The consultants warned Michael Adams that things would get messy. But Adams, CEO of SAGE, an advocacy and services group for LGTBQ+ seniors, brushed off the concerns. A Harvard- and Stanford-educated lawyer, he expected his organization to pursue its 2014 commitment to racial equity in linear, sequential fashion. Outline guiding principles — check. Conduct an audit to identify weaknesses — check. Make changes based on the audit — check, check, check. Within a couple of years, SAGE would, voilà, emerge as an equitable organization.
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SAGE is approaching its eighth year of racial-equity work that Adams describes as, well, messy. “We’ve come to understand that there’s no end to this work,” he says. “It’s permanent and enduring.”
The organization looks nothing like it did before. People of color are now the majority on staff, and the leadership and board are much more diverse. Daily conversations, training, and work are all infused with discussions of how race influences staff, internal operations, and the mission.
Externally, the organization’s change is evident in new senior centers built in diverse neighborhoods in the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Harlem. In 2019, SAGE opened Stonewall House in Brooklyn’s Fort Greene neighborhood, New York’s first LGTBQ+ friendly affordable apartment complex for seniors and the country’s largest. The group is working with a more diverse set of seniors, and the training services it provides are more focused on cultural competency.
Adams, too, has changed. He recognized that it would be unfair to ask people of color to do the hard work of leading the organization’s transformation. He took the reins but wrestled with how to lead without dominating. “You don’t want to dislocate and marginalize the very people who have been dislocated and marginalized their entire lives by white people and white leaders,” he says. His loquaciousness — “I have a tendency to talk a lot,” he says — made it even harder to strike the proper balance, and colleagues have cautioned him at times to stay silent and give space to others.
Adams also has tried to rewire the brain circuitry fashioned from years of legal analysis and accept that progress would come in fits and starts. The organization has nearly finished a new strategic plan that will feature efforts focused on racial equity and overlay all of its work with an anti-racist framework. At the same time, however, the staff and board are revisiting their original statement of principles and updating their shared understanding of anti-racism. It’s two steps forward, one step backward, just as the consultants predicted.
Michael Adams talks with Equity in the Center about the beginning of an organizational overhaul at SAGE, an advocacy and support group for LGBTQ seniors.