The past few months have been such a bizarre and crazy time. We started the Spring with a global pandemic then entered into a phase of racial reckoning. I don’t know many people or organizations who are not talking about diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Sharp Brain Consulting, like many other consulting firms, is working alongside organizations to improve their outcomes as it relates to this work, but we don’t want to stop there. Beginning in August, SBC will be working with women who want to take their race and justice work to the next level. Using the liberatory consciousness framework created by Barbara J. Love, we have created two groups to help white women.
We should all work to be liberation workers; Love describes liberation workers as people who are committed to changing systems and institutions characterized by oppression to create equity and social justice. To do that, we have to develop liberatory consciousness. The four elements are awareness, analysis, acting, and accountability/ally-ship.
Love says that the awareness component involves “developing the capacity to notice, to give our attention to our daily lives, our language, our behaviors, and even our thoughts”. It is about noticing what is happening in the world around you.
Analysis requires every individual “not only to notice what is going on in the world around her, but to think about it and theorize about it -that is, to get information and develop her own explanation for what is happening, why it is happening, and what needs to be done about it”.
Action is next because awareness and analysis are not enough. This component involves deciding what needs to be done, and then seeing to it that action is taken. This can be taking action personally or encouraging others to take action.
The framework ends with accountability. This involves taking the consequences of actions taken or not taken. This phase is “concerned with how we understand and manage the opportunity and possibility for perspective sharing and allyship in liberation work”.
The white women’s equity and justice groups were created based on this framework. Phase 1 is about awareness and analysis. In this phase, participants learn more about race, equity, and liberation. Participants begin to look internally to understand their role in this work and how they can work to become a liberation worker. In Phase 2, we focus on action and accountability. Participants begin to examine their lives to understand what action looks like for them individually. This work, work of equity and inclusion, will be challenging, but it is necessary. Women can no longer be complicit in an unjust society.