Dismantling racism is going to take far more than branding the word, “equity”. Equity demands work that will not be solved by simply adding the word to your strategic plan or initiatives so you can check mark it off your lists. So, let’s take an honest look at how we can really begin to do this work, in earnest.
Calls for equity culminated amidst the backdrop of last summer’s horrific on and off camera killings of black people overlaid by COVID’s illumination of widening disparities. This has rightly amplified cries for not just equity but for justice. Yet there is a discomforting disingenuity that I feel as a Black woman, a nurse scientist and scholar, when repeatedly the responses to predictable inequity occur after the fact. Instead, they are reactive attempts at equity that are fundamentally flawed. Using the now widely and wildly popular ‘equity brand’ is counter-intuitive to acting on equity simply by its passive implementation.
It is obvious to those of us who live, breath and experience inequity daily, that equity remains an afterthought. A primary example of this is a January 2021 Kaiser Health News report citing lower COVID-19 vaccination rates for Black, Indigenous, Latinx, and People of Color than Whites—by as much as 50 percent or more in some regions. Further, a recent U.S. National Academy of Sciences report estimated that COVID-19 induced reductions in the life expectancy of Black and Latino populations are three to four times less than that of Whites—a trend which is expected to persist and undo the last 10 years of progress*. Both issues are seeded in the structural manifestations of racism, inequity, and injustice.
What’s worst is that these gaps in existing and new inequities within these specific populations have been scientifically documented and well known for decades.
Therefore, inequity when left unaddressed, will continue to surface, and resurface. So while we purport to care about equity, and are deeply incensed by the unjust consequences of its absence, we still refuse to co-create structures, systems and policies where equity is embedded from the beginning and not tacked on after. We cannot retrofit equity into inequitable structures.
This is not a criticism of the well-intended and much needed equity efforts; it is a critique of the ineptitude of the broader structural processes to mitigate and ameliorate equity and create justice.
Focusing on structures as the starting point for solutions is key because much of these disparities and inequities are deeply embedded in root causes housed within and often perpetuated by structures, their systems, policies and practices. Most importantly, there is a predictability in the anticipation of inequity that should force us to proactively prepare to address it before it manifests instead of waiting until it does. Otherwise, we will once again begin the same cycle of trying to scramble to equalize the issue and create equity in the moment and worst after the inequity has already occurred.
