This pandemic. As part of our Program Series in conjunction with our exhibit, my america, we welcome layla assad. [applause] her book, me and White Supremacy grew out of an online effort to get people to disassemble how they benefit, and people who leave liberation for others to follow. She is an author, she lived in doha, and theyre excited to announcement this new book has released as number eight on the New York Times best seller list. [cheers and applause] and number 88, number 88 on usa today. So, with that, welcome. Thank you so much. Very happy to be here. Are you on . Not here. Oh. Here it comes. There it goes. Can you hear me . No. Can you hear me . No, will you grab the third mic . Sorry about that, a sudden technical that has never happened before. [laughter] its cause the tv is here. [laughte [laughter] you can hear me, right . So im going to ask a question and hand this mic over to layla so she can hear you. Im going to start with this fascinating work book and book and really great exploration of a topic that we, you know, are all interested to talk about more tonight. But in this book, youre asking white people and particularly white people in the United States to confront racism, and this can be an uncomfortable thing and can you specifically say what youve used to tackle this as a writer. Its interested ive been asked so much on this tour. Before i embarked on this work, if id known what this journey is ahead of time i might not necessarily have chosen it. The work i was doing before, i was a life coach and a business coach. I wasnt doing anything controversial or you know, anything that would make people uncomfortable. If anything, i was like come, i will take care of you and help you grow your business. But in 2017 when the charlottesville, you know the unite the right rally in charlottesville, it was a turning point moment for me. I remember seeing the images of the men marching in the street, we can remember, torches, the racial slurs and everything and it was like a light clicked over for me and i had things that had been brewing up inside of me for many months about things i was observing in the Life Coaching space, the spirituality wellness, personal growth space that i could see w was with White Supremacy, and people like me, and people in the room were majority. Why was that the case . Was it that people like me didnt do this kind of work or were we being excluded as being the experts, the leaders, the credible people. So i wrote a letter, an open letter called, i need to talk to spiritual white women about White Supremacy and i was addressing things that were brought up within me and asking people in that space to look at. You say you want to change the world, heal the world. You say youre all about love and light. You say you dont see color, but racism is running rampant in this space and we need to have a conversation about it. And so i got started on that journey through this letter that went very viral, very, very viral, and so fast forward a year later, one night im just thinking about, what have they learned in that time since we started having this public conversation . And i grabbed my phone and started writing, what have you learned about you and White Supremacy. I thought what is White Supremacy and what had i observed of it and experienced of it and started listing out dozens of these things, white silence, policing cultural appropriation, white fragility dozens of the prompts i realized wasnt a single post i was going to share to my community, but rather, was a journey. And so i created this 28day journal i and posted it on instagram. And 28day journey to explore White Supremacy and your complicity. I thought fun, right . [laughter] i thought not many would want to go on this journey. So its been an incredible journey because it came from a place of the anger and grief, from charlottesville and what i was seeing, within the curiosity of what had they learned. Amazing. You started this on social media, as you describe. Which i i feel a very millennial way. [laughing] of writing a book. So what made you then want to try to convert the social media experience into a book . Is that anybody in this room who is taken the original instagram challenge . It was an incredible experience. It was for the first time people having very public conversations around the own unconscious racist thoughts and beliefs. It, ive never seen it done before in that way. It wasnt behind a a pay wall r in a private setting. Anybody could come on my page and read while visiting said. I knew from day one this was a very special thing that was happening and had to pay attention. I knew by the end it had to become a book. Because there were people who are watching the challenge who were too scared to join in, and i knew they wanted to do the work but they were afraid. And because of the transmissions i had seen i knew it had to go beyond a challenge which i knew i would never run again. [laughing] never doing that again. But it was so incredible that it had to go beyond that life experience. And so i decide to turn into a workbook, and a great thing about doing that was i was no longer constrained to the instagram caption size. I could write at length. And i learned some things. I didnt realize how hard it would be for me and for the people i was asking to go on this journey. What i did the book was let me just prepare you for what youre about to experience, and let me equip you for a journey that would be very uncomfortable so we included extra things. Having gone through this in those, pages to help you get to the notion that this is not light work. This isnt something you can do without real happy about effort because its going to ask you some really hard questions. Yes. Now, the exercises that come in the workbook, obviously when you did them online you did than any particular order. You had to think about here is day one, dave two and asking different, more challenging questions each day. Somebody starts and says im good, good. Then they start seeing themselves, they see their complicity, start seeing these issues. How did you decide when youre doing it the first time, what was right order and did the change when you put into a print book . Or did it modify . What were those decisions . And night i received the download of what the challenge would be, action received dozens, i wrote dozens of these things down. When we started day one which was the next day and i woke up and thought oh, no, i said i was going to do this thing and now i have to actually do it. From day one when i was like let me just choose the easiest one which is White Privilege because i know people a part of this term so its a good starting point. As a begin to see what people were engaged on that day one post i was like oh no, you have to make it makes sense. The thing that comes next has to build on what just happened. Because at first it was like i said it was like before, at the next day. My plan had been share them in the order i received them in. But it did make sense to do that it is going to be a sequential journey. And so i was very intentional you today about what was going to come next. And that same order and the same prompts have remained the same from the challenge to the pdf workbook to the hardcover book. Its the same. But you were definitely composing that order as is happening. Absolutely, absolutely. And the responses you were getting. One of the main things that was important to me was not to do week two, the day eight to 15, thats a hard week. Thats the week we look at racist stereotypes, antiblackness, cultural appropriations, the things that most wellmeaning people do not want to associate with racism, dont want to admit to. If i had started that in week one, most people would have shut down. Because consciously the way that many people see themselves is im not racist. Because i know who races are and theyre the bad people, the ones who marched in charlottesville. Im not one of those people so i cant even hear this. When week one we thought what i started with the basics and what those do is allow you to understand the White Supremacy is not a french thing that on some people do. Its actually this whole system and hold belief in this consciousness that all of us have been conditioned by in different ways. So when you get too weak to you are more open to the idea that maybe i do have antiblack thoughts, maybe come so that all these other things that seem to resonate with things i know i have done and said and thought. On that same line you were talking about how the people were speaking and that was something you guide which challenge you put into the next and i started to order things. The other thing you mentioned in the book is the difference between the book and the challenge was it wasnt just your voice out there. As you are posting these things people responding online and then some people who might even work you through the issues a white person trying to adjust or confront or deal with this, there were other people chiming in, women of color, other voices ever adding adding to the conversation. How did that influence you when you went to create the workbook . The Biggest Surprise to me was that out of nowhere black women i knew and didnt know showed up to help facilitate the work, voluntarily, and he didnt have to do that. I instinct was to try to protect them. Dont look at this. You dont want to read this. They helped facilitate the work. They collectively have been so integral to me. I have two of my closest friends here who are sitting up front who are black women, and its that sisterhood and that working together that is so integral. When i went from the challenge to the workbook, now i was alone, and it was just me. But the support they get and the challenge help me to push more as well. Because there were some voices in the double like no, cut the bs. Go deeper. It helped a lot. This is to some extent a book that has definitely your writing but a communal support behind it that had influence on it. So a very different type of i think thats important because nobody does anything alone. Nobody does anything alone. Were seeing in the American Writers Museum of the good to see the legacy, the body of work so many incredible writers, some of whom are just everything to me. And i stand on their shoulders because the work that they did has so inform the work that i d do. A big part of the book is this notion of journaling. Youre asking people to write, asking them to engage with these questions and write the responses. My question becomes, why is a more important for them to write their responses than to just have a conversation with someone around these questions or think about it . Why do one of journaling to happen . I have to make answers to that question. The first one is that when i first started having conversations about race and i wrote that open letter, it was like a street battle every day on social media, trying to convince white women, no, this is real. You do do this. And it was exhausting. It was really exhausting. What i found instead of telling, asked, it slipped thinks. It made it easier on me and it made them more open to having the conversation. And so thats one part of it that the other part is when we just, it were just thinking about, if you read the book and think about it, to keep things at a very intellectual level where you are processing here but youre not processing it inside. We were talking about racism, racism is not an intellectual study. Its peoples lived allies. Its their lived experiences, and so that has to be matched with a lived embodied experience of trying to understand your own unconscious thoughts and beliefs. Because they dont theoretically harm people of color. They actually harm people of color and so it is important to use your whole body to put pen to paper, to write out and ring to the surface things that when you just consciously think about them are not there immediately. I agree fully, the power of writing to make things happen and change. In the introduction to the book you talk about the need to be a good ancestor. Can you tell us what that means, what does the phrase mean to your . Good ancestor i think saved my life, and helped me to be able to sit here and had this conversation with you now in a way im able to have it. When i talked about, when i first started doing this work and how hard it was, i went from being somebody who, like i said i was a life coach. I was very optimistic, very hopeful, very positive. And when i wrote that letter and began to experience the very nice women who were in my community, sadly have this reaction of what is called white fragility, which is that many white people are not used to having nuanced and complex conversations about race. So when the conversation is brought up, they have a very sometimes violent reaction to it. Defensiveness. Its getting angry, its getting up and walking away. Its saying things they would have never said, they couldnt even imagine that think thing e come out of the mouth. And so i went from being that hopeful, positive person to very negative, very pessimistic, very hopeless it because i couldnt see if something, if this work had been done for the amount of time that we know its been done, which is fighting for te liberation and inequality, its been going on for so long and i could read things that had been written by writers like audrey lord and read it and think she couldve written this today. Its its exact same experience e had today. And i needed something bigger than what i was saying to allow me to continue on the journey here because i couldnt do it in place of resentment and hopelessness. So this idea being a good ancestor went beyond me. It became about my children and my descendents. It became about people who will come after im gone. And so i use that, i have it on the cover. I host a podcast called good ancestor because i needed it but whats been really interesting is so may people have resonated with it for themselves. Are people who have White Privilege in particular, what it inspires or what it activates within is this idea that i didnt create White Supremacy, but obsolete benefit from it. White people who came before us didnt fix it, didnt dismantle it, didnt change it. Perhaps i can do what i can do right now in this lifetime to crate a different future for those who, after im gone. And so its been, as i said selfishly it was for me but it has helped so many people. Thats great. Can you tell me or us some of the people you feel left the kind alexi you want to leave . So easy for me to answer. I was actually before i said the people that we all know, i i wd actually come the first people are my parents and there are they are living ancestor today. When he got the news of New York Times just as we are writing here, you know, i called my husband first and then i called my mom. They are in the tarmac into em but it will come up and told them because they, everything that poured into me makes me what i am today. Everything. This spirituality. The ability to write and speak. Everything i get from them. So they are first. After mom and dad, writers. We sat set over the waiting isn image of Octavia Butler on the wall, and of the book that open and close it with her words. She is a huge influence for me. Audre lorde as as a midget esoc black feminist women who did this liberation work. A sciencefiction writer, but i spent i think it was 201820 meeting through her entire collection, and if you read the parable of the sewer, the character in that book is what inspired me to want to be a good ancestor. And she documents everything, this character and it reminds me how important words are. The power of words because the libby on us. They lived beyond us. Thats great. So you mentioned there is a months work of content in this book and really its more than a months worth of content because you discuss the idea people being able to walk through it and in a 20 day cycle but they can go back to it. You would want them to step through it in the order which its kind of put the first time. We cant go over all of these concepts tonight and cordial wl to buy the book, and to do it yourselves and do the work as you mention its really important for people to do the work if you want to engage in this content. I just want to ask you about three that i think a i read through it, hit me. You can see yourself in them. Yes. I want to know how you define them and how do you want someone like myself to respond to these concepts. The first one is white silence. Okay. Just it to zoom out a little b. The aim of this book is for people to understand that White Supremacy conditions and is infiltrated all of us, and what racism is isnt this what we can all point to and say that person is being racist, but is these unconscious thoughts and beliefs and behaviors which you take as normal or its not that bad, and then understand know, those things actually perpetuate White Supremacy and or they maintained it in place by their nonaction. So white silence is one of those things. Being silent when you see something racist happening, and again im not just talking about seeing somebody called someone a racial slur, but seeing somebody being mistreated, you know, racially regressed in normal situations and just thinking is it worth it to say anything . Is at my place to say anything . Does anyone even notice if i say anything . And then just choosing to stay silent. That actively keeps it in place. Its not neutral. Not a neutral be able to be in the face of racism here and so i was saying earlier you didnt create it. You didnt great White Supremacy. Nobody here of life created it but you maintain it and whiteside is one of the ways you maintain it. As an agent to you that thing just scroll through facebook and you see something from someone you knew in high school or use something from a Family Member and you ask the question, am i going to this here on social media . Am i going to that are different ways you can talk yourself into silence, talk yourself into saying nothing and making a case for why, is it worth it, and moving on. Did anybody get harmed . And moving luck wasnt that bad . With a just having a bad day . Maybe they didnt mean it that way. Theres different ways to talk you into white silence. I thought that was one picky also talked about the concept of white sintering. Can you tell us about that and believe . Yeah. I mean, White Supremacy, thats, lets define what it means. White supremacy means people who are white are su