Show notes
In this episode, I am excited to have Karen Fleshman on to talk about a different view of racism and the immediacy of the call to action she aims to instill in the future generations. Karen Fleshman is an attorney, activist, and a nationally recognized expert on racism, workplace fair practices, and police brutality. Her recent video plea to white women to stop calling cops on people of color went viral, with over 4.2 million views. In 2014 Karen founded Racy Conversations, a training company to inspire the first anti-racist generation in the United States. She facilitates workshops on racism, unconscious bias, microaggressions, sexual harassment, inclusive management practices, and raising anti-racist children. Topics Covered What inspired her to leave the law, and how she stumbled upon her current career of activism and inspiration. How anti-racism can be considered a mindfulness practice, and how she defines mindfulness and wellness as a communal environment. Why she is so focused on white women, and how sexism and racism are intertwined irrevocably in their fight for justice and equality. She even shares her thoughts on how white sexism has been used to propagate racism. How we fight against diversity apologists who "would hire more diversely, but can't lower our standards." We talk on how this mindset started, how it has been spread through white privilege, and how we can communicate and seek each other out more to show diversity in it's true form. Learn more about Karen at: Racy Conversations Twitter Questions? Comments? Email Jeena! hello@jeenacho.com. You can also connect with Jeena on Twitter: @Jeena_Cho For more information, visit: jeenacho.com Order The Anxious Lawyer book — Available in hardcover, Kindle and Audible Find Your Ease: Retreat for Lawyers I’m creating a retreat that will provide a perfect gift of relaxation and rejuvenation with an intimate group of lawyers. Interested? Please complete this form: https://jeena3.typeform.com/to/VXfIXq MINDFUL PAUSE: Bite-Sized Practices for Cultivating More Joy and Focus 31-day program. Spend just 6 minutes every day to practice mindfulness and meditation. Decrease stress/anxiety, increase focus and concentration. Interested? http://jeenacho.com/mindful-pause/ Transcript Karen Fleshman: [00:00:04] I think that's where we get confused about what racism is; racism is a system of privilege and wealth accumulation, it is not a personal fault. And I think that's where white people start to have the breakdown because they associate racism with a bad person. Intro: [00:00:25] Welcome to The Resilient Lawyer podcast. In this podcast, we have meaningful, in-depth conversations with lawyers, entrepreneurs, and change agents. We offer tools and strategies for creating a more joyful and satisfying life. And now your host, Jeena Cho. Jeena Cho: [00:00:46] Hello my friends, thanks for joining me for another episode of The Resilient Lawyer podcast. In this episode, I'm so happy to have Karen Fleshman. She is an attorney, activist, and a nationally recognized expert on racism, workplace fair-practices, and police brutality. Her recent video plea to white women to stop calling cops on people of color went viral, with over 4.2 million views. In 2014 Karen founded Racy Conversations, a training company to inspire the first anti-racist generation in the United States. She facilitates workshops on racism, unconscious bias, micro-aggression, sexual harassment, inclusive management practices, and raising anti-racist children. [00:01:32] Before we get into the interview, I want to tell you about my new course Mindful Pause. So often I hear from lawyers that they know they should practice mindfulness, but they just don't have the time. And I always tell lawyers, start with just six minutes or .1 hour. Of all the hours you dedicate to your clients, work, and others, don't you deserve to have at least .1 hour to yourself? Mindful Pause is designed for lawyers like you to fit into your hectic schedule. Try practicing mindfulness for just six minutes a day for 31 days and see for yourself the difference it can make in your life. Think about it like taking your daily vitamins to boost your well-being. Head on over to JeenaCho.com to learn more, or check it out in the show notes. And with that, here's Karen. Karen, welcome to the show. Karen Fleshman: [00:02:15] Thank you so much, Jeena. I'm so excited to be here and to get to have a conversation with you. Jeena Cho: [00:02:21] Thank you. Before we get started, can you just give us a 30-second introduction of who you are and what you do? Karen Fleshman: [00:02:28] Yes. So my mission is to inspire the first anti-racist generation in America. 43% of millennials are people of color, 47% of Generation Z are people of color. And I'm trying to inspire 10% of white people in those generations, as well as 10% of white women, to flip anti-racist so we can have a majority anti-racist generation that will transform our society for the betterment of all people. That may be more than 30 seconds. Jeena Cho: [00:03:03] Wow, I love your vision. When you say anti-racist, what does that mean? Karen Fleshman: [00:03:11] Anti-racist, I really got that language.. I'm very much influenced by Dr. Ibram Kendi, the author of "Stamped from the Beginning," and he defines racist thought as the belief that one group is inherently superior to other groups, and therefore are deserving of domination. And to be anti-racist means to not believe in the inherent superiority of any race, or believe that any one race should be dominant. And to actively engage to actually dismantle racism within oneself, within one's community, within one's sphere of influence. I'm really convinced if banning discrimination were enough, we wouldn't be where we are 50 years after a very successful movement that got our laws changed to ban discrimination. This has to be a grassroots, from the bottom up movement. And some people look at me like I'm crazy, but I do firmly believe that racism is not in the self-interest of the vast majority of white people. It is definitely in the self-interest of a tiny fraction of white people, and they have been able to convince the rest of us that it's in our self-interest too. But it's actually not, and I'm trying to help people to see that. Jeena Cho: [00:04:52] Say more about that, how is it that racism doesn't benefit the majority of whites? Karen Fleshman: [00:05:00] Well, we are a society in which 20% of the people control 95% of the wealth. And apparently that's not enough, they're trying to make it be 100%. Which I really don't understand, that just does not end well. [00:05:18] So you have many white people in the 80% of people in who are controlling 5% of the wealth, and they are somehow lulled to think that the 20% has their interests at heart by this notion of racial superiority. And that's been the whole history of racism in our society, is that it was created by a tiny group of white men as a means of wealth and power accumulation. And then they were able to persuade white people without power and wealth to be their enforcers of it, by persuading them that they were racially superior to other people. And then, of course, it makes sense to massacre and genocide Native Americans. And of course, it makes sense to enslave people from Africa and run around capturing them, bringing them back and torturing them, and doing all the horrible things that we've done. And I really do think this whole concept of white fragility is our post-traumatic response to all of the horrible things that our ancestors did and that we've never reconciled. We've never faced this history, we've never confronted its outcome and how it continues to impact us today. And I think that's why many, many white people experience a lot of trauma if you bring up the issue of race. Because I think we have very deep-seated fear and shame and guilt. Stemming from generations of trauma that we inflicted. Jeena Cho: [00:07:18] Yeah, I get the sense that when we talk about racism and the privilege that whites have, the pushback that I often get is something like, but I'm not racist; I'm not doing anything to contribute. I have black friends. So when we're having this conversation, what is it that you're trying to get people to do or see or think about in a different way? Karen Fleshman: [00:07:58] Well I think almost all white people in our country grow up learning what racism is from our white parents. And I don't think it's intentional on their part, they just literally did not know what they were doing. So I grew up with learning racism is terrible, Dr. Martin Luther King is wonderful, and the way to be not racist is to be colorblind and to treat everybody equally. But I grew up in an all-white community, so I never saw my parents interact with people of color. It wasn't intentional on their part, we just literally did not know any. [00:08:49] As I grew older and started to notice, well why is there so much racial inequality in our society? The story I got back was we used to have terrible racism in our society, but then there was the civil rights movement led by Dr. King, who is wonderful. And now opportunities are distributed equally. And some families, like ours, choose to work really hard, and that's why we're in our situation. And other families choose not to, and that's why they're in their situation. And no recognition of all the racial wealth accumulation strategies that my grandparents had access to that other families did not have access to. And it's undoubted, my grandparents, great-grandparents, they worked their tails off. They were farmers, they were the general contractors. But everything that they did, they had access to because they were white. And other families did not have access to that. And all of that magically lands on me, and I have no idea that racism played a role in that. And I'm sure probably they weren't racist either, I don't think they harbored.. I think that's where we get confused about what racism is. Racism is a system of privilege and wealth accumulation. It is not a personal fault. And I think that's where white people start to have the breakdown because they associate racism with being a bad person. And I am not a bad person; I'm an ethical person, I'm a kind person. I am all these things that are good, so therefore I can't possibly be racist without understanding. But when you exclusively associate with white Americans and maybe a few Asian Americans, and when you do all these different things. Who we who we believe when we serve on a jury, who we socialize with, where we send our kids to school, where we live, who we hire, who we promote, who we listen to. [00:11:11] Yes, you are racist; because you are perpetuating white supremacy in all those daily interactions, in all those little decisions that cumulate to the situation that we are now in. And I think that's where the breakdown occurs, is that they say, "I'm not racist," because they think that racism is to harbor ill-will toward black people. But we all have extremely deep-seated, unconscious bias that has been intentionally manipulated for us to fear black people. And if we don't recognize that and start to work on it, we just keep perpetuating it. I'm sorry, I'm going on and on. Jeena Cho: [00:12:06] Yeah, I am totally on board with you and everything that you're saying. And then my next question is so then, what? And I know you speak a lot to white women, and I want to get more into why it is that focus on that group. But let's say you're a white person and you're like okay I see what Karen is saying, that there is a system set up that is there to make things easier or make things more challenging, depending on the color of your skin. And I am part of that system, but I am just one person. How do I fix it, what do I do? Karen Fleshman: [00:12:50] Oh my God, I love that question. And I will say this, if you are a white person and you want to become a radicalized white supremacist, you have 18 bazillion, right? You've got your InfoWars, you got your Breitbart, you've got StormFront, all these places to go. But if you are that white person that's like, I think there might be something wrong, where do you go? I think this is a really bad problem. And what I would say to that person is that it's about mindfulness and changing your heart and your mind, the way that your mind works to come in alignment with each other. And then paying attention to these everyday interactions; things are happening all the time. And I think that because our brains are not designed to handle the way we are just bombarding them with so much information, like social media and online. We need to pause (I like your pause thing), take some time, pause, slow the heck down, spend some time in nature, get really quiet, and really start to think about why do I have these beliefs? Where did they originate, what kind of narrative about race did I grow up learning? And how am I demonstrating that in my daily interactions? And then start to change; start to intentionally seek out and develop relationships with the people against whom you're biased. [00:14:51] All the literature on unconscious bias says that the way to get rid of it is to start to supplant all those negative stereotypes with actual relationships with people that you know and care about. And then we're not dehumanizing people based on race, then we are re-humanizing them and we can start to recognize things. And in the building of those relationships, we also start to share social capital, which is a big part of this. Like if a white friend invites me to any kind of social event, their kid's birthday, a barbecue, a networking event, 9 times out of 10 90% of the people there are white, with maybe a few Asian Americans. If a woman of color invites me to a networking event, 9 times out of 10 I'm one of maybe 2 white women at the networking event. So we have to get to know each other because in these social settings is where we're exchanging all this social capital that is also really leading to the wealth inequality, right? How did you get your kid into that school? My company has an awesome opening I think you'd be perfect for. Oh, can you help my kid get an internship at your company? Whatever it is, that's where these things are happening. So if there are no people of color present, then we are perpetuating the racial wealth gap in these social settings. And then the next step beyond that of the building of the relationship is to really take a look at, you know people are like systemic racism, institutional racism, it's out of my hands. Bullshit, okay? Institutions and systems are created by people. [00:16:52] So look at whatever sphere of influence you have; it could be your kid's school, it could be your workplace, it could be your faith-based organization. Whatever it is, how does racial inequity show up in this organization and what am I going to do? Am I going to change where we're recruiting positions for, apply the Rooney Rule in recruiting? Whatever it is, each of us can do something that is going to move us toward racial equity. And that's how these systems are going to change. The people in power in these systems could not give a hoot, they have absolutely zero interest in changing them. I mean, I'm really so down on the whole Diversity and Inclusion profession. And I feel sorry for my friends, I have many, many friends who are heads of diversity for organizations. It's an extremely stressful and isolating job because, in the end, very…
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