The Work of White Leaders: Practical Approaches for Dismantling Racism

Whiteness is not something we choose, but if we seek to be ethical leaders while living in racist systems, we have a responsibility to act. Racist systems teach us to avoid looking at race, not understand our whiteness, and pretend that race does not matter. This intentional ignorance is partly what sustains racism. To dismantle it, white people must act — defying the norms and taking personal risks.

Those of us who are white and in leadership positions have access to organizational power and outsize cultural influence. We may not have asked for it, but the truth is we have a choice. A choice to use that power and influence in many different ways and for many purposes. An essential first step is to clarify our intentions:

• Why am I a leader?
• What do I intend to do in this role?
• What commitments do I have to people of color, in my day-to-day, and in the systems I manage/create?

For me, answering these foundational questions has been an ongoing process of deepening. And a spiritual process connected to my beliefs about life and my personal purpose. I am committed to the freedom and liberation of all beings. This means I’m paying attention to the systems that hold any of us back from getting free.

There are countless resources for you to learn more about white supremacy, colonialism, and what race means in your life and our society. I’m not going to focus on those things here, but instead, discuss what you can do as a leader in an organization. I assume you have done some reflection, personal education, and awareness-building around your whiteness.

I offer this collection of ideas from my experience as an anti-racist practitioner and as someone who has worked with many white leaders in white-founded organizations over my career.

1. Practice humility and compassion

Traditions of whiteness and leadership often teach us that we should act like we know everything. This, of course, is not true, and it’s imperative as white leaders that we stay in curiosity as much as we can. Assume a “beginner’s mind” as much as possible and invite learning in every interaction. Know that there’s an incredible amount to learn from the people around you and that you can only ever know a small slice of their personal experience. As you practice humility, your team members will be much more willing to honestly share what they think or experience, which is critical data for you as a leader.

On the compassion side, it’s important to offer compassion to both yourself and those around you. Self-compassion is the act of fully accepting the experience you are in now and caring for yourself as you would a beloved friend. From there, you can offer that same kind attention to those around you, no matter what they’re going through.

2. Engage in risky conversations

For most white folks, challenging the racial status quo is or feels risky. This may include discussing your power and privilege, how race impacts your workplace, or how people have been harmed by racism. You can often feel the sense of risk in your body — notice how that shows up for you. Even after years of learning about white supremacy, my body can still tense up when I’m getting ready to say something important about race in a group that doesn’t fully share my values, for example. The conditioning is deep — “white people are not supposed to talk about race” is the message we get all our lives.

Keep moving even when discomfort arises. Investigate what feels risky and why. Consider how you will live out your values during difficult conversations about race. Get support, coaching, or advice when you need it.

3. Apologize and repair effectively

You are going to make mistakes that are related to privilege, power, identity, and race. This is normal and expected — you are a human, and this stuff is complex, layered, and sometimes confusing. Sometimes you might have an instinct to retreat for fear of making a mistake. A better path is to act from your values and with clear intention, knowing that apology and repair are available in your toolkit.

An authentic apology includes acknowledging the harm you caused, showing empathy toward the person you hurt, and making amends. Authentic apology doesn’t happen enough across racial lines but is a powerful way to strengthen relationships and grow together. Lean into apology even when you feel like you might stumble or not be perfectly articulate. Lean into it even if you’re unsure how the other person will react. The effort is worth it.

Repair is about taking responsibility for your actions and working to restore relationships. Your values will guide you here too. Don’t sweep conflict under the rug or allow important things to go left unsaid. After you work through an apology conversation, follow through on what you commit to doing.

4. Distribute power

Distributing power is one of the things that can make the most significant impact when many people do it across many organizations. Many of our workplaces are white-lead, white-founded, or both. That means that over time, white leaders have sustained and expanded their power to control or influence how things work. This power shows up in many ways: who gets hired, which policies and practices are adopted, what is culturally “normal” and “professional,” who gets promoted, which ideas are valued, how communication flows, and how decisions are made (to name a few). Part of dismantling racism is inviting and enabling people of color to fully participate in sharing the power that white folks have been hoarding for a long time.

It’s up to you to bring this big-picture intention down to the practical level. What power do you hold in your organization? (Get some perspectives from other people on that question.) What power are you willing to let go of? What could it look like to share power or give power to those with less privilege than you? Here are a few examples of what I’ve tried in my leadership:

• As a white cis-gender man, I avoid being the first person to react to an idea or share my opinion in a group.
• I’ve looked for jobs in which I am working under the leadership of a person of color — supporting their vision and success.
• I’ve acted on opportunities to amplify, recognize, and highlight the voices and needs of the people of color, women, and transgender people I work with.
• I’ve created autonomy whenever possible — trusting that the people I work with can do a great job within a supportive and honest environment where expectations are clear. I don’t micromanage others or inspect everything that they do.
• I ask for what my colleagues need to succeed — and use my power to help them get those things.
• I’ve created an environment where leaders of color can be hired and adequately supported once they get in the door.
• When I played a significant role in an organization, I sometimes stepped down from that role when I sensed that somebody with different identities could step up into it.

5. Stay engaged with other white people

As we white people move further into an anti-racist practice and become more self-aware, it can become easy to put everybody else into a category: woke/not-woke, good white person/bad white person, enlightened/non-enlighted. Oh, how our minds are so good at comparison and judgment! This kind of comparison can sometimes lead us to distance ourselves from fellow white people, especially those with whom we disagree.

Let me return to a foundational belief — that white people are the ones who can end racism. If this is true, we must keep engaging with fellow white people. Even when it’s uncomfortable. Even when we’re not quite sure how. This has been an important lesson for me. It can feel easy or validating to only spend time with others who share my anti-racist values. But that does not help me bring new people into the fold or build empathy across differences. We need more white people learning about, thinking about, and discussing race. I can help make that happen across many small and large interactions.

I’ve found it very helpful to build my practical skill in doing two things: 1) interrupting a white person who is causing harm through word or action, with as much compassion as possible, and 2) staying in conversation with a white person who does not have anti-racist values, rather than disengaging. For me, these are spiritual practices that continuously push me toward growth. I encourage you to learn how to do these things in your style and practice them in low-stakes scenarios so you have them ready when you need them.

6. Remember that you are enough

A typical phase of white identity development is the experience of guilt. Guilt around what my ancestors did, all my privilege, the harm I may have created, or my complicity in upholding racism. Sometimes this kind of guilt prevents us from action because we don’t want to make any more mistakes. While guilt may be a necessary stop on the journey, it’s not a helpful place to stay. Beyond the guilt phase may be acceptance — knowing that you are enough just as you are. You are not personally responsible for creating all of our racist systems, you are not broken, you are not powerless, and you do not need to do anything to be worthy of love.

A helpful mantra has been, “I am enough, and I can cause harm.” This helps me remember a deep truth: I am an imperfect human fully capable of influencing the world around me, and I must use that capability wisely. When I make mistakes, I have tools I can use to help repair and keep going.

I’m just scratching the surface in this article — there’s no way to fully document what a lifetime of work as a white leader looks like. The details are different for each of us. And there are countless thinkers, teachers, writers, and provocateurs to help us continue learning. I want to leave you with this: as white leaders, we must continuously consider race in our work. This is a mission that white culture does not support us in, but we must do it anyway. It can be isolating, so we need community, inspiration, ideas, and advice. With those things in place, we can truly reshape the world — for the freedom and liberation of all people.

You can find more ideas about anti-racist systems change in these pieces:

Shifting from Control to Liberation in Workplace Performance Processes

Get started at busting organizational silos

Photo by Joshua Hibbert on Unsplash.