Writing in JLC's sister publication, John McManus took on the difficult task of addressing the "unwelcome and dangerous subject" of systemic racism in both home building and journalism. As editors at JLC, we are grateful for McManus's effort and sheer honesty to bring form to what may be the most difficult topic of all for an all-white, privileged group of editors to tackle, and can find no better expression to represent a position we feel compelled to convey to our readership.
McManus hinges this vital exploration on his discussion with the leader of one of the top-20 largest home builders in the U.S. who attended a recent housing leadership conference, and felt compelled to do the right thing:
"I was about the 30th to speak," says this public company chief executive. "It was a full hour into the format, and one person after another spoke about how 'business is good' and how 'the advances we've made in virtual selling technology' are amazing, and how 'worker and customer safety and security come first' in our pandemic-challenged business environment. My head was about to explode! As I looked at that [Zoom gallery] screen, it's more than apparent we need to do more. I could not not speak up."
"...Many home building firms and people do noble work and have memorialized values and principles at their core that are generous, well-meaning, ennobling," said this executive. "Builders everywhere try to do good work. But if they're not paying attention to this issue, and doing the self-examination as to how systemic racism and racial injustice, and Black Lives Matter, and what it means and how it's impacting what we do as leaders in housing, then we are not living by our values."
He wrapped up his 2-minute segment, saying, "I don't know whether it's for this group to lean into this issue and commit to action, but I think it is."
We hope you will find time to read McManus's article in its entirety, and lean into the issue a little more. McManus goes deep, owning his own complicity, as we do in sharing this.
"I feel the vertiginous nausea of a journalist," McManus writes. "Of one given a voice and an audience, and a responsibility to affirm, to challenge, and to offer ideas to that audience, who's been caught, and is unquestionably, unequivocally guilty of 'being part of the problem.' Complicit. If I am not antiracist in action, editorial direction, contribution of value to my firm, and leadership among staffers, then the only logical alternative is that I work collusively with a systemically racist status quo."
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