Are we really being meaningful allies?
By Adopt4Life
February is Black History Month. Many of us at Adopt4Life have debated and discussed how we wanted to recognize it. Inherently, there is a tension in whether or not we even should.
Tokenism has been defined as the policy or practice of making only symbolic efforts…especially to give the appearance of equality or equity, (Oxford Languages).
The systemic, ongoing, and critical overrepresentation of Black families and Black children in our child welfare system requires real action, real work, and real effort – collectively and individually – in order to improve outcomes for Black children and youth. In promoting and amplifying inspiring stories of the accomplishments of Black leaders, advocates, organizers, during the month of February, we risk being complicit in reducing Black History month to a check in, an awareness activity, a performative measure. It becomes clearly recognizable tokenism, despite our desire to be true, meaningful allies.
As we have challenged ourselves on why we wanted to mark Black History month, it has created deeper discussions on how tokenism manifests within ourselves. The lack of routine celebration of Black voices, Black experiences, Black families all year long is deeply concerning, and cannot be ignored. While we have publicly stated our commitment to diversify our leadership, team, and programs to better support the parents, caregivers, and families represented in our Parent2Parent community, we aren’t making progress as quickly as we wanted or envisioned. The pace of organizational change is too slow.
It’s spurring us to be more specific in defining equitable outcomes that can be assessed in context to the social identities of the communities we seek to serve and support. Early on in our work to understand and build more diverse, equitable programs and services, we received the invaluable guidance to acknowledge “practice over perfection” (retrieved from the Kojo Institute, The Language of Equity). Doing so recognizes we will never be perfect in our commitment to equity, and must continually remain open to learning, open to corrections, and willing to meaningfully address mistakes as we make them. It also means recognizing there is no “done” here, no end point.
Confronting our own conscious and unconscious biases; tackling the systemic racism and barriers experienced in the child welfare system by Black parents and families; examining our own role in perpetuating the outcomes experienced by racialized and marginalized children and youth entering, currently in, or having left the child welfare system; is the ongoing work that we must continue every day, through learning from first voice experts, having honest discussions, advocacy, and reflection that translates to action, programs, services, and accountability. We continue to look to the work of One Vision One Voice, including their Practice Framework (Part 3) and Implementation Toolkit as an actionable guide that we can employ to guide our ongoing efforts.
We continue to believe deeply that the requirement and urgency to act in addressing anti-black racism rests with all of us… and that our collective actions must extend far beyond Black History month.