The Token

Common Sense Ideas for Increasing Diversity in Your Organization

By: Crystal Byrd Farmer

Narrated by: Cherlandra Estrada

Length: 1 hr and 53 mins

Publisher's summary

Meet the new Black friend you never had

As a Black organizer, community, business, and organization leaders often ask: "How do I get diversity in my group?" The thing is, the work is real, but it's a minefield out there. And even progressive leaders can still, perhaps unknowingly, be racist and uphold oppressive systems.

In The Token, your new token Black friend, Crystal Byrd Farmer, acts as the bridge between majority White organizations that are dedicated to social justice and "diverse" people in community they want to recruit, across identities of race, LGBTQ, education, socioeconomic status, and disability.

With a blunt style that pulls no punches, Crystal tells you how it is, calling you out on tokenism, while extending a hand to help your organization make real transformative change toward diversity and inclusion. Coverage includes:

• What marginalized people experience and what they need to feel safe and comfortable in order to succeed
• Doing "The Work" – how to have deep conversations with your membership about the reality of bias, privilege, and microaggressions
• Practical exercises and discussion questions
• How to choose appropriate meeting locations and establish ground rules, when to bring in outside help, and how to recruit support within your organization
• Strategies on how to talk to friends who are resistant to progressive ideas

This no-nonsense, provocative, humorous, and accessible guide is for all well-meaning people leading progressive organizations who acknowledge the need for diversity but don't know where to start.

©2020 Crystal Byrd Farmer (P)2020 New Society Publishers

Beneficial and Concise

This is such valuable information as a white person for how I can support BIPOC. The clarity of the information provided is wonderful. This is easily be a book I can listen to over and over again to internalize these important actions.

To the point and practical

This book was direct, concise, and no fluff. It gave a basically step by step method for actually increasing diversity in any given organization. I highly recommend.

A really useful giude for important, hard work

Very useful resource! As a white AFAB person, this book was full of good reminders and things that I need to sit with. As the only openly queer (let alone trans) person at work, I am excited and relieved to have a resource to give to my boss, so she can hear this stuff from someone who isn't me.

Useful & necessary!

I appreciate the workbooks and discussion prompts to allow for a deeper dive and support my commitment to increase diversity in my work and life.