I was talking to a friend who consults on racial equity. Normally she’s very hard to book, her schedule is filled and I knew if I wanted to hire her for a training or project I would have to book her months in advance. These days though she said the schedule is open and business has been slow. This was a change from several years ago where organizations, government, businesses, and people in general were clamoring to do something in the wake of George Floyd’s murder.

Back in 2020 many was anxious to do something to show support for Black people. Protests were happening, books by Black authors were flying off shelves, racial equity consultants were turning down requests. Where is that same anxiousness to do something today?

Racial equity work can’t just happen when it is fashionable. Racial equity work needs to be sustained and to grow. It is easy to stand with the cause when everyone does, but really the quiet times is when we need people to stay the course the most. During these quieter times when riots aren’t happening, when race isn’t on the news every night is when spoonfuls of progress are quietly chipped away.

Opening the news there are so many articles about how the fragile gains that were made in 2020 are slowly being taken apart. Affirmative action was struck down in the Supreme Court, book bans in schools, voting rights and redistricting happening, and so on. This is when we need to double down and have our organizations invest in racial equity training, holding ourselves and partners accountable to race work, and looking for ways to push forward.

Here are some questions to ask your organization to gauge if your organization’s commitment needs a boost:

• Do you know where the organization’s racial equity statement is located, if your organization has one
• The racial equity statement was actively talked about at a staff meeting within the six months
• Racial disaggregated data was used, bonus points if the data was granular enough to see ethnicity
• Within the past 3 months the organization shared resources with a POC led organization with no expectation of reciprocity
• The organization has conducted mandatory racial equity training in the last 6 months
• People are comfortable talking about race. Comfortable means using racial terms – Black, Brown, Asian, Latino, Middle Eastern, Native American, white, etc.
• Staff members can call out racism as it happens, right the wrong, and repair the relationship so people can move forward effectively together
• The team is looking for ways to deepen work, including adjusting work to find the intersections of race with other marginalized identities – disability, immigration, elders and youth, poverty, LGBTQ, etc.

Most likely by thinking through these questions there are places where your work can be deepened. Now is the time to do it, not just when it is en vogue and everyone is making statements about how enlightened they are or becoming. Sustained efforts will keep us moving forward.

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