We All Have bricks We Can Use to Build or Destroy

so three times

i went down to the black lives matter

protest

i’m 66 years old so i’ve been to many

many demonstrations over the years but

this

one was really different

there were all these people hundreds of

people chanting black lives matter

holding signs and placards and with

black lives matter on their t-shirts and

face masks

all these white people around me all of

that energy

and i must say it was surreal in a way

it was a little bit

disconcerting i

at one point in the distance saw a young

white woman

and on her back were the words if

they open fire stand behind me

and i saw that and i felt emotional

and i actually thought of my young

grandson

who’s always been a bigger boy even at

12 13

he was six feet tall and then

as now i worried that someone might

see his clowning around or his

horse play as menacing or

threatening and what i know about

america

is that even being an unarmed innocent

child is not enough to protect him

so when i saw that woman with those

words on her

t-shirt on the back i felt a kind of

connection with her but i also wondered

could i trust her could i trust her to

stand with me

in the fight against anti-black racism

not just at that protest but between

the protest i wondered if that

fervor that led her to put those words

on her back

didn’t come with analysis

or would it fade when the excitement

around the protest wore off

could i trust her or would she get race

fatigue

when she understood that we would be

fighting for racial justice

not just now but next year and the year

after that would she be

with me when she realized that there are

no quick fixes

to centuries of black enslavement

and decades of government sanctioned

race discrimination so

it raised in our conversation uh

terry what does it mean to be a good

ally

and i when i saw that woman i wondered

would this be someone who would be

willing to stand with me uh

in the long term because that’s what

this fight is going to require

we did talk about what makes a good ally

and we

um i think that’s difficult for a number

of us

who think that we have good intentions

and we’re certainly trying hard but

we’re also making missteps

um you and i had talked about a lot of

the

the pushback and the verbiage around all

lives matter

as opposed to black lives matter and i i

think i get it but is there a way a

better way i can explain it

to people that i know and you gave me

that great analogy about the woman on

the beach

would you share that so what i said is

a mother’s on the beach with her four

children and they’re all in the water

and she notices that one of them is

really struggling

and so she focuses on that child

and it’s not that she doesn’t love her

other three

children she loves and adores her other

three children

it’s just her attention right now

is focused on the child that is

struggling

and i think that when we talked about

that and you looked at it that way

that was a way for you to uh

understand what it means when people say

black lives matter

it’s it’s a great way it’s a great story

and i did um

donna reference that i also write and i

did steal that but

with your permission and stuck it in a

column so that i could

adjust that story um we talked a bit too

about what real change looks like it’s

one thing

to say we want to make sure that we’re

more inclusive in our non-profit board

in our events in uh those things that we

do

so that there are more people at the

table but you were great to explain to

me it’s not enough to be at the table

why don’t you explain that a little

better one of the

expressions i always struggle with a

little bit

is uh diversity and inclusion and what

does

inclusion really mean and i think often

what it means

is if you behave you will be

invited into the circle and once you’re

in the circle

the expectation is that you’re there to

maintain the status quo

and when that happens then i think we

often don’t have

true diversity because the people who

are

there are there under certain conditions

and those conditions are made very clear

you’ll hear in certain interviews or we

didn’t think so and so was a good

fit that’s that’s often what that means

and so i think to make

real progress here that we have to think

about

allowing people to come into the circle

with their whole

self because in the end

if we’re just there if i’m just there as

decoration

um then the benefit of having those

diverse

voices are there and i think the other

piece of it is

when you invite people into the circle

who are not like you the outcomes

are going to change i think very often

when people

think of diversity and inclusion

and they bring they make the circle more

colorful

they don’t really expect anything to

change in terms of priorities what’s

important etc

and if you really want those

new voices to inform the future to

inform

outcomes in the future it has to be

allowed that they speak

with their full self

we talked about using an example for

that so that it became more

tangible and i come from a

background where we put on lots of

fundraisers like any non-profit

and you and i talked about what would

that fundraiser look like

if it really was authentically changing

and i said well you know we used to have

this big fundraiser it was

at a fancy hotel the saint regis they

helped us with food and beverage

we had a certain price ticket we had

someone do the lovely flowers on the

lovely tables

and we did a say a 150 ticket

so let’s talk about how that event would

be different if it was going to be

authentically inclusive so

it invites people to think about how

that event is going to be

because often what happens the uh

new person comes into the circle and

maybe has some different ideas about the

venue

maybe has some different ideas about the

music

or different ideas about the caterer and

what typically happens

because the people in the circle are

smart people and they’re

you know in the world experienced they

will talk

the new person out of the caterer that

they might recommend because of course

the caterer that they’ve always been

using

has been carefully considered embedded

and the same with the venue and the same

with the music

and in the end nothing changes and

that’s what i mean

by if you have new

people in the circle and you listen to

them

it’s gonna be a different party uh

there’s no

um there’s no value to you

if it’s going to be the same party no

matter who’s in the room

we also touched on um something that i

really hadn’t given

enough thought to which was it’s one

thing to say

that the first black judge the first

black

general and what it means to be in the

room where it happens

but you made me look at what is the cost

to be in the room where it happens

yeah and this is when i was saying

making the point about

what inclusion means

and that we are often asked the price

of being in some of these rooms

is to not come in with our whole selves

and one of the things that’s

interesting about this moment you now

hear

generals black generals or you hear very

senior black

executives feeling that they can speak

more candidly

about their journey up the ladder

and the times that they had to be silent

when maybe they didn’t want to be silent

or things that

they saw that they couldn’t speak

out about so there’s a price for this

conformity there’s a price for

not allowing people to come with

all of their full experience

so what does that mean so to me that

means

you don’t during this black lives matter

period

walk down to your senior black executive

and say bob can you do a

two-page memo on this for me that for me

is not

a serious effort not that bob should not

be part of the conversation but i’d like

to see companies

approach this like they would any other

big strategic initiative so

there’s a budget there’s staff

there are metrics there’s a timetable

it’s reporting to the ceo and

it is not just you know a small

project a beautifully crafted

corporate statement on black lives

matter

you have a book club you’ve you’ve

talked to me a bit about your book club

and um who’s reading what

and two books have come up um white

fragility

and white rage give us a little bit more

a few more

titles that we ought to be reading

paying attention to and then if you’re

comfortable

tell me a little bit about your book

club and what transpired lately

so i’m gonna focus actually on

white rage so if you’re if you’re gonna

read anything right now i’m gonna say

that’s the book to read

the reason that i say that is that

we don’t really understand

our history so when i look at uh what

does it mean to be a good ally

one of the things for me it means is to

be proactively

anti-racist and that

you get versus i’m a nice person i’m not

raises what’s for me to do

there’s that posture and then there’s

proactively anti-racist

the people who are there they get there

through a process

and part of that process is

self-reflection

they look at their own unconscious bias

they look at

how they came up their family etc

but they also take an unflinching

look at this enterprise that is america

and they look at our shared history on

race we talked about um i’m going to go

backwards for a second

about inclusion and about corporate

inclusion

and we talked about the commitment of

putting products on the shelf for

example

talk a little bit about that black

products on the shelf so

there’s a pledge right now

where uh companies are being asked

to uh set aside 15

of their shelf space for black owned

products

if you are a company that is signing

this 15

pledge you also have to

be involved in the operational

part of it how are these companies going

to successfully

deliver on that pledge who where are

they going to get the financing

how is your procurement department going

to work with them

a procurement department that typically

is working with

asian companies they’re negotiating on

price in a really aggressive way

a small black-owned business

may need help ramping up to get to that

15

so companies i don’t want them to just

sign the pledge

without considering some of these other

things or what will happen is three

years from now

when we don’t reach that goal everyone

would be you know what we really

tried and you know we just couldn’t get

the products

you know as a retailer

what it takes to deal with you what it

takes

to be able to serve

a multi-store national chain

so it’s going to require that you

work closely with these companies

to ensure that they’re successful or if

you don’t work with them you help

them or you identify a partner who can

work with them

otherwise these sorts of pledges are

performative

from my point of view i want you to tell

me

right now tonight what are you worried

about

i worry that we’re gonna squander this

moment

26 million people hit the streets

multi-racial multi-ethnic

multi-generational in the middle of a

pandemic

we’re morally called to come out

and we have an

opportunity here to create

a moral and just america

we have an opportunity to

create a highly functioning

multi-racial multi-ethnic society

where race and zip code

don’t determine life outcomes

and i see a lot of things that are

performative

i see companies coming out with

beautifully crafted statements

i see i don’t see the

uh the heft behind

some of the programs

that i’m hearing them talk about and i’m

someone who i do think

symbolism is important but it’s not the

only thing that’s important so i worry

that we will either

squander the moment

because we don’t understand

the urgency that’s required or we don’t

understand fully the magnitude

of what we’re addressing and that people

may not have the commitment to be

in this in a sustained way this is going

to be

both a straight vertical lift

parts of it will be a slog but parts of

it are also going to be an adventure

you know i like to say that

momentous change requires

both creation and destruction

there are systems that are going to have

to be

taken down and there are systems that

are going to require

all of our talent and creativity to

build

and to do that

we’re going to have to be in this

for the long term and i

worry that we might not

have the uh what it takes to do that

so then the flip side of that coin what

are you hopeful

about right now what i’m hopeful

about is everybody who knows me

knows i love tik tok and they groan

because i’m sending them

tick tocks at two in the morning i guess

you are you too terry and she knows how

to do it

what i love about young people

and is that so i think part of it is

this

when you look at the demographics of

people over

65 it’s like 80 of them are white and 20

or something else when you look at

zoomers or generation z it’s pretty much

50 50. so whereas in general

75 of white people have no contact with

anybody

black at all they don’t know anybody in

their network

they don’t have anybody with these young

kids they know each other

i go into friends homes

and when i look at the grandchildren

it’s almost like a mini you in

in there so what gives me hope is that

as this proximity where

these younger people are actually seeing

what’s happening to their friends it’s

not remote for them

that that will lead

to a different outcome and

the you know more than half the people

who took to the streets

uh were people under 25 so that gives me

hope

you