Internal Scan: Racial Equity and Inclusion Competency Survey Results 2019

On September 10, 2019 we administered our third annual Racial Equity and Inclusion competency survey to all staff to reflect on their individual competency as related to understanding and advancing racial equity. The survey was originally designed by Hafizah Omar, with feedback and input from Nadia Owusu and Ratna Gill. The questions from this survey were adapted from GARE’s Employee Survey for Local Governments, D5 initiative’s Field Survey, and additional best practices from the field. Last year we added demographic questions and this year we added questions that speak to our racial equity competency framework and additional questions on risk-taking.

The survey had 35 respondents, which is a 100% completion rate.

The survey results were analyzed by a subset of our internal racial equity team, Colleagues Operationalizing Racial Equity (CORE): Elodie Baquerot, Hafizah Omar, Evelyn Ontaneda, and Nadia Owusu. The survey results we had the following overarching takeaways:

• 3 years into doing the survey, we are thrilled to see that almost 100% of staff are reporting deepened understanding of interpersonal, institutional and structural racism and that they have/are taking concrete actions to increase equity in their team processes and infrastructure.
• This increase in competency saw increased self-reflection, power analysis, and reimagining – all of which we see a lot of throughout the survey.
• As we deepen our practice, existential questions that have surfaced: about specifically focusing on Black people towards targeted universalism, and about our relationship to capitalism.

This analysis is a deep dive into the themes and takeaways that came out of the evaluation of the Racial Equity and Inclusion competency survey.

The graphic below highlights some of our key findings and insights:

If you have any questions or want to share your story on your racial equity journey, please email racialequity@livingcities.org