Getting to equity in a time of backlash
In this Inclusive Leadership Summit session, Tim Wise will explore the current backlash against diversity, equity and inclusion efforts (and the larger anti-racism movement), and place the backlash in historical perspective. Why is it happening now? What does it mean for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion practitioners, educators, and concerned citizens?
Getting to Equity in a Time of Backlash | Tim Wise | Inclusive Leadership Summit
0:00
[MUSIC] There were not enough hours to be all that I am,
0:06
not enough hours to make this overworked mom feel like Superwoman, not enough hours to let this dream that used
0:12
to breathe within me by new life. Just enough time to listen to that inner voice and
0:17
believe maybe there's more time on the other side of trying, and maybe there's not enough time until there is.
0:26
Take classes any time of the day or night at the University of Phoenix.
0:55
Welcome to the University of Phoenix and I'm from inclusive leadership summit.
1:01
My name is Saray Lopez, and I am a Director in the office of educational equity.
1:06
We are pleased to have you joining us today. Thank you. Thank you all. As we begin this summit,
1:13
we first want to acknowledge that the seabed is being broadcasted locally.
1:21
Can go to the next slide, please? [BACKGROUND] May we honor and give gratitude to
1:31
the indigenous peoples who were the original custodians of the various lands on which we live and work.
1:41
We recognize that a land acknowledgment alone isn't sufficient.
1:47
Yet it serves as a starting point as we continue our individual journeys
1:53
towards racial equity. Here in the Phoenix Metropolitan area
1:58
we inhabit the: Hohokam, Akimel O'oodham, Pipash and Yavapai land.
2:06
Thank you for joining me and taking the time to honor those original custodians of this land.
2:13
Next slide please.
2:18
The inclusive leadership summit is committed to fostering an atmosphere of lifelong learning,
2:26
as we explore, and address systemic inequities to inform an impact and ever-changing workforce.
2:33
Thank you again for joining us on our journey and becoming inclusive leaders.
2:39
Over the next three days you can expect to hear from phenomenal speakers, from leaders,
2:46
and practitioners, and you're being joined among an incredible network across the nation and globally.
2:55
Thank you. These speakers will be sharing stories, and strategies to help us gain awareness of ourselves,
3:04
fellow colleagues, and direct reports. It is our hope that this awareness
3:10
along with the tools and resources shared will enable us to leave the summit with action that
3:18
will help them foster in it's inclusive spaces in the workplace, classroom, and within our sphere of influence.
3:26
I will now turn it over to my colleague, Tondra Richardson, and the office of educational equity.
3:32
Thank you Saray. If we can move to the next slide, please. Good morning everyone.
3:39
We are so excited to be here with you today. We're also very excited to announce that the summit attendees who have joined
3:47
all three days of sessions are eligible to receive the University of Phoenix badge,
3:52
inclusive leaders, self and social awareness. Now to be considered for this badge,
3:59
you will need to complete the post-summit survey provided on day three and include your name, and email address.
4:06
To be more specific, you will need to participate in at least three sessions and three days of the summit,
4:12
and complete that assessment. We're very excited about that badge and we hope to see a lot of you are earning it.
4:18
We can move to the next slide please. Before we dive in today, we want to direct your attention to the navigation panel,
4:26
which is located on the left side of your browser. This is going to enable you to switch
4:31
between different areas of the virtual conference, including stages networking, and virtual employer boots.
4:38
We highly encourage you to connect with one another. The People tab is a dedicated area to
4:43
promote one-on-one connections between attendees, in addition the networking feature is a great way
4:49
to meet people within the Inclusive Leadership Summit. I did see that a few people were already sharing their LinkedIn pages,
4:57
so please continue to do that. Connect during and after the summit. Go ahead and grow those networks while you're here.
5:04
We can move to the next slide please. Let's set the stage for today's sessions.
5:12
Listed here, you're going to see some guidelines that we believe are essential to fostering respectful conversations.
5:19
Please consider that some of the issues presented may be challenging for you. We invite you to allow yourself
5:26
grace to fill uncomfortable. This enables us to create empathy, and support for the persons and communities
5:33
who are directly impacted by our actions. We encourage you to share your experiences in your perspective in the chat.
5:40
We do also ask that all participants contribute to an atmosphere of
5:46
mutual respect and sensitivity. In addition, we highly encourage you to share
5:51
helpful resources related to today's topic. We often find that our attendees have great resources to add
5:58
to the topics that we're speaking on, and we encourage you to share those. We'll now hear from our president,
6:03
and President Emeritus to share more about the summit followed by an introduction of our keynote speaker.
6:11
Good morning. I'm thrilled to welcome you to our inclusive leadership summit.
6:18
Thank you for taking the time to join us today. Over the next several days as we hear from
6:24
incredible speakers who will share their wisdom about what it takes to be an inclusive leader and
6:31
the actions and efforts that will help us create cultures of diversity, equity, inclusiveness, and belonging.
6:40
As we shared when I was introduced, I am the new president of the University of Phoenix,
6:45
and I couldn't be more excited to be leading this fine institution. I've been an inspired fan
6:52
of the university for some time. Observing its trajectory towards success,
6:57
while working to disrupt higher education, and expand access for more than 45 years.
7:05
In the realm of DEI and B, it has worked hard to be a leader too.
7:10
In my brief tenure, I've observed a culture that embraces transparency,
7:16
difficult conversations, and a willingness to listen. Over the next several days,
7:22
you'll hear about what the essential characteristics are to be an inclusive leader.
7:28
I think you'll come away with greater self-awareness, excitement, and tools to
7:34
accomplish your leadership goals. I hope you can attend as many of the discussions as possible.
7:40
I don't think you'll want to miss a minute of this summit. I also want to take a moment to thank our sponsors,
7:47
ETS, and diverse issues in higher education magazines. We appreciate their support,
7:53
and expertise in planning and executing the summit. Now, it is my honor to introduce our President Emeritus,
8:02
my predecessor, Peter Cohen. Peter has been an incredible supporter
8:08
of DEI and B initiatives at the university. We'll talk about some of the things he championed,
8:15
and will continue to support in his emeritus role. I think you will be inspired by what Peter will share,
8:22
and may pick up a tip or two from him. Thank you again for joining us for the inclusive leadership summit.
8:29
Now please welcome President Emeritus, Peter Cohen.
8:34
Good morning everybody and thank you. I'd like to welcome you all to this Inclusive Leadership Summit.
8:41
Our President Burnett, thank you for that very gracious introduction. As he mentioned, I'm now
8:47
president emeritus for University of Phoenix, which is a fairly recent change for me,
8:52
and frankly, I'm still getting used to it. Retirement is one of those things that you've set
8:57
your sights on and when it finally arrives, it's just a little bit disorienting.
9:03
You go from having every minute schedule to being responsible for how you allocate your time and
9:09
just be careful what you wish for. Don't get me wrong. I'm not complaining.
9:15
I'm thoroughly enjoying more time with my family, especially with my grandchildren.
9:20
They are the center of my family's world. They are our future. There's perhaps no greater privilege
9:28
than to be a grandparent, at least in my humble opinion. When the team asked me if I'd be willing to make
9:35
some opening remarks at the summit, I was more than happy to do so. In many ways, this summit is the culmination
9:42
of many efforts that the university began during my tenure. For several years, we've discussed the importance of
9:49
establishing a learning community devoted to racial justice and equity.
9:55
That supporting the environments and communities in which our students and alumni live,
10:00
is both wise and necessary. 2020 delivered both a global pandemic
10:07
and escalating social unrest due to the ongoing and unjust racially motivated killings
10:14
of black Americans. These realities made it even more critical to
10:20
continue these conversations and to act. As an institution, we moved quickly to
10:28
collaborate with employers and think tanks and other organizations to take action in a number of ways.
10:35
For example, we hosted a three-day webinar series titled Essential Conversations addressing systemic inequities
10:44
and criminal justice, healthcare and higher education series created a space where people
10:51
representing many different sectors of society could come together and envision a path where equity,
10:57
inclusion, and belonging is everyone's experience and discuss
11:02
what we have to do to get there. As part of the work done to bring
11:07
the educational equity webinar series to life, we've realized that we had to have
11:12
relationships with organizations and thought leaders, including our University of Phoenix faculty,
11:19
staff and alumni who were contributing to the important conversations related to diversity,
11:25
equity, inclusion, and belonging in higher education and across various industries.
11:32
It was important for us to continue that work and bring more voices to the table,
11:38
including those of our students and this led to the establishment of the Inclusive Leadership Summit.
11:45
Now our theme for today is leading through tumultuous times.
11:51
The last couple of years have certainly been the epitome of challenging.
11:57
For leaders it's been in many ways an existential moment.
12:02
In these times of unprecedented uncertainty, leaders have been called upon to lead him ways
12:09
they may never have been before. For me, as a privileged,
12:15
relatively successful, white cisgender male, I have always believed I have
12:22
an obligation to use my voice to speak out about the issues of diversity, equity, inclusion,
12:30
and belonging, even if they're uncomfortable, and to leverage my position as
12:36
a leader to assure that we make more and faster progress in addressing
12:42
the causes of inequity is built into our policies, practices, regulations, and implicit biases.
12:51
I believe this is an obligation of anyone who assumes a leadership role.
12:56
If more of us recognize this obligation, we could begin to break down the systemic racism that's
13:04
existed for far too long in too many parts of our society.
13:10
For example, our systems of funding for education often favor those who
13:15
live in higher-income zip codes and perpetuates the divide of resources available to support high-quality education,
13:24
ranging from school facilities to teacher salaries, to broadband access and we compound that with
13:31
zoning regulations which limit or eliminate multi-family housing in those zip codes.
13:38
This divide means those with the means to tend to have a better resource education opportunities,
13:45
and thus are advantaged throughout life by stronger early learning foundations.
13:51
Similar inequities exist across healthcare, food security, and personal safety.
13:58
Just this morning, the National Urban League released its annual report,
14:03
and found that black Americans have slipped even further behind in education,
14:10
social justice, and civic engagement. I encourage you to read the report.
14:15
As a country, we need to address these equity canyons. If we want all children to have
14:22
an opportunity to succeed at the same rate. These are tough issues,
14:29
but ones that we must tackle as a nation. We must have courageous, honest,
14:36
even raw conversations if we're going to change any of this. Banning books in public schools is
14:44
not the path to enlightenment as one example. Outline conversations in our classrooms about
14:52
our collective history as a nation is not going to unite us.
14:57
Banning the discussion of sexual orientation in school is not going to make us more inclusive.
15:05
The last couple of years have unprecedented events and they've impacted our society on so many levels,
15:12
including health and safety, economic, political, and racial and social justice reawakening.
15:20
In some ways, for those of us who are a bit on the older side like me,
15:25
it's a little bit of a painful deja vu. I grew up during the 1990s and remember
15:32
the civil rights marches demanding an end to police brutality. I remember the march in Sherman, Georgia,
15:39
I remember when Rodney King was brutally beaten, when Freddie Gray died in the back of
15:45
a police van in the town I lived in. When the Philando Castile was pulled over for
15:52
a broken tail light and fatally shot by police. Sadly, what we've faced in
15:58
the past couple of years is neither new nor unique. But where we go from here, what we do next is
16:07
critical if we're going to break this cycle. If we're going to end systemic racism, disparities and inequities.
16:16
When I announced my retirement from the university, I was proud that during my tenure, we developed attitudes,
16:24
programs, and departments to reflect the impacts of racism on our courses,
16:29
our students, and our faculty and staff. We sharpened our focus on educational equity
16:36
across our system with curriculum reviews to address bias and content and
16:41
support for our students with many types of learning are physical differences through the establishment of our office of educational equity,
16:50
and we made traditional diversity training an annual requirement.
16:55
For our university faculty and staff, we launched the inclusive cafe,
17:01
which is a virtual meeting space to connect and build community and to draw upon
17:06
the diverse perspectives of participants to explore powerful and effective responses to
17:13
difficult yet culture changing conversations. A place where it was okay to be whoever you really are,
17:22
and to ask forbidden questions, to learn more about how others
17:27
see and are seen in the world. It's where I learned about
17:32
the long-term emotional impact of microaggressions and the nuance
17:37
of intersectionality in how we group people. We also began working with the city of Phoenix,
17:44
and it supplemented the city's investment in programs and policies that will promote racial sensitivity,
17:50
social justice, and the reduction of inequities at city touch points within the community.
17:56
We did this because we believe business and society are inextricably linked and neither can
18:02
thrive without the well-being of the other. We also hosted a virtual free virtual teaching academy
18:10
in the summer of 2020 with nearly 6,000 educators and administrators from
18:16
almost every state in America and 14 foreign countries participated. Many were from underserved communities
18:23
struggling to pivot to online learning with limited technology and training.
18:29
We also took part in the 2020 boycott of Facebook by pausing all paid investment in
18:35
Facebook for a month to demonstrate our commitment to eliminate hate speech in social media.
18:42
We also established the President's Advisory Council on diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging.
18:49
This council is a representative cross-functional body that works to develop and promote strategies that
18:55
foster a community of inclusion, values, diversity of thought, experiences and culture, and
19:02
leads to a sense of belonging for all. The council has been essential in the planning of this side.
19:09
I'm also very proud that for the five consecutive years, the University of Phoenix has been awarded
19:16
a Human Rights Campaign best place to work. This award is regarded as the gold standard and
19:23
benchmarks LGBTQ+ workplace equality through four different sets of criteria;
19:29
non-discrimination policies, equitable benefits for LGBTQ workers and their families,
19:36
supporting an inclusive culture, and practicing corporate social responsibility.
19:42
We are cultivating inclusive practices internally and externally, and this award highlights our successes.
19:50
Now just as we've been an innovator in higher education since 1976,
19:55
the University of Phoenix has always been reaching forward with diversity initiatives that foster inclusion and belonging
20:03
and that influence our corporate culture and our communities. We are an open access university,
20:10
which means that any and all who want a higher education, and have a high school degree or equivalency
20:16
should have that opportunity and we will provide it. We have always been career focused
20:23
and defined by who we serve, who are often first-generation to college,
20:28
often hard working parents, typically over 35 years old and more than 60 percent of whom are people of color.
20:37
We serve more than 75,000 students who were taught by practitioner faculty who average
20:43
over 25 years of professional experience, and over 12 years of teaching for us.
20:49
They bring their real-world experience into the classroom every day.
20:55
Now, our work is not over. There will always be more to do,
21:00
and the university is committed to continuing this important work, and the summit is just one example of that commitment.
21:09
Now let me turn my attention to our keynote speaker today, author and anti-racism educator, Tim Wise.
21:18
Tim is among the most prominent anti-racist writers and educators in the US.
21:23
He has spent 30 years speaking to audiences in all 50 states, on a good 1,500 college and high school campuses,
21:31
at hundreds of professional and academic conferences and to community groups across the country.
21:37
Tim has also trained corporate, government, entertainment, media, law enforcement, military,
21:44
and medical professionals on methods for dismantling racial inequity in their institutions,
21:50
and has provided anti-racism training to educators and administrators both nationwide and internationally.
21:57
Tim is the author of nine books, including his latest essay collection,
22:03
Dispatches from the Race War, and his highly acclaimed memoir, White Like Me, Reflections on Race from a Privileged son.
22:12
He appears regularly on CNN and MSNBC to discuss race issues,
22:18
and has been featured on Nightline, CBS Sunday Morning, Twenty20, and 48 Hours,
22:24
among many other national news programs. He graduated from Tulane University in 1990 and received
22:31
anti-racism training from the People's Institute for Survival and Beyond in New Orleans.
22:36
In his keynote, Tim will explore the current backlash against diversity equity and inclusion efforts,
22:42
and the larger anti-racism movement and place the backlash in an historical perspective.
22:48
Why is it happening now? What does it mean for DEI and D practitioners and educators and concerned citizens,
22:55
and how could move your main strong in the face of opposition to even discussing racial injustice,
23:02
let alone rectifying it. I'm really looking forward to hearing Tim's presentation and I hope you are too.
23:08
I also hope to make the most of the next several days, so we can learn more ways to work
23:14
together towards real, sustained, and effective change that enables our progress towards creating
23:20
a more equitable and inclusive world where we all feel that we belong.
23:25
Remember, this is a journey. It's not a sprint, and every step matters. Thank you.
23:38
Thank you so much, Peter. Thanks to everyone who made it possible for me to be with you all today.
23:44
I know that we are not technically together. We are doing this thing that we do and had been doing for the past couple of years.
23:53
But it certainly gives us the opportunity to share some space, even if virtual,
23:58
and to have some incredibly important conversations and I'm honored to be able to be a part of that today with you.
24:03
Let me first start with some disclaimers I have learned in the two years of doing these kinds of
24:09
virtual events that I need to do this upfront. Listen, I am a 53-year-old man,
24:14
which means that I am not technologically gifted. That is an understatement of somewhat biblical proportions.
24:20
Just so you know, which means there is every possibility that I could hit a button. I could knock my computer off of
24:27
the stand where I have it so delicately rig. I could theoretically disconnect the Internet,
24:33
not just in my home and on my block, but perhaps on the entire Eastern side
24:38
of the United States. I'm coming to you from Tennessee, so that would include me and a whole lot of other folks.
24:44
I hope that doesn't happen. I do have the link. If I screw up, I will get back to you.
24:49
But as I said, I'm 53, which means that any technology that is more recent than about 1981,
24:55
Atari video games is way above my pay grade. We're just going to keep our fingers
25:00
crossed and hope for the best, if that works for you. Again, honored to be here, particularly at this time.
25:08
It is both an exciting time but also a very dangerous time for us in
25:15
this country right now and in this culture as we attempt to do this work that we referred to as
25:21
equity work or DEI or DEI work. It is exciting of course because, as Peter mentioned in the last couple of years,
25:29
there has been a flowering of focus and interests and activism around issues
25:34
of racial justice in large part, of course, because of the murder of George Floyd in May of 2020,
25:40
but also because of the work that was being done even before that. Coming really to that inflection moment
25:48
after the killing of George Floyd, after which tens of millions, some estimates say as many as 25 million Americans ended
25:56
up involved in some way in protest activity, demonstrations, rallies, public events,
26:03
and that doesn't even include the millions more who in their own way, perhaps privately and more quietly,
26:09
began to ask these very critical questions in their schools, in their workplaces, in their places of worship,
26:16
in the non-profit spaces where they operate, in their community-based organizations,
26:21
these questions about how do we create a more equitable and just society,
26:27
not only with regard to policing, to the criminal justice system, which was obviously the focus of a lot of
26:34
the activism in the wake of the killing of George Floyd, but how do we create that systemic fairness
26:39
and equity in our labor markets, in our schools, in our housing access, in wealth creation, in healthcare,
26:47
in all of the different areas of human activity that take place within our society. Millions of people have begun asking that question,
26:56
many of whom had never really been involved in that work before. That's the exciting piece of what's
27:02
happening and we should take heart in that and from that, it is also though, a very dangerous time.
27:08
The danger comes from what you can expect will happen in the wake of that increased interest and
27:15
activism and what we in fact see has happened. That is that because we have shifted the narrative,
27:22
because we actually are getting people to talk about issues like systemic racism and
27:28
institutional racism and injustice that has provoked a very predictable backlash on the part of
27:35
those for whom the existing arrangements have worked pretty well. If the system has been working pretty well for you when
27:42
people start talking about challenging that system. When they start talking about changing the way
27:47
that we do our work in the workplace, or in schools, or in the justice system,
27:52
or with regards to housing or any other issue. For people that have been doing okay the way it is,
27:58
to talk about change can be very frightening. We see those individuals leading the fight against DEI,
28:05
against what they referred to as critical race theory, which to be honest, is a term that they could not
28:11
define if their lives depended upon it. You could hold these folks over a bridge by
28:16
their ankles and give them 10 minutes to define critical race theory. If they don't get it right, you tell them,
28:22
you're going to drop them, and I promise you, they're all getting dropped because they don't actually know what it is they're talking about,
28:28
but they know how to scapegoat this thing called critical race theory as a way to attack,
28:34
as Peter said in the intro, any conversation about issues of injustice and inequity,
28:40
using that as a ruse to ban books and ban materials in elementary school that simply tell the truth
28:47
about the history of racial inequity in our country, banning books about MLK
28:53
and the civil rights movement because, oh, gosh, it'll make white kids feel bad about themselves if they realize
28:59
the history of white supremacy and racism against black and brown people. They might ask, where were my grandparents in those days?
29:06
So we don't want them doing that. We can't teach them about what has happened in our country's history,
29:12
at least not honestly. That backlash is happening now in a way that it
29:17
wasn't 10 years ago, in 20 years ago. Why? Because the uprising since 2020 has frightened some folks,
29:24
because they see millions of newcomers flocking into this justice movement, asking these critical questions.
29:31
It's not just the usual suspects that are always doing activisty stuff, it's people in corporate America who want to
29:38
do better and want to figure out what does that look like. It's people in religious institutions, it's people in nonprofits,
29:44
in K-12 schools, in neighborhood organizations. If you've had hegemony and dominance,
29:51
pluralism starts to feel like oppression. If you start to see movement toward equality or
29:57
even just the shifting of the conversation in that direction. We haven't had substantive changes
30:03
since the killing of George Floyd, even in policing, let alone elsewhere, but the narrative has shifted.
30:08
Once the narrative begins to shift and people start using language like systemic injustice,
30:14
certain folks are going to get upset, they're going to get nervous and they're going to push back. That makes this moment very dangerous.
30:21
It makes it a moment where these two forces, one pushing forward and one trying to pull us backward,
30:28
find each other at odds with one another in this sort of epic battle,
30:33
and the question remains, who is going to prevail? Are we going to go forward? Are we going to go backward?
30:39
That is the question that I want us to address today and give you some ideas about how we can ensure that we
30:45
continue to make progress because, obviously, there are some who would rather that we didn't do that.
30:51
How do we remain focused and resolute in the face of this backlash that is encompassing education,
30:58
but also a backlash that's happening in the corporate world. There are certainly folks who had been mightily upset
31:04
by the focus on DEI within corporations as well. The state of Florida has said that they even want private companies to be banned from
31:11
having these conversations and allowing employees to sue their employer for having
31:17
DEI efforts that might make them feel bad. Which is, of course, an entirely subjective concept.
31:23
I don't know anyone in this work who wants to make anybody feel bad. I've been doing DEI or equity racial justice work for 30 plus years,
31:30
I never wake up in the morning thinking, how can I make someone feel bad, feel shamed, feel guilty?
31:35
That's not what any of us want, but I can't control the fact that if you learn about injustice and if
31:42
you learn about the way that that systemic inequality has perhaps elevated you above others as someone who's
31:49
white or as someone who's a man relative to women, or someone who is straight or cisgendered relative to LGBTQ folk,
31:55
or someone who's upper middle class or a fluent relative to the poor, or able-bodied relative to the disabled.
32:01
If you feel bad about, if you end up feeling some way about that, I have no possible way of controlling it.
32:07
All I have to do in my obligation is to tell you the truth and then we can work through it together. But we have folks who want us to
32:14
shut down this conversation. Because if we have the conversation, they realized that a lot of
32:19
folks are going to want to do better. The fact is, most people are good people. Most people don't want to oppress or
32:25
marginalized or harm other people. But most folks also don't realize the way that our society has
32:31
created and sustained injustice and inequality. If you don't understand how that's happened,
32:37
you won't understand the need for having these conversations. How do we stay strong? How do we stay resolute?
32:43
How do you do that in the face of all this pushback? Number 1, I think you have to understand that
32:49
what we're experiencing right now is entirely normal and predictable. That's important because if you
32:54
think this backlash is something new, if you think that this is something that we don't have strategies for,
33:00
it becomes much more frightening. But the reality is this is always what happens. Carol Anderson, brilliant scholar
33:06
at Emory University in Atlanta, wrote a book several years ago called White Rage. I highly recommend it.
33:12
What Professor Anderson talks about in that book is the way that every time in American history that we have had
33:19
forward progress on the road toward racial justice, particularly for black folk. But I think you can make this argument
33:26
for people of color more broadly. To be honest, you can extrapolate this larger argument to any marginalized group,
33:33
whether we're talking about race, sex, gender, sexuality class. Whenever there is progress for
33:38
the people who have been on the bottom of the structure, those on the top will push back.
33:44
We see it with regard to race as Carol Anderson talks about in her book, White Rage, after the abolition of enslavement.
33:50
When Reconstruction comes into being, we see people pushing back against that because that was starting to provide what?
33:57
A motive come of power and opportunity to formerly enslaved persons. We saw it again when black folks moved from the South to
34:05
escape sharecropping and segregation moved North to the Midwest, out West, looking for
34:10
opportunity in what's called the Great Migration. What was that met with? It was met with overt violence
34:16
on the part of white mobs who didn't want black folks coming into their areas and taking "their jobs."
34:23
We saw it in the wake of desegregation and the integration of schools, backlash, violence,
34:28
white parents pulling their kids out of the schools, creating segregation academies,
34:33
private academies that were specifically racially segregated. We saw it in a backlash to
34:38
affirmative action that began in the '70s and continues today. We saw it after the election of President Obama,
34:45
even though the Obama years didn't really bring a fundamental change in
34:50
the situations facing most black Americans. Symbolically, his victory
34:56
was something that a lot of folks, beyond just mere political partisanship, had a very hard time getting their head around
35:02
this man of color as the head of the country. Well, he must not be really an American. That's how we get something like birth tourism.
35:08
Because you have folks who can't possibly imagine the leader of the so-called free world looking
35:14
like that with that name and that supposedly exotic background because he was from Hawaii,
35:19
which I gather some folks think is just a tourist destination, they forget that it's actually a state.
35:25
You have the backlash to anything that either symbolically or in fact brings about progress.
35:33
In the wake of the murder of George Floyd and the movement of the last few years, we've seen a progress,
35:39
a narrative progress, a shifting of the conversation. Understand, one of the ways we stay strong is taking a breath and
35:46
realizing that all of this backlash we're seeing is completely predictable. It's not something new.
35:52
Everyone who's ever been involved in this work has faced it, and the fact is they have continued to push forward.
35:58
Learn that history is the first way that we stay strong. We take strength from the strength
36:03
of others upon whose shoulders we stand. The second thing is to understand that when that backlash happens,
36:09
it's because the medicine is starting to work. When you were a kid and you would have a sore throat or a cough,
36:15
and your parents would give you some cough syrup and you always wonder why does it taste so terrible.
36:21
You would screw your face up and you make that face that you make when you have the coughs. They try to make that stuff taste better,
36:28
they flavor it up with some cherry or grape flavor, it never works. It's still awful.
36:33
The reason it's awful, it's either that the folks that make that stuff are sadists and they just want to make kids miserable,
36:39
but I don't think that's it. The other possible option is that whatever it is that makes your face do that,
36:45
must be the thing that's in the medicine that makes it work. Because if not, they would take it out, They would make it taste like Kool-Aid.
36:52
Obviously, the medicine is working that's why you make that face. That's why you feel awful when you're taking it.
36:58
But that's evidence that it's starting to do something. I'm here to tell you the work that we have been doing,
37:03
that many of you have been doing , that I've been trying to do, that so many of us have been trying to do in the last 20 and 30 years,
37:09
to shift the conversation in this country is starting to work, especially among younger folks.
37:14
That is also why folks are afraid. Again, hegemony and dominance, when you've had that,
37:20
pluralism and any movement toward equality can start to feel like oppression. Oh my God, things are changing and it's been
37:27
working for me really well and I'm afraid of change. That backlash is actually evidence that in
37:33
some ways we are winning those of us who care about diversity, equity, and inclusion, and that ought to also
37:40
buoy us as we continue to do this work. The third thing, to understand to stay
37:45
strong and resolute in the face of the backlash, is that we have to remain focused on the systemic nature of the problem.
37:52
Don't get sidetracked by looking at this through an individualistic lens. Remember that we're talking about systemic issues.
37:59
Now, this is critical and I'm going to spend some time on it. Because I think that part of the reason we're
38:05
facing this backlash right now, in terms of anti-racist education,
38:10
in terms of DEI work in the workplace or elsewhere, is because a lot of folks when they hear the term racism,
38:18
or they hear the term sexism, or they hear the term heterosexism,
38:23
or they hear any of these isms talked about, even though those of us talking about
38:28
them are thinking about them systemically. We're thinking about structures, we're thinking about institutional practices,
38:35
we're thinking about policies and procedures within our institutional spaces. A lot of folks are hearing it as a personal attack.
38:43
They're getting defensive because they think they're being judged. If you talk about racism, people's responses, what,
38:50
are you calling me a racist? If you talk about sexism, guys are what you're saying, I'm a sexist, you're saying I'm a misogynist.
38:57
They're thinking about it individually, even though we're talking about it systemically,
39:02
so we have to be very clear that this isn't really about good people and bad people.
39:08
This isn't about, look at this awful racist over here, and we're the good people who don't have
39:13
a so-called racist bone in our body or whatever it is we like to say. The problem is sometimes even we who do this work talk
39:20
about these issues in a way that can be misunderstood. If we're talking about white privilege and
39:26
white fragility and implicit bias, all of which are real phenomena. I'm certainly not denying them.
39:31
I've written about all of them. I've talked about them. But it's very easy to hear that as a personal critique.
39:38
As in you have privilege, you need to check your privilege or you need to stop being so fragile, or you need to be aware of your biases.
39:46
All of those things have systemic features. All of those things stem from systemic inequity.
39:52
But a lot of times, even we who do this work are not careful to talk about them in that way.
39:57
You can understand how someone who's not deep in this conversation might hear that and think that they're being shamed,
40:04
that they're being attacked. This isn't about good people and bad people.
40:09
Part of our work has to be understanding that good people, which I think most folks are,
40:15
can find themselves in flawed systems. If you're a good person who finds yourself in a flawed system,
40:21
that produces a particular outcome unless you change that system, your goodness is not going to carry the day.
40:28
Your good intentionality is not going to alter the outcome.
40:33
It's like going to a sausage factory and standing at the end of the conveyor belt that spits out the sausage,
40:39
and saying, where are my chicken nuggets, you all, I wanted chicken nuggets.
40:44
Well, you didn't read the sign, did you? Because the sign told you that it was a sausage factory,
40:49
so you probably ought to expect sausage. If you want chicken nuggets, you have to retool the machinery.
40:55
Your good intentions about wanting to get some sausage is not going to change what's happening. You have to actually think in terms of systems.
41:02
We have to be soft on people and hard on systems. This is not about bashing individuals,
41:08
not about calling individuals out, not about shaming anybody. It's about saying, you're a good person and so am I and so are
41:15
most folks but we can find ourselves in flawed structures in the labor market, in the housing market, in the schools.
41:23
What does that mean when I say that? To me it's obvious but I want to be very specific.
41:28
What does it mean to have systemic institutional structures, policies, practices, procedures,
41:35
and paradigms of thought, the four Ps, that skew the opportunity structure
41:41
regardless of our good intentions? Well, let's think about a few of them. Let's think about perhaps the most
41:46
obvious since we're talking a lot about DEI in labor markets in this country right now and in the workforce.
41:52
Let's think about that. How do people get jobs in this country? You ask folks that and they'll tell you, well,
41:58
you send in a resume, maybe you apply online nowadays, there are all these different websites and
42:04
places and portals that you can use to apply for jobs. Maybe you pound the pavement, you go fill in an application at certain types of jobs.
42:11
Then your resume or your application gets evaluated along with everyone else. That's the theory. But in practice,
42:18
we know it isn't nearly that simple. We know, for instance, because a study from just a few years ago, founded that almost half of the new jobs,
42:26
about 45 percent of the jobs after the 2009 recession are being filled not through
42:33
some objective screening of resumes and objective evaluation of merit
42:40
and qualifications and experience, but instead are being filled through networking and a particular kind of networking,
42:46
and specifically the writing of letters of recommendation by existing employees
42:53
on behalf of people they know, to help them get a job at whatever company that is.
42:58
If I know Jim over in the HR department or I know Bill over in accounting, I get Jim or I get Bill
43:04
to write me a letter of reference saying, Tim would be really good at this new job that just opened up. I think you ought to hire him. Almost half of
43:11
the new jobs in the private sector are being filled that way. Is that a consciously racist thing
43:18
or a consciously sexist thing? No. But what the research finds, is that the people who were disproportionately excluded from
43:25
that networking opportunity because they don't know Jim and they don't know Bill or Bob or Tim or whoever it is,
43:32
the folks who are less likely to know existing employees such that,
43:37
those employees could write them a letter of reference are disproportionately going to be people of color. They're disproportionately going to
43:44
be women of all colors. They're disproportionately going to be working class, and that includes working-class white guys,
43:50
you could be the most qualified person for that next job at so and so firm or so and so company.
43:56
But if they don't know you exist because you don't know anyone that already works there, the way that certain other people do,
44:02
you're going to be scratched before you even get a foot in the door. We sometimes talk about equity as being
44:09
skewed because some people have like a five-lap headstart in an eight-lap race. That's a pretty good analogy.
44:16
But this is actually even worse than that. This is about some folks not even knowing where the racetrack is,
44:22
not even knowing that there's a race that they might jump in. They don't even know about that job opening
44:28
because they don't know the "right people," they didn't go to the "right
44:33
schools" where they met the "right people." In that sense, that's a structure
44:38
that isn't deliberately racist. I don't think most of the people who are hiring through that mechanism are doing it in some devious ways.
44:46
Sitting back there going, this is a great way to keep black people out of the workplace or a great way to keep Latinos out or are a great way.
44:53
It's not that, and there might be people like that. But the dirty little secret about that hiring
44:59
is that even if the rationale for it is entirely non-racial and it usually is, it's usually because it cuts down
45:06
costs you all, let's be serious. That's why they do it. It's cheaper. Most of the time you're going to figure, well,
45:11
Jim over in accounting, he's not a total idiot. So if he recommends Tim, Tim is probably all right.
45:16
May or may not be the best, but Jim vouches for him, so what the hell, let's take a chance. It cuts down job search cost, it's cheaper, but it doesn't
45:25
mean you're going to get the most qualified person, and it almost definitely means that you're going to keep certain people out even if they're the best.
45:33
For that matter, the second way that you get jobs, the old-fashioned way of actually applying and having someone evaluate your resume.
45:40
That's not objective either in and of itself, because if certain people have had more opportunity
45:46
and more access to accumulate credentials, they're going to look better on paper.
45:51
It's like if I have that three-lap head start in a five-lap race, I should hit the tape first.
45:57
I should cross the finish line before you, but that doesn't mean I was the faster runner. In fact, what if I start out three laps ahead and at
46:05
the end of the race I'm only up by two? By definition, you don't want me on your track team, you don't want me on the relay team,
46:11
you want the one that closed the gap. But see we have a job market that only looks at the end of the race,
46:18
the end of the race being the resume-based credential. Well, you've got seven years of experience and this one's only got five.
46:25
We're not looking at the context within which the seven got the seven,
46:30
or happened to have this kind of experience versus this kind of experience. If we're not being critical thinkers and evaluating
46:38
people holistically with an understanding of structures of inequity, we will perpetuate structures
46:45
of inequity even when we have the best of intentions. You all know that there are a lot of companies right now,
46:52
probably the vast majority nowadays who are using these filters for looking at resumes,
46:57
these online artificial intelligence filters where they're looking for certain keywords,
47:03
and if you don't have these key words in your resume, they just throw you in a junk pile.
47:08
They're using AI to filter, again, as a way to cut down their costs. Well, who were the people who were more likely to
47:14
know the right words to use, and the right phrases to use, and the right way to construct there?
47:19
They're the people who are going to have the time to do the research on that. The people who have someone who can tell them about that, again,
47:26
that's a networking thing, that is a privilege thing, that is about being in the know.
47:31
It's not about being able to do the job best, it's about knowing how to write a resume, which is a really good qualification if the job you're
47:38
applying for is how to write a resume. If that's the job, resume writer,
47:44
that's a pretty good thing to look at. But if the job is literally anything else, the fact that someone writes a better resume than you,
47:51
shouldn't get them that job, but it does. That's how systems and structures can perpetuate injustice,
47:58
it's not only in the job market. Peter mentioned in his intro, and I was very glad that he did.
48:04
One of the ways this happens in housing, we have policies in our communities around the country, zoning policies that are not
48:10
necessarily drawn up deliberately with racist intent. Now they have been historically done with racist intent,
48:17
but there are perfectly non-racial reasons for some of these zoning laws that restrict multi-family dwellings.
48:23
Or here in Nashville, for instance, we have a rule that says if you're going to build an apartment or a condo,
48:29
every unit you build has to have two parking spots. Well, what does that do? It means you've got
48:35
to build garages or you've got to build parking lots that take out of circulation possible land where people could
48:41
live in an actual unit or a home or an apartment. That drives up the cost of the remaining housing because you've taken
48:48
a bunch of land out of circulation. That cost then keeps working-class people disproportionately unable to live in certain areas,
48:56
which pushes them further out from educational opportunity, from job opportunity, and who is
49:01
that going to disproportionately impact? It's going to disproportionately impact people of color,
49:07
is that because all the city planners are bigots who go to clan meetings at night secretly? No, none of them might be that,
49:14
but if you have a rule that has that disparate impact on certain marginalized populations,
49:19
your intent doesn't matter anymore. That's what we have to be thinking about,
49:25
getting away from these good people, bad people thing. Let's be soft on people, hard on systems,
49:30
that means looking at those policies and procedures. It also means understanding the next piece about
49:36
maintaining our strength and our commitment in hard times. Is about understanding that systemic racism is a lot
49:43
like the inertia that we learned about in school. You were probably what? Third maybe fourth grade when you learned about,
49:51
depending on the school you went to, when you learned about inertia. Newton's first law of motion, the idea that an object in
49:57
motion tends to remain in motion until and unless it's met with a force of equal or greater power to arrest it's forward trajectory.
50:05
I'm taking some liberties with the definition, but that's roughly it. If I roll a ball down the hill,
50:11
it's going to keep going until it bumps into something and stops, or somebody picks it up, or it reaches level ground and eventually,
50:18
the friction slows it down. But that's not just a property of the physical universe, it's a property of the socioeconomic,
50:25
historical, cultural, political universe that which happens in one generation affects the next and the
50:31
next and the next right on down the line until it's forward trajectory is
50:36
arrested by an equal or greater force. We inherit the legacy of all that has come before, we have hundreds of years of accumulated inequality.
50:45
It is preposterous to believe that the passage of mere civil rights laws 50-60 years ago were
50:51
sufficient to arrest that forward trajectory. We have laws against murder, 18,000 people were murdered last year.
50:57
We have laws against armed robbery, laws against drunk driving, laws against tax evasion. People violate these laws all the time,
51:03
we need more than simple formal promises of equality, we need active measures to ensure greater opportunity.
51:11
The next thing we have to do if we're going to stay strong is have radical humility, what do I mean by that?
51:17
Well, in the last two years as people have joined the racial justice movement, it is concerning to me that sometimes those of us in that movement,
51:24
we find ourselves, especially newcomers, who maybe don't understand how long and difficult this work can be.
51:31
They get very upset with people who aren't quite where they are yet.
51:36
This is especially true, I got to be honest, of white folks who have joined this work. Black and brown folks tend to
51:41
know that this is a marathon, not a sprint, as Peter alluded to in the introduction. But I think sometimes these new guys,
51:48
it's like newly converted religious folks. Like the newly converted are always the most zealous,
51:54
they're always the biggest pains in the ass, to be honest, they are the ones that are just like, "Why don't you know this thing that I know?"
52:00
You only learned in on Monday and it's Thursday now. You're going to jump down someone in
52:05
your family or somebody on your block, you're going to jump down their throat for not knowing on Thursday some stuff that you
52:11
literally just learned three days before. We have to have some radical humility and understand that we've all been
52:17
encouraged not to see this stuff. We've all had this hidden from you, we've all had this kept from our vision.
52:25
In fact, we have been raised in a society that encouraged us to take viewpoints that are actually racist and sexist.
52:33
It's actually quite miraculous when we don't fall into that or when we rebel against that. What do I mean when I say that we've been
52:39
raised in a culture that encourages it? Think about it, what's the one thing that we were all taught?
52:44
I don't care whether you're white, black, whatever your racial background, cultural, ethnic background, linguistic background,
52:50
part of the country that you're from, religious upbringing, class status. The one thing that we were all taught is
52:56
the cornerstone of American ideology, and what is that? It's the idea that anyone can
53:02
make it if they just try hard enough, this notion of rugged individualism and meritocracy,
53:08
that ultimately wherever you end up is all about your own effort. Now we don't say that to be deliberately racist or sexist,
53:15
we say it because we think it incentivizes hard work. We tell our kids that so they work really hard.
53:21
The problem is if we say it and don't interrogate the complexity of it, if we're not honest about
53:27
that thing that we say, what ends up happening? If I tell you that wherever you and others end up is all about them,
53:33
and then you look around and you see massive inequality. You see white folks disproportionately on the top,
53:39
black and brown beneath them, you see men disproportionately on the top, women disproportionately beneath,
53:44
you see rich here and poor down here. You start to put two and two together and you think to yourself,
53:50
well, I guess those rich white guys are just that much smarter man. I guess they just work that much harder,
53:55
it almost becomes rational to accept racist thinking, and sexist thinking, and classes thinking.
54:02
Unless we're interrogating that core ideology, which is like the secular gospel, you-all.
54:07
If America was a Bible, that would be Genesis 1:1, and folks don't like it when you question Genesis 1:1.
54:14
That's like going to church on a Sunday and right after the sermon, just popping up in the third row pews and be like, yeah,
54:20
that was a lovely sermon, but there is no God, why are we here exactly? No one invites you back to the rectory
54:27
after the service to get the cookies and the punt. They don't want you to come back, they just want you gone.
54:34
When you start questioning these fundamental premises, expect push back. But understand if we don't challenge them,
54:41
if we don't encourage the putting of an asterisk at the end of that promise,
54:46
the one that says anybody can make it. We got to put an asterisk that says, if you want that to be true,
54:51
there's some things you have to do. Not just as an individual to work hard, but you have to be prepared to challenge
54:58
these systems and structures of inequity as well. If we do that, we can stay strong.
55:04
If we focus on that, if we understand that we have all been encouraged to miss these things.
55:10
It's not about being ignorant that you missed them, it's not about being bigoted that you missed them. It's about growing up in a society
55:17
that has tried to keep us from coming together in solidarity to create the America that we were promised.
55:24
We were promised a country that was about liberty and justice for all, we haven't lived in that place for one minute.
55:30
It is words on a page, the idea that all men are created equal,
55:35
endowed by their creator, etc., etc., etc. Those words that Jefferson wrote even at a time that he owned a couple 100 human beings.
55:42
He clearly didn't mean them, I mean them, and I suspect that most of you mean them. But in order to make them meaningful,
55:49
in order to make them real, we have to continue to do this work. Stay strong, know that it is
55:55
partly because we are winning, that we are getting this push back. Remember that nothing worth having when it
56:02
comes to equity and justice is going to come easily. It has been hard-fought, people have fought and they have died for
56:08
us to get even as far as we are now. No doubt, that will continue to be the case as we push forward,
56:13
but we must push forward anyway. Thank you all so much for inviting me in to your house today,
56:19
if you will, and I'll take any questions that you have. I appreciate you-all and I hope the rest of the summit
56:24
is a success. Thank you so much.
56:29
Wow, that was great. Thank you, Tim. [OVERLAPPING] That was absolutely amazing,
56:35
especially ending on that statement of radical humility. I don't know about the rest of you, but I was actually trying to monitor the chat
56:42
and look for questions and take notes at the same time. I will share some of the questions that came
56:49
beginning at the start of your keynote here. One of the things that was asked is what backlash have
56:58
you experienced and how have you coped with the impact? Well, I'm a strange case in the sense that
57:09
I started doing this when I was so young. I started doing anti-racism activism
57:14
when I was still in college and then immediately after
57:19
college was involved in the work against David Duke, former Klan leader, white supremacist, neo-Nazi when he ran for the senate and then
57:27
for governor in Louisiana in 1990 and '91. When you do that work at that level and you are
57:34
challenging a really overt white supremacist, you can imagine the backlash starts very early in
57:39
its very frightening and violent or potentially violent. I ended up getting used to, if you can,
57:46
and heads I don't mean to sound brave because it's not about being brave. It's just that when you're 20 and 21
57:53
and somebody says they want to hurt you, most of the time you don't take them seriously because you're too young actually,
57:59
most 20, 21-year-olds not thinking about their mortality. Obviously, some are who face that kind of thing
58:05
every day in much more dangerous communities perhaps in where I grew up. But most of us don't look at that seriously.
58:12
It's like you just think someone's clown in you and you take your precautions but you get used to it. By the time I was a full-grown adult,
58:19
I was somewhat used to it. Now, having said that, it is an everyday thing or at least a weekly thing where
58:27
someone will write to me to invite me to stop living in effect, not necessarily threaten it myself,
58:34
but certainly invite me to no longer be a carbon-based life form. I don't personally worry all that much about that.
58:43
I knew what I was getting into when I started this. My wife knew what she was getting into [LAUGHTER] when she married me.
58:50
Our children, it's a different thing and it's certainly more frightening when those threats and that anger and
58:56
hostility are directed at your larger family. But what I tried to remember in this is that
59:03
black and brown folks are not safe ever as long as
59:09
racism is an operative force in our culture. If black and brown folks are never really safe,
59:16
by the same token, if LGBTQ folks are never really safe, and if women as women are never really safe,
59:24
then who am I as a straight cisgender, white male to be like, "Oh, it's getting hot out here,
59:30
I think I want to take a little break." If it's not safe for others, then I have to run into that work as
59:37
well because until we're all safe and until everyone, black and brown life,
59:43
and LGBTQ life, until all of those lives really matter, folks will say all lives matter but they
59:49
don't mean it because they're not really focused on making sure that the most marginalized lives matter.
59:54
Until that matters, I have to be prepared to take a risk and not to take advantage of the privilege that
1:00:01
I have which is a privilege of just sitting back and being, whatever I'm going to let y'all handle it.
1:00:07
It's not that it's not disconcerting, it's not that it's not disturbing, but it cannot detract
1:00:15
us from doing what needs to be done. We have a very short time on this Earth and at some point we all have to decide why
1:00:22
we're here and what we're going to do in James Baldwin's terms to earn
1:00:27
our death which sounds like a macabre concept but what Baldwin meant was that we earn our death,
1:00:34
we earn the right to leave this place once we have decided what we're going to do to justify our time in this place.
1:00:41
I'm very clear on what that means for me and I hope everyone else gets clear on what it means for them.
1:00:46
Thank you and thank you for taking that risk because for those of us who do identify as brown or black,
1:00:55
we need those allies and those co-conspirators that are advocating for us so we do appreciate that.
1:01:00
We have quite a few questions. I'm going to try to get through as many as I can here. I think some of these are
1:01:07
answered in what you were speaking. How do you recommend we provide insights to companies that talk the talk,
1:01:14
but never walk the walk with DEI? Well, I think again, going back to what I was saying,
1:01:21
a radical humility is still helpful because I think until proven otherwise, and if it's proven otherwise,
1:01:27
then what I'm going to say here doesn't apply. But until proven otherwise, I want to start out with
1:01:32
the assumption that most of the folks who aren't getting this right aren't getting it right because they've never been
1:01:38
encouraged to understand how they were getting it wrong and they don't really understand what getting it right means.
1:01:43
I think once they are apprised of that, they can begin to get it right. But until I've made it clear or you've made it clear,
1:01:51
someone's made it clear, we can't be surprised that folks dropped the ball. I'll give you an example. After the uprising began in summer of 2020,
1:01:58
started getting a lot of corporate gigs. It was funny because for 25 years that I
1:02:04
had been traveling around the country doing this work, I think I had done a combined total of 25 corporate private sector gigs.
1:02:12
Most of my stuff had been in educational institutions. Within six months I had 40 private private sector corporate gigs.
1:02:21
I took advantage of that to bring some stuff that I normally don't get to bring to such basis to them.
1:02:27
One of the firms I worked with was an accounting firm, I won't say which one, but it was an accounting firm on the West Coast.
1:02:33
I went into their website because I wanted to know a little bit about them before I started working with them.
1:02:39
I noticed that on their website, they were saying as a selling point for
1:02:45
clients that you should trust us because in effect, that's what they were saying, because we only hire
1:02:53
accountants from the top four accounting schools in America. I don't know what those top four schools are
1:02:59
and I also don't know why it's four and not three. I guess that must mean that one of the executives went to number 4 and wanted to get
1:03:05
in under the wire or something. But I said I'm thinking to myself, what does that mean? You would rather have
1:03:11
the last place graduate at the best school, then the valedictorian at the number 237 school?
1:03:19
What are these rankings even mean? Even at the top school, someone graduates last.
1:03:24
You have the valedictorian at the top and then you've got somebody who's the exact opposite of
1:03:29
the valedictorian but they still got that degree from whatever that school is. What is the logic there and who does it exclude?
1:03:36
I don't think that company was meaning to say, let's keep out working-class people which is disproportionately going to mean black and brown people.
1:03:43
I don't think they're meaning to do that and I brought it to their attention. I said, have y'all thought about not only
1:03:49
what message you're sending but what that means, you're overlooking a lot of amazing talent just because you're
1:03:55
going with this credentialocracy thing, not meritocracy. This isn't about merit and actual ability,
1:04:01
it's about credentials which are not the same thing. When I said it, they were like, "Oh."
1:04:07
It wasn't like they pushed back or, "Oh, my God, you're a lunatic. What are you talking about?" They were like, "Oh."
1:04:12
They started to think differently. I think the approach that we want to take is to start with the radical humility that says,
1:04:20
"Here's some things that you need to think about because these are things that once upon a time, I might not have thought about."
1:04:26
A lot of the things that I think about now, I only think about because I had mentors and teachers who brought it to
1:04:31
my attention and some lived experience that brought it to my attention. There was a time before that is to
1:04:38
say a time before I know what I know now. If I want you to know what I know now, I have to bring you along in not a hand-holding way,
1:04:47
but in a way that says, "Here Is the thing that maybe you haven't thought about." Only when that person
1:04:53
doubles and triples down on their nonsense, do I need to get maybe a little bit more
1:04:59
deliberative and pushy because if you start tripling down on that top for accounting schools, we're going to have a different conversation.
1:05:05
But if you do what I expect most people are going to do which is say, "Oh, I hadn't thought about the way that resume
1:05:12
filtering AI that I'm using is screening out certain people. Let me think about how
1:05:17
to maybe change that a little bit." I think a lot of folks just haven't thought about that. We need to give them the space to
1:05:24
actually grow into that understanding. Thank you. It looks like we have some questions that
1:05:30
go along with that particular question. See one here says,
1:05:36
education is disproportion in many ways, and this is a loaded question, so I'll just ask you one or two of them at a time.
1:05:45
How do you think we can elevate excitement for youth that are surrounded by negativity in their living circumstances?
1:05:53
Especially since social media is such a big impressionable tool, and urban families are
1:05:59
split by lack of parental stability, poverty, and education equality.
1:06:05
How do we begin to break the chain of years of preconditioned thinking?
1:06:10
I can repeat any portion of that if you need me to. I think I get it. You know, what I think excites people who are
1:06:17
experiencing all these different stressors, that can easily derail them on the path to education.
1:06:25
That would easily derail any of us, if we face some of the things that some young people in this country face.
1:06:32
What young people really get excited about more than just about anything, is adults who will tell them the truth,
1:06:39
and not lie to them. That may sound like a weird thing to say, but let me give you an example. Several years ago, I was given a talk at
1:06:46
a conference for a bunch of charter school operators in the Twin cities.
1:06:53
I'm somewhat cynical about charters, I'll be honest because I know sometimes they have been set up with some intentions that I'm not so sure are pure.
1:07:00
But I also have known some folks that have set up some incredibly radical liberatory progressive charters, so if you tell me you want me, I'm going to come.
1:07:07
I go, and the young people are there all day listening to these speakers, I'm the last speaker of the day.
1:07:13
I've been sitting there watching a bunch of the other speakers. Now keep in mind, these students are overwhelmingly black and brown.
1:07:19
They are overwhelmingly low income or poor. About 30 percent of them are unhoused.
1:07:25
A lot of them living out of cars, and vans, or hotel rooms, or going from place to place.
1:07:30
They are sitting there listening to these speakers who are giving them,
1:07:35
I can't even describe the thing. It's just this lecturing, not even lecturing,
1:07:42
almost like preaching at them about how messed up they are. It's almost like a drill sergeant
1:07:47
before me that was like, pull your pants up, stop listening to that music in class, sit up straight.
1:07:52
Basically a "get your crap together" thing. Which is basically looking at these young people as
1:07:58
broken and operating from a deficit, and that they are the problem. Or maybe their mama's the problem,
1:08:04
or their family or their neighborhood or whatever is the problem, and they need to just snap out of it. I was thinking, my God, what am I going to?
1:08:11
Because these kids, every time they would say pull your pants up literally, some of the kids would stand up, sag more, and sit back down.
1:08:17
They would say, take that earphones out of your ears, they would turn the volume up. Not because they were intentionally trying to be disrespectful,
1:08:24
but because they felt disrespected. They felt like they were being disrespected,
1:08:29
and viewed through a lens of brokenness. I get up, and this would have been, I don't know, about 12 years ago.
1:08:36
I was about 40-41. I stood up as the last speaker and I'm like,
1:08:41
what is this middle-age white man going to get up and say? Because they're all like slack back.
1:08:47
They could not have cared less at that point, some of them, and I don't blame them. I got up and I said, well, I just want to start by telling you,
1:08:52
I want to apologize on behalf of America. By the way, America did not deputize me to issue this apology, but I will offer it.
1:08:58
I want to apologize for the fact that we lied to you. When I say we, I mean, the country, old folks,
1:09:05
your parents, maybe not your parents, but a lot of parents, teachers. We just lie to you, because we told you,
1:09:10
all you had to do was work hard and you could make it, and you know, full well that that's nonsense. Because you know, people in your neighborhood and community,
1:09:16
maybe your own family, that work hard every day, got nothing to show for it. You all know there are a lot of people, including some people in this room that were
1:09:22
born on third base think they hit a triple, and never had to work hard a day in their lives. You all know that, so let's just stop pretending
1:09:29
that this country is what we told you it was in third grade. As soon as I said that, a lot of the older folks got very nervous.
1:09:37
Like a lot of the older folks were looking around like, oh my God, there's going to be a riot. They're going to burn the place down.
1:09:42
No, that's not what happened. These young people, all of a sudden, stand up straight and I start looking around,
1:09:48
and they've got this quizzical look on their face. One guy looks at his buddy, and it's like, I'll just repeat it, so pardon my expression.
1:09:54
He didn't say it out loud, but I saw what he mouthy said, what is this shit? He didn't mean shit like as in bad,
1:10:00
he meant like, this is some good shit, what is it? His friend was like, I don't know, but his friend starts writing down notes.
1:10:07
Now, this isn't because I'm a genius. This is not because I'm just so smart. This is because, I know because I'm a parent of young people,
1:10:13
I have a almost 21, and almost 19 year-old, at the time they were quite a bit younger than that. I know how much kids are
1:10:19
tired of older folks lying to them, and we lie to them all the time, to try to soften the blow of reality
1:10:25
and what they needed was adults in the room to look at them as I was looking at them and say,
1:10:30
you know that thing that you think is happening, it's happening. What are we going to do about it?
1:10:36
In other words, I will ratify your truth. I will ratify your reality. I'm not going to try to control
1:10:41
your expression of your anger, I'm going to try to channel it. I'm not going to try to tell you not to be
1:10:47
angry about police brutality and injustice, or not to be angry about the housing situation that you're facing.
1:10:53
You got to be angry about it, because that ought not be happening, in this or any other country. But how are we going to channel that?
1:10:58
The only way we can channel it, is if I align myself in solidarity with you.
1:11:03
If we would start talking like that in our schools, if we would see our schools as spaces of liberation,
1:11:10
as places where the community comes, not just sends their kids to learn math,
1:11:15
and to learn how to diagram a sentence, or learn about the periodic table, or whatever it is we're teaching them, but as a place where you go to get justice,
1:11:24
and you go to talk about real community issues, and you go to actually seek connection,
1:11:30
then we could turn this thing around. But as long as we continue to treat school as this thing we do to kids,
1:11:36
where we send them there, set them in rows, tell them to be quiet, don't speak until your spoken to,
1:11:41
that's what prison does. That's what wardens do. That's what prison guards do.
1:11:47
Why are we preparing young people to be in prison? Maybe it's because we don't intend to provide them
1:11:52
with the opportunities to do much of anything else. Young people know that, they know they're being steered in that direction.
1:11:59
We ought not be surprised when they tune out. We want them to tune in, we have to tell them the truth.
1:12:04
Because they know the truth, but what they're not used to is older folks shooting straight with them,
1:12:11
and saying that they see what the young people see. Once we say that, it changes the entire way in which
1:12:17
young people look at their reality, and the way that they look at us. Thank you, that is so good.
1:12:24
I will take it a step further and say that, that can be applied in the workplace as well. I think that if we look
1:12:31
back to the experiences that we've had, for many of us over a lifetime,
1:12:36
but many that came to light during the pandemic, for others who actually never saw what was actually happening around us.
1:12:42
We have to take into consideration that a lot of employees are coming into work carrying that same weight,
1:12:48
and they're not able to have those important conversations. You're expected to show up to work,
1:12:53
you're expected to meet the deadlines. You're expected to perform in the same way that you perform.
1:12:59
As let's say a black man coming to work, just after the death of George Floyd. He's expected to perform in the same way he did before
1:13:07
George Floyd passed even though he may have driven to work in fear, even though he may be in fear for his son.
1:13:12
I think it's important to also understand how that affects us as adults. If we're starting to have
1:13:18
those conversations with our youth, were developing those adults to be able to create these spaces of safety,
1:13:25
that we go into the workplace with. Along the lines of that, we had a question that was asking,
1:13:31
what are your suggestions for setting the stage for the difficult and uncomfortable conversations
1:13:37
that must take place, in order to have meaningful and transformative dialogue?
1:13:42
I think that there are two things, one of which I talked about today, and then another of which, which is going to sound
1:13:49
almost the opposite of what I said, but they actually go together. The one today is making sure that we are clear,
1:13:56
that we're not talking about good people, bad people. That we're talking about systems, so that we are depersonalizing the blame,
1:14:03
if you will, or the problem. But the opposite thing, and not really opposite. But the other thing that I want to mention,
1:14:09
is we also have to personalize the issue, depersonalize the blame, but personalize the issue.
1:14:15
How do we do that? We have to talk about our own lived experience. Not only black and brown folks who often talk about
1:14:23
their experiences with these things, but also those of us who were white have to be encouraged to
1:14:29
actually think through how race has played a role in our lives. Because it isn't just black and brown folks
1:14:35
who had been shaped by race, white folks too. It isn't just women who've been shaped by sex or gender, it's men. It's not just LGBTQ
1:14:42
folk who are shaped by straight supremacy, transphobia, heterosexism, it also straightened cisgendered people.
1:14:47
We're all being affected and those in the dominant group often haven't spent a lot of time reflecting on it.
1:14:54
For me one of the reasons that I wrote the first book I wrote was a memoir, White Like Me, is I wanted to talk about issues of
1:15:01
privilege and inequality and bias, not just with a bunch of footnotes and a bunch of data as helpful as that stuff can be,
1:15:08
but I wanted to tell stories about what I saw because to be honest, even though I sit here in these events
1:15:14
with these books behind me, and it makes me look very well-read I suppose, I haven't read all of these, but they come in very handy when you have
1:15:20
high school and college students who might need to do a research paper, and I'm like, as long as you all do a paper on race, I got you, we got on your whole library here.
1:15:28
But here's the thing, these books, even if I had read them all, that's not why I do what I do.
1:15:34
It isn't because of some class I took or some video I watched or some books that I read,
1:15:39
it's because I grew up seeing some things. I played baseball on a team that were almost all black kids,
1:15:45
and when we were 11 years old, we went out to a outlying area outside of Nashville to play a scrimmage and the team we
1:15:51
were supposed to play refused to step on the field with us because they didn't want to play black players.
1:15:57
This was not 1950, I beg to remind you, it was 1980, and as we were leaving, they surrounded our vehicle
1:16:04
and started threatening to hurt us, yelling racial slurs at the black kids, yelling at the white kids that we were
1:16:11
inward lovers as you can imagine and other epithets. It was that moment, it wasn't these books,
1:16:17
it wasn't some academic intellectual knowledge, footnoted knowledge, it was what I experienced.
1:16:22
I saw people essentially abusing my friends, people whom I cared about,
1:16:28
and saying to me that I had crossed some invisible line, that I had crossed the line
1:16:34
of acceptable white peopleness. Now I had been, as Baldwin talked about, turned away from the welcome table of white society.
1:16:42
I took that as a personal offense, it wasn't just offensive to my black friends, it was a slap in my face and that's why I do what I do.
1:16:49
I think there are a lot of white folks who've seen a lot of stuff that we maybe have never processed,
1:16:54
who've heard a lot of things, maybe in family, maybe among peers, maybe in the workforce that we haven't really
1:17:01
ever sat with and really talked about, and deep down, I think we know the way in
1:17:07
which we have experienced various privileges. First and for most the privilege of being oblivious to black reality and brown reality.
1:17:15
The privilege of not having to know what other people experience if we would sit with that and if we would lead.
1:17:20
If I want to bring somebody into the conversation, I can hit them up with the latest academic research,
1:17:25
but they're probably eyes are going to glaze on that stuff, because unless you're an academic, that's just how that works, or I can tell you a story.
1:17:34
I could give you all the data, for instance, on how the war on drugs has been fundamentally racist.
1:17:39
I give you all the statistical proof you need or I can just tell you about all the stuff I did and got away with when it
1:17:45
came to the use of illegal narcotics, which now the statute of limitations has expired so I can confess and nobody can touch me now.
1:17:53
But there was a time when I broke plenty of laws and I never really worried about being arrested,
1:17:59
being prosecuted, being incarcerated, whereas if I'd been black or brown, I would've been thinking about that because my reality would have been different.
1:18:06
If I tell you that story, and there was a bunch of them if I had time I would, that'll stick with you longer than the data.
1:18:12
If we want to bring people in, depersonalize the blame by focusing on systems instructors,
1:18:18
but personalize the concern and personalize the issue by talking about one's own racialization
1:18:25
and how it's not only hurt others, but how it's also affected you. Because those experiences that me
1:18:31
and those friends had who played ball together, those experiences harmed us as a unit.
1:18:37
It essentially divided us to where we never turned on one another, we were comrades, we were friends, we were teammates,
1:18:44
but it meant that my black friends were having a real different experience than me. Even though I experienced a little sliver of it,
1:18:51
a few years later our friendship started to drift because they knew they were in a whole different world than me.
1:18:58
I paid a price for that too, I didn't pay the same price they did, but I paid a price.
1:19:04
We all pay a price for the indulgence of this phenomena, and if we understand that and we
1:19:10
personalize that I think will stay in the fight longer. We all pay a price for the indulgence of this phenomenon.
1:19:17
I hope I can record that, that's a good one. For our moderators who are on here.
1:19:23
Someone document that, that's a good quote. Talking about stories,
1:19:28
someone mentioned that many of these stories are based on twisted stories, and we're trained to follow conformity,
1:19:36
not to break traditional thought. This is actually along the lines of the radical humility you were talking about.
1:19:41
They ask, what is the first step to beginning this process? Well, for me, the beginning of the process,
1:19:51
I had started thinking about these things obviously even as a child, but the beginning of the real deliberative process
1:19:58
was me sitting down in the early '90s, with a pad and paper, and starting from as far back as I can remember,
1:20:07
thinking about how race had shaped my life. How had it shaped to my parents were in the world?
1:20:14
What their experiences had been? How had it shaped our families even before I was born? How had it shaped my
1:20:20
family's very existence in this country, which meant thinking about not just my mom's side of the family,
1:20:27
parts of those families go back to the 1600s coming here in the colonial era,
1:20:32
but also thinking about my father's father's side, which were much more recent Jewish immigrants
1:20:37
who came to the US in the early 1900s. Well after enslavement, well after segregation,
1:20:43
came with the proverbial 18 cents and a ball of Linton in their pocket. We all say our ancestors did,
1:20:49
who came on that boat at Ellis Island, but the reality is that my great grandfather also came with European background,
1:20:56
which meant he was able, even though he was Jewish and he was hated for his lack of English skills and he was
1:21:01
discriminated against based on religion, but he still came from Europe. He still was now seen as
1:21:07
''white'' or at least whiter than black and brown folk, which meant he was able to get jobs immediately off
1:21:14
the boat in New York that had been off limits to black people in that city, not just in the South, in New York
1:21:20
since the 1880s or 1890s. The fact that he was European meant that he was able to come in the first place because
1:21:27
we had had anti-immigration law since the 1880's that would exist for generations that really limited, if not utterly banned,
1:21:35
the arrival of virtually anyone who wasn't European. Even though he caught hell, even though he faced obstacles as we all do in our lives,
1:21:44
he also had certain advantages. I had to start with that because that shapes the inertia,
1:21:49
that shapes me, and then I come through my own life and start as a child. Then what did I see? What did I experience?
1:21:56
I ended up with 10 -12,15 pages of stuff. Even when I crossed out
1:22:02
the memories that weren't quite clear and I'm like, I don't really know if that means anything or not maybe that's a bad memory.
1:22:07
The stuff that was left even after I went through all that, was enough to make that book that I wrote White Like Me.
1:22:13
I'm not saying everybody needs to write their own memoir, but at least a journal, some type of personal way that you
1:22:19
see your investment in this, and you see that whether you decide to take action or not,
1:22:25
you're part of it and it's part of you. You're either going to be part of the solution or you're going to
1:22:31
be part of the problem because once you get all that stuff on the page, you realize there is no neutrality.
1:22:36
As Ibram Kendi talks about in his work. There's no neutral, you're either actively pushing against this phenomena that we've inherited,
1:22:43
or you are exceeding to it. Most white folks didn't own segregated lunch counters,
1:22:49
but they went to them, and they ate at them and they didn't boycott them, at least not most.
1:22:55
Most white folks didn't own other human beings during enslavement, but they didn't speak out against it, they didn't join the abolitionists struggle,
1:23:01
they didn't join John Brown to try to overthrow it. In a sense, it's that going along to get along,
1:23:07
it's that acquiescence, it's that bystanderism. That is the bigger problem, and once you get some clarity on your own trajectory,
1:23:16
and your own racialized experience, bystanderism becomes impossible. The only thing that makes it possible is
1:23:23
avoiding looking at one's own life, and that's why we have to start with that.
1:23:28
I think we have time for one more question. I'm going to shift gears just a little bit because
1:23:34
we had a few questions related to religion. I'll make sure we get at least one in here. One person asked, how can we include and help people of
1:23:42
different religious backgrounds to feel comfortable in their workplaces, specifically, people who don't hold a God belief?
1:23:50
Well, I think we have to have the same conversations that we're having about race,
1:23:55
about religion, and/or the lack thereof. When I said hegemony makes you feel that pluralism is oppression,
1:24:02
that's not just about racial hegemony. That's about religious hegemony. It's about sexual hegemony.
1:24:07
If you're from a Christian background and Christian hegemony has been a very real thing in this country,
1:24:13
certainly faith holding hegemony broadly, but Christian hegemony specifically, anytime that you're now being asked to include
1:24:20
the traditions of other faiths or to be less about that so that we
1:24:26
can make space for those who are not of a particular faith that feels like you're losing something because you are,
1:24:31
you're losing hegemony, but you were never entitled to that. Unless you work in a church or
1:24:36
an explicitly religious organization, that shouldn't really be part of the policy practice or
1:24:41
procedure of the institution in an otherwise secular space. One can have one's own faith belief
1:24:47
and one can express one's own faith belief, but we've had a hegemonic dominance of that, so that people who were not of
1:24:53
a particular faith belief ultimately don't feel that they can talk about those kinds of issues or if they're from a non-dominant faith belief.
1:25:00
We want to have the same discussions about privilege and the privilege of obliviousness because most
1:25:06
people who come from a faith tradition, especially Christianity in this country, they talk about, oh, it's so hard to be
1:25:13
Christian and we're oppressed. If you think it's hard to be Christian, try being like anything else in this country.
1:25:19
If you think it's hard to be a person of faith, try not being. Try being a person who is either atheist or
1:25:25
agnostic or a free thinker or whatever term you might use. That is infinitely harder. We still have polls that show
1:25:30
that people are less willing to vote for an agnostic or an atheist for president than they would be someone of a non-dominant religious tradition.
1:25:38
We have to talk about why is that? What does that mean? There are obviously a lot of
1:25:44
deeply embedded faith beliefs and it's not about trying to challenge people's beliefs, but as someone who grew up Jewish
1:25:50
in Nashville, Tennessee. I'll leave it to your imagination what that might've been like. Little different than growing up Jewish in
1:25:56
a place where the Jewish community is quite a bit larger. I got used to, and I shouldn't have had to, but I got used to being told by teachers,
1:26:04
not just by other kids who were 11 and they don't know any better, but by teachers that I was going to hell,
1:26:10
by teachers that I was destined for a lake of fire, and I know that's in your doctrine
1:26:15
and you have a right to believe that, but you don't have a right to torture me with that in the name of evangelism.
1:26:21
You don't have the right to torture me with that and then tell me that you love me. You don't have the right to tell me, I'm just telling you this because you love me.
1:26:27
No, if you love me, you'd know what hurts me and you'd care about what hurts me. As a Jew or as someone who
1:26:33
is Muslim or someone who's Hindu, or someone who's Sikh or someone who's atheist or agnostic or any other thing,
1:26:38
like try putting yourself in that position if you think it's hard being Catholic or Southern Baptist or whatever.
1:26:45
I'm not saying you don't face stuff. I'm just saying there is a privilege in being a member of
1:26:50
that dominant entity and there's a privilege in being a person of faith in this country that gets taken for granted.
1:26:56
If we really want to create pluralistic and equitable spaces, we have to make sure that we understand the difference between holding a faith and
1:27:03
believing it very devoutly and essentially imposing it, or creating environments in
1:27:08
otherwise secular institutions that marginalize people who don't share it. We haven't done enough of that in this country.
1:27:16
Thank you, Mr. Wise, and thank you for this session today. This has been fantastic.
1:27:23
My apologies to everyone whose questions didn't get asked. There were several questions that came in.
1:27:29
I do encourage you all, we shared the resources that Mr. Wise provided to us in the chat.
1:27:35
He's mentioned his books. We would encourage you to take it a step further.
1:27:40
Buy one of his books. Take the time to try and implement some of the things that you heard and learned today.
1:27:47
The work does not stop here. We want this summit to begin the action
1:27:52
that you all will take within your own spheres of influence. Again, Mr. Wise, I thank you for your time today.
1:27:58
Thank you for that fantastic keynote. We're now going to turn it over to one of our University of Phoenix employees.
1:28:08
Well, wow. I think I speak for many of us here today when I just say wow, Thank you, Mr.
1:28:15
Wise for that insightful presentation. We greatly appreciate the historical contexts you
1:28:20
provided and helping us to understand anti-racism movement, what it means for us, and how we can proceed in
1:28:26
our efforts to fight against racial injustices. I've taken several notes that I plan to review, reflect upon,
1:28:32
and examine ways in which I can use the information to be more intentional in my practice as
1:28:37
an account specialists and ADL leader. I'm so excited and driven. There are more throughout the day and I
1:28:43
hope you are as well. Right now, we want to release you to take a break and return at 10:45 for the general sessions.
1:28:50
On your screen you'll see you can choose from one of the industry focus tracks. The navigation panel that is located on
1:28:57
the left side of your browser will hold those there. Click on Stages and assess one of the upcoming sessions.
1:29:03
You'll see those on the screen. Of course we have three different tracks and so one is leadership and management.
1:29:09
That is leadership in the digital economy with agile, people-centric, and dynamic features.
1:29:14
We also have a healthcare track that focuses on best practices when leading through tumultuous times.
1:29:20
Finally, last but not least, we have the education track that focuses on leading in tumultuous times and leading reform.
1:29:27
As we wrap up the day, I want you also to join us to learn about the career optimism index.
1:29:34
It talks about what research tells us about our changing world and the implications for a fast evolving workplace.
1:29:40