Why DEI (diversity, equity, inclusion) Can Be Useless with Dr. Kimya Nuru Dennis

Why DEI (diversity, equity, inclusion) Can Be Useless with Dr. Kimya Nuru Dennis

This episode is the first episode in a three-part series with Dr. Kimya Nuru Dennis. She is a community advocate, sociologist and criminologist educator, and researcher. Dr. Dennis connects with local, national, and international communities. Schools, businesses, and organizations. 

She was born and raised in the city of Richmond, Virginia, and Dr. Dennis lived in North Carolina for 17 years and now lives in Baltimore, Maryland 365. Diversity is her company and it helps to change policies and actions, curriculum, and class materials for K through 12 schools and colleges and universities.

This includes changing academic programs, and career training. And policies and evaluations for medical and health schools, medical and health organizations, and also medical and health facilities. Please visit 365 diversity to learn more about her work. I invite you to pause and evaluate and see if there’s anything in your life that you feel that you’re not doing.

What you should be doing to help to change these traditions, American Traditions, worldwide traditions that we’re talking about in these episodes. I hope you enjoy it. I know, we totally should have recorded that because it was good. I remember it, but I wish that the audience could have heard it too. 

Yeah, we can just give the audience a refresher of what we discussed and that’ll be helpful to them as well. 

In this episode, we’re gonna be talking. Why diversity, equity, and inclusion can be useless.  I know part of what we talked about, I think the JR thing fits into this category, and then the other, the previous topic will fit into the next episode. Let’s talk about why diversity, equity, and inclusion can be useless.

Most of it is useless. So most, when you see people using. DEI DNI acronyms and departments and official statements and training, tend not to do their work based on what black people in the United States of America have done for centuries.

 Like literally black people have for centuries. Done work, done research, done, writings done, poetry, artistry, and indigenous people aligned with parts of that as well. Black people since the 1960s, and 1970s have done equity race, racial equity training for white audiences before black people could get paid to do that.

Black people have created and. Courses.  I’ve taught race and ethnic relations for 15 years before, again, we were considered trendy, hot topics, the kind of things to have a whole career on. Black people have, again, been the trailblazers talking about sexuality, gender, and identity. That’s something that’s.

 Been done way before white middle-class, upper-class white women did women’s suffrage, you know, women’s liberation, white women’s version of feminism. The first pride parades were led by particularly black transgendered women. And this is where we always have to highlight, and I always tell people, one of the models that I.

 For 365, diversity is discussed daily and not your typical diversity training is the other model. And I use that because I tell people, I discuss these every day, everywhere I go and people’s outrage in response to what I say, whether it’s race. Ethnicity, religion.

They get mad and I tell them, you’re mad now, but yet you pretend in two days that if you go to an anti-racism book club or an anti-racism training, that all of a sudden, you’re conscious and you’re outraged on behalf of minoritized people and situational consciousness, convenient awareness, and only being willing to make changes

Based on your permission means that nothing is changing. Like if you’re mad at what I said about white power across every political affiliation around the world on Friday, February 11th. You’ll be mad. Even if you come to one of my training sessions on Monday, February 14th, you’ll be mad because, because it’s Valentine’s Day in general, and because you expect it to be based on white people’s comfort and permission.

 I will say things, and you’ll be mad because you want it to be a very comfortable place. And I tell people, I’m saying it the same way I said on February 11th, like there’s no on and off switch when talking about this and this.

Unfortunately, we also have to hold white women accountable. We talk about school systems, which we’ll talk about in a future session as well. White women and white men are in charge of K through 12 and colleges and universities in the Western Hemisphere, Europe, and parts of the world.

And a lot of times white women understand when we’re talking about gender equity work. Men are uncomfortable, and especially cisgender men, they understand that discomfort.

They understand this notion of outrage and burning bras, and it’s okay if you piss off the oppressor, right? But when it comes to race, white women are the highest-paid anti-racism and DEI trainers, directors of DEI offices in charter DEI committees, and bestseller books.

Because white women know how to use that white power, white outrage and pretend that gender identity and sexuality buffers white power, white powers never buffered ever.

It’s never buffered. It’s never reduced. And this is why people need to understand it. It can’t be convenient, it can’t be situational. It can’t be based on a New York Times bestseller because again, New York Times bestsellers are still based on white people being the biggest consumers.

 All of that is still the same routine of minoritized people only being free if given oppression, and permission. If your condition, then it’s, you’re, you’re asking, you know, you think of Oliver Twist. Say, please, sir. Going to have some more.

I would. I would always say that people always know when they’re contributing, which includes contributing through politeness. Because being smiley and polite, now means your emotions matter the most. And I explain this a lot. I just think of many instances such as now we can still access the postcards of black people being hanged from trees and white people posing eating watermelon.

And you know, first of all, watermelon does not originate in the USA. But you know, these ideas are that if white people smell around us, if white people use a polite voice, we’re supposed to not notice. That the school curriculum in literally every K through 12 and college, and university, including terminal degrees, and medical degrees around the world are controlled by European white

I tell people this, that’s why I talk about white history, white mathematics, and white sciences, including when forms of Asian sciences are incorporated. The idea is that you’re supposed to think that white people and especially white men, with coalition and collaboration with white women, are the main founders, the main developers.

 Despite hundreds of thousands of years of all this knowledge being known, it doesn’t have value unless discovered and considered worthwhile by white people. For teachers, I, you know, used to teach undergraduate students and students and teacher master’s degrees, who unfortunately I was often either the first black teacher, first black professor, or the first.

 A person who told them what they were taught in this education program sucks. You know, they were very comfortable because they were like, they had their teacher certification, they had their full-time teaching job. And I said that’s the same problem in K12 as it is in colleges and universities where you know, a certain narrow scope of knowledge based on a demographic cultural power majority that are the determinants of intellect.

Decide that that is the expertise. And then when challenged regarding that, and this happened when I was still faculty in North Carolina as well, when challenged regarding that, people get uncomfortable because now they have to challenge their internal self and question why they felt so accomplished when they weren’t oftentimes even learning about their own people’s knowledge accomplishments, like indigenous people.

 If you’re not learning indigenous history, indigenous sciences, and indigenous mathematics, including the books that you find in some places, including free online, you have to question, why are you furthering that. By teaching that to every generation, and now people are like, well, well, I do hashtags, I do book clubs.

 I am writing a new book. But again, I tell them, being in charge of changing curriculum means you have to get past your one-book list. You have to get past that one class because if you are changing the outcomes for your students in one class, you’re still having lunch with the horrible teachers every day, knowing good and well that their curriculum sucks

And they’re complying with horrible accreditation policies. Accomplishing nothing in progress. They’re complying with the library’s policies and the superintendents’ policies. How can you all be friends? You know, how can you be friends in PD together? You smile at each other, sitting beside each other at a PD and everyone’s like, yeah, I learn so much, but you know that it’s going to be the same nonsense. I’ll be grown.

Why are you all acting like this? Is kindergarten on the playground? I’ll are grown. But then you want people to celebrate teachers. You want people to defend teachers during Covid, but a lot of teachers have not been outraged about anything. Until Covid, maybe they wanted a teacher’s union to talk about salary.

But it is very rare in every school district across the nation to find teachers who’ve been outraged about the actual curriculum. Even when families and communities did protests and with the school boards, the teachers were always like, you know, you better appreciate and respect how I do.

So now we’re supposed to ignore that for centuries and pretend that teachers have now. Centuries of oppression. With the work that I do for 365 diversity, I tell people to demand changes. You have to understand this is not about a book club. This is not a New York Times bestseller. This is not about celebrating those famous DEI trainers who are getting paid $30,000 for nothingness.

This is about what you are changing and if you’re not willing to risk parts of yours. That could be your family not getting along in your friendship circle, or your career change because now you’ve got deal breakers of what your employer’s doing. Like you’re mad at the government, but you gotta be honest about how your school is complying with the government.

Mad at your medical facility where you work. But you got to be understanding how your medical facility has perpetuated five centuries of medical racism and laboratory experiments as well. You can’t choose to lack peripheral vision and, and be conscious.

People have to do their part reasonably in their lifetime. It’s just like when we’re talking about anti-capitalism, capitalism is about exploitative labor and harming people. It doesn’t mean that you can’t have a business. It doesn’t mean you can’t profit. 

People assume that being against capitalism means you’re against wealth building. I always have to explain this to people. Dismantling oppression and exploitative labor. Does not mean that you can’t build profit. Because pretending they have to go together implies that every employer around the world is harming somebody, which is false, right?

Building wealth does not mean you have to be a millionaire either. There Are different kinds of wealth, and so this is where a lot of adults express their outrage. When we talk about equity, actually I tell people about it.

Your entire life to insult me because I’m not insulted. No matter what people do when they create anonymous email addresses and block their numbers to send harassment, it never insults me. It’s five centuries of data. It’s a social experiment to show that people are angry.

Because they don’t know much. They haven’t read much beyond what they’ve seen in their schools on social media. They want to not be held accountable for not knowing, but then they want to claim that they’re teaching generations like you don’t know, not you, but you know, people don’t know.

But then they’re teaching falsehood in schools, so that’s the problem. That’s just ongoing. So that’s why I tell people about mine. Unapologetic, just as black work has been for centuries based on hundreds of thousands of years of black knowledge that have been shaped, of course through being enslaved.

And so that’s the work. It’s not comfortable. It’s not just based on white outrage like, you know, white people still talking about the whole of January 6th, 2020. Thing, what? 2021.

I tell people your outrage can’t just be based on something that’s more violently overt like that. It has to be like there’s stuff happening every day and it can’t just be based on something that’s now the popular topic to discuss.

 It’s very common as black people to do this work, which again, black people have done this work for centuries and taught courses about this, and done training for generations.

It’s often the case that black people in particular will try to not even mention white people because we know the moment we say white, white people. Including white liberals, white democrats, and white progressives, they will. All of a sudden there’s an outrage because they’re offended that we don’t use abstract, vague terminology.

A lot of black people have tried to not talk about white people at all. However, we learn that when we don’t specify white people, it perpetuates what sociologists term colorblind racism. One of the more popular social Textbooks, not textbooks, excuse me, but Dr. Eduardo bene silver’s book, racism Without Racists.

You can find one of the older additions for free online, and download the PDF it addresses white people and white accommodating people. People who can pass for white or, or be considered white accommodate what it means when people pretend to be race-neutral.

I don’t see color, which is insulting because it’s usually white people who say that, but it’s also ethnicities and cultures around the world who have had to accommodate white-dominant societies.

Spaces, schools, employers, and they’ve had to subscribe to this falsehood that we all are just blank slates. We’re like robots with no culture. And I tell people, you would be offended if someone said they don’t see your gender. Like if you tell a man. I don’t see your manhood. You might get cussed out.

Because that’s an insult because he would feel like, especially cisgender men would feel like they’re being minimized, that now they’re going to be treated as quote-unquote girly. That’s how they’re, they become very anti-women in how they try to reiterate their manhood. For most other identities, whether it’s religion or anything else, people can grasp how we don’t have to pretend neutrality.

We can acknowledge, understand, and learn about differences and similarities across humans for hundreds of thousands of years around the world. It’s when we talk about five centuries of racial categorizations that were created by white people to put hundreds of thousands of years of people into categories for trading for capitalism and Enslavement. 

That’s when people, particularly white people, also connect with colorism, also light main people. That’s when people say, well, let’s talk about class issues. Let’s talk about socioeconomic status. The problem is political parties. It doesn’t vary by race. Everything varies by race.

 Just like everything varies by gender, everything varies by sexuality, including when talking about health conditions, including when talking about genetic links with health conditions, reading abilities, and school curriculum, everything varies by race, just like everything varies by everything else, and it’s called on racism when white people, in particular, try to lead this off by saying no, and they call us racist.

First of all, there’s no such thing as racism against white people. There’s no such thing as reverse racism. It was in the 1980s when you go when you watch old episodes of Phil Donahue show that Phil Donahue allowed white people to declare white people as oppressed, but that’s back in the eighties On VE show as well, you would see these shows had this hot topic of angry white people who want to declare themselves racially.

That’s why I tell people, sociologists, particularly black sociologists, and indigenous sociologists, we don’t use the European white dictionary definitions and their terminology to define racism. A lot of times when people try to challenge us, they’re like, well, Webster says, and I say, that’s not an analysis, that’s not a power-based analysis.

That is instead saying that just because a white person is offended, they’re pretending to be. That is saying that just because a white person is not included in everything like a white person is not hired by every job application, a white person is not brought into every school based on the college application that’s saying, oh, it’s because I’m white. 

Reverse racism also became a popular phrase during the eighties because of affirmative action claims. And so white women are the biggest benefactors of affirmative action since the 1980s. But the idea that white people had was that affirmative action is an example of racism against white people. It’s this, again, this notion that white people created everything worthwhile, and white people, therefore, control everything.

 If anyone is familiar with Dr. G Oyster, who is a black woman who’s a biracial, black and white sociologist. She wrote the book Race in the Invisible Hand, in which she specifically was examining black men as compared to white men in this working-class workforce. 

The outrage that these white men had when they felt that having more and more black men in their workforce, competing against them meant that now white men were being omitted from something that belonged to them.

The fact that this land is stolen. This land became the USA because of terrorism. We are here. I’m not here on a cruise ship or an airplane. We’re here because we’re descendants of enslaved Africans who became the USA Canada, South America, Caribbean, right? We built this land. We built colleges and the universe.

 We built this industrial revolution and all that stuff. Deidre Royster, Dr. Deidre Royster explains what it means when white people perceive that threat to their power and they want to declare themselves as being oppressed and removed from something that should be theirs unless they permit us to take it.

You can think about that in terms of sports, since the horrible Super Bowl is coming up, right? I don’t watch that nonsense. And remember when we talk about the origins of the NBA and the NFL, these used to be a bunch of white men, right?

Just like when we talk, I used to tutor black men football players. And these universities across the nation intentionally market by going to mostly poor black schools, particularly in Florida and Texas, where they have particularly black boys, but also black girls who oftentimes will be struggling in terms of reading, in terms of comprehension.

We’re talking about standardized tests that are not culturally conscious in the first place. And schools realize that they will benefit from black children who feel like they won’t be able to go to school unless they become an athlete.

When I became their tutor, it was interesting because a lot of these students had been taught all their lives. All they know how to do is throw the pigskin. And here I am as a black woman who specializes in not just tutoring them for that class, but as a sociologist and criminologist with a background in criminal justice, I tell them, I’m getting you prepared for life choices.

Meaning, I don’t want you being tortured, hurting your body, hurting your brain, being a different form of enslavement of black men upon. It’s a different form of enslavement. When you look at how the NBA NFL went from being a bunch of white men to being mostly black.

That also came with white people’s outrage on one side, white people are like, why do I now have to see a bunch of black men? Then when people learned that the NFL and NBA make more money by forcing black men to do all this work than they made when it was white men, that’s it.

 I tell people, you know, I grew up watching the NBA back when it was, you know, Larry Bird, Danny for Three Magic Johnson grew up bar my favorite players and so like Dominique Wilkins, like the slam dunk contests and all that, but that’s before that true transition happened to what the. MBA represented, and then the wealth of MBA owners and players changed.

A lot of times when people understand what I explain in terms of a sports way, I’m like, okay, now, now apply that to your school district and notice the salary increase of the decision makers, school superintendents. Meanwhile, people in the communities need to ask for an audit. Where is this money being spent?

Because it’s not changing the accreditation for the good, good way. It’s not changing standardized tests. The book publishers that you’re using are still very white-dominant and telling you falsehoods regarding history. If people could understand when I. Sports as an example. They should understand when we’re talking about music like II my brothers and I are products of predominantly Black Richmond Public school’s eighties and nineties.

What does it mean when you’re teaching classrooms of entirely black children? Things like Robert Frost and the prologue of Canterbury Tales? It’s cool for us to learn this European stuff, but we’re a bunch of black children. Why should I not come out of this knowledge about Langston Hughes?

James Baldwin, Audrey Lord. I mean, we have five centuries of black poets in the Western Hemisphere alone and hundreds of thousands of years around the world. I’m a classically trained harpist and pianist, and it was a black woman harpist, who got a black girl harp group together. Because she wanted to counter, she wanted to teach us about the origins of black HARs around the world. 

But it took her doing that because she knew that we were not taught about the history of black people before enslavement. We were defined only through oppression. Therefore, it’s. Still unfortunately happens when you talk about black people, Let’s talk about slavery. Let’s talk about being lit.

Talk about Jim Crow. Let’s talk about oppression. Incarceration, and athleticism, but not about sciences, mathematics, laboratories, and universities. These are not, these are not created by white people. Oh, that’s why I just explained to people, if you understand the problem. The sports industry is done.

Understand the problem with the music industry. Understand the problem with the school industry and schools are an industry, including K through to public schools. These problems are the same everywhere. They just look different, but it’s the same underlying issues, including capitalism.

Capitalism always requires racism, ableism, sexism, hetero centrism, you know, cis genderism, homophobia, transphobia, all of those are also interlocked with cap.

That’s five centuries of white dominance around the world, right? The world is about 12% white, but yet controlled by white people, including in nations where there are no white people, except when you’re looking at the publishers and so forth, right? So that is the core of anti-black. And racism again.

We have had five centuries of black people being told to forgive white people, to explain to white people, and to teach white people. Black people have done generations of racial justice training and presentations. We’ve taught about this in classrooms. No matter what white people say and do to us, they can get us terminated from jobs, they can get us murdered, they can be police officers killing.

We’re supposed to still say, well, change takes time. voters die, right? Black people. We are five centuries of being told, including by other black people, that we have to be patient no matter how much we’re tormented, no matter how much the white version of everything we learn in schools, no matter how much we are even murdered, harassed, patrolled by.

The idea. Is that we are here on earth, but will be rescued in the afterlife as long as black people remain focused on the goal. And Whoopi Goldberg is an example of that. Antisemitism is the label declared whenever black people hold white Jews accountable. As white Jews ignore the origins of Judaism.

 Which includes Jesus not being white.  This is, you know because this is where I always compare white Judaism to white sacks and Protestantism. After all, they often use the same images of Jesus. A tall, slender, very pale white man, with long hair. Oftentimes the fanciness of blue eyes, it’s so awesome, not the actual Jesus that, uh, historical counts depict

Whoopi Goldberg said something that’s not accurate. Nazi Germany, Adolph Hitler, what they did was based on genocide, ethnic cleansing, and the notion of quote-unquote, real whiteness. Pure whiteness, which is also why Adolph Hitler, Nazi Germany focused on reproducing pure white babies, basically laboratories where they just kept reproducing pure white babies, right?

The pale is the better, the blue are the eyes, the list goes on and to, and that’s the genocide of course, even before the unfortunate holocaust. Of sending people to camps and starving to death and burning people to death. Before that, there were other ways to prove that these are not pure white people.

 We’re going to control and torture you. And of course, some Jews in Germany proved to the Nazis that. Yes, I’m Jewish, but I’m white just like you. And unfortunately, they had friendships with Nazis. That’s an unfortunate example of how we tell people if you are minoritized within this group and you are trying to impress the oppressors, just realize that while you watch your people getting murdered, controlled, and tortured, the oppressors will turn on you.

Remind you to stay in your place and they might murder you all, which happened to a lot of Jews during that time. Whoopi Goldberg said it was false. It is true that Adolph Hitler, Nazi Germany was doing this notion of Aryan blood. There’s no such thing as Aryan. Of course, there’s no such thing as Angle Saxon.

When we use that terminology, it doesn’t mean it’s historically factual. It means that that’s the core of five C. White dominance, and it’s how like the Irish, the Jews assimilated intentionally into racial whiteness. Also, what Whoopi Goldberg said is accurate in terms of how most white Jews tend to depict Nazi Germany and depict the Holocaust, including when you’re in synagogues, including when you go to Holocaust museums

They often do not highlight the role of race. Like they might mention something that they were not considered pure white. But they don’t then discuss how white Jews are not race-neutral. And I’m saying this as someone in whom I specialize. You know, I have a family who is black Jews, and I always have to specify black Jews because when I say I have a Jewish family, people think I’m biracial, black, and white.

Because unfortunately most people, especially in European white parts of the world, including America and Canada, can’t fathom Judaism. That’s not a bunch of white people. Like even when they see traditional forms of Judaism with images in New York of men with long beards and so forth.

These are depicted as very light melanin, very white-passing, if possible. Yep. And they don’t think about the darker Jews. Middle Eastern Jews, and Ethiopian Jews, who are also in synagogues. Thankfully, some synagogues in the past 20 years have started doing racial justice training to challenge white Jews, but many white Jews are offended by that.

What they’ll say is Judaism. Same thing Christians say. Also, white Christians ignore the origins of white English acts and Protestantism that falsely threw around King James’s version of the Bible around the world, including on the content of Africa. And that’s the foundation, of slavery as well.

A lot of Christ White Christians will say Christianity is not very by religion, but of course, it does. Even multi-multicultural, multiracial churches are very white. Including in the version of Black Gospel that they use. We’re told to surpass race by focusing on God. But I always tell people that religion is the same kind of institution as schools.

It’s the same kind of institution as police and law enforcement agencies and government entities. When they say religious institutions are protected from tax paying and all that, this is a deliberate, you know, step. It’s not just spirituality and faith-based, it’s formal institutions and organizations with decision makers, people building in money

Therefore, as with everything else, it varies by race. It varies by gender. You’re more likely to find synagogues, mosques, and churches led by cisgender heterosexual men. So what Whoopi Goldberg said was not accurate. However, what she said, is accurate in terms of how most white Jews depict the Holocaust, although they might say that this was a form of racial-ethnic cleansing.

They often won’t admit they are racially white and their synagogue is almost entirely a bunch of white people who are Jewish. When you look at it. Jewish organizations, Jewish non-profits. It’s mostly white Jews. Rarely will you find Ethiopian Jews, Middle Eastern Jews, and the list goes on because most Middle Eastern Ethiopian Jews understand that this synagogue is not for us?

This non-profit is not for us. You can go on the website and see a bunch of white people who are Jewish. Sitting at each other, right? So what Whoopi Goldberg said is false in terms of the Holocaust was about race. What Whoopi Goldberg said was accurate in terms of the color-line racism that’s also perpetuated by white Jews.

So what Whoopi Goldberg said was not anti-Semitic, and this is another example, of reverse racism. When white Jews claim that everything is anti-Semitic, it’s the same thing as white people claiming everything is.

Reverse racism or racism against white people. White Jews have a tendency when offended by something that black people say, which goes also far back to Dr. WB Dub. Boise’s words regarding Judaism are that we are being anti-submitted.

This is interesting because what black people say about Judaism as a religion, as an institution of black Jews, pertains to Middle Eastern Jews. It’s not anti-Semitic if we’re talking about racial variants and racial inequities within Judaism.

When white people are mad at Whoopi Goldberg, it’s the same routine. We’re expected to forgive white people for centuries, for everything white people do, including if white people do a harmful surgery in a medical facility and we die because as black people, we’re expected to have a high pain threshold, right?

 We’re supposed to forgive that, right? but instead of white people learning what Whoopi Goldberg was saying, learning, which means black people have written about. For centuries. Like it’s not in their bookstore, it’s not in white people’s bookstores and on their bestseller list. But black people have explained this.

This is an example of Whoopi Goldberg getting punished. That’s not shocking because that’s how white people respond to particularly black people. That’s how white Jews respond. Black Jews. You know, middle Eastern Jews pretty much understood what Goldberg was saying. You know, they might have been like, eh, what you said was false.

You shouldn’t have said it. But they pretty much probably did not declare antisemitic. The antisemitic declaration is because of the interlocking whiteness and Judaism, you know, the centuries of white Jews. Accommodating whiteness and eventually assimilating into whiteness. The same as the Irish who became white after being indentured servants.

They claimed they were enslaved during Tre Act slavery, but they were not. They were indentured servants. And I just also want to end by saying over the decades, Whoopi Goldberg has also said that she subscribes to acts. Aspects of Judaism. I mean, they’re, they’re punishing Pi Goldberg because they know that white outrage is the only outrage that matters.

It’s white people of every political affiliation. White outrage is the only outrage that matters despite black people being big consumers on social media and other media outlets. They know that white people are, uh, particularly white Jews, own big parts of ABC, and other aspects of Hollywood. And all of the news.

This is the factual reality of history and current facts, right? Mm-hmm. This is stuff that doesn’t matter what the textbooks say, it doesn’t matter what people talk about when comfortable, because they have to accommodate white people’s feelings. This is factual, what I’m saying, unfortunately

Predictably, a lot of white people will listen to what I’m saying, including white Jews, and they’ll declare me racist and declare me as antisemitic. And this is why I tell people racial justice never happens we waste time accommodating white people’s version of everything and only doing things based on what white people want to hear at any given moment.

 So those of us who don’t accommodate that, those of us who speak factually, and this is black, people have done that for centuries, we’re to blame. That not being to blame, you know, it’s like when we talk about men will blame women as hating men. When women demand gender justice. It’s the same kind of dynamic here, but it surpasses a race because no matter the oppression, white people are at the top of the umbrella.

You know, so like black LGBTQA, people, indigenous, Asian, non-white, Hispanic, non-white, Latinx, LGBTQA. People oftentimes have difficulty with the same issue because it’s like, here’s an oppression, but then white people still say, okay, I’m oppressed like you are, but I’m still white. The same routine over and over again pertains to Whoopi Goldberg.

But what I do is I make sure you do not subscribe to things, express things, and do things. And then say, I am Kenya’s friend. I’m a Miss colleague. We learn this in Dr. Dennis’s class. No, you did. Don’t try to use me as an escape and excuse.

This is where I hold white people accountable, but I also hold every racial and ethnic group of people accountable because if anyone subscribes to white power for the purpose of keeping the job, like a lot of people say, I can’t challenge white people.

I’ll get fired. I say, I understand we all have bills to pay, and racial equity work does not pay your bills. Like if I tell people if they became wealthy by doing racial equity work, then. You’re not doing racial equity work. Oppressors are never going to make you wealthy to reduce their power. That’s just not how humans operate.

 Right? Like men are not going to say, I’m going to pay women to reduce power from men. So like DEI training, all that stuff, it’s, and this happens at universities, K through everywhere. It’s mostly white women who get paid the most.

Black men are the second paid. When talking about whether it would be Goldberg or anything, It’s just an example. The same thing happened on the show, the talk with Sharon Osborne. Sharon Osborne did what white women have centuries of doing. It’s when people turn around and say, wait for a second, you pretend to be, you know, part of this coalition to make changes, but now we’re putting it on you.

Sharon Osborne thought that crying was going to change some things, and when that didn’t work, Shannon Osborne got angry. Right? And we’re supposed to be like, okay, now we’re poor, Sharon.

 That’s supposed to say that it was literally centuries, like when I watched that video. It’s not shocking. You start off crying and that doesn’t work. Then you get mad and you’re like, I blame all of you. And you know, it’s like, come on now, Sharon Osborne, go sit down

That’s interesting. I don’t have individual-level racism, so I don’t call white people individuals. Like when white people say and do things, I don’t say you’re racist. Because that’s another distraction for centuries. Because the whole design is for us to spend our whole lives debating with white people as to whether they as an individual are racist.

This is something for you and your husband to think about. Instead of that poll, well, that’s a racist thing. Instead discuss, here’s why. What you did was problematic, not just based on personal opinion, but how it has implications based on race and varies by race.

I mean, it’s a good learning process, but then it’s also, you have to also understand that being a talker in that regard is also exhausting. It is. Right. Because it’s. You’re this constant teacher and you know you can love your family, and love your friends, but then you learn.

You love your workplace, for example, but you learn that there are a lot of things that we have to ignore. Yeah. Because black people were depicted as angry, we’re depicted as constantly thinking about this. Like we wake up in the morning, go to bed at night, we walk around looking at white people at the grocery store, like, you picked up broccoli, that’s racist.

Like that’s that false depiction of black people, right? But no, literally for centuries, we have been taught by our families, and we’ve been forced by white people to ignore 99% of the things that white people say. And. And I’m saying this as a black woman with a Ph.D. who’s been a professor for years.

Who’s done community work for years, who’s been on the board of directors for mental health organizations, suicide, who, all this stuff I’ve been called all types of racial slurs. I’ve had white people contact me to call me Dr. And N I G G E R, and I’ve had white people, in my classes, file complaints. I’ve had white colleagues say things, if, if black people paid attention to even half of what white people do to us from childhood, then we would just be mentally unstable.

We would not be able to have jobs.  It’s impossible to have a career. It’s impossible to get through school. Even at HBCUs and indigenous schools. Those are white-controlled. Those are white people’s funds. Like I always tell people, indigenous schools, and HBCUs are controlled by white people, just like women’s colleges are controlled by men.

 I think we had that natural understanding within our relationship that he doesn’t want to be married to someone like that. I don’t want to be someone like that. It’s kind of, it’s kind of works.

And that’s the thing about, that goes back to deal breakers we were talking about, right? We’re deal breakers.  A black woman with a disability. I’m also cisgender, and heterosexual. My friends who are within the categorization of LGBQA, have deal breakers regarding me.

I have to watch what I say. It’s not about offending people because even if people laugh at a joke with you, it doesn’t mean that there aren’t any implications of what you said. And this is, that’s tokenism, right? Because a lot of times white people will say, well, my black friend thought it was funny. Or my black friend agreed.

That, or I see black people who love confederate statues, that’s always at tokenism, like, you know, like, instead of citing that person and using as this symbol, I mean, that’s like the equivalent when we’re talking about domestic violence and people will say, well, some women like to go back home after being beaten.

Like, no, it’s, it. That’s not how this is shaped by power. Do you know? It’s like that. There’s so much that goes into it. So that’s why I tell people you have to have deal breakers. Like my friends with an LGBTQA have deal breakers regarding me, and it’s not their job to explain everything. Like if I say or do something that’s a deal breaker, they don’t have to give me a formal letter to say, well, this is why we’re blocking your number.

It’s 100% my role. To dismantle my power and dismantle the power of other cisgender heterosexual people in my family, in my friendships, in communities, in non-profits, where I collaborate in police groups. If I have to be around police people, I mean like literally everywhere it’s. This is why I’m anti-biased.

We pretend that, oh yeah, that police officer gave me a ticket for no reason. Eh, you know, life goes on. I tell people bias training is a waste of time, and they’re done by the two groups that harm the most medical and health professionals and police departments. So bias training was effective.

 The people that. And abuse us and fill advocacy, wouldn’t do it. Yeah. They’re the ones that do and it doesn’t work, so. Yep. So that’s why I tell people it’s about more than just running people’s mouths and seeing who’s smelling or frowning at any given moment. That’s not how equity works. I love that.

Well, thank you so much. We’re going to wrap up this episode and I love it. I think we can talk about this all day, so we will continue, but thank you, Dr. Kimya. I am very excited to listen to the next two episodes with you on it. Thank you.

I’m excited. And remember the next two episodes we’re going to give people examples of what they can be doing to make some more changes.

Beyond having opinions. We’re, we’re, we’re the put your money where your mouth is?

Thank you for listening to the Determined Mom Show. We appreciate you. And we would love for you to leave us a review on Apple Podcast.