2021: How I Measured Up with My DEI Goals
I used to love Danielle LaPorte. If you flipped through my copy of The Firestarter Sessions circa 2015, you would have had to stop every four or five lines to read all the sections that I had eagerly highlighted.
She was my role model for what it looked like to be an aligned artist and a business owner. Now, that same copy sits unopened in my linen closet upstairs.
That’s because, in 2018, she launched a program called Lighter replete with racist advertising images – one of a faceless Black figure and one with four limbs of each different color tone, a white left arm, a black right arm, a brown right leg, and a white left leg.
Cringe.
From the moment these ads began to run, comments from Black and Brown voices flooded in with education and attempts to call her both out and in. She ultimately deleted all of these comments along with the original ads, effectively silencing opinions and erasing any productive discussion or wisdom that had manifested from those threads. Then she posted a message that glossed over what she had learned and focused more on how it had made her feel.
(If you want to read more about what happened, this is the most comprehensive post I could find.)
Until this happened, I saw Danielle LaPorte as a business owner who stood in her integrity.
It was a case study in what not to do when you’ve been called out.
While it took a few more years before I began to unpack my own internalized racism as a woman of color, experiencing that lack of representation cracked my rose-colored glasses.
And seeing it happen over and over again for years after with other online entrepreneurs has positively informed the way that I run my business as well as the way in which I advise my clients.
I am not, nor do I have any desire to be, a perfect, values-led business owner. But I try really, really hard to walk my talk.
In an effort to be transparent, I put together this review of 2021 that walks through my DEI goals, some of my most significant takeaways, and my ideas for how I can make more of an impact this year.
There’s still so much compost that I’m sifting through, but this is my best effort at what I know right now.
I hope it’s helpful, and happy 2022 :)