A short spoken excerpt from Vernā Myers arguing that fear of the unknown drives people to keep homogenous social and professional circles. She urges intentional expansion of one’s network—by assessing who you spend time with, building relationships around shared goals, and gradually growing trust—to reduce discomfort and avoid harmful assumptions or remarks.
Mostly I think we fear the unknown. And the more we fear it, the more we fear it, you see, like the more we don't make the connections, the more we don't gain the proximity, as they say. Then we get to make up stuff about how scary folks are, how ignorant they are, how whatever violent they are, whatever the stories are, we make up. And so my call to action for people is to, for example, if I asked you to, you could only choose 10 people to come to a very important dinner at your house, and you can't. It's not your 10 most important people, including your family. Like, okay, we already stipulate that maybe your family is part of your closest crew. But like non family members, who would be at your table? How old would they be? What would be their gender identity? What would be their sexual orientation? What languages would they speak? What does your own circle look like? Because if you do that analysis, some of us have a super, super diverse group of people we hang with, but many of us have a circle that reflects who we are. And that means on some level we are avoiding discomfort. Now some people, like, look, I go to work every day and I'm outnumbered. And yeah, hell, you're right, I'm going to surround myself when I'm not at work with my peeps. I get it. And there are also some limitations to that, right? Especially as you think about where you're in the majority and where you might need to expand beyond your comfort zone. So I'm really saying, don't get crazy awkward. Build relationships around some common goal or theme. If you're at work, you're working, build a relationship with someone you're working with, and then little by little, that relationship starts to grow, you grow trust. And then you start to have more of that relationship grow into more personal things. And, and then you start to have various conversations and then you are expanding your social and professional circles. And by doing so, you can stop saying things that get you in trouble.
