Workplace Journey in Anti-Racism & Anti-Oppression (EP.04)
Last Updated
December 28, 2019
In this episode, we discuss Fractured Atlas's organizational journey towards anti-racism and anti-oppression. We'll also discuss how unlimited vacation days, shared leadership, and fully virtual organizations can further this work, while at the same time creating new and different challenges.
Guests: Nicola Carpenter & Courtney Harge
Co-Hosts: Tim Cynova & Lauren Ruffin
Guests
COURTNEY HARGE is an arts administrator, director, and writer originally from Saginaw, MI who has been working in the service of artists for the last fifteen years. She is the founder and Producing Artistic Director of Colloquy Collective, an emerging theater company in Brooklyn, NY. Courtney is also a proud member of Women of Color in the Arts, and a 2016 alum of both APAP’s Emerging Leaders Institute and artEquity’s Facilitator Training. She holds a Masters of Professional Studies, with Distinction, in Arts and Cultural Management from Pratt Institute. You can find more information about her at www.courtneyharge.com and find her on Instagram and Twitter at @Arts_Courtney. Her credo (#HustlingKeepsYouSexy) is not merely a hashtag; it’s a way of life.
NICOLA CARPENTER works on the People team at Fractured Atlas, where she finds ways for tools and processes to better align with the organization’s purpose. She believes in tools so much that she sets personal OKRs every quarter. Prior to joining Fractured Atlas, Nicola worked for a variety of arts organizations including MoMA PS1, Walker Art Center, and Heidelberger Kunstverein, and she still has a particular love for museums. Originally from Minneapolis, she received a BFA in Art from the University of Minnesota and continues to stay creative through knitting and sewing clothes. She is currently in too many book clubs, but still somehow finds time to read books about organizational culture for fun. You can find her on Instagram and Twitter at @colacarp.
Interested in exploring the topic further? Check out Nicola’s collection of Resources for White People to Learn and Talk about Race and Racism.
Transcript
Tim Cynova:
Hi and welcome to Work Shouldn't Suck, a podcast about, well, that. I'm Tim Cynova and on this episode, Racism and Oppression, more specifically Anti-racism and Anti-oppression. And the work we need to engage in to co-create that future world. What can individuals, teams and organizations do to embark on and continue with this journey? We're joined by two people, Courtney Harge and Nicola Carpenter, who have a wealth of experience working together and separately to bring this work to Fractured Atlas among other places, the company which we all currently work. Both of their bios are included in the episode description and we'll learn more about their backgrounds in the work during our chat today.
Tim Cynova:
And their bios are packed with interesting work to things that might not make the cut. Both are originally from Midwestern States. That started with the letter M in both among a myriad of other fascinating things. Enjoy talking about fabric, shopping for fabric and talking about shopping for fabric. Conversations that I've had the privilege to listen to and have made me more conscious about the sourcing and sustainability of my own apparel choices. Courtney and Nicola, welcome to the podcast.
Courtney Harge:
Thanks Tim. Happy to be here.
Nicola Carpenter:
Yeah. Same. I'm excited.
Tim Cynova:
You both are deeply engaged in Anti-racism and Anti-oppression work, working together at Fractured Atlas in separate and other aspects of your life. How would you describe your activities?
Courtney Harge:
My activities, this is Courtney, are connected to one, just making work, a sustainable place for me as a black woman. I've been in a lot of working environments and so I tend to approach it like how can I thrive in whatever space I'm in. And so that includes running the POC Caucus, previous included facilitating the Anti-racism, Anti-oppression committee, in Fractured Atlas. It also includes doing the actual work that focuses on women of color and existing as a black woman in 2019.
Nicola Carpenter:
And I increasingly having these conversations realize that a lot of my motivation is to make sure that Courtney doesn't have to do it all by herself. And so at Fractured Atlas, I am currently the liaison for White Caucus and have been for the past three-ish years and kind of helped with Courtney form the current format for the Anti-racism, Anti-oppression committee and outside of Fractured Atlas. Just making the knitting and slow fashion communities that are quite White, better and more inclusive places.
Tim Cynova:
Starting with Fractured Atlas, can you talk a little bit about the journey that the organization has been on? Fractured Atlas is a non-profit arts organization with a public commitment to being an Anti-racist, Anti-oppressive organization. You both are deeply involved in that work to people unfamiliar with the journey that Fracture Atlas has been on and the work that we're doing. How would you explain it?
Courtney Harge:
I can offer that it's been a process. I walked into fractured Atlas five years ago, actually. At the beginning of January, 2020 it'll be five years for real. And the statement was made that Fractured Atlas was committed to be an Anti-racism Anti-oppressive organization and as a new employee, my concern was what does that mean? There's a lot of language thrown out, anti-racism, anti-oppression or diversity equity and inclusion work or diversity and inclusion work or there are a lot of words that happen, but what are you doing? And so for me, that moment kind of five years ago I was saying, okay, what do we do?
Courtney Harge:
And engaging with leadership thing about how does that play out when you're saying the thing and releasing the statement, that's one thing. But what does it mean in your policies? What does it mean in the everyday existence? And so there definitely been some steps that we can talk about more specifically like what some of those steps have been. But it has been ultimately the goal of we say this thing and then what do we do to back up the thing that we say. And that is I think manifested in a variety of different ways over the last five years.
Nicola Carpenter:
Yeah. And I think that at Fractured Atlas, it was started as a staff driven effort even before I started working here. And for a long time was talked about in relation to our mission, specifically the eliminating practical barriers. And I think that framing kind of helped the organization figure out that it wanted to make this commitment. And then yes, ever since then it's been figuring out how do we live up to this commitment because lots of organizations have statements, but do they actually do anything? Not so much.
Courtney Harge:
And to list some of the things we did before I joined members of the staff and the leadership team specifically to The People's Institute for Survival and Beyond Anti-racism Training. There was commitments to address hiring and making sure that was operating both in from a functional lens and from an anti-racist lens. There was commitment to all staff trainings as we persuaded with outside facilitators that kind of grew in length and purpose and really trying to create a baseline of what is everybody's understanding of what it means to be anti-racist and anti-oppressive. And then a variety of different tools that weren't necessarily specific to anti-racism but were specific to If we are understanding that something we were doing is an equitable, what can we throw at it? What resources can we throw at it to make it more equitable, to move in a way that is directionally correct.
Courtney Harge:
And so being able to recognize it doesn't have to just solve racism. Sometimes it feels like when organizations make these types of choices, they have to do a thing and it has to be, this thing directly says that this is anti-racist and it's like, or this thing addresses an equity as a whole. And sometimes they're like, well, if it's not anti-racist or if it's not specifically like about race and it's not fixing the inequity, and it's like, no, sometimes you can just do things better. That also as a byproduct will help support everyone. An example I'm thinking of is the Unlimited Vacation day policy. That's not an anti-racist policy. So much as it is something that allows work to not suck and having a workplace that doesn't suck actually becomes a tool to address inequity because people can enjoy their work. People can then bring their whole-ish selves and or can be more supported and that sure isn't an anti-racist policy. However, it is a policy that informs and it's connected to our values.
Nicola Carpenter:
Yeah, and I think that that's something that I've also recognized recently is that we've been on these kinds of concurrent paths of striving to be anti-racist, anti-oppressive and then also making work suck less and they have been kind of happening in parallel and at some point realized, Oh they actually do work hand in hand. I don't know. I kind of love that they work together and, working on The People team. It's exciting to think about policies in that way. But I don't know if Fractured Atlas would've ended up now if we didn't have that component along with it.
Tim Cynova:
One of the things at Fractured Atlas that you two get a lot of questions about. Because you both have written about A Race-based Caucusing that we do. We have People of Color Caucus, we have a White Caucus that meet on monthly basis and a lot of people want to talk to you both about why do we caucus and then how does that process look practically.
Courtney Harge:
The first thing simply, we started caucusing because we met with an outside facilitator who was like this is the thing you should do and we were open to the idea that we should do that thing. And I say that story, I want that to be an example of like some of it doesn't have to necessarily be driven from a giant external space or even a like morally motivated space. This is a moment of we needed to try something and somebody was like, this is the thing. And so we did it and it has been working for us. But yeah, it wasn't a deep compelling reason. It was as a result of working with a trainer, this is what they suggested and so we did it.
Courtney Harge:
Our approach, however, was very one I think driven by who Nicola and I are there ways in which we sat next to each other for a long time in the office and our energies are compatible. And so there is a bit of kismet in the sense of we both try to be really thoughtful about spaces that we cultivate and spaces that we operate in. And so given the opportunity to cultivate these spaces in accordance with these values and to do that in conversation with each other became an opportunity for us to be thoughtful about what these individual spaces were for the individuals who you're serving, but also what they were in relationship to each other.
Courtney Harge:
I facilitate the POC Caucus liaison for that caucus. And the practical thing is once a month we meet based on people's self-selection, people's identification, and there's an hour of space that's given to really talk about what is needed for the people in that space. And we recognize the White Caucus operates very differently from the POC Caucus. And I can give some insight into what the POC Caucus is like, but it is ultimately a container for POC to process whatever they need to be processing without the White normative gaze. Sometimes you just need a space to be a Person of Color without White input or White commentary or White observance.
Courtney Harge:
And knowing that hour becomes a very precious hour. Knowing that that's the rule of the space and it becomes an hour that can also be very casual. It can be very supportive. It can get really serious, but knowing that this is a secure hour in the day to just not have to engage with Whiteness as a whole, as a property makes it a really powerful space for us, for the POC who are experiencing and engaging with it.
Nicola Carpenter:
Yeah. White Caucus, as Courtney mentioned, as a different objective or our only objective is to talk about whiteness, which there are professional spaces where there are only white people, but there aren't that many professional spaces of white people talking about what it means to be white and what whiteness is and how white supremacy culture embeds itself in our organizations and work. It's really a time of education and there's often homework involved. We take notes and just in that structure there is some accountability involved. All of the notes are sent to the POC Caucus after the White Caucus finishes just so that people know what is happening and just have some transparency there which is kind of built into that structure and on the structured side.
Nicola Carpenter:
The White Caucus meets for one hour once a month. POC Caucus meets for one hour once a month and then Courtney and I are currently the White Caucus and POC Caucus liaison and we meet monthly and kind of I present what White Caucus did and what the topic was and go over the notes without the expectation that I received any information back from the POC Caucus, which I think is another important thing built into the structure.
Nicola Carpenter:
Also, at fractured Atlas kind of early-ish on the POC Caucus, gave the White Caucus the opportunity to ask questions and so we often try to come up with questions, but we also don't have the expectation that those questions will necessarily be answered.
Courtney Harge:
To speak further on that. The practice of accountability in this case being unidirectional like this, accountability goes one way in a way that everybody is aware of and everybody understands really is one of the strongest tools in de-centering Whiteness as a focus and in really practicing what anti-racist, anti-oppression values are because White supremacy culture centers White comfort and centers White authority in a variety of ways and so having to make an act of practice of de-centering White authority.
Courtney Harge:
Yes you White people are required to report and be accountable to this other group who actually owes you nothing in return. One is a challenge. It is worth knowing that that is a struggle. It takes a second to really understand because it's really easy to fall back into this concept of fairness, welfare reporting and we should be reporting and it's like, no, this is a corrective action. We have to in this space practice something different.
Courtney Harge:
And also even in the POC Caucus very early we had to de-center whiteness. The POC Caucus was receiving the White Caucus questions and they were spending time dealing with them and it's like there are no White people here but we are talking about what the White people need. Again, it's like this is not right and so it became a commitment that even if we don't have an agenda, whatever the White Caucus has asked us is the last thing on the agenda as a practice and so also communicate to the White Caucus like there is a strong chance we won't get to you.
Courtney Harge:
That's again by design this one hour of no, we are not centering Whiteness at all and it became the consciousness of the practice. This'll be the last priority and that makes engaging with it the highest priority. Making it a point to not bring that into the space unless we all choose, unless we all kind of consent.
Courtney Harge:
Making a conscious decision to deal with whiteness. And sometimes it's been like these are the questions from the White Caucus. Do we want to engage with them? Do we have something else we want to talk about? Now it's like, okay, we can spend our hour with this, but being able to choose become super powerful as opposed to trying to replicate this idea that this is a work meeting and so we need to be productive in a way that really is just replicating the ways that white supremacist culture says that we are productive and it's like no, taking care of ourselves is productive.
Courtney Harge:
Giving us the space is productive even if it's just the hour to exist. We've actually sometimes met at the in the first five minutes and decided that what we wanted was this an hour where nobody could deal with us, nobody could talk to us, so we keep the hour on the calendar and don't meet. The hour is to take care of us. It's an hour where we are not accountable to anybody else and that has been helpful, particularly in the transition to virtual.
Tim Cynova:
We recently realized that we have been caucusing on a monthly basis for three years as of this month, December, 2016 and it's right now it's December, 2019 which initially blew my mind.
Nicola Carpenter:
I know so weird how time works.
Courtney Harge:
Yeah.
Tim Cynova:
But that has been three years where we've not missed a month caucusing. As you also mentioned, there have been mandatory all staff trainings around depression, around racism, around disability and accessibility that have been part of this work as well. We've done things like the negative interaction document that would be useful to hear I think, but think about caucusing and looking over three years. What do you make of that besides the exponentially increasing passage of time is really not great.
Courtney Harge:
The POC Caucus is going through a really active transition and we're figuring out what that looks like. We still want the space below three years of having this safe space has actually meant that we need it less or at least we need it to be different. Where it was primarily a space for us to gather and support and hold each other up in a particular way that still exists there. But the parallel of three years of being able to do this work and three years of the organization actively making work, not suck and three years of just life and being able to create better tools, has meant that the container that we previously needed is very different from the container that we need now. Particularly again connected to this virtual work now that employees have more control over what their working space is like now that it is not the same coming to the office in engaging with the White gays in a workspace in a particular way.
Courtney Harge:
How we can serve each other and how we can support each other is different and what we need is different. And so that's been fascinating to really consider what happens when you get to the next level of doing the work. Three years of support leads to people feeling more supported. Now what nobody you do when there's still clearly issues to address or there's still space to address. But if the fundamental kind of baseline is people feel safe and cared for and able to exist more fully with themselves at work, then how do you go to the next level of care and respect for the space? And that is a conversation we are having in the Caucus.
Courtney Harge:
It is worth, we're all kind of all on board with we want to protect the space, but we need to really make sure that you're actively using the space and the resource that it allows us to have. But that was fascinating. That's just a question we never, I know three years ago we didn't think about what does it look like when we don't have to have this space?
Nicola Carpenter:
Yeah. I was recently looking at all of the topics that White Caucus has talked about in the past three years and it's been really interesting to see the topics that we come back to, the topics that change. Also, I was surprised at how many, I have facilitated, this is a slightly funny story, but the only reason why I became the White Caucus liaison is because when we were working with an outside facilitator was wondering who would be the White Caucus liaison. I knew that it was someone that needed to find some time on schedules and would meet with the POC Caucus liaison once a month and I knew that was either going to be Courtney or another person that I also enjoy talking to.
Nicola Carpenter:
It was like, "Okay, I can schedule stuff and I will for sure have a meeting with this person once a month." Great. Sign me up. But when no one was volunteering to facilitate, I quickly then became the facilitator for a lot of them and which I'll do and it's fine, but I don't think it's the most helpful for the organization to have only one person do that. We found an outside facilitator. Also, it's hard for someone within the organization to keep the group accountable. I think that it was helpful to have someone outside of the organization help us figure out what it means to be a White Caucus.
Nicola Carpenter:
And then we revisited and had someone do that again periodically over those three years. Yeah, and I think that we're also trying to figure out how do we get more people to facilitate and how do we spread that out to more people and I don't think that's necessarily something we've figured out yet, but I think it's something that we are figuring out and we do still feel like we have a lot to learn that there is still value in White Caucus and infinite numbers of topics. We're not going to dismantle White Supremacy in one hour a month.
Tim Cynova:
It's been an interesting challenge really because we're doing this work inside of an organization. I know many of our colleagues and coworkers are active in similar spaces outside of work, but having caucusing inside of a workplace where you also have people who are hourly and only have so many hours in the week to work. It's been an interesting constraints to have to figure out how this becomes DNA-level part of our organization to have the conversations. It's not the only thing that we've been doing. We think about the three years in the three years at Fractured Atlas that we've been caucusing on a monthly basis.
Tim Cynova:
We've gone from a single CEO to a four person shared non-hierarchical leadership team. We've grown our programs. Whereas you both have alluded to, we're days away from being an entirely virtual organization with team members currently in 12 States and six countries. That's adding an additional component maybe worry, concern that the three of us have talked together and separately about what does this work look like when none of us see each other in person but maybe two to four times a year and how might we need to double down on some of this work so that a virtual organization doesn't benefit white people but we're-
Courtney Harge:
To jump into that. It feels like White Supremacy like fills in the cracks. If wherever we are White Supremacy is the water and if there's a hole in the boat, if you heard mindful about it, White Supremacy culture or oppressive culture seeps into the cracks. It is about how do we engage in once we change but once we pivot into a place that we haven't been so where we don't necessarily know how to identify the cracks, how do we make sure that we are being mindful enough to keep White Supremacy at bay in the spaces that we can now that we are going into new spaces.
Nicola Carpenter:
And I think it also comes down to who do we look to when we're doing things like this as well. Because, I mean we really love seeing what other organizations are doing. And I don't know of that many other organizations who are fully distributed, who are also committed to inter-racism and oppression just based on talking to people. Because there are a lot of people who think that you can't have a conversation about racism on video. But my argument is, well, if we can't have that kind of conversation, how can we have any other kind of work conversation? If we can't do that, then we are not functioning as a fully distribute organization in a way that works. I think that there's a lot of things in here, but I think that we've gotten good at communicating virtually and I don't think it's impossible to have difficult conversations in that way.
Tim Cynova:
... I've had the pleasure of getting to do workshops with both of you always have a great amount of fun. One of the things we often start with is a disclaimer. We're going to tell you about our story. It's not the only story. It's certainly not perfect. We've made plenty of mistakes along the way. We couldn't even follow this if we were to do this again because it's a different place, different world, but what can we learn from other companies? How can we continue to iterate on this and how can we continue to share what we all in organizations have done so that there's more information that people can draw upon.
Tim Cynova:
I'm not sure how to do this thing. I've never read about it, so I must not be possible. I can think about the questions that are next. Well, how do you do it? Or what if the leader in the organization isn't receptive to it or I'm the leader in the organization. What if the board's not receptive to it? Is it possible to even do the work or should I go to a different organization?
Courtney Harge:
I have a lot of feelings about that question. I recognize progress is not linear, but go with me in the sense of like let's say progress is linear and it goes from like one to 10, 10 is the utopia. The utopia of everybody's fine, Everybody's taken care of. No racism, no oppression or whatever. One is the world's most racist organization, you know like the DMV inside of the Klan rally. The worst thing with all the hierarchy, all the terrible things, right? It actually is the same net gain. If you take an organization from two to four as it is. Take an organization from five to seven that gain is two. But the amount of work it takes to get an organization that is starting at two up to four, the amount of effort and energy and resources it's going to take to get you there, so much more than it takes an organization to get from five to seven.
Courtney Harge:
From two to four is still only two deviations of progress, but it's burned through you and for other people and they're still not even on the right side of history. Five is the middle. They aren't even still there. And so organizations and institutions will protect themselves. You are more valuable as a person than any organization or any institution. And so burning through you to get an organization from two to four an organization that is not doing some of the basic things that are just necessary is not worth it, frankly for me. If you can find an organization that's already at five or already at six and then you can use your energy to get it further on the right side of history, that is I think far better for the world and for you than it is trying to get a bunch of organizations that are on the wrong side of history to just be slightly less terrible.
Courtney Harge:
Because if we can tip the scales to where more organizations that are starting at five get to seven, eight, nine, 10 they can then offer pressure as an institution, as a field for these other organizations to change. But the organizations that are again at two three and four they're actually going to spend all their work trying to maintain that. Than they are going to be to like address the field. My short answer is, if you can properly assess what the change is and how you can make it happen in a way that's sustainable, that can maybe last after you leave, then make the change. But if you can't, if it's not going to change, and if you're again operating in the two, three, four level and you're going to burn yourself out trying to get them to make minor changes to quote LeBron James, "Take your talents South beach," go somewhere where you can be appreciated and recognize that frankly the institution will be fine, it'll survive. Take care of yourself over it.
Tim Cynova:
The six, seven, eight reminds me of the pyramid about the three ways you get people to do something or change. The top, being inspiring. You try to get the most people in the inspire bucket and then the next one is motivate. You try to get the next people and do that. At the bottom of that inverted pyramid is coerce. That's the other way, but it's oftentimes, forget it. They will never come along the amount of time it'll take you to get that group to not realize that they will not do the thing. It takes so much time and energy. It's better just to cut your losses and go someplace else or realize that's never going to work. I'll focus on the other areas where I actually can impact to change.
Nicola Carpenter:
I fully agree with that. And I also think that sometimes when White people say, well I can't do this because leadership doesn't want to, or I can't do this because the board doesn't want to. I wonder how much of that is the case. Cause I know that white people like to pass the burden to other white people. Sometimes I like to push back with that and ask, well what is something that you can do in your current position to do something? Maybe you won't be able to get a full staff training without getting senior leadership on board, but there's probably something you can do.
Courtney Harge:
And not everything requires permission. I recognize not everybody is comfortable with taking like work risks and I don't want to advocate or forcing people to do things that they feel are reckless or dangerous, but some of it is just like is the worst consequence of this and awkward conversation. That's actually not a consequence really. It is a mildly unpleasant moment. I guess to follow up on what Nicola's saying, sometimes asking what are the real consequences of this thing? If I like include my pronouns in my email signature, does that just mean that one jerky coworker is going to ask me about it every time? That's annoying, but that's not actually a consequence, right? Or am I going to have to explain it? Yes. Annoying, maybe, but not really a consequence. The impact is that somebody who's receiving your email may feel more open or may feel that you are better understood or at least can have a conversation about it.
Courtney Harge:
That might be it. I think about the ways in which White supremacist culture and work culture and professionalism really maintain each other in a variety of ways. They work to this culture of quote on quote understanding. When I say understanding, I mean this idea that these social norms, these ideas that we just aren't supposed to do this thing, but the thing that we aren't supposed to do is almost always a thing that holds up White Supremacist culture. I'm thinking about salary transparency. Where you're just not supposed to talk about what you make and it's like, well that's just so people can underpay you. That's actually the consequence of that. It's that people get upset because they find out they are being underpaid. And so being transparent actually helps overturn the system. But the norm about not talking about being paid is a thing to support the system.
Courtney Harge:
And so I think about other training that Tim and I did in Dallas. We went to work with an organization and I made the room say the phrase White people just say the words. Because we do a lot of time, we do a lot of work protecting Whiteness by not being able to say that this is the thing that's going to make white people uncomfortable. And we use coded words like donors. We use code words like the board, we use coded words like people. It's going to make people uncomfortable. It's like no, it's going to make White people uncomfortable. And one of the first things we can do is say the phrase White people in a professional setting. And so I could see we were in the room and we're getting pushed back and I was like, we're all just going to take a deep breath and we're going to say the words White people.
Courtney Harge:
We're going to get through this barrier together. And there are some people who resisted. And so then I said, I see some resistance. That means we're going to do it again. We're going to take a deep breath and as a community we're going to say White People and we're going to see that the office didn't blow up, nobody got fired. There are no consequences. We are just, we're going to call the fact that what we're talking about is whiteness is White People. And being able to say that is one of many first steps to being able to address the issues. But if you can't even just say whiteness, White People, White Supremacy, there's so much more really hard work after that.
Courtney Harge:
That like if that's the barrier, there's so many ways in which you're not ready, so it's worth it to know that when there is something you can do, but one of the things might be able to just say, this is a problem because of racism. This is a problem because it's oppressive. This is a problem because it is systemically a problem. It's not just a business problem. It's not just a, well, some people might be bothered by it as a problem because it replicates oppressive systems. Let that be enough of an argument for something to be addressed.
Tim Cynova:
One of our colleagues in the field was speaking at my new school class last year. He has a friend who was recounting the number of years of sleepless nights and stress and worry that people endure for the awkwardness of a 90 second conversation is amazing. You just need to have a little awkwardness for 90 seconds, but you're worrying about, should I say this? Should I not say this? You're lying awake at night asleep or whatever it is. It goes on for years and years and years for just, this is going to be awkward for a couple of minutes or it's going to be stressful. If I do this then I can move on to the next thing rather than have this as a blocker.
Nicola Carpenter:
Just put the information into the Shared Pool of Meaning.
Courtney Harge:
Yay. Shared Pool of Meaning.
Nicola Carpenter:
Tim led crucial conversations training and me and Courtney especially loved the Shared Pool of Meaning and talk about it all the time because it's just so good. It's like if you just put the information into the Shared Pool of Meanings, so many things will be solved.
Courtney Harge:
It's both perfectly accurate and also corny in such a way that it's just fun.
Nicola Carpenter:
Right. It's so corny.
Courtney Harge:
Right and all of the... I mean it's both corny and useful, it is like one of my favorite sub genres of existence.
Tim Cynova:
One of the things we often hear is, well what if we do this work in our organization and we lose people?
Courtney Harge:
I have an answer for this. I'm going to let Nicola go first because I get super excited about it.
Nicola Carpenter:
I was just going to say, well Courtney would probably say you're already losing people-
Courtney Harge:
That was my answer.
Nicola Carpenter:
... And then I was just waiting for Courtney to say it, but I'll just say it anyway. I mean we have this conversation a lot that you are losing people. I mean I think this works for any kind of loss of version. If you're afraid to lose something, how do you reframe that and show that your current situation is also losing something? I mean, I think that some of these questions are helpful, but I think that oftentimes these questions are coming from people who want to make it more complicated than it is, which is whiteness at work.
Nicola Carpenter:
But I think it's helpful to reframe it as also, I mean if you're not working towards being into racist, you're being racist. And so in various policies also people are like, well, Oh this is going to take so much time and effort and how are we going to do this? And it's like, well you're already being racist. So what is your argument to continuing being racist?
Courtney Harge:
I love to make people argue for the racism because very few people... It becomes a fun, like rhetorical trick. But very few people want to be on the wrong side of history. And so if they can talk way out of being on the wrong side of history, they will. And so that's why we get some of these questions around like, well, if we lose people or it'll be difficult or it'll be there. And by presenting the fact that not doing this is racist, so now I need you to make an argument for keeping the racist thing for doing the racism, right?
Courtney Harge:
If you're going to do a racism, choose it, and you have to convince me that that's the better answer, that the racism is the right one, and all of a sudden it becomes much easier for people to do the other thing, because very few people want to go on record and say, I want to do the racist thing. I want to be a racist. There are people who do that, right? Here's a whole subset of people who are like, no, I choose the racist thing and that's fine, but the majority of people who don't want to be in that group when forced to argue for racism won't. There are just ways to talk about the reframing.
Courtney Harge:
You're already losing people. If you have staff of color or even staff who are just uncomfortable with perpetuating racist systems, one, very few people are going to tell you that in their exit interview. They aren't going to be like, PS, this department is hella racist and so I don't want to be here. That's not how people communicate. It's not how people communicate at work. Partially because oftentimes we can't say racism at work. It becomes this proving how racist it was. It becomes this whole thing and it's just much easier to say, I got a different commute or I want a new opportunity or I just got a better offer and it's been really great to work here and now I'm just ready to move on. Those phrases do a lot of work to cover what they want because particularly if they feel like this working relationship with you was over, they are going to invest in the 90 second awkward conversation about saying, well I think you're racist because they're already exiting.
Courtney Harge:
They're already done. If you know that, and if you see that like, hey, we keep losing some really great people and Oh well it's just not the right opportunity. Consider that there's a bunch of stuff that you don't know that may be why they are actually leaving and that's why you're losing them. Just because you're the one donor would be like, well I'm uncomfortable with this and so I'm going to stop because we're an arts organization so I'm going to stop supporting it because you guys are getting political.
Courtney Harge:
That donors may say that thing or that board member may say that thing, but and so sure that looks like that's why you're losing them. But again, there are all the other staff members who are dealing with toxic environments, who are dealing with like racist and oppressive policies are just not vibing with what you're doing because they can see what you value and they aren't going to say that. They're just going to assume that you're not going to listen to anyway and they're going to walk out.
Nicola Carpenter:
I actually think this is similar to when people say, well, I just can't find diverse candidates for this job opening. I like to push back and I was like, why? Why is that? What are you projecting to the world that is causing that? There are lots of people out there, there's lots of very qualified people and maybe there's a reason why they're not applying to jobs at your company.
Tim Cynova:
Yeah, there's 7 billion people in the, I'm reminded of a comment, one of our awesome board members said when confronted with someone saying, "How do we do the work? What do we do and do we need a plan or something?" And she said, "When I decided I want to be a vegetarian, I just stopped eating meat one day." I didn't have a strategic plan. I didn't go into a planning process or anything. One day I ate meat, the next day I didn't. What's the equivalent of that to this work? We often use the question, what can I do right now to move towards what I really want? You don't need to ask permission to introduce yourself with your pronoun. You just do it. What else do you want people to know?
Courtney Harge:
Well, don't be afraid to fail. Nobody's going to fix racism. You can't. We want racism to be fixed and oppression to be fixed, but it is not a one size fits all multi-year analogy is great about how doing things like it is not vegetarianism. It's like, Oh, today we eat meat and tomorrow we don't eat meat. It is like today we're racist and tomorrow we're not racist. Right? Racism is a system. And so acknowledging the ways in which we participate in the system is helpful and knowing that we're all going to fail at some point, but then we have to keep doing something else. We've talked about oftentimes there are policies where like people try to actually nickel a story where somebody is like, we're looking for candidates and we submitted a job application and we just, we just didn't get the right candidates. The assumption is that well the candidates aren't out there, which isn't true.
Courtney Harge:
Because the candidates are out there. Okay, so you didn't do it and so you don't just make the hire. Actually you do the thing where you go back and you fix your process and you come back or you say, hey, is our workplace actually safe for People of Color? Is that why they aren't applying? You have to maybe ask more questions and you might find these failure points that you have to fix that aren't about implementing a EDI program. They are like, "Oh, our hiring is fundamentally problematic." Racist is one of the issues.
Courtney Harge:
Yeah, do things. Know you'll fail and then keep doing them. Whatever you can do, throw everything at it because racism is the train. Everybody likes to think that progress is a train and if progress gets far enough, then we will have fixed racism and that's not true. The train is racism and all we can do is throw whatever we have at it to slow it down a little bit. And so if you threw something at it and the trained in stop it all, keep throwing things at it, you have to.
Nicola Carpenter:
I think one thing that I would want people to take away also is that you're not doing this alone, that lots of people are doing this and any idea that you have, there are probably lots of people that are also working on it. And I think that there have been times in the past years where it can feel slightly lonely. Like if you talk to your friends. I mean especially as a white person, you're talking to friends, they're like, what are you talking about? I don't know what you're talking about. Which can sometimes feel weird, but there are so many people doing so much work and finding those people and working with people I think can kind of counteract some of them. A lot of people are doing it, which can make it less discouraging.
Tim Cynova:
Well, Nichola in the description for the episode, I'll include a link for the resources that you compiled from a variety of places, specifically for white people to talk about race and racism. It's a lengthy, an incredible list of various media. What are the other things we've done at fractured Atlas was to create a negative interaction guide. Courtney, can you talk about how that came to be, what that is?
Courtney Harge:
To go to something I said a bit earlier, sometimes it's not just about doing the thing that is anti-racist, it's about doing the thing that fixes a problem. And so this is an example of the majority of our customer service I've had the time where a young woman of color and we're noticing, just like observationally that they were staying on the phone in negative interactions. Just way too long. And so this is the thing where it's just like customer service. It's ingrained. You're talking to people and this notion that the customer is always right was translating into kind of a racist practice where they were enough members particularly are a kind of White middle-class artists. Were basically using the time to yell at these young women of color. Nobody is saying that. I don't think anybody's making that choice or it's like, I am a white person and I'm going to call and yell at this person because that's just what I want to do today.
Courtney Harge:
That's not how it's going. But it ended up being falling into this customer service mentality that meant that people felt like they could not get off the phone because this was a member and this person was paying or was going to engage in our services, that the power imbalance was automatically in their favor and that if they complained or if they exited the conversation or something, that the institutional power would not support them. Those are the assumptions and I remember having a conversation with our then CEO about it. He was like, why would you think that was like part of the question? It was like there's no way that if somebody's mistreating you and if somebody's like that, that's not it. And I was like, it's easy for you to say that partially as a white male, partially because a lot of white men in power have said that and then have fired people who went against that.
Courtney Harge:
And so it becomes something that people say, but there is a visceral understanding that that's not how institutional power plays out. Even if somebody is saying that that's how it will. And so the negative interactions document kind of came from really understanding that and saying we have to make explicit both what people on staff's options are and what the support will be if they choose to enact those options. And it was very important to me that the document did a few things. One that it gave a variety of options without prioritizing or ranking the options. Because people have different capacities. I'm a talker. I can talk through most things, it particularly uncomfortable or possibly confrontational interactions, but that is a particular skillset connected to my personality. Not everybody can do that. A lot of people, particularly if they are faced with something that is racist or sexist or just outright rude, shutdown and can't process through what's necessary to like continue the confrontation or even to continue the interaction.
Courtney Harge:
And so by having a list of eight different tools, including being able to hang up on somebody, no question to ask, just hang up the phone allowed people to one, be able to trust their own instincts, know where they are in a space and act accordingly. Two, it didn't prioritize one solution over another so that, and if people are in different spaces or differently resourced or if the level of disrespect was different, they can make a different choice and it detailed how senior staff would support them in that space. You hang up on somebody. Specifically right away you don't have to try to justify why you hang up. You can just simply say, I hung up here is the number so that person can't call back and continue to harass or bother other people and knowing that somebody who has more institutional power than you then is responsible for taking care of it.
Courtney Harge:
You don't have to manage both that person and your feelings and your manager. You can just say, I had to walk away from this. This is what's up, and that has been I think, helpful for staff, but it is also really just led to a conversation around how do you trust your instincts and how do you take care of yourself in these interactions that prioritizes the fact that you are the person working here. You're the team member, you have the skill set, you have the information and the customer is coming to you for your expertise. They don't get to both ask you for your expertise and beat you up for it. You can't do both of those things and if we are in community with each other, we can all respect each other and I'll be in community and be equitable in this community.
Tim Cynova:
What are the next things we did with that was that you publish that online. There's a public document that anyone who's a member who is interacting with us can see. If you go to workshouldn'tsuck.co it's linked there, it's on the Fractured Atlas blog. I know of organizations who have taken that and repurposed it in their own organizations as a document to guide interactions, but for those who call in and engage in that type of behavior, it's public. We say exactly what we're going to do and what people have available to them.
Courtney Harge:
Yeah, because it's helpful. Again, I believe in transparency and accountability and sometimes people want to prioritize simplicity and I believe things can be simple. But I think actually it's more important to say this interaction can be complicated. These are all of the tools we have at our disposal to deal with it. And so you knowing that choose to kind of misbehave, then you also know what the consequences are. That is helpful. And so that people who choose to misbehave are making a choice. Are in fact doing that and so they know what that response could be. It becomes, for me also both a matter of consent, a matter of transparency, but also making the implicit explicit is a strong driving force for me. The ways in which I talked about norms and talked about like these things that are understood and it's like, or we can take the understood and write it down. And if we're committing to it, then everybody knows what the rules are.
Courtney Harge:
But our working knowledge is based on this. Well, we just know that this is just how it's done. Again, that's where racism, White Supremacy, that's where it seeps into the cracks. Normally, this is just how it's done this is the racist way we've learned how to do it. And we can make changes, particularly once we take these implicit biases or these implicit understandings and make them explicit and make choices about what they are.
Nicola Carpenter:
I do actually love that to tell people, re-examine anything where your answer is, this is just how it's always been done. Because those are the things you don't necessarily think about. It's not necessarily the obvious things, but those are the things that probably need the most changing or to be explicit. Otherwise, yeah, you get those cracks.
Tim Cynova:
Courtney and Nicola, thank you so much for your time today for joining the podcast for your work you do at Fracture Atlas. Getting to work with both of you on this work and through Work. Shouldn't. Suck and thinking of new ideas to put Work. Shouldn't. Suck on whether it be buttons or track jackets.
Courtney Harge:
I want the tracksuit.
Tim Cynova:
We'll see what 2020 brings. It could be the year of the Work. Shouldn't. Suck tracksuits.
Nicola Carpenter:
With the anniversary gift Tim, come on.
Tim Cynova:
It's a perfect gift to give. It's a gift that says "Happy Fifth Fractured Atlasversary."
Courtney Harge:
Yes.
Tim Cynova:
It's an absolute pleasure getting to work with both of you and I want to thank you for your time today. If you want to follow along with Courtney and Nicola's adventures, you can follow them on Instagram and Twitter at @Arts_Courtney and @Colacarp. It's my pleasure to welcome back to the podcast everyone's favorite co-host, Lauren Ruffin. How's it going Lauren?
Lauren Ruffin:
It's good. And I am still everyone's favorite podcast co-host.
Tim Cynova:
Two consecutive episodes running.
Lauren Ruffin:
Yeah.
Tim Cynova:
In this episode about Racism and Oppression in the workplace, I talked with our colleagues, Courtney Harge and Nicola Carpenter. We chatted about the work that they'd been deeply involved in at Fracture Atlas. I want to get your take as a co-CEO in an organization that you joined relatively early in our Anti-racism, Anti-oppression journey with also perspectives and other organizations doing the work. Want to get your thoughts on what that journey has been like for you and how is it the similar or different or met expectations or didn't?
Lauren Ruffin:
I just think the journey of our organization is sort of watching the personal journey of our colleagues in so many ways. I go back to starting at Fractured Atlas in the summer of 2016 where I feel like I walked in the door in June and was like, "That man is going to win." Do you remember, I was like, "Are we serious about remote because I'm moving to Belize. Do you remember that?
Tim Cynova:
Yeah. I do.
Lauren Ruffin:
And you all were like no, he's not going win. I'm like, "Oh, he's going to win." And I'm moving to Belize. But going from having those early conversations with White male colleagues like you, and it's been, I think really rewarding to watch you and Shawn, your personal journeys as white dudes and quietly Tim, you're like a bit of a radical in a way that like a preacher's son, probably never from Indiana. You've gone from really sort of just thinking everyone should be treated equally, which is a beautiful place to be in. But also recognizing that that's not what happens in the world and standing up at a conference full of white guys and being like, you're not diverse enough and everything you're saying is BS until you get better until you get people of Color on this panel.
Lauren Ruffin:
I mean, I think an organization's journey is really a journey of individuals. I think Fractured Atlas has come a long way because the White people in our organization were willing to do the work and the People of Color and the overwhelmingly sort of Black female population, I would say makes up our People of Color on staff. I think we've been willing to struggle together. And that doesn't really happen, but we have the people on staff who are willing to do it together. And that to me has been the coolest thing about watching it because I think a lot of organizations just don't have the staff or the culture to really be able to struggle together and to make mistakes and to be patient with each other.
Tim Cynova:
We work on the leadership team together. It's a unique group of the four of us and you and Polity do not let Shawn and I off the hook on a thing and it's made real change in the way that I look at my own journey and my responsibilities as a White man and what needs to be done in organizations. You're always helping with, you should read this thing or you probably shouldn't include that quote because that person was a racist.
Lauren Ruffin:
I forgot about that-
Tim Cynova:
... It kind of really-
Lauren Ruffin:
... I'm not a racist. It says that person was an actual Nazi.
Tim Cynova:
... Good and done in a caring way. We're like, Oh God, I had no idea and now I need to yet again. Something I need to add to learn more about and as I go through this personal journey, it's one of those things where the more you learn, the more you know that you don't know and the more that you just need to read more and-
Lauren Ruffin:
I'm always amazed by how our history has been whitewashed and even the history that we think is radical or we sort of take for granted. It's been simplified and it's sort of turned our brains to mush and really stifled our ability to analyze and think and speak and engage with each other critically. And it just makes me crazy. But we could all read, we can spend the rest of our life reading about race and racism and then the more we read, the more we learn that it's not just people of color and black people in particular in this country who have been, a native people who have been really oppressed and held back. But White folks suffer from it too.
Lauren Ruffin:
And I think that's the piece that folks don't really think about. I will also say in the workplace that the conversation that you've had at a leadership team level have been sort of my probably least professional conversations at moments where I just completely blow my lid at somebody. It's been about just like what the (beep) I can't remember who I unloaded on the day after the election. I can't like white guy facial blindness. I can't remember, which one of you white guy said something about let's just wait and see what happens. And I was like, what's the (beep) talking about?
Lauren Ruffin:
I just totally unleashed on somebody and I don't remember where it was but passion and professionalism often walk very different paths. I am like the grace of the organization to put up with me and my mouth when I'm like, this is absolutely unacceptable. It's also something that I think is really unique to Fractured Atlas.
Tim Cynova:
We talk about traits of high performing teams and how trust and psychological safety. I think also the willingness to be vulnerable. I think those are three things that come together that allow us on the leadership team to have conversations that we might not otherwise have in leadership team settings outside of this organization. And I think that's why I find that group to be, well I don't think I'll ever find another group like that in a professional setting. And it's one of those moments where I see this right now and I realize this and that makes it even more special to be a part of that group as you grow personally and professionally because you have people willing to say because they care that is completely messed up.
Lauren Ruffin:
Yeah, it is a weird thing. It's also weird to work someplace where in this particular regard, even though it is not perfect, it's likely to be the, I would say unless the four of us worked together again, you know like after we transitioned from Fractured Atlas, it might end up being maybe the healthiest work environment to do this sort of work in a way that's challenging and respectful and yeah, it's a really good place to be. It's weird to be in the thing. And know that because usually when you miss a job, it's after you're gone and when you left, you're like, man F this place.
Tim Cynova:
It's funny. You're saying, yeah, we could just all work together and be like, "Oh right. We could just all work together and we still have that." When I was a cashier at a grocery store, as my high school job, someone came through and I rang them up and all their groceries equal to $100 and they're like, "I could never do that again." And I said, 'Well you still buy the same groceries."
Lauren Ruffin:
Okay, good to know High school Tim was exactly the same.
Tim Cynova:
What about you said like, "Oh, we could all just work together again." I'm like, "You are right."
Lauren Ruffin:
We could just work together forever. I mean that could happen. It can happen.
Tim Cynova:
Speaking of workplace culture. We recently were on a Slack chat with Courtney and Nicola about the verge article about a [inaudible 00:53:50] corporate culture. It's an article that seems to have prompted the resignation of their CEO. Courtney said it also because she knows I have an away bag. I remarked that, oh God, as an owner of an away bag, I'm now greatly conflicted about I really like my bag, but what does it represent? To which she responded, "I got to tell you everything that we love is tainted, which is why my only brand loyalty lies with Celine Dion." If she's terrible, I'm officially staying in the house for the next 40 years. I did not [crosstalk 00:54:21]-
Lauren Ruffin:
I'm just saying, she's been in public forever and she's amazing.
Tim Cynova:
I did not expect that that was... That the sentence that was going to be a part of our conversation there.
Lauren Ruffin:
What? The Celine Dion point or all your favs are terrible?
Tim Cynova:
No, I did not see Celine Dion coming in that conversation.
Lauren Ruffin:
I think in a future episode we should interview former colleagues of mine and people who've known me forever, who know how I was a stand before stands were thing, for Celine Dion.
Tim Cynova:
Maybe just like a birthday episode for you.
Lauren Ruffin:
Yeah. Maybe it's like this is your life. But for everyone who has a Celine Dion story about me.
Tim Cynova:
Have you ever met her?
Lauren Ruffin:
Oh my God, I can't. Like you said it and my heart jumped. For Christmas one year I got the album that she did with Barbara Streisand. I love her.
Tim Cynova:
It's amazing.
Lauren Ruffin:
Yeah.
Tim Cynova:
This is so beautiful.
Lauren Ruffin:
Yeah, but all your faves are really problematic and that's why I vet my people very carefully because I can't deal with a heartbreak. I'm a delicate flower, Tim.
Tim Cynova:
Oh, well on that note Lauren, thank you again for joining the podcast as America's favorite co-host. And until next time, thanks.
Lauren Ruffin:
Thank you.
Tim Cynova:
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