Walking the Talk

 

 

Angela Romans

A few organizations ago, I was co-leading our organization’s internal DEI work with a Latina, millennial woman, sort of self-identified right? And so, our working group actually had three generations: Baby Boomers, you know, Gen Xers, Millennials. And, these conversations started showing up. She and I had lots of conversations about how we brought different perspectives as leaders, and in leading this work, we had a lot of like, “you Millennials, you, you know you Gen Xers”. And then our leadership team was majority people of color. And we felt a lot of challenge from our “younger” folks who are in less positional authority saying, you know, why aren’t you doing better? And we were an organization that led racial equity work outside. Our external work was on point. Like, we nationally recognized all that. But internally, our folks were like, y’all are not walking the talk. So that was a good sort of framing.  Since then, I have had little snippets of this conversation come up, and in my own racial equity work externally as well, I’ve seen it in organizations. So now I work mostly with leaders of color, and mostly Black leaders. And I’m seeing these nuances continue to happen. What can we do about it? What’s my role in helping to be more liberatory in my behavior, and telling stories?