The Messy Middle of our Antiracist Journey

Like many of our peers, Uncharted is taking steps to become a more antiracist organization. We are determined to rise to the responsibility we have to fight systems of oppression, but we are also struggling. This work is complex, nuanced, and slow, and there have been times when we haven't known what to do. So to ask for help and transparently share our journey, we're inviting our community into the messy middle by publishing a series of posts over the next ten weeks that reveal the behind-the-scenes challenges we’re facing, the progress we’re making, and the questions we’re asking. Ultimately, we see transparency both as a tool for learning and a force for advancing equity. As Audre Lorde says: “There is no liberation without community…”

Later today we’re publishing the second post on the topic of inclusion in our series (two weeks ago we introduced the series here). Going forward, we’ll highlight other topics where diversity, equity, and inclusion intersect with hiring, hard conversations, culture, strategy, governance, power, and more. We earnestly hope that these posts invite conversations and engagement, and I welcome any feedback you have.

On a personal level, I am in the middle of some wrestling, searching, and confusion about what it really means to be a White ally, especially as someone who is in a place of positional power as a CEO. I’m attending an anti-oppression course on White allyship and exploring the ways oppression and allyship show up at the ideological, institutional, interpersonal, and internalized levels (the four I’s of oppression).