Knitcircus' guidelines for an anti-racist business model
Traditionally, Knitcircus' approach to guiding our company toward an anti-racist business model was to listen to and share the experience of Black, Brown and non-white people. In the last year, we've moved to the next step: putting our new education into action. The following guiding questions inform the way we plan events, interact with our community, and select our partnerships.
In the below questions, BIPOC stands for Black and Indigenous People of Color, a commonly used acronym in our community for Black, Brown and non-white people.
- How can we represent a range of skin colors, sizes, and abilities without tokenizing those groups of people?
- How can we boost the voices and experiences of BIPOC without taking advantage of their labor?
- How can we celebrate the culture of our community members without appropriating that which does not belong to us?
- How do we create a safe and welcoming space both in person and online without shutting down discourse?
- How do we contribute to conversations about race and show up for BIPOC without decentering their experiences?
- How can we balance our wishes to show our diverse staff without endangering or exploiting our marginalized employees?
- How can we support BIPOC designers, dyers, and makers and compensate them fairly when we work with them?
- How do we overcome the fear of causing additional harm to BIPOC when we're afraid to speak up? How does our choice to listen but not speak cause additional harm?
- How do we create and offer accessibly priced goods and services while providing competitive pay and benefits to all staff members?
Some of the answers to these questions are clear to us, and some will take more work. We will continue to grow, learn and share as we seek to run Knitcircus with the intent of answering these questions through action. We can't promise that we'll always get the answers right; when we get them wrong, we'll be counting on you to call out bullshit when you see it, and to not worry about hurting our feelings when doing so.