Black Lives Matter
Her brother's smart, he's got more sense than many
His patience's long but soon he won't have any
To find a job is like a haystack needle
'Cause where he lives they don't use colored people
Living just enough, just enough for the city
—“Living for the City” Stevie Wonder 1973
If you haven’t been to the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) in Washington D.C. I’d suggest making the trip once it opens up post Covid. It’s an emotional roller coaster. The lower levels of the museum are devoted to gut wrenching exhibits about slavery. The upper levels are a brilliant and colorful celebration of Black culture—community, painting, sculpture, music, poetry, sports, cuisine.
It’s impossible to engage with the exhibits in the upper levels without marveling at the extraordinary influence that African Americans have had on American culture overall. Where do you think Elvis got his moves? How did we get “dropping the mic”? Who created the side eye?
I don’t need to tell this to Black folks because they know it. But for us white folks, it’s amazing how so many aspects of our culture—what we often take as “our culture”—came from Black America. There’s a certain lack of consciousness that we white people have about this. More than that, there’s often a lack of understanding about the context and meaning in the cultural symbols Black America has created.
For example, as a teenager I used to belt out the refrain to Stevie Wonder’s Living for the City when I heard it on the radio: “Livin’ just enououough, just enououough for the Ci-tay!” And then I’d dance around to the musical harmonic interlude. But it’s only recently, via prompting from my wife, that I understood Living for the City is a Wonder anthem exposing racism and lost opportunity due to being Black. My wife also pointed me to the 7-minute version of the song—not the version that’s on the Stevie Wonder Definitive Collection that sat in my album collection all those years. If you haven’t heard the longer version, it takes you straight to police brutality of Black men and racist sentencing in the criminal justice system.
Clueless that all this didn’t register with me until recently? Yup. Any excuses? Nope.
For 17 years, I ran FSG, a nonprofit consulting firm and think tank. Under my leadership FSG went through several rounds of racial equity training with many ups and downs in the process. You can read a blog post about our experiences with this work. It’s been an eight year journey for FSG to evolve away from its dominant culture and even with new leadership the organization remains on a conscious journey to build its equity chops. After leaving FSG I did a two year stint as an Executive in Residence at New Profit, where I also participated in New Profit’s racial equity journey. I’ve learned a lot but I’ve still got work in front of me to better support transformation—both mine and society’s. In the wake of the George Floyd’s death due to excessive force by police, and the subsequent awakening of many white Americans to police brutality and systemic racism, it’s time for all of us—particularly white people—to step it up. To play my part in the fight to end systemic racism, I commit to the following actions:
1. Continue to educate myself. An important commitment for me is to move from a “head” understanding to a “heart” understanding of what Black Americans experience.
2. As I embark on this new endeavor related to collective change I know I need to engage Black leaders in this work both as partners and as my teachers. I dedicate myself to ensuring Black leadership becomes a part of my new initiative.
3. I intend to find specific ways to be in contemplative solidarity. Contemplative solidarity is about being alongside people who have been marginalized while not trying to solve their problems (a decidedly white, dominant culture inclination). I am currently looking at volunteering at a local prison that is primarily populated by Black and Brown people. I intend to show up as a supporter and as a witness to systemic harms, and not as an expert.
4. I will pay additional attention to the dimensions of my life that have been enriched by Black Americans and Black culture and visibly call attention to these—particularly with my white friends, family and colleagues.
5. I will challenge actions of racism or racist rhetoric that I observe. Specifically, I hope to get better at responding in the moment.
I have a Black colleague who is wise, intelligent and insightful and a leader in the social sector today. Like many of the Black leaders we are hearing from in this time of significant protest across America, she is clear-eyed and articulate about the offenses Black people endure as well as the shape shifting sources of power that are creating these offenses. But she is also full of faith and hope, and her eyes are fixed on a liberated future. We had a conversation recently about how, in the face of today’s grim reality for Black Americans, she could be filled with so much hope. She said that one thing that helped is growing up with parents who were intentional about exposing her on an on-going basis to what excellence looked like among Black Americans—artists, writers, activists, business leaders, faith leaders, scientists and others.
Black lives matter because every time we lose a Black life, we all become less whole. It’s a tragedy that we are where we are on this in 2020 almost fifty years after Stevie Wonder wrote Living for the City. We’ve got to make it right this time around. Fifty years from now—heck, five years from now—the final verse of Stevie’s song, can’t be where we’re at today.
I hope you hear inside my voice of sorrow
And that it motivates you to make a better tomorrow
This place is cruel, nowhere could be much colder
If we don't change, the world will soon be over
Living just enough, stop giving just enough for the city.
In solidarity, BLACK LIVES MATTER