Driving REAL Change | Johnny Campbell & Torin Ellis

Sam.

Good afternoon, good morning, good evening. I'm Johnny Campbell from Social Talent and you're listening to and watching the shortlist. It is today, Wednesday 9th September. It's been about six months since the pandemic started in my part of the world, in Europe and the United States, probably into month eight for those of you in Asia. But that's not the only big thing that's been happening this year. We've seen post pandemic, post lockdown. Anyway, one of the biggest movements begin in society around equity, around equality, around diversity, around inclusion, driven from events that really sparked off two days after, or two days before, I should say. Today's guest was last on our show. That was May 27th. And if you cast your mind back to May 27th, it was two days after George Floyd was murdered. It was a couple of days after the Central park bird watching incident with Amy Cooper. And both incidents, particularly the George Floyd murder, sparked a global movement and outcry against what was felt to be mass inequality and injustice, particularly in the US but extending across the world. When we spoke last with today's guest, which is Torren Ellis, good friend of mine, speaker and activist on equality, inclusion and diversity in the US and host of a radio show on Sirius xfm, it was just unfolding and we had, I guess, some initial feeling and outpouring of rage and torn address, a lot of that in our last show. But it's been several months since then and we've had riots, we've had social media blackouts, protests, calls for actions. There's been hirings, there's been firings. Companies have come out to say, we're outraged, we're going to change, we're going to do this. They've announced initiatives, they've talked about what's been working for organizations. People have spoken. But I would understand what's working. What does the future hold? Is this just a moment that we'll remember as that thing in 2020, or is it truly a movement, as was put In a recent LinkedIn article talking about the stats around postings and interests on this topic, which I'll come back to. But before we get deeply into it, just to remind our audience that you can follow the shortlist and watch previous episodes and check out Torren's previous episode from back in May. And you can subscribe to future episodes by going to socialtown.com the shortlist. And if you get cut off, don't worry, you can rejoin us there or subscribe to or listen to our podcast, which is available On Apple, Spotify and all good podcast mediums. Let's jump right into it. Torrin, maybe you can give us some background. Remind our audience about your own background, your passion for the subject and what, from your perspective, you've seen over the last few months since you were last on the show.

I'm gonna flip it up, man. We're gonna do my introduction towards the end, because what I think is most important is that we just hop right into the conversation. And I think, you know, it's important for us to. To kind of address and be thinking about that con that, that question you just asked a moment ago. Is this a moment or a movement? Is it a moment or is it a movement? We got to think about the. I mean, just the myriad of ways that this conversation has unfolded over the last five, six months. We've had grocery stores impacted. You know, we. We've removed items from grocery stores. Brands are looking at the messaging and the imagery and the packaging in the. The. The story behind products that they have on shelves have. The Motion Picture Academy, the Academy of Motion Pictures, I'm sorry, just distributed a DNI statement last night that by 2024, they're going to have a different criteria for films, whether or not they get an Academy Award. We love that. We've had more deaths than George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and. And the young man up in Kenosha, Wisconsin, he. I can't even remember his name. It's just so, so many of them. We have corporate America going through a bit of a reckoning. Leadership asking themselves, what can I do differently? Employees challenging them, that they have to do something differently. Communities. I mean, there's so many different things that are happening, Johnny. And, And I asked myself, how do I continue to apply the pressure? How do I continue to agitate and apply a pressure that makes people recognize that being human is not such a bad thing, that chasing diversity and inclusion is not such a bad thing. I was on a call last week with TA folks from San Diego, some dedicated individuals that want to do better around dni, equity and belonging. And one young lady said, torn, how do I get my CEO to understand that DNI is important? I've tried for a while. How do I get him to understand? I said, you work for an. Period.

Pretty simple.

One more. Listen, if you are an executive, we are. We tend to hold them in the highest of esteem. We categorize them as being smart and intelligent and crafty and business acumen and all of these flavorful and positive characteristics. That's what we bestow upon them when they hit the title of Chief Executive officer. So the question becomes, if, in fact those are all of the characteristics and attributes, then why is it that your CEO doesn't seem to understand and believe the reporting from Boston Consulting Group and Catalyst and Kaleidoscope and Deloitte and McKenzie? Why is he struggling to understand the value of diversity and inclusion? See, not understanding it is different than not doing it. And when a person says, I don't understand it, I think that they are being conscientiously stupid. That's just the bottom line. So I'm happy to be here. Jay.

I'm gonna jump right into the news, Torn, because I want to. I want to notch it up a bit and talk about what's happening right now this week and perhaps some of the. Some of the reasons why you have. Like that in roles like. Like that, and now that can still exist in our society. Niall, let's roll with our first news story. This one here might have been missed by many of our listeners and viewers, but BBC reporting that Trump was banning anti American diversity training. And actually, in fact, what he did was he issued a letter or the government issued a letter to any federal agency asking them to immediately cease and desist from funding any training related to, as it says in the document, critical race Theory, white privilege, or any other training or propaganda effort that teaches or suggests that either the US Is an inherently racist or evil country or that any race or ethnicity is inherently racist or evil. And I'm really, you know, I look at, you know, the role of government and the role of particularly one individual who's meant to hold such a higher moral ground to the rest of society, which is, you know, the President of the United States, and I look at the impact that having someone like that in office can have on these issues, and I immediately feel, what has he done now? What has he done now to. To make this worse? And I'm genuinely not sure around this one. Torn, I'd love you to maybe help me understand or get your own, you know, ideas on this. I don't know whether this is a genuinely bad thing that he's doing. Is it continue? Is it more Trumpism that basically is making us take a step back towards the Stone Age? Is this the type of thing that is going to fuel that asshole CEO mentality that goes, well, why. Why should I invest in dni? Why is this important? Or is this actually something else? Is this something different? Is this something genuine? Because I didn't know much about, you know, the issues being, being Being raised, critical race theory, et cetera, et cetera. I dug into them, and I am none the wiser. Tell me, what do you see on the ground? What do you know about this? What is your take on this?

Yeah, put it in context. Part of this was started by a gentleman on Twitter. His name is Christopher F. Russo. And this guy was on with Tucker Carlson on Fox News sometime a couple of weeks ago, if you know, within the last month. And Christopher F. Russo really began. And he's also a journalist to some degree, a fellow at the Heritage foundation. And, you know, his political leanings are pretty clear. Cool. I have no issue with that. And so he started to do a bit of digging and looking into some of the training that was taking place inside of the federal government, talked about some of that on Tucker Carlson's show, cited some examples of training that was happening inside of agencies. And then, of course, he said he called on the President to. To stop using taxpayer dollars to fund this sort of training. Fair enough. Got it. And I, like you or I, unlike you, I jumped on the bandwagon and I didn't read the executive order. I'll get to that in a moment. And so what happened was, of course, the president put out the executive order, or through his. His individual that was responsible, put out the executive order, and it goes in to talk about critical race theory. And for those of you who are not familiar, just a very quick definition of critical race theory just simply says that the United States, through all of its development, its laws, its practices, its systems, racism, is absolutely embedded and built into such. The second piece of critical race theory that I think is the piece that causes the bigger issue is that all white people are racist. So, of course, now when I read the executive order and I see that that's what he targeted, I have to absolutely kind of step back and say, listen, as much as I despise our president for various reasons, I don't want to be irresponsible with my platform or my voice. I don't want to be irresponsible with my platform, my voice, or my keyboard. And so I actually went in and said, you know, I apologize for jumping the gun or getting ahead of my skis, if you will, in terms of how I framed it. But I'm glad that I framed it because it got a lot of people talking on my social media feeds and beyond. And here's where I think the issue is. Johnny, I absolutely believe that while he was specific in mentioning critical race theory, I know, or I believe firmly believe that he is seeding that opposition to DNI training overall? He's seeding that without necessarily saying it.

Yeah, because I, I started thinking with this tour, right? I started thinking about, obviously to the end degree, none of us are sitting here saying that every white person or every, any person is inherently racist. But, but I started thinking, well, what have you. What if you say you look like unconscious bias, right? We all know we have bias, right? And a lot of bias is unconscious. A lot of bias is conscious, though. But, you know, you could you take it to the nth degree, I think this may be to your point and say, well, hang on a second. Unconscious bias, isn't that just racism? And therefore isn't anything that says we have unconscious bias inherently going to be aligned with critical race theory? I could see that argument being made by somebody who's a Trumpian or is just kind of trying to get rid of DNI training, trying to kill the movement. And that's what worries me is that it can be interpreted in that way.

Yeah, well, first and foremost, I'm not a person who supports unconscious bias. I absolutely believe that people consciously know what it is that they are doing. Again, my example is very simple. If you clutch your bag or you move to the other side of the street, when I walk by at 5:11, £235, you consciously know that you clutched your bag and moved to the other side of the street. If I am walking in the corridor of the building and you close the elevator button so that I can't get on, when you're on, you're consciously pushing that button and you know that you are doing that. It's the very same when people look at resumes. So I don't give them the COVID of hide it behind unconscious bias. The only place that I would slightly differ from what you just said, I don't believe that that bias is always racism, that bias is prejudice, that bias is fear, that biases. A couple of other things. It's not always to the degree of racism, which is certainly, certainly very toxic and something we should stamp out. But I absolutely believe that our president seeded the ground for individuals to say, you know what? We're not doing D and I training, not just in federal government. Corporate America saw that too. In corporate America or some organizations like the asshole that the young lady worked for, they're going to use that as a reason for them to not have to pursue diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging. One of the questions from our audience, Brian Balls, asked, you know, how does diversity hit the bottom line? It hits the Bottom line in a variety of ways. If it's the bottom line, because we get to look at organizations or as an organization, we get to determine where do we deliver our products and services and how do we formulate those products and those services, like what geographies, what communities should we be doing business in? More importantly, where are we not doing business? Where we can be doing business. I did a segment on Sirius XM and they talked about where the next 1 billion Internet users coming from. All of the place that I listed were in Africa, in India, in Asia, Latin America. It wasn't in the us it wasn't in London, it was there. So how do we develop a slate of products and services that get us there? Well, in some instances we need some DNI to help us to get there. You need different people sitting at the table to help you say, you know what, this is what folks in Africa need. This is what the people in India need. This is what they're battling with. And, and this is how we get around that in developing our products and our service suites. So DNI has always been good for the bottom line. It's just a matter of, you know, organizations and leadership understanding that. And so the executive order for me, while I know he was specific about identifying critical race theory, no, I do not believe that all white people are racist. I don't believe that most white people are racist. I, I do believe that too many are being silent, far too many have been silent in the injustices, that have gotten us to where we are right now. And this is the reason why you see uprising and protest and riot in cities, not just in the US but all across America, because people are tired of the bullshit. That's just the bottom line. Like why, why do we have to wake up and deal with the, the, the infractions, the microaggressions, the barriers, the challenges, the perceptions, the classifications that we're less than talented or we're not capable. Why should we have to deal with that?

I want to jump into our second news article. I want to just make a shout out first for anyone listening live or viewing live. We'd love to hear your comments, your questions. Don't worry, no question is too big, too small, too off the wall. We love to hear what you guys have to say. We'd love to hear your opinions as well and examples of what you're seeing in the front line for you, whether you're facing this challenge or whether you're part of the solution. I hope. And the second article, I want to jump into Comes from a European startup kind of blog called Sifted. And it's an article, it's an anonymous article by a. What claims to be a gay woman who says she wants to. She's saying it's time to scrap the diversity committee. And you know, the byline here is di committees have never been effective and likely never will be. And this is. I thought this was really interesting, right, Because I read this and it rings really true, right? And basically this is kind of like this is going one step forward to say what's actually happening, right? Because there's the rhetoric, there's the let's do something about it. I'm on side. I believe in it. Like you mentioned the asshole CEO who's still there saying, hey, should we do this? Let's ignore them, right? They're just assholes. Let's hope they just disappear from the world at large, right? But even the more let's call them responsive CEOs who are saying, we're up for this fight where we're going to do things, right? This article gets to the heart of what are they actually going to do? And is what they're doing actually going to work? And the author here kind of puts forward what she believes are three measures that actually do work while saying that putting a committee in place that's responsible for this. And she says herself, it's often a group of individuals who are chosen because they themselves are classified as diverse, whatever that means. And they're given the task of solving this for the organization, coming up with solutions whilst doing their actual normal job without being paid anymore. I'm being told to go back and make recommendations to the business. And the business feels brilliant because they got a committee dealing with the problem. What's the reality of this kind of. Kind of an argument? What are you seeing, Torren? Do these committees work? What are your thoughts on this?

Yeah. In August of 2018, Deloitte did away with ergs inside of the organization. They recategorized them as something different. Can't remember the name that they gave them. But basically the reason why they did away with him in August of 2018 is because they felt like white men were not invited to the various groups. I've never understood why an individual needed to be invited, if you will, to be a better corporate citizen, to be a better human inside the corporate corridor, especially white men. And so I found it interesting that Deloitte, one of the first organizations or one of the largest organizations that we trust, that we refer to when we talk about research and data collection that they were doing away with ergs as it relates to this article written by a queer woman in San Francisco. And like you, I wish she was identified, if you will, because I was actually going to tweet her and tell her to come on the show because we were going to talk about it. But when I read it, well, she's not identified. But when we think about the article that she, she, she drafted, I.