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For more information about the synthesis please contact Deborah Meehan.

Does Current Leadership Thinking and Practice Contribute to Structural Racism?

Sections:

1. Introduction
1. What do we mean by leadership?
2. What is ‘dominant culture’ and how does it affect our ideas about leadership?
3. What is structural racism?
4. How do current leadership ideas reinforce racism?
5. How do our leadership models influence our work on racial justice?
6. How can we work with individual leaders contribute to diversity and inclusion?
7. Why is work with individual leaders not sufficient for undoing structural racism?
8. What does leadership as a process for achieving racial justice look like?
2. What are some of the questions that leadership programs should be asking?
1. Who are you targeting for recruitment and why?
2. Does your program talk about race and structural racism?
3. How does your program decide what type of supports are needed?
4. What leadership model are you promoting?
5. What result is your leadership program trying to achieve?
3. What Changes in Our Evaluation Work Strengthen Racial Justice Outcomes?
1. Holding ourselves accountable for transforming structural racism
2. Institutional Change
3. Power dynamics and evaluation as learning
4. References for this Report

What do we mean by leadership? Over the past 50 years our thinking about leadership, whether in communities or board rooms, has been heavily influenced by heroic models of leadership. We traditionally think of leadership as the skills, qualities and behavior of an individual who exerts influence over others to take action or achieve a goal using his or her position or charisma. This way of thinking about leadership is only one part of the leadership story. We need to expand our thinking to include leadership as a process grounded in relationships that are fluid, dynamic, and multi-directional. We need a more expansive view to understand leadership in all the ways it is expressed, among all those who embody it. We will not make significant progress on racial justice without expanding our thinking about what leadership is, how it works and how we can support it.

What is ‘dominant culture’ and how does it affect our ideas about leadership? Our current ideas about leaders are strongly influenced by values and beliefs that are part of the dominant culture in the United States. By dominant culture, we are referring to views that have been shaped by those who have had the most influence and power, views that also often serve to perpetuate the continued advantage of this group. The Aspen Institute (Structural Racism and Youth Development: Issues, Challenges, and Implications) describes some of these popularly held assumptions that influence, among other things, the ways we think and talk about leadership:

• Personal responsibility and individualism: The belief that people control their fates regardless of social position, and that individual behaviors and choices determine material outcomes.
• Meritocracy: The belief that resources and opportunities are distributed according to talent and effort and that social components of “merit”—such as access to inside information of powerful social networks, do not matter.
• Equal opportunity: The belief that employment, education and wealth accumulation are “level playing fields” and that race is no longer a barrier to progress in these areas.

What is structural racism? The focus on the individual and beliefs about equal opportunity fail to recognize the racialization of advantage and disadvantage in the U.S. The Applied Research Center (Catalytic Change: Lessons Learned from the Racial Justice Grantmaking Assessment) offers a widely accepted explanation of structural racism as the accumulative impact of racism encompassing: 1. History that provides the foundation of white racial advantage; 2. Culture which serves to normalize and replicate racist images and ideas and; 3. Interconnected institutions and policies that perpetuate and reinforce racial power disparities.

How do current leadership ideas reinforce racism? There are several ways of understanding this:

1. Mainstream ideas about leadership assume that people have attained leadership positions based primarily on their talent, natural ability or achievements. This thinking overlooks the many ways in which structural racism has created economic structures that create advantage and disadvantage based on race, e.g. GI bill that disproportionately enabled white people to buy homes and create wealth (Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity) . These structures have historically created advantages for white people who earn more, and are more likely to have had access to educational opportunity and networks that provide them entry into leadership positions. An analysis of structural racism helps explain why people of color are significantly missing from leadership positions in the private and nonprofit sectors, and challenges racist stereotypes that people of color have less talent and ability. Leadership ideas about the equality of individual opportunity obscure the existence of privilege and justify a glaring lack of diversity in leadership.
2. Our focus on the role of individuals in creating and solving problems does not look at the impact of systems on the ways in which people behave, e.g. people tend to attribute racism to ignorance or hateful behaviors. Based on this logic, it would follow that we could eliminate racism by changing people’s attitudes. Our focus on individual behavior maintains the status quo because it prevents us from understanding how structural racism works and what it will take for us to change culture, policy and institutional structures that perpetuate inequality. The Applied Research Center had found that while intra personal racism and bias are declining, incidents of structural racism are on the rise.
3. Current models privilege leadership that looks and behaves in certain ways, e.g. directive, heroic, high profile, authoritative, positional, and because of historic privilege, often white men. This is, however, only one model of leadership. Leadership is not inherently individualistic as our normative thinking might lead us to believe, e.g. Native American leadership expresses values rooted in a deep understanding of the individual as part of a collective. Collective expressions of leadership are often rendered invisible and not rewarded. Therefore, reward systems reinforce advantage for people who express leadership that is aligned with the dominant culture rendering the leadership of many women and people of different races/ethnicities invisible.

How do our leadership models influence our work on racial justice?

Many leader development programs also focus heavily on individuals and assume that if you select an individual who has demonstrated their leadership potential or ability, and provide them with additional knowledge and skills, they will then strengthen their organizations’ performance and ability to better serving their community (or constituencies). This approach often fails to identify structural issues that inhibit individual power, however capable, and, also fails to provide a nuanced and complex view of what it takes to create change.

Leader Development Model for Stronger Organizations & Community Results:

Individual Development [leads to] Strong organization [leads to] Better Community Results

While it is true that individuals benefit from these programs, it is critical to understand the limitations of this approach. Even when a focus on individuals may support important personal work dealing with issues of race, it is imperative to discuss why a focus on individual behaviors will not be sufficient for dismantling structural racism.

How can we work with individual leaders contribute to diversity and inclusion?

Increasing Opportunity and Diversity: Leader development programs that provide participants with access to networks, financial resources, positions of influence, recognition, desirable skill sets, credentials, peer support groups, friends in high places and other advantages cannot reverse years of historical disadvantage, but they can provide targeted support to help reduce its impact. Strategically focusing on specific skills such as advocacy can support increased racial diversity at policy tables.

Individual Work: Leader development programs can support individuals to become more aware of how racism play’s out in their own life and in their relationships with others. This can include racial and ethnic identity work through which participants understand the impact of internalized oppression or privilege and power, and integrate this understanding to support healing and activism towards racial injustice. In leader development programs participants may also learn about each other’s cultures, values, and experiences of prejudice. This awareness can support behavioral changes and a commitment to deal with racism and prejudice within organizations and institutions.

Intergroup Work: Many leader development programs are responding to the changing demographics in the country and recognize that we need to better reflect this diversity in leadership positions. As programs are more successful in recruiting diverse leadership cohorts for training, issues of race often emerge, presenting an opportunity for a deeper discussion of race. Still, many programs that do not have an explicit focus on race do not build in a framework for dealing with issues of race.

Why is work with individual leaders not sufficient for undoing structural racism?

To support leadership that results in transformational changes, we need to focus on how individuals and groups are connecting, organizing, thinking systemically, bridging, and learning as a dynamic leadership process that mobilizes action on the scale needed to address the inequities and injustices we care deeply about.

Leadership as a process for transformational change:


(More information on the elements of the leadership process)

The focus of leadership as a process is not who (which individuals to recruit into a program) but on how to strengthen the capacity of teams, organizations, networks and communities to engage in the leadership process, while inviting individuals to do the deep inner work that enables them to connect on behalf of large social justice goals.

What does leadership as a process for achieving racial justice look like?

Connecting: Leadership scholars, Ospina and Su point out that “social identity is critical to shaping the emergent process of leadership among actors, not just because one’s race and ethnicity may create specific obstacles to be addressed or serve as a resource to be tapped, but because social identities create communities with collective grievances and aspirations that must be addressed from within.” (Weaving Color Lines: Race, Ethnicity, and the Work of Leadership in Social Change Organizations)

Organizing: We will not reach the scale or impact needed to achieve racial justice supporting one leader at a time or working solely through traditional organizations. Leadership as a process supports groups to utilize communication pathways and social media to increase their reach, and to experiment with when working through organizations, networks and coalitions to get big results.

Systems Thinking: The Kirwan Institute helps us understand that racial disadvantage is primarily a product of opportunity structures within society. “A systems perspective illustrates how racial disadvantages manifest, accumulate, and resist efforts to address them by allowing us to see the world in terms of wholes, rather than in single event snapshots and how parts of a system work together to produce systems outcomes.” (Systems Primer)
For example, a leadership development program may select one problem to address, such as the quality of education, without looking at complex factors and dynamics, i.e. the role of housing stock. In the U.S., a school with a good reputation increases the value of housing. A leadership program that focuses on strengthening schools with a general leadership curriculum for principals will not be able to support a breakthrough without understanding the complex context and system in which that school operates, e.g. the history of the neighborhood, the dynamics among potential stakeholders in the school's success (parents, realtors, mortgage lenders, churches, community groups, unions, school boards, teachers), the politics of the school system, and the demographics of the school.

Bridging: Understanding leadership as a process makes more visible the natural connections between many organizations and individuals in different parts of a system and encourages leadership strategies that connect multiple stakeholders around a shared problem analysis and vision for change. To achieve racial and social justice, we need to move beyond the emphasis on the power of individuals to a philosophy of interdependence and building connection.

Reflecting and learning: When leadership is supported as a process that builds relationships across a system there is increased opportunity for action learning that helps to identify leverage points in systems change and implement strategies that create a positive feedback loop, (an action that begins to change the system/s ability to self correct). PRE and mosaic (Changing the Rules of the Game: youth developments and structural racism) explain that making meaning of lived experiences in diverse groups through social movement building and racial justice work, builds leadership among young people, e.g. as they understand how their lives and opportunities are influenced by racism, they become a stronger collective voice that can advocate for themselves and their communities.


Who are you targeting for recruitment and why? Often programs focus on finding the “right” person based on some criteria of demonstrated capacity. Assuming that individuals possess and win recognition for leadership capacity based on the merit of their performance does not take into account that opportunity for recognition and promotion have not been evenly distributed because of racialized systems of structural disadvantage. Often those who challenge systems of privilege are marginalized. Rewarding those who have succeeded can run the risk of rewarding compliance instead of strengthening action that fundamentally challenges structural racism.

What leadership strategies can do:

• Increase opportunities for people of color: Leadership programs can intentionally target people of color. This won’t undo structural racism, but can begin to diversify the sector. Leadership programs can also support grassroots leaders who are challenging the system by providing skills, resources and access to new networks.
• Democratize leadership: Strategies that build leadership capacity in communities provide the opportunity to recognize and support leadership ability in everyone who wants to get involved in addressing the problems of their community.

Does your program talk about race and structural racism? It is important to keep in mind leadership diversity is necessary, but not a sufficient goal. It is not just about bringing new people to the table, but about shifting the power dynamic. It is critical to bring a racial impact analysis to the work in order to change basic power structures. Often programs that do not have an explicit focus on racial justice do not integrate discussions of structural racism, white privilege and internalized racism – as if current systems, policies, and community change efforts are race-neutral rather than affecting diverse racial groups differentially.

What leadership strategies can do:

• Illuminate structural racism: Leadership strategies can develop the capacity of individuals and groups to understand structural racism as a self perpetuating system. This is crucial and needed. In a survey of more than 120 representatives of leadership training programs around the nation, the Center for Assessment and Policy Development (CAPD) determined that only slightly more than half (50.6%) include a discussion of structural racism in their planned activities (Flipping the Script: White Privilege in Community Building).
• Talk about race: We need to talk openly about race. The leadership development process should support learning to talk about race. As RCLA has learned, “Those conversations that contain a potential for conflict or allow people to test uncharted waters can be opportunities for participants to learn something new and even transform their own thoughts and feelings”. (Taking Back the Work, A Cooperative Inquiry into the Work of Leaders of Color in Movement-Building Organizations)
• Engage in healing and inner work: Creating a safe environment for emotional exploration of racism, healing, and support is an important part of nurturing racial justice leadership. For this work, it is important to set aside time for reflection, storytelling and meaning making.

How does your program decide what type of supports are needed? Many programs do not recognize that some participants enter with a “leg up” based on their education, economic background and access to networks, especially if they are white and middle class. Without paying attention to these differences, a typical program approach that assumes equal opportunity will not take the extra steps needed to address historical disadvantage by providing additional resources, targeted training, access to networks and mentors, etc. that will enable every participant the same likelihood of success.

What leadership strategies can do:

• Resources: Provide resources to program participants based on need, e.g. help cover childcare, missed time from work, healthcare, educational opportunities. Leadership programs are an opportunity to move resources into a community outside of traditional organizational structures.
• Skills development: Leadership programs can be an opportunity to provide more equitable access to the types of skills that enable people of color to participate at policy tables where they can bring a racial impact analysis and a strong relationship of community accountability.
• Mentoring and intergenerational partnership: Mentoring models enables an exchange of wisdom across generations and also extends networks of access.

What leadership model are you promoting? Many programs promote the individual model of leadership, one that is associated with leadership “over” that creates relationships of dominance that have historically applied coercion, force or influence to reinforce privilege and power. This approach gets privileged over collective models that are often more aligned with the experiences and values of people from different races/ethnicities. Reward systems favor the individual model and continue to advantage those of the dominant culture.

What leadership strategies can do:

• Be inclusive in promoting leadership models: Programs can invite all who are engaged in leadership work together to talk authentically about the ways in which they and their communities express leadership and the values that they bring to leadership.
• Create rewards for and monitor collective behavior: Leadership programs can create systems that recognize and value more collective and collaborative behavior that is often rendered invisible.

What result is your leadership program trying to achieve? Few leader programs are designed to be accountable for community and systems level results. In their assessment of racial justice grant making, the Philanthropic Initiative for Racial Equity and the Applied Research Center, found that to be effective in promoting racial equity it is important to move beyond diversity and develop a shared framework on racism: to see racial justice as a core part of mission, goals and strategies.

What leadership strategies can do:

• Make racial justice an explicit program goal: We are more likely to contribute to changes at a systems level by supporting leadership within organizations, communities, and fields with a clear analysis of structural racism, an ability to think systemically about how racial advantage is perpetuated, time to reflect and make sense of our own experiences of race, and a philosophy of interdependence that supports us to engage collective action.

Holding ourselves accountable for transforming structural racism: Many leader development programs evaluate success by asking participants to report on increased personal mastery and/or behavioral changes. Benchmarks based on individual acquisition of skills and knowledge are not indicators of changes in structural racism. If we are going to hold ourselves accountable for transforming structural racism then according to Sally Leiderman, we need to track changes in community-level outcomes for different racial groups over the long-term (using such tools as report card), track the extent to which race becomes a less powerful predictor of how people fare, and track progress toward a community’s understanding of how privilege and oppression shape opportunities. The Evaluation Tools for Racial Equity site offers suggestions for engaging stakeholders in developing an evaluation.
Starting with racial justice as an outcome creates the context for understanding and strengthening leadership processes that contribute to specific racial justice results, e.g. a leadership program focused on educators with an anticipated outcome of improved quality of education might consider “test scores” an important indicator. This will not necessarily take into account inequality among schools in resources, and the historical and current relationships among housing discrimination, property values and school resources. Starting with specific racial equity outcomes will help leadership educators bring a racial impact lens to the problem and strategies.

Institutional Change: Social Policy Research Associates (SPR), for example, has developed an institutional change model that focuses on the required organizational context for any individual leaders' efforts to address racial equity to succeed (Commissioning Multicultural Evaluation: A Foundation Resource Guide). This framework focuses on three major institutional support areas that include: a focus on a shared vision behind the organization's racial equity work; an authorizing culture to support multiculturalism, and appropriate organizational policies, procedures and systems to implement the work. Attention to ensure that these three areas are aligned with diversity and racial equity principles has been instrumental in transforming not only individual values and practices, but institutional (such as philanthropic foundations) understanding, buy-in, policies, and approaches to racial equity work in the community.

Power dynamics and evaluation as learning: Not only does what we evaluate need to change, but how we evaluate needs to change as well. The Evaluation Tools for Racial Equity website acknowledges that the influence of race on the personal and professional lives of evaluators affects evaluation. We need to shift the power dynamics in evaluation away from the privileged institutions and experts, and towards groups of color who have the power to establish what success means, what questions will be asked, what measures will be used, what evidence is credible, how resources will be used, the timetable for results, and how results will be interpreted, framed, and shared. Evaluation should become part of the reflection and learning process that is integral to the leadership process itself.

1. Applied Research Center (ARC) and the Philanthropic Initiative for Racial Equity (PRE), Catalytic Change: Lessons Learned from the Racial Justice Grantmaking Assessment, May 2009.
2. Aspen Institute Roundtable on Community Change (Karen Fulbright-Anderson, Keith Lawrence, Stacey Sutton, Gretchen Susi, and Anne Kubisch, authors), Structural Racism and Youth Development: Issues, Challenges, and Implications, Washington, D.C.: The Aspen Institute, 2005.
3. The Denver Foundation, Inside Inclusiveness: Race, Ethnicity and Nonprofit Organizations, Prepared by Katherine Pease & Associates, July 2003.
4. The Denver Foundation, A Report from the Pipeline, Reflections on the Nonprofit Sector from People of Color in Metro Denver, 2007.
5. Diversity in Philanthropy Project, Diversity in Philanthropy Project Case Study, Evaluation with a Diversity Lens: Exploring its Functions and Utility to Inform Philanthropic Effectiveness, Millett, Ricardo, et al.
6. Evaluation Tools for Racial Equity, website: http://www.evaluationtoolsforracialequity.org/
7. GrantCraft: Grantmaking with a Racial Equity Lens, prepared in partnership with the Philanthropic Initiative for Racial Equity, 2007.
8. The Greenlining Institute, Funding the New Majority: Philanthropic Investment in Minority-Led Nonprofits.
9. Endo Inouye, Traci, Cao Yu, Hanh and Adefuin, Jo-Ann in partnership with Social Policy Research Associates with the support of The California Endowment’s Diversity in Health Evaluation Project, Commissioning Multicultural Evaluation: A Foundation Resource Guide.
10. Leadership Learning Community, Developing a Racial Justice and Leadership Framework to Promote Racial Equity, Address Structural Racism, and Heal Racial and Ethnic Divisions in Communities, Meehan, Reinelt, Perry, Prepared for and Supported by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation & Center for Ethical Leadership, July 2009.
11. Leadership Learning Community, Multiple Styles of Leadership: Increasing the Participation of People of Color in the Leadership of the Nonprofit Sector, Elissa Perry with Jamie Schenker supported by and prepared for Annie E. Casey Foundation, Fall 2005.
12. Menendian, Stephen and Watt, Caitlin, Systems Primer, Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity, December 2008.
13. Ospina, Sonia M. and Foldy, Erica G., A Critical Review of Race and Ethnicity in the Leadership Literature: Surfacing Context, Power and the Collective Dimensions of Leadership, June 2009.
14. Ospina, Sonia and Su, Celina, Weaving Color Lines: Race, Ethnicity, and the Work of Leadership in Social Change Organizations in Leadership 2009, Sage Publications, 2009.
15. PolicyLink, Leadership for Policy Change, Strengthening Communities of Color through Leadership Development, 2003.
16. Philanthropic Initiative for Racial Equity, and mosaic: Changing the Rules of the Game: youth developments and structural racism, 2004
17. Philanthropic Initiative for Racial Equity, Critical Issues Forum, 2008
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21. Quiroz-Martinez, J., HoSang, D., & Villarosa, L., Changing the Rules of the Game: Youth Development & Structural Racism, Philanthropic Initiative for Racial Equity (PRE), 2004.
22. Research Center for Leadership in Action, Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, Taking Back the Work, A Cooperative Inquiry into the Work of Leaders of Color in Movement-Building Organizations, 2009.
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