Why More People Should Partner with Someone Different from Them

We did it for this project, and here, we share insights into successful partnerships

One day in 2021, we were driving through a small town in rural Georgia when the police car started to trail us.

To Louise, it was nothing. To Ebony, it was time to “follow the plan.” She pulled into a parking lot, swung the car around and facing the police car directly, she smiled and waved. We drove off, and the officer did not follow us.

This was one of many experiences we shared as a Black and white pair of journalists. We set out three years ago to help more of the public understand why the typical Black family only has 15 cents for every $1 the typical white family has in wealth. We set out to uncover and show how this statistic plays out in the lives of Black people everyday in America. 

And we set out to do this in partnership with each other.

This article will explain the secrets we found to a great and, importantly, equitable partnership. After our own journey as partners co-writing a book, we are convinced that if more Americans experienced partnerships with people different from themselves, it would change many conversations in our country.

Our partnership is multifaceted. It is across racial lines. Ebony is Black. Louise is white. We are also based in different parts of the country, with Louise in the New York area, and Ebony in Kansas City, Mo. And we come from different family structures — Louise is married with children, and Ebony was widowed in 2021. 

We hope some insight into our experience may spark conversation among people who want to broaden their horizons and contribute to society through partnerships that cross racial lines, different economic levels, or other demographic boundaries. 

What is a Partnership?

So, what do we mean by a partnership? First, this is not about just hiring a person of a different race or background. Instead, we are talking about a partnership where you seek as close to equality as you can reach, and you both are leading the way and taking responsibility for the bumps in the path ahead. You want a relationship without hierarchy.

This can be tricky to reach, especially if you first meet in a hierarchical relationship, as we did, when Ebony worked on Louise’s team at a national news company. Yet, we are here to say you can change the relationship when you partner. Once we started the book, neither one of us was “the boss.”

In addition to partnering and moving away from hierarchy, it should be a substantial project you undertake, ideally one where you both have money, time and reputation at stake.

This partnership should be as “equal” as possible. Yet, an “equal” partnership is not about expecting exactly the same thing from each person. Partnering with someone different will help you think more about making things “equitable.”

What is an Equitable Partnership?

The difference between equality and equity is that equity takes into account that we all start at different places and have different considerations. The two of us have found an equity-based approach to feel more fair, because it does not imply that every effort from each of us must be identical, which “equal” deals sometimes require.

You’ll find quickly in your partnership that there will be three big issues: time, money, and reputation.

For us, when it came to time, there was the issue of taking time off for the book and, simply, paying for our lives while we undertook the project. Though we received a book advance that we split equally, only a portion of it was paid upon signing the book.  That money could last only so long … about six months. After that, Ebony returned to full-time work, but Louise could afford to stay out. And so, our first question of equity came up: was it fair that Louise would then be spending more time on the book? In a 50-50 partnership, did we need to make sure we committed an equal number of hours?

We decided no. A partnership didn’t mean living and working exactly the same way. And reality informed our decision. We simply couldn’t slow down the book and work at a pace where we each spent equal hours per week. In the end, we weren’t sure who was working “harder.” Louise worked more hours, but she was able to work at a comfortable pace during the workday. Ebony, in contrast, had to get up at 4 a.m. sometimes and squeeze in meetings on her lunch break and after work when she was exhausted. Who was doing “more?”

We started to understand better the concepts of equality vs. equity. If everything had to be equal and identical, it turned out, it wasn’t only unfair in some ways, it simply wasn’t doable. Requiring ourselves to put in exactly an equal number of hours would come at different costs. Not all hours were created equally.

And then there was the money.The same issue arrived with paying expenses. On an equal basis, we would have split them all. But that didn’t seem equitable, or practical. Exactly splitting expenses would have meant we had to agree that every single dime was needed as an expense. What if one of us wanted to pay someone for something and the other viewed it as a task that could be done by one of us? Or, what if one of us believed some records or data were needed and the other didn’t view it as essential? Splitting and agreeing on every expense would require, ultimately, one of us to sacrifice working in ways we wanted to work, and that didn’t seem like a respectful partnership either. Not to mention, just like we had different amounts of time available for the project, we had different budgets available. A single dollar put in by each of us represented different percentages of our household budgets.

Money is tricky, and in the end, we both just paid for a lot, but we didn’t compare item by item. We thanked each other a lot, knowing that it all was a sacrifice.

Third, there’s reputation. 

By partnering with someone, you are each standing by the other person by association and, in a sense, also sharing in each other’s reputations. We had reputations in some of the same circles but also in different circles, based on where we went to school, lived, and where we had worked. An immense benefit of partnership can be opening doors for each other into each other’s networks and in the institutions each person has access to.

But in partnerships you’ll also hit issues of how your project affects future reputations and how you present your work together. We learned early on how important it was not to interrupt each other in front of an audience. We learned how to give each other feedback on how we each wanted our biographies and skill sets portrayed. We learned how to compliment each other to a group while keeping balance and focus on both of us.

While navigating the tricky trio of time, money, and reputation, we came up with a few secrets to our success.

1. Listen, Learn, and Form Meaningful Relationships

As colleagues in the media industry, we could have had a relationship mainly about work and never touched on personal stories about how we got where we were. As partners on this project, we went deeper and talked about things journalists don’t always discuss – our lived experiences and identities.

We talked about growing up with fathers who were both first-generation college graduates  — a similarity. But then we talked about how Ebony’s father might not have gone to college if he had been just a tad older when Black people were not welcomed at many schools. We talked about both of our fathers’ commitments to their careers, but then Ebony pointed out that her father left a prestigious job at one point to move his family to a more diverse community. (Louise’s father never had to slow down his career to move his family due to racial concerns.) We talked about Louise applying to 21 colleges, any of which she could attend debt-free; meanwhile, Ebony applied for dozens and dozens of scholarships, many of which she received, and her parents covered much of the remaining undergraduate balance. Still, Ebony was left with graduate school student debt. And then there was the 2008 financial crisis. We both had trouble selling our homes, but only Ebony was forced into a short sale. 

These stories not only taught us more about the topic of our book, they also contributed to building a meaningful relationship. 

2. Disagree with Respect

The path to our successful partnership came through honesty and openness about our similarities and our differences. But it also came through our mutual commitment to respecting differences and being OK with situations that we would each handle differently. We had to make time throughout to fully explain our thinking on various things to each other, so that we understood each other’s perspectives.

Without our commitment to listening to each other and disagreeing with respect, there were so many conversations that would have been difficult. For instance, at the end of our book process, Louise told Ebony she had already donated and would continue donating all profits from the book and urged Ebony to disclose to readers that she, too, had made donations from the book’s proceeds. But Ebony didn’t want to make public her exact amount of donations. We had different perspectives on this, and concluded, that was just fine. Our statement about donations did not have to be identical.

Not only did the Black-white wealth gap impact our individual resources, we also know it has impacted how we each talk about money and what we make public. 

3. Be Generous, Share, and Care

The whole purpose of a partnership should be to share, but sometimes people look at it mainly as a way to split up the work of something. Approach your partnership in an altruistic spirit and recognize that in your work to be partners, you are also accomplishing change.

It is far easier to be generous and share with your partner when you care about the person. This is where the meaningful relationship you will build together comes in handy. If you care about someone, you don’t keep tabs on exactitudes. If you care about someone, you don’t overly worry about credit for who did what. If you show that you care, you will build trust, and with that trust, you can navigate anything.

Think about all the advantages you have in life and all the spaces you have access to. Now think about using those areas to amplify not just your project but also multiple people’s lives. Ultimately, inclusion is a form of sharing.

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It’s been about a month since the release of our book, “Fifteen Cents on the Dollar: How Americans Made the Black-White Wealth Gap.”

Thank you to all of you for the kind words you’ve shared with us about the book and our work. We have traveled the country to talk about these important issues and to pursue our goal to make the data behind racial wealth gaps better understood.

As the days pass, we increasingly hear from people who have gotten deep into the book’s pages. One reader even found a connection of her family’s ancestors to the ancestors of someone in the book.

We appreciate you sharing the book with others, and we hope you will reply to this email to let us know what you think as you are reading or listening.

-Louise and Ebony