Organizations have much work to do to dismantle systemic racism, advocates say at CBC town hall
Roshini Nair | CBC News | Posted: June 18, 2020 5:50 AM | Last Updated: June 18, 2020
Watch the archived version of Wednesday's event at CBC Vancouver below
As organizations within the private and public sectors commit to uprooting systemic racism, advocates say these organizations have to be honest about how they are part of the problem in the first place.
Parker Johnson, an organizational change specialist with Elevate Inclusion Strategies, says the first thing organizations have to do when trying to create meaningful change is to critically self-reflect.
"Black people [are] not a flavour of the moment. Folks [in organizations] need to take stock and actually really look at where they are," he said Wednesday at CBC Vancouver's town hall on racism.
This may mean a closer examination of hiring practices, demographics, and everyday work environments.
Here are some of the ways racism affects the workplace:
Kory Wilson, the executive director of Indigenous Initiatives and Partnerships at BCIT, says it's also about putting power and privilege to good use.
"[Leaders] need to look at and recognize the power they have and how they use that power. How they use that power for good, and how they use that power for change," Wilson said.
Johnson says leaders also need to be comfortable admitting to and learning from their mistakes.
"People have to have that courage and know that being called racist is not the worst thing that can happen to you."
How leaders can tackle their own white fragility:
Manjot Bains, a writer and former senior program advisor in the Department of Canadian Heritage, says, however, that executive teams who rely on the insight of Black, Indigenous, and people of colour in the workplace need to know what a risk it is for racialized people to speak out.
"It's dangerous to call out racism because then sometimes you're no longer up for promotion. People exclude you from team meetings, etc. It's really challenging for people to be in a space like that," Bains said.
"There needs to be real transformative change within an organization to make safe spaces."
Until these deep structural issues are addressed, organizations will continue to be part of the problem they're trying to address.
"There can't be a system where they're looking to have people assimilate into a structure which is not designed for them. That actually creates not only tokenism, but it ends up creating resentment and people are neither promoted nor retained or inappropriately recruited," said Parker.
"You can't plant a seed in hard ground."