Equity inaction: Don’t lose yourself in your organization’s false pursuit of equity.

A former colleague asked if I feel ten years younger since leaving my job at a public institution as a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion lead and advisor after working there for 5 1/2 years. My response was quick: Nope, I feel fifteen years younger and light years free-er.

See, I’d been in a space where leadership espoused a self-professed commitment to advancing diversity, equity and inclusion at every turn. These concepts: Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, Justice, Anti-Racism, when implemented with care and authenticity, are crucial to rooting out systemic inequalities that have pervaded the soul of this land and others around the globe for hundreds of years.

Many people and communities continue to suffer from the continuation and remnants of social, economic, political, educational and health inequities and injustices in very real and deep ways. The harm inflicted upon historically marginalized and oppressed populations lasts for generations. The harm, the violence, has been intentional, and thusly, our collective responsibility of righting the abundance of wrongs must too be done with complete intentionality.

However, when organizations and institutions deflate the true meaning of these concepts in an attempt to create the appearance that they are on the right side of history, they become complicit in the perpetuation of the systemic ills they claim they are aiming to dismantle. When this happens, the concepts of equity and justice are relegated to being only trendy buzz words that infiltrate press releases, news conferences and web postings. They seemingly become a guise for garnering support for projects, proposals and initiatives to ward off necessary public analysis and critique.

In essence, the concepts become exploited, hijacked, misused.

And if that weren’t bad enough — so do the DEI practitioners hired by organizations hiding behind the equity buzz.

I was one of those practitioners. As a community advocate and public servant who was always pushing for more inclusive, equitable and just policies and practices, I was optimistic that I could enter the system and change it from the inside. It wasn’t lost on me that I’d be up against a monster, because we are talking about hundreds of years of intentional injustice spanning across generations. If anyone could do it, I thought, it just might be me.

Looking back, however, I saw early tell-tale signs that it would be a long-fought uphill battle.

I saw a lack of compassion by leadership toward our most vulnerable.

I saw a lack of accountability and an excessive amount of comfort with being held unaccountable.

I saw a friendly relationship with the status quo.

However, being the hope-filled optimist that I am, I trekked on, believing it was a process, that I simply needed more time to shift minds and make real change happen.

But, even as I initiated and spearheaded a potentially ground-breaking racial equity project to effect holistic, comprehensive systemic change within the organization, I realized the conundrum in which I sat. I began to have a series of head scratching moments that culminated in this existential question: are the decision-makers within this organization truly committed to centering equity in its truest form, or is it all a facade? Everything constantly showed me that the answer was, sadly, the latter. Many of the practices and decisions made by leadership were continuously hugely incongruent with the flowery soundbites and press releases that exalted equity and inclusion on paper, but was farther from the truth in reality.

As a Black woman community advocate and DEI practitioner, my experience hit me in a different way.

As Chase Sloan writes in The Unseen Emotional Labor of Black Women in DEI Roles (linkedin.com), we don’t give enough attention to the “emotional toll that taking on DEI roles has had on the very individuals these initiatives are meant to support.” The work alone can be overwhelming. Add on top of that the devaluing of a Black woman practitioner’s insight, expertise, lived experience and passion around truly doing the work and you have a painfully curated environment of potential mental, physical and emotional strain.

Black women have been at the forefront of justice work for centuries in this country. We are expected to toil and hold the burden for society, for the world. We are expected to sacrifice our health, our selves, for the greater good. Even in the midst of unfair, unrelenting and unsympathizing realities.

That was where I resided.

After more than five years of internal struggle, I finally took to heart the old adage of when a person (or in this case, an organization) shows you who they are, believe them. I saved my life. I left. I know I made a good difference in the lives of many of the people and community members that I served in my role. The system-level change, however, is going to take the authentic dedication of all the people who work in an institution. One, two, or three people can’t do it by themselves.

I refused to continue the detrimental compromise of my mental and physical wellbeing by operating in a place not in alignment with my values and not willing, or wanting, to change.

My advice is for you to do the same.

Refuse to lose yourself.

Refuse to compromise your values and morals.

Save yourself.

If you are consistently seeing that the decision-makers and overall culture of your workplace are not in alignment with your spirit, values and morals, RUN.

Do not compromise your health and well-being by living in a pipe dream that the institution will actually change to reflect basic things like true dignity, respect, compassion for our most vulnerable.

As Audre Lorde states, self-care is not self-indulgence, it self-preservation.

Workplace stress is real and will increase exponentially when you are putting in the effort to transform a historically harmful system but those with decision-making power are adamant about maintaining a colonial-mindset culture where decisions continue to perpetuate oppressive systems.

Leave. The stress and even heartache is not worth it. You and your life are.

Do your good work in a space that rocks with, and not rattles, your spirit.