May 26, 2020: The First Conversation

Five years ago in May, the woman on the left called the woman on the right. It was the day after the murder of George Floyd. On that day, a conversation on race began between two long-term friends (20+ years) who had never much talked about race until that phone call.

In the video, during which we tell the story of that conversation, you will hear from Margaret, the woman on the left, ask Gina, the woman on the right, a simple question: “How are you feeling today?” Margaret listened. She held space for Gina to respond.

Holding Space

To “hold space,” is to:

• Listen without interrupting;
• Be present (in your body in the moment), not absent/present (your body shows up for the conversation but your mind is elsewhere);
• Let any response be about what you heard. Don’t make it about you.

“Discussing the Undiscussables”

When Gina shared stories of life as a Black woman in the United States, Margaret was hearing them for the first time. She suggested Gina write about those experiences. Gina told Margaret when she wrote a bi-weekly editorial column for a daily metro newspaper from 2000 – 2007, and occasionally about Black and Brown people being murdered without cause, she was always dismissed by White readers with, “why does everything have to be about race?” Gina then told Margaret, “if you were to share your experiences with race in the United States, then you will be dismissed as the ‘privileged White woman.”

From that awareness, an idea surfaced: What if we wrote something together? What if we publicly modeled the conversations we were not hearing? We are business professionals so we decided to share our conversation on LinkedIn. We called it: Discussing the Undiscussables – Why the Workplace is the Perfect Place to Talk about Race.

The LinkedIn community responded in a large way – people were hungry to talk about race. This emboldened us to continue our imperfect, public conversation.

The Business of Race

That LinkedIn series gave birth to another idea: we had much to explore and needed more than the occasional blog post in which to discover and evolve our conversation – as business professionals and as friends. So, we wrote a book called, The Business of Race: How to Create and Sustain an Antiracist Workplace, and Why it’s Actually Good for Business.

The Conversation Continues…

…nationally, globally. And five years since the murder of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and so many other Black and Brown people daily, the larger conversation continues to evolve.

In the United States (where we were born, raised and currently live) the national conversation has grown from the mythical, “Yay, a post-racial society!” to conversations on race being open, public and recognized as foundational to every institution in this country. Gaslighting on the historical economics of race still exists in the United States, yet we are openly talking about race more than ever before.

We see this as progress.

Why?

Because

“you cannot solve what you don’t discuss.”

• How has the conversation on race evolved for you since the year 2020?
• At your workplace?
• In your home/with family?
• With friends?
• How has the conversation on race affected your worldview?
• What do you know now that you didn’t know five years ago? How has that shaped your lived experience?