Seven Questions to Consider When Creating Racial Equity Indices.
The international development sector is currently moving through its hour of reckoning, slowly approaching its historical and future legacies with more scrutiny, it seems than ever before.
As the sector comes face-to-face with the impacts of a legacy steeped in racism, it can be difficult to process and accept that since its inception, the scales of humanitarianism have been tipped in the favour of Whiteness.
Most recently, many in the sector have begun to unpack and analyse all that has been done in the name of ‘doing good,’ and some have begun to gather and share information; information that could very well steer us all on to a better, more equitable course in the future.
One example of this new air of reckoning, and how new voices are shedding light on rarely talked about racial equity issues in global development, is the release of various racial equity indices by multiple organisations; assessments on how racially equitable an organisation is, and how much BIPoC staff are represented within the hierarchy of these organisations, where they are most represented (are they in top or middle management positions, are they board members?), and who is leading the charge on racial equity work, and how.
As a BIPoC led, run, and peer reviewed group, The Racial Equity Index also embarked on an external scoping exercise, to understand what others have done across the global development space to measure and map racial equity. We undertook this work to confirm that we are consciously adding to the field, rather than just duplicating existing bodies of work. We also intentionally pursued this specific type of index research after noticing that there was not only a lack of these types of indices, but also, a lack of BIPoC created indices. This process has led us to critically reflect on the intentions, purpose and anticipated audiences of racial equity indices, prior to publishing our own.
Here are some key questions we considered and discussed collectively throughout our own work, which we encourage other organisations who are creating these types of indices to honestly and candidly consider:
1) Who is the index for? Is it for the people most affected by the issues of racial inequity, is it for members of the board (and, who are the members of the board — are BIPoC people represented in them?), is it for stakeholders, is it to hold your organisation accountable and shed light on any areas of change?
2) Who created/will create the index? Is it by the people most affected by issues of racial inequity? Who are the main contributors and who will be the voices behind the amplification of the index once completed?
3) How is/will the index be funded? What are the motivations behind the funding of this tool, and are their key indicators marked once it’s published that these funders have thought about? Essentially, what comes next?
4) How have you interpreted existing research, data and information? What is the development process of the index? Are you being transparent about your research processes/data mining, or methodology?
5) What does the index aim to achieve? Why will people and other organisation heads care about this index? What is the relevance to the issue of racial equity?
6) What is your methodology and how are the samples and techniques you use accurate and credible? What kind of data do you plan to use? Only quantitative or also qualitative? What are the reasons for only using one/both?
7)Who will be helped or harmed in the creation of this index? Harvesting stories from BIPoC groups may add important qualitative context to the index, but such experiences can be traumatising for those being asked to relieve damaging experiences.
We must also acknowledge that, historically, knowledge production tools, and principles used in the design and delivery of projects or activities across the global development space and beyond, have predominantly amplified the voices, perspectives and lens of white people. Taxonomy and the development of indices as a tool to measure progress have been used in the past to rationalise, embed, and actively encourage racism. Race was invented as a social classification to justify racism and many categories and labels have been invented to separate or otherize BIPoC communities that are still maintained today.
The terminology used to categorise, or collect data from BIPoC communities is rarely consistent, if often incredibly broad, and does not delve deeply enough with its processes so as to capture the unique identities of BIPoC groups and individuals. When reviewing the data and narratives presented by these various indices, we must be conscious of how white supremacy, imperialism, and colonialism has skewed our perception of knowledge, research, and analysis, and as such it is our duty to dig deeper into the development or common usage of certain practices or tools.
We believe that for these indices to yield concrete change in the lives of BIPoC people working in the global development sector, researchers and agencies, including ourselves, should engage in reflective conversations. We would love to use this as a conversation opener with some of the indices we identified in our original scoping exercise, and those included in the list recently compiled by the Equity Index. We would also love to invite some of these organisations to have a conversation with us in the form of a Webinar to discuss and share the learnings in our blogs. Our intent is to build allyships and relationships so we can move our collective research forward in an equitable manner. We look forward to hearing from you!
The Racial Equity Index turns one year old on 3 July 2021! That is one year of our volunteer collective calling out inequities and injustices in the sector, and bringing to task the complicit behaviours that uphold them, and one year closer to building a Racial Equity Index for the global development sector. To celebrate, we are holding a series of ‘We Need to Talk …’ events from 28 June to 3 July and we would love for you to join us.
For more information, including details of how to register, please visit our website: https://www.theracialequityindex.org/anniversary-event
Established in June 2020, the Racial Equity Index Group is a collective of BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and People of Color) who currently work or have spent part of their career working in international development and are dedicated to holding the sector accountable through the creation of a global racial equity index.
Follow our work at TheRacialEquityIndex.Org
