ARCC of Change: Racial Progress Deprioritization

By: Kayla Gould

In the newest ARCC of Change podcast, our founder Donzel Leggett invites Tiffani Daniels, director of the Minnesota Business Coalition for Racial Equity to discuss recent racial progress and shortcomings.  

I found this episode to be very informative about how there is a sense of deprioritization over racial progress in some cases. For instance, Tiffani Daniels talked about racial equity regarding membership in MBCRE. She stated, “ In almost 3 years time even a coalition like ours has lost 75% of its member organizations, which I do think is somewhat telling and indicative of the shift in focus.” 

This deprioritization is due to other factors that come up which push the focus of  “old” crucial issues to the side while the focus is on the newest crucial issue that people feel they need to put all their attention towards. This is a problem because there can be multiple issues that need to be equally focused on because of the importance of each. 

Tiffani Daniels added that “Significant progress has always come on the back of tragedy. We have to get away from that. We have to be able to care about injustice or dismantling racism when no one is watching. Or when it feels unpopular to do so.” This quote helps reiterate the importance of consistency regarding crucial topics like racial progress, the focus needs to be maintained for there to be real change to happen.