Prioritizing racial equity in 2023 (Issue #15)
The economic tides are shifting, and cash for DEI investments has mysteriously evaporated.
A belated Happy Holidays! Or as we call it around my house, the anniversary of the day my life became a lot less fun. Because the fact is, it’s fun to be a grinch. It’s fun to wreck other people’s fun! I can’t deny that now that I’ve become a symbol of maturity and self-development, I miss some of the fucked up shit I used to do. Taking presents from kids—that was a blast!
I’m not going to sit here and pretend I don’t occasionally miss being a real grinch, like when I see an incredible opportunity to push a child down some stairs or kick a dog or something, and I have to pass it up because it doesn’t fit my new branding. Yeah, they got me on their side with all their “true meaning of Christmas” business. I stole all those people’s presents, and they responded by holding hands and singing songs? They got me with that one.
But let’s keep it real. It was giving a more peaceful Charlottesville-type of vibe (if you catch my drift). You see, Ole Mr. Seuss doesn’t like to talk about my earlier years living in Stone Mountain, 30 minutes east of Atlanta. I’ve been on this ruining Christmas shit for years now, but let’s just say the children of East Atlanta handled my antics a little differently. They beat my ass! Here is some footage of the day I decided to cave-hop back to Mt. Crumpit.
I learned from that experience that Atlanta, or as some like to call it the Black Mecca, is widely considered the center of black wealth, education, politics, business, and social movements in America for a reason. This community was fortified by black folks following times of extreme conflicts like the Black Reconstruction and the Atlanta Race Riots of 1906. So it's no coincidence that the people of Atlanta wouldn’t let a grumpy green dick like me just show up and ruin Christmas without a fight.
Did we miss our moment? Or is this our moment?
Throughout history, moments of conflict and pain tend to be the unwelcomed catalyst for Black progression. If you are an OG Grinch reader you know that rampant anti-Black racism in 2020 was essentially the impetus for our periodic check-ins with you. Like this classic throwback: Four Anti-racist Choices Corporate America Can Make Right Now.
As we move into 2023, it’s evident that the corporate tides are shifting. The money machine has stopped printing money. Elon and many other CEOs are tightening their belts and cutting employees. And the cash for DEI and social impact investments has mysteriously evaporated. I can’t help but wonder: Did Corporate America maximize the moment to appropriately address racial inequality, or did we miss our chance? Have the naysayers had the final nay?
On that topic though, when it comes to the “Why does it always have to be about race?” people, I’m not entirely unsympathetic. America is currently experiencing an economic transformation, driven by various levels of chaos, cooperation, innovation, and capital market cycles. Efforts to address the inequalities that divide us have the potential to have a greater impact than at any other time in our history.
I’m not saying this to catastrophize our circumstances, but to remind us that the work matters now more than it ever did. Trust me, I hear the “Race isn’t even real,” retort all the time. They’ll say, “We’re just reinforcing racism by even entertaining the topic.” Such a weird coincidence that people who benefit the most from racism are the most reluctant to talk about it.
Because yes, race might not be real from a scientific perspective, but racism sure is. And race being a social construct doesn’t mean it has any less of a real-world impact than other social constructs like religion, gender roles, and MONEY.
Race as an economic construct
Money is actually a key here, because at its source, race is all about money. You can actually think of it as an economic construct. Race was the justification for the transatlantic slave trade. It’s what made white people start thinking about themselves as white, and the basic reason why the United States became so profoundly infected with the disease of racism. Racism was necessary to justify slavery.
A plaque at the African American Museum makes it clear: “As the Chesapeake region began to take shape, ideas of race and class were less defined. Enslaved Africans, European indentured servants, and Native Americans worked alongside one another as they cultivated tobacco. They also intermarried, socialized, ran away and rebelled together. Fearful of interracial alliances and eager for profits, planters saw slavery as a safer and cheaper option. African were ultimately defined as enslaved for life, and the concept of whiteness began to develop.”
The trans-Atlantic slave trade wasn’t the first occurrence of slavery, but it was the first time race was used as a justification for slavery. The ancient Greeks and Romans, for example, did enslave people, but didn’t think of themselves as “white,” or really about race as a category at all.
Yes, race isn’t uniquely American. In South Africa, the Population Registration Act of 1950 divided people into White, Black, and Coloured (with Indians added later). The government of Myanmar has a system of eight “major national ethnic races,” and the Brazilian census classifies people into brancos (white), pardos (multiracial), pretos (Black), amarelos (Asian), and indigenous people, though this doesn’t nearly cover all the ways people there refer to themselves. But all those places have strong connections to colonialism and the slave trade, including in its modern forms.
A new set of management conditions
Learning about this stuff means learning where you exist in relation to it, which is where the whole white fragility thing kicks in. Because this system was set up to benefit the racial majority. “Are you saying slavery is my fault? Are you saying I didn’t work for what I have?” Nope, literally, no one is saying that. Putting yourself at the center of another person's culture and experience is very egotistical, and the defensive reaction to basic historical facts is the epitome of this.
It's also why the dominant culture can’t fully appreciate that things that might seem trivial or pandering—like representation on boards and in the C-suite, dolls that look like you, and highlighting the cultural significance of Black hair—are so crucial. They’re not small. They’re matters of basic existence and survival. (Let this be a reminder to the Senate Republicans blocking the passage of The CROWN Act.) For the racial majority, grasping this is likely to be a novel experience, as they may have been taught that their experience is the default experience. As Americans, we center on whiteness. In contrast, an emerging generation of racial minorities is being equipped with the language and tools to self-advocate for their personal, interpersonal, and institutional experiences.
This is important now because when we will drill into corporate and professional spaces we will find that they are still highly segregated. However, in the continuing economic transformation of the country, there is an integration of wage and salaried work occurring across the United States, making it much harder to keep segregated. Organizations with legacies of homogenous cultures are reaching a diversity inflection point and inheriting a new set of management conditions that they previously never had to deal with.
In an interview with TechCrunch, Karla Monterroso explains that people in power within these organizations are struggling to manage trade-offs: impact vs. financial sustainability vs. culture. People in power are going to have to get better at handling these inherent conflicts and develop more thoughtful skills in assessing these tradeoffs. The upcoming year will be a test to see if we can avoid the “back to business” mentality that often underestimates these tradeoffs, leaving people of color with the short end of the stick. Karla drops a gem in the interview reminding us that “power is helpful or harmful but it is never agnostic.”
If you are a company considering cutting your DEI budget, consider investing those dollars in strengthening your leaders’ capabilities to cultivate a culture of trust and psychological safety. Why? Because as we transition into the age of austerity, there is no greater assurance of productivity and performance than a culture that promotes trust and belonging.
The ugly backlash
The process of learning is fraught. To say that the dominant culture of America is ill-equipped to do this kind of inner work is a YUUUUGE understatement. America is so thin-skinned that teaching basic facts about our history has now been branded as “critical race theory,” originally a legitimate academic theory now turned into a catch-all category designed to shut down all discussion of racism and ban the truth. That’s not some woke talking point, it’s literally what’s happening. Look at how the wave of reactionary teaching bans is sweeping across the map, representing nothing less than an attack on multi-racial democracy itself:
Our efforts towards progress are often reduced to an argument focused on the reputation of America. How can we be the greatest country in the world and if we’re built on a foundation of racism and slavery? A better question is, is it such a terrible thing not to be the greatest country in the world? What if it’s just …. a place? A place basically in the middle of the pack, freedom-wise? We've prioritized the ideal of America over the lived experience of many of its diverse citizens.
Racism is screwing all of us
Fear of our history is echoed in the workplace. The examination of our history is not about creating a collective belief, but it's about creating an honest collective dialogue focused on clear outcomes. Companies can’t face their past. They are stuck in an endless learning phase while meaningful action perpetually awaits just around the corner.
This cartoon (and I’m sorry I couldn’t find out who to credit it to) could just as easily apply to companies as individuals:
As a very wise grinch once put it:
It’s not in the corporate DNA to look backward, only forward. Partly from a legitimate fear of death. Businesses that don’t adjust to change die—20% of them in their first two years, 65% in the first 10. They are, out of necessity, shark-like in their ceaseless forward motion. And it’s simply impossible to do equity work without appreciating historical context.
I get it. No single person, group, or entity can be held solely responsible for our current racial conditions. We got to fight the forces of evil, not the people. Because the truth is that racism is screwing all of us, not just minorities.
Harvard historian Walter Johnson, describes racial capitalism “as a technique for exploiting black people and for fomenting the hostility of working-class whites toward blacks, so as to enable white capitalists to extract value from everyone else.” Basically weaponizing the idea of fairness to create division amongst the working class to drive economic value for the elite.
We’ve been told that more layoffs, higher costs of living, and an inevitable recession await us in 2023. History shows us that America’s working class won’t be able to adequately address the conditions ahead without prioritizing racial equity. Here’s to solidarity, and all of us keeping our eyes wide open in 2023.
Grinch out.