banter | HOMETOWN
BY STEVE ROBERTS
C. Marie Taylor, who runs Equity Through Action, at home in Silver Spring caption
Growing up, C. Marie Taylor kept being told “no.” Now the former CEO of Leadership Montgomery is helping companies recognize systemic racism—and confront their own biases.
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IN 1981, WHEN C. Marie Taylor was 8 years old, financial problems forced her family to move from a large house in Washington, D.C., to a small apartment in the Virginia suburb of Annandale. “We were among the first Black people to move to this area,” she recalls, “and when I went to school, the first day I was there, there was a little girl who said, ‘Oh you can’t sit here—Black people can’t sit here.’ And I said, ‘What? What are you talking about?’ So, because I was 8, I made the incorrect choice and picked her up and threw her across the table
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and said, ‘Well, you can’t sit here either.’ ” That day “was my first trauma, my first witness of racism,” Taylor says. It was far from her last, and today, at 47, she runs a consulting business called Equity Through Action that helps companies confront and correct racial bias. “What I’m hoping to do is change the culture within organizations, to help them learn to listen to Blacks and Latinos and Asian people of color,” Taylor explains. “I’m trying to get them to learn a new vocabulary that’s inclusive. I want them to re-evaluate the systems they are using
PHOTO BY LISA HELFERT
‘WHY CAN’T IT BE ME?’