Facilitated by Yunga Webb and Kathy Bonavist

FACILITATOR BIOGRAPHIES

Kathy Bonavist, non-profit expert in Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) and JEDI work, stewards organizations during high-level transitions and serves in interim leadership roles, managing non-profits through cultural and strategic shifts, business downturns, and crises. She is currently Vice President of Admissions at Paul Smith’s College.

Yunga Webb, non-profit expert in Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) and JEDI work, is currently at North Country School in Lake Placid. During six of Yunga’s fifteen years in education, she has led over fifty educator trainings and served on DEI strategic planning committees, collaborating with administrators, parents, and board members. Yunga founded TimbukII, a land ownership initiative for BIPOC communities to achieve economic enfranchisement.

SET THE TONE

Yunga and Kathy began with a round of introductions, inviting each participant to share their name and something the group may not know about them. Responses were engaging and demonstrated the group’s readiness to share and connect.

The group was asked to establish standards of engagement to guide the conversation:

  • Lean into discomfort.
  • Accept non-closure.
  • Use both/and thinking.
  • Speak from the “I” perspective.
  • Stay engaged.
  • Take risks.
  • Take space, make space.
  • Listen for understanding.
  • Avoid blaming or shaming others.
  • Respect confidentiality.

Kathy then introduced the concept and definition of justice-centered organizational change to kick off the conversation.

ACTIVITY

A handout was circulated with two graphics and four focus questions. Participants broke into small groups to discuss. Afterward, participants shared responses and reflected on moments when they’ve been made aware of structural racism, hidden advantages, and/or cultural legacies that favored one group of people.

Focus Questions:
1. How do you build a lens so that you can identify systems that don’t work for everyone?

2. How can you be an agent for change in your community or organization?

3. Can you think of a situation where you could see an opportunity for disrupting structural racism?

4. Identify an issue that you would like to further investigate in order to get to the real reason disparity exists.

Kathy referenced two graphics to make several key teaching points about how empirical data can be a powerful tool for moving the needle toward structural change when systemic racism exists.

LESSONS AND DISCUSSION POINTS

Conversation flowed between Yunga, Kathy, small groups, and the large group. Active participation was encouraged throughout, with frequent reminders that everyone’s opinion is valued. The facilitators emphasized an action-focused approach in the pursuit of equity and justice. The facilitators methodically moved the conversation so each participant could leave with an idea of what to do differently on a daily basis to become an agent for change. The following questions and points emerged from facilitators and participants during the conversation:

  • Data moves us beyond echo chambers and beyond emotional conversations. It equips us with tools, methods, and practices to make change.
  • Data can prove that successful people have hidden privileges. For instance, there’s a study that analyzed the birth month of successful hockey players. Those born in January and February were a little older, stronger, faster, and more mature, and were therefore chosen for better teams with better coaches, allowing them to excel more quickly. [From Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers: The Story of Success]
  • How can we know when we need data, instead of making assumptions about phenomena, people, situations, or circumstances?
  • How can we comprehend and interpret data without making assumptions about phenomena, people, situations, or circumstances?
  • How do we determine what the evidence is showing?
  • Does watching, tracking, and monitoring individuals or systems change behaviors and structures?
  • Can self-governance change structural outcomes? If so, how? If not, why not?
  • Does watching and tracking police actions and statistics change outcomes in society and vulnerable groups?
  • If possible, how could empirical data help to change social behaviors?
  • In education specifically, how can we be aware of terms that alienate and divide students based on the financial status of their enrollment? How can we use language as a tool to promote fairness?
  • What is the responsibility of highly educated people when it comes to social justice and equity? Public intellectuals can play a role in advocating for others. What is the leadership role of any nation marked by inequity and structural racism on a global level?
  • Every system is aligned with an implied and/or explicit agenda or purpose. Every organization needs to have the ability to analyze its role and systems, and the willingness to completely transform by taking action to remedy challenges to equity.
  • Change begins with a full acknowledgment of the history of our systems and past injustices. This can be followed by an in-depth review of the appropriateness of those systems today. We can effectively identify the infrastructure, policies and personal behaviors that perpetuate inequity and injustice. Then, the intention and commitment to an actionable plan creates capacity to implement and support inclusive and equitable practices and standards.
  • People who want to be agents of change for equity and justice can equip themselves with facts about structural racism to avoid getting flustered by people who deny social inequity, systemic racism, and any other injustice.
  • How does wealth influence opportunity? Children develop and thrive based on what is provided for them structurally. Opportunities granted early in life open more doors for success. Data can illuminate how and why individuals in the United States are financially impacted by generational wealth.
  • Yunga shared her thoughts about how successful Black people are those who have been intentionally taken out of the systems that Black people were meant to experience. She asked, “How does education level, type, and focus, correlate with level of success over time? How do our schools shape us? What do our schools teach us?”
  • One participant gave an example of structural racism in education. Consider Howard University, an HBCU with notable alumni. Why aren’t the buildings at Howard under construction? Because it is underfunded; it does not have enough money to be physically improved or to give out scholarships the way other high-level universities do in the United States. Why?
  • Yunga spoke about the importance of re-examining our national and personal relationship to money. Business tends to shape our interactions as humans. How do we “value” people without focusing on money?
  • Some people need to feel superior. How does this tendency affect our socially-accepted concept of money and wealth?
  • It’s a myth that anyone is “self-made.” No one accomplishes anything without other people, nor does anyone accomplish goals in a vacuum. So how do Black people gain access to the game? “Game” meaning: what White people have had for generations in the United States.
  • One of the participants turned the group’s attention to the word, “overuse,” specifically as it applies to trails in the Adirondacks. He suggested it is a loaded term. He asked, “How many of us think that the High Peaks trails are overused?” Most locals raised their hands. How can we challenge the White male perspective about who “should” be in the Adirondacks and who or what defines appropriate use?
    • There’s structural racism present in White environmental and conservation groups in the Adirondacks and beyond. Permit systems for outdoor recreation do not make underrepresented people feel safe from potential hate crimes in predominantly White spaces. These factors combine to become barriers for many people to freely access the natural world.
  • Lived experiences shine a light on how our systems function, who they serve, and the maximum available potential for utilization.
  • How do personal biases undergird and inform our systems?
  • Diversity work requires cultural consciousness, or the development of an awareness of diverse cultures.
  • Why is the prison system one of the main institutions that has brought economic opportunity to the Adirondacks?
  • Why is the prison system one of the main institutions that has brought Black people to the Adirondacks? Is the prison system the greatest arbiter of diversity in this mountain region today?
  • A structural reliance on imprisonment to perpetuate political economies vis a vis racial inequality.
  • Structural racism is systemic but it’s made up of people facilitating and participating in socially-sanctioned, unjust practices.
  • We each have a personal responsibility to speak up and resist racist systems, actions, organizations, etc.
  • Showing up locally helps us to get to know our decision-makers and gives us more social power to build new cultural values in our nation.
  • Keep our interactions, exchanges, and businesses to a human and humane scale. Challenge cultural notions of development that include infinite growth and expansion.
  • Play the game. Stand in our braveness. Take action to make change.

READING LIST
https://humaneeducation.org/5-approaches-to-teaching-about-structural-racism/
https://imgur.com/GK9w7Xx