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Imagine that you’re working for a lawnmower company that struggles in large part because the product has fundamental design flaws. The flagship model looks great, has lots of bells and whistles, but the technology is outdated and is based on an inefficient structural design. As a result, marketing, sales, communications and other departments expend an inordinate amount of energy spinning the story around its performance capabilities which proves to be demoralizing and disappointing since the staff is invested in the company’s success. While a few employees have complained to management about the structural flaws in the design, the company keeps patching it with band-aid fixes instead of fundamentally retooling it. Then to make matters worse, they have the temerity to treat the brave few who offer suggestions as if they’re somehow disloyal because they dare admit that there are fundamental flaws.
This is how so many Black professionals feel when discussing issues of anti-Black racism in America.
Arguably, despite all the DEI smoke and mirror initiatives that have yet to close gaping racial disparities for Black professionals, organizations largely reflect our broader societal struggle to acknowledge the obvious, painting that acknowledgment as somehow unpatriotic or unprofessional. Regrettably, too many organizations cling to safer topics like unconscious bias as a proxy for deep antiracism work that first educates then problem solves—leaving most organizations with dreadfully low levels of racial literacy, humility and stamina.
Many organizations simply refuse to begin at the beginning with a full-throated acknowledgement of America’s racism, not for the purposes of indictment, but instead to serve as a healthy starting point for discussions around retooling our “design” for long term success. And yes, to make matters worse, those who initiate such conversations are too often painted as divisive or difficult.
Arguably, our workplaces, mirroring broader society, have reached a perilous state where they don’t just struggle with the deep, persistent legacy of legalized racial discrimination, but now there’s an assault on simply acknowledging the truth of that legacy. At the center of that conflict is debate over critical race theory, a concept popularized after the term was specifically cited (along with the phrase “white privilege”) to identify federal training activities to be banned in a September 2020 White House memo. Another conflict point has been The 1619 Project whose critics characterize it as divisive and inaccurate. Tragically, these debates have spilled over into school board meetings, classrooms, corporate human resources departments and company break rooms impacting many of us far removed from policy decision making responsibilities, or desires for that matter.
While the tribal nature of these discussions often creates a pressure to “pick a side,” it’s perhaps more helpful and healthy to take a breath, reduce the temperature and focus on the facts objectively, not through a lens of personal indictment but instead as a foundation for problem identification and resolution. Indeed, there’s a reason why the first step of the 12-step recovery process begins with admitting that the individual has a problem—because there can be no progress until one can acknowledge and name the problem.
Arguably, America is no different.
Last year, CNN’s Chris Wallace and Pulitzer prize winning journalist and creator of the groundbreaking book and Hulu docuseries The 1619 Project, Nikole Hannah-Jones tackled this fundamental issue in an exchange both illuminating and illustrative.
Chris Wallace: What's your response when people say that you're saying the country's racist and that this is a central part and making us feel, making them the kids, feel bad about it. Are you saying parents are wrong?
Nikole Hannah-Jones: Yes, I think that, I don't know how one can argue we were not founded as a racist country. I believe that we were. I believe that the record is clear. If you're founded as a country where Black people because they are Black don't have rights, don't have freedom. If you have a Supreme Court that's dominated by enslavers, 10 of the first 12 presidents dominated by enslavers, our founding fathers dominated by enslavers. If you have these things: the father of the Constitution was an enslaver, the drafters of the Declaration was an enslaver, of the Bill of Rights. So to argue that people who were explicitly white supremacist in their writings, I mean, the notes on the state of Virginia says Black people are inferior as a race. That is a racist foundation. This is just a factual rendering to me. Now, does that mean that most white Americans are racist? The project doesn't argue that. But what it does say is that systems of racism that have been set up over centuries don't simply disappear because we pass laws in the 1960s, saying you can no longer explicitly discriminate against Black Americans… So I don't understand how factually, anyone argues that we were not a racist country, because we were racist by law, for the vast history of our country for the first 350 years after the colonists landed at Virginia.
Hannah-Jones continues on to challenge the mythology that acknowledging or teaching a fulsome, accurate rendering of American history is really a covert attempt to make people today feel bad about themselves or accept personal culpability for centuries of legalized discrimination pointing out, “Nothing in this project or critical race theory argues that white Americans today bear responsibility for what happened in the past. Though certainly, I would argue, they bear responsibility for what they are doing about the inequality that this past created.” (Media contacts for “Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace” declined to comment for this article upon request.)
The simple, unvarnished, irrefutable truth is that for 246 years in this country it was perfectly legal for white people to own Black people as their personal property. You really can’t get more racist than that. So, the fact that these fundamental questions around America’s racism are somehow considered provocative or controversial is illustrative of a country not ready to grapple with its history and move towards real equity.
Just as it’s notoriously difficult for those suffering with addiction to reach that point of non-defensive acceptance, it shouldn’t be surprising that many of us similarly struggle with our beloved country’s flaws, refusing to name and accept the problem for what it is. For some, it’s downright gut wrenching no doubt and engenders feelings of sadness, frustration and disappointment. But it’s important to understand that those negative feelings are simply a natural part of the acknowledgement and healing process, not a goal in and of itself.
Consider the broader therapeutic process. Therapists often keep tissues next to their couch not because their goal is to make someone cry but because they simply understand that surfacing and honoring those emotions is a natural, healthy and sometimes necessary part of the healing process, and regrettably, those who refuse to acknowledge and deal with their problems tend to simply stay stuck.
Perched atop the racial hierarchy for centuries, powerful white men seem to be leading the charge for denial and deflection on the topic of America’s racial legacy. Former President Trump’s term was marked by a return to blunt overt racism—from his racist reference to one of his own previous cabinet members to his notorious “good people on both sides” comment after the Charlottesville tragedy to his reported reference to s*hole countries. Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s office recently sent a memo to state agencies characterizing the use of diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives in hiring as “illegal.” And of course, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ so called “anti-woke agenda” has been viewed by many as nothing less than an overt assault on historical truth and antiracism progress. Seemingly tethered to a historical era defined by white advantage, their policies and practices arguably promote a robotic, mindless patriotism marked by selective acceptance, convenient amnesia and willful ignorance.
“The real issue in my opinion is that our identity as white people is so closely tied to the narrative of what it means to be an American, culturally and historically,” insists Andy Horning, MSW, author of Grappling: White Men's Journey from Fragile to Agile. “Any new information that comes to light or gets elevated to our national consciousness has to be defeated because its causes us such distress.” Having authored a book focused on helping white men grapple with the unsavory parts of America’s past and present, Horning insists that that acceptance requires that they have the courage to both see and hear the truth as well as “the self-compassion to be with the discomfort that will inevitably arise as a result of adding voices to our narrative of who we are.” Horning admits, “This is not easy work, but it is critical work, and we have to suspend the easy exit points that reinforce old stories and comfortable falsehoods. It is a national and personal reckoning we must embrace.”
