How we're building an antiracist organization

America’s higher education system is broken. Fewer than 23% of students who enroll in California’s state universities will graduate on time. Student loan debt is sky-rocketing, projected to total $2 trillion dollars by 2021. And now, colleges across the country are struggling to adequately support their students during the pandemic.

While most experts agree that our higher education system is broken, fewer are as quick to call out our higher education system as racist.  But when you pull back the curtains, college completion rates are historically lower for Black and Latinx students (8% and 11% respectively at California state universities). Black graduates owe nearly twice as much in student debt as their white peers. And Black and Latinx students are more likely to attend colleges that are for-profit, underfunded, and that offer little to no personal support.

This is why Rivet School exists. We seek to build a college experience designed for students who have been overlooked and underserved by these institutions. The majority of our students are Black and Latinx, the first in their families to go to college, and are working parents. Many have previously dropped out of college and carry student debt. For us to reimagine the college experience, we need to account for our students’ past experiences in a racist society. To do so, our program must be explicitly antiracist. 

Our work on diversity, equity, and inclusion — and more recently, antiracism — has evolved over time. In this blog post, we’ll share more about our journey — and offer some prompts that, we hope, can other organizations foster reflection among team members and sharpen commitments. ‍

Our Journey to Antiracism & Equity ‍

Honest exploration of antiracism and equity begins with trust.

To build trust and belonging among our team, we began with a workshop to name how our visible and invisible identities (such as race, gender, sexual orientation, and socioeconomic status) shape our worldviews. Having candid conversations about the experiences of being non-binary, undocumented, or biracial led us to realize that even within our small team, our perspectives, experiences, and opportunities vastly differ. At the same time, the vulnerability demanded in these discussions helped build shared understanding and trust.

Next, we focused on building a shared vocabulary to explore antiracism and equity. We chose Robin DiAngelo’s White Fragility as a primer for personal introspection and to develop shared language around racism, white supremacy, and anti-Blackness. Within pairs, small groups, and as a full team, we discussed disagreements, named areas of discomfort and tension, and ultimately came to a set of shared conclusions.

We then turned to our organizational processes and systems to examine ways we can integrate antiracism and equity across our organization, from how we hire and set compensation, to how we analyze student outcomes data, to how we operate our Board of Directors. This work has helped us ensure equity across salaries and promotions, keep an eye on differences in student outcomes across race, and maintain trusting and open relationships with our leadership. 

Now, we’re working to articulate our overall vision of what antiracism and equity looks like at Rivet School. This requires that we define our priorities and commitments, our process for doing the work, and the ways we want to be held accountable. We’ve used the prompts below as a guide for our team's exploration of antiracism and equity — and hope that these can play a similar role for other teams and organizations.

Prompts for reflection and exploration

Building a culture of trust and vulnerability

• Do your team members have experience engaging with conversations on race, racism or equity in their professional or personal lives? How comfortable are team members discussing these topics?
• What are the demographics of your team? How is space being made for conversations among both white team members and Black or POC team members? 
• Which team members do the majority of race and equity work within your team? How do you ensure the breakdown of this work does not disproportionately fall on POC team members?

Creating shared language and understanding

• What terms are important for you and your organization to understand and define? What would it look like to incorporate those terms into your organizational work? 
• If your team members can’t agree on a set of definitions or understandings, how will you move forward? Do you have norms in place to address when there’s misalignment in mindsets or beliefs? 

Integrating antiracism and equity into organizational processes

• What processes currently exist to set organizational goals and metrics? How would adding an antiracist or DEI lens change those goals? 
• What would it look like to incorporate an antiracist lens into individual roles and responsibilities? What decisions would you make differently? How might your functional duties change? 

Articulating your vision for antiracism and equity

• Where do you or where does your organization fall on the “continuum to becoming an antiracist, multicultural organization?” 
• What characteristics of your current position in the continuum feel the most difficult to overcome?
  

Moving forward

‍As we work to define what antiracism and equity looks like within our organization, we know that our scope of work will continue to grow and shift. We will continue to return to the questions above – especially as we push ourselves to make progress along the continuum of antiracist organizations.

Rivet School's mission is not small. When we're reminded of the bigger picture – that many of our educational institutions perpetuate unequal outcomes – we know our mission will only be achieved if we continue to prioritize and pursue equity as a central tenet of our work.