2 Years On — When a Collective Continues (in the face of ongoing racial violence and gaslighting in global development)
RE: The Racial Equity Index
You know that feeling — the dusty crumbling feeling of broken and dried-up exhaustion? That kind that permeates from your solar plexus and invades all the spaces of respite that keep a person hydrated and moving despite the onslaught of what white supremacy culture continues to throw at them. This soul-zapping exhaustion seems to be part of my daily struggle these days. No matter how much I keep filling my places of respite (via hydration, communing with my somatic abolition sibilings, messaging sisterhood members in my network lifting each other up and reminding each other of our worth, resting in between parenting and adulting (so not resting at all)), the exhaustion remains so present.
The main experience sucking my soul these days is the vicious cycle of putting myself out there (for jobs, RFPs, fellowships, conversations with funders and partners for our work at the Racial Equity Index….) and hearing, “This (the work of the Racial Equity Index) is so overdue and critical,” or “I am so excited to see this out in the world…” or, “the work you are doing is so important…” from funders and people in the sector only to hear the agonizing rejection, “We really believe in your work but would love to see others support you as well so let us know how you are doing in 1 year.”
The constant doubting if you are meant to be in a sector where our wins are minimal, where racial violence is ongoing, where self-proclaimed white disruptors and equity ‘leaders’ continue to hold on to power — all of it weathers and withers BIPOC people on a daily basis and I won’t even get into the ongoing gaslighting that this sector continues to perpetuate against Black people and people of culture in this sector. In one day just in the past week, I received a rejection from a job that I had been in the interview process for since April 2022. I made it through to the final round and didn’t get selected in the end (I love consulting but am looking for my next organisational role). But then on the same day, I got a LinkedIn message from a leader at a global non-profit organisation:
…I am on a personal mission to continue to push for a real transformation in (ORGANISATION), and your work out there is contributing to making such work (which was unimaginable for most only a few years ago) inevitable…
When I share these struggles with fellow BIPOC women in the sector whom I adore, we commiserate, curse the system, note all the white people getting funding for similar work, take names of the gatekeepers, and then resolutely remind each other — we must do this (because do we really have a choice?). So we do what the primordial knowing in our bones tells us to do and told all our Black and brown ancestors to do — we keep going.
On the 3rd of July 2022, the Racial Equity Index celebrated our 2-year anniversary as a collective. When I say celebrated, what I really mean is marveled. Marveled at our fortitude, our resilience, our stamina, our perseverance — all of the adjectives that express the level of energy, effort, and sweat equity required to show up as Black people and people of culture demanding accountability in a global development sector that continues to harm us on a daily basis.
In the past year, our collective members have moved through every aspect of life — grief, unbearable loss, heartbreak, illness, divorce, and job issues — to name a few. And yet we have continued in our work to bear witness to each other and to it all. All the pain, the struggle, the co-opting of racial equity work by white folks, the distillation of racial equity as DEI and the harm caused by this, the continued visceral experience that racism is, and the continued gaslighting that the global development sector perpetuates at large.
When I sent out a Tweet and LinkedIn post on 23 June 2020, asking if anyone would want to join a working group led by BIPOC people to work to develop an index for racial equity I didn’t expect that two years later our collective would be as deeply connected as we are. What I know now is that we are as deeply connected as we want to be — we want to show up for each other day in and day out and do this work of accountability because we know there is no other option. We have been vocal in our podcasts about how many meetings our collective has held where the agenda is thrown out the window because yet another act of racial violence has happened that has stopped us in our tracks again, and again, and again. But there is no other option other than to show up for each other, and build a community of care, support, and workspace that we need in this world.
Last year I wrote about how our collective faced the reality that: white-led racial equity initiatives and funder-led racial equity initiatives are easily funded and “believed in’’ while our deliberate and intentional approach is somehow too radical, too much for a sector that continues to harm BIPOC people on a daily basis. Yet just this week The Racial Equity Index was included by The New Humanitarian on the list: 10 efforts to decolonise aid. While the acknowledgment is so welcome, as far as I can tell, the Racial Equity Index was the only volunteer-led initiative on the list (correct me if I am wrong).
Unfortunately and unsurprisingly little has changed in two years. White-led ‘equity’ initiatives continue to crop up, funded by funders in the sector who fail to uphold their commitment to the racial equity funding promises that they pledged in 2020. See here, here, and here). The latest white-led equity initiative that landed on my browser is TIME — led by Humentum and EngenderHealth. Now you may be saying — this is really important work being done in understanding and researching the best-operating models that support equity in SRHR organizations.
But this work (and this is one of many examples) is almost always copying, co-opting, and capitalising off the sweat and effort of BIPOC workers in the sector, who almost always go unrecognised, uncredited, and unrewarded. They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but I disagree — imitation in this context is simply another form of erasure.
It is now over two years since the murder of George Floyd ignited the Black Lives Matters global protests which catalyzed people in global development to speak out about the continued racial violence in their organisations. We have commitments, pledges (seriously enough with the pledging), white-led convenings of equity explorations, funder-led equity communal discussions, and racial equity being added on to already existing gender equality initiatives (finally). But we still haven’t achieved accountability, transparency, or data on racial equity in global development. The Racial Equity Index is here to change that. In a few short weeks, we will release our annual report. I invite you to take the time to read it, to learn more about the journey we are on, and then forward the report to someone in your network that you know will share it with others.
I’ll be honest — given all the work we have done, given how much we keep putting ourselves out there (and I haven’t even addressed the bodily cost of this OR the very real reality of the blacklisting BIPOC people face by being public about the serious and real issues in the global development sector), given all the research we have done, given all the funders ‘excited’ by our work, given how many people know about our work in the global development sector — it is mind-boggling that The Racial Equity Index doesn’t have substantial funding yet. So speak our name in the rooms you are in, commit to funding us, and join us for this journey. If you are white-bodied and you know of our work and are well connected in the sector — what are you waiting for? This is your chance to distribute some of that power. And if you are a funder, we are here to stay. The sector needs us and you need our data.
I look forward to connecting.
-Uma
