will rely on sharing from experts, synthesis, and only add my experience if it does not take away from the voices I am sharing from. I will learn and I will grow, and I will share in my journey with you, so that you can join me.

[olderthannetfic]

"can't you see how racists in the fandom are celebrating this and using this to turn the table and invalidate all the antiracism work"

What I've seen of TOG fandom (and admittedly, it's not everything) has not been antiracism work. It has been people coming up with supposed gotchas to prove that their favorite version of a ship dynamic is more ethical.

However, many of these gotchas involve pointing to extremely racist porn tropes elsewhere and saying they apply to TOG fic. I agree that the way black actors are treated in mainstream live action US porn is racist and shameful. For me, this is more a labor issue behind the scenes than about the porn content, but I see the arguments about how the content actively spreads stereotypes, and I do think there's some basis for them given the wide reach of the content and more importantly the huge barriers to entry and the lack of other content. An African American porn star doesn't really have the option to choose a less racist workplace and less traumatic content to act in, and that's a problem.

The problem, to me, isn't people kinking on shit they know is wrong and offensive. I, a woman, like certain kinds of misogynistic porn, and I'm sure there are POC who get off on horrible things because they are horrible. The problem is when the actual porn creation involves trauma (something that becomes far more likely with live action and wages and relatively more avoidable with indie textual erotica, especially when the motivation is horniness rather than a paycheck). The problem with the end content is less about one piece of it being bad. After all, some people are consuming it with full awareness that it's playing with stereotypes. The issue is when we bathe in a sea of media that's all telling the same story and no voices are pushing back. That's the situation that reaffirms our unconscious biases and makes them worse.

At one point, I'd read most of the Joe/Nicky fic on AO3, and at that time, I really wasn't seeing textual evidence of what people were talking about. I saw a strikingly more equal interest in both characters than with many big m/m ships. I saw a mild tendency towards the usual woobie-bottom-fave stuff with Nicky, which does, yes, sometimes turn the other partner into a bit of a prop, and that hurts if they're your fave. I can certainly see how that feels like sidelining the character and how that plays into a broader pattern of devaluing nonwhite characters... but as someone who has liked a lot of characters fandom devalued this way, TOG did not strike me as a particularly notable case.

The arguing I saw was very much a standard top/bottom war and a "How dare you slightly prefer X over Y in our pairing where we all like both of them?" A lot of it was also "How dare you ignore my favorite fanon?", often very historically inaccurate and One True Way-y when, inherently, there's a lot of ambiguity to history and the target being screamed at was something of an expert. A lot of it was just hating on kink.

That callout now clarifies for me where a lot of the historical misinformation was probably springing from and makes it clear why the level of vitriol was so oddly high compared to similar fandoms.

I'm happy to look at specific evidence, anon, but vaguing about people being bad does not impress me. Many people make stupid posts one time and brilliant ones another or are cruel when they're angry but still have a point when they calm down.

If there's some pattern of bullying with the posters you dislike, you can describe it to me more fully even if they've cleverly hidden the receipts. I get why you might not have hard evidence, but there's a big gap between a detailed story with no evidence and extremely vague "they're racists" with no elaboration at all.

What it sounds like to me is that they advocated AO3-y freedom to make the fanworks one wants even if other people find them offensive.

What it sounds like to me is that they got called "racists" a lot to obfuscate that they were trying to point out someone else's racism.

If they're celebrating their bully's downfall, it's only natural.

If those specific posts have a subtext I've missed--I'm talking in the argumentation itself or in evidence being faked--then I want to know. Otherwise... dude... do you really think it's that easy to sow self doubt?

[swanlake1998]

Article: The Paris Opéra's Diversity Report Proposes Steps Towards a More Inclusive Company

Date: February 9, 2021

By: Laura Cappelle

Five years after Benjamin Millepied was met with fierce resistance for bringing up racist practices within the Paris Opéra Ballet, the French company is finally acknowledging its lack of diversity. This week, the Paris Opéra released an official report with recommendations, commissioned in the wake of last summer's racial reckoning and increased support for the Black Lives Matter movement.

At the time, the worldwide push for social justice encouraged a group of Black and Asian employees, led by the Paris Opéra Ballet's five Black dancers [Isaac Lopes Gomes, Awa Joannais, Guillaume Diop, Letizia Galloni, and Jack Gasztowtt], to write a manifesto demanding change. Among the issues they raised were the continued use of the French n-word, a lack of tights and cosmetics for darker skin tones, and the absence of an effective anti-discrimination policy. The Paris Opéra's new general director, Alexander Neef, who arrived in September from the Canadian Opera Company, lost no time in offering support, and appointed the historian Pap Ndiaye and the civil servant Constance Rivière to lead an independent audit.

Their 66-page report, based on interviews with nearly 100 people both inside and outside the Paris Opéra, is at once measured and unequivocal. In the report, the Paris Opéra is described as "mostly a white world far removed from contemporary French society," with artists, management, board members and donors who remain overwhelmingly un-diverse. (No actual data is available, as racial statistics are strongly discouraged in France.)

Some of the report's 19 recommendations will strike observers outside France as common sense in 2021. Eliminating blackface, brownface and yellowface from the repertoire, or "opening choreographic commissions to diverse choreographers," are hardly radical moves at this point, and the Paris Opéra Ballet should arguably have committed to them a long time ago. Ndiaye and Rivière do insist on the need for more creations rooted in the classical technique, a longtime gripe of many POB aficionados, as the company tends to look to contemporary and hip-hop dancemakers to signal its openness.

POB also took action on some basic demands before the report was even released: A wider range of makeup and hair products was recently introduced (in the past Black dancers had to bring their own products), and in late January, for the first time, Black corps members wore tights that matched their skin tones during a livestream of the annual Défilé.

Other recommendations go much further. The suggestion that POB "reach out to high-level non-white artists in France and abroad to hire them into the corps de ballet," in order to "create role models," will likely be controversial within the company, as it has consistently refused to change its entrance competition system and allow for direct recruitment. Additionally, Ndiaye and Rivière focus much of their attention on the Paris Opéra Ballet School, described as "very homogeneous," with regards to its teaching staff and the very few minority children. They advocate for reform of the admittance process.

At present, the school essentially waits for students to come to it; instead, the report's authors say that it should be "more open to the outside world," step up outreach efforts, rethink its stringent physical criteria and organize auditions all around the country as well as in French overseas territories. A clash looks inevitable with the current school director, Élisabeth Platel. She has long insisted that the school is doing enough and isn't elitist because tuition is free, and recently defended the use of white face powder on Black dancers.

Platel isn't alone in France: The Paris Opéra's newfound interest in becoming an inclusive workplace has already sparked a political war of words. Renewed demands for antiracist action in the country since last summer have been derided by conservative thinkers as American-style divisiveness, and incompatible with France's universalist model, which hinges on a colorblind ideal. In December, the far-right politician Marine Le Pen seized on the Paris Opéra's efforts to accuse Neef of "antiracism gone crazy" and "obscurantism." (POB étoile Germain Louvet rightly pointed out that the Swan Lake video Le Pen tweeted wasn't even a company production. It actually starred the Bolshoi's Svetlana Zakharova and La Scala's Roberto Bolle in Milan.)

Even within the Paris Opéra, proactive, long-term support for this diversity drive is far from guaranteed. According to the newspaper Le Monde, less than 300 Paris Opéra employees, out of roughly 1,500, signed the manifesto last summer; some have even made their reluctance clear on social media.

Many of the recommendations—which include employee training, the appointment of a diversity officer, the creation of a committee of experts and greater contextualization of the repertoire for the audience—will also require significant financial investment, at the worst possible time. Despite a €61 million pandemic rescue package from the French state, the Paris Opéra anticipates additional losses of €29 million through the end of the 2022 fiscal year, as theaters are currently shut for the foreseeable future.

Millepied found out during his tenure just how slow POB can be to change. His successor as ballet director, Aurélie Dupont, expressed support, but Neef is clearly taking the lead and has remained steadfast in the face of criticism. Now the hard work begins: changing minds and ingrained habits, day by day, even as the news cycle moves on.

[arcticdementor]

It’s been mind-boggling to watch White Fragility celebrated in recent weeks. When it surged past a Hunger Games book on bestseller lists, USA Today cheered, “American readers are more interested in combatting racism than in literary escapism.” When DiAngelo appeared on The Tonight Show, Jimmy Fallon gushed, “I know… everyone wants to talk to you right now!” White Fragility has been pitched as an uncontroversial road-map for fighting racism, at a time when after the murder of George Floyd Americans are suddenly (and appropriately) interested in doing just that. Except this isn’t a straightforward book about examining one’s own prejudices. Have the people hyping this impressively crazy book actually read it?

DiAngelo isn’t the first person to make a buck pushing tricked-up pseudo-intellectual horseshit as corporate wisdom, but she might be the first to do it selling Hitlerian race theory. White Fragility has a simple message: there is no such thing as a universal human experience, and we are defined not by our individual personalities or moral choices, but only by our racial category.

If your category is “white,” bad news: you have no identity apart from your participation in white supremacy (“Anti-blackness is foundational to our very identities… Whiteness has always been predicated on blackness”), which naturally means “a positive white identity is an impossible goal.”

DiAngelo instructs us there is nothing to be done here, except “strive to be less white.” To deny this theory, or to have the effrontery to sneak away from the tedium of DiAngelo’s lecturing – what she describes as “leaving the stress-inducing situation” – is to affirm her conception of white supremacy. This intellectual equivalent of the “ordeal by water” (if you float, you’re a witch) is orthodoxy across much of academia.

DiAngelo’s writing style is pure pain. The lexicon favored by intersectional theorists of this type is built around the same principles as Orwell’s Newspeak: it banishes ambiguity, nuance, and feeling and structures itself around sterile word pairs, like racist and antiracist, platform and deplatform, center and silence, that reduce all thinking to a series of binary choices. Ironically, Donald Trump does something similar, only with words like “AMAZING!” and “SAD!” that are simultaneously more childish and livelier.

…

It takes a special kind of ignorant for an author to choose an example that illustrates the mathematical opposite of one’s intended point, but this isn’t uncommon in White Fragility, which may be the dumbest book ever written. It makes The Art of the Deal read like Anna Karenina.

Yet these ideas are taking America by storm. The movement that calls itself “antiracism” – I think it deserves that name a lot less than “pro-lifers” deserve theirs and am amazed journalists parrot it without question – is complete in its pessimism about race relations. It sees the human being as locked into one of three categories: members of oppressed groups, allies, and white oppressors.

…

This dingbat racialist cult, which has no art, music, literature, and certainly no comedy, is the vision of “progress” institutional America has chosen to endorse in the Trump era. Why? Maybe because it fits. It won’t hurt the business model of the news media, which for decades now has been monetizing division and has known how to profit from moral panics and witch hunts since before Fleet street discovered the Mod/Rocker wars.

Democratic Party leaders, pioneers of the costless gesture, have already embraced this performative race politics as a useful tool for disciplining apostates like Bernie Sanders. Bernie took off in presidential politics as a hard-charging crusader against a Wall Street-fattened political establishment, and exited four years later a self-flagellating, defeated old white man who seemed to regret not apologizing more for his third house. Clad in kente cloth scarves, the Democrats who crushed him will burn up CSPAN with homilies on privilege even as they reassure donors they’ll stay away from Medicare for All or the carried interest tax break.

…

Corporate America doubtless views the current protest movement as something that can be addressed as an H.R. matter, among other things by hiring thousands of DiAngelos to institute codes for the proper mode of Black-white workplace interaction.

If you’re wondering what that might look like, here’s DiAngelo explaining how she handled the fallout from making a bad joke while she was “facilitating antiracism training” at the office of one of her clients.

When one employee responds negatively to the training, DiAngelo quips the person must have been put off by one of her Black female team members: “The white people,” she says, “were scared by Deborah’s hair.” (White priests of antiracism like DiAngelo seem universally to be more awkward and clueless around minorities than your average Trump-supporting construction worker).

…

The downside, which we’re already seeing, is that organizations everywhere will embrace powerful new tools for solving professional disputes, through a never-ending purge. One of the central tenets of DiAngelo’s book (and others like it) is that racism cannot be eradicated and can only be managed through constant, “lifelong” vigilance, much like the battle with addiction. A useful theory, if your business is selling teams of high-priced toxicity-hunters to corporations as next-generation versions of efficiency experts — in the fight against this disease, companies will need the help forever and ever.

Cancelations already are happening too fast to track. In a phenomenon that will be familiar to students of Russian history, accusers are beginning to appear alongside the accused. Three years ago a popular Canadian writer named Hal Niedzviecki was denounced for expressing the opinion that “anyone, anywhere, should be encouraged to imagine other peoples, other cultures, other identities." He reportedly was forced out of the Writer’s Union of Canada for the crime of “cultural appropriation,” and denounced as a racist by many, including a poet named Gwen Benaway. The latter said Niedzviecki “doesn’t see the humanity of indigenous peoples.” Last week, Benaway herself was denounced on Twitter for failing to provide proof that she was Indigenous.

…

People everywhere today are being encouraged to snitch out schoolmates, parents, and colleagues for thoughtcrime. The New York Times wrote a salutary piece about high schoolers scanning social media accounts of peers for evidence of “anti-black racism” to make public, because what can go wrong with encouraging teenagers to start submarining each other’s careers before they’ve even finished growing?  

“People who go to college end up becoming racist lawyers and doctors. I don’t want people like that to keep getting jobs,” one 16 year-old said. “Someone rly started a Google doc of racists and their info for us to ruin their lives… I love twitter,” wrote a different person, adding cheery emojis.

A bizarre echo of North Korea’s “three generations of punishment” doctrine could be seen in the boycotts of Holy Land grocery, a well-known hummus maker in Minneapolis. In recent weeks it’s been abandoned by clients and seen its lease pulled because of racist tweets made by the CEO’s 14 year-old daughter eight years ago.

[dippedanddripped]

Modern consumers are as politically and socially conscious as ever. While some brands respond out of fear of alienating sects of their audience, a recent Morning Consult study found that merely saying the “right things” or “standing in solidarity” no longer cut it with consumers. They want the brands they support to back up those platitudes with action.

At the moment — with protests against racial injustice continuing across the globe — companies face increased pressure to denounce discrimination publicly and solidify their commitments to diversity and inclusion. We have recently seen companies respond to this demand in a variety of ways.

After George Floyd’s death, some brands posted brief messages of support and solidarity on social media, while others launched full-scale multichannel marketing campaigns. Regardless of the approach, companies should proceed with care when commenting on current events — especially when they involve social justice or politically polarizing topics.

Throughout the digital age, businesses have amassed massive paper trails on their websites and social media accounts. With a small amount of legwork, consumers can easily comb through a company’s receipts to see which brands are offering lip service and which ones genuinely care. Any inauthentic or inaccurate statements about your commitment to diversity or equal rights can quickly be debunked, ridiculed, and shared virally across the internet.

Be About It Instead of Just Talking About It

Authenticity in marketing has always been a best practice, but it becomes even more crucial in this time of social unrest and Covid-19. Campaigns about current events and social issues leave companies vulnerable to a different and deeper level of scrutiny.

For example, in response to the coronavirus pandemic, Amazon released a commercial that thanked its “heroic” employees and described the company’s dedication to keeping them healthy and safe. The ad seemed heartfelt, but it became clear that the company was not “walking the walk” when coupled with Amazon’s recent employee strikes over workplace safety concerns.

Similarly, the NFL continues to struggle to authentically address racial injustice in America. For the past month, the league has been outspoken on social media about the horrors of systemic racism and police violence. But two short years ago, the NFL punished players for kneeling during the national anthem in protest of these same issues. Naturally, plenty of people have scrutinized their inconsistent stance.

This is not a time for companies to share generic, hollow, or hypocritical sentiments. Doing so can ring inauthentic and like a publicity stunt instead of a genuine attempt at contributing to the conversation. Instead, it is a time to be humble, own up to any mistakes, and express a desire to grow. This level of humility and authenticity is what consumers want to see right now, and it will help companies continue to build trust over the long run. Companies that acknowledge what is going on in the world, and that honestly want to improving things, strike the right chord with their customers. Companies that practice corporate social responsibility, for instance, can attribute 40% of their public reputation to that CSR work.

But authenticity can devolve into just lip service that companies hope will make them look good without having to do anything. I have seen it happen that way, and I understand the adverse effects it can have. To help brands maintain their campaigns’ authenticity and effectiveness during times of unrest, here are four tips I have seen work:

Step beyond your company’s perspective. Marketing teams often craft campaigns in a vacuum. When developing their messaging and imagery, they rely heavily on internal expertise and perspectives because they know their products better than any outsider would. However, topics like global health and racial injustice likely fall outside of the average marketing team’s purview. When attempting to comment on these sensitive topics, incorporate perspectives from outside experts to maintain the thoughtfulness and sincerity of your messaging.

Connect with brand leaders who have also had to adapt or overhaul their messaging and tactics during uncertain times. They usually have insights that can put the challenges you’re facing into perspective and help you avoid unexpected struggles in the future. In addition, pick the brain of your target audience to learn about what they want to hear and what will not work for them. These outsiders can hold a mirror up to your company, and allow you to see things more clearly.

For marketing teams, turning to people outside the organization can also illuminate when groupthink is leading them astray. When I worked at Dell, for example, the company decided to ramp up its marketing efforts toward women. I was asked to join an internal task force to help create these campaigns, but I quickly recused myself from the situation once I realized the CMO — who happened to be a woman — was intent on pushing stereotypical messaging, emphasizing topics like fashion and diet. She and her team would not listen to people outside of the task force that voiced concerns and warned her about this ill-conceived messaging built on outdated tropes. After the campaign went live, she ended up losing her job because of the ensuing public backlash over the campaign’s content.

Listen, process, and validate. When customers or employees voice concerns about your company’s response to Covid-19, racial injustice, or other current events, do more than listen to their feedback — work to process it critically. Pay close attention to the specific terminology they use and take it at face value. Do not try to read between the lines or defensively make assumptions about the way they feel. If you do, you are more likely to inject your biases and preconceptions into the mix. When crafting your response, mirror their phrasing and word choices to validate their concerns and show that you understand.

Take the case of what recently happened at Starbucks. The company faced significant backlash after consumers learned the retailer would not allow employees to wear any attire that said “Black Lives Matter.” This policy appeared to contradict previous statements made by the company on antiracism and inclusion. Starbucks validated consumer concerns when they spoke out against the hypocrisy, and the brand recently announced it would manufacture and distribute 250,000 “Black Lives Matter” shirts to its employees. While the move from some companies would be to dig in and not back down from such a public display, I think Starbucks deciding not to dig its heels in here was the right move. By acknowledging the hypocrisy and vowing to do better, it saved face and allowed the company to start somewhat anew.

Apologize without caveats or explanations. Do not underestimate the power of a sincere apology — even if the transgression occurred decades ago. Lucasfilm, for example, first came under fire in 1999 after creating Jar Jar Binks, a character many viewers believed to embody racist stereotypes. George Lucas has persistently denied any racist intent over the years, and he has refused to apologize for creating such a controversial character. With Jar Jar Binks back in the news recently, due to questions about the character’s appearing in an upcoming “Star Wars” TV project, Lucas has another opportunity to offer a sincere apology once and for all.

Expressing genuine contrition does not include caveats or explanations, and it should not take a rotation in the news cycle to spark remorse. It accepts fault and places the onus on the brand rather than the people who feel offended. Even if you do not immediately understand or agree with the complaints against your company, take time to self-reflect and determine why an apology might be necessary.

If you decide to express remorse publicly, admit your lack of understanding while explaining how you plan to educate yourself. Provide follow-up statements as you learn, evolve, and implement changes.

Do not make a one-off statement. We have established that apologies are not enough in today’s age. With “cancel culture” as pervasive as it is, a one-time reaction is as good as letting an issue get ahead of you. Instead, treat apologies or mea culpas as the first steps of an ongoing dialogue designed to bring about thoughtful and meaningful progress.

After you finish owning up to the issue and better educating yourself, demonstrate how you are continuing to grow and leave that development open. Look at household names like Aunt Jemima, Uncle Ben’s, Cream of Wheat, Mrs. Butterworth’s, and Eskimo Pie — today, these brands are taking a (much needed) step forward by revisiting their divisive and antiquated trademark packaging. While, in a better world, this would have happened many years ago, it does show that they are trying to grow and create more inclusive products.

What is powerful about the actions those brands are taking is that they are just that: actions. Statements without actionable follow-through are just hot air. In the best case scenario, they are ignored. In the worst case, your brand will face backlash and be worse off than if you stayed silent. Take the next logical step that shows that you can “walk the walk.”

Following through doesn’t have to be complicated or expensive: If you value your essential workers, give them an hourly boost for facing increased hazardous conditions. If you value the environment, plant a tree. If you support your local community, give each employee paid time off to volunteer at their favorite charities. If you are invested in inclusion and improving racial equality, hire and recruit candidates from underrepresented communities. Make these gestures routine instead of opportunistic to show that you are invested in bringing about real change.

Your company might not get it right 100% of the time, but sticking to your core values, communicating with care, and displaying a willingness to reevaluate your point of view will enable you to build trust with consumers while learning and growing alongside them.

[googlenewson]

Feeling it is unsafe to go outside, working day and night without breaks, seeing blatant examples of racism—a lot of society is experiencing this right now, but it’s only a small sample of the issues black Americans have always had to deal with.

Now, imagine that while you’re feeling all of these pressures, your employer asks you to lead a task force to solve racial injustice at the organization. This is what is happening to many black employees nowadays.

This is not a complaint; it’s a reality.

Don’t get me wrong: Black Americans are glad that finally after 400 years, there is mass outrage at racial injustice. Many of us have been fighting for change our entire lives, and were taught by our parents that it was our job to uplift our race. And we are glad that nonblack people want to be part of the solution. 

But I want to shed light on the fact that while this is indeed a unique moment, the responsibility of dismantling systemic racism must not be placed solely on black employees by asking them to fully lead diversity and antiracism efforts.

Black people did not create these problems, so please do not expect us to resolve them alone. After all, we are exhausted.

Here are some tips to avoid black burnout while proactively improving your company’s approach to race.

First, do not inundate your black colleagues with requests to help you understand and solve racial injustice as if it is their duty. Remember that in many workplaces, we are outnumbered—and so many people are asking us for our input right now. 

So if you have told your black counterpart this week either that you are now finally aware of your white privilege and want an action plan to learn about the black struggle, or if you used your last conference call to confess all of your racial sins over the years, know that chances are 100 other well-meaning nonblack people have done the same that day. Be mindful.

Second, take responsibility for your own education on racial issues. Keep in mind that black people had to use their free time to learn about other races, given that the American educational curriculum only taught a minimal amount of black history. So we do not think it’s too much to ask our professional peers to take the time to do research, read books, and watch films. Start today and learn; then feel free to ask genuine questions.

Third, human resource experts and diversity and inclusion leaders have a great opportunity to help us out. Please do not tell the entire company, even with the best of intentions, to reach out and have a “courageous conversation” with their black peers this week. We know the power of our testimonies, but like you, have our jobs to do. In addition, we are leading race relations task forces, peacefully protesting, and working to protect our families that are disproportionately dying from COVID-19 and police brutality.

Create companywide forums and Q&A sessions to educate large groups. Bring in experts, if needed, to provide actionable plans that systematically implement racial equity. Identify those of us who are open to speak, and respect those of us who do not want to talk about the situation. 

Also, consider hosting pop-up “confessionals” on Zoom to allow nonblack people to share how they feel about their new level of awareness of their role in past racial inequity. Black people understand the need for nonblack people to process the upside-down world we live in.

I am able to write this because I work in an environment where my CEO and chief HR officer are leading from the front. I have not been asked to resolve race relations at work alone. I am fortunate to feel safe enough to express my emotions publicly for the first time in many years. 

But the majority of my colleagues are exhausted and do not feel safe enough to express their mixed emotions. Most are tired of showing empathy and forgiveness to white managers who want to confess racist actions. They don’t want to continue being put in the spotlight on conference calls surrounded by leaders‚ yet feeling alone. 

Nonblack leaders, please just be aware that while you may want to lift up black voices right now, you must be mindful of the physical and emotional bandwidth of black employees and leaders—and first take responsibility to be the change before asking black workers to lead the change. We can’t afford a mass burnout. 

Najoh Tita-Reid is senior executive of marketing reinvention at Logitech.

More opinion in Fortune:

4 ways companies can thrive in the COVID-19 economy, according to philanthropy strategists

A clampdown on corporate tax avoidance is coming. Companies should embrace it

COVID-19 can’t be used as an excuse to limit skilled immigration

Listen to Leadership Next, a Fortune podcast examining the evolving role of CEOs

WATCH: The CEO of Canada’s biggest bank on the keys to leading through the coronavirus pandemic

from Fortune https://ift.tt/3h7kiEC

[topmixtrends]

IN HER 1981 keynote address to the National Women’s Studies Association, the poet and freedom fighter Audre Lorde described the perils of some such gatherings. She told her audience that “I speak out of direct and particular anger at an academic conference, and a white woman says, ‘Tell me how you feel but don’t say it too harshly or I cannot hear you.’” Lorde then asked: “But is it my manner that keeps her from hearing, or the threat of a message that her life may change?” Lorde was up against “white fragility,” but the problem then lacked a name.

The person providing the name has been Dr. Robin DiAngelo, whose doctorate in education from University of Washington analyzed the racial discourse of white preschool teachers. An award-winning professor who has increasingly turned to being a facilitator of workshops designed to teach whites to frankly discuss their own racial position, she first used “white fragility” in a 2011 article. Her work has informed many experts in multicultural education and activists in social movements. In the book under review here, DiAngelo mostly lets readers figure out what white fragility is by trickling out interesting concrete examples, often from her workshop experiences. Through the years her most succinct definition has specified,

White Fragility is a state in which even a minimum amount of racial stress becomes intolerable, triggering a range of defensive moves. These moves include the outward display of emotions such as anger, fear, and guilt, and behaviors such as argumentation, silence, and leaving the stress-inducing situation.

There rages among antiracists and those who imagine that we are past all that a pretty fierce debate over the merits of asking people to confront, in an organized way, the advantages accruing to them as whites. On the right, DiAngelo is already attacked, as is critical whiteness studies generally. Indeed, one perverse dimension of such venomous attack is an ability to perpetually gin up outrage and white fragility around academic studies of whiteness as if it were a new and intolerable thing, a quarter century after the first such attacks. Now that DiAngelo’s book has appeared on the New York Times nonfiction best-seller list, she is almost certain to become the outrage du jour.

At one extreme of progressive opinion is the position taken by the political scientist Adolph Reed and the literary scholar Walter Benn Michaels. They discern in activism and education around racism the diversionary initiatives of a “class” of academics, middle managers, and political hired hands who, consciously or otherwise, divert attention from the hard facts of economic inequality and keep us preoccupied instead with obsessing about identity. This “antiracism/industrial complex” — odd that a nation so bereft of industrial jobs is said to keep generating these complexes — allegedly expresses the interests of a professional/managerial class serving capital. The counter-positions to those of Reed and Benn Michaels hold that stark racial inequality continues and that something like what feminists called “consciousness raising” has value where whiteness is concerned. Whites — the feminist imagination of a process with the oppressed themselves at the center is perhaps insufficiently emphasized in the antiracist variant — might then puzzle out the miseries, to others and themselves, done in the name of adherence to a set of unexamined assumptions and fiercely defended privileges.

Neither position very much encourages constructing a balance sheet regarding what antiracist seminars, study circles, workshops, and certificates might achieve. Neither much notices the differing ideologies and material realities under which they operate. For Reed and Michaels, the antiracist consultant is a class enemy; the more sympathetic, myself included, are sometimes too tempted to then suppose that the well-meaning consultant ought not be criticized, or even that the critiques are themselves simply evidence of a desire for what DiAngelo calls “comfort” and “white-centeredness” among the critics.

To occupy more fruitful ground, treating the contradictions and success of the book together seems apposite before I offer a closing section on the challenges and possibilities of antiracism training. White Fragility fascinatingly reads as one-part jeremiad and one-part handbook. It is by turns mordant and then inspirational, an argument that powerful forces and tragic histories stack the deck fully against racial justice alongside one that we need only to be clearer, try harder, and do better. On the one hand, as its subtitle suggests, the book underlines how wildly difficult it is for mere conversation to break through layers of defensiveness among whites. The sedimented debris of past injustices conspire with current patterns of white advantage to make white employees and even white activists very hard to coach toward any mature questioning of racial oppression. Their practiced (in all senses of the word) resort to defensiveness and even tears in squelching talk about such advantage is both reflexive and conscious. That very fact adds to opportunities for race talk to devolve into a need to validate the good intentions of individual whites at the expense of serious consideration of either structures of white supremacy or its impacts on its victims. Seldom can anyone learn anything.

On the other hand, White Fragility and DiAngelo’s website offer lists, links, and rules for working antiracist magic, making the task seem at times straightforward and centered on the skills of the workshop facilitator and perhaps on lay people adopting and adapting her wisdom. “Robin DiAngelo is,” Michael Eric Dyson writes a little oddly, in a generous and apt foreword, “the new racial sheriff in town.” DiAngelo is able to bring a “different law and order to bear upon the racial proceedings.” She can, he holds, deliver results by making whites own up to fear, pain, and privilege. If we do things right, the movement, workplace, or the congregation will change and grow, at the very least coming to contain better people. In tone and content, the book jars against itself. The can-do spirit of the workshop and primer knocks against the sober accounts of the utter embeddedness of white advantage in structures of both political economy and of personality and character. Such jarring is not indefensible. We live in contradictions and we do what we can. “Optimism of the will,” the Italian revolutionary Antonio Gramsci enjoined, but also “pessimism of the intellect.” The danger perhaps arises when doing ameliorative work well begins to seem like a strategy for deep structural change.

The subtitle itself suggests how hard it is for a book to thread needles that a society and the states of its social movements do not provide us with the resources to thread. I never blame an author entirely for his or her title and subtitle, as I have unhappily learned from personal experience how the marketing department can commandeer the naming of books. But whomever gave it to us, the subtitle of White Fragility offers a telling example of the apt severity of the book’s analysis clashing with its search for a plausible fix. It promises to tell us “Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism,” a real problem, but one deepened even more by the fact that white people do in fact drone on about race and racism. They speak privately, rehearsing what I have elsewhere called “whitelore” and to a remarkable extent casting themselves as the victims of racism. When a Donald Trump or a Rush Limbaugh markets himself as having the courage to defend in public what “you” already know and say, they trade on an extensive, if intellectually impoverished, discourse.

Thus the challenge only seems to be getting whites to open up and fill a void. At its best, DiAngelo’s work knows this well and emphasizes likewise that whites are not in the main vexed by being actually fragile around race. The more exact and obdurate problem is that they tend to be sullen, anxious to defend advantages, and given to performing a stance of fragility. It is less clear that all readers will know as much or that allowing them to acknowledge what underlays their fragility will change their attitudes.

The author’s keen perception, long experience, and deep commitment make White Fragility revealing as to how whites hunker down and huddle together for warmth. In movement settings, I have seen the term white fragility deployed to great effect, especially in the least scripted scenarios. In its appreciation of the emotional content of white identity’s many associations with misery, it calls to mind the indispensable work of the theologian Thandeka in Learning to Be White, though the latter leaves more room to acknowledge that the pain of white racial formation is profound and real as well as contrived. As Katy Waldman has written in The New Yorker, DiAngelo has issued a necessary “call for humility and vigilance.”

Though at times White Fragility envisions race as a durable category — even calling for whites to have more “racial stamina” in order to question whiteness — it does not imagine anything redemptive about whiteness and hopes at least for so-called white people to become “less white.” It is uncommonly honest about the duration and extent of entrenched injustice and provocative on the especially destructive role of progressive whites at critical junctures. How often, in the age of Trump, do we read that: “White progressives cause the most daily damage to people of color?”

Nevertheless, for me White Fragility reads better as evidence of where we are mired than as a how-to guide on where we are on the cusp of going. Its pessimistic half convinces more than its optimism. Without more than appeals to logical consistency and to conscience, what lasts beyond the workshop is likely to fade. There is no firm sense of the politics that might be productively attached to the attack on white fragility and white supremacy to which DiAngelo is passionately committed. Between the book’s lines, some sort of reparations for slavery, Jim Crow, and mass incarceration would seem the logically desired outcome, but DiAngelo elaborates little regarding what comes after white fragility.

Part of the problem is a certain reticence to become curious about what antiracist training is, who it has as an audience, and what are its limits. Is the workshop the project of a union, a church, a radical collective, or, as is so often the case, an employer? This difference goes unexamined. It includes much textured description of training sessions, but perhaps too little about their contradictions and limitations.

Beyond the contradiction belabored above — the one setting powerful structural and emotional causes for white fragility against discursive and voluntary solutions — several other (potentially productive) difficulties arise. What voices and eventualities are relatively missing from the description of the workshops deserves consideration. As Waldman points out in her appreciative review, the role of people of color in the sessions described is pretty scant. They appear as rightfully suspicious and not active at times or as weighing in late in the proceedings or afterward with a critique that enables the facilitator to reflect and grow, modeling the overcoming of white fragility. But the substance of their contributions and the ways in which they might become more central to the discussions remain unclear. The very important and often transformative moments when people of color disagree with each other in discussions of race are perhaps subjects for another book. The labor historian in me also wonders how many antiracism workshops take place in workplaces, and whether we should not emphasize that those interactions are management-sponsored as well as workplace-centered. As much as Starbucks, for example, seems to enter the side of the angels by undertaking diversity training, they and other corporations also manage workers hierarchically, and use their antiracism training in marketing, in damage control, and in combating litigation. Such corporations are themselves in large measure responsible for the obscene racial wealth gap in the United States. Under their auspices may not be the most favorable setting for workers to find their ways beyond racism.

Full disclosure: I have had an inglorious and meager career — okay, the better noun is surely side hustle — in giving non-corporate antiracist workshops, in addition to being a historian of race and class. If asked to do so by unions or by friends wanting me to do something extra when in town to do an academic talk, I grudgingly assent. The critical legal theorist john powell and I long ago prepared a questionnaire on whiteness. I still sometimes trot out a few questions from it — “When are you white?” or “What would you put in a display on white culture?” — to try to break through to frank discussions very like those DiAngelo has honed strategies for encouraging.

Sometimes, such antiracism without a license has proven to be a wonderful learning experience, more for me than my interlocutors. The best examples came a quarter century ago. I was still trying to figure who the “white worker” was, past and present, and why so much of her or his political behavior accented the “white.” So I just asked, particularly in workshops in Missouri sponsored by the New Directions Movement within the United Automobile Workers and the summer schools of the United Steelworkers: “Why would anyone want to claim the identity of ‘white worker?’” The students were perhaps two-thirds white, and it was the white trade unionists who first answered. They said that if you were white you could get a job in higher-paying skilled trades, that you could get a better interest rate and buy a house in any neighborhood, that your kids could go to better schools, that cops were less likely to hassle you and your family. That is, they understood acutely — in that setting anyway — the advantages attending whiteness.

The remarkable matter-of-fact set of insights that those workers presented, reinforced by interspersed comments from African-American workers, suggests that White Fragility may — if taken as panacea rather than as a useful corner of a big problem — be too pessimistic as well as too cheery. Some of the critique of whiteness may already reside in the heads of ordinary whites, though sadly what they already know can increase defensiveness as easily as decrease it.

Long ago, in The Fire Next Time, James Baldwin invited a dis-identification from whiteness so that whites in the United States might join in the “suffering and dancing” around them. More than ever in our moment we need just that. In my view, such a change will come when whites are swept into social movements that express the interests of humanity and that probably will seldom have whites at their center. White Fragility — indeed any single book — cannot conjure up such movements. But it does much help us to get there.

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David Roediger chairs the American Studies Department at University of Kansas. His recent Class, Race, and Marxism (Verso) has won the C. L. R. James Book Prize from the Working Class Studies Association.

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