Grace, Race, and Equity

Grace… as a cornerstone of my practice. 

It’s not intuitive or natural for me, especially on the issue of race and equity, but it is important to me to become Grace-centered in my work and my life. 

Why?

Because we all believe a lie that our lived experiences told us was true. 

As an example, belief that people of color are inherently less human, defacto deficient and intractablly inferior is a lie that, to various degrees and with varying implications, most people believe, including people of color. 

Other examples of lies we believe are true: 

✔️the degree of “American” you are is dictated by your race

✔️that people who are different are to be feared, controlled, marginalized, muted, stunted 

✔️that equality and certainly equity are too lofty of a goal to pursue with Fidelity 

✔️that some people matter and others don’t or 

✔️that there is no such thing as right or wrong anymore

What’s common with these “living lies” is that they are either lies about ourselves or lies about others.  

Many of these lies are disguised as beliefs. 

And with beliefs, it’s very hard to interrogate them and then ask ourselves if those beliefs serve us in our lives. 

Its even hard to accept the possibility that a belief we hold could be a lie. 

On that notion we take offense, especially if the notion is delivered to us in anger, dripping with judgment or laced with vitriol.

But we all have at least one “living lie” that we must chase down because it gets in the way of progress. 

ALL BELIEFS FIND A WAY TO EXPRESS THEMSELVES!!

And as it relates to work, overtime, these unassessed, uninterrogated, unpacked lies (cloaked as beliefs), become your employment culture, and have toxic, implications for women and your black and Hispanic employees. This is why you have high turnover with this population and lower employee engagement scores. 

Each of your employees have this battle and most of your leaders are ill-equipped to unpack it with them and do much about it. 

Your leadership team must have the confidence and clarity to fully function inside of multicultural spaces so you can court and retain talent of color. This work starts with understanding what lies are permeating through the workplace about people who are different. Absent meaningful exercises to uncover this reality, you will never see persistent results in this space.

Thankfully, at Harper Slade, this is our specialty. We can show you how. 

Click HERE to get started.

-Nikki Lanier