Sit in It: Philanthropy Must Embrace Discomfort and Rapid Change on the Road to Achieving Equity

When Alton Sterling and Philando Castile were murdered last summer, they joined a long list of Black people slain through state-sanctioned violence, a pile of dead Black and Brown bodies for whom no one was accountable. We also watched in horror as police used pepper spray, rubber bullets and concussion cannons, and dogs to fight peaceful protestors at the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe who were protecting their land, cultural sites and water from the Dakota Access Pipeline. These processes are becoming so familiar to the modern American psyche that their almost now as rote as arithmetic. Black and Brown and Native communities demanded justice. The headlines sensationalized and stirred passions. Leaders gave empathetic, but careful speeches.