Workplace Worldwide: Where Diversity, Inclusion and Equity Do Not Intersect, with Wilma De Soto (Part I)
Speaker 1 (00:00:01) - You're about to listen to Workplace Worldwide, a podcast featuring news, deep dives and interviews about our workplaces and workers rights worldwide.
Speaker 2 (00:00:10) - Another one coming up on today's episode. We are talking to Wilmer De Soto, a literal founding badass teacher, about how diversity, equity and inclusion in our workplaces is failing to serve the black community. Wilma generously shares her history and her experiences with us in this two parter interview, and we can promise you you will laugh, learn and if you like me, probably cry. Hello, legends, and welcome to Workplace Worldwide. Yes, that's right. It is a refreshed format of your favorite workplace show, Workplace Weekly. And don't you worry. That idea that I had, which was the joke, is that we might release a weekly with shit canned real quick. So here we are with workplace Worldwide. We are changing up the format a little bit, but it's all exciting stuff. However, it's just not what we're here for today. Today I am here to introduce you to a very important guest, someone that I've been very keen to have on for a long while, and that is Wilma DeSoto.
Speaker 2 (00:01:17) - So let me get to the formal bio and then I'll tell you why we're having her on and we'll get right into it. Wilma DeSoto is a retired teacher from the school district of Philadelphia. Wilma has been on the board of directors of the Badass Teachers Association. Yes, it's a real thing since 2017. And a member of the badass teachers quality of work life team. Now, we've also put in the show notes where you can read more about this organization. Wilma holds degrees from Oberlin College and the Conservatory of Music at LaSalle. And I hope I'm saying that right. University. She co-authored two national research surveys in conjunction with Bats and the ATF on the workplace conditions for teachers and teacher job stress. In 2015, she presented survey data to the Secretary of the Department of Education in Washington, DC, and has presented at several conferences on quality of work life for teachers. Wilma is also currently serving as the Director of Diversity Equity and Inclusion on the board of the National Workplace Bullying Coalition, an organization that's dedicated to eliminating bullying in American workplaces through education, conversation and legislation.
Speaker 2 (00:02:27) - You can read more about them by following the links in our show notes, of course, where we've also got the links to that Instagram and Twitter. So just a quick note for me before we get into this, and that is that through everything that we've made as hand and heart media, I've been really open, especially with our audience, that I feel that corporate diversity, equity and inclusion efforts have really been weaponized by a lot of companies. Right? But my issues go beyond that because it's also people, professionals like me who work in workplace consulting or who have workplace consulting businesses who are letting the concept of DNI down. And I know that because I see so many workplaces where they have these policies, they've had external help. But at the end of the day, those who are in minorities, those who experience historical and prevalent oppression, are not being served by these policies. And that just tells me, well, they're not working right. So I met Wilma at the International Workplace Bullying and Harassment Conference in San Diego in 2022, and I had just watched her presentation where diversity, equity and inclusion do not intersect.
Speaker 2 (00:03:46) - I knew immediately that I wanted to have her on this podcast and to share her voice. Wilma has a really commanding and authoritative presence. A. Which I always appreciate in any person, but it's another thing. To also admire how that person communicates their expertise and their experience and their insights, their data, their information in a considerate way. And in Wilma's case, in a way that I found to be profound. So for those reasons, it is genuinely my honor to have Wilma DeSoto on this podcast. It's my honor and it's Your Honor, the listeners as well. As I said at the top of the show, I say you'll learn. I say you'll laugh. And if you like me watching the edits, you might just cry. This is a special one, so let's get into it. We are very lucky to be joined by Wilma DeSoto. Wilma, thank you for coming on.
Speaker 3 (00:04:49) - Thank you for having me, Kate. Good to see you again.
Speaker 2 (00:04:52) - Can you tell us about your professional background?
Speaker 3 (00:04:55) - Oh, yes.
Speaker 3 (00:04:57) - What there is of it. Yeah. Okay. No. Okay. I, um. I was a teacher for 38 years in public schools in Philadelphia. I taught English as a second language and foreign language, and I retired in 2015 after workplace bullying incidents. And I am I'm a graduate of Oberlin College and Oberlin College Conservatory of Music in Oberlin, Ohio. And I did my graduate work at La Salle University. And that master's in bilingual, bicultural studies, Spanish education. And in 2013 I joined the Badass Teachers Association, which is a group that started on Facebook. And we were kind of a rather activist militant group of teachers who got together because of the corporate school reform movement here that was burgeoning and all the standardized testing stuff, which was pretty much to my way of thinking, a political and financial boondoggle for certain people, as well as to put us in the wheel of public education in the United States. So we formed that group. Then we grew to well over 50,000 people in all states and in other countries.
Speaker 3 (00:06:29) - ET cetera. I belong to the quality of work life team, which we presented in 2015 at the Department of Education in Washington, DC, in the boardroom, and we gave a presentation about. Those type of things. The school reform and how it was manifesting as a state affecting teaching, learning, etcetera, etcetera. And we've done conferences around the country. The bats have. And that's how I met Jerry Carbo, who's our president of National Workplace Bullying Coalition. And he was on that team. He's an attorney and a professor at Shippensburg University here in Pennsylvania. So and that's how I came into National Workplace Bullying Coalition. And I've been on that board for about three years now.
Speaker 2 (00:07:25) - And can you tell us a little bit about what that that rather impressive CV looks like now in your day to day life you've got so you've got the National Workplace Bullying Coalition and you've got, you know, a day job, essentially, of everything else you must do and live a life. So what is your work looking like at the moment in that space?
Speaker 3 (00:07:49) - Well, actually, I am supposed to be retired.
Speaker 3 (00:07:52) - I'm just making a mockery of it. You know, It's just, you know, that's what I call it. But it's, you know, I just keep getting people saying, well, we need you to do this and we need you for your help for that or that kind of thing. So most of my work is with activism and some writings that I do, you know, here and there. And yes, that's pretty much it or whatever else people, you know, want me to do, you know, pretty much.
Speaker 2 (00:08:25) - So It's also it's activism. But also you do a lot of work in speaking and presenting on these topics and trying to break down that wall of, you know, understanding essentially as well. So you're making a mockery of retirement by being incredibly busy with a lot of important things. Is there anything before we get right into this conversation that you would like to share about yourself or your life with our audience that you think might be important for them to hear or know about you before we get right into it?
Speaker 3 (00:09:01) - Well, as I said before, I went to Oberlin College and Oberlin Conservatory of Music, and that was in the early 70s, which was kind of like the height of affirmative action type things going on.
Speaker 3 (00:09:30) - And Oberlin Conservatory has had this requirement called basic music skills that everybody incoming had to pass. Okay. And it was a grueling test of musicianship. And if you didn't pass, you had to take the course, which was a horrible course to take. So as incoming freshmen, we go in there to take the test. They were seniors in there taking that test, too, who did not want to do that course and were still trying to pass the test, etcetera, etcetera. So, you know, took a test. Okay. There were 68 freshmen in the conservatory out of 68. Four of us passed. I was one of them. And another friend of mine, another black woman, put in the same high school that I went to. And we were friends. We. She passed two. Okay. And as a flute person, you know, was a flute person. But I've been playing piano since I was three. So I, you know, I had piano lessons as well, too.
Speaker 3 (00:10:37) - So but there was a piano requirement for instrumentalist to take. Because I was interested more in music education. Okay. So I did my piano thing when I passed the basic music skills test and I didn't have to do that. So to refill, to fulfill my piano requirement, I got lessons with a piano teacher, professor at the conservatory. And this was actually, I think, my first. Instance of workplace bullying because I consider the college a workplace. And and the woman who was assigned to me, the professor who was assigned to me, this obviously did not want to teach someone like me. It was quite obvious, for example, during those times of affirmative action, people think that the only reason that you got it is because you were black. Yeah. Therefore you're not qualified for this or qualified. So how dare I? Eh? Skip basic music skills and be as instrumentalists skip the piano requirement. Okay. So when we went in and, you know, she heard me play and she says, I, what do you want to do? I said, Well, I'd like to do some Gershwin preludes, you know? I never did any of those.
Speaker 3 (00:12:01) - But she said, Well, you need to do churning etudes. And I'm thinking Czerny Etudes. I did those back in like eighth grade and everything, right? Oh, okay. So I did turn études and you know, every time my fingers would miss something, she would hit me with a pencil.
Speaker 4 (00:12:22) - That's disgusting.
Speaker 3 (00:12:23) - Okay. Yeah. First of all, she wouldn't let me do what I was capable of doing because she assumed that it was beyond my kin. And second of all, then she would hit me. And I was thinking, you know, this is terrible. You know, the second semester I did luck out because unfortunately for her, she became ill with some kind of thrombosis on her foot and had to skip the second semester. So I got the dean of the conservatory. His name is Amy Danbury. Okay. His wife. Also a great concert pianist, Marianne Danbury. She became assigned to me. So when I went in for the second semester and I played for her and she says, Well, what do you want to do? I said, Well, I really want to do some Gershwin preludes and everything.
Speaker 3 (00:13:15) - She said, I said, Could I? She says, You can do anything you want. And any time that I went in for lessons, she would be at her piano, I'd be in my piano and we'd be playing together. And another kind of thing. And it was a great semester. But the first one, I consider that workplace bullying. Absolutely. You know, as a teenager, you know, and that's really. You know, my first acquaintance with it.
Speaker 2 (00:13:40) - Yeah. And I think, you know, going back to that timeline that you noted, we're going back, you know, 40 something years at this point. And is it 40 years study? 50, 50 years at this point. And the conversations that we're still having really touch on those experiences that you had, the assumed incompetence that that a person will take when they're in that reinforcing that hierarchy and that. Feeling of people needing to hoard their power and abuse their power in a workplace setting, even though it's entirely inappropriate in order to maintain whatever they feel is right for a society that's 50 years ago at a time of affirmative action, as you noted, and a lot of what we talk about today, I think, and the experiences people are having reflect those experiences you had.
Speaker 2 (00:14:39) - And it's since, for you, been a lifetime of those experiences. So, you know, I can definitely. Empathize is the wrong word. But I think, you know, it's. It's incredibly sad that it's an ongoing conversation. It has been an ongoing conversation within your life and you know all the power to you for your fortitude and showing up and and continuing to talk about it as well.
Speaker 3 (00:15:07) - Thank you.
Speaker 2 (00:15:08) - So I think it's a great time to really get stuck into the weeds. Of of this this matter. And going back to where we met at the International Association of Workplace and Bullying Harassment Conference. I was particularly taken with your presentation and you presented on the topic of where diversity, equity and inclusion do not intersect. And it was a very it was we had very short presentations for this conference. So you managed to really cover off a lot of deep. Information. And I will also say this to our audience. Wilma brings the receipts every time I. She is the first podcast guest to send us a resource list which will make available to you.
Speaker 2 (00:15:56) - However, when you see when I saw your presentation, just the sheer amount of data that you were backing it up with was incredible. Not to mention the anecdotal things that you were able to touch on. And I think there wasn't many other people presenting on this topic at that time. Now, one of the things that you you talked about in this presentation that you noted, which was a particular interest to kick off this conversation, is that black people were written into the US Constitution as 3/5 of a person. And you raised this in talking about the racial and social hierarchy in the United States. So I think that that is pretty indicative. A person being written into the constitution of a country as 3/5. Yes. However, when we quite. Yeah. So when we talk about the racial and social hierarchy in the United States, can you talk about the implications of a fact like that and how that fits into this structure as you see it in 2023?
Speaker 3 (00:17:05) - Well, see, not only were we originally written into the Constitution as three the 3/5 clause that you mentioned, there's also the fact that we were owned like livestock or animals for more than 250 years.
Speaker 3 (00:17:21) - So you have that whole history of being not really human and or subhuman from the inception of the country. So just think of the implications, what that means. Okay. So and of course, you're going to have that kind of there's never been any kind of reckoning with that. People here just kind of gloss over it and say, well, you know, that was a long time ago and this is today. And none of that's happening before. But of course, the people who say that none of that happens, too. So, you know, but, you know, my question is, well, if it doesn't happen to you, how do you know so much about it? You know. It's a good question.
Speaker 2 (00:18:18) - I'm sure they have a wonderful answer for that one, Wilmer.
Speaker 3 (00:18:20) - Well, no, they don't use the answer. That's the problem. You see, when you start, you know, zeroing in on those points, people do anything they want, you know, to avoid really coming to terms with that or even just thinking about what a phrase like that means.
Speaker 2 (00:18:39) - And I think that that is, you know, in in part really representative of the hierarchy, which is the privilege to not talk about it, to not deal with it. And that is a snapshot of the United States in 2023. I think there's been a lot of, you know, movement to some extent, but it's really just reverted back after a few years to, oh, well, we don't want to talk about the fact that this since the inception of this country, an entire population of people were considered subhuman. We just don't want to talk about that. We don't want to deal with it. And it is a way of them retaining power in many ways and reinforcing that hierarchy that I think, you know, exists around it people every day. But we don't talk about it.
Speaker 4 (00:19:30) - Yes.
Speaker 3 (00:19:31) - It's also a means and a privilege to blame those who are affected by that, by their reaction under oppression of being. Relegated to subhuman category or inferiority category. Yes. And so. You know, when when people do things wrong.
Speaker 3 (00:19:54) - Or there's a crime committed or something like that. We all of us get painted with that. I get painted with that. Everybody does. Yeah, everyone does. So. They get to blame us for people's reaction under oppression? Yeah. You know, and a lot of their history. Europe and beyond. When they were on oppression. There was a lot of things that they did that we haven't even done. You know, we've been just pretty much trying to survive.
Speaker 4 (00:20:29) - So yeah.
Speaker 2 (00:20:30) - 100%. I mean, that that idea of of the reaction to oppression is something that we can see it in our interpersonal relationships as well. You know, often the the way these things manifest. But I think you're really touching on something really crucial to this that. This is a hostile, oppressive society. What do you expect the reaction to be like, let alone after nearly 300 years? And this this ties in with something that you touched on in the talk. So you discussed the need for a study on the black population that would actually look at the trauma of slavery and the trauma of those hundreds of years of inhumane abuse.
Speaker 2 (00:21:21) - How can you see something like that influencing the current situation and the cultural understandings that we have now?
Speaker 3 (00:21:29) - No, I frankly don't know that it will, but I know it needs to be done. I was looking at a study in 2016 on. Children and grandchildren of survivors of the Holocaust in Europe. Okay. And they were talking about the trauma that they had and how they were even psychological damages and DNA changes even. Yeah. And these descendants of these people. But no one's ever talked about. What kind of DNA changes there could be to African-Americans or the effects of so much trauma. And then then you have after the slavery, you have the whole Jim Crow thing, you know, that happened in in the American South, which, you know, people try and sanitize that as well, you know, because they have something that they call the Great Migration when a lot of black people moved from the south to the north and the Great Migration was actually black people seeking political asylum in their own country because they could be lynched, tortured, murdered, whatever, any time.
Speaker 3 (00:22:40) - Okay. Not and just not to mention just the regular disrespect and abuse that one had to tolerate in order to live. Yeah. So every person of color, black person that people see in the US has survived through all that. Plus. We're a living testimony to being able to be, I would say, a student of clever enough. Focus enough to even be here today to talk to you. But people never think of us that way. They never think of us that way. If you're looking at a history that. You know. But then, you know, you get to get blamed by how you react under that. There's no research about it. There's no studies about it. There's nothing after like almost 300 years, not anything. So I really think that. That needs to be done. I think people will be appalled at what people endured and how that affected people. Right. Maybe they would look at people like me differently as a result of reading that. I don't know, but I would hope so.
Speaker 3 (00:23:54) - At this point, I don't know.
Speaker 2 (00:23:56) - I think you're right in terms of changing the perspective. I think it's a rather unfortunate reality of humans that we we struggle to connect with a lived experience that's not our own. But every human can understand numbers and data that has been peer reviewed and gone through a process where this trauma is legitimized in the terms that so many other communities have been legitimized, as you've noted, through this type of research and genuinely understanding it. And again, not that we want to go into debates with people who would try the, oh, you're just making it up. You don't have trauma kind of people. But there is then a leverage to say, no, this does go to the level of DNA. This does you know, this has generationally had this impact and this chain of causation. And that's why the situation is as it is so.
Speaker 3 (00:24:56) - And a lot of the racism is internalized because that's the that's the flip side of the whole racism coin is the internalized oppression. And a lot of the anger and violence and rage is taken out on people who look just like you or me, you know, And and, you know, that's also a factor that people, you know, need to think about.
Speaker 2 (00:25:21) - I would agree. I would agree.
Speaker 3 (00:25:23) - But instead, you get blamed for being an inferior. You're all criminals. You're all this. You're all that. ET cetera. But no one ever thinks of like, well, maybe there's a reason why that contributed to that. Yes. Maybe people have no hope of going anywhere else outside of where they're born. You know, who knows this? There's so many things. But considering that for people like me, it's not not in the menu.
Speaker 2 (00:25:52) - That's the thing is, I think, you know, we're talking about doing a study on something, you know, historical and generational. But it's also those are actually studies that probably are not being done today in the communities that need them most. You know, you can have 100 surveys on white kids with ADHD.
Speaker 4 (00:26:13) - But yeah.
Speaker 2 (00:26:15) - You know what I mean? Where is this.
Speaker 4 (00:26:17) - This.
Speaker 2 (00:26:18) - Work so that we can solve and engage?
Speaker 4 (00:26:23) - Exactly.
Speaker 2 (00:26:26) - So going a little bit back to your talk, but also going back to the time frame that we spoke about, you discussed black tokenism as a reaction to the Civil Rights Amendment in 1967.
Speaker 2 (00:26:40) - And you discussed very clearly that affirmative action for black people during this period was derailed. And then I came in like a little horse. He had to save everyone, and that was essentially substituted what should have been implemented during this period? This has been distinctly detrimental to the black community and especially to black workers who represent a majority, if not all of the black community. Can you elaborate a little bit on the impacts that this has had not only then, but through to where we're at now with these types of changes and amendments? And and I.
Speaker 3 (00:27:23) - I distinctly remember as a kid my elder sister. You know, it was graduating high school. And I was thinking, remember, the university's calling up the house and asking things like, are you black? Do you want to go to school? College. Okay. And I remember going outside to play with my friends and I was saying, you know, we got the most unusual phone call today from certain university and, you know, asking if we were black and we want to go to college.
Speaker 3 (00:27:57) - And they said, so do we. So did we. So did we. We got it, too. So this is how they went about so-called fulfilling the requirements of black people. And this is before I got out of high school. This is a true story. Okay. That, you know, we'll just call up any of them and anyone will do and we'll just stick them in there. Okay. Then there's also the fear factor at work, because there's a lot of fear amongst white people. A lot of the people, for example, like me who got beat up playing piano, you know, in Oberlin, it scared people because we were assumed not to be qualified to be in white space with them. Okay. And that we were only let in because there was race based quotas, etcetera. So when a lot of us got in there and could actually compete or even outdo. That wasn't supposed to happen. That was not supposed to happen. So what happens is they move that color line back, you know, because this can't be true.
Speaker 3 (00:29:07) - I can't be working with a black person who's not only equal, but might even be better in some respects. And their activities, achievements or whatever can't be unheard of. So you move the color line back, back. So the largest beneficiaries of affirmative action are really white women, and that's been proven. There are stats on that. You can you can look it up. But then everybody else came in who as long as they weren't black, if they were white women or if they were Asian American or they were Latino American or they were handicapped American, or if they were LGBTQ American, everybody else got a seat at the table. Well, with the original problem of exclusion in society of black people was never addressed and relegated to the hinterlands. Oh yeah, I see. There's a lot of things that they do with bias, but and that's fine. But there's good bias and there's bad bias. You know, that's not necessarily racism. That might be a part of it, but it isn't. But when you get down to anti-blackness and racism, it never gets there.
Speaker 3 (00:30:29) - And that's even true today. So when, you know, you attend these trainings and things, a lot of them never really get down to why we needed this in the first place. Okay. It was about everybody else who may have been treated. So me saying, How could I put this off?
Speaker 4 (00:30:48) - White You know.
Speaker 3 (00:30:51) - No, seriously wanting. Wanting to be treated as regular white again. Okay. They you know, as long as they had their their, you know, orientation or or, you know, disability or something, they weren't looked at as the same as other as every man, white person, which is the the normal supposedly. But doing this helped them kind of reestablish that kind of connection with whiteness and being white. And that's not to say that all disabled people, all gay lesbian people or like that. What I do know that in my city there had been a very large number of black trans women who were murdered. And I never saw the white gay community march or scream and holler about that or protest about that.
Speaker 4 (00:31:52) - There you.
Speaker 2 (00:31:52) - Go. That's it. 100%.
Speaker 4 (00:31:54) - Okay.
Speaker 3 (00:31:55) - So I you know, I you know, so that's where I'm forming my perspective. I know it's not what everybody else perceives, and I can't help that, but this is how I'm looking at it.
Speaker 4 (00:32:08) - Yes. Yes. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (00:32:10) - And I think, you know. You can't. You can't gaslight someone's life and someone's lived experience. You know you.
Speaker 3 (00:32:20) - It happens all the time.
Speaker 2 (00:32:22) - Yes, sir. I should say you can. But we don't want to do that here because. Like, what's the point? Like, you can't do that to someone. And that is actually what you go up against every single day, right? That's what the core of it is, that people will gaslight and say, No, it's not that bad. It hasn't been that bad. It didn't happen like that. And you'll have defensive people like you said, you know off white that will ultimately. Not show up. You know, for the people lower down the hierarchy, even if it's pitched to society, is, oh, no, you're all on the same level.
Speaker 2 (00:32:59) - The rising the rising tide lifts all ships. It just wasn't true. There was a ship.
Speaker 4 (00:33:06) - Adrift.
Speaker 2 (00:33:06) - And that was the community of black people that just didn't get a look in actually, at this. It wasn't legitimate. It was tokenism.
Speaker 3 (00:33:13) - I think the hurtful part is many black people support. Those causes. They watch with people they go out with. You know, they do that. But then when it comes to, you know, their their plight, you get left behind.
Speaker 2 (00:33:30) - Do you think that that is a result of just constantly being reinforced and conditioned, that there is a lack of worth in standing up for those causes and that it's easier to support these other causes? Or where do you think that that comes from?
Speaker 3 (00:33:44) - Socialization into whiteness? Is a huge part of it. And you have the the accompanying institutions of society who reinforced those things. Okay. And. I've learned in my life that a lot of social relations, socialization of whiteness. Entails ignoring the pain and suffering of black people.
Speaker 3 (00:34:13) - Because it's better to pretend they and it doesn't exist because that's going to make me.
Speaker 4 (00:34:20) - Unhappy thought.
Speaker 3 (00:34:23) - You know, or worried or whatever. So a lot of it is ignored. People can look at people, you know, being beaten by cops and then then writing an editorial comment like, oh, well, you know, what was he doing there? Or he deserved it or yada, yada, or the person the cops killed, he wasn't no angel. Anything to justify not acknowledging, suffering, death or plight of black folks. And you've probably heard this over and over.
Speaker 2 (00:34:56) - I mean, that's that's kind of the thing that bothers me so much about this particular issue is that we do see it over and over again. We see the same narratives perpetually being put out over the course of decades upon decades upon decades. It's absurd to me that so many other conversations could have progressed. But it comes down to that or have progressed. But it comes down to what racism really is, right? It's going to.
Speaker 4 (00:35:26) - It's we don't.
Speaker 3 (00:35:27) - Get there. We never get there. Exactly.
Speaker 2 (00:35:28) - Because you cannot.
Speaker 3 (00:35:30) - Never get there.
Speaker 2 (00:35:30) - And let's talk about a way that we haven't gotten there specifically. And this is something that I see in my work and why what you spoke about on that day resonated so much with me. We've gone through many iterations of recognizing and seeing the black community, and that is there's a media storm and it goes on for a little bit. And then we see the pendulum swing back to the not carrying and not acknowledging side. And how I see this in my work is that I will see companies be very reactive to social issues in the media and be like, Hey, did you guys know about racism? Let's get a D. And I think going on because we've got to we've got to show that we care about black people now and we want to do that. So they'll go and they'll get usually a white person to come in with a training or an education or something that helps them be not racist.
Speaker 2 (00:36:33) - And I guess I'm going to go in a little bit longer about it because I just want to make sure I capture the essence of what I'm trying to package here. But I think in many ways D and I in the corporate world now, from what I've seen, exists in the same way that the affirmative action failures you experienced existed. There's this idea of, Oh, well, we've got to do something, we'll just do this and do the bare minimum and then gloss over the actual needs when that group that they're supporting either become a threat or they decide, oh, like it's they're asking too much. Now we've said, yes, we want to have diversity, but now the diverse people are asking too much, Now they're asking too much. And it goes on and on. So I'm assuming that you are cognizant of all of this, living through it and seeing it. What are your what are your observations on this and what burdens are you seeing being generated for this on top of the burdens already faced by the black community?
Speaker 3 (00:37:41) - Oh, there's a great article from The Atlantic magazine.
Speaker 3 (00:37:44) - I included my resources that you should check out. It's called. DEA. DEA. Has merit, has better check its privilege. Yeah. And it's about how corporations in, you know, initiate these initiatives and everything. But the bottom line is so that they look good and make money. It has nothing to do with helping the people who are disenfranchised, marginalized, etcetera. And that's particularly black people. It's something that's performative, like perfunctory and, you know, often done where people are like, why do I have to sit for this? I'm not like that because a lot of times people think of racism as my personal flaw or something, or I don't do that. I'm nice to black people, I'm cordial with them, and I work around them and I work with them, etcetera. So that can't be me. They don't see it as a mindset of societal training backed by institutions that reinforce that. They don't see it as systemic. They think it's all personal and it's not all personal. A lot of it has to do with.
Speaker 3 (00:39:05) - Where you stand and where you fit in, in the great scheme of things versus where I stand and where I fit in and why and what keeps me there and what makes you be where you are. And most white people don't like to think about that. They they they want to think about you see, I'm every man. I'm normal. And the the. Those are those people. Blacks, Latinx, Asians. These are the other. Okay. And to me, that's a very. Telling of socialization into whiteness, because instead of saying those people are different, they say those people are other.
Speaker 4 (00:39:50) - Yeah.
Speaker 3 (00:39:50) - And by saying other, it puts them as the standard to be and the standard to be is white superiority. So I know plenty of people who are different Latin, Asian, black, white, European, American. But I would never call them other. What they do. And see. This is where it comes to bite you, right on the tush. Sometimes you don't even realize it.
Speaker 3 (00:40:24) - Until someone points out a point like that, why didn't I think of those people as just different from me? Why do I think of them as other? So that's a mindset that comes through societal training. And that's a racist mindset.
Speaker 4 (00:40:40) - Yes.
Speaker 2 (00:40:41) - Yes. And that's.
Speaker 3 (00:40:43) - Am I making sense to you?
Speaker 2 (00:40:45) - You are making total sense. If anything, I'm struggling to find my own words here. But when we understand that and we look at these performative DNI programs that that I'm talking about, you can immediately see how hollow it is. If a corporate leadership team understands racism, first of all, they have to understand the othering of people and how that affects them. But they also have to say is giving black people this type of perk going to help them as much as not donating to the Republican Party, for example.
Speaker 3 (00:41:24) - For example.
Speaker 2 (00:41:26) - And it's a broad example, but what I'm trying to do is illustrate that unless these corporations that are staking this claim and trying to tokenize a community in order to make money, as you say, unless that is backed up in their systemic actions.
Speaker 2 (00:41:43) - As a company, then it is hollow. I think that this is crucial because what we're seeing is a society that knows there's a wound there and they're just sort of saying, well, we'll take the quickest fix possible. And then everyone's now saying, well, and AI is a waste of money. And it's, you know, it's all going down the hill and it's sort of like, well, yeah, because exactly what you're saying, Wilmer, it's not addressing it beyond the personal level. We as a company want to look good. We as a leadership team want to look good. We're going to do this. But are you going to stop donating to Republican Party who are, you know, causing these types of problems for your black employees in this state? That I think is. Toxic. And I think we're going to look back and be like, Oh, it was just the time and we didn't know. But it's yet another red herring in this 50 plus year conversation of your life.
Speaker 4 (00:42:43) - Yeah, well.
Speaker 3 (00:42:44) - In another time. And another time and another time. Yeah, it's. It's. It's. You know, to be a black person who's hired into one of those corporations as in terms of diversity, it's got to be one of the worst things in the world. It really does. Yeah. Because like I say in my presentation when we were in San Diego. Those things don't stop at the office door. Yes. Okay. Those kind of feelings, attitudes, socialization, institutions. They're all inside, too. Okay. And see, that puts an extra added burden on someone who has to constantly prove that they're human. Constantly. Constantly prove that they're qualified. Constantly. Because the minute a black person enters white space and I'm talking about what Dr. Elijah Anderson wrote, he's one of my sources here. He wrote Black and White Space. And you have to. Represent. We had to prove that, Oh, well, I'm not from the slum or the ghetto or you have to, you know, dress certain way, speak a certain way, you know, in order just to be left alone to do the job pretty much, you know, just just to be.
Speaker 3 (00:44:18) - So that's a constant strain and struggle on people because the moment you enter that you're under scrutiny because they don't think you belong there. Yeah. You know why they don't think you belong there? Because you're black. Not because you don't know anything. Not because you're not studied. Not because you're not good. Just because. So even the most, shall we say. Lower level white person is better than any black person. I don't care whether he's a PhD or what. So you have that constant thing on the back. Plus you're trying to make a living. So you can, you know, feed a family, keep a roof over your head. The usual pressures that people have at work, which are pretty hard enough as it is, But you also have that. And that's why I put in that article and the resources why so many of your black employees are quitting. I don't know that resource page that I sent to you. It has a lot of. Decent resources on it about like, what we're talking about.
Speaker 3 (00:45:29) - Yes, like the article from The Atlantic. The article for Forbes and also the other one, when white women became the face of diversity.
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