Navigating Hostility with Grace: Lessons from Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Interview Experience

BEP Narrator: 00:00:02

A Black Executive Perspective now presents Need to Know

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with the award winning hyphenated Dr.

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Nsenga Burton.

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Dr.

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Burton.

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What do we need to know?

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Dr. Nsenga Burton: Good afternoon

and welcome to need to know with Dr.

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Nsenga Burton.

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I am Dr.

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Nsenga Burton and today I am talking

to you about Etiquette but business

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etiquette and When I burning down the

house, your own house is not a good idea.

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So previously we talked about an interview

between, uh, Ta-Nehisi Coates, who's

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a brilliant, uh, person, philosopher.

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I call him a philosopher, but he's

a brilliant writer, journalist,

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uh, thinker, critical thinker.

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And he's written a book called the message

and he's been making the rounds and

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doing lots of interviews about the book.

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Um, one of which was an interview on CBS,

uh, CBS this morning, um, in which he was.

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I would say mistreated by a journalist

who was asking him questions

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about the book to such an extent.

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We never learned about

the entirety of the book.

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What else was in a book?

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Um, why?

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You know, we might be

interested in the book or not.

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Um, and so it really took away from

the way that he was, uh, you know,

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Interviewed and the way they only focused

on such a, you know, just 1 part of

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the book, um, really took away from

the audience or the viewers learning

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more about what was in the book,

uh, that might have spoken to them.

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Right?

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So I say that to say, what.

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We've talked about that side, about

treating people well, when you invite

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them to your house, you don't treat

people, you don't invite, invite people

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to your house and then mistreat them.

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You don't invite people, um,

to your house and bully them.

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Uh, you don't invite people to

your house and belabor a point.

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Uh, and I said culturally in the

previous interview that black and

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brown people don't do that anyway.

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We don't invite people that

we don't like to our house.

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We don't want that static.

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You know, if you're not a family member,

and then it only if your family member

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is only to a certain extent, you know,

at some point, you're going to get

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off get left off the invitation list.

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You know, if you keep

if you keep doing it.

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So, even culturally,

that's not what we do.

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We're not going to invite it to the house.

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If you get to come into the house,

that means somebody really likes you.

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That means that someone really trust

you and that means that someone

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thinks a whole lot of you if they

bring you into your home into

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their home and around their family.

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So there you go there, but the

point of it is, I want to look

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at the other side of that.

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And that was Coates

response, which was amazing.

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He never lost his cool.

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He never raised his voice.

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He never lost his point

and he never conceded.

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To

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a perspective or point of view with

which he did not agree, you know, his

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position is, and this is about the

Middle East, and you can read the book

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and you can discuss it or whatever,

but he doesn't agree with any entity

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having an apartheid state period.

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Doesn't matter if it's Palestine, doesn't

matter if it's Israel, doesn't matter

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if it's the United States, you know, and

he says in this interview that he was

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raised by parents who grew up in Jim Crow.

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So he's not, he's against

any type of apartheid.

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That exists anywhere in the world.

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And so when he sees it, he has to not only

document it, but speak out against it.

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All right.

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And, um, you know, whether or not

you agree with that point, the point

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is, is that even though, uh, the

interviewer, the journalist was really

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stuck on whether on Israel's right to.

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Exists because that was the

question he wanted him to answer.

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Um, and, you know,

Ta-Nehisi he's very smart.

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So he's like, well, you know, it's a

complicated question because you got

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to think about these answers, right?

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You got to think about these perspectives.

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The point I wanted to raise

was how he responded to that.

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And this is something that happens to,

um, black and brown people, I would

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say, in the workplace constantly.

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Um, but it's this idea that you have

to agree with me about a number of

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things and I'm not trying to, um,

pretend like, you know, the, uh.

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I mean, like, thousands of

years long attacks on Jews.

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I mean, I was like, well,

you can't say decades.

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You can't say hundreds of years,

centuries long attack on Jews equates

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to anything that I'm about to say.

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So, it's not the same thing.

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I understand that.

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But what I am saying is that.

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Even when you have unpopular opinions

about things in the workplace, you

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have to know how to present them, but

you also have to know how to sometimes

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respond to people who might be hostile

towards you because those opinions

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are unpopular and they're rooted

in your identity as a black person.

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So what I want us to think about is

how this absolutely can happen in

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the workplace in terms of being met

with hostility when your views Don't

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align necessarily with those who

are empowered in your organization

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based on your personal identity

and the experiences of your people.

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Right?

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If you're a black person, whose

parents were raised in Jim Crow

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and whose parents parents may have

been raised in slavery or not.

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You know, if you're someone who's

from the Caribbean, whose family

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was part of a servant class.

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Right and what's made to do certain things

or experience slavery because we know that

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was all in the Caribbean and South America

and all the places you just might have

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a different perspective on these issues.

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But all of that feeds into who we

are, and then when we come into the

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workplace, and particularly when

you're working in spaces, my area

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of expertise is intersectionality,

race, class, gender and sexuality.

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So I'm always doing what

I call the heavy lifting.

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Always doing the heavy lifting.

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Um, and so, you know,

other people do fun stuff.

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I don't necessarily get

to do the fun stuff.

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So I'm always having to defend my

position, defend, you know, that

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even, you know, racism exists.

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So, or sexism exists, or there's an

anti trans movement and it's violent

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and we need to do something about it.

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I always have to defend

that kind of stuff.

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But I think what we can learn from

this interview and for with people

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who've had long careers, like tiny,

easy coats, or I would argue mine.

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And doing this work is the ability

to not burn down the house while

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you are defending yourself, right?

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The, the ability to, um, respond to,

I would say, a very at best a very

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energetic inquiry into a part of a piece

of content that you did not agree with.

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Um, but the ability to respond

to, um, these kinds of.

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Which can often be read as.

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Micro aggressions, or I just call them

aggression aggressions that you receive

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in the workplace from people whose

opinions don't align with yours because

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they may not have the same experience.

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Most of the time.

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They're just not exposed to

what you have been exposed to.

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They don't read a lot about what we've

experienced in the school systems.

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Um, you know, whether you're talking

about secondary schools, or you're

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talking about college or master's

programs, like, you really have to take

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a specific class to learn about these

things that people are so bothered by.

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But, you know, there are lots of reasons

why that happens, but you can't let people

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stop you from doing what you have been

tasked to do and you can't let people

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get you to a place where you were your.

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Um, lifestyle is now in jeopardy, right?

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Where you now can't pay your bills

where you now can't sell your books.

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They won't carry your book,

you know, all those things.

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Um, and it's not fair.

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Let me just say that 110 percent

because we have to put up with so

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much hostility in the workplace.

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Um, even when we create our own work,

you know, whether it's books, articles,

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um, things of that nature, um, you know,

People think that we are always fair game.

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What we write is always fair game

and they are quite comfortable with

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throwing us into categories, typically

stereotypical categories that have

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no value for us, but have lots of

value for them and continuously

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disenfranchising us in a myriad of ways.

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So, I say that to say, you

can look at this interview

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because it's making the rounds.

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I'm sure you've seen it.

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And if you haven't, you will

see it of Mr Coates response.

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Right?

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He knows the book, the work.

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He wrote it.

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He understands.

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This is an unpopular and he never gave

his opinion during the time period.

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He wasn't really allowed to really delve

into it, but he did give an opinion

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about his, his views on apartheid.

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Um, but.

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You know, the whole time he was

respectful, you know, he was giving

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the respect that he should have

been getting from the journalist.

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Um, he was giving the, um, thoughtfulness

he should have been given, given

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or granted from the journalist.

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And, you know, that's what should

be happening in the workplace.

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You know, you should be respectful and

thoughtful, even when you disagree.

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And when that goes away, and I've actually

learned this in a number of workspaces.

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It damages the workplace.

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It makes it hard to continue

to work in the workplace.

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And unless you make a very concerted

effort to fix things, you know,

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typically you can't rebound from it.

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And it makes, you know, the house no

longer a happy home to quote the greatest

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philosopher of all times Luther Vandross.

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So,

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I just wanted to say that, um, on

the flip side of treating people.

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Well, when you invite them

into your home, your workplace.

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Um, you know, when you invite

people there, you should treat them.

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Well, but conversely, if you are not

treated well, which is something that

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we are often we being people of color,

historically disenfranchised populations.

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I'm a black person.

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I'm also a woman.

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Um, you know, when

you're not treated well.

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Being able to respond in a way that

is thoughtful and reflective and that

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allows you to maintain your lifestyle

and maintain your space in the workplace.

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If you so choose to do so,

you know, but, you know.

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Without being a conspiracy sister, you

know, some folks are always waiting for

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you to blow up into to ruin your life,

uh, based on something they said to you.

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Um, and so there is a skill that is being

able to withstand that type of aggression

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that comes to it, whether it's micro.

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macro or aggressive, aggressive,

or passive aggressiveness that

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comes through in the workplace.

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There is a skill set to

being able to survive that.

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And we have it.

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So lean on it and don't let people

disenfranchise you, um, in a different

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way because they disagree with

you or not aligned with which you,

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uh, uh, the conclusions you ever

have come to based on, uh, their

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unwillingness, um, to understand

or to think about your perspective.

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So.

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I wish you a fantastic day and please

tune in next week to another episode of

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a Black Executive Perspective podcast.

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A Black Executive Perspective.