Diversity Hiring Strategies and Workplace Training Initiatives Miss the Mark on Systemic Racism
Opportunities to translate knowledge about systemic/institutional racism into practice have begun to grow exponentially. This may be evidence of an increasing number of organizations realizing how important taking visible action on social problems is to their future success. Both employees and customers want to associate themselves with companies who care about social issues and are willing to take a stand, even if it means alienating a segment of their market.
Sounds great, right? Not entirely. As I watch the rapid expansion of the consultant/speaker industry around anti-oppression work, and hear feedback about some organizations’ experiences, I am getting a little concerned that in the flurry of provocative soundbites, we might miss this very real opportunity to weaken the grip systemic racism has on our social institutions and other organizations.
My concern isn’t about the information being disseminated about systemic racism. It is about how poorly the practice of knowledge translation (KT) seems to be understood by most people doing anti-oppression work. Giving people information on what needs to change, even convincing them that change is needed — but without changing organizational systems to make them responsive to new ways of thinking and doing — only creates a comforting, but transient, illusion of change.
My concern led to this blog post in which I want to address two of the most popular products currently being offered on the anti-oppression-solutions market that I know, from experience, to not be worth your money. Unless of course, what you want to create is the illusion of change instead of real, sustainable change.
But first, for those of you unfamiliar with the concept of KT, the following three paragraphs provide a brief primer on KT, as it applies to systemic racism (or more broadly: anti-oppression work). This partial description KT is based on my personal experiences, and my reflections on those experiences as well as my knowledge of critical social theories, which acknowledge the role that power plays in all human interactions.
KT facilitates the practical, systematic application of factual information to real-world problems. KT works to transform organizational systems to make factual information both accessible and useful to practitioners. In other words, KT is about more than giving people information, it’s about making it possible for workers to put that information to use by removing structural barriers and implementing supporting or facilitating systems.
A critical perspective on KT uses a very broad, inclusive definition of knowledge which encompasses, but is not limited to, research findings and lived experience. This is because just as we discriminate against people based on the colour of their skin, we also discriminate against people based on their level of education, which directly affects the options they have for expressing what they know. Practicing KT from a critical social theory perspective means always taking an anti-oppression approach, whether you do it explicitly or more surreptitiously.
KT is distinguished from workplace training/teaching activity by the scale of the change being implemented through knowledge. While the focus of workplace training activity is to improve individuals’ practices, it usually does not undertake the task of changing organizational systems, infrastructure or culture. KT is concerned with organizational and higher level transformation through the restructuring of systems to accommodate big ideas and new ways of thinking, such as evidence-based or anti-oppression approaches.
Unfortunately, it’s been my experience over the past few years, that taking an explicit anti-oppression approach to KT work is not popular with most public sector organizational leaders, even those with a mandate to address specific forms of oppression, like racism. This is of particular importance because addressing systemic/institutional racism can only be accomplished with the full cooperation of those with the authority to make organizational-level changes within an institution, including boards.
There are two strategies being actively promoted as ways of addressing systemic/institutional racism that are actually incapable of doing so. These two popular but ineffective strategies are workplace training and diversifying an organization’s workforce. These strategies are ineffective ways of addressing systemic racism because they target individual workers for change when the problem lies within the organizational infrastructure (which includes organizational culture).
Workforce training to impart general information about systemic racism is ineffective simply because the kind of organizational changes that need to be made cannot be made by the vast majority of workers. In my experience, that approach (telling people they need to change things they do not actually have the authority to change) quickly leads to workforce apathy. Kicking off your anti-oppression strategy with organization wide training on systemic racism is like training everyone now to use new software you hope to implement in a couple of years — a waste of everybody’s time.
A far more productive use of a knowledge translator’s time is to coach organizational leaders through an evidence-informed, reflective process to identify the list of structural things that need to be changed in order to concretely address a specific, defined, measurable problem. Then focus in on a subset of that list: things they are willing to change. Once operational plans are finalized, general workforce training can occur as part of a change management strategy to give context for the workplace changes that are being experienced.
Diversifying organizational workforces by hiring Black, Indigenous and people of colour (BIPOC) is ineffective in addressing systemic racism for two reasons. Firstly, strategies to hire the few BIPOC individuals who have successfully fought their way through the system does next to nothing to address the marked inequities faced by all BIPOC children and youth in the education, health and social systems. These are the systems that will shape tomorrow’s workforce to be just as inequitable as the current one, unless changes are made. In relation to systemic racism, a diversity hiring strategy, while it could be wonderful for BIPOC individuals currently looking for work, is really like trying to empty the ocean with a thimble.
Secondly, until organizational policies, processes and practices that reproduce systemic racism are identified and changed, the only BIPOC people who will make it through the hiring process are those who are recognizable to the people hiring them. Also known as the candidates who are a “good fit”, they are the people who exhibit the behavioural norms and attitudes that are familiar to hiring managers, the ones that mark a person as being “like us”, “belonging here”, or “understanding how we operate”. Unfortunately the norms and attitudes that seem to indicate a new hire will fit into an organization’s culture include those that also reproduce systemic racism.
Of course, workplace training and hiring diverse employees are activities that have a place in a larger anti-racism or anti-oppression strategy. What is important to take away from this post is that if that is all you’re doing, or the majority of what you’re doing, you’re not going to make any long-term impacts on systemic racism.
Systemic racism discourse remains highly conceptual, and most people, regardless of how kind or open-minded they are, will require professional help to address the sources of it within their organizations. To make it more concrete, my recommended strategy is to start with one measured or measurable problem affecting racialized people in your organization or community and work your way back to root causes. With system change of any kind, it’s important to start small, work slowly and communicate strategically to minimize backlash.
