Building A Pro-Black World

Leading Restoratively: The Role of Leadership in a Pro‐Black Sector

Sequoia Owen

Nonprofit organizations pledge to serve communities through powerful missions. Often, those missions are about empowerment, restoration, safety, and wholeness for the marginalized within our communities. Since 2021, racial reckoning has led the nonprofit sector to examine the ways in which white supremacy lives in our organizational systems. Increasingly, nonprofits are publicly showing support for Black causes—at times, to distance themselves from the appearance of condoning racism. Operating as pro‐Black, however, involves much more than releasing a statement of support for Black and Brown lives. It may not even require a change in organizational mission or new programming—an organization can make such changes and still operate with a white supremacist structure.¹

Being a pro‐Black organization means internalizing our missions and extending energy and resources to our frontline staff members who serve our communities. It calls for the antithesis of divisiveness and destruction and a movement of restoration. Nonprofit leadership must build thriving workplace environments in which staff members have the permission and tools they need to become their best selves. A pro‐Black organization ensures staff member well‐being, safety, dignity, and advancement by practicing trauma‐informed, collective care; prioritizing psychological safety; and restoring worker dignity by providing equitable living wages ...