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December is a month when a lot of people are thinking about family and tradition. Reliving memories. Retelling old stories. Each year, those stories get passed down — sometimes with new details, or a different twist. And eventually, many of those stories have nothing to do with what actually happened. This week, we're looking into one such story: the truth, and the lies of it.

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Guns. They're as American as apple pie. They represent independence and self-reliance. But ... not so much if you're Black. On this episode, we're getting into the complicated history of Black gun ownership and what it has to tell us about our present moment.

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Listen, a lot has happened this year, and it's no shock that some things may have slipped under the radar. So our resident book expert, Karen Grigsby Bates, took a virtual trip around the country to talk to independent book store owners about their favorite underappreciated reads of 2020.

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In this conversation on race I’m joined by Diversity pioneers and original thought leaders Lee Mun Wah and Howard Ross to talk about the current state of diversity, racism and white supremacy in the US today

 

Howard is known for his cutting edge work on implicit bias and Mun Wah made the ground breaking film on race, Color of Fear.

 

Key Topics:

• Origins and current state of the Trump executive order banning diversity and inclusion training in the government and companies that do business with the government.
• Threats against Howard Ross and his family for his work in diversity, equity and inclusion.
• The content of the letter suspending Mun Wah’s training with the government calling diversity and inclusion unpatriotic, propaganda and unamerican.
• Why diversity, equity, inclusion and conversations on race are more important now than ever in the current culture of the US and across the globe.
• How Black people and others protesting in the name of social justice are being shot, threatened and attacked.
• Overcoming resistance and fear of diversity, conversations on race and social justice.
• Whose lives matter? Do white lives matter more than Black lives? Do heterosexual lives matter more than LGBTQ lives
• The fact that the media doesn’t mention the large numbers of Native American women who have disappeared, the lack of funds to help Native American communities and the high Covid death rate in that community.
• How issues of racism against LatinX, Asian and other people of color are often neglected, trivialized and ignored.
• Intercultural
• Health care disparities that result in higher death rates for Black women during childbirth than white women.
• Howard and Mun Wah share experiences engaging in dialogues with white supremacists.

 

Guests Bio:

Lee Mun Wah, M.A. Special Education, M.S. Counseling
Executive Director of StirFry Seminars & Consulting

 

Lee Mun Wah is an internationally renowned Chinese American documentary filmmaker, author, poet, Asian folk teller, educator, community therapist, and master diversity trainer. He is the Executive Director of StirFry Seminars & Consulting, a diversity training company that provides educational tools and workshops on cross-cultural communication and awareness, mindful facilitation, and conflict mediation techniques. His first documentary film, Stolen Ground, about the experience of Asian Americans, won honorable mention at the San Francisco International Film Festival. His most famous film about racism, The Color of Fear, won the Gold Medal for Best Social Studies Documentary and in 1995, Oprah Winfrey did a one-hour special on Lee Mun Wah’s life and work that was seen by many.  His latest film, If These Halls Could Talk, was just released.  The film’s focus is on college students and their experience with racism and other diversity issues in higher education.  Thousands of people from government and social service agencies, corporations and educational institutions have taken Lee Mun Wah’s workshops and partnered with Stirfry Seminars & Consulting on their diversity initiatives.

 

Howard Ross is a lifelong social justice advocate and is considered one of the world’s seminal thought leaders on identifying and addressing unconscious bias.  He is the author of ReInventing Diversity: Transforming Organizational Community to Strengthen People, Purpose and Performance, (published by Rowman and Littlefield in conjunction with SHRM in 2011), and the Washington Post best seller, Everyday Bias:  Identifying and Navigating Unconscious Judgments in Our Daily Lives, (published by Rowman and Littlefield in 2014, Second Edition released in 2020).  His latest book, Our Search for Belonging:  How Our Need to Connect is Tearing Us Apart, released by Berrett-Koehler in May of 2018, won the 2019 Nautilus Book Award Gold Medal for Social Change and Social Justice.

 

Howard has specialized in the synthesis of neuro-cognitive and social science research and direct application re: Diversity, Inclusion, Equity and Accessibility work.  His client work has focused on the areas of corporate culture change, leadership development, and managing diversity, inclusion and belonging.  Ross has successfully implemented large-scale organizational culture change efforts in the area of managing diversity and cultural integration in academic institutions, professional services corporations, Fortune 500 companies, and retail, health care, media, and governmental institutions in 47 of the United States and over 40 countries worldwide.  In addition, Howard has delivered programs at Harvard University Medical School, Stanford University Medical School, Johns Hopkins University, the Wharton School of Business, Duke University and Washington University Medical School and over 20 other colleges and Universities, as well as for the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC).  Howard served as the 2007-2008 Johnnetta B. Cole Professor of Diversity Professor of Diversity at Bennett College for Women, the first time a white man had ever served in such a position at an HBCU.  

 

Howard’s writings have been published by the Harvard Business Review, the Washington Post, the New York Times, Fast Company Magazine, Diversity Women Magazine, Forbes Magazine, Fortune Magazine and dozens of other publications.  He appears regularly on National Public Radio. Howard has served on numerous not-for-profits boards, including the Diversity Advisory Board of the Human Rights Campaign, the board of directors of the Dignity and Respect Campaign, the board of the directors for the National Women’s Mentoring Network, and the Board of Directors of the National Center on Race Amity.  Howard has been the recipient of many awards, including the 2009 Operation Understanding Award for Community Service; the 2012 Winds of Change Award from the Forum on Workplace Diversity and Inclusion; the 2013 Diversity Peer Award from Diversity Women Magazine; the 2014 Catalyst Award from Uptown Professional Magazine; the 2014 Catalyst for Change Award from Wake Forest University; the 2015 Medal of Honor by the National Center for Race Amity; the 2015 Trendsetter in HR by SHRM Magazine; and the 2016 Leadership in Diversity Award by the World Human Resources Development Conference in Mumbai, India.  He was also named an Honorary Medicine Man by the Eastern Cherokee Reservation in N.C. and given Medicine Holder designation by the Pawnee Nation.  Howard has also been honored to serve as a “Contributing Expert” in both 2015 and 2020 to the Global Diversity and Inclusion Benchmarks by the Centre for Global Inclusion.

 

Howard is also a former Rock ‘n Roll Musician and has taught meditation and mindfulness for more than 20 years, including his role as co-founder and Lead Facilitator for the Inner Journey Seminars.

 

In 1989, Howard founded Cook Ross Inc., one of the nation’s leading Diversity and Inclusion consultancies.  He sold the company in July 2018 and founded Udarta Consulting, LLC.

 

Howard keynotes and speaks regularly at Conferences for SHRM, SHRM Diversity, the Forum for Workplace Inclusion, National Association of Corporate Directors , ATD, the World Diversity Forum, and dozens of others.  

 

He can be reached at howard@udarta.com.

It's no secret that Code Switch is a team full of book nerds. So this week, we're revisiting one of our favorite book conversations, with author Carmen Maria Machado. Her genre-defying memoir, In the Dream House, tells the story of how she survived intimate partner violence, despite having few models of how to deal with, or even recognize abusive dynamics in queer relationships.

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Let's face it — we could all use some help right now. So today on the pod, we're looking at a few of our favorite questions about race and identity from our "Ask Code Switch" series. We're getting into food, relationships, money, language, friendship and more, so you know it's about to get a little messy (in the best way.)

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It's Thanksgiving week, and like basically everything else about 2020, this holiday is on track to be...let's call it "different." But while the world has changed in innumerable ways this year, one thing that hasn't changed is that the country is still deeply politically divided.

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What does the 2020 election in the United States tell us, or remind us, about the state of democracy in America? A follow-up to our Season 4 series on democracy, The Land That Never Has Been Yet. Host and producer John Biewen talks with series collaborator Chenjerai Kumanyika.

Editor, Loretta Williams. Music by Algiers, Eric Neveux, and Lucas Biewen. Music consulting and production help from Joe Augustine of Narrative Music.

Photo: An election day march to the polls in Graham, North Carolina, November 2020. Photo by Anthony Crider, Wikimedia Commons.

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One of the biggest storylines from the 2020 presidential race has ... well, race at the center of it. If you paid attention to the stories about exit polling, you heard a lot of talk about how Latinx and Black voters showed up in bigger numbers this year than back in 2016. But on this week's episode, we also focus on a conversation that's not happening: The one about a group whose support for Donald Trump hasn't wavered. We're talking about the white vote, and in particular, white evangelical voters.

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Amy Nickerson joins me for this Conversation on Race to talk about how racism traumatizes Black families.

Amy is an educational consultant who focuses on race and race relations. She is the author of the book, “HOW DO YOU SEE US?: Our Lived Realities of Being Viewed As a Threat.

This book details and analyzes what she and her family have seen and experienced as it relates to issues of law enforcement. This is not Black vs. Blue. This isn’t about sides – the black side or the blue side. This is not an attack on the overall institution of law enforcement. Nor is this a scathing rebuke of every white law enforcement officer. As Amy states in her book, "This is about my perspective, my innermost feelings about how I am viewed as a Black person in America, why I feel vulnerable around police officers, and how it got this way." Amy Nickerson recounts numerous encounters with police officers as well as ordinary white citizens insistent on policing black people.

Amy shares her experience with race and racism as a Black woman, mother of three children including Hardy Nickerson Jr. a linebacker in the NFL and as the wife of former NFL player and now a coach, Hardy Nickerson.

 

Key topics:

• No matter who you are, or how much money you have, if you are Black in the US your position and money will not protect you from racism, discrimination and being targeted by law enforcement and white racists.
• Her first experience with racism in elementary school.
• White policing of Black people by white people.
• All too frequent experiences of the Nickerson family being accused of stealing the cars they drive, or not belonging in their own neighborhood.
• Why white people often resent Black people being successful, or living their own lives, and how they try to sabotage Black success.
• Justified fear that Black women have every time their children leave the house.
• Challenges of being Black on vacation, having to tell her son, he couldn’t wear the clothes he liked because it could be dangerous.
• How many white people view Black skin as a threat and justify racist actions.
• Solutions to white policing of Black people everyday.

 

Kamala Harris is the vice president-elect, which marks an impressive list of firsts: woman in the White House; Black woman in the White House, Asian American in the White House; etc. Her Indian heritage has gotten much less attention than her Black identity, and in many ways, it has been complicated by her Black identity. On this episode, we look at what Harris's identities can tell us about dual-minority POCs, South Asian political representation in the U.S., and what it all means at the voting booth.

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In this conversation on race, I’m joined by Dr. Elwood Watson, a Professor of History and African American Studies at East Tennessee State University. His areas of specialty are in 20th Century Post World War II U.S. History, African American History, African American Studies, Gender Studies, Popular Culture, and ethnographic studies.

Elwood is an author. His most recent book is “Keeping it Real,” essays on race and racism, white supremacy, and contemporary issue in the Black community.

Election Day has come and gone, but we're still awhile away from knowing what the outcome will be. But while there's a lot we don't about the results, we do know that this election will tell us a lot about what our electorate looks like. With some help from our friends at NPR's politics podcast, we're looking at what happened, and waiting with bated breath to see what this portends for the future.

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For a lot of reasons, the 2020 election feels historic. But in one important way, it's like so many elections throughout American history: Black and brown voters are being disproportionately prevented from casting their ballots. On this bonus episode, we're revisiting a conversation with Carol Anderson, author of One Person, No Vote, about what voter suppression has looked like throughout history.

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Dr. Eddie Moore and Dr. Joe-Joe McManus join me on "Everyday Conversations on Race" to talk about white privilege, Black and other people of color working with white people, and racial justice.

Dr. Moore founded the White Privilege Conference in 1999. Dr. McManus is a well-known award-winning educator and leader in the anti-racist, social justice movement in higher education for over twenty years.

For the first time in election history, Latinos are projected to be the second-largest voting demographic in the country. The reason? Gen Z Latinx voters, many of whom are casting a ballot for the first time in 2020. So we asked a bunch of them: Who do you plan to vote for? What issues do you care about? And what do you want the rest of the country to know about you?

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We know his rhetoric has been described as boundary breaking when it comes to race. But U.S. presidents have been enacting racist policies forever. So as President Trump wraps up his first (and maybe only) term in office, we're asking: In terms of racism, how does he stack up to others when it comes to both words and deeds?

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In this conversation on race, I’m joined by Kathleen Saadat veteran civil rights activist in Portland, Oregon. 

Kathleen shares her observations on the demonstrations in Portland, the federal troop presence, tear gassing of demonstrators and controversies surrounding the Moms and the Dad with Leaf blowers.

Key Topics:

• The fact that there have been large numbers of Black people in Portland, Black clubs, and soul food restaurants in North and Northeast neighborhoods

• Sundown laws in Oregon but there were still Black people living there

• Protests in Portland, tear gas and attacks against protests

• Moms marching and dads coming with leaf blowers to stop the tear gas

• People who were committing violence were in the minority and mainly provocateurs

• Most protestors were peaceful

• The violence against Black people and minimization of the value of Black values

• The problem that agent provocateurs are seen as representing protestors

• How young people have been great at bringing people together for Black Lives Matter and social justice from different backgrounds and world views

• Importance of having a vision

• Why she hates cancel culture because people have been raised a certain way and we need to educate them

• Black people are a small number of people in the US and need to build coalitions • Kathleen Saadat’s vision for long-term change

• How to address the need for people to understand history and how government is supposed to work

• The need for a truth and reconciliation program in every state

• How we can bring people into the equality community

• Why self-righteousness is another form of violence

• Why we need conversations instead of just canceling people

• The danger of cancel culture

• Why we have to allow people to change

• Why the Ten Point Program of the Black Panther Party is still relevant

 

 

 

Bio for Kathleen Saadat

Kathleen Saadat has served Oregon’s LGBTQ community as a mentor and confidant for nearly 40 years. In 1976, she and six others organized Portland’s first gay rights march. Later, she worked with a team of city employees to craft the Portland’s civil rights ordinance, which prohibited discrimination against gay and lesbian people and discrimination based on legal source of income. In 1992, she served on the steering committee for the campaign against Ballot Measure 9, which, had it passed, would have rendered GLBTQ people second class citizens.

An activist and advocate for African American rights and the rights of other people of color, for women’s rights, and for economic justice for all, Kathleen was a planner and participant in Portland’s International Women’s Day Celebration..

Kathleen Saadat  has received lifetime achievement awards from in recognition of her contributions to the efforts to "Keep Living the Dream" of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. She has been listed as one of “100 Who Lead in Oregon” by Oregon Business magazine.

She is a former member of the Oregon State University's board of visitors for minority affairs.

Contact info for Kathleen Saadat

BanLon@msn.com

The VP candidate's biography and heritage allow people to project all kinds of ideas onto her, and to see what they want to see. But Kamala Harris's identity is a very important lens into not just her own politics, but also Black politics around crime and punishment more broadly.

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Why are hip-hop and mass incarceration so entangled in the U.S.? That's the question that our play cousins at NPR Music, Sidney Madden and Rodney Carmichael, set out to answer on their brand new podcast, Louder Than a Riot.

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