Racism is that word that no one wants to talk about. A colleague said she went to a training on public speaking, specially to prepare for TED-like talks, and the advice given was “If you’re going to speak about race or racism, lower your voice.” We can’t lower our voices, it is time to call out racism and label it for what it is and for the harm it does. In that same conversation another colleague talked about hearing a white man say “Why aren’t more people angry? Why aren’t we all angry about racism?” My astute colleague calmly said “We are mad and we are angry, but we can’t always show our anger. We don’t always have the luxury of being angry.” She’s right sometimes as People of Color if we get angry and speak up about racism we’re labeled as ‘the Angry [fill in race],’ or if we get angry our anger is misinterpreted and seen as hostile, or if we speak up about race the burden shifts to People of Color who are then blamed for the problem.

If we say race matters, we also need to believe racism matters. Racism is insidious it shows up in big and little ways. It shows up in headline grabbing news stories, and it shows up in smaller ways that are harder to see, name, and define. When we don’t name racism we say it doesn’t matter, we give people a free pass in thinking they are exempt from dealing with racism.

Two Experiences in One Day—I’m Over Thanksgiving
The Friday after Thanksgiving killed the thanksgiving mood. I was home eating a bahn mi sandwich when the doorbell rang. Two women (not Chinese) said they were looking for Chinese speaking families to share religious information with in their native language. I was hangry (hungry-angry) and rude—no giving thanks here for their preying with prayer. The two women sulked off confused why I wasn’t receptive to their divine message. It had nothing to do with their message, it had to do with the delivery.

The racism they demonstrated was subtle and disguised as kindness, but it was still racism. When the women said they were looking for Chinese speaking people, they were preying upon a vulnerable group. Native Chinese speakers are most likely immigrants and at a disadvantage because of language, new-comer status, less community and family support, and not knowing the American culture. I’m also guessing the two missionaries are learning Chinese or at the least not native speakers, which means if they are looking to practice their language skills which will benefit them more than the Chinese immigrants.

Earlier that same day I stopped by my favorite Vietnamese deli to pick up lunch. The shop is small so everyone is in everyone’s business. A White family stepped in and the father picked up tofu spring rolls and said to his teenagers “Let’s get these, what are they called? ‘hee hees’?” He was being serious-funny. I gave him the stink-eye. It was rude to insult another person’s food with a made up name that sounds like something a toddler would say. That behavior wouldn’t be condoned by children in a mainstream restaurant, yet when a White dude steps into a Vietnamese deli he can get away with it.

These two examples happened in one afternoon. These two examples didn’t lead to devastating consequences, but they demonstrate the underlying values that people in my community hold. I have so many other examples of individual, structural, and organizational racism. I’ll save those for another day, some of them are worth sharing because they are so painfully sad or just sad-funny.

Racism Matters
We have to own up to our actions. We also need to begin to see that sometimes we make mistakes but we also learn.

“We weren’t trained to admit we don’t know.  Most of us were taught to sound certain and confident, to state our opinion as if it were true. We haven’t been rewarded for being confused. Or for asking more question rather than giving quick answers. We’ve also spent many years listening to others mainly to determine whether we agree with them or not. We don’t have time or interest to sit and listen to those who think differently than we do.” — Meg Wheatley, Willing to be Disturbed

In order to undo racism we have to admit we don’t know. We don’t know what it is like to live in another person’s experience, we don’t know how a person will react, and we have to be ok with not being rewarded or having the answer. The rewards will show up in learning about others and creating a more inclusive community. We also have to learn to ask better questions and to ask why is it ok to make another person feel lesser because of their race.

When we admit we don’t know we begin to build an understand, we build relationships by being open to new ideas. When we admit we don’t know something we are also bringing voice to the unknown and breaking the code of silence. The silence is hurtful and is a tacit form of anger.

Racism Matters, our Collective Voice Matters
At a gathering of African American families I sat next to a high school principal. At one point he leaned over to me to tell me about the restorative justice work his school has undertaken. He said they started learning about restorative justice, but quickly pulled back. They didn’t pull back because they didn’t believe in restorative justice, instead they chose to lean in and do they work by starting with themselves. He realized that he and others had to heal themselves before they could create an environment conducive to restorative justice and community building.

We need to do our own work around learning about race and racism, myself included. I need to grow as a person and stretch my thinking about race. Several years ago I would have been annoyed by the two incidents I wrote about earlier, but wouldn’t have been as pissed as I am now. On the positive side, several years ago I wouldn’t have known how to put together the Fakequity chart that guides me and others on how to work towards racial equity. I hope you’ll join me in continuing to learn so we can have a collective voice around calling out racism in its many forms.

We need our collective voice to rise up and call each other on the racism that exist. Sometimes this is in comments or actions that take place on a personal level, or in policies and within institutions. With enough collective voices we can begin to root out racism and build stronger communities.

I’ve spent the past few days in a training on equity. One of the lessons I learned from equity champions was: “Equity isn’t a thing to solve. We solve problems through equitable solutions.” The point the speaker was making is we can’t keep throwing the term equity around. It isn’t that we need to solve for equity, like an algebra problem: X + Equity = 209 happy children, but first we have to isolate equity so we can make sure we get it right – wrong/fakequity. We can’t isolate equity, equity is the process and the methods to get toward equitable results.

Equity isn’t a Thing to Solve or Isolate

One of the problems I continue to see is organizations trying to solve equity. They have separate line items or boxes on their workplans labeled equity with targets such as “recruit XX% of people of color,” or “hear from 10 communities during the community phase,” or my favorite phrase “it’s the equity factor.”

Equity isn’t the thing to solve, it is the solution to the problem. The problem should be defined by disaggregating data, communities most impacted, and asking the right questions to really understand the underlying systems in place that are holding people back. Once the problem is defined, equitable solutions begin to present themselves.

Slapping an Equity Label on – Bitter Lemons

A few years ago I was invited to be a grant reader for “equity grants.” The funder has a fancy theory of change; it is a really pretty infographic that is easy to understand through pictures. This grant round was a way for the foundation to flex their equity muscles. The organization was proud in pulling together the money to offer these equity grants.

As a grant reader I got my packet of applications and started reading. As I read I became more and more disappointed. The grants were from mainstream organizations and the projects were directives from their organization down to the community. There was little community voice, let alone communities of color defined solutions. From the community perspective the projects were lemons, pretty to look at on a tree from afar, but sour and tart when bitten into.

What Went Wrong

Slapping an equity label on the grant round and isolating the effort didn’t produce truly equitable results. What went wrong was the grant making process and the organization stayed the same—in other words the organizational and process systems didn’t change, but they were aiming for a different result.

By keeping equity isolated to the grants and not embedding it across the organization, it defaulted to what it knows and what is easy. In this case the funder started with what it knew, it knew mainstream organizations and partners, it knew how to do grant making through traditional means (i.e. send out Request For Propsals to people they know, expect properly formatted LOIs back, make grants, and expect reports back), and it was informed by voices from within the organization not the community.

How to Get it Right—How to Make Lemonade

Equity isn’t the problem to solve, equitable tools are needed to get to equitable results and solutions. In this case the funder didn’t define the problem correctly, it took the easy way out and said “we want to impact equity so we’ll give out equity grants.” There are no such thing as “equity grants.” This is the lazy way of doing things. What the funder should have done is look at disaggregated data, listen to the community, and allow the community to define its own problems. The funder, or whatever group is working on a problem, then uses its power to put together a process that targets the problem. The principles of racial equity should be embedded into all of their grants or plans, not isolated to one grant cycle or activity.

The grant making process needs to change to get equitable results. This is where we take those sour and bitter lemons and turn them into lemonade. In order to make lemonade we need to acknowledge not everyone or every group with lemons also has the right materials to make high quality sweet lemonade. In order to make lemonade you need clean water, sugar, and a pitcher—in grant terms does the organization have access to the grant, do leaders within the organization know how to write a grant and get it submitted, can the organization navigate a site visit and build relationships to receive funding, who is reading and scoring the grants, etc.? If the answer is no, then we’re stuck with lemons and won’t get lemonade.

We also need to acknowledge not everyone has the same access to the ingredients to make lemonade or win a grant. For some the burdens to get this access is greater. In order to get equitable results we need to change the structure of the grantmaking process.

1. Define the problem correctly—disaggregate data, listen to the community, allow the most impacted groups to define the problem to solve.
2. Redefine systems– Change the application process to allow those most impacted a fair chance at receiving a grant. Ask about distribution channels, ensure large organizations aren’t competing with smaller organizations for the same funding, look at who the grant readers and scorers are, do grant seekers have the tools and information they need to apply?
3. Questions assumptions– Does it need to be a grant or are there other mechanisms to solve the problem? Is the grant structure right for accomplishing the goal and solving the problem?

In answering the questions we can begin to insert equitable changes into the process, which will help get to equitable results.

Redesigning the System to Embed Equity

In future posts we’ll explore examples of when this is done right. We all need something to look forward to and inspire to.

A special thanks to Bao N. for her thoughtful lemonade example and prompt. She offered the prompt as a dare to use it in a sermon. I’m not a sermonizer just a bitter old lemon, but I took the dare and hopefully made some lemonade.

Posted by Erin

Hi,

Welcome to the Fakequity blog. The Fakequity team has been throwing around the idea of a blog for several months. We finally did it. This blog may or may not be our final home, we are doing a trial to see how blogging fits into our professional and private lives, and if we have enough material to make it a quality blog.

We’ll blog about racial equity and its nemesis Fakequity. Some of the posts may veer off towards equity’s siblings and cousins diversity, inclusion, culture, community engagement, accountability, etc. They are all related and we need to understand and think about a lot of different things in order to get towards equity.

Sometimes we capitalize Fakequity, sometimes we won’t– don’t hate us for our inconsistency. Its a made-up word so the rules around its use are a little loose.

Some of the posts will be authored by member’s of the Fakequity team, others may be guest posts, and some will be posted under the cover of Fakequity. We envision some of the posts will push the boundaries and therefore having a name attached to it might not be the best for our professional careers. We aim to talk about what needs to be talked about, but we still need paying jobs and paychecks to buy ourselves tacos and pho.

We’ll aim to post about twice a month. Our Facebook page gets more action, check us out there for more current Fakequity thinking.

Settle in, grab a cup of tea, and get to know Fakequity. You can start by reading the Fakequity chart. We’ll post more blog posts soon.

Sincerely,
Erin and the Fakequity team