A Black Executive Perspective now presents Need to Know with the award winning hyphenated Dr. Nsenga Burton. Dr. Burton. What do we need to know?

Good afternoon and welcome to need to know with Dr. Nsenga Burton. I am Dr. Nsenga Burton and today I am talking to you about Etiquette but business etiquette and When I burning down the house, your own house is not a good idea. So previously we talked about an interview between, uh, Ta-Nehisi Coates, who's a brilliant, uh, person, philosopher. I call him a philosopher, but he's a brilliant writer, journalist, uh, thinker, critical thinker. And he's written a book called the message and he's been making the rounds and doing lots of interviews about the book. Um, one of which was an interview on CBS, uh, CBS this morning, um, in which he was. I would say mistreated by a journalist who was asking him questions about the book to such an extent. We never learned about the entirety of the book. What else was in a book? Um, why? You know, we might be interested in the book or not. Um, and so it really took away from the way that he was, uh, you know, Interviewed and the way they only focused on such a, you know, just 1 part of the book, um, really took away from the audience or the viewers learning more about what was in the book, uh, that might have spoken to them. Right? So I say that to say, what. We've talked about that side, about treating people well, when you invite them to your house, you don't treat people, you don't invite, invite people to your house and then mistreat them. You don't invite people, um, to your house and bully them. Uh, you don't invite people to your house and belabor a point. Uh, and I said culturally in the previous interview that black and brown people don't do that anyway. We don't invite people that we don't like to our house. We don't want that static. You know, if you're not a family member, and then it only if your family member is only to a certain extent, you know, at some point, you're going to get off get left off the invitation list. You know, if you keep if you keep doing it. So, even culturally, that's not what we do. We're not going to invite it to the house. If you get to come into the house, that means somebody really likes you. That means that someone really trust you and that means that someone thinks a whole lot of you if they bring you into your home into their home and around their family. So there you go there, but the point of it is, I want to look at the other side of that. And that was Coates response, which was amazing. He never lost his cool. He never raised his voice. He never lost his point and he never conceded. To a perspective or point of view with which he did not agree, you know, his position is, and this is about the Middle East, and you can read the book and you can discuss it or whatever, but he doesn't agree with any entity having an apartheid state period. Doesn't matter if it's Palestine, doesn't matter if it's Israel, doesn't matter if it's the United States, you know, and he says in this interview that he was raised by parents who grew up in Jim Crow. So he's not, he's against any type of apartheid. That exists anywhere in the world. And so when he sees it, he has to not only document it, but speak out against it. All right. And, um, you know, whether or not you agree with that point, the point is, is that even though, uh, the interviewer, the journalist was really stuck on whether on Israel's right to. Exists because that was the question he wanted him to answer. Um, and, you know, Ta-Nehisi he's very smart. So he's like, well, you know, it's a complicated question because you got to think about these answers, right? You got to think about these perspectives. The point I wanted to raise was how he responded to that. And this is something that happens to, um, black and brown people, I would say, in the workplace constantly. Um, but it's this idea that you have to agree with me about a number of things and I'm not trying to, um, pretend like, you know, the, uh. I mean, like, thousands of years long attacks on Jews. I mean, I was like, well, you can't say decades. You can't say hundreds of years, centuries long attack on Jews equates to anything that I'm about to say. So, it's not the same thing. I understand that. But what I am saying is that. Even when you have unpopular opinions about things in the workplace, you have to know how to present them, but you also have to know how to sometimes respond to people who might be hostile towards you because those opinions are unpopular and they're rooted in your identity as a black person. So what I want us to think about is how this absolutely can happen in the workplace in terms of being met with hostility when your views Don't align necessarily with those who are empowered in your organization based on your personal identity and the experiences of your people. Right? If you're a black person, whose parents were raised in Jim Crow and whose parents parents may have been raised in slavery or not. You know, if you're someone who's from the Caribbean, whose family was part of a servant class. Right and what's made to do certain things or experience slavery because we know that was all in the Caribbean and South America and all the places you just might have a different perspective on these issues. But all of that feeds into who we are, and then when we come into the workplace, and particularly when you're working in spaces, my area of expertise is intersectionality, race, class, gender and sexuality. So I'm always doing what I call the heavy lifting. Always doing the heavy lifting. Um, and so, you know, other people do fun stuff. I don't necessarily get to do the fun stuff. So I'm always having to defend my position, defend, you know, that even, you know, racism exists. So, or sexism exists, or there's an anti trans movement and it's violent and we need to do something about it. I always have to defend that kind of stuff. But I think what we can learn from this interview and for with people who've had long careers, like tiny, easy coats, or I would argue mine. And doing this work is the ability to not burn down the house while you are defending yourself, right? The, the ability to, um, respond to, I would say, a very at best a very energetic inquiry into a part of a piece of content that you did not agree with. Um, but the ability to respond to, um, these kinds of. Which can often be read as. Micro aggressions, or I just call them aggression aggressions that you receive in the workplace from people whose opinions don't align with yours because they may not have the same experience. Most of the time. They're just not exposed to what you have been exposed to. They don't read a lot about what we've experienced in the school systems. Um, you know, whether you're talking about secondary schools, or you're talking about college or master's programs, like, you really have to take a specific class to learn about these things that people are so bothered by. But, you know, there are lots of reasons why that happens, but you can't let people stop you from doing what you have been tasked to do and you can't let people get you to a place where you were your. Um, lifestyle is now in jeopardy, right? Where you now can't pay your bills where you now can't sell your books. They won't carry your book, you know, all those things. Um, and it's not fair. Let me just say that 110 percent because we have to put up with so much hostility in the workplace. Um, even when we create our own work, you know, whether it's books, articles, um, things of that nature, um, you know, People think that we are always fair game. What we write is always fair game and they are quite comfortable with throwing us into categories, typically stereotypical categories that have no value for us, but have lots of value for them and continuously disenfranchising us in a myriad of ways. So, I say that to say, you can look at this interview because it's making the rounds. I'm sure you've seen it. And if you haven't, you will see it of Mr Coates response. Right? He knows the book, the work. He wrote it. He understands. This is an unpopular and he never gave his opinion during the time period. He wasn't really allowed to really delve into it, but he did give an opinion about his, his views on apartheid. Um, but. You know, the whole time he was respectful, you know, he was giving the respect that he should have been getting from the journalist. Um, he was giving the, um, thoughtfulness he should have been given, given or granted from the journalist. And, you know, that's what should be happening in the workplace. You know, you should be respectful and thoughtful, even when you disagree. And when that goes away, and I've actually learned this in a number of workspaces. It damages the workplace. It makes it hard to continue to work in the workplace. And unless you make a very concerted effort to fix things, you know, typically you can't rebound from it. And it makes, you know, the house no longer a happy home to quote the greatest philosopher of all times Luther Vandross. So, I just wanted to say that, um, on the flip side of treating people. Well, when you invite them into your home, your workplace. Um, you know, when you invite people there, you should treat them. Well, but conversely, if you are not treated well, which is something that we are often we being people of color, historically disenfranchised populations. I'm a black person. I'm also a woman. Um, you know, when you're not treated well. Being able to respond in a way that is thoughtful and reflective and that allows you to maintain your lifestyle and maintain your space in the workplace. If you so choose to do so, you know, but, you know. Without being a conspiracy sister, you know, some folks are always waiting for you to blow up into to ruin your life, uh, based on something they said to you. Um, and so there is a skill that is being able to withstand that type of aggression that comes to it, whether it's micro. macro or aggressive, aggressive, or passive aggressiveness that comes through in the workplace. There is a skill set to being able to survive that. And we have it. So lean on it and don't let people disenfranchise you, um, in a different way because they disagree with you or not aligned with which you, uh, uh, the conclusions you ever have come to based on, uh, their unwillingness, um, to understand or to think about your perspective. So. I wish you a fantastic day and please tune in next week to another episode of a Black Executive Perspective podcast. A Black Executive Perspective.