“Your silence will not protect you.” – Audre Lorde
In my most recent blog post, I asked if you were a hero or a coward. I am here to confess that I am a coward.
Last week I started writing about leadership, but in light of recent events, I’ve decided to scrap that draft, instead opting to say what needs to be said, and what I should have said years ago…if I’d only had the courage.
True leaders value every human and strive to bring out the best in them.
True leaders see every human for who they are, for all their humanity. Not just for their work performance or the HR box they check.
True leaders stand up for what is right – in the office and in life.
It is next to impossible to be a true leader while riding the coattails of race and privilege. We can’t be. Our complicity in the racial hierarchy has ranged from turning a blind eye to outright enslavement to murder in broad daylight. Those of us who have unjustly benefited must help those who have unjustly suffered.
Black lives matter.
Black lives matter. Period. If we can’t say it and mean it, we aren’t true leaders. We have four hundred years of wrongs to right. We either work to be anti-racist, or we are racist. Period.
Our friends and colleagues of color have been trying to get us to listen for years. Four hundred years, actually. And we refused.
“He must have done something for cops to detain him or arrest him or shoot him…or kill him.” Black people are murdered before our eyes. By police. By white people. And that’s just the visible injustice.
Black people also suffer from the prolonged health effects of racism. Black families have been robbed of generational wealth, largely thanks to policies and practices like redlining that were/are completely legal. Black children lack opportunities due to inadequate access to education and unconstitutional funding of public schools. Black men rot in jails because of bias in the justice system. The list goes on.
The keepers of privilege must dismantle the system. We don’t expect the battered wife to stop her husband’s abuse, and we can’t expect people of color to end racism. If they could, they’d have done it ages ago. It’s up to us. And we better get started because we’ve got lots of work to do.
I’ve been trying to understand white privilege and my role in institutional racism for over a decade. But I’ve kept that work “on the side,” separate from my day-to-day business. I didn’t trust my clients and colleagues to have the courage to consider the world from this perspective. I worried it would hurt my business. I was a coward.
That ends today. I commit to living my life as an anti-racist. Every day and in every aspect. I’ll make mistakes, and I’ll learn and try to do better.
George Floyd did not die. He was murdered. Words matter. Black lives matter. We can do better. I hope you will join me.
