Dignity Dialogues
Dignity Dialogues serves as an extension of the learning that happens both inside and outside of our school walls at Beaver Country Day School, allowing community members and outside experts to share their experiences, stories, and personhood.
By sharing the beauty and diversity of human experience, this podcast delves into the power of empathy, listening, patience, and openness as tools to honor and amplify the value of each member of our Beaver community and beyond.
Dignity Dialogues
Anchoring Your Community in Dignity: A Conversation on Belonging with John Krownapple
Join us for a conversation with John Krownapple, co-author of the book, "Belonging Through a Culture of Dignity."
In this episode, John graciously shares insights from his life and explores the powerful yet often misunderstood concept of dignity. Through his experiences, we learn how dignity is a foundational element in fostering a sense of belonging within educational institutions and beyond.
Explore the intricacies and nuances of dignity and its distinction from respect as we navigate practical ways to honor our intrinsic human value. Inspired by Donna Hicks' conflict resolution strategies and 10 Essential Elements of Dignity, John highlights the tenets needs that underpin dignity, such as understanding, safety, and fairness. We tackle the triggers that can disrupt these needs and discuss how intentional actions can help build more equitable environments. John's emphasis on developing "dignity consciousness" invites us to cultivate meaningful connections and enhance our interactions across various aspects of life.
Good afternoon On today's episode of Digging Dialogues. We have John Krownapple with us and before we get in, I'm going to read a little bit of his brief bio to give us context as to who he is and why he is here at Beaver today. So John is an educator, an author and a speaker who specializes in transformative education, professional learning and organizational development Focused on inclusive work and learning environments. He centers belonging and dignity as concepts that help people thrive. John has been an adjunct professor at John Hopkins University since 2007, and for 15 plus years has served as a coordinator of diversity, equity and inclusion at the school district of over 50,000 students. Additionally, he's been a classroom teacher, curriculum specialist and professional development facilitator. He's authored articles and books and is the co-author of Belonging Through a Culture of Dignity, the Keys to Successful Equity Im equity implementation, and that's why we have here John today to talk about his book, his work that is transformative and I want to pass it over to John Welcome, tell us who you are, where you're from and what listeners should know about you.
JK:Well, thank, you for having me, so we'll start with where I'm from. I'm coming to you from Central Maryland, right in between Baltimore and Washington DC, and I think you captured a lot of my background there in the introduction. But I like to think of myself as an educator and, even broader, a learner. I had the opportunity to partner with organizations across the country, across the continent and even a little bit beyond that over the past few years, and even a little bit beyond that over the past few years, and it's been an incredible opportunity to learn, to evolve my own thinking and just to continue to try to figure out how we can best practice this thing that we call democracy.
DE:Centering it in democracy. I love that and when it feels like democracy is ever being shaken and woken where we are. I love how you have tried to send your dignity in that work. And I want to give you some background story. I feel like this almost it's not a full circle moment, but actually and then I would say she was a mentor of mine, it was really, I would say, a steeped DEI practitioner gave me this book and it was a part of the school's DEI board training conversation and she used the image of kind of the segregation inclusion blobs as a model of saying just really a question of like, where do we stand as a school? What do you all notice? And so I took this book I didn't read the first actually fully the first time. I would say it's kind of like a.
DE:You know it was a tool in my toolbox to have and then I think, particularly in my work, as I left my alma mater, went to a boarding school in New Jersey, was then assistant director of DEI at that school, kind of picked it back up, but I wasn't running the program then at that school and so now here at Beaver I get to run you might call it the DEI program here and so I said, hmm, I was also being simultaneously tapped to come in and lead something called the Belonging Initiative here at Beaver, which predated me but had the opportunity with my colleagues to reshape maybe the focus of the group and we needed a framework, a foundation upon which that we could ground ourselves in commonality and really common knowledge and we'll get into that a little bit later about how belong has become a buzzword. But I thought for our community at Beaver, before we got into maybe trying to measure or to assess belonging we need to share common knowledge of, because it is a buzzword. When I say belonging I mean this right. Or when you hear the word belonging, how does it invoke in you a particular feeling that you can wrap your mind around a particular word so we can share, speak common language as it pertains to belonging. And I think your book did that in a masterful way. So it feels almost I don't know what the word is to even describe it but special moment of being able to sit across from you.
DE:I think in my mind. You've probably lived in my mind many days in this book. I call it kind of the belonging Bible. For those who are listening here, you can't see it, but I take it with me everywhere I go. I whip it out, I'm like well, on page number 46, they mentioned this thing and I would also say that because you all center dignity it's inspired the name of this podcast, dignity Dialogues, and I think it's really helpful. In a world in which culture, war, seems to be ruling everything, I find that dignity is maybe the evergreen piece that people really hopefully can't touch and weaponize to their good. So tell our listeners what really inspired this work of art for you all to birth in the first place.
JK:Wow, well, thank you for describing it as a work of art. It's been really flattering to hear people's response to the book and I have to say, floyd and jaded but around 2015 or 16, right in there was when we first started talking about we started the conversation that led to us deciding to write this book. And so just a little history. Floyd is from Denver, colorado. Well, he lives in Denver, colorado. He has the entire time that I've known him. We met at a national conference in 2008 or 2009. I think it was, yeah, 2008, december 2008, I believe and we became friends. We stayed in contact and everything, and we reconnected about halfway through that decade I would say 2015-ish.
JK:And to put this in more context, at the time I had been in the role of DEI coordinator for a rather large school district of about 60 to 65,000 students. I had been at it you know the day-to-day grind, as they say, for 10 years. At that point, floyd had taken on some similar responsibilities, although not the job category, but on the executive team that he was on, he ended up assuming a lot of the responsibility for what nowadays people casually refer to as equity work. So I think any time you've been at something day to day for a decade. It's a good time to reflect a little bit, re-evaluate. Yeah, have I been making the difference that I think I've been having?
JK:But 2015 was really interesting because I think some things shifted culturally in our country.
JK:I think you saw it first on college campuses students.
JK:I think Harvard was the first place this showed up, but the I2M Harvard movement became something that swept across the nation where students were basically declaring that they, too, deserve to belong to that institution, and it usually was students who were experiencing minoritization in that environment, so mainly black and brown students saying, hey, I belong here, even though I'm being made to feel like I'm not, and so that was captured in the I too am fill in the school movement, and that was around 2015.
JK:But at that same time, there was a proliferation of social media activity around. I guess social justice would be one way to describe it, and Twitter is in my mind more than anything else, because what we started seeing on that particular platform was the use of academic language in ways that were negative. Academic language in ways that were negative meaning, you know, calling people out, talking down to them, using language as weapons to prove a point Basically, a lot of indignant type of interactions in these echo chambers which simultaneously, you know, in me, reflecting on my job, I thought, thought, okay, I am mainly responsible for professional learning, professional development. We have a really good thing going, with a very devoted group of people who will sign up for anything that we offer and so you had a captive audience.
JK:We, we had a movement, okay however, I started wondering about what, about the people who are not choosing to be here, and what has changed over the past 10 years as a result of people's commitment to this movement. And Floyd was having a similar conversation. But Floyd was also very much exploring the concept of humiliation, some personal things he was experiencing at work, as well as some writing he was doing and we started talking about. He very, he, very much was instrumental in getting this conversation started because he was talking to me about the power of humiliation and how it has been used as a tool to control people forever. And it's not just interpersonal relationships, where it's almost like we have this intuitive knowledge that if we really want to commit a certain type of violence on someone, you humiliate them. You know, you make them feel small. But that whole dynamic has also been used in a broad scale to subjugate entire populations of people, which, in other words, you know, humiliation in that context is to make people seem or feel less than right, less than worthy. So, quite literally, floyd said I need to know what the antonym of humiliation is and from a quick look in the source, dignity happens to be one of the antonyms, and that led us on this journey toward this discipline that we didn't even really know existed at the time, which is the dignity and humiliation studies, very much an international audience of brilliant thinkers. That led us to Donna Hicks, who had just recently, at that time, written about dignity in a way that can operationalize it. That led us to Donna Hicks, who had just recently, at that time, written about dignity in a way that can operationalize it. It led us full circle, back to some of the writings of Dr King, for instance, who used the word dignity a lot, and it started to make more sense when we had an understanding of how to unpack that word.
JK:In other words, we all have a need and a desire to be treated with dignity. In other words, to all have a need and a desire to be treated with dignity, in other words, to feel like we are being treated as a person of value and worth, and the flip side of that is that there are very specific actions we can take in order to meet that need, and that was a paradigm shift for me completely. It's almost like it turned the work that I was doing on its head or inside out, because very much I started to see that these issues that we're wrestling with are human issues and Just like food, you know and I'll fast forward a little bit belonging and really it's belonging and dignity are human needs as well, and it isn't so much about, for example, belonging being a human need as it is about okay, how are we going about meeting that need? Just like it's not a big deal, that food is a human need, right it's.
JK:How are we going about meeting that need? Is it in a healthy way or an unhealthy way? And so I guess where we can transition back to you here is where Floyd and I and our team has been focused over the past year is helping people, draw people's attention to the entirety of the phrase belonging through dignity, because that's the best way that we've learned how to describe healthy belonging. The reality of it is when we see, you know, declarations such as you know we're all about a culture of belonging I just think it's't help A deep sense of belonging.
JK:It doesn't tell you that much. You can have a deep relationship with food and you can find sugar all day. It's not going to lead to healthy outcomes, totally so. As belonging has become a buzzword over the past few years, we've gotten more and more clear that really the type of healthy belonging that we're advocating for and assisting with is belonging that's deeply rooted in dignity.
DE:And can you define dignity one more time for us? We're all on one page of what that language should invoke or mean for us.
JK:Yeah. So it's a simple yet complex definition, and what I mean by that is the complexity is always going to be there because of the nature of humans and being in organizations or systems. However, it doesn't need to be complicated. So, dignity, we rely on the work of Donna Hicks and her work. She's a conflict.
JK:She spent her career in conflict resolution and international affairs and has dealt with human conflict and intractable human conflict around the world for decades.
JK:You know she was partnering with the likes of the late Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who was one of her conflict resolution partners, and along the way, she realized that what was at the heart of all human conflict regardless of whether it's a quarrel between loved ones or whether it's an emerging war between nation states what was at the heart of the conflict were the unresolved and unhealed wounds to dignity, and so that context helps us look locally at our issues around, for example, our history of slavery, for instance we can better see it as unresolved, unhealed wounds to dignity.
JK:In other words, it's unresolved conflict Totally. And so the way she was able to operationalize the word dignity started with a definition. Now it's a two part definition, and the first part is that it's our value and worth as human beings, right, you can't quantify it because it just is so. When we start to quantify it, it becomes indignant, because that implies that one person is more valuable than another person. Right, and so it's innate. You were born with it because you're human and you're here. So she makes this really special distinction where she parses out respect from dignity.
DE:It's a good distinction.
JK:Yeah, dignity is innate you can't earn it. You know, I think we have a lineity is innate you can't earn it. You know, I think we have a line in the book. You can't buy it off of Amazon, it's like you have it. The only thing you can do is honor it or violate it, right. And so respect, on the other hand, is very much conditional and very much accorded to people's behaviors, and we all know this, right. There are people who do things that earn your respect and do things for which you lose respect. So that's the first part, Easy enough to understand. That distinction between respect and dignity is huge.
JK:And then the second part of it, of the definition, is that it's a consciousness or a mindset that we can all tap into, although it's we're humans and we have these nervous systems that we share with animals, and so, you know, we get triggered and we downshift, and it's hard to live there in this consciousness, where you can see the reflection of yourself in the eyes of another person, right. But when we're able to tap into the consciousness, we're more able to see our equal value and worth, as well as the vulnerability that we all share, as a matter of fact, that all living things share. And understanding that last part of the definition. It's a little bit more heady in terms of for me. I had to chew on it a bit, but that unlocked for me a deeper meaning in what I think people are trying to get at when they use the terms like inequity or injustice.
JK:Because as humans, we all experience vulnerability, which means we can all easily be wounded by other people, and the flip side of that is every single one of us can wound other people, even though most of us might not enjoy it.
JK:We don't like to think of ourselves as people that can wound people, but the honest truth is we do. Not only can we, but we do in little ways all the time. So none of us is above this, and so, when it comes down to words like inequities and injustice, that vulnerability word is key, because even though we are all vulnerable to, for example, our dignity being violated or having our dignity violated, that doesn't mean that we all experience that with the same frequency or volume. And, because of our social context and our social identities, some of us may have to endure more assaults on our dignity on a daily basis than other people in the exact same environment. And if we are a people who are dedicated to basic democratic principles as our true north right, as our foundational principles, then that can't be okay. And what I mean by that? I mean, and what I mean by that I mean some people experiencing, you know, less or more violations on their value and worth in the exact same environment.
DE:So my question is how do we make it move from the heady space right to the actual, everyday human beings? We're not in this state of critical you might say consciousness or dignity consciousness. How do we go about? What tangible everyday actions can we do to honor the dignity of people?
JK:Yeah, okay. So this is where Donna Hicks was able to operationalize it even further than the definition identified within her conflict resolution work. That showed up again and again and again. That represented what people needed, that they weren't getting that either. That escalated the conflict right or kept the conflict alive and unresolved. And nice round number, she was able to identify 10 of them, things like benefit of the doubt.
JK:You know, understanding we all have this need and desire to be understood by others safety, both physical and psychological. Fairness there's there's 10 of them, right, and so these represent the very specific things that we need. Now I'll equate it back to food. Right, there are certain minerals that every single one of us need as human beings in our diet or else we get sick. We all need a certain amount of iron in our diet, or else we become anemic.
JK:So, regardless of culture, regardless of geography, there are essentials that human beings need in order to feel like they matter in relationships and environments matter in relationships and environments. So the flip side of these essentials is are that there are basic actions that we can take to meet those needs for other people. So, for example, me recognizing that you have a need to be understood, I might deliberately engage in active listening when I'm when we're having an exchange, because not only might I want to understand where you're coming from, but I know that you have a need to be understood Now, if you take all of this into the context of just getting better and doing better, right, Just being better humans to other human beings.
JK:That's what it is, and it extends far beyond our workplaces. It extends into our personal relationships, it extends into our neighborhoods and you know, I've I've been at this a while and I'm still working on it, but I'm but, I'm getting better, and what's what's really helped me is to get better at mitigating my feedback triggers, and this shows so what are feedback triggers?
JK:okay. So feedback triggers are when you're receiving data, receiving input, that ends up triggering your nervous system, where you end up becoming defensive, right, and then, once this happens, the allure of the temptation to violate dignity becomes almost irresistible. So, for example, so, and here's what I mean by the temptation to violate dignity becomes almost irresistible. So, for example and here's what I mean by the temptation to violate dignity there are several of these as well that Dr Hicks describes Shirking, responsibility, blame and shame, taking the bait Like it's, like. You just can't help it. It's almost like for me smelling a chocolate chip cookie cake in an oven.
DE:You can't resist it. I know it's not good for me, but I can't resist it, right.
JK:And so once your brain downshifts and you're in that fight or flight mode or freeze mode you know this is what I mean by we share with animals, right, you are probably going to violate dignity Yourself, the dignity of someone else or the dignity of what's bigger than both of you, which, in a school community.
DE:What might? What might a violation of dignity look like?
JK:okay. So let's let's bring it to a real granular level, because this is where most of my learning occurs with my partner, my wife aaron, and like any relationship, there's conflict. Now, conflict is not good, it's not bad, it's conflict, it's just conflict, it just is. Now, how we respond to conflict ends up leading to good or bad outcomes, right, healthy or unhealthy. So where I've gotten better is controlling my immediate defensive reaction of explaining things away. So let's take a very benign example, and this is off the top of my head. Let's say my wife says hey, I've got a run out today. I've got some clothes in the laundry machine. You know you're going to be home in the home office, do you mind? You know when you hear the buzzer goes off, can you put it in the dryer, cause I need those pants for later on? I say sure, and then I take a phone call and then you know.
JK:Next thing you know we get into a very interesting conversation and then something else pops up.
DE:It's two or three hours later.
JK:And she goes upstairs to get the pants out of the dryer and they're still wet in the washing machine. So I hear my name called. It's either John, john, it's probably not, it's probably john.
JK:And then all of a sudden I think, oh my gosh, I forgot to do this right and so I come upstairs and she said I thought you said that you were going to dry these. Put my pants in the dryer. And I said, oh my gosh. And in that moment, my defensive like right now I'm triggered, right? I mean, so I'm getting this feedback. Yep, right, and my feedback. You know it's a feedback trigger, it's probably a.
JK:So there are three categories of feedback triggers there's relationship triggers, there are truth triggers and there's identity triggers. And identity triggers is when we receive feedback that conflicts with the story we tell ourselves about who we are. So, for me, I like to tell myself a story that I'm a kind person, that I'm a good partner, that I'm a spouse, and so right now I'm experiencing right, like, and she's like, I can't believe you did this. And so I want to defend myself and prove that I'm a good person. Yeah, and so I start saying, oh my gosh, delante called me. And then you know, and then I got so hungry I had to eat. And do you know? I, I paid the mortgage.
JK:I did something you're explaining away making excuses which which is counterproductive when you're in the middle of escalating conflict, because what she needs is now. Whatever's coming out in her words and her emotions is actually clues for me to figure out what elements of dignity are in play right and really what I've gotten better with is almost like what dignity provides us is uh. Now I'm going back to my childhood in the 80s like a magic decoder ring to basically categorize and understand what our partner is experiencing, so we can respond and not react.
JK:That's a good distinction responding, not reacting so in that moment, if I'm able to pause and breathe, you know, to neutral, like as a neutralizing routine, so I don't react, because I'm probably going to react reflexively in a way that violates dignity I can think oh my gosh, she has a need for acknowledgement right now. That's one of these 10 essentials of dignity. I don't need to explain this. I need to acknowledge that I didn't do it, I'm sorry, I messed up, and then I need to be accountable for it Right, which basically are two of the 10 elements of dignity. And this is what it sounds like oh my gosh, I dropped the ball here. I told you I was going to do it and I didn't. I told you I was going to do it and I didn't. That doesn't help right now, but, moving forward, I am going to figure out a way when I say I'm going to do something, whether it's a reminder, a post-it or something.
JK:This is true, I'm not very good at making lists for myself. I'm kind of all over the place, and that might be something. You know what. I am going to start making a list for myself and checking it off as I go out there today, because I get sucked into so many different things.
DE:That'll help me stay organized Right and so to me it's like through doing that, you're actually honoring. Obviously you're doing it, but like the intentionality which you're taking to actually thinking about how you described vulnerability earlier right, so you know that is one of your vulnerabilities was because the person not being a list maker yeah, but then, too, I'm going to actually try to bring it up to the top of my mind because I care for you as a person and I want to be better for you, yeah, in our relationship, how we live together and, ultimately, our household.
JK:So you're not thinking that I, I don't care about your pants not being in the dryer yeah, because if I don't do that you know I'm gay I'm engaging in a form of defensiveness that will probably land as dismissal and even taking it at its worst. Now I hesitate to say this because it's such an overused and misused term, but it but it can feel like gaslighting in a and we have contextualized versions of that word right that if you put it into like a gender dynamic or a racialized dynamic, you know that's where the terms mansplaining or whitesplaining make sense, and so you're always kind of flirting with that special type of gaslighting, unless you're able to better respond right and so that's maybe the main takeaway.
DE:How does one prepare themselves? How does one have the skills, the ability to, to respond? Yeah, and try not to react based upon what you said might be attributed to, to those feedback triggers so, like anything else, deliberate practice, and so you know, I use muscle reps.
JK:Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. So I used to be as a professional development specialist for decades, right, I used to think of the word training as a dirty word because, like you train dogs, you don't train humans, right. But there are certain things that we do need training on, like when we think about technology, for instance. There are some basic things you need trained on, right.
JK:What I find fascinating about relational dynamics is most of us have never been taught. There's been things modeled for us, but you think about your like high school and college experience. Us, but you think about your like high school and college experience? You never, really, unless you go to, like the Gottman Institute or something and learn about relationship. You really are just trial and error guided all the way, but what I've gotten to is like wow, when it comes to dignity, there are some things that that require training, that require reps, that require shoot. I'll go as far as to say rote memorization, right, and, like I said, I've gotten better at it personally and professionally, but that's because I'm thinking about it every single day You're in that state of dignity consciousness.
DE:Can we coin this a term? It is called it, yes, Dignity consciousness, and actually she describes it. You know this a term. It is called it Dignity consciousness.
JK:What is it? And she says it's three C's.
DE:Yes, connection. Yes, yes, yes, I remember, but here's the thing.
JK:The dignity consciousness is when you are connected and plugged in to your own value and worth, Right? So think about that for a moment. In a relationship or in an environment that means you're not going to shrink yourself for someone else, right. You're not going to act like someone else, just to you know, get by or fit in right, Compromise your own value, Compromise yourself, right. And then it's connection to the dignity of another person, and that's kind of what I was describing with that silly kind of laundry machine example. But then there's your connection to something that's bigger than you and the other person. So for me, in that example, I was also conscious of the dignity or the value and worth of my marriage. Like in this community that we're in right now it would be the beaver community, right? There's something that's bigger than all of us, and so those three things actually interact simultaneously in a I think it's more of a circular than a linear way because there's no end point and speaking of things that is bigger than any individual.
DE:That is bigger than any individual. I'm reminded of what you all said in your book about culture eating strategy for breakfast and that thing that's bigger than all of us, in which we are, is culture. There was culture before we came. Culture that we're here now. Culture we're probably trying to impact and better for the future. But how do we ensure that culture is primed so that the work is done well and actually has impact in our community?
JK:Yeah, I think you're referencing, so that quote is attributed to Peter Drucker. We tried to get down figure out where exactly he said it and there's disagreement about it, but it is attributed to him. And that quote really got to the spirit of, in our minds, systems level change and not simply trying to, for example, train teachers on new strategies. And it could be as simple as okay, we're going to introduce the idea of restorative circles and then we're going to implement restorative circles.
DE:There's levels to it. Yeah To the work. There's levels to it. Yeah To the work.
JK:There's levels, there's levels to it, and so what we know doesn't work is trying to implement a new strategy in an unsupportive culture. So this is why, if we look at it from a systems level vantage point, every level matters. So the consistency with which leadership is making it their norm to honor dignity and to be accountable for when it, you know, when behavior and action veers from that to the point of, you know, teachers in classrooms, and then students to students and in, you know, within a culture. Basically, what we're trying to get at is dignity is the way we do things around here. It's not a strategy, it's not an activity, it's not a program. It is our norm. It's our norm exactly, which means it's really our core value, or at least a core value.
DE:Is there any value in explicitly naming it as such, do you think? Or does it lose its power? Because I feel like that's always the hard part you're trying to. It's funny because you just did a workshop with our core leadership team and talked about belonging being the buzzword, and so the hard part about it is how do you not emphasize something so much that it loses its meaning? People roll their eyes. Oh, here we go dignity, belonging.
JK:I agree. Well, for one thing, floyd, and I agree that belonging I'm sorry, dignity is more precise than belonging in terms of the specificity with which we can define it. Belonging has multiple meanings to multiple people and it's often used absence of a definition. So, for one thing, dignity is a little bit more precise. Absence of a definition, so, for one thing, dignity is a little bit more precise. Second thing I would say is start with the action. Start with actually trying to practice dignity, trying to use it as the lens through which you view, you know, school improvement, professional improvement, et cetera, and don't start with making it a bumper sticker, right, don't start with a branding campaign, but and I guess this is where grassroots as a metaphor works, because I'll give you an example of a success story. Now, this is belonging, not the dignity word, but belonging.
JK:We worked with a school in Missouri for I think it was year three of their implementation and we had done work with the leadership team, we had done some work with the teachers, we had done some work with coaching and we got to the level of actually facilitating student dialogues, and the principal called them leadership seminars. They were half day basically assemblies where at the end of the program, students would identify things in the environment that needed to stop because they were getting in the way of dignity and belonging, things that needed to continue because they were fostering dignity and belonging, and then generative ideas that they wanted the principal and the leadership team to consider and they would present on these ideas and the admin team would sit there and listen and that became a part of their culture. Even after our consulting relationship left with them, they took that on as their own thing. So every incoming freshman class participates in these leadership seminars everyone. And so the graduating class, the senior class of that third year, you know they had their funds and they wanted to do their senior gift, and their senior gift ended up being this huge window treatment.
JK:When you walk into the school it's a big atrium, two-level atrium. In the top level of the atrium there are some windows to a classroom or something. And now that window treatment it says that the name of the school. I think they shortened it to the H because H is the first letter of the school's name a place where you will belong, right, and so that was the message from the students. Now it didn't start with the adults who get paid to work there saying telling students how they should feel. The students are actually expressing their lived experience in that school by promising people that came after them that, hey, you're going to also experience this as well, you're going to find a place, that this is a place where you will belong, such as we did.
DE:Yeah, I love that.
JK:So I think that that helps. Just don't start with, don't start with the branding campaign. So I think that helps. Just don't start with the branding campaign.
DE:Start with trying to live it. I want to focus in on a little bit more of living it. And you describe in chapter one maybe, the pitfalls or the cycle or you call it dysfunctional cycle of equity work, and so I think, particularly for either DEI practitioners or school leaders or just educators in general, how does one in their work not fall prey? And you might just say being accustomed or being aware of what that cycle is. But I say one, describe that cycle and are there any maybe guardrails along the way to ensure that you don't fall into it? And I might actually say part of, I think my work and my growth has been oh, I can see the cycle now where we're about to land, and so I can have some foresight and try to steer us off into a different direction so we don't end up back in that cycle of dysfunction.
JK:Right, well, first I have to say that that cycle was reflective of our own lived experience as authors. So I want to say that, because we are not above this at all, matter of fact, that whole chapter was really a result of Floyd and I trying to help each other kind of reflect on what we had done over the previous 10 years and the fact that we just had this feeling something was off. Like, after about 10 years, you start to wonder is this really making a difference? And you start to see negative chatter on Twitter and social media and you, you know, wonder to what extent am I contributing to this? Am I part of the solution or part of the problem? And so, actually, in reflecting, we started to map out predictable, you know, steps in this cycle and we agreed we were experiencing similar things, although in different geographic regions. Then we started passing it around colleagues throughout North America, everyone, a hundred percent, would say things like were you spying on us last year? Cause this is exactly what we've done? Or, oh god, you're describing our reality right now. And so that was our own internal validation. But, um, when we ended up, you know, publishing it as chapter one, it really was a cautionary tale of like hey, be mindful of this. Yeah, we've, we've lived through at least one era or one iteration of you know what nowadays people would refer to as dei it's, it's been called various things over the decades, but, um, you know the predictable?
JK:The main predictable parts are something that happens and, by the way, this is a reactive model, meaning that the organization or the person is reacting to the negative thing. Insert whatever negative thing you want there Racism, bullying, you know geopolitical events, events of injustice that are far outside of your community or in your community. So, whatever it is, something bad happens, and the next element is that people end up condemning the bad thing. Now, this is a very. You can see this at the top levels of government. You know political leaders having press conferences and saying, hey, this is not us, this bad thing is not us, right. So you get a double negative, and this is the first thing to be aware of is that the negative framing is actually the first step to the initiative going nowhere, and so what you get is the condemnation, or we are against this bad thing, which why I say it's so easy to do is because you never have to build consensus around what you're for right.
JK:So Floyd always gives this example of legislative legislation just a legislative process To illustrate it's so much easier to kill a bill than to get a bill passed, because to kill a bill, all you need is people to be against it. And people could be against it for wildly different reasons. Right. But to get it passed you have to at least fundamentally agree to the core components of that proposed legislation. So it requires consensus, it takes time. It's actually quite expedient and easy to kill a bill, right? So when you think about the double negative created with condemning the bad thing or being anti-bad thing, you don't need a positive vision, you don't need consensus, and the negative frame, you know, ends up not being very helpful when it comes to implementation. Right, because it basically communicates what we don't want. It doesn't give guidance on what we do.
DE:We're working towards and for where's the vision forward?
JK:Correct. So that's one of the biggest things, because then you run into all the problems of implementation. I'll tell you, implementing anything is difficult, right, but implementing some invisible thing that you haven't named because you're against the bad thing is like at best you're going to get random acts of improvement and at worst you're going to get absolute malaise with people. And you saw this in terms of like social justice with in the absence of a shared vision you had, you know, rogue teachers making the news, doing things in the name of you know something good, but upsetting members of the community. Then, all of a sudden, the leaders there are trying to put out fires and handle conflict and things and I would say where are we now?
DE:I think, that's where I think, and I say that honestly. If you were to apply the same logic of this cycle having a real gut and reality check, of just saying, okay, we're three years, four years, almost approaching five years, past our racial reckoning, so to speak, in our country, where are we?
JK:Yeah, we saw that cycle that summer, summer 2020. We saw that cycle revealing itself at a scale. Remember, we started with our own experience, as for me, it was. I was a DEI coordinator in a rather large district for 15 years, so it started with our own experience. But that summer 15 years so it started with our own experience. But that summer, all of the signs that we were going to, as a country, engage in this dysfunctional cycle were there, and we ended up writing a blog that summer. It was called how to Avoid the Biggest Equity Failure Ever. And here we are.
DE:And I would say I don't want people to walk away like, oh, we're just slashing down. I'm actually saying like we're at a real impetus, we're at a real juncture, I should say, rather and for us to be more clear as to where we want to go, to create that collective vision of what does it look like for us to have true equity, to have liberation of all people. And so I would say it's actually a clear young call, because there's a moment and we don't want to miss this moment that we're experiencing right here, right now.
JK:Well, you asked about like the guardrails to keep, I would say to break the cycle right.
JK:And of course you need a positive shared vision, but when it comes to social equality which is really, at the end of the day, what this is all about it has to be rooted in dignity.
JK:It has to be rooted in dignity, it has to be, and so belonging is like evidence that people are experiencing dignity.
JK:But but it has to be that.
JK:And even when you go back and look at the writings of dr king, you see, you see him talking or writing about dignity a lot, right, and so, revisiting it, for me it's like I saw it in a different light, because I saw it as an actionable word, even though it's a noun, you know.
JK:And so if you were to look at the long arc of all of this and even let's shorten the arc, let's just take 1965, which I tend to think of 1965, in the beginning of civil rights legislation being passed as an extension of the 14th Amendment right, and so you know, whatever legislation followed ADA, idea, I mean, there's a whole Title IX, there's a whole slew right of laws that sprung out of the civil rights legislation the efforts really are still how to implement those pieces of legislation, or you can think of it, and this sounds technical, but how to comply with those pieces of legislation, and at some point I feel like perhaps some of the efforts around that get lumped under this very, very, very, very, very broad umbrella that's called DEI somehow became uncoupled from that.
DE:Can it be also too? I still feel like a big part we talked about vulnerability and I feel like a big part is acknowledging the wounds, and I feel like we still, as a country, maybe we've acknowledged it, but we haven't done the work to repair those wounds that many people are facing in our country and I feel like I don't know how we'll get there, to be quite honest, but until that work is done and people can feel that work being done, then we're going to keep on trying, but we'll end back up in this dysfunctional cycle along the way.
JK:Yeah, and the need to heal from these wounds, that if we could go back to those three C's right.
DE:Connection connection connection yeah.
JK:It's not. It's not just healing at the collective level, right, the country. Yes, we need that, and yes we need it in terms of local communities, local groups of people and interpersonal. And then if you just think about the trauma and the intergenerational trauma from existence in our country, there's internal and intrapersonal healing from those wounds as well and in the end, you know the idea of dignity really represents. We're all worth it, right? I'm worth expecting great things from myself. You're worth me expecting great things from you, and you know what we're worth expecting really the promise of democracy, living up to that as a country, and it's worth it, right. Or our school is worth it, whatever the community is. But that healing it's deep, it's deep man, it's so layered and it has to happen in all those layers.
DE:I want to end us on these two points right here, and you've kind of gotten to it. What has changed and or I would really say, say what's evolved in your thinking from when you wrote that book in 2019 to where we are now, approaching 2025?
JK:A lot. There's a lot that didn't make it in there, because when you're writing a book, you have things like deadlines.
DE:The practicality logistics of it all.
JK:So let me, just off the top of my head, a few things. Chapter eight we really get into the need to assess the climate, to to shape the culture of dignity. You need to know where you're falling short so you can work on it. So you need, there needs to be metrics, and at that time there was far less survey fatigue than there is now. I think surveys just proliferated during the lockdown period of COVID, right. So I put less stock into surveys now than I used to, although I still think they can be helpful in terms of having a marker in time, starting the process of trying to drill down and figure out you know what problem we're going to identify. Now, I think the people who get really good at this do it intuitively, right. It's like they're always, you know, gauging. They always have their finger on the pulse of the people.
DE:It sounds like having a solid EQ to be able to assess the environment which you're in and understand people and their ticking points almost yes, and I don't want to give up on the people who that might not be as developed I was not trying to insinuate that, but yeah, um, I think. Or how do you develop that skill?
JK:that skill set to be more in tune with others and how they're feeling so there's a concept called gosh I hope it's a french word t e r r o I r, and it basically represents um the effect the environment has on the product. So, for instance, people who are extreme foodies can taste the region that the cocoa bean was grown in. They can taste the region that the grape was grown in, right, is that?
DE:a taught skill or an innate skill? That's my, that's my one. Do you get so good at it Cause you have so many reps? We talked about those reps earlier.
JK:I don't know, probably a little bit of both, but let's back it up to the fact that that it happens. Now I know it happens because the beer, the guinness beer that's brewed in ghana tastes different than a guinness brew. That's beard in ireland which tastes different than the guinness brew that's beer brewed in um in maryland, and so much of that has to do with the water and the composition. But the idea that you know, in foods, grapes in a certain region will taste different than others has to do with the. This is where the word terroir, I believe, which just this, was just introduced to me by um someone I met at a conference not that long ago.
JK:I wasn't familiar with it, but it makes sense is that it's the combination of the soil, the water, the air, the sunlight and then the care it takes in terms of cultivating that environment that there is a unique flavor, right? So I think for people who may not be as their EQ, might not be as developed as others, I do think being in an environment where people are working on it will help them develop it, if it's a part of the way we do things around here. So if my EQ is low, it's a 2 out of 10. I might never be a 10 out of 10, but if I'm in a supportive environment, the culture six out of 10,.
DE:Back to the culture back to the culture.
JK:the culture is it and, um you know, people that are in that culture will contribute to the development of it and will be different from being a part of it, and that word captures so much I want to end off on this question.
DE:I would have started with it, but I actually think it's really good that we're ending with it on this note. Where and with whom do you feel the most dignified? Where or with whom do you feel like your worth and your value and your humanity is honored and amplified?
JK:Well, geez, okay, there are several people that come to mind my parents, uh, my wife, just my, most of my family in general. But it's it's hard, you know it's it's hard not to think of my mom first, because think about each of us, right, we come into this world literally connected to another person. So she has known me long before you do. She has known me, so she knows all versions of me. So there's conditional belonging, or, in other words, I'm sorry, there's unconditional belonging or unconditional love, just there, right, and I feel it, and it's something I try to keep in mind, like when I'm working with we worked with your leadership team today. Uh, for instance, and the way we think about what we do matters. Like, for instance, instead of me thinking, okay, how can I help people feel connected, I think of it more as okay, how can, how can I help people, help people break off the corrosion on their connectedness, like I believe they're already connected in so many different ways, right, like you and me being from the DMV, right, we already have that connection.
DE:That's a strong affinity. The DMV, it's a strong affinity. The DMV, it's a strong affinity. Yeah, it's like.
JK:I just think we are all connected in ways that we don't normally see in our day-to-day human experience. But I know this sounds trite, but we already belong to each other.
DE:And so you got to create the time to tell those stories.
JK:Yep, it's almost remembering that we belong to each other more than learning, and so that's that might be a personal philosophy of mine, but, um, you know, my lifelong, literally lifelong connection with my mother and how I entered the world, literally physically connected to her, is always kind of a metaphor for that. I would say another, another one my, my, my dad and my stepdad. They're the two best of friends, you know, they, they, their friendship developed as a result of them caring for my brother and I.
JK:You, know, and they just along the way decided. They like each other and so there was unconditional love at the heart of that relationship. So when we are together and we will like go out for Father's Day, we just spent Thanksgiving together. There's no pretense, there's no. I never have to try to fit in. You know what about you? Where do you feel the most belonging? That's a good question.
DE:Actually, I wasn't prepared to answer that question. On this side, I think that I find belonging this is going to sound interesting, but I would say that I feel it's not with any particular person, but I think it's environment broad, and I'll even more so say the dignity piece. I would say as a Black man in America, I find that my dignity is amplified. My worth, my value is when I'm in a space that my Blackness is not ruling the lens to which I see it. Does that make sense? Like I'm able to forget about my Blackness, almost. I'm just able to be a human being and it's great and I'm like, oh, it's a breath of fresh air and that, to me, is not with people, but it allows me to actually exercise vulnerability in a certain way.
DE:I found like when I was studying abroad in Argentina as a 19 year old, people would come up to me like, why are you here? What are you doing here? But it was out of curiosity, it was their inquisitiveness of saying, okay, like, hmm, you're Black, you're probably not from here, but I was like, oh, they're interested in me in some way. Capacity, I speak Spanish. That helped a lot, but I think that being in those environments outside the States I have more often than not found I've been able to live into my community, I would say more fully, as an individual that isn't colored by racial, ethnic or class dynamics here in the United States. Yeah, your lens changes, yeah, yourself. Yeah, I talk a lot about kind of the fluidity of my identity and how it changes and morphs and shapes depending upon with whom I'm with or depending upon the country or geographical context that I'm in yeah, it's a beautiful phenomenon so you're not the first person who has told me a story like that.
JK:I remember some mentors of mine said that they were talking about the first time they visited paris and all of a sudden, james baldwin talks about that. They felt different this was the first experience they had where they weren't using that primary lens of basically the black experience in america. At some point it kind of moved to the back. It wasn't the primary lens, which they said was transformational.
DE:It's liberating, yeah. And then there's an additional piece where I think I was cognizant that my American privilege was a whole other conversation, but I think it actually allowed me to one be more empathetic to women, because I had the experience of what it felt to be, let's just say, stereotyped because of my gender and because of my race. So I was able to kind of empathize more so, of like, oh, this is what it means to be a woman and to be catcalled on the street. And until I had much more empathy. I'm only half American technically, my father is Nigerian, but I was able to have that much more empathy for people who go through the immigration process and what it means to have to work up against the system, and it just seems like there's never ending process.
DE:And so I think travel has been the greatest gift to understand my humanity. And we have the way I see it, to your point. It's very simple we have one planet earth, like why not see the fullness and greatness of it? And it's challenged me in many, many ways to really understand who I am as a person, not because I've been taught it, because I've experienced it as an individual. Yeah, amen. So we'll end on that. Thank you, john. Thank you for having me.