Pursuing Equity Blog - Anna Branch

March 18, 2023March 18, 2023

The Ever-Changing American Dream: The Labor History Behind Modern Racial Tensions

The labor market inequalities we see in the United States today are rooted in the way economic security has historically been made available for White workers at the expense of Black workers.
guest article for Labor Press, access it here

As layoff whispers grow and inflation remains high, the uncertainty of whether American workers will have a job that pays enough to survive is fueling a resurgence of unions, which have the highest approval rating by the American public since 1965, according to a recent Gallup poll.

In Work in Black and White: Striving for the American Dream, a recently published book by the Russell Sage Foundation that I co-authored alongside Dr. Caroline Hanley, we unpack the labor history behind modern racial tensions and expose fault lines in the American Dream. Large swaths of Americans understand economic insecurity in opposition to a nostalgic and romanticized view of the post-World War II period—a time of high living standards, low inequality, and widespread opportunity. But the perception of the postwar period as the heyday of American labor, requires erasing the experiences of non-White workers.

Our research found that many workers, both Black and White, are living an American nightmare—unending anxiety grounded in the reality of profound economic instability. As a nation, how tightly we hold onto the promise of the American Dream despite rising economic insecurity will define this generation. As unions fight for a living wage, they must reconcile the reality that a good job is only good as long as you have it.

We call on policymakers to pass legislation to rebuild the social safety net to help workers navigate the uncertainties that characterize modern work in America. We need to abandon the racial dog-whistle language of “entitlements,” recognizing that even those attempting to “help themselves” increasingly find that it is not enough.

Get 20 percent off when you purchase the book using code: BRANCH.

January 26, 2023March 20, 2023

Work in Black and White: Imagining a Just Racial Future

Institute for the Study of Global Racial Justice (ISGRJ) Book Talk

The Black body was brought to America to labor. We cannot imagine a just racial future without reckoning with how race continues to shape work and wellbeing.

I could not have asked for a better way to launch this book! The talk picks up on thread in the book about the impact of inequality at work on health and I connected it back to ISGRJ Black Bodies, Black Health: Imagining a Just Racial Future project with the funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. You can watch the talk on their YouTube now.

As the structural realities in the US labor market and economy continue to shift, Americans’ commitment to meritocracy means they are working harder and harder to stay afloat. The promise of the American dream is that hard work not only leads to opportunity, but also security. Yet as insecurity rises and workers hold tight to the cultural mythology pushing themselves to work harder, it is fueling an invisible, but highly consequential form of insecurity. As Black Americans cling to the assurances of the American dream, and grapple with the host of impediments to achieving it, they are literally dying in the process. There is no structural accountability in the dream, just individual responsibility to work for it.

As economic vulnerability defines our new normal, perhaps we can now realize the critical role of social supports for Americans going through tough times and find the political will to make the invisible policy choices that create structures of opportunity. This is necessary not just in a profound and disruptive crisis like the COVID-19 pandemic, but in the ordinary and now routine labor force disruptions that characterize modern work in America. For as long as individuals are chasing job security, hustling to demonstrate deservingness, and internalizing failure, the broad coalition needed to push for change and sustain it cannot be formed. Instead, Black and White Americans will chase the elusive American dream while bemoaning the fact that it is not working for them. The reality is this—unless we redefine the American dream inclusively, creating the means to enable true economic freedom—not just aspirational opportunity, but the means to achieve it—we will not live up to the ideal, the promise, or the possibility of America.

Thanks especially to my amazing team who came dressed in black and white to show their support. I am so fortunate to work with absolutely amazing people!

May 16, 2022March 20, 2023

Joy and Rage: Being Black in America

I wrote the piece below to make sense for myself of the jumble of emotions I felt this morning. To reconcile the oil and water experience of joy and rage existing alongside each other in my brain and heart. To quote Charlie Mackesy, “sometimes just getting up and carrying on is brave and magnificent.” To all those who pulled it together and carried on today, I see you and I am you. Onward.

After the Buffalo shooting don’t choose a comfortable silence | Opinion piece for nj.com

The past week offers a window into the disquieting reality of being Black in America. It is the violent, perniciousness of rendering daily life—whether at church, in the supermarket, or asleep in your bedroom—unsafe while at the same time decrying the teaching of critical race theory as harm.

It is the treatment of Michael Brown Jr. in the media as a man while the Buffalo killer is a teenager—they are the same age. It is to insist on the sanctity of Black life, to ask the country to see you and agree, and be derided as divisive. It is emotional whiplash to find and hold your center when the world, if you are Black and paying attention, pulls you to the poles of hopelessness and outrage.

Yet, millions of Black Americans woke up on Monday morning and went to work and to school. You smiled and perhaps they smiled back. For me, and I venture it is true for many of us, the capacity to hold collective grief and find space for joy is well-practiced. This weekend was graduation. Celebrations of Black joy and brilliance abounded, the news of Black death did not overcome it. The celebration was not just a distraction, holding space for joy was itself resistance.

But I hope we never get to the place where we, by our inaction, normalize the mass murder of Black people. I recall the 2015 Charleston massacre, the loss of nine Black lives and the desecration of a historic church, but most of all, I remember the suffocating devastation of that moment. America from that point on forever chose to live in willful ignorance of the radicalization of White youth online, the reality that code words and dog-whistle politics set up the future of America as a battle of “us vs. them” incites violence.

We all witnessed the 2017 Charlottesville riots, the chants “you will not replace us.” The storming of the Capitol on January 6 bears an awful resemblance to that moment, the sentiment that a country was being taken and the fight was on to take it back.

We watched the fervor of the last several months where the feigned fight against teaching critical race theory in schools was used to galvanize voters, terrorize school board members, and ban books. Now we sit in the wake of the terror visited on the Buffalo community and I am reminded of James Baldwin’s words that “to be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a state of rage almost all of the time.”

It is not enough for Black people to be enraged; we need all people of conscience to speak up. This is not a choose your own adventure moment in America, we fall or rise together. I am often comforted by Martin Luther King, Jr.’s admonition that “the moral arc of the universe is long but it bends toward justice,” but only if WE bend it.

I hope you do not choose comfortable silence. I hope you do not give in to despair. I hope you find a way to hold space for joy and channel your rage and I hope the world is better for it.

March 5, 2022March 5, 2022

The Call to Justice

I had the pleasure of hearing Angela Davis speak last night on “Redefining Justice and Freedom for Everyone.” She began her lecture with a damning question, How do we make sense of this historical moment, when we were on the verge of collective consciousness – the recognition of racism as structural and systemic, rather than individual and attitudinal, but there has been an absence of real change? She answered, in part, by naming the elephant in the room of the post 2020 racial reckoning, which is organizations – from higher education to corporations – responded with an explosion of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts.

This was an aside in her lecture but generative for me, as it is at the heart of the frustrations that I have and what has been expressed to me as an organizational DEI lead. Nationally, new organizational commitments to DEI emerging from the racial reckoning gave the veneer of engagement with racism but have sought to resolve it at the level of statements and offices. Well-meaning work, but often it targets individuals and serves performative aims. Sometimes, it supports important and needed organizational shifts but often changes are low hanging fruit that leave the inequities built into the systems untouched. Simply adopting the language of DEI is not enough.

“We cannot settle for including individuals who had previously been excluded in harmful systems. We need justice.”
Angela Davis

Integrating justice, however, requires more than making alphabet soup. Moving from DEI to DEIJ. Even if you center justice in the JEDI–justice, equity, diversity and inclusion–formulation, what is your vision of justice? Who is it for? Does it call for equity–justice as the pursuit of freedom for all people? Or just us? Freedom for me and mine or those whose views and self-presentation are comfortable for me and mine. Is your call for justice transformative?

Too often we have a singular and small vision of justice, resting at the level of individual reconciliation, repair, and acknowledgement of harm. This is important, yes and always necessary. But the root of injustice has never been individuals. It has always been individuals acting within, and often validated by, systems of inequality and ideologies, like racism, that legitimate injustice. Justice, in the systemic sense, is the accomplishment of equity, defined as “the state, quality, or ideal of being just, impartial and fair.”

Davis reminded us that while we celebrate victories, such as convictions for taking Black lives too soon. We must not settle for that as the accomplishment of justice –the grander vision, the goal, is the shifting of systems that created the conditions for harm. This envisioning is the core of abolition – the collective imagination of a different future.

While we envision a just future, we cannot be lulled to sleep by overtures to diversity. Diversity is NOT enough.

February 27, 2022March 20, 2023

Diversity is NOT the goal. Equity is.

A lot of organizations and leaders say they are committed to diversity but have no idea what it means to pursue it, and more importantly make working towards it a shared organizational goal. Most well-meaning leaders stay at the surface and articulate performative, even if sincere, goals.

As a society, we are in the middle of a change for which we are profoundly unprepared. We talk past each other and attach different meanings to the same words, with ever increasing consequences (ex: critical race theory). Today the realities of demographic change and culture wars are dueling in prime time. Organizations and leaders are grappling with how to respond. To authentically be and do better. Let me be your guide.

Diversity is NOT the Goal, Equity is. To understand this and meaningfully work toward it, we need to be clear on what equity is not. Equity is not the same thing as diversity. It is not about race, gender, LGBTQ or differently abled groups as identity groups.

Equity focuses on where those identities have overlapped with differences in desirable outcomes, with deleterious consequences, and asks why. If we celebrate and showcase diversity and do nothing to work towards equity, we have failed. Equity requires a constant pursuit. An awareness of what the real goal is and striving to reach it.

Check back here often for my notes, tidbits, and observations on equity–why it matters and how to work towards it. If you enjoyed this blog post, share it on your favorite social media platform with the hashtag #pursuingequity and follow me at @AnnaBranchPhD.