Episode Notes

Zach and Mary-Frances Winters, the founder and CEO of The Winters Group, Inc., sit back down together to have another conversation, this time themed around the concept of Black fragility. Mary-Frances talks a bit about her upcoming book, Black Fatigue: How Racism Erodes the Mind, Body, and Spirit, and summarizes what we’re going through right now from her perspective as a Black woman and leader in the workplace equity space. She also shares how she processes folks saying that they “didn’t know” that racism is still a systemic issue in American society.

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TRANSCRIPT
Zach: What’s up, y’all? It’s Zach with Living Corporate, and you know what we’re doing, right? I mean, you should know, but every listener is a first time listener, so for those who don’t know, Living Corporate is a platform that centers and amplifies Black and brown voices at work. And I say the word platform and not a podcast because if you go to our website, living-corporate.com or livingcorporate.co or livingcorporate.us or .tv or .org or .net… anyway, if you go to our website, what you’ll see is a whole grid of podcast interviews that have been categorized by industry and theme, and then you’ll also see a lot of blogs, right, you’ll also see webinars. And so it’s all searchable ’cause it’s all been transcribed, so we really consider ourselves more, like, a database of thought leadership for diversity, equity and inclusion, and what makes us unique even beyond that is that we center black and brown people, not only in our topics but in our dialogue, the people we speak to, right? So we’ve been blessed to have incredible guests, and today is no different. We have the great Mary-Frances Winters. Now, this is not the first time that you’ve heard Mary-Frances. If you haven’t heard her before on Living Corporate you need to get familiar, okay? So we’re gonna have all of her links and stuff in the show notes, but Mary-Frances, welcome back to the show.

Mary-Frances: Thank you so much. Appreciate being here, and I appreciate everything that you’re doing. Your platform is absolutely amazing. When I walk in the morning, I listen to Living Corporate. So y’all need to be listening, ’cause you do have some incredible, amazing guests.

Zach: Thank you so much. I appreciate it. You are leading the vanguard in the vanguard, so I appreciate you. So let’s get started, right? So first off I want to just give you some space to talk about–give me a summary of this moment, right? Let’s start at George Floyd’s murder, Breonna Taylor’s murder, Tony McDade’s murder, up to now, and when I say now we’re recording this in July. So kind of talk to me about how you would summarize what we’re going through right now, of course not just as a Black woman, which you are, but also as a leader in this workplace equity space?

Mary-Frances: Yeah, thank you for that space. And so it is July, and it is July 18th, and I just want to recognize that we lost a giant yesterday, John Lewis–actually two giants, C.T. Vivian, both really vanguards in the Civil Rights movement, and so when I think about them and I think about now, I think about the struggle, you know, in the ’60s and the ’70s, and you know John Lewis was jailed, you know, 40 times and hit in the head, bashed in the head, all of the things that he went through, but still, you know, he rose, and his voice was so loud. So I juxtapose that to, you know, what’s going on now, and I say, “Wow,” you know, “Then is now.” And he was 23 years old, right? So we see the young activists out there right now who are saying, you know, “Enough is enough,” and I think the confluence of, you know, the coronavirus and people dying of that and people, you know, dying in the streets of all sorts of other things, you know, dying at the hands of police, right? You know, but it’s just a time when I think it was a confluence of these events that said “Enough is enough, and we’re not gonna have it anymore.” And what really was surprising to me–I’ve been doing this work for 36 years now, so I’m getting up there myself, but one of the things that was so really surprising to me was that white folks were saying, “We didn’t know. We didn’t know that racism still existed in America. We didn’t know it was that bad.” And so, you know, clients are coming out the woodwork. We had to do anti-racism training. We had to do it yesterday. We got to do it right now. And I know some of your other guests have been saying that too, and I guess maybe I’m naive that I’m like, “Y’all, we’ve been telling you this, at least I’ve been telling you this, for 36 years, and we’ve been talking about this for over 400 years, and you didn’t know?” I had corporate CEOs–I’ve been doing town halls where they have 15,000 people in the virtual town hall, and the CEO of a major corporation will say, you know, “I’m embarrassed to say that I didn’t know,” and that’s just blowing my mind, that people are saying they didn’t know.

Zach: So let me ask you–let’s pause there, because I have more questions about this moment, but when you hear folks say that they didn’t know, like, how do you digest that?

Mary-Frances: Well, I digest that is that you didn’t want to know, that you didn’t care to know, but you really did know. You just blocked it. You just–it wasn’t important to you, you know? So even when we–let’s go back to the 2016 election and wondering, “How did that happen? How did we get Trump?” And, you know, it’s obvious that he’s, you know, a racist, a sexist, a homophobe. All of those things, right? He just says it. But then when you have to think about it it’s like, “That’s better than the chance of having anybody,” you know, “another black person, another woman,” and so you just see it. You just see that the racism is just so deep, and I think that, you know, those white people who are advocating for diversity, equity, inclusion, belonging, you know, those are all–you know, those are all soft code words, right, for “We just really want the status quo,” but I don’t believe–I know that people knew it. We do trainings and they say–I give some statistics, right, and I’ll say, you know, “1954, Brown vs the Board of Education made segregated schools illegal. 2019 headline – schools are just as segregated, just as unequal,” you know, public schools, and I say, “What statistics surprised you?” “Well, the one about the schools surprised me.” Come on, now. That’s in the news all the time, right? So you just tune it out. It’s not–so, you know, white supremacy, you don’t have to know about it, you don’t have to care about it, it doesn’t have to be a part of what you think about until folks start burning stuff down, and now all of a sudden people are saying, “How do I be an ally? How do I come forward?” And so I make sense of all of that, and you asked me how, and I just say, “Shame on you.” You know, “Shame on you.” But when you look throughout history, that’s the only way we get people’s attention. Violence is the only way to get people’s attention. Rebellion is the only way to get people’s attention.

Zach: And I think it’s just so intellectually dishonest that we don’t have those conversations. I remember back in, like, 2016, I was having a conversation with some colleagues at work, one of whom happens to be a really good friend of mine now, like, we’re very close, but I was the only Black man at the table, only Black person at the table, and we were talking about protests because there were some protests happening in Baltimore at the time due to the murder of Freddie Gray, right? So we were talking about this and I just said–as you know, this has become, like, an established line of argumentation around protests and the history of protests in this country, but I just, like, was very plainly like, “Look, like, if you look at America and, like, the formation of America and, like, really sort of all the policies that we have, they all come from violence,” and they were like, “Well, not really,” and I was like, “No, it’s true.” I said, “Beyond just the Boston Tea Party, like, if you go back and you look, there was a lot. There were a lot of labor riots and protests that sparked a lot of the labor laws that we have and the civil rights laws. You think about Pride. Pride was started through protests, through protests started by a Black trans woman, but my point is, like, I just don’t think that we’re being honest when we say that peace is the answer, quote-unquote, when that just isn’t–for good or for bad, that just is not the language that we–that is not the means by which we affect change in America, and it’s not the means by which America helps affect change around the world for good or bad, so I don’t understand where that–beyond y’all just… and when I say y’all I mean, like, the powers that be, beyond those who are in charge just simply trying to manufacture or maintain control, that’s just not honest, you know what I mean? Like, that’s just not true.

Mary-Frances: No, it’s not honest. It’s not, and yes. We do a little history thing now that we’re doing, and part of our sessions that we do–’cause folks just claim they don’t know American history period, right? And Black history is obviously a part of American history, but they don’t know it, or they, you know, suppress it, or it’s okay. You know, it’s okay for white folks to ask for justice or to demand justice through violence, it’s just not okay for Black people to do so. That’s what I take from that. You know, we can do it. I mean, we saw it with, you know, the not wanting to wear masks and the storming of the Michigan Statehouse, right? And they were all armed, right? And no police came at all, right?

Zach: Nobody came… I was like–

Mary-Frances: Nobody came! [laughs]

Zach: You know what was wild about that is when I saw that picture I was like, “Oh, is this some type of, like, art installation?” ‘Cause I was like, “There’s no way–” I just couldn’t wrap my mind around what I was looking at because it was just, like–it didn’t make any sense considering–I said, “First of y’all, not wearing masks and y’all got wild guns in there, and I can y’all got clips in there. Those are loaded guns. So what is this?” You know what I mean? So to your point though, I would like to talk about, you know, how do you manage your own mental and emotional well-being during this time? First of all, you know, we’re in a time right now where we’re surrounded by death, and specifically we’re surrounded by predominantly Black and brown death, but we’re surrounded by–everybody’s dying. You got police killing people from every ethnic group, which is insane. You have the coronavirus impacting, killing–the death count is, at this point in time, like, the last number I saw was, like, 135,000 people, and you’re seeing all of this in media and social media every single day. So, like, you have that element of just as a person, as an American and as a Black woman, so there’s that piece, but I’m also curious about the work that you do. Like, it seems as if this would be exhausting to manage, and I know that you’ve been doing it for 30+ years, but I’m just curious about what does it look like for you not to be burdened down with that?

Mary-Frances: I have to be honest – it is truly a burden. I’m tired, you know? I’m exhausted, and, you know, my book is coming out September 15th, “[Black Fatigue:] How Racism Erodes the Mind, Body and Spirit,” and I think that I’ve never felt Black fatigue than I’m feeling it now. I’m feeling it because, you know, in some ways I feel helpless even though, you know, we get accolades about, you know, “This was so helpful,” you know, “Thank you for helping me.” And I learn so much, you know, from millennials and from the Gen Z’s who are saying, you know, “Hey, we need to rest.” You know, rest is a form of resistance, and it’s not our job to teach white people. When I first heard that–and I wrote about that. You know, what really sparked me to write the book Black Fatigue were you all, young folks, who were saying, “Wait a minute, we gotta have a different model, you know? We’re tired. We’re exhausted,” you know? [laughing] And I was like, “What? What y’all, 30 years old? How y’all getting exhausted already?” And they would look at me like–you know, with that side-eye like, “Wait a minute, now. We respect you, now. You’re older, but don’t be telling me I’m not [?], ’cause I know tired when I see tired,” right? And so yeah, so it was a new framing for me because–so through a colleague I talked to Andrew Young, and we asked him about fatigue. “So when you all–you know, in the ’60s, did y’all have fatigue?” And he said, “No.” He said, “Fatigue wasn’t the word we used.” He said, “I used to get migraine headaches,” and he said, “Dr. King would tell me, you know, “Get on that plane. The headache will go away once you get on the plane.” So even though we were tired–you know, James Baldwin talks about being tired, right? They talk about it, but it wasn’t in such a way that, you know, we were going to do something about it, but now what you all are saying is “We’re gonna do something about it,” you know? “We’re gonna rest. We’re gonna take self-care.” You know, I’m a Christian. I’m a pretty strong Christian, and [? songs?] like, “I don’t feel in no ways tired,” right? [both laugh] You know? And I’m saying, “Yeah, I do. I feel–” You know, I do feel tired, so I think that it is important–and I’m learning, and I think that it is important to set those boundaries. I think that it is important to just say no. And I have not been able to, in the business–let me tell you, I’ve been in business for 36 years. I’ve not been able to say no, because as a Black woman in business–and we’ve seen this with the coronavirus, with the loans, the PPP loans, paycheck protection loans that small businesses, you know, small Black businesses were not necessarily able to get the loans, so I didn’t have a real strong relationship with a bank even though we’re a multi-million dollar company because banks have not done me well over the years. I’ve been screwed by banks, okay? Even though I’ve always had good credit. So when the PPP loan came out I didn’t have a strong relationship with a bank, right? Not a bank that was a–but I knew a brother at a bank, right? [laughs] So yeah, I went to the brother at the bank and he said, “Don’t worry. I got you,” right? Because all my stuff was in order. I knew my stuff was gonna be in order, but the point being that it is tiring, you know? It has been tiring, it has been fatiguing, and I’m learning from, you know, Brittany J. Harris on my team, and I’m learning from people like her who are saying, “You know, Mary-Frances, we gotta put some boundaries around this. We don’t need to take all of the business that comes along and this sense of urgency, which is a part of the white supremacy culture, right? “Everybody needs to do something tomorrow,” and, you know, I just jumped through hoops for a potential client. Just jumped through hoops. I worked last weekend. Got the proposal, da-da-da-da, and then he said, “Well, you know, I got these two other people on the board,” and they were two white people, right–so I just learned yesterday, “Oh, we’re gonna go with somebody else who said that they could do the work immediately.” Uh, I said we could do the work immediately. That’s why we got the proposal into you. But anyway, the point is that I have to learn, right? I have to learn to put boundaries on myself, and the reason that I’ve done this over the years is because when I left the corporate world some 36 years ago they said, I heard through the grapevine, “Oh, let her go. She’ll be back anyway. She’s not gonna make it.” So it’s always been for me, “I am not gonna go groveling back to a corporate job because I couldn’t make it on my own.” So I think we–the drive, I think we do it to ourselves. We do it to ourselves because it’s like, “I gotta make it. I can’t fail,” ’cause it’s–hey, taking its toll. You know, in the book Black Fatigue I talk about, you know, racism literally makes us sick, and it does.

Zach: You know, and it’s interesting because I think about my own life, right? So before I was, like, explicitly doing diversity, equity and inclusion, like, through Living Corporate and also in certain parts and elements of my job now as a consultant, I think about just how exhausting it is just to experience it, right? Just to experience being marginalized, otherized, otherized, isolated, excluded, and the impacts it has. Like, that’s not me even speaking out against it. That’s just me experiencing it, you know what I mean? And so then, like, to compound it by you trying to speak up to, like, an audience that will treat you as hostile or, in certain instances I believe, gaslight you into thinking that, you know, this isn’t real, then it becomes a challenge. Let’s continue to talk about black fatigue as it pertains to you showing up in spaces in spaces as a Black woman doing this work. You know, there has been, like, a collective pushback against this work and this space, right? So you’ve seen–there’s been some articles that have released about Dr. Robin DiAngelo. We’ve some stuff come up come out about Howard Ross. Like, we’re seeing, like, a pushback right now, like, really just the start of it frankly, against this work in this season, and I’m curious to know, like, what does it look like for you to protect yourself as you do this work and as someone who continues to do this work?

Mary-Frances: Yeah. And so I would say the pushback is already, you know? Because we had this really swift kind of “Oh, we need to do this work, right?” Because corporations have not been doing anti-racism work. Let’s face it. They’ve been doing diversity work, which, you know, puts everybody in the bucket and we’ve gotta–and I’ve been told many, many times, “Let’s not talk too much about race, Mary-Frances. We can’t make this too much about race. We’ve got to make this about–you know, diversity is more than just about race.” We’re hearing that already. Clients are saying, you know, they want us to come in and talk about race, and I just got an email from a client that said, “Well, you gonna talk about the other isms?” And I went back and I said, “No, because you all asked us to talk about racism,” and so there’s never been a point in time in this work, that I’ve been doing this work, where race can have its own place, race can have its own discussion. And why? As Dr. Robin DiAngelo says, you know, white fragility. White people are uncomfortable. If I’ve heard “uncomfortable,” I’ve heard that word–if I had $100, maybe I wouldn’t be a rich woman, but at least I would be wealthier than I am if I had $1,000,000 for every time that I’ve heard in the last six weeks, “We are uncomfortable,” you know, talking about race. So they had been uncomfortable, and so when I come into a space as a Black woman, I have felt like I have had to disarm people, make sure that they know that I’m going to talk about all the other kinds of, you know, isms and diversity, make sure that they know that diversity is everybody and that white men are in the equation when we talk about diveristy. So I’ll say things like, “If you have two people in the room and they’re both white men, you still have diversity. They might be a different age group. They might come from a different geography.” And so making white people feel comfortable, this is what I feel that I have to do as a Black woman because I have been accused of talking too much about race even when I don’t even talk about race. I did a generational session a few years ago, and some of the feedback was “Well, she talked a lot about race.” I looked back at the deck, Zach. Wasn’t nothing about race at all. I didn’t even go there. I mean, I didn’t even go there to say, you know, “If you’re a Black millennial,” you know, or “If you’re a Black baby boomer,” or–I didn’t even go there, but just my presence, my existence and presence as a Black person, made them say that I talked about race. So as a Black woman doing this work, I have felt–and I’ll be real honest with you, I’ve been jealous of people like Howard Ross. Tall, you know, white man, and I’ve been told, I have been told, you know, “We went with Howard Ross because we think that our white leaders will hear the message from him better than they will hear the message from a Black woman.” Yeah, many times. As a matter of fact, let me just tell you this story. I had a call one day. I didn’t know who this person was, you know? Picked up the phone and she said, “You don’t know who I am,” she said, “but I’ve worked at 3 different companies in the diversity space,” and she said, “Your company’s name comes up all the time, and people talk very well about your work, and they talk about the fact that you’re, you know, leading edge and that you push, and they also said, “However, we can’t hire The Winters Group because our leaders are not ready for a Black person, Black woman business to come in and give them this message.” She said, “I just wanted you to know this because I want you to know that your work is really not in vain, however you’re not getting hired. If you want to know why you’re not getting the proposals, not getting selected, that’s why you’re not getting selected. That was probably about 10 years ago I had that.

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