This article, titled “White Privilege Diary Series #1, White Feminist Privilege in Organizations, about the failure of many organizations to tackle the real work of anti-racism raises a lot of questions. The author, Kali Tal, does an excellent job at defining a well thought out process and general facilitation method for moving groups through the work needed when a group professes to want to become more diverse.
Yet, as the author notes, it usually fails.
And she basically leaves it at that in frustation and anger at the people in power who don’t want to change their organizations.
The phenomenon Tal describes makes a lot of sense and she brings a clear sense of history and understanding of a lot of the nuances that can plague these attempts at diversification. I appreciate that she isn’t willing to hold any punches about how racism manifests, and the article does a great job of honing in on the key space where this manifests. I had a question or two about the way those dynamics were described, but this mostly struck me as likely pretty accurate.
Nonetheless, it also struck me as too quick to succumb to pessimism and a good vs. evil paradigm which is limiting for everyone. I’m not laying blame on Tal as the facilitator for not overcoming these issues. But lacking culpability doesn’t mean that an opportunity isn’t being missed.
If this pattern becomes so sure and replicable, and the author is one of the only one’s with the experience to see it, then why doesn’t she change her approach? It seems that there are ways to approach this situation, knowing the likely pitfalls, that might make it easier to avoid those pitfalls.
For example, what if the facilitators forewarned the participants about the likely need for deeper structural change before the long engagement with the board and members? What if they asked for specific commitments, perhaps related to cost, percentage of programming efforts, or some other measure to prepare for the needed changes ahead? This would serve a number of purposes:
- to test the seriousness of the interest in addressing the issue before walking the path;
- to create clear parameters and commitments ahead of time which should make it much easier to hold the white women in power to those commitments later (and not just “hold them” coercively but pre-set their own commitment so that confirmation bias and people’s innate desire to create a consistent self-image, a well documented motivator, kicks in to help the later parts of the meetings run smoother); and
- to create a clear playing field for the suggestions that come back from the people of color, so that the facilitators aren’t setting them
up for failure from the beginning.
To carry people through a process with the expectation that the process is likely to fail not only undermines the process, but also sets up the entire group to be further discouraged and frustrated with the idea of positive change.
Again, I do not claim that the author is to blame for these circumstances. Nor that the institutions or people that she describes aren’t racist. Certainly, many people will claim they want change until their power is actually threatened. And a power analysis is crucial to changing the dynamics that the author was brought in to help change. I do not lay sole responsibility on the author for changing this. But the author is the only window we have into this dynamic, and I would urge any party that I was talking to in this whole mess to look at what measures were in their sphere of control and influence and work from there, and I would urge each party to try to access their highest selves to determine their best course of action. As Tal is the only one we, the readers, are in dialogue with here, then I feel we must ask these thing questions of her. Not in condemnation, but in hope of finding solutions that help us all become unstuck.
12:48, 01.06.2011
I find this a very very acute and wise response. I do think we have all been around this bend too many times…and we need to change our behavior. Yes, I am white and lead an anti-racist organization where we have never tried this suggestion. I think we will. Judson Memorial Church.
ds
10:10, 05.01.2012
A friend just passed me the URL to your question or I would have answered it earlier. First, I’m far from the only person to see this pattern, though there aren’t many who write about it. Second, the article you reference was specifically about a particular set of problems I’ve experienced again & again — I’ve been working on some other essays (actually, a handbook) that provides some possible workarounds.
Your three suggestions are quite good, and I have tried various versions of them, though without a lot of success. First, before the process starts, I (and my colleagues, if I’m working with other people) have the very discussion you describe with Board members. But the “what if” scenario is very different from the “okay, now you actually have to do it” scenario and in most cases, no matter what an organization promises, it doesn’t come through when the nature of the systemic changes necessary become clear. People, it turns out, are often racists because they *want* to be , not because they don’t know any better.
Most organizations aren’t willing to put their promises in writing (and yes, this is a danger signal, but the diversity facilitator is then put in the position of saying, ‘this is a waste of my time’ before actually giving the process a try). Those that are, however, have a much higher success rate with diversification. My experience tells me, though, that their success does not come because they were asked to put their promises in writing; it’s because they were actually serious about diversifying in the first place, and thus willing to put their promises in writing. Big difference.
And it’s really difficult to get commitments of non-trivial amounts of money from organizations *before* the “results” of the trainings. Usually, these organizations don’t want to lay out *any* money, including for the diversity trainers, so often we worked for free. (Diversity-for-pay consultants are a mixed bunch, and because they’re dependent on “good reviews” to get hired by new clients, there’s a built-in pressure not to really challenge the organizations that employ them, but that’s another story.) At any rate, I will try, in the future, to write more essays that address these various topics.
Peace,
Kali
10:59, 05.01.2012
Hi Kali,
Thanks for writing – it’s good to have direct conversation! And it’s really helpful to hear about your experience in trying some of these other approaches. Certainly, the approaches I was suggesting don’t suddenly make things easy! What you say rings true, that when you try to clarify or set these things up at the beginning, a lot of pushback happens, and yet as the facilitator you don’t have a lot of recourse at that early stage of the relationship to push too hard.
And I thought / hope that I was being clear that I wasn’t trying to claim that these patterns don’t happen. They do.
It seemed to me that your original article was both an expression of your own frustration, and a clarion call to the challenges of this work. Both are reasonable, but I suspect it’s the frustration and the tone of “Well, the racist bastards can’t be dealt with” (paraphrasing…) that sparked a lot of interest with folks. Clearly it resonated with a lot of other frustrations. Also reasonable.
Yet, then it came across as the end of the conversation, and for me that felt untenable. So, this was an attempt to keep that conversation moving forward.
I’m sure that conversation moves forward within your own world all the time. Thanks for connecting with me on that.
I’d love to hear about more writing you do on this topic.
Jacob