Why Racial Equity and Diversity Efforts Fail
Over the last few months we have seen public and private sector organizations perform the following actions in hopes of advancing their cities, counties, school districts and companies toward Racial Equity.
- Create diversity, equity and inclusion task-forces and committees
- Hire Chief Diversity, Equity and Inclusion officers
- Issue formal statements supporting Racial Equity, diversity and inclusion
- Passed city, county and district resolutions committing to promoting Racial Equity
- Conduct unconscious bias training for employees
- Provide educational resources and readings of White Fragility and How to be an Anti-racist
The above actions are great starts and can be categorized as; initializing, symbolizing and empathizing. Based on social science research and best practices, these actions alone without additional strategies, will be ineffective because they fail to address the larger systemic and structural mechanisms that reproduce racial disparities.
Below are five causes we frequently identify for Racial Equity, diversity and inclusion programs that became idle, made little progress, or lacked importance organization-wide.
Public and private organizations must also learn how to make Racial Equity standard operating procedure by prioritizing, normalizing, organizing and operationalizing Racial Equity inside their cities, counties, school districts, and companies, to build on their efforts of initializing, symbolizing and empathizing.
Join us Sept 10th for the 1st National Racial Equity Summit, to discover and deploy a framework for making Racial Equity, diversity and inclusion standard operating procedure, and build on your current organization’s efforts to ensure everyone can obtain opportunity and well-being.
Register Now!