anti-racist-principles

The Mayor's Office for Economic Opportunity

The Mayor's Office for Economic Opportunity


NYC Opportunity

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Staff

Jobs

Accessibility

Contact Us


Our Anti-Racist Principles

From its founding, NYC Opportunity has been committed to embracing diversity, equity and inclusion. However, upon deeper reflection in 2020 we acknowledged the need to hold ourselves accountable to the racial inequity and injustice that perpetuates the cycle of poverty for the communities we serve. As part of our learning, in 2021 all staff members of NYC Opportunity participated in trainings to undo racism and co-created anti-racist principles to help articulate what that means for our organization. Our office updated and revised them in 2024-25. NYC Opportunity commits to embed anti-racist principles into all of its work, internally and externally.

Guiding statements

We acknowledge that this work takes time and resources.

We commit to holding ourselves accountable for regularly putting these principles into practice in order to reduce disparities and increase equity.

We recognize that racism is shaped by factors like privilege, power dynamics between the government and the public, and intersectionality (how different aspects of one's identity, such as gender or class, interact).

Learning and applying knowledge

Learn from historic and systemic racism
We acknowledge there are personal biases, institutions, and systems of power that create the racialized inequities for the populations we serve.

Learn from current experiences and reflect on impact
We commit to assessing the impact of our work and learning from the lived experiences of people who have been impacted by racism.

Commitments to each other

Grow and support a diverse workforce and leadership
We value our team's lived experience and its contribution in our work and in our office. We commit to diversity in hiring and providing leadership pathways for our team members.

Commitments to the public

Partner with communities to center their needs and priorities
We actively involve community members in shaping, guiding, and leading in the work we produce. To provide reciprocity, we share expertise, resources, and (when possible) compensation with community members.

Responsibly steward data and information
We are transparent with people on how information collected from them will be used and protected. We share our data back in an accessible and useful manner. We use our data and research to increase government transparency and advance equity for the public good.

Improve access to government services
We strive to ensure that people can understand and access government services, especially people in underserved communities.