JANUARY UPDATE from Rebecca KellyG
Hello EST,
Happy New Year! In this newsletter, you will find:
Progress Report
Feedback Google Form
Food for Thought
1. Progress Report
We are extremely grateful to the EST Community for your substantive participation in this equity & justice process, so far. We are deep into Phase 1, and have collected meaningful feedback related to your experiences, perspectives and ideas. To date, here is how we’ve collected that information:
Survey 1: Race & Organizational Culture
Disseminated in October 2020
250 participants
Survey 2: Leadership, Power & Transition Team
Disseminated in November 2020
170 participants
Focus Groups: Guided zoom discussions organized to 1) gain deeper feedback pertaining to equity in EST culture and community and 2) engage in collective visioning for leadership.
50+: December 2020
BIPOC: December 2020
LGBTQIA+: January 2021
Women: January 2021
We have also begun to analyze and synthesize the data in order to develop a comprehensive report that surfaces patterns, themes, root causes of inequity & injustice, and ideas offered by the community. The report will also include our recommendations in how to move through a leadership transition process as equitably as possible.
2. Feedback Google Form
In addition to the various spaces for written and verbal feedback, you can also offer your views here. This google form is a place for you to offer any additional feedback you may have forgotten to mention or new ideas/experiences since our last connection.
3. Food for Thought
Each monthly newsletter offers resources or concepts to deepen understanding of our work together. This month, I’m sharing an article published in American Psychologist called The Psychology of American Racism and How to Work Against it.
The construct of race and social impacts of racism are discussed frequently, but there can be confusion about what those things mean and how they function in society. In this study, 7 factors that can contribute to American Racism are identified and unpacked. Consider how these pop up in your life and/or the EST community and its work. These factors are
Categories which organize people into distinct groups by race;
Factions: which trigger ingroup loyalty and intergroup competition/threat leading people to treat their own race like a team;
Segregation: which hardens racist perceptions, preferences, and beliefs and increases reliance on media and folklore about people outside of their category or race;
Hierarchy: which emboldens or oppresses people to think, feel, and behave in racist ways due to their internalized sense of their place in the social/racial hierarchy as presented in history, media, education, etc
Power: which legislates racism on both micro and macro levels. Due to the legacy of blatant racist oppression and select social mobility, White Americans have more hard power to set dominant social norms and legislate these norms within American society.
Media: which legitimizes overrepresented and idealized representations of White Americans while marginalizing and minimizing representations of People of Color;
Passivism: which allows for ignoring and denying that any of this exists enabling the system to persist. For example, White parents rarely talk with their children about race and racism, which gives White children the illusion of post racialism and creates barriers and resistance to knowledge that contradicts this understanding throughout life.
If you have any questions or concerns about this process while Rebecca is on parental leave, please contact Yejin at yejin@rebeccakellyg.com.
