Communicating About a Troubled History
After nearly a decade of delivering training on race equity, I’ve worked with many organizations that have troubling histories.
Often, they want to hide the way they were founded or who founded them.
They feel like their organization will always be weighed down by what their founders did or their values.
But hiding the faults in your organization, including the way you were founded, takes away the opportunity for others to see how much you’ve evolved.
A better way: Confront your organization's past and learn from it.
It is pain that is necessary. And it provides a potential path to freeing your organization to reach its full potential.
Of course, much of this work falls on your executive leadership and board. Ideally, they will be willing to uproot the parts of your history that no longer align with your current values and mission, and take a hard look at who on the board and staff is willing to shed old skin and step into new.
Morgan State University recently offered a prime example of this difficult work in action in the way they approached tearing down an oppressive symbol that divided their community for over 80 years.
As communicators, we also play a role in this process. Your communications team can help your organization acknowledge its past and shift organizational culture moving forward.
Of course, you can also lead the effort to talk about your history publicly — which can help you build trust externally and reaffirm what you stand for today.
This process will also demonstrate that you are serious about ensuring that future chapters of your history are about uprooting oppressive or inequitable systems.
If your work is focused on equity and uprooting systems of oppression, you have to become comfortable being uncomfortable.
This means you welcome the opportunity to learn, even if that means facing criticism. Doing so allows you to apply what you learn to make your organization stronger and wiser.
Nicki Faircloth
Communications Consultant
Nicki@turn-two.co
