DEI — The Path to Anti-Racism

In the middle of a growing movement for racial justice, not only are two Washington State human resources leaders listening to the needs of their workforce to create lasting change, they’re also taking notes from one another.

“We don't just want to do things. We want to transform who we are as a practice, and we want that to be viral. We want that to be contagious, and people to ask how we did it,” said Bobby Humes, director of the human resources department for the City of Seattle.

“The change that we’re trying to make is going to be uncomfortable for people who traditionally have been in power and privilege,” said Michaela Doelman, chief human resources officer for the Washington Employment Security Department.

Humes and Doelman are not only major advocates for diversity, equity and inclusion in the state of Washington—they’ve also been good friends for nearly 10 years. The two met back in early 2011, and both say there was something in the other neither could ignore.

“Her energy is different than some of the managers who were in the state at that time, and so I gravitated towards that,” said Humes.

“Similarly, what stuck out to me was a difference in energy. At the time, the strategy of HR seemed to be ‘How do we mitigate risk by saying no to everything?’ Bobby, a few others and I wanted to make things happen and bring more people to the table,” said Doelman.
 

Creating a Roadmap to Dismantle Racism

And each is doing just that. Humes started with the City of Seattle in 2019 and has since developed a Leadership Expectations and Accountability Plan (LEAP) with his HR team. It’s a six-tiered roadmap for the future, with strategy straight from an activist’s playbook, designed to dismantle systematic racism.

“This plan is a self-assessment that asks many questions, all through the lens of ‘How are you creating a diverse, equitable and inclusive space,’” said Humes. “DEI is where it starts. Anti-racism is where it ends, and I’m learning that we can’t skip anything on that path to anti-racism. It has to be DEI, anti-racism. If you try to go equity-first, you’ll fail. You try to just go inclusion-first, you’ll fail, and people will see that.”

Doelman, who says her 68,000-person organization is years behind the city, looks to Seattle as an example of how to transform and do it well. 

“I think what we’re doing right now is hard, and not many are willing to do it,” said Doelman. “I don’t see a lot of organizations just admitting that we’re part of the problem. It’s being honest and saying that we are upholding a white supremist culture and we’ve set up processes that make it harder for marginalized communities to receive our services. If we can’t admit that, then we’re not going to get the right people who are willing to come in and make change. It’s also the acknowledgement that this is a journey as we’re still very much at the beginning. We’ve got a long way to go before we can undo 400 years of systemic oppression, but we’ve got to start somewhere, and it’s got to be more than just a DEI statement on our website.”

We’ve got to start somewhere, and it’s got to be more than just a DEI statement on our website.
 

“In Seattle, while we really lean in to making sure that we’re diverse, equitable and inclusive, we try to focus on Black indigenous people of color and women because when we do that, we touch everybody else,” said Humes.

He says the divide all boils down to intersectionality. 

“I could be Black and a gay man, I could be Black and trans, I can be Black and whatever. You’re still good if you’re not Black or you’re still good if you’re not a woman. When we find those two crossroads of Blackness and gender, those are huge opportunities,” said Humes.
 

Recognizing and Addressing Biases

Some HR leaders have pointed to unconscious bias training as a stepping stone in the organizational mission for DE&I, but Doelman says training alone doesn’t go far enough.

“Research is starting to come out that unconscious bias training isn’t even that effective,” said Doelman. 

“I don’t think you can remove it. I think you’re aware, but I don’t know if you can remove it,” said Humes.

“I think if we can take a step forward, it would be normalizing that we all have biases and being willing to acknowledge what those biases are so that we can address them, but ultimately we need to get to a place of creating new systems that no longer allow us to perpetuate our biases in our decision making,” said Doelman.

While Humes recognized the importance of addressing biases, he said it’s also about creating a learning culture. 

“We should set the expectation that we’re all learning, so when Bobby shows up sexist, that’s a conversation about my continued learning,” said Humes. “I’m brought into a conversation of ‘Let’s get you better so you don’t see that way anymore, so you’re more conscious of it.’ I think it’s a continual thing.”

We cannot make changes unless we look internally first and start working on ourselves.
 

Humes and Doelman offer this advice to HR leaders who are just now embarking on their DE&I journey:

“There’s no emerging topic that’s more important than actually making change and identifying what your organization, what your company, what your team is doing that upholds a broken system,” said Humes. “We’ve been working at being at the table, we’ve been working at being strategic, but we have not worked at our role of loving people—all people. We have not worked at that as a practice.”

“I’m assuming everyone reading this article is in some position of power within their organization,” said Doelman. “We cannot make changes unless we look internally first and start working on ourselves. Author Annie Dillard talks about the spiritual journey and how you have to go deep down to find your own demons and eradicate them before we can stop projecting them onto other people. In the work that we do as HR leaders, we must understand who we are and what harm we’re causing to other people. We cannot fix a broken system, if we’re broken ourselves.”

Special thanks to all participating companies.

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