Talking About… Disrupting and Influencing Bias

In this series of conversations, Maggie and Sarita talk about our ongoing journeys shifting from “not racist” to “anti-racist.” This conversation is from early June 2020.

Maggie: We’ve spent time exploring racism — from unintentional to intentional. Let’s move into the questions of How do you influence it? How do you reframe the conversation?

There is something really powerful about addressing this directly, talking about race overtly, instead of doing the “polite” thing and not talking about it at all. How we can use our influence — in the spheres we’re in — to share insights we’re learning from our colleagues of color and community voices? We can use our privilege to call out racist behavior, so that we’re not putting that burden back onto people of color, core community organizers, or BIPOC advocates.

When we hear something, we can disrupt, instead of dismiss.

Sarita: Yes — we can speak up. And, as you say, the key question is, how? Instead of “call outs,” how can we help each other look at our thoughts and words, differently? Even the most well-intentioned among us can be unintentionally offensive and propagate dangerous concepts — we don’t know what we don’t know. If you find yourself, as a friend or a colleague, in those moments where unintentional or normalized bigoted behavior is happening, how do you correct it in real time?

As an example: A friend of mine, he’s white and he’s male, actively works to address racism, and sexism, in real-time. He believes, as many of us do, that equity needs to be promoted by everyone, not just the people who are under-represented. I’m proud of him and his courage. The issue is that he finds that these conversations don’t go well for him. He gets shot down and loses credibility when he tries to “correct people.”

And I think that’s a place to start — shifting away from the idea of “correcting people.” Having impact needs skills: How can you speak up for what’s right, with compassion and humanity, and keep credibility. And keep influence.

Maggie: If someone’s being openly, explicitly racist, that’s one thing. It seems easier to confront. But if someone is being inadvertently racist, and you want to be compassionate, you want to approach it as a learning process. “Here’s an opportunity for you to learn” kind of thing.

How do you identify and influence — in a way that doesn’t threaten their safety, doesn’t shame them and shut them down? This goes back to white fragility. They have to be uncomfortable to grow, but I’m wondering what’s the level of discomfort where they feel the conversation is a good thing, versus “I feel shamed and I’m never going to talk to you again.”

Sarita: You hit the nail on the head for me when you said, how do we help them feel safe enough to change? When people feel threatened or on the defensive, it makes the conversation way less effective. I love the idea of approaching it as a learning process.

And, to be transparent, it feels really uncomfortable and scary to speak up. I feel a genuine need to speak up when I’m confronted with something bigoted, or veiled bigotry — I understand the responsibility in front of me. And, at the same time, not saying something is so much easier than saying something. Letting it go is so much easier than conflict.

Maggie: I think, in any conflict scenario, the question is: what is most important? What’s most important in that moment is helping that person understand what they’ve said. It’s not my feelings that’s important.

Having scripts for different scenarios is also really appealing to me. Once I’m given a script, I can deploy it, but I have trouble coming up with the words in the moment. In the moment of conflict, especially if my counterpart is angry, I get a little shell shocked. Which is why I didn’t have much to say to that man who harassed me last week when I canvassed for petition signatures.

Personal criteria for action might help as well. Instead of going after every single instance of biased, racist behavior and, and losing credibility like your friend is worried he is doing, having an internal flow chart or rules of engagement could be useful. If I encounter X type of behavior then I will do Y. If I hear A language, then I will do B.

For instance, with extended family, I started making some scripts and flow chart rules for myself, so that if I ever found myself in a situation that was making me uncomfortable because of what people were expressing, I could leap on it in the moment. I don’t leap on every single little scenario, and these are general rules. As an example: We were playing Boggle with extended family. An LGBTQ slur came up in the random jumble of letters and I looked around the table and saw that almost everyone noticed it, making eye contact with each other and giving that slight nod, that smirk. When someone tried to play the word and get points for it, I said, in my loudest, most forceful, voice, “No, absolutely not. We will not use bigoted language here.” I named the behavior for what it was. I didn’t use euphemisms. My tone, my bluntness, my refusal to “be polite” and sweep it under the rug came out of me because I was prepared for it. Because I was prepared to claim that authority, and I claimed it, everyone completely stopped their snickering behavior and that word was not played. The power of the script, and the power of if-X-then-I’ll-Y were super helpful.

So could we make scripts or if-then rules when we encounter oblivious or harmful language? Especially in a public or a community space, or for policies that are harmful and reinforce racist tropes or stereotypes? Can we do a little planning ahead to prepare for these encounters?

Can we either ask questions about what they really mean, or give a very firm boundary of some sort?

Sarita: That’s great. I love that idea of thinking, in advance, about how I might respond. So, if it’s an unintentional trope or insult, coming to it with the responsibility of addressing it, but keeping a lot of space for compassion — that this may have been an unintentional offence, and letting the person know — because knowing is half the battle.

And if it’s openly bigoted, verbalizing that the statement isn’t okay with me.

Let’s take that second one a step further: When I hear a biased or bigoted statement, and when I address it, I often hear something like “Chill, I was just joking.” The get-out-of-jail-free card for racism, sexism, and homophobia is “I was just joking.” I think a lot of people truly believe these are harmless statements. But they don’t recognize that bigoted comments, even in jest, propagate dangerous ideas.

There’s a well-known cognitive bias around hearing lies and falsehoods: the more you hear false things, even when you know they are false, the more that they start to feel normal and true. BTW, it’s called the illusory truth effect.

In the “I’m just joking” response — there’s the straightforward, and transparent response of saying “I understand. My concern is that jokes reinforce stereotypes, even when it’s unintentional. So, that statement is not okay with me.” It’s a clear way to challenge social norms and explain your reasoning.

Back to your example with Boggle, what happened next in the room? Do you feel like there were longer term implications?

Maggie: Number one, in that moment I outed myself as someone who doesn’t believe that slur was okay — that’s the longer term implication. And I was ready to do that because of the if-then rules I’d thought through for myself — the prior internal work I needed to do. I had decided I’m not going to, for the sake of politeness or going-along, let them be comfortable in believing that I share their negative beliefs. By standing up for that and saying no to that, I outed myself and that was the major implication.

Now, somebody with a different family or workplace dynamic might have to weigh how their approach and script should differ, especially if they are concerned about more serious fallout.

Sarita: You weren’t concerned about more serious fallout, in the moment?

Maggie: Part of my rules of engagement for this group of people is: If I respond X, and it does not go over well, what am I prepared to do then? There’s a continuum of what-then responses, things like: escalate my push back, leave, talk to my husband about it and request a response from him, refuse to return to future social engagements with this group, use it as a teaching moment with my child.

At the Boggle game, I had decided long even before I spoke out loud that if bigoted behavior were to continue after I asked for it to stop (here, if the word were to be played) I would take my child and we’d leave. I would have said, “If you’re going to speak or behave this way, then I can’t be around you. I can’t participate with you if you allow bigotry here. And I will not allow my child to be exposed to that.” So I would have removed myself and my child in that situation; my husband probably would have chosen to come with me. But of course, I speak only for myself, not for him. He’s another adult, right? There’s also there’s power for your child to see people making independent choices and standing up for your values. And especially, at the time, he was quite young.

Sarita: Speaking up takes courage, and that’s huge. Just the courage to say something.

I think a lot about scaling impact. How do we work together to scale equity and awareness? How can we each help change hearts and minds and understand the experience of someone facing bigotry? In practical terms, I’d hope this awareness results in electing people who are actively anti-racists and pro-equity. People who will drive equity changes, like less red-lining, less voter disenfranchisement, and so on.

So, I think a lot about the “hearts and minds” piece, and the awareness piece. And, tying that back to the flow-chart rules of engagement, my key question would be what do I most want out of this conversation — what can I say or do to create the outcome I hope to see? Am I saying something because I want you to know what behavior is unacceptable to me? Am I saying something because I want to actually change your outlook? In any given opportunity to speak up, what’s my goal? Being deliberate about that answer will guide the flow-chart rules.

Maggie: What’s my goal? That’s a question each one of us has to ask ourselves.

Sarita: Yes! You had mentioned reading about the “multi-lane highway” analogy to equity. Each lane represents a path you can take: Maybe it’s being on the ground, protesting. Maybe it’s working on campaigns, or running for office. Maybe it’s talking to your family and friends. Maybe it’s through art.

There are a lot of lanes on the highway — and you only need to pick one to drive in. Pick the one that works for you, right now. You can change lanes later, as your needs change. Understand what your goal is, then figure out how to drive in that lane.

Maggie: There’s multiple ways to contribute and we don’t have to feel like we must drive in every lane. It’s so helpful for it to be okay to not have to do everything all at once or make grand gestures.

Sarita: I, like many of us, suffer from the “I have to do it all — right now!” fallacy. I love that idea of choosing from your strengths and passions, and taking a realistic approach to have impact. I think that’s really smart.

And a key point from earlier — this question of what impact do you want to have? If you have the courage to say something in the moment, what is the goal of that thing that you’re about to say? In the Boggle game, you can say, “Look — not in front of me. I’m not going to tell you how to live your life, but I would love for you to understand my perspective.”

Maggie: At the time, I couldn’t have told you what my goal was. Looking back I can see it now, I just didn’t know it consciously when I set up my rule of engagement. My goal was a firm boundary around: “Not in front of me, not in front of my kid,” and a desire to disrupt the normalizing of bigoted behavior.

Sarita: Yeah, we can’t expect to change opinions — people have to come to opinion changes on their own. But you can set the expectations of your social norms, and set a boundary that some things are not acceptable or normal. You can share your perspective and truth, and advocate for what you believe is right.

Maggie: There is also a measure of self protection. “I simply won’t allow you to say that in front of me, or my child.”

Sarita: Yes — absolutely — great point.

And back to the multi-lane highway analogy. We have to be realistic in what we can each do: We still each have a regular life to take care of — work, grocery shop, shower, all the life stuff. And, there are so many causes in the world — climate, homelessness, diseases. So, anti-racism doesn’t have to mean full-time activism. If it’s something you believe in, find one or two lanes to so you can have impact in your everyday life.

Maggie: Then you’re not spending the energy of going from lane to lane and you don’t deplete yourself and burn out. Because, to quote the woman from the protest you participated in, this is the long haul.

Sarita: The long-term piece of this, and the idea of “doing the work” is a good tie into next week’s topic: Meaningful, sustained allyship or performative, on-trend allyship. Making a commitment to the long road ahead.

Well, Maggie as always, I love chatting with you. These conversations are really thought provoking and challenge me. They help me move out of a fatalistic perspective and into something constructive, optimistic and action oriented.

Maggie: I agree. And I always learn from you. I learn from the conversation, I get different reframes on how to think about what I’m seeing, what I’m doing and what I’m thinking. I really appreciate that.

Back to the idea of what gets talked about gets normalized, I feel like we’re normalizing anti-racism for ourselves the more we talk together about structural racism, anti-racism, privilege, disruption and how it all plays out on the big stage of our world, as well as in our individual communities and lives. Talking about it helps normalize this kind of thinking, and language, which is fuel for disrupting racism. An arrow is in the quiver!