Privilege is any aspect of ourselves and our lives that facilitates ease or advantage at any scale — it’s not an indictment, it’s a responsibility — Privilege has become a fraught concept, so we should invest in understanding the myriad dimensions of our own. This is especially true for white people these days. In short, privilege is any aspect of ourselves and our lives that facilitates ease or advantage at any scale. …

Why the attack on inclusive policies and programs should concern everyone — I’ve been leading and designing diversity, equity, and inclusion programs for over two decades. Unlike countless new entrants to the field, my team and I have traversed this terrain for ages. I have long believed that the workplace is the biggest learning laboratory we have outside of formal educational settings…

Unlearning racist oppression isn’t just for white folks — Recent meditations include the ways that I, as a Black person, subject myself to internally racist lies and misconceptions. Sometimes the still small voice inside is the voice of the oppressor. Edgar Villanueva’s Decolonizing Wealth describes the colonizer virus as the synthesis of delusional white supremacy and capitalism that infects…

Why the Midterms Were a Remarkable Moment for America — And the World — It was an election result that pleased no one. “There should have been a Democratic landslide,” my friend Cindy said. “Joe Biden? Trump is the man!!” said the guys at the little shop next to me in Europe…and they’re from a “third world” country. “But why didn’t Americans vote out…

Those who rationalize racial disparities often provide evidence for the very thing they deny — Over the past thirty years, I’ve written hundreds of articles and more than a half-dozen heavily footnoted books documenting the reality of racism as an ongoing force in America. In this, I am hardly alone. Scholars and researchers have long demonstrated how racism operates, individually and systemically, impacting the opportunity…

Why doing the minimum required task is perfectly acceptable — Workplace culture has been the focus of my career for the past two decades. My company has helped thousands of workplaces become high functioning, inclusive, and welcoming by focusing on diversity and belonging. I’m currently intrigued with the new label on the old concept of maintaining work/life boundaries. The trending…

Reckoning with racism is becoming impossible to avoid — I was recently reminded of the idea of double-consciousness, the state of being both Black and American, and how ill-at-ease those two conditions rest. Coined in 1897 by W.E.B. Dubois, the reality that many of your nation’s people and systems operate towards your oppression remains soberingly relevant in 2022. White…

When love dare not speak its name. — “I was singing when I freed you But my pride was just a veil I pretended not to need you Now my heart tells a different tale” — “Hearts in Armor” by Trisha Yearwood On September 1, 1992, country singer Trisha Yearwood released her second album, Hearts in Armor, and…

Moving from Black Lives Matter Support Statements to Antiracist Action and Systemic Change — Blackwashing is worse than tokenizing a few Black people. Blackwashing is a corporate strategy designed to paint a veneer of wokeness onto the institutional image. It’s an ill-advised approach that countless organizations initiated as a knee-jerk response to the murder of George Floyd and the subsequent racial uprising. It’s not…

5 Red Flags for Antiracism Practitioners to Look for Before Signing a JEDI Contract — A history of expecting free labor from Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) is the reason we need Antiracist education and support in the first place. I’ve noticed a disturbing trend of businesses reaching out to Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (JEDI) practitioners expecting free advice and free, or…

How White Men Can Evolve from Ordinary Allies to Antiracist Co-Conspirators — The nice thing about being an inclusion expert is that I get to see both the best and the worst human behavior. Witnessing the extremes gives rise to gratitude in the face of folks really working to do right by others. It is from this place that I have been…

Stop/start DEI work can severely undermine employee trust and increase BIPOC turnover — Whether you’ve been leading a diversity strategy for years or you just got on the post-2020 racial justice protest bandwagon, you may be noticing a lag in justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion (JEDI) momentum. JEDI Marathoners If your organization has a fairly mature JEDI program replete with diversity councils, maybe a Chief…

Spoiler alert: It’s impossible — Imagine the sound of chalk screeching down a chalkboard. For the generations who grew up with whiteboards; recall the sound of someone pulling a fork across their teeth as they finish shoveling in that last bite. Now you have a sense of my visceral response to the throngs of people…

Leveraging bias in service of inclusion — Black people and female founders are the least likely to get funded by private equity. A paltry 0.64% of total venture capital investment between 2018 and 2019 went to Black and Latinx women combined. I know this from statistical research and from personal experience. …

The Great Resignation is upon us and we have an opportunity to rebuild something in its wake — As an inclusive organizational development researcher, when you put people first, outputs are improved. People who feel supported, included, seen and heard are less stressed, healthier, more joyful, and more free to innovate and be productive. For decades, I’ve been researching and facilitating organizational change through a justice, equity, diversity…

Many of us will age into disability, so ration your privilege responsibly — Sometimes we simply need a shift of perspective. Disability is the one dimension of diversity that any of us can enter in the blink of an eye. …

Is that VIP title and matching salary worth the headache? — Between leadership hiring you, only to derail your career, and a position with little to no standardized template for success — Chief Diversity Officers (CDOs) are an experimental class of executives lingering on thin ice. I founded a diversity firm nearly 20 years ago, so I’ve audited, beheld, and built…

Unexpected, welcomed, and sometimes unusual — Large numbers of white women are undergoing a metamorphosis, and countless others have a track record of genuine grace. As new acolytes of cross-racial kindness stumble and fumble their way through awkward interactions, these wide-eyed allies are earning their stripes. From Beckys to Karens, white women have come under fire…

What Putin’s War is Really About — And Why the West is Unifying to Try and Stop It — The question on everyone’s lips is: what happens now? Where does the war in Ukraine — Russia’ bloody and illegal war of aggression — go from here? It’s understandable. Yes, this is the closest the globe has been to another World War since the end of the last one. And…

Her comment wasn’t anti-Semitic — meanwhile, Ron DeSantis is out here refusing to condemn Nazis in his own state — As a Jew, I know full well how incorrect Whoopi Goldberg’s recent comments about the Holocaust were — that it “wasn’t about race,” but merely a matter of man’s inhumanity to man, involving white people killing white people. To the Nazis, Jews were a distinct race of evildoers — a…