A Journey Towards Racial Equity: Advancing the Work at New America

It’s been over three years since the murder of George Floyd ignited a summer of protests, a global racial reckoning, and for New America, the beginning of our equity transformation learning journey. In response to the events of summer 2020, we committed to going beyond the platitudes of press statements and instead usher in a reckoning within our own walls.

As an institution in the white-dominated think tank sector, New America made an explicit promise: to put equity at the center of our work, across all our work. That commitment came with a timeline. We pledged that, by 2023, our staff, work, and culture would “reflect the new America we’re trying to build.”

Over the past three years, we brought that promise into sharper focus. We enlisted the valuable support of equity-focused leadership expert Tamara Osivwemu to guide us on our journey. We developed an internal roadmap and specific benchmarks to evolve individually, organizationally, and in the work we put out into the world. Together, we hosted org-wide workshops where we unpacked implicit bias, practiced having difficult conversations with empathy and courage, and built a shared vocabulary around concepts such as microaggressions, privilege, and tokenism — to understand how these forces impact our daily lives and work. We updated our style guide to feature best practices for inclusive language. We relaunched and repositioned our editorial platform and newsletter to highlight voices at the intersection of equity, policy, and culture. We reached diverse representation goals at all levels of the organization (from our Board, to senior management, and across all staff).

We made great strides, too, in mapping career paths and growth opportunities for both new and existing talent at New America — to ensure anyone who joins our community enters a supportive space where they can thrive. And, we’ve done deeper research and offered concrete solutions to challenge inequity, discrimination, and systemic racism across our programmatic work — from culturally responsive education and narrative change in TV and film to housing security and equitable technology.

To bring our nation’s past to life, we recently sent 21 staff members to visit the Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration in Montgomery, Alabama. Occurring just days ahead of the 60th anniversary of the March on Washington, the trip offered staff an opportunity to gather and reflect on our nation’s history of racial injustice. All of these efforts are influencing and shaping the New America we want to be.

But don’t just take it from me. Below, a few staff members from across the organization share what New America’s commitment to equity means to them — and for them.

I’m proud of how far we’ve come. The journey, however, is far from over. While we hit many of the targets we set in 2020, we redefined a few of them, and we recommitted to the process as a journey. We seek to be an organization that works actively to not only lead difficult discussions that reckon with our past but create an equitable future where we can all thrive.

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