Sparse evidence on the long-term efficacy of anti-racism in organizations
Sparse evidence on the long-term efficacy of anti-racism in organizations
If you have evidence of the long-term impact/efficacy of anti-racism efforts, by all means, refute my conclusions.
Right before I left for vacation at the beginning of October, I asked a few friends: "Do you know of any data/evidence on the long-term efficacy of anti-racism/social justice related to racism-related interventions?"
I had a lot on my plate. While I had done a moderate amount of research, I needed clarification about how to answer the question.
What do you think the answer is?
Upon returning from vacation, my brain seems clearer. Having nine hours of sleep per day, meals prepared for you, and time to play in the pool with your son for 4-6 hours each day for several days can do that.
So, I returned to the question.
I am still looking for solid answers.
There are at least a few reasons why I am struggling to find an evidence base for the longitudinal impact of anti-racist approaches in the past 5-7 years, especially in the post-COVID (after Floyd) era.
Few to none of the interventions I discovered (mostly retrospective studies) were designed to last for long-term impact. What do I mean by that?
Most of the interventions after George Floyd's death, for example, were based on the ideology of a few journalists and academics: Nikkol Hannah-Jones (1619 Project; published in 2019), Ibram X. Kendi (How to be an Anti-Racist; 2019), and Robin DiAngelo (White Fragility; 2018). A few other authors’ approaches seemed to gain traction, too. That includes the work of Tema Okun, who I recently re-read with a new lens after reframing help from Chat-GPT.
The rigor of their approaches in the books and resources above differ slightly. Hannah-Jones and colleagues built a revised narrative about the origins of the United States. Many well-known historians have criticized the New York Times’ series. After reading many of the essays, I didn’t have criticism. Still, it did occur to me that the America where I was born and lived at the time was deemed irreconcilably destined to subvert people of African descent forever. It was a shout-out to Afro-pessimism.
I don’t think the work served the plight of black people. While the history lessons are worthwhile, the interpretations of that history and the purpose of the pieces lacked what I would deem the level of granularity of deft Historians.
It did generate significant revenue for the New York Times and gave anti-racist activists another trove of “evidence” to consider when educating people about racism.
What it didn’t do was set the stage for meaningful systems change. To me, it just doubled down on anti-hope. It is not altogether a bad thing to do so. It can lead to the Buddhist principle of non-attachment, which I have been working to practice for many years of my spiritual development.
However, if detachment isn’t the result of being introduced to this pessimistic narrative about people who share your group identity, despair might be. To be weak on hope when focused on shifting something, like racist beliefs and behaviors, leaves one ungrounded not only from imagining new possibilities for the future but also from human agency.
So, it leaves many with the sense that the intractable problem of racism hasn’t and will never get better without reinforcing an inherently disempowering or binary narrative. In the case of DiAngelo, the story is that white people cannot take the heat of dealing with their racist past, and therefore, they need to be smacked upside the head with no “Oops.” And white people need to do better in a way that “helps” black folks. Um: “Say NO to paternalism!” Admittedly, I am biased against White Fragility. It occurs as infantilizing. I could not finish it. John McWhorter (Who some of my readers abhor and I get why they do: he doesn’t conform to the narrative of many black elite) confirmed my sentiments as I “discovered” him via The Glenn Show.
Professor Erec Smith, the founder of Free Black Thought, comments on her follow-up book on which he writes: “Apparently she has a new book, Nice Racism: How Progressive White People Perpetuate Racial Harm, coming out in June. Upon reading its title, my first thought was, ‘Is this an autobiography?’ reiterating the infantilization of black people as she wantonly uses the word “harm.”
For Ibram X., the narrative is more Yoda-like, “You’re either anti-racist or you are not, no try!” The problem is doing anti-racism or being anti-racist is setting yourself up to look for racism wherever you go or wherever you spend significant amounts of time. I have been in that state of mind. It is exhausting and ultimately unproductive.
Are you optimistic about the future of DEI efforts?
There was a time when Public Enemy’s albums It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back and Fear of a Black Planet informed my beliefs about race and racism in America. All the while, I lived a highly privileged upper-middle-class life in middle America (Kansas, that is. . you can’t get any more American than that).
My belief that racism has caused and, in many cases, continues to harm people worldwide remains. The understanding came from listening to my father about his experiences integrating public schools in Topeka, KS, post Brown, and also watching him navigate a terse business environment where he was not a member of the predominant group.
What my parents never did was let me think that the ills of racism and discrimination would hold me back from pursuing my dreams and aspirations. There were times when they needed to intervene because race might have been a factor in my experience. And, never did I think that my skin, darker than the majority, determined my destiny.
Conversely, my parents were big on principles: Dignity, Rigor, Integrity, Virtue, and Service, amongst other values, were either stated or role-modeled.
The current anti-racism approaches are not working. I hope approaches like that of Chloé Valdary and her Theory of Enchantment or Sheena Mason’s new work with her Togetherness Wayfinder and book The Raceless Antiracist will eventually show some long-term impact.
My hope comes from the fact that their work is based on principles—principles that, I believe, can address racism and any other form of reducing humans to a physical or social characteristic in a manner that is accessible to everyone, unambiguously prioritized, and aligned with organizational purpose.
The principles I depend on when working with clients to create antifragile cultures where inclusion is normative include:
Prioritize principles, not programming: Programs reveal, but if they stay a program and don’t move towards beliefs about inclusion’s necessity for high-level organizational functioning, they can create the opposite of their intentions.
Prioritize people's development and thriving: Don't aspire to an outcome like eradicating systemic racism. Instead, educate your entire workforce from day one about collectively creating conditions for people to thrive. Building such a set of skills is part of the continuous fostering of future-fit cultures.
Prioritize designing systems rather than focusing on symptoms alone: On this one, many talk systems change. Few in DEI talk about complexity and tradeoffs regarding what’s being delivered in their work. Many DEI practitioners acknowledge that systems are designed precisely for the results they produce. Quotes like Audre Lorde’s “For the master’s tool will never dismantle the master’s house" are frequently invoked.
Few acknowledge that the tools they are using are ineffective for all intents and purposes, primarily if they are not intended to co-create the conditions for everyone to thrive.
Prioritize embodying the reality that everything is a co-creation: Do people realize co-creation is always at play even if your co-conspirators are not present? If you do, you will see that any anti-racism effort that rests on “them” doing something “we” say they need to do to fulfill “our” needs will ultimately fail. . .There is no “them.”
If you have evidence of the long-term impact/efficacy of anti-racism efforts, by all means, refute my conclusions. I thrive by and am a beacon for dissent!
I hope this was helpful. . . Make it a great day! ✌🏿
In this episode of the ‘Reconstructing Inclusion’ podcast, I chat with Dr. Darryl Stickel, a leading expert on trust. Dr. Stickel discusses how modern relationships have become shallow due to social media, emphasizing the importance of building deeper connections. He explores trust in organizational contexts, highlighting the role of vulnerability in leadership and team dynamics.