Open Letter on Race
Curatorial Note: Originally posted on Friday, June 5, 2020 on LinkedIn. By Juneteenth, the post received 30,000 views, likes, shares, and engagements. The letter was a reflection and commitment to action. The creation of #blacklist100 (curated image capsule, 170-page e-book, and directory) took under a month from start to finish, released digitally as a full piece on July 3, 2020. The time for change is now.
An Open Letter on Race:
Hi, I’m Kai D. Wright — a lecturer at Columbia University, a media executive, and an author.
Over the past week, I’ve had many conversations about race. For me, that’s nothing new. For many others, it was difficult, embarrassing, enlightening, humbling, and painful. For all parties, these conversations have been a deep reflection that in these two Americas many “leaders” have woken up to confront the fact that they’ve either been woefully ignorant or asleep at the wheel. Now that all of our journeys have converged, many leaders (and people) want to know what to do. I applaud those moved to action — welcome to the fight of the survival of Black Americans and the fight for the soul of American culture. We’re exhausted, so we’re happy to have new & growing allies.
As Nina Simone said, “to be young, gifted, and Black, oh what a lovely precious dream.” And I’ve been afforded the time and space to dream BIG. And when no one willingly gave me that time & space: I learned to advocate for myself, tapped into my invaluable community, got thick, conjured my inner #Blackboyjoy, and turned a “no” into “wow, he did that.” Many Black people aren’t as lucky to have that time & space or can take the calculated career risks I’ve undertaken in pursuit of my dreams, so I understand my obligation to speak up and lead action. I am simply lucky; there are millions of Black people that will never be given the opportunities that I had, yet could do what I do with opportunity. And that creates a heavy burden of duty.
Across my many jobs of teaching at an Ivy League school, serving as an executive in media, and continually speaking & writing as an author, I’ve encountered racism at every turn and micro-aggressions every day. Shocker. With most Black people learning what racism is from childhood, I feel like an expert in spotting when it’s both active and passive & small and large (and have a trove of stories). This piece, though, isn’t about any of those personal battle scars or shrapnel wounds. Rather, this piece is about what I am doing with those troubling inhumane experiences and how they’ve shaped my point of view on Dr. Martin Luther King’s critical question: “Where do we go from here?” I’ve persevered, sometimes had breakdowns, but was always uplifted by a Black community that knew I was their dream… someone who is a role model, advances strong values, pulls others up, claps back, and eloquently captivates an audience to action.
Despite my relative success, I’m faced with a personal and professional reckoning, one that many Black Americans find themselves in at this critical inflection point: Did we do enough? What move to make next? What role to play as a change agent? Which problem to solve first? What is & isn’t acceptable any longer?
My reckoning had three take-aways: I have done a lot, but can do better & more, and must. Specifically, this week taught me three things about my mindset and unintended enabling behavior:
I shouldn’t have simplified Black history to make it “easy” to digest for allies,
I shouldn’t have let leaders and/or organizations go unchallenged, and
I shouldn’t have accepted being overlooked or under-invested in as Black talent.
Let me explain more how each of those three things has had unintended consequences and how I will be operating differently moving forward, to evolve as a diversity champion in the classroom and boardroom. And humbly, I’d like to offer some advice to my fellow Black Americans and White allies.
1. Educating others about Black history 101:
Whether the “general population” in America admits it or not: your history is Black history because Black history is American history. So, I’m no longer keeping or giving a ready-made “reading list” full of documentaries, movies, books, podcasts, plays, or poems … about Black history & culture.
Why should I do your homework?
Black folks — please stop summarizing our history (American history) into CliffNotes and bite-size chunks to make it “easy” to understand for the general population — your boss, neighbor, friend, colleague, doctor, mailman, and beyond. Allies are more harmed when you remove the ugly side of history or skip details; summarizing isn’t helping anyone nor motivating any action.
I learned American history, British history, European history, and world history, all before leaving K-12; I have every expectation that people around me will take time to learn about the ugly parts of American history that textbooks now call “migration” rather than slavery.
If you want to be an ally, don’t burden your Black colleagues, friends, and peers with the work you need to do. We don’t “enjoy” educating you on race. As an ally, recognize that even when you “innocently” intend to foster conversation, the subject matter can re-traumatize and re-victimize Black people because the history of Black Americans is violent, raw, and disgusting, but it is your history, too. A history created by the now general population, who conveniently now want to forget about it so they can abdicate needing to correct it. My freedom (to dream) is bought and paid for with the blood, sweat, and tears of my ancestors; I will never forget my history and you (allies) aren’t off the hook either. Stop denying it by ignoring it; when you ignore it Black Americans suffer longer.
We learned everyone else’s history in an often biased school curriculum and then had to go home to study our own. We put in the work. I already put in the work. We don’t need to be anybody’s coach, sensei, or teacher on race. We did it — you can do it. And well past slavery, many Black people couldn’t even read but still learned their history and passed it on. I’m proud to be an educator knowing that my own family members, based on personal research of looking at Census reports from the 1800s and early 1900s, couldn’t even read or write. But still, I’m not doing your homework any longer.
So, start with one documentary or book, and then discuss it with someone Black. That’s an action you can start today. We will respect you far more when you have an informed point of view based on the time you spent learning than if you half-heartedly ask for a resource that you never prove to us you ever took time to watch or read. We have to stop spoon-feeding allies, and allies have to stop expecting to be spoon-fed about race.
As an educator, I am reminded by the words of Aristotle, “Those that know, do. Those that understand, teach…” I’d like to see more non-Black people who know enough they can teach other people. Take that heavy burden off us. Call out the hate, jokes, and offensive language happening in your inner circles on a daily basis. Seek understanding and I will respect you for life; ask me for a movie or book recommendation and my response will be a “hard pass.”
As an ally, your goal should be to move from knowledge gathering to understanding. And when you understand enough to explain things to someone else, then you’ve read and watched enough.
2. Giving a seat at the table for representation:
As a country, we have gotten very comfortable with “diversity & inclusion.” We are comfortable with making changes to be inclusive of “non-controversial” groups like veterans and parents. Companies then moved to LGBTQ. Happy Pride Month. And a brave few have advanced to gender. However, we haven’t yet become comfortable enough to fully address the defining diversity principle of America since 1619 — Black versus White — race. Under the law, gender and race have the same equal protection, yet companies actively prioritize gender and other non-Black groups with Diversity & Inclusion efforts. Diversity & Inclusion leaders, please stop making us (Black employees) feel second class like we already do in America. When will you bet on black?
In 2018, Bloomberg, the international finance and media company that has nearly 20,000 employees, implemented a policy change for diversity and inclusion in their newsroom: journalists could only participate in conferences that have on-stage representation of women (i.e., at least one per panel). But why not include Black people or people of color if you’re bold enough to rally for one group at a time? Seeing policies like these that choose one group over long-waiting Blacks, rings clear that it is fully within a company’s power to enforce diversity standards, as in the case of Bloomberg, yet companies actively decide NOT to champion efforts for Black employees externally and internally.
Companies committing to new policies represent one part of the solution — let’s go back to the conferences and events policy and why such a thing is so watershed. From experience, most big “deals” and recruiting for top jobs happen during conferences and events. Conferences are backdrops for vital exposure needed for career advancement and become places that set the tone for how industries will operate in the future. Often, conference organizers aren’t held accountable for programming panels and keynotes full of White-dominated or only speakers, as if they’re the only ones who can possibly shape thought-leadership & business. And, agencies & companies are not held accountable by enabling those conferences & events because they continue to participate rather than demanding change that benefits everyone. And sometimes the companies are guilty themselves of not even allowing Black employees to go to their own controlled conferences & events, which all harms the long term ability of Black talent to gain the exposure and credibility needed to rise up in an organization. I need my own company — WPP — to do better, to advocate, and to externally prop-up Black voices. And Ogilvy can step its game up, too. My message to them is the same message I have to every leader of a Fortune 500 company: force change or sit-it-out on principle. You decide when enough is enough. Inaction and silence is an agreement with these broken policies and empty promises of inclusion, which we know, ultimately harms my community economically, in the long-term.
To my fellow Black executives and those coming after us, the road is long & winding and full of Dead End signs. As someone who teaches at an Ivy League school, serves as one of the most senior, client-facing Black executives in the US at the world’s most known agency, an author with a major publisher, and someone that has done a dozen speaking engagements from SXSW (i.e., largest brand & marketing session among 120 sessions with over 1,200 attendees) to industry events for the Association of National Advertisers (ANA), American Marketing Association (AMA), and PR Society of America, I still am often the only person of color speaking/attending major industry events. It’s lonely. Or worse yet, I still face a mountain of rejection from event organizers that say my accomplishments are not enough. If all of my degrees, professional experience, a decade of teaching experience, accolades, and thought-leadership through writing an award-winning business book isn’t enough to warrant speaking to audiences then there’s a flaw in conferences and events from Cannes to CES that say they want diversity but continually fail to deliver. And to everyone who attends, speaks, and approves expenses for conferences and events, you can do more to champion diverse voices as a policy in your company.
To get to my point, I’m starting a pledge for more conferences and events to be held accountable for their glaring lack of people of color in programming; we must amplify the voices of individuals and not settle for an unsubstantiated and empty diversity statement and then zero or a token inclusion. In the age of LinkedIn, it’s impossible to believably say you couldn’t find someone Black. B.S.
If you run an agency, company, or organization, then this is your fight — be our ally and get us on-stage virtually or physically so we can get the credit we deserve for steering culture and opportunities to provide different points of view that represent communities you and your clients profit from. Try harder. Change happens when the voices controlling the narrative shifts. Uplift and advance someone else.
3. Finding, nurturing, and advancing Black talent:
Companies recognize that there is systemic racism, yet obfuscate and skirt around amending their recruitment, development, and retention strategies. We see time-and-time again that White male (ineffective) leaders often get golden parachutes while Black employees while Black executives & employees remaining behind are overlooked, held back, underpaid, and eventually pushed out. In the age of #MeToo, the NY Times tracked 201 White men pushed out of their jobs, and the majority were replaced by other White people, over 50% were White women. In terms of getting Black employees over the finish line of senior management, we have to critically ask ourselves not the why that prevents it (because we know the why is systemic racism and individual biases) but the how to overcome it (what about company culture creates this void of Black executives).
Sometimes Black people don’t last or aren’t hired under the moniker of “lack of a culture fit.” Whose culture? American culture? Human culture? No, White culture. To say someone is not a culture fit is to “other” and “ostracize” them. It means you can’t bother to account for another human’s experience that doesn’t fit the current homogeneous thinking of an organization. Black people have a uniquely blended culture of our own, and we are assets to companies that require empathy to sell products or services to diverse communities. I’m tired of White creative directors acting like they “know” multicultural communities — respectfully, stay in your lane and empower Black people to speak for themselves and their community. Your demographic data dump and one-sheet persona snapshot doesn’t begin to capture my nuances and rich tapestry. To be blunt: we Black Americans will never assimilate to your “mainstream” “gen pop” (White) culture; stop waiting, punishing, and barring us from owning our own culture within corporate America. We want this high-stakes stand-off for assimilation to end.
Inherently, I work in audience-driven fields — communications, marketing, and advertising. All industries built on human behavior and empathy. Companies mirror the values of their leaders; so, if your company doesn’t have senior Black executives and board members, then the “culture” of your company is one of complacency and denial. Period. There are hundreds of highly qualified, Black thought-leaders and business executives fully capable of and already leading teams, clients, and organizations. We are not hiding in plain sight you are actively overlooking us.
Moving forward, I am challenging companies to invest more in the Black community, starting with their Black employee development, now that they have eyes wide open that the struggle is real, and those Black employees that show up every day shouldn’t be taken for granted. If your company can have a million programs for women, then you can have one well-funded, management training program for Black people. We need systemic change to how, why, and when specific groups are prioritized. But most importantly, just start the programs and iterate rather than miring them in red tape; we need them now more than ever.
And to those employees who ask why Black Americans should be addressed first, it’s because we’ve been waiting over 400 years for acknowledgment & recompense.
The only way to cure racism and heal the divide of two Americas is to right the initial injustice in the Black community of under-investment and under-commitment in resources that will continue to shackle America from full prosperity. As an organization or leader, show that you value your Black employees through action that benefits them tangibly. Commit to action by a near date. Your chief diversity officers and our White allies have hundreds of ideas; most organizations are already late, we ask that you also not be slow. Save your corporate #Blacklivesmatter social post or lengthy diversity statement; we’d rather see you proudly post a picture of your executive team and board of directors for the Internet to react…and we will then quickly see that we can do better Corporate America.
(Sigh)
Overall, as a Black educator, businessperson, and leader, I need to do better. It is my duty and I owe that to my community. My privilege of being able to move freely between the classroom and boardroom means I have no choice but to speak and act & continue teaching the next generation of leaders what #blackexcellence looks like personified and the value that Black people have in the world. And in doing so, I can only hope that I so eloquently articulated what so many Black people around you have likely been trying to say for years… since Trayvon Martin, since Sandra Bland, since Ahmaud Arbery, since Breonna Taylor, since Botham James, since Eric Garner, since George Floyd. Learn their names — they’re now part of American history. Black history. Your history.
We all need to do better. And that starts with accountability. I want everyone in my community to hold me accountable for my pledged actions because I’ll be holding others accountable.
Sorry, but not sorry, this isn’t a message of hope; it’s a message to stay woke.
Because education, representation, and talent development are all critical components to building a healthy work environment & community for all, we cannot allow leaders to stay asleep at the wheel any longer.
If my point of view made you uncomfortable, then good, that means it’s resonating. Your discomfort means you’re thinking critically and already mentally challenging your own status quo biases. Know you’re not alone in feeling that discomfort. Turn that discomfort into empowerment through meaningful action — learn about Black history (at whatever pace you want), have deep & meaningful conversations about what you learned with others, put someone else on that stage for attention, and develop Black talent.
Whatever action you decide to take first, start today. Welcome to the fight.
#imallin
#LetsGetToWork
*kai