Change is the Vehicle, Freedom is the Destination
I’m writing this piece in response to a question a student asked me: “What are the ethical implications of changing corporations from the inside—particularly thinking about WOC (women of color) who may need the clout of groups like McKinsey to be marketable while also knowing the immense violence those groups can bring on communities?”
This question is incredibly important to me not only as a DEI consultant and educator, but also as a Black American woman. From a very young age, I received messages from all directions that assimilating into white institutions was not only the safest life trajectory, but also represented a commitment to furthering the ideals of civil rights activists like Dr. Martin Luther King. I was fed this message in US History classes that taught us about Dr. King but not Malcolm X or the Black Panthers, on TV shows like Saved by the Bell and Vampire Diaries that featured well-spoken, fair-skinned tokens, and from white “friends” who tolerated me as long as I talked, dressed, and thought like them. As I return to these world-making representations from my childhood, I notice that all of the images that I interpreted as reflections of myself were actually reflections of the kind of Black woman that would put white people at ease. In this sense, I had been socially programmed to conflate righteous political action with operating inside white people’s comfort zones.
Until this year, I spent most of my life depending on the goodwill of the institutions into which I had assimilated, which mirrored the dynamics of an abusive relationship. I had to believe in my ability to change the institution from the inside not because it offered evidence of its willingness or ability to evolve, but rather because I had bound up so much of my identity, my future, and my economic stability in preserving my fantasy of the institution’s deep-down goodness. Because without the validation of being employed by an elite institution or corporation, who was I? What did I have to offer? Where could I possibly go? The questions I asked myself were tied together by a common thread of fear, as well as my belief in my own inadequacy. In order to break free from the toxic cycle of believing that I needed to be affiliated with an institution that fundamentally could not meet my emotional or political needs, I had to start validating myself from the inside. And through that process of internal validation, I began to expand my imaginative capacities until my visions for the future manifested themselves as tangible solutions for real social problems.
The primary output of my liberated imagination has been define&empower, a consulting and education collective that is rooted in the work of Black feminist authors such as bell hooks, Toni Morrison, Audre Lorde, and Jewelle Gomez. As a Ph.D candidate researching 20th century Black feminist literature and culture, I had been institutionally trained to read these women’s work as purely theoretical. It never occurred to many of the people around me that these Black feminists’ work was not merely source material for an academic project, but rather a brave and innovative foundation for a radically different way of structuring the future. As I read their work, I began to think about what it would mean to build a company around bell hooks’ idea of a beloved community, Toni Morrison’s belief in the power of radical imagination, Jewelle Gomez’s practice of creativity through storytelling, and Audre Lorde’s exploration of difference on the basis of race, gender, and sexuality. In fact, we took the name of our collective from Audre Lorde’s essay, “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House.” In that essay, Lorde writes, “In a world of possibility for us all, our personal visions help lay the groundwork for political action...In our world, divide and conquer must become define and empower.”
As I continue to liberate myself from institutions, I find that my personal visions for the future shift as I find my place within a beloved community. Instead of recreating a corporate environment that prioritizes competition, insecurity, ruthlessness, and solitary work, I am establishing an organizational culture at define&empower that encourages collaboration, experimentation, and accountability. I’ve loved collaborating with former students of mine to create a Black feminist summer school, our Black Feminist Hotline podcast, informative blog posts, and a variety of educational content on Instagram and TikTok. We’ve also facilitated workshops and roundtable discussions on topics including dance-writing and sexual violence. As a consultant with define&empower, I’ve also been able to work on brand strategy and educational reform projects in which I was able to apply the Black feminist principles I listed above to real-world problems. Through creating define&empower, I’ve had the opportunity to affect institutions and corporations from the outside, which has allowed me to preserve my freedom and wellbeing while also contributing to social change.
My current goal for define&empower is to create a dual Ph.D program/consulting think tank that on trains people to develop practical applications for Black feminist thought. As a collective, we are developing a database of educational material that our consultants can draw on when facilitating workshops, conducting research for podcasts, TV shows, and films, and developing DEI (diversity, equity, inclusion) consulting plans for companies and schools. We are also currently collaborating with our community members at 5DNC to create a system that tangibly measures a business’s commitment to social justice and equity. To measure a business’s commitment, we would ask (among other things) if the organization:
Pays its workers a living wage
Is welcoming to LGBTQIA people through respecting pronouns, not dead-naming people, and offering gender-neutral bathrooms
Actively educates its workers, management, and owners about anti-racist or abolitionist politics
Offers employees paid time off to do community service
Recycles/composts
The goal of the system we’re creating at define&empower is to develop a community of organizations that are committed to doing the work necessary for a sustainable, inclusive, and ethical future rooted in Black feminist ideals. This is an idea that I never could have come up with on my own, much less if I was still committed to the fantasy of making change within an institution that sees my most fundamental human needs as “too much.” Once I had the courage to validate my needs--such as being respected, seen, and uplifted--it became possible for me to develop a business model that continually nourishes me and my community.
If you are a lawyer, accountant, business manager, graphic designer, sound editor, or data analyst who would like to get involved in define&empower, please don’t hesitate to reach out. Additionally, if you are a writer who is interested in creating blogs and other content with d&e, please feel free to DM us on Instagram or contact us via our website.
If you are a business owner, educator, artist, or employee at a company who would like to collaborate with us or benefit from our variety of services, including workshops, trainings, research, and consulting work, please contact us as well.