We’re celebrating the middle of our launch season with a special conversation with our very own co-host Ifeoma Ike, author of The Equity Mindset. Ifeoma shares why she developed a gumbo of interviews, practical tools, and disruptive strategies to support those invested in building spaces where marginalized communities are ignored and harmed. Providing a vulnerable account of writing with a disability, maneuvering the publishing world, and creating space for underlooked equity architects, Ifeoma’s journey is a must for visionaries and entrepreneurs alike seeking to use words to spark change.
Welcome back to a very special episode. I am your co-host, Kelly Burton, and I am here with the indomitable, Ifeoma Ike. We are going to talk about her brand-new bestseller, The Equity Mindset. Welcome, Ife.
Hi, Kelly.
Our team and your village are so doggone excited about this phenomenal book. If you haven’t already gotten a book, you need to not only get one but get several because other people in your life need this book. Giving is what is that saying, “Sharing is caring?”
Sharing is caring.
Buying a book and giving a bit away.
Gifting is also caring.
That’s right. We can continue to hit all of the top bestsellers list. First of all, congratulations. This is a phenomenal milestone in accomplishment. It’s been a beauty. It’s been a gift watching it come to life. So I want you to talk a little bit about the impetus for this book. What made you decide to sit down because writing a book is no small task? What caused you to say, “This is meaningful enough to take significant time from my life in order to put pen to paper?”
Again, thanks to you, Kelly, the Black Innovation Alliance team for a beautiful runway to the launch of this. There are like several different reasons why I felt like putting this in a book. As you know I’ve talked a little bit about how there are some journeys that come to mind around how frequently my default to problem-solving is built on what I call an equity mindset. I am almost always looking for fixes that can be measured, reduce harm, and improve people’s lives.
We largely call that social impact now, but there was a time where there wasn’t even a term for that. We can even critique a little bit as to whether the umbrella of social impact is focused on those disparity reductions. I was always very intimately connected to certain theories that were about human beings not having certain things. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is one that I raise frequently because I don’t know if as a society we’ve prioritized that. What does it mean, for those that don’t know Maslow’s theory?
Maslow’s Theory is not a strict theory, but it does talk about the conditions that are needed for people to survive. What is important about that is his theory is that all of the parts of that pyramid, often segmented in colors. All of them are important for us to survive. The top being self-determination. The bottom layer which is physiological needs and to an extent even psychological needs. I find that when I look through that list, housing, rest, food, healthy sexual relationships, and intimacy.
All of those have stark you know statistics as it relates to us as a people. That then makes me wonder like, “People are existing but are they living?” A lot of my work whether it was working on the hill, whether it was innocence projects, being on the ground in Haiti, or in Ferguson. Whether it’s designing strategies with Black Innovation Alliance. All of them come from this space of, how can we get the basic foundation so that we can begin to experience humanity in ways that other communities?
Unfortunately, often that baseline is whiteness but in the ways that whiteness gets to experience it. I find that to be the urgent human rights mission regardless of what industry you’re in with my consultancy. It’s like how do I get more people to adopt an equity mindset as a problem-solving tool. For a while, it picked up during COVID. I was teaching a curriculum or a lot of what my team was being brought in to help companies with was to be like, “What is this equity mindset thing?”
We would talk through it and a lot of it were conversations. Fast forward, our team is Pink Cornrows. There are a lot of other facets that we’re trying to go into. For me, it’s like, how can I free up my time a little bit so that we can get a little bit deeper into how do we create more rest for working class women? How do we create more nuance in the conversations around innovations ignored by Black and Brown people?
How do we create more disability spaces for those that have intersectional lives and lives that are often ignored? I was like, “What can I do to start the conversation in spaces that I’m not physically able to be in?” The book is an attempt to get people to fracture a little bit, their understanding around equity. It’s not a diss towards D&I, but I do think when people hear equity, they automatically think D&I. For me, equity is the larger umbrella, which D&I fits under. We should use whatever tools we need to use to achieve equity, but equity is the goal.
Now, I find that there’s a lot of confusion with even the concept of equity in what it means. A lot of people use equity and equality interchangeably. How do you define equity in the book?
Very simply, I would say that you can’t achieve equality until you achieve equity. Equity is like the stop before equality. In a lot of ways, people say equality to avoid talking about equity. There’s this sameness thing that happens when we talk about women’s rights. I’m always like, “Which women?” That is an equity question.
When we talk about disabilities, are we talking about visible or hidden disabilities? Which disability? That’s an equity question. It’s not that equality is not a righteous goal, but it does mean that equity then is part of the strategy to get there. Separately, equity has also been used quite a lot in the concept of fairness like how do we ensure that people are experiencing fair lives? Some of that is a little bit more amplified talk about fairness and justice.
What I feel like is missing and sometimes the introduction is the part that people skip over. Please don’t skip over this introduction. First of all, it explains the quirkiness of who I am, the foolishness of who I am, and the brilliance that is in there. It gives a sense as to the tone of who I am and what I’m trying to bring into this space. The part around equity that is so frustrating to me that doesn’t get emphasized is that equity by definition only exists because of inequity.
We would not talk about equity if we didn’t have problems. Equity inherently spotlights the problem and asks the questions of how do we then get to a place of equity? How do we use equity? Equity is both an outcome and a process. How do we use it as our technology to get to this outcome that we all deserve? Equity for me is not just about the forward-looking impact we want to have. It needs there to be like this wider accordion of like, how did we get here? What was the starting point? That, to me, is the broad definition.
The first chapter though is, 40 thoughts on equity focuses on like, but there are characteristics of equity, too. There’s a being and a flow. It deserves to continue to be expounded on because for me to know what equity means like for Kelly. It means that you would have to sit and listen to Kelly’s journey. You would have to understand what it is that Kelly has been missing. You’d almost have to recognize the intersections that are obvious to me. You, as a Black woman in America, you also then have to think about the fact that there isn’t just one Kelly.
Equity as a movement then is about how do I imagine that Kelly is not the only one experiencing these inequities? What do we need to design for more people that are in that space to experience more wholeness? That mindset is not about sitting here and needing to read every article. Sitting here and needing to listen to everybody’s lived experiences. It’s sitting and recognizing, “I’ve heard enough from enough of the same type of people that are experiencing harm, lack of safety, and under employment that I have enough to figure out how to address that in whatever way that I can.”
As we’ve heard from another person that we’ve had an interview with, without necessarily raising your blood pressure all the time. I do think some people probably do need to get on an equity treadmill and burn a couple of calories. Some of us need to rotate out and rest. I do think that the whole point is we have enough to do while we’re here.
I feel that sometimes people struggle to wrap their minds around what equity looks like. Can you provide some examples of equity in practice?
I’m glad that you said that. People do struggle with that which is why in this book, this book is also full of conversations. It’s intended for people to visualize equity from practitioners who could have chosen to do anything in the world to be anything in the world. Majority of them in this book, similar to myself and similar to us, have come from spaces where statistically and experientially they’ve experienced the ills of oppression. In many ways, still are, but they have chosen to be a part of the problem-solving. That is what they do, even if it’s not in their title.
When I was doing this book, I struggled with, “Is this going to be a book solely about how Ife does equity and what it looks like for me?” I could, but I also know that one of my concerns and critiques is that I don’t think a 1, 2 and 3 step process is what is helpful in a world that looks at self-help, where there’s a market for just give me the toolbox, where I do think there are some well-intentioned people that want to be impactful.
Also, we’ve been taught like our education system teaches us and systematizes us to do things like input and output. This is not one of those books. Equity is going to look different for Dominique Morgan, who is the first, I believe, Black trans woman to lead a major fund at a philanthropic organization that focuses on trans futures but also is formerly incarcerated. Her process is completely different as far as what it looks like.
It’s going to look different than one of my mentors, Ross Moskowitz, who is of both Russian and Jewish ancestry and a partner at a law firm. It’s grappling with this concept of allyship, what it means to be both White and also connect to a history of oppression. One of the things that I am maybe doing that’s going to be uncomfortable for people is that it’s a book full of many answers. It also forces you to craft a little bit for yourself. How you practice equity, versus how you create solely the outcome on the other side.
Let’s talk a little bit about your journey in writing this book. What did it cost you?
It cost me some clients. It takes a lot of time to write a book. It cost me both. There’s a thing around time that for me with this was very much connected to rest that was missing. I do think and I think you know this. I don’t want to say it cost me, but it impacted my recovery from long COVID. I wrote this book in its entirety while having a long COVID. In many ways, I still have some of the symptoms but the height of the symptoms.
I have videos to capture the frequency of how many times my hands would just tremble. Especially my left side, it seems to be the most impacted. I would watch it. Watch it flicker and have to wait till it stopped or what it meant to have to stand up and type because your feet are doing weird things and spazzing. For many of the months, I didn’t write anything because the part that was the most impacted was memory. I know we have a broad audience, but when you think back to your mamas and your praying grandmothers. The thought of like to gain the whole world and lose your mind or lose your soul.
It reminds you of the fickle and fragile nature of memory. Ability as a whole but like as a writer and somebody who’s always written. Somebody that at many times is consulted to help with words and craft thoughts when you can’t craft it for something you’ve been doing for so long. It was very much a challenge.
What does writing this book teach you?
First of all, it taught me that we need to honor disabled voices more. I already had a visual disability. It is not apparent to people when they see it or when they see me. As we got to the conclusion of this book more and beating myself up, this is not all that coincides with the workshops that I’ve done and, “I forgot to put this in there. What about this?”
There’s something about the writing process no matter what the topic is. I have to let go of that and recognize, like, there is enough and I’m enough no matter what space I’m in. Broadly, as this book is about the equity mindset and I have teachers in this book that are connected to a lifelong journey of being a part of the disability community. I’m like, we’re missing so many tools in our toolbox.
There are people that create solutions every day and we don’t even know what those solutions are because people don’t care to ask. They are literally not only waiting for the status quo to change, but they are also figuring out how to make it work in their cubicle, how to advocate for themselves, and how to sustain harm just so they can get a paycheck.
There’s a lot more curiosity that came to me as a result of like what else needs to be included in a mindset? What I’m happy about is that I get to be a participant in my own book versus the expert in my own book. I get to engage with folks and the conversations are a little bit like a tennis match between individuals that are trying to figure it out. I want people to get comfortable with trying to figure it out.
This book just launched but you’re already a successful author and you hit the top of a couple of bestseller lists specifically in Amazon. Talk a little bit about that because I want to acknowledge that. I want you to share that.
It’s trending to be a bestseller. We hope that happens but it was on some top new release books. It’s cool. I’m not good at celebrating myself. I can get real Daria about that shit but there is a baseline joy, though, with all of that like the areas and you know this is. Many people that do social science research don’t even get acknowledged for their shit. When it was coming up on sociology lists, I was like, “That’s cool,” or social sciences.
The three steady spaces it was coming up in was organizational change, workplace culture, and discrimination and racism. When about the honey that that creates, I was like, “Those are the parts of this book. Those are the communities that I want people to feel like picking this up.” As you know, I don’t think the equity conversation should be just in the workplace. This book does focus and it explains in the introduction why I’m focusing on labor.
The equity mindset should broadly be discussed as a social problem-solving agenda, if you will. It is human rights. What we’ve inherited is a real chasm between communities. It is about like, let’s not look at the social ills as fragmented issues. Let’s take a step back and ask why is it that the same communities are experiencing the brunt of the negative parts of humanity no matter where you go in the globe like why is that, then to think about what that then means from the macro to the micro.
It’s like in my space, my position, my field and my industry, do I even know the history of inequity in my field and how we got there? What is our role to change that? Recognizing that poor, rich or indifferent. Most people have to work. It’s the thing that you can’t get around. If you can get around it, you’re either on the spectrum of being extremely privileged to get around it or being literally disenfranchised from working. Whether it’s from ability or citizenship. Whatever the case may be.
There are a lot of either aspiring authors or first-time authors who have written books or have books in their hearts. What recommendation or advice do you have to people who are working on a book or want to work on a book and want to write a book?
This is the stuff you would not know. I was speaking to some of our team here about this stuff you wouldn’t know until you’re on the other side or maybe you consult with people ahead of time. Speak to as many people that have written books about their writing process. There’s writing the activity then there’s writing the business. Learning as much about the business ahead of time is helpful. Publishing world is a very white space. Even the best intentions do not get us. They do not understand us. They do not understand our tone, which is very important when you think about the editing process.
You are your best advocate in that space. There’s also a lot of questions I didn’t know to ask because you don’t know what you don’t know. Sometimes you were treated as somebody that should know the business. If you’re thinking about writing, learn about business. That’s not something that I did the best job on. Connected to that, creating a little bit of a tribe around like already think about your book in these like with the binding, the front and the back.
Once it’s here, what does amplification look like? Who are you talking about? All of that crept up on me. Those are some practical things. I will say, though, I went through a period where I was a bookworm. My first big girl book was like Their Eyes Were Watching God. I didn’t know what the heck was going on at that time. I read Their Eyes Were Watching God and Saga of Solomon. It was just all in Toni Morrison and all the greats then I got jaded and started thinking about, “Do books even matter? Are people even reading books?”
It almost came full circle with books being banned and what it means to write at this moment. Not even write any type of creative production that in many ways, as we were losing the Maya Angelou’s, or the transitioning of the Maya Angelou’s and the Toni Morrison’s and the Bell Hooks. It felt like we still have them, but we have them through their works.
I do think that we have to be very intentional about encouraging each other to leave some type of a print behind. There is something that feels very wild about there being something that will stay beyond me in some way. That’s important at a time where the erasure of history is a national and maybe even beyond national priority for so many, especially as a release equity.
As we wrap up, we are in a very peculiar moment in the United States, especially as relates to this conversation of DEI and meaning to say, diversity, equity, and inclusion are under assault and attack. How do we need to respond collectively as a community of Black people of allies and people who aspire for a fair and just world? How should we show up at this moment?
I love that because it depends on how close to the center or to the margin that you are in. I would say for those that are on the outer part of the margin. I recommend people pick up Bell Hooks from the margin to the center where you rest. I do think that this is a period of sabbaticals. As our team calls them, radical sabbaticals. This is a period of being much closer to the community and not looking for outside sources to validate who we are. We honor our movements, especially of recent days. We also start asking ourselves the questions around what intra-community equity means for us.
I do think that there are times when D&I is raised, it feels like a space where people of color, unfortunately, but also, understandably, are the teachers of communities that benefit the most from society, but that puts a lot of work on us. That’s a lot of work. There’s like this weird thing and in a weird way, we also should be the ones leading this work. Part of the reason why a lot of efforts aren’t sustainable is because there are holes in who the communicator is as to how they are able to bring a problem-solving mindset to experiences that many of them haven’t experienced.
It becomes very regimen and definitions and do 1, 2, and 3, versus getting the essence of what it means to experience oppression. There’s a component but also figuring out what does equity mean? What is this way that I can channel my strengths to be a part of this problem-solving puzzle without burning out? Also, recognizing that within our communities, we have intersectional issues as well. We have gender issues, disability issues, and colorism issues. There is an equity mindset conversation that we need to be having in our spaces. That’s going to take a lot of work.
Probably, just as valiant of a movement could be focused on that for those that are closer to privilege. We’ve done this work at BIA. It’s implementing the clap back for a reason because we know that no industry is safe. Every industry is experiencing an equity crisis. We’re seeing those who are creatives who create the amazing content that we all at times take for granted when we see the finished product on Netflix or whatever. Those writers are striving to figure out if they’re going to be needed in the future.
Many of them are Black and Brown and trying to break their way through. The concept of moving up in their industry may not exist anymore. That’s not a dream deferred. That’s a dream denied. What does that mean for the executive that believes and felt that fire on the streets, whether it was Trayvon Martin or Sean Bell or Breonna Taylor or George Floyd. Take that fire and then figure out what that means for communities that need power to be behind their voice.
I’ll end with this, for those that are especially not Black, but also not White, how anti-blackness impacts us all but also, understanding anti-blackness is not just about black people like whiteness is not just about white people. These laws that are in place are directly connected to their ability to also experience the fullness of humanity that the othering of us is also by design created so that they can distance themselves from the community that, in many ways, we’ve all been programmed and socialized as determining that it’s their fault that they’re in that situation.
We’re moving towards a more brown society. I get nervous when people say Brown and they assume that, “It’s becoming more Brown, ie less White. Therefore, there’s going to be less whiteness.” If we’re not practicing anything that’s combating the psychology of whiteness, then our mindset is not only going to be the same. We’re going to be treating each other. We’re going to be the ones on both sides of oppression. We have to create intentional spaces that call that out as a way of bringing in. Not as a way of isolating ourselves.
I’ve heard it said that whiteness has a very strong immune system.
It’s the finest wine. That’s what I like to say.
It’s very intoxicating.
It’s a very fine wine. It evolves.
You get started with this British, then it’s up to the Scottish, then the Irish. All of Western Europe.
It will never ever be Black. It will never ever trickle to us and there’s something both beautiful. I watch a lot of X-Men. It’s not as pure. It’s not as whatever comical as like good and evil, but it is a spiritual fight because I am too dark to be White. I don’t care how many rapes happen that our ancestors did not ask for. I don’t care how many degrees you bestow upon us. I don’t care how fair your skin or how curly your hair or how light your eyes.
You are never going to be White. That is something that, again when I think about the browning of society. I think about the ways that whiteness creates passes for us to participate in privilege. If whiteness is the standard of humanity, then we’re never going to experience the fullness of that. If we challenge that there shouldn’t be a color, if you will, to humanity, then there’s going to be some hard truths we’d all have to confront.
I also think you have to be aware of what you’re participating in to break it down. Hopefully, this is a wake-up call of, “I don’t need to give you any more facts.” We got enough facts. You don’t need another article. I have a lot of degrees, but this is not a research book. This is not a legal book. This is like, can you sit with the conversation long enough to be like, I’ve got to do some shit differently. That’s the challenge because it’s not a typical business book. People just want to know what to do and then do good work. Me being a full human being is not good work. That is I think the human commission. That is the reason why we’re here.
Where can people find the book?
I don’t want to advertise any particular company. If you Google my social justice background, I would probably get in trouble. Wherever books are sold, you can go there. Also, support your Black and Brown and independent bookstores. Even if they don’t have it, they can order it for you. Go to your public libraries. I know that some of them are also starting to pick them up. You can also go to Ifeomasinachi.com and get yourself a link to get the book. It’s so easy. They’re literal.
This is wonderful.
Thank you for the time.
Thank you so much and for the time, joining me on this journey, and from giving birth to our baby. This is one of her many pearls that fall out of her mouth. You impetus to even this conversation. Thank you for all the ways you continue to pour into our work at Black Innovation Alliance and the improvement of our society through thought projects like the Equity Mindset.
Thank you.
We’ll see you in the next episode. Thanks, Ife. Thank you all so much for joining us for another episode, where I got the opportunity to interview my sister’s friend, Ife Ike, on her brand-new book, The Equity Mindset. Pick it up at Ifeomasinachi.com and continue to follow her journey online and at Black Innovation Alliance. We appreciate you all. Peace.
