New(ish) to Organizational Anti-Racism Work (EP.46)
Recorded
April 27, 2021
Last Updated
October 25, 2021
This conversation was recorded as part of Work Shouldn't Suck's Ethical Re-Opening Summit that took place on April 27, 2021.
This unprecedented time has become a time of learning (and relearning) for many. But what is the process for turning knowledge into action in and out of our organizations? Thinking about organizational anti-racism work begins with a clear understanding of what “the work” is. Task forces, caucuses, book clubs, consultants? So many options. Our guests discuss different approaches to doing "the work" in our organizations.
Resources mentioned during episode:
Change.org’s Reflect & Reset
“What Does It Mean When We Say Doing ‘The Work’?” by Nina Berman
“Working Apart So We Can Work Together” by Courtney Harge & Tiffany Wilhelm
“Resources for White People to Learn and Talk About Race and Racism” by Nina Berman & Nicola Carpenter
The Nap Ministry on Instagram
artEquity & Carmen Morgan
Fractured Atlas’s negative interactions document
Guests: Ansa Edim, Courtney Harge, Tiffany Wilhelm
Host: Tim Cynova
Guests
ANSA EDIM (she/her) is the Vice President and Chair of the Staff Board at Change.org and sits on Change.org's C-team. With over a decade of experience in brand, marketing, and communications, Ansa is a proud member of Change.org’s Black community resource group, Change.Noire. Before joining Change.org, Ansa spent several years working in tech, government consulting, non-profit, and education industries and most recently ran her own brand consulting firm, working specifically with elderly-, women-, and minority-owned businesses. Ansa lives in Washington, D.C. with her two boxers, Big Mac and Kiss, and spends her time enjoying the city, traveling, and lifting heavy things.
COURTNEY HARGE (she/her) is a producer, director, and professional arts administrator originally from Saginaw, MI. She is the CEO of Of/By/For All, and is the Founder and Artistic Director of Colloquy Collective, a theater company based out of Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. She has worked for the Elaine Kaufman Cultural Center, Theater for the New City, The Public Theater, Gibney Dance, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and, most recently, Fractured Atlas where she led the design and implementation of anti-racist practices, like race-based caucusing and an equity-informed customer service strategy. She holds a Masters of Professional Studies, with Distinction, in Arts and Cultural Management from Pratt Institute and a Bachelors of Fine Arts with Honors from the University of Michigan in Theater Performance. Her credo (#HustlingKeepsYouSexy) is not merely a hashtag; it’s a way of life.
TIFFANY WILHELM (she/they) is a Program Officer at the Opportunity Fund in Pittsburgh, a foundation that supports the arts and social & economic justice. Previously, she was Deputy Director of the Greater Pittsburgh Arts Council where she raised funds, oversaw programming, and co-led initiatives on accessibility for people with disabilities and racial equity. Tiffany has been involved with several collectives focused on educating and organizing for racial justice, both in Pittsburgh and in the national arts field. Prior to Pittsburgh, she was Executive Director of the Central Wisconsin Children’s Museum and taught in an undergraduate arts management program. Tiffany is a facilitator for artEquity and Farsight, and previously facilitated with Keryl McCord’s Equity Quotient and the Fractured Atlas white caucus.
Host
TIM CYNOVA (he/him) wears a multitude of hats, all in service of creating anti-racist workplaces where people can thrive. He is the Principal of the consulting group Work. Shouldn’t. Suck. and has deep knowledge and experience in HR and people-centric organizational design. He currently leads curriculum design in WSS’s areas of expertise: from sharing leadership and power to decolonizing the employee handbook and bylaws; talking with humans to how to hire. His book, Hire with Confidence, based on his experience leading hundreds of searches and “retooling” the traditional search process to center anti-racism and anti-oppression, is scheduled to be published in Winter 2021. In April 2021, he and WSS produced the Ethical Re-Opening Summit, a one-day online convening that explored the question, “How can we co-create a future where everyone thrives as we move into this next stage of a global pandemic?” In August 2021, Tim closed out his 12-year tenure leading Fractured Atlas, the largest association of artists in the U.S., where he served in both the COO and Co-CEO roles, and was deeply involved in its work to become an anti-racist, anti-oppressive organization since they made this commitment in 2013. Additionally, he serves on the faculty of Banff Centre for Arts & Creativity and The New School teaching courses in People-Centric Organizational Design and Strategic HR; he's a trained mediator, and a certified Senior Professional in Human Resources (SPHR). Earlier in his career, Tim was the Executive Director of The Parsons Dance Company and of High 5 Tickets to the Arts in New York City, had a memorable stint with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, was a one-time classical trombonist, musicologist, and for five years in his youth he delivered newspapers for the Evansville, Indiana Courier-Press. Also, during a particularly slow summer, he bicycled 3,902 miles across the United States.
Transcript
Tim Cynova:
Hi, I’m Tim Cynova and welcome to Work Shouldn't Suck, a podcast about, well, that.
Earlier this year, podcasting's favorite co-host Lauren Ruffin and I produced Work Shouldn't Suck's Ethical Re-Opening Summit. The event took place online on Tuesday, April 27, and featured eight sessions, 25 amazing speakers, and covered a whole host of topics related to the ethical re-opening of workplaces amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
We raced to produce the Summit from start to finish in just three weeks as we felt the urgency and stress mounting as workplaces were in the midst of re-opening decisions. Several months on, we still feel the content is as necessary as ever, so we decided to release each of the sessions in podcast form.
In each of the eight sessions, you'll hear the conversations just as the Summit attendees did. As a reminder, in late April 2021, COVID vaccine distribution was just gaining speed and we had yet to begin hearing about the Delta variant. From that vantage point in time, it very much looked like by Fall 2021 things might be settling back into somewhat of a quote unquote normal routine. As I record this preamble in Fall 2021, that's not the case. We're now talking about break-through infections, booster shots, schools opening and closing again, hospital ICUs are packed in states across the U.S., and still how to safety gathering in indoors as the temperature again begins to drop with the change in seasons.
In this session: New(ish) to Organizational Anti-Racism Work, I have the pleasure of chatting with Ansa Edim, Courtney Harge, and Tiffany Wilhelm about the different ways companies can approach the work towards becoming anti-racist organizations. So, let's jump over to the conversation...
Hi, and welcome to the session New-ish to organizational anti-racism work where we'll be diving into and discussing different approaches to doing the work in our organizations. I'm Tim Cynova. I'm a white man with short to medium messy brown hair. I'm wearing blue rectangular glasses. I have salt and pepper maybe stubble, I'm wearing a black sweater, a zip-up sweater with a blue dress shirt and blue tie. I'm sitting in front of a wood-paneled wall and I am really excited about this session, especially coming off the last session. I'm so excited.
I'm just excited for today and being able to spend time with all of you. A reminder about the Q&A in the chat here. If the chat starts filling up, throw your questions into the Q&A, and then as we're going along we don't lose them. I'm excited to be joined by three amazing people. Ansa Edim, vice-president staff board chair at change.org, Courtney Harge CEO of Bi For All and Tiffany Wilhelm, program officer of opportunity fund. Ansa, Courtney, Tiffany, welcome to The Summit.
Courtney Harge:
Yay. SO excited to be here.
Tiffany Wilhelm:
Thank you.
Ansa Edim:
Thank you for having us.
Tim Cynova:
I realized we didn't say what order we'd go in after I did that. So to kick things off, why don't we go around in that order, Ansa, Courtney and Tiffany. Have you typically introduce yourself and your work. And as you think about organizational anti-racism work, what does that look like and mean to you?
Ansa Edim:
All right. Hi, everyone. My name is Ansa Edim. My pronouns are she her. I'm in Washington DC and I am a black woman wearing a headscarf with my hair out, a white t-shirt and green overall. I'm in my home office with a blue and white background that I painted in a pandemic project. How do I think about organized organizational anti-racism work? Really I'm personally kind of new-ish to it as well as of change.org, and the way I think about it a lot is a lot about learning about what equity really means and spending a lot of time kind of parsing the difference between equality and equity and it's been a lot of education to...
I work in a white led tech company as change.org is generally a white led tech company and so it's been a lot of education and a lot of teaching and a lot of learning and a lot of energy put into kind of bringing people up to speed and getting people moving along in their anti-racism journey. I'll pass it to Courtney.
Courtney Harge:
Thanks, Ansa. My name is Courtney Harge, I am the CEO, of OF/BY/FOR ALL. I use she/her pronouns. I will preemptively offer that I have the best roommate ever who offers an occasional cello concerto which you might be hearing as I speak. I am also a black woman. I'm wearing a red shirt. I am in a favorite virtual space of mine, which is the library of the former fractured Atlas office. So you can see three chairs and a couch behind me not to mention a wall of library books and a gnome. I have a short Afro, I have some big round glasses and I'm wearing a headset.
And what brings me to institutional anti-racism work really was selfishly a matter of self preservation. Work was a place where I knew I could be successful just as a venue, and I am somebody who has had a success in "traditional spaces." I graduated from college with honors. I actually have strong relationships at institutions and I would get to jobs and not be able to thrive or succeed and it felt like there has to be something that is a problem. Something has to be hindering me in a way that isn't just about, "Can I work harder through it?" It's like, "What if the environment itself is a problem? And what are the ways in which I can engage with correcting that and allowing for people to be as much of themselves as they need to be, to be successful at work?”
And so that is where it grounds for me, and really more and more as I see how do we build environments that people can thrive in? For me, there's no way to do that without an anti-racism lens. And I'll pass it to Tiffany.
Tiffany Wilhelm:
Hi, everyone. It's great to see you. It's great to be with you Ansa and Courtney and Tim. Tiffany Wilhelm, she or they pronouns. I am currently a program officer at Opportunity Fund, which is in a land that's now known as Pittsburgh which is Seneca and Lenape and Mingo and Shawnee and hopeful, and many others land so glad to be with you from there. I am a white woman and really short hair, super short, buzzing it during the pandemic. I'm in my bedroom where my headboard of my bed is actually a fuzzy shagged carpet that I've tacked up on a green wall so you can see both of those behind me. I'm wearing a blue sweater, the sort of a V-neck and some big silver earrings. I'm glad to be with you all and I too have a lot of great poking into that somewhat darker short hair.
Yeah, I get to work in philanthropy and then I also do some work in organizations around racism work and part of the community that Courtney is part of too, our equity and others that as well. Gosh, how do I think about organizational anti racism work? One thing I was thinking about coming into this especially that framing of being newish to this, although I'm sure there are folks that are not newish to this in this space.
So welcome you all, I want you all to put your thoughts in the chat too. It's just how much more it probably is than anyone expects when they maybe are newish to it. It is full change, personal change, culture change, policy change, institutional change and that to me is just a fractal of what's happening in the whole society, right? And so that's kind of what I think of to start, but I'm really excited to talk more to you all about that.
Tim Cynova:
One of the questions that our colleague at Fractured Atlas, Nina Berman, prompted us a couple of months ago that created a podcast and a blog post, Nina is also here, so hello, so I hope I get this right, Nina. She said, "We talk about the work a lot, doing the work toward becoming an anti-racist, anti-oppressive organization," she said, "But what do we mean when we say the work." For each of you, what does that mean when people say the work? Well period or quite, I guess that's the question mark.
Ansa Edim:
I can jump in here. At change.org, it meant for us what we called the Reset like with a capital R where we had a period of time after the murder of George Floyd where black staff at Change, we have a black affinity group called Change Norm where actually a community resource group and employee resource group. And we came together and said we have been doing a lot of work around this. We're exhausted, we're tired. There aren't very many of us, but that tech organizations in general, and because there are so few of us, we were not taking vacation, we were really just exhausted because somebody had to be on call to do the work of being black at change.org in this moment.
And that was a huge wake up call to all of us to say that the company needs to do the work of building itself as an anti-racist organization inside and out. So our leadership heard that, and we agreed as an organization to enter what we call the Reset, where we examined our values and policies, recruiting practices, everything you can name of for anti-racist principles and anti-oppression principles. And it continues today, you can check it out at change.org/reset. We've put together some of the information there to keep ourselves accountable. But the work really fell on the shoulders... of surprised me, it fell on the shoulders of our white leadership is that there was work they needed to do internally within themselves.
They needed to do a lot of training, and then they also needed to do the work of showing other staff how they could be held accountable. Doing the work, isn't just talking, it's building in practices that say, "For the longterm, here's how we're going to follow through. Here's what this looks like five years from now." It's not the work. I think looks like not just that change, but to me thinking through accountability, the work looks like accountability.
Courtney Harge:
This is Courtney and I agree. And I think for me, it's both simple and complicated in the sense of the work is interrupting oppressive systems whenever and wherever I see them and resource to do so. And resourced, I mean, particularly as a black woman, both financially resourced, emotionally resourced at the moment, something I often say to my team, and I say that pretty much anyone who will listen is the idea that oppressive systems both have a few 100 year headstart and 1000 fold the resources and energy. And so sacrificing yourself to it doesn't actually stop it to what you were talking about and to around people feeling like they weren't taking their vacation days, they weren't resting and/or taking care of themselves in service of fixing the problem.
But the problem is so big that it will be here beyond your level of exhaustion. It will be here after you've burned through. And so for me, the work is doing as much as I can and being really clear about what I cannot do so that I can do something else the next day or the next moment. So I can interrupt it again because these oppressive systems don't need any more martyrs in service of them. They've taken so much of our, our time, our energy, our resources that throwing my wellbeing and any of our well-beings, this isn't just about me, throwing any of our wellbeing at it to the point we both won't fix the problem and we'll just sacrifice you. So for me, doing the work is taking care of myself so that I can interrupt more things more often with more efficacy.
Tiffany Wilhelm:
Huge support for both of those, and for those of you who know me, just know that I feel so strongly that so much of the work has to happen among white folks and with white folks in that transformation that happens. So just to support what you both said, because that's where the catch-up needs to happen and where if we're going to collectively shift all of our organizations and society more broadly, the white folks have to be ready to do that. And so I had the honor to work a few years ago with Fresh Atlas and to really be part of that journey and both kind of in the kind of full staff teams that were doing that work and in the white caucus, which was doing some work that was important.
And way back when Tim, you might have this link handy, Courtney and I wrote a post about what the caucus spaces were doing and how that had to look really different to support the work of the organization. And the thing I always loved about that is the idea of the harder the white caucus works, the more everyone else is going to be able to resource themselves and rest and heal, and then collectively we can move the work forward. So yeah, so just I really am passionate about supporting those kinds of spaces.
We had a similar series of conversations like you were saying as it happened in Pittsburgh last year among the funding community where some folks that were starting to gain some awareness last summer said, "Hey, well some of our black colleagues, will you host sessions for us?" And folks said, "No." So we formed kind of a white caucus space for just anyone in the funding sector here in this region which is just now it's going to continue and it's just going to be part, hopefully, of whatever other journeys everyone is on because there's just as so many different things to be part of and to keep growing and learning.
So the work just looks like so many things, and I also just wanted to... If you're doing it in an organization, just think about it being emergent. Try different things, know it's got to be ongoing and longterm like our session descriptions book clubs and caucuses. Yes, try it all. See what works in the moment, see what your culture needs for the change at the moment, see if you need some outside help, or if you just have the folks in the space who can support that learning, all of it is important.
Tim Cynova:
I just shared a couple of links, including the piece that Tiffany... started with Courtney. And a piece that is based off of a list that Tiffany compiled years ago that one of our colleagues Nicola published and then another one of our colleagues, Nina, updated. It's called Resources for white people to learn and talk about race and racism. And we just looked at our blog numbers at Fractured Atlas, and it is the most read piece by tens of thousands of reads that we ever published. I think it's nearing 100,000 views and then maybe the next post is like 30,000. So those are two pieces that are there. What isn't the work?
Courtney Harge:
White feelings? Yeah, it isn't. That isn't the word at all. It really is... the work is decidedly not about making white people feel better about themselves. I have love for many people but I really do not care if you feel better about us going to the joyful revolutionary space. As much as I love wanting to change hearts and minds, I actually want people to just functionally be better. I actually don't care if you like being better, right. And I know that's not how everybody approaches it, but I don't need you to believe that I should be treated well, I would like that. I actually just need you to treat me well, right?
And then how you feel about it, you can take that home. That's your work to do. And so I think people get confused in talking about the work in quotes because they think the work is I need to believe and feel and trust that you, whoever you are, marginalized in any way deserve this treatment. And I'm like, "No, it's actually not up for you to arbitrate, you just need to do it. Just frankly, be better, and then you can figure out if you feel good about it." But yeah, managing my feelings is decidedly not the work.
Ansa Edim:
I want to plus one that 100% this is Ansa speaking. So the [inaudible 00:16:55] is that not just the feeling good about it, but managing white guilt was a huge stressor for me personally in the last year or so, is there are people who really want to be doing this work and they just feel so bad that we haven't achieved it yet and this is horrible, isn't it? And it's just a huge downer. And I as a black woman, I'm already experiencing this, having to ask someone to have empathy for you in your lived experience is hard enough, and then having to manage that person feeling guilty for not having already given it to you, it's just complicated. It over-complicates things. I 100% agree with you, Courtney and that just do it.
Let's just get there and just do it. I don't want to hold people feelings. And what I find really about the conversation about caucuses is just that we did some hours, dozens of hours of trainings at change.org and there were some questions around caucusing where we split up into caucuses and the group of us who were in the black caucus were like, "This isn't for us. We don't need to be here. We already know what we're here to do." And we had this strong feeling.
And so on one hand, we were pretty grateful for our break from really challenging conversations, and on the other hand, when we came back and talked to the group, I find myself being really grateful that there was a space where I didn't have to be the living example of why they needed to be in this training. So those people who needed that could go and talk amongst themselves. And I appreciated not having to do that work because doing diversity trainings and I'm putting some quotes diversity trainings at the huge broad spectrum of types of training and being a black person in a mixed group having people ask hard questions that aren't very easy for me to hear, or asking for me to give an example of a time someone was racist against me.
It's just very traumatic and it's difficult for me as a black person. And so I think that's where caucuses really made a huge difference, it is not putting the pressure on black and brown folks to have to hold for other people's feelings in those cases.
Tiffany Wilhelm:
Yeah. And knowing that those can have places and spaces. Tim, I'm sure [inaudible 00:19:26] is listening too much.
Tim Cynova:
Yeah, the classic. Oh, crap, I'm supposed to be asking some questions.
Tiffany Wilhelm:
But it was sort of about what is not the work, right? And I think that's sort of the tricky space if I think about actually the work that does happen in white caucuses is just trying to hold all of that, letting it be a little bit of a process based, but not letting it get stuck there either because that can be just ridiculous and hard and not moving. Giving us tools to move through all of that is a lot of, I think the work of white caucus spaces. And the other thing I think about that's not the work either or it's only part of the work. It's not, not the work, but it's so much more embodied than we often realize we [inaudible 00:20:18] way out of any of this. And so any of the work happening in whatever space it is just has to go so far beyond that intellectualizing part of it because we will never get anywhere if that's where we stop really.
Tim Cynova:
Speaking of intellectualizing, Nina Berman who we've mentioned a couple of times already in the session asked the question how do you think about how much of your intellect time, energy emotions, should go into anti-racist work at your job versus in other aspects of your life?
Courtney Harge:
Ooh, I love this question. And I have my opinion is frankly, as much or as little as you want and/or need. And I'm going to rephrase that for POC and/or other marginalized people. White people, as much as you can spare and then a little extra. And yes, there are ways in which this binary around kind of white people and other is I don't like the language, I think there are ways in which as much as I enjoy BiPOC as an acronym, it does still center whiteness.
However, the history that we are trying to engage was perpetrated and created and connected to whiteness and so this is a moment where I'm not defining people as white centered and not white, it is more like this is a group of people who named themselves this to create harm. And then this is a group of people, the people of the global majority who were harmed by that behavior. And so in this case, I'm using white and BiPOC, again, not as wholly identifiers, but as saying these are people who harmed and named themselves to harm and these are the people who are recipients of that harm.
And so for BiPOC folks, it really is about what are your choices? What do you want to give? But you are in control of how much you give to an organization. And so if you show up and you clock in and you clock out and you're just here so you don't get fined, that is fine. You can go live your life however you want to do because survival and thriving while surviving to me are the best ways or one of the best ways to interrupt a system that is built to destroy us or make us hate ourselves.
And so if you can do what you can do while spreading joy and liking yourself, then do that. For white people, it is frankly, your primary responsibility to interrupt and break these systems that were built to serve and protect you. So how much intellect, time, energy? As much as you can give and then just a little bit more because to Tiffany's point, you all are in fact, the ones who are behind. You are the ones who have to catch up. And way too often, white people turn to their nearest person of color and say, "How do you help me catch up?" And the answer is I don't, you have to catch up on your own. You have to find community.
I promise you a bunch of people of color have already done the reading, have written a book for you, have engaged in a course for you. You have to go find that, it is not my responsibility to help you catch up. And I still want to be in community. I realized I promise you, I'm happy to support you catching up, but it is not my job. It is not my responsibility. And you are still responsible for catching up even without the assistance of your nearest black friend, I promise. So those are my answers BiPOC folks, give as little as you can spare white folks, give everything and a little bit more.
Ansa Edim:
And I can jump into Tiffany, I don't want to stump you if you have something to say. Okay. I agree with that. Of course, surprise, surprise. I was introduced to the Nap Ministry on Instagram last year and I've really stuck by the principle of rest as resistance. And I will nap in the middle of the day if I'm stressing about racism. I will just walk away.
And to the point I made earlier about last year black folks that change really struggling with the responsibility, the feeling of the responsibility to make sure that the company was fighting racism, and to Courtney's point, it's not our job, but you still feel this responsibility because if it's not our job, who's job is it. And if we don't do anything, then nothing happens and there's just constant pressure.
I started, I decided to me this question that at work, because it is a part of my job, I am paid to do this work. I am a staff representative at the executive level. It's the first, a new role, a change. I'm on the C-team, I'm in the C-suite and I represent staff at that level. And I'm the first black woman at change.org to be at that level. And it's comes with a lot of responsibility and pressure to be at that level and so I've decided to put my energy and intellect into it at work because I feel a responsibility, but in my personal life, I was very quick to just say, "Oh, nope, not going to deal with that, that's racist. Walking away from that.”
I'm not going to tell you it's racist. I'm not going to educate you about why it's racist. I'm just going to release myself from that. And I had this epiphany that something has to give in my anti-racism work and that it had to be dealing with anti-racism in my personal life, because at work, I am making an impact that I really value. I love the work that I do, I love my colleagues of all backgrounds, but in my personal life, the world is huge and I am one person and I don't owe it to every racist or sometimes racist or maybe racist to educate them and put my energy and intellect and time and emotion into making sure they see me as someone who's deserving of existing and thriving.
So yeah. And other aspects of my life, I put very little energy starting very recently into anti-racist work because that's not my job. And I released myself of having to educate other people.
Tiffany Wilhelm:
Full support and yeah, Courtney, just so you said, white folks, give as much as you can at your job and in other aspects of your life. And I just think about too, also have some discernment about yourself. We all deserve to have liberated cultures and all deserve to have our full humanity. So if you're at somewhere potentially like base camp that we heard about in the opening session, you might all want to leave. There might not be... Also like Carmen Morgan, who some of us know who's with [inaudible 00:27:45] just says, "Work with the willing and work with the folks that are wanting to do the change." And there might be some culture, some organizations tell it is so entrenched that no amount of how much you give is going to change it, so think about that.
And then I think too about especially now that I'm in a small foundation, but in philanthropy, how much power is there. And so how much influence, sort of anti-racist principles, moving into a space that holds so much power and so much complexity. And holding that too, holding the weight of knowing where real influence is going to make just ripple effects happen. So all of that, and then to your point, Tim and I especially think for white folks, I hope you're not in any spaces just feeling like this is professional development work, feeling like this is just happening at your job. This takes us all and especially white folks to transform completely and so do get involved in it.
I mean, it's everything else in my life that has not been outside of my jobs that has informed how I'm showing up. I've got involved in showing up for racial justice really early in my journey, all of that sort of just activism work happening in the community and that's what makes it possible to show up in all the ways so I hope I encourage everyone to do that too.
Tim Cynova:
Ansa, when you said, "Nope, I'm not going to do that," when we have this thing that Courtney held create called the negative interactions document protocol, that helps our program staff at Fractured Atlas and we published it so everyone can see if you're being racist and oppressive, someone has the full backing of the organization to just hang up the phone on you or not respond to your email. Courtney, do you want to give a bit of sketch into this? And I included the link in the chat so people can actually download and use it if you want.
Courtney Harge:
Certainly. For me it came as a response to staff, particularly POC staff, a feeling like they could not exit conversations where people were misbehaving. And it wasn't because of directive in higher ups, it was in essence just kind of generally understood that the customer is always right. And if a member or a Fractured Atlas kind of patron is calling and misbehaving, it is the program associate's or it's the staff member's job to kind of sit through it and reconcile and get them to kind of a better space which is a generic general understanding around what "customer service" is supposed to be.
And we were having more and more of those, particularly as Fractured Atlas as an org became more vocal about being an anti-racist org. People were calling and just saying just rude things unnecessarily and the staff. And I was like, "Why are you still talking to this person? Why are you taking on the responsibility?" Actually to what Ansa was saying, you are holding this responsibility for maintaining this relationship with the person who is in fact, and this working relationship with a person who is in fact, not doing anything to maintain a good working relationship with you. And you don't have to take that. That should not be the case.
And so in talking to people, the concern really was, well, what happens when we hang up on somebody? What happens if I just want to exit? Or is it my responsibility to kind of mediate and pivot them to a better space? How much of this, if it's abuse, how much do I have to take? When is the line? And so we created the document. Really, it was like these are all the ways you could respond. No one response is better because sometimes you're in for the fight, right? Sometimes you're like, "Oh, okay, you want to say this, I'm going to interrupt, we're going to do this." And sometimes you just can't, Ansa, again to your point. Around sometimes you're like, "You know what, you're doing a racism and I just will not.”
So what are the processes and what are the processes that don't just transfer this negative interaction to somebody who has equal power in the organization? So one of the things that I was just really proud of was like you can hang up, you don't have to ask permission, you don't have to go to a higher... Whatever line. If it was too much for you, it's too much and you hang up, right. And all you had to do to tell everybody was say... We had a hashtag, it was bad call. You could put it on Slack and say, "Bad call," and this phone number. And so that way, when it came back, if somebody decided to call back, everybody knew not to hang up or particularly those at the lowest not to hang up, sorry, not to pick up.
Anybody the lowest level of the organization was like, "Nope, we're going to let that ring." You're not going to get to yell at somebody and then try to go to somebody else and be like, "This person was rude to me." It's like, "Nope." They've already flagged that you misbehaved, and this is what's up. And then it was up to somebody with more institutional power to respond and address that person. They would call back or they would email them and say, "First, this is how you mistreated our staff, so before we resolve whatever you need resolved, I need you to know that that's not how you treat the people who work here, and once you agree to that, then we can talk about your issue.”
But it really became a series of steps that allowed people to feel empowered, to disconnect and know that they weren't going to be undermined later in the process by being like, "I know that the staff member was unreasonable, but I really care about you," and the way that I've seen other organizations do where they kind of say, "Well, that person just like... the staff member misbehaved, but we know you are right," just to maintain that relationship. It's like, "No, if you're going to work with us, you have to respect that we are people that we deserve that type of energy," and that's where the document came from.
Ansa Edim:
Really love that. I love that. I was just smiling the whole time you were speaking just thinking about all the times where I wish that I had that protocol somewhere I've worked. I've worked in teller research in college and a number of people are mean. I mean, we all know it was anonymity with phone calls or the internet, or if I could've just been like, click, "I'm just going to hang up here. Don't have time for you, nobody pick up the phone," I love that as kind of conditioning for other people as well, which is something that I had to learn in my own anti-racism journey.
My family is Nigerian. They came here in the '80s. I was born here in the US and I learned about my own blackness in a different way as a first-generation American. And Dean [inaudible 00:35:03], he talks about, or he talked about when kids are... And this is his quote so I'm going to put it in air quotes, "But when kids are playing Cowboys and Indians and that they're rooting for the cowboy, they love John Wayne, that's super great. Everyone wants to be John Wayne until you grow up to realize there's a minute when you were about six years old and you realize that you are the Indian in the called Cowboys and Indians games, you're not John Wayne. That there's a select few that are John Wayne.”
And I had that realization sort of around that age and later and it was only until the last several years of my life that I had this kind of awakening that I could just talk back to people and just say, "No, that's not nice. That's not right. That's not how you talk to people," or, "Hey, that's racist." And I had this awakening, you could tell people they're being racist. And so I really love bringing that into the workplace because it's difficult and it's a huge burden on HR systems for black, brown or indigenous staff to have to go to HR and make such a report which I have had to do several times in my life, make a report, "This person was racist to me." They do an investigation. The investigation comes out this way.
It's all very clinical and I would love to take some lessons from this to my current workplace to just say, "Hey, I think this is something that we can start to implement," just empower people to shut stuff down. I love it.
Courtney Harge:
So basically like this imbalance works and I know we're short on time, but I'll be quick, is that there's an assumption that responding negatively to negative behavior is the first, in essence, the first shot fired in this conflict. This person said something terrible to me and if I respond in kind, I'm the problem. And it's like, no, violence has already occurred. The violence has happened. Somebody has said a violent thing, has an acted something that is an attempt to limit and undermine my own humanity, right? How I respond to them is a reaction, is not the inciting incident.
And so to what you're saying, one of the ways in which part of my comfort around interrupting that is one, recognizing this violence has occurred and I am responding. Two, I am not responsible for how you feel about me. I am responsible for interrupting what is happening and for not just letting you harm me, right? So I'd much rather if you think I'm angry black woman or whatever, that means okay, that's on you. But this person said something real foul to me, and I'm going to respond in a way that names this is what just happened. And that is not a violent act. It's not even about meeting violence with violence, but it is naming violence is not the same as enacting violence.
Ansa Edim:
Just unmuting. So you can hear my snaps.
Courtney Harge:
Yes, I appreciate it.
Tiffany Wilhelm:
I love that. And I'm excited to for funders to the point where they say, "Hey, we see anti-blackness happening, we see people getting harmed. We're not going to fund you anymore." It really could be kind of that simple too.
Courtney Harge:
It could. It could be so easy.
Tim Cynova:
So we have about five minutes left in our conversation today, if there's other questions that you have, please put them in either the chat or the Q&A. I've been taking a look at them. Maybe let's take a look at the question. I was scrolling up, I saw Sarah posted, "I want to learn how to encourage our workplace to turn apathy and concern into action." And maybe a related question that I often hear is like what if I work for an organization and they're not going to do anything about it?
What if they're, like we heard in the first session, maybe they put a black square on Instagram and they're like, "All right, well, so what are we going to do?" And what if you work in that organization that's not showing that actually, they're truly committed to the work. What should you do? What can you do?
Ansa Edim:
I don't remember if it was Tiffany or Courtney who said this earlier, so forgive me, but I believe we were talking about kind of the power of your own labor, really at the end of the day. And it is a privilege to be employed. It's a privilege to be able to leave a job and I totally understand that. But similarly to what Tiffany just said about funders being able to say, "I hear it but you're not committed to anti-racism, so we're not going to fund you." I am a serious believer in people doing that with their labor, their dollars, with whatever power you have to take away from an organization that isn't committing to helping us build an anti-racist world to say, "Oh, well, this isn't the place for me then.”
And they'll start to see recruiting staffer and turnaround and all of that. And we as workers have an enormous power to make demands. And we saw that change, like I said earlier, with black staff stepping up and saying, "You're not doing enough. We see that you're doing something, and we see that our mission is connected to anti-oppression and we're seeing that. We just believe it could be done more better in bigger ways.
And we made demands. We straight up made demands and it worked. And so if more workers can do that and just band together as a staff who want to see your organization succeed, you believe in your mission, you believe in the organization and you really want to be there and you want to help say so. And eventually these organizations will get the pictures that they need to either step it up or large flocks of staff.
Courtney Harge:
Audience is a gift to any place you chose to give it and they are giving you dollars in exchange which is not more valuable than your brilliance and talent. And even if they are paying you what you feel you are worth or what you deserve, you are still giving them more than they are giving you. I recognize capitalism has taught us that capital and dollars are the most important than that is not true. That capital is a necessary resource to survive capitalism, but it is not a determinant on who you are. And so whatever gift you are giving to any org which your talent, your attention, your time take to a place that recognizes that they are still making out better than you are in the deal, frankly.
I always like to say pull a LeBron, take your talents to South Beach. Go way where you can be appreciated and where people are willing to work with you. Because if they're expecting you to come in and do the work for them, one, it'll fall apart. Two, like I said earlier, you will fail before the systems fail. And three, the second you do go, it will not be sustained. And so you have an essence out on a treadmill that nobody's going to see, and not create a better world. It's not just about being seen doing the work, it's about can we make impact. And the people and orgs and institutions who are not willing to grow and adapt and change deserve to collapse, do not save them.
Somebody, they have boards, they have CEOs, they have staff who are paid and compensated and supported and keeping the organization going. And if people are not making choices to do that where they are losing staff, let it go, let it fail and build something new in its place. Give those resources to other people fully. And I realize I feel like I'm coming from a very kind of nihilistic place, but this is out of love. This is about building a joyful space. And if other spaces do not want to be at the joy of liberation with me, then they can go, they can be elsewhere. They can hate from outside of the club because we will be in a joyful, loving, chosen community.
Tim Cynova:
And with that, the clock has hit 45. Cut. So amazing to be with the three of you today and our great participants who have been lively in the chat. Ansa, Courtney, Tiffany, truly thank you so much for sharing your wisdom and your insight and your time with us today. Thank you for being at the summit.
Ansa Edim:
Thank you so much for having us.
Tiffany Wilhelm:
Yeah, it was so great. Thank you. Thank you all.
Ansa Edim:
Thank you everyone for attending.
Courtney Harge:
For sure. Thank you.
Tim Cynova:
Thank you so much, everyone. Truly amazing. Take care.
Find more about the Ethnical Re-Opening Summit, including speaker bios and session recaps at work shouldn’t suck dot c-o backslash ethical hyphen reopening hyphen summit hyphen 2021.
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