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It's time for white people to implement the“start up mindset” to anti-racist activism
Over the past few months, I was invited to consult some all-white startup companies on how they can change in solidarity with BLM and racial justice. I’ve also had the pleasure of joining my company’s Diversity & Inclusion Council and Black Leadership Network in ally roles, founding two book clubs featuring anti-racist works, and facilitating white accountability groups for racial justice. In these spaces, as well as in 1:1 conversations, I’ve continually heard white people state, “I don’t know where to start,” “I don’t want to overstep,” and “I’m afraid of making mistakes.”
While I’m empathetic of white people not wanting to cause harm to BIPOC, I find these statements ironic. White people, we act in uncertainty and with the risk of making mistakes all the time, just not usually in the context of anti-racism.
Listening to any successful entrepreneur talk about the journey of their company, it’s clear that moving without all the information and making mistakes is necessary to get anything done. I'm a huge fan of the podcast, How I Built This with NPR's Guy Roz, where founders of companies like Dyson, Lululemon, and Chez Pannisse share their stories, successes, and struggles. In each conversation, the founders, without fail, mention a time they acted in uncertainty and the mistakes they made. This was a part of the journey not something the founders could opt in and out of if they wanted their vision to come to fruition. Because of white privilege, thinking about white supremacy is something that we can opt in and out of. Recognizing that making mistakes is not only inevitable, but necessary for anything to change, or, the founder-mindset, is helpful for me to reframe fear into action.
In one of my meetings with a startup, they said “We’re in learning mode at this time.” I pushed back, saying that there is no start and end phase for learning or action; they enable and rely on each other. I advised them to instead implement action steps for racial justice into the quarterly reviews that already exist, seeing these consistent checks as just as important for leadership as revenue.
For the continued momentum of white people thinking about racial injustice in our workplaces, families, and friend groups, making mistakes is inevitable, as any founder would tell you to be true. What if we brought the resilience, curiosity, and energy of a founder into how we approach our understanding and dismantling of white supremacy?
In our control is to decenter the “I’m down” ego and listen to the abundance of information out there from Black activists literally outlining, “Here’s what we need from white people.” (I've shared a few of these below.) As Ijeoma Oluo aptly writes in So You Want to Talk about Race, “Take care in your conversations, remember that you are dealing with the real hurt of human beings. But be brave in that care, be honest in that care. These conversations will never become easy, but they will become easier. They will never be painless, but they can lessen future pain. They will never be risk-free, but they will always be worth it.”
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