Should 2021 be forgotten? The answer is a resounding, “No … AND …” for me. As we enter 2022, our invitation is for you to consider the following: What am I remembering? What am I unlearning? What am I redefining? These questions allow for the honoring, learning, and contemplation of the past while also facilitating intentionality and imagination around the future. Sankofa.
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Yesterday, we learned that bell hooks, scholar, writer, poet, a woman I credit as one of my own intellectual foremothers, became an ancestor. I have always been drawn to her method of boldly acknowledging the influence of culture, system, and structural oppression while also lovingly affirming our individual agency, collective power and choice as we strive to “survive whole.” As we wrap up the year and continue our conversation on what it means to center abundance, it feels timely to offer a few rememberings by bell hooks that emphasize the role of and power in community as we work toward a more just and loving world.
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In my experience, “meeting people where they are” has long referred to and been limited to inquiry into the intellect, the mind. Likewise, “meeting people where they are,” as well-intentioned as it may be, in practice, has more often been applied with a “silent” white. In other words, “meeting [white] people where they are.” It is worth calling attention to the ways in which even our work – diversity, equity, inclusion, justice work – must be held accountable to its deference to the white gaze.
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We are experiencing a cultural shift, y’all. Simone Biles. Naomi Osaka. Dr. Nikole Hannah-Jones. Mental health. Black Women. Boundaries. In the mainstream, we are experiencing Black women unapologetically affirm their divine right to refusal and rest, and gift us with possibility for what it means to reorient our relationship with “work.” It is all fun and solidarity, retweets and hashtags, until someone we know models radical self-love and asserts their boundaries, and we experience inconvenience as a result. It hits different…and reconciling that, in my experience, is the work—that intrapersonal reckoning.
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Operationalizing justice absolutely requires pragmatism, practicality… AND it requires we reimagine. Operationalizing justice requires we re-evaluate what we deem “realistic” and practical. Operationalizing justice requires we push our mental model that focuses on “why things cannot happen” to an orientation that engages head, heart and hand to answer the question of “How could we make this be?” How can we be responsive to immediate needs while prioritizing strategic imperatives?
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The Winters Group is often called on to introduce justice-centered concepts that are new to the ‘corporate world’ in support of leadership’s espoused commitments to prioritize anti-racism and justice. This is important work… AND now is a timely opportunity to reimagine strategic, accountable partnership. I have read and heard from many Black and Brown people that they are experiencing “listening session fatigue” within their organizations. People want change. People want action. This is important work. How can we move beyond listening sessions to more strategic, accountability-driven partnership?
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I’ve previously referred to “power” as the silent “P” in corporate DEI work. We’ve talked about cultural differences without equal attention to the ways in which group membership and systems of oppression make some cultural differences valued over others. We’ve talked about unconscious bias without attention to the nuance that all biases are not created equal, and power has significant — even deadly — implications. We cannot begin adding “equity” and “justice” to our DEIJ industrial lexicon without addressing and amplifying the role of power.
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Justice work isn’t just about compelling statements and campaigns. It is certainly not about leveraging DEI firms as window-dressing to mask the deeply entrenched and harmful practices that persist within an organization, nor should it be centered on maintaining the goodness and sanctity of whiteness. Truth telling and reconciling are requisite to achieving any form of equity or liberation. Put simply… “The truth will set [us all] free.” Ya’ll — the stakes are high.
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Lately, I have been experiencing a strong sense of indifference and uncertainty related to our work — diversity, equity, inclusion and justice. Black people are dying, white nationalism and supremacy are embodied within the highest offices of government and, in more subtle ways, within most organizations. This is deeply troubling, yet unsurprising. I’ve been grappling with a few hard truths as we experience this segment in history — hard truths that have implications for DEIJ work more broadly.
Read MoreAs I write this post I am frustrated. It is September 23, 2020, and a few hours ago, I learned that one of the three Louisville, KY, police officers who were involved in the murder of Breonna Taylor was charged for the risk he posed to white people, not the life he stole from Breonna Taylor, a Black woman. It says a lot about what appeals to America’s whiteness’ moral compass, and the devaluation of Black women’s lives. Whiteness is only moved by Black death that is visible and that it can see. I am so over this system.
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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. Moving beyond the rhetoric and centering justice in our work means reimagining who we deem as qualified for doing this very important work.
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Many organizations are currently scurrying to leverage the current racial justice momentum to engage senior leaders in this work. Let me first affirm—this segment of work is important to much broader systemic change. I believe that learning, unlearning, relearning are critical paths towards disrupting systems and reimagining new ones…. AND I believe that 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.
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