- Just ahead on "Black Issues Forum," as fair workplace practices face political backlash, equity leaders are getting fired, monitored and silenced.

We unpack the chilling reality for those working in DEI spaces and explore the theory that racism isn't just a social disease, it's a psychological one.

Coming up next, stay with us.

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[bright music] ♪ - Welcome to "Black Issues Forum."

I'm your host Kenia Thompson.

For years the work of diversity, equity and inclusion, more commonly known as DEI, has aimed to correct disparities, confront injustice, and create environments where everyone can thrive.

But today that work is being monitored and those who wish to uphold its practices are being baited and fired while the very language of equity is being erased.

While most talk about the political side of the fight for equity, and we will as well today, we will also want to talk about the psychological dysfunction behind the discrimination.

Later on in the show, we'll be joined by a therapist who sheds light on this theory.

But first, I wanna welcome Marcus Bass, who is the director of North Carolina Black Alliance, to talk about where we are with DEI today.

Welcome to the show.

- Thank you for having me.

- Of course.

So I wanna share two recent developments that have happened from the UNC system that serve as an example of how DEI professionals are being at risk and under scrutiny.

So first one was at UNC Asheville.

In June, the dean of students was secretly recorded, admitting that she's continuing equity work and even said, you know, "I love breaking the rules."

Within days she was released from her position and that recording was released.

Same thing has happened, or similar things have happened over at UNC Charlotte and Western North Carolina.

And then secondly, we have the UNC Board of Governors who the reports has said quietly, directed each campus, UNC campus to establish trustee-led DEI compliance subcommittees.

So let's talk about your take on those trustee-led DEI subcommittees.

What are your thoughts around purpose?

- So I think the real purpose behind it is not to advance education in North Carolina, but to impose regulations that are narrowly focused on what has been coined as DEI now, but it's really about race consciousness.

How racially aware are we of the systemic harms or the challenges that certain communities face.

And beyond race, we're even finding now in some of the repeals in DEI that it is farther reaching than just race.

But when we look at the intent, when we think about the attack on consciousness or this whole wokeness that has been coined by the right, it is really about awareness and resources.

I think it's very important for your viewers to understand that we're talking about state dollars, which come from each and every single citizen, and we talk about how those dollars are spent.

Some communities don't get the same fair shake as other communities.

When we think about schools systems, we think about higher education.

North Carolina A&T, in fact has $2 billion of reported funds that have not been actualized at the university because of race.

And so, when we think about DEI and these diversity equity inclusion officers, and now the regulatory act of adding a committee oversight by the board of trustees, which is a political body, it continues to dismantle the quality education that we've seen in higher education in North Carolina.

It's not lost on me too, that when we think about DEI from a raw sense, America and North Carolina has benefited from DEI well before the current civil rights movement.

We think about all of the provisions that have been made in this country for individuals in rural communities or in different abilities, only now when we think about racial consciousness in DEI, is it a problem, and which is why I think it's a problem.

And many North Carolinians think it's an oversight for board of trustees to add a regulatory component or being forced to regulate DEI, which is a very broad base phrase when we're talking about implementation.

- And when we think about these subcommittees, you know, I was reading comments and some people feel like it's almost this mole approach of being sneaky to catch people off guard.

And you know, my question was, is it okay to hold someone accountable for an off the record opinion or thought around equality, just fairness, right, in the rules of either HR or student recruitment?

- That's right, first of all, it's unethical.

Second of all, whenever you're taking sound bites and you're not getting the whole conversation, you're losing context.

And actually, it is feeding into a counter narrative around this attack on consciousness that I mentioned earlier.

We believe that these individuals that were caught on camera were not trying to undermine the quality of education, but the actual process of someone using a camera to record a conversation that was supposed to be private is a slippery slope.

When we talk about access in education, when we talk about trust in education and being able to trust our leaders to do the right thing, candid remarks can be taken outta context.

And we know what misinformation and disinformation can do.

- And for sure.

But when you look at, let's say you had a professional who was in a DEI role, didn't get released from that role, but still is at the institution or the corporation and doing different work, how do you take off your DEI hat and just all of a sudden say, "Well, I'm gonna comply with rules that don't necessarily provide fair opportunities,"?

And when we look at the trajectory for their position and for their livelihood of keeping a job, do you feel like most people are gonna fall into this compliance space of saying, "You know what?

I'll just do what they ask me to do."

- Absolutely, and that's where the ambiguity is the largest problem.

It is impossible to remove race from your understanding of how things happen in workplaces, in social places, in personal spaces, race has implications.

There is no race neutral or colorblind approach.

You can assume to be colorblind, I don't know how you stop at a traffic light, but for the majority of individuals in this country, race is a factor, class is a factor.

And these things and our biases play into how we deal with things in a professional setting and especially in an academic setting.

So I think in a real way, the broad or ambiguous lines around DEI compliance are gonna lead to a lot of individuals limiting how they can help and serve students.

- Yeah, if they are successful in pushing out these voices and pushing out fair and equitable practices, what do our workforces look like for our Black and brown professionals?

- Very sterile, I think in a lot of ways, there was a period of time where we were told, if you cut your hair and learn how to play golf, you can make it in this society.

And in a very real way, that's a farce.

There are many different barriers.

And when you make race invisible, you allow those barriers to hinder not just the growth of individuals going through those systems, Black individuals, but all citizens.

When you hold back certain communities from growth and you remove the very real elements of race in those decisions, it doesn't make an improved outcomes.

It actually makes for worse outcomes.

And it makes for more divided society and a less educated, less sustainable and less successful workforce.

- And as we start to enter spaces, what are some trigger words or phrases that we should be aware of?

Maybe someone doesn't realize they're in a space that is trying to change DEI, whether it's, you know, outside the UNC system, let's just say.

And I guess, what are some of those precursors or things that we should be looking for within the workspace that may be an indicator that that's what's happening?

- So hopefully we're not seeing individuals having to send an email at the end of the week talking about the three things that they did every single week.

But it could get to that point.

I think right now there is a huge attempt to go through different curriculums and reorder, reword certain phrases.

I know when we talk about marginalized communities, and a lot of times that language is no longer as viable in regards to grants or funding.

At the federal level, they're already making huge changes around impoverished communities.

And I think in a very real way, folks are trying to figure out now how do they reshape the real understanding of what it means to impact and affect marginalized communities in other ways, in other words.

In a real way, rural is now becoming the new way when we talk about the disparities.

And there's always been kind of coded language that we've had to use to talk about populations in need.

But when we think about the far stretching implications, women, when we think about individuals that are different abled, and when we think about communities of color, there are a lot of words that could be used against individuals that are just trying to do their job.

And like you said, fairly, equitably and justly educating individuals or serving populations.

- Yeah, any connection with the work you're doing at Black Alliance in this space specifically, seeing the development of where we are today?

- No, absolutely, this week, we are going down to Elizabeth City to meet with HBCU student leaders in a think tank formation, where we're talking about the impacts of DEI, where we're talking about sustaining some of the good programs, at the same time, trying to watch out for the barriers that could trip up students when they're trying to do programming.

We're thinking about the impacts of DEI, not just in the classroom, but also at the voting box as well.

We talk about the ballot box and the changes around gerrymandering and how district lines are drawn, race has been used in a way in which have marginalized districts and communities.

And so there are a lot of different areas, not just in education.

Even in North Carolina this past month, the state passed a bill that will now fine state employees $5,000 if they're caught engaging in DEI.

We know that ambiguity is gonna spread across many different systems.

And so we're doing a very good job in talking to our local elected officials, talking to our community stakeholders, talking to individuals that support or the work is supported by federal grants and state grants to figure out how we can still meet the need without them getting caught up in the technicality of wording.

- Yeah, well, I'm sure we'll revisit this conversation as things develop, you know, but thank you for sharing your insight and for the work that you're doing with Black Alliance.

Marcus Bass, thank you so much.

- Thank you.

- Thank you.

As with most hot topics, social media users are eager to have their voices and opinions heard on current topics.

Before we talk about the mental health connection to DEI rollback behaviors, here's a look at some of the trending social clips on the disruption of DEI.

- I study breast cancer, I study women's health.

And right now, you're not able to really put into proposals that you are studying women or females or looking at barriers or looking even at how race can influence cancer outcomes.

- Yeah, if we lean into the discomfort of what it means to be inclusive, and we actually take that and hold it close to our heart in terms of how we intend to be in the world, not just at work, but also in, you know, outside of work and with our family and with our friends, and how we interact with strangers, so the world would be a better place.

And not only a better place, but actually there's so many things that we could solve.

- If you remember from American history class in high school, they talked about de facto versus de jure segregation.

When you remove the legal protections that integrate institutions, when you violate that order from Supreme Court saying, with all deliberate speed to use, as LBJ said, affirmative action in order to integrate institutions, we are talking about the resegregation of America, the resegregation of the American workforce, the resegregation of American educational institutions, and then the resegregation of the American dollar.

- Many companies are still walking back the commitments that they made, and these were commitments that some of these companies made long before George Floyd.

So did you really care or was it about the optics of it all?

Did you actually want to make real change in your company?

And we're talking about household brands, we're talking about brands that some of us have devices in our pockets right now.

And we need to be more vigilant on the companies we support when they don't support us.

- Joining us now is Sara Wilder.

She's a licensed therapist, clinical addiction specialist and mental health professional, and the owner of Perspective Counseling.

She studied the psychological roots of racism and bias and brings her perspective to the conversation.

Welcome to the show.

- Thank you for having me.

- Yes, so we've had conversation before, which is why I thought you'd be a great addition to this conversation about DEI, 'cause I don't know that we always explore the mental health side, right?

- Yeah.

- The roots of it and then the impact of it.

And so, in our conversation previously, you've shared with me that racism is not just a learned behavior, we do know that it is a learned behavior, but it can also be at times a mental health issue.

Please expound on that and share with our viewers.

- Yes, well, first and foremost, mental health is not just one thing.

It's a combination of, you know, people's belief systems, people's perceptions, and you know, as Marcus said earlier, the biases that we hold.

And my world of what I talk about for everyone is invisible.

Like, it's very challenging.

So when we talk about mental health, you know, our society externally is still dealing with a lot of stigmas and barriers for us to even kind of go to the depth of what we even know mental health to really be.

But I think perception and biases also need to start to be examined of, like, perception is a very subjective experience, and it's attached to how we feel and what's activated within us, not only just in the moment, but also what we've experienced previously in the associations that our brain makes to protect us.

And the biases are the more objective kind of defense mechanisms that our egos, which are very natural and part of the psychology that we just can't get rid of, that start to infiltrate how we perceive certain situations.

And even that can be a conversation of, you know, words being used or tones being activated, but even also the different colors of skin that we come across with people.

- And you know, the way I interpret that is a fear response, right?

When we are scared of something, we kind of either, you know, push it away, get it out of our space, and in other words, discriminate against it.

And so would you say that that's like a psychological fear that some people don't even realize that they're acting out with?

- Absolutely, you know, our egos, it's a controversial topic but I tend to have conversations around with people of like, what feels natural, and then also what do you challenge within that like.

And mental illness and what we know that to be is not just the diagnosis, but what goes into a person in the environment that they live in that reinforces why that's comfortable or why that's not comfortable, why do we open ourselves up to, you know, experiences that feel familiar, stay there, but then also maybe, you know, restrict ourselves in what we want and desire, especially with success and, you know, education business and the things and how we want things to happen for ourselves.

- What's the damage mental health wise on the person carrying the biases and acting out the discrimination?

- That's a great question, but there's always never one answer.

It really just depends.

Even in my experience professionally, I was even plagued by the things that I carried to the forefront of what I knew intellectually.

I studied in school, I was trained, have an immense amount of hours of my licensure that required me to do what I do.

But personally, I represented that very shallow in a lot of ways because of my fear, because of grief, because of experiences that I've been through.

And every single person goes through that.

You know, it doesn't mean that you have to give up your whole life and start a new one, but you see a lot of people doing that because when they're operating out of an unchallenged ego, they lack that understanding and development of their own brain and what their needs are.

You see this in where it starts to infuse itself into chronic health issues and public health where.

So my story personally, I try to use more of my examples so people don't personalize, but my story is one that I've never been one to fit in from a size standpoint.

I'm a tall person, I've always been heavier set.

I never fit into the traditional weight model.

And I made an effort to try to lose that most of my life.

And when I got there, I still wasn't satisfied.

And it's all a matter of perception of how do we accept ourselves and how do we grow, but also challenge what we think we know about ourselves and in turn, how that projects.

- That challenge is hard.

That challenge is hard because it means that we have to change, we have to open up our eyes to see people differently, to see ourselves differently, and to challenge the conditioning that we've gone through.

- Absolutely.

- When we talk about conditioning and Black professionals and the trauma experience and workplace, what is the impact of that?

Over and over, I mean, I've experienced it throughout my career.

You start to have anxiety around interviews, going to work, feeling like you belong in a position.

What are the long-term effects of that?

- Well, there are many, but I would say the first one is really the hypervigilance that comes from that anticipation.

A lot of that is ego defense mechanism was like trying to prepare you for, oh, you know, a certain way of someone's gonna have a certain tone to their voice.

And that could be from whether it be a past experience or from that person.

And that can cause a lot of what we now know as a kind of a trendy word, but a lot of inflammation.

But I deal with the emotional inflammation for people is what are those psychological experiences, those emotional experiences that make us who we are, but also hold tension and trauma in our bodies.

That's what bleeds into obesity, that's what bleeds into Alzheimer's, what they're now calling Type 3 diabetes, because insulin resistance comes from your immune system.

And one of the first, like if you are in a hypervigilant state for too long, your body starts to shut down other systems to be able to put your energy towards react, protect, and protect yourself.

The problem is, is that, you know, we're people, we're not, I'm not staring at, you know, a saber-tooth tiger in front of me and I need to be able to, you know, get out quick.

But those are also very real experiences when we start talking about all of the turmoil and the chaos that our society's going through right now.

Race is a very real construct that we deal with.

It's also just one that is attached to a lot of trauma responses that we have to recondition every person, not just Caucasian people and not just one race.

- Yeah, and so when we talk about being neutral constantly and knowing that this was the work that you did, right?

Fair, equitable justice spaces, right?

So when we talk about the neutrality of now coming to work and not acknowledging that that's what you're here to do, that kind of switches the identity piece of our belonging and who we are.

And I guess my question is what is the impact of that, right?

Not understanding place and space and worthiness that can also have deep impact?

- Oh, the deepest, self-worth for, I mean, I know for women is excruciatingly challenging in today's streets, but for anyone, and men as well, I think everyone has a contribution and responsibility that they have to build some capacity to commit to, for us to be able to recover from what we're going through.

But self-worth and self-esteem, I'd say, even for an individual that I work with, you know, behind the doors and in a therapy room is one of the most challenging things to accumulate an emotional investment within, to feel like you actually have a view of yourself that you're enough to, am I enough to sit in this chair for you today?

Who am I to think that I can speak about DEI, given I've never, you know, maybe experienced a racial form of discrimination, although I have my experiences.

But is our perception of ourselves, our ability to accept ourselves at any given moment, regardless of how bad we mess up or how well we do, not having to move on to the next moment and be like, okay, what's next?

What do I need to do better?

- Yeah, safety also comes up as a thing for me too.

You see, well, you see a lot of people now, well, our suicide numbers have gone up in the Black community and people don't feel safe anymore.

And when you think about college campuses and young students, young minds who are still in the stages of development and self understanding, safety becomes a big concern.

Have you seen the uptick in that in your practice?

- Oh, absolutely, with all fairness though, it's kind of a chronic steady idea with a lot of- - [Kenia] Unfortunately.

- You know, my background, I've gone through a lot of different types of treatment of places, whether it be inpatient, hospitals, community, outpatient, DWI work, but also my background is in corrections.

So there's a large gap of security internally that we as, I mean, I'm just speaking to clinicians, that we deal with every day that's kind of norm normalized.

And it puts us at risk too for neutralizing our experiences of stress to be able to help other people, which is partly why I focus on a lot more provider health these days.

But for a growing mind that is research shows, you know, general area of like 25 years old is where our brain stopped growing, I personally don't really fully subscribe to that.

I've grown my world and myself differently ever since past that number.

And I think it's a matter of, in order for us to build security for other people, we have to start with the internal security of each individual person.

And unfortunately, I don't even have control of that.

I have a lot I can do to help people build internal security for themselves, but I can't force anyone to do it.

It has to be something that you choose every single day.

And that's why I think recovery, the recovery community, not just from the 12 step standpoint, but is a great role model for people looking for how to invest in themselves is emotional wellness and committing to let's clear up the things that are causing the insecurity, and then work on what we can actually do to provide internal security and safety.

- Yeah, a little under two minutes.

And I wanna give you the opportunity to share about what your practice focuses on and how folks can reach out to you if they find a fit.

- So I focus on a lot, but I shifted my practice because of my own personal work that I had to do, which kind of intersects with DEI and having my own racial consciousness moments.

But I work on a lot of education, but I really specifically try to help people start with the relationship with food, which I feel like is the best representation and mirror for ourselves.

How we literally nourish ourselves.

It's also one of the first things that when stressed, and I don't even talk about traumatic stress, but just when we get stressed, we get overstimulated, our appetite is one of the first things to shut down.

And if we're gonna talk about safety, being hungry, especially for me, it's not the most safe thing.

Like, I'm gonna be a little bit, you know, more uncontrollable, because my body is not nourished.

And so my practice is really just trying to kind of bring the inside out approach.

And that some of that's education, some of that is nutritional.

We are very undernourished and over consuming, and so it's really a matter of perspective and perception.

- And we will be talking more about that later in the season, that's how this conversation started.

And we kind of went to DEI and I thought you'd be a great fit for this as well.

So we will talk more about- - Absolutely.

- That relationship with food.

- I look forward to it.

- Thank you so much, Sara Welder.

- Thank you.

- Thank you.

And I thank you for watching.

If you want more content like this, we invite you to engage with us on Instagram using the #BlackIssuesForum.

You can also find our full episodes on pbsnc.org/blackissuesforum, and on the PBS video app.

I'm Kenia Thompson, I'll see you next time.

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