am honored for all of us to have as our keynote speaker today my cow hong she is president and c e o of wilder foundation my cow has extensive experience in the public and private sectors serving low income and disadvantaged populations she is committed to achieving an equitable society where everyone can prosper having overcome adversity in her own childhood and young adult life my cow believes in the power of changing one life at a time and strengthening the social and civic infrastructures of our communities to transform the world awards she extends her leadership in service throughout the twin cities i heard and met my couch yesterday at fracking wilder's first overcoming racism leadership workshop mike  a glimpse of her academic passion for transforming institutions awareness of getting in her own way as a leader and unique ability to see and express the importance of diversity in our moving forward together please join me in recognizing and welcoming my cow hong thank you for answering me with the opportunity to deliver the speech this morning especially among so many distinguished guests as well as those who work tires tirelessly in this community to promote organizations and leaders who want to be diverse inclusive and to overcome racism thank you for your service your courage and your willingness to work as a society that values all of its members without regard to background so that all of us can actually lead productive full and healthy lives this conference is really important because it affirms and inspires all of us to continue to generate the momentum to dismantle racism i want to thank all the frak members organizations the volunteers and i'd really like my staff at the wilder foundation to stand if you're here  there's a special thank you that goes to my staff where our staff but while there because the truth is everything that i'm going to be talking to about today about how while there has transformed belongs to the leadership at all  foundation and i know i can do this without all of you so nothing this special happens at an organization without leadership from you and nothing special like this conference happens without leadership from frak and so many community partners so i feel really blessed to live in a community that can come together like this so i'm going to talk for about forty minutes and i'm going to leave some time for questions in case anybody has any of that and i did not bring a power point with me today a big shocker because i feel like we need to be more disciplined with listening to each other from the heart like you i want to live in a society that's free of racism dismantling our legacy of racism is still one of the biggest challenges that we face as a society i'd like to experience a day when we no longer need and overcoming racism conference actually but that is not this day but the reason why i'm here is to remind you that our work is not finished our work is not finished when most indicators of health education community wellbeing and racial disparity of all types are so large and persistent our work is not finished when allies for and champions for equity like sue hegg of the met council are not supported in our community our work is not finished when we have so many college students and graduates of color without jobs even though they're highly qualified want to keep talking about employment disparities and though it is bittersweet when i listen to leaders that work with me talk about a deficit mentality with a deficit mentality about people of color and i'm in the room i know that our work is not finished it's not like all of us are people of color are criminals low income or lack of aspirations to pull ourselves up and yet i am there and they forget and finally our work is not finished when we're still afraid as parents of color that michael brown will be our child because that's what i'm afraid of i have a really tall five foot ten son who lives in woodbury and our works really not finished when my daughter who's fourteen comes home from what barry and says my people constantly ask me where you're from what kind of asian are you and i said well you know what do you say honey and she says well i ask them what kind of white are you it's a small when i know but she's my daughter and i was quite proud of her response because recovery is really important so i'm so happy that there are is a wilder can join the chorus of organizations and people in this community who are growing force to really dismantle racism and address it in our society so i want to talk about three things today major groupings the first is just an image that i hold dear when it gets really challenging for me because you know unlike what most people assume a c e o does just because you're in the top position doesn't mean that it's any easier for you it just gets harder second i'd like to share some insights that i've gained from working on my doctoral studies at hamline university around race and representation especially in local county human services and what white people think and how they work because you know that's highly curious to me as a person of color i have no idea and then i want to actually tell you about some of the work that we're doing at the while there foundation some lessons that we've learned and i'd like to close actually today this morning b issuing a challenge to all of you so that you can go back with concrete actions that you could take to look into your hearts and minds and organizations to cultivate transformation so before i do this because i am the president while the foundation because so much of this is about some of our own experimental work and trying solutions i'd like to tell you about the wilder foundation because it gives you a context for why i'm in the role that i'm in and why why this conference and why our work so while there's a nonprofit organization that's dedicated to improving the human condition it's been it was founded in one thousand and six and it committed us to existing into perpetuity to serve all people to improve lives regardless of background in fact it has one of the earliest anti discrimination statements and classes on record in the state of minnesota and perhaps nationally for over a century we've existed to serve those who are in need those who are low income and those who are sick to zation that provide services across the lifespan and we also work to build the capacity of the community to do the same thing we have applied social research and valuation and we are kind of the smart human services people so we're with solutions in the real world and in the community for example and i know the address goes on staff is here we're working right now to launch a mobile grocery store that will eliminate transportation barriers right into low income neighborhoods to address some of these social determinants of health every two and a half miles in the city of st paul there's a wilder staff person or volunteer that's delivering a critical human service and last year about eighteen percent of what is the equivalent to the population of st  fifty five thousand people convened at our space that while there center to work on mission related activities to improve our community that's while the foundation we've changed for one hundred years and we're changing again so that's the context now first the image that i hold really dear when things get hard for me as a leader because i know that you've all been there if you really care about this work you've been challenged and the challenges often come in forms that you can't even anticipate right so when i first got married my husband lou and i lived in a really rough neighborhood in the on the east side of st paul and i are both mung and we were settled as refugees first generation college students we overcome a lot of barriers i grew up in st paul he grew up in a town of two hundred people german lutherans in michigan coming out of poverty being homeless displaced learning a new language on top of that was really challenging for both of us so here's the example of the rough neighborhood we lived in one day when my husband left his car in the alley he came out of the apartment to find that poop and urine had been tossed over his honda accord it was normal to find broken windows in our neighborhood because there were so many rocks thrown at our windows this was a neighborhood that was mostly in transition becoming low income white to black to mung we don't even know who hated us it seemed that even the children on the streets call ourselves names like i'd be outside and someone would write a bike and someone with throw out a racial slur and one night my husband rushed to aid a neighbor who had been stabbed in the stomach he was stopping the flow of blood with his hands his wife had stabbed him because of a domestic situation she he had been choking her and at the time i was actually giving my son food she who was six months old a bath the struggle seemed less an unsurmountable to me even having lived the life that i had lived and then one day when i was doing dishes in relative peace i looked out of the kitchen window and saw something that almost made my heart stop and the tears started streaming down my face can anyone guess what it was well i'll tell y in the alley behind our apartment building i saw the backs of two little girls with their skirts fluttering in the wind one was black and the other was asian i think the asian girl was monkey and they were both about seven years old they were holding hands and keeping each other safe walking across the shards of broken glass down the long narrow alley it was obviously a dangerous path and each was helping the other get across their hands reached out for each other half way taking turns and in that moment i still i still tear up when i think about it in that moment i saw a flash of the beauty that is the unconditional love and friendship that is present in humankind before we destroy it with our structural inequality and the forces of socialization socialization that work to continuously separate ourselves from our humanity the future was so present in these girls this image almost immediately erased my passing as a and the growing hatred that had planted itself in my heart i was able to become more forgiving again and to let my optimism flow back here's the thing i've never understood about americans we're country built with displaced people we have legacies we have been heritage from previous generations three hundred fifty years of violence terror and horror which we have to overcome today we want transformation but forget that it was only fifty years ago that women and people of color and those who are disadvantaged gain the full rights of citizenship and that previous to this those who were in these categories if we asserted ourselves were subjected to violence death torture ignorance and so many other things climbing outside of our social boundaries was reinforced with terror and destitution and so many things until the civil rights movement so advancing social justice and equity is like that it can be beautiful but hard it can also be dangerous and holding hands across races classes genders is absolutely necessary too often we don't reach out our hands and off as people of color or as white people as females to males as people of disabilities and those who are perfectly healthy and fine i'm here to tell you we're all a part of this racial equation regardless of race because that's what we're talking today about if we remember that the bond of love that is in human kind can overcome fear courage will come we have to have the emotional and social and professional courage to do what is right overcoming racism is more about overcoming and moving beyond our personal comfortable space there's nothing mystical or magical about the institutions that we have and that we hold dear we created them we can uncreate them i know that the many valiant efforts of all of you have actually paved the way to this conference and i really want to thank you for being part of the courageous leadership that continues to press forward we must claim our humanity and reject complacency so hold on to your own dear image to actually make sure that you are being as brave and courageous as you can possibly be we don't sweep that alley enough with knowledge access and opportunity those of us who are the privileged few because you must be privileged if you can sit here outside of this event lies reality let's get to work why because racism is not episodic it has the power to socialize all of us inside and outside of the institutions of which we are part unless trust is tightened across races cultivating organizational change can't occur and we have to do this one relationship at a time extend a hand generate trust and create solutions together unlike those little girls we have not been as generous as we possibly could be extending a hand and reaching out to the middle to lift each other up so if you're working for me at the wilder foundation you're going to extend your hand doesn't matter if you're black you're white you're asian you're native american i don't care if you're signing up for our mission you're signing up to do hard work you're signing up to love each other and to protect each other to be loyal to each other and to have really hard conversations so we've been disrupting our peace all over the place with the wilder foundation taking out emotional personal and professional risk running towards transformation sometimes running away you know because we've had staff do that too but that you know maybe it's not time for them so i had a flash of insight when i was working at ramsey county human services as a division director i used to run all the county based social services for people who are eighteen and over in the county and i worked there ten years ago when the anti racism initiative was just forming and boy that was hard and i was actually the only director of color so i kept an anti racism blog to keep myself like reflective and i had this amazing boss was the director of human services who really was committed to this racial equity thing except he called it changing demographics and can  figure out he really wanted to work on anti racism took about two years for us to get there i mean this is like how it goes you know and i know a flash of insight as the only person who is a director of color there i realized because i extended my hand for the first time to a white guy heterosexual white male married to children the insight i gained was that wow if socializing me as a person of color was as strong as racism socializing him as a white person it must be so strong that he can't really see it can't see it without me reflecting it back to him because i think about race all the time you know it's like i think about it all the time it's not that i want to it's because it disrupts my life ok so i don't go around saying hey mike out asian person among you know ethnic whatever and then something says something some some people you know they just forget and they they do stuff and then it makes me remember so i started getting really curious about why people write and here i am and i decided to change jobs i want to wilder and i thought you know i'll just do this doctorate in public administration at hamley university so i can figure out what the heck's going on  because i was really curious you know why are we always studying racism from the perspective of people of color i mean aren't there more white people in the world who are in leadership positions so after a couple years of wandering around on my proposals those of you who have ph d s you know what i'm talking about the risk which search question is so hard to come up with at least it was for me and i was trying to do this working full time while there's a new c e o for kids and going to graduate school but i finally landed on a great topic which i was highly curious about so i focused my dissertation on white people in government who are actually working to represent racial minorities like how are they actually doing it you know what are the personal an organizational factors that contribute to that  because i knew i was contributing to myself to kind of move things along but i had no idea why are these white people doing this and you know we assume it's true that you know if you're a black you're representing maybe people who are black and you have that you know view of the world but you know what does it really say what does the research really say well you know the research says that that is actually in fact true for those who are curious about that but no studies of any kind on white people in government mine was the first of its kind can you believe that yeah i had to draw from the fields of sociology psychology political science you know to study public administration which is a huge huge powerful force in our society right so why study race and representation in the perspective why people are moving into the second segment here which is really about my studies so in public service we have this ethic and you know if you're working a nonprofit  nonprofit sector you know you have this ethic as well there's really an ethic of service in public administration that says we are here to represent all and serve all people and to make sure that all are included this ethic of race to achieve social equity is really really challenging right because of our centuries oppression slavery colonialism war and white racial  framing racial disparities persist across sector and public and efforts are underway but oftentimes it's those public institutions that need to change they need to inform themselves and we keep trying to say well can you please people of color are here kind of inform us and it's like no you're the ones that need to change all right the study was really unique because it was really looking at white allies and you know people of color over the centuries have not been alone in making the progress that's been made partly it's been because we've had very little power in an authoritative sense to actually make changes so what do we know from the research about being white we all know that race is socially constructed there's no biological basis and that race forms in relation to others reinforced because we socialize inside of our racial group and then we get kicked out of other racial groups right were assigned as a social value  actually when you get out too far then people actually push you back in again so if you get too successful as a person of color or you know you get too oriented towards understanding as a white person the experience of people of color your own group actually tosses you out you know that's a really hard thing so it can work against you your own group can work against you because they also define those boundaries and because society because of  how we have socialized people actually assigns value to a person and it follows them throughout society in jobs in community organizing in academia well we have wealth inequality right being white is also being about the norm you know the norm was created by white people who are in power nothing against white people today use your privilege as a tool and a weapon for good those of you who are white it's it's just there we can't even identify it anymore now what are the characteristics of whiteness this was interesting social dynamics that create structural advantages without us needing to think about it a lot of white people who are anti racist allies actually reject the because they feel like they did nothing to earn it and i hate to tell you guys this white people but i know you don't do anything that's why racism  ok like i rejected my asian s too like i actually think of myself as a right but you know society kind of tells me i'm asian and they treat me that way and there's nothing i can do about it so it's all very frustrating for all of us in society but i want you to know that i finally get it after these studies that white people also don't like it and it's ok you don't have to being white the characteristics of whiteness is that you are unmarked and invisible which means there's color blindness arguments around color blindness  conscious and a lot of times people who are white say i don't have a culture yeah you do everybody has a culture understanding it making it visible is actually the first step to gaining consciousness white resists challenges so actually whiteness asserts itself when it is the most challenged and by the way that's true for people of color too but i was studying white people so i'm talking about white people you know the  yth of meritocracy reinforces white superiority manifest destiny given to us by god individual action got me here all these different things when in fact there were a lot of federal local and state policies that actually and private actions that reinforce those things and white identity can be positive or negative in other words you can be a really a white person who has a strong weight identity who is an anti racist ally and you can be a strong white person who has a really strong identity to be fascist and to believe that you are the most superior race kind of scary actually i felt when i found that out you know one of the things and looking through the research was that actually the more educated a white person is the more the more like the less likely they are to actually think about race or to actually think about racial equity at all so you think that that would be the opposite right that the most educated of us who are white would actually be because of our big brains and our ability to gain consciousness that that we would actually do better but it turns out that's not true low income whites and middle class whites are actually a lot more racially conscious and care about it than upper income whites so in anti racism work which is a lot of what you guys do exposure of white people to people of color is supposed to like raise consciousness right and move towards the creation of a non racist world turns out that's not so true because exposure doesn't mean engagement and belief doesn't mean action that was one of the major findings from my research study so let me give you an example of how racism impacts people through public administration or like through just people who create rules are part of some large system i was unable to actually take a shower at a public park a number of years ago with my children and it was because i was asian  and when i confronted the park ranger he told me i could actually take my babies down to the river or go like a black down to the pump because i was not a registered camper even though i was actually registered what he meant was i hadn't paid for a site that had public shower capacity but as any white person you could have paid to go into the park and showered and nobody would have noticed well you know there were a lot of us because i was with my sisters and we couldn't go in so here you have you know a somewhat neutral policy that was in consistently applied and it was in consistently applied because i was an asian person and obviously i was marked in some way so we have public administrators and staff people all over the state of minnesota who are doing this i'm applying policy but it's being inconsistently reformed because i see that you're different and i never was able to wring an apology out of the park ranger who was there so it's really really important that we raise consciousness and at all levels of an organization because when you're part of an institution that is public you are what i call the cyber what is the sovereign mean the sovereign means you have absolute forty and regulatory power to create and frame changes in a way that must be complied with the authorities to force is present and that's true of any public organization right so that's a pretty awesome amount of power active representation which is what i'm talking about where you say you know what i know that there are no black people here but let me think about what it might be to be a black person here getting this service or going to the camp means that you're actually adopting a role to represent those racial interests that is quite different from your own personal journey that's hard to do because like monte and i are in it to the department of human services and i we've lived such different lives you know how do you even step over that chasm to understand that so i interviewed for this dissertation process fifteen people white public administrators all levels of you know  authority in a rule county urban county suburban county and a rule county what were the results what are these what what it what did i learn so i'm just going to go through these this really quickly i found that whites who are actually taking action who are the most racially conscious and intentional about their actions deliberately used their privilege as a tool for good in other words they were  apologetic so i talked to an administrator pretty high level up in a suburban county who said oh yeah when the trayvon martin thing happened i did covert organizing and i actually played the president obama tape and made and invited all my staff to come and view it so we could talk about disparities in the child protection system she used an event in society to actually leverage her leadership to make change and i said what did you tell him that that's what you were doing she goes oh no but she didn't apologize for it yet covert action totally did it it was fine they were also people who kind of weren't afraid to socialize outside of work with people of color that they had relationships circles that expanded far beyond their own race that was pretty interesting but they were unapologetic you know the other thing that was counter to what most people think of as i need support all the way up and down the chain of command was that by and large i found the social worker in rural minnesota who is making massive change at the county with with latino and somali residents that were growing in number so these are only counties that experience more than a ten percent demographic change they actually she she  actually was transforming entire county and the only thing she really needed was the support of her direct supervisor it turns out that the support of your direct supervisor to give you discretion to actually make changes is kind of enough because you don't have to do so much permission seeking all the time and and because she was someone who was really racially and culturally conscious she was a could be able to be the catalyst that was transforming her organization very counter to what some people think well you know don't you have to go higher up in leadership no turns out no you know the other thing that was really interesting and by the way you can you can get the whole two hundred twenty seven page dissertation if you'd like to read ad nauseum about this i'm only sharing three things with you but i thought was really interesting is that that every single person i talked to and interviewed believed in an anti racist world they understood that they had a white racial identity they had privilege but privilege did not mean and understanding did not mean that they could actually identify actions to advance racial equity they couldn't do it more than half of them in the interview so the interviews were only an hour from the beginning of stating this is my belief system to the end where i had them give examples about how they were advancing racial equity there was bias there was bias in terms of the identification of whiteness being invisible believing that they were superior all these different things wow these are people who are trying to work on this so one of the really interesting things that i found is that you know what just because you believe and you are working on it so like i interviewed someone really high up in county government working unemployment asperities all the time guess what he was doing perpetuating racial disparities because the solutions that were present were ill fitting and the problem definition was wrong because they were from a white racial frame so you know there was a group that was very conflicted so so the most conflicted group the group of white people that i feel like we can really work with were the ones that surely believed and they were trying but there was no one to support them through this learning process  so they were half conscious half racially conscious in other words they were working pretty hard but they didn't know what to do how many of you have have said you know i really care about dismantling racism but i have no idea what to do right ok well this is going to become very concrete for you that this next part that i'm working on it wilder so you know when you're partially racially conscious but you don't have the courage to leap over to action and to enlist support for your own learning you haven't resolved personnel issues they look like they're racial issues they look like they're performance issues i have no idea what that is you know i'm sure some of you have struggled with this there's an inability to actually make transformation and disparities go and there's inconsistent efforts because you just really tired you know you don't know how to make it work and pay so we have to we have to help this group that is partially  conscious go from belief partial consciousness to actually action and we need to support our anti racist white allies to actually do better and you know i've got a whole bunch of recommendations which i'm not going to talk about here but i just want you to know that it's really important because we can't do it just as people of color so you know this brings me to kind of the concrete actions that we've taken at the foundation and i'm going to go through these at through these a just just to give you some lessons ok you know one of the things that we've learned while they're not only rushing towards conflict and trance to to use it as a tool for transformation and getting people to say you know what we need to be in relationships with each other the bond of us as as people who work together from different races has to be stronger than the challenges that come to actually disrupt us as human  beings that's a lot for me to ask my staff but it is the only thing that will help us transform ok so do you guys have i phones or like phones that can take pictures ok so if you have one take it out ok now turn it to the function the camera function that kind of swings around so you can do a s ok now take a picture of yourself ok you all pass that was the major lesson for today the message i'm taking on what we've learned from the wilder foundation and the work there is we're part of the problem we all work in institutions and if we don't we don't provide the leadership to do self directed learning and create ownership over the problem we may be perpetuating disparities not eliminating them and we can't rely on other people to actually direct our learning we've got to want to do it so as institutional leaders who sit at different positions in the organization you're the one that needs to change you're the one and if we can accept that as a lesson around cultivating transformation that we are part of the problem then we can also be a part of the solution but if we reject that we're part of the problem then the solution lies elsewhere and we can feel guilty but not be action oriented because guilt is very self serving right i talked a lot of people feel guilty i don't want anyone to feel guilty i want them to be mad i want them to actually do stuff that's one of the lessons so keep your selfie you can put  you know we're very good at like excluding people from being part of the solution and at the wilder foundation we've done is we've developed a very simple framework for giving roles to every single staff person and every single formal and informal group so the board has a role what is our board's role steward the mission remember to remind us about the anti discrimination and diversity clause and you do the work too because you're the key leaders in this organization what's the c e o role champion create transparency inside and outside the organization measure progress don't run away from conflict enlist the support of informal and formal leaders you know so was i was heartened during the research process to know because one of the things we do it while there which i mean other institutional leaders i talk to are like what you do what so do we have our staff of color or people who are a lot more culturally competent mentoring our senior leaders and sometimes they're they're like line staff they're not they're not people who have any like fo we don't really have enough people and we're too cheap because we're nonprofit right we've got to be thrifty so we have qualified administrators twenty bucks for every interpretation and employees who have no authority at all it seems like an organization are given a role to what's their role self directed learning create ownership so we have a benchmark in the foundation to actually move our entire workforce and entire stage ahead using the intercultural development inventory which is a cultural comp and we now know that forty eight percent of our staff are in acceptance or adaptation that's that's really amazing to me and we're about a four hundred person organization so you know that's a second that's that's another lesson give everybody a role make everybody feel included you know frankly if you're an asian person that while you come to me say well you know i'm really culturally competent whatever and i say ok what about working with black kids are you ok with that you know there's there's a journey that never ends here with learning about other cultures and people the other thing is and how many of you are actually stuck in the definition process like you say racial equity and there are like ten interpretations raise your hand or you say diversity and there's like ten interpretations ok well that's kind of where wilder was like about seven years ago when i started there and we introduced a framework so that we could use the same language it's not perfect because it's just a tool for change but we now use the same language this is a resistance strategy from institutions if you can just keep defining and redefining what all of this actually means then you really don't have to do anything right how many of you are working an organization that might perhaps be stuck in this little stage yeah right go back and commit to language that can be used across your organizations it's amazing how how helpful that is the other thing that i have done or we have done it wilder is that we don't mandate anything we don't make anybody do anything we set broad metrics and we say we want to work towards this kind of vision and world will you be a part of the solution here's a role for you you are welcome to create conflict if you want to and we will help us ourselves through this process so our efforts are voluntary an organic and i was at the leadership workshop yesterday and there was a comment made about there are also all these different racial equity things i mean like the commissioner of m d h is doing stuff and while there's got to  on racial equity network and itasca with c e o s is doing c e o s are doing something and and you know it's just like why can't we get aligned and i think we have to shift our approach the voluntary organic nature of eliminating racism is go with where the energy is thiel the momentum don't stop it because you know another resistance strategy that organizations uses or there's not alignment so i guess i can't do anything there's not alignment there is always alignment there's a line of it between two people five people ten people twenty people thirty people supervisors executive teams make it voluntary an organic because if you aren't doing that then you're stopping the forces of change we can link up later after the movement's been created i don't think like during the civil rights movement people decide to dr king you know we're just not aligned are you kidding unleash the energy of this community why do we keep talking about that ok so the other thing that's created change and cultivating transformation is you know we have to create pressure as organizational leaders from inside and outside the institution so i subject myself to humility around mistakes that we have to learn as an institution i put myself out there as the first authentic leader to say my gosh we massed up i was not racially conscious enough i was not good enough and i am eating humble pie because i couldn't do it the way that it was supposed to be done so inside of our organization we have resource networks that keep management good and we tell them don't celebrate diversity go to action you know most of these affinity groups are you know we want you to support each other but please don't do anything to disrupt management you know and by the way we're not even to give you resources well forget that given resources make them do stuff help them help you create strategic advantages for change in your institutions and don't be afraid the conflict that happens in the good stuff we also do things like you know we have a performance factor that is around diversity that helps we report our results out to the community i'm doing it to you right now and then we try to respond to calls for assistance and help which is you know in the future hopefully a diversity institute where we can bring organizational leaders and who want to do the same kind of work that we're doing to help teach and learn and educate and have a mutual mutual accountability setting so we talked about conflict that's a big one and you know the thing that i'd say about this is you cannot expect people of color or white people or any people in your institutions to be able to do this alone you can't do it alone even as the c e o you need a safe space  where there's complete confidentiality that will never be violated when you talk about trying out solutions and reserving judgment and learning how to say the words out loud about what you're experiencing and what you're doing is really really important  lack the language to identify what we are experiencing and it's because if i'm wearing commissioner eleanor's glasses and i can't see the way he sees you know we have to come together but it's not enough you know the other thing we've done because by and large we don't know which policies are creating racial disparities that wilder we have to become racially and culturally competent enough with skills racially conscious in terms of how is racism  surfacing to actually do a root cause analysis on the policies and practices that are perpetuating disparities in the community and we can only do that if we have enough validation from people who understand so here's an insight that system favored white men so compensation was in equitably distributed and we're in the process of reworking that right now i don't have to tell or h r director do that she's an h r she's an h r specialist she had to identify that because there's no way that all of us can identify all of these different things likewise in the g l b t community how different forms are you know put out we had to have the  g tell us that there was bias being created towards heterosexism people heterosexual world that was making clients that were serving uncomfortable so it's not just enough to id that identification process in the solutions can't be seen if people aren't racially conscious or culturally competent enough to actually say something about it because we lack the language and then you know finally one of the lessons that we've learned is that we can always assume and we never question that people of color are right about their life experience it's amazing the dismissals that happen throughout an institution when we start listening to people of color  incorporating their views into a design process how often they are told that they're wrong they are told that they're wrong you must just not get this piece or that piece and it's like you know what why don't we just say you're always right i like it when people tell me that people of color have to control their own narratives ok so you know i guess i'm starting to wrap up now but there is no progress without discomfort or challenge in other words conflict is part of the change equation to transform our belief systems and in fact move to action too often we don't have the reciprocity and trust across different races in order to do this and we let the attention go on too long if we are lucky enough as white people as people of color as people who sit in different corners to have someone hold the mirror up to us to express our reality like the selfie we are lucky for you because most people just walk off the job you're highly talented staff are walking off your community providers aren't wanting to work with you so let me just say that i continue to see when people suffer because they other people are not willing to move across the comfort zones here's when i see it i see it when an educated and successful person of color refuses to take a risk to speak out because they're afraid something will happen to them that they'll be negative consequences i see it when i see discomfort or people stay in their comfort zones from the dominant white culture when they wait for the minority person of color to speak even though they're the ones that need to speak up their behalf i see it when a person turns away from someone who sits in a wheelchair because it makes them uncomfortable and i see it when people choose in their free time to only socialize with people who look exactly like them we have to disrupt our personal peace for progress to advance racial equity and that means taking risks to advocate for ourselves and to be allies for others taking turns in the alley if you're a person of color working to identify to limit eliminate your own internalized oppression the trauma that you've experienced so that you can heal and move on and as a white person using your privilege and turning it into a weapon to defeat bigotry hatred and injustice work on seeing your own race and practice every day how you can do but do it better and i want you to know that the status quo is always easier to maintain because it's easier but maintaining a status quo means transformation on a kurd so we need to practice and just like a good entrepreneur you have to risk more often to be more successful more often and we're probably not risking enough even me we can also be hard on those who aren't moving fast enough and we all have to be more generous forgive ourselves and each other to work and press forward we have to build each other's confidence because intent does not equal effective impact we have and we have unconscious bias towards others and despite our best attempts sometimes we're our own worst enemies and if we care and come back we need to learn how to try something else but nobody is responsible for your learning you are responsible for it to dismantle racism inside of yourself so what do we do how do we plant and create new ways of being together while in this community i believe we have all the right ingredients to change to overcome racism but i believe we are having trouble creating the recipes we keep wondering if some do not work or group is going to come up with the recipe for us while i'm telling you that one recipe just isn't enough it's many recipes and to debunk this myth that we somehow can't overcome racism i want you to know that i've seen it happen and we can do it so here's a concrete challenge to you i've learned over the years in being public in public administration at wilder and other places that budgeting is a values exercise some people think it's actually about numbers it's not about numbers the values exercise so what i want you to do this year is i want to to have you be advocates to allocate and reallocate resources to feel this work in terms of time money and people to generate the impact that we want to see on the world to dismantle and eliminate racism so go and examine your good intentions in your belief systems and see if there is measurable financial impact within your own organizations and from your own pocketbook to organizations and causes that are working to eliminate racism because budgeting is about exercise what we do financially and with our staff reflects what we think is most important do some analysis of what you're spending and pay attention to whether your efforts are really standing behind your belief systems and your values everywhere you touch with resources as institutional leaders work to advance the kind of world that you want to see so i'm very blessed to be in a role that gives me the platform to talk about while there's work and in a role where i can actually assist other organizations to improve and i want to thank you so much to listening to my very long speech this morning i have a few minutes to take questions i believe right yeah ok does anybody have questions or comments over here i'm really excited to have heard he speak like this i know we've worked together you've come down to our office and i appreciate you taking the time and it worth it anthony to hear about the work that we're doing came about because same promise neighborhood work but i have ben charged up this is going out and wilder i'm very very very excited to hear this it to hear your frame work was extremely exciting from a different perspective about michael thank you a very lonely lonely time there were in a zation so my question is what is the organization doing now to reach out to the aft american community in st paul  well you know one of the things that we're trying to do is build leaders within the organization and to give institutional supports in a way that doesn't leave people out alone so recruiting is is helpful i mean we  moved in the last few years to being forty percent people of color in the organization numbers help you know so we have about eighty percent turnover and over the period of i think five or six years we have  increased the ratio of the share of our staff of color by seven percent which means that we had to retain and we had to hire new people now i'd have to go back and see what it looks like in terms of figures moving up but we are promotions of people of color have increased about one percent a year so we're not we're not that big but we're trying really hard and i think we still have a long ways to go with with promoting inclusion making people feel welcome once they do come  both both as an institution and also as as people across races but i think that we're doing a better job than probably when you were there and we will never do the perfect job it will never be perfect because there's a mutual relationship that gets occurs and really what i'm looking for from new staff of color and white staff is are you wanting to sign up for this do you do you want to engage in creating and making the organization better so our we have a we have an employee engagement measure that's really around taking leadership around diversity and inclusion efforts and we have a benchmark of thirty percent of our staff all staff that while they're engaging in some leadership capacity where thirty nine percent now so thirty nine percent of our workforce is engaged in some way in some leadership activity and that's participating in an area g being part of our inclusion action team which runs our diversity efforts you know being a manager that has committed to action to moving people along in their journey to be more culturally competent or racially aware so things like that so we're doing better yeah but we're not perfect and i don't think we ever will be yeah other questions when it comes into contact with other groups there's bond to be hybridisation of culture both in the majority culture as well as in the minority coaches and in that we have two choices either hybridisation kind of good in the harmonious fashion or in a conflict or some combination of the two so how do we manage the composition of harmony and conflict in that situation yeah you know i think one of the mistakes that we make  because we do have a racial frame that's been created over a couple of centuries here is that we don't we lump people into one group and then we say oh but you're black you know if you're if you even if you're somali or you or some other thing happens a lot to the asian american community because we have so many different ethnicities but we the hybridization does occur but generationally so like the monks have been in this country now for forty years what i'm seeing at wilder is that the same patterns of internalized oppression and racism and the dynamics around economic inequality if that first generation of immigrants or refugees don't make it through they become  victim to the same dynamics that are other racial communities have had forever in this country it's that's how strong racism is so you know one of the things that they can maybe help reconcile this is is for people to understand that and it took me a long time quite frankly to say i'm asian american you know because i was always ever i mean i speak i grew up in that culture is that that's not how people treat me whether i choose to that or not so they only see an asian american woman who's at some conference or you know i mean i could be anything and and the asian american experience and i can only speak from my own is that you are the perpetual foreigner and you are often forgotten from racial dialogue because you're the perpetual foreigner even third generation chinese americans are asked where you from where you're from you're never ever legitimately here and so you know the hybridization is still occurring  socio political and economic context which created a lot of structural advantages of for people of one type and not of the other what it has done at least in our community and in the a p i community is it has massed the racism that impacts so many groups that are not as highly educated coming from overseas and so you know i do think that those dynamics will shake out over time but i'm not seeing at least from a policy perspective any any changes in that capacity so like we are still only accepting immigrants federally that that certain categories you can come if you're an engineer and you're usually american you can come of your doctor but you know you can't come if you're from burma or you can't come if you're from this other place and you know it's still still very widespread targets are set every year through immigration policies and the target for a period of i think sixty years was only white european americans it was a very dark time actually for asian americans in the country because if you were chinese american during that time and some crime happened to you you couldn't be counted as your own witness you were denied the rights to actually serve as your own witness policy wise through the courts so you know that legacy for chinese americans still gets perpetuated today and you know i mean it does lead to a lot of wealth inequality so i think that that  i like to be hopeful about the hybridisation occurring but i think history shows us that without intentional action to dismantle policies at that level that we will continue to see some of the things that we see and that's actually why we continue experience some of the problems that we have in our society it's not just about history it's actually about today we're still creating things today and i found the thing in my research that we were still creating things today that don't do anything for people of color or advancing racial equity even from those who believe that they're doing it any other where there was this question up there yeah thank you i love your speech today it was great question i have and i've worked in for profit nonprofit and now i'm working for a smaller privately owned company and i've also worked in the area of diversity for years so i'm familiar  with as far as educating and forming a diversity team but i will say this last job that i haven't is as a diversity manjit manager is the most challenging but whatever reason i don't know is a just the the citee were things are today what people have endured over the past year but for me and probably a lot of other folks i think i'm struggling with hold to really move this organization to have an appreciation for diversity to move the organization a direction and and i don't know like i said just understanding diversity and racism overall i'm the only person of color sitting in the office which i was amazed by because you know we're in the twentieth century and now i'm the only person call or walk into th e door was surprising to me but nonetheless in my role as the diversity manager but i'm trying to figure out how to move this organization for in a white male dominated organization that is really they bursley but they don't know really what that really means so i'm just asking you for your bias on that wow i'm so glad you asked because that was the exact situation i was then except i wasn't the diversity manager i was the division director in adult services at ramsey county you know i think what i did and i don't know if this would help you is i thought about it as making sure you know i mean i  just tried to find one other person and i had because i had no people of color working with me i said is there one person on this senior team that can actually be my ally so you know frankly like i had lunch with him and i talked to them and i learned about who they were and then and then i realized when i had actually enough confidence i was quite young when i had that job i think i just turned thirty was i i like i decided that i was going to let some of them in a little bit because of their respective backgrounds understanding poverty because you know it doesn't have to be understanding race i mean as long as you can anchor them anchor people and not also see white people as all monolithic that's the other thing that we do as people of color we forget that there are so many allies out there but they're invisible to us we have to get to know them and listing one person at a time and you know like if there's some great like racial conflict o cultural conflict or something the company struggling with russia there because that's when the tension is going to be high we had a situation like that ramsey county where we were trying to roll out a self assessment tool and those of us who were people of color actually ended up i think i actually like left crying and sobbing it was probably the worst experience of my professional career but because i had been there for a couple of years and people knew that i was an otherwise pretty emotionally stable person it really said something and you know it was the hand that the white people on my team had to expand extend to me to actually help me and them along but it what it came with believing that if it was really about horrible for me in that meeting it must be really bad and so you know we've used examples we've used things like that wilder too so look for openings where there's cultural conflict racial conflict and don't assume that all white people are the same take them out to lunch learn about them and you know they're there you do have to kind of bring people over and it is a gradual process i mean i think i think monte would say the same that the lation ship that we developed as a trusting bond across race was probably one of the most trans formative experience is that he experienced as a white person who had never had the opportunity to actually know a person of color with that level of intimacy in terms of supervision you know so it happens one relationship at a time and you only need one  you know in community organizing it's like if you're just you then that's kind of not enough but if you can have one other person you can be a coalition or partnership and that's kind of how i think about it no no i mean it's like a you know there are two of us great more energy  other questions oh yes a lot of women asking questions hi i have a question my question would be do you think that the merican itself is a culture is cell so there's two or three different issues where the you are of one race or another but once you have became become an american after five years we have to deal with that and she'll so what do you think about that you know ok this is going to sound a little radical but i'm just going to say it american to me you know in so many coded ways has been used and through through a lens of whiteness so i just can't be an american i'm like among american i'm an asian american so so i think of the word american sometimes gets racialized in ways that we don't even realize because you know are all the native peoples who are here are they american do you know what i mean the other story and the reason why i say we're a nation of displaced people and not saying you know american dream all these other things is you know what my dream was very different than someone else's dream and frankly we did a lot of killing people as dreams so you know so my experience of america as an american is a very different experience than i you know as experienced as an african american person and so i feel like there is a sort of like a democratization process but everybody gets socialized into a slightly different america and and so i think that american is used to in my in my view to connote white protestants you know i mean it's not the the story isn't even an as inclusive as it could be one of my an american being american and american to me does have certain ideals it's my u s citizenship it's when i became a citizen at age twelve and i remember being really young when this happened because i'm naturalized i had a very negative experience with the ins officer he basically asked my mother if i was really his her child and my mother said in very broken mung she come out of me yeah yeah but you know the other thing i thought of when that happened was the other thing i thought of when that happened was you know the legacy of everything historically that has happened in this country as a citizen  mine to own and that because we are a nation of displaced people that perhaps there might be a space for someone like me to create a better world so that other people in this community can actually not have the are you sure you're this mother of this kid i mean that that's ridiculous so yeah i thought the most american when i was actually studying overseas and germany i was an exchange student to berlin and  then and i told people i was an american and most of them thought i was turkish because there's a big turkish population and then they also thought i was a native american because i my hair was really long and i had like dark skin and then because i played a lot of tennis so you know i mean it means different things to different people that's what ok reverse racism as and also including white people or advancing equity and kind of including everybody or what yeah yeah ok ok well you know i guess the first thing i would say is i've kind of gotten over that part of it is self serving and i don't you know i don't i don't see a lot of white people going on apologizing for advancing racial equity because they're white you know and i think we need to quit doing that as people of color myself because you know the reality is when you do that you deny that that people actually see your skin color and it's a way of reinforcing invisibility for people of color so i've kind of gotten over that now if you're going to ask me what are the challenges and how have i advanced leadership in the community as an asian american leader who you know has to have different strategies to keep myself authoritative credible you know all these other things i'd say that leading as a person of color on these issues and leading as a white person are very different and that i need to have multiple messengers or we need to have multiple messengers for the message that we're having change the messenger don't have it be you i mean this is when allies are really important frankly you know because of the kind of work that i do at the wilder foundation i have to have allies who are black i have to have allies who are white i have to have allies who are you know qur'an and i don't enter a space to talk about controversial things you know white person can perhaps go as a c e o and talk about this and you know maybe nothing will happen i as a as an asian american person if i'm going to be advancing racial equity i need to bring other allies with me i need to have enough support to actually do that because because sometimes i'm not believed i'm not believed even as the c e o of the wilder foundation i can be dismissed because i am a person of color that happens on a more regular basis than the other thing so i'm not afraid to say you know what as an asian american here's kind of what i experience you know and i  actually had a call to action for the c e o s in town that i'm working with organizations a couple years ago and it was us reporting on it while there about what progress we're making and what i said to the c e o s and well say it all the you is good leaders who are advancing racial equity will not last forever without your support commissioner ellinger will not last forever without your support antonia wilcox and myself sue hey you know these are challenging jobs we need all of you to rush up and support us and to say i know you're not quite getting it right but i think you're halfway right or you're right here and let's move on no no because you know you don't you and i think that that's the part of the equation that we always miss right i mean how often does a come along not very often so celebrate recognize and and link hands you know you get a link hands behind the people that champion the values that you care about and i say to people while they're all the time you know what  social justice and equity is they're really important concepts our actions are more important how we practice how we show up who were attending to where we are you know it's very important ok i think over time thank you so much