“If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.”

LILLA WATSON

THE COMMUNITY EQUITY PARTNERS BLOG

Women of Color Will Save Us All

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“My mother could make a penny cry.” This is what my Godmother told me about how her mother would make a way out of no way while raising eight Black children during the 50’s and 60’s. We were driving with my 18-month old daughter through Montgomery, Alabama visiting civil rights museums including the Peace and Justice Memorial, The Legacy Museum, The Rosa Parks and the Freedom Rides Museum. While musing on how Black women have always adapted in order to survive the pain of racism, patriarchy, and in many cases, the realities of poverty, I thought about the fight in that statement.

The statement was not just about survival. It was about adaptation and resilience. While clutching the steering wheel and searching feverishly for signs of the Confederacy rising, I let go of fear to be present and feel the power of my historical and activist ancestors in my body. I called on Rosa, Clara, Helen, Maya, Nina, and Angela.

My baby was in the car, so I had to channel Black woman superheroes to ground myself and keep us safe in a land that still instills fear deep in my soul. I also used their wisdom to conjure the courage to face the pending and growing threat of Coronavirus or Covid-19. This threat, like all other social pandemics including enslavement, colonization, femicide, and genocide could make us targets and create new targets of dehumanization and even death. I needed courage.

Rosa Parks Courtesy of Marie Claire Magazine

“You spend your whole lifetime in your occupation, actually making life clever, easy and convenient for white people. But when you have to get transportation home, you are denied an equal accommodation. Our existence was for the white man’s comfort and well-being; we had to accept being deprived of just being human.”

Rosa Parks

While in Montgomery, I meditated on what it would mean to live in a world where I couldn’t run my own business without fear of it being burned down like in Tulsa, Oklahoma or having to ride in the back of the bus or sit in the Colored Only section. While I don’t live in the land of the “old Jim Crow,” systemic racism, patriarchy, and poverty lives on strong.

A Different World

As news increased about Covid-19 spreading around the world, consultants, facilitators, trainers, educators, entrepreneurs, and small business owners began losing jobs because work conditions became unsafe. Fear of our bodily safety also illuminated how work conditions in the old paradigm were unjust. This old paradigm left the livelihood and the possibility for transformation of unjust systems to the will of organizations and leaders who may or may not know how to create new possibilities for learning or imagining new ways of being in relationship.

I am a Black woman entrepreneur. I am a millennial. I have the privilege of sharing financial responsibilities with my partner including maintaining a home and raising our daughter. I have class privilege. I am able-bodied, cis-gender and straight. There are many ways I walk through the world with agency.

I am also conscious that in my line of work, racial equity leadership development, coaching, facilitation and consultation is an industry filled with practitioners who are the most marginalized by society. Space, time and money are often resources required for adaptation and innovation that are not often not readily available to us.

A few weeks ago, we lived in a different world. We lived in the world that required in-person contact to teach, facilitate or train people to think differently. As consultants, facilitators, trainers, and entrepreneurs seeking to transform the behaviors and culture of organizations and communities, we relied on the only tools we had within the context of an old paradigm.

The old paradigm hoarded power and allowed those whose bodies were over-valued in society to survive crises to maintain or profit from business as usual. The old paradigm relied on a ‘good ole-boy’ handshake. The old paradigm relied on markets guiding all decisions for businesses rather than the humanity of their employees and customers. The old paradigm called for many women and women of color to become consultants because our skills and expertise were not enough to protect us from the “2 for 1” combo of racism and sexism of former employers.

The old paradigm allowed those who are the most marginalized to be harmed at the greatest rate without recognition or resources. They were invisible. The old paradigm continued to protect those with the most resources, historical and generational wealth, networks that provide ideas for adaptation and investment to actualize the ideas.

It became very clear to me that in this old paradigm, This pandemic would amplify the suffering of those who are the most vulnerable in every way. The harm of systems that have marginalized them for generations would spread like wildfire.

“You have to act as if it were possible to radically transform the world. And you have to do it all the time.”

Angela Davis

We are Uniquely Made for This!

Many women identified people of color or women of the global majority who are entrepreneurs are often direct service providers. Women-owned businesses and the non-profit organizations we lead often provide the most necessary services for health and wellness, we are caregivers to the most vulnerable, and provide mental and physical healthcare, education, and training to create a culture of equity and justice for the most marginalized in society.

Angela Davis

Angela Davis Courtesy of the Smithsonian Magazine

"According to the 2018 State of Women-Owned Businesses Report commissioned by American Express Since 1972, the number of women-owned businesses has increased by nearly 3,000 percent. And in more good news, revenue is up (about 1.7% of women-owned firms generated sales of over $1 million in 2018) and the number of women of color starting businesses is on the rise.” (Source: Charissa Enns at the Story Exchange)

The majority of these businesses are in the following categories:

  1. Professional Services
  2. Personal Services
  3. Health and Wellness
  4. Marketing and PR
  5. Education and Training

For women of color the threat to our livelihood, and hope for liberation and transformation would be exaggerated in comparison to that of our white and male counterparts. Many women of color lead the charge of social, racial, educational and economic justice, and that work could come to a screeching halt. The systems of oppression that thrive in this old paradigm would survive Covid-19, and our businesses and justice work, might not.

I believe we are on the brink of a paradigm shift — a new world order. Covid-19 is killing vulnerable bodies; fomenting fear and paranoia and xenophobia, and exposing the most gross inequities in these systems. It will shed light on those who are often invisible and silenced in society. I believe it is no coincidence there is an uprising of women illuminating femicide in Mexico, and that women activists and journalists were at the forefront of the revolution in Puerto Rico in recent times.

For these times, I believe women of color entrepreneurs will have the necessary tools, talents, and skills to build a new paradigm.

As coaches, facilitators, educators, trainers, caregivers, therapists, and consultants, we are also the people who are providing care to our clients and also centering the experiences of those who are the most marginalized or vulnerable. We do often center the needs of others, without centering our most essential needs for care, creativity, and adaptation.

Lead with Love and Courage

Black Lives Matter Founder

Patrice Khan-Cullors, Co-Founder of Black Lives Matter

“Women — all women, trans women — are roughly 80% of the people who were staring down the terror of Ferguson, saying “we are the caretakers of this community”. Is it women who are out there, often with their children, calling for an end to police violence, saying “we have a right to raise our children without fear.”

Patrice Khan-Cullors

Covid -19 compels me to think about the ways we can use this moment in time to remake ourselves and our practices. This is an opportunity to use our gifts, skills, and talents to reach more people and adapt in a time of paradigm shift and not be left behind. We can create new ways to deliver services, and to stand in our power and offer our skills in new ways.

There are ways we can create a community of support for women entrepreneurs, especially women of color entrepreneurs during this time to share ideas for business innovation and delivering services that center the most marginalized.

As social justice practitioners, many of us may believe that capitalism is the villain here. While capitalism is one of the systems working on us, history tells us that paradigm shifts override existing systems that no longer serve us. I believe we are in such a time. If we allow our radical imagination to let us envision new ways of being, we can lead this shift.

“A wise woman wishes to be no one’s enemy; a wise woman refuses to be anyone’s victim.”

Maya Angelou

Let us lead the change and let fear take a backseat to our greatness. Now is a time of hope which is the fuel for paradigm shifts and systems change.

This is not the time for competition. This is the time for collaboration. In this new paradigm our connection starts from within our hearts and bodies. We may communicate via the internet or phone, but our emotional and energetic connection will create opportunities for us all.

Maya

Let’s make a penny scream together and change the world!

Below are a series of resources that have been shared with me. I have reviewed and cultivated the ones that I have found most valuable to facilitators of deep, interpersonal, and community building work, organizational and transformational leadership development. There are also links that connect to even more curated resources for online practitioners, educators and coaches.

Many organizations and social justice organizers and educators have taken the lead in curating these resources. To them, I am incredibly grateful.

Self-Care, Self-Love, and Mental and Emotional Health

Providing Online Trainings and Workshops

For Employers and Employees

 

Erin Trent Johnson is the CEO, principal coach, and founder of Community Equity Partners (CEP) a coaching and leadership development firm that helps leaders and organizations in the education, non-profit, government, finance, legal, and tech sectors committed to creating equitable practices and culture. Erin also serves as the Senior Advisor for The Equity Lab.

At her core, Erin is committed to justice for communities of color and supporting the leaders and communities to achieve their vision of liberation.

Erin’s approach to coaching and facilitation focuses on Liberated Leadership: a heart-centered and mindful practice built upon her deep belief that when people are resourced with curiosity, compassion, courage, creativity, conscious relationships and a loving community, they will have the skills to liberate themselves from systems of oppression.

Liberated Leadership also employs a model of cross-racial coaching that centers on consciousness raising for white leaders and leaders of color working together to dismantle the systems of oppression within and around them. Liberated Leadership releases the skills and power of individuals and teams to address the intersecting issues of oppression including racism, classism, ableism, heterosexism, and sexism.

Erin is a Certified Professional Coach trained by Leadership That Works. Erin’s seventeen years of experience and leadership in education, community organizing and racial equity training of thousands of people nationwide allows her to support leaders in solving their own problems of equity and community building. Erin’s experience includes designing co-facilitating racial equity workshops focused on White Fragility, Internalized Oppression with Dr. Robin DiAngelo, and healing from racial trauma. Erin is trained in Cultural Somatics by Resmaa Menakem, and action methods, group process and perspectives of socionomy by Dr. Leticia Nieto.

Erin has a Master’s degree in Public Administration from the Fels School of Government at the University of Pennsylvania and a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science from Hampton University. Erin lives in Philadelphia with her husband and daughter where she dreams, speaks and writes about love, liberation and leadership.

 

ETJ Bio PIc

Erin Trent Johnson is the CEO, principal coach, and founder of Community Equity Partners (CEP) a coaching and leadership development firm that helps leaders and organizations in the education, non-profit, government, finance, legal, and tech sectors committed to creating equitable practices and culture. Erin also serves as the Senior Advisor for The Equity Lab.

At her core, Erin is committed to justice for communities of color and supporting the leaders and communities to achieve their vision of liberation.

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