What question(s) are you burning to ask our Equity Advisors about our work and what’s coming up for you personally?
Supporting B Corporations
on Racial Equity
What question(s) are you burning to ask our Equity Advisors about our work and what’s coming up for you personally?
There is one widely experienced yet unaddressed and persistent challenge to racial equity.
White men still hold many of the primary levers of power, yet often remain the least engaged and least skillful in equity spaces.
This is also often true in business.
For white male leaders in business to play their important role in service of the JEDI and/or racial equity strategies and priorities set by the Black, Indigenous, and other People of Color and white women who have been leading that work for so long, these white male leaders must shift their mindsets and build their skill sets. ��These twin goals are best achieved in community.
Supporting B Corp Leaders on Racial Equity
What question(s) are you burning to ask our Equity Advisors about our work and what’s coming up for you personally?
Supporting B Corp Leaders on Racial Equity
Phase 1: Shift Mindsets
Phase 2: Build Skill Sets
A multi-phase approach to ‘the work’ can overcome this challenge.
‘The Work’
Without supportive preparatory experiences to shift mindsets among white men, efforts to help each business move beyond statements and implement the Blueprint for Racial Equity will fall short of desired outcomes due to lack of understanding of the scope and origins of racial inequity and consequent lack of meaningful and sustained commitment and resources to achieve racial equity.
In addition, without the opportunity to develop basic literacy about whiteness and how the culture and systems of white supremacy play out in their own lives, white men are more likely to cause harm when in the multiracial, multigender spaces that carry on the vast majority of racial equity work.
Equity work is often more effective when alternating between working in affinity and shared spaces. This program adopts a braided approach with two steps: in Step 1, people who identify as White men and women will work in White affinity spaces by gender; in Step 2, cohorts become multiracial/gender.
Flow of Participants
WMRJ Foundations for B Corp Leaders
INSIGHT
White men doing pre-work will result in:
- less harm to women and BIPOC
- more proportional, committed, and skillful engagement by White men in multiracial multigender work
Shared space
(e.g. 102)
Braided program
Affinity spaces
(e.g. 101)
| Step 1 | Step 2 | |
Program | Foundations 101: Seeing White | Foundations 102: Groundwater | |
Audience | White men affinity space | White women affinity space* | Multiracial/gender shared space |
Duration | 8 weekly 90 minute sessions | 1.5 day + 1 90 min session | |
Timing | Sep 26-Nov 14; 1:00-2:30 ET | Nov 30 12:00-4:30 ET Dec 1 10:00-6:00 ET Dec 5 1:00-2:30 ET | |
Participants | Cohorts 25-30 participants (min 20/cohort registered by Sep 1) | ||
*If there is demand, this experience, designed and facilitated by White women/nonbinary JEDI practitioners will be offered in Feb 2024, but not for fall 2023.
Commitment
Cohorts meet for weekly 90 minute sessions over 8 weeks. Participants commit to complete assignments even if they must miss a session.
Curriculum
WMRJ uses the Seeing White podcast series, and curated supplemental content, as an entry point and anchor of foundational knowledge, as well as a shared experience, for all of us. It is also a model of one white man’s accountable learning journey everyone in our community can draw from and reference. Curriculum and facilitation will reflect gender of participants.
Experience
Participants meet primarily in small breakout discussions to process reflections from their journals about what they’re thinking and feeling about the content in each Seeing White episode and supplemental materials. No matter how much or little anti-racism or DEI work we have done, this experience challenges participants to live into WMRJ values that everyone has something to contribute and to learn.
Phase 1/Step 1 Foundations 101: Seeing White
Chenjerai
Kumyanika
John
Biewen
Phase 1/Step 2 Foundations 102: Groundwater Intensive
Groundwater/REI’s seminal 1.5 day intensive experience is designed to develop the capacity of participants to better understand racism in its institutional and structural forms. Moving away from a focus on personal bigotry and bias, this workshop presents a historical, cultural, and structural analysis of racism.
Topics covered include our fish/lake/groundwater analysis of structural racism; understanding and controlling implicit bias; race, poverty, and place; markedness theory; institutional power arrangements and power brokers; importance of definitions of race and racism; history and legacy of race in American economic and policy development; racial identity and its interaction with institutional culture.
With shared language and a clearer understanding of how institutions and systems are producing unjust and inequitable outcomes, participants should leave the training better equipped to begin to work for change as cross-sector of the Groundwater Network.
Phase 1/Step 2 Processing Groundwater and Implications
In week 10, participants will meet for 1 90 minute session to process the Groundwater Intensive and familiarize themselves with frameworks and partners to support personal and organizational transformation.
Organizational Transformation
Personal Transformation
White anti-racist space(s)
BIPOC affinity space(s)
Multi-racial/gender sessions
What is still sitting with you from Groundwater? What feelings came up for you? What are the implications of the Groundwater, personally
Week 10
Processing Groundwater
Implications
What’s coming up for you?
What are some of the options for continuing the work of personal and organizational transformation?
What areas might be:
- our greatest opportunity for impact
- most needed for us to address
- most challenging for us
- missing given our unique position
Flow of Participants
Program Cost and Contribution
The BIPOC Network brings together those that identify as Black, Indigenous, and People of Color to form community and offer opportunities and collaboration.
Businesses led by BIPOC who also identify as women work with B Corp consulting firms to access resources needed to: measure and improve their impact, tell their story, adopt legal stakeholder governance, and certify as a B Corp.
For every WMRJ Foundations for B Corp Leaders cohort of 30 participants, $5,000 is contributed to fund B Lab’s racial equity strategy, including its BIPOC Network and Level program.
Cost of this integrated WMRJ Foundations for B Corp Leaders program is:
*WMRJ recommends that White women and non-binary folk participate in both 101:Seeing White and 102:Groundwater. However, they may choose to only participate in 102: Groundwater.
Flow of Participants
How to Join
Register below for the first WMRJ Foundations for B Corps cohort:
Note: 101:Seeing White is for participants who identify as White. Registration requires participants to self-identify their gender so that WMRJ can ensure they participate in the appropriate affinity cohort for White men or for White women and people who identify as non-binary.
Note: 102:Groundwater is for participants of all identity. Participants who identity as White men must have completed 101:Seeing White, which is highly recommended for participants who identify as White women/people who identify as non-binary.
Interested B Corps should contact WMRJ stewards
Or reach out to any of these WMRJ in the B Corp community, including: Rooney and Ted Castle (Rhino Foods); Justin Wright (Habitus); Adrian Gershon (formerly cChange); Chris Lyon (Androscoggin Bank); Drew Bonfiglio (Emzingo); Fortunat Mueller (Revision Energy); Jared Meyers (Legacy Vacation Resorts); Ryan Honeyman (Lift Economy); Justin Belleme (JB Media); Benn Marine (Dirigo Collective); Michael Neuwirth (formerly Danone); Ben Conniff (Luke’s Lobster); Ben Anderson (formerly B Lab and Preserve)
Ideally, a braided pattern of doing the work in both caucus spaces and shared spaces will continue throughout individual racial equity learning journeys.
This helps work through issues that come up related to our individual identities, and to bring those insights, questions, challenges, and opportunities to shared spaces more skillfully.
White Men
for Racial Justice
Be More with Anu*
(caucus spaces)
Groundwater Institute
(shared space)
Note: Supporting BIPOC B Corp Leaders
Example of Braided Learning Journeys in Phase 1
Concurrent with the WMRJ Foundations 101 offering, Be More with Anu (BMA) is offering a learning journey for members of the B Corp community who identify as Black, Indigenous, and other People of Color. More info here.
What question(s) are you burning to ask our Equity Advisors about our work and what’s coming up for you personally?
Partners
B Lab US/Can (B Lab) is the nonprofit network transforming the global economy to benefit all people, communities, and the planet.
White Men for Racial Justice (WMRJ) is an anti-racist pro-justice community of practice for people who identify as white men that is rooted in personal transformation, relationships of mutual accountability, and taking action in our spheres of influence. In its first 2 years, more than 230 men have participated in more than 175 hours of programming over 115 sessions and been assigned more than 200 hours of independent learning.
The Groundwater Institute (GWI) works with leaders of the major institutions across the country in the corporate, nonprofit, and government sectors. GWI partners with leaders who intend to bring the full weight of their organizations and influence to bear in the struggle for racial equity. GWI believes in the power of connecting community, grassroots networks, and institutional leaders together in this work.
Be More with Anu (BMA) is a DEIB training company that empowers impact-driven organizations to move beyond compliance and actualize their diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB) commitments.
What question(s) are you burning to ask our Equity Advisors about our work and what’s coming up for you personally?
Appendix A:
Beyond Phase 1
What question(s) are you burning to ask our Equity Advisors about our work and what’s coming up for you personally?
A Final Note for B Corps Who Register 6 People
Phase 1: Shift Mindsets
Phase 1.5: Pause to Assess Needs & Next Steps
While not included as part of this WMRJ Foundations for B Corp Leaders program, an important intermediary step for each individual B Corp will increase the effectiveness of this work.
WMRJ recommends an intermediate step in which organizations harvest the wisdom that sprouts as a result of Phase 1. Questions to be explored by leadership in program design for what’s next include:
Flow of Participants
Phase 1.5: Pause to Assess Needs and Next Steps
INSIGHT
Beginning organizational work prematurely, before sustained personal work, will likely produce only superficial insights and workplans.
Organizations should each create their own immersive experience consistent with their unique culture during which participants celebrate the completion of Phase 1, deepen culture building around the work, and grapple with the big question: “How might we apply our learning to bring the full power of our organization to advance racial equity in our organization, community, and society?”
Key considerations for an immersive experience
Phase 2, not led by WMRJ, in which B Corps join new cohorts to implement the Blueprint for Racial Equity, may itself have sub-phases to allow organizations to build trust and momentum in their multiracial multigender cohort with racial equity work that feel closest to the surface and to the business.
Organization
Flow of Participants
Phase 2 – Building Skill Sets
Community/Society
Phase 2.1 – 6-12 months
Phase 2.2 – addl 6-12 months
Phase 2: Build Skill Sets – Blueprint Cohorts
INSIGHT
The Blueprint is holistic and can be overwhelming, so implementing it in phases working from the inside out might be helpful based on the experience of a WMRJ @Work pilot.
What question(s) are you burning to ask our Equity Advisors about our work and what’s coming up for you personally?
Appendix B:
More on WMRJ
There is no such thing as a “safe space” —
We exist in the real world.
We all carry scars and have caused wounds.
This space
seeks to turn down the volume of the world outside,
and amplify voices that have to fight to be heard elsewhere,
This space will not be perfect.
It will not always be what we wish it to be
But
It will be our space together,
and we will work on it side by side.
--Beth Strano
Invitation to Brave Space
Identity An anti-racist, pro-justice community of practice rooted in personal transformation, relationships of mutual accountability, and taking action in our spheres of influence.
Purpose To dismantle racism and the culture and systems of white supremacy in ourselves, our communities, and our country.
Vision An America in which everyone feels valued, has access to equitable resources to reach their full potential, and is part of joyful communities of belonging.
Values We all have something to contribute. We all have something to learn.
Opportunity White men continue to hold the primary levers of political, economic and cultural power, and therefore have a unique responsibility and opportunity to act.
What Men Say About WMRJ
"In a few short months WMRJ has gone from a non-existent in my life to a top priority for me." Chuck
“WMRJ has had a huge impact upon me and quite frankly in my role as board chair." Jeff
"[WMRJ] is positively influencing the raising of my son." Scott
“Joining WMRJ has profoundly impacted who I am, how I show up, and how I view the world.” Josh
“To be candid, it has been very uncomfortable sometimes as ignorance is bliss." Brett
“Before WMRJ, I was stuck . . . having desire and commitment, but not necessarily the skills and support system to move forward. . . . I now have the WMRJ community as an indispensable resource.” Anon
Why White Men
A precondition to building multiracial relationships and to working effectively in multiracial groups is taking responsibility to do our own work. And this white racial caucus group is part of that work.
Additionally, and perhaps most importantly, we must avoid causing harm to friends, family, co-workers, and colleagues who are Black, Indigenous, or other People of Color (BIPOC). Many people of color are tired of being asked to bear the additional burden (beyond living in a society in which they experience racist culture and systems everyday) of educating white people about race and racism.
A major challenge for most white men specifically who genuinely care about this issue is that there are few comfortable spaces to have honest conversations about it.
We need a brave space where we can have uncomfortable conversations, and be vulnerable in these conversations.
We need a space to explore:
Our Accountability
We are each accountable to each other, and we are all accountable to our equity advisors.
Dr. Zoe Spencer says “I am wise enough to know that I know nothing at all.” She is a scholar/strategist/activist from Barry Farms projects in DC. She currently teaches sociology at Virginia State University. She is a published author and a highly sought after speaker and presenter. Most importantly she is a freedom fighter, a seeker of truth, and unapologetic in her purpose of making a better world for humanity, no matter how small the mark. She says: I am a microcosm of the Universe, in real life. I was put here to perform a task, maybe even to take this test…test my faith, test my humility, test my obedience, test my resilience, test my focus…test my willingness to simply admit that every blessing is given to carry out a divine purpose…And the closer I get to actualization, the more I realize that I am just a vessel, on loan to this Earth to see what I will do here, to tell stories, fight, love, and then leave…hopefully a legacy-a lingering spirit- that will live on-long after my body is no more.
Taylor Paul was appointed by the governor to his juvenile justice and prevention board and just recently the governor’s department of criminal justice service board as well. Taylor Paul is cofounder of RVA League for Safer Streets, an unorthodox basketball program that focuses on problem solving, critical thinking and conflict resolution for high risk youth in the city of Richmond, VA. He’s also the founder of THE S.A.N.I.T.Y. Project (Standing Against Negative Influences Toward Youth), a program that takes aim at incarcerated fathers and their children. Paul Taylor served 23 years of a life plus 26 year sentence, and was paroled on his 11th try in 2017, returning to his community as Taylor Paul, the opposite of the man who went in. He’s passionate about restoring humanity back inside of people challenging all racial biases and social injustices. Taylor Paul shared his story in the Richmond Post-Dispatch and more recently at Philadelphia Citizen’s Ideas We Should Steal Festival.
The Role of Equity Advisors
By being accountable to Black equity advisors, our community is more credible and our learning and action more thoughtful.
This is because we don’t know what we don’t know. As white men we have patterns of thinking and behavior that can work against the very purpose we have co-created for our community. Creating the space to check our assumptions and instincts with those most impacted by the culture and systems we seek to dismantle helps to ensure we minimize any unintentional harm and maximize any positive impact of our work.
Being accountable means we seek their advice to inform our work, yet we remain the decision makers and are accountable -- to ourselves, to each other, and to our children -- for our actions and inactions.
Our Community Cadence
We gather in community every Tuesday from 8:00-9:30 ET..
Every Month | ||
Week 1 | Fireside Chat / Trainings | Engaging with BIPOC Equity Advisors / Trainers / Guest speakers |
Week 2 | Community Learning 1 | Understanding key concepts and issues |
Week 3 | Peer Support Circles | Sharing and listening to personal stories of how this all shows up in each of our lives |
Week 4 | Community Learning 2 | Translating our learning into action |
Our Community Norms*
* Updated 3/21; Inspired by the work of A. Michael and Conger, UPenn GSE
Own our impact We recognize that our good intentions might have a negative impact. If we learn this has happened, we own it, prioritizing others experience and our learning.
Prepare for discomfort We know discomfort is inevitable and seek to “lean into” that discomfort in effort to understand its origins and its impact.
Stay committed We prioritize attending and participating in meetings and engaging with the content; we take risks to share and use what we learn with others; we practice self-care to stay engaged for the long haul.
Expect a lack of closure We are aware that racism has existed for 400+ years on this continent, and that dismantling racism is unlikely to be complete in our lifetime, let alone this gathering, yet we persist in the work.
Be aware of our language We are aware of the power of language, and specifically, the power of the n-word. We do not use that word in our lives, including in our sessions. We are conscious not to use language that could be harmful, be it through a gender, race, ability, or other lens.
Honor privacy We encourage vulnerability by respecting confidentiality, sharing outside the group only without attribution
Respect individual experience We are all at different points in our journey, and our community is open to all willing to do the work. We believe we all have something to contribute and something to learn.
Use “I” statements We share our own thoughts, feelings and experiences, do not generalize, and refrain from talking about “people,”“we,” or “you.”
Share experience not advice We offer advice only when requested; we ask for permission to offer advice if it seems vital.
Reflection before action Prioritize asking questions, including of yourself, before giving answers or rushing to solutions. Monitor use of declarative statements of “absolutes”; use language that seeks connection and expands conversation
LEARNING
- the history of race and racism;
- how both play out across all aspects of our society today
REFLECTION
- continuous checking-in on relationships, process, and outcome
ACTION
- our learning and reflection informs our actions across all our spheres of influence
REFLECTION
- how they play out, consciously and unconsciously, in ourselves and our relationships.
WMRJ
PRAXIS
Our Work
Our work is a continuous praxis of learning and doing, reflection and action, that inform and inspire each other.
Our Approach to Action
What is WMRJ doing?
And I’ll decide if I want to join.
What are you doing?
And how can WMRJ best support you?
Place burden on others
Hold power by sitting in judgement
Take responsibility for own research
Organize others to support