Dr. Ella Speaks

   Reminder: A year ago people were afraid to say “Black” in the workplace. 

   Talking about race was still considered one of the taboo topics, along with politics and religion. As we move into a new month, I encourage you all to pause and take a look back at how far we as a society have come with addressing racism, educating ourselves and more openly talking about the formerly “taboo” topics in and outside of the workplace. 

   March commemorated the one year anniversary of the deaths of Breonna Taylor (March 13, 2020), Daniel Prude (March 23, 2020) and many others that were killed by police. With the start of the Derek Chauvin trial for the murder of George Floyd (May 25, 2020), we are reminded of the horrific event that sparked the racial reckoning in America. Their names became ubiquitous rallying cries at protests calling for police reforms, and many social justice advocates point to their stories as an example of how difficult it can be to hold police accountable for violent acts. 

   Since then we have seen new laws put in place or proposed to prevent similar events from happening in the future, Black Lives Matter protests that called attention to systemic racism in our country and record financial settlements won by the families of Taylor and Floyd. Now is the time to use the momentum from the past year to help address the rise in hate crimes towards the Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) community. In the Stop AAPI Hate National Report recently released, 3,795 incidents were received by the Stop AAPI Hate reporting center from March 19, 2020 to February 28, 2021. The number of hate incidents reported to Stop AAPI Hate represent only a fraction of the number of hate incidents that actually occur, but it does show how vulnerable Asian Americans are to discrimination, and the types of discrimination they face. Senseless acts of violence and a surge in xenophobia (dislike of or prejudice against people from other countries) against the AAPI community must be addressed. 

   We still have so much work to be done within DEI, and I encourage you to keep having the tough conversations with your teams, your friends and yourself. (For more advice on having tough conversations, listen to the, No Political Discussions at Work? Not So Fast, episode of Cultural Competence.)

I leave you with a few resources on how to support your AAPI employees, colleagues, family and friends.

Asking Tough Questions to Create a More Equitable Workplace

   Last month Slack asked me the tough questions on how to maximize diversity, equity and inclusion efforts. Read my answers in the excerpt below and the full article here to learn more. 

   Instead of seeing the “we” in a conversation, we see through the “me, myself and I” lens. The virtual world only exacerbates things. During a Zoom call, you look at yourself at some point, right? There’s been research that shows that it’s unnatural for us to look at ourselves like this all day. It perpetuates that “me, myself and I” perspective.

   In terms of drawing empathy, there are two things that are really important:

1. Leaders should walk the walk. They have to demonstrate empathy and go out of their way to model appropriate conversations and seek out new perspectives.

2. We have to reward and recognize good behavior. If you’re telling managers to be more empathetic, you can’t just say it. You have to provide support and recognize when people have done it positively.

Services Spotlight

   Ellavate Solutions offers a number of topics for keynote presentations on diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging. Past topics include microaggressions, allyship, introduction to DEI and more! At Ellavate Solutions we are able to offer a custom experience to best fit the needs of your company. Dr. Washington is a dynamic and engaging speaker and facilitator in person as well as our current virtual landscape As a culture and D&I thought leader, she brings leadership insights along with practical tools to inspire and motivate audiences of all sizes. 

Reach out today!  

Best Practices

   Kimberlé Crenshaw, the law professor at Columbia and UCLA who coined the term intersectionality over 30 years ago describes it as, the way people’s social identities can overlap. It’s basically a lens, a prism, for seeing the way in which various forms of inequality often operate together and exacerbate each other. We tend to talk about race inequality as separate from inequality based on gender, class, sexuality or immigrant status. What’s often missing is how some people are subject to all of these, and the experience is not just the sum of its parts. I have noticed in some workshops lately that people often feel torn in supporting BLM or AAPI or another topic of inclusion that may not be in the news right now. Further, with all the pain happening in the world we can get caught in the cycle of comparing pain which only leads to more hurt. Instead of comparing pain let us try to demonstrate more empathy, more perspective taking and more elevating our similarities as humans instead of amplifying our differences.  

Remember, we are all just human at the end of the day, doing the very best we can. 

Source

Ellavated Learning

   Feeling overwhelmed with all the new data on diversity, equity and inclusion? Let Ellavate Solutions help! Each month we will bring the latest research on DEI and recommend the research and findings we found most useful. This month we are highlighting the latest Future Forum blog, A new era of workplace inclusion: moving from retrofit to redesign. 

   Standout statistics from this report: The small minority of Black people who are employed as knowledge workers (those with a university or college degree and a computer) are even more likely to reject the office-centric model. Of those currently working remotely, 97% want a hybrid or full-time remote working model (compared with 79% of white knowledge workers in the U.S.). Only 3% of Black knowledge workers want to return to full-time co-located work (vs. 21% of white knowledge workers in the U.S.).