Adapted from Multnomah County Office of Diversity and Equity
Integrating a racial equity lens supports actions that empower, heal, transform, and places emphasis on doing less harm. Partners at all levels align around transformative values, relationships, and goals to realize racial equity.
Defining an Individual’s Purpose:
- What is my purpose towards achieving racial equity?
- What gets in the way of maintaining my purpose towards racial equity?
- What do I need to maintain my purpose?
- Purpose towards racial equity is also further clarified by our positions in the hierarchy.
- If you are an administrator with positional authority, how can you further clarify your purpose as an equity-minded leader and leverage the power you have?
- If you are not an administrator within the organization, what do you need in order to feel valued and recognized as a key contributor and leader to the organizational purpose?
- How does your role and your purpose influence and align with the organizational purpose?
Defining an Institution’s Purpose:
- What is our institution’s purpose towards racial equity?
- How are we clearly defining equity, and where and how do we communicate that?
- How can we ensure that our purpose is integrated into our policies, procedures, and practices?
- How can we empower our employees with a greater sense of meaning in what they do around racial equity, so that they feel a deeper connection to their work and the organization?
- In what practical ways can our institution add more value around equity and do less harm?
- Is equity the central theme in your outreach, recruitment, and retention efforts?
- Who is sitting at the table of stakeholders and decision makers? Whose voices are heard at that table? Whose voices are silenced? How do we make this an equitable space to achieve our purpose of equity? What new tables need to be created?
- How do we ensure that we are all in this together and align the institution’s purpose towards equity?