From the course: Supporting Allyship and Anti-Racism at Work

Workplace antiracism is everyone's business

From the course: Supporting Allyship and Anti-Racism at Work

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Workplace antiracism is everyone's business

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- Racism is a very personal issue that, unfortunately, impacts virtually every aspect of society, particularly the workplace. One of the mistakes organizations have made in the past is relegating issues like anti-racism, discrimination, and equity to other people to handle. While leadership and specialized groups play a key role, like changing policies or providing broad training opportunities, building anti-racist organizations often requires a fundamental shift in corporate culture. And that's where you and I come in. Indeed, if the fundamental DNA of the organization is to change, everybody has to play a role. I'm Dana Brownlee, a workplace anti-racism consultant and corporate trainer. And I've worked in and around corporate America for three decades. For nearly 20 years, I've trained teams and individuals on how to build more effective teams and navigate workplace challenges. One more thing, I'm a black female who has experienced and worked against racism throughout my career. I didn't read it in a book or watch a TED Talk, I lived it. Because racism is such a deeply personal issue, in this course, we're going to take a personal approach. You won't find broad DEI theory or generic HR frameworks. Instead, we will specifically focus on anti-racism. And to do that, I will leverage personal experience and decades of team building expertise to provide real life, relatable examples, recommended best practices and tips and techniques to help you build more anti-racist workplaces. That said, there are many other areas of discrimination and inequity, including gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, marital status, ability, and other areas. Diversity efforts include this broad spectrum of differences, both visible and invisible, and that work is critically important. But for this particular course, we will intentionally focus specifically on strategies for addressing workplace racism. It's also important to acknowledge that racism is a huge topic literally covering centuries of history, theories, laws, and the like. As much as I wish we could, we won't have the ability to delve into important topics like race as a social construct, unconscious bias and privilege, the history of racism and discrimination for different racial groups, or the specifics around systemic racism and how it works. But I'm so excited about our focus, helping you identify specific steps that you can take to foster anti-racism where you work.

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