We Stand For DEI with Dr Shaun Harper

Some of them my friends did. We hung out people who did all types of stuff, and I get it right, even though, of course, now at this big age, I realized we probably could have died, and or people even today who are still taking like I don't know what's those drugs ecstasy, and I don't even know if they make that stuff anymore, but the Mali's and all of that. It's a pretty dangerous mixture of a bunch of different drugs. But most people made it home alive by the skin

of their teeth. But they've made it home a lot pretty bad shit, right. I know many family members and friends who were on drugs as kids or younger teens or what have you, and they got themselves straightened out later on, maybe in their twenties or thirties, and now it's as if that thing, whatever it was, is not even there. And I will say it's just one thing. It is true, though, that your body does experience some shift somewhere as a result of the overuse of any

kind of drug. Definitely, so people who smoke a lot of weed, that there is a mental slowdown that happens, and other issues that you learn about as time goes on. And I'm sure from my drug abuse of prescription pills, I'm sure there is something that when I'm eighty five, I will learn there was an impact. So I don't want to get into make it seem like if you

used it when you was young, you good now. There are people who are dealing with issues, sometimes severe, sometimes not so severe, but they do know or they have been told at a doctor's appointment that as a result of the use of this drug, it has impacted you an X y Z way. So all of it is bad, and all of it. We need to be real careful about what you're putting in your body, especially shit that's man made from the pharmaceutical companies to the street to

street corners, right. So I just want to make that as a disclaimer. But the fentanyl thing, I don't be getting because every time I turn around, the people are talking about their dying. So I post it on my page. I don't get fentanyl now. I know it is a drug that is supposed to be used for severe pain. I know that severe severe pain. And it's also something that is administered when someone is close to the end, so it's an end of life, and they say that when a doctor is giving it to you. For some

people it is very necessary, right. But somehow or another, it made it into the hands of Tink Tink them, you know, oh Billy Bob, and they are putting it in all kinds of other drugs and using fentanyl, and it's killing people literally left and right, of all racial backgrounds.

But it was they was. You know, sometimes you read these articles and they it's for super smart people because they'd be saying things and you kind of get mixed. So I couldn't figure it out, so I sent it to somebody to tell me what I'm reading, right if they but they were specifically talking about even heroin, they weren't saying heroin is good. They're saying heroin is dangerous as hell. But they're saying that it is even worse. Listen, I know that there is the stress and the desire

to get higher or lower or whatever. I hear all that. I've watched documentaries, but I'm just really trying to understand if you are even a drug dealer, why would you want to sell something to kill the people that tell the dying. I think that I am. I am confused about the fentanyl.

it's we are. We are in a society where we it's oxymoronic. We celebrate the ship that's most dangerous to us, that's most detrimental to us, Like we've rationalized the shit that's gonna kill us. You know, I was like, Yo, why would you know I have posted son about Nicki Minaj and them, you know, and the situation, and I was talking about it and I said, why would two multi millionaire people be beefing with situations that can get

you killed or go to jail. And the dude was like, yo, man, she said, he said, you don't know what he said to her, said, so you're trying to tell me that there was a word that somebody said that you said, you know what, I'm gonna throw away all of these millions of dollars and my freedom and possibly my life.

And you rationalize that at a big age you're grown, not no, fifteen sixteen where you know, thirteen for where that makes sense to you, where you like that's the grown age, like grown or pushing this It's just like to myself, it's like I don't even understand. So it goes hand in hand with this situation like and in mind people's mind is like I want to do the worship.

I want to put myself close to as possible. I want to I want to either die or almost feel like I'm dying right Like it's the weirdest shit that I've ever we had a time, like everybody always says, yo, I've never seen nothing like this, And my mother used to say it, but and now I get it. If we were anywhere like this generation and the shit that I see now. I realized why he was really confused, because I can't even make sense of the shit can't I can't make And I pride myself on being someone

who's rational, who you know, deals with common sense. It's like, oh, I can understand why that happened, even though it might not be good to everybody. I kind of understand this shit I don't get for the life of me.

Just for folks who don't know. His brother was going into his grandmother's house, his grandparents' house, and he jumped over a fence. This was in California. He jumped over the fence, which is probably you know, Grandma would be like, listen at night, I don't have my hearing aiden or whatever. I'm being funny about that part, but I can't hear what's going on in the front. So you want to get in, you got to jump over this gate and come to the back window. That's been going on since forever.

The police saw him jumping across the gate, told him, I guess to put his hands up, which he did based upon the findings, didn't have a weapon. They shot him to death in his grandmother's yard. So Fonte, his brother, has been an activist since you know his brother's passing, of course, fighting for justice for his brother, also working with other families, showing up and being a support system

for people around the country. But I noticed that as of late, he has been talking a lot about fentanyl abuse and engaging in the movement to try to reduce fentanyl usage in his community and around the country. And I thought to myself, Wow, for Stefonte to go from what we know him for to this right here, it means that he sees a serious and desperate need to

get involved in this issue. And they just dropped in a station, just dropped into our chat here that fentanyl is up to fifty times stronger than hero and one hundred times stronger than morphine. So to go back to the point, I'm not saying that you don't die, because I know people was on crack. They died a lot of crackheads that or people who use crack, I don't know, we supposed to call them cracked heads. But people who

use crack and they well whatever, they died. Cocaine addicted people who that hit messed them up, messed up their membranes, and they died. So we know that people who smoke weed every day something the weed doesn't go well, and they got sick and had internal issues and died. Not as many, of course, of any of those things. But still it's bad. The overusge of anything or dangerous, especially

man made drugs. Anything can happen. But fenton All, they're saying it's up to fifty times stronger than heroin fifty times. I just ain't gonna give it.

it into accounts sometimes when I say things. So I wrote a post because it was in my heart. And the post that I wrote was about Krishan Brock, And the reason why I wrote it publicly was because when I'm in my rabbit hole at two and three o'clock in the morning, when I can't sleep, or one o'clock in the morning, I will go to certain posts, certain places and just kind of try to get a feel for what's going on in the cold because all day long there's like no way to monitor comments and thoughts

and look at the feed of every blog. I don't have that type of time, So I usually do that when I'm narrowing the day down, and I kept seeing like I cannot get Blue Face and Krashan Rock off of my timeline. So no matter if I wanted to ignore it or not, it is ever present in your face all day long, even in this day that we sit here now, from the morning until now at one forty eight, there have been at least five to six

posts about them, okay, different things. What he said was she said with this, that and the third the doctor's appointment, the blah blah blah blah blah, all the stuff that's going on. And I saw it and said to myself, this is like really serious because that that baby does something. It shifts people, you know what I'm saying. When it was just the two of them, I prayed for them, God bless you and moved on. I said, I know this is crazy, and we talked about it before. I'm like,

what is zeus and who owns it? And what is going on? This is craziness, But I've moved on because there's an appetite for it and nothing. All that comes of me saying that you know it's bad or it's wrong or whatever is a bunch of people getting frustrated and telling me to mind my business. And you don't this and you would hate blah blah blah. So I don't have time to fight that fight. I gotta stop a man from becoming governor and to tell me we have to do that. So when I saw this situation

with the baby, it made me feel something. And at first I felt the immediate like, what the fuck? You know that? Which is judgment is judgment? And then what I always try to do is sit with myself for a moment, especially when I'm thinking about younger people. And I got this somewhat from you when you said you always try to think of what does the young you want to hear or what would you have listened to?

So I kind of slowed down and sat with damn, remember this, remember that remembering stories when I was young, young with my baby, I might not have been as far to the left as what you see with the two of them. But also everything looked magnified and worse. When it's on social media or in front of a screen,

every day looks worse. So my same shit, the basements that I lived in, the craziness, the fighting with my baby father, all of the drama that I went through, if it was on TV or on social media, it would have looked very similar. The screaming, the yelling, the fighting, the carrying on with my son being there with us at times, it would have looked similar. And when I checked myself in that way, I begin to write. I

spoke to Yande about it first. She was like, girls been on my mind too, blah blah blah, and then I begin to write and so I posted it and then it ended up on this blog and that blog,

in this place and that place. And I appreciate all of that support because most of the blogs wrote that, you know, Tamika Mallory, you know, they said positive things about it, and then the comments section is overwhelmingly folks who are in there that have been very very you know, moved by the gesture to say that we will help

in some way. And it's not financial help, but it's looking at how can we pair her with the right black duelas that can work with her, that can help her to manage the postpartum and motherhood and learn some of the things that she may not be able to get from, you know, her, from her upbringing or her family or her community or whatever it is. She may never ever, ever Krashwan say that she wants to talk

to us, and that's okay. Sometimes just knowing that people are watching and they're telling you that they care, or that they are that they will help you, that they will try to provide you with some type of support, it's enough to make you be like, damn, how do.

place she took her baby was church days later. That means that somewhere inside is a young girl who is really crying out for help, who really knows that I'm so far to this side, but I really need somebody to help me with this baby and help me with me, help me with me.

going to heal the problem. But it took strong women to be around me. And I mean strong women. I'm not talking about some chicks I know, or just because

it's a family member, it makes that person qualified. Family member don't necessarily make you qualified to help somebody through their challenges when you suffer room with your own, but when you surround yourself with strong women and men who can help you see other perspectives without judging you in or going back to the world and blasting your most

vulnerable spaces and places and exploiting you. Because, by the way, many of the people who she works with and talks to are exploiting her pain and her baby father's plane for their own purposes, regardless of whether she puts it on social media. So I'm very passionate about it. I don't expect I have no expectations, and I don't have to because I have the world is going on that this, you know, young woman will hopefully, and I believe that

she will. I have to believe that, like we have to live in a society where we believe that there is healing, even for Kashan, even for a person who might not even know, understand or feel they need support. I have to live in that world, and there are people who many of them, and I don't even think they're wrong. Their quick immediate response is you want to help this chick instead of because she's a celebrity, instead

of all these other people that need help. And let me tell you why that's important to me or why I understand the question. And I have a very specific answer. I already told people about all the work that I do with folks you ain't never seen or heard of, and the support of our village around young people who are having issues, challenges, young mothers, so on and so forth. If I wanted to, I could call the roles. Some of them don't want that. Others who may want, who

do want because they say it all the time. But because Kashan is a celebrity, she the reason why I was posted. It wasn't about me. It's not like people are constantly posting on all of these blogs and in other places everything we do. They post some things for me, they don't necessarily they don't post the things that you talk about often enough, and we know that and we've

challenged that. But they do post some of my work, they post my comments or things that I've said at times, but there are not many opportunities because number one, the comments section or even the response from the people, if

you will, is not even the same. So most of the sites, the blog sites or whatever, they are posting things where they know there's going to be interaction, and if they're just putting up that Tamika Mallory is working with college students and helping them, more than likely, even the same people who are challenging why I don't help young women, which I do, or young mothers other mothers that are not celebrities, you ain't got nothing to say.

You ain't in a comment section celebrating that sharing it, giving comments. That's not the case. We don't engage in that kind of stuff. So the reason why it's getting the attention that it's getting is because of who she is and the fact that you all are already tapped into her. But let me say this last thing and I'm done with it. One thing I know about life right and capacity, is that we don't always have the type of capacity that we want to do everything we

want to do, and it's often frustrating. But Krashan's healing has the potential to heal millions. So if she can, she becomes an example. Sometimes we're not able to work on seventy eighty one hundred thousand people because we don't

have the capacity to do so. But if you can work on one individual that appears to be at her bottom or at her lowest moment, which I don't even believe that that's true, because there's always under, there's always lower until you are under the gun, literally, And I believe that she can find healing, whether it's about me or not, just in her own ways, it has the potential to spread to millions of young women and men everywhere and show them that there is a path for redemption.

Even though you might be in the worst situations, the worst toxic relationships, you might be most toxic to yourself, there is a path for grace and for there to be redemption for you. So that's all I have to say. I know it's a lot, but I think people need to know that, No, you know, I'm not going to let you make me feel like I shouldn't do or or somebody else is more worthy. I think all of us, even Krashan, is worthy of love and support.

had to deal with that. A lot of us come from this hierarchy, to come from this moral high ground about oh, you can't do this, and you're this, and you're the worst type of person, you're this, look at what you've done, look at what you've done. Not acknowledging that we've done. Worship ourselves and somebody cared for us, and somebody loved us, and somebody walked us through that,

somebody stood by us at our worst times. And we want people to just forget everybody during their worst times because we've because we figured it out, you know, And I don't I think that's that's what we deal with a lot in this society, especially in these times. Everybody's coming from a moral high ground that they don't really have the right to come from.

In the last few free weeks or the last few months, we found out that Panini, a company, a three billion dollar company that uses the faces and images of black and brown players, sports players were making were through their memorabilia and their trading cards, didn't have any black people in positions of power in their company, no senior level executives. And so they have hired someone now to consult with

them to make changes within the company. But it's been enough months I believe that we should now, especially this summer is over. We're into the fall or coming up there. We're into the fall. We should be able to receive feedback from them about what has happened as there again same thing Like Krashan, I might not be able to have the capacity to go after seventy companies at the same time, but we can shure enough make sure one company is an example of how we will expose what

they are doing. Again, they're hiding in playing site. It's not like you can't find these things out. You just need a quick search and ask some questions. And when we did that, we found out that this company was really doing something that I believe is bad business practice. And so you know, we will continue to work on that. And now we're going to reach back out to them to find out what is the update since they from

our work. From our work because until we raise the issue with Panini, they did not have a consultant working with them on diversity, equity and inclusion practices within their company.

people really understand what's happening. This isn't all out of salt. It's really serious.

phone again, and so I don't. But when I was answering my phone, it wasn't nobody calling to pold me at all. Okay, So now listen, y'all. We got somebody, super super smart on here today that knows a lot.

And you know, lately we've been talking about DEI and the challenges around diversity, equity and inclusion, and I think people really need to be paying attention to how just because it's not on the TV every day doesn't mean that there's not something spreading across this nation that is really, really, really dangerous. And we've got to be aware that right now, being black in certain spaces is not sexy, and people are actually trying to diminish our value and our worth.

And so this gentleman that is coming on with us today is a new friend to UH street politicians. But he also is someone who is very very qualified to talk about diversity and equity and inclusion. So let me just usually I don't read bios to y'all, but I got a few sentences that I think right on my son that we should probably go over today, so you'll know more about who doctor Sean Harper is. He holds the Clifford and Betty Allen Chair in Urban Leadership at

the University of Southern California. In twenty twenty two, he was appointed University Professor. Doctor Harper has published twelve books and is author of more than one hundred peer reviewed articles and other academic publications. He is a recipient of dozens of top honors in his field and four honorary degrees.

A prolific and energizing speaker on a range of diversity, equity and inclusion topics, he has delivered hundreds of keynote addresses around the world, many audiences comprised of thousands in his DEI work. I mean, I think that is something to be really really proud of as a black man. You're working in this space and also right now to be tuned into what you do. So why don't you get started? First of all, welcome to street politicians, Doctor

Sean Harper. Why don't you get started by telling us about your upbringing, the things that are not here in your bio, and how you made it to the DEI space.

day in every space. There's nothing I would rather be than black hints It really frustrates me, right, the palpabole, pervasive, perverted sense of anti blackness that we see in you know, just about every corner of America. But you know, despite those attacks on our black lives and black cells, we're gonna keep being black unapologetically, and we're gonna keep making black sexy. So you asked about my upbringing. I grew up in Thomasville, Georgia. It's a small, rural, racially segregated

town on the Georgia Florida border. It is a place where the racial politics are ever present and incredibly intense, but yet nobody really talks about them, at least not out loud. People talk, you know, within their family units, perhaps within their church communities, but there's never really a multi racial common conversation about, you know, just the crazy racism that placed itself out, you know, in plain sight. So those were the things that got me really interested

as a youngster. Really, I mean, honestly, I think back to when I was like five years old. I noticed that most of the people who were black, like my family, were incredibly poor, and most of the people who were rich and who ran things and who were in charge of things were white. So I've been on a lifelong quest to understand why those racial inequities exist. I ruled out several things. I ruled out that we weren't poor

because we were lazy. My mother cleaned white people's homes as a housekeeper when I was a kid, so it definitely wasn't because we were lazy. I also ruled out that we were not poor because we wanted to be, and I ruled out that we were not poor because we were somehow inferior intellectually to white people. There were

a deeper set of structural and systemic explanations. So, you know, for the past forty eight years, I've been on a quest to find those answers and more importantly, provide solutions. You know, not just to Thomasville, where I'm from, but really to the whole United States of America and really to every place around the globe where anti black racism exists.

I said pledged. So you asked if that same intensity is still there from June twenty twenty. Nah, not only is the intensity not there, but those people also haven't paid up. They haven't paid the two hundred billion dollars that they pledged. You See, the thing about a pledge is that, you know, you make it usually over like some time span, Right, So for most of these companies that were like, yeah, over the next four years, we're gonna give one hundred million dollars to black folks and

to black things. Yeah. At this point, we're about three and a half years in and yo, like the money still hadn't reached the accounts of black people with black black organizations, black communities. So I'm waiting on the money that was pledged to be paid yeah.

have black folks give that. But what I mean by it is that the energy in the room, the space, it is not about focusing on black folks the way that it was just so many years ago, which makes it so much harder for us to continue to put us back in the center of the conversation. Every time they try to rear in a different direction, we have

to constantly bring it back. And what happens in those moments is that when corporations and the media and others are not covering us even the dollars that we depend on, which is generally successful people, people who have resources to give because they feel inspired by the moment. That moment has diminished. And it is even other black people who have resources that it's like pulling teeth to get support

from them. And so you know, I agree with you one hundred percent, So tell us this are there since twenty twenty? Are there companies that you can continue to work with? You see, their commitment has been something real and you know a way that they are truly focused on this because I got to ask you about all the black folks leaving DEI positions in these companies. But first tell me do you know any good companies? Because they'll say, we never talk about the good stuff.

of color departing these these DEI positions. I got a lot to say about that, But honestly, companies that in my heart and soul felt so committed. I was like, this is it? Like this is great. Even they have fallen victim to I suppose that's just that something happened to them, as opposed to them consciously deciding not to be courageous. But even those companies have walked back many of their DEI commitments and have began to unravel the

DEI infrastructure. So no, I don't have a name for you. Unfortunately, it's sad. It's real sad because so many companies profited reputationally from these declarations that they were making about how committed they were to black folks. Again, that stuff lasted in most places for a maximum of seven weeks. Our brother Van Jones gave us language for this. I'm gonna take us all the way back when Donald Trump was

elected president. It was Van Jones who tearfully said live on CNN that what we're seeing here is whitelash to the eight years of the Obama administration in a very like pornographically analogous way. What we're seeing right now in the attacks on DEI is whitelash to the progress that was made in summer twenty twenty. You know, it was only it was less than three months after George Floyd's murder that Donald Trump issued an executive order banning DEI

trainings in government agencies and in the military. Right now, I was on the team that helped Biden and Harris get elected, and part of our work, I was on the education policy team. The thing that was super important to us was on day one a President Biden has to undo that executive order that Trump signed, right because it was having a chilling effect on DEI in education. We succeeded. On day one, President Biden rescinded that executive order.

But at that point, the damage was already done. Right, the strategy of unraveling all of this stuff, all of the momentum had already the traff had been set, The strategy had already.

So in my education work, I'm working with literally thousands of educators in any given week on these very issues, helping them to understand that there is a politicized, you know, attack on black folks, on black history, on people of color, on queer people, and so on, and that you know, Ron de Santis, Greg Abbott, the Texas governor, and others are succeeding in making the American people fall for the okido, the okidote that things are actually happening in schools that

are not happening right. So, yeah, I'm on this. I'm

on it every single day. Earlier this summer, back in June, the USC Race and Equity Center, the organization I lead, launched what we call the National DEI Defense Fund, and we're using that as a fundraising mechanism to help buy books in communities where books have been banned, to help support teachers who are very generously creating after school and out of school programs where they can teach black history and other things that have been banned in the formal curriculum.

You know, it's a whole bunch of other stuff that we're using the funds for. It's just one of at least one hundred ways that my center colleagues and I are attempting to save our democracy from the ridiculousness.

black culture and black people. We're going to send millions and millions and millions of miseducated people into our industries, into our workforce, and they are going to create cultures that are anti black. They are going to not hire and promote black people equitably. Right, So it's going to have a real negative impact on black professionals, for sure.

That's one second. It's going to lead to a whole bunch of racial tension as people of color and white people are on you know, two different sides of the American experience, and one side consistently misunderstands the experiential realities of the other. That other side is going to get increasingly frustrated by those misunderstandings, by the devaluation of our lives and our experiences. You see, when people don't learn about each other's cultures, histories, and realities, right, it makes

them susceptible to eruption and misunderstandings. Right. So that's my second prediction. The third prediction that I'll make is that I honestly believe that our democracy as a whole is going to be susceptible, vulnerable to all sorts of attacks, both domestic and foreign. I know that I'm talking like

I'm speaking to a group of military officers. Well, actually it's because just last week I spoke to hundreds of military officers and I reminded them of the military oath of office that includes language of them pledging themselves to protect America against enemies both foreign and domestic. The most dangerous domestic enemy right now in the United States of

America is misinformation and disinformation. Those things are only going to be exacerbated by these attacks on diversity at what are you an inclusion right those attacks that are fueled by disinformation and misinformation. So it is really going to make our country weak and really susceptible to all sorts of breakdowns and attacks.

But I have to imagine that somewhere in there it feels like people are being fired without maybe saying it publicly, just by them the way that they feel marginalized at work, or maybe it's a lack of support that they are also feeling in the environment. So what do you think is causing people to run? And or are they just being terminated and we just don't hear much about how it ends.

time period. And you know, I mentioned in my Forbes article that the same thing happens in college and professional sports to black coaches, black head coaches, that they get less of a runway to build their team, to show results, so on and so forth, before you know, they're pushed out or fired or whatever. You know. So there is a chance that that is part of the Rosslyn Brewer experience.

We got to find out from her, right, she needs for herself, right, But I think the larger point is that Rosslyn Brewer was one of only two black women

Fortune five hundred CEOs. That's not okay, that's not okay, right, So we got to understand the intersectionality of race and gender for black women and the ways in which that intersectionality undermines their day to day experiences within corporate environments, but also undermines their climbing of the corporate ladder, and then ultimately when they get there to the top, right, the attacks and the unreasonable expectations on them that are

not placed on certainly not on their white male colleagues or counterparts, right, who are CEOs? Now with the diversity officers chief diversity officers. I wrote a piece and Forbes back in January explaining twelve ways in which CEOs and companies fail chief diversity officers. You know, it really is the combination of those twelve forces factors that explains in the largest part the turnover in the CEO role. We ain't got time for me to talk about twelve, so

I'll just like lift up three. One one of these is not like the other in many companies. So in many companies, the chief diversity officer is if I'm being honest, and I don't mean to disrespect our brothers and sisters and gender queer colleagues and family members who are in those roles, but they don't have the same seat at the table as the CFO, or as the chief marketing officer,

so on and so forth, the chief legal officer. In fact, in way too many organizations I supposed to, I should say, and way too few organizations they ain't got a seat at the corporate table at all. Right, they have like a vice president title, they're called the chief diversity officer, but they never ever ever get to talk to the CEO, right, because my friends, I mean, are chief diversity officers.

here comes you know, we need to meet. And then, as you said, the expectations at that point of the DEI person to be able to do something for the company's brand that is not a part of anything in the culture is unreasonable, you know, So go ahead.

moment of a crisis. But I have way, way, way too many examples where companies have literally been on the news, you know, and I'm talking like in the New York Times or CNN and other places on fire for you know, some sort of racial problem or sexual harassment problem or whatever,

and the CDO is not at the table. The CDO finds out when the rest of us finds out right, and the person's like, uh, hello, you got a whole in house expert that you haven't, that you don't even have enough respect for to call to the crisis resolution table. So I do know for sure that both things are simultaneously true. Let me go a little bit faster, So I promise people three, let me tell you two more reasons.

Chief diversity officers often have way too little money in their budgets, way too few staff members, and way too little authority decision making authority. You know, folks are like, yeah, I fail for it. I thought I was like gonna be an actual vice president and I came here and yeah, it's just like me and two staff members for a

massive corporation. Here's the third explanation. In summer twenty twenty, lots and lots of CEOs and other C suite executives contacted me directly personally given the work I do, saying hey, we want to think about hiring our first chief diversity officer In almost every instance, I told those folks, no, don't do that, y'all just bandwagoning. You're just doing the thing right now that is popular that everybody else seems

to be doing. But you know, a lot of those folks rejected that advice and went ahead and very haphazardly hired chief diversity officers without an actual job description, without an actual, real you know, sort of complex understanding of what we want this person to do. Hire the people without onboarding them properly, so on and so forth. So it shouldn't surprise us that so few of those people lasted for more than eighteen.

so on and so forth. So I just want to make sure that your listeners recognize that I'm a multifaceted DEI expert, so to are the twenty nine people who work at the center that I lead in terms of other racial groups. I'm really glad you asked this question, right, because we've talked a lot in this conversation in this episode about black people and black professionals. Latin X or Latino or Hispanic professionals also experienced tremendous racism in workplaces.

About a month or two ago, I was watching Eva Longoria's film Flaming Hot, which is, you know, a screenplay, a film about the guy, the Latino guy Janitor, who created who had the idea for flaming Hot Cheetos, Right, So you know, I was thinking, Yo, this is going to be just like a little fun movie. But actually, as I watched that movie and I watched Richard Montagnez's experience as a Latino janitor, so much of it resonated with my research and what I hear from Latino professionals

about their workplace realities. So I wrote a Forbes article about it that night because really it was such a familiar experience to me as I watch it play out in Eva's film. And let me also just say quickly, for our Asian American Pacific islander and Indigenous brothers and sisters and gender queer people in workplaces, those folks experienced tremendous erasure, meaning just like an ever present feeling of unimportance.

And it's not just a feeling, right, there are everyday reminders that now y'all ain't important here, right, and that's not okay. We often talk about the underrepresentation of black and Latino folks in executive level roles in organizations, Asian Americans are also severely underpresented, underrepresented. So to our indigenous.

the intersection of many communities. You got you youth that are also locked out of many positions around this nation, where you know, younger people being able to get into these companies and make the salaries that they deserve. I mean, there are so many layers of issues because the bottom line is that white men have created an environment that they want to maintain within their companies, their corporations that they've used so many people who are black, brown and

others to build. And so it would seem to me that we would all be working together right like that. That is the metropolis, if you will, of folks that need to be pushing back against this and not so much being in our silos. Seems like it should be something that's bigger, but that is often not the case

because there is so much divisiveness in our movements. But I think that we get a bigger bang for our buck, if you will, if we are able to join together to push back on some of these narratives and to make sure that we're holding the line line within these companies to provide opportunities for others.

is such an important way to end. I want to end on a beautiful note, but honestly, this is a painful note to end on because it's just important for listeners to to understand this. I over the course of my career, have had the privilege of working with more than four four hundred companies, government agencies, nonprofit organizations, and educational institutions on diversity, equity, and inclusion. More than four hundred.

One of the most painful discoveries of mine is that black folks are catching hell everywhere everywhere, across sectors, across geographies,

across age groups, so on and so forth. So in addition to those interracial coalitions with other racial groups, we also need black folks to come together across industries across age groups to collectively heal from the collective trauma that we've experienced historically and contemporarily at work, to share navigational strategies with each other as deliberate acts of self care, and to collectively determine strategies for resistance regardless of where

one works. To disrupt and dismantle racism and anti blackness. We need black folks across industries to come together for that.

normalized abnormalities inside of this culture. So unfortunately, until we stop normalized being treated wrong, until we understand that, there has to be a unified front in which we address this. First we got to unify within us and then we unify with everybody else.

But DEI is sitting on me heavy because I know that if we think we're dealing with poverty now, if we think we're dealing with challenges now, when AI becomes even more of a corporate strategy that they begin to use, we're going to see violence and crime and depression rise in our communities like we have never ever, ever ever seen before. This is about to be a time that we can't even manage if we don't understand the problem.

And I think it is incumbent upon those of us who have our ears to the streets, someone like my son and I who might not be well versed in all of it, but being able to meet and talk with people like you who can help break it down and bite sizes so that are people who are moving fast, who are stressed to or all the things, have an opportunity to grasp that the problem you're having at work with this white woman that continuously writes you up and

continuously treats you bad and you know, continuously get you in corners and steals your work and lies on you. All of that is not a problem just because there's something wrong with you, but there's something wrong with the industry. And to my son's point, until we work together, we're never going to be able to change it. So thank you very much for joining us on street politicians today, Doctor harper.

reason to give you a job. They're not forced like people think, oh affirmative action on. No, these things only made sure that people who were qualified got opportunities. It wasn't They didn't bring unqualified. People will say, oh, yeah, you gotta a sixty, you know, you gotta a C minus. No, they took the top of the battle from communities of people who weren't able to afford and gave them education. That's what these things provided, and that's what de does.

It gives people who are qualified the opportunity to actually get heard. And then it says there's a certain amount of these people that are overly qualified that actually have to hire. And I don't understand why people think that's such a big thing. But you know, that's a whole other thing. Man shout out to doctor Harper. You know, his take on that is phenomenal, and I think we definitely should have him back. But being having that be said,

it brings me to my I don't get it. I posted something on social media the other day and it was a young boy who was fifteen years old and judge who's actually a black lady was sentenced to him, sentencing him for doing I think it was arm robbery, take stealing cars, walking up with guns and stealing cars. He was actually ultimately sentenced to about thirty years in prison.

And there were so many people like, that's good, he needed to be in jail, lock him up, this and that and this and that, and I was and I was listening, and you know, and I understand a lot of people think people need to be held accountable. There is accountability, right, But there's two things that I thought about, right.

The first thing that I thought about is that you people think that there are people who think that this fifteen year old is unredeemable, that this action he does, he's done makes him unfit to be in society, that he's just gonna be out here. He can't turn it around. He just needs to be in jail for thirty years. And I said to myself, I know people who've literally committed crimes that are henious, that have robbed people, that have stolen people and got away. That are CEOs of companies. Now.

There are CEOs of businesses now that never did that. Those things again, that run corporations who are millionaires and billionaires that sit in these rooms every day. They didn't get caught. There's so many people whose story especially that come from our communities, who they just didn't get caught.

It's not that they didn't do these crimes. It's not that they you know, they were poverty strict, and poverty is you know, people don't look at when you look at robbery, it is a crime of poverty, right, It is.

And then the second thing I said to myself was, if a young boy has thirty years in prison, right, if we don't think that they are redeemable at fifteen, if we don't think that we can sit that there's no alternative to visit. We look in different communities, if we look in different people violence, I mean alternative to incarcerations. Right. If we look around this world the reality of incarceration, it's not working. Right. We incarceerate people at high rates

and just about everybody, and we still have higher crime rates. Rights. It's places around this world where they don't incarceraate people nowhere near as much as we do in America, and they have lower crime rates. Right. And when you look at if you look at the situation, if you look at the places where these crimes will come from, the usually we're poor people, right, and they're usually black and

brown people are the people that they locking up. And it's so so confusing to me that we see these people from our communities that really think that this is the best course of action, that given this fifty year boy, thirty years is the best course of action. And it's so mind boggling to me how we don't understand how it hasn't worked, you know, the experiment of incarceration. For

I believe there should be accountability. I believe there should be some level of you know, maybe he does some jail time, but thirty years, what you've pretty much done is made him a hardened criminal. You kept him in prison around people who are criminal minded. He's learning criminal mentality. Even worse, he comes out here with less opportunities, less access to anything. He's forty years old with nothing, and now you expect him to become a conductive of a

constructive and a productive, productive member of society. It just doesn't make sense to me. And it's our people. And that's why when people say get mad and say yo, Joe Biden wrote the crime bill, I have to really push back and say, I get it is the worst shit ever. But a lot of our people wanted that crime built. It was our people in the community and said lock them people up. They the worst ship, get

them up. And this is what happens when you look at when you go online and you see the responses of all these people saying, put this little boy in jail for thirty one.

I would say that what you are speaking to right now, yes, I think it's important for you to keep saying it, But I don't think many people who are the ones who are pushing back against what you're saying, or those who are just basically saying lock them up, I personally don't think that they will ever get it or shift their mindset to understand that the people you're talking about who wanted the crime buil in whatever year that was, those people didn't want a crime build. They wanted to

be safe. And we've been taught that unitive punishment is the only answer. We have not been taught to advocate for stronger communities to deal with violence, drugs, and other issues that relate to poverty. We've been taught that the immediate response is to go towards law enforcement and again punitive measures. That is a result of being enslaved, and an enslavement if you did something, no matter what it was, you could just suck your teeth and get slapped, beat,

locked away, raped. We still carry that mindset. It has been taught to us. When we went to Africa, we learned about the villages and it does not mean that if someone committed an egregious act in the village that there was not war, fights and punishment that existed. But that was not the way of raising children, beating them. And the first thing that comes to mind is what is the harshest response that you can have to the things that young people or all people do that's wrong.

And we've been disconnected from our culture so much that we don't even know what it looks like to be a community that takes a child who looks challenged and try to work on dealing with their issues among ourselves. It doesn't mean that there should not be consequences, but we jump to consequences before even finding out what are the circumstances, so we are beyond. It's the same thing with the Krishan rock thing. We are beyond circumstances and

already at consequences. That's the way in which we have been taught. And it is something that you know, it's a chain that's been around our next for a long time that even I, even you, all of us fall into sometimes believing that, oh you disrespected me. So now

I'm going to lash out in these different ways. And it is it is, It is an unlearning that we're all trying to do to say or not we all of it, I mean, in our space and until freedom, we're trying to unlearn that where we can actually have communication or understanding that puts us it makes us on comfortable,

but it's necessary. So you know, I don't think those people will change from that because they don't know, because they have not well let me say again, going back to for Sean, it's not that they don't know, because they've been many of them given grace. Carl Russell, same situation. People want grace for the Pooky Ray Ray and their family members t T and Leelee.

But you want a kid who didn't shoot nobody, didn't physically harm anybody, who probably was stealing out of desperation, to do thirty years, And you think that makes sense? How does the justice? How do people rationalize those things? It doesn't. It doesn't even make sense. It's not even a rational thought in.

good for him, that's right, Lock them up. He ain't no good anywhere. I blame his mama. But and I'm just like, damn, we don't have any level just for a child who's who's front two lover is not even developed. I don't even the ship that I was doing at fifteen, I don't even understand. Like when I sit there and thinking about shit I've done at fifteen, I'm it's no way that I would have done even remotely did some shit like that five years later, you know what I stand.

I'm saying. So when we as grown people actually take ourselves out of our own reality to we can't look back and say, damn, I did a lot of dumb shit at fourteen and fifteen, I just dumb shit at nineteen and twenty, you know, when we can't say that and we're wishing all of that shit on somebody. Fifteen because we were able to either rise above it get away with the ship we did. Nobody caught us all, like, it's so crazy to me, the mind state that we

deal with, it's just fucked up. But like you said, that's what we are. And with that said, you know, another brilliant episode. Shout out to doctor Harper and his insight on DEI. You know, we definitely got to pay attention to that because.

So with that said, man, another episode, brilliant episode. I'm not gonna always be right, Tamika D. Mallories and I could always be wrong, but we will both always and I mean always be authentic.