Welcome back, fellow thinkers and curious minds to another captivating episode of Desanthra Life.
I'm your host, Adam Gamwell, and we're here to explore the fascinating
intersection of anthropology, culture, and the human experience. So race yourself for
a thought brooking discussion that's going to challenge your perspectives and leave you at the
deeper understanding of the world around us. Now we're diving in the topic of
teaching towards a post racist imagination with the brilliant Janine Dan the Age and in
a world that constantly grapples with issues of race, especially the United States,
imagining a future where racism no longer holds us back is not just a dream,
but it's a vital necessity. Jeanine is an expert in the field,
and she'll guide us through the process of dismantling racist attitudes and creating a more
inclusive society. So here's the question to ponder, what does it mean to
teach towards a post racist imagination? How can we foster conversations that challenge our
perspectives about race while creating a safe space for learning and growths. It's a
question that every person regardless of their background, should be asking themselves. And
the great thing is we're about to get some of those answers. So joining
us today is the incredible Jeanine Danovitch, whose expertise in teaching complex subjects with
both empathy and bravery has garnered widespread acclaim. Jeanine will share her insights,
experiences, and practical strategies for engaging in productive conversations about race in both professional
and personal settings. We'll explore how Janine sets the stage for meaningful discussions and
when and how race matters in those conversations. We're going to dig into her
concept of brave community and how to create a safe and empathetic space for discussing
challenging topics. Jeanine will also share her method of grounding for learning and how
it can empower individuals to be intellectually brave and open to change. But that's
not all. We're also going to look into the power of empathy, the
importance of respectful conversations across different raceful perspectives, and how to navigate the complexities
of discussing race in today's world. Jane's insights and practical strategies will leave you
feeling inspired and equipped to have more meaningful conversations about race and racism. So
grab a pen and paper, or prepare to highlight with your headphones or however
you take those, because Janie's wisdom is about to ignite your imagination and chal
the status quote. So, whether you're a seasoned advocate for social justice,
we're simply curious about fostering a more inclusive for us. This episode is a
few now right before we jump in, make sure to hit that subscribe button
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inspiration that This Anther Life has to offer. So let's dive onto this journey.
Right after the break, Jean, so excited to have you back on
the program. It's been a little while since we've talked on the podcast.
We've obviously talked numerous times in the intervening years and months since then, but
you know, so excited to have you back here on the pod for the
community. Thank you I'm excited to be here. It's been i don't know,
seven years something like that. It's been it's been a while, yeah,
which is also just kind of crazy to think about too. Yeah,
we last met at in person at Harvard University, which has a different ring
to it now that I mean, we're in post twenty twenty at this point,
so we were like, we went through pandemic and so we meeting in
persons sounds different even we can say it. You know, was way way
before in those days we really we met regularly in person. It wasn't go
figure writing crazy world, you know. So we're trying to try to bring
that back. But as you if you're listening, we're talking remotely. So
this is the fun irony of this. But you know, so one thing
I'm excited to kind of bring into conversation and something that I always appreciate about
our conversations. This is something that like when I was a graduate student and
you were finishing your doctoral work too, that that really helped me get real
about. Was this idea that we can actually bring pedagogy. You know,
it's just a fancy way of saying teaching and teaching methodologies into quote unquote real
life outside of the classroom. And this is this is a piece of conversation
we discussed originally just in terms of what does it mean to have certain kinds
of conversations in and outside of the classroom. I think what's really really cool
and exciting about your your work and your new publication on Brave Community is helping
us actually see that what it means to bring these kinds of you know,
ways of methodologies into into the classroom, but then also kind of beyond it
also. So I'm curious to kind of open our conversation in this arena,
right, I want to get into the content of Brave Community itself and teaching
for a post racist imagination in the idea of imagination there too. But I
think that like the idea of teaching in pedagogy as both a method and something
that informs your work, I want to kind of open us up here and
think about this idea of how does pedagogy play into the kind of work that
you're doing, you know, as an educator of students and classrooms. But
that obviously beyond that as well. Yeah, thank you. That's a great
starting point because I think the fact that Brave Community as a method is a
teaching method, it's a teaching and learning method is crucial to its value.
And what I mean by that is that it's two things. It has to
do with it. How it came to me, right, and also what
it does. So how it came to me is that it came out of
my doctoral work, as you know, and I was interested at that point
to see how people who taught about race and racism in racially diverse classrooms and
higher education succeeded in doing that and succeeded in doing something that when that topic
was being broached outside of those contexts, a lot of things weren't happening.
Right, So outside of the classroom, the successful classroom talking about race was
about emotion. There was a sense of ungroundness in history that you really couldn't
rely on what has occurred or a sense of reality. There was a low
trust among people. Things would blow up all the time. And as we
all experienced that and observed that, my thought was like, well, when
this happens in classrooms, that doesn't seem to be happening. So what is
it about a classroom setting that makes this feasible? Not only but also profoundly
moving and transforming for learners. And so I went and studied two successful thought
race courses, courses on race and racism though slavery in one case and African
American political thought and another to watch what they were doing. So I won't
bore the audience to it's like the details of the research. But what that
the answer to that study, to that question was this method. And so
that's the first piece of it. So then in telling you what the method
does, I'll tell you what what's cool about the pedagogy The community has to
do with leveraging what I call grounding for learning, which is what classroom is
basically made of, in order to empower people. In this case, you
know, the first instance it was college students. But we can talk about
how that's anyone to be more empathetic towards one another and to be more intellectually
brave. So the both the sort of mechanism is a pedagogical mechanism, but
also the advantage that it gives you is that it it helps you to look
at one another as learners so accept that one another can change, can grow,
that we can find common ground if we have the same content that we're
dealing with and that we can sort of be solid in our interaction with each
other if we make some agreements about how we're going to interact. So it's
it's about what is special about a learning environment that makes it more suitable than
you know, Twitter and Facebook. And it's it's funny too because it's it's
the so many like if we hop online, you know, so to kind
of draw up the other side here in terms of conversations like you know,
Twitter, Facebook, social media, the kind of other quote unquote public arenas
or platforms. It's it's really interesting because there is this there's been this kind
of pervasive narrative that from the tech elite. We might say, you know,
from the from the very business for folks, that you don't need to
go to college, you don't need to get a college education. You know,
you just need to like figure out a coding skill and then you know,
hop into a startup and develop some nice product that somebody needs. Then
you can get rich and then everybody worship you. And it's funny because while
on the one, idea like that points us towards an anxiety people have about
developing careers, pathways and livelihood, it totally ignores this side also, which
is this fundamental side of what it is that classrooms and educational apparatuses and spaces
can do for us, like the training of a skill like this is how
I read the American novel, you know, and which is still valuable too.
But but I think that's that's a really important piece too, that that
you don't necessarily right now see on a you know, on a college curriculum
or even at a like faculty meeting. You know, you may not see
this this kind of forward idea of like we're actually intentionally framing engagement with one
another a specific way that allows us to both see each other or as learners
able to change. And I think this is really important, you know.
I mean, so even as we're as we're going to dive into a brave
community itself, even this framework, I mean, I mean, to your
point is, as you said too, we're we're gonna look at how we're
addressing the challenges of racist thinking, racist thought, and how do we address
these emotionally charged spaces and conversations and empathetic and open ways. But then on
top of that too, I think there's there's a huge value here too in
terms of how do we articulate the value of a you know, pedagogical approach
to challenges like this, So just an extra extra high five for like,
there's there's other piece I think that like we could also bring and to give
colleges like, hey guys, this is the way to think about this.
Absolutely. I will also say that I think this this sexus into the idea
of the foundation of brave community being what I call grounding for learning. So
I'll touch on that next. But what you're talking to about is reminding me
of a much older, a much older controversy that we have in this country
about the usefulness of things like general educ cation requirements, humanities and the humanities,
right, which the humanities are just like I like to say, a
fancy word for human culture, expressions of human culture, and we just tend
to think they're very remote and for all kinds of issues having to do with
the choices that higher education institutions have made to be not inclusive. Right.
So that's a whole different podcast and a different soapbox that I can get on.
But the fundamental issue that you're raising is that those kinds of educational endeavors
which were core to American hired when it was founded, When American Hired was
founded, there wasn't a real understanding that, Look, people just don't wake
up knowing how to be in a moltiracial democracy. Right, We're going to
need to practice this. And at first they weren't even trying to be a
moltiracial democracy. Right, this is like fifty years of that, But still
there was a sense that this needs to be practiced. Both from the get
go people don't have that skill, but also you've got to keep flexing that
muscle, the muscle of having evidence based, text based and text I mean
that in a broad possible sense, but content based interact and engagement with one
another around these norms of empathy and you know, accommodation and negotiation of terms
and sort of like you know, your experience is entangled with another person's experience
and you're sort of in we're all in this together. We've done a really
horrible job of getting rid of that, and so we end up having to
have we now have these masters of the universe who lacktic basic ethical, humanistic
orientations, whether we're talking about the tech people that everybody's thinking about, or
the Supreme Court justices who have seemingly like less ethical point of view than like
a twelve year old you know, where they can be taking a bribe and
be like I didn't know I was taking a bribe anyway, big digression as
you and I are wants to have. But yes, back to the grounding
for learning. Yes, no, But I think it's an important point though.
I mean, I'm you know, I think it's it's a useful rabbit
hole too, because it is also just giving us a sense of when we're
thinking about the usefulness of pedagogy. The idea of us discussing this right now
is to show a little bit about what it's up against. Right like listeners
of this podcast may or may not, you know, be be anti education
hopefully not you know, or like anti going to higher ed. I doubt
it, But just like this idea too that like there is the narrative out
there in terms of like what is the use value of of of a higher
education in this case? And I think what you're raising there is this fundamental
point that there is aspects to our humanity that we take for granted, and
part of it comes to us a lot through through an education system that,
like yes, has its own problems. That's that's what we're going to be
kind of dive into it in the Brave Community format. But then this other
idea of how do we counter some of these other at these you're prevailing narratives,
And so I think there is also again there's room even as we think
about Brave Community too, like if we have to also then say, this
is why this kind of education is valuable, right, we have to,
Like the way you said, we don't just wake up knowing how to operate
functionally and appropriately in the multiracial democracy. That's not that's not a given,
as much as we tell ourselves it is. Yeah, And you know as
a as a sociologist of culture too, like and you would know this too.
The society itself is one big giant classroom, right, it is.
It is a pedagogical force unlike any other. And it is actually teaching us
a script and teaching us a way to think about ourselves and our condition.
And so you do want to have like a kind of obvious counter to the
prevailing lesson that the society is teaching you. So it's kind of like,
yes, I have a pedagogical approach, but also why wouldn't you have a
pedagogical approach. The whole thing is a pedagogical approach. Right, Yeah,
I'm not you know, I'm not here to say everybody needs to go to
college at all, like my kid didn't go to college, but I will
say everybody needs to be learned at all times. You know, how to
negotiate becoming a person in a way that allows other people around you to become
people too, versus something quite opposite that, which is what we're up against.
Right, So yeah, okay, grounding for learning. Yeah, let's
let's dive into So there is this like one of the I mean, we
may sell at the ground level, right, It's it's like kind of like
the basis you found so in the case studies that you did, and then
also you find yourself. You kind of talk about this as grounding is what
the what the classroom is made of, what it helps us do. So
it's kind of like to me, I'm thinking about if I'm in a garden,
this is the dirt that we have to stick our roots into. So
how do we set the soil the proper way? How do we make it
fertile for these kinds of engagements? Yes, so big idea with very I
love this very big ideas. I think this is true for throughout the book,
very simple executional, huge return on investment. Grounding for Learning is the
foundational brave community and it is exactly that it's the dirt that allows two kinds
of plants to grow. Now you're going to have to remind us of this
metaphor because you and I tend to have metaphor bloat problem. But we're doing
gardens. We're doing we're doing garden, We're doing gardens. So it's the
dirt to that allows two kinds of plants to grow. That we really like,
that bravery and that empathy, and how does it do that. Grounding
for Learning is a combination of two things, both content for learning and culture
of learning. They need to be together. So when you're approaching a group
of people, and then i'll give a very specific example, you want to
have both things. So content for learning is everything, but everything that is
content that is evidence, that is data that is not unfounded opinion. So
in the book there's literally a parenthesis that says not unfounded opinion. And it's
a very twenty twenty two things to have to say. You know that you
can't just say this is what content is. I literally had to say,
not your vibes and feelings. It's not your vibes and feelings, but that's
content. What are we using to learn and think about and work on this
issue of race and racism? Combined with an attention to how we're going to
approach this content and one another. So there you have things that are about
the norms of the discussion, the ways of being that are going to support
a learner to be engaged and to push themselves, but also receive that when
someone else is being engaged in pushing themselves. So when you have both of
those things together, that is what allows people the highest likelihood to have this
kind of bravery and this empathy. Why, because they then get two things.
They get clear about what we're talking about. So we're not talking about
the broadest broadest strokes of white supremacy. Now, let's talk about something very
specific. So think about a classroom and obviously you think about the curriculum,
and obviously you think about the reading for that week, let's say. But
then you think about a school having a di meeting, and yeah, they're
not thinking about white supremacy in schools they are going to think about the racial
disparity in the discipline records of girls and boys or some version like that,
something very concrete. So that's content. The second thing is the subject matter
is hard, we know it, but we're going to deal with it.
And so how do we need to be with one another end with this content?
So those considerations can range from how we're going to treat each other,
but also what we're not going to do, So you can make agreements in
advance about we're not going to go off content. We're not going to go
off topic. We're not going to have a conversation about, you know,
going back to that school. We're here to discuss the racial disparity and discipline.
We're not going to have a conversation about how you don't like Black Lives
matter signs in the principles door. That's neither here nor there for what we're
talking about. Right when those two things are together, folks know what we're
here to talk about, and they have expectations about how we're going to treat
each other. That what allows you to lean into that bravery and into that
empathy. And I think that that's such an important piece too, of how
do we set the stage right of the conversation or basically, what do we
we'll keep our garden metaphors, how do we like, how are we watering
the soil the right way so that certain kind of plants can grow? And
and this idea, I think it's really important too, because you know,
one thing that you kind of talk about in the book too is understanding a
bit when you're setting the framework up. It's like you kind of have a
section that's both about when race matters and when it doesn't matter. And this
is again like how we're talking about race and like, you know, when
and why we might capitalize white and black and when we don't need to,
and like and also this this other kind of idea that who is the method
for right? And so in part of this too, like because a lot
of the conversations that we've seen classrooms and obviously in the political realm and online
too, this is this is the other grounding piece right when you're in the
classroom, we can kind of then point towards these other areas if we need
to. We're just noting that, like as a contrast to how we might
set this up in the classroom when we were talking about political discourse or dire
tribe online. Right, there's there's we see things like who's allowed to talk
about race and what parts of race and who can be part of the conversation
and parts of what conversation and so this isn't you know? So we see
inklings of what does it mean to set boundaries? But then oftentimes we see
all transgressions of those boundaries because either they're not fully defined where someone doesn't respect
them, or on top of that, then we just lump in more and
more and more stuff because he said race, let me let me pick the
other five things that come to mind versus our actual substantive content because we did
a reading on one piece, so part of it, I mean, I'm
curious about this too, thinking about it if as folks are kind of wrapping
their minds around how do we set the stage? So part of it two
in the work that you saw both think classrooms. Then if if we're bringing
this into other kinds of meetings too, it is important to have some level
of content to engage with together. Is that something? Am I was I
reading that properly? Like you want to have either readings, podcasts, some
content that you build together. Yeah. So in the book, this is
a great question because I did want to say the most important thing is like,
Okay, let me help you your audience think about, Okay, what
does this look like. So in the book, I have the steps,
you know, I have a really wonderful chapter that is like step by step,
you know, you go and you do this and get back to me.
So let's think of an example. Give me an example. You're a
someone in a tech company and you're going to have a discussion about the lack
of racial diversity in your recruitment of engineers. Okay, ye, so that's
your that's your problem. You're you're the brave community gardener, and that is
the that's the situation you're trying to set up. Okay, what I would
want you to do according to the method, what we do is first we
take inventory of the situation with this grounding idea. So we do a grounding
inventory. So I'm that person I'm going in, I'm maybe I'm maybe the
d I professional at that tech company, and I'm going to have this meeting
and there's going to be all hands, like all staff are there, and
I'm going to lead this conversation. So I literally write down on one side
of a piece of paper content and on the other side of the piece of
paper culture, and that's my inventory. It's not it's very analog. So
I'm sitting there with my pen or I'm talking into my voice note whatever,
whatever you prefer, and I'm thinking in terms of content. Okay, assuming
I have some content expertise and we can, we're going to break that down.
But mcgiven you know that this is going to happen on a Tuesday,
that we have two hours to do it, what material am I going to
bring for the team to get their heads around this problem? So that's on
my content column, and I'm writing down, like our recruitment data, our
racial demographics, maybe there's some climate data that we took where people you know,
in that particular or subset of engineers or in the larger organization or flagging
this issue and they're frustrated. We said we're going to fix it in twenty
twenty, and we have it right, some version of limited content, very
targeted to the organization and to the question at hand, that people can either
look at during the time or briefly before. So you're not giving, you're
not sending, You're not in a position most of us I don't know about
other people to send people go get PhDs like real quick before I talk to
you. So this is what you've been doing. So are you writing that
down content? And then for culture, have there been trainings about I don't
know, interstaff discussion. Do you have protocols that you usually do that work
really well for talking about hard things? If you don't, what are you
going to do about that? Also under culture, is this a group that
gels well together and can have hard conversation or is this a literal power kike?
So you sit there and you have to think about this context before you
go do the brief community thing. Right, this is like your pre work
in the chapter I call it pre work. A couple of things are true.
That gets to your question if your culture column is not looking very good,
there are things in the book that I tell you that you can do
to get that fixed in a real time, you know, generate more empathy.
There's some norm exercises that I suggest that you can do. If you
know that you're in a room that's kind of cold to the issue, right,
Sometimes you are, sometimes you're not. We could do something on that
day. Then I'm very clear that if you do your inventory and there is
a blank content column and you don't have no content, the book is like,
I am like, don't do it. Stop stop, go get some
I don't know it, go go know it, Go get some why Because
that's the line. The grounding is the difference. So you're you're doing grounding
and then you're doing brief community. If you're not grounded, you're not doing
brief community. You might be doing good things. Things might still go for
you, of course, but that content piece needs to be there too,
exactly to your point, to give us parama and you know, solid soil
under our feet to stand on, so we're not all over the place,
and in the case of this example, to make it very context specific.
So what would that be. Maybe there's a real cool short article, podcast
video presentation about the egregious patterns of racial disparity in tech engineering, which we
have, right something. So at that point, last thing, I'll say,
you can be smart about your selection, right, what kind of material
is not gonna it's gonna be the most open to appear the most neutral for
that content, you know, is it going to be an op ed from
political No? Probably not that's probably not your best content, you know,
but also you don't need to be I don't know, getting depending on the
organization you're in, maybe an academic journal on the you know, like the
disparities and the field or not is not ideal, so you're gonna be able
to pitch it. But yes, something that people are going to get their
heads around together in real time. Yeah, and that's that's such an important
piece, and I appreciate you you're breaking that down. I'm in a very
concrete way because I think at one level it opens up the the reality that
if we're approaching these kind of conversations and organizations, whether they're an academic institution,
whether there are our tech company, whether there are our di group within
an organization, yeah, that we we don't want to show up just blank
saying let's have a conversation. You know, the goal is to build dialogue,
but unless you have a foundation with which to build on. And again
this sets again this this kind of question of boundaries of like how what is
what are the questions at hand? To I guess there's something else that you
said that that sit out to me there too. It's it's more like,
how do we even decide the content to bring, it has to address the
question that we are interested in. So in this case, if it's like,
how do we think about and address the racial disparity of hiring practices of
engineers? Are not organization in this case, right, or how do we
address I mean that's that's a great example for all organizations, right, and
an academic institution, you know, the racial disparity in hiring practices amongst studentior
faculty and senior faculty, and amongst student body in terms of acceptance rates and
in high school classrooms. You know. So it's like it's an important piece.
And then also again I appreciate this idea that don't get the first see
in an article or Politico or BBC article you find and say this is this
is it here, here's our story, right, Like we have to be
intentional about the kind of content that we also curate there and it's like a
third see I'm thinking about their two rights. It's curated. Yeah, that's
like a big ce in the beginning. The other thing about that I want
to say about content that I mentioned in the book is like the question then
becomes well how much content? Yeah, you know, and people get very
paralyzed. So the first thing I want I want listeners to know is don't
get parallezed. It literally, knowledge is infinite. The idea that that you
could actually have some kind of foresight omniscience to know exactly what it's not possible.
So this is why the last I think, the last sentence is the
book is this is a practice manual. That's the last words I wrote.
I mean that. I mean that. So this is about what can you
practice? And so I say very specific. It's like you said, it's
content that will help solve the problem, and it's bound to be limited.
So it says that you know, in the Book of the Phrases, the
content is bounded. And that's okay for two reasons. One, we will
be doing this over time, you don't have to hit it all at once.
And two, it's not possible to not have bounded content. Right.
So, for example, in my practice, I end up doing I've landed
on through like you know, trial and error. Some combination of my content
usually has two dimensions to it without being overwhelmingly too much. I do a
little bit of history of the problem, and then I do something very specific
to the context. So if I'm into an organization. That's what I'm thinking
about, right. So if I'm talking to a museum in the twenty twenty
era and their headline was like, museums are racist white supremacist organizations, stop
and be anti racist organizations. What those folks needed was both content about the
specific institutions what's going on there, but then also a little bit of a
primer on what is the relationship between like racial capitalism rit large and am I
am museum expert? I am not. So when I did my inventory,
I was like, oh, I gotta go research, find some a really
good piece, you know. And I found a really good chapter and a
really good book. I didn't write it, and the people I was with
knew that. I didn't pretend to know. I was like, hey,
I'm not a museum professional, but I have this method, but my method
is not content. Yeah, my method is a way to get content,
and this is what we're doing. And again that went worked out really well.
They could have not liked the book, they could have not liked the
chapter, but we did it and it worked out. But the idea was
the method directed me the infantor the content side was blank because that's not an
area of my expertise. No one's an expert in everything. And I was
like, oh, I gotta go get that before I show up with these
folks. And I think that's an important piece. And I think that you
know, to right that helping folks realize too when they're I mean pointing towards
how this kind of method is applicable kind of large in different institutions organizations.
Is this It's like it's not about these specific content itself, but it's like,
I think it helpful piece here too for me? Is I think about
this? Is that if I was doing working on practicing this method too and
again and a tech organization, and I would in this case maybe think about,
like if there's a book chapter social science that helps us get a sense
of hiring practices and tech organizations right, and then find some news stories that
were recent from this year that point out here's here's some examples or some stats
we have from Pew Research or whatever of hiring practices that we're seeing. And
so again it's not this like I have to go do it. I have
to go do a deep, deep literature of view. I could if I
really wanted to write, if I'm into really getting into tech hiring practices,
which if that's my job should be. But but if I'm also coming in
as a consultant you're thinking about applying this, then it's like I can do
enough to get a series of neutral pieces of content, you know, and
this case could be like to your point two. Right, it's a book
chapter and a news story. And just give us that that parameters from which
we're going to build this discussion because it's addressing the specific question we want to
figure out of, you know, lack of diverse hiring practices and what's what's
fueling that? How do we how do we overcome that? Yeah? And
if you set up that way, yeah, if you set up that way,
if you think about it for the audience, Right, let's think about
that. That what you just describe. If I'm going into that meeting,
it's taking care of a few things for me. I'm not anxious about whether
or not I can say certain things. I'm not anxious about whether or not
I am allowed to speak on certain things. I'm not anxious about whether or
not the conversation is going to veer off to something else. Right, It's
gonna help me come in more ankle because I do feel grounded to be learning
deeply, to be intellectually brave to ask things that are hard, because again,
I have this container that you've set up for me with this like pure
research and this article, and you know I basically, you know, you
the teacher. You're outside in the wild, but you're basically the teacher you
assigned. You assigned the reading, and I know that I can come in
and talk about the reading. Yeah. Right, It's very different than like,
let's have a conversation about racism in our organization and then everybody white is
quiet and they kind of like surreptitiously look at the two people of color on
the corner of their eye. That's a very different setup that we just described.
The grounding, Yeah, totally. I think that's such. That's an
important piece. And so so we have our we have our our grounding,
our soil set in place. And so then the idea here is that we
want to use this again to help facilitate a sense of empathy and braby.
So let's let's break down these two as our next Yeah, other next steps
with these are the plants that we're kind of growing here, right, they're
the plants. Yeah, they're the plants, and they're like, they're a
vine. They are a vine. They're entangled together. Our metaphor is working,
all right, yeah, so far, so good. The vine has
like the bravery interwoven with the resilient empathy. So let's take them one at
a time. The bravery is essentially what you think it is in your gut
when you hear me say it. It's encouraged to ask these questions. And
that's right, that's right. But okay, most learning has that demand.
The discomfort. The threshold, which is what propels your learning forward, is
the gap in what you understand and you say, okay, wait, I
look, I used to think of it this way, and now I have
this like looming looming flashlights suggesting to me that I'm not thinking about this the
right way. And what that happens to you in public or in community.
There's two things that could happen. You embrace that, you try to close
that gap by growing up, growing your thoughts and learning more, or you
retract because you're scared. So bravery is about not retracting and having the fortitude
to push, to push your thought process, to push your fellow learners or
colleague. I always say, like, we all know. I tell people
this story because I think it's vivid in our minds. You're learning about something,
you're a you're in a dialogue, you're in a process, and then
you come to that fork in the road and it sounds like, man,
I really wish I could ask this question, but I don't think so it's
only Monday, or I don't trust these people, or we want you to
be able to ask that question. That which arises naturally in your process of
inquiry needs to be asked. So that's what that bravery is. However,
to do that, you have to be received in good faith. So my
friend, my friend Jake, I think I give him a shout out in
a book for telling me, for forgiving me this language, like that's his
expertise, Like he'll just give me the perfect he said, you mean with
empathy, what you mean is listening bravery. There's a bravery and yeah,
right, he's good, he's good. Shout the Jake. So that there's
a bravery and expressing what you need for your learning. And there's a way
that your community can hear you with bravery, and that means opening the space
for it. Counting the ten when you're driving them a little bit crazy and
just having extending grace and good faith. So that's the other piece. So
spoiler alert, everybody loves the bravery plant, the resilient empathy plant. People
have a lot of problems with it. Yeah, I mean I can well
I'm treating I've both I've read the book. But I'm also like, okay,
I'm thinking about this if we haven't read the book yet, what I
would speculate that sounds weird to do this since I've already read it, but
like, but this idea in terms of that, I would either get mad
when somebody says something that offends me, or I may say I'm afraid I'm
gonna say something that's gonna offend somebody else. And so either of those feels
like I'm either not going to be treated empathetically or that I'm not to extend
empathy to somebody else that if they approach something in a way I feel uncomfortable.
Is that how I could talk about them? Yes, exactly, And
so what where what I talk about in the book, And I want to
say, like, there's deep gratitude in the entirety of this trajectory. So
this is almost like not quite a decade, but like seven years of work
for all the people who have been in community with me and workshops and classrooms
who've taught me so much what the nuance and texture of the method is through
practice, And so there was a lot of stuff that needed to happen in
terms of how you boost people to have these qualities and sustain them that I
didn't really know until people were letting me know that they needed these boosts.
So yes, grounding for learning and setting that up gets you along at a
lot of the way, almost all the way, but people do struggle along
the way. So for the Bravery, the boost is just to acknowledge when
it's happening, right to be like to see you. So I'm in I'm
in dialogue with you, we're in we're in the brave community bubble. And
you say something like I'm not sure I want to say this, and I
say to you, no, you definitely should say it. Then, So
that's a way for me to say, I know, I know what you're
I'm sure your heart, you're your process racing a little bit too fast and
stuff, but that's exactly what you need to be doing. So I do
this in the room all the time. I'll tell people me too, my
hands just got cold. I know exactly what's going on. But then,
didn't we say that we were going to lean in and be brave? Right?
Didn't we agree when we were setting up culture that this is this was
going to happen. So this is a crucial time for us to push or
you can bounce it around, you can say, okay, if people are
really quiet, A lot of people are really quiet. Is there anybody here
that feels like they can push us? We feel a little stuck. So
that's one version of that boost. For the end boost, it's a little
bit more subtle. And so what you might want to do is think about
ways to do things that you usually do in a group, like icebreakers or
introductions in a way that is warming, in a way that really signals everybody's
humanity before the discussion. And I don't mean this in like a corny way,
but certain like very simple adjustments. Right instead of everybody say their name
and their favorite color of what they ate today, everybody says their name and
where they work and when the last time you felt content? What's a question
that we can all answer briefly that has a like a modicum of humanity and
vulnerability and authenticity to it that everybody can answer yea that they are not likely
to have a prepackaged answer to. You do something like that before any discussion,
throw out brave community before any discussion. It changes the quality of the
dis Yeah, I really, I really like that too, and it's it
is it's good advice for life. And also yeah, just human engagement and
and value in terms of this of how do we ask ask questions in a
way that both generate a set of being together, inquiring together. But then
also yeah, we'll generate the human response. And it's funny because that's something
else that I mean, I'm thinking about, like the the one of the
challenges that has arisen just on the sense of life on the podcast over the
past few episodes. It's been interesting that, I mean, I've done a
lot of episodes recently on technology development and artificial intelligence, and again as as
a as an adjacent set of conversations. It's interesting because this idea of forgetting
our humanity is actually one of the subtexts of the problems that we find ourselves
running into because we're so interested in like getting the numbers and the ordinals right
that we don't pause and think about it. Is this the world that I
want to create? Is it's like, what are the basically what are the
norms that we're actually what are the what's the grounding that we're setting that we're
putting out here? Yeah, with this technology versus saying, let's start from
this this point of humanity and ask ourselves like, what does contentment look like
to you? Or was the last time you were short? Short answer R.
Yeah. I think this is such an interesting thing that you brought it
up because, as you may know, the book, the next nonfiction book
I'm working on is on that is on the digital implications for society. And
part of what this this revolute for I don't know what I mean dystopian thing
that we're dealing with both social media and now even more so with AI and
we will not go down this rabbit hole, but is that they are taking
away our ability to have these fundamental resources. These are fundamental resources for a
host of human practices of convivlience, solving, sustainability, the democratic practice,
a host of things are required like depend on the same soil that learning the
pends on. And we're getting rid we're playing with getting rid of them,
and empathy is one, and a sense of our common humanity or the experience
of humanity is one. Yeah. Yeah, a reverence for that stuff.
Caind of stuff seriously as opposed to rolling your eyes out it like who cares?
Like what it's like? No, that stuff, If you get rid
of that stuff work nowhere. Yeah, So resilient empathy I call it that
because to your previous point, you don't tend to want to extend it in
the context of brave community. And that's a really interesting idea of resilience there,
right. It's that it's the capacity to withstand the desire to not to
not be nice. Yeah, that's a really nice translation, thank you,
Adam. Like, yes, in the books it has an eloquent definition,
but it's something like the ability to put yourself in someone else's even when they're
learning is challenging you. But yeah, what you said is like your ability
to be resilient to the fact that you don't want to be nice to this
person, you don't want to extend trust to this person, you don't want
to count to ten yea. And so in the book I go deeply into
of course, the fact that in our world that is a skewed world where
there's a hierarchy of power in terms of race and racism that is abhorrent and
we need to work against over I'm being very general here. People of color
would be well within their rights to have a deficit of empathy for white people,
and white people would be well within not their rights but their reality to
have fear that people of color will not extend that empathy to them. That's
just real. So what the method allows us to do is create these where
we can engineer those conditions for all, including cross racially. And that's what
the grounding does. So when I come into a room, to be very
concrete, when I come into a room and I'm applying the method, and
I do I call establishing grounding, I do something like back landing norms to
first move people into this idea how we're going to be together, and basically
myself and the community that I'm in, we construct our norms together and I
solicit this from the group. I don't tell them what it is. They
tell me what it is. What are we gonna need? What do you
go around the room? What do you need for this to go well?
And not be another disaster, not d I from Hell? How do we
make sure this is not d I from Hell? And consistently over seven years,
consistently, regardless of who's in the room, what do they say Open
minded honesty, different versions of the word, but basically empathy, the ability
to ask questions. And then they'll say things that really speak to our culture.
They'll be like applicability, not waste my time. Like you get a
lot of like you get a lot of feelings, but those key things like
for me to learn, I need to be able to do it, and
I need people to treat me while when I'm doing it. Jason Isabel,
which is a very random thing to think about, but he's on a podcast
with Ada Victoria that people should listen to, and one of the things he
says as a southern white man in that podcast, they're in this beautiful cross
racial conversation and he says that people something to the effect that like, people
should have the ability to change their mind without losing love, self respect and
self love or something like that. Yeah, that's a beautiful that's beautiful,
but that's also entirely what pedagogy That's worth its name is about. That's all
it is. Like people call distinguish critical pedagogy. I'm like, if the
pedagogy is not critical, it's not pedagogy. But that's not I'm just being
editorial. Yeah, it's not whatever you call yourself teaching. But if your
learner don't have the ability to change and grow without losing self respect and self
love, you're not a teacher. You're doing some but you're not a teacher.
So that's important too. Yeah, it's hard, it's hard, but
we can do it. Like that's the thing about resilient empathy. And again,
why can we do it? Because the grounding provides a resource. And
one thing I'll say too, like for for listeners, if you're if you're
gonna curious about the method, but also again in the book too, like
you you go through a number of examples, you know, verbatim conversations you
have with people in these in these in these classrooms, in these, in
these meetings with with museum staff, with faculty, that where people ask the
ask about tough questions to kind of say either I'm uncomfortable or like you see
somebody getting heated, right, and like you talk about how I as the
facilitator have to then be assessing. I have to stay authentic and I have
to understand how I feel about it. I have to then pull out these
and again these tactics from my pocket that says, all right, you know,
I want to check are you okay right now? Like you see,
you seem really heated about this. Let's let's take a minute and think about
that. And like even these like again, if I'm saying this asn't as
I'm reflecting, I'm reflecting as I'm saying this, that's just actually you're extending
humanity to somebody by just saying, hey, are you okay right now?
I know this seems like you feel your pulses up, your voice is getting
bikky. Just want to check it feel okay first, Then we can move
on to the next, the next question old from there. And so even
the extending these spaces of space right to be human, to feel, to
think, and to I mean to model the idea that both we could ask
the questions that come out of our gut, but then also we have room
to feel uncomfortable or excited or confused or whatever it is, right we can
we can have those and have room to express that also. So again,
it isn't about shutting people down. So I think so much of the fear
that we have around conversations around race racism in the United States and especially in
the professional settings too, is that I'm going to get shut down, right,
I'm gonna get yelled at. I'm gonna be called called racist for saying
something. I'm going to either bell called combative if I don't so, depending
on what it is. And so there is like such fear around the conversations,
and so I think like bringing this idea of grounding is actually just saying
I'm recognizing that emotions are fine, They're part of these conversations. And this
is hard work, right, Like the the US and so much of the
Western rob have been, we've been conditioned to not talk about race, and
if we do talk about it, we get told that we're either making something
up or like perpetuating a badity. You talk about this in the latter part
of the book too, of just why we need to post racist imagination in
general, because so much of the broader narrative, right is that we don't
talk about race. It's not a thing. It doesn't exist in the way
that we're talking about critical race theory and questions of how do we talk about,
you know, structural racism and these like bigger sounding ideas institutional racism are
terms that are quote unquote we're not supposed to talk about in this broader political
context, but are very real for actually what shape how we even approach the
conversation in the first place. Yeah, I think you reminded me of two
things with that. One is this idea that you want to be able to
in the room sort of do what you're expecting people to do. So the
book talks about this post racist imagination, and we can talk about what I
mean by that, But ultimately, what I think I want people to understand
is that, as as a brief community pract Tishner, which I hope everybody
that gets the book becomes one, this is possible. We all need to
be doing this. You model for a group of people how to do this.
Now, in my experience, I don't always have to model when things
get hard. Other people in the room are happy to do that and they
show up for me. But I think they're showing up for me as the
facilitator because we've connected as humans and they're like, oh, she's like she's
having to deal with a tough moment right now, and she's asking, can
somebody jump in? And I will raise my hand and jump in so that
happens right. But just like with everything in the model, there are two
go to moves. I always brag about this. I'm like, not ten,
not fifteen. This is not a martial arts courts. Two things that
you do when it gets tough, when you've done everything right and you're like,
I did everything Johannine told me to do. I ground it. It's
been going well, and then something occurs, something says, someone's has something
bad. It blows up the things and it's quiet. It's that awkward silence.
Yeah. Two things. You model the bravery that you all were doing
before, and then you hold that community accountable to the grounding. So model
the bravery just means you name what's going on. Like you said, are
you okay? Because you sound real tense, you're kind of talking and a
real I just want you to know that you can take a break, but
I just want to check or we're really quiet. The room just got really
quiet. I can't sit here and talk to myself. We don't have all
day. The meeting is almost over, so I'm wondering if someone who's not
feeling overwhelmed can say what they think is going on right now. So that's
modeling the bravery. It is not to take over the work. No,
people are like, don't, don't do people's works for them. This is
not about that. This is about how do you push learning, keep learning,
keep learning through the hard stuff. That's one, and that the whole
the community accountable is again just to explicitly say, wait a minute, we
said we were going to be brave when it got hard to how do we
restore that? The idea is this is a method that understands how humans actually
act, you know, and then we can still be human through the bumpy
parts. And that's really where it wins. Right If we have a moment
and it's hard, and we follow these very basic steps and it helps,
then you're golden. And here's like something that that brings us back to the
beginning question about like why are learning? Why a learning model? Why a
learning approach to this particular topic? Right? I always say to people,
we keep saying we need to have conversations, and we don't. We've had
plenty of conversations and quite frankly they're terrible and they suck, and people hate
them. They don't want to have them. That's in my introduction, I
say something like that. Right, we don't want to have conversations about race.
We've had too many. It's been hundreds of years, five hundred years
by some counts, like come on, But what we want is learning about
race that will become transformative and allow people to improve the conditions of their existence.
So that's a different thing, because where I'm after is learning about this
issue, not talk about it. Talk is instructor everything and anything goes.
I'm not the boss of you, You're not the boss of me. We
just talk. Learning has like goals, it has parameters, It has grounding,
It has agreements that we can come too because we look at each other
as learning people, and how do we treat each other when we learn?
And I can identify in myself as a learner what I need, it makes
me recognize what you need. Your version of empathy might be different than mine.
Right, if you're as a white person, what's bravery for you in
this context is not the same as what's bravery for me. It may be
sometimes sometimes it may not, depending on where you were born. Where you
will raise etcetera, etcetera. We don't have to we don't have to get
into that. But the but the substance of the of the mindset of the
state is the same. Similarly, for empathy, the substance of the state
is the same. What it looks like is different, Like like we were
joking before recording that for me, empathy might be not rolling my eyes at
you. Yeah, for you, empathy might be not feeling like why does
she think she gets to talk just because it's about race? She talks all
the time, like whatever version of that. But the but the substance is
the same. It's a gesture of extension now and in the bravery side,
it's a it's a gesture gesture of risk taking. And that's all that's happening.
It's because we're thinking about learning. We're thinking pedagogic and that makes you
want to send learning to everything now like this this is a great well well
like all things told. Like in my worldview, learning culture is learning.
Yeah, like the fundamental human like the Homo sapiens of it all. I
don't get it right, Yeah, it's not just we're not born with it,
right, Yeah, it's learning and it's practice. So it's like human
culture ultimately is that it is is a pedagogical phenomenon. We just don't see
it as that, but it is. And so like ultimately, change and
improvement and what I call post racists practice and imagination is a learning endeavor for
sure. Yeah, I think that's great and it's such an important piece too.
I guess one thing I would ask with that too, Like I'm channeling
my inner listener here, and one thing I'm curious about is like, what's
what's one of the things that people really struggle with? You're like, what
do people tend to push back on if they're in sessions we're thinking about these
that makes it hard for them to participate or kind of walk away. There's
two things. One is they really struggle with the idea that I say in
the front of the book that the book the method is the same regardless of
the race, racial composition of who I'm talking to, who we are speaking
with, and people really struggle with that for obvious reasons. We live in
racialized society. People's experiences diverge, of course, they are individualized, but
there's some grand consistent experiences that people who are white have that people who are
not white broadly don't don't have, et cetera. And so we tend to
think very comfortably in racialized term. And so I say, off from the
very beginning of the introduction, that's not what this method is. This method
is the same regardless of who's in the room, and people really struggle with
that. The reason I don't struggle with that is that to do it any
other way would be like, practically and ethically impossible. Practically, I could
never iterate enough versions of this method to fit every identity experience category. I
could do it, but I would be lying to you if I were like
brave community for people, Brave community for brasilience great, I mean, come
on, So practically I couldn't do it. And then above and beyond,
like inter of my ethical commitment, I could not do it. Why again,
this is a learning model. It is unnethical to try to forward project
growth of someone based on a few identity markers, even race. So it
would be unethical for me to predetermine in advance what quote unquote abstract people of
color need. Black people need this version of it, White people need this
version of it. No people learning about this difficult subject matter research has shown
me and practice has shown me need X, Y, and Z thing.
They need grounding. Basically, they just need grounding, and when the grounding
fails, they need to be put back on the path. That I can
say for everybody, but folks really really don't want to hear that. The
second thing that people kind of don't want to hear is this post racist imagination
idea. I mean, some people do, but some don't because they think
I'm being like Obama era post racial and I'm not talking about that stuff.
I'm not talking about We're all going to turn beige and have babies with each
other and poof, the thing's gonna get fixed. That's not what I'm saying
at all. I'm saying that racism is a structural condition of most of the
Western world, but it has an origin. It was, It is practiced
and is learned. Therefore, logically it can be unlearned and it can be
not practiced to the same extent. And so in our own lives communities,
classrooms, organizations, churches, libraries, there are things that we can do
to limit the reproduction of racist experiences day to day. They don't eradicate them,
but they limit them. So in a racist world, of course,
leadership positions and positions that pay more go to white people more than they go
to people of color. There are things that people in decision making roles can
do to change that in their organizations, period point blank. That is what
I call post racist practice. And so the imagination pieces, how do you
think about a future where racism is not present while structural racism persists? How
do you both engender that in people and sustain it so that they can keep
thinking that, because that's how that world is going to be partly produced entirely.
Again, this is not a structure versus culture argument, because that argument
I find silly. But it's about we need There is a racist imagining that's
five hundred years strong, and it is very very healthy. It's having a
resurgence, you know. And I love Affair with Fascism. It's favorite.
So it's like, we're really, so what do we do? What are
we doing because we don't have the power that they have, So what are
we doing to sustain ourselves and to practice in a way that he both like
that practice thing where you're thinking post racist and you're practicing, and then you're
going back to thinking it and you're in this different loop. Yeah, people
think I'm selling out and thinking small and they don't like that because I'm not
going like structure or busts and I'm like, no, man, our problems,
Our problems are big and they're historic, but we are. We are
really working twenty four hours at it at a time humans And that's such a
that's such a powerful point too, that like reminding us that that racism is
practiced and learned. Therefore it can be unpracticed and unlearned. It's it's not
a given format. And like in like the simplest like epo that we hear,
people says, oh, children are not born racist, and it's like
we help. Yeah, that's a good example. Right, they have to
be taught to be to have racial thinking, Like, yes it can,
it can happen very early in their lives. But have to be taught to
value one human form over another in one way of being over another. And
like people don't argue that, but I think it's a really interesting point and
I think it's such a key area for folks to remember too as we're thinking
about practicing grave community or like what would it mean to try to implement it,
like being aware of what obstacles mental obstacles you may run into as we
begin to facilitate these kinds of conversations. And that's such an important one too,
because it's like because really what it is is it's also coming up against
because I mean, the other another part of racism is that like there's no
way out of it, right, Like like the racial imagination is like it's
boxed in and there's anything that we do is not going to matter, right,
There's no actual action we can do to make people not racist. Yeah,
and post racist imagination is standing standing outside of that box. Yeah,
that racism has you in that actually is dictating what you think is possible,
who you think you can trust, what you think winning is, what you
think losing is. All kinds of really problematic things are in that racist box
that we are by default living in unless we're doing something very deliberate and consistent
to live outside of it. So there is no neutral stance, which is
another problem that the West, when the world suffers from Western European descendant white
supremacist democracies, suffer from that delusion that you could you could have such a
monster as white supremacy out of the box, and that you ever have like
a status quo. I'm not really actually being I'm just okay, I'm not
really like supporting the cause of racism. I know, yes you are,
unless you're actively in reflective mode thinking differently all the time about it. Yes,
you are supporting something that people will tell you all the time they abhor
they don't support it. It's like, okay, well this is a way
to practice that. Yeah, and that's an important part too, like when
it comes down to it, because it's like it then I'm putting my listener
hat on here too again where it's like it gets really big, really quickly
when we start talking about the idea of post racist imagination, and so then
something I begin to feel paralyzed, like okay, well what do I actually
do? And it's actually like again coming back to this learning model, coming
back to the literal grounding as a human, Let's have a conversation together.
Let's set the parameters of how we're engaging when we're talking about topic of need
at the time in our organization, amongst our friend groups, whatever whatever is
right amongst two friends, right, just having this conversation about something tough by
saying, here's our grounding. I'm gonna extend my empathy to I'm going to
ask questions as they come up. I want you to do the same.
Let's call each other out and reset the conversation if things feel like they're getting
a little off the rails and recognizing that it's tough. But I think that's
actually the power here too of the method, and like taking away from this
conversation too, is that we're able to like really draw on our humanity.
Right, we know how to set the rules of engagement to help push learning.
We know how to do that yet, yeah, and we can right
when things get big, It's okay, we just need to come back to
remember what are we here to do. We're here to push learning together.
If I think about what I've learned the most practicing this, I've learned actually
believe in that exact thing. I still go in a lot of rooms with
that little voice in my head that's like, this is crazy, this is
this is you don't know what you're talking about. It cannot work, it
will not work, and it does work. It does work. And so
every time I myself that is how I practice my own post racist imagining,
and I'm thankful for those opportunities because again, they are not widespread in my
life. I'm not having a brave community experience twenty four seven, three sixty
five at all. I'm just a regular person and a black woman in America,
and I'm pissed off a lot at the time, and my empathy is
like at sub zero a lot of the time. And how dare you ask
me for more? And my indignation is very righteous. I need it.
I need my own version of the practice so that I can be in democratic
and with people who are different than myself. It's not second nature for me,
and we shouldn't expect it to be second nature for anybody. And so
I think that's that's what I keep learning. I love it, and I
guess that's a wonderful place to wrap this converse. So you need thank you
so much. It's been so great to talk with you again. I'm really
excited to get the book out of the community and have folks check it out.
It is out now, so we're definitely check it out, yes,
and let me know how those people. Yes, thank you was a pleasure,
right on, jeers. And that's a wrap of today's episode of This
Anthro Life. Now we've had an incredibly insightful conversation with Janie Davivation exploring the
importance of teaching towards a post racist maagination. So a huge thank you to
Jannine for joining me on the podcast today. Throughout the episode, we've dived
into the crucial notion of setting the stage for conversations on race, exploring when
race matters and when it doesn't, and even delving into the impact of terms
and language choices. Janie has provided us with practical tools such as connecting a
grounding inventory and embracing the concept of brave community to navigate these discussions more effective.
So I'm about you to take a moment to reflect them what we've learned
today. How does this conversation on teaching towards a post racist magination resonate with
you? How might these insights apply to your own life or in the broader
society that we live in. At This Anthro Life, we believe that knowledge
is most important when shared an engagement, So let's keep this conversation going.
I encourage you to connect on social media, gave a comment on the website,
and share your thoughts and experiences and any questions that you might have a
really really valid your perspective and the diversity of voices within our community. And
if you're hungry for more on this topic, I recommend checking out your Need's
book by a Brave Community and the website and show notes we'll give you more
information of how to do that. Resources provided across that book, we'll give
a ton of great understanding and content of FoST we've covered today, and I
allow you to continue your own journey hours teaching in a post Racis imagination.
And as always, just want to say a huge heartfelt thank you to you,
our listeners, our viewers. Your support, enthusiasm and encouragement means the
world to me and it's your continued commitment that inspires me and all of us
here at TL to keep bringing you a thought provoking conversations. So it's always
make sure to subscribe to the podcast on your favorite platform, video, audio,
whatever it is. And if you enjoy what you here, again,
it would mean a lot to me if you could either leave a review or
share the episode with someone who you think would love it too. And if
you're into more topics like this and want to just dive deeper, you can
check out the anthrom Curious substack blog. It's the writing version of this podcast,
so we're going to dive even deeper into the fascinating worth of anthropology and
many topics there as well. So thank you so much for being a part
of this Anthrom life and its sol Next time, keep questioning, keep exploring,
and keep embracing the power of anthropology. I'm your host, Adam Gamwell.
We'll see you next time.