Supporting Your BIPOC Staff

It may seem self evident but it bears repeating: the responsibility for addressing workplace equity and inclusion falls first and foremost upon the employer. A hiring policy to increase the diversity of staff is an obvious visible step in transforming a workplace, but it must be accompanied by a commitment to change workplace culture. It is not uncommon for organizations to wait for complaints or issues raised by their BIPOC employees before attempting to address (or indeed even noticing) racism in the workplace -- placing the burden of change on the people already being harmed. The burden and responsibility is not on BIPOC employees. It is first and always on the employer.

The Coalition for Diversity & Inclusion in Scholarly Communications (C4DISC) has created a series of "Toolkits for Equity" designed to help organizations proactively address racism in the workplace as a long-term, on-going commitment to diversity and equity:

"Inclusive leaders provide BIPOC employees with the space for them to be true to who they are and cultivate an environment where their ideas and perspectives are respected and valued."

The toolkits contain resources and strategies for things like:

• Avoiding BIPOC Burnout and Overburdening.
  
• How to onboard BIPOC Employees.
  
• How to mitigate the impact of Code Switching.

See the full toolkit here:
Supporting BIPOC Staff from Toolkits for Equity in Scholarly Publishing Project Volunteers

You can't manage what you don't measure. Do the work.

B Lab Global creates standards, policies, tools, and programs that shift the behavior, culture, and structural underpinnings of capitalism. They certify businesses whose practices are in line with their goal of creating a more fair and inclusive economy. Some of the companies with B Corps certification include Ben & Jerry's, Patagonia, Sundial Brands (Shea Moisture), and Dr. Bronner's.

Last year they compiled a collection of Anti-Racist practices and strategies adopted by some of the businesses who have achieved certification. The overall guiding principle? "You can't manage what you don't measure, do the work on racial justice."

The document shares concrete measures B Corps certified companies have taken or committed to implementing. Some are public-facing, like making sizable donations to the NAACP legal defense fund, and some are internal and in-house, like keeping an updated library or anti-racist resources for employees, implementing paid volunteer time to be used towards Black=founded charities or social justice work, and even protest marches.

All have committed to continuing education and training within their own companies, whether it is in the form of formal DEI training, or something as simple as an on going staff book club. Read more here:

Anti-Racist Practices Collection

How to Be an Ally if You Are a Person with Privilege

Share your journey on The 21-Day Racial Equity Challenge Bulletin Board

SIBA’s 21-Day Racial Equity Challenge
February 14-March 7, 2022

SIBA's 21-Day Racial Equity Challengeis returning for 2022. This year's Challenge will take place from February 14th to March 7th. A self-guided program open to any member of the book industry, Challenge participants receive daily emails that contain prompts for reflection, discussion, and action. The prompts are also posted at a dedicated blog, along with resources and links in support of each day’s prompt and topic. Resources are actively curated to be relevant to contemporary issues.

The Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance (SIBA) stands against Racism. SIBA is committed to amplifying and supporting BIPOC voices in our membership and industry, and to offering DEI educational programming to members, SIBA staff, and Board.

REGISTER

The Challenge’s Keynote Launch event will occur on February 7th at 7:00 PM EST:  In Pursuit of Racial Justice: A Conversation between Laura Coates and Steven Wright.  Laura Coates, the author of Just Pursuit: A Black Prosecutor’s Fight for Fairness, is a CNN senior legal analyst, SiriusXM host, and adjunct professor at the George Washington University School of Law. She'll be in conversation with Steven Wright, a clinical associate professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Law School, where he co-directs the Wisconsin Innocence Project.

Registration for the Keynote.

The 21-Day Racial Equity Challenge Blog

Register to take the 21-Day Racial Equity Challenge

SIBA’s 21-Day Challenge is designed specifically for its member booksellers and draws its format and many of its resources from the 21-Day Racial Equity Habit Building Challenge created by Food Solutions New England (FSNE), a regional collaborative network organized to support the emergence and continued viability of a New England food system that is a resilient driver of healthy food for all, racial equity, sustainable farming and fishing, and thriving communities. We are so grateful for their extraordinary work creating this program and making it available to other organizations.

SIBA would like to thank Kenrya Rankin, author of Words of Change: Anti-Racism, Powerful Voices, Inspiring Ideas and her publisher, Sasquatch Books, for providing most of the daily quotes and images of activists. SIBA also thanks Sourcebooks for their contributing sponsorship.

For more information about SIBA’s 21-Day Racial Equity Challenge, contact Linda-Marie Barrett, Executive Director, at lindamarie@sibaweb.com

The April 5th Keynote event, A Conversation Between Friends about Race and Joy with Ben Philippe and Luis Correa is now available to watch:

It was an inspiring, heartwarming, and sometimes enraging conversation. Some of our favorite quotable moments:

"Silence is not neutral."

"It's not about the intention, it's about the impact."

The event was the official launch of SIBA's 21-Day Racial Equity Challenge. Over 75 people have already signed up to take the Challenge, including many booksellers, librarians, and book industry people nation-wide.

Registration will remain open until Sunday, April 11th. Register here

The self-guided Challenge consists of a daily email prompt to encourage reflection on the ways racism manifests in our lives and our communities, along with some suggested actions to take to counter it and resources to help us work for change. Prompts will also be posted on the Challenge blog, and more resources added as we continue.

SIBA encourages its member stores to make the Challenge available to their staff. Some bookstores have contacted us to say they will be taking the Challenge as a group, which is wonderful to hear. We were especially impressed with the response from Julie Wilder of Spiral Circle Bookstore in Orlando, Florida on the subject of store owners taking this journey with their staff (quoted with permission):

"Since we are in constant talks about this issue, I was able to pull aside my Black, Brown and Asian staff to let them know this was happening before I announced to the rest of the staff and let them know that they could opt-out at any point, that their trauma was not up for consumption for the rest of the staff unless they were willing to share, etc and to make sure they knew I would have their back throughout this process."

Wilder has worked out a comprehensive plan for the Challenge that includes regular communication with her staff, in-store meetings, and integration into their already ongoing work on anti-racist training in their store. "We are not a perfect organization," she said in her announcement to staff, "and there are microaggressions that exist in our environment. The goal here is to create a culture in which none of us feel we have to endure essentially sexist, racists, ableist, etc behaviors from one another or our patrons and discover a way to effectively, compassionately and firmly disallow this to perpetuate in our culture."

See the store's posted Anti-Racist Commitments