Accountability Matters: Addressing Racial Inequity With Results-Based Accountability (RBA)

• DOI: 10.1177/2153368718811696
• Date: 01 January 2019
• Published date: 01 January 2019
• Subject Matter: Introduction

Introduction

Accountability Matters:

Addressing Racial Inequity

With Results-Based

Accountability (RBA)

JeffriAnne Wilder

1

, Marian Amoa

2

, Randy Nelson

3

,

and Tamara Bertrand-Jones

4

Famed civil rights activist and intellectual forefather of American sociology W. E. B.

Du Bois (1903/2004) proffered in 1903 that race relations—“the color line” as he

wrote—stood as our nation’s most pressing issue. Du Bois’s work as the first

American scholar of race, one of the first criminologists, and pioneering figure in

other subfields of sociological inquiry united the key principles of community-

engaged research, public sociology, advocacy, and activism to advance equity for

Black Americans (Hancock, 2005; Morris, 2015; Wright, 2016). Indeed, as Morris

(2015) highlights, this foundation laid by Du Bois was done so as a Black professor at

a historically Black university in the South. Du Bois suggested that eradicating racial

inequities within our society requires an acknowledgment of the structural forces

shaping institutional disparities. Perhaps, most importantly, it requires accountability.

That is, we must develop mutual ownership and responsibility in leading change.

Continuing in the tradition of Du Bois, the contributors of this special issue—many

of whom are professors at historically Black and Hispanic-serving institutions

(HSIs)—engage in this key discussion of collaboration and shared accountability

within the context of our nation’s continued social problem of race relations. Spe-

cifically, this issue explores the utility of results-based accountability (RBA; see

Friedman, 2005), an action-oriented framework centered on performance-driven

results, as a viable strategy in addressing racial inequity. RBA was developed by

fiscal policy strategist Mark Friedman and has been applied in a variety of social

1

National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT), University of Colorado Boulder,

Boulder, CO, USA

2

Annie E. Casey Foundation, Baltimore, MD, USA

3

Department of Justice and Society Studies, Bethune Cookman University, Daytona Beach, FL, USA

4

Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, USA

Corresponding Author:

JeffriAnne Wilder, National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT), University of

Colorado Boulder, Campus Box 417 UCB, Boulder, CO 80309, USA.

Email: jeffrianne.wilder@ncwit.org

Race and Justice

2019, Vol. 9(1) 3-7

ªThe Author(s) 2018

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DOI: 10.1177/2153368718811696

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