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In the next episode of Communicate Like You Give a Damn, host Kim Clark sits down with a true trailblazer in the field of workplace linguistics, Suzanne Wertheim, a national expert on inclusive language and author of the new book, The Inclusive Language Field Guide. Together, they have an enlightening conversation surrounding linguistic anthropology, language bias and how it relates to communicating in today’s workplace. Not only do they unpack how to deal with problematic language, but they also explore the evolution of language and understanding how semantics have changed over time, both for the better and worse.
About The Guest:
Dr. Suzanne Wertheim is a national expert on inclusive language and the author of The Inclusive Language Field Guide (2023). After getting her Ph.D. in Linguistics from Berkeley, she held faculty positions at Northwestern, University of Maryland, and UCLA. In 2011, she left the university system in order to apply her expertise to real-world problems. Dr. Wertheim has been an invited speaker around the US and in Europe, presenting research on language and bias, language and gender, and anthropology and artificial intelligence. As head of Worthwhile Research & Consulting, Dr. Wertheim now specializes in analyzing and addressing bias at work.
Find Suzanne Here:
About Kim:
Kim Clark (she/her) focuses her work on the communicator and content creator's role in diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). She is the co-author of The Conscious Communicator: The fine art of not saying stupid sh*t, an Amazon #1 bestseller and the leading voice for DEI communications and social justice messaging for brands.
She speaks at conferences, writes custom workshops, writes inclusive communications guides, and consults with companies on all things related to diversity, equity, and inclusion communications. Kim is a member of the LGBTQ+ community, a cisgender woman, Native American (Muscogee Nation) and a mom of two kids with disabilities. These marginalized identities and the privileges that come with society seeing her as White motivate her daily for social change.
Communicate Like You Give A Damn Podcast
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Welcome back everybody. Well, I have the
Kim Clark:honor of bringing in a guest that her work, my work, our work
Kim Clark:is quite complimentary. So you're gonna find that pretty
Kim Clark:much everything you need for dei communications and applying it
Kim Clark:to your work on a daily basis is going to be wrapped up in this
Kim Clark:conversation right here. So let's get into it. Please, Dr.
Kim Clark:Susan Wirthlin, please introduce yourself, and then we'll get
Kim Clark:into the questions.
Suzanne Wertheim:Sure. My name is Suzanne worth time, I am
Suzanne Wertheim:currently sitting in Oakland, California. I am the CEO of
Suzanne Wertheim:worthwhile research and consulting, where I apply social
Suzanne Wertheim:science and My academic background to real world
Suzanne Wertheim:problems in the workplace, in particular problems of bias, but
Suzanne Wertheim:not always.
Kim Clark:You have a very particular expertise in language
Kim Clark:as a linguist. So how did you get into that work, and you also
Kim Clark:have a new book coming out. So tell us about the book as well.
Unknown:So it's a little bit roundabout how I got into the
Unknown:work, but people find it interesting. So I'm gonna go a
Unknown:little deeper than you might have expected. When I graduated
Unknown:college, I had student debt, like many people, and I
Unknown:graduated into a recession, and I ended up with my English
Unknown:degree, as a technical writer in tech. And I was so disrespected,
Unknown:and my mind and abilities were so disrespected. I felt like so
Unknown:much of the time, men in tech were like, boop, boop, boop,
Unknown:boop, boop, and just ignoring me, then I became filled with
Unknown:fear. And I was like, How can I get men to listen to me and I
Unknown:literally got a PhD. I'm like, if I'm their professor, they
Unknown:have to listen. So that was how I got into linguistics was
Unknown:actually addressing bias in tech, which is very funny,
Unknown:because I'm like, Oh, I'm full circle, like the 12 years I was
Unknown:away from Jack, things actually got worse and a lot of respects.
Unknown:So I come in now with inside knowledge. So in grad school, I
Unknown:ended up specializing in a few kinds of linguistics, but I was
Unknown:really much more grammatically focused. And I was very
Unknown:interested in endangered languages. So I lived in Russia
Unknown:for a year studying how people were speaking. And I was so
Unknown:curious about why when you have two languages in contact, does
Unknown:the dominant fancy language almost never change its
Unknown:structure. But the minority language that's maybe
Unknown:stigmatized, maybe contracting, ends up changing its grammar a
Unknown:lot. And I didn't expect the answer to be what it was, which
Unknown:was context, human context, human interactions. So in order
Unknown:to write my dissertation, I had to teach myself so much about
Unknown:the social meaning of language, what goes on in the
Unknown:conversation? How does it relate to power structures? How does it
Unknown:relate to the larger context? I thought I was writing a grammar
Unknown:dissertation, and it ended up with me in my field of
Unknown:linguistic anthropology. So I taught Linguistic anthropology
Unknown:at various places. I was at Northwestern, I was at
Unknown:University of Maryland doing research for the government,
Unknown:where I had top secret clearance, which is not as
Unknown:exciting as you would think. It's cool. I was at I was. Yeah,
Unknown:it's pretty cool. It was, it was weird. They didn't ask the right
Unknown:questions for my, they didn't ask the right questions for my
Unknown:getting that security clearance. So for example, they didn't find
Unknown:out that I was one person away from a whole bunch of Chechen
Unknown:warlords, that was much more interesting than I thought then,
Unknown:what kind of public transit I took when I was in cities that I
Unknown:visited. So yeah, okay. So I was at UCLA, and I started
Unknown:consulting, again, for tech, because I wanted enough money to
Unknown:buy a house and Professor ing wasn't going to do it. And then
Unknown:I got so frustrated with how much useful knowledge was locked
Unknown:behind academic doors, and how usefully it could be applied to
Unknown:so many different situations to help people who shouldn't have
Unknown:to take a college course to get access to really useful stuff
Unknown:that I left, and I started my own company in 2011. And so
Unknown:that's how I ended up working on bias in the workplace, which is
Unknown:a great application for my field of linguistic anthropology makes
Unknown:a lot of things transparent to me that are very opaque to other
Unknown:people. Because I got a toolkit that gives me X ray vision.
Kim Clark:Excellent, excellent. And, and all of this led to your
Kim Clark:up and coming book.
Unknown:Yes. Up and coming very soon. It's out October 3. So,
Unknown:um, yes. So there were a lot of reasons why I wrote the book. So
Unknown:many people like why did you write the book I'm like, my
Unknown:clients kept on asking me to like, it's kind of basic, but I
Unknown:really wanted people. People came to me for two reasons. The
Unknown:first was that there were problems in their workplace
Unknown:because people were saying problematic things. Right. So
Unknown:they were just saying Things that were problematic in
Unknown:different ways that I ended up delineating in the book. But
Unknown:then also people would come to me because they would say, I
Unknown:want to do better, especially in 2020. Right? Suddenly, there was
Unknown:this great awakening where a lot of people were like, Oh, I think
Unknown:there's stuff happening in the world that I don't know about.
Unknown:And my good intentions might not be good enough. This is when
Unknown:there started to be a lot of talk about ally work, how can I
Unknown:do ally work? How can I make the world better? How can I make my
Unknown:good intentions have good impact, and people realize that
Unknown:language is so complicated, and the resources out there were so
Unknown:confusing, and they couldn't understand how to take this list
Unknown:of words and apply them to another list of words that they
Unknown:said, alright, what can you do to help? And so I was like, I'll
Unknown:come to the rescue. And I put on my author, cape, and I wrote a
Unknown:book that I think will solve a lot of problems for a lot of
Unknown:different kinds of people. It's reverse engineered for the
Unknown:biggest problems that I see. The book was designed, not what I
Unknown:think is interesting, but like people needed the most the
Unknown:people who come to
Kim Clark:me, I hear that, I hear that. And so you're well
Kim Clark:known on LinkedIn, for talking about language and inclusive
Kim Clark:language. So the title of your book is the inclusive language
Kim Clark:Field Guide. Correct. And so, so it's, it's, it's going to be
Kim Clark:practical in nature is what I'm gathering by that title. And so
Kim Clark:please help us understand what inclusive language is, how do
Kim Clark:you define it?
Unknown:Sure. Actually, I want it. Let me just talk about Field
Unknown:Guide for a minute. There. They were, it took a long time, I'm
Unknown:sure you had the same problem takes a long time to find a
Unknown:title of a book, right? Yeah. And for me, inclusive language
Unknown:is related to why I called it a field guide. Because a field
Unknown:guide sets up a scenario and in the book, I talk about the
Unknown:scenarios that are invoked by words, right, I get scientific
Unknown:about it, inclusive language, and a field guide sets up a
Unknown:scenario where the world is complicated and diverse. So I
Unknown:hike, I have a field of wildflower guide, I've got a
Unknown:birding guide, I know that the world out there is complicated.
Unknown:And there are principles and patterns and behaviors that are
Unknown:interesting to me that without an expert's guidance, I can't
Unknown:figure it out on my own. But it's a positive thing that I
Unknown:want to learn. And that's how I'm setting up this book, right?
Unknown:It's not a blame and shame. It's not a viewer a bad person. It's
Unknown:saying the world is really complicated and really diverse.
Unknown:And there are patterns and behaviors that are linked that
Unknown:you might not recognize. But let me give you this guide. Right.
Unknown:And so that leads me into the idea of inclusive language,
Unknown:because many people think that it's just choosing a correct
Unknown:word. And I am using linguistic science to go deeper and say,
Unknown:Actually, we really have to find what those patterns are those
Unknown:skeletal under structures, those behaviors that link them, and
Unknown:then we can do a good job. So let me tell you that I'm going
Unknown:to be a little bit negative and say, inclusive language is not
Unknown:problematic language. So there's lots of names that people give,
Unknown:they'll say, oh, it's racist, or homophobic or transphobic.
Unknown:Honestly, they might be right. But in my experience, that kind
Unknown:of language is not productive. If you want people to really
Unknown:assess what they're doing, and change it. When people feel
Unknown:shamed. When people feel blamed, they'll often shut down and
Unknown:it'll feel like touching a hot stove or something unpleasant.
Unknown:So the book is really designed to be like, Hey, we're all
Unknown:coming into this bias. Most of you haven't had the benefit of
Unknown:the incredible training that I got, and the luxury of all the
Unknown:time to do all the research that I've done. Let me give you
Unknown:information to benefit you. So you can avoid language that
Unknown:makes people feel like they haven't been seen that they
Unknown:haven't been heard that they're not valued, that they haven't
Unknown:been taken into consideration. That's what problematic
Unknown:languages and inclusive language is the flip side, inclusive
Unknown:language is word choice and beyond that makes people feel
Unknown:seen, heard, valued, understood, taken into consideration.
Kim Clark:And so how do you handle that pushback of people
Kim Clark:who want to use the term inclusive language as a
Kim Clark:weaponization to create polarization by or it's just
Kim Clark:their misunderstanding of it and they feel defensive and lashing
Kim Clark:out and saying things like oh your tone policing or you know
Kim Clark:you and your political correctness and and identity
Kim Clark:politics, etc. So how do you handle when especially for us
Kim Clark:communicators when we are rolling out inclusive language,
Kim Clark:we're trying to role model it maybe we have an inclusive
Kim Clark:language guide, you know, that we want to put out there then we
Kim Clark:get this kind of feedback kind of RMS on how to handle those
Kim Clark:conversations.
Unknown:So I've got two things in the book that come directly
Unknown:From conversations with people who were having exactly that
Unknown:problem, and let me briefly summarize them for you. The
Unknown:first was from a dei practitioner. I used to be on a
Unknown:listserv that then converted to not a listserv. So now I don't
Unknown:get as many good questions as I used to. But this person was
Unknown:having a problem because she was diversifying the calendar for
Unknown:her company, which has multiple locations, some of which were in
Unknown:the Bay Area, which has accepted certain things more than some
Unknown:other areas. Although, here in the Bay Area, we're not nearly
Unknown:as perfect as many people think I gazillion stories of terrible
Unknown:things that have been said and done here. So. But anyway, so
Unknown:she was diversifying the calendar and putting in things
Unknown:like Diwali, and Women's History Month and Hispanic Heritage
Unknown:Month and all of these things. And she got pushback from
Unknown:people. And so she wrote to the listserv, and she said, How do I
Unknown:respond, I feel really stumped. And so I wrote back a thing. And
Unknown:it was my first time publicly talking about this concept
Unknown:outside of the client base, which is called masking
Unknown:language. I said, the problem is people are using what I call
Unknown:masking language, to pretend that their particular
Unknown:perspective, their particular viewpoint, is objective is
Unknown:neutral is universal. They're saying, things are just fine.
Unknown:And I'm thinking, your masking language is hiding that things
Unknown:are just fine for some of the people, but they're not fine for
Unknown:all of the people. So people who read my book, if there's masking
Unknown:language being used, they can use they can identify it, and
Unknown:then push back. And so here's the problem. You're using this
Unknown:term. So for this particular example, it was the idea of an
Unknown:objective calendar. And I'm like, dude, a calendars.
Unknown:Christian, right? This is a Christian calendar, you get
Unknown:Christmas off, you get Easter off, you get Sunday off. So what
Unknown:if you're not Christian? What if you want to? What if you want to
Unknown:take a Friday morning to go to mosque? What if you want to take
Unknown:off early Friday evening, to make your Shabbos? Dinner? What
Unknown:if you need to take off for Diwali? To go home to your
Unknown:parents? You know, why do you have to take personal days and
Unknown:somebody else doesn't. AD and BC are Christian. So there's so
Unknown:many ways that this objective American calendar is actually a
Unknown:dominant group calendar. So that was the first one. I don't know
Unknown:if you've got any questions you want to I don't want to get only
Unknown:Oh,
Kim Clark:yeah, I'll add to your example that, you know,
Kim Clark:whenever I, you know, often get the question of like, you know,
Kim Clark:sometimes, you know, people want to challenge me, like, where do
Kim Clark:you find bias in communications? Like, well just look at your
Kim Clark:company calendar. You know, it's like, what are we operating
Kim Clark:from? You know, this is? Let's start there. Right? You know, to
Kim Clark:your point. Okay, let's go to the next example you have?
Unknown:Well, and I'll say from that, that's one of the gifts of
Unknown:the anthropology side of linguistic anthropology is one
Unknown:of the four branches of anthropology. And it really is
Unknown:focusing on the relationship between language and culture,
Unknown:and how language is culture. But there's a thing where, once you
Unknown:start studying what's called cultural variability, right, or
Unknown:cross compare cross cultural data, you start to see that a
Unknown:lot of people, there's a lot of things in somebody's world that
Unknown:they think are normal, or natural, or just the way how it
Unknown:is, like a, like a natural principle, like gravity or water
Unknown:flows downhill, but they're not they're culturally constructed,
Unknown:and water is going to flow downhill across the globe. But
Unknown:your calendar is not everybody's calendar, right? You know, and
Unknown:so there are a lot of things that feel very normal or natural
Unknown:right now we're interrogating as a society in the US the idea
Unknown:that gender is a binary, which other cultures have known for a
Unknown:very long time, gender is not a binary, they've gotten
Unknown:terminology, you know, and then the Nazis burned down some
Unknown:important research centers in Vienna. So we got set back,
Unknown:European and American research got set back a long time. So
Unknown:we're finally come to coming to terms with that. Okay, so
Unknown:there's masking language, and then I'll say a second thing in
Unknown:the book is, my first principle is reflect reality. So we're
Unknown:actually going to reflect reality as much as possible. And
Unknown:sometimes it's going to sound harsher than what people think
Unknown:is tough stuff. But well, we can get back to that later. The
Unknown:second example I have is, a client of mine was VP of Dei, at
Unknown:a rather conservative company, that in fact, they ended up
Unknown:leaving because that company, kept on being obstructionist,
Unknown:with the construct of communications and other things.
Unknown:They were trying to roll out the person they reported to stop,
Unknown:stop, stop blocked all the time. But at the time, this was early
Unknown:in that person's tenure. And they said to me, hmm, I'm
Unknown:getting pushed back. And this person has a disabled person in
Unknown:their family. So they've got lived experience. That's not
Unknown:just academic experience, where they've learned about
Unknown:disability, but they've witnessed things that their
Unknown:sibling has been called and seen various struggles, etc. So
Unknown:they're like, I'm trying to get as better and roll out better
Unknown:disability terminology, and I'm getting a lot of pushback.
Unknown:People are like, it's just PC. It's just work. What can I tell
Unknown:them and I'm like, Ah, I got an answer. Let's drop some science
Unknown:on them. So, in linguistics, when you study Historical
Unknown:Linguistics and how language changes over time, one of the
Unknown:things that you look at his pitch duration, a word becoming
Unknown:more negative than it was and people might know the word in
Unknown:English pejorative, which means an insult, right just in itself.
Unknown:So what happens is, in various cultures, there's always going
Unknown:to be stigmatized identities, identities that have our lower
Unknown:status that aren't seen as stigmatized in some way. Words
Unknown:that are neutral, originally or technical that are used to
Unknown:describe people in those groups start to get used negatively,
Unknown:that pick up that taste of the stigma, they get very bad
Unknown:tasting, and and they end up undergoing what we call semantic
Unknown:change. So a word that started out as a descriptor becomes an
Unknown:insult. Disability language is filled to the brim with well not
Unknown:disability language, but former disability language is filled
Unknown:with words that are just insults now, that people I think, don't
Unknown:recognize come from a place that was meant to be a descriptor of
Unknown:a particular kind of person. Dumb, moron, imbecile, lame.
Unknown:Spam as for spastic, even just fast tick is used as a
Unknown:pejorative and now I'm gonna say a word that a lot of people
Unknown:don't like to say, but I'm gonna say it anyway. And that is
Unknown:retarded. Right? So retarded. For my book, I looked up how
Unknown:recently my mom used to teach special ed in New York State,
Unknown:and I was pretty sure her classroom had the word retarded
Unknown:in it, EMR. educable mentally retarded, because it was a
Unknown:neutral or a technical term that New York State was using how do
Unknown:we get our students into classrooms that are appropriate
Unknown:for them? Oh, people who test in this kind of IQ range are gonna
Unknown:go to the EMR classroom. So I said, All right, my mom retired
Unknown:in 99. When did New York State stop using retarded because it
Unknown:was already a pejorative when I was a kid on the schoolyard.
Unknown:Right, it was definitely negative, but it was still being
Unknown:used as a technical word. Now, it's such a taboo word that
Unknown:people will call it the R word. People will sometimes not spell
Unknown:it out. And you'll see r and then a bunch of asterisks, and
Unknown:then a D. So this shows you parallel to the N word, how
Unknown:stigmatize how insulting how taboo, the word has become. New
Unknown:York State 2022 2022, they finally signed legislation
Unknown:saying, Alright, we have to move away from this term, and we're
Unknown:going to move towards intellectual disabilities. Even
Unknown:the federal government is not that long ago, I can't remember,
Unknown:I'm gonna say five years, eight years, like not that long ago.
Unknown:So my answer that I gave to this client of mine was semantic
Unknown:change is real. You can document it. And it is one of the reasons
Unknown:why it may feel like oh my god, there's another term for these
Unknown:people. I mean, let's talk about in this country, how often we've
Unknown:changed terminology for black people, black people themselves,
Unknown:right? In my lifetime, there have been a range of terms
Unknown:because, unfortunately, black people in this country suffer
Unknown:from being a stigmatized group in all kinds of ways. And so
Unknown:when a word becomes just starts to sound like an insult, you
Unknown:have to replace it. Let me end with one thing. My students
Unknown:didn't really love 30 Rock the way I did, but I love 30 Rock
Unknown:episode where Alec Baldwin is briefly dating Salma Hayek,
Unknown:who's a nurse, and Salma Hayek is Lebanese Mexican, but she's
Unknown:playing a Puerto Rican woman, right. And I grew up in New York
Unknown:and was mistaken for Puerto Rican my whole New York Life.
Unknown:And now that I'm in California, everybody thinks I'm Mexican,
Unknown:I'm neither. But Alec Baldwin's character says to his
Unknown:girlfriend, okay, so what do I call you? And she says, whether
Unknown:he can? He says, No, you can say that, but what can I call you?
Unknown:Right? And so this very, these very sensitive writers are
Unknown:showing that they know that you can use a very technical a
Unknown:standard terminology, right, a standard term for people. And it
Unknown:can still sound like an insult because of the ways that it's
Unknown:being used. So that is one of the main reasons why we need to
Unknown:have inclusive communications because we have to reflect the
Unknown:reality of semantic change and stigma.
Kim Clark:Would you mind kind of walking us through the
Kim Clark:process of what you know about the changing semantics around
Kim Clark:the term woke? You know, it was just it wasn't it was just a
Kim Clark:past tense of Wake, right? It was a net neutral term, you
Kim Clark:know, just like your example. And then the black community
Kim Clark:decades ago, started utilizing it and saying, You got to stay
Kim Clark:woke, you got to stay work, which is alert, keep yourself
Kim Clark:safe. Watch what's going on around you. And then now it has
Kim Clark:been co opted as a pejorative. So it's gone some route and in
Kim Clark:other words in from other marginalized groups like queer,
Kim Clark:you know, has has been taken and then retaken. And so, you know,
Kim Clark:so kind of help us understand this, this current context of
Kim Clark:woke, anti woke, because if you just look at the term woke, and
Kim Clark:if you say anti woke, or I don't want to work for a woke company,
Kim Clark:you're basically saying you're choosing to be asleep, you're,
Kim Clark:you're choosing to be unaware, uneducated, whatever it may be,
Kim Clark:even though, you know, it seems to be a statute kind of term and
Kim Clark:an ideological alignment kind of term. But if you can you help us
Kim Clark:understanding that term, and what will it take to take it
Kim Clark:back?
Unknown:Of course, you ask a linguist with a lot of
Unknown:Historical Linguistics training. And I used to run the the
Unknown:world's biggest nonprofits studying language and gender. So
Unknown:I'm like, Oh, these edited volumes. I'm like, in the 90s,
Unknown:we were talking about this, where the language of feminism
Unknown:was taken over by corporations, or by taken over by right wing
Unknown:people like this is a trajectory that is documented and is
Unknown:common. I'm thinking of I wish I could remember the term but when
Unknown:I was young, there was a Virginia Slims ad, where it was
Unknown:like taking the language of feminism to say, and you go
Unknown:smoke, you know, like, there, there are these things that have
Unknown:happened again, and again, again, and again. So the pattern
Unknown:I'm sorry that I don't have a lot of great examples for this.
Unknown:But the pattern is again and again, where there's an
Unknown:appropriation of a term that's being used in one sense, and
Unknown:then it becomes twisted in another sense. This is the
Unknown:reverse of what you brought up with queer, which is done by the
Unknown:ingroup. And the term that we use for that in linguistics is
Unknown:reclamation, where there's a term that's become a pejorative,
Unknown:and then it becomes reclaimed by people who first use it in group
Unknown:to I think defang it, right. Like if I say queer, it doesn't
Unknown:have that flavor of Oh, my God, I'm about to get beaten up by
Unknown:this dude on the corner yelling queer at me, right. So there are
Unknown:all of these ways that there are these different terms that deich
Unknown:is another one that's being reclaimed. There are a bunch of
Unknown:them that are being reclaimed. And that's in group work. That
Unknown:usually isn't like language engineering, but it's just
Unknown:people doing a thing because they want to, because this is
Unknown:how human beings joke and use humor to make scary things less
Unknown:scary. This is not that this is often I would say, so liberate,
Unknown:researched, people who are like spin doctors are paid to take
Unknown:ideas and transform them. So they become agitating, angry
Unknown:making talking points happen, and then they diffuse out to the
Unknown:population. So I would say one of them is sort of grassroots
Unknown:and bottom up that in group reclamation, and the other one
Unknown:is very much, um, purposeful, for I want to say nefarious. But
Unknown:I mean, it really is for the various reasons that people want
Unknown:an angry, uneducated, fearful populace where people don't
Unknown:trust each other. So that's one thing to separate out. So I
Unknown:talked about X ray vision before for me, X ray vision is my
Unknown:version of when I'm giving workshops, saying woke to
Unknown:people, right? So woke and X ray vision are the same thing.
Unknown:There's a thing that in your former state, you couldn't see,
Unknown:because your eyes were closed in your unconscious, or because
Unknown:things were obscured to you because of the fog of culture,
Unknown:or you haven't been trained to see through things. And I'm
Unknown:like, let me give you a superpower. Wilk is like, hey,
Unknown:you've been asleep, wake up. I mean, the entirety of the movie
Unknown:Get Out is about this, right? And they call it the sunken
Unknown:place. So what I've seen is, and people on Black Twitter do a
Unknown:great job of deconstructing these things. It shows up now to
Unknown:mean, I would say sort of a synonym when it's being used in
Unknown:a way that's designed to agitate and denigrate, woke is used to
Unknown:mean something like, what politically correct used to mean
Unknown:it's sort of like the new PC, which dismisses things and says,
Unknown:it's to toe the line, it's to virtue signal, it's to perform
Unknown:that you care. It's um, it doesn't really have a basis in
Unknown:reality, it's only because there's a thing that you feel
Unknown:you have to do because of rude social pressure. And so you're
Unknown:going to do that thing. And so for example, a thing that
Unknown:happens is people will talk about woke casting. I've
Unknown:collected some examples of this. And so people will say, the
Unknown:like, they're nice things on the internet. Well, there'll be
Unknown:like, political versus regular, and so everything that's like
Unknown:white male straight is considered regular. And then
Unknown:everything that isn't white male straight is considered
Unknown:political. And it's the same thing with woke. What does it
Unknown:mean are woke hiring practices? So someone on a What was I on
Unknown:the other day someone put a comment on something? I get so
Unknown:many interactions with people who, through the internet or
Unknown:through workshops, I forget who this woman was. But it was a
Unknown:black woman who said that at her business school, one of her
Unknown:professors had said, about diversifying your pipeline when
Unknown:recruiting, they said, Why are you going to fish in the same
Unknown:pond? That's so limited, then you're gonna, you know, if
Unknown:everybody's going for the same pond, you're gonna have to go
Unknown:lower and lower, like we're going lower in our food chain,
Unknown:you know, stuff that used to be trash fish is now regular
Unknown:restaurant fish, right? But if you expand what you're fishing
Unknown:for, then you can get the best fish from all the different
Unknown:pawns, right? So that's a very reasonable and logical way to
Unknown:look at things. So that's the kind of argumentation that
Unknown:people can be used to say, Well, what about this, I think the
Unknown:thing you can say to people is, for good faith people, so I
Unknown:think I've decided with my book is that I don't have the energy
Unknown:to try to convince people that inclusive language has value. So
Unknown:if I'm going to interact with you, you have to already be at
Unknown:the starting point. inclusive language has value. It's not, I
Unknown:don't care, I'm not going to waste my breath, time, emotional
Unknown:labor, intellectual labor, and people who are coming in,
Unknown:genuinely not caring, or aggressive, or very resistant.
Unknown:I'm like, go educate yourself, like Best of luck. Best of luck.
Unknown:But for other people who are coming in, and really haven't
Unknown:had the education that helps them see the world with the
Unknown:clarity that you see, or I see, because we've had these years,
Unknown:really rigorously examining how the world works, seeing
Unknown:patterns, seeing patterns, and then and then fixing them, or
Unknown:seeing how to address them. Somebody who comes in who just
Unknown:is like, well, this feels work to me, I don't get it, then you
Unknown:can work with that person and say, Well, what about this
Unknown:doesn't feel real, because for me, I'm trying to reflect
Unknown:reality. And then you can have a discussion that moves people to
Unknown:a place where I'll say one other thing. In a lot of my workshops,
Unknown:I've developed vocabulary to describe bias that is granular
Unknown:and behavior based. It doesn't use identity as a reference. And
Unknown:it's not high level label. It's very specific. Woke is the kind
Unknown:of thing that used to be a nice shorthand for an in group. Oh,
Unknown:be woke might not have noticed this thing, right? Now, it's a
Unknown:label that gets people to knee jerk, dismiss something. But if
Unknown:you can get people out of the high level label, and describing
Unknown:in granular ways in a non accusatory way, help me
Unknown:understand what this feel like, what this feels unreal to you.
Unknown:Right? What in this feels like a performance and not like a good
Unknown:faith effort to improve something? That's, I think, a
Unknown:way to shift people. But PS like this has been going on forever.
Unknown:I I wish I wish so badly. For some cranky person writing about
Unknown:complaining that people are seeing you instead of Thao these
Unknown:days. Right? I keep on looking like there's so many complaints
Unknown:about using vai instead of urushi. Right? So many
Unknown:complaints. I'm like, we did it. We did it. We moved away for
Unknown:like we started using plural you for a single person hundreds of
Unknown:years ago. And guess what? You're not complaining? Because
Unknown:it happened a long time ago. But I'm sure there are
Unknown:contemporaneous people who are like, yeah, people these days
Unknown:are so influenced by the French and their vous, you know, like,
Unknown:I don't want to sound French, I want to sound English. You know,
Unknown:I'm sure I'm desperate for somebody be going through
Unknown:archives for the time period and find those complaints because
Unknown:these kinds of complaints are ongoing. People are resistant to
Unknown:change. And they often think that change isn't for the
Unknown:reasons that are addressing problems. They often think that
Unknown:it's made up, and you got to work through a lot of people's
Unknown:resistance with science.
Kim Clark:Thank you. Thank you for that. Right here. I noticed
Kim Clark:and it was really building up momentum. You probably hate me
Kim Clark:right now. But the conversation we recorded was so good. We just
Kim Clark:kept going and going. So we're gonna split it in the sake of
Kim Clark:your time protecting your time. We're gonna split this
Kim Clark:conversation into two different episodes. So keep a lookout and
Kim Clark:find the other half. And the other part of this conversation
Kim Clark:with this guest I know you're gonna love it.
