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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2016-03-30 Human Relations Commission Summary Minutes Approved 1 HUMAN RELATIONS COMMISSION Wednesday, March 30, 2016 Mitchell Park Community Center El Palo Alto Room 7:00 PM SPECIAL MEETING Reverend Kaloma A. Smith, University AME Zion Church: Good evening Palo Alto! How's everybody doing this evening? Thank you so much for taking time out of your busy schedule to join us for this needed conversation for our community. My name is the Reverend Kaloma A. Smith, I’m the pastor of a little church right down the street less than a block called University AME Zion Church. Just a couple of quick housekeeping things, this is actually an official city meeting. So we're going to have to do some technical things like we have to do a roll call and check in. So as we work through that part just give us about three minutes and the important thing about it being official city meeting is that when we get to question and answers I'll need you to say your name so that the person that's taking minutes can write the names and write the comments so that they go in the official City record. Thank you. Commissioner Stinger: Mary roll call please? ROLL CALL: Commissioners Present: Chen, Gordon Gray, O’Nan, Savage, Stinger, Stone Absent: Alhassani Council Liaisons: Council Members Berman and Wolbach Staff: Minka van der Zwaag, Mary Constantino ORAL COMMUNICATIONS: Commissioner Stinger: There is one other piece of business , that is oral comments that are not on the agenda, if anybody wants to make oral comments on a subject not on the agenda please fill out a speaker card and you'll have a chance to speak otherwise we’ll go right into our program. BUSINESS 1. Community Forum: Being Different Together: Experiencing Palo Alto, Perception and Reality – A Forum on Implicit Bias Reverend Kaloma A. Smith, University AME Zion Church: Thank you so much for being with us this evening. One of the things I love about Palo Alto is that you are a community that cares. The interesting thing is that this conversation on implicit bias is a mirror conversation. It's not a conversation about blame. It's not a conversation that is driven by Approved 2 some mass shooting in the country. As a community we have decided to come together and have an honest and frank discussion. So as we have this conversation tonight this is not about blame, this is not about pointing, but this is more about a mirror or reflective moment. I'd love to have Councilman Berman one of our more progressive Councilman come forward. Councilman Berman is definitely one of the catalysts to this conversation. So we'd love for him to give us a few words before we start. Marc Berman, Palo Alto City Council Member: Thank you very much Pastor Smith and thank you to everybody for joining us this evening. My name is Mark Berman, and I serve on the Palo Alto City Council, and I want to thank all of you for joining us for being different together, experiencing Palo Alto perception and reality. This is the fourth in a series of really amazing community forums that have been organized by the Palo Alto Human Relations Commission (HRC) and you heard the Commissioner's names earlier, but I want to give all of them round of applause and in particular Valerie Stinger who has organized tonight's event and really put in so much time and all of our board members and commissioners in Palo Alto devote countless hours behind the scenes to make our community what it is today and so I’m very grateful to all of them. So thank you guys very much. Tonight's forum is especially meaningful to me. Growing up in Palo Alto in the Eighty's and Ninety's I had friends of all races and from all different socioeconomic backgrounds and while I didn't really realize it at the time those experiences really shaped the values that I hold today as Pastor Smith mentioned they might be more progressive values. I worry that we're losing this socioeconomic diversity in Palo Alto and that the diverse groups that we do have aren't really coming together to form a stronger community. But I do see a glimmer of hope and it comes from increased dialogue throughout our community about what can sometimes be awkward and touchy issues like implicit bias. Implicit bias can be experienced in all walks of life from health care to housing and even in education. Just last year the education nonprofit that I work ed for supported state legislation that was aimed at ending implicit bias in course placement for students in California public schools. Because studies have shown and I see this for some folks know what I’m talking about. Studies have shown that that Latino and African-American students are repeating coursework at how much higher rates than their Caucasian and Asian peers even if they show the same aptitude, do as well on the same tests, and get similar grades in school and it's really important that we be cognizant about these issues and put systems in place to end these types of implicit bias. Tonight’s discussion is a continuation of important community conversations that want, it might not be because of, it happened after the really senseless killing of nine African- American church members by a white supremacist in Charleston, South Carolina. Soon after this tragedy I was invited to attend a forum held by Pastor Kaloma Smith who at that time a fairly new pastor of University AME Zion Church in Palo Alto and this was a forum for community members to discuss their experiences with prejudice and both over and implicit bias. Wow. This was one of the most powerful community forms that I’ve been to both before and during my time on the Palo Alto City Council. It was and it sparked a conversation about racism and prejudice that there was clearly an overwhelming desire to have in the broader Palo Alto, and I think peninsula community. This was also the first time Approved 3 that I saw Pastor Kaloma Smith in action. Wow again. Pastor Smith’s ability to navigate an emotional conversation on a controversial topic and ending on time and weaving the wide ranging conversation into tangible next steps was really remarkable. I'm excited to watch Pastor Smith moderate today's really fantastic panel. Before we get to that I want to let everyone know about the community participation piece of tonight's meeting. So some of you might have noticed there are big poster papers along the windows and if you have a program in the middle of the program there's an opportunity for everybody to write down their thoughts as we go through tonight's conversation. At the end of the meeting everybody will have an opportunity to write down their thoughts on these different areas and put them on sticky notes and add those to the big pieces of paper against the window. My colleague, City Council colleague Cory Wolbach will give everyone mo re instruction at that time, but be thinking of that as we're going through the conversation and if you hear something that brings an idea to mind or a thought or emotion to mind write that down so that you can remember it at the end of the meeting. So without further ado it's my privilege to hand the mike back over to my friend, Kaloma Smith, Pastor of University AME Zion Church. Pastor Smith: Thank you so much everybody. A critical thing about the writing, the notes you're going to take tonight are going to be part of an art project that's going to go in City Hall. So these thoughts and these ideas that you have will not be wasted. Also all the comments are being filmed so they are going down for posterity. So we really want to make this discussion engaging, important, and relevant. And I have the pleasure… Oh, one other thing. In preparation for this we did a video testimonial. Two interesting results came out of the testimonial talking about implicit bias. The first is we had some really brave people that shared some amazing stories. Those videos are in the back I really want you to take a look at those videos as they describe some of the things that happened in our community and the surrounding communities. It's right there where the lady with the purple top that is Minka. So go and check out those videos. They’re amazing. But the other thing that happened was that we talked to several people in the Palo Alto community and they were a little scared. They were scared to share their exper ience because implicit bias is real and they were I don't know what the response from my community is going to be if I share. With that said as we share tonight this is a safe space. People are allowed to speak. People are allowed to say what they need to say. What we're not allowed to do is shout, scream, and put anybody down for what they say. We're all right with that? Y'all don't sound like you are really all right. All we are right with that? Thank you so much. Right now I want to bring forward somebody that has just totally impressed me. This is Dr. Joseph Brown he is at Stanford. He is in the First-Gen and Diversity Office, but he has such a beautiful way of presenting information on implicit bias. I thought I knew a little bit about bias, but after talking to him he really opened my eyes to see that I am bias. In certain things that I do because we each bring a bias from our background and where we come from. So he's going to do this amazing presentation and then we're going to have our panel come forward. Approved 4 Dr. Joseph Brown, Stanford: Can everyone hear me? All right let's try again. Right, so my mother didn't raise any quiet children so… So I want to thank you Valerie Stinger and Pastor Smith for giving me the opportunity to speak with you today. I wanted to take a tack that would be a little controversial because I wanted to talk about one of the consequences of implicit bias and the continuing influence of negative stereotypes in our communities and in our society and to get into this so I want to talk about my micro aggressions as one consequence of implicit bias and use that as a path for getting into a discussion about creating a more truly just and inclusive community. Implicit bias has been a controversial topic in the last few years and micro aggressions perhaps even more so. So I saw an essay by Amitai Etzioni in which he criticized the idea of micro aggressions and basically his argument was listen, people are getting beat up, tortured, and murdered; that's what we should be focusing on. Ok. I read a couple of other essays that criticize micro aggressions as sort of embracing a victim mentality, and I want to address that and address some of the causes of micro aggressions. But before I do that I wanted to ask you to think about something. What I’d like you to do is see if you can remember a time when someone said something to you, did something to you that suggested that they weren't seeing you clearly; they were seeing you through the distorting lens of a negative stereotype about your group or they were being influenced by implicit biases, negative biases toward your group. It may have been due to your gender, your race, your religious faith or lack of faith, your social class, and sexual orientation. See if you can remember a time when something like that happened to you. So take a moment. See if you can come up with that m emory. I want you to think about the details of what happened. What specifically was said? What was the behavior that occurred? So take a moment to think about that. Now I want you to think about what your thoughts were when it was happening and after it happened. And what were some of the emotions that you felt? So would anybody be willing to share something about their experience? Let's even get two or three examples. Can we get a mike? Dr. Brown: Thank you. You can give us your name and… Deniva: Hi, I’m [Deniva]. A negative experience I had was walking to my car. You know from my home and there was an older Asian couple walking in the opposite direction. I’m walking towards my car and they're walking in the opposite direction and then they walked across the street to avoid walking next to me not realizing that I was walking to my car. I have been told before from other Asian friends of mine that they're afraid of black people or that I’m different or whatever so that's an example of somethi ng that happened to me. The feelings I felt were kind of frustration more like, I don't know, I was offended and frustrated at the same time and I also felt uncomfortable walking to my car. Jill: Hi, my name’s Jill. This is something that happened to m e when I was a little girl that made a big impression on me. I grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio in a very conservative time. We had career day at my elementary school and when the girls were asked what career they wanted they all said they wanted to be a nurse, a teacher, or a secretary and then they would be all become moms. But I didn't want to do that. I wanted to grow up and be a writer. I wanted to travel; I wanted to do other things and when I said that I was really publicly shamed by the teacher for being like an outcast an outlier because I didn't want to follow this Approved 5 conventional you know female model that we were all programmed with. So I’m happy to say though I am a writer today. Dr. Brown: Congratulations. One more person. Yeah, right in front of you. Yes. Gloria: I was walking across a street and it was getting on to be early evening and it was dark. I happened to be crossing Waverley to go to my church, and I saw this black man across the street and I recognized him because he was someone that I worked with and was very fond of so I ran over and as I came towards him he recoiled. I put my arms around him to give him a hug because we were that close of friends. And he said, “Oh my goodness Gloria.” He said, “I was walking down the stre et I was thinking to myself oh yeah, there's another white woman she's going to walk across the street just to get away from me. Next thing you know she's running towards me to give me a hug. I was totally shocked.” Dr. Brown: Thank you. So I want to draw your attention to something with those three examples. So how do you define micro aggressions? They’re brief commonplace verbal behavioral or environmental indignities. They’re intentional or unintentional. They communicate derogatory, negative or hostile slights, invalidations, and insults. So that's the official definition, but I want to draw your attention to something. So for each of these individuals that experienced micro aggressions the behavior of the people doing the micro aggressing may or may not have been influenced by negative stereotypes. In one instance it seems pretty clear, but because a person made a statement that seemed to suggest a gender right, gender stereotypes. But in most cases it's not necessarily clear what's driving the micro aggressor's behavior. But for the target the negative stereotype about their group conditions the consideration of the micro aggression and what it means or not. Part of the problem with micro aggressions is why did this happen and was the behavior statement driven or not driven by negative stereotypes about my group? That ambiguity is part of the problem and part of the damage that micro aggressions can do, but they can only be understood by referencing the negative stereotype. So for the budding writer in the back it was the awareness of the gender stereotypes at the time that helped her understand how damaging that statement was, right? It was the negative stereotypes about African-Americans that Deniva had to consider might be driving the behavior of that Asian couple. In fact stereotypes might not have been driving their behavior and here I want to draw a distinction between impact and intent because micro aggressions can have a negative impact on you regardless of the intention of the micro aggressor. My colleague in the Diversity and First- Gen Office, Dereca Blackmon makes this point that if a Starbucks server spills hot coffee on you and you're burned and he says I’m sorry I didn't mean to… Well, that's great, but I’m still burned. Ouch. Right? So the damage still holds. So when we're considering the impact of micro aggressions part of the problem is the attributional ambiguity around the micro aggression. Because what happens and what likely happened to the three people that talked about their experience is that they struggled… why did this happen? What does it mean? And how should I respond? The damage done by the negative stereotype is that it's all too difficult for a person to dismiss the micro aggression, to dismiss it from their minds because if that behavior or statement is driven by negative stereotypes that has consequences. So if that Asian couple is genuinely afraid of her that suggests that future interactions with them may not go so well. Right? Approved 6 This has happened to me on a number of times where I’ve been walking in a department store, and I noticed that I was being followed by either the store security or a the sales staff. They didn't approach me to ask me if… they, they would follow me. Well if that behav ior is being driven by negative stereotypes about African-Americans being criminals well that has consequences for how I’m likely to be to be treated by that staff. So I have to think about it. Here's the thing about negative stereotypes so they're widely disseminated in our society and study after study shows that part of being a good citizen is being familiar with those negative stereotypes even if over time fewer and fewer of us endorse those stereotypes as accurate. No matter, we’re familiar with those stereotypes and here's the ugly truth that social psychology, my field, has demonstrated about those stereotypes. They affect us. They're useful. They help us resolve ambiguity. When we are preoccupied, busy, they're more likely to affect our judgments and our feelings and our behavior. But the point, larger point is that they're useful. They continue to be useful, but they exert their influence largely in ways that we are unaware of. If we’re the targets of those negative stereotypes then we have to consider whether the treatment they were receiving is being conditioned by those negative stereotypes. So some of the short term consequences of micro aggressions are for one thing, they distract us. So when you experience a micro aggression you have to devote attentional and cognitive resources to figuring out what that behavior what those statements were about, what they mean, and how we should respond. It also taps our emotional control resources. Experiencing a micro aggression and considering that the behavior was driven by negative stereotypes about my group that's the right way. It's disturbing. If you tell me you ignore it, you have stopped paying attention to it; well I have to devote attention to managing my emotions around that behavior. And here's the ironic short term effect of micro aggressions is that they draw spotlight around the social identity in question. They draw attention to that social identity: race, gender, social class, sexual orientation, religious faith. At just the time when if we bring up the micro aggression and the behavior we're likely to hear from other people well, aren't you paying, aren’t you making a little bit too much of this, right? You know, gender isn't everything. Race isn't everything. So imagine the irony in the dissonance experienced by targets of micro aggressions that they've had an experience that highlights, that stigmatizes social identity at a time where they're likely to be told that they're paying too much attention to that social identity. What are some of the long term consequences of a chronic experience of micro aggressions? Well, what targets of micro aggressions are learning is that it seems they are less likely to be seen as individuals and more likely to be seen through the distorting the lens of stereotypes and the implicit biases that people have about their group and their trust in the local institutions, in the people that they're working with is undermined. So an increase in alienation, isolation, increased stress and distress around how we’re likely to be treated in the future. Some of the most interesting research being done in social psychology today around these issues looks at the long term health consequences of the consistent continual experience of micro aggressions. What causes micro aggressions? I wouldn't want to argue that overt prejudice drives most micro aggressions. That's just not the case. You know things have changed in America and what we see is that fewer and fewer people endorse negative stereotypes as accurate or valid. Approved 7 What has happened is that social norms have changed and those changing social norms make micro aggressions even more important for us to consider. So I’ll tell you a story that my advisor, Claude Steele, told me when I was a graduate student at Stanford; so Claude Steele, prominent social psychologist who's now no longer at Stanford. He's a provost at Berkeley. So Claude did his undergraduate studies at Hiram College, a small liberal arts college in Ohio. And he was one of only seven or eight African-Americans at the college at that time and here's what he said about that experience. He said, “Well you know Joseph when we were, when I was a student there, I didn't have any questions about whether I was a completely valued and included member of the campus. I knew I wasn't. I knew there were lots of people that didn't want me and other African-American students there. So there wasn't a question of, there was an expectation of full inclusion. So I found my friends and the niches that I was comfortable in and I did my thing and got my education.” But now social norms have changed. Now to be racist is to be a bad person. To have a bad character and our expectations, our current social norms embrace full inclusion. But what the experience of micro aggressions does is to undermine the sense that we're being treated fairly and justly. It undermines the notion that we are valued fully included members of our communities. And that's the problem, but in fact because we're all moving through this society, a society rife with negative stereotypes because we're all at one time or another influenced by those negative stereotypes. We've all experienced micro aggressions. We've all been the target of micro aggressions and every single one of us has been a micro aggressor. Because we're all subject to the negative stereotypes that are part of our society. Because we're all subject to the implicit biases that we've learned in this society; so in fact micro aggressors are potential allies in our project to create a more inclusive, a more just community and society. So how do we do that? I could say a great deal, but I want to close with a concept that has been very important to us in the Diversity and First-Gen office and it's the concept of cultural humility. I want to contrast it with the notion of cultural competence, which is a much, much more often used concept in diversity and inclusion training and that can be associated with the learning of some important skills and important knowledge about other groups and the problem of implicit bias and micro aggressions but all too often cultural competency can sort of morph into a well I've taken these classes and I’ve read these books. I'm done. I've reached it. I'm no longer part of the problem. Thank you very much and I am perfectly happy to consult with you for with a substantial hourly rate. You know. By contrast what cultural humility says is that we're in an ongoing process of learning more about our community and about the groups that are a part of our community and that we'll embrace an ethic of trying to be inclusive in our behavior and our statements. But that we know we're going to be vulnerable, and we know we're going to make mistakes and we'll be open to listening and learning about those mistakes and improving. And so you never reach the end with cultural humility. It's an ongoing process, but the most important thing that we embrace in embracing the notion of cultural humility is courage. The willingness to speak up and possibly make mistakes, possibly say things that people find offensive and to be willing to listen and hear when others are hurt or injured and want to tell us why. There is no other in my view important ethic, more important ethic than cultural humility for building the kind of inclusive communities that we truly want to build. That ethic that focuses us on learning Approved 8 from other people and being willing to engage with other people even if the conversation is going to be difficult and painful. In my view we stand so far as a society and we've made such remarkable progress. Let me just make an embarrassing admission to you that I did not in any way believe that in my lifetime America would elect a black man president. I will admit that. Holy cow! But I think our next progress is going to be much more intimate and personal and will involve our interactions with other people who are a part of our community, and I see that you are all on that journey and I congratulate you for that and I look forward to the discussion. So thank you very much. Pastor Smith: Thank you, Dr. Brown. Was that not an amazing presentation? We all have a brand new word to go home with tonight: cultural humility. You had… everybody has a program? What I want you to do right now is take two or three minutes and open it to the center of the program. You have a little bit of homework, and I want you to process what Dr. Brown said in relation to those questions because what we want to be able to do at each point in this experience you’re cataloguing your impression. Because at the end we want when you go to do the communal art project that you've cataloged what you felt when you heard Dr. Brown and then after you hear this distinguished group of panelists. In o ne more minute we will get started with the panel so write your last thoughts in please. Thank you. Thank you so much. Right now what I’d like to do is introduce this distinguished panel and there is a paragraph on the inside of the program, and I had a chance to really talk to each of them this evening and I think their stories are so impactful and powerful that I’d like each of them to introduce themselves, tell a little bit about themselves, and so forth. We're going to start with Mrs. Delorme and then we'll work our way down. Delorme McKee-Stovall, Director, Santa Clara County Office of Human Relations, Executive Secretary, HRC: Good evening. It's really a pleasure to be here tonight. I'm the Director of the Office of Human Relations for Santa Clara County Government which means I run the Office of Human Relations which is focused on human rights for all the residents of Santa Clara County and civil rights, conflict resolution, and trying to increase the respect of inclusion not so much diversity because we already have diversity in our communities to the max impact but how do we create inclusion for everyone? I also staff the HRC which does policy work around these issues. My background is first I have a bachelor’s degree in nursing, and I was a nursing executive for quite a while. Then I got my master's in religious studies and decided to do justice to work in the community which brought me to the county about 16 years ago. I was responsible for building the first program in the County that was spoken specifically on prejudice reduction and from there about five years ago I became the Director of the Office and I do mostly policy work with the HRC. This is work that I love. I'm fascinated by it. I cannot get enough. In terms of information I’m constantly researching about it and practicing with the communities that I serve and really I think I, one of the things I value most is building alliances between myself and other people. So it's always been an exciting journey for me. Approved 9 Amy Lazarus, Founder and CEO, InclusionVentures: Hi, my name is Amy Lazarus. I'm just humbled and privileged to be a part of this panel this evening so thank you to everyone who put this together, Valerie and your team. I come to this work I was born and raised in a community outside of Cleveland, Ohio that's 50/50 black/white and the cool thing to do; it really was a cool thing to do is to try out to be in the Dialogue on Race Relations Club. High school students taught fourth and sixth grade students at a young age about stereotypes and prejudice and discrimination and of course in order to prepare to teach the younger kids the high schoolers had to have these conversations. We met in each other's living rooms every week and it changed my life. I went to college and I was like where's the race relations club? You know and there wasn't one. So I started one there and kind of all through life did that. Then I realized oh this is not about Kumbaya and let's all hold hands. There's a mission case for this and there's a business case and when people feel included they perform better whether that’s academically in the classroom or in the workplace or in the community. So I’ve really been asking for about 20 years now what's the most effective and efficient way to make inclusion the norm. The company I started a little over a year ago is called Inclusion Ventures, and we're on a mission to scale inclusion. We do that in two ways; one is working with organizations in every sector around how and why to bring your best self and do your best work. A lot of people say oh, yes the business case for diversity and inclusion we know that, but there is a disconnect between that intellectual we know we want to do that and the behaviors that are stopping us from getting there. So Inclusion Ventures helps to bridge that gap. We also realize the majority of the world is not going through our trainings. So how do we reach the masses? So you want us to talk about humility, right? How do you reach the masses through technology, athletics, and media? We work on how does your world view also known as your implicit bias impact the color of the emoji’s that are on your iPhone, right? Why were they all yellow at first and now reflect the user experience? Why are Band- Aids my skin color? Was there not a market for people who want their Band-Aids to blend into their skin? Rev. Dr. Diana Gibson, Adjunct Professor, Santa Clara University: Thank you. I’m Diana Gibson. I was Pastor at First Presbyterian Church in Palo Alto for 16 years. I was one of the Executive Directors for Santa Clara County Council of Churches. I'm a Presbyterian pastor and I currently work in the Religious Studies Department in Santa Clara University. The reason for being invited here, thank you very much Rabbi Lewis, is my work in ecumenical and then interfaith activity throughout the community, and I have just found that to be a place of so much learning for myself as I’ve worked more and more with people who you know are different than the people who might attend my own parish. So stretching myself to see the world what we call moral imagination to glimpse the world through lives other than my own has been what's called me to say yes when Rabbi Lewis asked me to be here tonight and I hope to learn a lot. Stephanie Rabiner, Senior Fair Housing Coordinator, Project Sentinel: Hello. I am Stephanie Rabiner, I am a Fair Housing Coordinator at Project Sentinel, which is the Bay Area's la rgest and almost oldest housing discrimination organization. I came into this work by accident. When I went to law school I knew I wanted to work with low income populations, and I knew that I wanted to do something directed at poverty reduction. I ended up working at a Approved 10 fair housing organization down in Los Angeles (LA) and then after coming up here I luckily found Project Sentinel where I’ve been working for a few years now. The reason I do this work is I think housing is essential. It's essential to inclusion, it's essential to access to health care. It's essential to education. It's essential to poverty reduction and day in and day out I do a lot of investigations of housing discrimination and we do that on an individual level but at a policy level in a larger community level these issues that need addressing and if we don't address them at this level I don't feel like we aren't doing our job as a community to be inclusive, to deal with the stereotypes of the past that still linger. And so that's sort of why I was invited to come today and talk about housing and its relationship to bias and inclusive communities. Jade Chao, The Y, Palo Alto Family YMCA Board of Managers: Hello everyone. My name is Jade Chao, and I'm a member of this Palo Alto community. I'm a resident. I have two young children. I'm also a member of the California Bar and a member of the United States (US) Patent Trademark Office. I am a practicing attorney. But I've been on the board of the Palo Alto YMCA (The Y) for about seven years now, and I've been asked to speak to you about what does diversity look like in a nonprofit board. I have been the chair of the board as well, and I also serve in a volunteer capacity for my children’s school, Ohlone Elementary, and we have hosted an afterschool program for 120 students in nine different languages in twelve different classes one day a week with an annual income of $56,000 run entirely by a volunteer parent corps. I’m here to tell you that there is a platform in this community for bringing together and modeling for our children what diversity looks like. Thank you. Pastor Smith: Thank you everyone. For a first question I would like to ask you what resources in your expertise have been useful to promote diversity and inclusion? What are the tangible items that you can say to somebody “hey, how do we start this process?” Very much like how Dr. Brown spoke about cultural humility. Is there any other items that we can give the audience to say that this is a tool that we can start the dialogue? Ms. McKee-Stovall: As a result of doing this work through many different eras in terms of building race relations in Santa Clara County. I watched us really transition greatly. As the diversity is increased and we've had to acclimate to that diversity I found that I’ve had to use many different tools and now I'm having to build a whole new tool box because of the Trump-ism era that we currently live in. But, one of the first things that I would recommend is getting in touch with you first. You know we always want to talk about the other guy. You know the other guy's problem. But implicit bias is just a common thing in all of us and we shouldn't view it either negatively or positively. It is, it just is, but we need to do is start exploring what it is and how it affects us and so you could engage in Implicit Association Test (IAT) which is Implicit Association Testing. Harvard has a study online. It's free. It's confidential. And you can go there and just take as many tests as you want as often as you like. Now the key about it is that once you take the test you have to sit with the message that it delivers. You really have to sit with it for a while because initially you're going to want to deny it. Ok, that's it. It's like a reflex reaction because none of us want to be called a racist. But this test is not calling you racist, is just telling you what your implicit biases are that you can begin to work on. Ok? So I think we can start there with yourself first and then you can help others as you're going through your journey. Ok? And it's really an effective tool. Approved 11 Ms. Lazarus: To add to that there's a MTV had something called the Look Different Campaign and it's the cool, hip updated version of the implicit association test so for you and/or you some of your family members that's a great thing to take. Show of hands you're all here for an evening of implicit bias talking so how many of you kind of consider I know the basics, I could be up here on this panel? Anyone? Thank you, Commissioners. I would hope so. How many of you I’m brand new, tell me you know 101, what can I do here, what can I read? Ok, one brave soul, a few, ok great, thanks. So there are some really great resources out there in the form of Ted Talks and articles. Angela Glover Blackwell who's the founder of that really explains equity really well. Unconscious bias expert John Powell who's also at Berkeley, I heard some bias when you said Berkeley there. Pastor Smith: Definitely bias. Ms. Lazarus: The Perception Institute also has some really great work especially on the impact of implicit bias on health care and so if you're looking for the statistics on health that's a place. Going along with your beautiful plan about turning internally Glen Singleton talks about courageous conversations on race and there are books you can read about it. One is when you think about these issues do you tend to approach it from an intellectual place? I want the statistics, I want the facts, where is that? Do you tend to approach it from a judgment moral place? Race relations, diversity, inclusion this is the right thing to do. Do you tend to approach it from a moral, excuse me, a heartfelt… this is my experience, and I get very emotional and care a lot about this and then the last one is let's just do something about it. Why are we still talking? As you're looking at how to do this work effectively with other people I know that I’m talking to someone that really approaches this from the head space I got to start there even if I don't want to start there and meet them there so figure out where you start and then also figure out ways to bring other people in if you're not in their quadrant. Rev. Dr. Gibson: Well I’m going to fess up to being the confused one on the panel because I’m a question behind Pastor Smith there. I'm till on the first question, what inspires you to care about bias? I didn't realize that's what we're supposed to ask the first time. Pastor Smith: No, I have to still ask you the question. Rev. Dr. Gibson: Well, ok so you've got to come back to this one. Oh ok, well then I won't try and sneak it in now. I was going to. I think I gave away my answer to this. I teach at a Jesuit university, and we use a lot of moral imagination. It's trying to envision the world from someone else's standpoint and that’s not claiming we can do that. Obviously we can't, but the mere idea that we think that some lives matter more than others is the first kind of hurdle we have to overcome to do any kind of this type of work and to realize that my life may not matter more than someone else and to imagine how the world the way it's working now how it might look like and feel like from one other person and then many other people’s standpoint is the first step. The next step then is that I'm going to pick up on what Dr. Brown said that moral humility is to then Approved 12 talk about well this is how I imagine it might feel and find out oh, I got it wrong. I'm going to try again. I'm going to ask you so-I mean that having that type of dialogue conversation and being a teacher there is a lot of good critical thinking. Ms. Rabiner: I want to echo a little bit about what everyone else said. I think acceptance is really important in addressing these issues and being able to actually have a decent conversation about them. Acceptance that you're not a perfect person and that there are these biases inside you, but also acceptance that other people are not perfect and allowing them to not be perfect. Just one of the things that I encounter a lot in my work is you know you get a housing provider who's like I didn't mean to do this, but I’m not a discriminator, and one of the best ways to have that conversation with them is say, I get it. I know that's not your intent. You're not a bad person, but let's talk about what made you do this, what your thought process was, why this is not a good thing to do. I think once you start talking to people and accepting their humanity and understand that they're not perfect and that you're not perfect either you can start to have some of those conversations. Ms. Chao: I tend to look and see what already exists in the community. I'm not a big fan of reinventing the wheel. So when I got to school, and I had a kindergartener I heard about this program that was an afterschool program and I joined it and learned from it and watched other people make use of what was already in the community as a resource to make it better. Since I’ve been involved in the Ohlone World Language Program it's grown from I think 6 classes to 12 and it's gone from six languages to nine. So similarly at the Y I'm also trying to use what's already available in the community. The Y's been around for, since before the transcontinental railroad and in Palo Alto and in Silicon Valley, it’s the oldest nonprofit. So there's no reason to reinvent anything, but make use of what's already there, the structures. Yes some of it is antiquated and outdated and needs to be updated, but I think your best shot with the bus yness of your lives is to make use what's already here. Dr. Brown: There are a couple of resources I wanted to direct you to. The two psychologists who designed the IAT, Mahzarin Banaji and Anthony Greenwald, have a really good book called Blind Spot in which they summarize their decades long research on implicit bias. There is an institute at Ohio State University called The Kirwan Institute, K-I-R-W-A-N and they publish and updated reviews of research on implicit bias. You can download for free their report that will take you up right there and it's just a wonderful report. One thing that, that report and Blind Spot both note is that you know one thing we might hope for is that there is something we could do that could get rid of our biases, right? Something, you know, meditate… something. By the way it turns out that this is a hot area of research, and they are finding things; so for example, it turns out that mindfulness training meditation it turns out it does reduce implicit biases temporarily. Imagining what it would be like if you were a member of a discriminated against group, what would it be like? It turns out that kind of imagination can also reduce your implicit bias. So if you take the IAT and you previously displayed a bias engaging in this kind of activity for long enough reduces the bias. Temporarily, right? One way to think about implicit biases is not simply about what you learned as a child. We are continually rewrapped, represented with stereotypes, with representations of people that Approved 13 reify existing stereotypes and that help maintain the implicit biases that we have. The lesson I take from that is what we have to do to do better is to recognize that there are likely to be times that our biases and stereotyping are likely to influence our actions, our perceptions, and our judgments and to put in place practices that counter them. When you have the position where you are hiring people, it means ensuring that in your search for candidates you are actively seeking candidates from diverse backgrounds. It means asking the question what are the characteristics of a strong performer for this particular position. What are the attributes that are truly associated with strong performance? For example, in my other position I’m the Graduate Diversity Recruitment Officer for the School of Humanities and Sciences and one of the things that we do is a workshop for faculty and staff engaging and a survey on graduate admissions committees. What we encourage them to do is to carry out their own studies on the factors that are associated with success in the graduate program. Don't let your lore, anecdotes, presumptions guide your judgments. Carry out the studies yourself and that can be a way to reduce the impact of biases and negative stereotypes. Pastor Smith: Thank you all for those astute answers. The next question we would like to ask is a two sided question and it's more about personal interaction. What if somebody is on the receiving end of implicit bias? How do they react and navigate that situation? Also how does the person that is doing the implicit bias deal with somebody confronting them with that? What are those things that are going to make this dialogue not be… there will be tension because somebody is bringing up something, but how do we move this from a tense dialogue to a healthy dialogue? Ms. McKee-Stovall: In all the work that I’ve done these last 22 years I think this is the one that I focused on most. One must be courageous in order to, one must be courageous to share with another person that you’ve been impacted by an implicit bias. It does take coura ge because a society has told us that we're supposed to minimize the effect on ourselves. Take it in ourselves and get over it, ok? So we swallow it. If we’re the constant victim or the constant target of micro aggressions we kind of swallow it. It takes courage to step out of that and in the moment say to another person when they have targeted you whether it was intentionally or not this is what happened to me. What you just said or what you just did affected me this way, ok? That takes courage but at the same time you’re entering into conversation once you say that and that means you as the target must remain curious rather than enter into the zone of anger. If you are openly curious and you ask questions rather than making accusations you will be able to have a conversation. It's very important that you engage in that kind of conversation in a confidential space. You don't want to expose that conversation to other people because then they rise to another situation. They have an audience and pride enters into the fact. So conversations like this can really happen, but you have to be courageous and you really do have to remain curious. Then the next thing you have to do if the person tells you things that you know are factually inaccurate you have to actually correct that. You have to give them other examples of why it's not true and then finally when you get to the point to where you feel like you're comfortable with each other about talking about what happened you have to actually be bold enough to say that for me I would rather you didn't do that again. That I would really like for you to think about what we just talked about and try to see if you can prevent it from happening again in particular with me because the fact of the matter is we're all engaged in this. This is really a part of who we are being human. There's no expectation that we're Approved 14 going to get inoculation it's just going to go away. So it's a lifelong work and you can only be accountable for yourself. So that's why I tend to limit that conversation between the person and myself and not make it a global issue, ok? Ms. Lazarus: So the product is about dialogue I used to work at an organization called A Sustained Dialogue Institute and our founder just recently passed away, Hal Saunders, helped to negotiate the Camp David Peace Accords and Egyptian/Israeli Peace Treaty. His definition of dialogue includes listening deeply enough to be changed by what you hear and right now I feel very listened to. Your eyes are on me. Thank you so much. How often are we listening so that we can be the next person to talk? Listen so that we can tell someone why they're wrong, right? In this exchange when someone tells you this is what happened to me when you did this to really be able to listen deeply enough to be changed by what you hear. To be able to say those three favorite little words, “tell me more,” right? Especially if you disagree, oh that's so… don't get defensive, right? If you're the one being approached how can you take a breath and take a beat and then do the tell me more thing and have an open curious stance. If you're the one that's doing the approaching which is just so hard and we know that there are those of us who tend to be the approachers more than the approached and why is it always our responsibility and what does that look like especially for women and people of color and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer/questioning (LGBTQ), right, and the lower socioeconomic. So what does that look like to always do? I would say to recognize when you don't have it in you and it's ok because sometimes you just don't have it in you and you're still a good person and you can go on the next day and maybe do it the next day and when you are doing it to be able to call people in instead of calling people out. So we don't say “you're racist” or “don't say that,” right? You want to be able to say exactly what the Delorme said and to really make it an inviting learning opportunity instead of a chastisement. Rev. Dr. Gibson: I actually prefer the word curious I had the word clarify, but curious is really wonderful. Just to ask the question: is this what you meant to say? Can you understand how it might be interpreted in another way? You know, what were you trying to say too? Again, not the calling people names, but trying to pull them out in a sense that I know that, a sent, a statement of faith I would put I know that you, that we can have a conversation better than this or we can have our interactions can be better t han this. If you are the one who did the implicit bias which is a role I’ve certainly been in to breathe and say tell me more about what you know how that impacted you. Help me understand and worry, do your defensiveness later. I mean it's totally natural to feel defensive and say I didn’t mean that and I’ve been, you know how many marches I’ve gone on. I'm sorry, I’m being honest here. Just hypothetical, right? I think that's really just natural and it needs to get out of my system later, but that's at home with my husband. You know, at the time I need to just shut that off and try and listen, to really listen more. I also appreciate when there's as a teacher and the information is incorrect we need to pull that out and say ok what are you talking about because I teach in religious studies and what I get confronted with is a lot but is not so implicit, but biased about Judaism and Islam so I try and pull that out and what I say then is I'm glad you brought that up because that's some misinformation that's out there and now we need to talk about it. I’m sure that it can work Approved 15 with others, but to affirm that someone said they learned from somewhere else, they didn't usually make it up themselves, and say thank you for bringing that up because we need to clarify that that's not true and then to go ahead and not be shy about offering the information. The final one I have is to make it I statements and that's been said alre ady. This is how I felt. And yeah, thank you. Ms. Rabiner: I'm definitely guilty of maybe over correcting facts. I'm very big on correcting facts, but I recognize that not everybody wants to hear that and not everybody's in the frame of mind to hear that. I think as someone who has experienced a micro aggression you have to be ok with recognizing and saying maybe this isn't the right time to have this conversation with this person. Maybe they're in a bad mood. Maybe they're stressed out. Maybe I've said something and it's just going to really heated if we continue this conversation, we just need to step away to think but on that end if that's who you are at that time and you can't have that conversation at that moment and if you're on the receiving end of the criticism essentially. Make a point to go back and have that conversation. Not being in the mood for it doesn't mean you get out of it and I mean just be open and keep going back to the idea of acceptance and accepting that you're not a perfect person and we're all flawed and we should all welcome criticism to become better people. And if you don't agree with their facts go look them up. Ms. Chao: So one of the things that I notice is it starts to happen in elementary and middle school and it's called bullying. I don’t know if, how many people in the audience are familiar with the Project Cornerstone? If you are please raise your hand. Ok great . So it's a project of the Y and we've been doing it for several years now. Started with a survey in the schools to try to determine what are the factors that are making students successful or not successful social and emotionally and there's a whole set of materials now developed called the 41 Assets and each of these assets address a particular trait of a world view from the students' perspective. Now the program is well entrenched in many public schools up and down the Valley, also here in Palo Alto and so excited to hear at the breakfast last week that the material is now being translated into Spanish so that it can go into Spanish speaking communities. I raised my hand and I talked to Anne who is the Project Cornerstone CEO and I said, can we get this in Mandarin too? She said write me an email, let's talk. So if we can get to our kids early enough and talk to them about these things and also give them the tools that as adults that we still need to continue to sharpen so I think it's a great beginning and very useful for them no matter what they end up choosing to do. Again making those resources that are already available in our community just make them better. Pastor Smith: Thank you all so much. I’m going to ask that this be our last closing question. So I’m going to ask the question then ask you to give your closing remarks. We like to give the audience an opportunity to have feedback so at 8:30 pm we're going to go into questions from everybody in the audience so if you have been holding it in you can get it out in about 10 minutes. This is my question. As a bystander I see somebody that's receiving micro aggression. Whether I know the person that's doing it or I don't know the person that's doing it, how do I handle that? A lot of us see this happening and good people sometimes stay quiet because they don't have the tools to deal with it. Also add your little closing about how you see the future of this working through our community. Approved 16 Dr. Brown: I think bystanders can have a very powerful impact because what you can do is validate the perspective of the target in a way that it may make it easier for a micro aggressor to consider that but I do think using I statements is still appropriate here to say, you know, I heard what you said and I don't like this language. I know you probably didn't intend this, but this is how I heard it. I'm afraid she might have heard it that way too and but, you know I know you probably didn't intend it, but see that's this is how it might have been heard and you know maybe we could talk about a different way to approach it in the future. I know you don't want people to come to that impression it's sort of an approach that presumes good intentions on the part of the actor that I think can be really, really powerful. I’ll say just as far as where the future is going. I was talking about the last honor student that I worked with who did a thesis which she talked about the limits of tolerance and the way she talked about tolerance is Americans have embraced this notion of tolerance as a way of having, accepting diversity. The idea that I don't understand you. I don't know what you are about, but as long as you stay over there doing your thing and you don't interfere in my thing that's fine. That is not going to work anymore. Our communities are becoming more diverse and to… Diversity is a fact. Inclusion is a practice and it's going to depend on our embracing what my honor student said was acceptance. Embracing that as American citizens we have a responsibility to learn about other groups and to extend ourselves, but simple sort of tolerance that's just not going to work anymore so that it goes back to this cultural humility and embracing in some ways I’ll use another Stanford psychologist, Carol Dweck, in Voices of Growth, embracing a growth mindset around diversity and inclusion. I’ve got to devote time and effort to learning more and doing better. I think that's where we're going. Ms. McKee-Stovall: Ok, everything he just said plus there's still the target and sometimes when you're the bystander you also have to take care of the target. Sometimes it's not the moment to confront the person who's projecting their implicit bias and so you have to really observe objectively what is really going on between the parties that are having that conversation. I found that in some cases it was just not the time to talk to the person that was projecting, but the person who was the target when that person that was projecting walks away they need comfort because one of the things about being the target is micro aggressions happen all the time to targets and they feel isolated. If you can stand with them in compassion and comfort it also gives them courage to stand up for themselves and then you can actually have that conversation about courage. You can teach them something about what we've just said about how you respond to a perpetrator when you're the victim. A lot of people that are targets they're just tired. They’re tired of being the target, but the isolation is the thing that is the most painful so if you can stand up with that person, say to them you saw, you heard, you felt, and that you understand they're probably feeling somethi ng too. Would they like to talk about it? Compassion is an important thing and people need allies so badly these days. You know we have to stop thinking of ourselves as individuals. We have to start seeing ourselves as being part of a collective, a community that needs to take care of one another. Ms. Lazarus: Thank you. Write down what she said so in the moment you're startled, wait, was that a? That, that person’s hurt. What am I supposed to say to them to be able to go up and to say I felt, I saw, did you? Just do that in the moment and by thinking the pre-work is as important as the during work and the post work because if you commit to yourself that you are someone who is not a bystander you're an upstander, right? You go when there is an Approved 17 issue and if you commit to yourself and practice that now then you're more likely to do it which means that you're more likely to make inclusion a practice which is so critical. In those moments when I do this work, I do this work for a living and in the momen ts when I don't want to do it I think all right, the cost of not doing this, I know the biggest cost of wasted resources according to Harvard Business Review is navigating the second job. Navigating the second job is things like saying did they say that to me because I’m a woman? Would they have said that to her if she weren’t a lesbian? Is that only because he's in a wheelchair? It's that second train of thought and I’m seeing some heads not nodding which makes me wonder do you know what I’m talking about? Have you ever experienced this or might you have colleagues or family members who do, right? So what does that look like? So the pre-work is as important as in the moment to commit to doing it. I think about the bystander for the intention versu s impact on a few levels as well. So one is you know, so many times I’ve heard people say oh, and what are you? It is not to me; it's to someone who does not look white and what are you? It might be coming from a possible good intention so actually going through was it a possible good intention where this person is coming from? They want to relate to you, they want to find something in common, but a possible negative impact is that that's the only thing you see. I worked with a student who was asked every single day, seven times a day what, what are you? She's from Afghanistan and her head was wrapped and that and she ended up dropping out of school, moving schools because it was literally impacting her ability to learn so when you're coming from a place of privilege even if it's well intended to ask someone don’t or take a step back and think ok, well what's my intention behind this, what's another way to do it? So part of this is the preventing some of the bystander stuff. In terms of the future how can you lead from where you are? Whether that's raising your hand to say hey let's get this in Mandarin or I’m going to be interviewing people let me meditate for two minutes and all you had to do for that is focus on your breathing. Breathing in and breathing out for two minutes before you're interviewing someone because even though it only reduces bias temporarily maybe I’ll make a different decision in that moment. I work with someone who's an executive assistant to a CEO in Washington, D.C. and she is in control of the calendar. So how does she lead from where she is? She decides and has talked about this with her boss regarding transparency in communication, who's getting the meetings? Is it where there's quadrants and most of the people in one quadrant are higher socioeconomic status and whiter than other people in other quadrants. She sees all these people here from the northwest let's get some other meetings on the books here. That's another way to lead from where you are, to make inclusion a practice. I invite you to think about it on a daily basis or where you are with your organizations who are you calling into your community and how can you continue to lead from where you are to create this community that you want to be part of. Rev. Dr. Gibson: Thank you. So the question actually said what is an effective role for a bystander, and I wrote don't be. Don't be a bystander be an ally. Be someone with some compassion or someone who's willing to stand in solidarity. I come from the conviction as from my tradition that each and every human being is made in the image of God and that is in many traditions and if you're not a person of faith the chances are you still hold and most people I know do, vast majority of humanity holds a sense of the sacredness of each human being and remember that when you're in that position and know that you do not ever want to Approved 18 stand by when that sacredness is being trampled. Something sacred is being trampled when someone experiences that kind of bias, and we do not want to be bystanders. Then we have to learn from these wonderful other people effective ways to move forward but first I think we have to come from the conviction of who we want to be. I believe none of us want to be bystanders when some, a part of God, a part of something sacred is being trampled. Mother Teresa says that most of the ills in the world can come from the root cause that we have forgotten that we belong to each other. So another thing that I just sometimes remember I’m a mom. Would I want, would I want that kind of bias focused against my child? Would I be a bystander when that's going on? No way. Think of anyone you love and think if you would allow them to be the recipient of that kind of bias and then follow what seems like as you said there are times that we need to be the bystanders, the allies, the non-bystanders and need to be the one who address it in some of the effective ways we've talked about. There are other times when we go afterwards and talk to the recipient of the bias. Often we're called to do both. The one thing I would add that I find helpful is when I do talk to the recipient is to say do you wish I would have handled that differently? Because I’m still learning and they may. Yeah, I think that's… Ms. Rabiner: In terms of bystanders there are sort of two thoughts that I have. One is if it's someone you know be a friend. The people that I consider closest to me and the closest of friends are people who can tell me things I don't want to hear. So be that person for as many people in your life that you can be. You're in the perfect position to tell people things that they might not want to hear and frankly nobody wants to be accused of bias. The second thing is don't care what people think about you. No, I’m serious. I know that there's a lot of fear in approaching someone who you may not know about something that you've heard them say. Usually it's at least for me it's well, they're going to think I’m strange and who is this random woman talking to me and telling me not to do this or that? What I said was inappropriate. Don't care. It's your job as someone who is a citizen of humanity and who wants to improve this world to just speak up and say something. With that being said in terms of the future, the second part of the question I think that there's a lot of promise in the Bay Area. I think that we have a lot of diverse communities and people from around the world. But I think that there needs to be a conversation about what it means to be diverse, diverse and what it means to be inclusive. Are we actually interacting with each other because I know I’ve lived in Santa Clara for five years and this is about as diverse of a room I’ve ever been in. I run in pretty diverse circles given the work I do and so my call is to challenge yourself to take a hard look at your community and who you interact with and ask whether or not you’re separate but diverse or diverse and together. If you want to be that second part we need to work and we need to work quickly to maintain that togetherness connected to diversity and we need to speak up and we need to scale it up. I see it I am sure a lot of people probably agree is we're kind of drifting apart in our communities and we come together for this, but do we live together? Do we go to church together? Do we shop at the same grocery store? So think about that and how you can actually address those issues. Ms. Chao: I want to share a story with you about my grandmother. I think this indirectly answers your question and projects to the future. I am my grandmother's granddaughter you can say. My grandmother was born into a very wealthy family in China, but that didn't last Approved 19 very long because a plague swept through her village and everyone died includi ng her parents so she got shipped to a distant relative in a different city and at the age of about 16 she ran away from home because nobody really cared about her, but they wanted her to marry a cousin who was very ill. So she said I'm not going for that. But when she left two World Wars were breaking out. World War I broke out first and then World War II and through her experiences she was discriminated in many different ways by many different people. By the time I got to know her as my grandmother she had survived the bombings in Nanjing, she had traveled to Taiwan in ’49, she had married and had two children, but her husband died so she widowed at the age of 38 and so she was trying to raise a family in a war stricken environment and she was very self-sufficient. When she was my grandmother I watched her and watched what she did. I learned from her that no matter what happens in your environment and things will happen you just have to figure it out and go on and be choosing that it's the right thing to do and the optimistic thing to do. She had her own garden. She brought seeds with her from the old country so she could plant her own vegetables. She put kitchen scraps in a in a barrel before organic gardening was very popular. She used the stomach and innards of fish to fertilize her rose garden so her roses were huge and now in my 40’s I find that I'm doing what she's doing. I have a plot at the community garden behind Rinconada. I planted strawberries and cucumbers and onions for my children yesterday. I find that it doesn't matter what the environment is because the biases or implicit biases always be there, but you've got to have grit. You've got to have the will to survive and to make your environment good and better because you know sometimes people aren’t going to help you because they can't. Not that they don't w ant to. It is really up to yourself to make the best of what you have and navigate yourself towards people who care, a caring community and work together. Ms. McKee-Stovall: I failed to answer the second part of the question, and I really want to have an opportunity to do that. Our Commission has launched a new initiative we started about two years ago and it's called a Human Rights Initiative. What we're working on is getting the County of Santa Clara to become a human rights county and already within the County we're being joined by other cities who are trying to get themselves established as human right cities. The last week of October on Thursday and Friday there is going to be the first Human Rights Conference here in Santa Clara County. It's going to be at Settlers Estate. It's a collaboration between our Commission and any other commission who wants to join us in Santa Clara County, and San Jose State, and the state wide Association of Human Rights Organizations. We're really excited about it. It's a two-day conference. We welcome people to join us. It's going to be a lively conversation for two days. A lot of students are going to be with us as well so that will really make it a lively conversation so pay attention when we send out the announcement in the next couple weeks and please do join us because it will be talking about the future here in Santa Clara County and the human dignity of all the people and how we can approach everyone with that sense of human dignity for everyone. Thank you. Pastor Smith: Can we put our hands together for this fine panel? They did an amazing job for us tonight. Thank you so much. Here goes audience participation. As I stated earlier this is an official meeting of the City of Palo Alto. If you have a question we ask that you please fill out the card that I’m holding. Approved 20 We have Minka and Mary. Can you put your hands up? They will be carrying the mike around. Do we have any questions and did you… Ok, thank you so much. Lars Johnsson? Lars Johnsson: Good evening, thank you very much. I was a little surprised that this panel on bias was mostly focused about adult issues. I think a lot of adults can help themselves. What I’d be interested in is to get your perspective on bias in schools. Many of you probably agree that most of us aren’t born with biases and what subconscious bias does to our children in schools specifically when perpetrated by the teachers by leaning subconsciously and separating different groups based on their expectations of what a child should be capable of not by its true potential. Pastor Smith: Anybody can take the question please. Ms. McKee-Stovall: One of the things that I’m concerned about when I work in schools is that our education seems to be more focused on nationalism than it is on whom we really are as a people and how many different people have contributed to what it is to be human here. You don't find it in the textbooks. Students go and they feel isolated as they go through our K through 12 education process. We haven't spent a lot of time educating teachers on how to deal with implicit bias at all. They're afraid of that. To talk about implicit bias because they think they're going to get it wrong. We have to make an investment in that kind of an education because it doesn't happen when they're becoming a teacher. We have to feel that it's just as important that learning to be a good person, how to be in good relationships is really as critical as learning how to do math and science. Because even when you enter those fields if you cannot relate to other people it takes you a long time to get to the objective. I also think that schools need to be more welcoming of groups like yours, like mine, and many others who really want to go into the schools that are funded. Just give us a little space so that we can work with the kids and work with the teachers. I'm hopeful that's going to happen in the near future. We're just not there yet. We see a lot of suffering among kids right now. I mean it doesn't matter what your ethnicity is. You know it could be class, it could be anything. It could be size, height, speech pattern; you know any kind of ability or marginal disability or significant disability. We're having a hard time and we're still dealing with our children if they're not in that perfect little category. What I think I’m saying to you is that we've got to make the commitment. We've got to say to schools that this is as important as them learning because how they relate to each other is critical if we're going to be successful. And we're just not there yet. Pastor Smith: Thank you. We're just going to ask one panelist to answer since we're short on time. Can we get Melissa Kirven. Melissa Kirven: I agree with what Lars just said because I was actually going to bring up the same issue that our most vulnerable are our children and if it… I’m more concerned less with how the children deal with each other, but with how the teachers deal with the children because that sets the tone. I spoke with somebody before the program began today about the fact that the people who are here are not necessarily the ones who need to hear this. It's all the rest in our community who are not here. I don't know if there's anybody here from the Palo Alto Police Department (PAPD)? In general I think they've done well, but there are issues and it came out one day in my church service you know one person brought up Approved 21 something and then another and then another and another and there are so many stories about people being ill-treated by our PAPD. I don't know if you have any recommendations, but I’m thinking more training for the school administrators, for our Police Department. But then how do we get into the wider community? To the people who aren’t here tonight? Pastor Smith: Anybody want to field that? Ms Chao: I don't represent the Police Department, but I would say that there are changes that are happening already. I can speak to at least one specific example. In my son's sixth grade class the English teacher had them read a book called Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry and it's a book about the Deep South and it was a six-week project where the students were to first read the book and then discussed in different ways and then asked to write small essays. Then after the six weeks ended the teacher invited parents to come in to the classroom and have a discussion about race issues because it was very uncomfortable that she was even teaching this book much less have parent participation, but you know the result was a lot of people came forward and wanted to talk about this. They didn't know if it was ok to talk to the teacher about this but when the teacher actually brought it up and communicated to the parent community it was very well received. I do think that there are changes that are happening. I'm not sure that it's happening at every school but certainly there are pockets and if you find those pockets get involved. Go do something. Make it more widespread. Pastor Smith: Thank you so much. I'm going to ask that both the panelists and the questionnaires to keep their comments to about one minute to two minutes just because we want to allow everybody to have a chance to speak. Patricia Griffin: Hi. I can appreciate making inclusion a practice and that kind of private work and reflecting and looking at our own implicit bias; however in a sense that feels a little too focused on the individuals. If you are practicing usually you have a Sangha, a community to express your thoughts then you know, hey well, the other day I did this and then this happened. So it's always about sharing because we're not human alone. We are not in this alone and it's manifest in our laws. It's manifest in our institutions, etcetera, and etcetera. This is our policies. This is where it's manifest. So my question is taking this from the private individual work to then the Sangha, the community, how then can people work together on a community policy, on a community because there is where the rubber hits the road; that's when we, it comes out. That's when we can be human. Implicit bias also is just how we learn and navigate the world, but when we're making something together to make a more equitable policy to make a more equitable law, yeah. That's where I’m kind of and I think. Pastor Smith: Anybody want to deal with the policy question? Ms. Lazarus: I’ll go back for a moment to Hal Saunders, a Sustained Dialogue founder who said that governments can create, only governments can create treaties, only people can create peace so what is the role? I think it's still the both and let’s get the people who are making these policies to be held accountable and aware on what is your worldview? How is that impacting the policies you're creating? Is there an extra layer, an extra step to go Approved 22 through an empathy building process to figure out whose voice is not in the room or whose voices are in the room and therefore what perspectives may or may not be missing. I think i t still comes down to the people making that the new norm so would love to talk with you afterwards about where you see that, where is your community of practice and whether that's at your Sangha or in your workplace or are you now creating it, investing a chunk of time whether it's a one day or three days or an off-site saying this is going to be our new norm and then how will we implement that moving forward so that when you're in the midst of making the new policy everyone knows where this is coming from to be able to really build and strengthen those muscles. Pastor Smith: Thank you so much. Lynn Huidekoper: Hi, my name’s Lynn Huidekoper, and I tell people just call me Lynn because my last name is complicated. I'm really glad to see the City Council Members and the Palo Alto HRC addressing this topic because a couple years ago I was involved with the homeless and there was a ban against the homeless in their cars and the HRC never did a forum on it. I think we could have prevented the ban had the HRC addressed the issue with the neighbors and the homeless themselves. I’ve noticed in Palo Alto Weekly which does fabulous coverage, Sue Dremann in particular, that the HRC is running a whole series of working with the various groups. So I’m hoping that our name on the list here that we'll all be apprised of when the next one was and hopefully they will address every ethnic group, cultural group in Palo Alto because it's mainly a wealthy white population. Pastor Smith: Thank you so much Lynn. Can we get Kate? Kate Pynoos: I thought that Dr. Brown when you brought up that this work has to be done in sort of an intimate and personal way; so true, but also very daunting because fostering these positive conversations among a lot of people is, seems more efficient I guess, but way harder. I think that people are and I think that what everyone brought up this evening about being courageous is, is also very important because I find so often that people are scared of talking about these subjects because they are sort of aware of this concept of an implicit bias, therefore are very scared of showing their own implicit bias. This is probably not a good question because there's probably no good answer, how do we foster these conversations on a much larger scale and not just when someone displays their implicit bias because people do get defensive and maybe we want to start talking about it at an earlier stage whether that is in an elementary school, but also among adults as well. So how do we have more conversations like this? Dr. Brown: I want to say one thing briefly that I’d like to hear what my panelists who have been doing this out in the world. There's a counter narrative that we would do well to actively dispute and it's a narrative that says being sensitive to these issues is just being politically correct, right? I think that's very dangerous, and I think actively combating that and arguing that in our more diverse society try to learn more about communities and engage with them in a positive way that's just being a good member of the community and it's not being politically correct because in fact it is about being honest and learning and growing and accepting that we may not know everything and we may be wrong. I’m really concerned about that narrative and how popular it is right now because I think it's part of a larger Approved 23 message to call into question efforts to create a more socially just society and community. I think combating that narrative is really important. Pastor Brown: Thank you so much. Eunice Lee. Eunice Lee: Hi, so my question deals with starting a conversation and open dialogue with someone. Let's say that you, you now muster up the courage to begin a dialogue with someone who is projecting their unconscious biases that's having a negative impact on you or somebody that you know. But the person that you want to start the conversation with is either in denial about these unconscious biases or unwilling to start this conversation. Do you have any thoughts or input to share with us in terms of how we can help kick start that conversation and begin that honest dialogue? Dr. Brown: Not everyone is going to be on board and that's just truth of the matter so several of us have mentioned language that I think can help you in engaging that person, but I think we have to accept that some people are just not going to want to engage with you. You can only do what you can. If it doesn't work then I think you have to accept that and try to learn as much as you can from it, but that's a message from my colleague Dereca Blackmon too, that not everyone is going to be able to join you on this journey. Ms. McKee-Stovall: I also can tell you there are miracles. I've had really difficult conversations with people who just could not take this information in and a year or two later I see the person and suddenly they tell me thank you, thank you for having that conversation with me. I could actually tell you it's happened to me so many times. So it may not stick in the moment. They'll be in denial. They’ll fight you. But because you are were truthful and compassionate in sharing that truth it lingers in the body somehow. It may not stay in the rational mind that's what we want to kick it out, but somehow it penetrates the heart, it lingers in the body and it just resonates there. And then the work is done. Rev. Dr. Gibson: I was just going to echo here and say plant the seed and then you have to have some faith, but go ahead and plant the seed. Do it with compassion, but plant the seed and you're right people come back later. You never know, five years later. Pastor Smith: Thank you. And we have one last question form Mariangela. Mariangela Smania: I know we live in many countries and now I’m here, and I find this a very unique community, but the numbers in the election it scares me. I feel like in a bubble in a way. So the numbers tells me I do live here, but there is something here that I don't know and is out there and maybe now we are more open to say because the numbers are showing and those discussions I think are very important and the other thing it's I know; two questions. May I? The other one is I know is inside this community we see a lot of ghost houses. So people are investing, but they are not investing their lives in the community. The ghost houses will change the community and they are already changing so what you we can do about it? You know that’s scary as well as the election. Pastor Smith: Thank you so much. Ms. Rabiner: What do you mean by ghost houses? Like foreign investors? Approved 24 Mariangela Smania: People invest in the houses but they don’t actually live in them. So they call them ghost houses. Lisa Craig: Can I just add something quickly to that? Pastor Smith: Yes, but you have to fill out a card. Promise me please. Lisa Craig: Yeah, also just to add to the housing like the one two punch that has happened to the African-American community with the predatory lending, with the foreclosure crisis, and now with the rents in this area just you know, skyrocketing. So a lot of people are getting pushed into the Central Valley and we're losing the diversity there. Pastor Smith: Thank you so much. Stephanie, right up your alley. Ms. Rabiner: Yes, this is very true and it's happening all over the Bay Area and we see it regularly and I think the way that you addressed that is so the way people have been thinking about that question is they've been saying affordable housing, affordable housing, affordable housing. Affordable housing isn't coming any time soon or it's just not coming soon enough and so how do you preserve what we have now? At least what we have left of what that diversity is before all goes away. People come from different schools of thoughts, but I think that there needs to be a conversation about how to address displacement on the community level. Some people say rent stabilization, some people say just cause eviction, some people say let's do smaller affordable housing projects, some people say let's have an ordinance where landlords have to take a Section 8 voucher. I mean it's really community driven, but if you're interested in preserving what diversity is left in your community you have to address displacement now because right now what we're seeing is everybody's fleeing to South San Jose. They're fleeing further south. They're fleeing out into the Valley and there's going to come a point where we've re-ghettoized our population and it's already starting to happen. I mean I can't tell you what to do, but I can tell you where to start. Pastor Smith: Well, can we thank our panelists Palo Alto? I just want to say all of this comes with a lot of work. I’d like to recognize a few people: Shelly Gordon from the HRC, Rabbi Sheldon Lewis, raise your hand. Minka and the person who really drove this process, Valerie Stinger. I’d like to bring up Councilman Cory Wolbach. He's going to close us out this evening, but Palo Alto you asked a question how the conversation gets wider. You leave this room and you tell somebody and you show courage and having hard conversations at the soccer field, at Peet's, Philz, what’s the other one? Blue Bottle. But have those conversations because if good people don't talk then who will? Oh, please, please, please. Ted, he is a student at Palo Alto High School (Paly), he did an amazing job on this video. I want you to go see this video. I saw it today for the first time and when you hear these stories I think it will crystallize what we're talking about tonight. Cory Wolbach, Palo Alto City Council Member: Thank you, and let's hear another round of applause for Pastor Smith and let's also give it up for all of our panelists and our amazing keynote Dr. Brown. I know we already said it, but once again for Valerie, the HRC, and their staff of course Minka and Mary, they just do a wonderful… Approved 25 I don't want to take a whole lot of time. We've had a lot of great comments here tonight. I've learned a ton, but I just want to talk about a couple quick things: humility, empathy, and next steps. When it comes to humility just a couple thoughts on this, one is an old story about apocryphal probably about Zen master. A guy goes to see a Zen master to learn about Zen. Sits down, they have tea and the Zen master fills the guys’ tea cup and they're talking, they’re talk and then before the guys had any of his tea the Zen master pulls out the tea, the teapot, starts pouring more tea in and more tea in. It just starts pouring all over the table and the guy says well, what are you doing? My cup's already full. He says well, how can I teach about Zen if your cup's already full. So another approach, you know so-called western science and I’m a huge fan of science and no I’m not Buddhist myself, but in science, science really is all about humility. It's all about intellectual humility. There is an implicit humility in science both a prefix and a suffix. The prefix in science that's implicit is based on the current research and then whatever you're saying. There's also an implicit suffix that's humble which is and I could be wrong. You know future research might prove me wrong, my research or somebody else and I invite them to go do that. So there's an implicit humility at the start and at the end of every scientific statement, of every piece of scientific research. You know how many people here have ever heard somebody say we heard a little bit about this before. How many people here have heard somebody complain about some injustice they suffered or some micro aggression or something that they thought they were feeling and you thought man, it's all in their head. I've done it too. Well, everything's in our head. I mean. If I said after this election this fall when Trump gets elected America's going to be great again and a lot of you are going to get what's coming. If I were to say something like that you’d probably feel something. Oh, but it's all in your head and no that's not something I would actually say with seriousness; just a thought experiment so before you quote me on it. But the point is you've got to be humble, right? Every tradition teaches us that. Now, when it comes to empathy how do we do that? You know how do we develop empathy? I think that humility helps lead to that. I think it's important that we're humble and that we're empathetic about ourselves. Recognizing that we're not perfect, heard about that tonight. Being empathetic about the people we interact with. Empathetic about the people we observe. If we’re the third party bystander who's about to become an upstander to be empathetic about the person who we perceive is committing a micro aggression or an overt aggression and to be empathetic about the person who might need a, might need a friend. But to recognize it's an old quote and I can't remember who originally said it, but be kind to everyone you meet because they're all carrying a heavy burden. Me, you, the third pe rson, the fourth person they're talking to, all of us. As I was listening tonight I was putting together like a flow chart that if we are consciously culturally humble that can lead us to be a little bit more open and that can lead us to a little bit of empathy because we can see the humanity in other people and if we see that humanity and we act based on recognizing that humanity hopefully we can transcend our bias. Now as far as next steps we've all been invited to you know respond to those questions in your pamphlet. There are a bunch of sticky notes over here and boards. So before you leave I’d encourage you please fill one out. You don't have to put your name on it. It can be anonymous. Answer any of those questions that you want and you can al so on a sticky note Approved 26 if you want to, you can also put down if you an idea for a future forum similar to this that could be hosted by the HRC. They're very interested in hearing your thoughts on what the next topic or two topics could be and you can either put that up or you can give it to any member of the HRC. But I’ll tell you right now what I’m going to put on my note, one questions is I hope for Palo Alto and I hope Palo Alto will become a place where we courageously look into the mirror of introspection. The next step after you put the sticky note up go out there, do some introspection, be self-aware, and lead from where you are. By the way one last thank you; thank you for coming and being the best of Palo Alto. ADJOURNMENT 1. The meeting adjourned at 9:10 pm