Anti-Racist Reads from AAMD

2022

March:A nonprofit executive director on leadership lessons from BIPOC communities

3 learnings from BIPOC communities that have made me a better nonprofit leader (by Kristin Cheung, Community Centric Fundraising blog, approx. 7 minute read)

"I thought working as an Executive Director was the most natural progression for my career path, but I quickly realised that the role was much more than the job description." Kristin Cheung of the Community Arts Council of Vancouver became executive director of that organization last year - her first time as a director. In this blog post she shares how when seeking resources for new leaders she turned to lessons she learned from her Asian Canadian community - accessibility, transparency, and collectivism - as well as more traditional business-oriented sources.

 

February: A daily newsletter for Black History Month

28 Days of Black History newsletter (curated by Nicole Cardoza,  Camille Bethune-Brown, and Shanaé Burch from the Anti-Racism Daily)

The 28 Days of Black History newsletter sends subscribers an email for each day of February about a different person or event from Black history. So far, the newsletter has featured everything from the origin story of Black History Month, to the first high-five, to barrier-breakers in medicine, modelling, and video games, with discussion questions and links to learn more about each day's subject. The tone and content ranges from the horrific to the celebratory and everything in between. I have learned something new every day. You can subscribe here and read past editions here.
 

2021

December 10: advancing equity by doing less

How to work with your racial equity consultant (FAKEQUITY blog, approx. 7 minute read)

"Many organizations are really good at doing more. We’re trained for it, we see a need and we jump in and do it. We may even say we’ve got new money and we can hire new staff to do the new shiny thing. But at some point we’ll hit a saturation point..." This blog post highlights some tips from racial equity consultants on how to set your organization up for success if you are doing this work with a consultant. (They have a previous post on the topic here as well.) One of their tips is to be prepared to identify what your organization will do less of. As shown by the example in the piece this often can look like examining current ways of working and shifting those practices (and the corresponding staff time) for a more equitable outcome.

 

November 19: "Four hundred years later we're still fighting for our land, our culture, and our people"

This tribe helped the Pilgrims survive for their first Thanksgiving. They still regret it 400 years later. (by Dana Hedgpeth, The Washington Post, approximately 13 minute read with audio also available)

"Four hundred years later we’re still fighting for our land, our culture and our people,” said Brian Weeden, Mashpee Wampanoag chairman. This article shares the true origin story of Thanksgiving, busting many of the myths about the history of the holiday that are embdedded in American culture. It also traces the Wampanoag tribe from pre-colonization to the present day - a brutal history that includes stolen land, brutally forced assimilation, Indian boarding schools, and a federal land trust for the tribe that is still unconfirmed today.  Writer Dana Hedgpeth also makes the connection between annual visitation at Plimouth Plantation (1.5 million) to that of the Mashpee Wampanoag Museum 30 miles away on Cape Cod (800).

 

November 4: the role of storytelling in equity and inclusion

How Sharing Our Stories Builds Inclusion (by Selena Revzani and Stacey A. Gordon, Harvard Business Review)

While hard data and benchmarking are essential to tracking institutional progress on equity, “ it’s the exchange of human experiences via stories, focus groups, and listening sessions that tend to inspire lasting change for people on a personal level,” according to consultant Selena Rezvani and diversity strategist Stacey A. Gordon. They write about how listening sessions and employee resource groups that use storytelling and vulnerability, particularly in a peer-to-peer fashion, are a key piece of making staff feel welcome and accepted in the workplace. They also provide guidance on the role of leaders in creating safe spaces for these conversations - for example affirming others’ stories and not asking them to over-verify or prove their experiences. Thank you to Stephanie Stebich for submitting this article.

 

October 29: a new toolkit for art museums

CAPE Toolkit (by Monique Davis, Managing Director, The Center for Art & Public Exchange)

The Center for Art and Public Exchange, or CAPE, at the Mississippi Museum of Art uses original artworks, exhibitions, programs, and engagements to increase understanding and inspire new narratives around issues of race and equity in contemporary Mississippi. Last week they released the CAPE Toolkit, authored by CAPE Managing Director Monqiue Davis and packed with information and resources on this institution's equity journey. The indended audience is "other art museums grappling not only with how to enact pledges to demonstrate diversity, equity, access, and inclusion during national awakenings regarding antiracism and social justice but also how to authentically serve their communities." It's much longer than a typical weekly read but I hope you will visit their website to download this rich new resource.

 

October 22: National Disability Employment Awareness Month

Putting People With Disabilities Front of Mind, a Small Organization Revamps Operations (by Drew Lindsay, The Chronicle of Philanthropy, approx. 6 minute read)

October is Disability Employment Awareness Month in the U.S. Though one in four Americans lives with a disability, in 2020 only 17.9 percent of persons with a disability were employed, with likely even lower numbers for the nonprofit sector. The Maryland Philanthropy Network re-shaped their office and operations to center accessibility needs in their physical and online presences, aiming to create a more welcoming environment for both visitors and staff.  The article has many ideas and resources for how to center access needs beyond ADA compliance, from acousitcs and paint colors to digital access needs and much more.

 

October 15: "One is a token, two is a choir...three? That’s a voice”

A Woman of Color Cannot Save Your Workplace Culture (by S. Mitra Kalita, Time, approx. 6 minute read)

"if your ideal candidate is a woman of color, it means your workplace needs to work to make sure you are her ideal, too." In this article S. Mitra Kalita lays out the tension inherent in many predominantly white workplaces' sudden (in the last year) urgency to hire BIPOC women. Though it may appear a sign of positive change on the face, this urgency strongly contrasts with the realities BIPOC women continue to face in (and outside of) the workplace - from "Strong Black Women Syndrome" to the loneliness of being a "double Only."  Kalita shares perspectives from BIPOC women leading in their fields on how avoid the pitfalls of tokenism;  examine process over hiring alone to help build an inclusive culture ; and support the BIPOC women on your staffs, whether or not they might be new to your organization.

 

October 8: Indigenous erasure in history and the news

The White Sands discovery only confirms what Indigenous people have said all along (by Nick Martin, High Country News, approx. 5 minute read)

America's Real Longest War Was the Conflict Against Indigenous Americans (by Michael Meuers, Native News Online, approx. 3 minute read)

"Why is it so hard for an Indigenous truth to become an American fact?" Nick Martin asks in his essay about the erasure of Indigenous knowledge from reporting on the dating of footprints at White Sands to 23,000 years ago. He points out that Cree-Métis archaeologist Paulette Steeves has worked tirelessly throughout her career, against extremely difficult odds, to prove the existence of Indigenous peoples in the Americas many thousands of years earlier than the 12-16,000 years previously accepted as indisputable fact by many archaeologists. (Steeves' story is worth reading as well.) But this discovery is being heralded as a scientific one only, with no connection to Indigenous history or knowledge, whether ancestral or scholarly.

Michael Meuers problematizes the widespread framing of America's war in Afghanistan as this country's longest war, at 20 years. The American Indian Wars lasted exponentially longer, starting centuries before the U.S. was a nation with European settler contact; occurring simultaneously with every American war from the American Revolution to World War I; and not ending until 1924, with the Apache Wars, less than 100 years ago.

 

October 1: reads on Latin identity

Latinos own and disown 'Hispanic' in journey to harness identity (by Nicole Acevedo and Isa Gutierrez, NBC News, approx. 6 minute read) 

The Problem with Latinidad (by Miguel Salazar, The Nation, approx. 10 minute read)

These two articles dig in to the complexities of ethnic Latin (Hispanic/Latino/a/x) identity. The NBC News piece discusses the origins of the term "Hispanic" in the US and interviews a range of people of different races and nationalities who variously chose or reject one of these identifiers for themselves. The Nation piece (from 2019) is an interview with a group of young journalists, some of whom are of Black and/or Indigenous heritage, who are leading the conversation around wholesale rejection of a unified "Latinidad" (Latino-ness). They question how one title can describe a group of over 60 million people of different races and nationalities, who an idea of Latinidad benefits/empowers, and who it erases. "What happens when you subscribe to the idea of a single Latinidad narrative is you create a monolith—culturally and politically—of an entire continent when every single country and every single community has their own history," Amanda Alcántara told Miguel Salazar.

 

September 24: the history of Critical Race Theory

The Man Behind Critical Race Theory (by Jelani Cobb, The New Yorker, approx. 20 minute read)

"The civil-rights movement had been based on the idea that the American system could be made to live up to the democratic creed prescribed in its founding documents. But [Derrick] Bell had begun to think that the system was working exactly as it was intended to--that that was why progress was invariably met with reversal." Derrick Bell was a civil rights lawyer, Harvard Law School's first Black tenured professor (in 1971), and an academic whose work provided the foundations for what we now call Critical Race Theory, or C.R.T.  Jelani Cobb's piece is highly informative, not only profiling Bell but also fact-checking and myth-busting anti-C.R.T. rhetoric.

 

September 17: "from pet to threat"

Many Black women felt relieved to work from home, free from microaggressions. Now they’re told to come back. (by Natachi Onwuamaegbu, The Washington Post , approx 7 minute read)

When Black Women Go From Office Pet to Office Threat (by Erika Stallings, Zora, approx. 9 minute read)

The current "staff turnover tsumani" is a hot topic across industries, including art museums. The high rate of turnover is attributed in part to workers re-assessing their life and career priorities during the pandemic. This Washington Post piece describes how Black women are increasingly choosing remote work for their own mental health, after experiencing racism in predominantly White workplaces. The second article describes the 2013 academic paper "Moving from Pet to Threat: Narratives of Professional Black Women" which examines the experiences of Black women in the workplace, reporting a strong pattern that persists in different fields and job types.

 

September 10: pronounciation matters

Say My Name | Why Pronouncing Names Correctly is Important (by Yejin Lee, idealist.org, approx. 5 minute read)

"For those of us who experience discrimination based on our identities, chronic mispronunciation of our names in the classroom and the workplace can be especially painful. Refusal to learn the correct pronunciation can feel like erasure—another signal of not being welcome. " In this short piece Yejin Lee writes on why it's important to make an effort to correctly pronounce your colleagues' names by sharing her own experiences. It also includes helpful tips for how to navigate your own discomfort or embarrassment around mispronunciation. Effort and humility are more important than getting it right every time, Yejin write - it's a small and basic but impactful way to show welcome and respect to colleagues at all levels.

 

August 5: summer reading

For something a little different, here are some books I have both enjoyed and learned from (including several that have come up in past reads). Anti-Racist Weekly Reads will return after Labor Day.

Non fiction/history

  • Caste: The Origin of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson - an incredibly compelling case for America's racial history and present as a rigid and unspoken caste system, using examples from India and Nazi Germany as comparisons. The audiobook is excellent.
  • Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann - A true crime page-turner about the murders of wealthy members of the Osage Nation in 1920s Oklahoma demonstrates the many brutal and insidious ways settlers throughout the history of the U.S. have stolen from Indigenous peoples.
  • Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments by Saidiya Hartman - how early 20th century Northern urban progressive reforms were actually designed to police Black life and violently enforce of the color line, and how Black people, particularly women and queer people, resisted and even sometimes thrived in spite of this system designed to brutalize, dehumanize, and disenfranchise them. Hartman writes in a style she calls "critical fabulation," combining deep research with fictional narratives to "wring more from the archive." Because the archive is mostly empty of marginalized Black lives, or tells of them only through the lens of White people, Hartman's method helps fill some of these gaps.
  • The White Devil's Daughters: The Fight Against Slavery in San Francisco's Chinatown by Julia Flynn Siler - details the struggle against human trafficking of Asian women and girls in 19th and early 20th century San Francisco, led by White Christian women as well as women who escaped enslavement themselves

Fiction

  • Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi - begins with two sisters in 18th century Ghana and follows the trajectory of their family from enslavement and colonization to the present day
  • Leave the World Behind by Rumaan Alam - a dark and apocalyptic comedy of manners exploring race and class
  • Passing by Nella Larson - Harlem Renaissance novella about two childhood friends who meet again in adulthood on very different paths. Spotify has a terrific, free audio version. (A film version is set to be released on Netflix.)

 

July 30: words matter

  • Disability Language Guide (written by Labib Rahman and Reviewed by the Stanford Disability Initiative Board, Stanford University)

    Matthew McLendon (Fralin Museum of Art) shared this disability language guide during the Academic Museums' Equity Task Force meeting this week. From the distinctions between people-first and identity-first language to common words in our lexicon with ableist roots, I found it to be an extremely helpful resource for formal writing as well as the language you might use in conversation every day. Thanks to Matthew for sharing this resource.

    For those who would like to dive deeper into this topic this style guide from the National Center on Disability and Journalism at ASU is more detailed - and also available in Spanish!

 

July 23: a quantifiable definition of workplace belonging

  • What does it take to build a culture of belonging? (by Julia Taylor Kennedy and Pooja Jain-Link, Harvard Business Review, approx. 6 minute read)

    The authors of this article are the leaders of Coqual, a global nonprofit think tank dedicated to workplace diversity, equity, and inclusionn. "When companies emphasize a culture of belonging, they call everyone in, creating space in the conversation to address our shared humanity and build a bridge to greater empathy and inclusion for the groups that are the most marginalized in the workplace today." They identified four measures of belonging and created a ten-point scale to measure worker belonging by identity. The data is presented here along with actions workers can take to foster belonging at the leader, manager, and colleague level.

 

July 16: a list of ways you can be more respectful of Native cultures

 

July 8: desiging for equity

  • Design for the furthest from opportunity (Fakequity blog post, approx. 6 minute read)

    "What we value is what we plan around." This post describes how to design with equity in mind, whether that is a program, event, or something larger, and uses the uneven COVID vaccine rollout as an example of now haste and lack of planning can bar access in unforeseen and unintentional ways. What would that process have looked like had the planning centered those people with the most challenges accessing vaccines? This concept also echoes something our Race Forward trainers shared with AAMD during one of their workshops: inequity was designed, so to counter that one has to design for equity.

 

July 1: sharing power at James Madison's Montpelier

"Not only was [Montpelier] once the wealth-generating plantation belonging to our nation’s fourth president, James Madison, and the place where he formulated the concepts and ideals of our Constitution, but Montpelier was also a major site of enslavement where the needs of the few were serviced by the forced labor of the many," James French, chair of the Montpelier Descendents Committee, writes in the Washington Post. "For more than 120 years, some 300 enslaved American men, women and children were held in bondage, bought, sold and buried in unmarked graves at Montpelier." In June, the Foundation Board of Montpelier voted to change their bylaws so that descendents of those enslaved at the site will share power over its governance. Both articles share how this important and hopeful first came about and was decades in the making.

 

June 17: critical race theory and the unavoidable discomfort around anti-racist education

  • Is there an uncontroversial way to teach America’s racist history? (by Sean Illing, Vox, approx. 13 minute read)

    In this interview, scholar Jarvis R. Givens, who studies the history of Black education in America, examines the current uproar over critical race theory and anti-racism in schools. Givens points out that the arguments about anti-racist education in schools mainly pertain to white students, as Black students have been receiving anti-racist education from Black teachers for decades. Givens discusses why it's important to move beyond the "anti" in anti-racist and the unavoidable discomfort that comes with learning about the U.S.'s brutal history, especially for white people who may not have been forced to confront that discomfort head-on.

    "...certain folks never had the luxury of being comfortable," Givens says. "So now we’re at a place where we’re trying to figure out how to be more intentional in acknowledging our history and its consequences, and that means that discomfort is going to have to be shared in a way it hasn’t been up to this point. And if we’re going to talk about how to unify the country, the onus can’t just be on the people who are the descendants of enslaved Black people and displaced Native communities, whose forced labor and stolen land were the primary factors of production in building this country. This is something we all have to encounter, and it’s going to be discomforting for everyone."

 

June 11: the intersection of ableism and racism

  • Ableism & Racism: Roots of the Same Tree (Be Antiracist podcast with Ibram X. Kendi, 37 minute podcast, transcript available at the link)

    One third of American households include a disabled person, and the Americans with Disabilities Act has been law for over thirty years. But disabled Americans still do not have access to marriage equality, employment protections, or broad ADA enforcement. On his new podcast Dr. Ibram X. Kendi interviews disability rights activist Rebecca Cokley about the intersection of racism and ableism. Cokley worked in the Obama White House including as Chief Diversity Officer and speaks candidly with Dr. Kendi about her regular experiences with ableism; the racist origins of ableism; and civil rights for the disabled community, among other topics.

    If this topic is of interest you may also want to check out the Museum Access Consortium's Inclusive and Accessible Employment Series this July, including sessions on Ableism in Cultural Employment and Creating an Inclusive and Accessible Workplace.

 

June 4: building the pipeline from within

  • Cultivate talent with the same energy level you cultivate gifts — especially with your BIPOC support staff (by Priscilla Lopez, Community Centric Fundraising, approx. 10 minute read)

    In this essay, Priscilla Lopez cites research from the Stanford Social Innovation Review indicating that "adults learn 70% through on-the-job stretch opportunities, 20% through coaching and mentoring, and 10% through training programs." Who are these "on-the-job strech opportunities" available to? Lopez encourages nonprofit leaders to cultivate and promote your BIPOC staff whenever possible. She argues that this strategy is both a way leaders can share power and create a pipeline of next generation BIPOC nonprofit leaders. "When someone tells you that they are interested in growing with your organization, your first thought shouldn’t be, “We can’t pay you more.” Instead, you should welcome that conversation with genuine gratitude because they are telling you, “I’m committed and ready to give you more of my talents,” Lopez writes.

 

May 27: one year after George Floyd

  • 1 Year Later by Darnella Frazier (post from her personal Facebook page, approx. 5 minute read)
  • How Privilege and Capital warped a movement (by Talmon Joseph Smith, The New York Times, approx 10 minute read, may be paywall protected)

    Two reads for reflection a year after the world saw Derek Chauvin murder George Floyd, thanks to the brave teenager Darnella Frazier who filmed the nearly ten minutes of excruciating cruelty. Darnella shares how this changed her life in a deeply personal Facebook post.

    Talmon Joseph Smith's incisive opinion piece looks at how the racial reckoning of the last year has mostly been felt in white professional spheres, why that is, and what might be next, with input from racial justice activists on what has actually changed and what still needs to change. In the piece, activist Deray Mckesson praises some changes that have come about, such as Band Aids for a range of skin tones; however, he also notes that “All these things are overdue and none of them is structural change.”

 

May 21: the myth of the race neutral organization

  • Why So Many Organizations Stay White: Understanding how race is historically and structurally built into the workplace (by Victor Ray, Harvard Business Review, approx. 11 minute read)

    Why is a Black-owned bank designated as such, while a white-owned bank is just a bank?  Scholar Victor Ray looks at the myth of the race neutral organization and how this concept is a barrier to more inclusive workplaces (and society at large). He identifies how resilient and supposedly race-neutral social structures continue to shape the deeply unequal distribution of resources in the U.S.; how this manifests in organizations;  and why current methods of addressing workplace discrimination focusing on individual behaviors will, while necessary, not be enough bring about a more equitable workplace structure. According to Ray, predominantly white institutions can start by looking at how their own policies mimic these unequal distributions of resources and specifically benefit whiteness.

 

May 14: Angel Island and AANHPI allyship

  • It Is Time to Include AANHPIs In Museum Diversity, Equity, Accessibility, and Inclusion Efforts (by Edward Tepporn, AAM blog, approx 7 minute read)

    Edward Tepporn is the Executive Director at the Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation in San Francisco. He shares both the history of Angel Island (a west coast equivalent of Ellis Island, "except that it was built for the purpose of keeping Asian and Pacific Islander immigrants out") as well as takeaways on how to be a better ally to AANHPIs on the personal, professional, and institutional levels. (AANHPI stands for Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander.)

 

May 7: the political history of Cinco de Mayo

  • The forgotten, radical roots of Cinco de Mayo (LA Times podcast interview with Russell Contreras by host Gustavo Arellano, 22 minutes)

    In this conversation reporter Russell Contreras breaks down the origins of Cinco de Mayo and how it has evolved from an abolitionist celebration by the 19th century California Latinx community commemorating the 1862 Battle of Puebla (in which an indigenous army defeated the French and their interests in upholding the Confederacy and slavery) to a holiday which many Americans believe is Mexican Independence Day (September 16).

    The conversation also describes Cinco de Mayo's more recent connections to movements against police violence, particularly the Moody Park Riot in 1977 in Houston, which occurred after Houston police officers brutally beat and murdered 23-year old Vietnam Veteran Joe Campos Torres and were only fined $1 for their crime.

 

April 30: impact over intent

  • Intent vs Impact vs Consequences (Fakequity blog, approx. 5 minute read)

    A brief case study about COVID public health signage in a medical institution causing unintended harm to Asian visitors demonstrates why honoring impact over intent is essential to authentic equity work and healing, and is also a path forward to learning.

 

April 23: racial equity and the minimum wage

 

April 16: is social class part of your DEAI efforts?

  • The Forgotten Dimension of Diversity (by Paul Ingram, Harvard Business Review, approx. 15 minute read)

    "Any hopes we might have of addressing racial inequity in the workplace require a clear-eyed analysis of its root causes—and these are increasingly connected to social class." Paul Ingram (with Jean Oh) provides compelling qualitative and quantitative data on why and how to  incorporate class origins into the scope of your institution's equity work. Their data demonstrate that workers from lower-class origins are less likely to become managers, but once they do, often make better and more empathetic managers. The article also addresses how leaders can make changes that will create more welcoming workplaces for people of all class backgrounds, such as hiring for skills rather than degrees (including Bachelors degree), and reconsidering how access to cultural capital determine "culture fit." This prior anti-racist read from August 2020 addresses the anecdotal elements of "culture fit" in a complimentary way, providing an employee persoective.

 

April 9: what is it like to be a Black or Brown interpreter at an historic site?

  • Many history interpreters of color carry weight of racism (by Christine Fernando, Associated Press, approx. 5 minute read)

    This article describes the trauma inherent in the work of Black and Brown front-line interpreters at historic sites. This manifests in ways that are inherently part of their job interpreting the U.S.' history of racial violence through re-enactions of atrocities, like auctions of enslaved people. But interactions with visitors are another source of trauma - an indigenous interpretor describes how visitors have told him "the colonists should have completely wiped out Native Americans". I was struck by the generosity of these interpreters in committing to continue their work animating history (for a not always generous audience), and the ways in which some historic sites are putting more measures into place to support their interpreters, financially and emotionally.

 

March 31: resources for understanding anti-Asian violence

  • Guidance from Asian American Journalists Association

    The Asian American Journalists Association has compilation of guidance for covering and discussing anti-Asian violence. Though targeted to journalists I think these resources are helpful for anyone as they provide context for recognizing bias and stereotyping in reporting, helpful information on pronunciation and language, mental health resources, and more.

    Today AAMD shared a statement on Twitter against the current rise in anti-Asian violence with this other resources. You can see the Tweet thread here.

 

March 26: race consciousness in meetings

  • Why Every Meeting Should Mention Race and Equity (by Renee Rubin Ross, Community Centric Fundraising blog, approx. 7 minute read)

    When white people fail to have the courage to talk about race, the default racial context for conversations is whiteness. BIPOCs’ lived experience of racism continues to be invisible and suppressed." Renee Rubin Ross shares her own journey as a White person learning to talk about race with openness and curiosity, including recommendations for how to implement this as a White organizational leader. This post goes very well with Kaywin Feldman's piece from Apollo this week about learning not just to listen, but to hear.

 

March 19: Asian hate is white supremacy by another name

  • Artist and writer Chanel Miller on Instagram (ten slides of words and visuals)
  • Why This Wave of Anti-Asian Racism Feels Different (interview with Cathy Park Hong by Morgan Ome, The Atlantic, approx. 12 minute read)
  • The long, ugly history of anti-Asian racism and violence in the U.S. (by Gillian Brockell, The Washington Post, approx 5 minute read)

    You may know about the Chinese Exclusion Act, and FDR's Executive Order 9066 incarcerating Japanese-Americans during World War II, but did you know about Vietnamese shrimpers on the Gulf of Mexico patrolling against the KKK in the 1980s? Or when the term Asian-American was coined? (I did not.) These three pieces all make the connection between anti-Asian racism and white supremacy today and throughout American history, from exclusionary immigration policies and terrorist violence to the more insidious forms of violence, like erasure.

 

March 12: is it diversity or diversity theater?

  • Black Tech Employees Rebel Against "Diversity Theater" (By Sidney Fussell, WIRED, approx. 12 minute read)

    "The nationwide reckoning on race and racism last year exposed what many tasked with diversity work have privately discussed for years: that Silicon Valley’s own diversity and recruitment structures can hinder the work of opening doors to new people from different backgrounds with new ideas." This blistering report shares the experiences of Black employees in the tech industry. Many report being sharply criticized and even pushed out after doing what they were hired to do: bring their expertise and perspectives to predominantly white organizations in the name of diversity, equity, access, and inclusion. It also demonstrates what we have heard in anti-racism trainings and conversations with museum diversity officers: efforts to become an anti-racist and inclusive organization will not succeed without truly hearing, and learning from, the uncomfortable truths of your BIPOC staff members' experiences.

 

March 5: critical race theory in museums

  • A Liberatory Framework: Critical race theory can help museums commit to anti-racism and combat anti-blackness (by Porchia Moore, Museum magazine, approx. 10 minute read)

    Porchia Moore writes on why critical race theory is an essential tool for museums as they aim to address and disrupt systemic racism and inequity in their work, including a list of questions to ask of yourself and your staff about incorporating it into your own institution's work.

    This article is also available in print in the January-February edition of AAM's Museum magazine.

 

February 25: commitment to equity is a requirement for young job seekers

  • For younger job seekers, diversity and inclusion in the workplace aren’t a preference. They’re a requirement. (by Jennifer Miller, The Washington Post, 7 minute read, may be paywall protected)
    Young professionals are prioritizing their potential employers' commitment to equity and anti-racism, even in a competitive job market across industries. This article describes what attributes students and job seekers look for from potential employers to determine their true commitment to equity;  how college and university career centers are helping students vet employers; and why this has become a particular priority for Gen Z and Millennials since the muder of George Floyd.

 

February 19: White America and the zero-sum mindset

  • 'Sum Of Us' Examines The Hidden Cost Of Racism — For Everyone (Heather McGhee interviewed by Dave Davies, NPR's Fresh Air, 35 minute listen or read)

    Heather McGhee's new book examines how racism is the primary driver of inequality for Americans of all races; she calls this the "zero-sum idea that progress for people of color has to come at white people's expense." McGhee traces the zero-sum mindset to public policy throughout American history, from a lack of public services for all people in southern states during slavery; to the communities that chose to eliminate public services and amenities rather than integrate them in mid-century; to the predatory lending practices that led to the 2008 financial crisis.

    McGhee was also recently in conversation with The Atlantic's Adam Serwer at the New York Public Library. You can view that talk here.

 

February 12: a toolbox for advancing racial equity in the arts

  • Creating Cultures & Practices for Racial Equity (by Nayantara Sen & Terry Keleher, Race Forward, 43 page report)

    Race Forward has published a brand-new report with tools specifically for arts workers and leaders that want to advance racial equity in their organizations. "DEI efforts lose potency and impact when they are deracialized, depoliticized, and dehistoricized. Many arts organizations deal generally with diversity issues, but fall short of specifically addressing racial inequities in their institutions, in all kinds of decisions such as curation, compensation, and organizational culture," the authors write in the introduction to the report. It includes both large scale frameworks and helpful reminders for you and your colleagues to use as you grapple with and address the racial impacts of your decision making in your institution.

 

February 5: a new metaphor for understanding equality vs equity

The equality vs equity "box" graphic, with three people of different heights standing behind a fence at a baseball game, is a feature of many inclusion and anti-bias trainings, including some of the trainings that AAMD has provided for the membership. The equity training from Race Forward that we held in October also featured a discussion problematizing this graphic and envisioning how it could become clearer and more inclusive. This blog post undertakes the same excercise, this time using food as a metaphor for understanding the difference between equality and equity. In this metaphor, equality looks like everyone  receiving the same-sized assembly-line sandwich, regardless of their hunger or dietary restrictions. By contrast, equity looks like a menu of options, utilizing multiple strategies to help people feel nourished and fed, taking into consideration that different people have different dietary needs for a range of different reasons.

 

January 29: how effective is unconscious bias training?

Upscale beauty retail giant Sephora undertook a year-long study of racial bias in their stores beginning in 2019, following complaints from Black customers (including famous ones, like the singer SZA) about being racially profiled while shopping. This article looks at the report's planned policy changes, and where Sephora could potentially do better, with insight from Frank Dobbin, a Harvard Sociology scholar that studies corporate diversity programs. Dobbin questions the effectivity of bias trainings, particularly for the challenges Sephora is facing; he notes that larger-scale changes, like employee-friendly childcare policies and diverse leadership, are what is truly needed for a culture shift in their retail experience.

 

January 22: a report on inclusive leadership

This robust report examines current research on workplace culture and how it intersects with DEAI work. (I was unable to attach due to the report's size, so to read, you must download directly fron Bentley University's Center for Women and Business. It is worth the bit of extra effort for this excellent resource!)

The report addresses questions and challenges that are currently top of mind for many museum leaders, including but not limited to:

  • What makes a culture inclusive, and what does exclusion cost leaders and institutions?
  • What are the key traits of an inclusive leader?
  • How can a leader build trust, particularly when virtual work can make authentic communication even more challenging?
  • What is the role of intersectionality in creating truly inclusive culture?

 

January 15: roadblocks to institutional change

  • Challenges to Making Institutional Change (by Nina Berman, Inciter Art blog from Fractured Atlas, approx. 7 minute read)

    "..people might all have their hearts in the right place and still find change hard to manage for a multitude of reasons," Nina Berman writes for Fractured Atlas' Inciter Arts blog. "If we don’t articulate the roadblocks to change, we won’t get any better at addressing them." Following the Capitol riot perpetrated by white supremacists last week, many institutions are doubling down on their commitments to anti-racism - at a time when staff and management are burned out from ten months of crisis mode and ever-morphing challenges working through the pandemic. Berman helpfully identifies some major roadblocks to institutional change, from the obvious (systemic racism, inertia) to the less obvious (scarcity mindset, high turnover rates).

 

January 8: Enslaved Americans built the U.S. Capitol

  • Built By Slaves: A Capitol History Lesson (Michel Martin and Fred Beuttler, NPR's Tell Me More, 11 minute read/listen)

    Black men, enslaved and some free, largely built the U.S. Capitol, the site of the mob insurrection perpetrated by white supremacists and conspiracy theorists earlier this week. In an interview just prior to President Obama's 2009 Inauguration, Fred Beuttler, the now former Deupty Historian of the U.S. House of Representatives, details how enslaved labor was essential to every step of building the Capitol, from clearing the land before the cornerstone was laid, to quarrying the stone, to forging the Statue of Freedom atop the Capitol dome. "You can imagine the amount of effort and labor that went in day after day, all seasons of the year because slaves lived around the Capitol here in small shacks as they were rented out to build this - what is called a Temple of Freedom," Beuttler says.

  • Black Men Built the Capitol (by Jesse J. Holland, excerpt from his 2007 book of the same title, 7 minute read

    A more detailed account of the contributions of Phillip Reid, the enslaved man who is now responsible, in several ways, for the Statue of Freedom atop the Capitol.

 

2020

December 18: most popular reads of 2020

To commemorate six months of Anti-Racist Weekly Reads I'm resharing the most-clicked reads so far:

  1. The Hiring Practice That Stymies Equity in the Museum Workforce (by Makeba Clay, American Alliance of Museums blog, approximately 5 minute read) Makeba Clay, Chief Diversity Officer at The Phillips Collection and Senior Diversity Fellow at American Alliance of Museums, digs in to the outsize role of personal recommendations in museum hiring practices, and how to change this in the face of challenging power dynamics. Though it may seem harmless on the face to "take another look" at a candidate recommended by a trustee or senior staff member, the candidates that this practice tends to benefit are often those already over-represented in museums.  "Our actions must align with the organizations our words say we want, so that we may actually become them," Makeba writes.
  2. Dear White CEOs: It’s Time To Lead On Racial Justice (By Jeff Raikes, Forbes, approx. 5 minute read) This article by the director of the Raikes Foundation provides a list of ways that White CEOs can take the lead on advancing equity in their institutions. Many of the recommendations have come up on various AAMD calls but are helpful reminders.
  3. What’s missing from corporate statements on racial injustice? The real cause of racism. (by Amber M. Hamilton, MIT Technology Review, 5 minute read) Sociologist Karen E. Fields and historian Barbara J. Fields coined the term racecraft term to describe the “conjuror’s trick of transforming racism into race, leaving black persons in view while removing white persons from the stage.” In this article Amber M. Hamilton uses racecraft to analyze statements by tech companies in 2020 and how they use race as a stand in for systemic racism or racist acts, obfuscating the role of whiteness and white people. Hamilton points out that the critique might seem “nitpicky,” but is essential to how we understand institutional racism and inequity and how we can make lasting changes going forward.

 

December 11: pay equity audits

  • How to Identify — and Fix — Pay Inequality at Your Company (by Amii Barnard-Bahn, Harvard Business Review, approx. 7 minute read)

    Pay equity has been a hot topic in the museum field in recent years, and discussions inside and outside our field have only increased since the uprisings this past summer. (Due to inequitable compensation practices,"Black and Latina women experience lifetime earnings losses of up to $1 million or more over a 40-year career.") This article from Harvard Business Review outlines the pay equity audit process, which identify how consistently applied your compensation plan is and how to remedy any discrepancies going forward. The article also discusses common barriers to anticipate during the process(e.g. data), and why pay equity audits should become a regular part of your institutional operations.

 

December 4: welcoming difference in the workplace

  • “Tokenism is NOT Transformation” with Chuck Warpehoski (The Ethical Rainmaker podcast with Michelle Shireen Muri, Center for Community Centric Fundraising, 32 minutes long, transcript available here)

    DEI consultant Chuck Warpehoski discusses why tokenism is damaging and counterproductive to your organization's equity goals. "That's one of the barriers that I see all the time as organizations and communities begin their process of trying to say, 'Hey, we need to bring more voices in.' They bring the voices in, but then they don't let them be their full selves." The conversation also addresses, among other topics, treating community members as full partners, and raising white children.

 

November 20: seed rematriation and indigenous food justice

  • Centuries After Their Loss and Theft, Native American Seeds Are Reuniting With Their Tribes (By María Paula Rubiano A., Atlas Obscura, approx. 9 minute read)

    How a network of indigenous seed keepers is helping to rematriate (or return) missing seeds to their tribes from seed banks, universities, and museums, with both practical and healing results. “To us, seeds are our relatives,” according to Rowen White, creator of the Indigenous Seed Keepers Network, a group of 100 seed sovereignty projects all seeking missing seeds. The seeds are missing in the first place due to the U.S.'s history of violence toward tribal nations (crop burnings, displacements onto lands with different ecosystems, and forced assimilation). Today, this is directly related to the fact that in the U.S., Native communities are 400% more likely to experience food insecurity than Americans overall. The article goes on to detail how seeds found in the collections the Field Museum were repatriated to the Meskawi Nation; they are one of two museums to rematriate seeds as of the article's publication.

 

November 13: documenting and analyzing museum anti-racism statements

  • Museums and Anti-Racism: A Deeper Analysis  (MASS Action blog, 6 minute read)

    The Museums as a Site for Social Action (MASS Action) collective is researching and analyzing museums' statements in support of racial justice following the murder of George Floyd. Their study of all accredited members of the American Alliance of Museums found that 53% released a statement. (This data set includes many AAMD members, though not all, since not all AAMD members are AAM-accredited.) They also provide six criteria through which they will analyze these statements, also intended to help institutions critically analyze their own statements and better understand how to move from statements and intent to action. Finally, MASS Action is inviting museums to share more context into their individual institutional anti-racism journeys."This survey is an open invitation to institutions to add nuance and context to the story told by their public statements, and to share any other anti-racist initiatives and commitments that may not yet be public," according to the survey's intro.  "Our ultimate goal in learning more about the context behind these statements is to support museums in their anti-racism work: to ensure that their actions back up their statements, and that they are held accountable to their publics."   More information on how to participate is available here (including deadline and how data will be managed and anonymized).

 

November 6: Doing "the work"

 

October 30: Saidiya Hartman writes the "history of the present"

  • How Saidiya Hartman Retells the History of Black Life (by Alexis Okeowo, The New Yorker, approx. 30 minute read)

    Columbia University professor and 2019 MacArthur fellow Saidiya Hartman writes in a style she calls "critical fabulation," combining deep research with fictional narratives to "wring more from the archive." Because the archive is mostly empty of marginalized Black lives, or tells of them only through the lens of White people, Hartman's (sometimes controversial) method begins to fill some of these vast gaps. As Alexis Okeowo writes, "[Hartman] calls her work a 'history of the present'--writing that examines the past to show how it haunts our time." Engaging with Hartman's work has me thinking about art as a powerful tool to understand, process, and act on complicated and brutal histories, in our complicated and brutal present.

    In her most recent book, Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments, Hartman demonstrates how early 20th century Northern urban progressive reforms were actually designed to police Black life and violently enforce of the color line, and how Black people, particularly women and queer people, still resisted and even sometimes thrived in spite of this system designed to brutalize, dehumanize, and disenfranchise them.

 

  • An Unnamed Girl, A Speculative History (by Saidiya Hartman, The New Yorker, approx. 12 minute read) An excerpt from Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments, centered on an expoitative photograph of a young Black girl posed as an odialisque by Thomas Eakins. "I had been obsessed with anonymous figures, and...my intellectual labor was devoted to reconstructing the experience of the unknown and retrieving minor lives from oblivion through archival research and imagination," Hartman writes.

 

October 23: what is racecraft?

  • What’s missing from corporate statements on racial injustice? The real cause of racism. (by Amber M. Hamilton, MIT Technology Review, 5 minute read) Sociologist Karen E. Fields and historian Barbara J. Fields coined the term racecraft term to describe the “conjuror’s trick of transforming racism into race, leaving black persons in view while removing white persons from the stage.” In this article Amber M. Hamilton uses racecraft to analyze statements by tech companies in 2020 and how they use race as a stand in for systemic racism or racist acts, obfuscating the role of whiteness and white people. Hamilton points out that the critique might seem “nitpicky,” but is essential to how we understand institutional racism and inequity and how we can make lasting changes going forward.

 

October 16: facing hate in America's music history

  • How to Handle the Hate in America’s Musical Heritage (by Grayson Haver Currin, The New York Times, approx. 10 minute read) Lance and April Ledbetter, owners of the archival music record label Dust-to-Digital, share how they have shifted their approach to addressing racist content in their releases of early American country, folk, and gospel music. Their perspectives on this issue have evolved over time from providing as much context as possible in the interest of preserving history, to eliminating the racist content from their releases, recognizing the widely different audiences that may be listening and the reality of how listeners consume all kinds of music.

 

October 9: Indigenous Peoples' Day

  • Land-grab universities: Expropriated Indigenous land is the foundation of the land-grant university system (by Robert Lee and Tristan Ahtone, High Country News, approx. 30 minute read) how the land-grant university system was established through wealth transfer of "10.7 million acres taken from nearly 250 tribes, bands and communities through over 160 violence-backed land cessions." 52 land-grant universities across the U.S. either have endowments built with this wealth, or own unsold parcels of land from the land transfers. Some of these schools are grappling with this violent and mostly invisible history now. as recommended by Henry Art Gallery director Sylvia Wolf.
  • Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI (by David Grann, non-fiction book) A true crime page-turner about the murders of wealthy members of the Osage Nation in 1920s Oklahoma provides another example of the many brutal and insidious ways settlers throughout the history of the U.S. have stolen from Indigenous peoples. A dark, transporting, and fascinating read.

 

October 2: a CEO blueprint for racial equity

  • Dear White CEOs: It’s Time To Lead On Racial Justice (By Jeff Raikes, Forbes, approx. 5 minute read) This article by the director of the Raikes Foundation provides a list of ways that White CEOs can take the lead on advancing equity in their institutions. Many of the recommendations have come up on various AAMD calls but are helpful reminders.

  • A CEO Blueprint for Racial Equity (PolicyLink, approx. 15 minute read) For more specific actions, Jeff Raikes, author of the Forbes article, recommended PolicyLink's CEO Blueprint for Racial Equity. This resource which was released in July 2020 contains detailed policy recommendations for becoming an anti-racist institution internally and externally, in the community you serve and at the societal level. Though the target audience is corporate so some of the language does not apply to museums (e.g. supply chains, corporate philanthropy, lobbying), many of the suggestions can still be applied to museums and non-profit institutions, if applied to exhibitions and programs rather than products and services.

 

September 25: Learning from Civil Rights Movement leader Diane Nash

  • Diane Nash: 'Non-violent protest was the most important invention of the 20th century' (by Jamiles Lartey, The Guardian, April 2017, approximately 10 minute read) In her recent talk to AAMD about leading through crisis, Nancy Koehn invoked Diane Nash, one of the leaders of the Civil Rights Movement who is much less well known than her male peers. She described Nash as brave and serious, someone who provides a moral and ethical frame to explain everything she does, and never falters in taking the high road. In her role as a chairperson of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Nash was key in organizing some of the most well-known actions of the Civil Rights Movement, including lunch counter sit-ins, the Freedom Rides, and the 1965 Selma to Montgomery march. Her courageous leadership in the face of violence and her principled and uncompromising approach, are all evident in this interview from 2017.
  • Diane Nash: Managing Fear (video, MAKERS YouTube Channel, one minute thirty four seconds) Diane Nash on leading while managing fear
  • "Who the hell is Diane Nash?" (video excerpt from PBS' American Experience: Freedom Riders, two minutes) John Seigenthaler, assistant to the attorney general Robert F. Kennedy in 1961, describes his encounter with Nash

     

September 17: the widespread practice that stands in the way of equitable hiring

  • The Hiring Practice That Stymies Equity in the Museum Workforce (by Makeba Clay, American Alliance of Museums blog, approximately 5 minute read)

    Makeba Clay, Chief Diversity Officer at The Phillips Collection and Senior Diversity Fellow at American Alliance of Museums, digs in to the outsize role of personal recommendations in museum hiring practices, and how to change this in the face of challenging power dynamics. Though it may seem harmless on the face to "take another look" at a candidate recommended by a trustee or senior staff member, the candidates that this practice tends to benefit are often those already over-represented in museums.  "Our actions must align with the organizations our words say we want, so that we may actually become them," Makeba writes.

 

September 11: a rising tide lifts all boats

  • Why centering Black women in the economy could benefit everyone (Maria Hollenhorst and Kai Ryssdal, Marketplace, 9-10 minute listen/read) An interview with Janelle Jones, the managing director of policy and research at the Groundwork Collaborative, and Professor Michelle Holder, an assistant professor of economics at John Jay College at the City University of New York, about why centering the economy around workers who are typically left behind — specifically, Black women — could help make the economy work better for everyone. The discussion includes the concept the "double gap" that Black women face (the gender wage gap and the racial wage gap, as Black women make 62 cents on the dollar compared with White men in the US) and data demonstrating that during recessions, Black women are the hardest hit and the last to recover; and a significant aside on the difference in language between centering and prioritizing.

 

September 3: psychological safety and inclusion

  • Woke-washing your company won't cut it (by Erin Dowell, JD and Marlette Jackson, PhD, Harvard Business Review, approx. 10 minute read) Two corporate equity and inclusion practitioners outline pathways from statements of solidarity to accountability, transparency, and lasting change.
  • Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace with Amy C. Edmondson (HBR IdeaCast, 26 minute audio) In the above article Dowell and Jackson identify psychological safety as a pillar of inclusive culture. According to Amy C. Edmondson, a scholar who has researched psychological safety, "It is far more common for people’s contributions at work to be thwarted by interpersonal fear than to feel able to be direct and candid. In contrast, when people are able to be themselves, they can do their best work and make contributions to the team in a timely way."

 

August 28: Reimagining the museum field to center equity and care

 

August 21: a recap of all the anti-racist weekly reads to date

 

August 14: small talk and honest conversations

  • How I Learned to Small Talk With White People (By Ashley Stoney, The Cut, approx 5 minute read) Ashley Stoney shares her experience working in a majority White workplace as a Black woman from a working class background. She illuminates how even something as seemingly benign as small talk can be a barrier to entry for Black staff, staff of color, and staff from different class backgrounds. Stoney shares how she learned to be her more authentic self at work despite this challenge; and how we can all lean into more honest conversations about our assumptions of others' experiences, even through office through small talk.

 

August 7: approaching tough conversations with help from the Dalai Lama

  • What Spiritual Teachers like the Dalai Lama Can Teach White Anti-Racism Activists (Dr. David Campt, White Ally Toolkit/The Dialogue Company, (10-15 minute read) a toolkit outlining how white allies advocating for racial justice can call other white people "in" (rather than call out, leading with anger), based on advice from none other than the Dalai Lama. You may find it helpful in some of the tough conversations happening with your boards, staff, friends, and families.

 

July 31: Advancing inclusion through systems thinking

 

July 24: remembering Congressman John Lewis for his patience, persistance, and support of the arts

 

July 17: hiring for equity

 

July 9: equity consultants

 

July 2: Art to help us understand our history

 

June 25: Moving from intention to action

  • Is Your Company Actually Fighting Racism, or Just Talking About It? (Kira Hudson Banks and Richard Harvey, Harvard Business Review, approx. 9 minute read) "If your organization takes a stand against racism, you must also articulate how progress will be tracked and communicated back company-wide. ...There’s no need for shame or guilt if your results are not glowing or swift. What has been given years to root will not be unearthed overnight"
  • Aurora James on Her 15 Percent Pledge Campaign to Support Black-Owned Businesses (by Liam Hess, Vogue,  approx. 5 minute read) An interview with the founder of the 15 Percent Pledge, an initiative encouraging big-box retailers to stock 15% of their shelves with products from Black-owned brands. How would it look for an art museum to apply this principle to its vendors, or to the museum shop?
  • “For too long, economists have dodged the issue of racism and discrimination” (Kai Ryssdal and Maria Hollenhorst, Marketplace, 6 minute listen or read) William Spriggs, a professor of economics at Howard University and the chief economist at the AFL-CIO, explains how racism is baked into the field of economics
  • Our US Diversity Data (R/GA, medium.com, 7 minute read) One example of transparency from advertising firm R/GA

 

June 19:

 

June 12: lived experiences of BIPOC employees

  • Towards a Racially Just Workplace by Laura Morgan Roberts and Anthony J. Mayo, Harvard Business Review (20-30 minute read) Highlighting the statistical and anecdotal ways existing DEAI efforts have fallen short for black employees from entry level to C-suite, and four broad strategies to change that, moving from a re-active to a pro-active approach
  • The Bandwidth Cost of “Not OK” by Cia Verschelden, vice president of academic and student affairs at Malcolm X College (City Colleges of Chicago) - 2 minute read focusing on the bandwidth cost of being a person of color in America
  • Hiring Me Will Not Solve Your Diversity Problem by Grace Ouma Cabezas A 2-3 minute read from marketing executive and consultant Grace Ouma-Cabezas

 

June 3:

 

If you have any questions about Anti-Racist Weekly Reads, please contact awade@aamd.org