Step 3: Fiercely Monitor, Question, and Challenge Gatekeepers in Your Life and Network

“The Gatekeepers must change” - Prince.

Welcome! Without further ado: Step 3 (of 11): Fiercely Monitor, Question, and Challenge Gatekeepers in Your Life and Network

Yesterday, I talked about the important work of challenging and off-setting the racism and discriminatory behavior within each of us. Today, I want to talk about the most important people in our lives to engage on topics of race: The Gatekeepers.

American Racism is a big, messy, and horrible stain on society. It is the core hypocrisy of our great nation and the original ‘invisible enemy’ - predating Covid-19 by centuries. Yet, today we find ourselves in a flashpoint moment where we have a limited-but-real window to do more to unravel the threads of systemic discrimination that built our country than ever in my lifetime.

But how do we deal with things when they’re big and messy? An approach we’re all familiar with from our favorite television medical dramas is: Triage.

If my theory is correct, and we’re all walking around with latent biases, it is simply impossible to engage in meaningful conversations with everyone we know on these topics. Likewise, unless you are both hardwired to the same radio frequency (or cable news network), there is a chance for some uncomfortable daylight between your views and theirs.

Fortunately, we don’t have to engage with everyone on this in a meaningful way. Just like in a real or fictitious Emergency Room, where the person with the severed limb is treated before the person with a headache (right? as my friend Kellan will gladly remind you, I’m not a doctor), we can surgically select the most urgent people in our networks to check-in with. I call them The Gatekeepers.

For this conversation, let’s define gatekeepers as: Those in professions that frequently entrust them with the ability to directly impact the potential outcomes of others.

This includes educators, executive-assistants who control access to their bosses, record executives (as Prince did in the quote above), Police, loan-officers, politicians, and those with the ability to hire anyone for anything.

A main focus of our national conversation right now is on Police Brutality, and rightly so, as bias in their ranks too-often results in visible and tragically negative outcomes for Black citizens. But at the local level, we need to dig deeper and look further into the potential negative outcomes from all gatekeepers. As outlined in my anecdote from yesterday, even a gatekeeper with altruistic intentions can be an unwitting ‘asymptomatic super-spreader’ of bias.

If you are a gatekeeper yourself, do not shrink at my assertion that you can do better. In at least one way, big or small. Own that. Systemic racism is inherent in the system, but we are the people who make up these systems. We are the ones with the power for change. If every gatekeeper who sees this post or is confronted with the opportunity to change does nothing, nothing will change, and we’ll be having this conversation again 25 years from now.

So the task is this. Monitor the gatekeepers you know. Ask them about their day. Listen to their anecdotes about work, the people they interact with, the mundane and the exciting. But listen carefully. Listen when they talk about the people who annoy them, and why. Listen when they talk about that “at-risk” student, that entrepreneur who is just shy of deserving funding, the interviewee who was “just so urban.”

Question them. Ask questions as to the situations they encountered and how they handled them. Learn more about how they view their role in the lives of the people they are interacting with. By doing this, in addition to the benefits of just being a good friend or family member, you’ll be learning about how the individual levers of our systems and institutions function.

Challenge them. Ask them pointed questions. Ask them for stories from work that made them uncomfortable. Ask them for examples of times they regretted a decision they or a co-worker made. Ask them about times they think they may have read a situation wrong, or didn’t show the equality they may pride themselves in.

(Note, while challenging, now is not the time to be self-righteous. Stay productive, and keep in mind step one, ‘de-weaponizing words around race.’ By entrusting you with information about the inner workings of their profession and processes, they have created and expanded upon a vulnerability and bond with you. “Gemma, it sounds like you might be a racist!” will not do much to support or sustain that bond.)

It is when we understand and shift the behavior of our gatekeepers, introduce and remind them of the nuances that make them the final arbiters of racial justice, and participate in erasing unconscious bias from their ranks, that we can continue the march forward.

So, that’s all for today. See you tomorrow for:

Step 4: Abolish Cancel Culture. Engage Passionately and Respectfully. But Engage.