The Big Lie

[Music]

have you ever been lied to

like for a long time

santa claus and the tooth fairy are

popular lies right

and children are devastated when they

finally learn that their adults have

been lying to them for years on purpose

i mean there’s heartbreak and tears

but then those same children grow up

and they repeat the same harmless white

lies to their own kids

all of this lying and pretending

is normal

for my talk today

i want to take you on a journey to

discover how i learned that i was being

lied to

and what i’ve learned about needing to

uproot that lie to address racism

this is a picture of me and my family

taken when i was two years old

as the only american born child in a

nigerian family i’ve always been a

little different

shortly after that photo

my family moved to nigeria

and for a while i grew up in a country

where everyone looked like me

my skin color was the default

if you would have asked me to describe

myself

as i was growing up in nigeria i would

have told you that i was a girl

how old i was

that i had a bold personality

my little sister would have told you

that i was bossy

i say i was a natural-born leader

it wouldn’t have occurred to me though

to tell you that i was black

until

we moved back to the united states

and i learned very quickly how very

black i was everywhere and eventually in

the workplace

imagine i offered you a million bucks to

accurately describe the race and gender

of leaders of industry in our country

i’m talking governors

heads of media conglomerates non-profit

execs corporate ceos

you would probably

guess mostly male and white

and you would be

right for the most part

it’s 2020

and of all the fortune 500 ceos

only seven percent

are women

none of them are black

only one percent

of those ceos are black and none of them

are women

zero percent of them

look like me

this gives you an idea of what i faced

when i entered the workplace where for

over 20 years of my career i only ever

one time had another black woman in my

reporting structure between me and the

top leader in that workplace

and these were workplaces that for the

most part were striving to build a

diverse and inclusive environment

well

i’m tired of diversity and inclusion

dni yeah

diversity and inclusion efforts have

been popping up in workplaces for

decades

but

marginalized demographics are cynical

because we keep seeing needles move

and we’re not seeing transformational

change

where are the results

of diversity and inclusion

billions of dollars have been spent in

this industry

a recent time magazine article asked a

great question

why are we spending so much

to achieve

so little

after my family moved back to the united

states

i was at i was 10 and

so much happened as i was indoctrinated

into a white dominant culture and

society

and with time i learned the language to

describe what i was experiencing

it was bias

discrimination racism

now i am naturally oriented to jump in

and fix a problem so by high school i

was in the hands across campus club a

prejudice reduction program at the

school for the students and then after

that i went to kentucky state university

which is a hbcu a historically black

college and university

during my visit i recognized that there

was something on that campus that i was

craving

a break from racism

while i was at k-state i began to do my

own learning about the history of race

in the united states and what i learned

would later help me make sense of what

was happening in the workplace

when i entered the workplace i joined

all the committees and councils working

groups and task forces to try to push

for change

and i was consistently disappointed

when diversity and inclusion strategies

that were

rooted in equity

would lose traction

i grew weary

and began to feel like i was on the

diversity and inclusion wheel going

absolutely nowhere

i want to move that entire wheel forward

so why don’t we

why are we spending so much to achieve

so little

it’s because a big lie was told hundreds

of years ago and it’s stuck and

we’re not thinking about it or talking

about it nearly enough

the lie was actually very simple

white people are better than all ethnic

groups

that was pretty much it

white people and

the way that white people did just about

anything

was better

for those that may not know why or when

white became a thing that you could be

allow me to share a bit of information

almost 500 years ago

in 1526

spanish colonists were already here in

present-day south carolina

with enslaved africans

and by 1619

the british colonists were here in

present-day virginia

enslaving africans dispossessing the

indigenous people

killing both if they dared to resist

they built considerable wealth and power

and were soon threatened by rebellions

by the poor

and they recognized that if the line of

division was between the rich and the

poor that they were outnumbered

the color of skin was an effective way

to divide and conquer

and to reduce the number of folks that

were

invested in toppling their power

structure

so they created whiteness

and over time selectively

invited european immigrants to opt in

to that whiteness

and to reap the advantages that that

assimilation would provide

and brown people have been disposable

ever since

and you only need to look at the news

or scroll through your social media to

see that black and brown lives

are still disposable by the systems in

our country

it’s 2020 hundreds of years have gone by

and we are still grappling with the

language to talk about this talk less of

the strategies to solve it

and i saw this in the workplace

where whenever any diversity and

inclusion strategy got remotely close to

de-centering whiteness

it got shut down

it met barriers that maintained the

status quo

where are the results of diversity and

inclusion

they are hampered by the big

white lie

most approved diversity and inclusion

efforts are still operating within

that lie that anything white is better

for months now

workplaces

have finally recognized

the movement for black lives and are

asking what they can do to meaningfully

improve the experiences of black and

brown people

at work

as you’re listening you might be

wondering okay then lady tell us

what should we do

how do we move that entire diversity and

inclusion will forward

the first thing that we have to do

we got to stop lying

why are we so invested

in

pretending that this lie isn’t real

the lie isn’t true

but it is real

internationally celebrated

writer and poet alice walker wrote

healing begins where the wound was made

the wound is this lie that we don’t even

recognize anymore

because it’s not overt

it’s not cloaked in a hood in a gown so

we don’t call it white supremacy even

though that’s what it is

and then we pour salt into the wound by

saying things like

we’re all equally free now

or

that only merit determines who gets that

promotion at work

why

can’t we just be honest about this

let’s get honest about the root of

racism being the creation and

preservation of whiteness

to advantage europeans for a purpose to

maintain wealth and power

so that’s the first thing we have to do

we have to stop lying

second we need to

proactively root out the white lie

in our lives

rooting that out means figuring out if

the white lie has somehow benefited

you your family

your

school

place of worship

business

workplace

third we need to consistently reject the

lie whenever it shows up in us

whenever it shows up in me

and in you

and in your families your places of

worship schools

businesses workplaces and so on

if we do these three things if we make

them an ongoing practice

we stop lying we root out the lie and we

reject the lie

we will discover the specific action

steps that we need to take

to make transformational change

so why am i tired of diversity and

inclusion

because i’m tired of

not addressing the big white lie

and i’m tired because so many markers of

stability and

success not just in the workplace but in

our lives

are still largely predictable by race

and by gender and sexual orientation

and other identities

but i am daring to hope

especially after this historic year

that more of us

are ready to uproot this lie from our

ways of thinking and our ways of being

now uprooting something that has been at

work for going on 500 years is going to

take some time

and it is exhausting

it requires

imagination and creativity

it requires courage

it’s worth it

and maybe someday

when you look at a photo of the fortune

500 ceos

you will see

many more people on that photo

that look like me

thank you

[Applause]

you