- 6 hours ago
Several states have advanced legislation and policies to prohibit the teaching of Black history. Some companies are caving to criticism of being “woke” and decimating their corporate responsibility and diversity programs. And the United States Supreme Court is poised to overturn or severely alter affirmative action as we know it. What are the implications for Black people and other marginalized groups in the United States and what can you do about it? How do we meet this moment?
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LifestyleTranscript
00:01How's everybody doing? Well it's a special honor for me to be here. I've
00:08always dreamt about coming to this festival and having an opportunity to
00:12actually have the kind of conversations that we don't get a chance to have
00:17together. This is a particularly difficult moment. Some of you know that
00:23this Thursday one of the most important policies that was ever created to
00:30dismantle many of the obstacles that we face in fully integrating the society was
00:36struck down. The Supreme Court decided that affirmative action was no longer
00:42constitutional as it is currently practiced by many higher education
00:48institutions. Now it's important to realize that one of the ways in which the
00:53Supreme Court talks about affirmative action is really connected to many old
00:59ideas about how racial equity and justice for black people is often equated as
01:06reverse discrimination against white people. We saw that idea when the bus
01:13boycotters decided that they wanted to have equal access to lunch counters that
01:19was framed as discrimination against white owners of businesses. Integration of
01:25public schools was framed as reverse discrimination against students. Even the
01:30freeing of slaves was framed as discrimination or aggression against
01:35slaveholders. So this is a very old, a very damaging idea. Unfortunately it's an idea that
01:43we're seeing in other places these days as well. So in Texas and in Florida, DEI,
01:50diversity, equity and inclusion, has been eliminated in public education. Since the
01:57great reckoning prompted by George Floyd, 48 states have introduced legislation that
02:04labels ideas about racial justice and equity as divisive concepts. Ideas like
02:13structural racism, implicit bias, intersectionality, critical race theory, all
02:19have been rounded up and now they are banned in 27 states. Nearly half of our
02:26children in public schools are impacted by these laws that punish teachers for
02:33teaching the truth about American history. And black authors are being
02:38pushed out of the classroom like Toni Morrison, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Zora Neale
02:45Hurston, James Baldwin, Alice Walker, George Johnson. They've all been banned. I'm sure
02:51many of you remember just a couple weeks ago the poem that was written by
02:55Armanda Gorman that was presented at President Biden's inauguration which is
03:03called The Hill We Climb was taken out of elementary school. Advanced Placement has
03:11taken racism out of the study of American history and structural racism has been
03:17taken out of African-American studies. This is all under the name of anti-wokeism. Now
03:24here's what we're going to talk about. These stories may seem disparate. They might seem like
03:30disconnected ideas but actually they're united by one idea. If you remove the
03:37ability to name and historicize the inequality we face, it then becomes
03:43impossible to address that inequality. And that is the point. So today what we want to
03:51do is start making sense out of how all of these efforts are connected. We want to
03:58examine the current state of play and we want to set an agenda to call in stakeholders, to
04:05call in our allies, all those who are necessary to correct the course so that we get back on
04:11course to the society that we have every right to live and thrive in. So I am pleased to introduce
04:23our wonderful panelists who will help us with this hefty task. Alfonso David is the
04:28President and CEO of the Global Black Economic Forum. It is because of him that you all are
04:35sitting here so please welcome him. Damon Hewitt is the President and Executive Director of the Lawyers'
04:43Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. He's been in the trenches fighting to sustain everything from voting rights to access to higher
04:52education. Please welcome him. And Malia Lazu, founder and CEO of the Lazu Group and is a lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management. She brings the heat, she brings the fire. Please welcome her.
05:09All right, so we've got a lot to discuss in a short amount of time, so I'm going to get with it. So for ripped from the headlines, new development, I'm going to get with it.
05:22I'm going to go to you first, Damon. On Thursday, as I mentioned, widely expected, the Supreme Court severely curtailed affirmative action in higher education.
05:34Now we know this case is going to be ground zero for all other kinds of efforts to talk about race and racism and to be about the process of trying to dismantle remaining obstacles.
05:46Yet a lot of people are confused about what this case is about. If you look at the media, the media more or less presents it as the Supreme Court now says that you cannot replace more highly qualified Asian students with less qualified black and brown students.
06:06That's sort of a frame. So for folks in this audience who are clearly going to have to have the opportunity to know about what this case really was about, give them two of the most important things that they need to understand about what this case really was about.
06:23Well, thank you, Kim and Alfonso and Global Black Economic Forum. So what had happened was they did us dirty. And they did us dirty in a way where they tried to make it seem like they didn't. See, you know about the prior legal precedent for 45 years.
06:41The court has upheld affirmative action on the same grounds. I've litigated those cases for 20 of those years. And by pretending that they weren't overruling anything, saying nothing's changed, we're just applying the law as it is, y'all.
06:57That's what the court said to us when in fact it took the law, turned it upside down, twisted it in the knot, and now makes it difficult.
07:05Because if the admissions policies at Harvard and North Carolina where we represented students and argued the case in the Supreme Court at the Lawyers Committee, if those policies don't pass muster under the Constitution, then what does?
07:17It's like a bizarre world world. It's like telling you the sky's really red when you know that sky is blue. It doesn't make any sense.
07:24So it's an intellectually dishonest decision by the Supreme Court by saying nothing's changed here when in fact everything may have changed.
07:32The second big thing to know is this. Read all the concurrences and dissenting opinions if you care to, but I want you to pay attention to the conversation between Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first black woman Supreme Court justice, and Clarence Thomas.
07:51Now, Thomas is about what did not fully succeed in this case, but is the danger that looms.
07:59It is about this rabid pursuit of a race-blind society, a society that is really about erasure, erasing our history, erasing our identity, our ability to express ourselves, the ability to even see us.
08:14Because I'm not sure when he wakes up in the morning if Justice Thomas even sees himself. That's the extent of erasure. All trace of blackness gone.
08:24But as we'll talk about later in the next questions, no matter what this court does, we have to stand up because we can't allow anything to erase us.
08:32Nothing can erase our race conscious future no matter what this court says. So those are the two important things from my point.
08:38All right. Nothing can erase us. That has got to be at least one motto that we leave this with.
08:46Malia, let me understand what is happening in the DEI sector. From what you've been hearing from your associates, from your friends in the sector, should we be worried about possible spillover effects from this decision?
09:04Absolutely. I mean, I think we're already seeing spillover effects. And part of the reason why is, yes, there's a fatigue, but there was already a concern about getting the thing started, right?
09:17So when companies have any reason to pull back, that's what they're going to choose. Now, what my associates and I are talking about is, does our industry exist in 10 years? Right?
09:28I mean, do we have jobs in 10 years? And I think that's a really important question because the work that we do, and especially as black women doing DE&I work, we hold corporations accountable.
09:41And I also want to say that within our field, a majority of DE&I consultants are white women, the same beneficiaries of affirmative action. So maybe, you know, we'll see what happens with that.
09:54Right now, DE&I as a field is very concerned on how do we keep doing the work if it can't be called DE&I. And just one example, I have a global insurance client that said, we want to do DE&I trainings, but you just can't talk about race.
10:12And so what can you talk about? I mean, if you're not going to talk about race, what are we going to talk about? Exactly. Well, when I asked that, they said, women, LGBTQ accessibility. And so I said, great, if I find a black lesbian, not to go into intersectionality, but if I find a black lesbian woman in a wheelchair, can we then talk about her race? Right? And so we may have to get it that way. Right? Like, well, I work with women, and I happen to work with black women.
10:41But I think that's where we're going to go. But it's very, it's frightening. Yeah. And this is part of the consequence of erasing race and racism. Basically, diversity without race and racism means that we're not dealing, frankly, with white supremacy and many of its legacies.
10:57So, Alfonso, let me come to you. One of the challenges is that some of these cases that aren't explicitly about race actually have racial effects. And our inability to understand that means that we might not know how we're impacted by some of these policies.
11:15So, yesterday, the Supreme Court overturned President Biden's student debt relief plan. Now, a lot of folks don't see it as a race case, but let me drop a fact on you. Black women have the highest average total of student debt, about $40,000.
11:34So, what should people understand about the long-term, racially disparate consequences of student debt for black students, for their families, and for black communities?
11:50The long-term implications for this decision, and I think all of these decisions, is to keep us uneducated. That's the goal.
12:03How do we make sure that people of color, and specifically black people, don't have the education to succeed?
12:13And if we can identify all of the pillars that support an educational construct for people of color, and we remove them, then they simply won't get the education they need.
12:27And if you don't have the education they need. And if you don't have the education, you can't compete. If you can't compete, you can't establish wealth. If you can't establish wealth, you see where the line goes.
12:37So, I think this decision, among many others, goes to the heart of whether we are acknowledging our history. There is a history here in this country that these decisions seek to erase.
12:55We cannot pretend slavery didn't happen. But that is what some of these decisions are seeking to do. Because you have to recognize that the vestiges of slavery and discrimination are the reasons we have some of these policies now.
13:11So, when you say these policies are no longer constitutional, i.e. what Damon is saying, what you're indirectly saying is, we're pretending slavery didn't happen, and we're pretending the impact didn't happen.
13:25We should just pretend it's racially neutral, and everyone's equal. And that's just not true.
13:31Right, right.
13:32So, the long-term effects, I think, ultimately will mean less people will go to college, because it's expensive and getting more expensive every day.
13:41And it will mean the wage gap will continue to increase. Martin Luther King gave a speech in 1960. March on Washington. I may have the date wrong. March on Washington speech.
13:57The wage gap was 8 to 1. Guess what the wage gap is today. 12 to 1.
14:07So, the wage gap has gotten worse. Yes.
14:11And that's a part of the economic consequences of discrimination and not dealing with the structured way in which inequality distributes burdens differently that we are now dealing with.
14:25So, as much as people try to say that was a long time ago, sometimes time makes it even worse.
14:31Wealth gaps have increased, for example, over time.
14:35So, I want you to hold on to the mic, because I want to come back to you right now.
14:39So, when we last checked in, in 2020, racial justice was everywhere.
14:45Everybody was saying, we're with you African Americans. We stand beside you.
14:51Corporations were putting money on the table. They were making new positions.
14:56It seemed as though something was going to happen.
14:59Three years later, something did happen. There is a movement. It is huge. It's growing across the country.
15:07It is not our movement. It is the anti-woke movement.
15:12So, tell us what happened, what conditions existed for this backlash against George Floyd, against the activation that happened in all 50 states.
15:23What made it so easy for this backlash to now take over and be more powerful than our movement was in the aftermath of George Floyd's murder?
15:37I mean, I think there are several reasons why that happened.
15:40When I think about George Floyd, and I think about the horrifying visuals that we all had to process, I remember one thing in terms of this context.
15:51And that is, we couldn't leave our homes. We were all living at home because of COVID.
15:57They couldn't ignore the television screen. Right? We had to recognize what was happening because of COVID.
16:05Well, now, we're all busy. We're running around. And even though black people are still being killed today, we're not seeing the same response.
16:17And the pressure on corporations, on multinational businesses to respond to racial justice has alleviated.
16:31And when we depressurized it, they felt the need not to respond.
16:38So this highlights the importance of us collectively keeping the pressure on.
16:45We don't keep the pressure on. They won't respond.
16:49Yeah. If we can't change the equation on the ground, there's no reason for them not to continue doing exactly what they're doing.
16:57So I want to come back to the DEI question.
17:00So yesterday we read that executives, DEI executives at Warner Brothers, Discovery, Disney, Netflix, and the Motion Picture Academy were either laid off or left their jobs in the last 10 days.
17:18And many of these people were hired during the reckoning that was inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020.
17:26Three years later, we're told that there is diversity exhaustion.
17:31Now, they're exhausted after three years of trying to do the right thing.
17:35We ain't exhausted after three centuries of experiencing this.
17:39So what does this reveal about the challenges that DEI professionals are facing in the midst of this so-called war on wokeness?
17:50You know, that is such a great question because we all knew that the pressure after George Floyd was going to be fleeting, right?
17:59And that's why we were like, we may have five years trying to get everything passed, trying to get all this done, right?
18:04So we know this comes in cycles.
18:07I think what we need to reckon with and wrestle with, and I think it's important really for us to wrestle with this is, are we going to have this fight?
18:18Right?
18:19So what does it mean if Netflix gets rid of Vernet?
18:22What are we doing to Netflix?
18:24Right?
18:25Right?
18:26And at the end of the day, as you said, without the pressure, there is no need, no need to change, you know?
18:34So when we look at the DEI officers, yes, we're losing them.
18:39They're losing their budgets and they're losing their power.
18:42And so I think it's critical to recognize that we influence corporations in two ways.
18:49One, how we buy, and two, who we work for.
18:54And making those decisions are really, really important.
18:59Who's going to get our money when they're tired of helping us for three years?
19:05That's what we have to ask, and I think we need to have a conversation with ourselves.
19:10Are we willing to live without Netflix?
19:12Okay?
19:13Well, are we?
19:14Are we?
19:15Are we?
19:16Are we willing to live without Netflix?
19:18All right.
19:19That's right.
19:20They got rid of Vernet.
19:21Hashtag save Vernet.
19:22And the last thing I want to say is, if we just look at who we have in this room, in this center right here,
19:29not even including what we're going to do tonight at Caesars.
19:33If all of us decided to stay home for one day, one day, we would have different conversations.
19:40So we are fatigued too.
19:42I want to honor and recognize that.
19:44And I want us to ask ourselves, what are we willing to break?
19:50Y'all ready for that?
19:55That's the least we can do, right?
19:57Damon, I think a lot of people don't understand the scale of the problem, and particularly the way that law has been used to weaponize this right-wing agenda.
20:09Tell us a little something about how that has worked, what the laws are doing, how they've been able to make anti-racism illegal.
20:19Exactly.
20:20So it takes a perverse kind of logic to follow what these folks are doing.
20:26Let me try to make it plain.
20:28The 14th Amendment of the Constitution, one of the Reconstruction Amendments, came out of the Civil War, fought over chattel slavery.
20:36It was supposed to be a shield to protect us from discrimination by government.
20:42It's now being used as a spear, and they are stabbing us with that spear.
20:48They have turned the law on its head and say everything that you thought was up is now down.
20:54They have done this through conservative federal courts, and the Supreme Court in particular, with these perverse interpretations.
21:01But they're also doing it at the state level.
21:03And it's not just interpretations by courts.
21:05It's also your state legislatures.
21:08You know, Kim mentioned all the states that are now banning curriculum and books.
21:14But over years, there have been over a dozen states that are banning affirmative action at the state level.
21:20In places like California, Washington State, right?
21:26Michigan.
21:27Michigan, right?
21:28And even when they don't ban at the state level, you see state college systems like Georgia saying,
21:32well, our state didn't ban it outright, but we're going to ban it for the colleges here.
21:36So they're taking every instrumentality of the law and saying we're not going to allow it to be used for opportunity.
21:42We're going to turn it on its head.
21:43And this is really a political move.
21:45This is, let's be frank, this is a politics of a white grievance, of misplaced grievance,
21:51a politics that says something's being taken away from us, which is simply not the case.
21:56Because, you know, affirmative action is not a handout.
21:59It's not a handout.
22:00It's what we deserve.
22:03There's nobody unqualified getting these positions.
22:06That's right.
22:07They may have said my test score was low in law school, but I sure did kill it for the last 20-some years.
22:12Speak.
22:15Right?
22:16Speak.
22:17So we're all super qualified, but they're trying to turn this around so that every way we go,
22:22they're treating us like mice in a maze.
22:24Everywhere you run, it's black, it's black, it's black.
22:27So what we have to do is bust those walls down.
22:30That's right.
22:31That's right.
22:32We ain't no damn mice.
22:33I want you to hold on to the mic and answer this question.
22:36We know that telling black history honestly is also a banned concept.
22:43There are 27 states that are now saying you can't tell black history if it makes certain kids feel bad.
22:49Yeah.
22:50So tell us, moving beyond DEI, something that cannot be understood appropriately without our history.
23:00Here's a quick example.
23:02So people talk about rules and policies as if that's just the way things are.
23:08But things are the way they are for a reason.
23:11You ever heard about legacy admissions?
23:14Legacy preferences?
23:16So like if your mama and them and your grandfather and your great grandmother and your ancestors
23:21go to school, then you're going to get a free pass too?
23:24Well, guess who couldn't go to the University of North Carolina 50 years ago?
23:29Legally banned from even going.
23:31This reminds me of voting rights, Kim, because there was a thing in voting rights,
23:35one of those mechanisms to stop us from voting called the grandfather clause.
23:39And that said if your grandfather could vote, then you could vote.
23:44But if your grandfather was legally prohibited from voting, then you can't vote.
23:47It is a perverse logic.
23:49And so legacy admissions is really racial preference for white people.
23:54That's exactly what it is.
23:56And so we have to break that down and say if you have a school that's saying we're not
24:00going to consider race anymore the way we used to, then you better not be considering
24:04legacy preferences because we believe that is a civil rights violation.
24:07That's right.
24:08That's right.
24:09So Malia, concepts like implicit bias or intersectionality have also been framed
24:17as divisive concepts that can't be taught in these 27 states.
24:21So can you give us an example of dynamics that happen in workplaces that cannot be understood
24:28or addressed without these concepts?
24:31Absolutely.
24:32You know, when I'm working with clients, we sit in culture, right?
24:36Because we know culture eats strategy for breakfast and that you could have the best strategy
24:42that you want.
24:43And if your culture doesn't want it, it's not going to move forward.
24:47And so what we try to do is talk about what is black culture?
24:51What is BIPOC culture?
24:53What is intersectionality?
24:55Because we're not just black people, right?
24:57We come with that intersectionality.
24:59What do we need to thrive in community, in our work?
25:04And the number one thing is I want to be able to be myself.
25:08I want to be able to go to work and not put on this mask of professionalism a la white heteronormativity.
25:16I want to be able to, if I want to wrap my hair, I can wrap my hair and not feel like I have to explain anything.
25:22And so we need these words because we need to identify what's not happening in the workplace
25:30that doesn't allow black people, brown people to bring their whole selves.
25:35So if I can't talk about the intersectionality of someone's lived experience, then I can't talk about their humanity.
25:44And if I can't talk about their humanity, then I can't talk about equity.
25:49There's no way to talk about equity without talking about humanity.
25:52And I think, you know, thinking now that at any point I could have one of my clients, general counsel, call me and tell me that I'm putting my client at risk by talking about these words.
26:07That's fascism, right?
26:09That's live fascism.
26:11Right.
26:12It's alive and well.
26:13And I think it's really important that we don't see this as just another thing.
26:18Right.
26:19Just another thing that we have to endure.
26:21Hashtag strong black women.
26:22We can endure anything.
26:24I don't think we want to use our resiliency here.
26:27I think we want to use our urgency.
26:29I think we want to use our impatience.
26:32I think we want to use our love.
26:34We want to use our solidarity to actually build a new culture in in these companies.
26:41So it's without these words, without being able to talk about the history.
26:46When someone says, well, that's reverse racism.
26:49I can't laugh in their face and say that's ridiculous.
26:53Let me tell you why reverse racism does not exist.
26:56That's right.
26:57Right.
26:58All of a sudden it becomes this false equivalency.
27:00And that's why we need folks like the lawyers committee to give me all the legal mumbo jumbo.
27:06So that when a client comes up and or, you know, a general counsel comes up and tells me I can't do this.
27:13I can explain to them why I can because I'm sorry.
27:17The last thing I want to say is we before during D.E. and I during the height of D.E. and I Obama as president,
27:23we were still told this goes against fair lending practices.
27:26This goes against EEOC.
27:28Right.
27:29And when everything was good, we were told, well, you can't just have a policy for black women.
27:34Why not?
27:35Why not?
27:36Right.
27:37So that they certainly have a policy against black.
27:39Exactly.
27:40And shout out Johnson and Johnson right now actually has an H.R. policy just for black people.
27:46And it's really important that we support Johnson and Johnson in continuing to do things like that.
27:53My my favorite implicit bias example.
27:55I'm sure many people have had it.
27:57You say something in a meeting.
27:58It's a good idea.
27:59There's crickets.
28:00Then Karen.
28:02Right.
28:03Tad.
28:04Tad.
28:05That's exactly the same thing.
28:06And it's like the greatest thing they've ever heard.
28:09That's implicit bias.
28:11Alfonso, I'm going to come to you and ask for everybody's last response.
28:17And we're going to combine a question.
28:19So we've been talking about the concepts that they're trying to ban that without we can't really understand contemporary inequality.
28:28So I'm curious about how these ideas that they're trying to ban compromise our efforts to address opportunity gaps in business or wealth gaps in society.
28:41If we don't address these things, if we don't all come together and fight hard, what are you what do you think the world for us will look like in 2033?
28:54What do we need in order to make sure that that that story that we're heading to doesn't actually happen?
29:03Look, I think the decisions that have come out this year alone are going to take us back decades.
29:10And when I said the wealth gap in the 1960s was eight to one and today is 12 to one.
29:16If we do nothing, it will be 20 to one in five years.
29:21Let's just be clear.
29:23This is a state of emergency.
29:26We shouldn't pretend that those decisions don't have the impact that they're going to have.
29:33Less black people and brown people will get into prestige universities.
29:38Less black and brown people will get into high power jobs.
29:43Because the principles and the tools, the legal principles and tools that we've been fighting.
29:49I'm a lawyer. I've been doing this for 20 years.
29:51The tools that we've been using to ensure that racial injustice and oppressive policies are stripped away, we won't have those tools.
30:00And if we don't have those tools, we can't fight back in the way that we need.
30:06So I'm concerned about what this looks like.
30:09What does the landscape look like in large companies?
30:13What does the landscape look like in places that we need to be?
30:18What does the landscape look like in certain neighborhoods?
30:21In certain parts of this country, you still have the blacks out of town and the whites out of town.
30:27And that's going to get worse.
30:30Unless we take action and we take action now.
30:33And Damon, I'm going to come to you on that same question.
30:36What does the world look like for racial justice in 2033 if we don't have a massive response, reinforcing our troops, having new supply lines in the struggle?
30:48What happens if we lose this so-called war on woke?
30:52If you don't coordinate and fight, if you don't organize, if you don't fight for the future we deserve, you might get in the colors.
31:03One of your children or grandchildren might get in, but you know what it's going to feel like?
31:06You're going to feel like Ruby Bridges.
31:08Like you're desegregating the place all over again.
31:11Because you might be the only one in your classroom.
31:14You might be the only one in that dorm.
31:16You walk through the quad on campus.
31:18Doesn't feel right to me.
31:20If you don't fight for the future you deserve, you will be giving your money to companies that wouldn't even hire you.
31:28And wouldn't think twice about it.
31:31If you don't fight for the future you deserve, and if you don't vote, and vote in your interests, you are going to not just get more than Sam, you're going to get this squared.
31:45Because all this power that is vested in federal courts, people that have lifetime tenure.
31:51These are not elected judges in federal courts.
31:53They're appointed by the President, confirmed by the Senate.
31:56They have lifetime tenure.
31:58For the rest of your natural-born black life, they're going to govern what your opportunity is and continue to twist the law.
32:07So we have to fight.
32:09We have to fight.
32:10You heard that.
32:11For the rest of your natural-born black life, you have to fight.
32:14Leah, you get the last word.
32:1630 seconds.
32:17What does it look like in 2033 if we don't fight now?
32:21It looks like we are trying to go back to Ghana and do it again from there.
32:26I mean, we may have to repatriate.
32:28Right?
32:29I don't know.
32:30I think we think of being American and this fight as inevitable.
32:35And it's not.
32:36Right?
32:37There was a time where we had even less rights than we have now.
32:40And that is the beginning of this country.
32:43And I think we may go back to that if we don't fight.
32:46We may actually lose what little we've gained.
32:50And we can't let that happen.
32:52You know?
32:53So we have to fight or we have to decide to go somewhere else and do it somewhere else.
32:58And whatever we do, let's just do it collectively and with love.
33:01Well, one of the things we know is that we can't fight unless we know what we're fighting for.
33:07We can't envision a transformed world unless we know the history from which we came.
33:13So in every state, including this one, where there are laws on the books that tell us that we can't pass on to our children what was passed on to us,
33:21we cannot sit down while that is standing up.
33:25We have got to stand up against this repression.
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