Accountability for White Men: A Case Study in Leading More Inclusively

Whatever metaphor you want to use, as an aspiring inclusive leader, at some point, you’re going to step in it, or it’s going to hit the fan. It’s inevitable, but hopefully, however often it happens—you didn’t think it would be an isolated incident, did you—you can receive it with humility and as a learning moment. 

This happened to me recently during a webinar presentation on the importance of inclusion. Ironically, something I said made someone feel excluded, and thankfully, the individual took the time to let me know, not just in the Q&A section of the webinar platform, but also through an email that they submitted to the session sponsor.

Here's a sampling of the email they sent to the session sponsor:

I watched the [recorded session] again, and the exact words from Julien were:

As white males, “We have caused and perpetuated a lot of the challenges in the world.”

Julien accused all white males, including me, of causing challenges in the world. I have not caused any commotion in this world. Discriminating against me as someone who has “caused challenges in this world” because of my race and gender is the definition of racism and sexism. The same thing goes for any other race or gender.

Julien’s quote does not serve any purpose to me as far as the topic was concerned, and it opens up white males to hate from other races and genders. The topic was inclusion, and this statement only paints white males as evil which is exclusion. Saying the word “we” involves me since I am a white male, so he needs to say the words “I, Julien, have caused and perpetuated a lot of the challenges in the world,” but leave me (“we” other white males) out of it.

Below is my email response that I asked the event sponsor to share with the white male in question. 

You're absolutely right that my comment was not accurate, and I appreciate you calling me out—this is an example of what honest accountability between folks has to look like. You taking the time to review the transcript, pull out my exact words, and examine them, is important because it shows that you're invested in this work, and I hate the thought that I might have made you feel excluded. Your quote is absolutely right, "there are a lot of us with a lot of voices". Language and words matter, and so does accountability. I agree with some of your points and disagree with some of them as well. I'll try to summarize my perspective and areas of agreement/disagreement here.

• I was wrong to generalize and use "we" in the way I did. I should have said, "I feel that I have benefited from the systems that people who look and identify like me, white men, have put into place historically and continue to perpetuate today. While white men are not the only ones who have done so historically, I believe that they are the ones who in modern times, have the most concentrated amount of power. Given that, I think that white men, like me, in positions of any influence/leadership have an opportunity to lead more inclusively and help slowly improve those systems, policies, and practices that have subjectively discriminated against folks who are now often classified as marginalized/disadvantaged/etc."

• I can only speak for myself, but I know that even though I try hard not to, through my socialization, both in organizational and societal life, I still perpetuate harm. The degree of that harm may be very slight. Still, harm is harm, and I'm committed to being open to continuing to account for that as best I can through honest relationships of trust and accountability with those that I lead and those I love. 

• You're right that I perpetuated harm against white men in my statement, and I am sorry. However, I think that what I perpetuated in my statement was racial and gender prejudice against white men, not racism and sexism. What I've previously learned from others far more intelligent than myself is that racism and sexism are all about the dangerous confluence of racial prejudice AND power. I believe that white men have a far greater share of the power than is proportional to our demographic makeup in global populations. I looked for a resource that explores this important distinction more here and would like to share it with you. 

• I really like your proposed alternative quote “white males can be a strong voice for marginalized groups and promote inclusion because there are many of us with a lot of voices". I may paraphrase this in the future and utilize our exchange as an important lesson learned for me in this work. 

I hope that I did an acceptable job of acknowledging and validating the impact of my words. In some ways, I can see how this is an example of white fragility. Still, my words were poorly chosen and overly generalized, given the sensitive nature of a session on inclusion.

Additionally, I don’t know anything about this person other than that they identify as a white man. Given that this is also a central identity point for me, I feel that there’s an added degree of accountability for me here because, as they stated, “there are a lot of us (white men) with a lot of voices”. We continue to have much of the power—it must be shared as generously and courageously as this individual’s feedback was.