Assessing and Learning

This section provides resources to look at a community or organization through a racial lens, in order to have the kinds of information that support movement toward racial equity. The resources cover ways to know more about racial/ethnic disparities that might exist, individual attitudes and behaviors regarding race, opportunities and challenges that need to be factored into your work, power dynamics, and the racial impact of policies and practices. These kinds of information help you pick the strategies you will implement.

Knowing the strengths, history of change and struggles of your community or organization helps pinpoint assets your group can use, untangle complicated relationships among and within racial/ethnic groups and helps you fit your strategies within the culture of change in your place. Investing in this information can save you a lot of time in your racial equity work. This information can also tell you:

• which groups, institutions and individuals need to be involved for the work to succeed (key stakeholders).
• kinds of resistance that might surface.
• people, groups and organizations that might serve as "unlikely" allies to your work.
• when you are most likely to be bucking the status quo.
• more about past and current power dynamics.
• when you are most likely to be bucking the status quo.

Community level data is also important to help you know and describe where racial disparities exist, and to track improvements over time. Knowing organizations deeply provides information about opportunities to work interdependently and also provides ways to track institutional changes that lead to more equitable polices and practices. When this information is used to develop your racial equity strategies, it puts data at your service in the work.

This section provides information about:

• Understanding Local Context and Opportunities - includes resources to learn a community's history as well as current dynamics of racism and power.
• Assessment Process - provides several examples of various kinds of assessment for communities and organizations - including what questions were asked, what data was tracked, and how data were shared with stakeholders.

Tip Sheets:

• Laying Out Your Assumptions: Understanding Your Theory of Change
• Assessing Your Community, Part I: The Initial Steps and Considerations for Doing Racial Equity Work
• Assessing your Community, Part II: Creating and Implementing an Assessment Process
• Understanding Strategies: Three Pathways of Race Relations and Racial Justice Work