At Confluence Philanthropy’s recent Practitioners Gathering, I had the honor of moderating a provocative panel on the importance of language and framing—especially in the context of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) investment themes. Our focus was about how if we are not careful, catch-all concepts and acronyms can be yet another excuse to avoid racial equity and racial justice in our investment discussions and documents.

Joining me on stage was Fred Blackwell, CEO, San Francisco Foundation; Kristin Hull, Founder, Nia Community Foundation; and Carmen Rojas, President & CEO, Marguerite Casey Foundation. Dr. Bob Ross, CEO of the California Endowment, spoke immediately preceding our panel and cued up an inspiring discussion by stating that the economic inclusion and wealth gap “battle” will be the hardest and toughest to win. This offered a perfect segue to the discussion of language’s importance within our portfolio investments (which in aggregate are much more than our grant-making budgets) if we want to focus on achieving racial equity and justice.

As the panelists responded to questions about how language matters and how they view the use of racial equity and justice terminology and acronyms such as DEI, ESG, SRI, etc., themes emerged. There was strong alignment that our portfolio investments need to be prioritized as their impact is crucial and perhaps not as far along in achieving racial equity/justice as our grantmaking.

We also surfaced the uncomfortable reality that under un-interrogated DEI frameworks, a majority of the capital is placed with Caucasian women. Carmen cautioned investors to resist scarcity mentalities when it comes to investing in historically under-resourced capital managers. Women and people of color have both been excluded from “Wall Street” for generations. I agreed with her, and responded that the commitment to racial equity investing must be spelled out in the Investment Policy Statement (IPS). Fred and I discussed how important it has been to our respective organizations to have made racial equity a priority in the IPS.

Fred ended the panel with a reminder that protests work, and our voices need to be heard;  Kristin reminded us to lead with love even though these are tough conversations and I expressed hope in future generations as I see them truly embracing the necessary changes and disruptions to achieve racial and gender equity/justice. I hope the audience felt a renewed commitment to tough investment policy discussions. If we are truly going to “win” the economic wealth gap battle Dr. Ross referred to, our portfolio investments need to better reflect our goals.