Community development leaders, we hear you. You are tired. Poorly compensated. Overworked. Heavily regulated. Emotionally exhausted. You have been stretched to fill urgent, time sensitive needs, from voter registration to vaccination, from responding to floods and severe storms to distributing food and meals. And that’s on top of the long-term work of keeping residents in their homes, developing safe and vibrant places for people to gather, fostering vibrant small businesses and commercial corridors, and building resident power to advocate for their communities. You’re addressing immediate resident needs, while also pushing for long-term, systems-level reforms through innovative approaches.

This is particularly true when pursuing race-conscious approaches to work in an ecosystem that does not always support such efforts (and sometimes actively penalizes them). This is truer when those anti-racist leaders are leaders of color and bear the brunt of emotional labor to endure microaggressions and support other leaders of color. This is even truer when considering the elevated expectations on community practitioners of color who, when placed into leadership positions, are expected to support the racial equity journeys of white staff, board members, and community members, push for reform, and solve decades of structural inequities in the system, without the necessary professional or financial support. This is truer when placing leaders into predominantly and historically white organizations, where they might be told to fit into a dominant culture and change who they truly are. In the words of one practitioner, being forced “to fit into a box that was never made for you.” This is on top of imposter syndrome. Of fighting for spaces where you belong, while creating these spaces for your staff and your communities.

What a dilemma we’ve created. A false narrative that hiring a Black leader to run an organization will magically solve a lot of structural inequities in the system. A puzzling assumption that investments of leaders of color and communities of color are inherently risky. A focus on the most credentials, degrees, and certifications to work in our communities, yet lower compensations for our leaders who are Black women, despite being the most credentialed.

We hear you loud and clear. In community development, we need more attention to building up and supporting leaders. We need onboarding and retention supports, knowledge sharing, succession planning, personal and professional developments, healthier work-life balance, protections against microaggressions, and financial compensation. We need sustained and strategic investments in developing and amplifying the leadership of those most impacted by structural racism. We need to support the senior leaders of color who have paved the way for future generations, and we need to build a pipeline of future leaders of color in the field. We need healing. We need rest.

Community development leaders, we see you. This issue, we invite you to review a set of promising community development leadership practices we’ve gathered. Then join the discourse of the complexities around leadership, particularly the unique dynamics of leadership in community development and those facing leaders of color. Let’s get proximate to the impacts of structural racism and how it shows up in the hierarchy of organizations, funding structures, and defining organizational success. One thing is clear in this performance review – an anti-racist approach to community development must include leadership development. Onward.