White Women in the Struggle for Racial Equity w/ Karen Fleshman

Episode Summary: In Episode 4 of The Diversity Gap Podcast, Bethaney has a discussion with Karen Fleshman, founder of Racy Conversations. In this episode, they dive into what it has looked like for Karen, a white woman, to find her place in diversity and equity work. They also talk about the importance or raising the next antiracist generation and what it takes to cultivate cross-racial sisterhood. 

Karen Fleshman, Esq. is an attorney, activist, single soccer mom, and a nationally recognized expert on racism, feminism, workplace fair practices, police brutality, and politics.

Racy Conversations' mission is to inspire the first antiracist generation. In workplaces, Racy Conversations change culture by creating a brave space to address unconscious bias, microaggressions, sexual harassment, and allyship. Organizations including the Sierra Club, the Wikimedia Foundation, Yahoo, Sony, Xero, Upwork, KARGO, Pixar, and the Fred Hutch Cancer Center have hired Karen to assess their culture and facilitate Racy Conversations.

Episode Notes: Episode References:

Racy Coversations Founded by Karen Fleshman

Emergent Strategy by Adrienne Maree Brown

Dying of Whiteness by Jonathan Metzl

A Few Antiracism Organizations/Leaders:

The People's Institute

Racial Equity Institute

Mindful of Race with Ruth King

The Black Mecca Project with Mattice Haynes + Jen Wilsea

Transcript

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

people, white, women, anti racism, gap, learn, grew, conversations, racism, workshop, racy, diversity, workplace, color, harm, understand, organization, ethnic identity, important, karen

SPEAKERS

Bethaney Wilkinson, Karen Fleshman

Bethaney Wilkinson  00:00

So one of the questions I get most often after I lead a workshop or a training or do some sort of talk on race and diversity, one of the questions I always get from some white person in the audience is, Hey, okay, so what can I as a white person do about this problem? And I love it. Great question. And back in the day, I used to bend over backwards to try to answer it really, really well. Like, here's your three step plan, start here, do this, do that done, you know. But what I've learned more recently, what I've been trying to practice is really just connecting curious white people with other white people who are a bit further along in the journey, because I don't know what that journey is like, that's not my story. And so I don't know, I feel like it's a part of my responsibility, and a part of my opportunity in this season to connect my white friends to other white people who have committed their lives to becoming anti racist and to becoming more inclusive. Welcome to The Diversity Gap podcast, where we are exploring the gap between good intentions and good impact as it relates to diversity, equity and inclusion. My name is Bethaney Wilkinson and I am your host. Hey, friends, so for today's conversation, we are dialing way into the specific role, white women can play an anti racism work. If you're not a white woman, you should still listen to this because we can all learn something from one another stories and processes. And this episode I interviewed Karen Fleshman, the founder of racy conversations, I got connected to her work through a friend who attended Karen's workshop and panel at South by Southwest. The panel was specifically on cross racial sisterhood. And I so appreciate Karen's intentionality and curating a space for this specific topic. One of the lessons I've been learning over the past few months is that just because a group has a shared experience of being excluded, either from being a woman or from being a person of color, it doesn't mean that we can assume solidarity with each other. My experience as a black woman is very different than the experience of an Asian woman or a white woman. It's important to acknowledge these differences so that we can coordinate our efforts for justice with more thoughtfulness and nuance. We have to be careful that our ideas for empowerment don't further exclude other people. And that work takes a lot of intentionality and time. So in this conversation with Karen, we dive into how she as a white woman has learned how to show up in this work. We talk about ethnic identity development, and about the power of turning points, and about how white women can engage this conversation without causing more harm. It's an important interview, I hope you learned something new. When did you first learn that you have a race or ethnic identity?

Karen Fleshman  03:08

I grew up in an all white community. And I first started to notice race. I think by the time I was around kindergarten, I remember asking my parents, if I met a black person, how should I treat them? And they told me, Well, you would just treat them like you would anybody else you would treat them with the same respect you would give anybody else? 

Bethaney Wilkinson  03:35

And so did you perceive at that point like that you had a racial identity or was raised something that other people were experiencing?

Karen Fleshman  03:43

Yes, that was exactly it. I did not consider myself as having a racial identity. Hmm. Probably until I moved to New York City in 1997. So as a at around 28 years old, I moved to New York City. And then people would start to ask me, Well, what are you? And I couldn't understand what they were asking. You know, I was like, I'm an Aquarius. I don't know what you're asking me, you know. And then it became that they were asking me what my racial or ethnic identity was. And it wasn't even that they wanted me to say I'm a white person, they wanted me to say, Oh, I'm Irish, or I'm Italian, or actually a lot of people in New York City come up to me and speak to me in Spanish. So some people thought that I was Latina, I'm kind of racially ambiguous the way that I look. And so some people didn't perceive me as white.

Bethaney Wilkinson  04:46

I'm hearing that more and more for many people who white people who are doing this work. When I asked this question, it's interesting how they, I mean, as we all do, as kids we perceive other very, very early on, but for many years white people, it seems that they don't know that Oh, race is like a thing that's happening to me. And I'm happening to the world until they're in their 20s.

Karen Fleshman  05:08

Yes, I think it's, it's well, because of the residential segregation, right? Where I grew up, there were two black students in my high school. And there were a few Latin X and Asian American people. This was in Colorado, but it was very, there were there were hardly any religious minorities, like my best friend was Jewish, there was one other Jewish kid. And that was it. Everybody was white, almost entirely Protestant, very religious, went to church every Sunday, as my family did. And it was only recently that I realized that the town I grew up in was a sundown town, meaning a community in which black people were not allowed to rent, own, or even stay in a hotel overnight. They could not stay in our town or overnight. So even though the 1968 federal housing discrimination act banned, these kinds of local ordinances and customs that created sundown towns, who's going to be the first family to be like, Oh, that seems like a nice place to live. Let me go live there, right. So you grow up in geographical segregation, and in largely white communities, and you don't sort of you you think of white as being normal. I am normal. And so it's only later that you start to understand, no, this is not normal. There, there are all kinds of things that not anyone is better or inferior to anybody else, or the standard.

Bethaney Wilkinson  06:53

Hey, I just wanted to jump in and say that's so interesting. The thing about The Sundown town, I've never heard of that before. I do think that a lot of our ideas about race and community are really formed by the neighborhoods and the places that we grew up in. And so I'm wondering for you, as you're listening to this podcast, and just as you go throughout your week, what can you do to learn a little bit more about the place you grew up about the streets and about who was allowed to live there? And who wasn't allowed to live there? Did you grow up in a sundown town, I have no idea. But that could really be interesting as you are developing your own sense of your racial identity. And as you're trying to make sense of what it means for you to engage this work. Now back to our conversation with Karen. She's about to tell me more about racy conversations. Tell me more about what racy conversations is what you do. Tell me more about it.

Karen Fleshman  07:50

Well, the mission of racy conversations is to inspire the first anti racist generation in America. And what I mean by that is 43% of us Millennials are people of color 47% of Generation Z, the generation coming up behind Millennials are people of color. So I'm trying to reach like 10% of white millennials, 10% of white Generation Z, and in particular, people who identify as women and, and get us to change our views on race and racism and to become anti racist. So we can have a majority anti racist generation, and transform our society for the betterment of all. How we do that is largely through workshop facilitation. So we have four core workshops that we do, overcoming unconscious bias, recognizing and intervening in microaggression, becoming an ally, and ending sexual harassment. And so we do those workshops in workplaces, universities, nonprofits, all throughout the country. And then, in addition to that, we convene events called inclusive conversations that are designed to bring women together across age, race, sex, class, sexual orientation, and bridge divides, and get us communicating with each other about the real issues that divide us so that we can start to make progress toward becoming more united.

Bethaney Wilkinson  09:42

Oh, it's so powerful, such important work, and I'm excited to ask you more questions about that as we go. Before I go there, though, I wonder, has it been controversial at all, for you as a white woman to kind of build a platform on anti racism work? How have you navigated that Like, and finding your place in the midst of this,

Karen Fleshman  10:03

yeah, it's hugely controversial. And also, I am still undergoing my own journey like I, I was on a panel earlier this month, and I did something white supremacist on the panel, and another panelists call me out for it. And at the moment, I didn't fully understand it, it took me a while to digest it. And now I'm like, Pam, you know, I'm still on my own journey, I don't consider myself like, Oh, I am the epitome of white ally ship, you know, I am just a little bit further along than the next person, but I'm still making mistakes, and definitely need to be in accountability, and constantly growing and learning my own self and collaborating, I think when things are most powerful is CO facilitation. And so I'm constantly co facilitating with other people. But yes, I have. And there's, there's some black and Indigenous Women of Color, who believe I should not be doing this work whatsoever, that this should be exclusively the work of black and Indigenous Women of Color. And there's other black and Indigenous Women of Color, who say, please go out there and get your people, we need more people like you to reach out to them to communicate, and we can't carry the burden of educating all of them by ourselves. And, and so what I like to think of my, you know, my lane in this thing, is in that outreach, and in educating white women in particular, about why we need to do this work, but not for them to get stuck doing the work with me. But to then go to a black indigenous woman of color, anti racism educator, pay her and work closely with her, not with me, but that I can be like that kind of, you know, kind of community outreach person, and someone who white women can maybe express what they're feeling and feel like they can be more open than they might be if the person conducting the outreach was not another white woman. If that makes sense.

Bethaney Wilkinson  12:24

It does make sense. I wonder, too, if in some ways, I have a good friend who's a white woman who we are learning how to co facilitate this work in our organization. And what I find is that sometimes it causes me as a black woman less harm, if I can send the white people who are still learning to my white friend, you know, it's like, let's tag team let's get out of here and can stay in.

Karen Fleshman  12:51

Exactly. And let let me explain to the white woman why what she is doing is harmful. 

Bethaney Wilkinson  13:01

So when you interact with white women who are early on this journey, like they're interested, so maybe they come to something or they download something, what are some of the biggest hang ups you see? And then like making progress?

Karen Fleshman  13:17

Oh, my God, I mean, I think it's super, super deep, how deeply embedded white supremacy is, among white women. And this kind of infantilization of white women, and I have to walk a very fine line, right, because on the one hand, I am a white woman myself, you know, I am no better or, you know, in all of the things that live in them live in me to write and in order to engage them. I do believe in compassion and empathy, you know, for all people, and I do think that our white supremacy is is because of our intergenerational trauma of inflicting all of this harm, as well as having harm inflicted by us by the patriarchy. So I think on one level, you know, white women, you know, we're socialized into the patriarchy like, whoa, okay, white men make a deal with us, like, you can be number two, if you will, you know, support us being number one and keep everybody else down. Okay? But then, like, the psychological thing of all these guys, they're actually harming us, yet, we're still going to identify with them and how deep that is psychologically. Right? So I believe that in order to engage white women, I have to be empathetic, but then, on the other hand, I'm incredibly angry, frustrated, you know, like, how can you not see this as happening? Why are you still doing it? And why are you like checking out? And like practicing yoga or meditating? Or whatever it is that you're doing? Like, why aren't you paying attention to this? And doing something that you know, then, and I feel such a strong sense of urgency around that. And I'm super angry about it, too. So it's like, how can I establish kind of a tough love thing? Where like, Okay, wait, women, we are messed up, okay. And we need to change. And we need to change now in a way that is going to keep them into the conversation, and not cause them to disengage.

Bethaney Wilkinson  15:40

So when I think about organizations or teams, where white men and white women are in positions of leadership or influence, or managing people, do you think that the work for white women looks different than the work for white men? Yes, and if so how?

Karen Fleshman  15:55

Well I talk about this all the time, like, in the workplace, I have experienced sexual harassment, wage gap, glass ceiling, all that stuff on the part of white men, right. But the most harmful behavior I have experience in the workplace, psychologically, has come from white women, who were superior to me within the organization, and somehow perceive me as a threat to their power, and would like approached me as like mentors, and then kind of colleagues and like, get all this personal information from me, and then turn and use it against me in organizational politics. And that was so that for me that kind of workplace, I wouldn't even call it a microaggression I would just call it an aggression evoked all these other past trauma, like when I was sexually assaulted, or childhood adverse experiences, I like took me into a super depressed state that took it took years of therapy actually, to get out of this one particular thing that a white woman in the workplace said to me, and so I think it whereas like, I've had white male bosses, as well as women of color bosses, who have been deeply invested in men in my growth, and like, really helped me to advance to the next stage in my career, and gave me great workplace mentoring and advice and feedback. So I think for white women, we have to work through our psychological stuff that is causing us to behave this way toward other women, which I believe is rooted in a deep lack of, I think the empathy gap for white women and women of color is rooted in white women's deep disassociation and lack of empathy for our own selves, that's rooted in patriarchy. Okay. And I think for white men, you know, it's funny, like when I talk with my, my women of color, diversity and inclusion, colleagues are like, I'd so much rather work with the white man, like, they want to do it. They're like, Okay, I see, there's a problem here, and I want to get better. And what can I do? Whereas white women are like, there's a problem here. What are you talking about? I'm a woman, I understand this, like, and and so it's just a very different dynamic.

Bethaney Wilkinson  18:38

So for white women, are there things that like practical action steps like 101? I hear you saying, like, there, there's a lot of psychological work, which probably takes community maybe therapy, it takes a lot of intentionality to make that happen. Are there other things that you think like a man can do to begin if they're truly wanting to wake up? Like, yeah, I don't know, what actions do you advise people in?

Karen Fleshman  19:06

Well, I first of all, definitely work with a black indigenous woman of color anti racism educator, I've had very, very powerful experiences. And I and I know and and there's people doing great stuff online, but I highly encourage people to do in person workshops. And when they start to feel uncomfortable, not to leave and to really stay and to understand why they are feeling uncomfortable.

Bethaney Wilkinson  19:41

So there are two words or terms even using and I'm tracking with you because I similar to you spend a lot of my time swimming in this work, but I would love to hear you describe these terms for our audience. The first term you've been using is white supremacy. And so I'd love for you to give like your working definition White supremacy. And the second is anti racism. I think that's a word that people might assume they know what it means. But I find that most people don't know what racism is, therefore, anti racism is actually, their ideas are kind of off. So I love for you to unpack white supremacy and anti racism as you use them.

Karen Fleshman  20:20

Sure. So I, you know, for white supremacy, the belief in the inherent superiority of white people and thereby the right to dominance in every system, institution and situation, you know, that white is right and inherently right and should be in a position of power, anti racism, I'm very influenced by Dr. Abram candy, you know, stamp from the beginning and anti racism is to embody the practice of there is no superior or inferiority, inferior race. In fact, we are all equal. And thereby, none of us have the right to dominance, it's to work against this idea that there is anything inferior or anything superior about people, as defined by their race.

Bethaney Wilkinson  21:19

Do you find that anti-racism differs from other forms of advocacy?

Karen Fleshman  21:24

Well, yes, I think we tend to think of advocacy as very oriented to specific policies, issues, or even people and elected officials, right. So you campaign for this candidate, or you, once the candidate is elected, you hold them accountable to working on these different policies. And, you know, we want to advocate this policy for climate change, or this policy for a equality or whatever issues are important. I think, for anti racism, it's less so about advocacy, and more. So like an entire different approach and entire different paradigm shift. I mean, there's policy too, don't get me wrong, and policy has to happen. And policy and systems change are a very important aspect of it. But underlying it all is this notion of equality and just sort of getting rid of this whole idea of there's some kind of hierarchy, right? Where like, men are better than women, and white people are better than black people. And straight people are better than queer people. It's like, no, no one is any more or any less human than anybody else. And that, to me is like the real work of anti racism is like, how do you actually embody that in everything that you do? So it's less about advocacy around a particular issue, although, of course, that is extremely important. And we need to work on laws and policies and institutions. But it's about like, how do you actually move through the world? And how do you think about things? And how do you acculturate your kids about things, which is where I think a lot of the damage is occurring?

Bethaney Wilkinson  23:18

Yeah, that's kind of where my thoughts were going next, because I'm thinking about your mission to like, raise the first anti racist generation and how you work so much with younger people. And then that makes me think about young people and children, of course, and then the homes and I circle back to thinking about how geographically segregated we are. And so how are you thinking about that these days, like about kids, children? And what does it look like to begin instilling anti racism in people when they're really young?

Karen Fleshman  23:47

Yeah, I, you know, my kids are young. And for me, my approach has been to talk about this with them, from the time that they could talk, we've been talking about it, and to expose them to stuff that other parents were like, what you're taking your kid there, or you're watching that with you, like, don't you think that's really harmful? What I think is really harmful is to not expose your kids to this stuff, and then have them grow up. And someday, much like me, you know, 28 what I'm white like, what are you like, what? That is harmful? Okay, so so my kids, we watch Roots, even the really grisly parts. We've looked at lynching photos, we've watched police brutality videos, we have visited Native American massacre sites. We have visited Japanese internment camps. We have gone to protests of police brutality, and I send them to a very diverse public elementary school where more than half the kids are on reduced in preschool lunch, because I don't want to shield them from the reality of how brutal the society and the system really is. And I want them to develop resilience from a very early age rooted in this stuff, as well as you know, influencing that my kids are biracial, they're half Asian American. And so I'm constantly asking them, What do you identify as what do you but you know, I want them to be able, from a very early age, to name racism, to name sexism, to be empathetic with people from all that. So it's also about who comes to our house? And who sits at our dinner table? And who spends the night in our house. And who do they play with? And all you know, what books do they read, like, all of these things, right. And I really do believe that we have from birth until age eight to influence them. And after that, like, their subconscious is largely formed. And from that point on, you can still kind of direct them in different ways, but their personality, their subconscious, their understanding of the world is largely formed by the time that they're eight. And so it's extremely important, what you are role modeling, because it's also, you know, I could yell at them all day long, racism is terrible. But what they are learning from is how I am actually behaving and what I am, you know, what I am role modeling to them, and those types of things. So I'm writing now a book for white women. And the second book will be about raising anti racist kids as a white parent. 

Bethaney Wilkinson  24:04

Gosh, that's so good. So switching gears, just a hair I know that you are really passionate about, I want to say cross racial sisterhood. I'm not sure define it differently. Yeah. And so why is this important to you?

Karen Fleshman  27:12

You know, I woke up on the morning of November 9 2016. And just all I could think about was how white women had voted for this man. And How had I been kind of checked out, I was extremely engaged in 2016, in local police accountability, activism, and I really kind of did not participate very much at all, in the presidential election. And then I put together a panel at this Women in Technology Conference that I had previously attended. And I, this was right after the election, and I got like black in Asian American women and Latin X women. And all these really high level women were like, yes, I'd love to do this. And it was going to be a panel, where we were going to give white women some feedback on how we could be better allies in the workplace. And they rejected me at this conference. I was like, I'm like, yeah, like, do you see the names of these women who are on here, and then I was like, you know, what, screw this, I'm just gonna hold, I'm gonna do this same thing, this panel, but as a standalone event, and so it kind of got started from there. And it also stems from the fact that I know, as I was saying earlier, that if I had not been extremely intentional about it, my naturally occurring social circle would have been almost entirely white and Asian American. And I see that every day like when my white women friends invite me to something, everybody there is white, or Asian American, when my black women friends invited me to something, I'm one of maybe two white women who are there and I'm like, this is quite like, we have to start to get to know each other, we really need each other. But of course, we cannot just get together and you know, have some wine and look good and Hall. I mean, we have to like get very serious about listening to each other and understanding how white women have been harming women of color since the beginning of our country's history. And why is it that women of color today, distressed and have very little desire to engage with white women? And we have to have with we have to start having those conversations. And and I'm I also don't like the idea of panels like I'm, I'm like, let's, let's key up a topic and then have everybody in the room talk about it together. Once we have established some community agreements about harmful behavior and what is not going to be allowed in the space. But let's let's get everybody talking to each other. So we can start to form those interpersonal connections. So we can start to build the trust and work from there. And so that that was kind of the origin of it. And we've hosted like, I don't know, since 2017, I've probably done 10 of these events in in cities all across the country. And it's been fantastic. It we have gotten so much positive feedback, because it's also very intergenerational, right? We're trying to get younger women, older women, you think about most women's events, they're like, targeted at this very narrow band of like, oh, senior executive, or entry level, or whatever it is. And again, we need each other. So anyway, it's about trying to foster those very needed conversations. 

Bethaney Wilkinson  31:01

That's great. And I, I asked about it, because I think it's a really, I think it's incredibly important. And I personally have been learning a lot about how in working with other black Indigenous Women of Color, how solidarity can be assumed across all of those across all of our different and very diverse identities. I mean, even within my own project, yes, I've interviewed between 10 and 12, like black, broadly black racial, people of color, and majority white friends, but some of us are from Georgia, some are from Ghana, some are from Jamaica, and like, so yeah, we can't assume anything. There's work to be done.

Karen Fleshman  31:39

And also, I mean, I, my goal is we get to the day when you're Bethaney, and I'm Karen, you know, like, 

Bethaney Wilkinson  31:48

Yeah, yeah

Karen Fleshman  31:50

that is what I'm striving for. Right? That is where I'm striving for and that Karen can see Bethaney completely here, Bethaney completely have total empathy with Bethaney, and not center myself and not be like defensive or anything. And we can have a real relationship based in trust. And we can build together, that's, that's where I am. That's where I am aiming for. But we have all been harmed by these things so much, there's so much trauma, you know, and I spent so much time listening to women of color in just acute trauma, and white women, we just have to get better. And we have to stop inflicting this trauma, and which I think is rooted in our own trauma, that we also have to go back and and keel from. It's extremely complicated, but we have to stop inflicting trauma on each other. And we have to start healing ourselves. And I'm also very influenced by Adrienne Marie Brown, emergent strategy and pleasure activism. And how can we make activism the most pleasurable like, where people start to feel really good, I feel like Oh, my God, Bay Area activist circles, you know, how mean we are to each other. It's like, we're so mean. And it's like, we have to work on healing some of our trauma and be gentler with ourselves and gentler with each other and understand, we're all like, traumatized people. And we have to learn how to I don't know, just be better, be better to ourselves, be better to each other, and heal from this past trauma.

Bethaney Wilkinson  33:49

The last question, big question I have, I asked everyone that I interviewed this. So my project, the diversity gap, I'm really trying to help organizations, leaders, teams, begin to close the gap between their stated intentions, and then the impact of those intentions. And I feel like even over the course of our time, you've shared so many big picture and practical things that people can begin doing and thinking to close this gap. But and I would love to hear in your own words, what is the diversity gap? And how can we close it?

Karen Fleshman  34:20

Well, I think there's an intergenerational diversity gap. I think, you know, many people who are in positions of power, tend to be older tend to be wider. And then we have a huge demographic shift among younger generations, and also of their expectations of the institutions and the people, positions of authority within those institutions. And I think people who have grown up in with diversity or you know, have come into institutions within very high level expectation of how people with positions of power and how those institutions have done their homework and understand what racism is sexism is homophobia, sis phobia, you know, and how these, how these biases feed into systems of oppression and are like working on ourselves and working on changing the institutions to not keep manifesting these things. But the people in positions of power have no idea what they're talking about, like they literally are like. So, to me, that is the gap that is the delta that I am trying to fill, you know, because the folks in positions of power, I'm 50 years old, you know, the folks in positions of power look like me grew up like me, blah, blah, blah. And so I am trying to help them understand how we think that what we think is normal, but to other folks, it's like, completely absurd, you know, and, and so to, to bridge that gap to understand how these other folks think, and then start to change our behaviors, and our communication and the way we interact. And I think the most important tool for this is learning how to give and receive feedback. Because I can go in and, you know, facilitate whatever kind of workshop you want to have on whatever topic and teach you all these tips and practices and books to read and blah, blah, blah. But until like it becomes a cultural norm within the organization, that you have certain standards of behavior. And then when those behaviors are not met, that people can give and receive feedback and treat it as a learning opportunity and not as a reason to get defensive or retaliatory because that, you know, we have to get to the point where we're able to communicate across difference and and drive to behavior change. So this harm doesn't keep occurring. 

Bethaney Wilkinson  37:21

Gosh, I've never thought of that before. So true. Like I think about my experience as like I grew up going to college. I'm like studying critical race theory. So I have like this bag of information, and I'm expecting the world to be a certain way and then you're exactly right, like encounter management or people who did not need to study critical race theory as a part of their identity formation. And I'm thinking we're all gonna just work together and start a company and change the world and and then there's the rude awakening of like, Wait, there's a big, even just like knowledge education gap vocabulary gap here, um, that we have to begin closing in order to move together in any constructive direction. So gosh... 

Karen Fleshman  38:09

And the onus should not be on marginalized people to educate them, right like to educate us, like we we have to take the onus on of educating ourselves, but again, not without accountability to marginalized people and understanding that what is right for one is not right, for all like it's not a monolithic thing. So it becomes very complex. But I think any organization that has any degree of foresight is looking at the demographics and how you think it's intense now we till 10 years from now and and I think it's something like by 2020, millennials will make up 75% of the workforce and consumers and and voters, you know, you Millennials are already the biggest generation of voters and I just wish y'all would vote saves the world you know, and so anyway, um, so and it's also about how can we learn so it's not as if everything from my generation is bad, like, we have a lot of wisdom to share with y'all too. So how can we create those bridges and opportunities to share that wisdom so you don't have to make the same mistakes we did. And we can actually you know, transform society for the better of all people because we are in crisis woman, we are in straight up full blown, like end of the world type crisis and in we have to get serious about solving this stuff like it's not going to solve itself. That's another good book recommendation dying of whiteness. 

Bethaney Wilkinson  39:56

Okay, yeah.

Karen Fleshman  39:58

 That's a really good one.

Bethaney Wilkinson  39:59

I'll be sure to list that one as well. Well, Karen, thank you so much for your time. Where can people find you keep up with you, knowing your books coming out, like I love to be able to.

Karen Fleshman  40:09

Well, I got to get cracking on writing the book. Deadline is swiftly approaching. So I'm targeting a publication date of summer of 2020, which means I need to hand it in by September one and it's going to come at it's on sounds true publishing out of Boulder, Colorado, they largely published spiritual type books. In the working title is racy conversations for white women, practicing inclusion, Ally ship and intersectionality in everyday life. So yeah, there's that my website is racy. conversations.com, you can send me an email, there's a contact me link there. I'm very active on LinkedIn. That's like my most active social media, please connect with me on there. I have a really amazing LinkedIn community of people all across the country doing this work. And that's one of my great joys. I'm on Twitter, too. And yeah, I cannot wait to it is such an honor, Bethany, to be part of your podcast. Thank you so much for inviting me. And I can't wait to listen to the other podcasts and of course, to listen to mine. And I'm sure it'll be like, Oh, my God, I can't believe I said that.

Bethaney Wilkinson  41:31

This isn't so rich. Thank you. Okay, so what are some action items that I'm thinking about after that conversation? Firstly, I love, love, love how Karen talks about the importance of showing up to learn in person from black women, indigenous women and other women of color who are anti racism educators. It's one thing to read books, and to follow stories and to listen to podcasts. That's actually amazing. We should all do that. But I'm wondering, what would it look like for you to find a woman of color who is an anti racism educator, and to learn from them in person? What might it feel like to experience and to push through all of that discomfort I think? I think we'd all learn a lot if we put ourselves in those situations. So if you don't know where to start and finding an anti racism educator, I've listed some organizations in the show notes that you can check out and hopefully find a training or workshop that's happening near you. I think we live in a really exciting time where there are so many people and leaders that we can learn from and so this is a really great way to keep moving on the journey. Yeah, so thanks again for listening. If you have any thoughts or questions from this episode, hit me up via the website or on Instagram at The Diversity Gap. Thank you for listening to The Diversity Gap podcast. If you've been challenged or inspired by what you've heard, please rate and review the show. You can also subscribe to make sure you never miss an episode. If you have thoughts or questions I'd love to hear from you connect with me at thediversitygap.com or on Instagram at The Diversity Gap. This episode was produced by opdiggy for Soul Graffiti Productions