8/26/24 – On Thursday night, 8/22/24, Doctor Arelia Johnson addressed the Harris County Community Flood Resilience Task Force about Harris County’s new definition of equity. Dr. Johnson is the County’s new Chief Equity Officer and has been in her job only three weeks. She has a PhD in sociology and criminology from Howard University. You can watch the video of her talk on YouTube. It begins at five minutes and ten seconds into the meeting. Below is a transcript of her talk up to the point where she started taking questions from the audience.

Host: Whenever you’re ready Doctor Johnson, just let me know and I’ll help you advance through your slides.

Johnson: Thank you so much Amanda. This is Doctor Arelia Johnson. My pronouns are she, her, hers. And I am the chief equity officer for Harris County. And so, we’re going to talk about equity and where we are in this process of creating this foundational work and analysis. 

Racism, Sexism Declared Public Health Crisis

In June, 2020, Commissioners Court declared racism and sexism a public health crisis, and they then began to move towards creating a space for chief equity officer in 2021. The county then created its initial guidelines and definition for equity, and then more recently, we were able to update a definition that was more in alignment with the strategic planning that we’re doing. 

Current Definition of Equity

This particular definition feeds into our framework, which is three parts of the model. And we’ll talk about that shortly. But our definition as it stands right now is…

“Equity is the actionable pursuit of recognizing that there are groups who have disproportionately benefited from inequities, and others who have had the burden of solving the problems that have been created by inequities.” 

In other words…

“Equity is the actionable commitment to significantly reduce the disparity in the distribution of benefits and the actionable commitment in reducing the burdens of aligning and embedding goals, objectives, and outcomes related to inclusivity and accessibility to the historically marginalized.” 

Benefiting From or Being Hurt Disproportionally

Now, what does that mean? I’m glad you all asked. When we’re talking about equity, we have historically talked about equity in very vague, abstract ways. We have these huge aspirational goals, as if we can undo 250 years’ worth of work institutionalizing disparity.

However, we have to take a step back. And so, that’s what we’ve done as a county. We are taking a step back to figure out what can we do to recognize that there have been groups, multiple groups, who have benefited from disproportionality.

And then there have been multiple groups who have not benefited from disproportionality and who have been tasked with the burden, whether it’s the emotional labor, the physical labor, the social-political labor of solving the problems that inequity has caused and that has resulted in disparate treatment and what those consequences are. 

Equity is a conscious practice. It’s something that we are grounding in research, and it is informed by data that actively engages and addresses the historical, cultural and institutional dynamics and structures that privilege some and disadvantaged others.

Mitigating History

So, when you’re thinking about being a task force that wants to mitigate some of the flooding issues that we’re having, how do you then ground what you’re doing in research? How do you actively address the historical, cultural, institutional and structural dynamics?

And how do you know that you’re doing that? One of the tools that you can use is by actively engaging committees like this one, to where you can have a myriad of lenses and lived experiences at the table, to where you can hear from all of those different perspectives. 

There are three ways that we are looking at equity structurally, which is achieved when we take all of those dynamics that I just talked about into consideration. 

• What is the historical context? How have certain groups been ignored or underserved or underprivileged? 
• What are the cultural contexts? Are there biases or perspectives that are involved with dealing with the historically marginalized? 
• What are the institutional dynamics that have traditionally privileged some and disadvantaged others?

Structural Equity

Now you’re talking about systems and systematic oppression, which does happen. It has structural consequences, especially when you’re talking about which areas are being served and which areas are going to be the hardest hit. 

Those are some of the things that we need to consider from a structural perspective. 

Structural equity also seeks to rectify underlying structures, frameworks and policies and practices. 

Procedural Equity

Procedural equity is more about the development and implementation of equitable distribution and sustainability. We want to look at standard operating procedures. 

What are those practices? How do we then create impact within those communities, not just in word but also in deed, and making sure that those populations are groups that are not otherwise considered:

• One, have a seat at the table so they can have consideration, 
• Two, they can also help with these efforts instead of those efforts being done for them. 

Socio-Emotionally-Intelligent Equity

And then you have socio-emotionally-intelligent equity. I think this is probably one of the things that we have to work hard because we have all been socialized and conditioned to some extent. 

This form of equity helps us to increase the capacity to recognize, understand and address and then mitigate the impacts of interpersonal, individual, structural, systemic and institutional racism and sexism on the well-being of others.

Aligning with Commissioner’s Court Priorities

We think this is really important as a county, because we want to be in alignment with all of the resolutions that are coming out of commissioner’s court. But then, we also want to be able to take a step back and be introspective and reflective when having interactions with others. 

Must Work on Unconscious Biases

Sometimes our implicit biases are our unconscious biases seep into interactions. It’s not because we intend on being harmful. Sometimes we are completely unaware that we are being harmful. 

And so, this is something that we really have to work on. And it has to be very intentional and conscious. 

Socio-emotionally intelligent equity is locational or context specific, which means that you have to recognize where you are, your generational context, your historical context, your social context, your political context, and recognize it and recognize that sometimes we assume things to the detriment of progress. 

What you may be experiencing with someone, if it looks like anger, may not actually be anger, it may be frustration or disappointment. 

And so doing all of those things, what it does for us, it helps promote a uniform starting place, which means that then we go into this place of what training looks like, what a shared language looks like, what commonality looks like. 

So, those are the three components of our equity framework and our definition. 

Posted by Bob Rehak on 8/26/24

2554 Days since Hurricane Harvey