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(soft music) - Hello and welcome to the Crosscut festival.

I am Jason Johnson, the host of "A Word", a podcast on slate.com.

We are recording here today.

I'll be talking with Dr. Robin DiAngelo.

Her book, "White Fragility" became a best seller during the so-called racial reckoning over the year after George Floyd's murder.

She's now arguably the most prominent white voice in calling on white people to be accountable for racism.

Dr. DiAngelo, really glad to have you here today.

- I'm thrilled to be talking to you Jason, Dr. Johnson, excuse me.

- It's okay, it's okay.

You're the one being interviewed, so you get all the- - You just me in ease too quickly.

- I wanna start with this.

It's generic to begin with praise, but I wanna say this sincerely.

I actually read your book last year.

I read "White Fragility" last year.

I thought it was an excellent book.

It stepped into a space that not enough people were stepping into quite frankly and not enough white people were stepping into quite frankly.

So I just wanna say that from the beginning, a big fan of your work.

I'm gonna start with where we are right here right now in this country.

Were you surprised that officer Derek Shovan was found guilty of murdering George Floyd?

What do you think that says about where our country is right now on race?

- I was surprised that he was found guilty on all three accounts.

Just because watching the trial, it seems absolutely undeniable and indisputable that he's guilty on all three accounts.

Based on the history of our criminal justice system in relation to cases like this, I didn't expect that to come through on all accounts.

Symbolically it is profound and of profound importance but as we've seen every inch of progress as Carol Anderson, so powerfully argues in white rage.

Every inch of racial progress has been met by a white backlash.

And we can see at the same time those forces growing really strongly.

So we cannot be complacent.

We cannot say, oh, this is the turning point.

It is a potential beginning.

But if we relax around it, that's all it will be, I think.

History shows us that.

- So the day of the ruling, I did a lot of media talking about it.

And my first reaction is I was not surprised and I wasn't particularly happy.

I had long predicted that Derek Shovan was going to be found guilty.

And the reason why is because I felt like white supremacy in America occasionally has it sacrificial lambs, right?

Okay, we're gonna say that Trent Lott and Jesse Helms were the racists in Congress.

And once we take care of them, the problem is solved.

We'll say this is one bad apple.

How do you respond to sort of that tape that it's like, well, of course the justice system will get rid of this one bad guy after your protest.

But does it speak to the fact that we may see changes when it comes to the other officers being held accountable or the half a dozen other shootings that we've seen just during the two or three weeks of the trial?

- Yeah, well also stories of oppression can accommodate exceptions but the rule will remain consistent.

And the exceptions will be used to negate the rule.

I mean, we saw that during Obama's presidency.

We're post-racial now.

I mean, it was actually harder for me to do my work during Obama's presidency than it is today because I don't think anybody is in denial that we are so not post-racial.

Not only could the system accommodate that exception, but it gave it an infusion of racism, an infusion of explicit racism.

It got more legitimacy to express that than it had before.

We're gonna have to be really careful as always, dot every T and excuse me, dot every I and cross every T and still.

The question that keeps coming to me is what a price to pay?

Like what does it take to get white people to see this?

Is that what it took nine and 1/2 minutes, three minutes beyond no pulse in order for us to say, well, maybe he didn't do something.

And that's what we're gonna be up against in every case.

- And I'm glad that you mentioned that because that was essentially my sentiment.

I was like, it took basically a nine minutes snuff film that was seen around the entire planet and then a year's worth of protest.

And then quite frankly, a phalynx of other white police officers saying he's the bad one and EMTs and everybody else.

When it got to the point where one of the witnesses was an amateur MMA guy, I was like, goodness gracious, you couldn't have come up with a better list.

When you talk about how you did this work under president Obama, this is what's really fascinating to me and I think a lot of people who are watching, how did you get into this kind of work?

Like how did you get into this formally in talking to white people about white people and about racism?

- Well, pretty much any answer I give you is going to be on some level a strategic answer, right?

I am an educator.

And interestingly recently one of the strategies I use got thrown back and used as proof that I just showed up in 2018 and took advantage of that moment.

And let me add that in the intro you said that my book became a bestseller when George Floyd was killed.

But in fact it debuted in 2018 on the New York Times bestseller list.

It was on the list for at least a year prior to that moment.

I just wanna be clear because it's often framed as if I took advantage of something.

I fell into it.

I wasn't unqualified white person who like millions of other unqualified white people got a job I wasn't qualified for.

I sometimes wonder if black folks aren't kind of amazed at the mediocrity that white people get away with.

Let me just say.

- We're no longer amazed by it, we're used to it.

But please continue, this is good.

- I was your classic white, progressive or liberal as I called myself at the time, One, I thought, of course I'm qualified to go into workplaces in cross-racial teams and help primarily white employees grapple with racism.

I'm qualified because I'm an open-minded white person.

And two, that's gonna be really fun.

Who wouldn't like to have those conversations, aren't they cool, isn't this interesting?

And on both counts, I was in for the most profound learning of my entire life.

So basically I answered a job announcement for diversity trainer.

I just graduated with a degree in sociology, had no idea what I could do for a living.

Saw that ad and applied for the job and got it.

And everything about it was fish out of water.

From having my racial worldview challenged by folks of color in a way that I'm a non-traditional student.

So I was in my 30s at this time when I graduated with a bachelors.

And I could be that far in life and at that point college educated, a parent and never had had my racial worldview challenge.

I couldn't even tell you I had a racial worldview and certainly not in any sustained way by a significant number of people of color but we were working in cross racial teams.

So that was the first fish out of water.

And the second one was the hostility, the meanness of white people to this conversation.

And I was a lot like a deer in headlights in the beginning, but it became so predictable.

It really is a lot like a script.

And I imagine this happens for you, right?

Like, okay, here it goes.

I know exactly what this person's gonna say right now.

And so I actually went on to get my PhD.

So I'm a little bit different in that I went from practice to theory rather than theory to practice.

But that's how I ended up here.

- I wanna dig into something that you've mentioned, even just this monologue that you just gave.

I am amazed at your comfort in talking about your whiteness.

Because you can say with not a hint of self-deprecating humor or condescension, it's like, yeah, I was a mediocre white person.

I stumbled to this job, but now I've done X, Y, and Z.

And that is a level of candor that most white people seem incapable, incapable of having about themselves.

Why is it that white people have so much difficulty talking about whiteness even amongst themselves?

And I ask that not just as a scholar and an academic and a public relations, I just ask that as a black person.

Because black people have no problem talking about being black amongst ourselves.

- There's several threats, right?

There's not just one.

The first one that comes to my mind is it serves us not to have these conversations.

It serves us to be uncomfortable, to have such delicate sensibilities that we can't tolerate.

There's a function to that.

That's not just a natural response.

So that's one piece.

Another piece is the paradigm we're using.

I don't think you could have come up with a more effective way to protect racism as a system and the way that white people benefit from it, than to define it as an individual act of conscious meanness.

And as long as you define it that way you guarantee denial and defensiveness.

And sometimes when people, sometimes, often when white people take umbrage to what I'm saying, I say, hey, if that's how I was defining racism, I agree with you that it would be offensive for me to suggest that you're automatically racist just because you're white when I don't know you.

But that is not the sociological definition.

That is not the understanding the framework that those of us who really engage in this work are using.

When you understand it as a system, I mean, things like guilt just become moot.

I did not choose to be socialized into a racist ideology, into a white supremacist ideology internalization of superiority.

I would never have chosen that, but I wasn't given a choice.

What I do feel now is responsible for the outcome.

I was socialized into that.

And now it's on me to challenge that.

And that's actually liberating but that's transformative.

And although painful, it's also the most exhilarating, intellectually, emotionally work I could ever imagine doing.

- So when you say that, you say that it's sort of liberating.

I'm thinking about the fact that, and I was reading your most recent book, which I was also really much enjoyed, which got into this conversation of individualism, just talking about sort of nice white people.

And so your average white person, when you do these presentations, when you have these talks is saying to themselves, wait a minute, if I am not individually me, if I don't say to Jason, I hate you 'cause you're black and quite frankly, no one says that, right?

Like Richard Spencer, white nationalists, don't say, I hate black people.

They just say, I don't want you here.

So when someone comes up to you and says, hey, I don't individually do mean things.

I hired a black intern and my brothers, cousins, sisters, next door neighbor his college roommate actually dated a black guy once.

When you hear that from people, what is your counter to get them to realize like, no, you still actually have individual responsibility even if you haven't individually been hostile to someone.

- Well, first of all, I would question whether they had not individually been hostile to somebody or hurtful, because I would imagine the thousand daily cuts that are so exhausting for black folks in primarily white environments.

As I imagine you are, they're not conscious or intentional, but they have an impact nonetheless.

So that goes back to that question of not if I've been socialized into this, but how.

My racism doesn't look like a white nationalist racism, but it looks like something.

If you grant that the society is built on, rooted in and permeates with a white supremacy, ideology and racism, that it is a system in all institutions then you know you're a part of it and you can change your question to, okay, how am I a part of it?

What does mine look like?

How do I know how well I'm doing?

One, do we even have relationships?

It's always surprises me white people who live pretty much completely segregated lives as most white people do and yet are totally confident that they have no racism, no bias, would never do anything.

But on the occasion when they got feedback that they have, how have they responded?

And if they never got feedback again, odds are that doesn't mean they're doing great.

It means they responded in a way that said they can't hear it.

And so the relationship just isn't as authentic as they think that it is.

I can't probably come out and directly say that to somebody who's saying I don't do mean things, but that's kind of what I would try to have them understand.

And I would also use an analogy that they might be able to relate to.

And this one's easy for anyone who identifies as female.

I'm a cisgender female, my pronouns are she, her, I'm white.

Is to imagine that any man could be untouched by patriarchy.

What little boy doesn't know that it's better to be a boy than a girl.

And things are gonna go better for you if you don't do anything that's associated with girls or girl like.

And it's really similar around race.

We know at a very early age that it's better to be white.

And so how is the internalization of that coming out?

- So, along those same lines, you talk about white fragility and it's the sort of white people's apprehension, defensiveness and whatever and dealing with these issues.

But what I find interesting is that sort of white fragility can manifest itself differently in men versus women.

A white man's fragility comes in terms of, it's really his sense of masculinity.

Like, hey, I'm a white man.

I've done this, I've earned this, I've earned this, I've earned this, I've earned this.

And I think Halle Berry's hot, so I'm not a bigot.

And then a white woman is like, well, hey, I'm already a woman, how could I be an oppressor?

Because I've already been denied opportunities 'cause I had somebody to try and mean to me at my first seven jobs.

What's the process internally in breaking down those sort of gender biases that people have to get them to look at their racial biases?

Well, I might say, yes, you've worked really, really hard, but there's a major barrier you didn't face so that impacted the outcome of your hard work.

And I often use the swimming in currents in the water.

When you swim with the currents, not only does it impact the outcome of your efforts, you're moving your arms, you're working.

But it's paying off in a way that you don't even see or feel.

When you swim against the current, you're acutely aware of it.

And that's why I would try to go in somewhere where they might relate to being against the current.

I usually would ask when white people move to their marginalized status, I just said, so tell me what anti-blackness looks like in the white queer male community.

Tell me what anti-blackness looks like among Ashkenazi Jews of European descent?

What's white feminism?

You can ask those kinds of questions and hopefully, sorry.

- Oh no problem.

- I'll just keep my finger here.

Sometimes that helps.

And I think you know that if the question is ultimately, how do you get white people to engage and see this without defensiveness, that's the million dollar question.

And there are strategies, but it's hard.

- So a couple of weeks ago during a big speech that he gave, it was town hall.

So Joe Biden, somebody asks about race and racial togetherness, bringing the country together.

And Joe Biden said, look, one of the things that I think is a sign of progress in this country is look at all these interracial commercials, right?

You didn't see those 10 or 15 years ago.

When I was done throwing various things at my television screen what I wrote and pointed out is that most of the presentations of sort of interracial relations on television and commercials, it's always white men and black wives.

I mean, that is primarily what is shown.

So it's still racial progress in terms of a sort of patriarchal and racial standard.

As long as the white guy is on top, that's fine.

Whether his wife is Asian, is black or something else like that.

What do you say when you are doing seminars or doing training and you meet white people who say, "I have a black spouse.

How can I be racist if I love this man or I love this woman?

Or we have adopted black children."

Because those are people who will probably demonstrate like I remember what I had to do to learn how to do my daughter's hair.

I remember the time that my husband was denied a job opportunity and I heard some racial slur in the bathroom because there was just a bunch of white women there.

How do you get to those white people to get them to understand that diverse Cheerios commercials do not mean racism is over.

- Yeah, a couple of ways.

One is so, what does your life actually look like?

What has changed in your life on the ground as a result of these commercials?

So I don't ever wanna minimize the symbolic power of those representations.

But one of the things I show a picture of the interns, the white house interns, how white they are.

And then I make a point that likely Biden's interns and his cabinet are gonna be more diverse.

And then I say, and not one single person listening to me right now grew up in a society in which Biden's cabinet was the norm.

And all your socialization is not come on done because at this point in your life, you see some images.

It's important, it's a beginning but it becomes superficial if it's not followed up with actual outcome differences.

And inclusion alone is not an outcome difference.

I actually have a piece under a chapter called common patterns of white progressives.

And it's basically making sure everyone knows you're married to a black man.

- Oh God, yes.

- That pattern.

- It's insufferable.

- Yes, and the point is not that you can't share, if I was married to a black man, what an incredibly potential source of deep understanding.

But I say potential because so many white women married to black men don't demonstrate that.

Because if you are using your marriage as proof that you're not racist, you don't understand systemic racism, right?

If anything, what you come away with is this is a lifelong and ongoing.

It'll never be finished.

I have so much more awareness.

I have so much more skills and I still step in it on occasion.

To use a harsh amplified example, I think it's fair to say Harvey Weinstein is a misogynist.

And yet he was married to a woman, he might've had daughters.

He could function around women.

He didn't assault every woman he met, he probably wouldn't have assaulted me, my hair is gray.

But could I feel his general misogynistic orientation too?

Probably, I could probably feel it.

Well, we have a much more subtle version.

All of us have some version of the ideology of white supremacy.

You just can't be exempt from it.

And denying it, this is what Ibram Kendi says so beautifully, "Denial is the heartbeat of racism, and I'm not racist is the sound of that heartbeat."

So I'm gonna ask you if I may, Dr. Johnson, when white people say I'm not racist and no matter what follows it, are you thinking, great, I'm talking a white person with a critical consciousness right now?

- No, I don't believe that at all.

In fact, if I hear a white person say, and I use this example all the time.

I am probably sexist.

I am probably homophobic and I'm probably racist because I was raised in America.

I know the kinds of things that I was raised to think in this country.

The difference that I always say, 'cause I would never call myself non homophobic, non-racist, non anti-trans or whatever is I make a conscious effort to think about those things when I interact with people and not just those particular people.

That's what I attempt to do.

And it's interesting that you say that because this is a conversation we had before 'cause you get into those questions about like allyship.

And in my view, I don't put a great deal of focus on allyship.

I focus on sort of are you a generally decent human being?

For example, I have lots of white students who consider me like a second dad.

I have lots of LGBTQ students who like consider me to be one of their closest mentors.

I am not queer, I am not white.

I have all sorts of biases and prejudices, but I have found a way to still be a loving human being towards them.

And so I asked you this question, when somebody comes to you, when some white person comes to you and they're crying and they're in tears after the seminar.

And they're like, how can I be a better ally?

Where do you start with?

You say, look, can you treat people as regular human beings?

Do you give them a reading list?

Because that's often what white people say at the end of this.

They say they wanna know what to do but somebody runs up to me and says, "Jason Johnson, I'm an ally to black people."

I'm usually running the other direction 'cause that sounds performative to me.

- Yeah, and I don't know if this would be a surprise to listeners, but I do not call myself an ally or a white ally.

I am committed to anti-racist work.

But as for you, Dr. Johnson to decide if in any given moment, I'm actually behaving in ways that you might consider ally.

Now notice two things in any given moment, which means I'm not done, I don't arrive.

It's not a fixed location.

And it requires accountability, right?

I am the least capable, least qualified to make that determination.

And let's be honest, I'm the most invested in the system as it is.

I mean, there's so many perversions of racism.

So many ways that we project onto black and other people of color our own stuff, if you will.

So this idea that you're irrational, you're too angry.

You have a chip on your shoulder, you have an agenda.

It's such a perversion of I think white people are the most irrational, the most angry on this topic, the least objective.

And yet we position ourselves as the validators of whether your experience is legitimate or not.

The arrogance of whiteness is pretty stunning.

- And so along those same lines, when we think about arrogance a new phenomenon is it advanced by technology is explosion like the last two or three years in these videos, right?

Of some white guy being crazy racist at Chipotle, some white woman being called Karen this or Barbecue Becky who's yelling at random white people.

And these are often social circumstances, right?

They're encounters at Walmart.

They're encounters at the grocery store, they're encounters at the mall.

Do you think that kind of public shaming, is it helping white people realize their own behavior when they see it?

Like the young lady who was the birder, I can't remember her name but was yelling at the black guy and tried to call the cops on him.

Do you think these are our teaching moments for white people or are they just saying, oh great, now I'm threatened by class or culture.

How do you think it's playing out?

- It was Amy Cooper and Christopher Cooper.

They're potential teaching moments, but all too often they get used to reinforce what I call the good, bad binary.

Those are the racists and I'm not that.

And yes, for like the example of Amy Cooper, it's just too perfect.

Like in every level you see white fragility, you see white women's tears, you see the expectation that the entire institution would back you up.

You see that I'm not racist even as we're acting in racist ways.

It's just such a good example.

But before I use it and kind of break it down and unpack it, I always say, this is not really about Amy Cooper.

Amy Cooper just beautifully manifested some patterns that are very common.

And so we have to ask ourselves, what's my version again of Amy Cooper?

Notice that Amy Cooper like any white person who's ever been caught on tape, doing something racist is gonna say, I'm not racist.

And that's why that claim is functionally meaningless.

So again, if we use it to separate ourselves, I mean, I used to say something really provocative and like I stopped, but I'll just go here with you.

I used to say, Donald Trump is not any more racist than I am.

Now, what I meant is I grew up in the same culture.

He doesn't say things that are completely off the wall random.

I don't know what you're talking about, that doesn't make sense.

I never heard what he says about Mexicans.

Of course I've heard those things.

Or it wouldn't make sense, it couldn't resonate if I hadn't also been inculcated with those ideas.

There is of course a difference between us and that is he amplifies and embraces his racism.

And I seek to challenge mine and help other white people do the same.

But it doesn't serve the cause to put him in the racist camp if that means I'm over in the not racist camp.

- Right, right.

And I like how you say that about Donald Trump.

Because if you take a lot of what Trump has said, like you said, most white people have heard that, most other people have heard that.

It's not like what he said is completely out of the bounds of things that we've heard people say in our social lives, our personal lives, our professional lives, et cetera.

We've got about five minutes that's all.

I wanna get to a couple of questions before we start getting to the Q&A 'cause we've got tons of things coming into the chat right now.

I wanna go this intimacies lack larger national things.

Earlier this year, January six, you had a whole bunch of people trying to overthrow the government.

I mean, just try to overthrow the government.

It was a crowd that was mostly law enforcement, former military people and 99.9% white.

What is your definition?

Because again, it goes back to that, like you said, racism is this individual meanness.

Lots of white people watch that and they're like, oh my God, well I not an insurrection.

So I can't be a bad person when I call the police.

How do you define the difference between being a white nationalist and then the general sort of white supremacy that permeates how most people in this country think?

- This connects to the conversation about Trump because he just took the dog whistle out of it.

Keppra Carlston is following up even more direct.

Like we don't need any dog whistle anymore we now have permission to express what's always been royally just under the surface.

And I wanna make a point, I think that doesn't royal very far into service for white progressive's either.

You don't have to scratch very hard in a white progressive to get them quite resentful and a lot of hostile I think anger and anti-blackness can come out.

- Oh yes, I saw that in the primary.

- Yeah, so we're back to like, what's my version of this.

Let's not use these situations to separate ourselves.

So ask me the question again.

- How would you see the difference if you're explaining to somebody what's the difference between being a white nationalist to sort of being white supremacist?

- I mean, okay, so white nationalists are very clear that they want a white country, a white rule, a white led.

Replacement theory is direct from white nationalism that you will not replace us.

We are born to lead, destined to lead and so forth.

They're clearly working towards that.

I would say a white supremacist is similar.

I often use the term of vowed racist, an open racist.

But white supremacy is the foundation of this country and the system it speaks to the hierarchy that is expressed in myriad ways that white people are at the top, should be at the top.

And are biologically superior to be at the top.

All of us are getting that message.

Some of us just go unconscious and let it function at an unconscious level by denying it.

Some of us are working at uncovering it and others are full born embracing it and wanting it to be manifested much more clearly.

And that might be your insurrection and your white nationalists.

- I wanna close with this before we go to the questions.

You sort of mentioned this before, but I wanna make sure that people really bear down on this this idea that you can be a part of sort of larger intellectual discussions and it's still missed out.

So right now we have Republicans all around the country screaming about critical race theory.

And they're like, oh, we got to get rid of critical race theory, we got to get rid of critical race theory, even though most of them can't define what critical race theory is.

My understanding of critical race theory is it is merely, I mean, it has its histories and actually legal studies, but it's merely looking at how the law and then education outcomes and other things may differ or the outcomes may be differ and the experience may differ based on some of these race.

How would you define critical race theory?

And do you think you're a critical race theorist to do the work that you do?

- I mean, you and I are both academics.

So technically I'm not a critical race theory because it is a very specific of philosophical field within maybe what we might call equity studies.

And it does come out of legal scholarship.

Carrick Bell was considered to be the father.

And I don't have my background in that.

It's being used because it's a really great little soundbite or mean and the theory part is useful to those who want to undermine an anti-racist agenda.

Because you can say, well, see, it's just a theory, which means it's just some belief some people have and they're trying to impose that belief on us.

So I think those who are using it that way are using critical race theory as a stand in for systemic racism and then saying, there is no such thing as systemic racism.

And that's the fight.

If there's no such thing as systemic racism, we don't have to change these systems, outcomes, the cream just rises.

Overwhelmingly the top is white because in mail, because white men apparently are the best and the brightest.

I mean, I also love the way Ibram Kendi says, most people aren't gonna argue that by every measure across every institution, blacks are at the bottom.

And indigenous people and white people are at the top and there's only two overall explanations.

Black people aren't inferior.

Or systemic racism.

And if you're not using systemic racism, then you're using a racist framework to make sense of that outcome.

And that to me is the fight over critical race theory.

- So we're gonna go to audience questions, I'm having a little bit of a challenge right now getting access to the audience questions that were presented here in the chat.

Let's see here.

One moment, I have a little bit of a challenge here.

- If I talk while you're doing that, will it distract you?

- No, no, please do, please do 'cause we're having a little bit of- - 'Cause I have a thought, the question you asked me earlier about like, how does somebody know how can they be an ally?

I mean, I would always start with self awareness, self reflection, self knowledge.

What does this look like in you?

And then I do believe that if you truly have an integrated life, you don't have to ask anybody to teach you.

If you and I hung out and I just shut my mouth and listened and watched and paid attention, I'm sure I would see and learn all I needed to or much of what I needed to about racism.

Just by being with you, seeing your experience, listening to you.

It's not something that you have to like spell out for me.

- So we finally got to the questions here.

So this is question number one.

So a few people have asked, how do people like you with privilege make space for people whose knowledge and lived experiences are not as valued because they are people of color?

How do you actively center and not erase their perspectives and voices?

- Yeah, I mean, that's a deep tension.

I have struggled with that tension my entire career.

It is a both and.

None of us are outside the system and there's no clean way to do any of this work, that's for sure.

I try to use that.

That is the reality based on all we've been talking about, based on deep implicit bias, white people are a tad more open to being challenged by someone who it's harder to deny.

There's a little bit of that nudge, nudge, wink, wink, hey, you know and I know that gets me in to crack that open.

And I think about it as tilling the soil.

Let me soften this up a little bit so that folks can hear you and can listen to you.

It is not a zero sum game.

If they read one book, that's it, that was the book and it was by a white author.

I mean, the whole point is if you read my book that you are opened up to the whole world of incredible black thinking.

If it does what it's meant to do, if you truly got it, because you read "White Fragility" you are reading all those other books, right?

So to not use this platform or this position for me is not acceptable.

And as I use it, yes, I'm also centering whiteness and I'm interrupting whiteness because it stays centered by being unnamed and unmarked.

And here we're back to the tension.

- And I've told you from my perspective, that's a good thing.

Because again, if I were to look at it in a gender place, it's up to men to get together with other men and say, hey, that's sexist, that's not cool.

That's misogyny, this is what we mean.

There are internal in group conversations that can be had with greater authenticity that always demanding, requiring, insisting that an outside and oftentimes oppressed or mistreated group has to walk into the lion's den and make people feel better all the time.

I don't see your work as so much centering you in a bad way, as much as putting the spotlight on white people to think about themselves without the escape hatch of some black woman or black man standing at the front of the room that you can cry on their shoulders and then feel forgiven.

- Or I sit back and say, well, I don't think so.

I'll give you that.

But I don't think that other example you gave.

We will never understand racism as white people who are only listening to each other.

But I don't think we'll ever fully understand if we only listen to black folks and other folks of color.

And for far too long we've offloaded all that labor with all the risks and all the costs and all the punishments and all the backlash.

And what that does in addition to that is it reinforces this idea that we're innocent of race.

We are not racially innocent.

We are a part of this puzzle.

It's just like, so sad that happens to you.

But apparently it happens in a vacuum that has nothing to do with me.

No, it's coming from me.

And I have got to be at the table also engaged in this conversation and this work.

And hopefully do it in ways where I use my platform to amplify black voices.

And I hope that I've already demonstrated that just in our conversation.

- And I wanna add sort of an anecdote to this, which is very true when you talk about how these things can still come from white people.

I have been in many a room, in fact, I just did a talk at my Alma mater last fall, where it was like, hey, black people tell us what racisms you've experienced here.

And it's like, I still work here.

I can't tell you because for the three of you who may be cool with it, the other five who aren't, then I get punished, right?

I'm not empowered enough in this workspace to tell my truth about the discrimination I face without facing the backlash the moment the person who wants to initiate this conversation leaves the room.

- Yeah, I mean, here's a great spot where I would go into an analogy.

Imagine that the workplace was doing a thing on sexual assault, rape culture.

And some coworker, a man just comes up to a woman and says, have you ever been sexually assaulted?

Tell me about it.

You have to account for the power difference in that.

I'm asking you that question across not just power but across a history of harm.

A history in which most of the time when you've answered that question, actually you've gotten more punishment not less punishment.

And a lot of white people are like, well, but you don't know me.

Why would you assume that about me?

I think it's actually quite rational and smart for you to assume that about me and let me show you different, not tell you different.

And even if you're my boss, this is the Tisha Nietos distinction between rank and status.

You could be my boss so your status in the organization is above mine, but rank wise, you're a black man and I'm a white woman.

And that doesn't change and I can still subject you to racism even as you signed my paycheck.

- Exactly, exactly.

Another question we've got is you speak of white people getting away with mediocrity.

How do we help give a hand up to people of color without being demeaning or diminishing?

- I guess you don't think about it as helping them.

And in fact this is a great I think moment for me to actually ask you that question.

I mean, here's an opportunity to hear your perspective on that.

How would you experience somebody doing that?

- So first off it's interesting 'cause the language itself like I said, I find demeaning.

It's like, how do I know you could even give me a hand up.

I may be more qualified than you.

I think that the most important thing that white people can do in a workplace environment is try to develop prior to any interactions with jobs, try to develop your own sincere framework on what you think qualifications are.

And then hold to those regardless of who you happen to be interacting with.

Because all too often, what happens is people have an idea as to what they think is qualified, but they meet this young white guy who was like, ah, gosh, you know what, he reminds me of my best friend, Luke, back when we were in school.

I spent a couple of years screwing around too.

And then I got myself together or, oh my gosh, Laura she's applying, she's a single mom.

She's 26, she's white, da, da, da.

Suddenly standards melt away when white people want to find opportunities to bring more of themselves into opportunities.

So if you hold to a sincere set of principles, if you tell yourself the only person who should be qualified for this job can type 99 words a minute.

And that's my standard, that's one thing I'm gonna hold to.

It may actually allow you to be more sincere and objective and counter some of your cultural biases when it comes to hiring, that's the first thing, the second thing is quite frankly, when you're in these mostly white spaces, you got to tell people, hey, we need to expand where we're looking.

We need to find where we're looking for applicants.

The fact that you keep going to the same places even if you're going to Harvard and you're trying to just get black kids out of Harvard, there's other smart people in the country.

There's smart people who go to Cleveland State.

There's smart people who go to Benedict college and everything else like that.

So I think those are the two steps that I think white people should do that I have advocated for when I'm in positions where white folks are asking me, hey, how do we do these hire.

- Thank you, and here's some that I like to add.

You actually make anti-racist skills and awareness a qualification.

If you're not going to make it a qualification, then do not put on your website for your business that you value diversity.

Now you're putting the onus also pressure on white people.

If you wanna change a culture, and this is one of the things that organizations often do is they just add, right?

Let's add some color, okay, great.

And then they think they've accomplished it.

But if you haven't simultaneously been addressing the consciousness of those who let's be honest, have always controlled the tables, still control the table.

And it's up to them whether you even get a seat at the table, if you're not simultaneously working with them, you're adding people into hostile water.

And then you wonder why didn't they stay?

You should have filtered through, threaded through all your interview questions, questions designed to get at what is this person's basic orientation to these issues?

And you don't have to be an ethnic studies professor to get the job but there should be some basic orientation that you have that's demonstrable.

I can't tell you the impact I think it would have if we saw that in today in 2021, how could we not see it as a qualification to be successful to have some ability to engage in these conversations?

- And to be able to show, as you said that you have this sort of consistent cultural competence and that it's integrated into everything you do.

Not just in hiring, but in say the classes that you teach and the people that you've mentored and the people use the system one way or another.

Because if you can't show it as a through-line in your work, then it's going to be situational or episodic.

- And at least you're open to ongoing education, right?

That's why, I mean about like, hey, you don't have to have it all down but you right that, right there.

Even recognizing that it's ongoing and you're open to the ongoing training not resistant to it.

- First off, I just wanna say, everyone thank you so much for joining us today.

I hope you get a chance to see some of the other festivals sessions this week.

One I'd suggest is a conversation about religion and trumps.

CNN's Kirsten Powers is going to be talking with evangelical pastor, Rob Shinnick and Liddy Duncan, a black Reverend who is a former drug dealer, sex worker, homeless queer teen and felon.

That now leads an almost entirely white congregation in Vancouver, Washington.

You can catch that on Sunday morning at 10:00 AM.

All right, for now, have a great day.

I have very much enjoyed talking to Dr. DiAngelo.

I hope this is not the last time we talk.

I just find your work fascinating.

And thank you so much everybody for joining us on the Crosscut Festival, have a great rest of the day.

- Thank you so much, I feel the same way.

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