Reclaiming Our Narrative to Achieve Equity for All

My sisters and I spent most of our summers with our Granny in a small town in Central Florida. Granny lived in Haines City, which is more similar to small towns in Georgia and Alabama than big cities like Miami or Orlando. My Granny lived walking distance from our church and the fertilizer plant, which was the community’s largest employer. My sisters and I would spend hours of fun cheering on the other neighborhood kids who practiced backflips on old mattresses waiting in the field for trash pickup. That field was boxed in by the railroad track and the metal fence that protected my Granny’s flowers from animals and passersby. Despite our Granny’s small town life, the folks we knew nurtured big-time hopes for what was possible for them and their families.One of our favorite things to do with Granny was to visit her good friend, Miss Clara. Whenever we drove to Miss Clara’s, I was fascinated by how the front of her house looked like it was a yard sale that devolved into a junkyard. There were so many mismatched and mixed-use items on her lawn that it was easy to assume the inside of her house would be overflowing with additional debris in disuse and disarray. But whenever we walked inside Miss Clara’s house, we marveled at how her kids always had the latest and greatest toys, games, and gadgets. Her yard was more a reflection of her idiosyncrasies than her economic well-being.

When we left Miss Clara’s house dreaming of games and toys our parents would rarely buy, we often drove by houses that looked equally disheveled to the untrained eye. But we learned to ascertain the difference between homes inhabited by eccentric matriarchs and houses whose disrepair reeked of a deeper despair. We prayed for the sick and shut-in neighbors who had fallen on hard times and raised offerings for them in church.

It was not uncommon to observe one or more neighbors on every street who needed support; their houses were a reminder to rally around others in our community. Granny and her peers treated our struggling neighbors with care and kindness because most of them recognized that they were 1–2 paychecks away from similar hardships. And while I didn’t understand it then, those offerings of help were the difference between buying household staples or resorting to a set of choices only considered when everything else has failed you and those you care about.

Decades later, as I canvassed multiple neighborhoods in the swing state of North Carolina during this election season, I reflected on the razor’s edge of economic prosperity and despair. As I passed out resources to encourage my community to vote, I was overwhelmed by the number of houses that reminded me of my Granny’s neighbors who fell on hard times. And I was also struck by how so many of us who fight for equity and have experienced inequity ourselves have become disconnected from the immediate needs of our community.

We show up at conferences and invite-only rooms where the cost of a single day’s rental could cover our family members’ salaries. We quote MLK and Audre Lorde to an audience of peers who compensate us for our insights, yet are often absent when we ask for help in turning our insights into action. To make matters worse, we too often pander to allies who are eager to use their relationship with us as proof of their moral superiority but who are reluctant to take the necessary steps to create real change.

It is no surprise that within this environment, many of us have conflated rousing cheers at a conference with imminent change in our communities. As leaders advancing equity, the widespread acknowledgment of our work immediately after George Floyd’s murder was water on desert sand. We were finally experiencing momentum after years of antagonism. Institutions were funding our work in droves, which we believed was a leading indicator to broader and deeper change. Yet after only a few short years, much of the support vanished, and most of what we had left was bold statements coupled with inadequate implementation. We were so giddy with short-term momentum that we enabled long-term fecklessness.

People often say in times of challenge and struggle that there is more that unites us than divides us. This is true, even now, in our divided country. What unites most Americans is a belief that the economy is no longer working for them or their families. So many question what it says about our country that we can elect someone who has consistently demonstrated a lack of character. Instead, we should question, how bad are people’s everyday lives that millions of Americans either opted out of raising their voices or rolled the dice believing the devil they know is better than the reality they have.

To be clear, the election results do not mean that the public is against equity. For those of us who care deeply about building equitable systems, the data clearly highlights systemic inequity as the driving force behind so many of the challenges our communities face. But we cannot afford for equity to be grounded more in aspirational rhetoric than the needs of our communities. That is reckless behavior that we must confront and remediate if we want to mobilize a coalition who understands why prioritizing equitable impact makes both personal and economic sense. People want to move beyond hearing about the importance of equity. People need to experience equity.

The following five steps will allow us to reclaim our narrative:

1. Abandon condescension: Instead of speaking down to those who look or think differently than us, we must find the commonality between. That doesn’t mean we should perpetuate or encourage unacceptable behavior. One reason why organizations partner with CapEQ is that we meet them where they are. We leave room for people to make mistakes and provide a balance of actionable steps and accountability. If we want to build momentum around our work that withstands political headwinds, we must find where we’re aligned instead of chiding people who are earlier in their journey.
2. Embrace curiosity: This country needs deep, fundamental change. No one has the complete answer on how to deliver this change in a sustainable, broad-based way. If they tell you they do, they are probably selling you something you don’t want or need. We must be curious and ask questions to identify how we can create a truly equitable economy, rather than assuming we have all the answers.
3. Use accessible language: The average person supports equitable policies, such as higher minimum wages, broader healthcare access and even initiatives to increase diversity in the workforce. However, the language used by those of us who work for equity can sometimes be limiting and hard to understand. We should use plain language to describe the work we do to bring in as many people as possible to our movement.
4. Deliver quick wins in our communities: In my book, The Social Impact Advantage, I talked about the need for companies to find “quick wins” as they create equitable strategies for their customers and employees. Similarly, we must create quick wins in communities to show the power of an equitable economy. People want to see change, and if we can deliver that to them in real, tangible ways, we can build on that success.
5. Enable lasting community impact: Quick wins create momentum that over time create lasting change. We can use what we learn from short-term interventions to create the conditions for longer-term change, developing a virtuous cycle for an equitable economy that helps communities thrive.

In reclaiming this narrative, we can create an “economy for all.” Doing so will help us, as equity advocates, ensure that our rhetoric aligns with reality. We can create beneficial strategies where everyone thrives, which by definition includes those most marginalized. We can show what’s possible when we look after our neighbors, which is a lesson I learned from my Granny.

I do not expect the next several years to be easy or straightforward for those of us working to achieve equitable outcomes. But that was always going to be true, regardless of the election’s outcome. The silver lining is that the divide in this country is really not about political ideology. In the words of Governor Deval Patrick, so much of the discontent is about insiders vs. outsiders.

As leaders who have experienced economic inequity ourselves, we are best positioned to bridge that gap. We know what it feels like to have family members who have to choose between paying for gas or eggs. Our role now, and always, is to ensure that regardless of what rooms we are in, we push our peers and ourselves to prioritize the work that cares for our neighbors. We can’t forget that people fighting to survive are often not in the position to consider choices that allow us to thrive. If we remember our unique role, we can ensure that our collective work is building an economy that works for us all — no exceptions.