How to Root Out Racism in 5 Steps

Intractable as it seems, racism can be effectively addressed with the right information, incentives, and investment.

The questions everyone asks are: How? Where do I start?

In this article, I offer a practical road map, in the form of my PRESS model, that answers those questions and shows how we can make profound and sustainable progress toward racial equity in five steps:

Individuals, communities, and organizations going through these stages move from understanding the underlying condition, to developing genuine concern, to focusing on correction.

Now, let’s have a closer look at each one and examine how they inform and lead us to higher and higher ground in the discussion on race.

Step 1: Problem Awareness

The first step to solving any problem is the acknowledgment that there is, in fact, a problem.

This is the question we have to tackle in the first stage of my PRESS model for addressing racism and racial inequity.You likely thought to yourself, “Of course I believe racism exists!” But a 2011 study by Michael Norton and Sam Sommers found that a majority of White people in America not only question the existence of anti-Black racism, many now perceive anti-White bias to be more prevalent than anti-Black bias. Moreover, many White people see racial equity as a zero-sum game, meaning they perceive that Black progress comes at the expense of White people.

Truthful Problem Awareness is where the work starts—because to solve a problem we have to be aware that it exists and agree on what it is.

There are multiple factors that explain the denial of racism, including cognitive heuristics and biases, such as overemphasizing the success of Black outliers like Oprah or Obama as indicative of the success of Black people as a whole.

There’s also motivated reasoning—i.e. many people don’t want to see racism, and so they don’t—and differences in how we each define what “racism” is. For many White people, the definition of racism is a malicious, violent act perpetrated by bad actors. In other words, as long as “I” have done no such harm, “I” am not a racist.But racism most often occurs without conscious awareness or intent.When defined simply as differential evaluation or treatment based solely on race or ethnicity, we realize that racism occurs extremely often. The very fact that most White people admit that they would need to be paid tens of millions of dollars to live their lives as a Black person indicates that they realize, on some level, that Black people are treated worse than White people. This differential treatment they’re afraid of is racism, regardless of intent.

Understanding and acknowledging this fact—the full awareness of the problem—is where we begin the path toward progress and healing.

Step 2: Root-Cause Analysis

Once you understand the problem, you need to then understand the underlying causes of the problem in order to choose the best remedy. This is the second step, what I call Root-Cause Analysis.

One of the biggest hurdles to diagnosing the root cause of a problem is that the source of the problem is often unseen and distal, stemming from things such as unconscious biases, seemingly “neutral” policies, historical events, or established cultural traditions.

​​Racism can have many psychological roots—cognitive biases, ideology, or personal insecurity, for instance—but most racism is the result of structural factors: established laws, institutional practices, and cultural norms.

And because many of its causes do not involve malicious intent, diagnosing racism gets complicated further, particularly for people who assume that acts of racism can never be perpetrated by “good” people.

To understand how a biased system can influence outcomes and behaviors that lead to racism, I imagine being salmon in a stream.

In that stream, a current moves everything in the water downstream. That current is systemic racism.

If you do nothing—just float—the current will carry you along with it, whether you’re aware of it or not. If you actively discriminate by swimming with the current, you will be propelled faster. In both cases, the current takes you in the same direction.

From this perspective, racism has less to do with your intentions and more to do with how your actions or inactions amplify or enable the systemic dynamics already in place—and how much you underestimate the prevailing current.

But swimming against the current demands much more effort, courage, and determination than simply going with the flow. To analyze the roots of racism, we must be mindful of the “current,” a.k.a. the structural dynamics that permeate the system, not just the “fish,” or individual actors that operate within it.

Step 3: Empathy

Once you’re aware of the problem of racism and its root causes, the next question is whether you care enough to do something about it. In other words, whether you have Empathy—the third step of my PRESS model for addressing racial inequity.

“Caring” enough means more than just sympathy. 

Caring can take the form of sympathy or empathy, but there is a big difference between the two. The important question is: Which is more likely to lead to action? The answer: Empathy.

Many White people experience sympathy, or pity, when they witness racism. Yet, much like in the analogy of taking a pill for quick relief, sympathy simply quiets the symptoms while perpetuating the disease. People of color don’t want sympathy. We want solidarity and social justice.

To get to solidarity and achieve social justice, you need empathy. Empathy is experiencing the same hurt and anger that people of color are feeling—which can lead to outrage and action.

Empathy is critical for making progress toward racial equity because it affects whether individuals or organizations take any action and if so, what kind of action they take.

The best way to increase empathy is through exposure and education. Often, people in a community or organization will register concern about racism in moments when their non-White counterparts voluntarily share, in psychologically safe environments, detailed accounts of the negative impact that racism has on their lives. When supplemented by resources and programming, such as DEI workshops, these experiences raise awareness and empathy that provide historical and scientific evidence of the persistence of racism.

All in all, there are at least 4 ways to respond to racism:

1. Join in and add to the injury.

2. Ignore it and mind your own business.

3. Experience sympathy and bake cookies for the victim.

4. Experience empathic outrage and take measures to promote equal justice.

Step 4: Strategy

Well, we have finally arrived at everyone’s burning question: What can I do to fight racism?

Once you have an understanding of the problem and increased concern and motivation to fix it, then you can look at strategies for driving change. More specific strategies fall into three broad, interrelated categories: individual, cultural, and institutional.

🧍 Individual

Individual strategies are geared toward modifying personal attitudes, behaviors, and habits. It’s about changing hearts and minds.

🤝 Cultural

Interventions at the cultural level focus on informal perceptions and expectations for what constitutes appropriate or inappropriate behavior. It’s about changing social norms.

🏛️ Institutional

Institutional approaches focus on formal procedures, practices, or laws within communities and organizations as they relate to racism. It’s about changing structures and policy.

To have the most profound and sustainable impact on racial equity, leaders—in government, organizations, schools, etc.—should consider how to run interventions on all three of these fronts simultaneously.

Focusing only on one—implementing diversity policies without creating buy-in from employees, for example, or trying to change attitudes without establishing policies to hold people accountable—is likely to be ineffective and could even backfire.

However, establishing an anti-racist culture tied to core values and modeled by behavior from leaders, for example, can influence both individual attitudes and institutional policies.

There are ample strategies for reducing racial bias at the individual, cultural, and institutional levels, and I spend dozens of pages outlining empirically validated strategies for moving the needle in Chapters 11 and 12 of my book, The Conversation.

However, even the best strategies are worthless without implementation. Commitment to action is critical.

Step 5: Sacrifice

So, what level of commitment are you willing to make?

There is a reason I end my PRESS model with Sacrifice. Nothing worth having comes without some cost, and addressing racial inequity requires people to make a “sacrifice”—or investment of time, effort, energy, and resources—necessary to produce the change we want to see. However, the cost is almost never as high as people assume it will be. Nothing in life worth having is free, but it won’t cost as much as you think.

Therefore, I put sacrifice in quotes because it often involves less actual sacrifice than one might assume.

As I mentioned above, many White people believe inequality is a zero-sum game: In their minds, Black progress comes at the expense of their own. However, there is strong evidence that greater racial justice benefits everyone, not just people of color.Organizational leaders, for example, sometimes assume that doing DEI well might require at least two sacrifices:

1. Some assume that increasing diversity means sacrificing principles of fairness and merit because it requires giving “special” favors to people of color rather than treating everyone the same.

In reality, fairness requires treating people equitably—which may entail treating people differently, but in a way that makes sense. 2. Some assume that increasing diversity requires sacrificing quality. In other words, you hire the diverse candidate or the “best” candidate.

In reality, the candidate that is often hired is not the “best” candidate but rather the “best fit” to a preconceived prototype or image of who the ideal candidate would be—an image that often does not include women or people of color (and instead provides an unearned benefit to White male leaders).

Secondly, there is often not ever a single best candidate but rather many best candidates—which certainly includes people of color. For example, could the NFL hire more Black coaches without sacrificing quality? Of course. Could the Fortune 500 do the same within its leadership ranks? Absolutely.Bottom line: “Sacrifice” may actually involve giving up very little, but instead dedicating effort, attention, and resources to smarter recruitment, hiring, and promotion practices.

Pressing the issue

When people talk about redressing racism, many—especially results-oriented leaders—are tempted to dive right into “solutions” before they fully understand the problem. It’s a short-term “fix” that doesn’t actually fix the problem at all—akin to a physician prescribing medicine before ever diagnosing the patient.

The very first step in solving any problem is becoming aware that the problem even exists and agreeing on what it is. If someone doesn’t believe that racism exists, then proposed solutions, such as DEI initiatives, will be seen as the problem rather than the solution (to a problem that, to them, is nonexistent).

But awareness is just the beginning. Effective interventions involve the many stages laid out in the PRESS model above, from awareness all the way to sacrifice—a deep investment and commitment to action, all while managing trade-offs.

Change is possible. We just need to *press* the issue a bit.

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