Page 21 - APAP - Inside Arts - Summer 2020

criticize you, do not be tempted
to say it’s because of toxic self- marginalization, not without a period of reflection and research.
It may be TSM, or it may just be because you are a crappy leader and you need to change or resign.
But I think this is becoming more and more of a problem in our sector. Dealing with TSM
is exhausting and leaves us less energy to deal with greater threats, and right now, we need all of us
to be focused on dealing with the greater threats. It diminishes our effectiveness when we continue to sabotage our own efforts without even realizing it.
And we need to acknowledge also that this phenomenon, like everything else, disproportionately affects leaders of color. I know a lot of white nonprofit leaders who are experiencing similar challenges. But it seems lately that POC leaders have been having an even harder time, especially with other staff
of color. It’s like in some ways, if you’re a white ED, you may get
a pass when you make a mistake because you don’t have the lived experience and can rightfully claim ignorance. You have the privilege to be imperfect.
But if you’re a person of color, you’re expected to know better. You live through racism and injustice every day, so you should naturally be able to understand everything
and never make a mistake, and
you are considered a part of the problem when you demonstrate that you are imperfect like everyone else. Targeting leaders of color who have positional power is an effective way to diminish their effectiveness and serve as deterrence for other leaders of color, thus helping to maintain status quo, including
the marginalization status that many of us may be unconsciously most comfortable with. How do
we get people of color to assume leadership positions when the pressure is so high and the threshold for being considered a cog in the wheel of injustice so low?
I don’t exactly know how to counter toxic self-marginalization; it will require constant self- reflection and dialog, including about our uneasy relationship with power. I do know that many nonprofit leaders are emotionally drained. Dealing with a broken funding system and daily doses of racism, bigotry, misogyny, ableism, etc., in your work and in society
is stressful enough, but to come back to your own team constantly doubting your motives and not giving you the grace to be a fallible human being is soul-crushing. As another frustrated WOC ED said to me, “Maybe this model is not working. Maybe we just need to give all the money back and do something else.”
Perhaps that is the answer. Perhaps we need a completely different system altogether, one that is less hierarchical and can avoid these power differentials and the dynamics they carry. But I’ve also seen those who are trying to do just that, who use their positional power to shift organizational structures and practices, get railroaded too.
This is something all of us need to reflect on and debate over. Most of us are here because in various ways, we are affected by systems of injustice, or deeply care about those who are. But like that story about the fish who passed another fish, and the second fish asked “How’s the water?” and the first fish is like “What the hell is water?” each of us need to reflect on whether we are so used to existing within a system of inequity and marginalization that if taken out of it, like a fish out of water, we start unknowingly fighting to get back into it.
This article was originally published on the blog Nonprofit AF by Vu Le on September 19, 2019. It is reprinted here with permission from the author.
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