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