Imagine this scenario: You're a racial equity officer or practitioner in government, charged with advancing equity in your organization. Officially, leadership says all the right things about supporting racial equity. But behind closed doors, you get the unspoken message: keep it low-key, don't stir the pot. In other words, you have symbolic support – and a directive to stay under the radar. If this sounds familiar, you're not alone. Many equity practitioners find themselves walking this tightrope, trying to drive meaningful change with only cautious, lukewarm backing from the top. It's a frustrating and exhausting place to be, but there are ways to navigate this dilemma.
The Dilemma: Symbolic Support and Unspoken Limits
Recent field research confirms that practitioners across the country are indeed feeling this squeeze. GARE’s State of the Field of Racial Equity in Government report notes that political pushback has created a climate where many leaders grow skittish about bold equity efforts. In fact, 55% of practitioners surveyed identified political resistance as a significant barrier to their work. This resistance often leads to subtle cues from leadership to scale back. As one local government equity officer put it, "leadership seems to agree with racial equity work 'within reason.' In many ways, we are given cues to slow down and fly below the radar."
Such quotes resonate for those who have seen enthusiasm for equity suddenly become a quiet insistence on caution.
Why does this happen? In part, it’s the broader political backlash that has escalated in recent years. Equity initiatives that were embraced a few years ago now face overt political hostility. Nationally, we’ve seen attempts to defund DEI work, pressure from federal agencies like the Department of Justice to abandon race-conscious programming, and threats to withhold federal funds from jurisdictions promoting racial equity. In some communities, partnerships between local law enforcement and federal immigration enforcement (such as ICE) have further strained trust and marginalized vulnerable populations. This isn’t just discomfort - it reflects a coordinated effort to chill racial equity progress and intimidate both institutions and individuals advancing justice.
The impact on practitioners is real. Institutional barriers begin to pile up: your initiatives might get stalled by middle managers, resources are scarce, and you might even be left as a solo champion carrying this work. People in the field report feeling overburdened and fatigued, noting that while "racial equity looks good at the top", the folks doing the work on the ground are stretched thin and often blocked by unsupportive higher-ups. It's demoralizing to pour your passion into equity only to be told, implicitly, not to push too hard. When leadership offers only superficial support, it doesn't just stall equity progress, it erodes staff morale, burns out your most committed practitioners, and ultimately signals to your entire organization that equity isn't truly a priority. If you are experiencing this, take heart – the struggle is not just yours. It's a structural challenge many are facing, and it can be addressed.
A Direct Call to Leadership: Moving Beyond Symbolic Support
If you're in a leadership position, this section is for you. Yes, the political climate is challenging. Yes, there are real pressures and risks. But here's the truth: symbolic support for racial equity work is not neutral - it actively undermines your organization's credibility, your staff's capacity, and the communities you serve. Your teams are doing incredibly hard work under intense scrutiny, and they need more than permission to "stay under the radar." They need your active, visible, and sustained backing.
What does moving beyond symbolic support look like, even amid political pressure? It means:
Being Clear and Consistent: Don't send mixed messages. If you publicly champion equity but privately discourage bold action, your practitioners are left in an impossible position. Be explicit about what you will support and defend, and then follow through when that support is tested.
Protecting Your Practitioners: When equity work faces backlash, your staff shouldn't be left to weather the storm alone. Use your positional power to absorb criticism, reframe narratives, and shield practitioners from retaliation or burnout. Your willingness to stand in the fire matters.
Allocating Real Resources: Equity work cannot succeed on passion alone. Dedicate adequate staffing, budget, and time. When resources are scarce, equity initiatives shouldn't be the first to be cut or diluted. Your budget reflects your values - make sure it shows equity as a genuine priority.
Building Accountability Structures: Create mechanisms that hold you and your organization accountable for equity outcomes, not just equity rhetoric. This might mean regular public reporting on equity metrics, embedding equity into performance evaluations, or establishing community oversight bodies with real decision-making power.
Modeling Courage: Leadership in a politically volatile climate requires courage. When you demonstrate a willingness to take measured risks for equity – whether that's defending a controversial initiative or speaking truth about systemic inequities – you set the tone for your entire organization.
The practitioners doing this work are watching. The communities you serve are watching. And history will remember whether you chose courage or comfort in this moment. Even in climates of intensified political pressure, there is space for authentic leadership – leadership that transforms symbolic gestures into structural change.
Strategies for Practitioners: Navigating Constrained Support
For practitioners working within these constraints, there are strategic approaches that can help you advance equity even when leadership support is limited or inconsistent.
Internal organizing is critical. Practitioners can strengthen their impact by cultivating a network of allies across departments and roles, especially among mid-level managers, frontline staff, and data leads. Whether through informal working groups, internal equity cohorts, or cross-departmental Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (JEDI) teams, these relationships create distributed leadership and institutional resilience.
Inside organizing also helps normalize equity as 'everyone’s job' rather than the responsibility of one office or title. By building this depth and breadth, equity work is harder to isolate or shut down and more likely to survive political transitions or staff turnover.
Build Internal Coalition Across Departments
Reframe Equity Work Internally: Align with Core Priorities
One key strategy for navigating this environment is framing your equity work in terms that resonate internally. If overt racial justice language causes leadership to tense up, consider adjusting the narrative to highlight how equity advances the organization's core mission, efficiency, and overall success. The field report shows a growing sophistication in how practitioners talk about equity: moving beyond moral urgency to emphasizing practical benefits like better service delivery and organizational performance. In fact, 30% of surveyed jurisdictions in our recently published State of the Field: A Snapshot of Racial Equity in Government are using economic or efficiency arguments as a key strategy to secure buy-in for equity initiatives. GARE will continue to explore and develop tools and resources that help practitioners sharpen economic upward mobility arguments (if you are interested in staying in the loop on these, share your interest here).
In practice, this might mean presenting your equity proposals as solutions to problems leadership already cares about. For example, you could show how reducing racial disparities in service access will improve your agency's overall customer service metrics or compliance with mandates. Data can be your ally here. One practitioner explained how using data to demonstrate improvements – like removing barriers to access that increased efficiency and even decreased staff burden – helped make the case for equity (even if those outcomes aren't viewed as "flashy" wins).
Co-Create with the Community for Shared Momentum
When internal support is limited, turn outward and engage the community as co-creators in your equity efforts. It might seem counter-intuitive – if your bosses want to keep things low profile, involving the public could raise the profile. But done thoughtfully, community co-creation can actually fortify your work in ways that make it harder for leadership to dismiss or derail. State of the Field highlights that many jurisdictions are adopting co-creation models, treating residents as equal partners in designing equity initiatives to ensure projects meet real local needs and foster trust.
Think of it this way: a quiet equity plan developed in a silo is easy to shelve or slow-walk. But an equity initiative co-created with community members, especially those most impacted by inequities, comes with a constituency. Residents who have helped shape the plan are likely to champion it and hold the government accountable for progress. As one practitioner noted, "The progress we have made within the institution is a direct result of our relationships outside the institution. A core principle of our work is about being accountable to the community – those most directly impacted by inequities."
Codify Equity Commitments into Policy
Another powerful strategy in an era of symbolic support is to formalize and codify your equity efforts into lasting policy. If you sense that verbal support from leadership is fickle, push to get those commitments written down as official policy, ordinance, charters or integrated into departmental plans. Once something is codified, it's harder to simply sweep under the rug when the political winds change. The field report found that jurisdictions are increasingly doing this – 45% of survey respondents said their jurisdiction has codified racial equity policies.
For example, Seattle codified its Race and Social Justice Initiative into law in 2023, ensuring that the initiative lives beyond any one mayor or council. One practitioner emphasized the importance of "embedding [equity] into policies and practices so they are harder to undermine". In practical terms, this might mean incorporating equity impact assessments into budgeting or legislation, or adopting a citywide equity ordinance that formalizes staffing, reporting, and accountability structures. The GARE Learning Center has a number of resources to support the institutionalization of racial equity in your jurisdiction.
Leverage Peer Networks When Funding Fades
While philanthropy has historically played a critical role in supporting racial equity efforts, many practitioners now report that some foundations have pulled back or deprioritized this work. If you've relied on philanthropic dollars that are now shrinking or disappearing, you're not alone.
This reality makes peer networks and public-sector alliances even more crucial. The field report found that 40% of respondents reported leveraging cross-sector partnerships to amplify their work. Whether it's working across departments or collaborating regionally, these relationships allow practitioners to share tools, pool limited resources, and reinforce each other's momentum. As one interviewee noted, "Other places have resources that I may not have, and I may have resources that they may not have. It's about being intentional with collaborating across jurisdictions."
Even without new grants, these collaborations offer moral support, strategic feedback, and creative problem-solving. And when external funders step back, these alliances can help fill practical gaps or bolster the credibility and durability of equity initiatives. As always, the GARE Online Community is an incredible resource for remaining connected to your peers in the field.
Conclusion: Staying Resilient and Moving Forward
Navigating a situation where your organization's support for racial equity is largely symbolic – where you're expected to do the work but not make waves – is undoubtedly challenging. Yet, as we've discussed, there are practical ways to keep advancing equity under these constraints. It requires a mix of savvy and heart: speaking the language that will be heard internally, building genuine alliances externally, formalizing wins into policy, and finding support where it's available.
For Practitioners:
Continue the work strategically by reframing messaging, codifying wins, building cross-sector and internal coalitions, and staying anchored in community partnership.
For Leadership:
Remember: visible, consistent support; resource allocation; and public accountability are not optional—they are the backbone of institutional credibility.
Even under constraints, your creativity and commitment are powerful. Stay grounded in the work and each other. Your persistence today lays the foundation for lasting change tomorrow.
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