START HERE: Learn about OTC!

Welcome to the community!

This introductory episode introduces listeners to the premise of Our True Colors. In this opening episode, I discuss terms and concepts surrounding issues of race. The links below are here for your reference and to learn more.

Want to be a guest? Click this link to send me your thoughts on how you could add to the convo as a guest on the show!

I encourage you to reach out to me and share your thoughts! What topics would you like to discuss? Do you have some feedback? Would you like to respond to an episode? Reach out with a direct text.

Link further exploration:

• Race as a Social Construct
• Human Genome Project
• Race, Ethnicity, and Culture with Jelly Beans
• Eugenics and Scientific Racism
• Biden Administration's Proposal for Updated Census Data Collection
• Honorary Whiteness - Eduardo Bonilla-Silva
• Colonialism
• Culture
• Being a Third Culture Kid
• Intersectionality
• Blumenbach and "Caucasian"
• More on Blumenbach and the term "Caucasian"
• The Construction of Race and Racism

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If this is your first time with OTC, check out EPISODE 1: START HERE for more background on the show.

Our True Colors is sponsored by True Culture Coaching & Consulting. Head to our website to find out how True Culture Coaching and Consulting can support you and your organization, and subscribe to our LinkedIn Newsletter, The Culture Clinic, for more great content. You can find us at truecultureconsulting.com where you can also contact us to schedule a free consultation.

Transcript

00:06 Welcome to Our True Colors, hosted by Shawna Gann. Join her as she explores the challenges of being a racial, racial, and ethnic enigma, and a cultural conundrum. Let's dive in.

00:21 Hello, and welcome to Our True Colors. I'm so glad that you're here. Thanks for joining the conversation. I'm your host, Dr. Shawna Gann, business psychologist and certified diversity executive. I'm also the founder and CEO of True Culture Coaching and Consulting, a firm that uses Organizational Psychology and learning theory to support you and your efforts in strengthening your workplace culture. I'm not a clinical psychologist though, and you should know that while we'll discuss societal trends and cultural norms on the show, I'm also not a sociologist. I'm here as your host to facilitate conversations about being racially ambiguous or in some way being connected to the community of folks who identify this way. Along with my co-hosts, we'll have guests who come on to share their lived experiences with us, or we'll invite specialists in fields like psychology, sociology, or other areas that can help us unpack our varying identities whether biracial, multiracial, multiethnic, or monoracial. That way, we can have a solid foundation on which to learn about each other and to better understand our varying perspectives. After all, the multiracial population is currently the fastest growing population in the US. There was a 276% increase in people self-reporting as multiracial, between the 2010 and the 2020 US census—that's a growth from 9 million to 33 million people. That's pretty significant, y'all.

01:51 The purpose of this "Start Here" episode of Our True Colors, or OTC, is to give you an idea of what to expect on this journey. We'll use this episode to break down some common terms you'll hear throughout the seasons, just to have some kind of baseline to work from. It's important to note that language is always changing, just as society continues to change. So that may mean some updates now and then, but for now, this gives us a place to start. Before we dive in all the way, I have another quick note for you. Some of the earlier episodes of season one refer to the show as Tribe and True. That was the previous name of Our True Colors. You can find out more about the story behind the switch to OTC in season two, in the episode called "What's in a Name?" Check it out. Alright, so let's get on into it. Our True Colors is meant to be a platform to share thoughts and express ideas about anything and everything having to do with being someone who might identify as or be regarded as being racially, ethnically, and culturally ambiguous. This ambiguity doesn't necessarily translate into being biracial, multiracial, or mixed, although we do talk about that quite a bit. This show is for folks who might identify in that way, of course, but maybe you're someone who's in a position to shape workplace culture, like someone in senior leadership or human resources. Or maybe you work in DEI. With the population of multiracial people growing so quickly, I'd say for the workplace, this is pretty relevant. So you might find value in understanding people who identify in this way. Perhaps you are in the world of academia and you're looking to add to your research, or honestly, maybe you just want to hang out with us and learn about the experiences of people who are different from yourself. The bottom line is this: you are all welcome here, whatever your reason.

Maybe we should talk about what Our True Colors is not. It's okay, and it's natural, to vent or complain about lived experiences that have impacted us in some negative way. But this show isn't a place to put down others, whether as a group or as individuals. OTC is intended to be a source of positive energy and a place of support where we can come and welcome each other's thoughts and opinions in the spirit of inclusion and learning. It's definitely not meant to be an echo chamber. It's very important to me that listeners joining me have a sense of belonging here. That's the main premise of the show. Every voice is welcome here, even those who respectfully disagree and offer a different opinion and perspective to consider. Especially that. Honestly, how would we grow otherwise?

04:34 I keep saying the term racially ambiguous, but what does that actually mean? Likely due to the history of race in the US, many folks think of race as a binary between black and white, and the other racial identities sometimes get attention and sometimes don't. Even as an abstract concept, race is not as simple as black and white, literally or figuratively. And on this show, we don't think of it as being black or white or even black and white. Racial ambiguity is not code for mixed either. The word ambiguous means unclear or inexact, or according to Lexico, it means being open to more than one interpretation. I like that definition because it really gets to the heart of it. Not only do people try to perceive others and categorize them into the race buckets that they've learned, but we may even change the way we see ourselves. How are we interpreting races? Like most folks, I am still on my identity journey. Identity is fluid and malleable, so I think of it as an ongoing journey and I worry less about the actual destination. For me, I describe myself as racially ambiguous. I don't identify as being biracial or multiracial per se. In racial terms, I tend to describe myself as being a person who is monoracial with a rich, multiethnic heritage, which includes Louisiana Creole. You can learn more about that in season two's episode called "Am Gumbo Baby." You might be perceived as ethnically or racially ambiguous if people tend to have a hard time pinpointing your racial ancestry. You might perceive someone else as being racially or ethnically ambiguous when you find yourself wondering what they are, or maybe where they're from. Have you ever asked anyone or perhaps been asked any questions like these?

06:26 What are you? How mixed are you? What's your ethnicity? What's your background? Do you always have a tan? What are you mixed with? Where are you from originally?

06:43 Those questions don't necessarily come from a place of malicious intent, or even prejudice or racism. Many people don't even realize that in asking questions like that, they might be making people feel a sense of otherness and alienation, pointing out how they're different somehow than the norm. Some folks really don't register that they could be coming off as rude or intrusive.

Most of the time, people aren't just coming from a place of curiosity. It's human nature, after all, to be curious. And we're wired that way. We're wired to categorize people and things. It's a survival mechanism we developed to distinguish between what's harmful and what's beneficial to us.

However, categorizing people becomes problematic when there are biases that go unchecked, and that leads to prejudice and discrimination, or even unintended disparate treatment. This mindset could foster harmful in-group and out-group dynamics and perpetuate essentialism and stereotypes. In other words, lumping individuals into biased categories without considering their unique identities. Yeah, that gets to be problematic.

One of the best ways to check our biases is to ask ourselves the simple three-letter word: why? Why am I making this decision about this person or this group? Why have I come to this conclusion about this person or group? Why have I decided to take this action regarding this person or this group? In my opinion, the answers to those questions and questions like that should have nothing to do with their racial or ethnic category or any other personal identity that they hold unless there is a very specific, relevant, and intentional reason to consider those characteristics.

You know how we can avoid the traps of essentialism and stereotypes? By spending more time with people who are different from us. And that's what we're aiming to do on the show. Hear the voices and perspectives from people who might be able to relate to us but who are different from us. Though I'm your host, OTC isn't meant to be just my voice. It's yours too.

I fully invite you as a listener to join the community and extend these conversations. If you haven't already, you should definitely subscribe to the show and follow on social media. You can also follow me and True Culture on LinkedIn as well, if you like. There are links in the show notes for that too. But here's what I'm getting at: your questions, feedback, your thoughts and ideas that you send me. I plan to integrate these into our discussions on the show, so please feel free to reach out however you'd like. As a matter of fact, you can send me a text directly from the link in the show notes.

09:27 Earlier I mentioned my co-hosts that will join me every season. I invite a new co-host, someone who can relate to the experiences that we talk about but who also offers perspectives that are different from mine in some way. In season one, you'll meet my co-host Shannon Edwards. She identifies as biracial with one Black parent and one White parent. Unlike me, I don't have parents of different races. Shannon and I are of different generational cohorts too, which is another way that we compared some of our lived experiences.

As for season two, my older brother, Jason Mitchum, joined as my co-host. We didn't grow up together, so we don't share childhood memories and a lot of lived experiences. But he also brings a different gender perspective to the conversation. In season three, you can hear different points of view from my Canadian co-host, Carmen Watson. I met Carmen in the previous season, season two, when she recounted her family's story of discovery and reunion. You should definitely check it out.

Yolandie Hamilton is my co-host from season four. She is of Jamaican and Polish descent and lives in a small town in Michigan, as opposed to where I live in the DC metro area. This season, we're mixing it up a bit. For season five, I'll have two co-hosts contributing to the conversation. Kat Aragon is the daughter of a Filipino woman and a White father. She works in the beauty industry, working toward the mission of empowering women of color by amplifying their voices and advocating for representation in the industry.

You'll also meet Rachel Sadler in season five. She describes her mother as Black and Indigenous, and her father as White with Hungarian ancestry. As a former classroom teacher and school leader, Rachel advocates for educational equity with the belief that education can start to break the cycle of generational poverty.

So, I've used words like multiracial, mixed race, racial ambiguity, and so on. But there are some other terms I'd like to break down. We should probably get down to the most obvious yet most nebulous concept in the terms of the show: the social construct of race. But before we can talk about race, we need to make sure that we're on the same page about social constructs.

A social construct is an idea or a concept that is literally created and maintained by society or in some culture. This is done through collective agreement and social practices rather than being natural or inherent in some aspect of the world. It's like the unspoken rules that people in society abide by. Having these constructs can be helpful. It can help us organize and understand things and give meaning to the human experience and our interactions.

A construct can't exist unless people create it. It usually arises from beliefs and values that are held and can only be sustained when society goes along with them. Also, they can change over time since societal norms are fluid. What was accepted and practiced yesterday may not be the case for tomorrow. The one thing that I really want to hammer home about social constructs is that they are not rooted in nature or biology.

Here are a few examples of social constructs to think about. Gender is one. Gender roles and identities are shaped by societal norms and expectations about behaviors, activities, and attributes that are considered appropriate for boys and girls or men and women. And how about other genders? How does that come into play?

The institution of marriage is another one. Marriage, including its rules, significance, and forms, varies across cultures and has evolved over time. It's shaped by social, religious, and legal constructs. Ideas about what's considered to be attractive or beautiful is another example of a construct that's social. It's shaped by cultural norms and media representations. These standards or these ideas can change over time. They also differ across societies and cultures.

The way time is measured and structured, like calendars, work hours, even age—like what's considered old or young—those are social constructs too. In some ways, social constructs of time help us organize our daily life and societal functions. This one is a little different than the others I've mentioned because it's tangentially connected to natural laws, since lunar cycles are the basis for our months. The word "moon" is literally the root of the word "month." But still, the moon doesn't care if we define a month as 28 days or 31 days. The moon is going to moon whether we have a calendar or not.

And now it's time to get to the social construct we address most on this show: race. Sometimes people use the word race interchangeably with ancestry, ethnicity, nationality, or culture, but they're not the same. I'll show you how these other terms compare to the concept of race. Earlier, I told you about my Creole background, and I mentioned that you can learn more about that in a previous episode. I think it could be kind of fun to use the analogy of gumbo to talk about this. So let's roll with that.

Let's start with ancestry. Ancestry is simply your family lineage, your roots. It's like your family tree that shows your predecessors, your ancestors, and where they came from. If you've ever used a service like Ancestry DNA or 23andMe, you probably noticed that the results don't actually put you in racial categories. Instead, they show you where your ancestors likely came from geographically.

Now, because of the historical creation of racial categories and the adoption of using these categories in the US and some other places around the world, you might be tempted to map these geographic places onto your idea of race, equating these places to races. But I caution against that, because as we're discussing, race isn't an actual thing. It's not based on anything scientific. It's a construct.

Alright, so let's try to apply my gumbo analogy here. Okay, so ancestry is like the roux, the base of the gumbo. It's made with flour and some kind of fat. The roux represents your genetic heritage, a combination of your parents' ancestry, and so on, that goes back generations. Just like the type of fat and the flour that you use, and the proportions of those things can influence the texture and the thickness of the roux. Your ancestry can influence your physical traits, called your phenotypes, your facial features, and so on.

15:58 Ethnicity builds on ancestry. It can be influenced by your ancestry, but it's not the same thing. Someone can have mixed ancestry but identify with a single ethnicity. Ethnicity represents your cultural heritage, including the traditions, languages, and customs of your ancestors' ethnic group.

Using the gumbo analogy, ethnicity is like the holy trinity of vegetables in gumbo: onions, bell peppers, and celery. These chopped veggies add a distinct flavor and aroma to the dish. It's like the specific seasoning that comes from your family's background.

Nationality is your legal connection to a country. Usually, it's where you were born, but more importantly, it's where you hold citizenship. It has nothing to do with race or ethnicity. It's a legal status.

In terms of gumbo as a stew, consider that there's a whole world of stews out there. You could have a rich Japanese miso stew, a hearty Moroccan tagine, or a spicy Thai tom yum. These stews come from specific places. Similarly, nationality refers to your legal citizenship in a particular country but also reflects the broader cultural identity associated with that nation. It often influences the primary language used in everyday life, what you might see on street signs, how people conduct business, and other broad customs that reflect the shared political and social history of that nation.

Speaking of broader customs associated with nationality, that brings us to culture, which is the broadest term. Culture encompasses the shared beliefs, values, and practices of a group of people. It includes things like art, music, food, social norms, and communication styles.

Culture can be influenced by ethnicity and even nationality but isn't limited to those. People from different ethnicities can share a culture, especially in situations like immigration or globalization. Culture is the most fluid of these concepts, constantly adapting and borrowing elements from other cultures.

For our analogy, consider the methods used to prepare gumbo. The ingredients alone don't make the recipe. Differences in preparation style and method can change the flavor profiles and texture. Similarly, culture encompasses the shared beliefs, values, and practices of a group, including the traditions and practices passed down through generations. It could even be generations of people in a workplace.

Culture shapes the daily lives, behaviors, and values within a group or community. Let's delve a bit deeper into culture. I want to discuss the idea of being a "third culture person." You might have heard this term as "third culture kid" before. This could refer to people working in the Foreign Service or military, or even children of expats who have lived in various cultural settings throughout their lives.

Usually, this term refers to the formative or developmental years of childhood, hence "third culture kids." But why is it called "third culture"? The first culture is the one of your parents or the people who raised you, usually coming from their place of origin. The second is the current location, different from the place of origin. Remember, "current" can change, hence the fluid part. Today you could be in one place, and two years from now somewhere else.

The third culture is the combination of these influences, including cultures from several places over time. Does that make sense?

Now that we've looked at the differences between ancestry, ethnicity, nationality, and culture, consider this puzzler: How would you describe a person with African ancestry who holds a US passport, practices typical American traditions, but lives in Australia? Let that idea sink in.

Okay, now that we know these words aren't all interchangeable, let's get back to the concept of race.

21:15

Earlier, when I was discussing ancestry and the use of apps and programs like Ancestry DNA and 23andMe to show where people's ancestors may have come from, I mentioned that people might be tempted to map those locations onto their understanding of race. I urged caution against that.

So, let's revisit that discussion. I've stated that race is a social construct. This means it groups people based on perceived physical characteristics like skin color, hair texture, facial features, and so on. You might hear me talk about these physical traits as phenotypes. When I say someone presents phenotypically in a certain way, I mean how they look, not how they are purposefully portraying themselves.

The American Sociological Association defines race as referring to physical differences that groups and cultures consider socially significant. The key word here is "socially." It's important to understand that these categories are not based on biology. They are more about history and social factors rather than what's in our genes. To learn more, check out the Human Genome Project—there's a link in the show notes.

Basically, it comes down to this: no matter the color of your skin, the shape of your facial features, or the texture of your hair, you're a human being. We all have so much more in common than we realize.

That said, I still use the term "race" in conversation sometimes. For example, I might say someone is racialized as white or racialized as [fill in the blank]. While I use the word race in conversation because it's how we've come to communicate about these things, I want you to know that my use of the term doesn't mean I subscribe to the ideals of the construct.

Another quick note: some people think that naming a race or using terms like black or white to describe someone is inherently racist. It's not. Yes, race is a construct, but simply describing someone in these ways isn't racist.

Now, speaking of using descriptors, let’s talk about terms like black versus African American or white versus Caucasian. You can use whichever term you prefer. Of course, there are real words that are considered disrespectful or outright slurs, and for obvious reasons, I'm not going to cover those here. But there aren’t any hard rules about whether you should say Black or African American, or white or Caucasian. It really comes down to personal preference, sometimes influenced by geography.

For me, I mostly use the terms black or white to describe people with African ancestry or those with European ancestry. I do occasionally use African American, but it depends on the situation. Not every Black person identifies with Africa, even if they are part of the African diaspora. Some people resonate more with a specific place or part of their heritage, which, in a way, defies the social construct.

The same rationale applies to why I use "white" versus "Caucasian." To understand this, let’s dive into a bit of history.

Colonization began in the 1400s, but let’s focus on the 1700s and 1800s for this discussion. During this time, anthropology and ethnography emerged as disciplines, and the term "Caucasian" was coined by Johan Blumenbach, an anthropologist. He named people from the Caucasus region (between Russia, Georgia, Armenia, etc.) "Caucasians" and categorized them as one of five groups.

Blumenbach’s other categories were Mongolian (for East Asians), Malayan (for Southeast Asian or Pacific Islander ancestry), Ethiopian (for Sub-Saharan Africans), and American (for indigenous peoples of the Americas). He admitted that these classifications were somewhat arbitrary, stating that "all national differences in the form and color of the human body run so insensibly by so many shades and transitions one into the other, that it is impossible to separate them by any but very arbitrary limits."

While Blumenbach was involved in classifying people, the concept of social hierarchy wasn’t fully developed yet. However, it did emerge later. Other anthropologists, such as J.C. Pritchard and William Winwood Reade, were developing ideas about racial superiority. Reade, for instance, wrote that Africans would "probably become extinct" and illustrated a belief in the superiority of certain races.

In 1866, Frederick Farage categorized people into "savage," "semi-civilized," and "civilized" groups. He considered most people of color as "savage," with the exception of the Chinese, whom he deemed "semi-civilized." The "civilized" group was reserved for Europeans, Aryans, and Semitic people.

Eugenics, the practice of selective breeding to improve a population, was advocated by those who believed in creating a "superior" race. German Nazis later adopted these eugenics theories, which had been influenced by American models. By the early 1900s, eugenics was taught in American colleges as a legitimate science.

These arbitrary categories highlight the invention of the concept of race as a social construct. In other words, the categories were created to justify certain groups as "civilized" or "superior."

30:38
They justified it all by saying it was God's will. They reasoned that they were granted the gift from God as manifest destiny to rule superior over the land. It's so deep, y'all. Listen, people are just people. But when folks try to use their idea of God to justify their actions based on who they consider to be better than others, to stratify people, attach value, and even decide who can be considered a full person at all, you know what I'm getting at, right? The rest is history. And unfortunately, it's also a lot of our present. Science has proven that there are zero genetic markers to determine differences in race, let alone superiority. There never was such a thing. But some of those anthropologists back in the day, observing people in different places, decided that people had different aptitudes and values. And that, my friends, is how race and therefore racism were born. It was constructed to serve social interests.

31:50
There are many more topics and terms to explore on the show. I only have one more to address in this particular episode, though. So let's briefly talk about intersectionality. Intersectionality, coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw in the 1980s, focuses on our multifaceted selves. Specifically, it examines the intersections of identities held by groups that have been marginalized or sidelined in society. People with marginalized identities are frequently excluded from many aspects of society because of their race, gender, sexual orientation, or other factors. Intersectionality highlights how these intersecting identities lead to distinct and often more severe forms of discrimination.

32:45
Well, that's what we have for now, folks, just to get things started. Now that I've shared some of my thoughts and offered some foundational concepts for you to consider, I invite you to dive in. The episodes aren't in any particular order, so choose your own adventure. Pick what speaks to you and join the conversation. If you haven't already, don't forget to subscribe to the show so that you never miss an episode. And please do send me your thoughts, questions, ideas, and responses to the show. You can use the link in the show notes to send me a text or find and follow me on social media. Come along on the journey, y'all. I am so thrilled to have you here. In the meantime, be kind, be well, and be safe out there. And as always, spread a little sunshine by finding a way to make someone feel welcome. Take care, friends. Talk to you soon.

33:49
You've been listening to "Our True Colors."