Judy Blair
What does it mean to look professional? What does it mean to act professionally? Who decided what it means? Professionalism standards are classist and racist, rooted in an elitism that wants to keep the “right” people separate from (and hierarchically above) the “wrong” people. This elitism evaluates the way people look and act against a […]
A current experiment involving universal basic income in California and a recent large study using cash transfers in Kenya show that giving people money without conditions on how they spend it often contributes to a better quality of life for those people. It turns out that trusting people to do what’s best for themselves in their specific situation results […]
Last month I had the honor of participating in a webinar for the Adventure Nannies Summit Sessions series, a set of monthly webinars tailored for their audience of childcare providers. We talked about white cultural values, as presented by Tema Okun et al., and how those intersect with domestic work. At the end I took a few […]
Equity Matters, a Seattle-based consulting firm, has a set of ground rules they use for workshops and discussions. One of those ground rules is, “Put relationships first — Work to build community and trust with an awareness of power dynamics.” I’ve been thinking about this a lot recently and what it means to put relationships […]
Power is the ability to influence or change an outcome. Generally speaking, there are two different kinds of power: institutional and personal. Institutional power is often used to restrict resources, exercise control over others, or decide what is best for other people. Personal power is the influence or authority someone has over themselves and their […]
What does it mean to be white and to be paid to do racial justice work? What are the ethics of me, a white person, making money off racial oppression? I struggled with these questions a lot once I decided to try to make antiracism facilitation my career. I had been doing this work as […]
In August 2018, I filmed the following video with Dr Cheryl Ingram of Diverse City LLC as part of their ongoing video learning series.
Judy Blair 