Investing in Equity

James Whitfield (with Kristen Whitfield)
Kirkland, WA
Updated February 2020

There are many questions organizations face as they increase their focus on issues of diversity, inclusion, and equity. Questions about pacing – are we going fast enough or too fast? Questions about capacity – can we really do this work at this time? Questions about outcomes – what does this really mean for our staff and the people we serve?

Underlying those questions is another equally relevant question - whose equity does the organization value?

From a systems perspective, equity is ownership.

Equity markets on Wall Street exist so people can buy and sell shares of businesses. The holders of those shares direct the strategy and the future of the companies. Shareholders can (and by some assessments, are legally bound to) choose to guide the organization in ways consistent with their own interests, even if that means voting out someone who founded the enterprise in the first place – as famously happened to Steve Jobs.

Equity means having enough ownership to ensure one’s interests are being attended to. In every organization everywhere, someone is in a position to ensure their interests are being served. Someone has equity.

So, the question is never “if” anyone has equity, it’s always a question of whom.

Holding various positions of leadership on Seattle’s Eastside for more than twenty years, I have participated in many discussions related to the area’s changing demographics. It has grown increasingly diverse in some ways, and less diverse in others. For instance, issues of class play a significant role in our society, however on the Eastside we are becoming less diverse in this area. A huge amount of our growth has come at the higher end of the wage spectrum with fewer and fewer people who fit the definition of Middle Class, and limited accommodations for the population at the lower end of the income scale. We have become far more diverse racially and ethnically. Not only is Bellevue the largest city in Washington with a non-White majority, the rest of Seattle’s Eastside continues to change similarly.

For some of the residents who arrived prior to this wave of changes, diversity at this scale may ring a bell of concern. They might not even oppose the idea of differences but wonder how so many cultures of origin can be effectively assimilated into the present traditions and expectations.

And, if assimilation were the goal, they’d be right.

The assimilation, or “Great American Melting Pot,” view of American culture tends to set people up with a specific kind of “Inclusion” lens. The question underlying this type of inclusion is: How do “we” (people currently in the Inner Circle) help “them” (people who differ from those in the Inner Circle) to be like us enough so that we can comfortably include them in what is already happening? When power dynamics go unexamined, Inner Circle people saddle themselves with a very painful job. They must “fix” the people they are trying to include. To make assimilation work, they need to standardize, penalize, and otherwise convince people to be like them and appreciate what the people currently in charge have decided is good and right.

But that’s not equity.

If we start with the idea that people who are not “us” get to help decide what’s good and right, we avail ourselves of a whole new set of possibilities. What if the incomers want to add new traditions alongside the old? Or have insights into improving the existing traditions? Or what if we develop new traditions together?

One of the concerns some people have with equity is they think they must give up ownership in order to share it with others. However, one of Wall Street’s most amazing practices is the creation and offering of new shares in existing enterprises. Of course, there is some effect on the shares already in place, but the new investment, the additional ownership, the influx of capital means that the company has new possibilities that it never had before. This can be the boost necessary to fuel a turnaround, or provide the momentum needed to go from good to great. Done well, the original shares may dip briefly, but ultimately end up worth even more.

To reach our untapped future, communities and organizations can’t reject the investments that people who may be different than us are (sometimes literally) dying to make.

The goal of equity is not to force people in power to give their shares away. Rather it is to help everyone benefit from the investments that all too often stagnate on the sidelines. To insist on only including contributions that look like (and never challenge) our own is not a growth strategy.

However, opening ourselves to new investments can pay dividends for us all.