2020 has been a year of deep, historic challenges, from the most destructive pandemic to grip the world in the past century to a sustained wave of protests over racial inequity and police violence that has filled streets in cities and towns across the nation. While it’s more obvious in the latter, the thread of racism runs through both. We are deeply troubled by the 
impact of COVID-19 on Black people, from a health, mortality, and economic perspective. And the heedless murder of George Floyd is a sickening, disheartening reminder of the discrimination Black people have long suffered at the hands of police.
Together, these two events have both highlighted the structural racism in our society and worsened the disproportionate plight of our fellow citizens of color. At Deaconess Foundation, we recognize that racism is the most significant structural challenge impeding people’s ability to build careers that sustain them and their families.
This fact is illustrated by the racial disparities in the indicators that guide our work. We look to employment rates, wage levels, and household wealth to understand the environment in which Deaconess Foundation’s grantmaking, leadership, and collaboration take place. On each of these measures, outcomes for Black people and households are significantly worse than they are for whites. Although many indicators lag, early measures demonstrate that the disparities will worsen during this time of COVID.
Our fundamental strategy is based on the belief that the best way to help individuals and families in need is to enable them to enter and progress along career pathways that provide the opportunity to realize long-term, family sustaining wages. We recognize that the ability to progress is influenced by other systems that are characterized by inequities that prevent Black people from thriving. Opportunities to prepare for and make the most of high-quality jobs are influenced by education, health care, criminal justice, housing, transportation, and other systems. As long as there are demonstrated inequities in how Black people fare in these systems, the work we do at Deaconess to help people move towards jobs with family sustaining wages will be compromised.
Like every other organization whose mission is to improve the lives of disadvantaged families, our work is disproportionately focused on people of color. This focus is in the DNA of all of the impacts, strategies, and desired outcomes in our recently adopted 2020-2023 strategic plan. We recognize the critical need to close race-based disparities through our own work, and have therefore included improving race equity in our governance and practices as one of our stated strategies.
Clearly, the coronavirus will be with us for some time and its impact will only worsen. And the broadly energized will to tackle structural racism will not change the underlying policies, beliefs, behaviors, and impacts overnight. Our hope is that we can all look back on this time once it’s over and feel that we did what we could to reduce the damage to and enhance the recovery of the people whose lives we’re committed to improving.
– Board and Staff of the Deaconess Foundation