Face Ourselves: Striving for Antiracism in a Non-Profit

Abstract

Advancing racial equity in workplaces requires ongoing and structural change. Organizations invested in this work need to view equity not as a checkbox, but as a continuous process of examination and change to organizational culture (Winters, 2020). In 2014, The Leadership Academy, a national education non-profit, began their journey to becoming an antiracist workplace. Through participatory action research methods, we focused on dismantling inequities and building empowerment, being iterative, and spurring staff’s greater awareness and action. Our journey has been undergirded by core elements of participatory research. We anchored ourselves in a commitment to supporting varying interests, perspectives, and styles of communication and participation. Here, we share what we produced and the practices we used, supported by lessons learned across our journey. We changed strategic plans, policies, and guiding values to be overtly antiracist, and we did so by supporting the voices and experiences of staff of color and spurring more involvement and accountability among white staff. These practices included affinity spaces, balancing small workgroups with whole-group discussions, and asynchronous work options. External facilitators were instrumental in helping us disrupt the structures and processes embedded in our organization; they held a mirror so we would truly face ourselves. We learned critical lessons about transparency, change management, flexibility, and relationships. Our antiracism journey at The Leadership Academy will never be done. Our dedicated, participant-led efforts yielded substantial shifts. We are eager to continue learning and pursuing deeper antiracist practices.