E40: Can We Stop Pretending? - Inclusion Unscripted Live

<LYRICS>You're like a circle that floats around me, keeping me safe and sound. And when I fall, you tied a rope to me. You're blessing me every day. I was down with an illusion, like a sparrow with broken wings, but now I shine with your reflection on me.</LYRICS> Hi everyone, welcome to Inclusion Unscripted.

My name is Margaret Spence, and today we're going to talk about how we pretend that we want diversity and inclusion. I was talking with a good friend earlier this week, and we reconnected after several months, and we're both doing D&I work.. And in the conversation she said to me, can we stop pretending? How do we help organizations stop pretending? How do we help the general public stop pretending?

And it was a wonderful conversation.

And I immediately thought to myself, this is the topic for Friday's program. This is the topic that we want to bring forward today. For Inclusion Unscripted. So you know that we are not just talking about diversity and inclusion, we are living it every day here at Inclusion Unscripted. And I want to bring forward today this hot topic around, can we stop pretending? I think that's, that's the word today. Because I think we're living in a pretend land. So thank you for joining us here at Inclusion Unscripted. For those of you who are joining for the first time, my name is Margaret Spence. I'm the founder of the Inclusion Learning Lab, and Inclusion Unscripted is sponsored by the Learning Lab. At the Learning Lab, we are here to empower those of you doing the work of diversity and inclusion to do that work with a new stride, a new step. We provide courses and classes and support and coaching and one-on-one support for diversity and inclusion and talent leaders to help you do the work of diversity and inclusion more effectively. So this week has been another one of those where it's like a hard-to-watch week. Where you just go, are we, are we going any further down the path, or are we staying up at the top of the path? So a couple things happened this week that jarred me to where I am with this discussion, where I ended up with this discussion. And so today is a lesson on pretending, but today's a lesson on diversity and inclusion. Because I think I want us doing this work to frame this up a little bit differently. So when I wrote the show notes for Inclusion Unscripted, the questions that came to mind, and as I was talking with my colleague about the work of equitable hiring and equitable promotions and building effective employee resource groups to provide support for internal employees, the words "can we stop pretending" came up. And what I wrote is, can we stop pretending that we care about DE&I, diversity, equity, and inclusion?

That's a little hard to come to.

Many of you wonder why I'm doing this part of the work that I'm doing now, but let me give you just a tiny bit of my journey. And sometimes you always have to go back and explain it. Many years ago, I was sitting in a workers' comp adjuster desk. I was managing workplace injuries for employers, and I was managing workplace injuries for one of the largest employers in Florida. And in that process, I began to see how people were discarded from the workforce because they had a disability. That's where this work started. It didn't start at this moment here. This work started a long time ago. When I left that desk, I made a point to work on inclusion as a core fundamental part of the work I was doing. How do I get employers to realize that people with a disability can still continue to work? Because the system is built to exclude those who have a disability from work. One of the highest unemployed— unemployment rates that we have right now are people with disabilities. And so fast forward, I wrote a book called From Workers' Comp Claimant to Valued Employee. I wrote that book in 2008, so not today, not last week, not since George Floyd. The book was written to incorporate ADA, FMLA with retention of disabled employees in the workforce.

And how do I—

how do we work within a system to keep disabled employees in the workforce? So that was 2008, that book was published. And then I wrote a second book for supervisors and managers so that they can clearly understand keeping disabled, ill, and injured employees in the workforce. I went out and I formed a week called National Return to Work Week. That was focused around keeping ill, injured, and disabled employees in the workforce. In 2009, I launched a podcast around keeping injured and ill and disabled employees in the workforce, and I went around the country and I spoke about disability inclusion and what that needed to look like. Okay, I worked then with the Job Accommodation Network brought them here to Florida to speak, worked on an app that they were developing to keep disabled employees in the workforce, how easy it was to allow us to accommodate disabled employees in the workforce. So that was the basis of the work I'm doing now. So I didn't come to this desk overnight. This wasn't a overnight to today. What's happened with me is that I've clearly found my voice because I no longer care if the planet is offended by what I say. There's a difference. There's a difference because the work that I've been doing— I've been doing this for a long time— the work has been consistent, okay? So earlier, uh, yesterday there was a post on LinkedIn about the governor of Texas, Greg Abbott. And while this is not a political show, it is still my program, so I think I get to talk about whatever I want to. And I'm appreciative that you're listening to me, but Greg Abbott put out a memo to all state agencies and public universities ordering them to stop applying diversity, equity, and inclusion policies in hiring. The Texas Tribune is reporting this. It was on the SHRM website. The memo said DE&I policies violate federal and state anti-discrimination laws and hiring cannot be based on factors other than merit, according to the Tribune. That's what he said. The memo claimed that DE&I efforts favor some demographic groups while putting others at a disadvantage. It doesn't specify what about the DE&I programs or initiatives are so problematic. And a professor, Michael Green, with Texas A&M University School of Law, said, I'm not aware of any law that makes DE&I programs illegal. Governor Abbott's statement said that policies in hiring anti-discrimination laws are likely to be challenged. Texas will try to attempt to pass a law to codify his views around DEI, okay, and the courts have been clear in ruling that the mere presence of a D&I initiative or program is not per se violate Title 9 or Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and it doesn't violate any anti-discrimination laws that exist out there, okay. So Greg Abbott put out this rule on no DE&I in hiring, basically at the colleges, the universities, the schools, the state agencies, and so on. So there was a wonderful gentleman on LinkedIn who put out a note on this article and said, I don't want to get down into the swamp, we just need to be focusing on what we're doing.

Darling, we can't focus.

We can't focus. I asked the question to this individual, what part of focusing are you asking us to focus on? Because if you're trying to take away the ability for someone to be hired, um, under diversity, equity, and inclusion, basically what you're saying is the following. Let me give you the following that you're saying. And for all of you people who are non-Black out there, I'm talking to you because maybe it is that you agree with Greg Abbott, which is why I wrote this thing today about stop pretending. Maybe you agree with Greg Abbott, but let me give you how this works.

You're a woman, a white woman, you're in the DE&I category, you have an autistic child who's high-functioning autistic child who you want to get into college and there's no office of equity like our governor here in Florida has removed the office of equity from the college campuses?

How does your child with a disability get to navigate the functional spaces that are built for able bodies when those able bodies don't have to make an accommodation for your child?

If you have a—

if you are an individual who's in a wheelchair, who is blind, who is deaf, who has a able-bodied issue, a body— an issue that prevents you from functioning the way everybody else does.

If you— if there is no office of equity and there's no DE&I in any part of the hiring process, that involves you too. If you are a person who is senior and you're trying to maintain your job or you're trying to get hired over age 55, DE&I includes you too. DE&I is not a Black person thing. Black people fought for the rights, for the civil rights, but the people who benefit from civil rights are not Black people. They're everybody else. They're everyone else. There was a time when a child who had a disability could not go into mainstream colleges. They were not required to create a safe, inclusive space for people with disabilities. They were not required to do it. They had no reason to do it. So for all of you who are sitting back and pretending like this law means something to only Black people, I have a little message for you. The laws that are being put into place in Florida and Texas and any other governor who wants to pick on diversity, equity, and inclusion involves every single person in the United States. When I was doing the work of inclusion based on your disability, what I said to everyone then is the following: every person is one banana peel away from having a disability.

You can fall down, you can have an accident, you can be—

you can go from able to disabled in a matter of seconds. So if there is no diversity, equity, and inclusion across the board, what happens to the people who don't fit the Black category? Because see, these folks want to make DE&I the boogie person. They want to make DE&I the boogie person, right? That is the goal, to make DE&I the boogie person.

Right?

The challenge here is diversity, equity, and inclusion is not just for people of color. It's not just for people of color. There is a misconception that DE&I is only for Black people. Diversity And the, and the process of creating inclusion includes people who aren't white males. It includes white women. So if you don't want to hire based on DE&I, that means that white women are at risk of being hired as well. So you get to say, I hired that white man based on equity or merit and they will find a reason not to hire you. Or I am— I have a disability, but it's easily accommodated, and because the employer is no longer able to look at how they include me in the process, they can only look at my merit, then I get excluded. And so what we end up with is another homogeneous group of re-entrenched men in organizations. So my question is, when can we stop pretending?

That is the question.

When can we stop pretending? When can we stop pretending? When can we stop pretending that if you follow the rules, you'll get promoted as a person of color. When can we stop pretending that? When can we stop pretending that we absolutely like each other, that we like each other beyond, "Hi, Margaret, how you doing?" When can we stop pretending that inclusion includes everyone? Because obviously right now, Inclusion doesn't include everyone, and the process of re-entrenching diversity and inclusion is happening right before our eyes, and I don't see anyone waking up and saying, wait a second, this doesn't sound too right. See, many of you allies got out there and you protested after George Floyd. And, and guess what? The people who are doing this saw you joining arm in arm with us to protest injustice, and they got scared, which is why they are creating all of these laws to re-entrench us.

But here's the thing that I want everyone to understand. This is what I want you to understand.

This process is not new. For those of you who are just doing the work of diversity and inclusion, this process is not new. This has been occurring for a long time. This has been happening for a long time. Let me, let me hit on a subject here, and the reason why I brought this forward right, is because I want us to stop pretending so we can have a level set discussion about where we go from here.

I want to have a level set discussion about where we go from here.

What's, what's our next opportunity and our next option beyond right here? What does that look like? For all of us. So let me—

it's Black History Month, and so I'm gonna unpack a little Black history for everybody, just unpack a little Black history.

And I live, again, as I said, in the state of Florida. And in the state of Florida and across the U.S.

They're banning books written by Black people, written by LGBTQ+ people, written by Jewish people. Um, they're, they're—

they've even banned in our state books on Martin Luther King.

So if you think that this is just some, oh, we're just gonna sing Kumbaya and everything's gonna be okay, and we need to create a policy that looks a little bit different than it does right now—

no, these folks that are hell-bent on undoing DE&I right in front of our eyes. And for all of us who stay silent because we don't think it belongs to us, we think that this is not our problem, are mistaken. Because this is your problem. This is your problem. It's not a Black problem. We are the current, um, highlighted targeted group with the LGBTQ+ community, but it is an everybody problem. It's an everyone problem. Let me, let me go back in history a little bit for you.

The book, um, the book banning that is going on right now, where we're pretending that we don't see the book banning going on out there The first time a book was banned was in 1650 in the United States. The earliest book ban occurred in the United States in 1650. I got this information from the, um, National Archives. I went into the history part and I searched on book banning. Mark Twain, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Judy Blume, William Shakespeare were banned from school curriculums in the early days, not 2023, 2021, 2019. The first book that was banned in the United States was called The Meritorious Piece of Our Redemption. It was a pamphlet that argued that anyone obedient to God and followed Christian teaching on earth can get to heaven. Imagine that. Many of you are on the Christian right, or Christian folks think, God, could we ban that now?

They did in 1650.

It was banned. Fast forward in 1850, Uncle Tom's Cabin was banned, which is Harriet Beecher Stowe's book. In 1851, the book was banned, right?

In 1860, there was an anti-slavery book that was banned, right? In 1873, there was an act passed called the Comstock Act. That basically made it illegal, obscene, and illegal to possess obscene and immoral texts and articles, right? The law was designed to ban content about birth, about sexuality, about anything to do with anything around women.

Right?

In 1836, we had another ban. In 1920, Boston, the city of Boston, had the most notorious book banning process in the entire country. 1960, 1920, 1954, They banned The Rabbit's Wedding and children's books by Garth Williams who depicted a white rabbit marrying a black rabbit. This was not even people, this was just some rabbits marrying each other. The book was banned, right? 1950 Huckleberry Finn, Catcher in the Rye, To Kill a Mockingbird, and Canterbury Tales were banned under McCarthy era.

1969, the Supreme Court said y'all can read whatever you want to read, more or less, right?

So in 1982, New York, liberal New York, decided to ban a bunch of anti-American, anti-Christian, anti-Semitic books, including Langston Hughes. See, the playbook to dismantle diversity and inclusion didn't start today.

The playbook to dismantle diversity and inclusion did not start today. This is a playbook that is well oiled, that is well tuned, that is easily deployed, that just gets new buzzwords added to it and deployed again.

The problem here is many of us pretend that this is not happening. We go about our business.

Setting up our programs, doing what we think is what needs to be done apparently, and we think that that is going to overcome the burden that we are being— that is being placed on us to prove that diversity and inclusion is actually important, because that's the burden that's being put on us right now.

And so I want to stop pretending that any of this is okay.

Let me, let me give another class today because today is a, is a teaching day. In 1996, I spoke at the SHRM conference on diversity, equity, inclusion. In 2006, I spoke at the SHRM diversity conference I meant to say. And at the SHRM Diversity Conference, I talked about a couple things, and I went back today in preparing for this show to look at my PowerPoint that I presented back then. And I talked about the journey of diversity and inclusion, the journey of diversity and inclusion from 1960 to 1970. DE&I was affirmative action until that word got to be so bad that no one today even says it. And when somebody says affirmative action, I even cringe at the word affirmative action, right? I had a client say to me this week that they don't want to call their diversity inclusion program DE&I anymore. They want to find a new word for it.

Okay, go, go for it, find a new word. But this is where we are. Back in 1970, affirmative action was the word.

Find me a person right now that doesn't think affirmative action is the biggest F-word in the planet, right?

By the time we got to 1980 It was equal employment. Find me a person that can say equal employment out loud and not get swatted down because you said equal employment. Find me that person, right? By 1983, '84, we got to diversity.

The field of diversity was formed, and there were early pioneers in this field. Howard Ross, Lenore Billings, Shirley Davis. These early folks has been doing the actual work of the E&I for years coming forward, who set the foundation for the rest of us to walk on, right? And by the 1990s is when we, we first got the first inkling of reverse discrimination. 1990 is when reverse discrimination became a thing.

That's when it became a thing.

So what we are seeing today with Greg Abbott and Ron DeSantis and others who want to dismantle the word diversity, equity, and inclusion, and who want to dismantle the entire process of diversity, equity, and inclusion, and who are no longer pretending that that's not what they want to do.

See, they stop pretending. See, many of us think, oh no, that's not really what they're doing. No, they're not pretending anymore. They're saying it out loud. They're issuing memos. They're passing laws. And then to codify it, here in Florida they passed a law that they could run us over with a car if we go protest.

So there ain't a lot of us running out there to go protest in the street because we could get run over by a car, right?

So I want to stop pretending—

all of you doing the work of diversity and inclusion, I want you to stop pretending that the work you're doing in your organization is going to stop the work that is happening outside to dismantle every part of what you're doing.

When the tech giants laid off recently, they laid off whole swaths of their diversity inclusion department. Their diversity recruiters got laid off. The, the money that they were spending under the covers of George Floyd's murder They don't want to spend that anymore. People are scaling back their DE&I processes and programs. They're eliminating the DE&I leaders from the table. They're reconfiguring the table so we don't have a voice there. So exactly what are we getting today in the diversity process?

In the early 2000s, people started to talk about the business case for diversity and inclusion. And so the business case became the thing that drove what we are doing right now. The business case became the thing that drives what we're doing.

But the business case is not enough because people are still pretending that they want diversity and inclusion and they don't want it. Because if you're, if you're even thinking that you don't want to use the word anymore, we are technically back— for those of you who want the history on DE&I, right— we're technically back at 1980 when the word affirmative action was a dirty word. And they made it a dirty word to the point where nobody wanted to use it anymore.

Right?

And then fast forward to 1987 when they made equal employment a dirty word to the point where nobody wanted to use it anymore. See, when the field of diversity was born in 1983, '84, '85, in that region, um, the dominant groups didn't want to hear the word diversity either. We have not evolved in this landscape that we are a part of, and I want all of you to stop pretending that we are evolving from the landscape. The playbook is being rewritten for the current timeline, and we are pretending that everything is okay. When I, when I talked to the group at CHIRP in 2016, I said there are 5 parts of this process. There are 7 factors to social change that many of us don't understand.

The first factor is consciousness.

We gain consciousness about an issue. So during George Floyd's murder and during the pandemic, people became conscious for the first time— many— that Black people had a problem. So they got conscious, they made a commitment to the process of fixing it.

So imagine a winding road that goes up and down, and this is the analogy that I use when I presented this at SHRM.

At the beginning of the curve, the first curve is consciousness, and we make the curve to consciousness, and then we make the curve to commitment, and then we make the curve to collaboration, and we curve into collaboration.

And I'm going to collaborate with you and, and boy, this work is hard.

And the next curve is courage, and we make the curve to courage. And when we get courage, after consciousness and commitment and collaboration and courage, we find courage, then we get to common purpose. And when we get to common purpose it's right about the time that we start backpedaling back to unconsciousness.

It is the moment that we backpedal to unconsciousness.

And so the history—

so let me give you one more history lesson.

In 1933, there was a young Black history teacher Her name was Tessie McGee, and she wanted to share a book in her classroom, and the book was called The Fugitive Pedagogy. Carter G.

Woodson and the Art of Black Teaching was the book that she wanted to share in her classroom. This was 1933.

And she was teaching at the only Black secondary school in Parish, Louisiana.

Miss McGee, like other teachers, had been instructed by Louisiana's all-white Department of Education and the Parish School Board to only teach the approved learning objective and to keep the approved outline visible on her desk. The state-approved textbook showed not only, um, you're not only not supposed to talk about the Black race, but you're not supposed to talk about Blackness as a civilized group of individuals. And so she defied the process, and she wanted to teach The Negro Is Our History, which she held in her lap. When the principal entered the room, she would teach from the approved outline and book, but when the principal left, she would return to the book in her lap, right?

This is what happened to her. This is what happened to her. She returned to teach from the book hidden in her lap because she wasn't allowed to teach the history of Black Americans. So she hid, she put on her lap the book she wanted to teach from, which was the true history of African Americans, and instead she taught from this pedagogy book that she was given.

1933.

Can we stop pretending that the playbook isn't being used against us again? Can we stop pretending that the playbook is not being used against us again? See, I went out and I looked for this history. I looked up history on Reconstruction. I looked up the playbook on Reconstruction, and I asked myself, are we pretending that we want diversity, equity, and inclusion today because we're running the same playbook and the world is silent as the playbook is being run. Those of you doing the work of diversity and inclusion, like the gentleman who told me, oh, we just need to do talent acquisition a little bit differently. How do you do talent acquisition a little bit differently if you're unable to use diversity as a means of hiring someone, if you're not able to say, I want a diverse slate of candidates who are qualified, how do you do diversity differently if you can't say that? Tell me, because I'm trying to figure this out. So I'm gonna pretend with everyone that we all want diversity and inclusion. But I know in my heart of hearts that not everybody wants this.

And so for all of us doing this work, for all of us doing this work, we have to ask ourselves a single question: have we been given a winnable roll? Have we been given a winnable role in the organizations that we work for? Is the role that you are occupying as a diversity leader, is that role winnable?

Does the organization at its core believe in the censorship of books?

Believe in the dismantling of education around African American history?

Does the organization support this in its financing of processes like campaigns?

But physically you get to say, I support the D&I program for my employees, but the reality is I support the people who want to bring this in as the law of the land.

Because here's the thing, we doing this work for standing on the backs of our ancestors need to understand that we have not crossed the river fully. We haven't seen the mountaintop fully. We are still climbing the mountain and we're still crossing the river. We've not been given a winnable role. But here's the lens that I want to leave you all with.

I want to leave you with this, because we have to care if we fail at doing this work.

We have to care if we fail. We have to care if this work fails. Because if this work fails, if the work of diversity, equity, and inclusion fails, it fails for everyone. It fails for women, all women. It fails for people who have a disability, all people. It fails for young people. It fails for people who don't meet the criteria, the folks who have tattoos, the folks who have curly hair. It fails for those people. If we don't do this work effectively, And if we don't go back and look at the history of the work we're doing, then we fail the whole process. We fail the entire process. We've got to really be conscious about what we are doing as we do the work of diversity, equity, and inclusion. This is a winding road. This is a winding road.

You know, when I presented this program to the SHRM group in 2016, what I said was a quote that Nelson Mandela had, which is, "After climbing a great hill, one only finds out that there are many more hills to climb." Nelson Mandela. Let me say that again. After climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to climb. We haven't started climbing this hill yet. This hill is not built yet.

It's still being built in real time every day. And every day we get up— and those of you who think that these guys are making headline news and they want to be in the the news, that's why they're trying to dismantle DE&I. No, they're dismantling DE&I for everyone that is not a white male. That's what they're doing. Let's be real. But there are white men who don't agree with this, who don't want this, who recognize that they want their daughters, their sons, their nieces and nephews to walk into a world that is diverse, that is homogen— that is not homogeneous, that is expansive for all, that allows this unity to be created. But we need your voice at the table. You can't be quiet. We as Black people can't be the only ones protesting against the dismantling of DEI. It is not our issue only. We are not the only ones who are going to be affected when DE&I is dismantled at the university level, at the college level, at the high school level, at the elementary school level, at the daycare level. We Black people are not going to be the only ones who are at the back of the dismantling of DE&I because DE&I dismantlement is coming for all of us. It's coming for all of us because if you have an autistic child, you want a department of equity at a college that your child is going to. If you are not sighted, you want to make sure that there's equity on the campus so that you can get a full education, you can get hired based on not fitting the merit goal but fitting the equity goal, the inclusion goal, that even if I don't look like everyone else, I will be included.

So if we are all okay with the dismantling of diversity, equity, and inclusion, go for it. But let's not pretend that we want something different if we don't really want something different. I'm gonna stick to the Nelson Mandela theme. I'm gonna climb this hill, and I'm gonna recognize that there's more hill to climb.

And every day I'm gonna climb this hill recognizing there's more hill to climb.

And I'm going to be back next Friday to talk about this again and again and again, because now I'm fired up. Now I'm fired up because the work I started doing around inclusion is now full circle, being dismantled under the guise of getting rid of diversity, equity, and inclusion. So I thank you all for listening to me, and those of you who are going to listen to the recording on your favorite podcast app. Thank you for joining me on Friday.

This is a tough subject, but I think if we're going to talk about diversity and inclusion, we need to have a level-set discussion about what this means for all of us.

We need to have a level-set discussion. What does diversity, equity, and inclusion mean for me? If I am not a diverse person. And let's level set it so that we don't all pretend that this is what we want when we don't really want it.

If you don't want it and you want the thing to be rolled back, have at it. I'm good with that because I know I might— 20 years from now, somebody will find this podcast and remind you that you made the decision not to support DE&I fully. And all of you doing the work of DE&I, pull out the history books and go back and look at the playbook that is being run right now, because that playbook is coming to an organization near you.

That playbook is coming to an organization near you. So thank you guys for joining me today. Uh, thank you, Terence, for your wonderful comments. Um, I posted that this is Black History Month. I'm not celebrating Black history, I am honoring Black history. I'm honoring our history. I was told this week by someone that they needed a speaker who could talk more about Black history than I could, but that's okay. Margaret Spence is good.

Ah, the things we go through when we're doing this work.

So I thank you all for joining me. I'll see you again next Friday. Not sure what we're going to talk about next Friday, the last week of Black History Month, but I'm coming with it. I think I'm gonna talk a little bit about Reconstruction and how the effects of Reconstruction are hitting us right now in corporate America. So let's tune in. I'll see you all again next week, and thank you for joining me. Have a wonderful week and end and week ahead.

You're like a circle that floats around me, keeping me safe and sound. And when I fall, you tied a rope to me. You're blessing me every day. I was down with an illusion like a sparrow with Take care everyone, have a good weekend.

See you next week and tune in on your favorite podcast app. Download, like it, share it, um, help my podcast gain more, more viewers and listeners and invite a friend next Friday. Take care, bye-bye.