Before Tackling Systemic Racism, You Need to Dig Into Your Own Biases

0:01This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome, that's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required, compatibility and availability varies 18+. If you're like me, you may be a little bit overwhelmed by the social media posts and headlines about racism and sexism at one company or another.

0:36When I get frustrated and overwhelmed, I tend to go into my creative mode. That led me to develop an idea with my co-researcher, Dr. Beth Livingston, and that idea is shared sisterhood. Shared sisterhood is a radically optimistic philosophy on how to dismantle systemic inequity. At an individual level, it equips people with tools so that we can feel less frustrated and overwhelmed. We can actually do something to make the workplace better.

1:08Shared sisterhood is a philosophy that's comprised of three practices. Dig, bridge, and collective action. Dig is at the individual level of analysis, and that's about surfacing your own assumptions and biases about identity for yourself, so your own identity, as well as the identities of other people. Bridge is interpersonal or relational, and that is about connecting with people who are different than you, developing authentic connection with people across difference. Collective action is about dismantling systemic inequities together and how you engage in collective action. So one of the reasons that we have found diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives may fail is because oftentimes employees and leaders and managers jump right to the collective action phase.

2:01They say, we're going to recruit to have a more diverse workforce. but they have never ever thought back to how do they even relate to the people that they're trying to recruit. Okay, you may successfully recruit people who help to diversify your workplace, but they join a culture where they don't feel welcome, where they don't feel as though they're understood, where they have to deal with microaggressions and any other number of isms in the workplace. When you dig, you are going to learn things about your own belief systems, your own identity, and how you perceive other identities. And that is going to affect how you connect with people.

2:40Let's dig into DIG. DIG is very much about understanding your identity, but also the identity of other people. So this is you as an individual, but when you do DIG, you also need to understand your membership in a power-dominant or historically marginalized collective. It can be challenging. You know, I use the terms historically marginalized and historically power dominant. Those may be new terms for you. Historically marginalized are people who have tended to have less power than people from historically power dominant groups and vice versa. And most of us belong to both. So, for example, I can talk about Beth Livingston and I.

3:21We're co-researchers. We're good friends. We're also, I mean, I would consider her a sister. We engage in dismantling systemic inequity together. I learned about being a black person at a very, very young age. And specifically, my parents were proud to be of African descent. Lots of history books, lots of learning, et cetera, et cetera. I also, my parents had to inform me about being a black person. For example, when I was little and I got into the pool and all the white kids got out. I didn't understand that. But they might have thought that my skin color was going to come off and make them dirty.

3:54I mean, literally, this is something that actually happened to me. So my parents at a young age had to equip me and almost inoculate me from the racism that was swirling outside of our door. Beth, Beth, we talk about and we've explored how she really dealt and delved into the power dynamics of identity when she was in college. So a much later age. So what does that mean? That means that when you show up in the workforce, let's say Beth and I, hypothetically, if we worked together, I would have been wrestling. This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome, that's new.

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5:08Because the best Halloween memories aren't made in just one night. They're made all season long. Shop Halloween decor now at Wayfair.com. Wayfair, every style, every home. With what it meant to be a black person and what whiteness means from a very young age, Beth may have wrestled with that at an older age, and then we meet in the workplace. And so that's why I talk about with Digg, it's really important for people from power-dominant backgrounds to listen a lot more than they talk, because you probably could gain a lot of information from learning from the experiences from historically marginalized people.

5:46A common reaction when doing DIG, power dominant people may commonly become defensive. They may deny what they're hearing. They may distance themselves from the information or from the people. And this is coming from research by Dr. Miguel Unzueta. And I'll give you some examples. So you might say, if you're denying it, well, okay, Tina, you're saying that our organization has an issue with recruiting women. That's not the case. Women don't want to come work for us. That's not really an issue. If they wanted to, the positions would be available. Hello? Okay, so what you're basically saying is that this entire group of people is all behaving in the same way, but our systems and processes are 100 % accurate.

6:33There's nothing that we could do to improve our systems and our processes. If you find yourself in that defensive stance or that stance where you're denying things, one of the things that we ask you to do is to pause and then to say, what if it's true? What if there is something biased in our system, in our process? Then what would we have to do to make it different? And the reason we do that is because in psychology, you know, there's something called approach and avoidance stance. And an avoidance stance, it's when you get defensive, when you deny things, when you're trying to prevent some harm to yourself.

7:12It's threatening to the ego if you admit or acknowledge that you might have a biased system or that you might have a racist ideology or belief in operation. That causes you to hit, go into the avoidance stance, which means you're trying to prevent harm, which actually has negative implications for how well you can engage with the argument, for how productive you can be in terms of solving problems, et cetera, et cetera. By writing down your issues or your concerns and asking yourselves questions like, well, what if it's true? You're beginning to you're diffusing your defense mechanisms and you are then beginning to think more about the accomplishment of something positive.

7:54So what if I was able to make this system or this process more equitable? What would that look like? You can then open yourself up. you begin to approach this idea of these positive outcomes, as opposed to referring to these absolutely normal defense mechanisms or denial situations. You may be wondering, if you're a member of a historically marginalized group, are there hurdles that I might confront when I do dig? And the answer is yes, and I will use myself as an example. When I first met Beth Livingston, my co-researcher, I did not trust her. She hadn't done anything wrong to me. But at a conference, she basically skipped up to me.

8:36She was all happy and goes, hey, I want to meet you. And I was like, girl, who are you? I didn't know who she was. And she's a white woman. And I was like, wait a minute, what's happening here? And that was because, I later learned when I did dig, in my prior workplace experiences, I had been betrayed by white women. And so when white women approached me specifically in the workplace, I was reticent to accept their friendship or even any kind of connection because I wondered, I was suspect or skeptical of sincerity. I assumed that they wanted something from me. And as a result, I would keep them at arm's length.

9:28Like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required. Compatibility and availability varies 18+. This episode is brought to you by ChatGPT. Hey, it's Bill Simmons from the Bill Simmons Podcast. Have you guys heard about ChatGPT work? It's the new way to use ChatGPT for bigger multi-step projects. And when you need more than just answers, give ChatGPT work access to your apps and files, and it can create real work documents like spreadsheets, slides, and structured reports.

10:09Get started at ChatGPT.com by selecting work mode available on Plus and Pro plans. Beth was a little bit different. She persisted. And I later found out that she and I knew a Black woman in common. and this Black woman, Dr. Charlize Hurst, could vouch for Beth's sincerity. And then over time, Beth and I got to know each other a little bit more. And now we have an amazing friendship, research, personal and professional relationship. And the takeaway from that story is that as a Black woman, I could have missed out on an amazing, life-affirming relationship because Beth was white. So a tool that you can use.

10:52I paused. I literally said, Tina, why are you reacting this way to Beth? Has she done anything to you as an individual? Yes, there are collective issues that you know about, that you've read about the history of. But I paused. I began to interrogate my own emotions, my own cognition. I literally tried to hold them up and analyze it from different angles. Then I did some sort of risk assessment. What could happen if you trust her a little bit and she betrays you? So then another tool for me was to trust Beth incrementally. I didn't show her my bank account from day one, right? Because you could be betrayed or you could, et cetera.

11:37So what I did was there were small ways that I could see, you know what? Beth is a real one. I can really trust Beth. Beth is someone who actually has my back. And as a result, over time, I mean, now we trust each other with money, with children. It's, we're right there with each other. There's a warning, though. There's a caveat. I'm not telling you to dig for two years. Okay, this has to be urgent. Engaging in digging bridge for a long time is not an excuse not to begin to look at the systemic inequities. So I really want people to have a sense of urgency around shared sisterhood and around dismantling systemic inequities.

12:23And people will say, no, just be patient. This takes more time. Well, let's think about, sorry, COVID. COVID happened. Organizations immediately, from top to the bottom, had to figure out a way to continue to exist. What would happen if we applied that same urgency to what I would consider as a global pandemic of racism and sexism? What would happen? I think the challenge is, is that racism and sexism for some people is just not urgent. It's something that happens to other people. If you understand that, you know, the cure for cancer, the cure for anything that might ail your company could very well be in the community that you're not urgently trying to include in your organization.

13:07So from a business perspective and even from a moral perspective, it makes sense to ensure that everyone is able to show up at work fully in their authentic selves. And that will improve the workplace.