The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – How to Talk to Your Boss About Race: Speaking Up Without Getting Shut Down by Y-Vonne Hutchinson

Episode Date: February 28, 2022

How to Talk to Your Boss About Race: Speaking Up Without Getting Shut Down by Y-Vonne Hutchinson An indispensable practical toolkit for dismantling racism in the workplace without fear Reporting and personal testimonials have exposed racism in every institution in this country. But knowing that racism exists isn’t nearly enough. Social media posts about #BlackLivesMatter are nice, but how do you push leadership towards real anti-racist action? Diversity and inclusion strategist Y-Vonne Hutchinson helps tech giants, political leaders, and Fortune 500 companies speak more productively about racism and bias and turn talk into action. In this clear and accessible guide, Hutchinson equips employees with a framework to think about race at work, prepares them to have frank and effective conversations with more powerful leaders, helps them center marginalized perspectives, and explains how to leverage power dynamics to get results while navigating backlash and gaslighting. How to Talk To Your Boss About Race is a crucial handbook to moving beyond fear to push for change. No matter how much formal power you have, you can create antiracist change at work.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. This is Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com. The Chris Voss Show.com.

Hey, we're coming to you with another great podcast. We certainly, certainly appreciate you guys tuning in. Thanks for joining the Chris Voss Show family. Family that loves you but doesn't judge you. But please, do clean your room. Anyway, guys, we have another great author on the show with us today. In the meantime, you know the drill. Go to YouTube.com, Fortress Chris Voss.

See everything we're reading and reviewing at Goodreads.com, Fortress Chris Voss. All the groups on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, et cetera, et cetera. See the big group on LinkedIn of 132,000 people and our LinkedIn newsletter that's just killing it. LinkedIn's really becoming a thing over there. So we're excited to announce my new book is coming out. It's called Beacons of Leadership, Inspiring Lessons of Success in Business and Innovation. It's going to be coming out on October 5th, 2021. And I'm really excited for you to get a chance to read this book. It's filled with a multitude of my insightful stories, lessons, my life, and experiences in leadership and character. I give you some of the secrets

from my CEO Entrepreneur Toolbox that I use to scale my business success, innovate, and build a multitude of companies. I've been a CEO for, what is it, like 33, 35 years now. We talk about leadership, the importance of leadership, how to become a great leader, and how anyone can become a great leader as well. Or order the book wherever fine books are sold. Today we have an amazing young lady on the show. She has written the book, How to Talk to Your Boss About Race, Speaking Up Without Getting Shut Down. Yvonne Hutchinson is on the show with us today. She's going to be talking about her experience and everything that she's done before. She is the CEO and founder of ReadySet and the author of How to Talk to Your Boss About Race.

And it's a diversity and inclusion training firm that she runs that helps tech giants, political leaders, media outlets, and Fortune 500 companies speak more productively about racism, in fact, and turn talk into action. To date, ReadySet has worked with hundreds of companies around the world to build, manage, and grow diverse teams. In a former life, prior to founding ReadySet, she worked as an international labor and human rights lawyer for nearly a decade. Welcome to the show. How are you? I'm good. I'm good. Thank you for having me. I'm super excited to be here. Good, good. Did I get to pronounce your first name correct? Almost. It's Wyvon. Wyvon. I'm sorry. My apologies. I throw so much energy into the beginning of the show,

the brain goes, woo-hoo, right out the window. So welcome to the show. Tell us your plug so people can find you on the interwebs. You can find me on the interwebs at yvonne.com. So Y-V-O-N-N-E.com. I was lucky enough to be able to snag that. And you can find my company online at www.theredyset.co. And also you can find me on Twitter, Hutch Machuch. I picked my handle before I knew how Twitter works, so it's long. And yeah,

that's usually where, and I'm also located on LinkedIn. And people use that, well, I use it less well, but I'm on there. You just look for my name. There you go. There you go. So what motivated you to want to write this book? Yeah, I mean, there are there are a couple of things that that that motivated the book, you know, I was approached to write it in the summer of 2020, when we were kind of all waking up to the racial justice movements that were happening in the country. And, you know, I was asked to write a book to really help equip people to have difficult conversations. But I wanted something that was like about more than that, right? Because so often I feel like we stop at the idea of conversation. And I just like reflecting back on my work, I so often got the question, how do I as an individual, change a system. So in a way, the book almost became this kind of Trojan horse for thinking about individual action to change systems. And in the book,

we talk specifically about race and the culture of racism, but this could be any kind of system that you're within, right? How do you as an individual engage that systemic change? That was the book that was interesting to me. That was the book that I decided that I wanted to write. And so that's, that's why I wrote it. And I'll say one more thing is if you read the book, it's kind of half how to guide half mentor memoir, sorry, half memoir with like a sprinkling of profanity throughout it. And I wanted to write, I wanted to write a book that was true to myself that had that shit in it.

See, because that's how I talk. And I just didn't want to write a traditional business was true to myself that had that shit in it see because that's how i talk and i just didn't want to write a traditional business book you know i wanted something that felt open and honest it didn't feel like somebody on high kind of telling you what to do yeah so is the book a good way to to help people get inclusion uh different principles and stuff into a company that maybe hasn't embraced that yet? Yeah. I mean, in the book, I talk to people about how to think about culture change. And for me, it's not just about inclusion. That's part of it, right? But when I work with companies, quite often, diversity, equity, inclusion are symptoms of something much deeper going on, whether that's inequitable systems of management, toxic cultures, whatever. And so the book is essentially how do

you equip yourself to have a tough conversation in this case, particularly around racism, which is uniquely hard for some people. And then how do you think about following that up with action? So yeah, so I mean, there's definitely some best practices. And if somebody read it, they could walk away with some tips for how to get started in doing that. So what sort of environment, so it's different, like toxic environments or stuff. Is it advice on how to get a racist policy set up or racism policy set up? Racist policy set up. Hopefully not a racist policy set up. We don't want you to do that. Let's say they already have one and it's time to finish their racism.

So, you know, the book starts with this premise, Chris. I say that there's no place historically in our country where race is more implicated than in the workplace. Like if you look at how my people came to this country, we came as slaves to do free labor, right? And if you look at the stereotypes that are associated with us now, they date back all the way to that condition. And the same could be said for a lot of other demographic groups. The workplace has always been segregated. We've always been told that based on our identities, there were certain jobs we could do and we couldn't do. And so, you know, I say we approach this challenge with that in mind, right? That we're trying to kind of undo this historical thing. And, you know, I start off

the book by saying, if you're going to change a culture, because it's not just about policy. It's also about how people treat each other. You know, I talk a lot about who does well in an organization. So if you go into a company and all the people at the top look one way and all the people who are entry level look another way, you know, even though people aren't wearing hoods, you probably have some racism in that company. Right. have some racism in that company, right? If you go to a company and, you know, people are getting shut down in meetings or, you know, people are, you know, we call it microaggressions. You know, every time a Black woman comes in, they're talking about her hair or like how she speaks. You know, you've got that problem. And so in order to fix it, you don't just write a policy. You have to

work on individual behaviors. You have to think about the overall culture. You have to think about the support structures you put in place to help those people. And it also starts with a conversation. And my book is like, how do you get ready to have that conversation? And in my book, I say a lot, I say the conversation is a starting point. And it's really tempting to think that these skills are innate to us, that we're born knowing how to be equitable, but we're not. If anything, the opposite is true, right? From the time I came in the world, people were telling me stereotypes about other people,

right? I saw folks in certain positions and folks in other positions. I internalize that. And we're all the same way, right? And so we have to be strategic when we think about how do we undo all of the things that we've internalized and the book tries to get us there. So I'll pause after I answer. Sorry, I'm long winded. I'll pause after I say this. You know, the book essentially has this sort of framework for action where it says, you know, you start if the conversation is jumping off point, we start with getting you ready to have that.

So first, understanding yourself, your power, your identity, your position in an organization, in the same way if you were going to do an organizational strategy, right? Understand your position in that way and think about how to leverage your power. And then most importantly, I always tell people this, understand who your allies are. When we look at any sort of movement in a social movement, civil rights movement, labor rights movement, workers' rights, it's all happened as part of a collective. Never has it been an individual. And we're taught, like history teaches us about Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks and Susie Anthony. But it doesn't teach us about the machines that were behind those people, right?

So you got to start building your machine, figure out how to get people closer to your cause, how to build trust with your allies, how to work in coalition. Talk about that. And then you got to figure out how to set up this conversation and have it be that jumping off point

and position it for success. And then you have to plan for failure, or if it doesn't go the way you want, what are you going to do then? So we kind of talk through people, talk to that framework in the book for people and hopefully set them up to have that conversation, but also to really see holistic action.

Yeah, that's really interesting. We had someone on last week, Gal Beckman, who wrote the book, The Quiet Before and the Unexpected Origins of Radical Ideas. And he was talking about how a lot of times we do these social things where we're just like, I'm going to hashtag this and then that's my contribution or that's how far the thing goes. And people don't realize you've got to build, like you said, the whole systems and everything around it to support it and really move it forward and keep its momentum going and stuff. What's one of the biggest problems you see in companies today that they're really challenged with?

Is it they're stuck in tropes or they're stuck in mindsets? They're not self-aware maybe of what they think? I think part of it's self-aware maybe of what they think? I think part of it's self-awareness. I'll say in this moment, because I think I could generalize across time, but actually, I'm not sure that's as helpful as saying what are companies dealing with in this particular moment that's unique. And I think we saw a lot of momentum with the Black Lives Matter movement, the racial justice movement in 2020, and this sort of sea change where companies are really coming out in support of these causes. Right. And like they have some big goals, you know, like Adidas is like, let's tackle white supremacy. And you're like, OK, Adidas, you know what I mean? But like, like, you know, we you had companies were like, you know, making these commitments.

And then what we've seen to two years later is that energy is tapered off. And I think, um, when I think about the challenge of this moment, it is maintaining that momentum and navigating the backlash that's inherent to this work. And I think for, for those of us who are new to, to fighting racism, and I say that without judgment, you know, like, you know, you talk about this as a show with no judgment. I say that without judgment, like we all come to this fight when we come to this fight, right? For those who came to the fight then, I think that they underestimated how deeply entrenched some of the stuff was and how hard it would be. You know, we're taught that if we're simply aware of racism, we're going to stop doing it. And it just doesn't work that way. And so when that didn't work, you know, I think the momentum tapered off for a lot of people.

And there was a question of, well, what does systemic change look like? How do I think about fighting backlash within my company? Oh, by the way, the world is also falling apart around me. As I'm making these commitments to racial justice, we still have a pandemic, these geopolitical tensions like that are, you know. So I think trying to figure out how to sustain progress, having identified it is probably the biggest challenge that I see organizations wrestling with today.

Do you have to identify if your boss, I mean, because you put this in the title, do you have to identify if your boss, I mean, cause you put this in the title, do you have to identify if your boss watches Fox news? I mean, I would say it's probably a waste of your time. And that thing, like, I don't, and neither should you, like, it's one thing to understand your boss's motivations in the sense of like, what is going to like get them going? What what what do they energize by at work like what how does their brain work but it is so hard to figure out if a person is like inherently racist or like whatever in their off time and it's quite often you just end up spinning your wheels so and

then you know in the book i kind of say focus on actions and the impact of those actions. So if your boss is like giving all of the great assignments to white people, you know, like the white dude's named Chad from his fraternity, then like, you should, like, that's the action you should focus on and then focus on the impact of the team. If your boss is engaging in microaggressions, you should focus on that. But it could also be that your boss is in a position to enact systemic change that you want to see. So maybe your boss can help expand the hiring pipeline or sponsor an ERG. In this case, there's no particular behavior that your boss is engaged in that's problematic because you need to get your boss on your side so that you together can change a culture. I talk about both of those scenarios in the book.

What's an ERG? Employee resource group. Sorry, I use slang because I'm so deep in it. But employee resource groups, they've been around since about the 1990s. They're comprised of like employees from similar identities and their allies. So it started with Black employees at IBM, but now today they're parents, LGBTQIA plus employees, Hispanic employees, women, ERGs. And they do everything from helping recruit to coming up with networking, programming, doing those affinity group months. It just sort of

depends on what their mandate is, but they're generally thought of supportive systems for employees for particular backgrounds. Cool. That's very interesting. Yeah. Fox news is taking us back the other way. I don't watch it,

but I, when I go to the gym, they have it on the gym locker room and they are really obsessed with black lives matter. Like they, like they're like, every time I go in there, there's there's, it must be the time of night I like they like they're like every time i go in there there's there's it must be the time of night i go but they're they are obsessed with black lives matter

and i'm like are we covering what you know all the all the trump legal things that just happened like last week was like amazing all the stuff that happened trump legal wise and you know i'm sure they're diverting but you know when i one of the problems i have i thought i was pretty, you know, I, I'm sure they're diverting, but, but you know, when I, one of the problems I have, I thought I was pretty, uh, you know, I didn't have any racist sort of tendencies or hidden prejudices or, or tropes stuck in my head. And after Trump was elected and I just sat there going, what the fuck went on and what is white nationalism? And I started reading about the tropes and the stuff that the white nationals were using. And, and I started reading about the tropes and the stuff the white nationals were using and and i started seeing the coded language that you know trump and and then we're using and you know you know culture and different different code words and i started going holy shit you know i

gotta make sure i don't use these code words i don't even i don't even know these code words a thing and you know we've had so many great authors on um jesus and and uh john wayne i grew up idolizing john wayne watching john wayne movies i had no idea the sort of feed that that was giving me of the you know the american ideal of of this shitty on the shining hill the 450 years of all our stupid shit that this country's done it's horrific um and so yeah i mean it's there's a lot to unpack i've been in different classrooms where we talked about this i don't know if you've ever been on clubhouse yeah and you know i've had a whole group of people you know sitting around and it's just amazing how many of us still don't

get it like yeah yeah and we'll still be hung up on like certain tropes like some this guy will have a trope over here and you're like no no, no, that's not right. And, you know, there's, there's like these little teeny things that you don't realize until you've really done some research and, and tried to kind of cleanse yourself of all this stuff. Yeah. Well, I think like in my mind, when we let go of the tropes, then we have to accept a really uncomfortable truth. And it's not, you know, I think I've had to do that work too, right? There are tropes that we're, I was taught as a Black person about Black people that I have to actively work to undo,

like tropes around underachievement or if only we just place more of an emphasis on education or absent Black fathers. These are all like empirically disprovable tropes, right? But we're taught that because if those things are not true what else is true that makes the outcome the way it is right and that's the kind of that's the scary question right like if black people are graduating from college at like you know incredible numbers and they are and graduate school disproportionate to the share

of the population mind you then what does it mean if we're not getting the jobs? What does it mean if we're disproportionately impoverished? I mean, something else is going on. And we personally, we can't personally be responsible for our way out of this, right? It becomes much bigger and harder to navigate. But yeah, I feel you on that. I think it's like a process of unlearning because we're just steeped in them. Yeah. I mean, everything that James Baldwin ever wrote or said, you can literally lift it off of 1950s, 1960s, whatever it was there. You can literally just go, yep, welcome today.

Put it right there. Put it right here. It's still true. Yeah. You know, and a few of his things ring true he's like when when is it finally when are you guys gonna finally get over this you know and and uh we still haven't and it doesn't help that we have like you know a political system that still plays on tropes you can see the code words like i've gotten really good now seeing i

know who they're talking to and who they're talking about and against and you know the them the days and stuff and some of them are the democrats some about and against and, you know, them, the they's and stuff. And some of them are the Democrats. Some are minorities. You know, it's really interesting because for me, the two parties have really become, the Democrats see the progression that someday white people will be a minority in this country in, what, 10 to 20 years. And the GOP seems really obsessed with the fact that they don't want that to happen. Of course, this is about power. This is about control of money and government and everything else. And then I see a lot of people who are

afraid or shameful that they feel like, well, once we're a minority, everyone will treat us as bad as we treated them. It's like, well, that's not necessarily true. And that's also not an excuse to keep treating people poorly. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'm not going to be nice not necessarily true and that's also not an excuse to keep treating people poorly yeah yeah you know well i'm not gonna be nice to people i should just keep being mean to people because if i don't then they'll be mean to me someday that's like oh yeah it doesn't make any sense yeah i mean i think you know it's so weird i feel like also we kind of trick ourselves into thinking that like the gop and the radical right and democrats like that they

split the country more evenly than they have you know i look i'm not i'm not a super idealist but i think we have to like especially like those of us having public conversations own that there are a lot of people in this country who don't agree white black let's see whatever with some of the stuff that the gop is doing whether it's abortion rights and i'm you know in texas right now so you can move to the trans bill that just came out dude it's we could get texas politics all day we could talk texas politics all day but even like where i am it's really easy to think oh you're it's a red state. Everybody agrees with this. And no, what's happening is small people, small number of people are trying to rig up a system of minority power where they carve off portions of the population and target certain people and act like it is reflective of the will of the people when in fact, a lot of times it's not, you know? And so I just, I totally agree with you. I think that public sentiment is a,

is a little bit more unbalanced than we are used to thinking about it being, but yeah. Yeah. And I think people need to learn empathy. They need to listen to other people's stories. Like reading the book cast was one of the hardest books I've ever had to read. It took me a long time because I had to stop and sometimes just be heartbroken. I have to stop reading this. But we have to read these things.

We have to understand our history. And until we understand our history, we can't fix the future of stuff. And that's why we had Andrea, I can't forget her name right now, on Monday. We were talking about racism with her book. And I think it was white nationalism, racism, white nationalism. And, you know, there's so many different problems. And it's so, people have to understand that the racism in our country is so built in from so many years between the neighborhoods we live in, not being close to each other, not understanding each other, not being integrated with each other, having empathy for one another,

our journeys and challenges, and just getting to know each other. I mean, our freeways are separate in our neighborhoods and redlining and things of that nature. So this is really important, and I'm glad you're giving people a tool so they can have something to talk about because these are hard discussions to have. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think so. And I think that you kind of hit the nail on the head with the fact that it is just so ingrained.

Like there's never been an America without racism. You know, there could be, but there hasn't been one yet. And I think it is so much of what we know, you know, and when people ask me, like, what is like an equitable, I use the workplace. For me, the workplace is a microcosm, right? Of like, it's where we spend the bulk of our time, but you can apply these systems elsewhere, you know, as well. But when people are like, what does an ideal state look like? Give me some great examples. You know, I have to say, like, this is something we've actually

never done before. Like, I'm, it's not like, you know, like, I'm like, you know, it's like, I don't know, like, what Elon Musk does in his, you know, it's like trying to do that kind of innovative thing that, like, nobody has truly ever done before. We're not returning to, like, some safe and neutral default. That's actually exclusion. We're trying to build a thing for which there is no historical precedent in the lifetime of our country. That's

super tough to do. Or in the history of man, really. I would push back on that. I'm not discounting the fact that we've had a really ugly 450 years. Man's, I think, struggled with not discounting the fact that we've, you know, had a really ugly 450 years. But, I mean, man's, I think, struggled with race all of his life, hasn't he? All of his dreams.

Well, I think, so Ibram X. Kendi's book, Stamped from the Beginning, I found this really useful. It's the history of racist ideas. And he actually kind of tracks it through time in a way that's interesting, starting with the slave trade. Now, I know that we've always sort of had in-group, out-group bias, but I don't think that has always been associated with race, even race as a classification. The fact that race itself is a social construct that we made up to justify certain economic and political goals, you know, that we could pinpoint to a certain period of time when we did at the beginning of the slave trade and colonial expansion and, and, you know, you know, and, you know, and now, and now bringing it up to date, I think, I don't think it was always this way.

I think there was always distance and bias and infighting and all of that nasty stuff. I think it was based on different things. But I think there was a world before racism and there can be a world after racism. Well, there you go. That makes sense. It's definitely something we need to do. What are some other tips or tricks that you have in the book that can help people? So let me see. So I mentioned, you know, understanding yourself and your power. I think power is really important. We have such a limited conception of power. Power is a binary.

Either you have it or you don't. And I talk about social power, the power of influence. And I kind of think of power as like knobs on a stereo where you have different levels and different things that you can access. So thinking about the different types of power you can access and how you access those. I've talked about building your bench of allies and converting people one degree closer to your cause. I use a lot of social movement theory in the book as well. And then following things up with action. And I talk a little bit in the book also about how to navigate backlash in the midst associated with

diversity, equity, and inclusion. We talked a lot just now about kind of the sort of code words that you have in the workplace. There are code words as well. And so I talk about how do you identify them and navigate them, right? So one of the myths that I talk a lot about is the pipeline myth, which drives me fucking nuts. Like the idea like, oh, we just can't find these talented people. When if you look at the data, people are not represented equitably in terms of like graduate schools and, you know, their rates of graduating from university into the workforce. And then once they get into the workforce up the ladder, you know, people are just aren't represented equitably and it has a lot less to do

with the pipeline than it does bias or the fact that this is in fact a global issue. It's not just a U S issue. And I think so. The U S like we fail ourselves when we think about civil rights is just a U S phenomenon. I'd say this is a former international human rights lawyer, so you're much a global issue. So I talk about that in the book. And then also, how do you navigate things like retaliation, backlash, that sort of thing? And then how do you know when to go? You know, the truth of the matter is, a lot of times when people bring this up, especially if they do it alone, which I never advise, but inevitably somebody will, you know, they can be targeted for backlash, right? What do you do when that happens to you and how do you know when to walk away?

And, you know, I talk through that. I think it's important to accept that sometimes we as individuals won't be able to change a system and we won't be able to change people. And sometimes our biggest lever of change is actually just to walk away. And then finally, I talk a lot about self-care too. The idea that we can't keep doing this work. And I mentioned earlier, I think what a lot of organizations struggle with is the sustaining the momentum piece. We can't do that if we're tired. And I don't know about you, Chris, but like,

I've been watching the news all day today. Like, and you know, as somebody who's like to study disarmament, somebody who's spent a lot of time in war zones, like, my heart is, like, breaking right now because of what's happening in the Ukraine. And so I'm, like, holding that. Then also, like, COVID is still very much a thing. My whole family actually just recovered from COVID

because my little one caught it in daycare. Oh, wow. Yeah. You know, so there's that. There's, you know, I live in Texas and, you know, I have trans people who I love who are so fucking scared right now, you know, I live in Texas and, you know, I have trans people who I love who are so fucking scared right now, you know? And so we have to hold all these things while still pushing for change in like the organizations that we depend on for our very livelihood. So we just have to like take care of ourselves and, and, and no, you know, no one to hold them,

no one to fold them, no one to walk away and like no one to take a nap, you know, and and and no you know no one to hold them no one to fold them no one to walk away and like no one to take a nap you know and and and take care of ourselves i like that i like this nap part i'm 54 i you have to take a nap yeah i take that all the time i love i used to tease my dad about uh they were like dad you're always sleeping always sleeping. He's like, someday you'll get it. You'll understand. You'll understand. We used to tease him. And now I'm paying for it. I'm also paying for the hair in the ears that I used to mock my grandfather about.

Yeah, that stuff grows out of everywhere except for your head, of course. Yeah, yeah. But fortunately, I got this. But no, this is really great. Let's touch on what you do. I was looking at your company's website, thereadyset.co. Tell us about what you do over there. I notice you have an app and some other things.

Yeah, we try to do, we do quite a bit. We kind of have positioned ourselves as like the end-to-end people company. I think wherever an organization intersects with a human being or they intersect with each other, that's where we come into play. So simply put, we work with organizations to train them. So like you said, at the top of our interview, you know, we do workshops and webinars with companies around things that relate directly to DEI, like, you know, anti-bias training, LGBTQIA plus inclusion training, disability inclusion training, and accessibility training. But we also touch on broader topics that require you to just kind of weave equity

in in order to do it well, like inclusive approaches to people management, inclusive communication, inclusive hiring. So we do that, but we do quite a bit of consulting as well. So we provide advisory services with organizations. We do organizational assessments. We help them track their progress. We do program design and development around DEI. We do individualized coaching. We write policies. We have a whole program, whole programs for executive teams. And like you said, we do have an app, an individualized learning app. It's like a coach in your pocket, we say for DEI. And finally, we've just launched our talent attraction recruiting service. So now we're like helping you hire too. Like, so it's, you know, I know that's where a lot of companies are like, okay, you've given me all these principles, but like, where do we go and find people? We're doing that as well. So we, like I said, we, you've given me all these principles, but like, where do we go and find people? We're doing that as well.

So like I said, we try to be pretty end-to-end with it. And we work with a large variety of organizations. Like I like to say, we choose to partner with the organizations where we think we can have the most impact. So, you know, sometimes it's a political campaign. Sometimes it's a city government. Sometimes it's, you know, one of our partners is the Television Academy. They do the MA. Sometimes it's an entertainment organization. Sometimes it's a tech company. But, you know, we're pretty open to those partnerships. And we just really love to work where we think it's going to be interesting, where we can be creative about this stuff, because there's always space to try something new. We haven't gotten it right yet, like I said. And where we think our work is really going to be impactful. We don't just like do that whole corporate DEI thing.

Let's like tap dance around the edges and like here's your training and it feels a little weird and then you can walk away and forget it. We try not to do that stuff. We're like really about the change. I like the executive and management coaching because, you know, you can make sure that the team you have around you is going to have any problems or cause any problems. You know, it's always interesting to me. Like, you know, when I went through the social media thing, we have a lot of friends in social media or had a lot of friends in social media before Donald Trump. You know, everybody during Obama was like, hey, we love, we're doing good stuff. And all of a sudden, Trump stuck his ugly head up. Then all of a sudden, I don't know, it seemed like a third of my friends.

All of a sudden, it's like, wait, you're a raging racist? I thought we were all doing kumbaya. I thought we were great. Everybody's hugging and holding hands, and it was a piece of love. And you're a raging freaking monster. And the great unfriending began. Yeah. And, yeah, I mean, I lost so many friends that I had just had to.

And, you know, a lot of them didn't understand it, but you're like, you know, I can't have you getting stuff on me. Yeah. of them didn't understand it but you're like you know i can't i can't have you getting stuff on me like you yeah because when people people i still don't think people realize this because i have a few friends that still remain friends with people and and it's like you don't understand when you're friends with them you know people see you and they used to go well that dudes are preaching racist so you must be approve them and you're giving that person permission. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it just unleashed this thing where these people had really a deep-seated racism. And it gave them permission to just come out of the racist closet and just, and you're just like, holy crap, man.

Yeah, I think with social media, I don't mean to interrupt, but I kind of think it was like, they found the people with like the little seed of racism. Cause they like, they radicalize them too. And like fed them a bunch of misinformation. This is not like,

I really believe in accountability. So I'm not excusing. Whoa, is me. I got radicalized by Fox news and Facebook, but that happened. Right. Like,

and the, most people had a kernel of racist belief. There was something that was already there. That darkness was nurtured and grown and amplified and permissioned and justified.

Then it just metastasized into this really ugly, ugly thing. It's so sad how it's happened. Fran Lebowitz had a great, I think she just summed it up perfectly. She said, Trump allows people to express their racism and bigotry in a way that they haven't been to in quite a while. And they really love him for that. It's like they were bottling it up and storing it and they were like angry. And they're just like, I wish I could say what I want to say.

And then there's a lot of education needs to have. Like I still bump into people that don't understand why white people can't use the N word. I learned a lot from Bill Maher when he got into a scuffle. And I think it was Ice-T came on the show. And Ice-T explained it like perfectly. Like he put it in a perfect box to understand. And but I still run many people that they just, there's so many of these tropes, there's so much of this crap going on.

It's so interwoven in our society and it's, it's, it's a lot of work we have to do to, to unravel it all. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it, it is a lot of work. I always like, I, so I don't want to underplay the work, but I think it's just so easy to get overwhelmed, you know, a shit ton of work right it's gonna take us a really long time but i also you know like i again i reflect back on 2020 and at that moment you know it wasn't like people all of a sudden magically got educated on racism but people like knew a thing was wrong they just didn't they had the bravery to say this this is a wrong thing. Like, I don't understand all the ins and outs of it. I can't, you know, talk to you about,

you know, theory and whatever, but I can tell you when a wrong thing's a wrong thing and that we need to stop this wrong thing. And I think that's the thing that we have to keep pushing for. And we're like the, it's a moving target. I'm learning about anti-racism and I'm Black and I teach anti-racism so i'm learning about it i know so many other people are still learning about it and there's still like more that we're discovering within our community so i think you're right there's a shit ton of work we can do but also it starts at just a very simple place which is like this thing is fucked up this thing is wrong right like we got to stop this wrong thing and i say to, especially the white people I talk to,

if you all just got together and just, like, provided a little bit of friction for the race, it's just made it harder for everybody. Like, like you're saying, like, do friend people on Facebook. Call it out every time you see it. It, like, it will probably get solved so much quicker. Like, that is what happened in 2020. It's like a bunch

of white people said, you know what? This is really messed up. Like, I'm gonna put on my mask, I'm gonna go out on the street with this sign and we're just not gonna get anything done today because I'm really pissed off about racism. And then all of a sudden, all these companies and these governments were like, oh, wait a second. What should we be doing here?

And then they went home. And then people were like, ugh, I guess that sign on the sidewalk was enough, right? And so, you know, I think it's just like, we have to figure out how do we sustain that friction and continue to make it hard because that will be, I think, what makes the difference. That's the biggest problem with CRT. Then if people fighting with CRT about CRT is we need to learn a history so that we don't repeat it. And that's what we need to like read books like yours educate ourselves get to know more get to understanding the nuances of of it all how how how just ingrained it is in our society and our history and until we understand that you know we're doomed to repeat it and so like you say i think everyone

needs to to learn these things it's a good new battle like i you know every time i come across some sort of thing uh it's a lot of times in my gaming community, we game a lot. We see Call of Duty and stuff. I'll run into people or drop in the N-word or saying other things, and it has to be an education session. I did the same thing a lot with Clubhouse. It was interesting, the discussions we have with Clubhouse. And you'd just constantly be going through people's tropes going, okay, so here's why that's bad, and here's what you have that you don't

realize mr closet dude and uh closet racist dude and uh let's fix that and then you know sometimes you know usually with clubhouse there was pretty open it stuff and some people get it so it's great that you've written this book so that people can discuss these things and that helps yeah and i think we're so you know it's a taboo? I learned how to talk about race when I was like six, right? And I came home from school, I talked about this in the book, and there was a boy who like wouldn't hold my hand because I was Black. And I didn't realize I was Black until that point. I just thought I looked like my mom.

And then, you know, I had to be told what that meant. And I had to be told how to navigate the world as a Black child and later as a Black woman. And I think, so for me, acknowledging Blackness, acknowledging whiteness, talking about racism, it's not taboo. It's not uncomfortable. It's a matter of survival. And I think, and it's a skill I've learned. And my goal with the book in part and the way I wrote it like I did is to get more people comfortable with talking about race. You know, I used to have people call me to come work with their companies and they couldn't even say the word race, Chris. They would be like, you know, Yvonne, we want to work on our internalized bias. We want to talk about sexism and gender and disability and accent

and neurodiversity. And they would like stop. And I would just have to like be quiet and be like, you can say the word, like race. I'm black, by the way, you can say that. Like, it's fine. You know? And, and I think we just have to like, we have to get comfortable talking about it. Like the reality that it is, you know, you talk about those critical race theory bills and the one that's in Florida is like, don't have conversations that make people uncomfortable at work what it like what is that even like we have to get comfortable talking about it so that it seems even more ridiculous that we wouldn't right and that

doesn't mean that we accept biases it means that we are open about our struggles and the struggles of this country has and we're not taking personal offense when people bring up very real stuff that's happening. So I, I agree with you. We got to get educated and we got to get comfortable having these conversations because it's just the reality of the world. And until we learn from history,

go and learn. I think you nailed it the best with what you said. You know, we have to get comfortable. We have to have the hard discussions and really they aren't that hard. Once you get used to having them and you having a conversation, Hey, an issue let's fix it um how do we fix it well we learn more we educate and you know empathy is another big thing understanding each other and uh you know histories and pasts and trying to do this but you know it's a constant battle since fox news is

cranking out the newest thing every day. So there you go. It's been wonderful to have you on the show. Anything more you want to touch on or tease out about the book and what you do? No, I think, you know, I'll just end on this note. I think it's really easy to think about anti-racism or DEI as more as a siloed issue. And I really strongly believe as somebody who's researched the future of work for a while, that this is the thing that we have to wrestle with as we're thinking about the future of work and the future of economic opportunity, right? Like so much of this is like interwoven.

And if we don't get this right, there's going to be so many more downstream impacts politically, economically, et cetera. I really think that, you know, a lot of this is like the future of our country rests on it, not to be overblown about it, but like, that's the reason why I write about it and talk about it all the time. Not just because I think it's interesting and fun, but also because I think it's really, really important. So I just encourage people to take the lessons that they can from the book. Um, if the only lesson they take is like, here's how I have an uncomfortable conversation better. That's a fantastic lesson.

Take that lesson. And, and, and, and just try changing one little thing. Cause it's like, so, so,

so important that we do this. We can't, we're either going to go forward. We're going to go backward. There's kind of no staying where we are at this point. Yeah. And we don't, we don't need to go backward.

I've been there. Yeah. It's really awful. I was backward. I've been there. Yeah. It's really awful. We had Eddie Glaude Jr. on the show. We were talking about James Baldwin. I'm like, you know, how do we make it so that we don't, you know, his words don't have to echo true 50 years from now or 100 years from now. He goes, I don't know, but we'll be drinking if it's still a problem.

Thank you very much for coming on the show. We really appreciate it. Thank you for having me. It's been such a problem. Thank you very much for coming on the show. We really appreciate it. Thank you for having me. It's been such a pleasure. There you go. And give us your plugs so that people can find you on the interwebs. Oh, yes. Find me at Twitter at Hajma Chuch.

That's my Twitter handle. Again, I apologize for its length. And then I'm at Wyvon.com. And also, you can check out ReadySet at www.theredyset.co. There you go. Order up the books, folks. February 1st, 2022. How to Talk to Your Boss About Race, Speaking Up Without Getting Shut Down.

Guys, learn about what's going on. Get educated. Education is empowerment, not sticking your head in the sand. So get empowered and learn what the hell's going on in this world, and that way we can fix it. Thanks, my friends, for tuning in. Go to goodreads.com, Fortress, Chris Foss, youtube.com, Fortress, Chris Foss, all the groups that we have on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram,

all those different places. Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe, and we'll see you guys next time.