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A history of integration: how we address self-segregation | Byron Burkhalter | TEDxSeattleSalon

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    Phil Klein: Hello, and welcome to
    TEDxSeattle Community Conversations.
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    I'm your host, Phil Klein,
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    and I'm here today with Byron Burkhalter,
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    a sociologist and co-founder
    of "Out of Privilege,"
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    an organization that helps people
    in individual and corporate settings
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    do the hard work to recognize
    the privileges afforded them
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    by the racism and white supremacy
    systemic in our everyday lives.
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    Byron, welcome and thank you
    for joining us today.
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    Byron Burkhalter :
    Oh, thanks for having me, Phil.
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    PK: Thank you so much.
    Yes, great to see you.
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    So, where would you like to start
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    in terms of thinking about
    either the history or the background
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    of white supremacy and privilege
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    as we experience in everyday lives,
    in the US or more broadly?
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    BB: So I think the place I would start
    is right after World War II
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    and the generation
    of soldiers coming back,
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    also coming into a time of the red scare,
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    and the way that the United States
    was attempting to integrate their society
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    and live up to their values.
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    And I just want to mention
    sort of two different ways of integrating.
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    One of them is what I would call
    a sociological model
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    because the impact was the individual
    in the world that they lived in.
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    So I would say that the suburbanization
    that brought in Jewish Americans
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    and in the '60s, mid-'60s,
    brought in Asian Americans
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    was evidence of sort of
    this sociological model.
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    And then secondly,
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    I would bring in a psychological model,
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    which is based on "Brown
    versus the Board of Education,"
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    which I think has been
    the overwhelming model
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    for integrating Black and brown people,
    you know, originally into schools,
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    but now I think
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    this is the basis of the DEI models
    that you find in corporate America.
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    And what I want to say, I think,
    mostly is I think that that model,
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    now some 70 years old,
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    was a misstep, was the wrong way to go
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    and has repercussions
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    that has hurt the ability
    to actually integrate our work spaces.
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    PK: Can you unpack that
    a little bit for us?
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    How do you see that model playing out?
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    BB: So I want to say first off,
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    that the model was a translation
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    of what the plaintiffs
    of Brown actually wanted.
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    They wanted the sociological model,
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    the ability to choose which environments
    their kids went to school in
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    without regard to skin color.
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    But the court translated that
    into a psychological model
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    and said, "Separate's not equal,
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    because you are impairing
    the minds of these Black children."
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    And so the model
    that comes out of Brown is
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    taking individual Black kids -
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    you know, in the visual
    that you get of it,
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    it's always sort of
    that black and white photo
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    with the crowds yelling,
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    and the one kid going in
    surrounded by police officers -
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    and you take them into a space,
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    and once you get them to that space,
    you've effectively integrated.
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    Now, the thing about that is
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    the space itself has not really changed.
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    Nobody has asked the white students
    in the school to do anything different.
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    The administrators
    aren't doing anything different.
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    The curriculum is not changed.
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    It's simply getting
    one individual into the space
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    that counts as integration.
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    That I think is problematic.
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    And it's problematic for us today
    as you try to retain -
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    or recruit and retain,
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    African Americans and Latinx people
    into your organizations
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    without actually going
    through any change yourself.
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    So part of what our organization
    "Out of Privilege" does
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    is it tries to bring
    in that sociological model,
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    where the people that are already there
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    have to change,
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    have to do the work to understand
    themselves in a larger context.
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    PK: So to understand that,
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    in Board of Education versus Brown,
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    you had Black people
    brought into the white schools, right?
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    And that was considered
    a complete remedy as implemented,
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    whereas what I think I hear you saying
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    is that true integration
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    entails creating a space
    where each participant -
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    Black, brown, Latin American, etc. -
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    is a full participant
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    and is recognized as a full participant
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    rather than being assimilated
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    or integrated in a superficial sense
    into a white space.
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    And it keeps attention
    off of details like,
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    Oh, there was an entire
    police force and federal agents
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    that were involved
    in the way that was implemented
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    to address the impairment of Black kids
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    in their lack of access
    to white resources.
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    BB: Yeah, I think that's exactly right.
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    And more importantly,
    for our understandings of whiteness,
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    that idea of the privilege
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    that you get from being part
    of the political group of white people
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    is that we didn't understand
    that those with the privilege
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    were active participants
    in maintaining the privilege
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    and that until their actions changed,
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    until they did things differently,
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    that privilege, that difference,
    that segregation
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    was never going to go away.
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    We made it
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    where as long as we nominally had
    enough Black and brown bodies around us,
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    we were doing the work.
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    PK: And there's this kind
    of whiteful blindness
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    around the not only "invisible man,"
    you know, in Ralph Ellison's terms
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    is the way a Black man was experienced,
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    there's the invisible white power
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    that is surrounding things
    that white people choose not to see,
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    because it's pervasive for them.
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    BB: That's exactly right.
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    Now, and notice as we talk about this
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    how different it was
    in the armed services, right?
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    through an executive order,
    from Eisenhower, I believe.
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    Within 10 years,
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    you had made incredible progress
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    by having people live with each other,
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    train with each other,
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    fight with each other,
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    trust in each other with their very lives.
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    But instead, in the way
    that we've taken the psychological model,
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    instead of seeing this
    as a social operation,
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    it's been an individual model.
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    And even to this day,
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    you get people going
    through anti-bias training
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    as though it were the individual's mind
    that had to be altered,
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    and that there were
    these slight behavioral changes
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    that an individual could make
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    that would create a neutral atmosphere.
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    In the meantime, so many of us
    have lived in segregated neighborhoods,
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    so many of us have gone
    to segregated schools,
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    segregated colleges and universities,
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    so many of us go to meetings every day
    that are segregated
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    that we haven't had the time
    of actually living together,
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    which was the armed services model,
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    and so we don't know
    how to connect with each other.
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    We simply haven't had
    the hours doing that;
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    in fact, we've had the hours
    disconnecting from each other,
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    looking for safer schools,
    safer neighborhoods,
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    and whatever other coded language we need
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    in order to justify having no experience
    with Black and brown people in our lives.
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    Without that change,
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    your anti-bias training
    doesn't teach you how to live with anyone.
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    PK: So, just to kind of capture this
    because it's so vital.
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    You're saying, I think -
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    keep me honest here -
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    that in our military,
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    really, the instrument
    for our patriotism as a nation
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    focused on an evolution of development,
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    systematically,
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    of a multi-racial national force
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    in its very architecture
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    whereas in education,
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    the system in segregation,
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    and even in some aspects
    of systematic desegregation,
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    was reinforcing of a psychological model
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    rather than embracing
    the kind of sociological model.
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    BB: That's right.
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    And the psychological model to me
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    is naturally more useful
    to maintaining white supremacy,
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    just like you said -
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    and I think what you brought up
    is brilliant, right?
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    This is how we protect our democracy.
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    If you go back
    and read the executive order,
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    it says almost exactly that, Phil -
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    that this is to protect our democracy.
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    Now, when we looked
    at Brown versus the Board of Education,
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    this was to stop the damage
    to Black and brown minds.
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    It wasn't for all of us
    that we were integrating the schools;
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    it was for them.
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    This was our largesse, our altruism.
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    But with the armed forces,
    this was our very country,
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    this experiment was on the line,
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    and so by order, you will live together,
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    and that had its effect, right?
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    But when we look at it
    from the psychological model,
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    the idea is that we're helping them
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    with no sense of that white people,
    people within that political party,
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    needed that for themselves.
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    Even now as we come together
    as organizations,
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    why is this organization diversifying?
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    Do they see it
    as part of their bottom line?
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    Do they see it as part of who they are?
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    Or is this just their largesse?
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    BB: Can you speak a little more
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    to what you see as how companies
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    can and are or could or should
    apply this thinking
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    in the way they start to look
    at diversity and inclusion and equity?
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    So what I would say
    is at the beginning of this,
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    each person would have
    to understand themselves
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    in this racial context.
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    Each of us would have
    to understand ourselves,
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    not in terms of our attitudes
    or our feelings
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    or, you know, "I never think about race"
    or "it's not intended"
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    or any of these psychological terms,
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    but where do you live?
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    Do you know a Black couple
    where both partners are Black?
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    How many hours have you spent
    talking to Black people in the last year?
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    How much experience do you have
    with Latinx people in a peer environment,
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    you know, at dinner
    or in a meeting, right?
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    So it's understanding yourself in context,
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    and then it's starting to see
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    the small ways in which we cover
    for the racism around us,
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    things like
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    "Well, I haven't been presented
    with a candidate to hire,"
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    where you get that sort of passive tense,
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    where there's no notion
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    that you would have to be
    active and proactive
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    and do the anti-racist action
    of going to find.
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    Or we say, "Well yeah, I did hear that,
    but I don't think that was intentional,"
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    or "I think that that person's
    just not educated;
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    they're just ignorant,"
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    as though it were just an issue
    of not having these things available.
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    So looking for these little practices,
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    where within whiteness,
    you maintain the privilege,
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    you maintain the veneer
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    that there's nothing
    untoward going on here.
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    Now, from that, you come into ...
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    a place where you can understand
    other people's perspectives.
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    Let me say a little bit more about that.
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    Right now, the way
    that DEI is done in organizations
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    doesn't require those in power,
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    those with the jobs,
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    those already enculturated,
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    to understand the perspective
    of other people,
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    but those one or two or four
    Black and brown people
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    have to understand the perspectives
    of the people around them.
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    They have to constantly be reading
    those perspectives.
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    They have to recognize
    that those people don't have any practice,
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    don't have the hours in,
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    and they have to modulate themselves
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    to keep the comfort
    of the fragility of that environment,
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    that white environment.
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    So all of the work,
    all of the weight of this,
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    is on those people
    that you're bringing in.
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    If you want to retain them,
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    if you want an integrated,
    diverse, inclusive space,
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    you are going to have to be able
    to take your white perspective,
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    that segregated perspective,
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    and move it over to the side
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    and get some time
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    understanding perspectives that
    you have segregated yourself away from
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    all of these years
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    so that you can begin to carry the weight
    of understanding other people.
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    Once you get to that point,
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    that's how you begin
    to establish trust, mutuality
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    so that then you can have
    real conversations with each other,
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    so that you can really
    come to understand each other.
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    This happened for most people
    within whiteness in the suburbs.
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    This happened for Asian American families
    coming in in the '60s,
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    straight into the suburbs
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    with Jewish Americans and Irish Americans
    and Italian Americans,
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    all coming to learn
    how to live with each other.
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    And they all had to change,
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    and in fact, each of those generations
    that came into the suburbs
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    is going to have more trouble connecting
    with their parents and grandparents
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    that lived in ethnic communities
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    than they have with each other.
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    That culture, that coming together,
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    that's what we're trying to create
    in a corporate environment,
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    and that means
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    that it's not just a set of policies,
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    it's not just a set of anti-bias training.
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    You need time.
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    You need practice.
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    It's time to understand
    someone other than yourself.
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    PK: That's a powerful invitation and idea.
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    What I'm hearing
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    is that as an organization, perhaps,
    that was predominantly white,
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    let's say, six months ago
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    and has begun the process
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    of increasing the number of non-whites
    who are in a variety of roles -
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    you know, I mean, for many companies,
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    this may have been going on
    for five, ten years, longer -
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    there may subconsciously be
    a sense of the company
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    as a "we're a white company
    who have some minority members."
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    But as you point out,
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    acculturation is a dynamic
    that is continually in operation;
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    and you're suggesting
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    that in order to become conscious,
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    that acculturation process,
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    it needs to entail seeing oneself
    in one's racial context,
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    one's self-segregating context,
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    or, you know, a combination
    of self-selecting segregation
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    and situationally selective segregation,
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    and taking that structure
    and putting it aside
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    to invite the culture of other groups.
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    So there's this transition from otherness
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    to connectedness
    and multiracial integration.
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    Is that a way to see
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    if going from "We think we're not white,
    but we really kind of are,
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    and we're insisting
    on white culture unknowingly"
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    to a negotiation of
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    "Hey, we're no longer
    needing to be that way.
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    That is not necessarily
    in the best interest of our organization
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    in the same way
    it wasn't for the military"?
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    To really achieve,
    we really need the full voices.
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    And to do that,
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    we need to really listen and really learn
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    and invite the potential and power
    that is in each and every person
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    across their ethnic, racial,
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    cultural, gender, etc. backgrounds
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    in order to generate a better future
    for our companies and organizations?
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    BB: Yeah, I actually think
    I can tie it to the bottom line.
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    Let me start off by tightening
    something up a little bit.
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    By "white,"
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    I'm talking about a political group.
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    That political group
    has certain privileges.
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    I have some of those privileges.
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    So I'm not at all talking
    about some biological category
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    because I don't think
    white was ever a biological category,
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    and I don't think Italians, Irish,
    Catholics, Jews, Asian Americans
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    are all in that biological category,
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    certainly,
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    but some of them
    have this whiteness conditionally.
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    I think if you're a Jewish American,
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    I think you'd recognize
    that as the tenor of the politics goes,
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    so may go your sort of inclusion
    within the group.
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    I think for Asian Americans,
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    you get almost a contradictory
    whiteness sometimes,
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    where at any point -
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    and again, today's politics
    would take you there -
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    you can be seen as the enemy,
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    you can require more protection
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    because of what's being said
    by the political structure,
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    and at the same time, you know,
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    it's not that you necessarily grew up
  • 19:01 - 19:03
    in an ethnic enclave
    or anything like that.
  • 19:03 - 19:09
    You may be perfectly comfortable
    at the largest companies in the country,
  • 19:09 - 19:14
    and you know, you're going to see others
    that look like you while you're there.
  • 19:14 - 19:16
    So I do want to understand
  • 19:16 - 19:20
    that when whiteness
    is a political coalition
  • 19:20 - 19:25
    and that not every member
    has the same standing
  • 19:25 - 19:27
    within that coalition,
  • 19:28 - 19:31
    and then for the cultural part of it,
  • 19:31 - 19:36
    I think, you know, whiteness is sort of -
  • 19:36 - 19:38
    Well, one of the costs of that privilege
  • 19:38 - 19:40
    is to give up your actual culture,
  • 19:40 - 19:42
    to not be taught your actual history,
  • 19:42 - 19:44
    to not be taught of the connections
  • 19:44 - 19:48
    that you have to others
    that are outside those groups,
  • 19:48 - 19:50
    and so I think that coming
    out of privilege
  • 19:50 - 19:53
    is coming into your actual culture.
  • 19:53 - 19:56
    Talking about it from
    an organizational perspective,
  • 19:57 - 19:58
    what I would say is this:
  • 19:58 - 19:59
    A lot of the work I do
  • 19:59 - 20:05
    is bringing up to speed
    people of a certain age -
  • 20:05 - 20:07
    if I could use that term of art -
  • 20:09 - 20:13
    people who perhaps were comfortable
    with their understanding of racism
  • 20:13 - 20:17
    five years ago, or 10 years ago, you know,
  • 20:17 - 20:22
    or during the LA rebellion
    or during the '80s or whenever,
  • 20:22 - 20:26
    where, you know, you could just understand
    yourself as not racist
  • 20:26 - 20:28
    and say, "I don't have these thoughts,"
  • 20:28 - 20:30
    and, you know,
    "These things are terrible,"
  • 20:31 - 20:34
    and say those out loud as though
    you were actually doing something.
  • 20:34 - 20:38
    There's a generation or two down there -
  • 20:38 - 20:40
    and I struggle to see
    exactly where they're at,
  • 20:40 - 20:42
    I just know I'm not among them -
  • 20:43 - 20:46
    and they are not having your neutrality,
  • 20:46 - 20:50
    they are not having your claims about
    a lack of intent or lack of education.
  • 20:50 - 20:52
    They are actively asking
  • 20:52 - 20:56
    why they've been given
    whitewashed education,
  • 20:56 - 20:59
    why they haven't been told
    their actual history.
  • 20:59 - 21:01
    And what I would say to corporate America
  • 21:01 - 21:04
    is that's the upcoming demographic
  • 21:04 - 21:07
    that's going to be buying
    some of your products,
  • 21:08 - 21:11
    and they are going to look
    at your statements of neutrality
  • 21:11 - 21:15
    and your claims of being
    behind "Black Lives Matters,"
  • 21:15 - 21:17
    and they're going to check out
    your board rooms,
  • 21:17 - 21:20
    they're going to look
    at your leadership teams,
  • 21:20 - 21:22
    and if all of your hiring
    is down at the lower level,
  • 21:22 - 21:24
    they're going to notice.
  • 21:24 - 21:27
    In case you haven't been able to see,
  • 21:27 - 21:30
    they are taking this quite seriously,
  • 21:30 - 21:33
    and so I think that there are
    good bottom line reasons
  • 21:33 - 21:35
    for some corporations
  • 21:35 - 21:40
    to start to think about
    how they are going to adjust their vision
  • 21:41 - 21:46
    for a multi-racial United States
    that may already be here
  • 21:46 - 21:48
    but is certainly on its way.
Title:
A history of integration: how we address self-segregation | Byron Burkhalter | TEDxSeattleSalon
Description:

Look at two models of integration and see how they continue to play out today. As tendencies to self-segregate persist, how will we as people and organizations come together? This talk explores how we can better understand our context, and work to improve our multi-racial United States. This video is part 1 of a 2 part interview hosted by Phil Klein and held on July 25, 2020. Byron Burkhalter earned his doctorate in Sociology from UCLA and focuses on issues of race, biracial identity, whiteness and multiracial political coalitions in US history, as he has for more than 30 years. He has taught at universities, spoken at large public rallies and published numerous pieces on these issues. His writings examine racial and sexual discrimination in the workplace, and explore the relevance of race in interracial relationships and racial and ethnic identities in online communities. He also helps groups of people do the hard work to recognize the privileges afforded them by the racism and white supremacy systemic in their everyday lives.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx

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Video Language:
English
Team:
closed TED
Project:
TEDxTalks
Duration:
21:52

English subtitles

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