White Men and the Journey Towards Anti-Racism Series Intro (EP.54)
Recorded
March 15, 2022
In this episode, co-hosts Tim Cynova and Lauren Ruffin introduce a new 12-part podcast series, "White Men & the Journey Towards Anti-Racism," where Tim interviews white men in positions of leadership whose companies are engaged in understanding how racism and oppression are at play in their organizations and the work they do.
Download the accompanying study guide.
Series guests include:
Raphael Bemporad (Founding Partner) & Bryan Miller (Chief Financial Officer), BBMG
Ron Carucci, Co-Founder & Managing Partner, Navalent
Ted Castle (Founder & President) & Rooney Castle (Vice President), Rhino Foods
David Devan, General Director & President, Opera Philadelphia
Jared Fishman, Founding Executive Director, Justice Innovation Lab
Jay Coen Gilbert, Co-Founder, B Lab; CEO, Imperative21
Kit Hughes, Co-Founder & CEO, Look Listen
Marc Mannella, Independent Consultant, Former CEO KIPP Philadelphia Public Schools
John Orr, Executive Director, Art-Reach
David Reuter, Partner, LLR
Sydney Skybetter, Founder, CRCI; Associate Chair & Senior Lecturer, Theatre Arts & Performance Studies Department, Brown University
This series was created to be a resource for white men who might be wrestling with questions like, “What’s my role in anti-racism, equity, inclusion, and justice work as a white man with power and privilege?” and “How might my personal commitment to do this work manifest itself in the organization I help lead?”
Want to explore related resources primarily *not* by white guys? Check out our compilation of 30 books, podcasts, and films. And find all the episodes here.
Co-Hosts: Tim Cynova & Lauren Ruffin
Co-Hosts
TIM CYNOVA (he/him) is the Principal of Work. Shouldn’t. Suck., an HR and org design consultancy helping to reimagine workplaces where everyone can thrive. He is a certified Senior Professional in Human Resources (SPHR) and a trained mediator, and has served on the faculty of Minneapolis College of Art & Design, the Banff Centre for Arts & Creativity (Banff, Canada) and The New School (New York City) teaching courses in People-Centric Organizational Design and Strategic HR. In 2021, he concluded a 12-year tenure leading Fractured Atlas, a $30M, entirely virtual non-profit technology company and the largest association of independent artists in the U.S., where he served in both the Chief Operating Officer and Co-CEO roles (part of a four-person, shared, non-hierarchical leadership team), and was deeply involved in its work to become an anti-racist, anti-oppressive organization since they made that commitment in 2013. Earlier in his career, Tim was the Executive Director of The Parsons Dance Company and of High 5 Tickets to the Arts in New York City, had a memorable stint with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, was a one-time classical trombonist, musicologist, and for five years in his youth he delivered newspapers for the Evansville, Indiana Courier-Press.
LAUREN RUFFIN (she/her) is a thinker, designer, & leader interested in building strong, sustainable, anti-racist systems & organizations. She's into exploring how we can leverage new technologies to combat racial and economic injustice. As part of this work, she frequently participates in conversations on circular economies, social impact financing, solidarity movements, and innovative, non-extractive financing mechanisms. Lauren is a co-founder of CRUX, an immersive storytelling cooperative that collaborates with Black artists as they create content in virtual reality and augmented reality (XR). Lauren is currently the Head of Movement Building at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA), where she focuses on amplifying the stories and activism of the YBCA community. Prior to joining YBCA, Lauren was co-CEO of Fractured Atlas, the largest association of independent artists in the United States. In 2017, she started Artist Campaign School, a new educational program that has trained 74 artists to run for political office to date. She has served on the governing board of Black Girls Code and Main Street Phoenix Cooperative, and on the advisory boards of ArtUp and Black Girl Ventures. She graduated from Mount Holyoke College with a degree in Political Science and obtained a J.D. from the Howard University School of Law.
Transcript
Tim Cynova:
Hi, I'm Tim Cynova and welcome to Work. Shouldn't. Suck. A podcast about, well, that. On this episode, I'm again joined by podcasting's favorite co-host Lauren Ruffin. When I'm quite certain, she will ask me just what I was thinking when I set out to record an entire series of episodes with white guys in leadership roles whose companies are engaged in understanding how racism and oppression are at play in their organizations and the work they do. This is the preamble episode to that very series, White Men and the Journey Towards Anti-Racism.
Tim Cynova:
What follows are 12 episodes where I interview everyone from someone choreographing movement on military grade robots, to the guy who helped invent the cookie dough that goes into Ben and Jerry's iconic Cookie Dough Ice Cream, to a whole host of guys engaged in different and fascinating work. I talk with them and unpack how their professional work currently intersects with their personal work and journey towards understanding how racism and oppression are built into their organizations and how as white guys they're trying to address it. Let's get going.
Tim Cynova:
It's my pleasure to welcome back to the podcast someone with whom I don't think I've physically been in the same room to record for 54 episodes. If you're playing along at home, this is our 54th episode. Lauren Ruffin, welcome back to the podcast,
Lauren Ruffin:
Tim.
Tim Cynova:
Ah, It's so great to be in the same space.
Lauren Ruffin:
I know. Well, we haven't been in the same space in two years.
Tim Cynova:
That's true. Yeah.
Lauren Ruffin:
Two years, two months. Wow!
Tim Cynova:
So much has happened. It's so great to see you in 3D.
Lauren Ruffin:
It is. You're still tall. I'm still short.
Tim Cynova:
You've changed your hairstyle.
Lauren Ruffin:
I have so much less hair. You have the same amount of hair, which for a white guy is a blessing.
Tim Cynova:
But I got to see your like new sneakers. They're amazing.
Lauren Ruffin:
They're really great. I'm wearing some dope Converses right now.
Tim Cynova:
Things you miss when you're on Zoom. You just don't get to see the footwear.
Lauren Ruffin:
We should just start putting up on the desk. What are you wearing today on those feet?
Tim Cynova:
A split screen.
Lauren Ruffin:
Totally. I'm like really excited to talk to you about this series.
Tim Cynova:
This has been a long time coming. This has been long time brewing. It's really exciting that it's coming together in the episodes. They're starting to drop this week.
Lauren Ruffin:
You and I have long said that any sophisticated leader needs to have an understanding of anti-racism. You went out into the wild and managed to find 12 white guys who are kind of figuring it out and like at least being thoughtful about it, right?
Tim Cynova:
Yeah. It was really interesting to talk to 12 white guys who are each approaching this in different ways, but they're doing the personal work first. And then like, what does this mean? Is it through an anti-racism lens? Is it through a justice lens? What does this mean for them as white guys showing up in their organizations, some of the organizations these guys have founded and saying like, "Whoa, we need to reimagine. We need to rethink our policies, our practices, or the language that we use," and sitting with them in that struggle. What's worked?
Tim Cynova:
What's not? Where are they still challenged? The common theme was white guys, but like really different backgrounds and work. I mean, they're small nonprofits, large B corporations, handful of employees, lots of employees. A lot of different ways that people are showing up and also willing to talk about it on the record.
Lauren Ruffin:
I was wondering when you first told me about this and I do want to ask you how you came up with this idea. But when you first told me about it, I was like, I don't know if you're going to be able to find very many white guys who even if they're doing the work will talk about it openly because folks are so afraid to say like, "Hey, this isn't perfect," or I thought you would get a whole lot of like, "Everything's hunky dory."
Lauren Ruffin:
I'm glad that these conversations were so robust. But let's take it back. It's a little bit of a crazy idea like diving head first off of like Mount Kilimanjaro, I'm afraid of heights. It's like literally I would be terrified to have these conversations, I think. Well, maybe not terrified, but I am curious about the impetus.
Tim Cynova:
Several years ago, unbeknownst to me at the time, you sent in an application for me to attend the Conscious Capitalism CEO Summit. I was fortunate enough to be able to go. It was that moment where I'm sitting in a room with 200 mainly white people, largely of men, and I was listening to panel after panel of people talking about like doing good by being good and how to create an organization where people can thrive. I'm like, wow! There's just a lot of white people and a lot of white guys in particular on these panels.
Tim Cynova:
And that was problematic in the space because it was a lot of white people who weren't recognizing their privilege when they talk about like the challenges I have of maintaining two country club memberships and making $2.5 million.
Lauren Ruffin:
How much golf can I fit in today?
Tim Cynova:
I'm sitting there and after like two days, it really started to get to me. I was taking notes. I was sitting with this tension of being in these spaces while coming from our organization where we were engaged in how racism and oppression is baked into the DNA of the organization. What do we do about it? And how as white people do we show up or not show up in the work? I sat on my notes for... I don't know. It was like eight months or so before I wrote the piece around why anti-racism work is a core leadership competency for in particular white men to be engaged in.
Tim Cynova:
But I start with like, what panel would I like to hear an all white guy group talk about? What would be a useful thing?
Lauren Ruffin:
Grateful Dead.
Tim Cynova:
Besides the Grateful Dead. I would really appreciate hearing an all white male panel talk about their journey toward understanding how racism and oppression is baked into the organizations that they run. And that sort of was the impetus for this where like, could I get enough white guys together to talk about something? I've never seen a panel of just white people, let alone white guys who are in these positions break it down for like, "Yeah, I have this privilege. I hold this power, and this is how I'm trying to change my organization." It was brewing well for like three years.
Tim Cynova:
That's how this all started to come together. And then I just started asking white guys and no one turned me down.
Lauren Ruffin:
I remember you came back from that conference pretty fired up. I was like, "Yes! We've radicalized Tim". That was the moment I was like, "Yeah, he's come over to our side."
Tim Cynova:
We were talking about the thing, but we weren't talking about the thing. These were organizations and these were people who were really well-meaning, wanted to create organizations where people could thrive, and we're just missing a giant piece of the equation and didn't know they were missing it. These are organizations I had studied, organizations I have visited about like, how do you actually create great places to work? I think on the second day, at the end of the day, they're like, "Let's talk about reflections on the day."
Tim Cynova:
I stood up. I about threw up. Seriously, I about threw up. There's like founder of Whole Foods and founder of The Container Store, like people that everyone knows in the room and no one knows me.
Lauren Ruffin:
I know you.
Tim Cynova:
Except for Lauren, yeah, who I was Slacking with at the time.
Lauren Ruffin:
Yeah.
Tim Cynova:
I stood up and I said something to the effect that, "I don't think this conscious capitalism movement is going to be effective unless it wrestles with its role in perpetuating racism and oppression." And then I sat down and I texted you. I said something like, "I don't think anyone's going to eat dinner with me tonight."
Lauren Ruffin:
Yeah, that is what you said.
Tim Cynova:
Let's move on to the next person and I'm like, I don't know what just happened there. But I walk out of the space into the lobby and I'm just standing there by myself. This person comes up to me and says something to the effect of like, "I really appreciated what you said." It turned out to be Jay Coen Gilbert who founded B Lab, before that founded AND1. That was a connection that we made. And then we talked a little bit afterwards, but it sort of went dormant.
Tim Cynova:
And then in May 2020 after George Floyd's murder, Jay and some of his colleagues in the B corp community emailed a bunch of white guys and said, "Let's get together to talk about this, to process this." And that was the start of White Men for Racial Justice. And then Jay, because of that connection at Conscious Capitalism, reached out to me. And then that led to this whole community of other white guys who are actually engaged in the work and who understand the power and privilege that they hold in their organization.
Lauren Ruffin:
That's really dope. I'm curious, you've got this network now. You're tapping the network for this series. What's the throughline?
Tim Cynova:
A lot of the guys talk about they're in the work, they're wrestling with the work, they're making mistakes. Nothing's perfect. A lot of them were pointing out. Look, our organization is engaged in this, but we're not perfect. We're trying stuff out here. Some of it's not working. Some of it's accidentally working. I mean, I was talking to an organization who uses inclusive hiring, which preceded their work.
Tim Cynova:
They would've defined their work that they're doing around belonging, but it was sort of this policy and practice that happened beforehand that now it's like, oh, actually that aligns with anti-racism work accidentally. Reframing like, how can we take this deeper? It's a lot of like, it's not perfect. Also, I'm wrestling with all the stuff that I'm now realizing has happened as a white guy in these rooms and how I'm showing up. I think a lot of humility and a lot of vulnerability that people were showing in the work that they're doing, which is why, again, this is all on the record.
Tim Cynova:
I mean, I told them clean up the interviews for like filler words and stuff. But more or less, what they said, it was going to get published. One person said something like, "I would be more comfortable if we were just chatting over a beer," but I thought also this is part of the work. This series is for other white guys in similar roles. Part of being on this journey is to sort of share what's working and what's not.
Lauren Ruffin:
I've been thinking a lot about truth and reconciliation and apology. Did anyone talk about feeling like they needed to apologize to staff, organization, colleagues, or do you think they sort of were able to move through getting into the work? Did they feel like they'd actively done harm to the point where they needed to apologize anywhere?
Tim Cynova:
I don't know if anyone in the interviews talked about that, but certainly these guys in the interview series, we've talked about that in other settings, where as you're wrestling with it, feelings of shame.
Lauren Ruffin:
Oh yeah.
Tim Cynova:
All of a sudden, I'm realizing the stuff that I had no idea, and then I'm looking back at decisions I made and that actually inflicted harm. And maybe those people don't work with me anymore, or how do I show up the next time? Working through that, it's been interesting to be a part of this White Men for Racial Justice community because it meets every Tuesday at like 8:00 PM Eastern Time. It's a weekly thing. Since I started regularly attending about a year or so ago, we've introduced two other cohorts, which has been an interesting dynamic to bring in new guys into it.
Tim Cynova:
How you prepared that group to then enter the other group that's been together and really digging into the work. They used the Seeing White Podcast series. That's the frame that we've been using with that group. But you can see people coming in and wrestling with like, "I'm here because my grandchild is black and I'm a white guy. I need to show up for them, or something happened in our company and I need a space to talk about this with other white guys. Because even if we have caucusing at work, there's power dynamics."
Tim Cynova:
You're always showing up as the CEO in any meeting, even if it's a caucus. Some of that got captured in the interviews. It's more like the longer themes that sort of come up again and again. How can you process that and how can you get beyond the shame that you might feel? And really what do you do about it in a way that's not what typical white guys do? It's like, all right, let's fix this thing. Yeah. But how do you sit with this comfort and just learn from it.
Lauren Ruffin:
Man, that's a lot. I'm curious about the cohort model. Do they remain with the sort of founding cohort, or do they stay there for a while and then split out on their own? How are you all thinking about this
Tim Cynova:
In Jay Coen Gilbert's interview, he talks about how this all came to be. He's like, "That first Zoom call, we had a hundred people." He's like, "My phone was blowing up with text messages. I can't get in," because he didn't realize he had the Zoom account that had a cap. All these white guys wanted to get in there. He talks about, "All right. It seems like there's some interest. Let's gather in two weeks. And between now and then, let's all listen to the Seeing White Podcast."
Lauren Ruffin:
Meanwhile, I'll I'll upgrade my Zoom account.
Tim Cynova:
Yeah. Meanwhile, I'll upgrade the Zoom account. You listen to Seeing White. He said it just evolved organically where it was just white guys just said, "Yeah, let's show up again, and let's show up." By the time I joined, there were some rigorous curriculum development. There are a number of people who are in education. They built out this curriculum that really guides the conversation, the weekly conversation. The new cohort that comes in, they go through an eight week introductory where you work through the Seeing White Podcast and then are introduced to the group.
Tim Cynova:
And then they just become members of the group. And then once you've gone through this eight week series, some people opt out. They're like, "Yeah, that was interesting." And then others sign up for the thing. You can see it ebbs and it flows. Every Tuesday is like 40 to 50 white guys who are showing up. There's paid equity advisors, so there's usually two black equity advisors who hold the group accountable. They show up once a month to talk about what's going on, how white guys should be showing up, and to deepen that learning.
Lauren Ruffin:
That's really awesome. I'm really excited to listen to the rest of the series.
Tim Cynova:
It's been fun to relisten to it after recording it, both the themes and then just some really interesting things that came out of it. I was interviewing Ron Carucci and he talked about this exercise he uses when he works with groups, where if you're talking about racism, before you even get into the conversation, you write the 20 or 30 words that you can't say in the conversation. You can't say white fragility. You can't say white privilege. In the conversation, if you want to refer to white fragility or white privilege...
Lauren Ruffin:
You have to actually say the behavior.
Tim Cynova:
You have to explain what it is. He said it's just a disarming thing because people toss around these terms, critical race theory. You don't really understand what that means, but it might be triggering for people. What are we talking about here? How do we really understand what everyone's saying? There's little things like that that came up in the conversations. John Orr was really taking apart equity, equality, and justice to explain like inputs and outputs and systems and how that works.
Tim Cynova:
I think every one of the guys has a different take that I found really helpful. What are different angles and lenses that you can use to think about the work? And as a resource for other white guys, it's going to be unique. What mix works for me right now to help me go deeper in my understanding?
Lauren Ruffin:
That's really dope and the importance of language, right? Like just being intentional about how you use words. I t can be really powerful to actually instead of sort of looping things up into white fragility, you can say like, this person decided to detach from the conversation and essentially got up and walked out of the room.
Tim Cynova:
Yeah, exactly. What is that thing?
Lauren Ruffin:
They took the thing that I said and said that they no longer wanted to engage with the work, but that's not what I was actually asking. It's a longhand. We do use shorthand too often. That's powerful. We did that with some of our interview questions. We used to say, describe diversity without using the word different.
Tim Cynova:
It was really interesting to take that lens. Jay Coen Gilbert shared an anecdote where he was in a room and someone was presenting to a bunch of white guys and was talking about earn versus unearned privilege. He said it was disarming in a way. All of a sudden, this group of white guys, you can see that the shoulders drop. There's multiple types of privilege. Rather than talking about white privilege, it's like, did you earn this or is this unearned and...
Lauren Ruffin:
You're just benefiting.
Tim Cynova:
You're just benefiting from it. Those are some of the things that... My hope is that as other white guys are listening to this series, they can find that oh, aha or it just really engages them in a different way. I'm excited for this to start rolling out and really excited that we had this chance to sit together in the same room and talk.
Lauren Ruffin:
Oh my goodness, I haven't been this happy to see somebody since I can't even remember. Maybe since I saw Beyonce on tour. You're my Beyonce, Tim.
Tim Cynova:
I thought it was Celine Dion.
Lauren Ruffin:
I do love Celine. But Beyonce was like... At that particular point in time in my life, which a very long time ago, I was really into it. I haven't seen Celine yet, because I think I'm going to be like one of those Michael Jackson fans who cries in faces. I don't want to be on camera. I don't want anyone to see it. I'm really nervous about Celine. You know when people get all sweaty and that they just faint?
Tim Cynova:
Yeah.
Lauren Ruffin:
Yeah, I think that's going to be me. I always feel so bad for those people in those old grainy videos. I kept my cool with Beyonce mostly.
Tim Cynova:
I look forward to debriefing your Celine Dion concert going experience.
Lauren Ruffin:
Well, if it goes well, you'll here about it. If not, you'll never know I was there.
Tim Cynova:
I do feel like one thing I would love to be able to do is get you a private audience, if you and Celine could just like sit down.
Lauren Ruffin:
My heart just skipped a beat. There's one person listening here heard me breathe deeply into the microphone.
Tim Cynova:
Well, on that note.
Lauren Ruffin:
Listen to the series. It's going to be great.
Tim Cynova:
Lauren, as always.
Lauren Ruffin:
Yeah, it's good to be back together.
Tim Cynova:
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