Van Jones: Leadership and Race

Several years ago at Creating Space, we invited Meg Wheatley to initiate a discussion around communities of practice. She described four key ways that young leaders in South Africa were being supported as a community of practice: naming, connecting, resourcing and illuminating. A young African American man immediately stood and expressed his concern that in this country, calling attention to your leadership as a person of color could put you in peril. I have thought about his comments repeatedly over the last year with the unprecedented number of threats against President Obama during his candidacy and then as president. The outrageous attacks on Van Jones by Glen Beck are another reminder of the perils of being African American and leading. Anyone who has attended a Farmer’s Market in the Bay Area has probably signed more than one petition in support of initiatives on any number of issues that could also be attacked as ‘un-American’. In fact, living in the Bay Area is probably un-American to the likes of Glen Beck, so it’s pretty disheartening that so few have seen or called out these racial attacks for what they are.

Many leadership programs believe that one of the ways that they can support and increase the impact of their participants is by increasing recognition for their leadership. In fact, an important goal of the Leaders for a Changing World program was to increase visibility for unrecognized leaders, many of whom are people of color. The good news is that these programs help to expand our thinking about what leadership looks like. The bad news is that without appreciating the historical legacy of racism in this country, we may also put people in danger without equipping ourselves to come to their defense.  At a recent meeting on this topic, one funder also raised the concern that we may through leadership work help people who have been excluded becasue of race secure leadership positions without addressing the dynamics that create hostile or unwelcoming environments.

The Leadership Learning Community has done research for the Annie E. Casey Foundation on why there are not more people of color in leadership in the nonprofit sector. Focus group participants shared many obstacles that have created this problem: lack of access to equitable education and training opportunities; exclusive networks that perpetuate white leadership; discrimination in recruitment, selection and advancement; unwelcoming or hostile environments; exclusive assumptions about what leadership looks like based on the white culture, economic status; student loans that preclude internships; or work in low paid jobs. Of course, the conclusion of this and other research by PolicyLink is that leadership programs can and should play a role in helping to mitigate the impact of these experiences by targeting those who have been excluded with additional resources and supports.

A number of organizations focusing on how a system of structural racism actually works are asking if a focus on pipelines that diversify leadership of the sector is really enough. The implications of these recent attacks are a good reminder that leadership programs should also provide participants with a framework for understanding how structural opportunity and disadvantage works in this country.  Without digging into these issues we may miss the implications of an attack on Van Jones, we may fail to understand the ways in which our seemingly neutural organizational behaviors favor a specific cultural points of view (often those of Northern European heritage) and we may fail to understand the racial impact of a policy that at face value seems like it will help everyone equally across the the board.  We are discussing these issues as part of Leadership for a New Era, a collaborative learning initiative focused on exploring the shift that needs to occur in the ways we think about and support leadership. Please visit the Leadership for a New Era website and join in this conversation.