Racial Justice Statement
The piece below was authored by RoadMap’s Racial Justice Action Committee—which was created in 2015 to address RoadMap’s need to strengthen its confidence, courage, and collective ability to fully integrate issues of racial justice into our work—and has guided our work for several years.
Racism[1] permeates every aspect of our social existence. It undergirds social identity and influences how wealth, citizenship access, power, and privilege get distributed in our society. Racism is inherently intersectional—often intertwined with other systems of oppression, such as classism, misogyny, homophobia and transphobia, xenophobia, and discrimination based on immigrant status, ageism, and ableism. Conversely, racial justice[2] is critical to social justice and benefits everyone.
RoadMap’s network of capacity builders brings our own personal and professional stories of white supremacy and how it shows up in our lives. Regrettably, there is also a long history of progressive movements that have upheld white supremacy. As consultants of color and white consultants we can only be an effective movement resource when we name racism as we see it and work through our practice to help shift how these forces operate interpersonally and organizationally.
Racial Justice Vision
RoadMap is multi-racial at all levels, sharing power to realize justice in leadership and in our work. We are stronger because of our differences. Every consultant in our network is committed to RoadMap’s values and principles. We are continuously learning and growing individually and as a network.
Statement of Principles
Given our role as a movement resource, each of RoadMap’s consultants commit to deepening and fortifying our analysis and practice as individuals and in our work with clients and movements. Similarly, RoadMap as an institution commits to embedding racial justice in our practice because it is fundamental to our effectiveness as an agent of change.
As RoadMap consultants, we commit to:
- Engage in continuous learning to fortify our skills, competency, and courage to effectively address racist behaviors, habits, and structures with our clients and with each other;
- Examine our tools, analysis, and resources to ensure that they support racial justice;
- Seek appropriate support from RoadMap colleagues when faced with a challenging situation where it is necessary or greatly benefits our work;
- Develop our awareness of the implications and impact of our own racial/ethnic background for client work;
- Support policies, practices, attitudes, and actions that produce more equitable power, opportunities, treatment, and outcomes for all people of color inside our organization, within ourselves, and in our work with clients;
- Support anti-racist organizational partners and peers;
- Assess RoadMap’s structures, practices, and principles to ensure that we are aligned with our racial justice principles and are moving towards our vision. (I.e. that we are “walking the talk”).
[1] Racism is a complex system of beliefs and behaviors, grounded in a presumed superiority of the white race. These beliefs and behaviors are conscious and unconscious and result in the oppression of people of color and benefit the dominant group, whites.
[2] Racial justice is the proactive reinforcement of policies, practices, attitudes, and actions that produce equitable power, access, opportunities, treatment, impacts and outcomes for all people of color.