THE ORIGIN
How do we, as a nation, attenuate structural inequity? This question has been an unhesitating one throughout my life. It started as a curious little Black girl, observing my surroundings in a Black, working class neighborhood.
Deepened as I looked at the untold stories in the groove-like creases of my Southern grandfather’s hands. And catapulted to a heightened state when I became more aware of the inhumane, yet legal pains of people who looked like me.
This question persisted throughout my professional journey in several fields. In fact, I've been creating and testing different models to disrupt persistent racial patterns in:
K-12 Ed, Academia
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In college access as a co-founder of a non-profit as well as while on the admissions/selection committee for an ivy league graduate program, and
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In academic and disciplinary outcomes as a K-8 educator and co-founder of a public middle school
Tech
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In employee experience, leveling, performance evaluation, promotion and retention rates
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By creating the first-ever company-wide strategy for racial equity as the founder & leader of Google's Center for Racial Equity and Systemic Transformation
Social Enterprise & Nonprofits
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As a CEO | Founder of my own social entrepreneurship venture
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In experiences of various forms of trauma in the social work/psychotherapy field
THE KINESIOLOGY OF RACE
While training to become a social scientist at Harvard University, I got the fortunate opportunity to study dimensions of race that draw on four disciplinary lenses (sociology, anthropology, comparative literature, and social psychology), and four schools of thought (structuralism, symbolic interactionism, microethnography, and phenomenology). What emerged in my dissertation was an empirically rigorous new theory of race - “The Kinesiology of Race” © 2014 - published in the Harvard Educational Review.
Distinct from prevailing understandings of race as an identity, category, belief, and/or outcome (e.g. racism), I used social science empirics to re-situate race as a verb or what I call racial kinetics. Racial kinetics position race as an activity in space and time. Each racial kinetic I found in my studies captures an interrelated and interactive complex of actions regardless of one's identity or beliefs. This theory seeks to capture the invisible, systemic nature of racial phenomena and add language to what we might mean by systemic racism.
WHAT IS THE EFFICACY OF THE EQUITECT,™ LLC'S APPROACH?
Though some traction has been accomplished in experimenting with different models in different fields over time, I would not say I have the silver bullet or have solved for systemic racism. I’m still in the lab of the earth school. Nevertheless, here are a few noteworthy mentionables:
Quantitative Measures of Impact on 6 Indicators:
This Model Hopes to
Expand
the scope of explicit racial flashpoints to include how racial patterns and hierarchies emerge through the accumulation of ordinary, seemingly benign, (inter)actions.
Build
on, rather than stop at, analyses of gaps between espoused values and beliefs and actions.
Shift
the focus of diversity analytics to how racial meanings implicitly move through the operations of an organization or become systemic.
Depart
from an individualistic analysis of who is and is not racist, emphasizing how it can extend beyond the control of a single individual or event.
