Why aren't we talking about racism on LinkedIn?

My other social media channels have been filled with conversations and articles about George Floyd, Brionna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery, over the last few weeks; even more so with the protests and rebellions of the past several days. 

LinkedIn has been almost silent. The silence speaks volumes. I want to invite us to have a conversation about it on LinkedIn. 

This is where we talk about how to work better, this is where we talk about how to build better organizations. When racism is endemic to our organizations, it has deadly consequences. I know of at least 3 reasons LinkedIn is a really important place to have these conversations.  

1) These traumatic events are the most recent in a persistent line of workplace-related incidents. Police officers are at *work.* It was Gregory McMichael's former role as a cop that his defenders use to explain his "extrajudicial actions" (murder).

2) The daily stress black people experience working in predominantly white organizations - micro-aggressions, overt aggressions, being asked to swallow who they are, and their experiences, and fracture themselves to do their work.

3) The existential stress our black teammates experience living in a country that is so hostile to black people. The acute, but repetitive, trauma they endure with continued unwarranted deaths of black people (which we should all be feeling if we're paying attention). That impacts how they can function as people, and of course, impacts their ability to work. 

Has your organizational leadership made any statements or changes to the way you operate? Have you checked in on your black colleagues? This isn't about signaling, it's about caring for people.

Systemic change, organization-wide change, is only going to come as a result of deep change on an individual level. What are *you* doing to support that deep change within yourself? How are you learning new perspectives and un-learning what you've always "known?" Are you listening to black individuals and advocates to understand their experiences and how it impacts their ability to do their work? How are you extracting your racism? 

Again, this is an invitation: it's not about shaming anyone, it is about ending ignorance as individuals and as the people who make up an organization. When it continues unaddressed in professional settings people's mental health and lives are truly at risk. 

If you need a place to start, I offer two suggestions: 

- Layla F. Saad's 28-day challenge: Me and White Supremacy. It will ask you to ask yourself questions, it will ask you to consider the experiences of others, it will ask you to extract your racism. It's not a book, it's a workbook - get a pen and do the work.  https://www.meandwhitesupremacybook.com/

- 13th on Netflix - a comprehensive look at the choices the US has made that criminalizes the actions of black people https://www.netflix.com/title/80091741

Again, this is an invitation: if you want help, or someone to process with, I'm here - just call. (I mean that as a person, not a professional - this isn't a business development effort.) To make your organization more effective, you need to intentionally remove the racism. To remove the racism, each person in our organizations needs to do the hard work of examining the multi-layered ways we participate in the oppression of others. 

Our organizations and our country depend on it.