youre racist but thats none of my business

Do not set goals benchmarked against other organisations or your own previous levels, be ambitious and set the goal as where it should be not an incremental improvement or so that you are in line with peers.

Set goals for the ideal situation and then work towards those.

If you have a board - look at the representation of that board.

Are there any obvious pay or management differences? Again, ask yourself where could you do better?

Draft and share a brief diversity report to objectively see how you are doing.

Critically revisit your people policies - are they explicitly anti-racist? Are they understood and meaningfully enacted by your team? Where could you do better?.

Begin to share what you are committed to doing going forward.

Talk to your team - share a statement internally & externally clarifying your and the organisation’s stance as anti-racist.

Find and listen to Black voices in the public discourse to learn about the movement.

Listen & learn - Do the work as an individual first (see below for resources).

Angela Davis Through your leadership & governance What you can do You have to act as if it were possible to radically transform the world. It’s natural with the discourse and heightened emotions right now to feel shame or guilt or defensiveness - but remember the bigger picture.

Don’t expect this work to feel comfortable or easy.

Being silent is being complicit, now more than ever, developing the ability to be a good ally is essential to making real change. Mistakes can be corrected, you can always learn if you’re open to feedback. To rest, to process, to grieve and to organise and it is not their responsibility to educate you or lead the change in your organisation or community.

Don’t ask your Black colleagues or friends about their opinions or guidance in response to the situation.

If it’s purely a PR tool it will read as completely inauthentic and, as we’ve been seeing, you could be called out for it. A post of solidarity or words, truly means nothing if not supported by a commitment to act.

Don’t use the Black Lives Matter hashtag or post on social media without also sharing resources or detailing the actions you as an organisation are committing to.

This is by no means a complete list and there may be suggestions that need to be changed/added to/updated, so please drop us a note if there are ways to make it better. We’ve included a lot of ideas here, many which might take time to develop and implement but we hope you find a few that you’re excited about and committed to engage with now. We’d love you to use this guide to inspire action and to continually interrogate your business and where you can do better.

There have been a number of resources shared about what you can do as an individual, which we’ll note at the bottom of this post, but as a business you have additional power and responsibility to ensure that you are actively anti-racist across your organisation.

It needs more individuals and organisations to join, to help build and sustain the momentum that will create lasting, meaningful social change. Maybe you’re also questioning how you can directly support and contribute to the efforts to tackle systemic racism and social injustice where you are. KendiĪs a business leader, you may be watching the global protests in response to the murder of George Floyd and Belly Mujinga’s death here in the UK. There is no in-between safe space of ‘not racist’. One either allows racial inequities to persevere, as a racist, or confronts racial inequities, as an anti-racist.

One either believes problems are rooted in groups of people, as a racist, or locates the roots of problems in power and policies, as an anti-racist. The opposite of racist isn’t ‘not racist.’ It is ‘anti-racist.’ What’s the difference? One endorses either the idea of a racial hierarchy as a racist, or racial equality as an anti-racist.

Youre racist but thats none of my business