Why We Start With Race
Over the past few years, Dr. Gerry and I have met with dozens of organizational leaders interested in starting the work of Racial Equity but are still determining how to begin. In these initial meetings, we introduce ourselves, discuss our education and systems background, share how we got into Racial Equity work, and guide these leaders in deciding where to start. Inevitably, the same question comes up:
Why don’t we begin our equity conversation with Ableism or the LGBTQIA2+ community?
It’s a fair question, and if we observe the systems around us through a linear lens, it is a reasonable place to start the work of equity, inclusion, and diversity. Unfortunately, inequality and oppression are systemic issues. Linear and critical modes of thinking can only create technical and temporary fixes to systemic symptoms. When processing this work at the systemic level, we quickly recognize that starting our equity work with race is a far more relevant place to begin.
The first thing to consider is that a person who is deaf, gay, trans, or in a wheelchair experiences the world racially first. The evidence is in the data, it’s in the lived experience, and it is the reality of our cultural paradigm. When a white man wheels into a room, he is a white man first. When a black woman wheels herself into the same room, she is a black woman first. Whether or not everyone in that room is in a wheelchair, their race shows up first because we have created a society that sees through the lens of a racialized paradigm.
This country’s systems of oppression and exclusion have a clear starting point. While pivotal events like Columbus’ voyage, the Declaration of Independence, and America’s first president are widely recognized as important milestones in our nation’s history, numerous other equally significant moments remain disregarded.
These hidden moments have greatly influenced our perspectives as modern Westerners or US citizens and shaped the decisions of our forebears. These invisible elements of history elucidate the motivations of our ancestors and the rationale behind historical behaviors that we find objectionable through our contemporary perspective. They leave us with a far more significant question to answer:
How can we change a system if we can’t perceive the incredibly significant origins of that system?
It’s impossible to address the systemic problems of diversity, equity, and inclusion utilizing the commonly employed tools of critical and linear thinking. These widely held methods of perceiving the world allow us to influence the status quo but don’t provide tools to observe the nuance and emergent relationships under the surface. To begin such a process, one must perceive the world systemically to discover the leverage points for change.
As students of Whole Systems, Dr. G and I have cultivated the ability to witness our world through a lens of interconnection and relationship. We both completed a Masters at Antioch University Seattle’s Whole Systems Design program. Our culture often prioritizes controlling outcomes and seeking resolution before understanding the dynamics. Society has taught us to avoid observing feedback loops in favor of quick, critical decision-making to drive outcomes.
Dr. G and I realized the systemic nature of diversity, equity, and inclusion questions through the relationship struggles that arose from confronting racial identities. We discovered the deep relational connections to multiple parts of our culture and within ourselves. To effectively address these matters, we adopt a systemic approach that recognizes the importance of these multilayered connections.
We learned that engaging with tools for fostering individual resilience sets the internal stage for change. We began to uncover the hidden history to reveal the origin of our cultural oppression. Finally, we started the decolonization process within ourselves before teaching others.
Exploring America’s beginnings reveals a disturbing narrative marked by exploitation and discrimination that primarily affected the underprivileged in a society on the cusp of industrialization and the Enlightenment. Seeking to expand their colonial empire, England targeted the uncultivated Eastern shores of the US. With serfdom declining in Southern England, former feudal laborers and families were left impoverished and displaced in cities, struggling with homelessness, imprisonment, and forced into indentured servitude. It was these individuals that the crown used as the vanguard for American colonization.
During the 17th century, indentured contracts were prevalent in Virginia and Maryland. These people faced harsh conditions in the American frontier, and many did not survive. The first Africans were introduced into this system in 1619. Some completed their indentured contract and became citizens of the colonies. After Bacon’s Rebellion, a violent and short-lived uprising of multi-ethnic indentured laborers, the colonial elites established the legal construct of “White” and “Black” in 1681. The goal was to divide the “undesirable working class” into a racial caste system, determining who was free and enslaved. In doing so, they ensured the working class “whites” and enslaved “blacks” would never revolt in unison again.
As the 18th century began, African Enslavement replaced the dwindling resource of the English impoverished. This racialized legal construct continued to shape American society for three hundred and forty-two years. More than 300 laws were written to define the rights and privileges of those considered white, while everyone else, regardless of ability, gender, or sexual orientation, was labeled as “other.” More importantly, this legal construct on race was the sprouting cultural seed that would become the tree of our Union.
“White” was never legally defined in the law, including in two US Supreme Court decisions. It has served as a pliable legal tool for determining who benefits from the system and who does not. Through a systemic lens, “white” is more than a racial identity or a set of phenotypical features. It is a cultural status created through caste. Over time, some ethnic and marginalized groups were granted complete or partial access to “whiteness” while others suffered perpetual “othering.” (Source: Ozawa vx. United States and United States vs. Bhagat Singh Thind)
As we worked to evolve our Union into a more-perfect model, we’ve actively included members from diverse groups in our society, effectively providing them all with the status of “white” when it suited the system. The access to “white” has always been flexible, allowing for expansion as required. Ethnic groups such as Eastern Europeans, Italians, Slovs, Norse, and Irish were not considered “white” until it served the culture to make them so. White women made significant progress in gaining equal benefits, while women of color were largely excluded from that progress.
Through various acts such as the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the Equal Opportunity Act of 1972, the ADA Act of 1990, and the Defense of Marriage Act of 2022, we’ve worked diligently to include those historically excluded from the societal benefits associated with the identity of whiteness. Those societal benefits and who gets them are the dynamic that manifests white supremacy culture because culture is designed to benefit a specific caste identity.
Even in the efforts to create a more just and verdant society, we find ourselves leaning into a racialized paradigm. The hiring practices in the professional EDI space reveal a striking reality. Despite the need for diverse perspectives, most Chief Diversity Officers (CDOs) hired in the US are white. According to hiring data at Zippia.com, 76.1% of CDOs identify as white. It begs the question: Why are individuals of color overlooked for these positions? (Source: Chief Diversity Officer Demographics)
Our professional experience confirms this data. Most Diversity managers, directors, and officers we encounter are white. We’ve also noticed that white CDOs enter this work not by addressing systemic oppression but by focusing on cultural prejudice or neglect. Technical fixes, such as policy advances and law changes, can affect social acceptance and legal status, not attitudes and bias. Conversely, cultural sources, such as systemic oppression, are outside an individual ability to influence dynamic change.
Consequently, we’ve witnessed white CDOs and white-led organizational equity efforts nearly always emphasize a strong focus on LGBTQIA2+ while neglecting any profound or ongoing effort to tackle racial equity. On the surface, one might shrug off the issue. Equity efforts and tackling prejudice are all the same, but they are not. Racial paradigms are the systemic root of societal oppression, while prejudice and bigotry are the cultural viewpoints that shape attitudes and biases. We can see this play out in the LGBTQIA2+ community by digging into the data.
An often unmentioned aspect is the significant racial disparities within this community. Surprisingly, recent surveys conducted by the US Census fail to include race as a factor when studying the LGBTQIA2+ community. Fortunately, readily available information from polling, academic research, and website data shed light on this issue.
Statista shows that 70% of gay and 68% of lesbian couples identify as white. The number one household income earners in the US are white gay men. White gay and lesbian households combined make 27% higher household income than their heterosexual white married counterparts. (Source: Gay Married Couples Have Higher Income than Opposite-Sex Married Couples)
White individuals in the LGBTQIA2+ community are significantly less likely to experience poverty. The housing inequity, lack of insurance, unemployment, food insecurity, and poverty in the LGBTQIA2+ community all break down along racial lines, as the recent UCLA Williams Institute study data shows. (Sources: Racial Differences Among LGBT in the US and Race and Well-Being Among LGBT Adults)
It’s very easy for white leadership and CDOs to believe they’re making an effort toward equity by starting with LGBTQIA2+, but that is not where the issue of systemic oppression truly exists. The systemic roots of oppression always return to a hidden caste of racial identity. White-identified people who live within the LGBTQIA2+ intersectionality have the same privilege as their heterosexual, white counterparts. *Some exceptions in the findings are represented by the small group of individuals (< 1% of US Adults)who identify as transgender and are racially white and biologically male.
If we dig deep, we’re confronted with the racial paradigm in every aspect of the equity conversation: A paradigm based on the pseudoscience of race, which later evolved into a hidden caste system explicitly used to weave oppression into society. These are systemic issues that require systemic solutions. To effectively promote equity, Chief Diversity Officers and consultants must focus on racial equity by encouraging their organizations and the individuals who make them up to self-examine our racial identities, origins, and ongoing societal impact.
Jeremy Tunnell is an author, facilitator and consultant with Co3 Consulting. Jeremy writes and presents on dismantling whiteness, personal and organizational resilience and our reality in the Unified Field. Together with his partner, Dr. Gerry Ebalaroza-Tunnell, they lead teams and organizations in equity and inclusion through Healing the Colonized Mind and Whole Systems Leadership. Gerry is the principle consultant for Co3 Consulting and author of the upcoming book Evolution of Aloha. Together, they host The Plowline Podcast.
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