Earlier this week I opened an email from someone I didn’t know asking me to take a survey about equity in education. I closed the email without taking the survey. I’m tired of taking surveys, especially from people I don’t know. I’m saying no more taking surveys unless I know the person sending it, or if there is a prize or compensation attached – I can be bought, often for the price of a taco. I realize I’m being a survey hypocrite since my organization just ran a large successful survey project. I know the value of a good survey and the data generated can be powerful. But I’m tired of being over-surveyed by askholes (people who ask questions and don’t listen to the answers); so many of the surveys are well intention but poorly designed or executed the data becomes meaningless and waste time, resources, and burns goodwill.

Surveys do not Substitute for Community Engagement
Often times organizations produce a survey “to hear” from the community. Just this week, I’ve gotten four request to complete surveys. All of these well-intention surveys are asking questions about topics important to them, but I don’t know what I’m gaining or what communities of color are gaining by filling out the survey. Is launching a survey a way of ‘checking the box’ and saying the community had a say in the project? Will things change because of the survey results? Is the survey collection method right for the community being asked? Asking without first listening is fakequity; good surveys are driven by the community and the community has ownership over the process and data.

How to do better surveys
A good survey design produces good survey results; vice versa crappy design produces crappy results, and fakequity in the design produces fakequity in results. Designing a survey rooted in the principles of equity will produce more equitable results. This isn’t hard, but it takes intentional thought and work.

One of the first steps is to look at who has a say in the survey design. The project should be centered in communities of color, which means you are doing the upfront work of gaining trust and buy-in, communities of color have a say on what is included and counted, and communities have control of the data. Inclusiveness is a key step in engaging the community.

My organization just completed a big survey project. Our design team was made up of a diverse group of stakeholders. We were thoughtful in putting together the team to include a mix of people, including parents of color, school partners, and community based organizations. We also invited partners to expand the table as we went along. This team guided the survey design process. They had a say and ownership around what data was captured, how questions were written and translated, and how surveys were disseminated and collected.

On the flip fakequity side, I recently reviewed survey data from a process put together by a small insular team. The return rate from people of color was so low it wasn’t a representative sample and the results were invalid for communities of color, essentially wasting the time of the people of color who took the survey.

Survey Delivery Methods – SurveyMonkey FTW (for the win), WRONG
Online surveys have become the default method of collecting surveys. Online methods definitely have their perks: cost effective, easy to put together, eliminates the need for data entry, and they are easy to disseminate. However, we need to ask is the ease of use still the right way to get results? One of the biggest limitations with online surveys is in-person engagement is lost. Online surveys are a one-way communication stream out then in, they don’t allow for dialogue to happen while taking the survey. Many people of color, especially non- or limited-English residents, benefit from having a translator and/or cultural broker who can explain the survey questions to gather the feedback.

My colleague Jondou shared a story about working on a survey translation into Somali. His Somali colleague looked at the survey and said “Somalis don’t talk like this. We are more direct and we ask open ended questions. You took an American survey and translated it into Somali, that doesn’t make it a Somali survey.” He also shared a similar story out of the Chinese community. Jondou was orally translating a survey and the survey taker was getting agitated. After a few questions he paused and said (in Chinese)  “I know this isn’t how Chinese people talk, these are American questions,” after  acknowledging the questions were biased and not culturally appropriate they were able to continue. These types of dialogues and exchanges can’t happen over a computer screen; they happen in person and where the experience is validated.

Paper surveys are much more adaptable for focus groups, interviews, and guided conversations around survey collection. Paper also wins when you have little children who want to ‘help’ you complete a survey – the picture is of a survey completed by a preschooler; can’t get that experience over a computer screen. Community engagement starts young.

Invest in People for Better Results
Racial equity work happens best when there is a relational component. When we invest in people we get better results. As you design surveys think about the people part of the project, what is the experience you want to give people? Don’t focus on the data, focus on people of color.

Quick tips:
Design team: Ensure you have diverse voices helping to write the questions.

Translation: Translate your survey to make it language accessible, and ensure the translation is appropriate and high quality (have a second person proof the translation). We also have to acknowledge having it translated is at best a minimum step, it is still an American/dominant culture survey and may need cultural brokers to help explain the nuances of the survey.

Allow for multiple ways to take a survey: Invest in multiple ways to take the survey, online, paper, focus groups, interviews, etc.

I have more to write about around survey designs and how to keep the experience positive for communities and people of color, but I’ll save the rest for future posts. Feel free to post questions or email us if you have thoughts or questions for a future post on surveys, fakequity@gmail.com.

Posted by Erin Okuno

Wednesday was GiveBIG day in Seattle and about 50 other cities across America, also known as Give Local America! GiveBIG is a big day for a lot of nonprofits in the Seattle and Western Washington region. The Seattle Foundation, which runs the day, set a goal of having $20-million raised on the day, much of it driven by an incentive pool of funds – every gift given through the Foundation’s website will be ‘stretched’ by a pool of money the foundation raised. Hooray, for $20-million flowing to nonprofits.
A few members of the Fakequity team compared ‘equity’ notes about GiveBIG, including the good and the bad. We also consulted a few colleagues at nonprofits of various sizes and in different fields to get their perspectives.

GiveBIG – the Good
Despite all of the gripping about how many GiveBIG emails people got, I had over 65, it is a concentrated day of giving with excitement. When GiveBIG first started in Seattle it was during the middle of a recession and fundraising was hard. The day really shook people out of a giving malaise and raised important money to support the work of many nonprofits. We shouldn’t take this for granted.

For many smaller nonprofits, like the one I work for, the return on investment (ROI) of time and effort is decent. Collectively our staff put in about eight hours of work. With this investment of time we raised more than we would have if we had tried to pull together a special event, or write a grant for the amount of money we raised. GiveBIG is a great way for our small nonprofit to have an individual giving drive without creating one from scratch.

We also appreciated the outreach provided to smaller nonprofits. Before GiveBIG the Seattle Foundation staff reached out to many smaller nonprofits and invited us in for technical assistance/help sessions, which was great.

So with all of this said there are things that can be improved.

GiveFAKEQUITY – the We Can Do Better Part
We need to acknowledge not all nonprofits are starting from the same playing field. Small nonprofits don’t have the same staffing as a large hospital, university, or well-resourced institutional nonprofit. I know many of the larger nonprofits will complain that even they don’t have the level of resources they would like to take full advantage of the day, but we need to acknowledge some are better resourced than others. In reality the organizations with the least resources need the support of the GiveBIG platform the most.

Last year I got so annoyed with my alma mater’s GiveBIG emails; I wrote back and asked Social Justice Minded University to forgo taking the stretch gift because others need it more – they didn’t email back, shrug. As a university they have at least triple the staff a small nonprofit working on just fundraising which means they can raise more funds. I’m all for them raising loads of money to support their scholarship fund which in-turn may support students of color. From an equity and community minded lens, is it appropriate for larger organizations with more fundraising ability to draw down from the stretch donation pool at an equal proportion? Probably not.

Another example, a larger organization shared a tip, incentives work. In their case delicious cupcakes – I’ll admit I donated a few extra dollars to qualify for their cupcake gift certificate. I love this organization, but I also see their ability to tap into donors who can donate gift certificates as an advantage over other organizations. Smaller nonprofits don’t always have the same donor base.

Several colleagues mentioned GiveBIG is beginning to feel a little like a popularity contest and like the Hunger Games – May the GiveBIG Odds be Ever in Your Favor. I wonder when did we lose the feeling like we are coming together as a community to support our organizations. The excitement is great and important, but I still believe in the truism donations and gifts should be made in the spirit of giving and connecting.

GiveBIG Next Year – More Equity, Less Fakequity
Here are a few suggestions of ways to embed more equity into the day:

Use an equity filter: If the goal is to raise as much money as possible, great the current structure encourages this. If the goal is run through an equity filter then the goal needs to be adjusted and we need to acknowledge resources, especially the stretch donation pool, needs to be allocated differently. An equity lens shows smaller organizations, especially people of color centered organizations, will benefit MORE from the stretch gifts than larger more established nonprofits.

Reallocate the stretch pool: Cap the amount of funds larger organizations (i.e. universities, hospitals, etc.) qualify for. Such as allow them to participate but forgo the stretch, or cap the stretch to $5,000 or some number so they don’t water down the stretch that benefits smaller nonprofits more. Or once an org reaches $100,000 then the stretch stops. There are different formulas to help drive the funds towards smaller nonprofits.

More Equity: If part of the day is to promote racial equity, organizations should be required (or at least highly encouraged) to demonstrate their commitment to equity on their profiles. Questions such as: How many people of color are served, how are you working WITH communities of color, geographic area served will help donors understand where their donations are going.

Transparency: There is still confusion around the stretch donor pool – some people think it is a 1:1 match, challenge matches that individual organizations raise are confusing, and where are the match funds are coming from isn’t clear. Transparency is important in creating trust.

Community: As mentioned earlier a lot of the community spirit behind the day is waning. Can we create more community rallying spirit and the coming together versus a sense of competition?

Supporting Communities of Color: The current giving platform totally caters to English speaking, technology based donors. Communities of color are diverse and not all English or technology based. Can we adapt or open up the technology to accept non-English based pages? We also suggest asking people of color based organizations how their donors give and adapt GiveBIG to meet their needs?

Finally, I know my colleagues at the Seattle Foundation worked hard to bring us GiveBIG. I share this in the spirit of getting the work right over the long haul. Thank you for your work and thank you for giving. Here’s to next year and more equity in philanthropy and giving.

Posted by Erin Okuno, with thought partnership from Heidi Schillinger and colleagues in the nonprofit field.

At least the dessert comes with the chicken lunch. Photo by Erin

It is that time of year when I attend fundraising events for local organizations doing work on behalf of children and families. I used to attend quite a few fundraisers, but the list has become shorter over the years. If you had asked me some time ago why after doing work in the community for so many years have I stopped attending these annual celebrations of work I would have told you it’s my hectic schedule and dislike of cold chicken. Let’s be honest one can only stomach so much cold chicken. After attending two events within weeks of each other however, I have begun to explore this more deeply. Is it the cold chicken or everything else that I am being served?
To protect the organizations and to keep me from being un-invited, I will refer to them as Agency A – Big Name Intermediary Organization and Agency B – Local Education Org. Agency A typically hosts functions where you see a lot of what we call major stakeholders. Now I would argue your biggest stakeholder is the community in which you serve, however I am aware that it is a fundraiser and the purpose of the event is to make money. You have to intentionally invite folks with deep pockets and political influence. Agency A can really fill a room. Trust me when I tell you there were well over a 100 tables with cold chicken on the plate and a lot of networking and hobnobbing. Agency A also made the mistake of having diversity in their line of speakers but those speakers didn’t speak towards a racial equity agenda, in fact one of the speakers, a person of color, shared a story reinforcing racial stereotypes and the story wasn’t connected to the mission of the organization.

This was my first time attending Agency B’s event. I was invited by a trusted friend and colleague and was curious considering their work is focused in another community that I do not professionally work in, however I live in the community. The room was filled with energy and activity and guess what? It was a breakfast event so for once I didn’t have to give myself a pep talk convincing myself that I could eat another cold chicken meal.

You could say that both events had your typical fundraising components. There was the welcome followed by a list of accomplishments from the last year. Lots of heart melting pictures of young children, the stuff that makes you all warm and fuzzy inside. Agency A told their story in a very interesting way. I won’t bore you with specifics but as best as I could describe it I would say at times it was like watching an infomercial. I was unsure what I was buying but these people somehow made me think I needed it. Agency B however, told their story in a way that I had been longing to hear. What I experienced at Agency B’s event was in essence what every annual event should be which was truly centered in the community.

Agency B not only highlighted their overall work, but they intentionally created space to showcase the individual and collective contributions that make their work possible. They demonstrated contributions that flowed both ways. Yes, they work on behalf of children and families, but the families also gave them something and the family’s contributions were valued. What they learned from those experiences helped to expand their reach, and what was even better is they worked directly with those who accessed their programs to do it. Finally, there was an overwhelming acknowledgement that the greatest gift was being reminded of the unlimited potential and abilities of young children. So often those of us in the field focus so much on the outcomes that we lose sight of the true beauty of just being present.

My experience reaffirmed there was still hope. There were still agencies out there doing the work I was actually just not doing my part in being intentional in finding them. So I’ve vowed following Agency B’s event on that I am done with cold chicken. If I am not being served a real story, with real people I will decline to attend. If there is no presence of community I will not attend. I am less interested in the menu and more interested in the content of the program.

We need more events like Agency B’s. Here are some tips to work towards equity at fundraisers:

• Share: Share power and control of the agenda. Allow participants and partners to help shape the agenda and showcase what they want to showcase. It is a fundraiser but there is room to allow communities to share their own priorities.
• Don’t exploit communities or clients: Fundraisers tread the fine line of needing to highlight good work, but be careful not to turn it into the Hunger Games where clients are paraded out and showcased.
• Food: No one wants to eat bad food, don’t get overly fancy or ambitious.  If you can taste it ahead of time.
• Diversity doesn’t equal a good program: Just bringing in people of color into your program doesn’t equate to a compelling program centered in communities of color. Are the people on your program speaking authentically about experiences from communities of color? As an example at another event a video was shown on a training program for youth. There was diversity of people in the video but all of the adults doing the training were white while the youth recipients were students of color. The video reinforced a ‘savior’ complex – White adults, coming in and saving youth of color, not a great image for promoting racial equity.

Be thoughtful of your fundraising design and do your best to center the fundraiser in the experiences of communities of color. This will guarantee a better experience for all.

Posted by CiKeithia Pugh

First, we need to pay tribute to Prince who died on Thursday. As Gen Xer/Millennial, Prince defined the music for many of us and our peers. Prince was unapologetic in fighting the call to assimilate and conform to music industry norms. This quote Heidi heard on the radio sums it up well “[Prince] resisted the pressure to do music like everyone else and that was freedom.” This article, Prince Was The Patron Saint Of Black Weirdos, also sums up Prince’s ability to stay true to himself: “He was a beacon for all of us who were told that we must cut out a part of ourselves in order to fit.”

Assimilation Isn’t the Goal and It Doesn’t Work
Every so often I do what I know not to do, read the comment section of a news story focused on race, immigration, or the like. I ‘armor up’ and think of the exercise as ‘opposition research,’ but I’m still blown away with the blatant racism and tenaciousness of commenters. On a recent story about a partner’s work advocating for language interpretation, the majority of the comments called for having immigrants and refugees to learn English, build a wall (as in the wall Donald Trump wants to build), and these comments:
“[O]ther countries do not pander to immigrants like the US.  If you want to live here, integrate and assimilate into American culture and stop being an outsider or go home.”

“We do not need to divert more of our school resources to bilingual education. The resource should instead be spent on things that could benefit all kids – sports after school, better science education, music, PE equipment, gifted education etc. Learn English if you want to stay here, otherwise, please go back to where you came from.”

Many immigrants and refugees want to learn English and want to fully participate in their communities. Racial equity work and creating a welcoming community for all, not just those whom we like, who understand what we’re saying, or have the ability to communicate with us. One of my favorite interpretations of the term racial equity comes from Junious Williams, a lawyer and Executive Director of Urban Strategies Council, while speaking on a panel at PolicyLink’s conference he said he thinks of the legal definition of equity “What it takes to make a person whole.” Language is an important part of a making us feel whole – language and culture help us connect and is an important part of the fabric that keeps our communities and ourselves whole.

In racial equity work we need to understand others, this is why we learn about history and need to once in a while crack open the ‘World’ section of the newspaper. Understanding our roles as US and global citizens also explains the good and bad we have contributed to why we need to step up and work with immigrants and refugees. Many immigrants and refugees would choose to remain in their home countries if given the choice, but make the painful choice of leaving to literally preserve their lives — war, persecution, famine , violence — and they seek a new home as a result.

Assimilation Works so Well it Destroys Communities — Dearly Departed We Gather Here today 2 Get Through this Thing Called Life
I’ve spent time with partners from various Native American communities in Washington. In getting to know different Native American communities, Elders shared how they or their grandparents were forced to assimilate to American ways. The most brutal of the assimilation practices involved ‘benevolent’ government agencies forcibly taking children from families and sending them to boarding schools. At the boarding school children were striped of their Native culture including clothing, families, and language. They were forbidden to speak their native languages and in some cases if they were caught speaking their home languages they were punished, sometimes with corporal punishment. Many Native American languages died and whole generations do not speak their family’s language because of these harmful assimilation practices. Heidi’s friend is half-Native Alaskan and grew up in a rural town. Lately she’s been thinking about how to preserve their Native language, but she also wonders has too much been lost. The last native speaker died last year. When a language dies culture dies as well. Assimilation worked so well it destroyed entire communities and many Native American communities are still reeling from these harmful practices.

In many ways the Japanese community experienced a similar forced assimilation during the World War II internment. Japanese families, including American citizens, were forced to leave their homes and put into internment camps. Others who weren’t interned, and other Asians (i.e. Chinese, Koreans, etc.) worked at assimilating more into dominant American culture so they wouldn’t be mistaken for Japanese. For children growing up at this time they were taught their culture was ‘wrong,’ they were less American, survival was tied to a standard not of their choosing. To use another Prince quote “Dearly departed we gather here today 2 get through this thing called life…” and now we watch as the “doves cry,” and mourn for a language and culture gone.

Assimilation practices don’t benefit communities. While many who think or are even so bold as to post comments saying: ‘they should learn English,’ ‘they need to become more American,’ ‘my grandparents came from Eastern Europe and learned how to read and write,’ need to ask themselves how much of who they are is also wrapped up in one’s ability to communicate, to feel a part of a community, and to feel seen- not marginalized. How much does a person change when we give up or lose parts of our culture and language? Is asking a person to change benefit themselves or are we forcing assimilation out of fear of non-conformity?

Prince: “Compassion is an action word with no boundaries,” in Fakequity terms “Equity without action is Fakequity.”
So much of our everyday dealings caters to the dominate culture and requires people to conform to norms. Instead of asking people to assimilate let’s adjust our actions to create ways where people can be valued, seen, and heard for who they are. When we create systems that default to these thing we help people become more whole, and as a result communities become stronger which is the goal.
Some suggestions of ways to open up and fight assimilative practices:

• Hiring: Qualifications vs. Desired Qualifications. Why do we value technical skills over relational and racial equity skills? Technical skills are easier to quantify but is a person who can type, code, or with a lot of education better able to do the work than someone who understands the cultural nuances of a community? As an example instead of paying consulting firms for translation services we can invest that money in recruiting, hiring, and providing professional development for a bi/multi-lingual person which provides a family wage (hopefully) job.
• Philanthropy: Written applications vs. Getting to Know a Community. Grantmaking isn’t a science there is a lot of discretion in who is awarded funding or support. The current system of using written applications shows a bias to organizations who ‘assimilated’ to the dominate culture of who understand grantmaking and has relationships with funders — in other words competing for grants can be like the Hunger Games (from the books of the same title) where contestants are forced to fight for scare resources and prohibited from working together. Getting to know a community and seeing who people turn to for information is a better signal of who is doing work and where support can be targeted.
• Language Access: Mostly everything we do, including this blog, is in English only (sheepish). High quality translation and interpretation helps to make things accessible to a broader audience. Extend yourself and your services and ask immigrant and refugee communities if interpretation and translation will help to increase participation and understand. And we need to break the expectation and assumption everything is provided in English. A few months ago, I went to a  Somali event where English speakers were handed interpretation headsets. They ran out of headsets and the headsets malfunctioned which meant many of us English speakers experienced what it was like where we weren’t catered to and had to experience the stress of not understanding what was happening — that was a better lesson than the actual content of the event. Find an event where you aren’t in the majority and try to follow along, let alone participate, let us know what you learn.

Finally, in the words of Prince: “I don’t really care so much what people say about me because it usually is a reflection of who they are. For example, if people wish I would sound like I used to sound, then it says more about them than it does me.”

Posted by Erin Okuno and Heidi Schillinger (Written by Erin – all of the ‘I’ statements are from me. Heidi contributed heavily to this post and is the brains behind a lot of it.)

It’s April 1. No joke and no joking about budgeting season budgeting season at my organization. Last year I put together my organization’s budget based on a lot of assumptions, sort of like April Fools but more serious. I was new to the job and our work had shifted so much the previous year’s budget was a decent frame, but didn’t provide the clarity needed to build a beautiful budget. This year’s budgeting process will be much more reflective of our racial equity lens and goals. Where we place and spend our money says a lot about our priorities and commitments. Martin Luther King Jr. said “budgets are moral documents,” and our budgets should reflect our commitments and accountability to our priorities.

Budgeting isn’t an activity I love. I didn’t get into nonprofit work saying “I’m so excited to change the world through budgets,” some may say this, but not me. I view budgets as a necessary part of being accountable and making sure we are doing what we say we are supposed to. I’ll admit sometimes I like to geek out with Excel and see what fancy formulas I can come up with; right after geeking out I freak out when my budget is horribly overdrawn because I created too fancy a formula and double counted an expense, not a great joke to play on yourself.

Get the Infrastructure Right, Get our Work Right
Quoting another great leader, Angela Glover Blackwell of PolicyLink, said “Get the Infrastructure Right, Get America Right.” If we think of a budget as part of the important infrastructure of our organizations and our racial equity work, then it needs to reflect our commitments to racial equity. I see it as part of my job to have our organizational commitment to racial equity reflected in our budget and organizational infrastructure.

So how does equity and budgeting go together? On the simplest level where you put your money and where you spend money should reflect our priorities. On my personal budget I really value eating so there are a lot of charges to small restaurants serving pho, tacos, bun bowls, and the likes. I should probably start valuing working out and cooking more too.

At an organizational level our biggest expense is staffing. Our staff make our work possible, and as such we need to pay them. This is why hiring is so important around racial equity. Majority of an organization’s budget goes to staffing cost and as such the staff need to be reflective of an organization’s commitment to racial equity.

Other places where our racial equity priorities are easily identified in our organizational budget:

• Program Stipends: Stipends are important to honoring people’s commitment to the work.
• Interpreters and translation: We value inclusion and participation of community members who need language support. Adequately budgeting for translators and interpreters is important.
• Child care: For our larger events we often provide child care to ensure parents can participate.
• Food: Majority of my receipts are for food. For me food is essential to building strong relationships and for getting to know our coalition members. I also try to use neighborhood, people of color, owned businesses as a way to continue to deepen our commitment to racial equity.

On more than a few occasions we’ve provided gift cards as a way to say thank you, or a nice staff lunch, or even better a trip to the ice cream store (they also have pinball and video games) to celebrate a milestone. A thank you can go a long way in relationship and community building. Allocating funds under appreciation or whatever the category code for your organization is important.

Where we spend money is as much a reflection on our commitment to equity and community building. I do my best to hire consultants of color who also share our values and invest back into the community. I also shop and spend our limited dollars in the neighborhood and with community minded business owners; can’t do this all of the time but where possible we do. Spending power is important and can amplify work in different ways.

How does your budget look?
Does your budget reflect your organization’s commitment to racial equity? Are you allocating dollars in a way that supports racial equity work? I hope so. When we get our infrastructure right our racial equity work moves a little faster.

Some suggested steps:

• Ask your staff where they would allocate funds when using their racial equity and community building lens.
• Is your budget flexible to allows for community driven program work and adjustments? Can you build in a little room to allow for changing communities, new work, and sometimes fun or “passion projects.” (Passion projects are projects we get excited about and keep us in the job.)
• Ensure allocations drive and support racial equity work – are adequate funds budgeted for translations/interpretation, food, child care, professional development.
• Where are you spending your dollars? Are they supporting people of color owned businesses, is the money staying within your community?
• If you were to share your budget with your community and constituents what would they say? Does it match their views and visions for the organization?

Want to go deeper?
My black year, TEDxGrandRapids talk by Maggie Anderson. She spent a year living “exclusively off of Black businesses, professionals and products for an entire year.”

Posted by Erin Okuno, who is on the lookout to make sure she doesn’t get pranked this April Fools Day

When I became an executive director a colleague reached out to invite me to join the Asian Pacific Directors Coalition (APDC). I hadn’t really done a lot of work with the Asian community so it was a new experience to be surrounded by so many Asian leaders, many of whom had paved the way for me to be in my present job. At one meeting a colleague said “too often Asians are left out of conversations around race.”

At the recent Oscars the hashtag #OscarsSoWhite was trending because of the lack of diversity and several skits projecting stereotypes of Asians. Many in the Asian community hoped with the recent Supreme Court vacancy an Asian would be named to further diversify the court. Asians in the Seattle Metro Area are the second largest minority group and it continues to grow — this trend probably holds true in other parts of the United States, which means we are here and we cannot be made invisible.

Other racial groups are sometimes left out of data presentations, but for the purposes of this blog post I’m focusing on Asians because I am Asian and can speak to my Asian experience. I hope others will choose to share their perspectives as well, please email fakequity@gmail.com if you are willing to share.

“Hey, I’m missing from that chart.”
Recently I was looking at an education report, pretty standard stuff – charts on graduation rates, kindergarten readiness, etc. Where it got interesting was the chart labeled “opportunity gap.” I paused and started reading more carefully, but couldn’t make sense of the chart or the table. My colleague and I puzzled over it until we read the footnote and it became real. In the chart Asians were grouped with Whites in order to present their opportunity gap data. We went from “no way, they didn’t do that…” to “oh, shit they did…”

Several weeks later, in another meeting (for a separate organization) several charts were passed around to demonstrate how students of color are doing academically and where the ranking of the schools where students of color attend. These charts were much simpler to read so it took me only a few seconds to zoom in on the bar line labeled “White or Asian.” I could feel my blood pressure rising and the facilitator could see I was getting agitated. She graciously came over and asked what was going on. When the group reconvened I ‘soapboxed’ and passionately explained why grouping Asians with Whites is a bad practice. Several in the room nodded their heads, while others stared blankly or their eyes glazed over with confusion.

Invisible Asians — Can you see me?
Many Asians, myself included, receive the benefits passed on to us with Asian privilege. For the most part I don’t worry about safety and I’m not treated differently because of language or faith beliefs. That said I can’t ‘turn off’ how I look, or control how people perceive me because of my Asian background. There are still systemic and institutional barriers holding many Asians back. Disaggregated Asian data shows many Asians are still struggling.

Data is an important way to demonstrate the disparities that continue to exist for Asians. Data can either be used for good or as my colleague Dr. Jondou Chen describes as ‘weaponizing’ data against communities of color. Grouping Asians with Whites plays into the myth of the ‘model minority.’ While many Asians are doing well, many others still struggle or have to work twice as hard to find the same gains as our White counterparts.

As an example my organization just completed a big data project. Through our partners, we surveyed over 600 families including many East Asians. Two of the questions asked were:

• “How often have you received positive communication about your child?,” and
• “How often have you received negative communication about your child?”

When we looked at this question broken out by race, Asian families reported receiving more negative communications about their child than positive. Could this be because of the ‘myth’ that Asian students are expected to do well in school, or is it because of language barriers, or teacher biases? The data set showed us where we need to dig deeper and examine the systems involved and work with partners to close and improve the gaps. Had Asians been grouped with Whites we wouldn’t have this level of specificity and Asian student’s needs would have been lost.

Within the Asian race category are 48 distinct ethnic groups – each with their own histories and cultures, different languages, and unique migration story. We must honor these legacies and richness in order to understand opportunity and achievement gaps or other gaps in health care, justice systems, etc. At an event hosted by partners in the African American community a gentleman said “I cannot learn your song, until I learn to sing my own.” In this case we cannot expect to close gaps until we understand the Asian experience and recognize the richness and the needs of Asian communities.

Grouping Asian with White people  shifts the burden of closing gaps to Asians rather than identifying factors that continue to marginalize Asian communities. When we look at disaggregated data, such as this chart from the Washington State Commission on Asian Pacific American Affairs (CAPAA) we can clearly see not all Asians are academically achieving at high rates. If Asians were grouped with Whites this data would be invisible and we would continue to wonder and at worst blame Asians for not academically achieving. With this data we can begin to look more closely at the systems holding Asians back.

Making Asians and People of Color Visible
We need to adopt practices that intentionally makes visible Communities of Color. We need to ensure Communities of Color own and have a say in how data is presented and used, here are some suggestions:

• At a minimum stop grouping Asians with Whites, or other combinations. Disaggregated data is a best practice.
• Learn about different Asian experiences, recognizing each Asian experience is unique and we need to create space for multiple voices, stories, and truths.
• Listen to and work with communities of color on how data can be used to highlight needs and drive towards problems solving and resource sharing. Data use needs to build trust, not used against people of color.
• Allow communities of color ownership of their own data — only collect data in partnership with communities of color, honor how the communities want to have their data used, check with multiple people from communities on how they are experiencing their data.
• Continuously review data practices using a racial equity lens.

Many of these practices will benefit communities of color overall. We need to stop making communities of color invisible. We need to make visible Asian and people of color experiences and truths, to counter the narratives that play into myths and stereotypes around race. We need to work proactively with communities of color to identify what is working and where policy and community work is needed.

Posted by Erin Okuno, special thanks to Jondou Chen, PhD, James Hong, MEd, and Heidi Schillinger, MSW for background material and thought partnership.

Earlier this week I was mugged; I’m fine – a little buss’ up, but fine. I won’t go into the details since they don’t really matter. What matters is the ‘equity story’ that comes out of it. Heidi (of the fakequity team) suggested sharing the story because it happened and the story didn’t end with “I was mugged.”

One Incident in One Place
I was mugged on a gorgeous sunny March afternoon on a route I travel often. My neighborhood is great, we have our good and we have our challenges. I love being able to walk to the park, the library, grab a bite to eat at the local Mexican, Vietnamese, or Chinese restaurants or a sweet from the Japanese, or Filipino bakeries. I love seeing the new affordable housing going up a half-mile from my house. I loved hearing from a colleague how a neighboring community is embracing a tent city that is moving in. At their community meeting instead of “we don’t want homeless here,” or “we’re worried about crime, trash, intoxication and drugs” as happened in other neighborhoods, the community’s biggest concern was “How do we get the [tent city] residents hot water? They need hot water!” Taken all together these are the things that define the character of my community. While it is true my neighborhood probably has a higher crime rate, higher poverty, and lower  education and health outcomes, do they define us – no. We don’t excuse the crime and we work hard to build stronger communities rooted and glued by culture, diversity, and relationships.

In racial equity work we have to remember one incident or one story doesn’t define a community. It is easy to think what we hear and see on Facebook, in the news, in rap songs, or hear from friends of friends is true. If I believed what I read on Facebook from our neighborhood group I would think my neighborhood is overrun by crime, off-leash dogs, and new houses (code for gentrification). I’d also believe everyone in my neighborhood was English literate, since US social media is predominately English based – I know this isn’t true and it is evident whenever I’m out grocery shopping, at the library, or in a school.

Writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie wrote: “The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story.” I’m not sharing details of the robbery because I don’t want to perpetuate stereotypes of my neighborhood, Asian victims (for the record I don’t think I’m a ‘victim’), or the person who robbed me. These details are for me to know and for me to process my own biases against and challenge myself to redefine. Stereotypes, biases, and incomplete stories are antithetical to racial equity work, they allow racism and injustice to continue. Instead we need to do the harder work of digging in and spending time building strong relationships that can question stereotypes and push us to evaluate the stories we tell ourselves.

Relationships First
I’ve been fairly open about being mugged. It happened, it sucked, and I needed a few things from my community such as – if you saw my purse dumped please let me know, if you needed to reach me use email since I didn’t have a phone, and I lost my wallet so lunch was on you. The response I got back was amazing. Friends, neighbors, and colleagues have been great. They sent messages checking in, a friend made me laugh when she correctly noted the robbers were probably disappointed to find random gummy bears in my former purse, and offers to help replace lost items. At some point I will return these favors, because I want to and because this is how we do things– we take care of each other, not because of a quid pro quo formula. Community building and racial equity work happens quickest and best when we spend the upfront time building personal relationships.

My Challenge and Your Challenge
My scrapes and bruises are still there, but will eventually go away. I can thank my friends for ensuring my headspace is fine. I’m fine because I had a strong community around me who made sure I was taken care of. Now they can worry about others.

Who I am worried about are the kids, overwhelmingly kids of color, in our community that slip through systems. I’m worried about the immigrants who may be a victim of a crime but may not report it because of a language barrier or they don’t feel they can trust government. I worry about families who are stressed about housing, food, and medical cost and as a result their children feel the stress. I worry about the little and big things that allow racism to continue. These are the stressors that also define our community.

My challenge and your challenge is to get our racial equity work right. We have to take care of each other AND we need to extend ourselves to take care of someone else we may not know or easily see. Challenge yourself to call out racism. Challenge yourself to analyze a piece of data and figure out who’s story and what story is it telling. Make a new relationship or invest in a community different than your own. Maybe these steps will help a kid, especially a child of color, feel connected, stay in school, and be more securely rooted—for me this is what equity work is about. Be safe and thanks for all you do.

Posted by Erin Okuno

Every few weeks I have the conversation around why we need to focus on race. Someone will say “what about [fill in the blank foster youth, special needs, LGQBT, people who live in a particular neighborhood, vegans, lactose intolerant, people who hate spiders, etc.]? They are often left behind and have a lot of needs.” I understand why they are naming specific populations; they are being inclusive and thoughtful and doing their job as an advocate. When this happens I pause the conversation and say “yes focusing on [fill in the blank population] is important but we lead with race because if we don’t we may still miss people of color.” It is at this point I get confused looks.
We lead and focus on race first because if we don’t we may miss people and communities of color all together. We have to design our work to have a focus on race because when we lead with race we ensure we are capturing people of color, and inevitably white people will come along. Defaulting to regular practices leaves communities of color behind.

Here is an example:
My organization just wrapped up a big survey project. We received 639 survey results, majority from people of color and very representative of the demographics of our community (e.g. high rates of eligible for free and reduced lunch, many immigrants and refugees, etc.). We had the survey translated into ten languages and used interpreters to help lead focus groups and trusted partners to reach out into the community. Our design team was all people of color. We designed the project with a racial equity focus – everything from whom we recruited for the survey design team, what questions included in the survey and how they were worded, translating the lengthy surveys into multiple languages, having both an online and paper copies available and using focus groups, who collected the surveys, and our community feedback Summit were all designed to cater to experiences of people of color. All of these efforts helped to ensure we were reaching people of color. We didn’t leave it to chance, we led with race and as a result we got what we wanted, an over representation of diverse families included in our data set. Along the way we worked with many white people and they were included. In a later blog post we’ll share more details about the survey project.

Had we said “we believe in equity” and not led with race our whole process would have looked different and maybe we would have found people of color to complete the survey but probably not in the high numbers that completed it.

Here is another example in reverse:
A library just got a big grant to do outreach to foster youth. Educational outcomes for foster youth are lower than non-foster youth and the library has a lot of great services which can help. The library system uses their traditional models of outreach – fliers in English, talking to library branch staff about whom they should send emails and information to, and scan their collection of books on foster youth experience. After a few months of work they review their work and see they are making a difference, however a staff person grimaced and says “I think we’ve missed our mark, we’re reaching mostly white foster youth. Foster youth of color and immigrant and refugee youth aren’t included in our numbers.” Everyone around the tables said “ohhhh…”

Focusing on a high needs population, such as foster children, is important but it isn’t

photo by Erin Okuno

enough. We need to use a racial equity priority or lens and focus deeper and ensure we are capturing foster youth of color. As you can see from the example above leading with a general purpose of ‘equity’ allows people of color to be forgotten.

We need to lead with race in order to make sure people of color don’t get lost or left behind. When we focus on racial equity we ensure people of color are talked about and focused on. It also means we are doing the harder work of capturing people of color who have more disparities and are further behind. By leading with race it also gives the project a better chance of having the work led by communities of color, versus having it happen to a community of color. If we only focus on broad strokes efforts or special populations we may default to practices which have historically left people of color behind. We need to lead with race, talk about race, and work with communities of color to ensure people of color are being served.

How to lead with a racial equity focus:

1. Be clear with your team you are talking about racial equity. And be clear about how you think about racial equity.
2. Recognize when your project defaults back to standard practices (i.e. email communication which works for those with internet access, English only, meeting times that are inaccessible to whom you’re trying to reach, serving food only some can eat such as pork, etc.).
3. Look at your data and see if there are racial disparity gaps, do you need to further target your efforts to respond to the data, such as do you need to focus on Asians or Latinos.
4. Design your project around your racial equity goals – location, food served, who to recruit, etc. should all be influenced by your racial equity lens.

When we lead with racial equity we see the results and we leave less to chance. Be bold and brave and do your part to lead with race.

Every decade or so a new set of words gets created and their predecessor fades out of favor. Here are a few examples:

1980s/1990s/2000s words:
Diversity
Achievement Gap
Equality
Minority
Equity gone wrong

Today:
Diversity and Inclusion
Equity
Opportunity and Achievement Gaps
People of Color
Fakequity

Many of the new terms came about because the previous word was inadequate. The previous words hit on one part of a social justice concept but didn’t go far enough in capturing the sentiment of what was truly being communicated. Our communities and work have evolved and we need more than platitudes and simplistic efforts. Such as diversity isn’t enough. We can get a room full of diverse people but if they don’t feel included or aren’t given space and room to have a meaningful role in the work taking place the diversity is meaningless. Or a short while ago people of color were called minorities, but as demographics change, language has to keep pace to reflect the growing number of people of color; in a few decades the term people of color will be out of fashion and some new word will be used.

I’m proposing a new term, Culturally Enriching. No longer is it enough to be culturally competent, we need to strive for better. We need to create spaces and programs where children and families of color receive culturally appropriate, relevant, and enriching experiences.

Why Culturally Competent is Blah
There are many definitions of cultural competency, some of them elaborate and use technical jargon. For the purposes of this blog post I’m going to use the everyday pedestrian bare bones snarky interpretation of the term:

Culturally competent means we do the bare minimum: celebrate holidays and heroes, put up red lanterns on Lunar New Years, celebrate diversity with multi-cultural potlucks at the office, order a banh mi but pronounces it ‘ban me,’ use Google-translated documents to prove we made an attempt at translating documents, post hiring notices in ethnic media but fail to have people of color on the hiring panel.

The definition above are some of the attempts people make to prove they are providing a culturally competent environment. Don’t get me wrong, these attempts help and sometimes are enough. But too often people and organizations stop at these surface level attempts of community engagement or program development and miss the boat on creating truly great programs that enhance and allow people of color to grow, feel grounded and included, and embraced by a larger community.

As an example a friend shared a story about how a co-worker received a lot of praise for creating a new program to honor Pride Month. Last year her organization marched in the Pride parade for the first time ever. They held open houses and special programs with art and books showing LGQBT families. And they have a special storytime with a drag queen. Many of these efforts demonstrate an awareness of diversity and an attempt at having LGQBT families feel included. But the efforts stopped there and didn’t move to culturally enriching.

If the program organizers used a racial equity lens they would have realized that simply focusing on LGQBT families fell short of their racial equity commitments. They could have focused on LGQBT families of color to target their efforts even more. Focusing their efforts into Pride month also stops short of realizing LGQBT families don’t stop being LGQBT once Pride month is over, a more enriching experience would be creating welcoming environments and ensuring their regular programming allows for diversity to shine through all year long. Finally, the drag queen storytime—come on! Can we move past perpetuating stereotypes? I don’t have anything against drag queens, seriously I don’t, but having a drag queen storytime be the capstone of Pride month doesn’t create an enriching environment where children feel like they have a normal cultural experience.

A culturally enhancing experience would have been having books and program on LGQBT experiences readily available all year long. Having LGQBT staff of color working within the program, creating relationships with the LGQBT families of color and listening to what sort of programing they want to see, and embracing. Partnering with the LGQBT community to hear what programs and experiences they want to have and making adjustments to help provide these experiences. Some may feel differently and I welcome dialogue around this.

Culturally Enhancing
We can do so much better than just being competent.  We can do better than hanging red lanterns and celebrating the heroes and holidays, we need to create spaces where people can be their best selves. Closing opportunity gaps, turning the tide on global warming, stopping youth violence, and all of our other world problems means we have to be open to new ideas and we get those new ideas by creating environments where everyone is included and brings their best selves. Culturally enhancing programs look like this:

• We invite people of color in and partner with them to create an experience where they see themselves reflected and valued. This means we open doors and share leadership and resources to allow people of color to create a culture that is embraces and honors communities of color.
• We center our work in communities of color and allow people of color to control the agenda.
• We move beyond stereotypes and surface level comments. We need to disrupt and shift the dominant narrative to include communities of color.

So what do all of those fancy words mean? It means we adapt and make things relevant to communities of color by centering our work in their experiences. It means we work to creating relationships where people of color feel and are valued and included and an equal partner in the work that is needed.

Yesterday, after my coalition meeting a white educator attendee stopped me at the door.  As we talked she said “this is one of the few meetings where space is intentionally created to be welcoming.”
Because our coalition focuses on race, culture, and the wealth found in communities of color we are creating something different, a more enriching experience for everyone, especially people of color. It was so nice to hear a positive comment affirming our focus on race and equity.

Posted by Erin