As a wave of backlash and political upheavals around the globe signal outright hostility to the very concept of diversity, equity and inclusion, DEI practitioners and the organizations that hired them are asking the same question: where do we go from here?
Key Takeaways
- DEI challenges are more pressing than ever.
- The current mood is characterized by a sense of threat.
- Workplaces are unique spaces for learning and interaction.
- Equity is seen as a disruption in an inequitable world.
- Inequity is the default state in society.
- Acknowledging inequity is the first step towards change.
- Sustainable change requires consistent effort and commitment.
- Reframing DEI conversations can lead to better outcomes.
- Humor is essential in navigating DEI discussions.
- This podcast aims to explore DEI in a fresh and honest way.
Full Transcript
Janet (00:01.786)
Welcome to In This Moment. It's the podcast that's going to tackle the real-time challenges and opportunities of DEI in the world that feels like it is constantly on edge. I'm Janet Stovall, and I am about as subtle as a sledgehammer when it comes to diversity. And I'm here with Khalil.
Khalil Smith (00:19.41)
And I am Khalil Smith. Yes, exactly. Not subtle as a sledgehammer for sure. Trying to bring a little bit of calm to the chaos, if you will. I'm all about leadership and strategy. That's my background, my interest, my passion. And sometimes that means taking a slightly more measured approach.
Janet (00:40.97)
Yeah, it's going to be kind of like this bad cop, good cop, where we kind of meet in the middle, which we have found very interesting in working with each other. We found it very interesting in planning this podcast. And we hope that you're going to find it very interesting in dealing with these issues that at this moment need both of those perspectives, need both of those sides. Because what we're going to hope to do here is to have some real talk about DEI. We don't want to sugarcoat anything.
We don't want to use a bunch of buzzwords. We just want to have honest conversations and some practical advice on this. You agree?
Khalil Smith (01:17.018)
Yeah, and I couldn't think of a better person to be partnered with when it comes to practical advice. I think we might let a couple buzzwords slide in every now and then just because there's so much to talk about. But to your point, we are not going to anchor on those things. We're starting and we're going to continue to kind of get at the elephant in the room, if you will. Or maybe nowadays it's more like the rhinoceros in a china shop. There's a lot going on, a lot that we're all dealing with and working
through. And when we were planning this podcast.
I put a question out, right? Then you said, what's different about this moment? What are people feeling? What's the mood? And initially, I'd answered uncertainty. I felt like this moment was very much about uncertainty and people wondering about the future and wondering what's going to happen. And, you know, some of the kind of fear that comes along with that. then as is very much the nature of our relationship, you push back and you're like, well, I that doesn't quite get at it. So tell the people what you told me.
Janet (02:19.802)
Well, so you gave me what was absolutely the measured response and it was very much the right response. Do not deny that at all. But remember, know, me, Sledgehammer, uncertainty just wasn't quite it for me. I'm like, no, it feels a little bit different. It feels a little bit different to me in this moment than it does in the other time, which is where the topic, the title of this came from, sort of in this moment, it feels different to me. It isn't just the uncertainty that we know of because
Khalil Smith (02:25.553)
Hahaha!
Janet (02:49.432)
The DEI space has always had some degree of uncertainty, especially for the people most in need of the DEI space being available and being in existence. But to me, feels like that what we're feeling now is a little bit different. It feels more like threat. That's kind of what we settled on, that it was threat. And it's not just the folks who are underrepresented, the folks who normally benefit from or
care most about DEI, they're not the only ones feeling this threat anymore. Everybody's feeling it. It's women, it's white men, it's basically anybody who is in the workplace or paying attention to the news or doing anything. It's just threat. And in this moment, it felt like that was what it was that we needed to talk about.
Khalil Smith (03:41.734)
Yeah, and you know, as usual, when you push back and we often have our banter back and forth, right? But what comes out of that conversation is so much more powerful. And I think you're right, because a large part of what I see as I'm talking to my peers, talking to other folks in organizations, talking to people out in my life is exactly what you're describing. It's that threat, it's that fear, and it's not contained to a particular group. And it's just kind of ever present. And there are a lot of folks that feel like maybe they're the only ones experiencing
it and others are not. A lot of my perspective around this comes from what does this mean in the workplace? I've worked in corporations and businesses for a very long time. Obviously I have a life outside of work as well, but I've always felt like work is this incredible opportunity for us to really lean in and learn about things that we might not learn about in other spaces and interact with people that we might not ordinarily interact with in our neighborhoods and our churches and our places of worship and all sorts of other stuff. And so I'm looking at this
Janet (04:18.83)
Mm-hmm.
Khalil Smith (04:41.63)
And I think that your point about the threat, the fear, the ever-presence of it definitely hit me terms of I am seeing that in the workplace. I'm seeing that across a lot of different spheres and a lot of different places. And when everyone feels threatened, it creates a very different kind of playing field for DEI. And I'm curious to hear your perspective on that. Do you feel like that's right? Like, is this a different moment?
Janet (05:07.148)
absolutely, because if you think about it, you know, we've always talked in the DEI space more from a identity standpoint that we come to work and we bring all of our stuff. In the spirit of being a sledgehammer, I don't want to that crap about bring your authentic self to work. Nobody brings their authentic self to work. And if they do, they probably get fired. So I'm not even talking about that, okay? We're gonna say that.
Khalil Smith (05:31.058)
We're going to say that many, many times as a part of this podcast. Yes.
Janet (05:35.93)
You're all gonna hear more of my authentic self here than anybody at work normally hears Okay, not true. Maybe but anyway We don't that authentic self to work I'm not even talking about that Because there have been people who have bought into that or who believe I think rightfully so that they have the right to do it That have always felt a little bit threatened and had fear in the workplace but the folks who
always brought their authentic selves to work because they own the space, they can be authentic in that space, even they are feeling threatened now. So I think that what it is is that what we bring to work is very much a function of what we do outside of work. And that's something that we know. And what we do outside of work now is so, there's your uncertainty. It's so uncertain now. We're polarized in our politics.
Social media has made it possible for you to say whatever you want to whoever you want. It's always on a news cycle. So much has changed in this moment and it's converged in this moment. And then the United States, which I would say uniquely, but no, because it's been a move in all over the world to things moving sort of to the right, if we use those terms. So I think that in this moment, all those things that have been building social media, polarization, all those things,
have converged and what's happening is folks are bringing that to work. So when we, in this podcast, we want to talk about what this means in the workplace. And that's tricky, but you said something that I believe, I said it in my TED talk and I say it everywhere I go. I believe that business is uniquely situated to dismantle systemic inequity and that business and the workplace is a place where it's going to get done before anywhere else.
And I know that sounds crazy because when we talk about where the problems are, it's always there, but that is, think, where the hope is to fix it. That's the place where there's the money, the resources, and despite what some companies may believe, it is also the imperative to get it done. That doesn't exist anywhere else. And to your point, it's also the place where we work with people that we may not see anywhere else in our lives. We don't see them in church. We don't see them outside of work.
Janet (07:55.108)
But at work, we gotta work together whether we like it or not. And so that's an opportunity. It's a challenge, but it's also an opportunity. And I think that what we wanna do with this podcast is deal with those challenges, but then figure out how we turn those challenges into opportunities in ways that have not been explored yet.
Khalil Smith (08:16.592)
Yeah, and I think that's such a critical point about the ways that have not been explored. And I think the other thing, Janet, and this is part of what I think is going to really challenge some people to think differently as they listen to the conversations that we have and the people that we invite in, is that there are folks that will be surprised that you said, forget that authentic self, right? Forget that, bring your full self to work, because I've often said, bring your full work self to work, right? To your point, there is an element of, listen, how I am.
in different environments may not be exactly how my employer needs me to be at work. There are also people out there that help to shape organizations that are saying, well, what is our possibility? What is our responsibility? Where do we need to lean in? Where are we supposed to lean in? We've got folks that want to talk about wars and this thing and that thing. What am I supposed to do with all of this? And so part of what I love about my conversations with you is that it's not a simple view. And to your point about what's happening across the world,
what we see in a lot of places that are leaning to more of a conservative point of view is a desire for simpler answers to really complex issues, right? There's so much going on and you've got so many voices and so many different things coming in. In some instances, what folks are saying is just put it back to like it was when I was younger. This is so complex. I don't understand it. I don't like it. I feel like they're...
you know traps everywhere and if I say the wrong thing do the wrong thing whatever the case is what is going to happen and yet we can't pull back right and so to your point about that threat being all over that is one of these things that I think is coming up but Janet not you know I don't want to keep going back to what we talked about before but how is this different or the same to what we've experienced in the past because there are definitely points of view and folks that'll say well it's just cyclical you have some progress you have some you know some some
backlash or you things get better in some spaces things get worse and others you've talked about framing this differently tell folks what you've been thinking about and talking about in that space
Janet (10:21.482)
You know, when I first started looking at what's going on now, sort of in this moment, I also talked about it being cyclical. I said, know, it's not a catastrophe, it's a cycle, it's this kind of stuff. But you know what, the more I've looked at this and done some research and just kind of gone back into my understanding of history and what I've seen, I've been doing this for a minute. And what I realized is that it's not a cycle. It's something that I like to characterize as a regression to the mean.
Now that's a scientific term and basically it says that when things change a lot, nature seeks to return to balance, no matter what. It seeks to reset. And so that's where I think the idea of being a cycle, that reset comes in. But the truth is we never come back to the same place and then repeat. That's what a cycle is. You go and then you start, you iterate, you repeat. That's not what happens. The way the DEI space works and the way history works is that there are spikes and there are drops.
Now in 2020, we saw a huge spike in the conversation around equity in the workplace for all the wrong reasons, but it was a huge spike and it was one that was felt around the world. I call it equity Cinderella moment in the workplace. We saw that and it was huge. And we hadn't had those kinds of conversations about inequity since the 1960s when DEI first entered sort of the workplace conversations. But now that what we're seeing, what feels terrible
is just the inevitable regression to the mean. But because the spike was so high, the dip feels a lot worse. And the reality is that we are still progressing. Unlike a cycle which just goes over and over and over again, maybe that's the way we've been doing the work, but that is not the way the work actually progresses. That's not the way change progresses. And so that's why I don't think of it as a cycle, I think of it more of as a regression to the mean.
Khalil Smith (12:18.162)
And Janet, do you feel like you're seeing some of those same things outside of the US as well? Because to your point, know, 2020 had ripples across the entire world. And I would talk to folks that would say, well, that's just a US thing. And then I would, you know, pull up the news in the UK and France and Canada and the Netherlands and all of these various places. And there were footballers and cricket players and you, you you name it. People coming out and saying, I've experienced that. I've experienced colorism. I've experienced this thing. And all of a sudden people had to take a step back and say, well, this isn't
just a US conversation. And I think sometimes when we talk about the workplace, there will be folks that say, well, that's just a US thing. That's only happening in the US workplace. We're not worried about it over here. And then I talked to female employees in different parts of the world, people that are lighter skinned or darker skinned, people that may not have the dominant eye color, whatever you can call out. I'm seeing and hearing those things, but I'm wondering, do you feel like that same regression to the mean is happening across the world?
You feel like you're seeing those same trends in other places.
Janet (13:22.134)
Absolutely, because the mean is always inequity. Khalil and I both have a background in working in neuroscience and how it works in the workplace. And one thing we know is when you think about how humans function as biological beings, we are biologically inclined to bias and we are biologically inclined to stratify. always want power dynamics exist in every aspect of human history and human society.
So there's always going to be a dominant class and a non-dominant class, which means that inequity is the mean. And I know how that sounds, that may sound discouraging. As we said in this part, well, there's no way past the fact that inequity is the mean. However, the first step is acknowledging that inequity is the mean. And it simply says that in an inequitable world, equity itself is disruption.
Khalil Smith (14:03.654)
I was gonna say is there a way past it?
Janet (14:21.816)
People don't like disruption. The status quo is simpler, it's easier. It's what we get used to. We don't like that kind of change. And that is what causes this fear. So we can't change the reality of bias. We can't change the reality of inequity. We can't really change the reality of fear. I heard an interesting conversation, a different Ted talk from Nikki Giovanni,
the recently late Nikki Giovanni. And she talked about fear. And she said, know, fear is one thing, hatred is another. Fear is what keeps us from doing stuff like lending money to your cousin. don't need, you're not to do that, you know? But hatred is totally different. So the fear, the inequity, those things we cannot change. What we have to do is acknowledge that they exist, understand where they come from.
and then address it head on. And we have to accept that the mean is always gonna be in equity. So this is an ongoing challenge. You don't fix this. You always on a journey to get things better. And the reality is, is even though I talked about that up and down, that regression to the mean, let's face it, we are better off in 2024 than we were in 2019 in this space. We're not as...
far along as we thought we'd be in 2020, but we're better than we were in 2019. So I do believe that the mean is always in equity, but the arc always leans, is always trending towards equity. Because demographics are destiny. It's gonna change. And so what we wanna do is help that change happen in a way that is effective, that is as, well, it's gonna be disruptive.
but that is as effective and productive as it can be. That's what we're about.
Khalil Smith (16:22.384)
Yep, absolutely. And sustainable, right? To your point, like how do we make some of these things that don't, you know, the highs aren't as high, the lows aren't as low, that kind of variance from that mean is not this whiplash effect where it feels like, well, now everything's wonderful. Okay, now we're pulling back completely, right? As opposed to how do we see that consistency and see that trend and see folks feeling, you know, more included, more supported. And I think to your point, just this idea that
Janet (16:25.54)
sustainable.
Janet (16:38.414)
You're mad again.
Khalil Smith (16:51.206)
we're not necessarily talking about Nirvana, right? We're not talking about a place where everyone gets exactly the same resources and has exactly the same outputs and everything is perfect. Depending on your religion, depending on your point of view, that is for a later stage. But what we are saying is where we've been is not good enough and we can do better.
And that for people like you and me that have been in this space for quite some time, seen a lot of different things, and for so many folks out there right now that are asking, well, where do we go from here? And what do we do? And all these topics that you and I have talked about that we want to pull apart, whether it's about the language or about employee resource groups or about the buzzwords or about the best practices that aren't actually best practices, to be able to just take an honest, truthful,
expert approach to some of those things and say that makes a lot of sense, stop doing that, you shouldn't have been doing this from the very beginning, you're doing this but you're doing it in the wrong way and let's actually have some of those conversations with experts and academics and practitioners and hear from folks that are truly trying to create that sustainable arc that you talked
Janet (18:01.582)
And you know, because of, as we explained to we are in the beginning, there's gonna be some humor in this, because honestly, you cannot do this job without laughing at some of it. You really have to, but you can't do it for long, right? You will burn out. And a lot of people have burned out. So one of the things I'm looking forward to talking to and talking about are some of the really unusual ways that you and I have discussed
Khalil Smith (18:14.214)
You can't do it for long, that's for sure, because you will burn out.
Khalil Smith (18:22.161)
Yep.
Janet (18:30.486)
some of these things. Like, how are people, what are the types of people that do this work and how do they work about it? You've got a book, I've got a book that one that's out already, one that I'm working on right now. I am building this whole new way of thinking about inclusion. I even can't even trademark the word that my daughter says sounds like a laxative, but we're not gonna listen to her. I think it's a great word and I've trademarked it and I don't care what she thinks because I don't care.
Khalil Smith (18:57.586)
you telling us the word or do people need to tune in to the next podcast to hear?
Janet (19:02.554)
We're gonna hold on because I'm gonna wait till I get that until I convince my daughter that it's actually a good word Because I gotta come up with the I gotta come up with the way the actual way to pronounce this word, too That's the other reason why it's complicated. I think it's a good word. So yes, it will be a podcast episode coming up and but it is about Not just coming up with stuff for the sake of coming up with stuff. But the reality is this We have been doing this stuff. We've been doing stuff for a while
Khalil Smith (19:04.444)
AHHHH
Khalil Smith (19:09.016)
I cliffhangers, already dropping cliffhangers.
Janet (19:32.794)
And I think that everybody's working very hard. And one of the reasons that we're burning out, because it doesn't feel like it's working in so many places. So what we're hoping to do is to think of some different ways of reframing it. I want to reframe, you know, Black History Month. I want to reframe where we talk about inclusion. The buzz, like you said, we're going to use the buzzwords because we have to start there. But the question is, why do we have to stay there? Because so many times the language that we use,
The things that we talk about just ensconce and embed the status quo. We are looking to unravel that. And the only way you do that is if you talk about things differently, you think about things differently. Heaven knows there's been plenty of effort to weaponize the terms that we've already used. So my attitude is rather than weaponize these terms, let's break them apart. Let's talk about what they really mean.
And that's just part of this, because when we talk about what the terms mean, which we have a whole segment that we're going to do that, we talk about some of these terms, we also then get a chance to dig down into what the work is that's being done around those terms and why maybe it's not working. And that's I think is different about this podcast, other than the fact that it's you and me doing it together, which nobody probably saw coming, is that we hope to tackle the issues that matter to many.
but We aren't trying to come up with solutions that are delivered by most. I mean, because if they were working, if they worked so well, we wouldn't have this damn conversation anyway.
Khalil Smith (21:05.008)
Yeah, or any of the conversations that are yet to come, right? We would have solved that and moved on, but that's what we're going to continue to do. So for everyone that is listening, if you are ready to navigate the DEI landscape in the workplace in this moment with all its challenges, all its opportunities, all its promise, all its pitfalls, join us on this journey. It is going to be a fun and wild ride.
I don't know what's going to come out of Janet's mouth. She doesn't know what's going to come out of my mouth. I don't know what's going to come out of my mouth. There's going to be a lot of fun, a lot of laughs, a lot of really practical advice and things that we are going to equip you with and things that we're going to learn as well as we take this back and really dig deep and dig down into how we do things differently.
Janet (21:50.382)
I cannot wait, Khalil. Let's go.
Khalil Smith (21:52.422)
Yeah!
