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The Origination Point Podcast – DEI & Politics

The origination point is connected to bias awareness and bias deconstruction. The origination point is the notion that all of our biases, implicit or explicit, have a point in time where they started. We were given a narrative or had an experience with a small group of people that then we extrapolate to a larger group of people. The reason why the origination point is important is because that is the point of healing and understanding. As we’re deconstructing and making our biases more conscious, the origination point supports us in understanding where they came from, and healing any emotional impacts that we’re currently having in our lives. Sit back, open your mind, open your heart, and let’s see if we can find your origination point to bias.

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This show is designed to have some deep conversations about a whole variety of topics that are affecting us as people, our connections, and our way of seeing each other more authentically. The origination point is a place of healing and understanding. It’s a place to understand not only who you are but also who the people are that you’re interacting with. When I say who we are, I’m talking through the lens of our stories and experiences, and how they impact not only how we see ourselves, our beliefs, and values but also how we see others.

I want to talk about a topic that I’ve been thinking about for a long time and haven’t ever stepped into it, and I’m not sure why. It’s a political and ideological topic. Maybe in some way, I was a little bit afraid of what would happen if I talked about it. I don’t know why. It’s something that I felt emotional about. Part of my approach is that I use the tools and strategies that I share with other people. In doing and knowing that, I decided I needed to get this out. I don’t know why I was holding onto it for so long. I just know that it’s time to let it out. Let’s start the conversation and see where people land.

The topic that I want to talk about is diversity, equity, inclusion, belonging, anti-racist, or whatever you want to call it, or the approach to how we see each other through the lenses of bias, judgments, stereotypes, race, gender, age, and every type of identity that we have. This topic is important to me because I’ve been using this approach on myself since I was eighteen. I’ve been sharing it with others for the last 25 years. It’s a process that works because it takes people through the change process. It allows people to think about who they are, what they do, and what their motivations are.

Connecting, Relationship Building, or Rehumanizing

A little bit about me. I’ve been facilitating this approach to work, which I have always called inclusion, belonging, and connection because that’s what I do. I connect people with me and with each other, one conversation at a time. I’ve been facilitating this work for 25-plus years. I’ve always called it connecting, relationship building, or rehumanizing, which is the outcome that I look for when I do my workshops and facilitate conversations with people who are in conflict. It is to relationalize themselves with each other.

Over the years, it has been called many things by other people, diversity, equity, inclusion, belonging, othering, anti-racist, and culturally responsive. It has gotten many different names that have been associated with it. With those names come the stereotypes and judgments about what they mean. It’s been going on for all the years I’ve been in this field. It has never been as politicized as it is now. Every word, phrase, or sentence that we use to talk about identity is rooted in some false narrative around fear or a belief that something is happening that’s indoctrinating people, and challenging people’s values and beliefs.

 

I’m not saying that doesn’t happen to people in this field who don’t facilitate in that way, because they do. What I’m saying is it’s not as rampant and destructive as some people want to make it out to be. That brings me to the crux of my conversation. When our last presidential administration was getting near the end of the term, all of this work came up around critical race theory, DEI, and what it is and isn’t. Through all of that debate, nobody ever got together to have a conversation to rationally talk through what it is.

People made up all kinds of stories and then pushed them out through the press, and then people believed it. Now, all of that is rooted in these false narratives that it’s an approach that treats people poorly. I’m not here to talk about critical race theory. I’m here to talk about the whole umbrella that we do this work under, and the approach that is taken that creates these narratives that this is un-American and divisive work.

 

In our last administration, one of the last executive orders was abolishing all this DEI work in the Federal government. It was written around this idea that you couldn’t do things that make White people feel bad or that create ranks or any kind of disagreement. I read the whole executive order. Surprisingly to me, there’s one section in it that I agreed to. It surprised me because that wasn’t my choice for our last administration, and yet I still had to honor that president who was still my president. That’s a whole other story.

What happened then in the whole field of DEI, and especially people who had a lot of government contracts was like, “What am I going to do now?” They’ve said that we can’t do any of this training. There are states that have created legislation against it. Now everybody is up in arms about what are we going to do. The part that I agreed with in the executive order was the part that said, “White people are being unfairly grouped and treated as if they are the problem by the fact that they have White skin.”

The reason that I agree with that is I don’t think it’s right to pick an identity of a group of people, and then extrapolate that to a group of people who were like them who did something bad hundreds of years ago, and then say, “Because of your association with them, you are also them.” For a lot of people, this means that you’re a racist because there were White people who created these systems for their benefit, which is a bias. I don’t think it’s right to have White people feel like, “If I go and have this conversation, I’m going to be labeled as the enemy.” That’s what happens a lot. I’ll read you a testimonial that I got from a gentleman named Robert after I presented a keynote for the Arizona School Boards Association.

He says, “I just attended your ASBA keynote session. WOW. What a reasonable and realistic view of where we are today, where we need to go, and some tools and thoughts on how we can get there. I did not hear any racist comments or slurs in your presentation unlike most of the other sessions. You challenged everyone, informed everyone, and included everyone the best you could in the setting/session. I suspect yours was the only session that left everyone feeling challenged and uncomfortable in a good way. I hope like me, everyone left the session feeling that, first and foremost. Maybe we only need to look at ourselves and start changing ourselves today. Start being the being that they want to be except that I will not be perfect, and that is okay. Each day gets better and better. Love others as you love yourself. Thank you for allowing and encouraging me to feel valued. As a White male, I did not get that from any other session.”

That was important to me because my approach in the last twenty years has been to engage as many people as I possibly can, not based on race, age, gender, religion, or any other identities that people hold. It’s to create a connection because if we’re going to write this path and we are all on that’s divisive, warring, and very destructive at this point, everyone has to be involved in the conversation. I worked with a group of White men in Champaign, Illinois. When they knew they had to come to spend a day with me doing some workshops, many of them told me that the first thing I asked my boss was, “Is this another one of those workshops where I’m going to be called a racist because I’m a White man?”

Engage with people not based on race, age, gender, religion, or any other identities that they hold. Create a connection. Share on X

Some of them had the courage to tell me, and because I don’t approach this that way, they never heard that comment from me. They were able to be more engaged and open to learning. Many of them took something away from the eight hours that we spent together. Some came in thinking that they were going to get nothing or that they were going to be told that they were the problem.

If You’re White, You’re A Racist

That’s important to understand because I’ve also heard comments from White women who have gone through some of my workshops. They’re like, “I didn’t know if I was going to be called a racist because I’m a White woman.” It makes me realize that there’s this narrative out there that if you’re White, you’re a racist, which is a false narrative. Are there people who are White who have issues with race? Absolutely. It’s not everybody. I think that’s where we err in this conversation.

The more that we suppress the conversation, the more challenging things will become because now we’re creating this culture of fear where people are afraid to even say anything. A lot of organizations have this saying, “See something, say something,” yet they don’t have the culture that allows for somebody who sees something to say something without having a feeling of some kind of ramification that’s going to come upon them if they speak their truth.

The more we suppress the conversation, the more challenging things will become because we're creating this culture of fear where people are afraid to say anything. Share on X

Sometimes speaking their truth means they’re talking to somebody who supervises them or someone who is their friend or someone they work with. The importance of these conversations is key. The reason why I agreed with the statement that you can’t do things that group people and then call them the problem is there are people who facilitate this work in the same spaces that I do who want to shame, judge, and blame other people.

I have never found that to be an effective approach. The reason why I agree with that statement is that there are people who are doing that. They are calling all White people racist and telling people that they’re wrong for their stories. I’m not just talking about people who will do this to White people. There are people who will do this to people of color and facilitate that way. I’ve experienced some of them.

DEI Work

For the most part, I don’t think those people are doing it with ill intent, at least the people that I experienced some of that with. I just don’t know if that’s the most effective way to keep people engaged in the conversation. There are many organizations now that are looking for somebody to do DEI work, whatever that is, and they’re hiring people to fill positions. Some of them are not effective because it’s not being done because they want to change the culture. For some, it’s being done because it’s the right thing to do. Without will and commitment, you could write an equity statement and you can hire a DEI person. Nothing will change unless there’s some impetus, especially at the top and throughout the whole organization for change to happen.

As I thought about that executive order and the part where it said that there are people who are doing harm in these facilitation spaces, I agreed with that statement. I explained to you why. I’m not saying that I’m perfect. I know that in some cases in my facilitation, I’ve done something or said something that was a bias or a judgment. I was fortunate that I had the kind of culture in the room where somebody brought it in and said, “What do you mean by this?” They didn’t let me go with it. They checked me right there in front of 100 people. I had to have a conversation about what I said. I had to think through, “Was it a bias towards that person, a judgment, or a stereotype?” Sometimes it was, and other times, it was just a different perception that the other person had, and then we were able to have that conversation that not all as I see it is true.

The message for me in that part of that executive order is to be conscious and cautious about how I interact with people to make sure that I don’t judge, shame, or blame them, and beat them up and tell them, “You’re wrong,” for any reason. It’s hard because sometimes people have different ideological perspectives than I do. I have to figure out how to put my stuff aside to hear and understand them. That’s always a challenge as well. How do I create a culture of acceptance with someone who has different values or beliefs than me while still keeping them engaged in the conversation? It can be a real challenge.

The other part of the executive order which I disagreed with the most was the perception that this approach to connecting work and relationship work is divisive and un-American. I would challenge that. I think the approach that I know I’m taking, and many others that I know in this space that take a humane approach, is the most American and connecting activities that a group could do together because it allows them to create connections that they don’t have.

Being American

Even this idea of being American warrants a conversation. What does that mean to be American? Is it about my race, ethnicity, behaviors, socioeconomic status, family makeup, or the language that I speak? What is it that we’re saying when we say American or un-American? That warrants a conversation. For the sake of argument, I’ll say that to be an American means that we are connected and supportive of each other. We want to engage in conversations and we see the authenticity of each other. That’s how I will approach this.

Through that lens of connection, relationship, and communication, it’s a thing that we can do in our country. It can be a part of America. It can be embedded in our conversations regardless of how people identify. It’s the least divisive thing I have ever done. If you know my past, you would know that I have done a lot of divisive things in my life. This approach to connecting with each other is not divisive. It’s connecting, relational, supportive, and inquisitive because it’s all rooted in, “Let me get to know you for your authentic self. Let me ask you questions. Let me hear your stories.”

 

Everybody has a story. It doesn’t matter how diametrically different we are with our values and beliefs. There’s a story behind it for everyone. It takes more time to get to each other’s stories, yet absent understanding our stories, we don’t get to know each other. What you see of me on a day-to-day basis or what I do as a professional is not who I am. Who I am is what I do when I’m not at work, the experiences that I like, the ways that I talk, the foods that I eat, and the places that I love. The idea of this work being divisive is another false narrative. We are having states now that are creating legislation that’s outlawing these types of conversations.

I do agree there’s a grade and an age-level appropriateness for these conversations. We have to look at brain maturation in children. A lot of young children don’t have the cognitive ability to discern what we’re talking about in a way that they can articulate it into action. I don’t think this is for everybody and it should be pushed down onto people. It should be something that is introduced in ways that allow for especially young people to explore what it takes to make a friend. How do they define somebody in some way that they want to be treated when they’re interacting with other people?

The way that we have these conversations and the way that we approach them is critical. If we approach it from the lens that it’s divisive and political, or that someone won’t understand it, then we’ll never have these conversations. I work with a lot of organizations around the country who will spend hours talking about, “What do we call this work, DEI work, equity work, anti-racist work, inclusion work, belonging work, and on and on?”

Their fear is  if I pick something that riles up the political in people, then I’m going to have to deal with all of that.” While that’s true, I do think that any of these phrases, words, or descriptions of creating more relation and connection always need to have an explanation. You want to make sure that people understand what your approach is and isn’t. Let’s stop arguing over the language and start getting to work. What does it take to create a more connected community? What does it take to rehumanize ourselves to each other? What does it take to create a more relational professional culture where who I am matters more than what I do? Who I am is what drives everything else.

I’m not sure the reason why I held back on this particular topic. I knew that it was political and ideological. It has been very interesting to me in the last couple of years how much people have talked about ideological bias. People feel like they can’t even share their true perspectives or ideology because of the way it’s going to be taken and used against them, and all kinds of things have happened based on people sharing their minds. At some point, we have to realize that it’s not the language or what we call this that’s stopping us. It’s our lack of will and commitment to rehumanize and rationalized ourselves to each other in ways that we’ve never had to before because we’ve always been connected or so we thought.

I want to keep one more lens in there. For all of the adults, in varying degrees, the experience that we have is a lot of what I’ve described in the last few minutes. For our young people, it’s even more because not only are they having those experiences of isolation, false narratives, and “Who do I believe?” They’ve also been doing it outside of their normal socialization activities, which is called school.

School is one of the places where most children, young adults, and adults go to that create a socialization process. Some young people who left school in sixth grade came back after the last couple of years and now they’re in high school without ever having that social maturation experience called middle school, or having it in a way that engaged them in thinking about who they are and why they do what they do.

My encouragement in sharing all of this with you is that it doesn’t matter what we call our approaches. I’m done using political ideology and definitions for what I do because what I do is connecting a beautiful, engaging, open, and creates vulnerability-based trust. I’m going to speak against everyone who addresses it other than what I defined to you. That is the beauty of an approach to relationship and rehumanizing work that I have seen to be impactful and effective. I want to work to shift this narrative because all these false narratives that are out there and all these laws that are being created are pretty much rooted in fear. Once people understand that this approach is not about indoctrination, and challenging beliefs and values, it’s about building skills.

 

I’m going to end with one last story. This story is from twenty years ago when I was working in a school and I was facilitating a peer mediation program with fifth-grade students. One of the students had gone home and told his parents about it. The parents called the executive assistant and they told me, “When you get in, so and so want you to call them.” I said, “Great.” I got in at about a little after 8:00. I found the phone number. I said, “My name is Bill. I was asked to give you a call about our peer mediation program that we’re asking your son to be a part of.”

The first thing she said to me is, “I am a fundamentalist Christian and I want to know if you’re going to inflict values on my child.” No one had ever asked me that question. I had to think about it. After I thought about it for about a minute, I said, “Absolutely not. What we’re going to do with this program is give your son skills to recognize when he gets angry or getting emotionally charged. We’re going to do some other skills around communication, and how you talk and articulate yourself so people understand that there is an issue that you need some support with. If you can’t work it through with the person that you’re triggered by the behavior or the interaction, then how do you go to an adult so that they intervene for you? It’s built around skills like critical thinking, problem-solving, decision-making, and communication. Whatever values and beliefs you have at home, these can meld right into them.”

She was satisfied with my approach in that definition that not only did she allow her son to be a part of our peer remediation program. She also brought her husband with us when we did the parent night, where we took them through some of the same activities. Think about however you want to call it, inclusion, belonging, DEI or Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, accessibility, anti-racist, whatever your frame is. Eventually, we have to get past that and do the work.

The work is creating connections that you don’t currently have, looking at each other for their most authentic self, being seen as your most authentic self, and answering this question. Do my biases, judgments, and stereotypes inhibit or enhance my ability to be in an authentic relationship? An authentic relationship is defined as getting to know you for who you are versus the story that I’m making up about you.

An authentic relationship is getting to know you for who you are versus the story I'm making up about you. Share on X

We’re going to dive a little bit deeper into what a false narrative is, what stories are, and what assumptions are. I wanted to start out by setting the playing field for these next few sessions that I’m going to be recording and sharing with you. They’re all rooted in how we actualize a more relational world, a more relational America or community. Instead of fighting against each other, we’re working together and honoring what people bring to the conversation as challenging as that might be.

I’m not going to sit here and say, “This is easy work. It’s going to not challenge us or be uncomfortable.” I don’t know what else to do. You can’t counter hate with hate or war with war. This is my way of saying, “Let’s do something different.” My challenge to everyone is to think about what your role is in where we are. What is your role in moving forward, peace, love, and connection?

If this resonates with you, share it, subscribe, and let us know what’s impacting you as we go through our series here around the politicization of DEI. That’s what we’ll call this, the Politics of diversity, equity, inclusion, and how to remove them. It has been great to spend some time with you. I look forward to chatting with you again soon. Take care and keep growing.

 

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