Why Start With Agreements?
By Michelle Molitor, with Nicole Young
The conversation about race is really a conversation about love. It often makes people uncomfortable to use the word “love” because the word “race” often conjures up images of struggle and inequity; but that’s exactly what it is. This is not a romantic kind of love; instead, it’s a love of self, a love of others, and a love of the kinds of relationships necessary to honor all humanity. In order to engage in conversations with ourselves and with others about race, we have to be willing to open up — first to ourselves, and then to others. We must be willing to excavate what we think we know about ourselves, and then we must allow ourselves to heal, have the humility to ask forgiveness, and develop the strength to offer grace.
At The Equity Lab, there is a reason we start all of the conversations we lead with what we call REDI (Race, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion) Agreements. These Agreements shape the conversation and form the backbone of racial literacy and personal transformation. All of us live in a country that actively refuses to discuss the construct of race and its myriad consequences with any fidelity to the lived experiences of Black, Indiginous, Latinx, Asian Pacific Islander, and other people of color. But in order to disassemble the harmful structures around us, we must start talking.
Talking about race is challenging. Talking about race is arduous. Talking about race requires bravery. Talking about race necessitates preparation. And we start each of these hard conversations with an invitation to each person. We invite them to examine how they are showing up with love.
The Equity Lab believes in equity across all lines of difference and variation. However, we recognize the special distinction that race has had historically around the world and especially in the United States of America. And because we recognize the potential for that history to repeat itself, we choose to address race first and to keep race at the center of our work. We believe that if race is allowed to be ignored, avoided, or referenced with false equivalencies — it will be.
We did not invent the concept of Agreements, but at The Equity Lab, we understand their power. REDI Agreements are about you. How do you want to hold yourself accountable? How do you want to show up for yourself and others? How are you working to navigate your relationships in meaningful, authentic and powerful ways? How are you showing up in love?
When I first started leading work around racial equity and social justice, I knew that the REDI Agreements were an important tool in this work. They gave me language and served as guideposts to help others on their own journeys. Over time, however, I’ve learned that these Agreements are so much more than simply a structural tool. I’ve come to understand that they actually represent who I want to be in the world when I’m my best and fullest self. They help me think about what it means when I don’t show up as my full self in any situation — how that not only undermines my relationships with others, but also deeply undermines my relationship with myself. Only showing up partially when I have the ability to be so whole serves no one. When I show up in love — completely — I support others to feel free do the same.
The Agreements are simple: Stay engaged. Speak your truth. Experience discomfort. Grace with others, grace with ourselves. Observe the 24- to 48-hour rule. Notice patterns of participation. Respect confidentiality. Recognize intent vs. impact. Consider power dynamics. Recognize the danger of a single story.
When we first share the Agreements, people sometimes think that they’re more like what we’re familiar with in workplaces: norms. Norms are an accountability system that can be used to call people out when your perception is that they are doing something outside of expectations. But what is powerful about Agreements is that they are a pact you make with yourself.
What are the ways you want to call yourself to more truth and love? How can that truth revitalize relationships with yourself and others? When we show up in that loving way, we remain curious about how we can grow and change and come to understand that our relationships — through love — are our most incredible and impactful tool to create lasting change.
Love is about believing in the power of transformation. And for us, it is important that we distinguish love from comfort. We are socialized to believe that being loving means being gentle in a way that often prioritizes the feelings of the most powerful in our society and leaves the most vulnerable without the support that they need. Love requires a deep shift in that dynamic, and that shift is not comfortable for any of us. Listening to the most impacted is a loving act. Listening and changing behavior requires love, sometimes alongside discomfort and sacrifice.
Throughout America’s history, we’ve centered the comfort of the white, the wealthy, the able-bodied, and those deeply invested in the status quo in conversations about systemic inequality. So much so that sometimes centering the stories and voices of Black people, Indigenous people, disabled people, people of color, and poor people is jarring. Allowing oppressed people to own and share their experiences in a society designed, in many ways, to destroy their identities, feels uncomfortable. However, Agreements help ground us in the reality that unearthing inequality and exposing our complicity in the harm of those around us is not an attack, but in fact the first step in healing.
Take, for instance, our Agreement of “Recognize intent vs. impact.” White dominant culture tells us that intent is what matters most in our interactions with other human beings. If we meant no harm, then none was given. But all of us, in our bones, know that not to be true. When someone does something hurtful or offensive to another person, we should prioritize the feelings and story of those most affected by that action. This Agreement helps us center those harmed, support them in healing first, and in so doing, encourage the person who perpetrated the harm to consider a different set of actions in the future.
Therefore, our Agreements help guide us to a place where all of us — especially those least practiced in conversations about race — have the skills and patterns to navigate racial conflict with increasing ease and reflection. These skills help to remove shame around concepts and language that are new or challenging to previously-held ideas of the world. Particularly for white people, who often don’t believe they need to have these conversations, our Agreements provide scaffolding until those skills begin to take shape.
Our work is only a beginning. There is no way that a single article, an eight-hour training, or a six-month organizational focus on racial equity will undo the centuries of oppression embedded in so many layers of our society. The work we are doing, personally and collectively, to upend the very systems that form the backbone of our societal understanding is ongoing and never truly finished.
However, the Agreements, and the conversations they foster, help lay the groundwork for more robust life- and systems-changing work. Agreements don’t just have a place in our more formal conversations about race; they can be taken to the dinner table, to a church meeting, to the boardrooms you sit in, and to the buses you ride. They are a guide to build not only your individual skill, but also the community will to engage differently on difficult and crucially important topics like race, class, gender, privilege, and power.
Want to learn more?
Read: REDI Agreements