How Business Leaders Can Step Up As Allies For The Black Community

As the literal dust has yet to settle and smoke has yet to clear, what is crystal clear is that it’s time for those who have been silent on issues of racial injustice, police brutality, and basic civil rights to be silent no more. While “allies” is the buzzing word for what white counterparts should be at this time, we need amplifiers. We need people who are willing to put themselves on the frontlines, using their systemic privilege, so that the black community is not fighting this battle against systematic oppression alone.

In a climate that’s threatening the livelihoods of black people and black professionals in the corporate sphere, here’s how business leaders can step up to amplify our message, provide support, and take necessary action.

In The Workplace

• Create a mandatory safe space (a meeting or forum) for the purpose of acknowledging any and all toxic workplace culture or experiences of discrimination.

How to create an effective safe space

• A company head and HR rep must be present, primarily to listen and take notes.
• Employees should have the option to speak in a group or individual setting based on comfort and desire for privacy. During group settings, employees should be encouraged to share openly in case others have a similar concern or have faced a similar experience.
• These talks should be ongoing as needed, with the intention of taking immediate action following, in the form of company memos and social training.
• All employees should be part of the conversation, no matter the topic. (Attempts to provide employees with separate resource groups based on identification can, at times, facilitate more separation.)

How to police your workplace culture

• When hiring, be sure to not just fill a diversity quota. Add checks and balances to ensure the best candidate hasn’t been overlooked due to race.
• Implement a zero-tolerance policy for hate crimes and acts of racism.
• Train your employees on what is a crime and what is not. Make sure they understand which crimes require a police presence and which do not.
• Stop tokenizing black employees in an effort to fatten a budget, especially if you don’t invest these funds in anything benefitting the demographic.
• Implement sensitivity training for your security guards and other security personnel.

Financially

• Donate to the memorial funds of black men and women who have been murdered at the hands of police.
• Fund opportunity grants to invest in black-owned and -operated businesses. (Direct investment is also helpful.)
• Fund scholarships for black students who are unable to afford college.
• Fund mentoring programs that connect young future business leaders of color with current industry titans so that climbing the corporate ladder no longer seems unattainable.
• Create more pitch competitions that are accessible and geared towards investing in the ideas of those who do not traditionally have funding access. Select pitch competition judges that reflect the diversity of competitors.
• Create solidarity funds for protestors of injustices.
• Consider investing in alternative emergency response systems. (Policing costs America more than $100 billion a year.)

Publicly

• Use your platform to bring awareness to injustices and demand results. (In the world we live in, some voices are louder than others.)
• Move beyond the Internet. Don’t just be an “armchair revolutionary,” “Twitter teller” or “Instagram intellectual.” Take that same anti-racist energy into your everyday life.
• Do not compare struggles. For example sentiments like “never forget 9/11” but “slavery was so long ago, get over it.”
• Acknowledge that this is happening. Talk to your friends and other business owners who are still in denial about what’s happening. Share the facts.
• Create a safe space for open dialogue about race at home and in your circles.
• Call out racism when you see it.
• Listen to black people when they explain how they feel about racism. Listen to learn, not to respond. But stop asking black people to teach you how to not be racist.

Personally

• Be careful who you endorse and donate to. Operate in the interest of the communities where your businesses exist and involve the community in those big decisions.
• Use your influence to demand that the laws related to police brutality are implemented.
• Demand that cities be required to maintain a transparently indexed and searchable database of every stop, frisk, summons, use of force, manslaughter, or murder they conduct. This should be accessible on the Internet.
• Hold police commissioners accountable for policy changes. Support the creation of external oversight committees to investigate police brutality and to audit police precincts.
• Research who you vote for. Withhold your support of those politicians who have a history of voting on the side of racists and racism. Hold current politicians accountable for facing their own racism.

While the steps above will not immediately solve 400 years of systemic racism running rampant throughout our country, these are actionable steps that any business leader can take to get the ball rolling in the right direction. Solving the issues of racial bias and breaking down the system of white supremacy will require collective action. It’s beyond time to start doing the work. It might get uncomfortable. Do it anyway.

This article was written by Rashaad Lambert from Forbes and was legally licensed by AdvisorStream .