Julie Kratz
Welcome to the Diversity Pivot podcast. I’m your host, Julie Kratz. I am thrilled you are here with us today. Our purpose is to share stories, ideas and tools to help you on your diversity, equity and inclusion journey. Let’s meet this week’s guest.
Kenji Yoshino
Welcome listeners. We have a very special guest this week. Kenji Joshino is the Chief Justice Earl Warren professor of constitutional law at NYU School of Law and director of the Meltzer Center for Diversity, Inclusion, and the. Coming. He’s a graduate of Harvard, Oxford, and he specializes in constitutional law, anti discrimination law and literature. He received tenure at Yale Law School, where he served as deputy team before moving to NYU. He’s published a lot of great stuff over the years. I’ve had a chance to see him featured in the New York Times. Washington Post. And he’s actually just written his fourth book while he’s joining us today that he co-authored with David Glasgow. And it’s called say the right thing. How to talk about identity, diversity and justice? He has also served as president of the Harvard Board of Overseers and currently serves as the board of the Berman Center for Justice on advisory Boards for Diversity Inclusion for Morgan Stanley and Charter Communications and on the board of his children’s. All that touches my heart, and he’s won numerous awards for teaching and scholarship, and he lives in Manhattan with his husband, two children and the Great Dane as well. Could you welcome to the show long term fan? It’s so, so wonderful to be with you.
Speaker 3
Thank you so much for having me, Julie. It’s really a delight to be here.
Kenji Yoshino
Ah, well, let’s start with, say, the right thing and really actually before we get. Into the new. Book. Let’s share your diversity story. How did you get into diversity work? And you Co founded this wonderful institution as well at NYU. So I’d love to just hear the back story on how that all came to be.
Speaker 3
Yes, it’s a great question because I think oftentimes people do not think of D and I as being populated by lawyers, which both I and my co-author who happens to be the executive director of the center that you just mentioned, the Meltzer Center for Diversity, Inclusion and belonging are. But I actually view this to be a story of much more continuity than rupture. You know, I sort of grew up, you know, cutting my teeth as a civil rights guy. I went to law school in order to think about sort of the other BTQ plus, you know, equality issues decided to become an academic, but low, you know, through tenure almost exclusively on LGBTQ plus rights within the law. So I’m older, right. So this is the time period in the 1990s. Then onward when you know the ice is finally breaking up in this area of the law where you know we had the Roma case in 1996, which you know for the first time, struck down a law that was discriminatory against gay people. And then in 2003, Lawrence versus Texas, the Brown Board of the Gay Rights Movement, and then so on and so forth. But as I sort of got to the end of that arc in a way, with same sex marriage in 2015, I was thinking like, oh, what is the next frontier? So is it that I pursue these issues, you know, globally. As in so many countries, you know, same sex sexual activity is still criminalized. Is it that I move into a different area that I think of as you know, needing my attention? And what I came to realize, Julie, was that I had all the same commitments towards inclusion. But particularly after I wrote my first book, I became a little bit leery about how much law could fully kind of deliver on those objectives. Because law is really, really good at sort of doing things that are kind of require a lot of brute force loss, kind of a meat axe, if you will. And it can come in and be very, very forceful so. You know, if it’s like, you know, making sure things like marriage is all off the land, there’s really no way. But, you know, through litigation and scholarship and legislation that you could achieve that. But if it’s something like, you know, is there a second generation form of discrimination that gay people or really any historically subordinate or equity deserving group is encountering? Is law really going to be the answer to that? Right. So I might be able to bring a lawsuit if a colleague of mine tells me to be more straight acting, right. But I’m really going to spend five years of my life. Doing that, you know, am I really gonna say, you know, I’m just gonna challenge this legally or or am I just going to say I’m either going to challenge this not at all, or I’m going to challenge this culture. Like so more and more, I just saw laws like the floor over which we had to build, and the cultural work of building above that floor. The most interesting people who were doing that were DNI folks, right? So they got really passionate about diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging, accessibility. And six years ago now, it’s hard to believe time has flown so fast. My executive Director and co-author of this book, David Glasgow and I co-founded a Center on Diversity, Inclusion and belonging here at NYU law and we just got endowed last year as the Mauser Center for Diversity Inclusion below.
Kenji Yoshino
Awesome. That’s awesome. Yeah. What a cool story. And. And you’ve been writing books about diversity for some time. How I got introduced to your work was through a mutual ally and colleague of ours, Jennifer Brown, who’s podcast you’ve been on many times. And we’re always have you send people a will to change is a great podcast out there for DI. And she interviewed you about covering. I think it was when you were first starting into officially into the DI space. So that work has been just tremendous. And the latest work say the right thing, you know, going from a, A, A cancel culture to a coaching culture. I know something you’re really passionate about, especially at this moment. The time when I got to think Kenji, you’ve probably been writing this book and putting it together for years, but what a time for it to come out when we’re so polarized and we’re so willing. Just to say somebody’s a bad person because they made one mistake and what a mistake that could be for all of us. Tell us more about the inspiration for this latest book.
Speaker 3
Yeah. Again, thank you for the question. So you know we started writing this book because so many people came to us and just said I want to be an ally, but I’m terrified that I’m going to say the wrong thing. And I’m terrified they’re going to hurt someone they care about. But I’m also terrified that I’m going to get cancelled and suffer some punishment. And so therefore, I’m not going to step into the allyship. Case at all, because the better you know, more self protective course for me is going to be just fine. That’s right. And as you and I both know, Julie, you know that silence is no longer really being construed as neutrality, right? It’s being construed as complicity in an unjust status quo. Right? So, yeah, I think those individuals who remain silent feel the costs of their silence, but they think that the costs of getting counseled are so much greater. And so when we looked at that, you know, David and I both thought, you know, it’s not. That we have the. Kind of on nuanced view of cancel culture, right, we we do think that cancel culture can be appropriate in certain circumstances so that if someone is a repeat offender and is engaged in egregious behavior and doesn’t want to get better, then you know we’re not, you know, saying that cancellation is never appropriate for that kind of a person. But that’s really not the vast majority of us, the vast majority of people. The encounter, even people who are skeptics of the DNI project, you know, people of goodwill who are trying to get better, but who are just not being given the tools to do. That so or? Two complaints about cancel culture, our first that is so indiscriminately punitive and it just goes from zero to 60 so. Quickly and then the other one is that it doesn’t really offer any practical tools to help anyone get better. So you’re just sort of calling somebody out and then casting them out into the outer darkness without actually saying, you know, here’s how they get better. And, you know, in our lives, we’ve learned the most when, you know, we’ve made mistakes and then some friendly coach has come to us and. Said to us like I’m going to hold you to really high standards, but I’m going to be with you every step of the way as you try to meet those standards and we thought, why wouldn’t we offer that in the DI context as? Well, so the. Book is quite different from other books that I’ve written. It’s very, very tactical. It’s a bit of like a screwdriver or a multi tool rather than like some high concept. The book, but it really is trying to meet this notion of the reader where they are just saying I want to do the right thing, but I’m terrified that I’m going to pay a kind of inordinately high price for trying to do the right thing and just say no. No, no, you’re not. Like, we’re here to coach you, like, let this book be your friend, right to coach you through these 7 principles of.
Julie Kratz
Mm-hmm.
Speaker 3
You know how to have these identity conversations so that we can. You know, entice you, if you will, to to step into the the place of Ally show. So the book as a whole was kind of animated by this desire to move more broadly. You know, I’ve talked a little bit about what our motivations were and talking to individuals, but more broadly at the cultural level is trying to intervene and saying, wouldn’t we all be better off if we move from at least an emphasis like an emphasis on cancer. Culture to an emphasis on coaching culture.
Kenji Yoshino
Yeah, yeah. So true. I mean, you think about, I think about my childhood experiences making mistakes. I learned not to make that same mistake again through someone coaching me. I mean, why would we just write somebody off for making one mistake? And that’s how our brains learn and grow to be better. So I agree. And and I love that you use the scale. In your book. So I think this is something that’s missing. I talked about this especially being a white person and allyship work. I have to be really careful because I I know how it can come across as like, oh, great. Now you want to forgive everybody. That’s like, done all this terrible racist, sexist fill in the blank behavior. It’s like no. There’s a there’s this a process, a a scale as you have in. The book and I. I love how you labeled it. Red, yellow, green. Like there are some things that just are a little nuanced. People just maybe a little need a little tweak on, right, we adjust our coaching approach. There’s some things more yellow where it’s like it’s probably a tremendous learning opportunity and then you got the red where. This may be so egregious or repeat behavior that maybe they don’t want to get it, but we know that’s such a small percentage of people, most people want to get it, they. Just don’t get it. Yet. So those yellow episodes are real opportunities for your coaching model. Tell us more about how you came up with that scale. Maybe give our listeners some context around how that might work.
Speaker 3
Yeah, absolutely. So we just this is in our chapter on disagreements and the chapter on disagreements really begins with a kind of heartbreaking story. Julie of a student of ours who came to us and said, like, as a man, you know, I made a comment at, you know, your last, you know, meeting for the center and then a female colleague of mine said to me. Oh, I think you’re being sexist. And I didn’t think I was. But am I allowed to disagree if I’m a man and she’s a woman, then if we’re hurt because, like, you know, on the one hand. Like we’re an institution of higher learning, of course we you should be allowed to disagree. Like if not here where right. But also like, you know, our heart broken in a in a in a better way like in a more positive way because this guy was being so thoughtful. You know, I’m saying like, I actually worry about this disagreement because I may not know stuff. Right. Just because of my life experience, I really need to be humble right about the way I approach this right. And So what, what and thinking about this, we thought like, we definitely want people to be able to disagree. Like the only options are like remain silent or like roll over then no one’s gonna want to be like an ally for very long. Right. So sometimes they have to just be able to disagree and say. I don’t think that’s right, you know, but you know, even on an issue of identity or DNI, but then when we dealt more deeply into it, we realized that, like there are disagreements and their disagreements, right, so. And we mean that in two kinds of ways. One is at the cultural level where and this is where your traffic light coating of red, green, yellow, you know, comes in or your reference to our traffic light coating. I should say. So you know, there are certain issues that we think of as just being in the red zone where you basically shouldn’t, right think that you can disagree about them and get, you know, any kind of traction, right. So the things that we have settled in society so long ago. So the example that we give are, you know, people on the far, far, far, far right. To say like, you know, women should not be allowed to stand for public office, right? It’s just sort of like that demeans all of us to have that conversation. I’m not even gonna step into that. We resolved this like, centuries ago, right? So maybe if we were in like, you know, 19th century, that would be an OK conversation to.
Kenji Yoshino
Have which some people may want to.
Speaker 3
Awesome.
Kenji Yoshino
Go back to.
Speaker 3
But you know, in 2023, like, no, I’m just not going there. Right. And then we thought at the opposite extreme, that these green conversations, right where if you and I are staying on the gender issue like are having a disagreement. About whether gender quotas are appropriate, right, we think that that is fully on the table because. You could actually be a total progressive and think like, you know, gender quotas do more harm than good, and then we would have a debate about what other countries have done with quotas have done and why our own country is an allergy to quotas. It’s based on race right now because race is our foundational example of, you know, civil rights and inclusion. And that may actually have, you know, skewed the way we think about. Photos more generally. Right. So I think that’s agreeing disagreement, meaning that, you know, have that like and then in the middle are the more complicated ones where it’s like ohh this may be sort of sort of you know fading into the red zone like and so or or to carry the metaphor of the traffic light, you know, you’re looking at the yellow light and thinking like, oh, can I make this light before it turns red? Right. And so if you think you can, you know, go for it, but go for it with eyes open, right, that this is in the yellow zone. So yellow zone disagreement might be like some. Thing along the lines of are there any innate characteristics right that differentiate men versus women that might bear on, you know, psychology right? Or the workplace? Right. So do we believe that, you know, as James Moore said in his infamous Google memo, right, you know that, you know, men are. Just going to be better at math at the very, very extreme edges right of performance, right? So well, maybe it’s not obvious, but I obviously don’t subscribe to that view, but. You know, it’s I I think it’s not green. It’s probably not as red, you know as. We would wish. It to be right and so it’s like maybe it’s useful to have that debate. Maybe it’s not right. So I’m on the fence as to whether. Or not this is. A useful debate to have right my general thought on this, by the way, is like, you know, there’s so much, you know. Gender stereotyping in society that I would really like to. To you know, as Catherine McKinnon once said to my colleague Carol Gilligan, like we’ll know whether women speak in a different voice wants, you know, the patriarchy takes its foot off of their clothes. Right. So it’s like, I think we’re in conditions of inequality. So it’s maybe not be useful to engage in this inquiry until we have more gender equality, as as a social matter, to figure out whether or not women. To choose, you know, different professions or different ways of life or things like that. So I hope that’s.
Kenji Yoshino
Such a good way to look at it.
Speaker 3
Helpful, right. And sort of laying out the landscape of like their disagreements and disagreements. But then the real innovation. And then I I have to give my colleague give Glasgow for this is more of the kind of retail level of the individual of saying like there’s yet another scale of like when you actually decided to have the conversation. Why is it that even when we think we’re in the Green Zone, or maybe even in the yellow zone, these conversations can go sideways so easily and his answer is again, their disagreements and disagreements. But this time the scale goes from like disagreements over tastes to disagreements over facts. To disagreements over policies, disagreements over values, all the way over to disagreements over equal humanity, and what he points out is that if you and I were to disagree, Julie, about which, like, you know Netflix show is the best or which sports team is the best like, that would be banter. That would be very friendly, I think, right. So disagreements over taste tend to be non inflammatory, right. And move over to fax. Again, not kind of fights over values by proxy like alternative facts, but like who, what, when, where, why sort of journalistic facts? Again, we might disagree a little bit more heatedly, but it’s not likely to get out of control when it goes to policies or values that hits at our core or more, and then over at the very, very kind of right. Is. Equal humanity so that you know if you say something that I feel like strikes at my equal humanity, then I may not be able to sustain, you know, a respectful disagreement because it just seems like demeaning for me to even participate in the disagreement. And we people missed each other. Was that when one side thought they were having a conversation about facts and value? And then the other side thought that they were having a conversation about their equal humanity, and neither side could see where the other side was coming from. And so our advice is you don’t have to, right, go to where the other person is. In fact, that’s often impossible to do just based on your own life experience. But, you know, acknowledge that it might have that salience for them. So the examples always help. My example here is like when prior to 2015 when I was doing the rounds of the constitutional law circuit like talking about, you know, why same sex marriage should be legally recognized. I constantly was in green room after green room prep call after Prep call where folks said we know you’re in the same sex. Chef and this might be personal for you, but please don’t bring that up right in this debate like we want you to have this debate as an issue policy, right? And a facts. Rather than, you know, adverting to your own personal experience, because we think that’s kind of unfair, right. And I thought, wow, like, of course, I’m a constitutional law professor. I’m not just gonna stand up on a stage and talk about my feelings like I have. Arguments and I feel like I have the stronger argument. But I did feel like goodness, like you could have done yourself so much good. And I don’t think would have deprived yourself of any argument if you’ve just been able to say it. Like we realized that we’re arguing this as a matter of, you know, facts and policies. You know, whereas for you, these might land as issues of equal humanity because they’re really about your sense of belonging and the policy. And we’ll try to be mindful of that. As we have this conversation, but if we ever sort of go over the line, let us know it’s such a. If we’re at intersubjective recognition of where I’m coming from.
Kenji Yoshino
Such a subtle. Reframe, but an important one. Rather being code. You can’t talk about a huge part of your identity in life. Yeah, one. And the irony too is you wrote a book about covering having to minimize or maximize or hide. You know, whether that’s being out in the workplace or out in an interview. And that is an example of when someone’s forcing you to cover too. So it’s so many, so many dimensions at play here. Kenji, one of the other things that I really liked about the book was about apologies. And it’s so fun when you meet a kindred spirit in the space because Harriet Lerner, you had Loretta. Jay Raz, you had Renee Brown stuff there. I’m like, yes, these are like, the thought leaders that all talk around. This, but I’ve never seen an apology framework like yours with the 4R’s that really spoke to me as something that was really like you said, like a screwdriver. It’s like something I could pull out and use in the moment when I stumble on Bumble because. I say that a lot like. I make mistakes. I’ve made two mistakes in the last six months on social media where I’ve chosen not to take the post down and add an edit because I learned from the feedback I got and I wanted other people to learn from the experience. I study this stuff and I get it wrong sometimes and and we need to have forgiveness for people as long as you own it. But apologies goes S real quick because it’s like, you know, the ifs, the butts, you know, you have all these great words that you use to describe why they don’t land, but people think they’re apologizing. And it’s still not enough, right? So when you make a mistake as hopeful allies, everyone will. It’s about how do you apologize in a very meaningfully respectful way. But walk us through that framework and maybe give us an example of how to craft a good apology.
Speaker 3
Absolutely. So. So first to make sure that you’re not hanging out alone out there, I will say that I too you know study this stuff and I too make mistakes constantly. So I sort of feel like if you’re not making mistakes, you’re not doing it right, you know, which means that we have to learn how to apologize when we get things wrong. So your 4. Bars, or the four’s that you mentioned are. First of all, recognition, second of all responsibility, third remorse and 4th redress. So quite quickly, right with regard to recognition, we want to make sure that we’re fully recognizing the harm that was done. You know, oftentimes people say, you know, if I did it, I’m sorry or I’m sorry if you feel that way. And so as you noted, like if it’s a real kind of danger. Right. That would signal that you may be under recognizing the harm if you’re generally uncertain, then exercise curiosity and figure out, you know, whether you did it or not. But generally, you do know what you did and what you’re trying to do is to evade full accountability for it and sort of hedge by saying, if I did it. I’m sorry. So beware of that. You know, fully own what you did. The next one is to take responsibility for what you did and the danger word here is, but right. I’m sorry. Come up. But I was having a miserable day. Whereas you might think, well, can’t you? What happens next time you have a miserable day or you’re gonna repeat this same bad behavior, right? So, you know, it’s perfectly fine to say like. I’m sorry, period. You know, there’s no excuse period, right? Rather than trying to. Sort of. You know, go on and provide some kind of insight into why you did what you did. You know, my favorite example here is Roseanne Barr was like, I’m sorry I sent out that racist tweet, comma. But, you know, it’s 2:00 AM, and I was Ambien tweeting and Sanofi, the maker ambient, had to tweet out. Right. It’s sort of commentary that, you know, racism is not a side effect of any. Nope. Product right? So.
Kenji Yoshino
I love that cheeky response too. That’s like such a great way to respond.
Speaker 3
Yeah.
Kenji Yoshino
To something like that but.
Speaker 3
Yeah, they are. And then?
Kenji Yoshino
Yeah, but your real life examples, kids. You too, I just wanted to point out in the book, I love how you use real life pop culture examples, everyday examples, but. The stories are so beautifully researched that you cite as well, which I love the application.
Speaker 3
Thank you so much. We we we have a lot of I want to give props to our student researchers who were incredibly wonderful and sort of vacuuming up every example of apology. You know, under the sun, but also sort of keeping us hopefully a little bit more hip and current than we otherwise would be. So the third one is remorse and we don’t really think that there are kind of buzzwords here like if we’re but it’s more like context factors. So like showing that you’re authentically sorry for what you did. And oftentimes the context can betray you and show that you didn’t really mean what you did in those instances. We really want to encourage people to offer a respectful. Disagreement, rather than an inauthentic apology. So for example, here is Mario Batali, the celebrity chef who was accused of sexual assault, assault. And he wrote this kind of not great, but passable apology and then added like as a postscript, you know. And for those of you who are interested here, it’s like a festive holiday recipe for cinnamon rolls. And it was like, you’ve got to be kidding me. Right, like you’ve just blown up all the work that you did there because there’s no way I’m gonna accept that as sincere. If you’re gonna mash it up against you know, recipe for cinnamon rolls or any recipe for that matter. And then the last one is redress is to say you can’t sort of talk your way out of something that you’ve acted your way in too. So don’t think of the apology as being closing the book. Finally on something like it is a form of closure. I don’t want to undersell that. But you know, the apology is also opening the book on something. It’s opening the book to a future course of conduct that doesn’t. With the bad behavior, right? Because if I apologize to you and I do the same thing tomorrow, then that apology is worthless. Right? So I really have to commit to a future course of conduct, so it has to be sort of not. I’m sorry, period. But I’m sorry. And right, I won’t do this again. It’s a pledge of future conduct. And to sort of put a bottomless. Yeah, actually. You know, those four areas, like when we were going through this, we were thinking like, why is this so hard for us to do as human beings and the wisest, you know, answers to that came from a physician. I mean, Aaron Lazar has written of terrific book and apologies where he says, essentially, apologies make us feel excruciatingly vulnerable.
Kenji Yoshino
So helpful.
Speaker 3
I know when I apologize, I’m I’m serious. Apologizing to you. I was worried that you would pile on or that you might take advantage of me or that you might sort of shame me. And I’ve opened myself up. So I’ve already admitted my you know that I’ve done something wrong. So I’m very, very exposed. Right. And he says these kind of hedges like if or but right or you know, sort of softening the remorse that we feel are trying to treat this as like if it’s done and dusted, why are we still talking about this when I apologize? Right. All of those hedges that fail the 4R’s are just attempts to protect ourselves and what he says is when you try to, that’s a very human. And the lovely kind of humane view that he offers, he says it’s a really human response. But be careful because it’s not a productive 1, because in fact you will succeed at neither objective. If you had your apology in that way, you will neither authentically apologize, nor will you genuinely protect yourself because the person will just reject the apology and then now you have to apologize for having rendered like 1/2 baked apology, right?
Kenji Yoshino
More times. Wait, it makes sense. I I when I read that chapter, I I was thinking where my.
Speaker 3
Exactly.
Kenji Yoshino
Personal life too. Because professionally I don’t know why it’s it’s easier, it’s not easy, but it’s easier. Your personal life, it’s like, oh, you know, and you like, just like. And I was like, oh, just keeping the professional contextually because, like.
Speaker 3
Ah.
Julie Kratz
It is. It’s like.
Kenji Yoshino
If you’re being ostracized or like outed, I think it’s like a deeply primal human thing, because we’re meant to survive in groups. And so I could see how an apology saying I was wrong could be a cause for being. Canceled. You know, to use your words. And being out on. Your own and that was one of the most dangerous things that a human being could have experienced. I mean, still today, loneliness is, you know, such a sad outcome for folks. But. That we’re and I think maybe, you know for hopeful allies. Think about that framework and and that’s a nice pressure test. When you do make a mistake, this is a meaningful way, a framework that you can kind of think through. OK did I do these things? Not that it’s a checklist, but it gives you some guidance cause rarely do you see an apology that fits all of those things. And I really appreciated the book. You had the Tina Fey progression because?
Speaker 3
Yeah, yeah.
Kenji Yoshino
I was like. No, I love Tina, not her, Tina. And she she. Does learn from her mistakes and finally has a complete apology for something that happened on 30 Rock. I think a black face, you know, just like how that happened on that show. I had no idea.
Speaker 3
Yeah.
Kenji Yoshino
Yeah. So when we make a mistake, you know owning it, that recognition, that responsibility. Yeah. I really appreciate the remorse, the genuine remorse and the redress because people want to know you’re going to be better next time. And that teaches other people how to be better. So maybe they don’t have to make the same mistake and go through all this work that you’re saving that. So that people can learn from your own experience by way of your example. I got to tell you to Kenji as much as I’ve done this work and studied it for so many. Those I I’ve used the word ally because I I couldn’t find a better word this before it got popular just like 6-7 years ago and I was writing about men as allies and I like the word champion. Such a silly thing to say, because now I’m like, what was I thinking? I like man champions like men, men, ambassadors. You know, I played with all these words and everyone kept sending me to this. Ally. Well, it wasn’t until I read in your book that Latin origin of that word to bind together and I thought, ah, full circle moment for me of what is being an ally mean. Right. And what does it mean in this dichotomy of cancel versus coaching culture? How do we show up? And so that was just really meaningful for me and one of the other things I wanted to just get your input on is one of the things I think that an ally can do very well is these everyday moments. Something’s not inclusive or something. Feel sicky. You know those microaggressions? Those covering situations? Just. How do we call folks in to be better, right versus out them and shame and blame them, which we know is not usually going to to your point cause a a productive behavior reform. And you have a great list in your book of call in phrases, and I I really like you and David’s personal favorites too. My go to when someone says something weird. I just say weird like, you know, just something like what was like, what makes you think? That or like you. Know, but in the moment you thought you called it an escalator blip is an escalator.
Speaker 3
We call it a staircase thought or escalator width, I think.
Kenji Yoshino
Yes, that’s what it is. It’s like. Be freeze. You don’t say anything and then like 5 seconds. You’re like I have the perfect thing to say. So could you walk us through some of those back pocket phrases when someone does have a bumble and stumble, this is more of a yeah, where I would put this in the more of the micro aggression zone. Probably that yellow part of maybe even green part of your barometer there. But when someone does make a mistake. How can we be an ally and call them in?
Speaker 3
Yeah. So absolutely. So thank you for for that commentary on on Ally as well. But you know, moving to this point, you know we we really generally generally our center don’t like scripts because we think these are human interactions are so nuanced and fine grain like we would be foolish like to think that it could be resolved with a script. You know, once you after another just says like, give me a script and I’ll read it. Just tell me what to say. It’s like it doesn’t really work like that, right, but in.
Kenji Yoshino
Most common question I get to say or do like I can’t do the work for you. You need to think too, but I I get.
Julie Kratz
Yeah.
Speaker 3
But the the one place where we felt like we could make an exception was exactly this one that you were talking about, which is, you know, you’re in a large meeting. We’ve I think all been in this situation where someone makes a like a loudly inappropriate comment. And they’re like, oh, I really need to speak up. But two things impede at least me from doing it, you know. One is that it’s very time pressured. So like you know, I gotta get it out, you know, before the meeting ends because then we’re all dispersed and I can’t have like one-on-one conversations with the 200 people in the meeting. So I really gotta get it done. But then the other one is, you know, it’s not just the clock is ticking, but that if I say the wrong thing, it could really be adversary, right, that, you know, I am sort of criticizing somebody else’s comment. Right. And so how do I do that in a way that sort of doesn’t put their back up. So I’m very sort of careful about trying to find the right form of words. But as I do, just as you said the. Clock runs out. We all disperse and I think of exactly the right thing to say. What the French call the Ponce de la Scalier, the staircase slot, not in the room where it matters, but in the staircase outside of the room, there’s a whole Seinfeld episode based on this, right? Where George Costanza thinks of exactly the right come back.
Kenji Yoshino
Ah, that’s so good. And it’s so practical like this happens a lot to people.
Speaker 3
Yeah. And so we provide a list we’re like we’re going to bend our rule and just give you a list. And so here are some strategies in terms of. Like saying something short and sharp right? So I personally can’t imagine doing that, but I’ve seen other people use it to really good effect of saying like Ouch or Yikes. Or excuse me, it’s probably like, you know, I don’t know whether this is to my credit or discredit, probably my just credit, but it’s like I’m just not that old, right. Like I’m not that confrontational like a person. So I like, you know, look down our own list and I go to something like educate, unsurprisingly, as a professor, I say, like, I see things differently, you know. Could I explain my perspective? Well, there’s another one that I love that is very Loretta Ross that says, you know, affirm the person before you criticize the conduct. Right. So I really believe that you’re an inclusive person. Period, right. That’s why what you just said really surprised me or therefore I was surprised, you know, when that comment came out of your mouth. Right. And so that kind of primes people’s egalitarian self conception. So it lowers their identity threat, right? Because you know, you’re not saying they’re a terrible person. To the contrary or saying they’re a great person, and then you’re calling out the conduct as being inconsistent with that, with that, with the nature of the person that you’re describing. So we have a sort of laundry list of strategies and then some examples of each strategy and the the thought is not choose the ones we chose like. To the contrary, it’s I choose the ones that work for you and that would feel authentic coming out of your own mouth. We’re diverse with regard to our temperaments as with everything else but the kind of challenge is you know it doesn’t matter which two but like. Find 2 responses on. List that would feel natural coming out of your mouth. Memorize them. Put them in your back pocket because the likelihood that you’ll be able to play those cards on the table is much greater, right? If you have them ready to go right in your back pocket, right? So that you can play the card in the room where it matters rather than, you know, waiting until you hit the staircase outside the room.
Kenji Yoshino
Yeah. Yeah, so. Good. Yeah. And and I love the authenticity because you’re not going to have the. Book in front of. You to read. I even thought about printing out that chart like having it somewhere I. Thought. No. To your point, these need to be things that feel genuine to who we are and to be used. Even vocabulary that you’re comfortable with. People are going to notice like oh.
Julie Kratz
Gosh, what’s she?
Kenji Yoshino
Where’d that come from? So it has to be yours. But because we do get kind of hijacked in those moments, and our amygdala is likely firing because we’re just so thrown off by what somebody said especially. If it’s somebody that you know to be a good person, which they probably are, they just made a mistake we’re throwing and we don’t know what to say or do. So I I always appreciate those phrases to use in the moment. And if, if all else fails, allies the circle back right. You can’t circle back to 200 people in the room, but you can certainly circle back to the person if their behavior went unchecked to say hey. Let’s talk about that more. I want to dig into what happened the other day and make sure that they’re held accountable because letting somebody off the hook is letting them do it again too. Kendi this has been so fun to talk with you. I do want to ask you one. You know a question just knowing you’ve been in this work for a long time and. What I appreciate about your book, it’s individual actions, but also the idea that we need their systems need to change, right our systems. And this is where we’re at in the DA space is how do we get individuals to shift behavior while changing the systems which individuals operate in. And you’re you’re doing that both right with law and with this. Look, what do you wish for? You know, if you could wave a magic wand and the DPI space was somehow better, what would make it better? What would you wish for to change?
Speaker 3
Well, so many things. You know, I I think the one that I’ll focus on is just the legal landscape that we’re facing. So ironically sort of my career is coming full circle where you know I started in law and then I kind of moved an emphasis away from the law into DC. Yeah, because I really felt like law is the floor. And dei is the kind of culture that we build above that floor to get the same kind of civil rights type commitments that we have in law sort of accomplished, right of inclusion. And what have you, right. But, you know, with legal developments, like the pending Supreme Court, affirmative action case, you know, other pieces of legislation that are. It’s kind of erupting all around the country, like the stockbroker doc in Florida or the anti CRT initiatives, you know that are popping up, you know, in school districts, you know, around the nation. Like laws no longer like, you know, the floor. It’s like the ceiling that threatens to crush the right. And so, yeah, so a weird thing about our center is that we’re now much more like, relevant as this DI Center that operates out of a law school. Right. Because the law is getting involved again. Right. And DI and it’s not, you know, being neutral with regards to DEI initiatives. And so if I wish, one thing would change, it would be like that the legal impediments to DUI that I see sort of looming on the horizon. Could be countered right? And that more people were who work in this space. We’re mindful about the fact that, you know, they’re going to be serious legal constraints on what we can do, you know, unless we kind of wake up and mobilize now about it. So that would be my sort of call to action. And then the thing that I would wish could change.
Kenji Yoshino
Well said, well said. These are the things that keep me up at night and it’s affecting our children, which, you know, having children as well. It just seems deeply unacceptable to be going back in time at a. Time when we need to move forward. So yeah, it’s the, it’s the floor and the ceiling. The laws for now, and got to remain hopeful about the future, about being real, realistic about what is happening. And now more than ever, we need people using their voices to advocate and to speak into these issues and to vote. And to follow the great work you’re doing and support the centers around the country that are on the positive side of things. So Kenji, it has been wonderful to be with you. Tell our listeners how they can stay in touch with you.
Speaker 3
Oh yeah. So I think that the best way to stay in touch with me is either sort of hit me up on LinkedIn. I do actually connect with people individually. You can follow me on Twitter at Kenji under score Yoshino, or you can go to my website or my centers website. My personal website iskenjiyoshino.com and then if you just type in Meltzer Center for Diversity, Inclusion, and belonging, you’ll come to the Meltzer Center website.
Kenji Yoshino
Awesome. We’ll link to both of those in the show notes and. Wow. What? What an amazing opportunity to talk with you today. I so appreciate your voice in this world. Thanks Kenji for the time.
Speaker 3
Thank you so much. It was a really it was a real delight to be with you. Such a pleasure.
Kenji Yoshino
Thank you for listening to this week’s episode. If you liked what you heard, consider hiring Julie in the next pivot point team to come speak at your organization’s next event. We speak on a range of topics, from active allyship to inclusive leadership to how to create a culture where.
Julie Kratz
Everyone feels seen, heard and feels.
Kenji Yoshino
Sense of belonging.

Thank you for being on this journey with us. Go to nextpivotpoint.com to learn more.