This Week's Opening Thought: December 5, 2022

This week's opening thought: I've had many companies and team leaders reach out to me for equity and anti-racism training and consultation over the years. During this time, I would say that half of those who've reached out to me for my services seek someone to convince their white leaders and team members that they should care about every person they work with. And that's one of the core problems with what many people believe equity and anti-racism work is: finding ways to dupe someone into caring for others.

There is no method or belief system built into equity and anti-racism work that can "convince" someone to care about the lives and societal and generational trauma of others. No one should have to be "convinced" that they should care about others. No one should have to con someone into being a human being that cares for others without kudos and photo ops. You can't trick someone into caring about Black lives, queer lives, and the struggles of Global Majority communities. You can't sucker someone into caring about accessibility and safer, braver spaces for all.

If you can't care about others without someone massaging your ego and constantly reinforcing your need to believe you're a good person? Then I'm still not convincing you to care.

I'm being asked to give you a participation award while co-signing and normalizing your lack of interest in empathy and compassion unless it benefits you in some way.

And you're asking me to do this as a Black man in the United States.

You're asking people who are a part of communities that are consciously and unconsciously harmed by those you want them to "convince" to do the heavy lifting. And if you're seeking those services, you've likely convinced yourself that this was the only way this work could be done in your organization.

I'm convinced many of y'all need more than convincing.

This Week's Opening Thought: November 28, 2022

This week's opening thought: If candidates, hiring managers, and staff members in your organization give you feedback on your interview process, and you hear your organization's interviews feel like:

• Interrogations;

• High-pressure situations where candidates feel like they have to show how much they love your company to possibly work for you (without knowing anything about your workplace culture other than what you've told them) instead of being evaluated for what they'd bring to your company;

• You're making candidates run a gauntlet of sorts with seemingly endless interviews in a lengthy months-long process;

• or "gotcha" situations where candidates feel they have to give the "right" answers to be considered for the job?

Your company needs to re-evaluate its anti-racism statement, equity and inclusion statement, and the company values that they like to trot out and wave like a flag of honor because y'all aren't living up to any of that.

Just sayin'.

This Week's Opening Thought: November 21, 2022

This week’s opening thought: We’re coming off a weekend where the Trans Day of Remembrance was marred with the dark clouds of another violent hate crime. We’re also going into a week with a supremely problematic national holiday representing the erasure of Native folx and factual history in the United States during the month slated as Native American Heritage Month.

To say that this is a week of trauma on many levels for many communities is an understatement.

These are moments in time when I find myself struggling for words. I think about action and inaction and the impacts of both, regardless of intent. But mostly, I think about safety: whom our society believes is deserving of it, the absence of it for so many communities. At this time, the only thing that comes to mind is this:

Everyone deserves safety.

Physical safety. Emotional safety. It should be for everyone. It’s ridiculous that, overtly and covertly, it’s not.

Safety should not be a privilege only available to white cishet Christians on unceded land. No one should have to live with the understanding that you’ll pass on the generational trauma of knowing that you and those who come after you will likely never be or feel safe as you navigate the world. Hate should never be a core part of living freely and openly as yourself. We all should be able to live happily in our identities, our cultures, and our communities without the fear of murder. And if you disagree with any part of this?

You are a contributor to a clear and present danger.

My heart and soul go out to LGBTQIA+ communities, to trans communities, after the traumatic hate crime that occurred in Colorado Springs this past weekend. My heart and soul go out to the families and communities impacted by the terrorist attack at Club Q. And my heart and soul go out to Native and Indigenous communities in the United States as we approach a harmful and invalidating national holiday. May there be some peace and love for you amid so much trauma.

This Week's Opening Thought: November 7, 2022

This week's opening thought, especially for those with power, privilege, and positionality in the United States: Vote.

Take the time to understand the measures and politicians in your area that could harm Global Majority and marginalized communities and vote against them.

If you haven't gleaned anything else from this country's past few election cycles, you have hopefully learned that your vote has legitimate weight. Making informed decisions that factor in human and environmental impact has weight. Voting not just for yourself and your best interests based on your class and socioeconomic status but as a voice for others who have been oppressed and harmed for centuries has weight.

I don't have any fancy slogans or stickers to motivate you to vote and care about your community and communities that are your friends, neighbors, and co-workers. I'm operating on the hope that you'll learn from history and respond accordingly, a hope full of swiss cheese-sized holes that I cling onto because the alternative is depressing. I'm expecting y'all to be decent citizens, to be the "good people" y'all claim to be. I'm hoping that some of y'all will live up to those "good white people" personas some of y'all gleefully tote around and vote outside of your ego and wants. I hope many of you will do better than using voting as a social media gold sticker participation award selfie. I hope you'll vote with empathy instead of for likes and retweets.

Hope.

There's that word again.

Hope is all many people in this country have left to hold on to. And some of y'all don't realize how your vote has eroded the hopes of so many.

I want to believe that people can be better than the images they show me daily. I need to think people can be better because, well, hope. Even with it in tatters, I wear it like a blanket against the elements.

I'm not the only one.

Vote like there will be no hope left to hold onto.

Because there might not be.

This Week's Opening Thought: October 31, 2022

Image description: A picture of Kool-Aid Man, a cartoonish human-sized pitcher of instant fruit punch with a stenciled-on smiley face, breaking through a wall. The words "Oh Yeah!" can be seen above him as the wall crumbles from the force.

This week's opening thought: if you see critiques of your industry from people, Global Majority folx, Black folx who work in your industry with ideas and solutions about how to repair these issues and the first thing that comes to mind is, "if you don't like [insert industry here] then you should get out?" Perhaps you're a part of the problem.

And please refrain from the whole "you're dividing our industry" jargon that people tend to trot out when they feel the need to defend their white supremacy ideology-driven professions. That's the response of someone who felt the words hit the nail on the head like a stake through the heart and don't want to sit with the discomfort of an honest evaluation.

If you've dedicated a part of your life to a career in an industry and you're not calling that industry to task for its lack of evolution and innovation or its lack of career progression and opportunities for marginalized, Black, Brown, and Indigenous folx, and Global Majority folx unless they prescribe to the throes of white supremacy?

You are drinking the Kool-Aid. It's not even good, Kool-Aid. It's Kool-Aid made with Sweet 'N Low. But you're comfortable conforming and toeing the line, so you're guzzling it like plants seeking water in the middle of a drought.

You might as well pour yourself another cup, continue sitting on the sidelines, and keep your opinion to yourself while the rest of us move our industries forward.

[Image description: A picture of Kool-Aid Man, a cartoonish human-sized pitcher of instant fruit punch with a stenciled-on smiley face, breaking through a wall. The words "Oh Yeah!" can be seen above him as the wall crumbles from the force.]