How Your Organization Can Build an Equitable Workplace with Justice and Accountability
This week, Derek Chauvin was found guilty on all three charges for the death of George Floyd. While a step in the right direction, this outcome holds an individual accountable for wrongdoing, but it is not justice. On the same afternoon, Ma'Khia Bryant, a 16-year-old Black girl was shot and killed by police in Columbus, Ohio. Some will argue that her death was justified because she was holding a knife. But when Kyle Rittenhouse, a young white supremacist, shot and killed two protesters with an AR-15, police allowed him to leave the scene of the crime to travel 20 miles home before being arrested the following day. Black people are more than three times as likely as white people to be killed during a police encounter.
While we must demand individual accountability, justice requires us to dismantle and redesign the systems, including those in our workplaces, that allow inequitable outcomes to occur over and over again. Below are four powerful ways you can help build a more just and equitable workplace.
Honoring the Dream, Doing the Work
We are living in two realities. At the beginning of 2021, fear, resentment, and entitlement culminated in an insurrection on our nation's Capitol. Rioters marched with Confederate flags, carrying weapons and wearing anti-Semitic shirts. And yet, we have now welcomed Kamala Harris, the first Black and South Asian American woman, into the White House to take her place as vice president—days after honoring the work of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Much like America, 2021 is filled with contrasts. Many of us are wondering, where do we go from here?
