Five practical steps you can take to support equality in your workplace
Warning; some of the ideas here are controversial and go against the current popular narrative, nothing in here, nothing I say is meant to offend and I am open to having my mind changed.
As many others have been for the last few months, I have been listening intently and researching to decide how I can best be contributing to solve some of the crisis that we are seeing play out in the world at the moment. I have had younger cousins and staff come to me at their wits end, wanting to help and feeling helpless to affect the world around them. I have seen the frustration and confusion of my own children, wondering why the world around them has become so angry and so divided and why the colour of peoples skin is such an issue. My children have grown up in a bubble to some extent, we have a very diverse family and group of friends that lovingly make up a whole spectrum of colour, so it’s not surprising that they cannot understand the complex narrative of race relations, especially when it seems that most of us can’t really explain it either.
The result of my research has been disheartening as when I googled in about twenty different ways, “how can I help to promote racial equality” the first five pages of results came up with lists that were almost entirely ‘check your own privilege’, ‘donate to black lives matter’ and some version of ‘ask your black friend/colleague/coworker.’
So after way too much research, I came up with a list of my own (based on research and some scientific backing), each of these relate to a practical thing that you can do, an action, an activity that has some science or solid research behind it.
1. Escape your digital echo chamber…
This is so important if you are going to have a rationale conversation with the impassioned left or right. If you cannot understand what each side is hearing, then you can’t understand the full picture and it’s very hard to find common ground. This means seeking out opinions that make you uncomfortable and sitting in it.
2. Conduct interviews, make choices about employment and write employee reports in the morning or right after lunch.
Dan Pink has done a lot of research on our diurnal rhythms and in his book, When: The Secret of Perfect Timing, he talks about how to organise your schedule to avoid times of the day when you are most strongly affected by implicit bias such as right before lunch and late in the afternoon. Being aware of when you are most likely to be affected by implicit bias means you can make conscious decisions about when you do what. This is an awesome book to read with some cool experiments to run yourself and practical, actionable advice.
Want more research? "Specifically, we expected IAT scores to be lowest (i.e. less bias) in the morning and then increase throughout the day." https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0110149
3. Research the causes you want to support, now comes the unpopular part
In researching who to support, I made the difficult decision not to support Black Lives Matter, because while I support the overall premise of racial equality, I disagree with the method. I align more with MLK and less with Malcolm X, and in my research I couldn’t find a lot of actionable advice or similarity in the approach with BLM https://blacklivesmatter.com/about/
Additionally, I personally found that there was little in terms of concrete in relation to where money was going, specific outcomes that had been achieved and clear policy stances.
Rather, initiatives like Campaign Zero, have similar aims but, I felt, have a more science based approach and concrete examples as to how they want to achieve their goals. https://www.joincampaignzero.org/#vision
Alternatively, there are a lot of great not for profits that promote minority business development loans and programs that teach financial literacy to help combat issues of generational wealth.
More research? There is abundant evidence linking financial literacy and wealth (e.g., Bucher-Koenen et al. 2017; Disney and Gathergood 2013; Jappelli and Padula 2013; Lusardi and Mitchell 2011b; Lusardi, Mitchell, and Curto 2010).
4. Share knowledge that lies within your strengths and skill sets, get mentoring!
I am fortunate that my background is training, education and psychology so mentoring and helping others develop skill sets is well within my wheelhouse. However, everyone has skills, if you have specific skill sets, look at how you can give back to your community. Programs like Off the streets are always looking for new mentors https://youthoffthestreets.com.au/what-we-do/growth/educationalsupport/mentoring/ or you can google ‘become a business mentor’ as a few examples. If you are a successful entrepreneur, help others trying to start up small businesses. In working with ECU and Curtin, I am usually working to mentor anywhere between 8-12 students a year to work in social work, youth work and I have learned so much from my mentors, their diversity and passion in a continuing source of hope and inspiration for me. J
5. Listen and be kind
I cannot express how heartbreaking it has been to see the vehemence, vitriol and absoluteness which has flooded the internet, social media feeds. I understand anger, frustration, I understand wanting to see justice, but in the words of Martin Luther King “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”
I have never seen a relationship repaired with hate speech or with violence. I have never seen someone berate into change their attitudes, thought or speech in a genuine way, it just pushes the thoughts and speech into the dark and that’s where danger lies. When we cannot discuss the dark thoughts that develop, they fester, they rot, they stagnate, when we bring them out, we can rationalise them, we can connect to each other, we can realise we are more similar than we are different, we can banish talk of us and them, to focus on we.
Before you attack, shame, blame, abuse… pause. Please. Talk, listen and be kind, reserve judgement and recognise that it may just be pain that you are hearing, address the pain and then educate.
If you can add to this list, if you think I got something wrong, I want to hear from you! I want to learn from you.
Much love and light to you all..