Rebuild, Don’t Fix: Too many DEI efforts in the workplace completely miss the point

The murder of George Floyd during a global pandemic, when people had time to witness and sit with a race crime that mirrored many before it, changed everything. People began to seek accountability from everyone, including those at the helm of companies and organizations. A surge of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives was born. 

Companies explored what DEI looked like, both within their organizations and to the outside world on social media, websites, hiring sites and other areas of marketing. Businesses began making a concerted effort to hire nonwhite employees to showcase representation and executing training programs to educate and integrate teams.

Unfortunately, too few of these efforts took a closer look at understanding what it was like to live life as a Black American, how different experiences and opportunities are and you are held to a standard that others are not.

Most DEI strategies and tactics also don’t address what’s at the root of inequality and how our entire system of living in the United States is based on a foundation where a whole community of people was considered consumer products. And, how when slavery was abolished, there wasn’t a new system set up to reverse that mentality and view Black people as consumers.

Seeing and acknowledging our history and its impact on our present reveal the imperative opportunity to talk about deeply-held, unconscious biases and microaggressions. This is where leaders of companies seeking to create diversity, inclusion, equity and belonging (DEIB) need to start.

We need to explore how public policy created to provide prosperity and opportunity to grow family wealth through things like home ownership fell short when Black individuals were intentionally left out. We must take a close look at all the actions taken that may have unintentionally alienated entire communities of nonwhite people.

Training isn’t enough. An effective DEIB initiative gets to the root of the system that breeds the thinking and beliefs that lead to tragedies like the recent one in Buffalo. It explores our history and encourages the surfacing of deeply held beliefs, feelings and fears that are at the core of how and why we behave, make choices, live our lives and run our businesses.

The work of DEIB can’t be done in a week or with one person at the helm. At Verity, we partnered with a group of consultants to provide psychological safety and a sense that they were “in it with us.” We are now thoughtfully considering a variety of perspectives to help us relate to a myriad of journeys, including our BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ communities.

As business leaders, we participate in trainings created for a certain demographic, and typically by white men. As a result, we can easily fall into showing up in “whiteness” – a way of thinking and doing that is passed on without even knowing it.

Even as a Black woman over 40 who served in the military, I walk in my own privilege. For example, I had a conversation with a member of our LGBTQIA+ community and realized I had the freedom to get married when I wanted to. I didn’t have to fight for it or have to jump through hoops to become a parent. 

This “aha” moment made me question what other privileges I unknowingly take for granted. This is where true DEIB work can create change.

This is big work. It can’t be accomplished by one person or a task force. It needs to include every single person in your company. Every voice needs to be recognized and a part of co- creating inclusion and equity. Sometimes we won’t understand; and that’s when we just get to be silent and listen.

We have opportunities to take immediate action. For example, as companies, we can invest in these communities in many areas, including education, roads, homes and schools.

Redlining made it impossible for these communities to have a successful banking relationship. Black communities suffered at the hands of financial institutions that had exclusionary practices, like charging more fees based on unfair risk assessments. When you look in Black neighborhoods today, you still see underfunded schools and a lack of banks or credit unions. Instead, you find check cashing centers. These are not places where people get ahead. 

We need to realize that we keep treating the symptoms and not the disease. We’ve been quiet for so long, complicit. The key will be for us to join forces to ensure a united front to dismantle systems that were built to discriminate. 

It’s time to rebuild, not fix.

Tonita Webb is chief executive officer at Seattle-based Verity Credit Union.