How to Develop and Support Leadership that Contributes to Racial Justice

One of Tides’ fiscally sponsored projects, Leadership Learning Community , just released a report that is relevant to those of us in the nonprofit sector and beyond. The report presents key methods and recommendations on how leadership programs can help solve racial inequalities in communities across the country.

The publication suggests leadership programs can help solve racial inequalities in access to education, healthcare, income and wealth; but many current approaches to leadership development actually maintain and promote racial inequalities.  According to the report, a large number of leadership programs associate leadership with equal opportunity and individualism. This thinking does not recognize that current systems (i.e. policy, culture and institutional practices) can cause racial identity to impact one’s access to life opportunities. It also focuses too narrowly on changing the behavior of individual leaders.  Instead, leadership programs should 1) make their programs more accessible for people of color, 2) help participants understand how race limits the access to opportunities – in other words, the impact of structural racism, and 3) promote collective leadership.  This approach will help participants work together to tackle the systems that maintain racial inequalities.

Leadership Learning Community is hosting a free, interactive webinar on September 28th at 11:00 PDT to explore the main findings from the report and collectively brainstorm resources that can help programs implement the ideas from the report.

For more information about leadership and race, you can visit http://bit.ly/LeadershipRaceInfo





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