Loss of DEI Hurts Everyone: Farah Stockman, Ali Thomas, Ken Covinsky

Eric 00:00

Welcome to the GeriPal Podcast. This is Eric Widera.

Alex 00:03

This is Alex Smith.

Eric 00:04

And Alex, who do we have with us today?

Alex 00:07

I’m so delighted to welcome dear friends. I’ve known them a long time and in fact, I’m hoping that stories from like high school, middle school do not come out on this podcast.

Ali 00:18

Oh, they’re going to come out. [laughter]

Alex 00:23

First, delighted to welcome Farah Stockman, a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and member of the New York Times editorial board, author of American what Happens to People When Work Disappears, which chronicles the lives of three steel workers in Indiana whose factory moved to Mexico during the first Trump presidency. I had the pleasure of listening to this book with Farah reading it. It is a terrific book. Talk about the curiosity of a journalist and the way it starts with Farah at Wellesley the night that Trump is elected and the tears and the crying, the how the heck did we get here? And then going and engaging with these steelworkers in Indiana. Incredible story, Farah. Welcome to the GeriPal podcast.

Farah 01:04

Thank you. Thanks so much for having me.

Alex 01:06

And we’re delighted to welcome Ali Thomas. Ali, who is a hospitalist, trombonist, Baha’I, leader in anti racism efforts in the Pacific Northwest, and co founder of a nonprofit called BIPOC Health Careers Ecosystem. Ali, welcome.

Ali 01:25

Thank you so much, Alex.

Alex 01:26

Delighted to have you. And we’re delighted to welcome back Ken Covinsky, professor of medicine in the UCSF Division of Geriatrics, and frequent guest and co host of this podcast. Ken, welcome back.

Ken 01:36

Hi, Alex.

Eric 01:38

So we are going to be talking about the topic of diversity, equity, inclusion. We got a lot to talk about before we get into this. We always start off with a song request. Ali, I think you have a song request for Alex.

Ali 01:51

I do, and it’s actually the song oh, what a Wonderful World because it is sort of the opposite of what we feel right now. And for reasons that I will get into, I feel like we have to maintain the perspective.

Alex 02:07

Yeah, I love it. A reason for optimism in a pessimistic podcast. Here’s a little bit. I’m going to do it. Hawaiian Israel Kamakaviva Ole style.

Alex 02:19

(singing)

Eric 03:01

Thank you, Alex. That was fabulous. So we’ve got a lot to talk about. I’m wondering if we can kind of take a step back for everybody. I’M just going to ask some kind of basic questions because it feels like there is a lot of discussion about DEI. There feels like there is a lot of pushback about DEI. When you think about DEI, how. How would you describe it? And fair. I’m going to turn to you because, you know, I had a chance to read a lot of your kind of New York Times articles, and one of the things that.

That stood out is it seems like many Americans are for diversity, equity and inclusion. But there seems to be a growing backlash against diversity, equity and inclusion programs. Is that. Is that. Did I. Am I saying that right? Is that what you were.

Farah 03:52

Yeah, I mean, I think they will say that they’re for it and, you know, whether they’re actually for it. Well, it could be a matter of discussion. But, you know, when these were just benign terms, maybe like five or six years ago, before they sort of became. It became kind of weaponized, I think people would say, yeah, well, diversity, you know, sure, equity, okay. They didn’t really know necessarily what it meant. But there’s been a lot of reasons for the pushback. And you’re seeing it. We used to see it on the left as well. Right. But before I get into that, let me just say that I think this DEI kind of exploded into the mainstream, I would say, five years ago with the death of George Floyd. And in the aftermath, there was this huge outpouring of corporations that wanted to ride this major moment we were having in history.

Every corporation came out with a DEI statement. Lots of companies were kind of taken to task by their employees, saying, what’s your plan for making sure that we have DEI, that we’re listening to different voices, that we’re hiring diverse voices and giving everybody what they need to succeed? And then I think President Biden came into office right as that was, like, was really reaching a peak. And he made it, like, a real priority for his administration. I don’t think people really understand, like, the level that he took it. He was basically, you know, on whether it was grants or hiring, just on so many levels. He said, we want to find disparities, you know, racial disparities and gender disparities, and we want to root them out. And we also want to make sure we have, like, a wide range of voices. And he had the.

He said he would have the most diverse cabinet. He did. And so I guess I kind of, you know, part of the cultural whiplash we’re experiencing right now is that that administration, which was the most diverse administration in US History, handed over power to an administration that pledged to root out DEI root and branch, to, like, go to war against it. And, like, that’s what we’re experiencing right now. What was the law under Biden is now illegal under. Under Trump and punishable by, you know, you’re going to lose your grants, all the grants. So we are experiencing a serious moment of cultural whiplash. Like, that’s. And now your question is, like, why? Why do people get disillusioned with it? And I think, you know, on the left, people are like, oh, this is just performative. You’re just making us go to these trainings that don’t really change anything.

And on the right, there was this feeling that, like, elite sensibilities, like people who just were obsessed with the right pronouns or the right language, were, like, imposing their will on everybody else. I think there were some reasonable reasons among some reasonable people to say, is this really the way we should approach it? Has it gone too far? For a lot of white people, they had never talked about race except in a way that framed them as being on the outside, like employment opportunities. Those offices that were created to disseminate fair opportunities were never for them. And now, I think now we’re seeing Trump weaponize that and basically say, okay, we’re gonna get rid of any brown person out there. We’re gonna question your credibility and whether you should be here, which is a whole nother. That’s a. Anyway, I’m talking too much.

Eric 07:41

Yeah. And then, Ken, I know you’re a big baseball fan. Today’s an important baseball day. What’s important about today? How does it connect to this podcast?

Ken 07:54

Well, thank you, eric. So on April 15, 1947, Jackie Robinson took to the field at Ebbets Field and broke the color barrier in baseball. And I always think when I think about these moments, I dream I could have been at. I dream of being at Ebbett’s field that day. And, you know, what does it mean now? You know? Well, it’s a day. It’s a day. The arc of justice turned a little bit in the right direction. You know, I think it’s a day that has grown in impact. I don’t think it was recognized. It was recognized as an important day in baseball at the time. I don’t think it was recognized as a profound moment in American history, Know, in a moment that just you know, really kind of rescued the soul of baseball and made the soul of America better.

And I think it’s also just like, you know, just a few things also about the timeliness of Jackie Robinson. So some of you might have heard the story about how the Department of Defense took the Jackie Robinson page off its website. So, you know, another thing that people often don’t know about Jackie Robinson is that his activism and courage extended far outside of baseball. So when Jackie. Shortly after the US entered World War II, Jackie Robinson applied to enter Officer Candidate School and was rejected because of his race and fought to enter and eventually became a second lieutenant. Another part of the Jackie Robinson story is when he was at Fort Hood, he was ordered to get to the back of a bus and refused and was charged and court martialed and thank God, found innocent. So, you know, remembering, you know, that this was 10 years before Rosa Parks. So just kind of the impact Jackie Robinson has had on our culture in so many ways and just the courage that he exemplified.

Eric 10:04

And how many Major League managers are. Are black.

Ken 10:08

Well, you know, I actually, I think we actually now have. So this was actually a major call of Jackie Robinson. So that Jackie Robinson had hoped to become a manager after he left baseball. And in his hall of Fame speech, he called for the day where there would be black managers in baseball. It was, I think it wasn’t the last World Series. I think it was the 2023 World Series where Dusty Baker faced off as the manager of the Houston Astros against David Roberts. So basically the two best managers in baseball. And also the first time that two managers in baseball happened to be African American in World Series.

Eric 10:50

Yeah. And there are currently two. Right. Two black managers in Major League Baseball. So, I mean, I guess this is going to. This broader question. I’m going to turn to you, Ali, about this. Why is DEI important right now?

Ali 11:08

Well, first of all, I appreciate being on the podcast. One of the things I wanted to make sure to bring to this is some appreciation of the greater history, because my father is a professor of African American history who really did a lot of DEI work from the 80s, and so he’s really seen the ups and downs. And so one of the things that I went into this era asking the leaders in my organization is how long is your commitment going to last? Because we know white people become interested in this for a period of time and then that fades again. So how long is this going to last for you? I think we need to take historical perspectives, and this is going to be something I’m gearing in throughout this podcast. So taking a couple of steps back to what is the, the reason why we have this work in the first place? What are the structures that were created?

We tend not to understand history in America. So we don’t seem to really understand the history of racism, to which DEI is one response. But we need to always remember that. So I think for all of us, we have to start to ground this conversation, I think, in what has been happening over centuries. For just example, the 19th century saw the United States economy overtake the economies of China, Japan and England to become the world’s leading economy. That happened at the exact same time of the increase in slavery. If you read Edwin Baptiste’s book about cotton and slavery, you see that from over a 40 year period, slaves were tortured to produce four times as much cotton as they had to produce just 40 years earlier. And that was through torture. And so during that same time, that’s when the US Economy took off. So we literally can see differences in the graph and the trends of the economy. And that’s the world that was really created by slave labor. So we now have to look at, okay, well, what’s been the treatment of African Americans since then? And where did affirmative action come in? Well, affirmative action was initially for white people.

And Ira Katznelson is an author who everyone I think should read in terms of understanding the history of affirmative action. He wrote this book called When Affirmative Action Was White, in which he talks about during the FDR administration, during the New Deal. New Deal, all of those New Deal programs were created for white people. All of them. My grandmother was a domestic laborer in Detroit. She didn’t get Social Security because Social Security was specifically passed with the provision that it would exclude the two jobs black people had. Agriculture workers were excluded from Social Security. Domestic workers were excluded from Social Security. My grandmother was a domestic worker. This was part of a bundle of projects. There was also the Federal Housing Authority rules. And when the FHA was giving grants, 98% of the money that they were giving out went to white people. So Ira Castelson talks about, during this era of decades, you essentially saw one country, that of African Americans, giving money to another country, that of white Americans.

And the amount of the white Americans received is $100 billion of direct funding from people who were graduated, who were graduating college, people who were trying to buy their homes, people who were trying to come back from World War II. The entire White community was getting affirmative action. Now we get to the administrations of Kennedy and Johnson, and Johnson was unabashed about the need to redress black people. And I’m going to actually read something that he said. He said, you do not take a person who for years has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race, and then say, you are free to compete with all the others and still justly believe that you have been completely fair. And he also said, Negro poverty is not white poverty. Many of its causes and many of its cures are the same, but there are differences. Deep, corrosive, obstinate differences, solely and simply the consequence of ancient brutality, past injustice, and present prejudice. He also said that these injustices themselves are not only for the Negro, a constant reminder of oppression.

And we still remember this oppression, but for white people, they are a constant reminder of guilt. So we have this issue of white guilt. When we look at this history and where you see problems now, it’s a reaction to that guilt. When you see how people have reacted to DEI, to how it’s been taught, you see how people are reacting to critical race theory, it’s guilt. It’s white people feeling guilty. And they’re creating systems structured around protecting themselves from feeling guilty. So we have to just understand this history, and I think we have to understand that. This is. Just a moment you’re asking me now, Eric, but this is only because we’re sort of at this particular part point on the line where it’s relevant. Yeah, but we have to be. We have to be cognizant of this entire history.

Eric 16:48

Can I ask, is it. Is the backlash just white people? I mean, I’m just thinking about, like, the Trump election. I don’t know anything about, like, DEI polling, but you know what I’ve heard about the Trump election is young men of all different backgrounds voted more for Trump than they did four years ago. Like we saw.

Ali 17:11

You’re talking about Trump. I’m not talking about Trump, but.

Eric 17:14

So I’m back. Is that backlash against DEI, is that just white people, or is it from different backgrounds as well?

Ali 17:21

So, again, my background is a Baha’I’m. Going to stay supranational, super political. Okay? So you guys can deal with the politics. You sent me some great articles about that from, like, the Progressive Policy Institute and so on, like that. This is all great. And. Well, I defer to Farah to talk about that.

Farah 17:41

I mean, I do think that, like, the term DEI has originated from this deep history of what Ali is talking about, but it has grown to encompass many more interests. I think white women are probably the biggest beneficiaries of both affirmative action and DEI. Right. If you look at how these programs have been administered now. And so immigrants, handicapped people, sexual minorities, all of these sort of fall under the umbrella of how do we make sure we have a diverse workforce? How do we make sure that people have what they need to succeed, which is the equity piece? It’s different than equality. It’s equity. And then how do we make sure they’re feeling included? And there was this whole movement around, you know, even in corporate America saying that diverse workforces are more successful, they make more money. Like, know, there, there, and, and there have been studies around this Harvard Business.

Alex 18:47

Review study, I think.

Farah 18:49

Yes, although there have been coral, there have been questions raised about whether there’s a, whether they were studying coral correlation. Like, is it that rich companies just, you know, can afford to go get a diverse group, you know, workforce, or, or does a work, diverse workforce create with rich companies? I mean, I, I, I think that Ali is exactly right in pointing out that we as an American people have a tradition of forgetting our history. And now under this administration, they are actively wiping away that history. They’re taking it away. Look what they’re trying to do to the Smithsonian. I mean, it’s actually chilling. It reminds me of stuff you see in Communist China, of whitewashing some of the worst excesses of Mao. Like, you know, that’s what authoritarian leaders do. They, they don’t want inconvenient facts out there.

But, but I do think that DEI has, it had a lot of flaws the way, not, not the overarching idea of it, who could be against diversity, equity and inclusion, but the way that it was implemented in some places, you could argue either was performative or that it alienated people, or that folks who were out there marching in the streets for George Floyd did not do that, so that a whole bunch of Ivy League educated people could get really cushy jobs giving trainings to elite institutions, which is how that often was translated. And so I think what this administration did is that it took what it does all the time. It takes a grain of truth and then it pours it heaps on a medicine that is worse than the disease. And the uprooting of DEI is an act of violence. Now to the federal government that is going way beyond what I think people truly understand.

Alex 20:58

Farah, appreciate the medicine metaphor for our clinical audience. Well played. And Ali, really appreciate your going through a brief history of an incredibly important history and making sure our listeners remember and are aware of that. Ken, I think you have something you want to say.

Ken 21:17

Yes, I have a question for both of you. And this sort of relates to a lot of the current discussion. So, and I’m going to say this is sometimes posed as A tension. And I’m going to ask you if it is a tension or should be attention. So the tension of, quote, DEI versus excellence. So that there are some who argue against DEI say that, you know, they don’t necessarily oppose some of the underlying missions, but everything should be about excellent. So that, you know, I think about what you were talking about, Farah, with Title ix. You think like, okay, Caitlin Clark, like, DEI didn’t make her talented or make her the best in the world, but we. The fact that we know who she is has its origins in DEI. And so Title IX eventually allowed her excellence to shine and be visible to all of us. You know, so Jack C. Robinson, maybe you could argue when Branch Rick, she decided he was going to desegregate baseball. You know, some would have called that a DEI initiative, but it was an initiative towards excellence.

He wanted the best in the world to be able to play the game. You know, I’m thinking about, like, you know, I think, Eric, you served on our medical school admissions committee once. So if you see a candidate who maybe has a lower grade point average and they worked 40 hours a week during college and they were the first in their family to go to school, isn’t that excellence to recognize that somebody persevered against those odds and that means something maybe different from somebody who their parents pushed, their parents paid all their way through their way through college? So, I mean, it’s a question about, like, how do we. The framing of this is a question of DEI versus excellence, and how do you respond to that, and how is there an avenue for. For advocacy within that?

Alex 23:27

I think Ken answered his own question, and I’d like to invite maybe Ali to use this as an opportunity to talk about the struggle for education within black community. And I think you have a story of your mom that you’d like to share.

Ali 23:44

Yeah, I could. I think I wanted to maybe be more direct. It is impossible to have excellence without diversity. It is just impossible. And I would love to see how, Farah, you talk about this, but when I look at just the clinical care that I do, you know, three of you are in palliative medicine, right? So it is my experience that I can have conversations about end of life that none of you can have because I walk in the room and you do not have that trust. And I have had recent conversations. Just in January, I remember having a conversation with a family that came in with a plan for end of life care. And I said, wait, let’s look at this more closely. And as an internist, I said, Wait, this doesn’t look appropriate for you. I don’t recommend this at all. And there was a brown family. I had an experience where some years ago, another patient of mine was a minister, a reverend, a bishop, and I called him Bishop. Have any of you talked to older black people and used their first name? I’m asking you, have you ever walked in and talked to a black, older black patient and used their first name?

Eric 24:57

Yes.

Ali 24:58

Okay, okay, that’s a mistake. You never go in and talk to an older black patient and use their first name ever. Because that’s a sign of disrespect. Because we were called boy. And we were called by our first names exclusively. So for, you know, I’ve been a physician for 23 years. I’ve never called a black patient, older black patient by their first name ever. I was calling this patient Bishop, his last name, and he passed away. And his wife, several years later, she still sees me. She still remembers that I was in a meeting for hospitalists. It was last month, a staff meeting where the leadership wanted to staff up the mornings and decrease the number of rounders, and they wanted to staff up the hospital admitter to the mornings. And I said, I’ve been working here for this number of years and we never have a lot of admissions in the morning. And I kept going and kept going and saying, this doesn’t make sense.

This doesn’t make sense. And I was the only one speaking. And we have 15, 15 hospitalists. And I found out later that they actually didn’t agree either. And they had talked about it before and didn’t agree, but there was only one person besides me who spoke up. So that’s a different culture. That’s diversity in motion. And they ended up not making the change. It was a foolish change. It would have wasted money and it wouldn’t have improved patient care. You have to have diversity. You look at the physical body and you ask yourself, can you afford to lose diversity? You look at your portfolio, ask yourself, can you afford to lose diversity? Look at a genetic pool for any organism and ask yourself, can you afford to lose diversity? It is simply absurd, naive and immature to believe somehow you’re going to get excellence without diversity.

Farah 26:42

Well, that’s where the inclusion piece comes in, too. Because it’s not enough to have diversity. You have to also listen to your diverse voices. You have to also give them a chance to speak from their point of view and talk. Whether it’s an immigrant community or a rural community, there are all kinds of voices that rarely get heard and they need to be heard if we’re going to make decisions together.

Alex 27:06

You had some examples of this in the New York Times piece that inspired this podcast. I think it was titled something like, why Loss of DEI Hurts Everyone and got me thinking. Yeah, it hurts our patients, too, and us, and maybe we’ll get to that. But you started off talking about examples of people in the Biden administration from diverse backgrounds and how their backgrounds helped inform decisions they made. I wonder if you could share that with us.

Farah 27:30

Yeah, so last summer, I started thinking about, okay, what does it mean that this is the most diverse administration? Is it just performative, or can they tell me some stories about how their background made them better at their jobs? And in my view, that’s what we need more of. It’s not a matter of checking a box or, like, meeting a quota. It’s a matter of sharing stories about how coming from a different background makes you better at what you do. That’s the excellence. Right? So Shalonda Young was the very first black woman to serve as the OMB director in charge of the federal government’s budget. And she was a mother, a new mother, when she started the administration. So when I reached out to her people, I thought they might tell me about, you know, how her perspective as a black woman new mom looks at the federal budget. And, yeah, there was a bit of that. She was very interested in Head Start programs and childcare and stuff, you know, making sure that stuff for young kids was in the federal budget.

Alex 28:35

But.

Farah 28:35

But what she really told me were stories about. What her staff really told me were stories about how she came from rural Louisiana, and so coming from rural Louisiana made her understand conservative members of Congress better. She knew how to relate to them. She knew her whites, she knew her. She could talk to them. And there was never a federal government shutdown during the Obama administration. She is credited with avoiding a lot of that mess because she knew how to talk to them and how to get them on her side. There was one story of her sending a belt buckle as a gift to one of them. And he wrote her back like, I sure don’t like your policy. I don’t like your policies, but I sure like you. And it made a difference. And if she had been some New Yorker, she just would have had a different sensibility of relating to them. So their geographic diversity matters, too. And I guess I was Deb Haaland, who was the Secretary of Interior, first Native American to serve in a Cabinet.

This is like the 21st century. I can’t believe it’s taken that long. But she had all kinds of stories about how protecting the land was a part of her family’s tradition and how she was raised. And so, of course, she’s going to figure out a way to auction off federal land for preservation, not just for drilling. And Wally Odiemo, who was the deputy treasury secretary, his family’s from Nigeria. And so what better guy to think about the impact of sanctions on foreign communities than him? He grew up watching his parents send money to Western Union to their relatives. And so he knows what it’s like to get caught up unwittingly in US Sanctions. And I just think the US Plays this huge role in the world and matters that we have people in our government from all over the world that understand how we’re perceived abroad. That’s actually excellence, right? That’s actually bringing a perspective that others don’t have. And so, you know, we could get into the irony of this administration and how unqualified so many of them are to do the jobs that they’re doing. It’s just ironic and incredible to hear them say that we should just be worried about excellence and not DEI.

Eric 31:15

So one criticism that I’ve also heard is that when we think about diversity, the. The Democrats have focused largely on gender, sexuality, disability, and race ethnicity. And you hear Republicans talking about med school admissions, you hear them talking about college admissions like that people with different viewpoints, AKA Republicans, are not the ones that are entering into college and not being accepted. Is that a legitimate concern?

Farah 31:47

I personally think it is. I personally think that geographic diversity matters, political diversity matters. I personally think it is. Whether. I mean, the hard thing is how do you measure it? Right. And if the goal is for us to have a diverse group of people who are not seen through the lens of terrible racial stereotypes, but rather valued for the different perspective they bring, it’s a hard thing to measure.

Eric 32:14

It is hard, too, because you have to be tolerant of intolerant people, too. Ali, what are your thoughts on that?

Ali 32:20

I think what I really love about Farah’s work is how it helps us to transcend differences and to harmonize perspectives. We have to be able to see beyond just this partisanship. We have to really transcend this. I took my kids in 2019, 2020. That summer, I took them to ride horses in the eastern part of my state. And I live in Washington state, and Eastern Washington is always very different than Western Washington. And I was very intentional about this. So it’s 2020. It’s the pandemic. My kids excited about Riding horses. They fell in love with the cats on the farm and all that stuff. And on the way back, I said, did you guys love that? Oh, yeah, we love that. And did you like the people who we were interacting with? Oh, yeah, Y. Well, you know, they all voted for Trump. They all voted for Trump. And their sheriff is running for governor, you know, as a Republican. So we have to be able to transcend this, you know, and that’s the only way that we can get about it.

You look at Shirley Chisholm, you look at, you know, what happened to Strom Thurmond. My mother won’t even talk tell. Won’t even call Strom Thurmond a racist. She grew up in South Carolina. She actually met Strom Thurman. He didn’t shake her hand, I think, but she was invited to the White House to get an award from rbj, and he was supposed to take her out to lunch and so on and so forth. But he actually started to come down on his views. So you have to be able to really look at people and see where can you come together and also see that we have always done this. So when I was talking about white guilt, I think that is one of the challenges and the problems with how DEI has been taught that my father was able to avoid because he. Early in his career, he realized that he had to give people hope. He was teaching at Michigan State. Half his students would be from Detroit, black. Other has to be from rural Michigan, white. And he was teaching them about the history of racism until he realized that he was. He was discouraging all of them.

And so he began to do more research. And he realized that based on his. On his Baha’I experiences, he realized, you know, I’m in a community that since 1912 has been doing racial unity. There’s got to be more history to it, you know, since 1912, he knew that, for instance, Martin Luther King, when he was in college at Morehouse, around the corner, you can crawl to where the Baha’is. The Baha’is built a building to allow for black and white people to come together. He knew this, so he started to research this, what he called the other tradition of people like John Brown, people like the Grimpe sisters, people who were not only willing to make sacrifices, but actually willing to put their reputations at stake. People who put their fortunes at stake, like Julius Rosenwald. Julius Rosenwald. Booker t. Washington built 5,000 schools for black people during Jim Crow when there was. There are no schools. Black community pitched. It was also part of that. And you had John Lewis, you had other luminaries in that era who benefited because of that partnership. So when my father began to teach this other tradition, then you have white people who will say, you know what, we actually have another history here. We don’t have to just think about the history of what we did bad. We have another history to become.

Farah 35:49

I do wonder if the last five years would have been different if we had leaned in to teach more history about white allies, about the labor movement and the parts of the labor movement that work together. I mean, if you want to reach working class people who are very diverse, right? They’re not just all white. There’s no such thing as the, you know, the working class is full of Latinos, it’s full of black people. And we have a strong history in the past of coming together to fight for a living wage, to fight for a five day work week and a weekend. And I know there’s incredible racism as well in the labor movement. But I think if we talk more about how those differences have been transcended, I think we’d be in a different place. Because for a lot of white, I mean, there are some incredible statistics about the number of white people who think that racism is against them.

And, you know, you, I’ve interviewed these researchers and they have no idea where it comes from. They have no idea why. And I’m like, how could that be your, your research, your life’s work, and you haven’t asked these people why, how they came up with that view. But if you’re, you know, if you’re a pipe fitter and you can’t get your nephew into the pipe fitting apprenticeship because they’re only taking blacks and Native Americans that year. Well, you know, that’s your only experience with racism. You’ve never seen it. You don’t know, you know, you’ve never. So I think that we sometimes the way the message is conveyed matters. And I just really, I really, to your point about working class people, I mean, that is, to my view, that is how Trump got into office. And they don’t necessarily, they’re not all walking around as white supremacists with hoods on their heads. Some of them really honestly do think they are the subjects of discrimination. And we gotta dig into why that is and how we can change that.

Alex 38:02

And plug one more time Farah’s book, American what Happens to People When Work Disappears. One of the most memorable, There are many memorable scenes, and one of the most memorable is when Farah has gotten to know these people. These Steel workers in Indiana so, well just become integrated, integrated into her lives and her research for this study. And one day she walks into, I think it was like the garage Vera and sees a Confederate flag. And the confrontation and conversations you have with that person who’s almost become like a friend in some ways, is just a riveting moment in the book. And Ali, we would be remiss if we didn’t give you time to talk about your work and what you’re doing now in the BIPOC health careers ecosystem. Yeah, we only have five minutes, so it’s got to be brief.

Ali 38:52

So there’s a couple of things that we have to know historically. One is the history of racism. One is the history of racial advocacy and amity and unity. There’s a great video I can forward to you that looks at. That looks at what the Baha’is have been doing since 2012. Right after the 1919 riots, for example, they had racial amity conferences. And then we have to look at constructive programs. So what do you do instead of playing whack a mole against various evils to actually drive progress? Well, you have to construct programs. And what communities have always done, all communities, but particularly oppressed communities, is to construct programs for their own well being. So what I’m doing in my work is I’m building on that traditional. So I am working with leaders of color and we are building.

We’re in the education sector and we’re in the health sector predominantly. And we’re saying that we need in health care to have black, brown and indigenous students entering advanced health careers because we don’t see them in any career that requires a master’s or above. We just don’t see them. You see them in the hospital, front of the clinic, and you’ll see them in the back of the clinic. What we’re trying to do, though, is to build that networking infrastructure so that those of us who are doing this work get to know each other as opposed to being in silos. So I’ll give you an example. Early on, some of us from across the state said that we need to have some kind of solution to Covid. And so we built a virtual program that after five years, 350 students matriculated through and are going on to master’s degrees in public health into nursing, into medicine, into naturopathic medicine. We then looked at what was happening in that group, student group, and we said, well, there are no black males in that group.

So we simultaneously, because we knew this was coming, have been working within a Couple of classrooms that are just black males and saying, how can we create new pedagogies that will be appropriate for black males who have lost their STEM identity by grade five? We’re also doing a lot of task forces so that those of us who have this positional power in our institutions can look at how can we improve in dentistry and pharmacy and public health, the number of people who are going in to these careers. All of this builds on the premise that we can and must continue to do what we can in our spheres of influence. We can’t always worry about what is happening around us and then be so paralyzed that we can’t move forward.

Alex 41:43

We could talk for another hour, easy, and we’re running out of time. We want to be respectful of your time. We’re going to end with our traditional last question, which is, if you could wave a magic wand, what would you do now? And I’m hoping that we’ll be able to end on this note of optimism. And then I’ll sing you out with Wonderful World. Ken, I’m going to turn to you first and maybe ask you to maybe hone in on the geriatric seriously ill population. Research something along those lines or whatever you like.

Ken 42:15

Well, I was, you know, I think Ali and Farah inspired me to change my answer. And what I think. I mean, I would wage my wand and give people open license to say what’s important to them and speak their mind. Because I think right now people are fearful of saying what they believe, and we can’t allow that to happen. Legislation or rules can say what you can do or policies that you can have, but they do not regulate your beliefs. And people have to say what they believe. And I think, you know, I think there’s a lot of room. I think there’s a lot of good people on both. I hate to use that term.

Alex 43:03

Don’t say that.

Eric 43:05

Oh, my God.

Ken 43:10

There’s a. Some people say the image of God is within all of us. So there is that within everybody. And if we can open conversation, we can have more understanding.

Alex 43:24

Yeah. Thanks, Ken.

Farah 43:26

Farah, I think maybe the silver lining of what’s happening right now is that people’s eyes will be open to the utter incompetence. And what happens when people who don’t respect what the government does get in charge of it. And maybe that will open people’s eyes to what was worth saving. I think when it comes to DEI, it was definitely not perfect to the way that it was implemented. But we threw the baby out with bathwater and A lot of people are going to get hurt. It’s not just black and brown. People are going to get hurt. Everybody’s going to get hurt. And so I just hope, I hope people wake up.

Ali 44:07

ALI and I think the prerequisite to contributing effectively to where humanity is is to understand that we are past the stage of nation building as humanity. We’re not in the Middle Ages anymore. We have to start with a worldview that we are one people. That is our first identity. It isn’t the only. But from that everything else flows. We have to understand that humanity is going through a process that is, you could say, organic and analogous to the stages of the individual human person. We were babies at one stage, children at one stage, and we are adolescents. This is, I think, one of the contributions that Baha’is have just to the paradigm of how we do change is that we have to understand hope lies in understanding that this is an organic process through which we are struggling. And the endpoint is to really act on this knowledge that we are one body that is infinitely diverse but has to be whole in order to function.

Eric 45:14

Oh, I love that, Ollie. And I think it leads perfectly to the song that you picked, too. Wonderful World. Alex, do you want to end with that?

Alex 45:26

(singing)

Eric 46:10

Ali Farah, Ken, thank you for joining us on this podcast, and thank you for the amazing things that you’re doing.

This episode is not CME eligible.