Since George Floyd's murder there has been a lot of reflexive reactions from non-profit institutions around the world trying to play "catch up " when addressing structural racism and inequality within their ranks. While from the outside this is good, many of these institutions unknowingly or knowingly, put the burden of educating and pushing forward these difficult changes on their BIPOC employee's. I cant tell you how many work shops, DEI seminars or diversity conversations ive been asked to be apart of. It can be overwhelming. Frankly I'm tired. I wanted to see if other folks are having similar thoughts and experiences.
I apologize in advance for my long screed but... Jason, I hear you loud and clear. This subject is especially touchy for me because of a recent experience I had with an org that simply just would not acknowledge that DEI was something we had to look at internally. I was employed by an organization that issued grants and provided "direction" for other orgs. When the org president started seeking input on DEI issues, issues that I had spoken up about several times and additionally went so far as volunteering myself to help steer the process (I was the only POC on staff, so it seemed like a no brainer to me) I was glad-handed to death but ultimately dismissed. This was an all-white, mostly rural organization that included a diverse and populated city in one of its catchment area, and the experiences of the staff did not line up with the experiences of some of the orgs they supported. On top of that there was very little energy put toward real understanding of the differences in culture and experience. Now I'm 50 something and have been active in organizations and community boards of all kinds so I should have been used to this treatment, but the amount of resistance to my experience and point of view being of any value shocked me. To make a painfully long story short, we scheduled a DEI training day that was focused on our org and several others in the region and of the 4 organizations in the room, again, I was the ONLY POC. This did not go unnoticed by me but it wasn't mentioned by a single attendee. We spoke at length about the external focus of our organizations but when it came to examining the internal the conversation fell flat and as usual I felt that I had to speak as a representative of everyone NOT in that room. There were so many other instances that struck me during my time there, subtle class conflicts that I tried to get some of my coworkers to recognize as well as the fact that the whole organization was infected with white savior complex that I found some key allies on but in the end fell on deaf ears.
What troubled me most was that very few of the initiatives and only a few of the supporting orgs took a bottom up approach in their designing of programs that they assumed (through “research”) the people served wanted or needed. I know from experience as one of those folks that I knew what I needed, and most people in need do as well. We may articulate our needs differently, but in the end we know what they are. The climate at the time (this was around February-April of 2020) and the fact that I’d been questioning the notion of philanthropy in general (thank you Anand Giridharadas) made me more sensitive to these issues than usual so I was already at my wits end with this org. But speaking up constantly, and never being heard made me feel isolated and unhappy. By the way, I was let go less than three months after our DEI workshop, the staff is now entirely White. What I'm sick of is the lip service being paid to DEI, I'd be less apt to feel weighed down by it if the efforts were genuine. I now work for an org that is really trying to make it a priority, not just in policy, but in practice.
Thank you for sharing this powerful testimony Michael. This is so real...