Maya Wiley is the Executive Director of the Center for Social Inclusion, a policy and advocacy organization which works to transform structural inequity and exclusion into structural inclusion. A civil rights attorney and policy advocate since 1989, Ms. Wiley has worked for the ACLU, NAACP Legal Defense Fund and the Open Society Institute. She has contributed to Growing Smarter: Achieving Livable Communities, Environmental Justice and Regional Equity, R. Bullard, ed. The MIT Press (2007).

What does it mean to measure the transformation of race? Funders and grantees are increasingly asked to predetermine measurable impacts and quantify them. We are asked to develop strategies, relationships, and outcomes in a linear equation. We assume, we do and we report. But the structural racism lens, a form of racialized “systems thinking,” draws us to multidimensional, complex institutional and social relationships, policies, and practices. It’s more of a constellation than an equation. It’s the stars, not algebra.

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