Welcome. Town hall. My name is Jessica Baloun and i am the community and outreach manager here at town hall. On behalf of our staff, well as our friends at third place books, it is my pleasure to welcome you to our tonights presentation with David Glasgow and jane park. As we get underway, i would like to acknowledge that our institution stands on the unceded traditional territory of the coast. Salish people, particularly the duwamish. We thank them for our continuing use of the natural of their ancestral homeland. Were very glad to have you join us tonight. The presentation will run for about 60 minutes, including q a. And when we get to the q a, you may ask your question, the mic over here and or you may use the qr code with your smartphone to submit your question digitally and youre joining us virtually at home. Then we will also post a link in the chat so you can add your question at any time. 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And finally, you can purchase your own copy of tonights book at our at the table hosted by place books and we, if youre interested, i had a book club that was very fun that we met before the show tonight and there is a flier about next book club that you can pick up at the third place table as well. If youre interested. Kenji yoshino is the chief justice earl warren, professor of constitutional at the nyu school of law and the director of the Meltzer Center for diversity, inclusion and belonging, a graduate of harvard, oxford and yale. He specializes in constitutional law, antidiscrimination law and law and literature. Yoshino has been published in major academic journals and has written the los angeles times, the New York Times and the washington post. He makes regular appearances on radio and Television Programs such as npr, cnn, pbss and msnbc. He is the author of three books covering the hidden assault on our civil rights a thousand times more fair. What shakespeares plays teach us about justice and speak now Marriage Equality on trial. David glasgow is the executive director of the meltzers center for diversity, inclusion and belonging and an adjunct professor of law at nyu school of law. He cotaught the courses the law school on leadership diversity and inclusion. He intended the university of melbourne and the nyu of law, where he received the david h. Moses memorial prize and the George Carlin award. Prior to joining the Meltzer Center, he practiced Employee Relations and antidiscrimination law in melbourne, australia, and then served as associate director of the Public Interest law center, nyu school of law. Jane park is the ceo of athena consumer and all women founded a special Purpose Acquisition Company as well as ceo and founder of toki, a social, unsustainable gift wrap company. Prior to founding toki, ms. Park was the ceo and founder of the online first beauty brand julep, as well as the founding director of the ceo forum for education and technology. Yoshino and glasgows latest book say the right is the subject of this talk tonight, so please join me in welcoming kenji yoshino, David Glasgow and jane park. Thanks for braving all the traffic. Apparently thats out there to be with us tonight. Were so excited to have conversation. I am so excited about this book because reading it, its amazing to find people who are so brilliant and thoughtful, write something that is so useful and helpful. Its like when a michelin star chef makes you a great burger. But i and please, were going through add own questions, especially if i think theres a qr code that you can submit questions to which will show up in my ipad right. All right. Well, without further ado. Can you tell me, david, why did you write this book . So we wrote this book because. Kenji and i work at a Research Center at nyu, and we consult with a lot of organizations and individuals how to build inclusive cultures. And we kept noticing problem recur over and over, which was that a lot of who want to get involved in diversity and inclusion efforts are terrified of saying wrong thing. And so what happens is they withdraw in fear out from participating in a lot of efforts as allies that we wish that they would participate in. And so we wanted to write a book, a shame free book, giving people some tools for how to navigate these tricky conversations about identity so that people could overcome their fear and show up as allies. How many times a day do you think you worry that you are saying the wrong thing . Oh, all the time. And you wrote a book. So, kenji, why do you think were finding it harder than ever to have conversations about our identity experiences. Yeah. So, first of all, jane, thank you so much for being our conversation partner tonight. Thank you to seattle town hall and thank you all for coming. Its so exciting to here with you. So i think theres actually a very hopeful reason why these conversations seem to be everywhere. These days and may seem even less avoidable than there were even a decade ago. So, you know, i think this as what kind of Political Writer matt iglesias, the great awakening, where he says different about the past few years is you see a lot of allies, people going to black lives matter rallies. Men going to the womens march on washington, you know, straight and people being allies so that Lgbtq Community and thats a really hopeful sign it means that you know to quote yale professor jennifer richardson, theres been a democratization of discomfort where it used to be that the more kind of minority group, subordinated group had to bear the entire discomfort of a conversation. So that if i said something inappropriate as a man to a woman, that the woman would have to sort of suck it up and, you know, deal with all the discomfort from the conversation. And i would be kind of blithely oblivious to the fact that, you know, anything had been in that conversation. So now with the rise of allyship and a more kind of culture of being more diverse and more inclusive as a society, i think its balanced out a little bit. But the upshot of that is that, know, we do experience some discomfort, right . When we enter into these conversations and they do seem to be everywhere and i think what david and i are trying to do in this book is to say, you know, i think were constantly told that you have to be uncomfortable in these if you want to get anywhere. We do believe that to some extent, but we dont want that discomfort to turn into such as david was talking about, that you opt out of having the conversation altogether. It seems like your book is really helpful with helping people expect discomfort to sort of anticipate it and, know what to do about it. So david, you write in the book that no one can afford to sit out on these conversations sort of related to what kenji was just saying. But why do you think that now . So just think about all the different of life that we enter into. And i think youll sort of see that these conversation patterns are becoming increasingly inescapable. So in workplaces, its much more likely now than at any other point in history that you get training on, implicit bias or privilege or opportunities, participate in Racial Equity forces or in gender equity efforts, or that the company will, in pride marches, or that therell be a chief diversity officer. Theres been a huge surge in hiring of actual professionals. So in workplaces, these conversations are happening certainly in universities and other educational contexts in high schools. I mean, even down to Elementary Schools and preschool schools now are having conversations increasing about issues of identity and diversity. So theres certainly all the way through the pipeline, youre going to encounter it. And then cant really remember a time when we looked at our morning news feed and didnt encounter least some conversations about identity. So it might be all of the movements that kenji was talking about, like black lives matter or the Metoo Movement or rights, the controversies around critical race theory, trans rights and so forth. So if a consumer of the media and you go to dinner or you talk to people at our family barbecues or around the thanksgiving table, even there, i think when youre not in the workplace or in school, youre increasingly likely to encounter these conversations and especially because younger people coming, a lot of these organizations are driving these conversations as well. So some of the we spoke to in writing the book told us when gen z has come into my organization, they want to talk about the White Supremacy in, my company. And thats extremely confronting for me as a manager and so i think a lot of that generational pressure is happening is also making this conversation inescapable. What are some of the kenji what are some of the most common mistakes that people make in conversations about identity . I love all the examples that you have in your book because i think we can all put ourselves into them. But maybe you could share some of the mistakes that youve made in your life. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, i borrowed this from my wonderful colleague at nyu, where she begins many of our classes by flashing up a slide, a professor. And she says, look at this terrible professor. This professor misgendered, a trans colleague. Confuse two people of the same ethnic group with each other and call them by each others names. This professor had a syllabus was like stock towards, you know, historically groups without any justification for that. Thats professor laughed at inappropriate and you see where this is headed the next is and that professor with me right so i can raise my hand and cop to four of those bad actions and say i too have engaged in those activities. Which is not to say im proud of that or i dont want to get better, but i think its a really useful point to say this is of us. Like none of us gets a set on the sidelines. And to say, im just here as an ally. If you think about it as like as the ally there, the affected person, and then theres the source of noninclusive behavior. Thats a game of musical chairs, right . Some days here, the ally, i thought some days or the affected person might get happened to. Me and then on other days youre the source of noninclusive behavior like you did it. And so because this is a game of musical chairs, were all going to fall into these errors at some point. I think it first thing that we can do is just to admit were all fallible in this domain, as in any other. I thought it was really interesting that, david, that in that trio you talk about how have to have empathy for the source and that is, you know, of all the different ideas in your book was one of the most startling to me that that you would call for that and. Can you talk a little bit more about why you know, if we have empathy, shouldnt we save it for the affected person . Why . I have empathy for the source. Yeah. Well, one of the reasons why we think that you should, you know, empathy and generosity toward the person who makes these mistakes is because someday that source will be you and me and everyone, right . Were all sources that are in inclusive behavior sometimes. And so we want to create a culture that helps people learn and grow from their mistakes rather than immediately, you know, canceling and condemning them for making mistakes. Now, of course, you know, there are going to be instances where, you know, condemning someone or canceling them is appropriate. I mean, kenji and i dont lie awake at night worrying about the plight of harvey weinstein. I think there are instances where a harsher approach is called for, but because all of us make these kinds of errors in our everyday lives. We think that that sort of generosity is an important point. Its also an important starting because people into these from different places right. Its much easier to know how to navigate all of these Difficult Conversations about identity if youve been steeped in that world for your entire or is not everyone is exposed to all of the diversity of the society growing up and might may not be able to navigate some of these issues until learn. And so we want to create that kind of a learning culture. And i think for all those reasons we think, you know, start from a place of generosity, show the person that youre learning to kenji did that you make mistakes as well and thats more likely to lead the other person to actually grow and improve past the mistakes that theyve made. When you are building on that a little bit, what do think of this book as like an ally ship one on one, or is it a201 or where do we enter . And if we want to be better allies, which is actually, you know, read the book, first of all, but in you know, if you could summarize sort of what what do you say to someone who says, i want to be a better ally . Yeah. So i mean, the book is sort of divided up into sort of seven principles and we think that all of those are relevant to go to ally shop. So the first one is just how to avoid the four most common conversational tropes and then the second and third chapters are about how to build their resilience and your curiosity, we think, are the two sort of cardinal virtues of ally, the fourth and the fifth chapters are about how to apologize when youve wronged somebody and how to respectfully when someone when you simply cant, you know, offer them the ally ship that theyre seeking. And then the sixth and the seventh chapters are, how to be a good ally to the affected person, obeying what we call the kind of platinum rule. And then the seventh principle is the one that you just discussed with david in a the importance of being an ally to the source. So the good things in there for whether you are someone who has thought about this issue a lot or are really new to the whole topic and thinking how to do it better. I love the chapter on apology is david so can you talk about what makes a good apology and how your are different than what is out in common public culture . Yeah, i mean, apology. This was a fun chapter for us to write. You know, apologies can seem quite amorphous sort of how earth do i put together this authentic apology but we actually think that they can be broken down into a relative easy to remember four step process, which we call the 4 hours of apology, which is recognition, responsibility, remorse and redress. And so is about recognizing the harm. So often people fail to recognize the harm by using we call an if apology. So they might say im sorry if youre offended or im sorry if youre upset or im if you take it that way and kind of suggesting that the harm is uncertain or you might not have actually caused harm. So recognition is about recognizing that responsibility is about taking personal responsibility for causing the harm. So this one, people often mess by issuing a apology. So theyll say, im sorry, but i was tired. Im sorry but i didnt mean it. Im but im not a racist, Something Like that. And so a classic example of this is roseanne barr, who famously wrote highly tweet. And then when she got in for it, she said, im sorry about, it was two in the morning. And i was ambien tweeting. And so that kind of, of course, didnt take responsibility. It just sort of blamed it on the ambien. Right. So thats the second step where you have to talk. The the other example, though, because my favorite person in the world next to you, kenji, but has tina fey and you talk about how a good apology works there, right . Yes, exactly. And so she sort of did do a bad apology by sort of saying, you know, im sorry, i didnt mean its right or im sorry, but my intentions were good. Right. And when she was called out for of her mistakes, but eventually what she achieve, she gave an apology that followed the for survivor recognition of responsibility of remorse and redress. This is when some episodes of her tv show came out that were that had actors in right and she ended up apologizing for that taking personal responsibility for it expressing remorse for the error and then asking nbc to remove that episode from circulation. And so thats the redress component, which is to actually take tangible steps to repair the harm so that an apology is not just all talk. And so we like tina feys apology there because she kind of completed the 4 hours without even realizing it. And i think thats what we really like about that. I think an interesting thing about that is, it makes it easier to accept the apology, too, because theres an action you know, and ive really thought about that, how hard. It is sometimes just to say thats okay when you dont really feel like thats okay. But if you have to say something, someone says im sorry and so if there is an action, then its really great. After an apology, if you can say thank you. So really that the goal is to do an apology that you can say thank you too. Like thank you for doing that. Absolutely. When you think about the pop culture today and we sort of theres this whole idea that like, were not allowed to disagree with anyone. And, you know, can you even sort of call people or, you know, to have a real conversation asian anymore . How what do you think about that and how does your book help with with that . Yeah. So we sort of die on the hill of saying that you have to be allowed to disagree. Right . So you know, our heart broke one day when after one of the events at our center one of our favorite students came up to us and said, like, you know, oh, like, you know, i made a comment, you know, during this presentation. And one of my colleagues thought, you know, that i was being sexist, you know, but i disagreed with her. Was i allowed to do that . Like, for goodness sakes, its like an institution of higher learning. Youre training to be a lawyer you have to be able to disagree. But we got where he was coming from. Some