How Teams in the Arts Can Embrace Anti-Racism
Using Concepts from Robin DiAngelo’s White Fragility for DEI&A Progress
Making the ethical case for dismantling systemic bias is an easy one. Actual progress in anti-racism at the level of individual teams has proven much trickier. Two recent sources provide tangible suggestions for anti-racist progress.
The first source is Robin DiAngelo's White Fragility, a text that identifies and analyzes the "defensive moves white people make when challenged racially" that "function to reinstate white racial equilibrium and prevent any meaningful cross-cultural dialogue." In addition to unpacking common cultural obstacles that prevent any meaningful discussion of racism, the crux of DiAngelo's text is that we must find ways to discuss the system of racial inequality in modern society if we have any designs on dismantling it.
The second is the concept of intense teams, codified by Sheila Simsarian Webber and David S. Webber of Suffolk University's Sawyer Business School in 2015. According to the authors, "[intense] team members have some prior work experience together, work under challenging project deadlines, and have a specific leader." From working with a cast in the rehearsal room during production to a meeting with the administration's executive team, teams in the arts typically meet the definition of intense teams.
These two sources make it clear how leaders can leverage the natural strengths of a highly creative group of people into progress in anti-racism. There are three actionable takeaways from the two sources, creating a framework for leaders to implement for DEI&A progress:
First, the leader must build group trust to move beyond the "Good/Bad Binary
Next it becomes possible to foster group identity to engineer an increase in "racial stamina"
Finally, the leader can encourage creative dissent for constructive conversations about systemic bias.
Moving Beyond the Good/Bad Binary
In White Fragility, DiAngelo identifies a core block to anti-rascism progress as the "Good/Bad Binary." The "Good/Bad Binary" reduces racism to "simple, isolated, and extreme acts of prejudice" rather than reveal it as the unconscious, systemic structure that unfairly benefits certain individuals.
Teams must discard the use of the term “racist” and embrace the fact that structures of systemic bias are inequitable. Doing so creates a permission structure by which whites can avoid being labelled as a racist and, on the other hand, not “[be exempt] from further involvement or responsibility” in an authentic exploration of the realities of race in modern society.
How do teams begin this authentic exploration beyond the initial gut reaction of “but I’m not a racist” that typifies white fragility? Only through trust and a willingness to be vulnerable. Webber and Webber’s methods to build trust are clear and actionable: through clear articulation at the very outset of the process of deliverable expectations, team norms (i.e., how and how often the group will communicate, convene, collaborate, etc.), and roles and responsibilities for each individual and the group at large.
To enable constructive team conversation around anti-racism, rejecting the good/bad binary should be a clear goal, teams should set norms around permission to be vulnerable and, most of all, commit to holding each other responsible for their words and actions. Even better is if this expectation is set from the team’s origination.
The Role of Group Identity in Building Racial Stamina
The next task for the team leader is to connect the team to a higher purpose, to build a strong sense of group identity rather than emphasizing the individual. This group identity creates the ‘glue’ for white team members to build racial stamina. Racial stamina is the ability to respond to racial triggers (such as the term "wypipo") and engage in difficult conversations about unconscious racial bias without resorting to feeling states of anger or fear in an effort to sublimate discomfort.
DiAngelo encourages an emphasis on group identity in a primarily white environment because deëmphasizing individualism forces the dominant race to confront the realities of systemic bias: that whiteness is, unfairly the default in society; and that encouraging individualism can interrupt the privilege of racial dominance whereby whites are able to "suspend our perception of ourselves as and unique and/or outside of race." When this becomes the goal, whites are able to identify how their socialized perceptions and attitudes about non-dominant races affect behavior. It lays bare the necessity of blackness for white supremacy: "white identity depends in particular on the projection of inferiority onto blacks and the oppression this inferior status justifies for the white collective."
Creative Dissent Transforms Feedback
DiAngelo's greatest charge for whites who wish to be anti-racist is this: transform how you receive feedback after engaging in "inevitable but unaware racist patterns" with racially diverse colleagues. The process of receiving feedback for unconsciously socialized racist actions or words is uncomfortable for members of the dominant race — massively so; however, encouraging constructive dissent creates opportunities for whites to "own and repair [...] inevitable patterns of racism" and establishes the idea that this uncomfortable work is worthwhile.
On the one hand, creative intense teams have an advantage in that they are naturally accustomed to creative collaboration and non-judgmental ideation. The should apply this same method of creative problem-solving to the challenges of anti-racism in teams.
On the other hand, intense teams can fall into the trap of sharing “information that they have in common and fail[ing] to offer new pieces of material for the group to consider." The role of the team leader here in terms fostering creativity – embracing failures and mistakes, establishing the value of diverse ideas and perspectives, and then directly asking for divergent views and information from team members – is critical.
Doing the Work
Existing emotional structures make discussion about racial attitudes difficult. Progress will not be fast, but it is necessary. This moment is an opportunity arts organizations are recognizing globally. The essential lesson that the performing arts industry can learn from COVID-19 is that we cannot and must not return to the world of before.
The good news is this: as artists, we have the tools we need, and now we have the momentum and drive for change like never before.