United For Change

What we witnessed concerning the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery is shocking, terribly tragic, and unacceptable. These horrible events highlight the systemic racial injustice that has been working to tear us apart for centuries.

This week I celebrated my 30-year service anniversary at AT&T. And while it seems like just yesterday, it clearly was not. Back in 1990, Douglas Wilder was the first black governor to be elected in this country in the state of Virginia. Thirty years ago, Nelson Mandela was released after 27 years of imprisonment. Also, in 1990, Jesse Owens (the most decorated athlete of the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, Germany, winning 4 gold medals in track and field) was posthumously awarded the Congressional Gold Medal.

While progress has been made in the past 30 years, it’s clear that there is much more work to do. I would like to reinforce our responsibility as individuals, leaders, and as a society – to listen to and truly hear the voices of our black colleagues and the black community. As Randall Stephenson once said, we must move past tolerance to understanding. And especially now, it’s clear this understanding must be deepened so that it can more readily serve as the foundation for action.

What action can we each take? We must stand up to all forms of racism, bias, violence and social injustice because this behavior affects all of us, both directly and indirectly. To do so, we need to expand our understanding of the issues, biases, and perspectives that are out there – as well as those which exist within ourselves. Only then can we attain the level of empathy, awareness and respect required for true understanding, so that we can effect the systemic and systematic changes that are so desperately needed. Without these changes, we will not achieve our fullest potential - whether that’s as individuals, teams, organizations or as a society at large.

In the spirit of developing further understanding, I’d like to share a few of the stories which have helped broaden my perspective:

-    Maintaining Professionalism In The Age of Black Death Is…A Lot..

-    Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man

-    Black Parents Explain How to Deal With the Police

I know there are many more stories out there. Feel free to share those that have impacted you. And if you’re wondering what you can do to promote racial justice and equality in the workplace, here’s a great article to get you started.

We can and must learn from one another. We must learn from both the past and the present so that together we can ensure that our future is one which embraces and celebrates our humanity across the whole of society. To do so, silence is not an option. We need many voices, ideally all voices. We are all members of the same race, and that is the human race. To make progress, we need to talk to each other, no matter how uncomfortable it makes us feel. We must not only focus on diversity and inclusion but on belonging. We all belong. Stand for equality. Make a difference. United, we can and must change the world.