Getting White People Unstuck: Moving from The Dominant Culture to An Alternative Future

It’s another week in the United States, and it’s another incident of police violence. Will things ever change? I don’t know. I hope so. As we move into the 1-year anniversary of George Floyd’s death and watch the police trial unfold, I want to remind us of what we are moving toward. So often, we get trapped in deficit-based thinking, which is rooted in colonialism. We focus on what’s wrong and get frozen by the overwhelming evidence of the problem.

I call this the “white people frozen effect,” where white people learn about the wide and deep systems of inequities and don’t know how to move forward because they don’t want to make another mistake. I’ve seen it over and over again in trainings, focus groups, and listening sessions that discuss the impacts of race on our culture. This isn’t just about race either. Our dominant culture in the US celebrates individualism, academic knowledge, big business, efficiency, productivity, able bodies, gender conformity, and singular measurements of success.

In a previous post, I mentioned some ideas for dismantling dominant culture in your personal practice at work. Today I want to highlight a list of where we are moving from to where we are going. This list of behaviors is deeply grounded in the work of adrienne marie brown (Emergent Strategy) and Peter Block (Community) and in conversations that I’ve had in the last 12 months with so many colleagues, but especially Hannah Nichols.

 ·       From answers to questions

·       From being helpful to being curious

·       From large-scale change to small groups as units of transformation

·       From a focus on leaders to a focus on citizens

·       From problem-solving to possibilities

·       From law & oversight to social capital & chosen accountability

·       From retribution & punitive systems to restorative justice

·       From systems to belonging

·       From fear & fault to gifts & generosity

·       From a single leader to shared leadership

·       From lectures to conversations

·       From dominance to community

·       From scarcity to generosity

·       From fear to trust

·       From changing others to changing ourselves

·       From closed circles to open groups

·       From hiding our mistakes to transparency

·       From blame to ownership

·       From defensiveness to listening

·       From lip service statements to long-term commitment

·       From deficiencies to strengths

·       From supervisor control to worker autonomy

·       From reliance on predictability to embracing chaos theory

·       From leaders as parents to leaders as conveners

·       From binary thinking to equifinality

·       From isolation to networks

·       From individualism to interdependence

·       From colonialism to consent

·       From clockwork strategy to emergent strategy

·       From competition to shared purpose

·       From speed to depth

·       From capitalism to shared prosperity

·       From personal projection to personal accountability

·       From consumer mentality to community citizen

·       From perfection to faith

·       From acceleration to action to slowing down to collaborate

·       From force to freedom of choice

·       From scale to relatedness

·       From parenting to partnership

I encourage you to review this list and sift your decision-making processes through the “To” column. What does curiosity look like in team meetings? How can you personally move from an either/or mindset (binary thinking) to multiple paths of success (equifinality)? Where can your organization slow down to collaborate rather than accelerating to action? These are all ways to use this list in your business, as we live into these behaviors as individuals, teams, and organizations.

What is the alternative future that you are trying to build? Author Edgar Villanueva states it this way in his groundbreaking book, Decolonizing Wealth:

“Up until now, diversity and inclusion tactics have been about getting different kinds of people in the door, and then asking them to assimilate to the dominant white colonizer culture. But the issue is not about the recruitment of diverse humans - the ‘pipeline’ focus of the past, laying a seat at the table, as is often said - the issue is creating a culture of respect, curiosity, acceptance, and love. It’s about fundamentally changing organizational culture, what constitutes acceptable behavior, and the definitions of success and leadership. It’s about building ourselves a whole new table - one where we truly belong.”

It's time to get unstuck and move with intention into an alternative future. Build a new table that celebrates diversity, equity, and inclusion every day – now and into the future.