There's been a lot of talks recently about performance improvement plans, their effectiveness, and whether or not they meet a legitimate need. The short answer? No. They aren't effective, and they don't meet a legitimate need. But, like most things that are messy and workplace-related, it's much deeper than the short answer.
Read MoreHello, white U.S. Americans who organize events and programming for your company or organization. It's that time of year when the air is crisp, winter is well underway, and white "professionals" reach out to Black speakers, consultants, and facilitators to speak at their corporate events as panelists and teachers to "celebrate" Black History Month. You reach out to us to share our stories, pain, and lived and learned experiences with your white organizations during the shortest month of the year, continuing the cycles of melanated pain porn for white consumption that your organizations have trafficked in for decades.
And you're still asking us to do this for little to no compensation.
Read MoreWe can't talk about the horrific murders of Michelle Allysa Go and Sandra Shells without examining the ugliness at the intersections of the patriarchal white supremacist national sentiments around homelessness and housing insecurity. We also can't talk about what happened to Michelle and Sandra without examining mental health advocacy and the perceived and perpetuated value of Black and Asian women in the United States. And we definitely shouldn't be having conversations about Michelle and Sandra's murders without incorporating an ever-evolving understanding of the deeply ingrained passive acceptance of anti-Blackness and anti-Asian hate that has permeated this country's mindset for hundreds of years.
Read MoreThis week’s opening thought: some thoughts on performative white nonsense “in the name of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.” on MLK Day, with past and recent history and sentiments for additional context (not that it's needed).
Read More(Not so) hot take: legitimate equity and inclusion an acronym or committee does not make.
All of the BJEDI, JEDI, IDEA, DEI, EDI, and other assorted acronyms you can come up with will not replace action and initiatives that gradually build stronger and more sustainable workplace cultures. Acronyms don't matter if you aren't putting in the work. Acronyms are just words. Those words are nouns until you make them verbs and just verbs until you decide to put in the hard work that makes them action verbs.
Schoolhouse Rock taught a whole generation that but you wouldn’t know it by lookin’ at that generation running victory laps with their acronyms and committees.