EP 21: Transcript

SESSION 21 TRANSCRIPT

Session Topic: Antiracism Post-Election Ally Q&A

Carrie: Hello, hello. We are going to get started in one minute, give people a chance to get in. Hello, everyone, and welcome to Anti-Racism for Allies. My name is Carrie Sawyer. And today we are, so honored to speak, to you about anti-racism post-election, what now? 

Carrie: And I have two incredible guests with me today, and I'm going to let them introduce themselves. But I first want to introduce you to Sarah Cooper. She is the executive director of Pretty Amazing The League of Amazing Programmers. And then we also have Howard Wright. He is the Chairman of the Board of Pro Kids and many other things as well, so is Sarah. Howard and Sarah, thank you so much for being here today. 

Sarah: Good afternoon, I'm really happy to be here. My name's Sarah Cooper. I am married to a redneck and got dragged to America in 2008 because he couldn't stand the weather in London anymore. It's like living here now for about 12 years. I had a long career in teaching technology, and my current position is at the League of Amazing Programmers, also the chair of the board at the United Women of East Africa, which is an organization, a support network of East African women, refugee, and immigrant people based in City Heights. And I've been with four children for eight years, and I teach the relationship-building portion of the Advocate University there. So I'm kind of embedded in a nonprofit. 

Carrie: Absolutely. Thank you so much, Sarah. And Howard. 

Howard: Carrie, how am I supposed to follow that? I'm just going to add the fact that I grew up in San Diego and even luckier to graduate students was actually I was able to pursue my childhood dream of playing in the NBA three seasons and then overseas after that. I worked in high tech at Qualcomm for 14 years and Intel for five years alongside Carrie, many of those years. Those are my kind of for-profit parts of my resume. The thing that I'm most proud of is probably being chairman of the board of Pro Kids a year ago that my father founded the organization twenty six years ago. And when he passed away 13 years ago, he asked me to take over as chairman. And it is by far the greatest gift he's ever given me. 

Carrie: That's awesome. Thank you both so much for being here. And I'm really excited that our numbers are going to get to have so I'm just going to go over a couple of things about tonight's flow and kind of set the stage. Tonight, we'll dove right into questions. Of course, if you have questions, you can feel free to pop those into the Q&A or into the chat, and I will pull them into the discussion. Tonight, we are going to go through the overview, and then just so as we are setting the stage, I just want to let everyone know that this is what we're creating is a safe judgment, free space for people to come and ask their questions about anti-racism. And it doesn't matter if you think they're stupid or you should have known it already or maybe even it's a little bit racist. No shame. No blame. we're here to unpack what the questions are. And so as we're here together I want to give an idea about what it looks like to talk about race, because I want to leave you with a couple of tips that you can use to go back into your regular life and talk about race as well. And so I just want to say that you're all for ourselves only. I'm not speaking for a black woman, Howard is not speaking for all former NBA players. Sarah's not speaking for all rights. We are speaking about just our experience and so many conversations with people of all of the assumptions, all the stereotypes. And we're just connecting one on one, getting information in, real-time and reacting based on that. We don't know everything and know everything about everything. I don't know everything about black history. 

Carrie: I'm actually terrible about history, that's the American M.O. I don't know Howard, do you know everything about playing basketball? Do you know everything about American programmers? 

Carrie: So we don't know everything about everything. We are going to make mistakes. Are we going to get it wrong? Yes. But we are committed to keep going and keep learning and to do better next time. And speaking of that, this is a lifelong journey and we're all at different points in our journey and there's no wrong place to be. The right place to be is where you are and then just committing to continue down that road to and through anti-racism. 

Howard: So, Howard is there anything else that you'd like to add when we think about just talking about race and tips that they can take back with them.  

Howard: So sure, I'll go Carrie since you've given us the platform, which is I probably watched more Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, and cable news the last week. I don't think this is good for our psyche. I think this is good for our system, we always try to get a balanced approach in the middle right or middle left. So I think part of this is the greater responsibility for us individually to educate ourselves and avoid that. This information campaign that has been hurled at us, the great ratings of the networks that I think is a responsibility to use these long-form adult conversations with folks that may not have voted for the candidate that you voted for, but to do it in a warm, safe place like you've been able to present for us here. I think that's one of my big outcomes in the last week.  

Carrie: Great. Thank you. Sarah, anything to add to this conversation and takeaways for people? 

Sarah: I agree 100 percent with what Howard's talking about. I think that human connection is the only way we're going to make any progress, and it's what we all crave and what we need, and we're tricking our brains when we think that we're making connections by collecting information in other ways. It's big news literally when we get it from someone else. So if you do have questions or you have concerns or fears, then the best place to start is always to find someone human to talk to. 

Carrie: Yes, I love that finding someone human to talk to you, making that human connection. Awesome. So before we start, I do want to acknowledge all of our veterans out there and any veterans who are on the call today. Thank you. Thank you so much for your service. 

Carrie: Oh, all right you two. What do you think? Are you ready to jump into the questions? 

Sarah: Let's do it. 

Carrie: OK, so this first one, we're just setting the groundwork, I want to hear from both of you. What does it mean to be an anti-racist ally in your mind? 

Sarah: I'm going to go first. I think that we're aware of different degrees of racism all around us in the environments that we're in, work, home, friends, neighbors, and for most people, I think it's quite an honest, understandable situation to just wish it wasn't there and to pretend it didn't exist. So you can have, you know, black friends and colleagues and not consider yourself to be a racist person, but still prefer to ignore what you see and what you hear in the environment around you. I think to become an ally means taking any small step in the right direction of acknowledging and seeking to counteract. Racism, and that doesn't have to be, you know, massive protesting or does it have to cost you a lot of time, money, or emotion? It can just be a question of finding some small things that you can do. And the other thing, the other aspect of it for me, is to be prepared to embrace racism in all its complexity because I think that we want to squeeze it down into a small concept that is digestible. So that we can put it to one side. So we've done that now we're not racist anymore and that that is, you know, an impossible solution. Can't make it go away. We are steeped in it. It's the fabric of our society. It's basically how everything operates at the moment. So we're not going to cure it tomorrow. You know, reinstalling normalcy to democracy isn't going to cure it tomorrow because let's face it, we've been racist for a very, very, very long time. We've had a lot of practice and to accept it. There are many facets to the problem, and we can't solve it all at once. 

Howard: I would love to piggyback on that, what Sarah just mentioned, which is we have to educate ourselves. We have to be more responsible than the headline of one tweet or the top of somebody's Facebook page. It doesn't do anything except confirming your own bias that you have. I don't need to have a degree in African-American studies to know what I know or to read more books about subjects that I am not a subject matter expert. And then I think the conversation can be both deeper, vertically as well as horizontally and how we have gotten here. Some folks, you know, I have been 6'8" since I have been 17 years old, so I had height privilege, and there are some folks that, it's uncomfortable to talk about an ingrained, undeserved, unmerited privilege in this country without it being perceived as you're trying to diminish my accomplishments or so the responsibility is to get outside of social media, to get outside of cable news, to the documentaries, the books, the audiobooks, the things that are in the Smithsonian that we have access to on all of our computers and actually challenge oneself to be an anti-racist ally. 

Howard: If I could go on just for a second Carrie, which is now the call to action is...if you want to pick up a song and go March, that's your prerogative...if you want to pick up a rock and go throw it at somebody; we ask that you stay home. You're not representing any three of us on this call. You're not doing anything that my ancestors died, bled, and tried to live for, that pays homage to them. Now, the goal, especially in this year where we had to sit in front of our TVs and the pandemic was here and the election is coming, you have to be not passively anti-racist. You have to be openly, aggressively anti-racism, openly and aggressively, anti-sexism and misogyny openly and aggressively, and see if I can pull this off without insulting anybody anti-Semitic. The goal now is not to be a lukewarm individual with the gifts that we've been given and the platforms that we have. We have a chance to influence and respect change, to change comes a deep responsibility to know what the hell you're talking about and not just some quotes from, again, whoever you are watching TV on a cable news network. 

Carrie: Yes, absolutely. I love what both of you said. And just pulling out all the parts about the active right? Anti-Racism is active, there's no neutrality also in anti-racism. Either you are interrupting racism or you are allowing it to continue around you. And as Sarah said, it's very complicated, it's very deep, and it is in everything. And no one is asking you to fix all of it right now. What we are asking for people to start to engage little by little, more and more, right at the point where they are. You see, we're all in this own unique sphere of influence. And whether that is in your family, in a nonprofit, in your community, at your work, you can learn what racism looks like, and then you can start to interrupt it and in that start to become more and more anti-racist in the moment. And again, stepping into that more and more and more, if that makes sense. 

Sarah: And I think it's very easy for us too. Otherwise, the things that we don't want to be associated with and push them on the shoulders of others and, you know, we have caricatures that we can point to and say, look how racist that person is. It's much harder to say, OK, am I making the right choices here? Have I got biases? You know, threaded through what I'm doing. Am I making assumptions and that's how it says, start with your personal responsibility. 

Carrie: Mm-hmm. 

Carrie: Yes, and I think it is. I love that. I love that, Sarah. The other and the thing that makes us uncomfortable. But what we all have to do is say, like these hard words like, I am racist. It's not I'm not racist or I'm not a racist, but I am because racism is throughout our entire world and it manifests differently depending upon what you are as far as your race and ethnicity. But we were socialized to be racist. Black people are racist against ourselves, against other races. And you can see that for every single other race. Right? So starting from that truth that I have been socialized in a racist country. Now, what am I going to do about that? Right. That was provocative. I know, but I would love to work with people who are not afraid to say that because it's true. And now we can acknowledge where we're where we are and move somewhere else. 

Sarah: If you're uncomfortable, it's good to be noticing that your uncomfortable and to try to figure out why. 

Carrie: Yeah, absolutely. 

Sarah: And I think if you grew up and were socialized to be racist. Saying "I am racist", isn't any, like, big confession, is that? Well, of course. Of course, I am. What am I going to do about it? How am I going to repair it, make amends, and it's how can we get to that healing place, that's the work that we have to do that is going to take so long. 

Sarah: I was grateful that, as you said, we were forced to be focused. In the aftermath of the George Floyd incident, when everybody suddenly was talking about racism and protests were happening and it was impossible for anybody to avoid the conversation, but my concern is that we don't lose momentum and think, OK, well, that's that was 2020. My concern is what are we going to do for 2021, what are our goals for 2025, and how do we, you know, build the future that everybody can live in safely? 

Howard: So, Sarah, I'm a prisoner of hope, and so I hope that we are through the looking glass in terms of becoming self-aware, self-responsibility, the way different groups have galvanized that vote for things that have happened in states that have gone blue in some states have gone red. And I think. Folks of color have understood from a distance that there was power in voting, but now that the votes swing elections every four years, of course, those are the big ones. And you know who's the president has some bearing. But who's governor, who's congressmen, who are the D.A.s, who are the elected officials and the sheriffs, and that also has a significant impact on you regionally and so down-ballot. I think. Stacey Abrams and others have done magnificent jobs not being on the sidelines. Oh, I got cheated or I didn't win or I got gerrymandered out of some votes. OK. Her responsibility is to pay it forward for John Lewis and all the others that died on bridges that we know about or were hung from trees that we don't know about. I would like to think that this is a, you know, a movement and not a moment, and that becomes closer to an A.I. engine becoming self-aware and operating inside all the legal boundaries needed. But to get folks out and it has been burned into us from since I can remember. And at no time other than this year that I recognize that the power of the vote means so much to so many folks and so many rural and urban areas throughout this country. It's our responsibility. We can't go back to the voting habits that we had in the primaries or, you know, black folks we just can't vote. Obama's on the ticket. 

Sarah: Yes, Absolutely.

Carrie: Yeah, absolutely. 

Carrie: So let's just go right into the main theme of this, this particular anti-racism for allies. And this is a two-part question that I would love to hear both of your thoughts on. 

Carrie: So how does the outcome of the election impact the work of anti-racism, both for individuals, but then also at the system level? 

Carrie: Who wants to take that first? 

Howard: OK, but Carrie, I'll be smiling. And so this is a perfect example. 

Howard: There are individuals and some of the highest levels of this country that do not believe systematic racism or racism exists in our judicial system, our criminal justice system, are up and down vertical. While I get frustrated with those individuals instead of barking at them via social media, I've decided to try to go on a charm offensive with each and every person that I come in contact with. I have a chance to have a positive contagion. After Amad Aubry and George Floyd, I was talking, probably about if you guys were with my white counterpart, friends say, oh, I didn't know or I'm so sorry, what can I do? And you and I talked about this. I put on my LinkedIn, okay, if you want to have a legitimate long-form conversation about this, here are six books to read. Here are four or five different documentaries that you can watch write off Netflix. That's the required reading, please don't come to me without having done the required reading, because there is no systematic racism or I don't see race, I really put those folks in the category of the flat earthers or the Holocaust deniers. I cannot be enlightened by nor could I share some enlightenment with someone who has not spent 52 years in my body or been the child of all of the thousands of ancestors that came before me to say, oh, no, everybody can pull themselves up their bootstraps. So it's the balance that I'm trying to seek, which is to be an informant, to be an operative of some progress. But there's also a line where I'm not going to engage with folks that have no desire to fundamentally understand what we go through every day. 

Sarah: Well, what do we do with all those other ones then? 

Howard: So that's what I haven't figured out. 

Sarah: But that's the problem that I'm having this week, in particular, while we watch, you know, the last dying throes of the administration. Cringingly, embarrassingly, I'm really perturbed by the fact that more people this time voted for Donald Trump than voted for him last time, not fewer. And you know, I know the common joke is I have a black friend, well, I have, you know, white friends who are on the fringes, people who believe that all lives matter. People who believe that blue lives matter. The problem for me is to find a way to engage with those people, the people who will do the required reading, great, you know, come along and be in my party any time, but. Those other people that that's what I'm struggling with at this point post-election is what are we going to do with the almost half of the country? That is terrified of change, that is terrified of, you know, the future. 

Howard: Sarah, sorry to interrupt, but there's an author that talked about retrenchment in this post-racial, post-Obama world that we all thought we were living in. I think many folks thought, OK, racism is over because this one individual black man got to the highest office and he did a pretty good job for the eight years that he was there. What we saw in 2016 and this past week was this retrenchment. Change is difficult for folks. Equality is a mythical world word that really I don't think it belongs in a traditional English dictionary the way that American English should be. We've never addressed the kind of a truth and reconciliation of the original sin of this country and all of this ends up to and including now. And so that's a lot for someone who is on the fringe himself in a rural area. That feeling like, OK, my voice isn't being heard. Seventy million folks voted for Donald Trump. They're going to be in these PTA meetings with us that we're going to see him in Starbucks every day. We're going to see in our corporate deal-making that we do. I don't have a solution, but I I know what I can't do is just recoil deeper into my own bias, I'm going to try to be a bit more of an influencer, one at a time, not blasting, you know, some platform that I don't have it, which nobody would listen to anyway. But I think about the responsibility of the generation that came before us, you know my parents and John Lewis and some of these elected officials that are the icons of all icons, they had it rough. What are we doing with our opportunity to be the modern-day version or at least take the baton and make some forward progress with it and not having to figure it out? And anybody, you've got to some ideas. I'm all ears as to how we make some forward progress together, not just blue states or red states. 

Sarah: I think that's where the Ally piece can come in, though. I'm unable to influence my friend, but, you know, I know that his wife is sympathetic and she wants to be an ally and I can help influence her thinking and influence, giving her tools or giving her perspectives that she will then pass on. So I feel like it is a rippling effect. But initially, I think the metaphor using of truth and reconciliation is kind of a difficult one this week. But I think it's going to get easier. Next week we're going to have to, you know, breathe a bit and. Just keep doing the work, keep digging and keep trying to, you know, to embrace people and hear their concerns, hear their fears, that does have to be a light enough where you just say this is wrong. This is just the law. You know, it's going to be a lot of work to do to repair the damage that's been done for the last four years with people being given permission to let their worst selves out, you know. It just imbibed the most rancid lies and it's been very, very damaging for years, I think, for the entire country, not least for those people who think that they were being represented by Donald Trump in the right. It's been very damaging for them. It's bad for a human to be evil. 

Carrie: Yeah, that's such a good point. 

Carrie: I have a mentor who I've been talking to some of this about, and she talks about how Native American children were used as target practice back when the Pilgrims came. And that hurt those people who did that, in addition, of course, to all the trauma that was caused to the families and the children. But it hurts them to enact these great acts of evil and act on anything that hurts other people you take that into yourself as well. And so that's, I think, why everyone here has been talking about this idea of healing and the necessity for that part and I think this is such a difficult question to answer. 

Carrie: What do you do with the people, those 70 million? And I like to think about it like a bell curve sometimes because some of those people voted for Trump out of ignorance, out of ease, like they didn't actually really think about it. Like it was an impassioned vote. It was just a vote. And so that means those people who are there are like fair game for us. And by us, I mean anyone who wants to create a world where everyone can be safe, thrive, and pursue the life that will make them happy. Right. This isn't like Democrats versus Republicans or anyone else versus anyone. This is really just the goodness of people and letting that come out versus those darker sides. And so how do we find that common ground? Because when I go to my Republican friend's house, he wants the same thing for his family that I want for my family. Right? How do we connect there? I think there's so much blind, like just loyalty in the voting and in the political party. We don't have to go down that rabbit hole for sure. 

Carrie: But I think that there's also a point where there are people where it's OK to be like, I have to cut this, like we're not getting anywhere. And this isn't a good use of my time or energy. I actually feel like it's almost like that with almost everyone. If you're trying to convince someone like instead of spending the time convincing them, go and work with the people who are raising their hand, who have opened, based on everything that's happening and that is happening, go and find those people and do work while these people are squatting over here, likely not doing very much besides talking, we can be over here getting work done. And eventually, this is how I always thought of diversity and inclusion at companies. Eventually, the people who are against it will get dragged along and they will get caught up in the positive momentum that we're creating as we are building a place where we all want to live, where we all want our families to live in the lives that we want to have. 

Howard: Let's also shine a right here on you, Carrie, this type of effort, this type of use of your platform. Is an enormous stride forward to have some number three, four, or five, not good talking heads on TV that are just there to try to get a sound bite that they can retweet or put on Instagram. It is a conversation of, OK, let's do this is still a ridiculous radical right, but would keep them over there. The lunatic left. Let's keep them over there. The centrist middle left, middle right folks that we all represent from that group is going to lead this country forward. I just don't think we're going to have any more polarized candidates, or at least I hope not in my lifetime. The tribalism is terrible. The confirmation bias is ridiculous, and folks vote along party lines without even thinking about the candidate. And whenever somebody calls me to raise money for some candidate, I always say; character is destiny. Tell me who your candidate is, what he or she has done, where she stands on the issue. I don't need to know if they are red or blue. I need to know if their policies match something that looks like progress, forward momentum in this country versus the retrenchment of. If we all retreat to our preconceived ideas and biases, we would have a civil war in this country that I'm fearful of, or at least a Cold War, maybe not a civil war. There'll be Kenosha and other horrific things like that to happen, but even having a Cold War inside of this country, keeps us from being as great as we possibly can. And this is, with all of its faults, still the greatest nation in the world. We just have to, as Baldwin said, criticize her from time to time to keep her on that path to her moral high arc. 

Sarah: And I agree. 

Carrie: Yeah, absolutely. 

Carrie: So I'm going to remind everyone, if you have questions or any comments, feel free to throw those in in the chat or in the Q&A. I want to take a question from that, that we had some people submit earlier. 

Carrie: This one is really specific, and it has to do with defending the police. 

Carrie: So say the defund the police movement is a big part of what pushed black voters to the polls, delivering Biden the win. But others say it's what cost Harrison his South Carolina Senate seat. Who's right and what does that mean for how we should be talking about defunding the police going forward? 

Carrie: What are your thoughts so when you even hear from the police, it's such a polarizing topic, but what do you think about it? 

Sarah: What I immediately thought when it came to the fore and, you know, I live in a house with the 15-year-old who is in that blossom of activism and how exciting it is and they're not allowed out at the moment, so all they've got is tick-tock. And so they're riling each other up, frothing at the mouth. But when I heard that defund the police phrase initially. I thought, what a shame, what a shame that we have to condense something to such an inadequate soundbite. It's good so much not going to do the work that we want it to do. It's going to just provide ammunition. So it's not that I disagree with the underpinning ideas about reducing the militarization of this police force, I've been here 12 years, but I'm still in shock about how things are organized here, you know, we do it differently back home, the police don't carry guns. They are racist, of course, they are. We're growing up in a racist world, but they don't, you know, routinely kill people for being black. And also the amount of tanks and, you know, you see them on the streets, it's like looking at an army and I want to defund that. I don't want to be paying for that. But neither do I want to minimize the significance of having a civil society where we're governed by laws and there are people who are willing to put themselves in a situation where they will hold us accountable and, you know, take action if needed. So there's a lot of stuff that we're asking the police to do that it's unreasonable that they're not equipped to do, such as deal with mental health issues and social issues on a wider frame. But, in my heart, yeah, I want to defend the police. As a political argument, I think it's flawed. I feel like you know, the question was framed very, very well. You know, did it have a positive effect or a negative effect in terms of the election? I feel like it probably had both. And I think that's something we find difficult in this country to acknowledge his ambivalence and mutual effects that have in some cases, in some areas. And for some people, it will have pushed them out to vote. And for some, it will have had a chilling effect. 

Howard: I couldn't agree more, Sarah, which is too polarizing, but phraseology is not correct. There are some methods. So we can all continue to improve on a municipal and a state and federal level if you want more accountability for the police, that's part of the annual budget of forensic examination, of county examination of all the dollars, and should it go to more schools or roads. OK, that's a legitimate conversation to have by regulators and elected officials. To defund the police is immediately going to trigger part of the retrenchment that we talked about before. Then they don't want police interaction in their society, they said, no, we want the cops to live and treat all of us with the same amount of dignity and respect. 

Howard: So I have family members that have worked in police forces all over the country, including one that has worked at the LAPD for 30 years. And I never felt called to do that. But I am in awe of folks that are willing to risk their life and their livelihood to protect and serve. Now, for those who do not protect or serve, I think we need to deconstruct some of this qualified immunity and build up a national database. We need to have a no chokehold in this country, this is the United States, this is 2020, there's no need for a chokehold. We need better training, so in some cases, given the community, given the state, it actually had more money going to police departments for better police officers, I would give that. I would give you X amount of dollars, more or a percentage of my taxes for that. But what we have right now is fractured. How I'm treated, you know, when I lived in San Diego and no how I'm treated in Rancho Santa Fe where I lived versus I'm treated when I leave Pro Kids in City Heights are two different interactions altogether. And, you know, Shelley Zimmerman, talked about this in one of your and your webinars. These are even more difficult conversations to have. And I think there needs to be a closeness to it. And we need to take defund the police out of our vernacular and speak about what Martin Luther King Jr. others did its Civil Rights Act. He was going to be against people having civil rights and equality and housing in the Bussy. It was let's take some of the toxicity out of the word or the phrase. 

Carrie: We had a question come in in the Q&A that's right along these lines. 

Carrie: Do you think there would have been less of a polarizing reaction if the message was decriminalized the police? Or would the perception be that the left was still anti-police? 

Carrie: And I still think that decriminalizing the police still makes it seem like the police are all criminals. So it's still the word that phrase that puts people on the defensive. And I think to Howard's point, this idea of how do you pick a set of words that no one can say, no, I don't want civil rights when I don't want, you know, these good things. I think, defund the police was picked on purpose. I feel like it was planted just to create the dissonance and the discord that it did. Honestly, when I first saw that, I was like, that's on purpose. 

Sarah: You take advantage of people's anger and their fear and you use that and you don't let that go to waste and you come up with things that will inflame the situation. But for me, when I look at it, it has to be looked at in a holistic fashion and the police are one important part of the whole body of our society. There is racism in the police and unfortunately, they have more power and weaponry to inflict more damage than your average citizen. But I would say that they are no more racist than many other factions in society. It's more dangerous, you know, because it ends up with people dying, and that has not we can't let that continue. That's got to stop. And whatever way we can, we need to stop it. But what it is to me is a reflection of racism that runs through every thread of the society from the government at the top down to the street sweepers at the bottom. And until we address that single problem as it pertains to everything, we're going to have racists in the police. We're going to have racist attitudes and just also racist reactions even from people who are not necessarily, consciously, feeling antiblack, you know, they're going to react in racist ways and they're going to be racist outcomes. 

Carrie: So, Howard and Sarah, what do you say now that, you know, we're in this transition between the old and the new? What do you say to the people who are in the trenches doing this anti-racism work now that things are turning over in the administration? What message do you give to them? 

Howard: My message to them would be to hold the Biden administration accountable for the promises that have been made. He's not responsible for every promise that every Democratic candidate has ever made to the black community. But this year in particular, there is the window dressing of yes, progress will be progress, but there are also some tactical legislative, executive order things that in order for the country to make progress and heal a little bit, that he will need to do. There'll be no equivocation, there'll be no, "but they won't let me do it". Leaders, lead, Carrie and he has to lead. And he would not be getting behind the resolute desk, it was not for the female vote if it wasn't for the African-American vote. The Latino vote. And he needs to be held accountable by his constituents. 

Carrie: How do we hold him accountable? How do we hold the administration accountable? 

Sarah: I think, you know, I'm fairly new to this, I voted for the first time this year, I became a citizen earlier this year and I was really horrified by how complicated he was, and I took heart from the fact that there's a lot of work going on in your local area and there are people doing that work, so reaching out to someone who has more experience and finding out who are the people that you need to write to, who are the people that you need to call? Who do we need to get into office locally, at the state level? And how do we hold them accountable? Because it kind of goes up the chain. Obviously, I'm not going to be able to have any particular influence on Kamela or Joe, but I can influence my own senators, my own congresspeople, and my own local politicians. And learning how to do that is something that, again, we have to be doing in a human circle, making connections with the people who've got the experience and teaching it to our younger generation. I feel like this generation is coming out, they are mad and they're not going to be quiet for the next four years. But they give me hope.

Howard: They give me lots of hope, and so my oldest daughter, Alyssa, is 26 and she graduated Stanford undergraduate with honors and distinctions. She graduated from Stanford Law School three years later with honor and distinction. She's, in fact, the child of the student that my mother wished that I was. But she absolutely sits at the center of a demographic of more learned, more driven, more progressive, more willing to listen, not afraid to walk in a room like three thousand ancestors are walking in with her. I seriously, all teasing aside, Carrie and Sarah, I think the generation that's coming behind us is going to be mentioned with the greatest generation that we talked about with our grandparents in World War Two because they are armed, they're more diverse, they're more colorful. They are unapologetically brilliant in what they have done. And the year 2020 has cracked the seal on all these conversations that were left for decades. Now, you leave that in the locker room, you don't talk about that at Thanksgiving dinner. It is all immediately in front of us and the spokesperson and the volunteer army to, I don't know, maybe got us out of our own malaise or complacency that we've had. Is the generation coming with you my oldest daughter, Alyssa.

Sarah: They're amazing. And they put us to shame if we do something wrong. But I think you're right, it's about them having, you know, they haven't been well trained to keep quiet, to be seen and not heard. They have information. They don't actually know what privacy is. So that's not a concern. You know, don't be embarrassing in front of the neighbors. They have much less to lose because they've got everything to lose. You know, they see us as the generation that's torched their planet and left them with no future. They don't have anything to look forward to but what they make for themselves. So and then so intolerant of some of this hypocrisy that we've been prepared to put up with in excess of 50 years each, as in, yes, sir, no, sir. In order to stay safe, they just won't have it. 

Carrie: Yeah, absolutely. So Sarah and Howard, what do you say to the people who are standing on the sidelines right now but have a desire to get into this work and in whatever way it looks like for them stepping into that? What do you say to our sideliners? How do we get them into it? 

Howard: This is very personal. And as I said, everybody need not be on the front line holding a sign and arguing with the other side, their letters to the editor. There are donations. There are calling your congressmen and congresswomen. There are trips to D.C. There is a way to localize and galvanize support and energy for what you believe in. Lots of different ways. I don't profess to prescribe to somebody else what they should do with their time, money, or resources. I will say this. Your grandchildren will ask you in the summer of 2020, what did you do? And I feel my ancestors who have long since passed watching, making sure I'm trying to do the right thing. And then there's the inevitability of what you do with your time, your money, your voice, your platform to make it incrementally better, one percent better, three percent better, 17 percent better pick a number. And those that sat on the sidelines during the 60s in the civil rights movement, shame on them, those who sat on the sidelines during the protests of the Vietnam War. Shame on them. There's seminal moments in American history. That defined generations and this year is defining ours and shame on you if you're sitting back, cracking open another beer, watching Fox or CNN, and just complaining.  

Sarah: It's an inexorable change. There's nothing going to hold it back is going to happen. And, you know, we have to take the notion of early adopters. We've seen the early adopters come out and now he's coming behind them. If you're on the sidelines now, that's fine, as long as you start planning what your first step is going to be and it can be the first step, you don't have to map out your whole future. You can just pick one thing. And even if it's just reading a book, that is going to have an impact on what you then choose to do, so I feel like the sidelines, you know, sometimes it's like standing on the edge of the pool, not wanting to jump in because it's scary or it's cold. So you just have to choose a way that first time in and you will regret it if you don't. 

Sarah: Find some way to feel that you are helping to do the disrupting of racism that you were mentioning at the top of the hour, Carrie. You're either in it. Or you're actually contributing to allowing it to happen. You're either making an improvement or allowing it to continue.

Carrie: And there is no wrong place to start. And there is no too late either. Right now, now is that time and we all have unique challenges and skills. So use those things. No one's asking you to go read a book that bores the pants off you. There are so many different kinds of ways that you can engage in educating yourself, find the area that speaks to you and what you're passionate about. And that is a big part of the work. If you're in health care, chances are you care about health care. There's a ton of systematic racism in health care like dive into any of that. Right? Wherever you are is where you start. And so I think that message and again, I also like that you will regret not having put your toe in and then letting that momentum carry you the rest of the way, because this is a pivotal moment. We're making history right now. This is the resurgence of the civil rights movement. That's where we are right now. And I want to take one more question, and we got one in the chat and then do just a wrap up in these next couple of minutes that we have. 

Carrie: So I think that this question actually dovetails really nicely into what we're talking about right now. The question is, how do I talk to my friends and relatives about looting and rioting, some take it as an immediate dismissal, too, of the message. How can I verbalize the painful complexity of where looting and rioting may be coming from? And I think that speaks to the larger question of like, what if I don't agree with what Black Lives Matter stands for? Does that mean, like, I'm out, like I don't need to do anything in this space and I would love to hear what both of you think when you hear about people like, oh, they looted, they rioted? 

Howard: I hope that this person probably knows me because I've been pretty vocal about that. And so the few bad apples in a police department, and a few bad apples in a peaceful, nonviolent protest, they are built out of the same genetic code and they are prey to our lowest instincts. And you put them in a pressure cooker in the dark. Things are going to happen. The fallacy, which really disturbs me, Carrie, is the kid in Wisconsin drives across state lines. He gets an AR 15 from an adult somewhere, you don't know if his mother took him or somebody else took him and he is going there to another state to protect what? To protect a yogurt shop or a gasoline shop, and the false equivalence of this property matters as much as my life or anyone of my children's life. That's where I feel my blood pressure going up right now, as a matter of fact. And so the calm conversation is to put some boundaries around the actual conversation that you want to have. Let's talk about, you know, person A in city B, in this construct. Let's not jump in and out of libertarian, Antifa, and proud boys, let's say, and just thoroughly examine what is containable for an adult conversation. But I find myself spilling to and from conversations that have nothing to do with the origin story. You will lose some friends this way. My sphere of influence has gotten better based on some of the things the so-called friends that I've lost. So don't be afraid to lose some friends or folks that say that your friends would be my advice to the person and ask that question. 

Sarah: Even if they are members of your family. 

Howard: Yeah. 

Sarah: You know, there's redemption later, but you do have to decide what you believe, what you think is going on and, I mean, I lived just behind Brixton Road. When the Brixton riots were happening, I don't know, it's very famous in the States, but it's very famous in the UK in 1993. My house was there as a refuge for people who were running once things got out of hand, because when you don't have order, you have disorder, you have chaos, and wherever there is chaos, certain people are going to take the opportunity to do whatever they can, and it's I don't even think it's economic for most of the cases, it's usually just driven by this hyped up adrenaline and opportunity so people will turn over cars and set them on fire because there isn't any order. And I fear that people aren't willing to look deeply. They want a simple, black and white answer to things. And if you have an entire society populated 99.9% of the people who have very little and an opportunity presents itself. Some portion of that group is going to take the opportunity to go and steal something, others are just going to go out and break things because they like the noise and the kind of chaos, they enjoy it. Why do people take drugs? I don't know. But some people do. There are unexplainable elements of it for me that, as Howard is saying, do not make an equivalent argument. You can't say we did not protest about people getting killed in case somebody breaks a target window or burns down the plant, which happened up the road from me in La Mesa. And, you know, the residents were very saddened by the change. But this is going to require some changes. So I think we can live without that bank, but we have to change society. 

Carrie: Yeah, I think you both made some really good points in this idea that protesting is different than looting and rioting and also you have to think about where you're getting your resources from. I feel like after George Floyd, the whole world was protesting. Right? And the majority of not even like 60 to 50 percent, like 80, 90 percent of the protesting was peaceful. Now, on your stories, you're going to hear some different information. But that's where you have to actually dig into what you're consuming and what you're spreading. And so understanding why people protest, talking about that, doing some reading about that, but then also knowing that that's not like all of it's happening. Right. And I think that speaks to Howard's earlier point. What is like this fundamental message that we're actually talking about? Black Lives Matter is about not killing black people. And if you are OK with that, like the killing of black people, then you're against Black Lives Matter. If you're not OK with it, then you support Black Lives Matter and not even just the organization, because this is so much bigger than the organization. I almost think that Black Lives Matter has been a catalyst for this resurgence of the civil rights movement. When I think about the work we're doing here. This isn't about Black Lives Matter. It's about civil rights. Right? I mean, it's bigger. It's grown bigger than that. And so that's the conversation that you need to bring your friends and family into. Forget about whether you agree with the individual people who lead that organization. It's not about that. It's about lives. It's about killing people. And it's about justice for everyone. 

Sarah: And that isn't to be conflated with a terrifying concept of socialism, which apparently over here is a bad thing. It's, you know, you shouldn't be conflicting issues that have no comparison, but also the other thing is that we've been so well trained to only hear the inflammatory things and the attention-seeking news, you know, and not the boring run of the mill, middle of the road, what is the actual thing we were trying to do here? Everyone is about the latest bang.

Howard: I have a quick story. Condi Rice was my sophomore year political science teacher and professor. And so I am convinced to this day that if you took away everybody's search engine and you sat down all the politicians and had been quizzed on Marxism, socialism, anarchism, any ism, none of them would be able to actually completely identify it and the oligarchs versus the know. So it is these buzzwords that are meant to continue to divide us. And I think we have to be intentional about what we put in our mind. I want to come all the way back, Carrie, to the kind of work that is being done in City Heights with Sarah and others, which have lived in San Diego my whole life. And when I was little, my father was playing for the Chargers. The last year of his contract, he became the fourth highest-paid offensive lineman in the NFL. And we moved from basically City Heights to the north, San Carlos area. And so I grew up a child of privilege, and so that comes with the responsibility. What am I supposed to do with that? Because if my father had been 6'4", 280 pounds, quick feet, and a mean disposition, I would still be living in City Heights. And so what we've done with Pro Kids for the last twenty-six years is give the kids a safe place for mentoring, tutoring, after school programs. And then when they qualify, we give them scholarships to go into college. So these are the kids that are that Washington and all the other corners of the country people talk about. Those are failure academies or those are kids of color. As Sarah will tell you, there are dozens of languages spoken in and around city heights. It is the most diverse population in the state of California. Those kids coming out of Hoover and Crawford and Horace Mann. Those are our collective kids that are going to Ivy Leagues and Stanford and Notre Dame's and on to business schools and on to graduate schools and medical schools. So the mythology that we have to convince ourselves or get out of this mythology is that these kids can't swim or they can't do or they're they have a altitude that they're going to have APACS that they're going to hit it's going to be lower than my daughter or other kids of privilege, that is the B.S., that terrifies me to do this, 2020, we still have this insidiousness of racism or sexism and say, oh, well, that child is probably only going to be able to do trade school or whatever. No, we showed it for over twenty-six years, tens of thousands of kids through the program, and hundreds of kids to the most prestigious universities in the world from our neighborhood. 

Sarah: And they're all future leaders. 

Carrie: Absolutely. Thank you so much for sharing that. And thank you so much, Sarah and Howard. Thank you, everyone, for staying over. I want to give you both an opportunity to just, like, give some closing thoughts for everyone. When we think about anti-racism post-election, like what now and then, I will wrap it up for us. 

Sarah: My what now is, okay, take a deep breath, get a massage, or whatever you're allowed to do in the lockdown and you know, regroup, don't forget to take care of yourself, put your own oxygen mask on so that you can continue with the next four years, which is going to be, you know, the work is still going to be around us continuing. 

Howard: I echo that. Exhale now let's get back to work, which is becoming more intelligent than you are, than we are, individually and collectively. I posted something on LinkedIn about some of the books that I've been trying to read and try to recommend. There's Michelle Alexander, the new Jim Crow. You can go watch Ava's 13th Amendment. There are some world class authors and Eddie Glaude and Michael Eric Dyson and others. See if you can just give yourself a two day, three day, maybe even a week reprieve. Turn off social media and actually try to reemerge as a more well-rounded human and have some thoughts and then engage in a deep conversation with someone in the LGBT community. I've been an advocate and an ally. I am a flaming heterosexual, but I've been an ally for women and the LGBT community simply because, it's the right thing to do, and, you know, you and I have heard things in elevators in corporate America where they didn't know that we were allies for something and we were the first one to say that is not only it's politically incorrect, you should not say that. And I feel uncomfortable with you saying now, luckily I've been 6'8" since I was about 16, 17 years old, and nobody really calls me to my face, but with that size and with that responsibility comes to fight for those who are not my size. And pulling back to the kids at Pro Kids is to be a voice, hopefully, be a bit of a mentor for them to get out of the current situation to a much higher ground, an opportunity for themselves and their families. 

Carrie: Absolutely. Thank you both so much. There was a question in the chat about your recommended reading list, Howard, so I will get that from you and send that out to everyone. So we will have that as well. Sarah and Howard, how or where can people find you if they want to connect or know more about you and your journey, the work you're doing? 

Sarah: So on LinkedIn, Sarah Cooper. 

Howard: The best place for me is LinkedIn and it's easy to find me, Howard Wright, Intel or Qualcomm, or Stanford. Pretty easy to find. The rest of my platforms are semi-private because sometimes I say stuff and I have to delete it later. But I am convinced that the form of social media is the least productive venue or meaningful argument or cognitive thought. It is for zingers. It's for great insults, and it's for funny quips and ridiculous memes and the vindictive side of me is all for that. But the long-form thought that I manage, that I try to express is on LinkedIn. 

Carrie: I will provide all that in the follow-up email. And again, Sarah, Howard, you're both amazing. Thank you for this incredible conversation. Thank you, everyone, for sticking with us to the end. Thank you for coming. And next week we have our last anti-racism for Ally session in 2020. It is going to be titled Power, Privilege, and Design. We're talking with the world-renowned brand Norman and his journey to and through anti-racism and what that means in the context of designing systems that influence the world. So I'm super excited. It's going to be an incredible talk. We hope that you'll join us Wednesday, 4:00 p.m. Pacific Standard Time. I'll send out the links so you can all register. And again, thank you for being here. And we will see you next time.