Anti-racist leads participating in a Home Truths 2 event are committed to building race equity-focussed organisations but face internal resistance.
A narrated version of this blog is available at the bottom of the page
Words by Sanjiv Lingayah; wisdom provided by the anti-racist leads who participated in our Chatham House session in July 2023. We thank, wholeheartedly, colleagues for sharing their perspectives in such a generous and thoughtful way.
As a prelude to the practical elements of the Home Truths 2 programme aimed at moving civil society towards anti-racism, the programme team is spending some time taking stock of the current state of play.
We convened a group of civil society anti-racist and Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) leads in a Chatham House event to understand what it feels like to do the inside job of building an anti-racist organisation. Though, undoubtedly, some vital work is being done, the feeling from the session was that being an anti-racist lead can be lonely and precarious work where champions are stymied or even set up to fail.
A post is not enough
When an organisation appoints an anti-racist lead, it feels important. It is official acknowledgement that there is a problem in the organisation and that things need to change.
But while anti-racist leads in our session were able to point to improvements in organisational practice and processes we also heard how gains came with plenty of pain.
One participant talked about the way that positive change was often so hard-won that it almost did not feel like progress. Another contributor mentioned how the work could be a “huge slog” for anti-racist leads and Black and Minoritised Ethnic people doing the heavy lifting on race equity inside the organisation.
Different forms of resistance
It was acknowledged that leads could face hard resistance from colleagues, such as controlling, micro-managing, undermining and bullying behaviour as well as senior leaders pulling rank to slow down or stop change. But there was also soft resistance.
Colleagues seemingly committed to anti-racism would raise ‘concerns,’ about it being divisive, difficult or disruptive. On the surface, such people appear to be focussed on preserving harmony. But such behaviour can cover a desire to preserve position and the status quo. It can also reflect an unwillingness to go through necessary discomfort on the way to building anti-racist organisations.
The wrong tools for the job
Another theme in the discussion related to Audre Lourde’s famous quote that “…the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.” For example, one participant noted that anti-racist leads are required to ‘sell’ their ideas to senior leadership and colleagues based on prevailing ideas of ‘performance.’ However, it is often these same people and logics that have allowed organisations to perpetrate racist harms in the first place.
Finding a way
All of the above makes it hard for serious anti-racist leads to do the necessary work of dismantling, reimagining and remaking regimes and organisations.
Our group of anti-racist and EDI leads was making headway and staying steadfast despite ambivalent and sometimes unsupportive work contexts. But anti-racism is too important to be left to creative and gritty individuals. We need organisations to set up anti-racist leads to succeed; to resource the work properly and sustainably; and to license audacious thoughts and deeds in pursuit of race equity.
Organisations need to prize their anti-racist leads and ensure that they are at the heart of our institutions. Situating anti-racist and race equity work like this means that while racism erases people’s humanity and possibilities, remade civil society organisations can work to heal, to affirm life and restore wholeness.
