Race Matters Institute: Five Building Blocks for Advancing Racial Equity
Race Matters Institute resources that make up the organization’s five Building Blocks for advancing racial equity in any department, organization, community, or network.
Building Block #1 – Shared Language
Without a shared language, we cannot assume that we are referring to the same issues when we use the same terms. It is the platform on which racial equity work stands. Too often work around racial equity gets detoured because we are using the same terms with one another but meaning different things. The results can be confusion and misunderstanding – which, at its worst, erodes results and trust.
Building Block #2 – Structural Lens
Too often work focuses on individual-level change without understanding the policies, practices, and conditions that produce individual outcomes. Change for individuals is important, but it will not be able to go to scale without addressing the structural factors that produce individual-level outcomes.
The factors that produce any given inequity or disparity are complex, interactive, and reinforcing of one another. This is how structural racism operates. The Race Matters tool “What’s Race Got to Do With It?” helps users sort through the drivers of any given inequity by creating a “backmap” that visualizes these and their interactions.
Building Block #3 – Disaggregated Data
Most of our clients find it necessary to pursue a “data agenda” in order to do their work to advance racial equity most effectively. We emphasize the need for “disaggregated data that advances an understanding of how different groups are differently situated.”
Building Block #4 – Racial Equity Impact Analysis
The Racial Equity Impact Analysis helps you both raise the overall bar and close the racial gaps that exist on any given indicator by devising or revising approaches so that they speak specifically to how different groups experience an issue.
Building Block #5 – Racial Equity Backmap
Racial groups share universal aspirations (e.g., college graduation, optimal health, adequate housing, personal safety). But the means for achieving or guaranteeing these aspirations are likely to vary because of existing inequities in how groups are positioned in the U.S.