Good afternoon and thanks so much for having me on your campus. It is truly an honor and a privilege. I would like to thank Sana Hussein and Dominique Earland for their tremendous efforts bringing me to campus. Wow! I am so very moved to be here. I have had the excellent fortune of working with several Southern Methodist Civil Rights Pilgrimage students when they have visited the University of Mississippi campus. Their interest and dedication to peace and conflict and civil and human rights gives me tremendous hope for the present and the future. We are in a time and space where this is so very important. I would like first begin to pay homage to Professor Dennis Simon who passed away on Sunday, February 12th. What a lion. A brilliant scholar, a passionate and oft- rewarded educator and a man who “walked the walk.” Professor Simon clearly understood that in order to establish and preserve human rights, it was necessary for individuals committed to this work to visit “sites of conscience.” Why do we do so? We do this because these are sacred and profound spaces. We do so because these are sites where we learn not only through reading, listening, and viewing. More importantly, because we can feel the history that has taken place in these spaces. As we quiet ourselves and inhale the moment, we hear echoes of the the protest shouts and cries, we see the mighty and mangled bodies, we soak up their strength and we are empowered and we feel clarity knowing what and our next steps must be. You cannot experience a civil rights pilgrimage without being comprehensively transformed. After visiting these sites of conscience you are forever changed and possessing the responsibilities to continue the fight for human rights. Professor Simon was both in tune and clairvoyant. He understood this work to be hard. He understood the need for cross-cultural engagement, for people to move across their discomforts and knowledge gaps, hurts and slights to a space of understanding and activism. So in the spirit of honoring our ancestors and understanding that we stand on the shoulders of giants and in particular, a giant that has taught and given us so much, let us take a moment to reflect upon Professor Dennis Simon. We humbly bow our heads for how you have impacted us and how through his work and teaching, we will impact thousands.
Okay and now let us return to the work that Professor Simon and the thousands of extraordinary yet ordinary individuals who were committed to this work. This work is not easy. We know this. We have all had that experience, that “human rights high” where we come together, diverse individuals with diverse life experiences, committed to making change. We meet, we discuss, and we are truly intentional to make change and then—(pause) we run into difficulty. We find that good intentions and dedication to a common goal are not enough. We find that in fighting for human rights, our socialization against difference emerges. By this I mean, we gradually begin to “think” that we cannot work together across race, class, gender, sexuality, ethnic, religious, or political lines. We fracture. Instead of understanding the importance and usefulness of affinity groups, we create chasms of identity politics. What are the ramifications of this? Does any of this sound familiar? We suddenly cannot hear differing perspectives. We suddenly only see threatening identity presentations. We demonize people with different political perspectives and reduce them to caricatures which allow us to ignore, deny their existence, and walk away. Let me be clear. This happens both within our community groups and from without. I would like to spend my time speaking about this and how we can fix this. In order to achieve our goals of ensuring human rights for everyone, we simply must adjust our approach to difference. And by difference, I am speaking to difference wherever it emerges.
Let us take a breath--we are in a particularly important moment. And when we are speaking about the business of human and civil rights, aren’t we always in important moments? Sometimes, we speak of movement as collectives of people and forget the individual people that make up these movements. As I was writing this address, I flipped through the news. Across the dials and up and down the news stations, we see and stories of human rights crises and tragedies. I hear of chemical attacks on Syrian children, refugee crises across the Middle East and beyond, immigrant and undocumented people, genocide and displacement, denial of rights across the globe. Basic human rights like the right to life, freedom, access to opportunities and rights, and happiness, yes happiness are being denied. And what do we see complacency or fear—either way most people turn the channel or turn the airwaves and broad bands off. But not you. Not you. You care. Your generation is a renewal of hope. I was a child of the 80s and well, we weren’t exactly focusing on human rights. It was more of a selfish generation. But your generation, Generation Z, you are different. You care. And you in this room care. But respectfully we must move beyond caring. We must act. But we cannot act if we don’t confront the thoughts, perceptions, and actions that inhibit our abilities to work across difference. You see we cannot understand and implement human rights if we universalize our experiences and perspectives. In this spirit, I will spend the rest of my comments addressing and providing contemporary context and addressing some common behaviors and ways of thinking that inhibit our activism. I will also include how we can change. After this address, I hope that you will join me for a workshop practicing how we can undo our problematic ideas and actions.
As a scholar/activist, I see that current days bear the markings of a civil and human rights moment. This isn’t going to be a political speech. I will speak the language of decency and humanity. We have been discussing the “broken democracy” for decades. Just for the record, it isn’t broken, if we keep working the program, our constitutional values will prevail. We are however seeing both enlightenment and ignorance. Strange times since as a nation, we tend to vacillate between the two. We are a nation and a people conflicted. Our religion, our spirits, our moral compasses instruct us to love everyone, to lean towards compassion and love. And yet at the slightest twitch, we struggle to maintain those aforementioned philosophies because of fear—fear of losing power, fear of losing resources, fear of being forgotten and unseen, fear of being lost living in a world that we don’t recognize.
We see tragic and violent events and policies against our national and global citizens. And we see it in counter group and ally responses, we see personal reflection and then we see changes and actions in our thoughts, perspectives, and behaviors and then of course, we see resistance. In fact, we are in all of these moments. It is this last aspect that I want to briefly speak about--resistance. While many understand resistance reductively, I believe that if we understand resistance beyond the fear of change, we can more quickly, more effectively, change. I understand resistance and the belligerent and challenging behavior that comes with it emerges out of fear—fear of loss and fear of being disempowered. But these are powerful feelings for these reach to the heart of us—they run so deep that we might believe these to be life or death situations. I believe this is why people respond in the way that they do—without reason, with violence, without compassion. I believe this is why we are seeing such a return to anxieties directed at people and populations where we enjoyed such progress and understanding. Such individuals are literally in a wormhole of fear—meaning there is no ground, no horizon, no oxygen and complete darkness. It becomes confusing and disorienting, it is frightening. While such displays of fear and threat might remind us of our own fears and insecurities and encourage us to step back, look away, we must resist these counter productive behaviors. As compassionate beings and especially as individuals bestowed with the responsibility of caring for people and their minds, bodies, and spirits, instead we must open our hearts, sharpen our minds, lean in, and embrace these discomforts until they dissolve and transform into compassion, empathy, and a pull towards social justice and equity. I understand that this is much to ask for, perhaps for some impossible, but for most it requires a simple pivot, that is a commitment to creating public and private, communal, civic, and professional spaces that value everyone. To do so, empowers all of us, for we must remember that power is not finite, it is infinite. We must extend power to those who have previously been denied that power, we must recognize where we have assumed and gained from power that is not rightfully ours and we must understand that to do so empowers all of us, calms our anxieties, and advances ourselves as communities and individuals. We must stop thinking in terms of “us” and “them” and the millions of ways we divide folks and instead remember the best of “me” and “you.” And we can do that every day, with intentional action. We have the power. Your change and consequent actions can achieve freedom for everybody on local and national scales.
So, in doing this, most folks that I run across insist that they cannot do anything until “change happens.” They argue that institutions, structures, and “others” must change, that is, everyone must change before “I” can do anything. I am here this afternoon to challenge such thinking. This thinking also emerges from fear of action and fear of failure. In fact, I would argue that such an approach hinders absolutely any possibility of fulfilling our hopes and responsibilities for social justice and equity. Let’s take a step a back and I would like you to think of the power that you possess. Think in terms of your training, your knowledge, your expertise, and your experiences, your gifts—both developed and passed down, Without the actions of “I” and then collectively “us,” we will forever be on the cusp of change and equality and happiness and contentment, with success so near yet so far we can see it but cannot grasp it. Mostly, I have discovered that most have an urge toward equity, human rights, toward calm, toward empathy, that is, rarely do I run into individuals who prefer to stew in hatred and anxiety. In fact, most are simply looking for the tools, for the language to use to understand inequity and to create or restore equity and equality. With this in mind, I will spend the rest of my time briefly and alternately describing the penetrating actions and rhetoric which both sustain and tumble inequity and equity. What I humbly offer are the clear articulations of those devices which I believe hamper our ability to live in peace and to value others. What I also offer and emphatically believe is the awareness, knowledge, and skills that each of us can utilize, if we have not already, to join in this historical civil rights moment to make change, to erase fear, to live in harmony and peace. I want to stress that you as
As individuals dedicated to human and civil rights, we can begin with ourselves and the spaces we find ourselves in. We can create equitable and compassionate spaces that are attentive not only to present dynamics but to the experiences, ideologies, traumas, and truth that our community members bring to those spaces. So, I will frame the rest of my remarks in terms of what inhibits and what builds and sustains communities dedicated to human rights and those who don’t. With such knowledge, we can create better, less anxious and more cohesive spaces where more healing and more community building and solidifying may take place. It is not hard, it is our job, and as humans it is our calling.
First and foremost, we must understand what bias is and is not. It is not an emotion; it is not merely moral. It is in fact, a behavior. Scholars have called bias, performances and while I do believe this to be true, I think that for this particular historical moment, we would do well to heed scholars understanding that bias as “bias craft” and it does descend from its ancestor witchcraft. Deliberately and etiologically developing the phrase from its ancestor “witchcraft,” “bias craft” understands bias as a behavior mixed in with a little superstition. Bias is repeated acts of stylized behaviors designed to create and sustain superiority and inferiority based on different racial, class, gender, and sexual identities. Oftentimes we understand biases “to be inherited” or “to be carried.” This suggests that we are not responsible for these behaviors. The superstition part is the belief that somehow these beliefs are essential and to fail to perform these ritualistic behavior is to risk stability and safety of ourselves and our society. So, if we understand bias as something that we craft and behaviors that we do, then we have immediately at our disposal several ways in which we can understand crucial behaviors that create spaces of inequity, fear, and isolation.
The first behavior cannot be easily detected. It is our implicit bias and it rests in the
unconscious. And everyone has it. Full stop. No twitching and no denial. Take deep breaths and move forward. Implicit bias occurs when someone consciously rejects stereotypes and supports anti-discrimination efforts but also holds negative associations in his/her mind. Implicit bias can come from brain stimuli and schema. Based upon visual and aural cues, individuals make automatic judgments about what category a particular person fits within and we often act on those judgments. Implicit bias responses often begin with the limbic system (describe) and our need to unconsciously categorize along simple lines of safety/danger. Our limbic systems are crucial regarding primal survival needs and humans need to understand the complicated and complex world. Things become less constructive and more violent when the brain, which automatically generalizes starts to categorize and conclude in ways that are unproductive and discriminatory. Thus, implicit bias does not mean that people are hiding their various prejudices. People literally do not know they have them. According to brain science, implicit biases are often positively or negatively triggered by past experiences, memories and conditioning and, thus, unintentionally different things get linked together. Implicit bias creates embedded stereotypes that heavily and arguably always influence our decision-making without our conscious knowledge. And as if this is not enough, the process becomes further entrenched. Once a group or category has been defined through brain processes and cultural conditioning, humans tend to exaggerate the differences between different groups and to presume homogeneity. We possess logical fallacies and we learn that we are not as rational as we think. “Trusting the gut” becomes really problematic. Repeated brain science and cultural conditioning reinforces implicit biases in an unwieldy cycle that unless addressed head on, sustains and reinforces discriminatory action and thinking. While it seems inaccessible and impossible to fix, there are at least four behaviors to intercept of interrupt implicit bias. As we mover through this discussion, I want us to honest reflect within ourselves how our biases impact the ways in which we conduct our work, the way we view our colleagues and clients.
First and foremost, one must have awareness about the existence of implicit bias and your relationship to it. Secondly, constant education about the way implicit bias operates and where it appears and its impact. Detecting and eliminating implicit bias requires constant self-reflection and self-patrol. Finally, when our implicit bias appears we need to enact counter behaviors. We need to privately and publicly acknowledge, apologize when necessary, and allow ourselves and others to recover. We must understand that implicit bias wells run deep. We must understand that our society relies on our limbic systems, our fears and safeties, to control us, to create divisions, to control access to opportunities, rights, and resources.
The second behavior is created by implicit bias and is in fact an externalization of implicit bias. Micro-aggressions are actually macro-aggressions and come from social conditioning. Micro-aggressions are commonplace daily verbal, behavioral, or environmental indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, which communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative slights and insults toward people. And we all commit them and we all experience them. The chief vehicles for anti-equity behaviors are micro-aggressions. These are pervasive, conscious, unconscious, subtle, stunning, often automatic, and non verbal exchanges which are ‘put-downs’ of individuals by offenders.” They are perceived as innocuous, harmless and are perceived as free speech. Can be verbal or non-verbal (failure to make eye contact/closed body). Micro aggressions involve: overt charged intentional discriminatory attacks or avoidance behaviors. They convey rudeness and insensitivity and demean a person’s identity and can negate or nullify the psychological thoughts, feelings, or experiential reality of minority persons. Some examples include: alien in one’s own land, ascription of intelligence, blindness and privilege, criminality & assumption of criminal status, denial of individual oppression, myth of meritocracy, that body project of inferior and superior bodies that I previously mentioned, pathologizing cultural values & communication styles, second-class status and environmental micro-aggressions. Again, let us take a moment to think about the ways in which we might have had these behaviors acted upon us and how we might have done this to others.
Wow, right and still, and still people think that micro-aggressions are much ado about nothing, that they are political correctness run amok, that acceptance and attention to this creates a fragile and fractures society but I would humbly submit that this is not the case. Micro-aggressions create tremendous stress (conscious and unconscious) on our minds bodies and spirits. We are in the business of caring and protecting and fighting for humans so I believe that is crucial that we understand the impacts of micro-aggressions. If left to fester, micro-aggressions can cause serious psychological and physical damage, including depression, frustration, anger, rage, loss of self-esteem, and anxiety. In fact, if we commit these as health care professionals, we are actually pushing against and hampering our own work designed to heal bodies.
Micro aggressions justify inequality, reinforces stereotypes, sends societal cues that signal devaluation of social group identities, firms up and legitimizes hidden or unintentional biases, and creates disparities in law, health care, education, legislation and other spaces in society. Because of their often stunning and lightning speed, micro-aggressions are insidious. People who experience them often wonder: did the person engage in micro aggressive behavior or did the “victim” misinterpret the action? These behaviors and their “invisibility” mask unintentional expressions of bias. They come in so fast that when it happens, the individual is not sure if it happened, whether it was deliberate, how to respond, and what are the ramifications for responding. Adding to the destabilization, the perpetrator is usually sincere in the belief that they acted without bias. Confrontations often lead to accusing the victim of having overreacted and responses are almost always negative. Additionally, people perceive that micro-aggressions cause minimal harm. Thus, perpetrator and victim are most likely to “let it go” thereby allowing the behavior to persist. Finally, victims of repeated micro-aggressions fall into the “it won’t change anything anyway” trap. For a moment, again let us ponder how this might be impacting our colleagues and our clients—our relationships, our abilities to successfully conduct our work, our own happiness and spiritual wellness.
So what are we to do when we commit a micro-aggression or are micro-aggressed? Super easy, especially in our spaces because you have the time and privacy to conduct the repair. First, we simply stop what we are doing and quiet the space and our egos and nerves. Then we say, “I am sorry.” I often marvel at the healing that is accomplished by those words and equally gob smacked when we are afraid to conduct the healing because we have misguided egos, understand apologies to mean weakness instead of empowerment. Next, we find out what happened? We ask, not about intent, but about impact. We listen to the story. We acknowledge the other’s story, we trust when they say they have been aggressed and impacted even when we ourselves cannot see it. Finally, we ask what steps must we take to bring the relationship back to a good space. AND then we take those stops. We adopt neutral or if we can, compassionate body language and tone. We must allow people to recover from micro-aggressions. Humiliation or gossip serves to reinforce embarrassment and thus exacerbates aggression. We address micro-aggressions because we want to stop the injuries and chasms that come through micro aggressions. We do not want to cause our friends or community members pain. And we can do this—how do I know this? Because we already know how to cross difficult bridges, challenging conversations. We can just apply these skills to fostering excellent relationships with our colleagues and patients. This is an added healing strategy.
So now I would like to address another behavior that is interfering with the complete success of communities—stereotype threat. I would humbly submit that in your in your experiences, stereotype threat is a giant factor in your lives as activists, citizens and community members. Stereotype threat is a situational predicament in which people are or feel themselves to be at risk of confirming negative stereotypes about their social group. Stereotype threat has been shown to reduce the performance of individuals who belong to negatively stereotyped groups. If negative stereotypes are present regarding a specific group, members of that group are likely to become anxious about their performance or their interactions with you, which may hinder their ability to perform or communicate at their maximum level. Importantly, the individual does not need to subscribe to the stereotype for it to be activated. Moreover, the specific mechanism through which anxiety (induced by the activation of the stereotype) decreases performance and communication is by depleting working memory. It may occur whenever an individual's performance might confirm a negative stereotype because stereotype threat is thought to arise from a particular situation, rather than from an individual's personality traits or characteristics. Since most people have at least one social identity, which is negatively stereotyped, most people are vulnerable to stereotype threat if they encounter a situation in which the stereotype is relevant. Situational factors that increase stereotype threat can include: the difficulty of the task, the belief that the task measures their abilities, the relevance of the stereotype to the task. Individuals show higher degrees of stereotype threat on tasks they wish to perform well and when they identify strongly with the stereotyped group. These effects are also increased when they expect discrimination due to their identification with negatively stereotyped group. Repeated experiences of stereotype threat can lead to a vicious circle of diminished confidence, poor performance, and loss of interest in the relevant area of achievement. The consequences of stereotype threat include: decreased performance, internal attributions for failure, self-handicapping, task discounting, distancing the self from the stereotyped group, disengagement and dis-identification and altered professional identities and aspirations. Behind the stereotype threat rests anxiety, negative cognition, lowered performance expectations, reduced effort, reduced self-control, reduced creativity, flexibility and speed and excess effort or attention. Friends, this is big and important. To ensure even greater success with our colleagues and the community members we have the privilege of working with this, we must understand that stereotype threat is a huge factor in communication. If we don’t recognize this, how can we be truly effective in our efforts to achieve human rights?
So with this tremendous device and the fact that all of us can be subject to stereotype threat, how do we reduce stereotype threat? First, we can deemphasize threatened social identities. We can utilize a method that increases the sense of self-complexity. We can also encourage self-affirmation. This can be done by encouraging or co-workers and clients to think about their characteristics, skills, values, or roles that they value or view as important. The nature of the feedback provided regarding performance has been shown to affect perceived bias, individual motivation, and domain identification. The effectiveness of critical feedback, particularly on tasks that involve potential confirmation of group stereotypes varies as a function of the signals that are sent in the framing of the feedback. Constructive feedback appears most effective when it communicates high standards for performance but also assurances that the student is capable of meeting those high standards. Several studies have shown that stereotype threat can be diminished by providing individuals with explanations regarding why anxiety and distraction are occurring that do not implicate the self or validate the stereotype. Some individuals tend to believe that intelligence is fixed, not changing over time or across contexts. Others tend to view intelligence as a quality that can be developed and that it changes across contexts or over time (an “incremental theory”).
Finally, the issue of privilege exists as the final peg that creates and maintains inequity in a healthcare community. Privilege exists when one group has something of value that is denied to others simply because of the groups they belong to, rather than because of anything they’ve done or failed to do. Access to privilege does not determine one’s outcomes, but it is definitely an asset that makes it more likely that whatever talent, ability, and aspirations a person with privilege has will result in something positive for them. This can come in the form of citizenship, able bodied, class, gender, ability, sexuality, and religion. In many ways people who have privilege may universalize their values, perceptions, thoughts and behaviors and you want to watch out for this. We are not to blame for the privileged class, healthy body, race, gender, or sexuality that you are born into but we must consider the ways in which you can use the benefits that you have acquired because of it. We must accept that many of us have not had the resources or environs that help us succeed or have in fact have put us in directly disadvantaged positions. Privilege operates interpersonally through assumptions about what is normal/problematic and through assumptions that everyone operates on your paradigm. Privilege is so damaging because it provides individuals with a false sense of power. It causes unnecessary division. Privilege discourses have hurt justice and equity as silencing and blaming mechanisms, through shutting down others’ conversations and contributions, by emphasizing pain, humiliation and embarrassment, by alienating or marginalizing, when expressing past trauma and project it unknowingly onto another. One can use their access to power to promote and ensure equity.
So how do we access our understanding of our own privilege? First, we must willingly ask questions, honestly and productively face answers, understood how privilege has impacted my success, understood how privilege has impacted my failures, be willing to be uncomfortable but staying focused, avoid finding reasons to move away from the ideas or thoughts, understanding the anger and suspiciousness that might come your way, not being paralyzed by others’ mistrust, and by accepting that you may experience guilt, shame, humiliation and confusion. So we recognize these issues and we can, yes we can easily navigate through privilege. We must create genuine and authentic relationships with people who, in every imaginable way, are different from us. We must not demand that certain conditions be met before you will act in positive and compassionate ways. We must check assumptions and expectations about what can be accomplished when people different from us express experiences, ideas, and demand power over their own bodies and minds. We must leverage our privilege for good. We must avoid blaming the victim. We must avoid: “but what about me? Syndrome and we must avoid overcompensating. Also, we must understand the anger of people who have not had privileged. So when your colleagues or clients seem off, perhaps they have been impacted by privilege. Don’t be ashamed of your gifts and resources, just learn to recognize where others’ don’t have them, have not had access, and perhaps consider sharing your power and gifts. As a direct positive consequence, you will create more trusting relationships with your colleagues and clients
And so my dear friends, I have arrived at the end of my remarks. I hope that through this lightning fast address you understand a few things. First, you have the power to build a community of equity. You need not wait on some big shift to happen, you are the shift. Second, this work begins within, that is, this work is dependent on your self-reflection. I say that we have gone awry when we so easily patrol others’ behavior without a glance toward our own or when we weaponize our knowledge and instead of building community, we embarrass, marginalize and alienate. Third, its not that hard. Think about it like exercise, the first few times or weeks that we do something it causes fatigue and pain and sometimes even despair. But that quickly changes and we are empowered by our abilities to make change immediately and not waiting for others. Finally, let me return to where I began, in addition to your work existing in the province of health care, please remember, and let this city remind us, everyday you are conducting social justice, civil rights, and human rights. You simply cannot forget that. We must have the bravery of a warrior, the intelligence of a sage, and the compassion of a healer. Thank you so much for your time.
