Beyond the Rhetoric—Centering Justice and Anti-Racism in our DEI Strategy: 10 Actions To Take Now

We published our first entry in our Beyond the Rhetoric series two and a half months ago. George Floyd was laid to rest three days earlier; nationwide protests were entering their third week; bookstores couldn’t keep up with demand for books on racial justice and white supremacy; and social media was a de facto anti-racism classroom filled with resources, calls for reform, and a righteous fury that reflected the fierce urgency of “now.” 

Since then, we’ve used this space to discuss how to move beyond surface-level discourse and performative allyship to effect genuine change in DEI spaces.  

In the meantime, public and corporate interest in racial justice has waned, social media feeds have mostly reverted to the milquetoast and mundane, and Sean Hannity sits atop the New York Times nonfiction bestseller list.  

Then on Sunday, August 23rd, a police officer in Kenosha, Wisconsin shot Jacob Blake, a Black man, seven times in his back in front of his young children. This is a tragic reminder that true change must be systemic as well as individual; that reading books and posting anti-racist content for a few weeks does not lead to justice.  

Jacob Blake serves as a tragic reminder that true change must be systemic as well as individual; that reading books and posting anti-racist content for a few weeks does not lead to justice. Share on X

Justice will come from breaking down oppressive racist structures with one hand and building equitable systems with the other.  

In DEI, that means moving beyond the rhetoric and implementing new strategies that center racial justice. Here are practical ideas and strategies, based on our series, that you can implement to move beyond the talk and actually make change through action. 

Action Item 1: Design a strategy that centers social justice 

Organizations that are committed to embedding racial justice into their DEI strategy must be proactive and willing to interrogate racism at all levels of systems: interpersonal and intra-personal (via education and learning) and institutional (via cultural transformation).  

Read about this on part one of our series, Our Approach.

Organizations that are committed to embedding racial justice into their DEI strategy must be proactive and willing to interrogate racism at all levels of systems. Share on X

Action Item 2: Interrogate your data 

Analyzing data brings potential inequities and injustices to the surface. Interrogation can uncover practices and policies that cause unintentional harm and disadvantage BIPOC and other historically marginalized groups.

Interrogate your internal data such as applicant flow, hiring, termination (both voluntary and involuntary), promotion, and performance appraisals to reveal — and ultimately reimagine — systems that perpetuate inequities.

Read more on Moving Beyond Analyzing to Interrogating Your Data. 

Action Item 3: Utilize and leverage qualitative data 

Data should tell a story, but not just any story. Take a justice-centered approach to revolutionizing your data-driven strategies by centering the rich and robust qualitative data that is often hidden, but exists readily, in our workplaces and communities — that is, if we seek it out. 

Interrogate your current use of qualitative data by asking these questions: 

• How are we limiting ourselves in how we define “data-driven?”  
• Whose voices are being silenced because they don’t have a “category?” 
• What critically important stories do the graphs and regressions not tell?
• How are we validating and respecting people’s stories, experiences, and environments?   

Read more on Amplify your Anti-Racist Practices with Qualitative Data.

Action Item 4: Engage leaders in becoming true allies 

DEI practitioners need to both engage with leaders around what it means to be an ally and push them to model equity– and justice-centered allyship. That’s how the necessary systemic changes will most effectively and efficiently take hold in our capitalist enterprises.  

Allies in leadership positions need to learn how to be informed, self-reflective, and active as they break down the structures and systems that oppress and marginalize Black employees and employees of color and rebuild equitable systems in their place. 

Read more on Engaging Leaders to Become Effective Allies.

Action Item 5: Leverage adult learning practices 

Too often organizations hastily schedule stand-alone 90-minute training sessions, ostensibly designed to “check the box” of racial justice learning. But attention to several key Adult Learning Principles can go a long way in designing education experiences that have lasting impact for learners: 

• Connect learning to a sense of self — Making connections to participants’ lives and understandings of themselves is key to ensuring they are invested in the topics, and all learners can benefit from reflection questions regarding their complicity in inequitable systems, as well as their roles and spheres of influence. 
• Build on existing knowledge — Framing learning around participants’ experiences and knowledge is an essential way to promote transfer of knowledge. Emphasizing that everyone has relevant experiences and can contribute to the conversation honors participants’ experiences and the value they bring to learning space — a key tenet of D&I work.   
• Activate learners’ internal motivation — Building a common understanding of race, racism, equity, inclusion, and justice will ultimately help us to better align our intent and impact, and to be more understanding and respectful of those with whom we interact. 
• Tie abstract concepts to solving real-life problems — Citing real-world connections between history and present day disparities, and sharing statistics about continued inequities, can be valuable ways to illustrate the countless problems that persist in realizing racial justice and equity. 

Read more on Leveraging Adult Learning Practices.

Action Item 6: Manage for change 

Establish strategic, sustainable intent by using a simple, high-level change management approach to address and eradicate systemic racism. Implement critical projects that are visible, meaningful, and measurable for managers, front-line workers, and all other stakeholders. 

Read more on Validating Emotion, Defining Allyship, and Leveraging Change Management.

Action Item 7: Minimize harm 

As Brittany J. Harris recently wrote, “DEI practitioners can know and understand ‘best practices’ and develop strategies around ‘inclusion’ … and still cause harm.” 

Learning, unlearning, relearning are critical paths towards disrupting systems and reimagining new ones. Share on X

Learning, unlearning, relearning are critical paths towards disrupting systems and reimagining new ones, and if we’re not mindful of how we curate and facilitate spaces that seek to engage us down this path, we can end up causing more harm than good.   

To guide you in minimizing harm, we offer these three questions: 

• Whose experience or truth are you centering? 
• Who does this primarily benefit? 
• Does this disrupt white supremacy and the organizational status quo, or does it preserve it? 

Read more on Minimizing Harm.

Action Item 8: Reimagine human resources 

Historically, HR has been tasked with the role of rule enforcement and compliance regulation. In turn, HR’s focus has been on pushing policies and upholding process over people, which has led to a rather reductive and detached perception of HR as a whole.  

HR needs to move beyond just serving the business, prioritizing management’s interests, and protecting their bottom line. Now is the time for HR to center its focus on establishing trust with employees by creating policies and practices that intentionally address the needs of the most marginalized employees in order to foster truly inclusive cultures.   

Now is the time for HR to center its focus on establishing trust with employees by creating policies and practices that intentionally address the needs of the most marginalized employees. Share on X

Read more on Reimagining the Role of HR.

Action Item 9: Reimagine the CDO role 

Diversity work has roots in compliance (e.g. Affirmative Action, EEO). Today, many organizations and CDOs still operate from that lens. Within this paradigm, there is often an emphasis on diversity as a “numbers game” or “check the box” exercise to “stay out of trouble” and mitigate legal risk. This work is important and ever relevant… and, in isolation, will not yield racial equity and justice. Organizations must rethink and expand the core competencies expected of Chief Diversity Officers to include: 

• Valuing lived experiences — Qualifications that overvalue years of experience and undervalue lived experiences can perpetuate many of the barriers that this work seeks to address, limiting candidate pools to those who have been privileged with access and exposure, and further marginalizing those who have not. 
• Understanding Anti-Blackness and Systems of Oppression — Concepts like “diversity of thought,” “inclusion,” and even “belonging,” have emerged to make this work more palatable — more specifically to the benefit of white folks. There has not been equal attention to the role of power, historical context, equity, and access. Rather than naming and disrupting the ways in which whiteness undermines diversity work, many efforts have been centered on how to manage Blackness. 
• Disrupting the Status Quo — This movement calls for the CDO to embody the role of an active disruptor — perhaps we call it the Chief Disruptive Officer. A focus on justice is inherently disruptive, as it requires dismantling and correcting systems that have traditionally been exclusionary and harmful. 

Read more on Reimagining The Role of the CDO – The Chief Disruptive Officer.

Action Item 10: Advance collective accountability 

Collective accountability is necessary to eradicate systemic racism. It requires understanding the history and racialized impacts of the organization and the industry, repairing historically harmful relationships, and changing inequitable business practices. Make collective accountability for anti-racism and inclusion a core value for the organization by implementing very specific anti-racist behaviors for the entire organization and educating every employee on what they are, why they are important, and the consequences for not adhering to them. The learning experiences on anti-racism should be mandatory, ongoing and embedded into the fabric of the learning philosophy. The organization should prioritize developing skills for:  

Make collective accountability for anti-racism and inclusion a core value for the organization by implementing very specific anti-racist behaviors for the entire organization and educating every employee on what they are, why they… Share on X

• Self-development and self-understanding 
• Learning how to respond to interpersonal and group issues
• Creating, critically analyzing, and implementing or advocating for organizational norms, policies, and practices that are equitable and inclusive
• Creating societal change by being able to work collaboratively with others to foster social justice. This may come in the form of volunteerism or other community engagement.  

Finally, make collective accountability an organizational norm by including inclusive behaviors on all performance reviews, not just for leaders. 

Read more on Advancing Collective Accountability for Racial Justice.

Equity and justice in the workplace will not come easily, and it will not come through strongly-worded statements or by painting murals on streets. It will come when those in positions of influence actively leverage their power to subvert, deconstruct, and reimagine organizational structures, processes, and systems that have historically marginalized BIPOC employees. It’s time — well past time, actually — to move beyond the rhetoric of justice and into the active, relentless pursuit of it. 

Equity and justice in the workplace will not come easily, and it will not come through strongly-worded statements or by painting murals on streets. It will come when those in positions of influence actively leverage their power to… Share on X