We must take on the difficult work of accounting for race and racism in our collective change-making endeavors or face the risk of failing to undo systemic inequities.
In 2016, when I started researching the successes and failures of cross-sector partnerships like My Brother’s Keeper (MBK), I chose not to foreground race.
That was a mistake.
I quickly learned that race and what I call racial negotiation—the leveraging of the power of race to achieve a goal—are at the crux of collective-action efforts aiming to address deep societal inequities.
We must account for this dynamic in our change-making endeavors or risk failing to achieve the ultimate transformation needed to undo systemic inequities: the acknowledgment and eradication of racism.
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