Last week, the University of North Carolina board finally voted to extend tenure to award-winning journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones. After months of student, faculty and Twitter protest over the board’s initial denial, this should have been a victory. 

Hardly. 

Yesterday, Hannah-Jones declined UNC’s offer and announced she’d head to Howard University in the newly created role of Knight Chair in Race and Reporting and establish the Center for Journalism and Democracy. “For too long, Black Americans have been taught that success is defined by gaining entry to and succeeding in historically white institutions,” Hannah-Jones wrote in a prepared statement. “I have done that, and now I am honored and grateful to join the long legacy of Black Americans who have defined success by working to build up their own.”

Now that is victory. 

Also from Hannah-Jones: “At some point when you have proven yourself and fought your way into institutions that were not built for you, when you’ve proven you can compete and excel at the highest level, you have to decide that you are done forcing yourself in.”

Every employer and worker in America should read her incisive statement, all 3,943 words of it, for the reality of power dynamics it so eloquently lays out and the respect Hannah-Jones rightfully commands, not just for herself but the students and faculty who advocated for her, and countless people of color toiling in institutions not designed for them. 

Don’t miss the most important two words directed at her won’t-be employer, which also happens to be her alma mater: “For too long, powerful people have expected the people they have mistreated and marginalized to sacrifice themselves to make things whole. The burden of working for racial justice is laid on the very people bearing the brunt of the injustice, and not the powerful people who maintain it. I say to you: I refuse.”

Those two words—“I refuse”—might become the rallying cry for a next generation of workers, whether they are newly joining or returning to an employer grasping for purpose and mission after COVID’s wrath, the death of George Floyd, and political polarization rooted in white supremacy. We’ve written here week after week on diversity efforts at work and the racial reckoning we still await. 

What Hannah-Jones just did is expose institutions in a way that warrants much deeper introspection—on their part. As she says, that is not our job. This precisely exemplifies what I wrote about back in a March column about how the work of code-switching must fall on white managers now. 

Further, and perhaps more importantly, is how Hannah-Jones raises the bar on what victory means for people of color, specifically Black women of excellence like herself: It is no longer acceptance by a mainstream institution. Often, that is accompanied by a daily guessing game at work, grasping for the ways and codes and mysteries of success in an organization whose founding never included people like you. Hannah-Jones bet on herself, bet on her community, and bet on a history of acceptance and inclusivity as a mission. That is the ultimate freedom.  

I know. Six months ago, I began my own version of this journey as I left corporate America and launched two startups, Epicenter-NYC and URL Media, rooted in community news. It’s been an exhausting ride but I knew we’d turned the corner when recruiting interns for this summer. Over and over, applicants told us we were first on their list, preferring us to Big Media, many of which are brands and household names I worked for once upon time. Why? “Because I might still get to be me,” said one graduate student. 

The Hannah-Jones’ statement, and her broader actions, should prompt reflection on your own organization. Are you seeking to diversify your workplace and pushing the work of doing so onto too few staffers of color to begin with? Are your expectations in line with norms that do not meet or embrace people where they are? (Examples: “He didn’t send a thank-you note” or “She didn’t demonstrate adequate vision for the job.”) Are you allowing the privilege we all agreed was problematic to guide decision-making key to your future? If you want to change the culture of your institution without changing its very mission and power structures, then this exercise will never be a winning proposition—for you. 

Your institutions, alas, need us more than we need you. 

This week's reads

The art of gathering

Advice from author and convening expert Priya Parker for the complicated road ahead: “I think you start hybrid and this needs to be a time of deep experimentation and bets. A tip for managers is to announce that this is three months of experimentation. In three months, we're going to do a post-mortem around the last three months.” (Charter)

Making gig workers whole

This piece by Ray Suarez asks us to stop romanticizing temp workers and extend protections. His analogy of these workers (including himself) as “scooters” is especially brilliant. (palabra)

More than a suit 

If you think what you wear to work doesn’t matter, Rep. Andy Kim (D-N.J.) will make you think again. The blue suit he wore after the Jan. 6 Capital insurrection to help clean up his workplace will be donated to the Smithsonian. (Philadelphia Inquirer)