Toxic culture that embraces racism and silences dissent
Pros
IRC is an international organization, with opportunities to do good
Cons
IRC's culture is toxic and racist. It's common knowledge that "white women run IRC" but the extent to which minorities are marginalized is astounding. Despite all the grandstanding about diversity and inclusion, IRC has made no progress on this front. When ethics complaints are filed, they're "investigated" for half a year, during which only the person who filed the complaint is reprimanded in the form of administrative leave. This is outright retaliation and yet no one at IRC does anything about this. Unqualified white people are routinely (and shamelessly) promoted despite not having the qualifications for their roles. Often it's because minorities are seen as incompetent and kept in lower roles or there is outright cronyism at play. During my time at IRC, minorities were routinely paid less than their white counterparts. It was common practice to lowball minorities, especially those working with refugees. This was so blatant that several applicants told me, "We know this is how IRC operates. They only lowball us because we're ___(insert ethnicity here)." IRC has absolutely none of the ethics it speaks of. It's all smoke and mirrors to cover an operation that not only harms the POC working in it, but those it claims to serve.
