Disrupting Racism™

This page offers a static version of results from your Disrupting Racism assessment. If you wish to change your responses or add others, you will need to retake the assessment.

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IMPACT ASSESSMENT RESULTS

The map below visualizes how you have assessed your organization in each impact area. It is meant to help you consider how your organization prioritizes and lives into these impact areas. This can help you identify assets, spot growth areas and consider where you may benefit from support. As you review your results, you can continue to review and adjust your responses.

HOW TO USE THIS MAP

Click on the circles on the map or in the list to review that card and the assessment questions.

The top and bottom quadrants show alignment between importance to your organization and your strength in it. Areas that show up in the right or left quadrant reveal a mismatch worth considering more deeply.

KEY

LESS STRENGTH AND IMPORTANCE TO YOUR MISSION
MORE STRENGTH AND IMPORTANCE TO YOUR MISSION
Important to our mission, a strength
Important to our mission; not yet a strength
Less important to our mission, not yet a strength
Less important to our mission, a strength

OPPORTUNITIES FOR IMPACT

Shared Narratives

  • Shared Narratives disrupting PERSONAL
  • Shared Narratives disrupting COMMUNITY
  • Shared Narratives disrupting INSTITUTIONAL
  • Shared Narratives disrupting POLICY

Transparency & Accountability

  • Transparency & Accountability disrupting PERSONAL
  • Transparency & Accountability disrupting COMMUNITY
  • Transparency & Accountability disrupting INSTITUTIONAL
  • Transparency & Accountability disrupting POLICY

Empowered Communities

  • Empowered Communities disrupting PERSONAL
  • Empowered Communities disrupting COMMUNITY
  • Empowered Communities disrupting INSTITUTIONAL
  • Empowered Communities disrupting POLICY

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

Select or deselect the impact areas to control which questions you’re viewing.

© Meclina Gomes Priestley

Personal

Weaponized fatigue

At the personal level, racism takes the form of intense, deeply felt, continual dysregulation from living the impacts of policy, institutional and community racism. It is the existential drag on mental and emotional energy from being made to represent one's race. When this kind of racism is at its most effective, it can mean destruction of hope.

Weaponized fatigue can look like:

  • Cognitive overload and ingrained lies
  • Doubt in self
  • Exhaustion
  • Dehumanization

“This is where fatigue sets in, dreams die and the work doesn't move forward. Fatigue is a barrier to change.” —Design team member

© Meclina Gomes Priestley

Community

Weaponized stereotypes

At the community level, the impacts of racism are felt in how the lives of people of color are portrayed by mainstream media and other public narratives. The behaviors of individuals are used to paint broad-stroke pictures of whole communities. One story stands in for the whole. Negative generalizations speak louder than a community’s strengths and are a deterrent to the building of strong community networks. The positive, generative and transformative stories are either left for communities of color to tell themselves, quietly without a bullhorn or stage, or simply erased.

Weaponized stereotypes can look like:

  • Media creating a singular definition of a person/people
  • Negative perceptions and expectations distorting positive realities
  • Isolation and segregation
  • Obsession with retribution

“Stereotypes like 'superpredators' have been used to drive harmful policies for decades.” —Design team member

© Meclina Gomes Priestley

Institutional

Weaponized culture

At the institutional level, racism takes the form of dominant cultures and norms that perpetuate white supremacist ways of operating. These norms often reflect an emphasis on individualism, the belief that it’s up to each person to thrive—or fail. To gain power in institutions, we balance the need to assimilate to survive and the desire to disrupt the system we are working to navigate.

Weaponized culture can look like:

  • Oppressive cultural norms and unspoken expectations enforcing assimilation
  • Power-hoarding strengthening the status quo
  • The system reinforcing its idea that it is the responsibility of the individual to make it, not for the system to change

“Impact investment funds focus on Black and Brown founders, but with investments that reflect the same extractive venture capital structures that folks have historically been left out of.” – Design team member

© Meclina Gomes Priestley

Policy

Weaponized opacity

At the policy level, racism takes the form of deliberate hiding of information. Systems obscure information, operate behind closed doors and make decisions based on an echo chamber of voices—the voices who are in the rooms of power and decision-making. Because information is held tightly, there are few paths for true accountability or equitable and diverse participation.

Weaponized opacity can look like:

  • Lack of transparency
  • Lack of representation
  • Lack of accountability

“Policy materials are written in legalese, creating barriers to access for people and practitioners without fluency in policy language.” —Design team member

© Rob 'Problak' Gibbs

Shared Narratives

Shared narratives counter the harmful narratives about people and communities of color that underpin racist policies, structures and practices. Our shared narratives allow us to be more than a monolith. They shift who is telling the story and bring many voices to the table.

For example:

The Front Porch Collective uplifts culture. It is actively working to change dominant narratives. It does so by seeking out workers of the diaspora to make and inform all decisions—on stage, in the boardroom and in the office. It makes and executes decisions side-by-side, as small as what stapler is purchased and as large as how to use sound with intention in performance.

Examples:

Soul Fire Farm: Equity Guidelines and Reflection Questions for Foundations & Donors

This tool provides donors with the opportunity to better understand how to connect and interact with community.

Issa Rae + Insecure

This series provides insights about the experiences of Black people in L.A. From microaggressions at work to gentrification to a police stop, the series tackles several issues. It also highlights several BIPOC-owned and operated businesses.

Master of None

This series provides insights about the experiences of BIPOC + queer people, from representation on television to the homophobia in the Black community.

The Laundromat Project

A collaborative aimed at centering narratives of community members.

Sort Of

This series focuses on the lived experiences of non-binary, trans, and queer people. From family relationships to gender identity, the series is another example of amplifying voices and creating multiple narratives.

© Marquis Victor x Nicole Garcia | Elevated Thought

Transparency & Accountability

Transparency and accountability make visible the effects of systemic racism. Lack of system visibility is not a passive act, but an active form of oppression and protection of existing systems. By using transparency to drive accountability, we make evident how systems are built to harm people of color and protect privilege. 

For example:

Citizens for Juvenile Justice uses data accessibility as one of its tools for advocacy. CJJ drives transparency in the criminal legal system by uncovering and connecting data points to reveal inequities. Accurate data about the experience of young people in the system is not readily available. CJJ fights to access data, analyzes it and makes it available to all.

Examples:

Bryan Stevenson

Founder of EJI and fierce advocate focused on ending mass incarceration and amplifying stories that would otherwise go untold.

Until Freedom

An organization on the front lines fighting for justice and focusing on police accountability and criminal justice reform.

Mapping Police Violence

A tool that captures and reports data about police violence across the United States.

Designing the We

Design group focused on community storytelling, including that of redlining across communities in the United States.

© Ekua Holmes

Empowered Communities

Empowered communities dismantle and create alternatives to existing systems by centering their own power and self-determination. They place the community at the heart of reform by co-creating solutions. 

For example:

The Transformational Prison Project was built by a small group of men serving life sentences who began exploring what restorative justice means. Restorative justice offers a model of accountability focused on healing and held by the community impacted. By providing spaces where those who have been harmed and those who have done the harm can come together and engage in dialogue, TPP builds understanding of both the individual harms and the systemic harms that affect communities of color.

Examples:

Black Wall Street

An early 20th century center of economic and cultural strength, founded and developed by African Americans in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Harlem Grown

A community garden founded by a community member focused on providing access to the community.

Stamped from the Beginning

A book detailing The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America.

Vector 90

An incubator, co-working space, and cultural hub in South Central LA, supported by the late Nipsey Hussle.