If you are committed to racial equity, your business will reflect that you are taking responsibility for more than your own gain. Those who find this appealing will be drawn to doing business with you. You’ll not only experience the benefits of living in greater integrity with the values and commitments you hold, but you will also be modeling for those around you. This is very important: the harmful effects of whiteness are systemic, meaning if you are white, they happen in you and through you. You don’t need to be an anti-racist professional to mitigate the harms whiteness causes; you simply need to take responsibility for them in your decisions, relationships, communities…and business.

Briefly: whiteness is a construct built to maintain an imbalance of power by deeming those who identify as white superior to others—this is where the term white supremacy comes from. The system of whiteness necessarily involves disparities, which means some have more and some have less, across all aspects of our culture: access to power, financial means, government backing, meaningful education, and the like. This is the basis of the harm that the system of whiteness causes.

Even the most ardent and committed white anti-racists uphold our dominant culture, just being white. Many BIPOC perpetuate elements of white dominant culture as well, by virtue of being raised in it. The system of whiteness is structural, insidious, and unconsciously maintained. For any of us to overcome racial inequities (and subsequently, all other inequities), we need to accept, comprehend and take responsibility for the impacts of whiteness we help cause. Building awareness of this and developing skills to recognize and remediate it are the bases of the Racial Equity Audit.

Capitalism and systemic racism are intricately intertwined and predicated on disparity. The goal of increasing your bottom line is at odds with the honoring of labor and commitment to equity central to the antiracist agenda. That said, by doing a racial equity audit and following through with the transformations that tell the world you’re taking responsibility for your whiteness, you may increase your profits. Or you may decrease them. It’s important to consider your priorities in this matter. Racial equity work is neither a trend nor a task that can be completed. It is an essential business structure requiring an evolution of work plans and attentions—like a marketing strategy or calendaring system.

• You see people around you becoming more educated or committed to racial equity, and feel like you’re missing out or falling behind. This kind of motivation is unlikely to support you through deeply personal, potentially profound work requiring a commitment of your emotional, spiritual, and mental energies. The audit is a deep dive, not a quick taste or a one-and-done.

• You currently lack the intention, means, or supports to both do the Audit’s reflective work and uphold the steps toward transformation the work leads to.

• You’re looking for a checklist of tasks and actions that constitute “doing anti-racism.” While the Audit involves assessment, reflection, exploration, analysis, and reckoning, the To Do list comes later. Action is a result of this work, not its focus.

While the Racial Equity Audit focuses on your business, the exploration starts with you. You’ll be asked to be open, honest and inquisitive about your goals, decisions, intentions, background, history, and experiences. For the work to be successful—which means not just completing the audit but acting on what you learn—you’ll need to reflect, share, explore, uncover, and reveal. Expect to feel a full range of emotions: unease, guilt, remorse, and sadness as well as excitement, expansiveness, connection, and compassion. Before the sessions begin, I give you a questionnaire about you and your business. Throughout the three sessions, I’ll request homework based on our experiences together: a table to be filled out, a video/podcast/article to mull over, a list to be generated. After each session, I’ll share a selection of resources relevant to your particular moment and geared toward your preferred learning style.

My background is in education. I have both a B.A. and Ed.M., as well as several decades’ experience with many populations in a variety of educational settings. For the last 12 years I have worked as a self-employment coach. My interest in anti-racism has solidified over half a dozen years into a personal mandate. Through trainings, conferences, ongoing groups, podcasts, reading and more, I’ve become aware of how I uphold systemic racism by virtue of my whiteness. I’m committed to mitigating this through my jobs and avocations. Combining my skills as an educator with my self-employment coaching to bring whiteness awareness to sole proprietors is one effective action I can take. You can glean more about my credentials on About.

If you’re open to reflection, able to contemplate things you have done (both consciously and unconsciously), and reasonably able to be gentle with yourself about things you haven’t done, you will likely increase your ability to stay in this work without shame overpowering you. However, if your shame is paralyzing or might contribute to further self-attack, your ability to reckon with your whiteness will be compromised. Take care of yourself first; then the world of anti-racism will benefit from your grounded foundation.

As you know, coming to terms with whiteness is a forever task. The work becomes quite nuanced the more time you put into it: often we develop particular interests based on specific topics that anger, move, or inspire us. The more committed you are to living an antiracist life, the deeper the reckoning: the path to equity involves honest redistribution of power and the riches it brings. Not only do each of us need to figure out how to give things up, we also need to understand all we’re gaining. As a business owner, you’ll face some challenging decisions as you integrate your antiracist commitments. The Equity Analysis meets you where you are and provides a sophisticated, dedicated focus on your priorities, blindspots, strengths and goals.

I have been benefitting in direct relation to others’ suffering all my life; it is one of the more cruel and unseen truths of white dominant culture. I intend to earn a living in part from the Racial Equity Audit; it is a service I perform that contributes to my livelihood. While I feel the actions I have taken to redistribute my own wealth are far from complete, I am committed to this strategy as key pathway to racial equity.

My coaching pricing structure reflects one approach to incorporating redistribution and mitigating the unearned gains I benefit from. I donate 10% of my income from Racial Equity Audits to organizations modeling effective antiracist work. Each quarter, I focus on a different category. Examples include:

• National: Undoing Racism: The People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond

• Regional: Northwest Community Bail Fund

• Local: Nurturing Roots Farm, Wa Na Wari

• Mutual Aid: Ujamaa Food Circle

I also offer a Reparation Rate (50% off True Cost rate) to BIPOC who experience barriers to generational wealth building or suffer the scars and harms of systemic racism.

All three sessions need to be completed six weeks from the time your first session is held. Exceptions based on the stuff of life can often be arranged.

The audit is designed to explore whiteness—which of course is a quality not just white people have internalized. If a BIPOC wants to explore how elements of white supremacy culture they have internalized are showing up in their business, then absolutely yes. I trust all people to determine for themselves whether they want to work with a white, middle-class woman who has made a study of white dominant culture. Much of the success of the analysis will depend on the relationship between the client and me. I have much to offer, and much to learn.

My particular skills, study, and training focus on racial equity—particularly on the experiences of white people and the impacts of their actions and inactions. I believe understanding racial equity will inform a baseline understanding of all other inequities. I acknowledge other forms of oppression as they come up within my racial equity framework—ageism, sexism, classism, homophobia, Islamophobia, and ableism to name a few—yet they are not my area of expertise. Learning about what you as a business owner do to maintain and to upend white dominant culture will make your business more equitable across the board.

Yes-ish. Basically, a Racial Equity package for someone who is not a business owner is simply Racial Equity Coaching. This is part of my offerings as well. I customize my racial equity coaching to whomever is asking for it, from wherever they are currently standing in their racial equity exploration.

Redistribution Rate: $2500
True Cost: $2000
Support Cost: $1500
Reparations Rate: $1000

Includes:
- A pre-session questionnaire
- Three 2/hr sessions
- Customized materials, activities, worksheets, and recommendations based on the stage of your racial reckoning and state or your business.
- The outline of a road map for steps you can take next to infuse an equity-commitment into your business operations
- A personalized list of resources