The show’s guest in this episode is Melanie Parish and Beverly Horton. Melanie Parish is an author, speaker, podcast host, founder of Experimental Leader Academy, and Master Certified Coach. An expert in problem-solving, constraints management, operations, strategic hiring, and brand development, Melanie has consulted and coached organizations ranging from a Fortune 50 company to IT start-ups. As the author of The Experimental Leader book, Melanie shows people new ways of thinking about their leadership, informed by her understanding of the fast-paced ride of technology innovation. Beverly has a strong background in education and a deep commitment to delivering high quality content that changes perspectives. For many years, Beverly Horton has facilitated mind-expanding antiracism workshops, designed worship services, taught about worship arts, and facilitated music workshops. In each of these contexts, she has been invested in and jazzed by “flipping the script,” reimagining and generally messing with traditional ways of doing things. Beverly sees “White People Work” as doing just that… flipping the script…challenging us to reshape our understanding of racism and its impact.

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Listen to the podcast here

White People Work: Anti-Racism Work for White People

Hi, Mel. It’s great to be here with you today. I’m Melanie Parish, and I’m a coach, a content creator and author, and the host of the experimental leader Podcast.

I’m Mel Rutherford, I’m a professor and McMaster University’s first transgender department chair, and I’m also a host of the experimental leader podcast.

Well, I’ve been thinking about the roles that I play in my organization, and the roles that lots of people play. And we don’t just serve one role, it’s it’s rare that we get to do one thing. And it’s interesting, I, as a content creator, a coach, a CEO, I have to have wear a lot of hats, sometimes I’m supervising people, sometimes I’m doing client deliveries, sometimes I’m creating content. And and I’m really aware of, you know, all those changing roles, and how, as a leader, I have to manage all those roles really differently. And, and it can be really challenging. It can, it can. And sometimes I get distracted. Sometimes I am, and sometimes I’m just more interested in one than another sometimes I get excited about one thing I’m doing especially like force creation, or podcasting or something, and and I, you know, don’t necessarily want to do the supervision or the management roles, that that I have to do. In in, in running a company.

Yeah.

Yeah, What are you thinking about?

Well, I’ve been thinking a little bit about mental health and supporting mental health of people who report to me in my organization, and what the reason I’m thinking about it now is because I’m taking a workshop that my employer offers on exactly this topic, how leaders support mental health. And, you know, I’m not a clinician, and I can’t diagnose anyone and I, it’s not my job to, to decide who’s in need of mental health support. David, I think it’s really clear that a leader should know what resources are available and, and connect someone who could who asks for mental health support. On the other hand, people are experiencing all kinds of things all the time. And as a leader, I’m not sure that it’s my role to decide who to who would benefit from mental health support if they haven’t come asking for it. And then I thought, if I was wondering if this pulls on our value of inclusivity, and, you know, what is it what would it be for a leader to just be, be inclusive, be accepting of people in our community, acting a variety of ways, feeling a variety of ways, you know, coming to work low energy one day, or being a little bit a little bit cranky one day, and, you know, so I was wondering about that balance between actively offering support and just digging into inclusivity and being okay with everybody, however, they showed up to work today.

Yeah, I think that’s really interesting to, like, where’s the edge, like to be aware of where’s the edge like, where? Where’s there an intervention that’s needed? And when is it your job as as a non clinician, like, how would you know? And, and I love the idea of, of expanding inclusivity I think I think you’re really good at speaking to that idea. Yeah, like, what if we don’t? Like what if everybody just doesn’t have to be perfect all the time at work? I think I find that idea really refreshing. And you talk about it regularly, and I really like it. So, yeah, I really liked that, that thought, and, and I’m also really grateful that I’m gonna step into a different role today. After all that talk about roles, I’m gonna step into the course creator role and be an interviewee today, and let you interview me. So thank you for that, too. So I will let you take it away. That’ll be fun. Let’s do this.

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Welcome. I’m really excited to have my two guests with me today. I want to introduce Beverly Horton, workshop facilitator, ELA instructor and musician and founder of flipping the script. Welcome, Beverly.

Thank you.

And I want to welcome Melanie Parish. Coach, consultant and founder and executive director of the Experimental Leader Academy. Welcome, Melanie.

Thanks, Mel. It’s fun to be a guest today.

Thank you. Thanks for making the time to be here. I want to start by congratulating the two of you on the new program you’ve just released called white people work. Thank you. What can you tell me about this new program?

The first thing that I wanted to say is and I think I mentioned this in one of the one of the modules videos for one of the modules. White people work used to be one of those phrases that I would utter in exasperation, when white people would come asking for free of charge, my input on their particular racial identity crisis of the day, looking for me to be the black Google. And I’d say, you know, sometimes verbally, and sometimes under my breath, white people work. Like that’s, that’s your stuff to do. That’s not mine, unless you’re gonna pay me. This is your work to do. So it was very interesting when when Melanie approached me about the working on the project together. Because I had this previous history when she said, I’m looking to put together this program, this curriculum weren’t really sure what to call it at that point. When when she indicated that she wanted to do this anti racism program and wanted to call it white people work. That was that was, I had a flashback to my use of the phrase. And I think pretty soon after she broached the subject, I shared that with her. So that’s the title exists in that kind of tension.

For me, I always thought, you know, with with a queer identity, I think similarly, I always felt like people had straight people work to do, they would come to me in the same way and, and so I realized that this carried over that I had my own white people work to do around anti racism work that it wasn’t, I had done some racial caucusing, where we had done some white people work and I’d realized that there was work to be done. That wasn’t that it shouldn’t be. It shouldn’t be people of color, who were doing all the anti racism work in the world that white people have their own work to do. And and so I really wanted to partner with Beverly, because I loved the work that she was doing in the world and I wanted to have her help create this work and to to bring her vast knowledge to this work. I was so excited when she said yes. Because because her perspective is so powerful. I was I’m just so excited that that we’ve gotten to work together on this project.

Yeah, that’s that’s cool. So what I know that there’s a lot of anti racism work available, a lot of anti racism workshops available. What’s important about creating this anti racist Some work for white people.

I think, from my perspective, it’s requiring, or understanding that a lot of this work is for first internal work, not about navel gazing not about, you know, white shame and blame and guilt and all of that kind of stuff. But trying to understand for white people to take the time, it’s a time to pause and prepare, I think, prepare for, to open up to the possibilities of reframing, noticing things differently, understanding what it means to be white, in a racist society. It’s it’s, it’s brave work, it requires a lot of candy. In fact, I think when it’s being done, well, it’s very unsettling. So one needs not a safe space, but a brave space, a container to hold that kind of hold all the vulnerability of offering a place to do that, in a way that that honors the self. But it’s still self reflected. It’s, in most in most instances, in many instances, people do anti racism work in the seminar con context where there’s an expert, right? Who’s going to this is what the landscape looks like, this is how you understand it. And this is what you do this, what I my perception of white people work is it’s even a step farther back than that, it’s like the preparation for, for absorbing all of that information about what racism looks like, how it, how it manifests itself in the world, and what we’re called to do. It’s like, it’s, it’s the internal and internal conversation that prepares one for an external conversation, and that I’m really invested in that conversation model. I’m not here in the work as the expert, except in my lived experience as a person of color. And it’s a conversation that I’m having. With, with Melanie, we were talking about many of the concepts that would come up in the in the context of a of have a seminar, an anti racism seminar, but we’re having a conversation as to people differently located and sometimes very similarly located people, just and the verb that we’ve been using is grappling. Right, this is hard stuff. What do we think about this? What do you think? What do I think? Why do we think the way that we do those kinds of coming from a place of curiosity, and putting that in the context of conversation.

And I often find that I’m a little gobsmacked by my my own hubris or my own my own context, my own experience of white supremacy as we have these conversations. I’ve, as we’ve had these conversations, I’ve had the experience of incredible vulnerability, sort of balancing that without asking Beverly to take care of me in that process. It’s, it’s been quite a journey. And I, I’m really excited about welcoming other people to that journey. To to invite them to come to have their own self reflection to have their own questioning to look at their own lives to look at their own experiences of of race in their lives. It’s it’s been a really deep journey. And I think what’s so different about this is that it isn’t we’re not telling people the answers, were asking the questions. And that’s how this is different than other programs that are out there. In a really deep way, you know, as I’m a Coach, and Beverly is naturally curious and has this context and and we actually decided that questions were better than answers in this context. And and I think that’s a really powerful stance that we’re taking. And it’s been incredibly humbling for me to be a part of this journey with Beverly, just by creating the content. I’ve been going through the program. And and I don’t think I knew what it would be like when I started. And it’s been life changing for me to to have this opportunity. It’s it’s, it’s been amazing and powerful.

Thank you. Yeah, thanks for that. Yeah, I really liked this idea of of creating questions and leaving and grappling and leaving space for for struggle, rather than handing handing out answers. Let me ask you, maybe a challenging question. Is there any danger? Or is there anything that we need to be cautious about in creating space? That’s defined as as white people space space for white people conversations? Is there is there anything to be careful about there?

Well, I think that’s a really interesting question. I actually attended a workshop this summer where people were doing caucusing, and they were doing long term caucusing. And they were creating white people space to caucus over time. And I actually found that problematic. I didn’t like it. Because I thought that caucus thing should have. And caucusing. I’ll just say Beverly, you might feel free to jump in and tell me I’ve got this not quite right. But caucusing, as I understand it, is that you go into affinity groups. So you would have a BIPOC group where you could have conversations. And BIPOC would be black and or indigenous people of color. And you could go into that group and talk about race from that perspective. And you could have a white caucus that was white people talking about race, mostly so that the BIPOC people weren’t having to educate White people. And and you weren’t, you were able to grapple with issues of race separately rather than together. But I do think that in best practices around caucusing, you do come back together to share learning at the end and you’re not having separatist groups forever. So the group that that I heard about this summer, they were just staying separate and and I think that’s that was problematic in my mind. I think they were getting value out of it because they were trying to talk about race, but I don’t know Beverly, do you have thoughts on all of that?

So many thoughts I think on a very simple level in a racist society where white knowledge white experience is privileged and in some cases are to a large extent treated as normative or universal. Everyday Life for from my perspective for white people is white caucusing. Because white people can very easily and in many parts of the world live in a white caucus, you don’t have to. You can make choices that ensure that you don’t have to engage with anybody but other white people. That is not a you know to use the language of privilege that is not a privilege that virtually any any people of color on the planet, even if they don’t, in their daily life, walk in a space where they see white people thanks to colonialism and imperialism. There are encountering whiteness all the time. Right? In the developed world, and even in the not too deep but not so developed? Well, I was thinking the other day about? I don’t know, either. Have you seen the movie? The Gods Must Be Crazy. Was that like in the 70s? I think for folks who are not familiar with it, it’s a pygmy man in South Africa walking out in the middle of nowhere, where do you think there is no touching of Western civilization possible is Coke bottle. A perfect symbol of, you know, capitalism, Western capitalism comes and knocks him in the head. And he’s trying for all his all he can do, though it’s tried to send it back and it can’t go. It doesn’t go in the opposite direction. So that’s kind of the way that I think about that was the image the the pop cultural reference that came to my head as I was trying to think of how one might talk about the impossibility of people of color insulating themselves from whiteness, and the the fact that that’s not reciprocal, like people can do that. It’s possible. Yeah. Because of systems of privileging. Yeah, yeah.

Interesting. Well, let me ask both of you, How’s it been going? How has it been for you creating this, this curriculum in this program?

One thing that I found very interesting is that Melanie and I started working on this, I think, early early planning stages would have been like last spring, spring, or early summer of 2023. And in having one to one conversations with people, or even the casual conversations over dinner, or whatever. People were very interested, like, oh, yeah, this seems like, this seems like work that would be transformative for me. Not me speaking other people speaking about their response for and because I was getting so much out of producing, creating the the content with with Melanie through our conversation, I was had a very had really great expectations for what, you know, what would happen once once we’ve we’ve launched and the response, initial response hasn’t been what I anticipated. So I’m in a place right now, where I’m figuring out, trying to figure out what that what that’s about, and how we make what we’re offering, how we present our offering elicit the same kind of enthusiastic response and curiosity that was coming out of the informal conversations. So that was happening with folks about the project. So and it’s interesting now going back and looking at, at some of the some of the videos that we’ve we’ve shot and our attempts to come up with homework. And it’s like, taking taking the program as we’re as we’re going, which is an interesting kind of kind of experience and offering opportunities for kinds of reflection that I didn’t, didn’t anticipate. So I think this will all be to the good of the end, and project. But it speaks to the the the way that this work is not doesn’t really have an endpoint that it’s always this is a continuing, if we’re open to it continuing opportunities for for revelation for for change for rethinking, reframing, really noticing things grappling with things again.

Yeah, that’s interesting.

Yeah, and I think when I started, I knew I knew that I was worried about sort of canceled culture like me doing anti racism work. And, and yet, I was so committed to it. I felt so strongly that this work was so important. It was so important for me as a white person to do white people work. It could bring that to the world that so many people are so afraid of getting it wrong that do the work that, you know, it’s almost like a circle, that circle keeps going like, like, and so I really was conscious of not wanting to be afraid. Because that fear is what keeps people from doing the work. And, and yet, I think that we got some feedback in our launch that I didn’t see vulnerable enough, or that I seemed in one of the marketing pieces that we did, as I was trying to describe my path for getting here self congratulatory. And, and, and I was really devastated by that, because it wasn’t, where I came, I’m coming from, it wasn’t what, it wasn’t true for me. And, and I, and I’ve noticed that it’s, it’s really hard for me to draw the lines about my own vulnerability. It’s really hard for me to say, you know, I, in one piece that I that I wrote, it took me five years to actually even tell the story, because I felt so vulnerable by the story. And, and so because I was so, you know, shocked by my own by my own inability to see the impact of race in the story, and, and so it’s been really interesting for me, I knew it was going to be an issue in the beginning. And then I’m still, I still reel from that being an issue, I still note like, it’s still Oh, I think it will always be an issue. I and and I will always have to be brave, I’ll always have to manage my own vulnerability in multiple ways in this project, both in the self examination, and in the external, putting myself out there in the project. And then the other thing that’s really interesting that I still am grappling with grappling, it’s that word again, and is in the, the juxtaposition between being certain as a course creator or program creator, and vulnerable as a experiencer of the conversation and, and so, like, from my perspective, every time I put together a program, it’s like I’m the deliverer of the content. And yet, we’re not really delivering content. So in this I’m actually experiencing the questions and so I’m vulnerable, but I sometimes feel like I sound more certain than I am when we’re delivering the questions. And and so we’re having those conversations too. And, and so that’s a really interesting place, just as a creator of this program, about certainty and uncertainty and how the balance of that is in this program.

Yeah. Melanie was just saying it took me the two comments about the self congratulatory or the perceived self congratulatory tone. And the questions about vulnerability came out of responses that I got through my attempts to launch or spread the word start the marketing aspect of the course, through my personal email, correspondence and through Facebook. And when those things when those responses came to me, I didn’t know what to do with them. It took me it took me quite some time to pick up the phone and call Melanie and say, Hey, so this is this is what we’re getting. Now. What did we do? So it’s caused me to question So what is my what is my part in this as well? I think again, that is the that’s the benefit of engaging in this is that constant calling to self reflection, sort of where am I in this What does this mean? And having action come out of out of those, that process of questioning?

Yeah. So the participants are going to grapple with stuff and you’re already grappling with stuff.

And I think that’s, that’s what ultimately, from my perspective, that’s what we’re trying to model. Yeah.

So I know the program is up, and now it’s available. I know people are signing up for it already. Can you tell me what what are participants going to be getting out of this program.

They get a series of modules. And they are able to do those modules. They’re they’re evergreen modules that they can go through, they get homework, they get a reading list. They’re able to do a self exploration with those modules. And a lot of it is getting to be a part of the, the dialogue with Beverly and me, and to get to explore the questions that we’ve been asking each other, and to ask themselves and to dive a little deeper into their own thinking. In these videos, there’s also an opportunity for some coaching, if they want to participate and add on some coaching, where they can actually talk directly to us, and, and to sign up for that coaching.

Very well. I want to thank you again for being here. With me today. I want to thank you for being open and being real and being vulnerable. Can you tell me where people could find your white people work program?

Yeah, you can find it at www.program.whitepeoplework.com.

Thank you. Thank you, Beverly Horton and Melanie Parish and good luck with your white people work project.

Thanks, Mel.

Thank you so much Mel. Really appreciate it is fun to get to be a guest today.

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Well, that was fun and exciting. Having Beverly and Melanie. Talk about the white people work program they just launched. I’ve signed up for the white people work and I’ve started I’ve started the journey. I encourage anybody who is curious about this to grapple with grapple with these issues in the white people work program. Go experiment.

Beverly Horton

 

 

Beverly has a strong background in education and a deep commitment to delivering high quality content that changes perspectives. For many years, Beverly Horton has facilitated mind-expanding antiracism workshops, designed worship services, taught about worship arts, and facilitated music workshops. In each of these contexts, she has been invested in and jazzed by “flipping the script,” reimagining and generally messing with traditional ways of doing things. Beverly sees “White People Work” as doing just that… flipping the script…challenging us to reshape our understanding of racism and its impact.

 

 

 

 

 

Melanie Parish

 

 

 

Melanie Parish is an author, speaker, podcast host, founder of Experimental Leader Academy, and Master Certified Coach. An expert in problem-solving, constraints management, operations, strategic hiring, and brand development, Melanie has consulted and coached organizations ranging from a Fortune 50 company to IT start-ups. As the author of The Experimental Leader book, Melanie shows people new ways of thinking about their leadership, informed by her understanding of the fast-paced ride of technology innovation.

 

 

 

 

 

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