Imagining an Anti-Racist UC
As part of the UC Coro Systemwide Leadership Collaborative, I recently participated in a year-long project that focused on addressing the systemic racism within our campuses. Although we cannot solve these deeply-rooted challenges with one project alone, our cohort felt we could make an impact. Our efforts culminated in a final project that provides an anti-racist reflection and learning tool for managers of staff within the University of California system, a set of stories that illustrate allyship and anti-racist leadership in everyday settings and key actions that leaders can take to serve as a catalyst for change.
We are fortunate to have leadership across the UC system that has taken significant, meaningful action in the aftermath of heightened calls for racial justice in summer 2020. The majority of this attention is focused on faculty and students, despite non-academic staff and managers being the largest population in the UC system (approximately 110,000 career staff). Despite being the third largest employer in California, the racial/ethnic demographics of our senior professionals and management do not reflect the racial/ethnic demographics of the UC workforce or our state.
Our long-term goal is to institutionalize anti-racism learning and reflection within regular professional learning and performance review processes to collectively build an anti-racist culture across the UC system. Anti-racism is an active form of action against racial hatred, bias, systemic racism and the oppression of marginalized groups. Anti-racism is usually structured around conscious efforts and deliberate actions to provide equitable opportunities for all people on an individual and systemic level.
To address this need, we’ve developed an Anti-Racism Learning and Reflection Tool that establishes guiding anti-racism principles and practices that can be applied uniformly across the UC system by leaders, supervisors and managers. Our goal is to create a mechanism to better communicate and carry out anti-racist core values, while cultivating a climate of belonging for black, Indigenous and people of color (BIPOC) staff.
While each UC campus has a performance review process and evaluation tool that includes consideration of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), these materials do not currently incorporate a focus on anti-racist principles and practices. Our tool aims to support the life-long learning of managers by offering a framework for them to advance racial equity principles and practices in hiring, performance review, promotion and workplace climates for staff.
Learn more about the cohort project "Imagining an Anti-Racist UC"