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Who thinks that they can subdue Leviathan? Strength resides in its neck; dismay goes before it. It is without fear. It looks down on all who are haughty; it is king over all who are proud. These words inspired PJ Wehry to create Chasing Leviathan. Chasing Leviathan was born out of two ideals: that truth is worth pursuing but will never be subjugated, and the discipline of listening is one of the most important habits anyone can develop. Every episode is a dialogue, a journey into the depths of a meaningful question explored through the lens of personal experience or professional expertise.
PJ (00:05.183)
Hello and welcome to Chasing the Viathan. I'm your host PJ Weary and I'm here today with Dr. Sarita Srivastava and we're talking about her book, Are You Calling Me a Racist? And she is the Dean at the Ontario College of Art and Design for Liberal Arts and Sciences and Interdisciplinary Studies. Dr. Srivastava, wonderful to have you on today.
Sarita (00:25.838)
Thank you so much.
PJ (00:29.203)
So tell me why this book, when you, like what led you, first off, great title, immediately grabbed my interest. Are you calling me a racist? Hilarious. Why this book? Why did you feel the need to write this? Why did you, I mean, I think in our current cultural climate, like the need for it is obvious, but I would love to hear kind of how this project came about.
Sarita (00:54.862)
So I was an activist many years ago working in the environmental movement. And there, and actually every organization I've worked in, whether it's universities, whether it's community organizations, for many years, the question always comes up, what do we do about racism, anti -racism, equity, diversity? And the answer...
for many years across all those organizations and across all those spaces is we need an anti -racist workshop. We need to educate ourselves. We need to talk about it more. We need to get together. We need to get a higher facilitator. We need to write a policy. And to my surprise, that answer hasn't changed very much for a long time. And in fact, in 2020, after the murder of George Floyd, its interest in this topic revived again. We had a wave of
of interest in anti -racism and racism again. Once again, this became the go -to strategy for organizations. What can we do about this problem? And often it's call in a facilitator, let's have an anti -racist workshop. And what I learned in my research, what I saw, what I observed, you know, starting out is that these aren't really very effective practices. So...
I saw that first as an activist. I saw that first that what actually happens in those organizations, in those moments, in those workshops is people get defensive. They say, are you calling me a racist? So that's a line. I didn't make that up. That's a line from the interviews. It's a common kind of reaction. It could be, you can say it in so many tones of voices. You could say it in a really sad, upset, hurt voice. You could say it in a really angry defensive voice.
but it's always about the individual reaction, individual response. And that when I heard and saw the kinds of things that were happening in anti -racist workshops and in organizations, the inability to actually make a difference or to make a change, I wanted to understand the reasons behind it. Why is it that in organizations where people are there because they believe in making a difference, because they believe in
Sarita (03:11.694)
making the world a better place because they're progressive, they believe in justice, social justice, environmental justice, and so on, or because they believe in education and schools, universities, places where people feel that they're good people, they're there to do good. Why is it in those places that it's so difficult still to make change on these questions of equity, diversity, anti -racism, whatever word you want to use. And the book is...
focused on the dynamics around race and anti -racism, but much of the analysis and the practices apply to diversity in general, whether we're talking about race or gender or sexuality and ability and so on. The kinds of practices that organizations are trying to do that so often the answer is, well, we have to look at ourselves as individuals. There's a problem with us. We have to learn more. We have to feel differently. We have to, so on, as individuals, look inside ourselves, teach ourselves more.
or that there's a moral flaw. So it's either learn more or that there's something wrong with how we feel. So it's a personal, it always comes back to the individual. That racism, for example, is a personal trait, a personal failing, a place of evil even, you're a bad person, or that you just don't know enough, you're ignorant. So there's only the two positions.
that people go to as they're thinking about what racism means often. It's a go -to way of thinking about racism. It's a personal trait, personal failing. It's because of ignorance or because of a moral failing. So either you don't know enough and therefore you're ignorant, or if you know better than you're an evil person. There's very few other positions available for thinking about this when you talk about individuals.
when you shift to thinking about racism in a different way, in a systemic way, in an organizational way, in the sense of that it's produced by practices and historical practices, then the answer to it would be different. So that's what my book is about is analyzing how did we get here? Why is it that we continue to use the same strategies? There's lots of different answers to that. I only provide one or two answers. I think there's a, you could write another book about some of the reasons people remain invested in these strategies.
Sarita (05:31.47)
But what I look at is the history of how it is that we think about race in moral terms, for example, how is that we think about prejudice and the importance of contact and knowledge about the other as a solution, how we think about in general progress through rationality and that we have to, if we just know more, if we reason better, if we have more knowledge that therefore
we would inevitably change when in fact the answer may be quite different in terms of how we need to change our practices, our organizations, our schools, our corporations. So there are other reasons why people remain interested and invested in those strategies because they're easy to call in someone, pay someone, they look like they're effective and so on. So that's not so much the focus of my
analysis in this book. It's more about how it is that particularly in places such as social movements, community organizations, schools, we have this history of a certain kind of way of solving problems, a certain way of thinking about ourselves in moral terms, in terms of moral identity, for example, a certain way of thinking about emotions and the therapeutic as a way of
getting to problems. So if we talk about our feelings, if we talk about ourselves, if we talk to each other, if we, it's that political foundation of the personalist political, for example, that we should link our personal experiences and our feelings to our practical and political actions, which is a good sentiment, but it's evolved into something that where we focus more on.
we stop, begin with the experience and stop with the experience, begin with the individual and with the individual so often. So your question was why this book? I'm actually can't hear, as I just, I was very motivated as someone sitting in those anti -racist workshops and seeing the denial, seeing people say, talk about your experiences of racism and having to share them, put them in the spot, feel very vulnerable and then having people
Sarita (07:57.102)
deny them or say, that's just like the same as my experience as being an American going to Canada or if that's sort of diminishing or denying or you probably misunderstood that person that they weren't being racist or this sort of desire to, in a sense, I think it is the desire to absolve. If someone tells a story of racism, somehow there's an implication of guilt.
to the people listening. And so there's all those dynamics that I saw, I realized this is not an effective strategy. And I really wanted to, because I'm a sociologist, I didn't want to just say, do something different. I wanted to understand why are these practices so tenacious? Like if it's clear that they don't work, because there's research that shows they don't work. Like we can, I don't do that kind of research, but there are people that measure.
What are the, what is the attitude to no change when people go into an anti -racist workshop or an equity workshop that they're required to take by their organizations, a mandatory thing, what were their attitudes before they went in and what were their attitudes afterwards? And we can, we can see that sometimes there's short term attitude change, but they don't last. There's very little, there's no change in the organization. In fact, there's research that shows sometimes it's worse because what happens is you go to a workshop, a diversity workshop, you.
kind of become emboldened. You're like, I'm one of those progressive people. So obviously when I decide not to interview that person, it's obviously not because I'm sexist or racist because I am a progressive person. So in fact, I mean, and I'm not just, I'm not making this up. This is based on research that measures and assesses this kind of, these kinds of things. So, and we certainly see like there's those, you know, I'm sure you're familiar with those.
PJ (09:21.407)
you
PJ (09:29.183)
Cough cough
Sarita (09:45.486)
studies that where they send out, they send CVs and put different names on them, you know, and it's been repeated in a couple of different, a few different countries over decades repeatedly to show that certain CVs with white sounding names are favored with the exact same qualifications. So, so, so we know that the practices of discrimination, you know, continue in organizations, whether it's hiring, whether it's thinking about the curriculum and so on, those, those things, the problems still exist.
And yet we've been doing this stuff over and over and over again. So the question I have is that prompted me to write the book is why do we keep doing that? So I wanted to go a little bit deeper into that, into that area. I'm so sorry, my computer is actually not plugged in anymore because I moved. I'm just gonna, I'm going to have to, I don't know, you're going to have to edit that out. Sorry, just give me a second.
PJ (10:30.943)
PJ (10:36.831)
Yeah, yeah, no worries, no worries.
Sarita (10:44.13)
I'm so sorry, is that going to be difficult to edit? Okay.
PJ (10:47.167)
No, not a big deal.
PJ (10:54.591)
I wanted to add another, like you said, there's a lot of different ways to say, are you calling me a racist? There's another one, there's the questioning one, the, wait, are you calling me a racist? It's so, I mean, I knew you'd hadn't come up with it. I obviously like when you said, it's something you heard many times, it's something I've heard many times. That's what I love about the title is that.
Sarita (11:09.87)
Yeah, exactly.
PJ (11:23.071)
I think that's a very common experience. People have heard that in conversation or seen it on a podcast or see, you know, whenever this topic comes up. And when we talked earlier, one of the things that I have appreciated about having people like Dr. Michael Soria on, Dr. Louis Gordon, and even the way that you've approached this is it's very freeing. I don't feel that same tension. I don't feel like...
And I think that's part of what you're getting at is that a lot of this stuff carries with it like, no, you don't get to learn anything until you admit that you're wrong. Right? Like the guilt is assumed and it's a very personal guilt, right? You've made that point a couple times. And this whole... What happens is we don't move forward because people are immediately...
they immediately look for flaws and, well, this is your experience of racism. It's like, well, I've never said that, right? Or I've never done that. So that immediately stuck out to me.
Sarita (12:26.734)
Or they look for reasons why that person would have done that. If I tell a story to you about racism, you then immediately look for explanations. Like, that person was really old, that person was really mean, that person was really ignorant, that person, there must be an exception. And so when you just said just now something like, you have to admit your guilt before you can, it's...
The problem is not that there are some guilty people that have to admit their guilt and that then there are some innocent people that don't have to. It's that the problem is that we're focusing on the individual as the site of guilt. It's not like some people aren't better than others. Like I'm saying that some people haven't done more anti -racist work and that we shouldn't commend them for that work. And that some people are really committed to racism and being racist. Like, of course we have a spectrum of.
of that, but that's not where we're going to, how we're going to make change by trying to find, you know, like get a score of how individually you want your racist to racist some individual is that's actually not going to change institutions and everyday practices in the places that we work. So my focus is not on just, you know, racism in general, it's in the places where people are actually working in organizations and places where they want to make a difference.
PJ (13:27.551)
Right.
Sarita (13:47.15)
So of course there's places where people don't want to challenge racism and are committed to racism. That's not what my book is about. So that's a different category. It's where we, so the issue is not then that we all say, well, everybody's innocent. You know, it's actually, we're all rather participating in historically in systems that are based on histories of colonialism, slavery and racism like that. Those, those are the, that culture, those practices.
We all, we inhabit all of them, that's including me. So it's not to say that therefore, you know, that any individual person is free of that, but that neither do we all have to then go, you know, before we can do the work, actually feel the guilt and, you know, feel terrible about it. Like in other words, it is often this, this, I don't know, notion or compulsion that people have to demonstrate their guilt.
in order to be seen as innocent. And that actually is something I've written about in relationship to criminal justice as well. So the people who are actually are innocent and they're wrongfully accused because they don't show remorse, because they're actually not guilty, they are punished more harshly. Like it's harder for them to get parole and so on because they're not showing the emotion of remorse. And so
PJ (15:06.847)
Mm.
Sarita (15:12.11)
in order to be absolved, you're supposed to show the emotion of remorse and guilt and so on. And so that's the kind of emotional moral. That's how the emotions and the moral are so, I think it's a good example to demonstrate how the emotional and moral are so tightly linked and integrally linked. And the same is the case with racism as well, is that you have to, there are particular emotional demonstrations.
of guilt and innocence that are important and that become important in these spaces and conversations. And again, it's all about the individuals and it's all about the therapeutic mode of how do we make change rather than a political or systemic or organizational or very practical way of making change in our organizations.
PJ (16:03.647)
Thank you. And that makes sense to me. I think I might have misspoke earlier, so I appreciate you clearing that up. And I think a great example is when you start your book off with, when you talk about focusing too much on the individual, when there are very clear systemic things at play, and you start off with Meghan Markle being like, I can't believe that the royal family has these racist tendencies. It must just be because they're old or because, you know.
Sarita (16:34.222)
Yeah, that's a good example. Yeah. You know, my, my, actually my publisher, my editor had said to me, you know, you should write about Megan and Harry. And I was like, well, I don't have anything. I'm not really into the royal family. I don't have a thing to say about them. Popular culture, not that interesting. I don't really follow it. And then I started thinking about it and I looked at that example and I thought this is a perfect demonstration of how it is that people think about racism as about the individual because.
PJ (16:34.271)
I.
Sarita (17:03.726)
They said that, did that interview with Oprah. They said, and you know, when their baby was, before their baby was born, someone said, well, what's the baby going to look like? And she says, Megan says to Oprah, you know, the implication was that if the baby would be brown or not white, that that would be bad. And she says, then she says, which is really hard to understand, right? She says to Oprah, and of course, like your first reaction is, my gosh, that's terrible. The royal family, like, and then you're like, obviously, of course.
If you think of the history of the British royal family in Britain and their history and the relationship to colonialism and slavery, like their whole practice job mission, you know, accomplishment has been to prop up colonialism and slavery for, you know, for, so why would you be surprised that there is some legacy of, of thinking that white is better than the other colors?
And so I write about how it is, but at that time there was people who were outraged, right? That they would call the royal family racist and point the finger at anyone in the royal family and defended the royal family, right? Thinking that this is about defending those individuals. It's like, how could, are you calling the queen racist? Kind of like essentially the title of my book. How could it be that people who are upstanding and aristocratic
leaders, how could they actually be also so petty and racist? And that to me is an example, a route to demonstrating that actually it's not about any particular individual or not. It's actually about the history of a particular family legacy of British colonialism and racism that of course come out in these conversations about who is
a prince going to marry who is a royal member of the family going to marry. What does the royal family line look like? I mean, it's actually astonishing that they, that racism, you know, wasn't actually more present at the time that they were married, it wasn't more explicit. So I, so I, what I, what I described in the chapter, in that chapter was to think about how astonishing it actually is astonishing is to, is that Megan could have been unaware.
Sarita (19:27.886)
as someone who walked down the aisle in a gown embroidered with 57 flowers of all the Commonwealth countries that Britain ruled, and then to say, how could it be that they would be express discomfort at one of those colonized countries entering into their line? That to me is a...
encapsulate some of the way of I think of I think we need to shift our thinking about racism in general. If you wanted to shift that way of thinking in the royal family, it wouldn't be to go and talk to those individuals, right? It would be to actually think about what does it mean to be British today, for example, who is a who what does it mean to be British citizen? What is what is Britain as a nation? And to ask questions about the historical legacies and the culture and what is it that we honor?
in our countries, for example. At the same time as she was asking those questions, people were pulling down statues of slave traders in Britain, for example, and all around the world. So it's that kind of shift in thinking that we need. And practice.
PJ (20:44.991)
Yes, I.
As we kind of look at this, I'm looking at your book, these 54 flowers that are on there. That's a perfect example. That was the one that really stuck out to me as you're talking about the individual versus kind of systemic because
And again, I'm imagining here, but I can't see how you couldn't imagine this, that Megan probably thought that was cute or lovely, historical, right? Like this, it's traditional. And she's taking the step back. She's able to create this distance between what they actually symbolize and just the grandeur of it. And so when racism comes up, it's, it's that individual, that kind of ugly thing going on there.
but she's not following through on what the 54 flowers mean, right?
Sarita (21:43.566)
No, we never do. We always think, that's historical. That happened a long time ago, and therefore it has nothing to do with the way we think or what we do today. We see this all the time. People are really annoyed when the history of slavery, the history of colonialism, you know, is brought up in any way to have implications for the present. But if you think about it, how could something that, you know, on which our economic system was based
and trade was based for so long, not have an impact on our culture today, not have an impact on social systems and practices today. How could it not have an impact on where people live and how we think about each other? How could it not have an impact on the subjects that we teach in school? It's kind of astonishing to imagine that it wouldn't.
In fact, that's the work that we're doing still. We think about curriculum in schools when we think about what counts as art and what counts as, you know, what are the stories we tell about the history and how the, anything really, who we honor. Those things are still based on who wrote those history books.
who was at the center of, who was in power when those histories were written about and so on. It's very straightforward if you think about it, but what we do is we live day to day life thinking that those things are in the past, that we are our own people and we are free of those histories and that culture. And so it's really that disjuncture we all, it's not just Megan that does that, we all do it. We're all shocked.
I mean, I am too, when someone says something racist. I'm also shocked when someone calls me a racist. I mean, it's not as if I'm like immune for many of this. That's why I'm able to write about it. That's not going to go away, our emotional reactions, but that's what we need to pause and think. Where do those emotional reactions come from? How do we shift them? And how do we actually make a difference if we want things to change?
PJ (23:54.815)
Race and class have always been tied in together. So another good one when we're talking about history is the leisure time necessary to get educated enough to write history and to actually write the history. It takes a lot of time and it's not like people become rich doing those things. Like it does happen, but it's pretty rare. And so when we talk about these sources, it's always going to be the upper middle class and higher.
that are going to have the biggest voice because they have the time to do it.
Sarita (24:27.598)
Yeah, absolutely.
PJ (24:30.207)
I had Matt Garcia on to talk about the food industry. And he was talking about, for him, it's the untold history of food farming in Mexican -American communities. And one of the things that as you're talking about these systemic things, I always grew up seeing agricultural work as unskilled, low paid labor.
But when you look at husbandry, when you look at agricultural work, there's a lot of not like, I'm trying to grow a garden out back and I do digital marketing, which is a highly valued skill. I get paid a lot of money for it. And gardening is just as complicated, if not more so, then I'm bad at it than digital marketing. But if you look at the history of it, starting with the African -American community, the slave trade,
And then you can actually trace what happens with emancipation. And then all of a sudden there's an influx of Chinese workers. And then you could trace the low wages to very clear and specific minority communities that are brought over to do those things. And that's why, and I mean, you talk to anybody, it's like, how much should you be paid to mow a lawn? And everyone's going to say it's like way, like.
Sarita (25:45.838)
Mm -hmm.
PJ (25:55.711)
You still have to know things about grass and stuff to do it right. Like we have a lawn service here. It's Florida. I'm not ashamed to say it. It is too hot. I talked to my parents about it. I was like, this is what I make. And this is, but they know so much about what they're doing. And I have no idea, but it's one of those like clear systemic things. do you have any, as you talk about these diversity days inside these organizations, what are some of the practices that you see?
that kind of enable these kind of systemic things. You know, we've talked about the royal family. That one's particularly egregious and it's kind of, it's gonna be really hard to get them to admit that that's systemic. Cause that seems like then they kind of stopped being the royal family. But I don't know. Yeah, it'd be hard. Like there's the, you know, anyways.
Sarita (26:45.998)
No, don't you forget that some people embrace those histories, right? There's people that think that those histories are valuable and those practices continue to be valuable and that those disparities continue to be important and that colonialism was, that they would prop up and support and value the histories of what colonialism have brought us. So it's not, I don't think that we might agree on.
They wouldn't necessarily agree, even if they realized that it was systemic, that they would agree that it had to be undone.
PJ (27:22.687)
Well, that's the quote that you have from the Queen about, it's a shame the African countries can't govern themselves. It was so much better when we took care of them. And it's just the, you know, that's just an individual. She's just, you know, there's no figurehead status there at all. Right? Like,
Sarita (27:41.646)
Yeah, yeah. No, the diversity days are interesting. Again, it's an example of so Jane Ward has a book, which the name of which is escaping me right now. But she has a book in which she studies queer organizations, community organizations in California who have who are like nationally known and one of them nationally known for their diversity projects and policies and and so on how they're held up as an organization that does really good work.
And one of the things, so she went into interview people in that organization. And what she found is that all the work that they do, the diversity days, the diversity policy and so on, for the people inside the organization, the people of color, inside the organization, actually all that did was reinforce that the organization is normatively white at its center. In other words, if you have to keep saying, hey, we have diversity days, hey, we're so diverse. I mean, who's saying that?
If you think about it for a second, obviously, I mean, it's not somebody like me that's like, Hey, isn't it cool how diverse we are? You know, it's the people who feel that they need to, who feel they need to demonstrate the diversity only because the organization desperately needs diversity days and diversity policies and so on in order to
counterbalance the fact that it's not that diverse, but it's not just about diverse, because diversity just means there's a lot of different kinds of things. What they're saying is like, what's really at the center of this organization in terms of its culture, in terms of its values, in terms of its history, in terms of who's in charge, in terms of whatever measures you want to use, who it serves, and so on, that that really hasn't changed.
And all that happens when you go diversity day, diversity policy, diversity project, diversity program, is that she, for them, this is from her research, that those folks, the people who were actually working in there that were marginalized or that were not at the center or that were traditionally not at the center, all it did for them is to not to make them feel more included or to make the place feel more diverse or equitable to them, but actually just to reinforce the fact that it's not. And so it really had actually
Sarita (29:59.598)
the opposite effect as often it does that these programs and projects often have the opposite of the intended effect. So not only are they not ineffective, sometimes they make things worse and there certainly aren't improving the things that really need to be worked on, which aren't as, let's say, public or obvious, right? Sometimes they can be very boring things. Sometimes it can be just, you know,
you know, changing a hiring practice, collecting some data, things like that, that you can't go, hey, we have this big celebration, come and eat some food, come and eat some food from different places. You know, that kind of thing that's like fun and celebratory and like very much of a public thing to do. One of the examples I give in the book, maybe we spoke about this when we talked earlier, is the very well -known example of two men that...
walk into a cafe for business meeting with a friend, with a colleague. And so they are approached by the person that works there, the manager, whomever to say, you haven't ordered anything, you have to order something. And they say, we're waiting for someone. And by the time their business colleague gets there, they're in handcuffs. They've been arrested for being in the cafe, not ordering anything. So that moment in Philadelphia was, of course, when on social media someone filmed it.
PJ (31:17.695)
Hmm.
Sarita (31:25.774)
And that cafe was Starbucks. And so because it was Starbucks, they were under scrutiny for this moment of racism. And this was, I've forgotten the year now, 2019 perhaps. Yeah, it was huge. It was huge because someone was someone in the cafe while it was happening, while the men were being arrested. So everybody saw, because when you hear that, it's just like the beginning of the conversation, you think, that camp, there must have been some, there must be some explanation.
PJ (31:38.655)
I think I saw this. Yeah, I saw that when it went in the news, but I don't remember the timing. Yeah.
PJ (31:55.615)
Right, right.
Sarita (31:56.046)
They must have been really rude. They must have like hit the manager. Something must have happened. Well, you know, someone was there filmed the whole thing to see that all they said was we're not ordering, you know, because we're waiting. And the person called the police. Then the police came. You think the police would go, well, they're just sitting there. They haven't ordered their waiting. No, the police decided to arrest them. So the guy, you know, there's two black men, obviously don't have to tell that part of the story. And the colleague arrives who's white and Starbucks is embarrassed.
So what do you think Starbucks does in response to this?
PJ (32:29.343)
Well, they have to do some kind of, I mean, this is actually something I wrote down. You said they do it because it's easy. It's also, like you said, it's not exciting to change a hiring practice, but man, it is great publicity to have some kind of diversity workshops, some kind of diversity training. You can take pictures. And if anyone questions you, you can point to it, right? I don't know exactly what they, what did they do?
Sarita (32:51.438)
And also believe in it. Well, they spent $12 million to shut down all the Starbucks for one afternoon to have a diversity workshop for all their employees. And they had the company or someone I assume make like videos and they were on iPads and the, I mean, that wasn't there, but the employees watched the iPads. They watched the videos. They watched the educational thing for one afternoon. They learned about racism. So.
I mean, if you think about, you know, I mean, I always think about this incident because it really demonstrates in such a scale, the cost of the diversity industry, the limited impact, right? It's we're talking about one afternoon. So would one afternoon have altered if that person, if we, if we think in the terms of the timeline, that that one afternoon of anti -racist training happened.
before those two men came into the cafe, would that person have thought differently or would that person have not connected at all in their mind? Racism with those guys better order coffee. They're supposed to order coffee. Why are they sitting and that emotional response to whatever that person thought about them? How dare they that they're all that history of their thinking about what those people represent, you know.
the danger they represent, whatever thinking that racist thinking that that person has, is that going to be undone by maybe the year before or two years earlier, they sat in the front of an iPad for a couple of hours? I mean...
PJ (34:28.159)
Yeah, so there is, if you don't mind, because we've talked a little quite a bit about how it's systemic versus individual. And I think this goes to what you said earlier, that you're not writing about the committed racist, right? For the committed racist, yes, there is the systemic side, but that is a individual moral failing.
Sarita (34:51.374)
That's a good question because I don't write about that. I haven't really, I don't know how I would, I'm not sure that that would go to that place either, actually. But I'm a sociologist, so I'm never going to go to that place.
PJ (34:58.975)
Okay.
Right, right, right, right, right.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was just, I was thinking, well, cause I'm thinking through this because if I, cause I have been in a diversity, like we had a, I taught at a school that will remain nameless and they had a racially charged incident that actually had nothing to do with the school. It had to do with some of the students during summertime. And all the teachers had to do a diversity work day.
And the prevailing attitude was, why am I being punished for this?
Sarita (35:36.91)
for the one failing of one person.
PJ (35:39.071)
Yes, for the feeling of like, and of course it was like, well, we could go more into like, I don't want to like throw stones. It's a good example, but it's definitely where, but that's as we're talking about this with these, that's what I would imagine most Starbucks workers are thinking when they get pulled into sit and look at the iPads.
Sarita (35:48.91)
Give too much detail.
Sarita (36:06.894)
Mm.
PJ (36:07.679)
I wouldn't say all of them, right? But I've been in that situation before, and I know that that had to be at least some of the feeling.
Sarita (36:16.782)
I mean, it's possible, but I also wouldn't buy that argument that if one of those other thousands of workers that were forced to sit in the workshop wouldn't have done the same thing if they were confronted with that situation. Because we see that all the time, right? We only hear about the few examples where someone decides to call the police on a birdwatcher. We hear about those. But that happens every day, some version of that. So yeah.
PJ (36:31.071)
PJ (36:40.607)
Yeah. I'm not arguing for that. I let me be clear. I, okay. I was just talking about how they're going to, why it doesn't work. I'm talking about why they've yeah. Yeah. I'm sorry. I'm not saying.
Sarita (36:49.422)
I think I see what you're saying.
Well, no, but you said, well, the people who are the committed racists, I think we started out with you said, but the people who are the committed racists, there are some individual moral failing. Is that what you're, or did I misunderstand what you said?
PJ (36:57.791)
Yes.
PJ (37:06.911)
That was kind of an aside thing. I apologize. I could see where the confusion came in. I wanted to see...
Sarita (37:12.43)
Now I'm curious though, were you saying that as kind of as devil's advocate or were you saying it as in a kind of a sarcastic way or were you saying, I think actually there's cases in which people are just like really bad people because they're committed to being racist.
PJ (37:29.151)
I do think that people who are committed to being racist, who enjoy that sort of thing, not committed to the systems or that sort of thing, I think the sort of person who... But maybe the moral failing is that they enjoy cruelty and that racism is an expression of that.
Sarita (37:47.278)
I mean, let's not talk about people who are pathologically, you know, outside the spectrum of, you know, human compassion. That's a different thing.
PJ (37:56.543)
Right, right. Well, that's why, yeah, that's why I'm like, maybe what I'm, as I'm thinking of examples of like that committed racist, like it often, it often seems to be someone who is allowed by the system to express things that are moral failings, but they, they probably would have found a different way to express it that would work inside the system. So maybe it's not anyways, does that
Sarita (38:02.926)
Yeah.
Sarita (38:16.957)
It's a really interesting conversation because it's not something I think about that often because I think more in sociological terms, so in terms of patterns and culture and history. So those few individuals who are extreme, let's put them aside because I think there's people that are extremely violent and extremely anti -social and psychopaths and sociopaths or whatever. Like there's something that I can't, that is so outside of my expertise. I'd rather just put that aside.
PJ (38:37.119)
Yes.
PJ (38:43.103)
Yeah, yeah, no, that's fine. That's fine. And I asked two separate questions. So that's
Sarita (38:44.846)
But there's something in between, which is people who are committed to, who believe, have racist beliefs and hold racist beliefs, who don't think of themselves as progressive or good people, and who are in an environment like their family themselves, or everyone around them thinks that those other people are inferior to them, and really genuinely believes that and has no problem repeating it.
and so on, and may even act on it, like maybe yell things at people on the street or treat people badly in their community because of it and feel justified in that. That I don't think of as an individual moral failing still. To me, I still think of that as cultural and social. And in other words, people often, that is often produced through particular kinds of interest, whether that's economic interest or whether that's, you know,
PJ (39:25.247)
Okay.
Sarita (39:39.566)
you know, culture, you know, histories of communities not coming together because of the way that slavery created distance between communities and created, you know, an opposition of economic interests and so on. So there's a reason why, you know, communities grew up, you know, feeling, you know, hate towards each other. Let's just call it that. Okay. And why was that hate cultivated culturally?
Right. because there was an, in a broader cultural interest to think of those, that group of people as lesser than you. Right. In other words, how do you prop continue to justify something like slavery unless you also continue to prop up the belief that, that those people are different than us. Right. How deep is that and how deep does that run even after, even after the systems may be gone, for example. So that I still think is you can't then go, that person was bad.
It's like, and it had nothing to do with this history, nothing to do with the culture as a whole. I don't think of, I still don't think you can think of those things as just individual moral feelings. And one of the things that I find so interesting in this conversation as an example is, do you remember the first, it's the first group of high school students that were bussed because of desegregation?
black high school students that were bused to a white high school in order to further the project of desegregating schools. And when that first group of students was bused, there was parents and students that harassed those students when they got off the bus, yelled at them, protested. Those students experienced harassment in the school by their fellow high school students and so on.
And recently I read a story about a man who was one of those students, one of the white students. So you can see him, there's a photo of him, a famous photo of him like yelling at the students when they're getting off the bus. And he, like he said, I was hateful and racist towards my classmates. And years and years later, like 40 years later, he feels, he realized an error of his ways, let's say. He felt remorse about it. He thought about it.
Sarita (41:56.686)
reflected on it and he reached out to his class, one of his black classmates to express this and to connect with her. And they now work together on anti -racist education. So I don't, I mean, to think about it as an individual moral failing means again, it's like an individual trait. That person can't be, you know, has to be, it has to be morally redeemed or something, or has to be educated or something. But it was, it was, you know, he's a child. He was a high school student.
living in a community in which for whatever reason, people really believed deeply, for historical reasons, that that group of people is so different than us that we cannot have them in our schools and that will somehow damage us. And he grew up believing that. That can't be an individual moral failing. And so that's, I think even in those cases, we can analyze it differently. And we can also think of other ways to...
to approach this besides, you know, neither, I mean, there's no one tool that's going to work, but how I often think about it to go back to the example of desegregation is if you waited, if the US had waited till all the hearts and minds of everyone had been changed, right, before putting into place and challenging,
discriminatory laws would still be there. You can't start with this premise that we have to change people one at a time in terms of their emotions, their feelings, their knowledge, and convince them before we can move on and make change. There has to be a way in which we look at the practices that need to be changed, which is what happened in this person's case. It's like he grew up in a society which he realized, his
everything around him has changed. Maybe the way he thought about segregation may have been wrong because he saw it started to live in a different way. The world changed around him. And so that's the sense what I'm advocating is let's look around and think about how can we change the practices in which we're inhabiting the organizations which we're inhabiting rather than changing our hearts and minds inside, one at a time.
Sarita (44:22.83)
Nothing's anything wrong with therapy or reflection. Those are all good things. It's only in this one context of organizational change that I'm talking about it.
PJ (44:33.439)
Alright.
PJ (44:38.478)
One is that earlier I realized I asked two questions. I did two questions in a row, which is not fair. I mentioned the individual guilt thing and then I talked about Starbucks. And so those were two separate things in my mind. So I apologize for the confusion there because that I was not trying to do that for Starbucks as if, well, it's just that one. That's exactly what you're arguing against. It's like just that one person. And I think I, you know, as we talk about
Sarita (44:51.406)
Yeah, that's okay.
PJ (45:08.991)
Individual moral failings. Do you think and I understand that we're way off topic here Do you think there are communal moral failings? Because that's how I immediately would think about what you're talking about and I realized that this is not your area and that's like so and it might just be a semantics thing because I agree a hundred percent that disease Desegregation the best way to do that was a systemic thing, right? You're not gonna I don't like it's it's a very solid argument. I don't think anyone thinks
that I was in Alabama that happened, like that we were going to try and go around and like, like talk to do therapy with every student and parent in Alabama, Arkansas. My apologies. Yes.
Sarita (45:46.19)
Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So your question to go back to your question, are there communal moral failings? Again, I'm a sociologist, so I don't think in terms of failings. But I do think in terms of the moral, right? So what I write about in the book is about moral histories and moral regulation, you know, and moral identity and moral culture. So to me, I think about if you ask me about the moral, I'm going to
PJ (45:54.687)
Yes.
PJ (45:59.903)
Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, I understand. Yes. Okay.
PJ (46:09.311)
Hmm.
Sarita (46:15.918)
answer in historical terms and in systemic terms. So I do think that there are ways we can make ethical shifts so that we can see that, for example, that abolition in the movement for abolition of slavery became more possible when people shifted their notions of sin, for example.
It's very clearly can demonstrate the people that were involved in the abolitionist movement, Quakers, for example, or people who often were religious tied it to their notions of what was wrong, how this was essentially wrong and a sin. But it's because the way that people began to think about what was wrong and sin shifted. And that the notions of absolution
and redemption also shifted. So I'm not saying we should, that that's something we should go back to, is I don't think that way of thinking about racism is going to work for us now, but to say that there is a way in which ethical shifts, in other words, collective ethical shifts, collective ways of thinking about morality can help us in thinking about anti -racism. So it's not that I think that I'm against.
thinking ethically at all, opposite, is that I think that we need to develop new ethical commitments, new ways of thinking about morality in a collective and community, you use the word communal, but I would say that, you know, collective and cultural and societal ways, however you want, whether it's our organization that we're talking about or our society or our community, you know, so rather than saying you're a bad person, you're a racist, you need to make yourself better reflect inside yourself so that you can improve yourself.
and become a better anti -racist self, I would say, what's our ethical commitment to anti -racism and diversity? And if we start from that place, then we're much more likely from the place of values, ethics, ethical practices, to think in every moment when we do something, are we acting in equitable ways? If that's our ethical guide, then that would make a difference.
Sarita (48:24.462)
So that's, but I think that's for each. I don't have a map for people or like any kind of universal moral guide. That's not my, that's not the way I would advocate, but I would advocate that each space, each organization, each community that wants to work on this reflect on. That's one of the things I should reflect on. First of all, what do we want to change? But secondly, they may want to reflect on what are the values that bring us to.
to answering those questions. How do we answer those questions in ways that reflect our values and what are our values? Even that work, and it's even that work to ask that question in a collective way, the question that you've just asked, but to reverse it. You asked it, what are the communal moral failings? And I'm turning around and saying in a positive way, what are our communal collective moral commitments or ethical commitments? That is a useful question to me in terms of getting us to a different place.
PJ (49:20.319)
One, I don't think we fundamentally disagree. And I think part of this is the disciplinary gap a little bit with like the, cause everything you're saying I agree with. And so thank you for answering that very charitably. Cause there was a little, it wasn't bumpy, but it was just like, I could tell there was some kind of noise there and you answered it very well.
Sarita (49:28.654)
Yeah.
Sarita (49:40.91)
No, not at all. No need to apologize. They're great questions. I think disciplinary gaps are so interesting. We don't want to just talk to ourselves. So it's so interesting to see how we could reframe and reframe the questions. Same problematic from different disciplinary angles. Like I'm certainly not going to argue history is better than philosophy or sociology is better than history or anything like that. I draw on all those things in my work.
PJ (49:44.959)
good. Yeah.
PJ (50:07.135)
Well, you're the Dean of Interdisciplinary Studies. Like you have to say that. So I want to be respectful of your time. Juan, thank you again for coming on. It's been really awesome. So what are some tools? I really appreciated your emphasis on the complexity of this, because as you talk about this, people do want like, well, if it's not diversity days,
What is the silver bullet? And so I want to avoid that question, but I do want to ask what are some tools that we can have to better analyze our systemic practices and come up with solutions for ourselves that work better? Are there sets of tools, like analytical tools, that allow us to create rather than just having great publicity?
Sarita (51:03.854)
Yeah, absolutely. So I, the last chapter of my book, asked this question, like, so what, what can we do differently? What, what, so if not that, then what essentially, and I came up with an acronym because it's makes things easier to remember, which is act the acronym is act and it stands for the, the a stands for ask. So ask, what is it that we, you know, where is it, where are the places that we can act? I'm actually going to open my book so I don't get it.
PJ (51:20.927)
Here you go.
PJ (51:31.743)
No worries. Excuse me.
Sarita (51:32.878)
What is it that I say the act stands for? I don't want to get the AA wrong. I'm going to have to get my glasses on. So the last chapter is called, why is anti -racism elusive? And try this instead. So what can we do? Act for change. So the act stands for ask, collaborate, and take action.
The first one is to ask questions and analyze, that's the A. So the words, how did we get here in the first place? How did we have, what are the, you know, whatever problematic that we have, how did we get here? What's the root of this problem? How big a problem is it? What are the practices that contribute to this problem? Let's say it's, we're a service, we're a community service and only a certain part of our community comes in and uses our service.
Why is that? Why is the same people, why is the same middle class white people, for example, where are the, I mean, we know we have a big immigrant community here, they never come in. What's going on? So maybe that, so just even identifying that problem, you know, how is it that we got here? What's the problem? How big is it? Let's do some, you know, data and see is this actually a problem? The second is see, collaborate and craft solutions and a vision for how we'd want it to be different. I guess that's kind of the backwards way of saying it. It's like, what do we want to be different?
and then crafting together collectively some actual solutions that we could think about that might work, how we want to look different. And then the third is the T, take one small action now. So I think it's often like people think of anti -racism as, that's why the workshops I think are appealing because they speak on the.
largest possible stage, right? They talk about the history of racism and convince people that racism is a problem and what percentage of CEOs are black and so on. They really like paint a picture and convince people it's a problem, but it never gets to the, actually, the sort of very ordinary. And people don't often, again, that's not something that's very often a very attractive thing to think about, appealing thing to think about because people don't.
Sarita (53:46.062)
think, well, what could that small thing do? But it's so much more effective to do that one small thing. And that's the one small thing could be, again, it could be simply, let's collect data on. Maybe that's our one small thing. Let's figure out what percentage of our students are from this community. Let's figure out, let's collect data on how many people buy our products. That's a very small thing. Or let's...
change the questions in our interviews. Let's change one thing about our interview practice. Let's interview three people that aren't as qualified as the other people and get them into the pool. Like it could be a very small action that's not gonna, you can't put on your annual report in the same way that you could, we did this diversity day. It could be anything, but it's the action part of it. It's the concrete practices.
rather than the therapeutic or the moral or the abstract knowledge as the goal of the practice or as the goal of the action. So that's my answer. I think it's very general because it's going to look different for each organization. Each organization actually can only do it themselves by looking at their own practices, what's going on, what's going wrong. I'll give you one example of how this works, which is one of the
PJ (54:55.135)
Mm -hmm.
Sarita (55:08.878)
the two of the women that I interviewed were working in a community organization and there was, they said there was accusations of racism. And so the response of the organization was to call in a big name, anti -racist consultant facilitator. And they would sit around talking about their feelings and their relationships and how what you said hurt me. And then the person would try to facilitate and the two women in the collective, it was a collective, run as a collective said, you know.
through this, we don't want to sit around and keep watching people crying and talking about people's feelings and so on. What we want to do, so what they did instead was they decided to collect data on analyzing the division of labor in the collective. Who did what? It's supposed to be a collective, so it's supposed to be equal. The division of labor is supposed to be equal. Instead, what they found was that the white women in the collective
did the management style work. They wrote the grant proposals and so on. And the women of color went to the post office and did the, you know, cleaning the kitchen or organizing the snacks and so on. And they demonstrated through a very practical way and practical analysis of labor, of the division of labor, labor practices, that there was an equity that was racialized, which is very different than let's sit around and talk about how what you said made me feel.
you know, and how can we repair our relationship and facilitate. So this conflict resolution, therapeutic approach that so often gets used doesn't actually change anything that's actually happening day to day.
PJ (56:37.983)
Do you mind if I try an example? And as you're talking, I'm thinking about you have colleges, for instance, where they'll say, we're not getting, you know, we're not very diverse. And it could be something as simple as, we go to college days and that's the bulk of our recruiting. And so they go where, and the people who are most likely to go to college days are this class of people or this.
You know, this kind of racialized division. So even if it's just something as simple as, and that's not anyone's particular, like, I like that example because there's no individual guilt to that. It's like, you know, what do you do as a recruiter? You go to college days, right? It's not like someone's like, I'm going to sit here and I'm going to not recruit, you know, minorities, persons of color. And so instead they go and they, they do the college days, but then they add something where they could go to.
a community of color and do figure out a different way to recruit somewhere else. Would that be another example as well?
Sarita (57:46.734)
Yeah, yeah, instead of saying, well, let's send all our recruitment staff. Diversity training, right? So that will be a standard thing. Like they must be, it must be those people, you know, or maybe just let's send our senior leadership in the university to diversity training or let's write a diversity policy, you know, they, you know, or even if we said, yeah, let's write a policy that says we are committed to diversity.
PJ (57:51.647)
Yeah, yeah, that wouldn't do anything. Yeah.
PJ (58:08.671)
Cough cough
Sarita (58:16.43)
We are committed to diversity and recruitment and we are committed to diversity of bringing in more people. Like those are all things that universities do. There's nothing wrong with those, you know, writing that policy policies. But what we need to back it up with then is some analysis, like some evidence -based analysis. So that, so that, a in my act framework is ask questions like, how did we get here? So if, if only certain numbers of students are getting a coming, you know, certain kinds of students, why is that? How did we get to that place? Well,
probably it's something to do with like way before the recruitment process. It's probably at the time of high school when students are thinking about what do I want to do with my life? Would I go to university? Well, nobody in my family ever did. And it would never occur to me to apply to an Ivy League, et cetera, et cetera. Like who's encouraging those students? Who's supporting them? What kind of support do they have in their families if they don't have a history in their families of doing that? Of course, the families where everyone in their family went to Princeton.
They know someone there, they know how to get into there, et cetera. They know what the people who led missions look at, did missions, all of that. So there's so many places that we could act to get students into universities that don't have that support and don't even think of themselves and don't even see themselves there. And so that would be what I don't know the answer.
PJ (59:39.135)
Right, because you have to see the individual college. Right, right, right.
Sarita (59:42.19)
Well, but so the answer, but that would be where you would start is like, how is it that this problem comes to exist? And then where are the places that, and then again, together think about what, what, what would it, how would we like it to look different? And then what would be the places that we'd have to act in order for that to be different and then take one small action. So let's, so my one small action might be, you know what this local high school where we, which is close to us, where it wouldn't be too expensive for students to think about coming to us. It's not too hard for us to support students from there.
We're going to go in there and we're going to talk to those students every year, or we're going to talk to them in grade nine. We're not going to talk to, you know, and then we're going to go back and we're going to actually in grade 10, we're going to bring them to campus for, to come and listen to a lecture. You know, I did this when I was in high school, where it was a thing where, and I wasn't from, it wasn't because they were, necessarily trying to target our, our, my community and everyone went to university in my high school, but it was a thing where they, it was professors did lectures.
that were for high school students. And we did it all together. We went down and I think it was because I was, I took Latin and I was into the classics and it was all the classes professors. That's my memory now. So all the Latin students went down to University of Toronto and it was cool. We got to sit in the lecture auditoriums and listen to university professors. So this is not an example of them doing something that I'm talking about, but to say how much of an impact that made on me, even though my father was a university professor, I'd never sat in a university lecture.
PJ (01:00:51.007)
Ha ha.
Sarita (01:01:11.345)
and listen to a professor. So even in my family, which it wasn't so weird for me to think about university, even there I really had no connection. So to think about what are the ways that we can connect those students to make them feel and see themselves in that place. So there's many ways in which places that we could act is all I'm saying. And it's not one small action to say, we're gonna go in in grade 10 or 11 and we're going to.
know, maybe it'll be a scholarship, maybe there'll be a program, maybe it'll be invite everyone down to for one lecture to say, not just to convince them to come to university, but just to give them some excitement about, hey, this place is not a not a place that's, it's a place where you belong, you could imagine yourself there. And to make it a positive experience. I do that with my kids. Why since they've been little, I take them to the art gallery to the to, you know, other kinds of cultural institutions.
you know, like the ballet or, you know, I mean, places I was never taken when I was a child, because I want them not to think, those are, that's for other people. Other people do that. It's like, no, it's a norm. It's an ordinary place that anyone can go and have an interesting time and you find your thing that you're interested in. It's not a high culture thing for, you know, rich people. And that's the kind of, I think, practice that could, we could do with anything where we're thinking, why don't, why aren't people here? It's like, well, what are you doing? Actually, instead of going.
PJ (01:02:26.271)
Yeah. Yeah.
Sarita (01:02:27.726)
numb to our place.
PJ (01:02:30.463)
Well, and what I love about, you know, ending with that, take one small action. and I think this has kind of been your, the thrust of your message this whole time is that, I mean, the diversity policy is fine, but if you have these, this change in like having people go in and do this nine 10th, you will see a difference with or without the diversity policy. But if you have just the diversity policy and you don't have the small action, you're just going to have something that's great for publicity, but it's not actually.
It's going to be very similar to the diversity days, right? Where it's like, it's this kind of salvation message where it's like, pay us $12 million and with our iPads, we'll change people's worldviews. You know, like it'll be great rejoicing in our anti -racism evangelism. Yeah.
Sarita (01:03:17.902)
The bad news is this one small action, you can't stop there. So let's say, for example, you get all those students in, you know, then you can't just again, rest on your diversity policy. We treat all students the same. And we have a policy that says, if anyone gets, you know, I'm laughing because that's how it is. I mean, I work at a university. It's not like any universities that, you know, is doing anything profoundly different. And I don't hold myself up as, you know, as an alternative, but to say we are, this is the thing we're struggling, all universities are struggling with is you.
PJ (01:03:29.215)
Ha ha ha!
Yeah.
Sarita (01:03:46.062)
then universities that do become diverse racially and ethically, for example, also struggle because then that actually increases the incidences of racism. Those students on campus experience racism. They feel marginalized. It's not enough just to get students in the door. Then you have to continue taking those actions to think about how do we support those students, not waiting until incidents happen and they feel discriminated.
discriminate against and say, well, we have a discrimination policy to deal with that. But actually, what are you thinking, what are you doing in thinking in terms of thinking about the culture and campus and the backlash, you know, towards those students from the majority students and so on? Like, this is, this is, this is a real, this is not a problem I'm making up. This is actually, this is what happens on campuses where there is.
PJ (01:04:32.383)
No, no, no. Right.
Would that be another take one small action or would you start over kind of asking again once people are on campus, ask, collaborate and take, it's kind of like, yeah.
Sarita (01:04:45.422)
Yeah, I think you have to take each problem. You'd have to say, I mean, it depends on how big your approach is, right? But if you're saying right now, the problem is, now we've got a campus that's diverse. So now how do we deal with the fact of diversity in terms of how do we create a culture that is welcoming for everyone? A culture in which people are not in silos or if they are in silos is because they feel that's where they feel most comfortable, et cetera. Like what's the way in which we can
decrease those instances of hostility, hate, et cetera, and polarization that happen on campuses that we see when people who are not historically there start entering those campuses. So that would be to me a new problematic where we say, okay, so now how do we think about this? How do we take one small action on this rather than to take the whole thing and go racism is a problem. We have to solve it. Let's take these, you know,
very sort of global universal actions, which can be useful too. Like let's make the big statements, let's make the big value statements, those are useful too. But sometimes looking at the concrete practices, like what do we do when students come on campus? How do we welcome them? What happens when they first arrive? What happens in their first year? And so to me, if the problem is student life, then the ask part of it is,
what actually is the problem? well, actually, students, we get students in the door, but we don't retain them after first year, they all leave. We have a really poor retention of students of color after the second or indigenous students, they leave. So you got them in the door, but so that you have to, the asking part of the analyzing part is really important. You have to ask what is actually the problem, right? Now it's not recruiting, now it's retention.
PJ (01:06:32.767)
And you have to ask why. Like, like, is it a lack of funding? Is it a, you know, is it because it's unwelcoming? It can be all sorts of different things. Yeah.
Sarita (01:06:37.678)
Yes, exactly. Exactly. That's right. So it's like we have, I think a lot of our solutions are based on an assumption of what the problem is, which is the individual, you know, personal trait, moral failing, et cetera. When we continue to do that in other cases, like, I know, let's, but we don't actually, if it's not evidence -based, we don't analyze it, and we actually don't know what's going on for students. And it may sometimes, it is actually.
PJ (01:06:50.367)
Right. Right.
Sarita (01:07:05.429)
the lack of being able to retain students in university often is because of funding, right? They just can't keep up working part -time and going to school, which other students who have money don't have to do. So there's all kinds of reasons. It's not just, they perceived a racist environment when they came into the school. So sometimes a one small action could be something very simple like have a bursary in second year.
for students, it doesn't have to be like, okay, do anti -racist training now for all the second year students.
PJ (01:07:38.303)
Dr. Srivastava, it has been an absolute joy having you on that. I love the way that ended. I love the way that it got so practical. I love that your first step is to ask and listen. And I think that we could do like, that's never a bad, never a bad takeaway. So thank you again for coming on.
Sarita (01:08:01.038)
Thank you so much. And I appreciate all your work and asking and listening to so many scholars. It's really impressive. I appreciate it. And I'm honored to be on your show. Thanks. Take care. Bye -bye.
PJ (01:08:10.943)
Thank you.