Leaders, Workers, and Entrepreneurs!

 

We approach our interactions and activities, our ambitions and goals, with a certain measure of caution. In all that we do, there is a Plan B and a Plan C to account for lack of safety, understanding, sponsorship or capital.  Self-policing is, to me, the most pernicious tax of all on Blackness and one that I believe has robbed America as a whole of countless leaders, innovators, creators, inventors, employers and problem solvers (...other than the senseless deaths).  It is also one of the most important fights I wage, in both my personal and professional life.  I fight for a black "middle-class" as much as I fight for those who are completely disenfranchised and marginalized.  I spend time on the school-to-prison pipeline and advocating for black girls in public education as much as I spend time against 3% black employment in the tech sector and the financial services industry.  Because there should be no artificial ceiling to what any of us can strive to achieve. 

Social justice and economic parity are not mutually exclusive.  Ultimately, communities without significant financial security and sustainability are marginalized, over-policed and lack political power.  To be unable to provide for yourself and your future securely is a slow death.  To work yourself to exhaustion yet earn so little you need public assistance is a slow death.  To be a target of the most predatory and indifferent business practices permitted by our legal system is a slow death. To be unable to tell your children, without a caveat, that there is no limit to what they can achieve is a slow death.  The deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and countless others are symptoms of toxic inequality that permeates many institutions in this country from the nonprofit and government sector to major corporations.  And we don't escape by virtue of reaching the higher echelons of those institutions.

And as a community, we must change that system.  Those of us who have achieved a modicum of privilege, cannot avoid this obligation.  I call on all of my colleagues and cohorts to do their part.  We must lend our resources, our talent and our voice to this cause.  We cannot stay silent to protect our privilege. We cannot wait for the perfect person, the right moment, the visible consensus before we step up.  We cannot fail to challenge the biased and discriminatory power structures in which we have managed to advance.  We cannot let diversity and inclusion advocates and organizations speak up for us without our help then walk through the doors their courage has opened for us.   I don't deny the very real fact that speaking up, especially in the age of social media, brings a very real risk of "burning bridges".  I know there is a real possibility that whatever you have valiantly and brilliantly contributed to your stakeholders, it may not afford you the space to speak your truth without damaging how you are perceived.  But if we do nothing, we condemn ourselves.  We are tied in this together and we rise and fall on the strength of those ties.  

There are many ways we can exercise our privilege to work on meaningful change, from the immediate to the long-term, easy to hard.