Let's Talk &nbspAbout Race

This is The Opt-In, and I’m Aurora Archer. This season of the podcast we’re taking a deep dive, and looking at the multi-year partnership between The Opt-In and the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, also known as CHOP.

We’ll take you along the ride from HARD to HOPE. And we’ll show you the success that is born out of CHOP’s courage and commitment and The Opt-In’s unique approach and support. 

Last episode, we talked about the WHY of DE&I. If you haven’t heard that episode, head back to the feed to listen. This episode will make a lot more sense if you do. Today, we’re gonna get REAL….so let me set some context.  We typically talk about how DE&I is the outcome that we ALL want, but candidly, it’s not the skills we need to get there. Cultural Competency skills are what we need to get us to our desired DEI outcomes.  

Today, we are gonna talk about the most essential set of cultural competency skills –  that frankly we all need – which are self awareness and racial competency. Shauna Swartz — the CHOP Foundation team member you just heard from –  was a participant in The Opt-In’s Cultural Competency learning program. And in a lot of ways she reflects the CHOP Foundation’s team at large. She is value oriented, extraordinarily thoughtful … and she’s a perpetual learner – my favorite. And demographically – like most people working at non-profits – she is a white woman. Shauna was aware of all of these things going into The Opt-In learning program.

Shauna Swartz: … going into the work too, I just felt like, okay, I am white and I have…unearned privilege because of that, and I have a lot to learn from this program. But just thinking about my own identity, you know, I also happen to be queer. I am a woman. I’m Jewish. I’m over 50. You know, there are aspects of my identity that, you know, I experience microaggressions. I experience outright discrimination at times. But it’s not the same as… racism, which is something I don’t personally experience. And so I felt like I had sort of a lens on discrimination coming into the program that I thought would help me in this approach. But I knew that I had a lot to learn.  … if we take race, which is the hardest one for us to look at, acknowledge, talk about, especially as white people, you know, to, if we can build skills and language around that, it’s just, you know, all the others fall into place, other aspects. And we can apply that learning to other areas.

Shauna has deep conversations about race with her family … and for her… as an employee at an institution with a clear set of values, it made sense to extend those conversations into the workplace.

Shauna Swartz:  Our values at the hospital are integrity, compassion, accountability, respect, and excellence. You can’t have any of those values Unless you have a culture where people are aware of racial dynamics, can talk about it, are aware of their own identity, their own privilege. We just really can’t embody those values without confronting racism in institutions, in ourselves. We need that shared understanding in order to live out those values. 

Shauna just laid out a perfect definition of what we mean when we say racial and cultural competency. So much of what Shauna is talking about is at the root of our philosophy here at The Opt-In.  That in order for us to create innovative and thriving multicultural organizations, we need more than strong values – but what we really need –  we need to develop SKILLS –  and the most essential of all the cultural competency skills are self awareness and racial competency. But here’s the thing, while Shauna may represent a lot of people working in the nonprofit sector, she’s not the one calling the shots.

I’ve been in the world of corporate America and non-profit boards long enough to know that, for the most part, people in the C Suite struggle to understand why we need to talk about race … let alone frame DE&I conversations around race. Some companies will opt for unconscious bias training. They will look at issues of prejudice as a whole … but for the most part shy away from direct conversations about race.

At The Opt-In, we take a very different approach – we need to go to the root of the problem or as we love to say, the heart of the opportunity. We’re going to get more into CHOP’s story about how executive leadership took the plunge in taking a DE&I approach, that centered cultural competency skill building and race. But before we do that, I want to tell you about the WHY – why The Opt-In operates from a race-forward approach. 

To do that I need to tell you about The Opt-In’s approach to build skills and shift behavior – it’s what we call our theory of change. And there’s no better person to talk about it than the woman who helped co-create it.

Colleen Philbin: I’m Colleen Philbin. My pronouns are she and her. I am a white cisgender woman.  I’m a social worker by person as much as by profession.

Aurora Archer: Yeah, so why do you choose to do this work, Colleen?

Colleen Philbin: For as long as I can remember, I’ve wanted change. For myself, for my family, for the people who came before me, for the people who are gonna come after me. And I feel like a connection and a knowingness and a… Did I not say that I wanted this change for me? Because I want this change for me. I want this change for all of us. It’s harming all of us. Racism, white dominance is harming all of us. I feel like we have a path to. something we are yearning for, because I am yearning for connection. I am wanting to reject individualism. I do not want to be alone. I have never felt better than in connection. And so that’s why I’m like, okay, let’s do it. Like we are the ones we’ve been waiting for, right? 

Colleen and I are kindred spirits. She’s a fighter who understands the importance of learning AND loving. She has a fire pushing her forward to make change. Colleen is also one of the Architects and facilitators here at The Opt-In. And at The Opt-In, we believe that in order to create a truly diverse and inclusive company, ALL employees, regardless of their social identities, must be equally valued and have the opportunity to thrive. We center racial competence because racial disparity negatively impacts the largest number of people in the most persistent and pervasive ways.

But you know here’s the thing, most WHITE people are going into conversations about race the incorrect way – a lot of white people think that talking about race, means talking about racism or talking about race means talking about Brown and Black people. As an Afro-Latina woman who has been in MANY DE&I conversations in corporate settings … This is one of the BIGGEST opportunities I see … and a big paradigm, we’re hoping to shift, here at The Opt-In. 

Aurora Archer: So let’s talk about another paradigm shift that we are co-creating here at The Opt-In. And you and I and many others on our team spend a lot of hours talking about this. But it really is around our theory of change.

Colleen Philbin: I’m just thinking about the origin about all of the conversations that we had where you just generously shared your  and pouring all of those experiences and combining them with what we know about the experiences of so many people. And white people, the experience of white people going into learning, thinking that we were there to learn about black and people of color and native people. And we were good white people doing it, right? Because we cared about our black and brown native colleagues. how that people of color, we cared. And in fact, that’s not what this is about. That’s not what this is about. And so really shifting from this idea of talking about racism and talking about race as black people of color, native people, and talking about race as. all of us in a racialized society where we know race is a social construct, but it is the most defining aspect of American life. We know that by the numbers. That if we’re going to talk about race, let’s talk about race. And if we’re going to talk about race, well, the majority of the people in the room in corporate America are white people, then what we really want to be doing is that is causing this disproportionate outcome by race. Why is this room almost completely white? Right? And why is it that we’re coming here thinking when someone says, let’s talk about race, I am thinking let’s talk about your lived experience, Rura. And so it’s that shift in really understanding, oh, what we want to do. do is talk about race. Of course we want to talk about racism, but we want to become racially self-aware, apply racial self-awareness to racial literacy, which really has to do with understanding the culture of whiteness, understanding the culture of whiteness as being different than being white. I’m white. The culture of whiteness is the culture that is normal here in the United States. and really understanding history and its connection to current disparity, really being able to have the language to talk about race, right, and the skills to talk about race. So we take the self-awareness, we develop more racial literacy in an ongoing way, we add the skills for connection, for real cross-racial connection. And it’s all, it’s all wrapped in our self-awareness, our racial self-awareness. Something you have had since you were a girl, Aurora, as an Afro Latina girl, you have been aware of yourself in the world as people were seeing you based on your race. I, as a white girl, as a little white girl did not have the self-awareness to understand myself as a racialized person, as a white woman, I absolutely can. There is nothing separating my capacity to do that but skills, right? And skills and learning them, and that’s stamina, continuously learning them. I can’t think of a more loving thing that I can do for myself. Then know myself. And to know myself is to know I’m a white woman in this world. I’m a white cis woman. And there are other social identities that we talk about when we’re talking about cultural competencies. But for now, I think we’re talking about racial competency, the first deep self-awareness that we develop and use for all else. 

Aurora Archer: So I love that Colleen, because one of the things that I struggled with and continue to struggle with when it comes to this work, and I think the stance that corporate America has taken historically and that I experienced for 15 years in corporate America was, it’s one thing. Let’s just focus on microaggressions or let’s just focus on unconscious bias. Then we went through the trend and phase of belonging, and we’re currently in the phase of inclusion, and really taking this very singular approach versus the paradigm shift is we need to be looking and thinking about several components in a multi-dimensional and connected way, which is why for us, that paradigm shift is exactly what you just stated, is a theory of change that includes the building of self-awareness, the building of racial and cultural literacy skills, the creation of skills that support our cross-racial connection, cross-cultural connections, as well as building the stamina skills to stay in this evolution of who we are, who I am, who you are.

This concept of a white dominant culture might be unfamiliar to some of you listening right now. It might even make you uncomfortable. And that’s OKAY! We are in this together. At The Opt-In, we believe that to make better multicultural workplaces … and to make a better society as a whole … SELF AWARENESS, which also means awareness of your race in relationship to others, is the START of building better collective awareness. AND we HAVE the DATA to back up our method of centering race. Our theory of change works. 

Andrew Knips: My name is Andrew Knips. My pronouns are he, him, white, male, cisgender, every privileged identity person coming to this work. 

Andrew leads Measurement at The Opt-In.

Andrew Knips: We have seen growth of 25 to 30% across our metrics in organizations from pre to post, before our learning program experience, and after our learning program experience.

By “learning program experience,” Andrew is talking about The Opt-In Cultural Competency Learning Program. The very program that the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia took part in. Like any good data + measurement lead, Andrew has clear guidelines for how he gathers this kind of data around our work. 

Andrew Knips: At The Opt-In, there are a few beliefs that our philosophy is grounded in. One is that the best data we can look at is humanizing data. So we are really heavy on prioritizing data that reflects the breadth of diverse perspectives, experiences, and insights from a diverse group of people in organizations. We’re ultimately really trying to understand human experience. And gather that in ethical and authentic ways from staff. Another measurement philosophy belief we have is that we are not going to eradicate any inequities if we cannot see them. So we’re going to ask hard questions. We’re going to come in with some things that are going to make people feel uncomfortable. And the goal is to uncover and illuminate these identity-based disparities that exist in organizations.that has to be our starting place. If we can’t see those, then we’re just doing surface level work that’s not going to make an impact. Another belief we have is that measurement requires a holistic approach. So we’re looking at a comprehensive picture of the data, right? This is not just a quant survey. This isn’t just a couple of interviews. We’re pulling all of these pieces together. We’re doing artifact reviews. We’re interviewing folks. In some cases, we’re doing focus groups. All of our client conversations and interactions are seen as part of a larger data picture. And we’re bringing in the quantitative piece for sure as well. So that mixed methods approach, the mix of quantitative and qualitative measures, is helping us get a fuller picture of what’s happening. And then the last belief I’ll name is just that data is imperfect. We will not ever actually get that full, perfect picture of what’s happening. And there currently is no universal objective measure of an organization’s cultural competence. Our work is constantly evolving and we’re looking at the newest research and best practices out there to ensure that we’re showing up from a measurement stance and from every stance as the best that we possibly can.

Needless to say, Andrew is thorough and compassionate when it comes to measuring the cultural competency skills for change. And he’s impressed by the 25% – 35% growth he measured at the CHOP Foundation, following the learning program. 

Andrew Knips: So we’re moving organizations from a lagging and emerging state of relevancy to a developing and embodying state of relevancy. Basically, going from interest, excitement, some enthusiasm, belief in building a truly multicultural organization to embodying a commitment to centering a humanity-centered perspective and a multicultural workplace. And we’re seeing this across the four skills that we measure and across all the learning domains that we measure as well. So these skills of knowledge, self-awareness, mindset, and action and learning domains like cross-racial connection, race and racism, whiteness, identity and intersectionality, stamina, across the board we’re seeing really tremendous growth. And it’s a testament to the the quality of the learning program, the quality of the facilitation. 

To build on what Andrew has shared – our goal is to support leaders and organizations build knowledge, embody skills, and have a shared language of Cultural Competency by supporting their development in four areas.

This language may be new, so hang in there with me!

1. Cultural Identity Self Awareness – the action of cultivating self awareness of your intersectional identities

2. Understanding historical + current context to support recognizing and interpreting the cultural dynamics of intersectional identities – its what we call Cultural Literacy

3. Cross-Cultural Connection  – building and maintaining healthy cross cultural connection and relationships

4. And last but not least, Cultural Praxis – integrating mind, body, + spirit to actively interrupt bias in yourself and oppression in your environment
 
Andrew has also documented some significant qualitative data. Our surveys show that those who participate in the program express their enthusiasm for the work. But that doesn’t mean that participants think this program is sunshine and butterflies. Nothing good comes easy.

Andrew Knips: So participants aren’t just saying, oh, I sat there and I learned some things and this was interesting. They’re describing the learning experience as exhausting and sometimes hard, coupled with powerful and engaging. And they’re emphasizing how important it is to them that their organization has made the investment in this work. Like, oh, I know this stuff. Like, I have a background in this area, or I know a lot about race. I don’t know if I really need this. And they come out specifically saying that this experience deconstructed their preconceived ideas, and then built them back up in each session, built that confidence, built that ability for them to really reengage, and ultimately what we’re measuring and what we’re looking for is improved cross-racial connection in the workplace, as well as more comfort and more willingness and more stamina around engaging in race talk. And that’s gonna come from deepening racial literacy skills, that’s gonna come from deepening self-awareness and really building this knowledge, self-awareness, mindsets and actions to propel them towards a more multicultural and…effective workplace.

And isn’t that what we want? Don’t we want more multicultural and engaging workplaces? It’s certainly what the Foundation at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia wanted. But even though everyone wanted change …  not everyone on the executive leadership team was on the same page about how to achieve it. 

Monica Taylor Lotty … who we met in the last episode …  was one of the executives who made the decision to focus on cultural competency skill building at CHOP. And while she was on board with a program that led with race … this approach wasn’t necessarily obvious to everyone on her team.

Aurora Archer: You and your leadership team made a choice to select a partner that would help you center the discussion around race and racial identity. That was not easy. It’s usually easier to just check a box. And what would you offer Monica? What would you say helped make that decision for you and your leadership team?

Monica Taylor Lotty: So the hard part with this is that, you know, of course, the team is diverse in many other ways than race, right? So we have gender diversity, we have religious and ethnic and people thought that it would be more important for us to sort of take all of those intersectionalities and have a developer program that would be based on everything. … I don’t think that people really fully understood just how difficult it was to even just say things like, black people or white people, or to recognize that there was white privilege and that there were, you know, underrepresented minorities. I mean, just the language itself was hard for people to tackle and to speak and to share. And so I would say we had a couple, and you would recall, we had a couple of sessions where you shared with us your what you’re proposing and the direction that this would take and the challenges that we would undergo. And it wasn’t it was not easy, but it was absolutely the right decision for us to make.

Katie Muller: Sure, so the concept of racial literacy or racial competence is having some baseline understanding of how to have cross racial relationships and interactions that are positive and meaningful and I think that was always a goal that we had, but it was not necessarily the goal at the outset of when we thought about this work. 

That’s Katie Muller. She is the executive director of business operations at the CHOP Foundation … and she was one of the central leaders helping to make the decision on how to go about DE&I and who to partner with for this endeavor. Katie has done a lot of personal work around race, cultural humility, and identity. It’s important to her. But at first she wasn’t convinced that race should be at the center of this cultural transformation effort at the CHOP Foundation.

Katie: I think there was or there was conversation around whether race was the right starting point or not. And I’ll share that transparently I had that question. So my background is in international development. And I grew up, I came up with the concept of cultural humility, which has existed in that international development space for quite some time and is now a little bit more prominent in the DEI space in the United States as well.

And so the notion of being competent in somebody else’s experience or being competent in race didn’t initially sit well with me or at least raised questions for me. But three years into this process with The Opt-In, Katie sees things VERY differently.

Katie Muller: By starting with race we have opened up conversations about every intersection and identity that exists. And so for those who are hesitant about starting with race or centering race in the conversation, I will say the impact that I have seen is that it, yes, surfaced really hard conversations and important conversations about race, but also about a lot of different intersections and identities.

Monica Taylor Lotty: … you realize that have we not been able to talk about racial literacy, we weren’t going to be able to step into these other areas. There aren’t any easier.

Again, let’s hear from Monica Taylor Lottie.

Monica Taylor Lotty: … Part of me wants to say, given all that we’ve seen in the country since May of 2020 with George Floyd … I mean, it’s continued. And so I think about myself back three years ago when we were starting this process and I’m grateful that we decided to start with race and feel like we’re moving forward with other in other ways and talking about other intersectionalities as well. It’s just become a part of who we are as a foundation. 

Making a more inclusive workplace … making a more inclusive society – won’t come easy. It’s about peeling back the layers, revealing the ugly truths, and then working together to change them. Talking about race is hard for SO many of Us. But if we CAN talk about race, across cultures and across experiences, we have a much better footing to talk about all the other identities we embody … I promise you. 

Now that you know OUR WHY, it’s time to tell you our HOW. That’s next time. You’ve been listening to The Opt-In. I’m Aurora Archer. Subscribe to us wherever you listen to your podcasts, and please share with your friends, colleagues, and yes your bosses.

Music from this episode is by Jordan McCree

The Opt-In is produced by Rachel Ishikawa and Colin Lacey. 

Our Theory of Change is co-created by Colleen Philbin.

To make a donation to the CHOP Foundation go to https:chop.edu/giving

Thanks so much for listening.