WISDOM Racial Equity Statement
WISDOM RACIAL EQUITY STATEMENT
Adopted February 21, 2019
OUR ASPIRATIONS
Racial equity is a core value of WISDOM and its affiliates and is practiced in everything we do.
- Diverse voices, viewpoints, opinions, thoughts, and ideas are actively encouraged and embraced throughout our organization.
- A culture of deep and authentic relationships throughout WISDOM and its affiliates fosters a sense of restored community and mutual caring.
- Our commitment to racial equity promotes a just, fair, respectful, inclusive, and thriving community for everyone in our organization and in the institutions we seek to improve.
WISDOM and its affiliates, and participants individually, are open and responsive to constructively-given feedback about racist attitudes or behaviors we may display, however unintentional.
- Mistakes are courageously and forthrightly identified. We will graciously “call each other in” and describe and discuss mistakes with clarity as part of a continuous education process.
- Patience, genuine caring, and compassionate listening are practiced in our mutual effort to understand oppression, both overt and systemic.
WISDOM and its affiliates are characterized by an intentional identity as an antiracist institution.
- Our antiracist identity permeates our organizational culture, values, norms, and behaviors.
- Diverse racial, cultural, and economic groups enjoy full participation and shared power in all aspects of our mission, structure, constituency, policies, and practices.
- People of color lead in the work we do and are always at the tables where decisions that affect us get made.
WISDOM embraces and champions policies that provide for both individual dignity and dismantling structural racism in the wider community by building clear lines of accountability to organizations of color and racially oppressed communities that are directly impacted by our work.
- Our work for racial liberation values embracing diversity/difference as a gift, the unique worth of every person, treating everyone with dignity, inclusivity, social justice, public good, and cultural competence (awareness, attitude, knowledge, and skills). By living these values, we are better human beings.
RACIAL EQUITY ACTION STEPS AND MEASUREMENTS
WISDOM and its affiliates will take the following first steps toward fulfillment of these principles and will do an annual racial equity check-in to keep us all accountable. The WISDOM Racial Equity Core Team will provide tools for this to the affiliates (e.g., a WISDOM assessment tool to be used each October) and serve as resources to the affiliates as needed.
Provide Education on Implicit Bias: We will provide an Implicit Bias workshop in every affiliate and encourage all members to participate. This training is provided through Gamaliel and is in conjunction with Gamaliel affiliates across the country.
Baseline Analysis of Organizational Racism: We will develop a baseline analysis of racism within our organization that will serve to increase commitment of members to dismantle racism both within WISDOM and its affiliates and within the community.
Education and Dialogue: We will develop a shared understanding within WISDOM and its affiliates of the meaning and historical reality of systemic racism through education and dialogue.
Long Term and Short Term Racial Equity Goals: We will be strategic and intentional in setting both long term and short term racial equity goals and in monitoring our progress toward them by their impact, not simply our intention. (We should be able to see the progress)
Raise up and Support Under-Represented Leaders: We will prioritize historically and systemically excluded or marginalized people by recognizing, raising up and supporting leaders from under represented populations and intentionally creating pathways for them to be included in decision-making and leadership.