COVID-19 Means We, Especially White Folks, Have to Talk about Race More at Work
Written by oneTILT COO and Co-founder Andrew Daub
We’re finding ourselves in a seemingly unprecedented time. It’s unsettling, new, unfamiliar, always changing, scary, challenging, a beautiful testament to community and hope — all around, it’s weird and hard to put into words. As headlines and Instagram stories update by the minute, and as social distancing has taken over so many of our lives, I’ve found myself staring at the gray walls of my studio apartment in DC with a lot of time to think.
I’m thinking about a lot of things — the health for which I’m so grateful, the shift to what my team needs as we stay connected virtually, the wine I next want to try (read: carmenere), the books I’ve been able to finally Marie Kondo. I’ve also been thinking a lot about how what we’re facing is so deeply rooted in the skin we’re in.
We pick up a lot about race as we face COVID-19.
A few weeks ago, shortly after leaders started to encourage us all to stay home, our Aspiring White Anti-racist Learning Community met on Zoom and reflected on the cycles of socialization and liberation. We continually take in messages from others, daily interactions, institutions, everything around us. As a white person, I’ve been taught and have deeply internalized a lot of problematic messages around race. My parents taught me not to see color and to whitewash race in a pursuit of colorblinded fairness. My teachers taught me that racism was something only to be studied in textbooks, not something to examine within our own skin and hallways. The Boy Scouts — through its ranks, principles, merit badges, and uniforms — gave me a roadmap for how to be successful as a white guy in America. Adulthood as a white person, in many ways, has been (and continues to be) a process of unlearning these messages.
That constant cycle of internalization doesn’t go away in a crisis. In this new world of COVID-19, we’re reading, hearing, texting, and retweeting messages all the time. These messages aren’t just about public health or policy, closing restaurants or crashing markets. Embedded in all of these messages is race. When I’m working with teams at different organizations around the country, and particularly when I’m working with other white folks, I’ll often say, race is always on the table, even when it’s unacknowledged. That’s no different when it comes to viruses. Anti-Asian discrimination is rampant both in the United States and around the world. Ambiguity hangs over how public health measures can best support undocumented residents. Our healthcare system — one entangled in deep racism against people of color — faces shortages, which very likely will incur even larger barriers to access and equitable care. We’re seeing a disproportionate impact of the virus on Black Americans. COVID-19 hits us at our core, exposing the cracks and inequities across every institution.
As a white person, the privilege inherent to tune out the noise, to not have a necessary conversation with a loved one, to not question the impact of a subtle yet deeply racist tweet or news coverage is likely all the easier to uphold, particularly as many of us look for comfort. We can co-opt self-care, dismiss that the weight of the virus hits us differently because we all face danger, excuse racism, and detour away from talking about race all that more easily.
And yet — what we’re facing isn’t, in fact, unprecedented. COVID-19 is just the latest debilitating disaster that masks racism.
The early waves of the HIV epidemic. Katrina. 9/11. We’ve been here before, and we’re here again.
So we — white folks — must critically analyze. That starts with looking at ourselves.
Let’s make this crisis different. Let’s actually sit in the pause that social distancing has created. This pause, particularly for us white folks, might be uncomfortable — yet, it’s necessary if we truly want to show up for one another in the face of crisis. Let’s ask ourselves the tough questions:
- What messages am I receiving, and what are they causing me to feel, think, believe, and do? What’s the impact of those messages?
- Where are race and racism showing up in how I’m processing and coping with COVID-19?
- What does it look like to counter these messages and this racism?
Unlearning what we’ve learned about ourselves and the world around us gives us the opportunity to relearn ways we can affirm everyone, work across lines of difference, and begin to chip away at the pain and inequity so deeply lodged in our country’s DNA. For those of us who are white, asking these tough questions can lead us to lots of different things: examining a component of our privilege, recognizing how we get in the way of talking about race, or seeing how we can so often assume one right way of doing things.
We have to then talk about race openly at work.
For all of us, asking questions about race in the face of COVID-19 can be a powerful starting place, but we’ve got to bring these questions out into the open — including at work. Why?
Because, even when people actively choose to not talk about race, that silence is talking about it. That silence, particularly when we hold more privilege and/or positional power at work, speaks volumes about who belongs, who is right or wrong, who is valued and devalued, what culture looks, sounds, and feels like, even what success means.
Many workplaces are starting to open up conversations that allow us to process and heal in the face of COVID-19. However, when we don’t hold space for those same conversations to include race, we silo people’s experiences, erase their pain, and shortcut critical work that many organizations need to undertake in an ever diversifying world.
Conversations about race are likely already happening at work, even if not in your check-ins or team meetings. At oneTILT, we believe work is a place where everyone should thrive in the skin they’re in — and that includes over Zoom, email, Slack, or anything else that comes in our shared virtual workplace right now. That means we’ve got to bring out the conversation about race more explicitly at work, to invest in the individual and collective learning required for teams to better talk about race and racism with one another, and to help one another process COVID-19 as whole, not whitewashed human beings.
COVID-19 isn’t just forcing us to change the way we grocery shop, work through our email, or stay connected with one another. It is inviting us to double down on unlearning what we’ve known about who we are in an effort to redefine who we can be.
And that starts with asking tough questions about ourselves — independently, with those whom we love, and with those whom, for many of us, we engage the most: our colleagues. In asking these tough questions, we might be able to turn this precedented crisis into unprecedented opportunity: a somber yet powerful moment to reimagine how we do what we do at work.
About oneTILT
We help managers grow in their awareness around several aspects: identity and racial equity; their mindsets and concrete skills; and their creative energy — to reimagine their leadership. Our workshops, engagements, and tiltForward fellowship help leaders and organizations better focus on their own missions, so that ultimately everyone can bring their full self to work.
