Part One: The “R” Word - Racism and Organizational Culture w/ Jen Willsea
Episode Summary: In this episode of The Diversity Gap Podcast, Bethaney kicks off season two with a two-part conversation on racism. Have you ever wondered how the complexities of racism intersect with our organizational diversity work? In part one of this two-part series, Bethaney sits down with Jen Willsea, a white woman who is an antiracism educator, facilitator, writer, and community builder. Bethaney and Jen discuss some of the common hang ups white leaders face as they try to pursue antiracist lives and leadership. They also discuss the phenomenon of internalized white superiority.
Episode Notes: Got Internalized White Superiority? The Danger of Denial and the Promise of Another Way by Jen Willsea - Read at link below.
https://www.jenwillsea.com/blog/got-internalized-white-superiority-the-danger-of-denial-and-the-promise-of-another-way
Jen Willsea’s Website
https://www.jenwillsea.com
Jen Willsea’s Instagram - @illuminator_jen
The Black Mecca Project - https://www.theblackmeccaproject.com
The Racial Healing Handbook -https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1684032709/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0
Transcript
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
people, white, anti racist, racism, organizations, internalized, anti racism, question, thinking, whiteness, race, color, work, superiority, communities, taught, jen, racial justice, hear, life
SPEAKERS
Bethaney Wilkinson, Listener Story, Jen Willsea
Bethaney Wilkinson 00:00
So I've been thinking about racism a lot lately, and not just racism in the big social systemic sense. Even though that's important, and my hope is that this project, and my work always speaks to the big picture racism in some way. But I've really been thinking a lot more lately about the internalized piece of racism. And we'll get into this some more in the episode. But something you may or may not have learned about growing up is that racism has a lot of different faces, and one of those faces is all about how in our hearts and in our minds, we come to believe that we are either inferior or superior, not just and in terms of our identities, but in our appearances and our voices, and how we lead and what our priorities are. And so in a racist culture in a racist society, people who are underrepresented racial minorities can often take on a sense of internalized inferiority. And people who are from the majority culture who are white, can take on internalized sense of superiority. And I'm not going to get into all of that right now. But I've been thinking about this a lot lately. I'm about to turn 30, which is super exciting. And as I reflect on where I was at, when I turned 20, it was my 20th birthday, 10 years ago, when I actually cut all of my hair for the first time to go from having relaxed hair to having natural hair. And I'm, again, I'm not going to get into all of that you can Google if you don't know what I'm talking about. But I began my natural hair journey when I was 20 years old. And it was incredibly liberating. And it was this really just deep affirmation of my identity as a black woman. But now it's been 10 years, and I've had my hair locked for a while and I like my my locks, I love them. They're very convenient for me. But at this new juncture, I'm thinking about, if there are other ways that internalized racism is showing up in my life, I mean, I spend a lot of time in white spaces, I'm married to a white man, I work in a white LED organization, my my church where I serve is majority white, and and those are just big parts of my life. And so as I am bouncing between my relationships with white people, and my relationships with black people out there, people of color, and also processing my relationship to myself and my own sense of worth. This idea of internalized racism is just really prominent and prevalent, and I thought it would be worthwhile to take some time to evaluate what was I taught to believe about racism growing up? What am I believing about racism right now, and, and this is my way of inviting all of you into that conversation. 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. What were you taught to believe about racism?
Jen Willsea 03:22
Being raised in the north, you were taught that people in the South was racist. And it's hard to also think back of what was I taught, right? Because nobody actually sat me down and said, This is racism. My mom unconsciously pointed things out to me where, why people were discriminated against, but to be sat down and taught like, this is racism, it was more of like, I'm just peeping game. And the news will tell me what racism is. Unconsciously, I was taught that racism was really a thing of the past. Something that kind of originated with things like slavery and colonialism, and really something that was the most prominent during like the civil rights movement. But growing up, I wasn't taught that racism was still something that was alive and happening around me and in my community. And I definitely, you know, wasn't taught that anyone I knew could even potentially be considered racist. And, you know, I don't necessarily agree with those things now. So that is what I was taught.
Listener Story 04:32
So as a kid, I actually wasn't really taught much of anything about racism. Even in school during Black History Month, like, we would just get a very like basic version of Martin Luther King, Jr. story. I don't recall ever hearing about Malcolm X as a kid. I don't recall ever hearing about James Baldwin, or you know, Stokely Carmichael nor you know any anybody other than Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and I feel like that was because that was See, I guess they say
Bethaney Wilkinson 05:19
so in early 2019, a little over a year ago or maybe right around a year ago now, me and my friend Kayla Stagnaro. She was on Season One of The Diversity Gap podcast, she and I entered in this workshop here in Atlanta called Transforming Culture and Naming Racism in organizations. And this particular workshop was a day long opportunity for Kayla and I together to go learn about ways that racism may or may not be showing up in Plywood, people's organizational culture, and, and to process that and to workshop some of those tensions. And so it was a an incredibly helpful learning experience for us. And I was able to get connected to Mattice Haynes and Jen Willsea, who co-facilitate this particular workshop. And so as I started thinking about internalized racial superiority, since that's not really my experience, I thought it would be helpful to talk with a white person who is a racial justice educator who can help all of us better understand how this internalized superiority shows up for white folks and the organizational context. And so I thought it would be helpful to sit down with Jen. And here is some of that conversation. Hey, Jen, thanks for being here.
Jen Willsea 06:35
Hi, Bethaney. Thank you for inviting me.
Bethaney Wilkinson 06:37
Oh, of course, I'm excited. So I thought it'd be helpful for listeners to just go ahead and hit record, because Jen and I were gonna start talking, and I thought it'd be helpful to even hear some of the process. But my first question for you is, how did you arrive at this work, and so maybe, where you're from, like a couple of pivotal experiences that led you to this work, and then how you would even define what this work is. Because I think a lot of people have different definitions of what it means to address race and life. And so there's a broad of the broad stroke, but I'd love for you to riff on that for a minute.
Jen Willsea 07:11
Um, so I was born and raised in Rochester, New York, it's really close to Lake Ontario. And it is holding a Sani land. So some of my ancestors were involved in colonizing what is now known as New York State, and we're involved in the land theft of that part of the United States. And let's see, so I grew up in a relatively, not a super political, moderate to conservative family, I didn't have any anti racist role models growing up. And so I had, one of the first transformative experiences I had was, as a young white activist, I moved to the Bay Area in California, right after college, because I wanted to get involved in progressive activism. And I didn't have any idea what that was, or how to get involved or what to do. So I started doing all kinds of things. But one, one friend said, you've got to do this workshop, it was called the challenging white supremacy workshop. And it was a four month long program, how are white activists and it was essentially like, re education, in race, re education on race and the role of race in social justice movements in the United States. So we were asking questions like, why is the environmental movement so white? Where did whiteness come from? Who invented it and why? And so that's where I got a whole new perspective. And my mind was kind of blown open and a fire was lit for me around realizing that I was white, realizing how whiteness had shaped my life up to that point. And it began my commitment to anti racism, which, you know, has had lots of twists and turns that was 17 years ago, I've made lots of mistakes. There's things I've done that I I'm not proud of, but also a lot that I am proud of. So ever since then, I've been on a quest to keep learning about myself, keep learning about race and racism and to be part of a force for anti racism in this country.
Bethaney Wilkinson 09:20
When you and I last talked, you mentioned that I guess, and you can give rework my language around this. But you mentioned that part of your work is especially in helping white people like understand racism, whiteness, anti racism, what it might look like for them to be not complicit but helpful in this work. And so my question around that is a Why do you think that's important? Like what, as a white woman who's leading that work? Like why is that important to you? And then to what barriers do you see white people face as they try to move in an anti racist direction?
Jen Willsea 09:56
Well, I think it was Alicia Garza who said not long ago that undoing white supremacy is white people's work to do. And so that is a lot of what drives the work I do with white people. I also do a lot of work with folks of color and multiracial groups, I partner with black women on a whole lot of projects as well. But the work, I feel like an important part of my role as a white woman is in modeling, imperfectly, what it can look like to show up as an anti racist every day in the work that I do, to model how I talk about myself to model just how I show up how I interact with people, the kinds of things that I prioritize with my time. And so, you know, I'm also a mama of a three year old little white kid, and trying to raise her as an anti racist from birth. Right? And I don't, I wasn't, like, I'm learning how to do that. And I don't want, you know, seven generations from now, or even one or two generations from now, I believe that if White people are still operating out of a complicitous in white supremacy and aren't doing the work to uproot it and undo it, then I will feel like I and we have failed, and the work we're doing today. So that's really what motivates my work. Yeah, is that I don't I don't believe that people who we call white have to be complicit and have to be recreating racism and white supremacy, the way we are currently doing. I don't think it has to continue this way.
Bethaney Wilkinson 11:32
So what keeps white people from entering in or showing up to this work? Even? Am I just thinking all white people? Because I think, you know, I'm thinking like people who want to say that they want to like, what are some of the barriers that keep them from doing it well?
Jen Willsea 11:46
A lot of things. I think that the work can be scary, the work can be hard. It's countercultural work. So the deeper I get into it, the, you know, I continue to come up against resistance up against like, having to look at stuff within myself, that's hard to look at. You know, folks don't always like what I'm doing white folks, as well as black folks and other people of color. So it's like, hard to, I think it's hard to persist. And to keep going through those hurdles and barriers. I also think I see a lot of white folks who want to be allies for racial justice, sort of thinking, Well, I've read the white fragility book, or, you know, yes, of course, I understand racism is real. And don't really understand that, like, intellectually, knowing that or having read the right stuff translates into being able to develop or pursue an anti racism strategy in my organization, or actually changes anything about how I'm behaving towards the people of color in my life, or my people of color colleagues, or family members. So getting from moving from, like an intellectual understanding to a more embodied effect, in terms of behavior, I think is one of the another one of the big barriers that I see. And also, I work with a lot of white leaders, people who've been in their fields for a long time, who are used to showing up as experts and who are used to, you know, commanding that kind of attention in the room. And my perception when I when I work with people like that is that it's very, very hard to admit to being a true beginner to really not knowing anything about how to be anti racist, or how to advance racial justice. And so it's such a huge contrast for many white leaders, for them to show up as the opposite of an expert. And so I see people really struggling and not able to do that and not willing to be vulnerable enough to make mistakes and admit that they don't know.
Bethaney Wilkinson 14:04
Yeah, oh, wow. I've never thought of it in those terms. I've sensed it. I've never put it in those terms before. And I think that's definitely probably resonating with people who are listening like, Yeah, I'm an expert. I've been doing this XY and Z for 510 1520 years, and to have to essentially be like, I'm a kindergartener again. And all of the mistakes and confusion and fear and vulnerability around that that's so helpful to name for people.
Jen Willsea 14:31
Yeah. And what does it mean, for me, I'm a public health or I'm an education equity expert. And yet, I really don't have a clue about how to do that with an anti racist lens that I can imagine I can empathize how hard that would be to admit, yeah, it's hard to hold the both and of those two things.
Bethaney Wilkinson 14:48
Yeah. But I also think it's a pathway. Oh, yeah. It's like, oh, that's a big thing. Like, I gotta take the most uncomfortable road like at least, there is a direction there is a So, guys, um, so I think it was actually when I attended your workshop last year, it was one of the most helpful times I saw like a breakdown of racism and like the four different dimensions, internalized, interpersonal, institutional, structural. And, and we've talked about the other forms on our podcast, some but I really wanted to kind of lean into this internalized piece, because as I think, as I interview people, it's a lot of what's happening across across races, like in just meetings with supervisors or over lunch, it gets these like small interactions where the internalized white superiority hits up against the internalized inferiority. And that's where a lot of the diversity gaps seems to live for people. It's an equity gap. It's a gap of a lot of things, but for the sake of the podcast, and so I'd love to hear just kind of how you think about this internalized white superiority and how you've seen it or experienced it showing up in relationships and in organizations.
Jen Willsea 16:00
Yeah, well, this is, I think, can be one of the hardest dimensions of racism, especially for us white folks to acknowledge or to grasp, and to really be able to talk about and work with, I'll just start with a little an example from just a few weeks ago. So I said, I have a three year old earlier, she loves to draw all over her body with markers. And she was drawing with a bunch of different colors. And then she got the brown marker, and she started drawing on her skin with a brown marker. And I caught myself I had the impulse. And I didn't say it, but I had the impulse to say not the brown one. And it was a sad moment. But I also it was also a victorious moment, because I was able to see how these beliefs are so deeply encoded. Despite all the work I've done, this belief just came up out of somewhere that I wasn't expecting, didn't realize was still there. And I caught it. But it just showed me like, just how deeply how deeply these messages are inside of us and how much effort it takes to be able to notice them and to choose to do something different. So anyway, I let her draw all over her arm with a brown marker. And I told her it was beautiful. So internalized white superiority. So I think a lot of people are more familiar with internalized inferiority for people of color. And I guess I'd like to challenge white folks who are wondering, internalized white superiority, what how could I possibly have that, you know, I love many people of color, I work with people of color, I couldn't possibly have beliefs inside of me that say that white people are better in any way. But if we understand that we're in a racist society, and that people of color have internalized some degree of inferiority, it would be impossible that white people could not internalize some superiority. So I think that can help us to just know that we're all swimming around in these white supremacist racist waters. And so we all have to internalize it somehow. And we all do. So internalized white superiority just essentially refers to any beliefs and thoughts and assumptions that live inside of my white body and my white brain that influence my actions. So that's the definition, I would just I would say, that's what it is. And, of course, there are some people who grow up in explicitly white supremacist households where white superiority is taught with words. But many of us, myself included, grew up in homes and communities with adults who would be horrified to learn that they taught me white superiority, because they didn't teach it with words, but their actions taught me that there was something better about white people. And so one of my teachers, Valerie bats, talks about how there are messages we catch. And there are messages we are taught. And so the way I think about it is that I caught a lot of messages about white superiority. So an example would be like my parents moved us when I was age five, from the city of Rochester, New York, where we would have been zoned to city schools that were much more black than the suburban school district that they moved us to. And the story for my whole life was like, you know, we needed to move to a place where you could go to good schools, better schools, those schools were much wider. And so even just the notion that those schools were better, but it was okay for it was okay for black kids and other kids living in the city to go to inferior schools. That's an example of how I then took in a message of white superiority that we deserved to go to better schools. And that there was has nothing to question about why things were set up that way or why it was okay, that some cool schools were better quality than others and the better quality schools were whiter.
Bethaney Wilkinson 20:10
Yeah. I'm curious about the role community has played in this work for you. Because I think for some people, especially those of us who've been socialized into like this hyper individualized context, and then white culture can be pretty individualistic. I think the the need for community and relationship to get to a point of healing is, in my opinion, really important. And so I love to hear you talk about the role communities played in your own journey. And then in your work, and, and just Any other thoughts you have on that?
Jen Willsea 20:39
Yeah, I think communities extremely important. And I have found myself over the years to kind of getting getting into a solitary place with this work. Especially the whiteness part of it and partnering with lots of colleagues and friends of color, and then getting the feedback back to me, nope, you need to go back to who are the white folks that you are deep in community with that you're leaning on. And so over the course of the last 17 years, I have been building very intentional white and multiracial communities with whom I talk about race all the time. So it's everyone from my partner at home, to, you know, colleagues and friends all over the country, and here locally, because I think the vulnerability and the courage that this work requires, we just, we need each other, we can't do it. By ourselves. And my work, I find advances by leaps and bounds when I do it with other people, the ideas I come up with the questions I have, they just can only get so far. If I'm doing it by myself.
Bethaney Wilkinson 21:47
Yeah, that's so good. Okay, so I work with a lot of like these, like a lot of do good startup organizations, what I'm observing is potentially that these this internalized white superiority becomes like, this is the best way to do things. And then we're going to export this best way to all of these communities, perhaps all over the world if we can. And that is really challenging. And if a person is leading an organization like that, and then they're like, Okay, we want to do anti racism work, it really kind of cuts at the foundation of what they're doing. And asking questions that weren't asked when things were started. And so what are your thoughts on that? If people are waking up to the reality that Oh, to undo racism in this environment means that everything seems like it needs to be burned to the ground and started over? Like, how would you coach or consult someone who's waking up to that reality?
Jen Willsea 22:41
Sometimes, organizations do need to be shut down. And sometimes organizations shouldn't be founded. So I do want to say that and then, for white folks who are excited about founding something, I would say think twice or three or five times about that before going ahead. There's so many other efforts underway, there's so much under resourced black lead, and people of color led efforts that you could find out or figure out how to support. And so yeah, I think it's often a good guidance to not start something new. And, and yet, if you have started something that has a purpose worth worth continuing and maintaining, and you want to start applying an anti racist lens to it, I would say, don't jump to solutions. Lean into the inquiry and the hard questions and the curiosities first about what you may not have been thinking about who's at the table? Why who's not at the table? Why? So don't don't try not to jump to like, how do we just get more people of color here? And instead ask the questions about, you know, what was I thinking about when I started this organization? Who was I thinking about? Who did I start it for? For whose benefit was this organization built? And really, to sit through and work through some of those questions before jumping to strategies, especially diversifying strategies? Because sometimes bringing people of color into an environment that hasn't done the internal work around anti racism can actually be harmful?
Bethaney Wilkinson 24:29
Absolutely. Yeah. So when you think about Oregon, that's a yes and amen. Thank you for that. That challenging, but helpful and important word that you just gave. When you think about organizations and just some of their gaps, big picture around anti racism work, what comes to mind for you?
Jen Willsea 24:49
There's too many I think I'll focus on sort of the gaps around internalized white superiority since that's what we've been talking about just to focus it otherwise I'd have to go on there. But I think that sometimes the way that that can show up in organizations is that, especially in liberal or progressive organizations or nonprofits is that we believe so strongly that the work we're doing is for all people, and it's for the good of all people. But we haven't considered or often are very resistant to looking at how they were built to primarily serve white people. And so that's how internalized white superiority shows up in organizations. That's one of the ways some other ways that it shows up are when we protect white comfort. And so, for example, one of the organizations I was working with, they had a race equity strategy. And they had a team that was working really hard on their race equity strategy. But they also had this pattern, it was a multiracial team, they had this pattern that would come up where one of the people of color on the team would bring up something that was bothering them. And that person's concern would end up getting overshadowed by a white team members could concern so the conversation and the caring would get turned around toward taking care of this white team members feelings and concerns. And the original concern brought up by the person of color on the team was just lost. And so I think that can happen a lot unintentionally, but it's very harmful. Because essentially, what we're doing is we are acting even though we don't think we believe it, we are acting as though white people's feelings and concerns are more important. White people's comfort is more important. And maintaining that comfort is more important than actually getting uncomfortable, and building the relationships across race that we would need in order to be honest with each other and all hold each other equally. In our brilliance and in our humanity as equal humans sitting around that table. So they that team was not treating each other as equal across the lines of race, even though they really thought they were Yeah.
Bethaney Wilkinson 27:11
I hear you almost do Well, it's interesting, because it's like, it's it's so hard. I was talking to a friend. I mentioned this. And then I think, another little company again later in this podcast episode. But how it's so hard sometimes as a black woman to describe racism, sometimes I'm like, no, nobody uses a slur. But but I can feel when the when it's not right. And then the energy it takes to try to explain it beyond understanding it myself is just so much. And then I'm like, Okay, I need a nap. Like, I can't get into this. Let me just do my job.
Jen Willsea 27:43
Yeah, and I think what when, when white folks, what I noticed is when we sometimes sense something is off, we actually disassociate from it a lot, or just like, and this has happened in me, I've noticed it's like, I'll just pretend it didn't happen. Or I'll really forget, it didn't happen. It wasn't even a conscious forgetting. But it's a way to avoid doing that labor of really figuring out Wait, what is going on here, something is not right. I need to work with this. So and I also want to say that we're in Atlanta, Georgia, we're sitting in the West End, we're in the American South. And so we can talk about internalized white superiority all day and just generally talk about people of color. But we need to talk about how anti blackness is specifically what white people what we need to reckon with lives inside of us as white people, and especially for anyone running an organization here in Atlanta. If that organization does not have substantial black leadership, if the work you're doing is not supporting, amplifying resourcing black women's leadership, specifically here in Atlanta, then, you know, there's work to be done in there some hard things to look at. So I think that while specifically Yeah, the ways we've internalized as white people superiority over people of color can look different towards different racial groups. I think the anti blackness piece is really important.
Bethaney Wilkinson 29:10
But yeah, that's so good and such a challenge. And I, but it's not the challenge isn't it's not impossible. You know what I'm saying? I think sometimes people, white people, or people who have the privilege to kind of show up and check out as they please, in this working conversation. They hear like, Oh, this is hard work, and then they kind of pull back. But I love to hear from you. Also, I know that it's challenging to undo some of these things vulnerable and even scary. But what have been some of the gifts or freedoms you found as a white person, white woman, in this space and in pursuing an anti racist life, albeit imperfectly?
Jen Willsea 29:43
Well, I couldn't be more grateful for the life that I've pursued and the fruits of it. I think I was reflecting on the way over here that although I didn't have the words for it, I think as a young person, I found whiteness to be suffocating. In many, many different ways that you wouldn't necessarily even immediately think of as race related. So the more and more I pursue anti racist work while I also do other things that are supportive of my own healing and evolution as a human being, and as a person, I feel more alive. And my relationships are just get even more amazing. With white people and people of color with my family members. The communities I'm a part of are vibrant, and I'm just learning so much all the time. So I'm a person who's just I get bored easily. And I have an unending curiosity. And so for me, and antiracist life means that I get to really live more fully and that I get to experience much more of being a more evolved human being, then I would get to experience if I wasn't doing this work.
Bethaney Wilkinson 30:59
So good. I love the word vibrant that you use. That's a good one. Okay, so my last question is, the diversity gap project exists to help leaders and people close the gap between their good intentions and their impact. And so we've talked about a lot of things and even a lot of practical things people could do from resources to attending workshops, that sort of thing. But I'd love to hear from you. What is one thing people white people specifically can do today, if they want to begin moving in a more anti racist direction? And to close that gap?
Jen Willsea 31:32
I think a great place to start is with your own home. And to just bring an anti racist eye and lens into your own home, what are the books that I'm reading? Who do I have on my walls? What TV shows on my watching how, you know, when, when and where is race coming up? Or not coming up in my household? Related to the conversations that we have or don't have? When am I thinking about race? When am I not thinking about race in my day to day? Activities?
Bethaney Wilkinson 32:10
I love that. I love that question. When is race coming up and not coming up? And when in conversation because I I've been thinking a lot about kids and how like two year olds, three year olds, four year olds, they know they understand. And so I'm like talking to kids about their experiences in school. And oh, that's just I love that question.
Jen Willsea 32:29
There's a there's a book called Raising white kids by Jennifer Harvey, that I would highly recommend if for anybody who is raising white kids and wants to deepen your awareness and skill around how to do that in a way that promotes racial justice.
Bethaney Wilkinson 32:44
Okay, cool. I'll post that in the show notes. Well, thanks so much for being here, Jen. And if people want to follow you or find you, what's the best way for them to make that happen?
Jen Willsea 32:53
Well, you can go to my website, which is jenwillsea.com. And you can also follow me on Instagram at Illuminator_Jen. Those are probably the best ways. Okay, awesome. Follow me for now. Yep. Great.
Bethaney Wilkinson 33:07
I'll link to those things too. There are so many things that Jen shared that I hope you find challenging and encouraging. There were a couple of pieces that stood out to me. Firstly, I really appreciated her thoughts on grappling with the inadequacy many of us feel in pursuing anti racist lives. A resource that she recommended that you didn't get to hear. It is called the racial healing Handbook by Dr. Anjali Singh. She's actually based here in Atlanta, Georgia. And what's really great about this resource is that if you are navigating, feeling just completely out of your depth, and feeling really inadequate in these conversations, this racial healing handbook walks you through a series of questions to wake up to your own racial identity, maybe some of the wounds that are there some of the gifts that are there, I started the workbook a couple of months ago, I think it's a great next step for you to engage. And so the second thing from Jen that I really appreciated, was the invitation to pause and ask yourself, Who was this created for? And I love this, if you're leading an organization, if you're leading a program, if you started a an interesting Instagram page or feed the question, Who was this created for? Who did we have in mind truly, when we created this thing? I think that's such a great question, because so many of us feel like when we get in these racial justice conversations that we want to jump to the solution, but we have to take a few steps back and consider what where was my head at when this whole thing started? And to see what diversity gaps actually existed in the initial ideation of that thing. And so that's just a couple of points that I wanted to leave for all of you to think about. And that's about it for this episode. This is part one of a two part series on racism, so stay tuned to check out the next episode. 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. The Diversity Gap podcast is recorded on the Skokie Creek land in Atlanta, Georgia. This episode was produced by Matt Olin for Soul Graffiti Productions.