Truth and Transformation speakers discuss what they have experienced in facing reconciliation and loss during systemic change, through examples from their nonprofit, organizing, and philanthropy work. Responding to paramount questions from the field, they weigh in on: What is at stake if we change? And what is at stake if we don't?
In this special episode of Untying Knots, hosts Erica Licht and Nikhil Raghuveera share a discussion from the 2021 Truth and Transformation Conference, hosted by the Institutional Antiracism and Accountability Project on October 14-15th 2021. The conference brought together a range of scholars, organizers, students, and organizational leaders to address whether organizations have lived up to the statements, commitments, and promises they made to racial equity the year before.
The second panel of the day, titled “Equity Takes Time, Commitment, & Disruption,” explored what organizational commitments to sustaining racial equity work look like in practice—through both challenges and successes. The panelists discussed what they have experienced in facing reconciliation and loss during systemic change, through examples from their nonprofit, organizing, and philanthropy work. Responding to paramount questions from the field, they weighed in on: What is at stake if we change? And what is at stake if we don't?
Featuring experts:
You can find Untying Knots episodes, including more discussions from the 2021 Truth and Transformation conference, wherever you get your podcasts, and, on the Institutional Antiracism and Accountability Project website: https://ash.harvard.edu/iara
Notes:
Untying Knots, co-hosted by Nikhil Raghuveera and Erica Licht, explores how people and organizations are untying knots of systemic oppression and working towards a more equitable future. Each episode features special guests and a focus on thematic areas across society.
This podcast is published by the Institutional Antiracism and Accountability Project and the Harvard Kennedy School’s Ash Center in collaboration with the Atlantic Council GeoTech Center.
Music:
Beauty Flow by Kevin MacLeod
Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/5025-beauty-flow
License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
About the Institutional Antiracism and Accountability Project
The Institutional Antiracism and Accountability Project believes in working at the intersection of community, academia, and policy to address intellectual and practical questions as they relate to antiracism policy, practice, and institutional change. In order to create and sustain change, the goal of this project is to promote antiracism as a core value for organizations by critically evaluating structures and policies within institutions. The project aims to analytically examine the current field of antiracism with a lens on research and innovation, policy, dialogue, and community involvement.
Our vision is to be a leader in institutional antiracism research, policy, and advocacy, and propose structural change in institutions and media centered on antiracism work in the public, private, non-profit sectors and digital space. This work will focus on researching existing organizations that conduct antiracism training and development while analyzing their effectiveness and promoting best practices in the field. Additionally, we will study the implementation of antiracism work among institutions that self-identify as antiracist and promote accountability structures in order for them to achieve their goals.
About the Ash Center
The Ash Center is a research center and think tank at Harvard Kennedy School focused on democracy, government innovation, and Asia public policy. AshCast, the Center's podcast series, is a collection of conversations, including events and Q&As with experts, from around the Center on pressing issues, forward-looking solutions, and more.
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Carmen Rojas: People, even in our sector, even the best and brightest and most progressive or hamstrung within their institutions, from naming the police as the perpetrator of violence, of being able to say that people took to the streets during the pandemic, not because we needed more Black entrepreneurs or Black coders or Black CEOs, it's because the police were targeting and killing Black people.
Nikhil Raghuveera: Hi, everyone. Welcome back to Untying Knots. I'm your host, Nikhil Raghuveera.
Erica Licht: And I'm Erica Licht.
Nikhil Raghuveera: In these last few episodes, we feature content from the recent IARA convening or the Truth and Transformation Conference. And today, we're sharing another panel from the day, equity takes time, commitment and disruption.
Erica Licht: And like the others, the hour long discussion featured some of the most critical voices thinking about and acting on racial justice. It's the long haul, including discomfort, interruptions and disruptions.
Nikhil Raghuveera: And we'll hear perspectives from philanthropy, civil rights organizing and policy, both in the US and the UK, as well as ways in which the panels reflect on what risks and innovation looks like in pursuit of really sustainable and impactful change.
Erica Licht: So Ratna Gill, research assistant at IARA, will kick off the panel with introductions, which you'll hear in a minute. And as always panelist views are their own. Enjoy.
Ratna Gill: Welcome to our final panel of the day. My name is Ratna Gill, and I have the privilege of introducing this panel where we will be discussing the commitment that's required to create sustainable anti-racist change in organizations.
Ratna Gill: Thank you so much to all of our attendees who have been so lively and energized in the chat. Please keep that going, we really appreciate it. And now I'll introduce Carmen Rojas, who's the president and CEO of the Marguerite Casey Foundation and the former CEO and co-founder of The Workers Lab. Welcome, Carmen.
Carmen Rojas: Thanks so much for having me.
Ratna Gill: We're also joined by John C. Yang, who's the president and executive director of Asian Americans Advancing Justice, AAJC, and who served in the Obama administration as Senior Advisor for Trade and Strategic Initiatives at the US Department of Commerce. Welcome, John.
John C. Yang: Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone.
Ratna Gill: We're also lucky to have Halima Begum with us. Who's the chief executive of the Runnymede Trust, which is the United kingdom's leading racial equity and civil rights think tank. Welcome, Halima.
Halima Begum: Good afternoon, everyone.
Ratna Gill: And we are joined by Eric Ward, who is the executive director of the Western State Center and a senior fellow with the Southern Poverty Law Center and Race Forward. He's also working on a forthcoming documentary about whiteness and race in America. So keep an eye out for that and welcome, Eric.
Ratna Gill: And this panel will be moderated by Mary McNeil who's a PhD candidate in the American Studies program at Harvard University and her work is interested in space, place and black and indigenous social movements. So with that, I'll pass it to Mary. Thank you.
Mary McNeil: Thank you so much, Ratna. And thank you, Carmen, John, Eric and Halima for being with us today, I'm super excited to have this conversation with you all. And we have about 45 minutes to have a conversation before we open it up to the audience for Q&A. So maybe I'll start by fielding a question to someone in particular. Why don't I start with Carmen and then folks feel free to jump in wherever you want to, wherever the spirit moves you to. We're hoping to have a pretty organic conversation today.
Mary McNeil: The first question that I have is a question about the redistribution of power and resources. What is the work that you think needs to be done in terms of the redistribution of power and resources to achieve broad goals of equity?
Carmen Rojas: Yeah, so much work. So first and foremost, thanks everybody. I'm really so excited to have an afternoon with this amazing group of people exploring these issues. I think a lot of work needs to happen. We are experiencing the greatest economic inequality, the greatest racial wealth inequality, the greatest political participation disparities that have been deeply embedded in our structural experience in the United States, right? These are not accidents, but they're clear features of what the making of US democracy and of what racialized capitalism looks like in the US. And so I think we have a long ways to go.
Carmen Rojas: I'll speak from philanthropy's perspective. One of the things that I have been thinking about, I'm pretty new to this job. I feel like I have two or three more months of being able to say, I'm a new person in this job, but pretty new to this job. I've been thinking a lot about the ways in which philanthropy can often confuse representation for actual redistribution. And so there's a real desire to have more people of color on boards, more people of color and leadership positions, more people of color in the philanthropic sector, but without the same weighted commitment to making sure that those people that we're bringing into these positions are actually aligned and committed to our racial justice agenda.
Carmen Rojas: And it's the icky conversation that I think is the necessary conversation that we have to have in this moment, that there are ideologies out in the world and people ascribe to and overwhelmingly neoliberalism has informed how we think about race and leadership in this country as somebody who is actually more committed to a left approach to political power, a left approach to economic power. What that has done, it's left us as a field with really a say-do gap that we talk a lot about race, but the lives of people of color aren't actually getting better. We talk a lot about race, but political participation or the vehicles through which people of color participate in our political system are actually being broken down or continuing to be atrophied.
Carmen Rojas: And so I think we, as a leader in philanthropy as a sector, need to engage with this difference, the key difference for me, of representation versus actual redistributing power and position in this sector. John, what do you think about that?
John C. Yang: Yeah, sure. Let me jump in here. Well, let me let everyone know, so I work at a civil rights organization. Our organization focuses on immigration, on voting, on anti-Asian hate, discrimination, educational equity. So when I think about the redistribution of power, I also think about the systems in place, right? The policy's in place that really keep our communities. And when I say our communities, I really am talking about the BIPOC communities, the communities of color, keep our communities from accessing that power, right?
John C. Yang: And so for me, it's about how do we create those systems? If you think about voting as an example, let's be clear, what we're trying to do it isn't about politics. As some people, frankly, the people on the right these days want to say that this is all about politics and trying to get more Democrats into power. For me, that's not what it is. It's about making sure everybody has a voice. And the reality is that, for too long, communities of color have not had that voice.
John C. Yang: And so when we're talking about voting, it's trying to create that system, the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act right now, that will allow everyone to have that voice. That's the same thing when you talk about census. We had a census last year in 2020. And in some ways, it's an arcane thing that some people think of because it's in the constitution. It's like, "Well, what's the purpose of counting everyone?" Well, the purpose of counting everyone is the distribution of resources.
John C. Yang: Literally, about $1.6 trillion of better resources are allocated based on census data. And so if we don't get counted right, and again, it's our communities of color, then we don't get those resources right. So if you're talking about equitable distribution of resources, that's what's important. And what we saw in the census, and we're still trying to unravel the data, but we are pretty confident in saying that communities of color, again, were undercounted at a significant rate, right?
John C. Yang: The same thing applies to whether we talk about education equity, immigration, or the other ones that I put in the field of civil and human rights. A lot of people talk about immigration as, well, people should come here the right way, they should come here legally and so forth. The people that are undocumented immigrants, well, they should get in line. Well, the reality is, who is it that makes the line? Who is it that decides who gets to come in? Well, it's the people in power. And historically that has always discriminated against certain groups.
John C. Yang: If you want to talk about people coming here, legally, let's be honest. Back when, for Ellis Island in the late 1800s and early 1900s, when there were European sellers coming in, they were not coming in here in a legal manner, but it didn't matter. At that point, it didn't matter because we wanted more immigrants. So when we talk about that, I think it's important to understand these systems that are in place. I agree with what you're saying, Carmen, there's these systems in place.
John C. Yang: The other thing I would talk about, and we could maybe come back to this because I don't want to hog the likes so to speak, is just thinking about also in the corporate America, right, where are we right now? What is the role that they have to play? Because government can't be the entire solution. Some corporations are starting to make efforts, some are uneven, some are better than others. We need to have candid conversations about what they can be doing better, what they're doing right.
John C. Yang: The last thing I would say, I really appreciate about the title of this is, when we talk about equitable distribution of power or equity. I think sometimes we get into a question about whether we want equality. I think the word equity is good, because speaking as a East Asian American male, I recognize that I enjoy certain privileges, right? So if I'm saying that we should be all treated equally, that's not right, because the reality is, different communities have suffered in different ways. And so what we want is equitable treatment that we have in our society. I'm not saying that I should have certain privileges. What we are all saying is that we should have that portion that is proportion to our place in society.
Mary McNeil: Thinking about, John, what you just said and Carmen, what you were talking about, I'm hearing this idea of redistribution versus representation in two different levels, right? So we're thinking about the structural as John is alluding to, right? And maybe be the more interpersonal or within a particular organization as Carmen was talking about within the philanthropic world.
Mary McNeil: A question that I have is, what are the relationships between the two, right? How does working towards the redistribution of power and perhaps not just a long identitarian or representative lines as Carmen alluded to that being a problem, but how might we think about the equitable distribution or redistribution of power and resources within our organizations, within our institutions as relating to this broader structural goal as John was alluding to?
Eric Ward: Yeah. This is Eric Ward of Western State Center. I haven't been provocative today, so I'm going to try to be a little provocative right now. I think the interrelationship between those two is one of the critical questions right now. And I'll put it this way to folks, don't go literalist on me, right? I'm just going to try to open up some space here and suggest something. The actual argument over whether we should be a multiracial society is actually one for the most part that the racial justice movement has won. How do I know we've won this, right? Because I can actually even look into the social movements that oppose multiracialism, right? I can look at the white nationalist movement, we can look at the Proud Boys and Alt-Right, we can look at the Christian nationalist social movement in this country, we can look at some of the most significant oppositions to multiracialism in this country and see that they are also committed to building multiracial leadership, or at least in the sense of presence, right, within those movements.
Eric Ward: They also have come to understand, that the idea of a diverse America, right, is a argument that is long over. And the debate right now is, what do we do with a diverse America? And that's why systems become critically important, right? If we stop merely at the presence of people of color, right, within institutions, within particularly boards and systems of governance, we begin to lean into a conversation of tokenism, right, rather than the transformation of a society that has been [fended 00:14:31] off of inequality.
Eric Ward: So I think we're in a moment right now where the question of the diversity is actually a rhetorical debate in this country. The question now is, how do we begin to practice diversity? How do we begin to practice? And the practice comes in the form of equity. But here's the secret here and then I'll stop here. I think that conversation around equity is much more complicated and nuanced than this society will allow for. And that is why the shifting leadership structures become so important in this moment. And, Carmen, I promise, I'm not going to sit up here and praise you for the entire panel. Just a little bit of it, right? But I think of an example of this, right? I come out of philanthropy, I'm currently the board of the Proteus Fund, right, a phenomenal foundation, diverse governorship, right? Many of us have been in and outside of philanthropy, perhaps some who are listening here.
Eric Ward: But I think the shift in leadership that is not just presence, but actually has agency, has quick and tangible outcomes. And so I look at the work of, Carmen, I look at folks like Crystal Hayling from Libra, Lorraine Ramirez from Funders for Justice, and they came with a very simple proposition into the world of philanthropy. They actually argued that equity was not as complicated as we were all making out. That if we brought forward leadership, right, and gave them agency, not just presence, right, but agency within those institutions and that these were leaders who were connected and felt accountable, right, to the most marginalized in our communities, that institutions would begin to change and transform and become stronger fairly quickly. And I think over the last couple of years, we can see that within philanthropy.
Eric Ward: And so I think philanthropy becomes a very interesting case study in this moment of transformational change, right? Not just for philanthropy, but in terms of the way we apply governance. Because at the end of the day, the goal is to ensure that everyone in this country, can live, love, worship and work free from fear and bigotry, that they get to embrace the opportunity and self actualize their lives and the lives of their communities.
Eric Ward: That doesn't happen just from protests, though it is important. It doesn't happen just from litigation though that is also critical. At the end of the day, it comes from governance and has marginalized communities who have perpetually been kept out of institutions of governance. The only way we can begin to learn, right, is to practice. But the only way we can practice is to open up space, but we have a burden because of systemic racism and also systemic sexism in our society and class bias.
Eric Ward: The burden is, is that we don't get 30 years to practice, sadly, unfair, but we don't. What we get, right, is the chance to practice and to show immediate tangible results. And that's why I think the conversation around what is happening inside of philanthropy right now becomes such a critical one. It's one of the case studies where we really can unpack and look at these questions and understand the challenges and what has [inaudible 00:18:13]. Probably I wasn't that provocative.
Mary McNeil: No.
Carmen Rojas: Like threw in a compliment in there so it's so distracting. The provocation, really, you brought down the heat with a little bit of hugging.
Eric Ward: But Carmen, I know. Look at me now about that specific question, there have been real advances over the last year, but is it accurate to say, it almost feels like there is a backlash, right, or recoiling to some of those advances that have been made. Is that accurate? And how do we apply to those?
Carmen Rojas: Yeah. This goes to John's question about the corporate sector. If we just took a moment in time, which is the murder of George Floyd and the 60 days after, and every single private sector, philanthropic rich person in this country came out with a commitment to Black people. And what happened, 12 months in, we know, is that either dollars weren't delivered. So people were like, "$1 billion." And there were actually like, "$1 billion to pay my company to help you, Black people, set up businesses."
Carmen Rojas: The second thing is that, people, even in our sector, even the best and brightest and most progressive were hamstrung within their institutions, from naming the police as the perpetrator of violence, of being able to say that people took to the streets during a pandemic, not because we needed more Black entrepreneurs or Black coders or Black CEOs, it's because the police were targeting and killing Black people.
Carmen Rojas: And so I feel like it warms my heart, your hope for us. And I do believe that the philanthropic sector, can be a leading edge of both systemic and organizational reform, but it actually requires a commitment from the top to the bottom of institutions, a belief that something else is possible and that we can actually see that and not a recoiling, I do think. I started in June of 2020, the first six months, I was invited to 100 panels on anti-racism and now I'm invited to 100 panels about how do I get along with my right wing colleagues in philanthropy? And I think that you all do a really interesting matrix dance around it. I don't think it's my job to do that dance because there's too many people in our sector doing that dance, or that need to do that dance right now. Sorry, Mary.
Mary McNeil: Oh no. I think that this is a great conversation. Thinking back to the title of this panel, right, it's thinking about a long arc, right? And that there are advances and that there are pushbacks. So it's a process.
Mary McNeil: One of the questions that I had, and maybe I'll start with Halima this time. Leading from this conversation, right, and I'm really thinking about something that Eric said in particular about intraorganizational dynamics and having to give executive directors say, the power to actually do the things that they want to do. I have a question about what that looks like in your respective organizations?
Mary McNeil: Halima, you're in this amazing think tank that I was looking over all of your reports, touching at so many different facets of BIPOC life in the UK, particularly in London and urban areas. Has diversification of researchers and board members been something that you have been having to contend with? Everyone else's organizations, are these things that have shifted a lot within the past 18 month? And if so, how so?
Halima Begum: Thank you, Mary, and really great to be here with US colleagues. I feel like I'm the UK sole representative. But I can't really speak about all of that experience in the UK, but I'll try and give you a flavor of how some of these conversations are panning out, because I'm not allowed out, unless I say this, please follow on Twitter, Halima_begum. We're very democratic at work.
Halima Begum: Yeah. I'm just going to start with the comment that I think, Carmen, it wasn't a lack of diversity that led to the murder of George Floyd. Actually, the US and London streets are quite diverse. It wasn't that that led to the murder of George Floyd. There was something systemic and institutional. And therefore, I think that question about diversity and it's link to representation and therefore, what is the redistribution of power connection comes to play, right? Because you can have all the diversity and representation in the world, but if it doesn't bring about a change in reality to transform people's lives, then it's diversity for diversity's sake, it's representation for representation's sake. And quite literally across the pond in here, I'd say that we have certainly in political structures, quite a lot of diverse representation. But if we don't follow that with some level of power redistribution and resource transfer, then something's not sticking.
Halima Begum: What we've seen in the last 18 months certainly, is people's perception of what diversity is and isn't and its limitations come to that. Because I think most people thought, "Well, if you have more diversity, more representation, we'll have less Black people being killed in the streets, they'll stop and search and so on." Well, if you have more diversity, something like COVID is, in theory, indiscriminate, everybody's affected in the same way. But guess what? Certain minorities were disproportionately impacted, hit hardest.
Halima Begum: So I think for many people, it became quite clear that equity is probably the conversation we want to have, but people didn't have access to that discourse. So in the UK, for many, many, many years, we've talked about the rhetoric of inequality of opportunity. So at the level of the law, everybody has equal access to services, representation, you name it. But if you then look at the outcomes, those outcomes don't seem to stack up to the equal opportunities landscape. So what we've been trying to advance is, well, in order to get from equality to outcomes, there's this thing called equity. We want equitable outcomes. And is that what we've been pushing, equitable outcomes? Yes, equality of opportunity. But if you don't have equality of outcomes, sorry, it's not working.
Halima Begum: What we are now seeing though, is a bit of pushback in certain quarters, from that focus on outcomes. So they want to go back to equality of opportunity, notions like fairness and meritocracy. Well, it's a fair country. You all have the same opportunity. So therefore, there must be something terribly wrong in individual families or individual communities that you must fix yourselves. We've heard these arguments with gender, haven't we? So rather than thinking about fixing impacted communities, we need to think about fixing the structure and the environment.
Halima Begum: So I think that discourse is happening, not happening fast enough. But what we have noticed is, corporates. They really have started shifting their tone a bit, because I think corporates on the whole were the most removed from that reality of racism. But then, something really important happened in the last 18 months that the curtains fell down and I think they realized how much racism still exists. And what we now see is corporate scrambling to do the right thing.
Halima Begum: Some of it started off with slogans, some of it started off with rhetoric, some of it was quite engaged actually. So what we saw was a lot of staff and employees from companies. So a lot of the initiatives that you see from the big companies, didn't come from the very top, by the way, they actually came from staff, ordinary workers and employees who were saying, "Oh my God, I thought that this thing called racism was the thing that the Kay Kakay did. It turns out that it can happen in a living room where my children can access the TV."
Halima Begum: So I think that shifted and so corporates are now looking to do something systemic. They need a lot of help, but I think there's a commitment there. They need a lot of help. And so we've been approached by a lot of corporates who have said, "Look, we want to do something systemic, but we don't know what it is, and we need some help." That honesty is appreciated far more than slogans and one-off donations, which is just about this year.
Halima Begum: But to your point about leadership and what we need to see happen inside firms, unless we see power invested with responsibility or representation with responsibility and agency, I think we're back to the drawing boards again around equality and representation. Senior leadership need to take a handle of this and think, right, "I want to see change happen in the next five years, not in the next 50 years." Because if we just left it at the level of representation, I think it's steady, slow progress. And what's really different this year, unlike maybe many, many years ago, is that young people these days, they're impatient. They want their rights right now. And you know what? I love it. I absolutely love the fact that young people, these days are on demand. They want it. Why should they not want democracy and rights and right now?
Halima Begum: So I think it's young people's attitudes that have shifted, it's corporates that are wanting more. So I think there's a lot to play for. There's a lot of a dance here as well in terms of motivating corporates who want to do the right thing and getting them to do the right thing. But I would rather play that dance than give way to a growing right wing who really doesn't want to go to the ball at all, right? Because they can see that some of these corporates or the ordinary person who's stuck in the middle is uncomfortable with racism, never wanted to do something before, but right now, they might want to do something. And quite keen on saying, "Okay, let's talk about this." Whereas the right wing there is thinking, "Oh my God, for once, anti-racists have a chance to really go into the heartlands winning hearts and minds. And we must stop that." That's my worry. How do you stabilize? How do you keep at bay the right wing, both in the US and here?
John C. Yang: Can I pick up on something that Halima said that I think is very valuable, which is ... There's a lot of things that you said that are very valuable. One piece in particular is about how employees that many of the corporations really drove change. And I completely agree with that. So obviously, everyone knows that over this past two years, it's been incredibly hard on the Asian-American community with respect to the anti-Asian violence, with the murder of six Asian-American women earlier this year in March. And we had the same thing happen to a certain extent is that there are a lot of corporations that came out to support the Asian-American communities. So offer contributions or say, "Hey, what can we do to help?"
John C. Yang: And some of it was, you would call it tokenism. Some of it was just throwing dollars and then hoping it would go away. But where I thought it was most effective was when the C-suite said to their employees, "Hey, we don't know what to do here, we recognize that there's a problem. You guys, as employees that are from the Asian community, help us figure this out, right?" And it gave them voice and they came up with much better solutions in some way.
John C. Yang: So part of this, right, is, if corporations know when to see the ground, if you will, right, let their employees guide them and trust that their employees are looking out for all of their collective best interests, including the corporation's interests, it really does make a difference. There's two other points I would want to make about this. One is, I think what all of you have been talking about with respect to, yeah, there's structures that can be changed, but then we have to look beyond them as well. I think that's important.
John C. Yang: There's a article that came out. I think it was in Washington Post, the last couple of days, that talked about how even for the female Supreme Court justices, they are constantly interrupted more than the male Supreme Court justices. And not just by other justices, but by the advocates, the lawyers themselves, the lawyers that are supposed to be ultra respectful of the justices. So that tells you something, right, is even at the most pinnacle of power, right, just the fact that they're there is not enough. We need to ensure that their voices are heard. And that is true at the Supreme Court, that is true in C-suite and boardrooms. Just having diversity as you guys are saying, for diversity's sake is not enough, if the other people don't recognize that the reason that they're there is that they need to have a voice.
John C. Yang: I think the last piece I want to make sure we all think about is the role of truth in all of this. And I hate that we have to say that, but one of the fights that all of us need to engage in is against misinformation and disinformation. Let's be clear. There is a campaign out there that is trying to distort a lot of what is happening in society. And that is where, again, vulnerable communities are the most vulnerable. We see it in the coverage of George Floyd about how, "Oh, he was using drugs or something like that." We see it in the coverage of welfare and of some of the support systems like the SNACK program or other things that these people are not working hard enough. And that's why they're in these programs. We have to make sure we get the truth out there, right?
John C. Yang: That's easy to say, it's hard to do, but I think, again, this is where we need to be systemic about it. Part of it is responsibility of the platforms if you will, the Facebooks, the Twitters, what are they doing to prevent false information from getting out there? Part of it is on all of us to make sure that we are contributing to getting the right information that is out there. And part of it is also incumbent on the government and the corporations to make sure that they stand up for truth, right? Too often, we engage in this relativism. That is like, "Well, we want to protect free speech." This is the free speech we're talking about.
John C. Yang: In 2020, like it or not, Joe Biden won the election. There's no, well, on the other hand about that, right? And so when news platforms give way to that and say, "Well, there's an argument being made." Yeah. There's an argument being made that the moon is made of cheese, but let us be serious, right? And we should call that out and people have to be willing to call that out. I think that's also the threat right now that all of us face. And again, it is most often born by the most vulnerable communities, which include all of us in the communities of color.
Mary McNeil: I love that comment, John and I would love to hear other people's thoughts about the ways in which they think their respective organizations are really concerned with this issue of truth, right, and knowledge production in service of more equitable or certainly, at least less violent futures.
Carmen Rojas: I feel like the tension that I'm at least confronting. And I feel like Eric and I have been, in my imagination, I am in a pretty good conversation with you, Eric, about this issue where I believe that we actually need to name the enemies and the people who are actively targeting our communities. That there has to be a naming of the individuals, there has to be naming of the corporate leaders, there has to be a naming of the people who we have elected to office who are actively either stoking fires that lead to the deepening of white supremacy, the calcifying of white supremacy in our political and economic institutions and, or are profiting off of it. And that we need an actual regulatory regime.
Carmen Rojas: And one of the hard things for me is that I'm clear that there are two levels, Mary, you keep on intimating at this, right? That there's a structural systemic level and then there's the interpersonal level, and where do we need to meet people to bring them along in a journey? And the question that I am continually grappling with is, how often do we need to concede? The way that I imagine it in the worst case scenario is sitting across, needing to be in conversation with Steve Bannon, with Steve Miller and needing to be in conversation in a way that actually creates the room and the aperture to see his humanity, right? That is the interpersonal shifts that I feel like we often default to, of wanting to bring people along. And to be honest, I don't buy it. I don't want to do it, I don't want people in my organization to need to do it, I don't want my mom to need to do it, my cousin, my worst relative to need to do it, my worst enemy to need to do it, and I know it's work that needs to be done.
Carmen Rojas: And so I feel like the tension that's emerging for me in this conversation is that there is a structural and systemic that actually lives in the realm of the culture norms, rules of how we engage with each other, setting the table for how we eat with each other. And then there's what we eat and the interpersonal, like, what we talk about at the dinner table, the interpersonal things. And I wonder, for my co-panelists, how do we engage with both of these seemingly different, but definitely intertwined challenges in ways that are authentic and true. And frankly, in ways that don't require people of color to sacrifice themselves, because the leading edges is like, you're a jerk, Carmen. The start for me is, not all White people are bad. I'm like, "Clearly not all White people are bad, but white supremacy is that." We have to be able to walk and chew gum and name these things.
Carmen Rojas: And so Eric, John and Halima, how do we fold that there are people that we're talking about as good or making change who have gotten rich off of advancing white supremacists agendas, or anti-Black agendas or anti-Asian agendas and anti-immigrant agendas and the need that we need more people in order to have ... Democracy has to include all of us.
John C. Yang: Eric, I think you're on mute. We can't hear you. While we wait for Eric, one question I have for you, Carmen is, do we need to engage with the Steven Millers and the Bannons of the world? At least for me, well, I agree with you, I don't want to engage with them, but can we just put them aside and say, "These people, we don't engage with. But the people they're trying to influence, those are the ones that we need to engage with." And that even there it's very, very hard work, right?
Carmen Rojas: I don't know. I feel like we are in a moment where racial justice work is really bifurcated and it's not coming together in a way that feels clear. I'm hearing my part. So I'm not sure if that's me. I'm good. Okay. And it feels bifurcated where I feel like it's an extreme, John, where we have to be able to be in conversation with the worst of us, of our people, of people here. And we need to do the work that you're going to do, but I also don't want to do that work. I'm just not going to lie. I don't want to do it, but I feel like it's work that we need to practice doing. And it's a challenge. It feels hard.
Eric Ward: Probably, it is, Carmen. I'm going to pretend like everyone can hear me right now.
Carmen Rojas: Yeah, I can hear you.
Eric Ward: I don't know if everyone can hear me.
Carmen Rojas: We can.
Eric Ward: But I'm just going to speak for a second. Of course, I started to get lagged just as soon as you asked this amazing question. And I think, this is one of those complicated questions. Here's my quick take. I'm not interested in being in a room with Steve Bannon or Steve Miller, right? There's no value in it. Not because I don't recognize their humanity, right, but that they have adopted such a different set of principles and ideology that I don't know what the common ground is that doesn't result, right, in the selling out of other marginalized communities, right? So I don't understand how we could find that common ground.
Eric Ward: I do think though, we should be contesting the institutions that they seek to govern, to create this exclusive form of democracy. And the real question in the United States is, what do you do with the constituency that they primarily seek to recruit from, which is the white population in America? Do we ignore it or do we compete for that constituency? And if we compete for that constituency, how then do we do that in a way that I think is principled? And we wrestle with that, right?
Eric Ward: Western State Center, I think, in 2003, so nearly 20 years ago, we released one of the foundational toolkits and modules on addressing systemic racism, right? It helped to build much of the conversation that happens today, around systemic racism. We continue that work with our Northwest Equity Lab, which invest in EDI, equity, diversity, inclusion, key staff, right, in government and in large institutions.
Eric Ward: And one of the pieces we've come to, I think, with supportive groups like Race Forward, is to understand that at the end of the day, for Western State Center at least, the paths we've carved out is not the one of personal grievance, right? So we're not doing a lot of investments. Not because we think less of it, but we are not doing that investment in the individual development, right? The personal development that many do around EDI. At the end of the day, because of the external conditions, we've decided, whether people or prejudiced or not, is less important than how our systems respond to that prejudice, right? And for our systems to offset that socialization of prejudice, it means that the governance of that system leads to be both diverse and present, right, but connected to the actual understanding of the systems of discrimination that are played.
Eric Ward: I'm going to name some names, right? We'll talk about some of this, because I think that work around systems change has created a different dialogue and so has the tens of thousands of people who took to the streets, right, in result of police killings. I'm not a person who says, "Oh, that mobilization appeared out of nowhere." I'm too old for that, right? I know that that was a result of generations of struggle in infrastructure building and expansions, not just of movements, right? But in the way that we have moved society to a point where more white Americans today, right, are supportive of Black Lives Matters than were supportive of Martin Luther King. And I mean by percentage, right? By percentage, more white people today, support Black Lives Matters than ever supported Martin Luther King Jr in his lifetime. That is the arc of change. And we know change is slow, but I'm an urgent guy.
Eric Ward: And so I think we need to move this way. I think there's a real danger right now in not holding businesses to the moral principle of anti-racism, let's be clear, right? Anti-racism is of value, not an ideology, right? That means racism is also a value. And when businesses promote and allow space for racism, they are practice seeing a value. When AT&T, yes, I name them, gives money for the founding of One American News, right, one of the leading flagships for the Alt-Right and white nationalist movement in this country, right, movements that have engaged in violence that have taken more lives of Americans through ideological violence than any other social movement in this country over the last 10 years, we have a problem with corporate values.
Eric Ward: And what they'll tell us is that this is all about profit, but we can't believe the lies, as John said, anymore. We know this is a not profit. Citigroup itself released a study last year, a document, that this country has lost more than $11 trillion, right, in the last decade from discrimination, just against the Black community. I'm not even talking about immigrants, Latinos, the Asian American community, or Native Americans. This country has lost 11 million. And let's not be value neutral on that loss. That loss has mostly come on the backs, right, of African Americans and those who have gained from it have been primarily white. And so I do think where we are in agreement, right, is the idea that personal grievance is less important than building the governance structures necessary to engage systems. And the question of white constituencies is a complicated one. I think it's set by time and place in this country, and it gets set by the organization and its mission statement.
Eric Ward: But I do believe this, where I push back against the idea that we simply need to go out and have dialogues with white communities is this, it is always proposition on the idea that we need to lower our expect and engage the white constituency around the authority of other issues, right? Everything but the conversation around race. At Western State Center, the difference for us is, we actually believe white people have a self-interest in opposing racism in this society, systemic racism, not an allyship role, right, not a supporter role. They have a direct self-interest. And when white people identify and white institutions identify that self-interest, they begin the process of systemic transformation and hopefully personal growth comes with that.
Eric Ward: But I didn't come into this work, right, to be a personal counselor or to be someone's professional development person. I came in to open up the space, right, for liberation and opportunity for communities who have been denied that too far in a society that claims to be a democracy. So I think we agree, and there are real questions around how we engage white constituencies. That was very long, but since I lost my headphones, I went on. Thank you.
Mary McNeil: No, thank you so much for that. And I think, Halima, did you have something to say about this as well?
Halima Begum: Yeah. I think I've moved on from that point, but I will say, anyway, I think, was it John? You said, I don't want to be in a room with Steve Bannon. I'm quite clear about that. I know lots of other people I don't want to be in a room with. The reason for that is that, for me to be engaged in a room with the other side, we have to commit to some principles of no harm. But if I feel that my interests are harmed there, I will not get into a room with them. So don't ask me to self harm myself. I won't do it. What I am interested in is though, the people and the communities that his followers are targeting. And I tell you why I'm interested in them. Because the story of racism is not complete. Sorry. The story of anti-racism is not complete until it becomes a story of us.
Halima Begum: If we only worked with our supporters and followers, then I think it's a story about them. When it's a story about us and our society, that includes our white friends and allies, and indeed our white friends who might have a self-interest as well. So that's why I'm quite keen on working there.
Halima Begum: But like you, Eric, I don't think that conversation should be about individually converting somebody's views as though we all live in a liberal democracy and they want to espouse hate, that's not what I'm interested in doing. I'm interested in making sure that that hate doesn't ever touch large numbers of people from my communities. That means building the power, the resources, and everything within our structures to make sure that that harm is mitigated.
Halima Begum: So I don't mind the individual racist or the bad apple here and there, what I mind is whether their views has cultural normalcy, is institutionalized, because that has devastating consequences on our children and our children's children. And that's a structure piece I think. I think that is about empathy. Isn't it? Ultimately we care about a legacy we leave behind for our children, so they never go through what we have to go through. But that does mean working with white society as well, but not the Steve Bannons and their likes.
Mary McNeil: Yeah. I think what I'm hearing from you all is this really important distinction being made between individual prejudice, right, and racism as being prejudice plus power, right? That ability to actually shape our lives to do harm. So I'm going to switch over really quickly. We have quite a few questions from the audience and only about 10 minutes. So I'm going to start with one question from someone who's registered for the conference and they write, they're particularly interested in hearing about communities that have established systems of public accountability, particularly as that accountability relates to spending and contracts in construction and infrastructure projects. And here they're thinking about diverse hiring and spending. They say, "Moreover, I'm very interested in learning about how local communities have leveraged respective public, private and philanthropic relationships or partner to establish ongoing systems of transparency and accountability to benefit local businesses that are legitimately owned by people of color." So, yeah, I think that ... Oh, somebody has something to say?
John C. Yang: Let me start, perhaps. So I serve on the Diversity Council of a number of corporations. And so we get into these discussions about supplier diversity and who corporations are contracting with. I guess there's a couple of things that come out to me as practices maybe if that's where this question is going. Number one I would say is, public transparency. I find the corporations that are willing to open up their books so to speak and take those hard questions or corporations that are more likely to change and be willing to listen.
John C. Yang: The ones that are a little bit more closed or a little bit more defensive about the fact that, well, this data, we're not sure, we have different flaws in our data so we want to iron it out before we reveal to everyone, those are the ones that are resistant to change. But then it gets to, I think a number of people have talked about this also is, it gets further than that. Because when you talk about minority owned businesses, for example, there are too often that you could find a minority that owns a business, but really if you look beneath the surface, it goes to this tokenism idea, right?
John C. Yang: So part of this is making sure that those numbers actually back up what a corporation is trying to project, right? Because, for example, and I don't need to name the company. I had a company that was looking at the supplier diversity. They said they had huge amount of Asian diversity. I asked them about it. It turns out they were from Asia, literally from Asia, right? So, okay. Yes. You have supplier diversity because you have a lot of manufacturing coming from Asia. That's not diversity, at least the way I would define it. So again, we got to kick the tires, we got to ask the hard questions if we are really trying to assess it.
Mary McNeil: Yeah.
Carmen Rojas: I would say, from a community perspective, there's an amazing leader here in Seattle named Nikkita Oliver who runs an organization called Creative Justice that's been doing a ton of work looking at how public dollars are spent in service of a whole host of things. So like we all know, we are in the midst of what can quite possibly be the largest public investment in US history in people. And so I know there are community organizations across the country who are actually working with local residents to make sure that the money is understood as a collective investment in us, a collective investment in our institutions, a collective investment into our future. And so I'll just name for practical intents. I think that there are a number of local community based organizations that are making sure that people who have long been excluded from the conversations about how we spend our money are front and center at informing the agenda of public dollars and public spending.
Mary McNeil: Thank you so much for giving that really clear example of someone that we might look to particularly for community pressure in making sure that communities are actually seeing these benefits. And thank you so much, John, for really highlighting the best practices for private industry in terms of actually, like you said, opening their books.
Mary McNeil: The second question that I have from the audience is, someone writes, "Time is in the title. How do you feel like time functions in racial justice organizing and institutional transformation? And are white people patient enough to engage in the long haul?"
Eric Ward: No. Sorry, white folks. It's because of privilege in society, right? It's not because of whiteness. Males in society, for the most part, also have this problem, where we're urgent with all the wrong things, right? And not only urgent with many of the wrong things, but when it meets up against our privilege, when we realize that systemic racism is actually more powerful than even an individual's white privilege, it creates a discombobulation that is hard for white folks to understand. I think, it's for white leadership to understand, right, that this is not a fight that started ... It's going to say on contradictory but I promise it's not, when we're done.
Eric Ward: We have to understand, right, if you are a white person dealing with racism, right, if you are a man dealing with sexism and issues of gender discrimination in the society, right, you're cis, you have to understand that the arcs of those struggles are much longer than you realize and can hold, right? And so many of us have been watching these struggles through generations, and there has been great progress, right? Not where we want to be, right? But there has been progress. And the other piece though, is that, that is not an excuse to not be serious and disciplined about this, right?
Eric Ward: Often what happens is, when people get frustrated, they quit or they leave, which is also a privilege, right? Most people of color don't get that choice to leave. This is their reality day in and day out. On the other hand, we have to stop this idea that solving racism is super complicated. It's not that complicated. It just takes public will, right? And we need to do a better job, right, of white folks not feeling that understanding racism is a popular association that you get to belong to that other white folks don't get to belong to, or have to go through these rituals to belong to it.
Eric Ward: And that has been one of the problems with EDI, right? One of the bad outcomes over the 10 years, right? Is that it's become much more of a social club than a set of tools to address systemic change. That's why there's this over-emphasis on personal development, right? White people who have entered this movement have profited, have become substantially better at their jobs, right? But the conditions haven't changed for people of color. And that's because white folks are not opening up enough space to bring in other white folks into this work.
Eric Ward: So yes, folks are impatient, but around all the wrong things. This is a long arc struggle, but we need more folks and you need to stop telling other white people that this is super complicated to solve. You're not helping us.
Mary McNeil: I'm hearing from Eric this notion of discombobulation. And it also sounds like, what do they call it? Ally fatigue. It's an interesting phrase. But yeah. So anybody else thinking about this idea or this issue of time, right? And how might you address it in your own practice, in your own organizations, right? The fact that immediate change very rarely happens. There may be a working towards a particular campaign and there can be victories, but we know more often than not, those are long and hard battles.
Carmen Rojas: I feel like, Angela Davis wrote the book, right, Freedom Is a Constant Struggle. And as we work in the fight for freedom, there are always going to be oppositional forces. And I feel like our orientation need to change away from short term, small victories and gains, and towards starting to see the ground for the world and country that we know is possible. It's like a garden, it's always going to take work. And I feel like our sector, our movements, frankly, because of how philanthropy has been structured and organized, it's only incentivized to have material real gains, not to sustain those gains, not to realize those gains and not to actually expand those gain or to build on those gains in service of this future world.
Carmen Rojas: So for me, talking about time creates a trap around legacy and personal contribution and attribution for victory. And it makes it seem like one person did one thing. And that led to all of these other things. And we just know historically, that that's just not true. That every great movement leader that everybody always lifts up was always tethered to a broader community of people, both in the past and into the future that were able to keep their victories alive. And that for me is the key of movement work, is that it's not tethered to a destination, but we need to have greater discipline about the constant nature of the struggle for freedom.
Mary McNeil: And Halima, I think I saw your hand as well.
Halima Begum: Yeah, no. I was just in a conversation yesterday about actually the timing issue. And obviously, everybody around the room said, "Well, we've been on this movement piece for a really, really long time." So the question of timing is, who's timing? And the consensus was that what's particularly timely now is that the movement is being met by the other side, because the movement always existed, but it just wasn't getting that traction from wider section and demographics in society. So given the fact that that, what's the word I'm looking for? Not fusion. That contact point has happened. I think there's a lot that can be gained from that contact point that we might not gain in other periods when the movement is perhaps feeling slow and cumbersome.
Halima Begum: What we say to a lot of our friends is that, that opportunity, that window, that portal isn't going to stay open right, forever. What is it that we must do now to crowdsource in the assets, the power, the networks so that we can keep that portal open for longer? Because if we just relied on other people's preferences, timings, they might just move on to saving the planet they should do, by the way, we should all be saving the planet. Do you see what I mean? So our responsibility is to make sure that people don't wait and people don't lose interest, because for sure they will. As human beings, we tend to be a little bit apathetic and possibly a bit lazy. But our role is to make sure that that door, that portal stays open as long as possible.
Halima Begum: And that's partly the work. This is what I see in race equity organizations now. We've existed since 1960, we've always done this work, but there's something very particular at this moment where I feel, well, if there were corporate scrambling, wanting to do the right thing, it's never going to happen again if we don't ride on this, like make that space bigger than it already was. So I think it's on us to make sure that people just don't lose interest, we've just got to work harder, right?
Mary McNeil: Well, unfortunately, thank you so much with that closing idea, right? That we just have to work harder and also as Carmen was saying, that practice of working towards freedom, it's a constant struggle to paraphrase Dr. Davis. Unfortunately we are all out of time, but thank you all so much for being in conversation today. I really enjoyed this conversation and I hope that all of our many participants and audience members do as well.
Erica Licht: Untying Knots is hosted by Nikhil Raghuveera and Erica Licht. It is a podcast of the Institutional Antiracism and Accountability Project and the Harvard Kennedy School's Ash Center, as well as the collaboration with the Atlantic Council, GeoTech Center. We'd like to thank the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation for supporting our convening as well as our speakers, Carmen, John, Halima, Eric, as well as Mary for moderating.
Nikhil Raghuveera: And we have one final special episode coming out from the Truth and Transformation Conference, a fireside chat between Erica and Dr. Khalil Gibran Muhammad, IARA's director, which I'm particularly excited about. So definitely come back for this must listen episode. Thanks so much for listening.
Erica Licht: Music is Beauty Flow by Kevin MacLeod.