Advancing Liberation and Justice

Transcript:

Lisa Reyes Mason:

Hello, I’m Associate professor Lisa Reyes Mason, interim dean of the University of Denver Graduate School of Social Work. Welcome to Episode 15 of the school’s Brave Ideas for Social Change podcast series, which draws on GSSW faculty expertise for fast-moving discussions on emerging research, practice and policy innovations to spur social change. Today’s guest is Chenthu Jayton, executive director of GSSW’s Equity Labs, which is a comprehensive diversity, equity, inclusion and justice consulting organization. Equity Labs works with for-profit, nonprofit, governmental and other organizations to advance systemic change by adopting a cultural ecology framework that attends to intrapersonal, interpersonal, epistemic and institutional aspects of an organization. It offers clients a rigorous, theoretically grounded curriculum and custom consulting services based on organization needs. Chenthu has also been facilitating some of the internal equity and inclusion work that we're doing here at GSSW. Chenthu I’m so excited to share your perspective with our listeners today.

Chenthu Jayton:

Thank you, Lisa. I’m very excited to join this conversation.

Lisa Reyes Mason:

Great! We have been so lucky to have equity labs here at GSSW and to benefit from your work. Now of course, not everyone is starting from the same place of understanding and often people sometimes don’t even really know what is meant by diversity, equity, inclusion and justice, or they might be afraid to ask. So that our listeners can follow along, let’s start by breaking down some of the key terms that we’re going to be discussing. So Chenthu, what are diversity, equity, inclusion and justice?

Chenthu Jayton:

So diversity is about representational variety in identities and experiences in the practice, thought and operational spaces that we move in. Inclusion is about making sure that the folks who bring that representational variety feel like they’re seen and valued in the spaces that they’re moving through. Now, equity is about making sure that people have access to the necessary resources to attain and succeed in the ways that they imagine for themselves, whatever that might be. And there shouldn’t be a disparity, both in the ability to imagine and to then attain whatever that imagined success is. So that’s what equity is.

Now justice, in the way that we see it at Equity Labs, is a process of acknowledging that historical harm manifests itself in contemporary ways, and then taking steps to account for it, apologize for it, remedy it, and then make sure that that harm doesn’t continue. So diversity, equity and inclusion are located in the present context about what people’s experiences are in a particular time and space. Justice is the through line that recognizes the history of our world and then promises something better that we can aspire to. So that’s what the four of the terms mean.

Lisa Reyes Mason:

Thank you, Chenthu, that was so helpful. I think bias is another term that people might struggle with. Can you also tell us more about that, about bias?

Chenthu Jayton:

Yeah. Bias is the evaluative lens through which we look at the world. So it’s important to acknowledge that nobody really has neutral eyes, and it’s not because we are bad people, but because we live in a world where there’s just a lot of information and stimuli that is coming at us and we have to process and make decisions about that. So bias then serves as a decision-making shortcut that allows us to make quicker decisions, for whatever reason. Because we value efficiency, because we perceive a threat, because we’re lazy or because we’re overwhelmed by the amount of information. So the problem is that we don’t make the best decisions when we’re making quick decisions. So disrupting bias is about slowing down the decision-making process just enough so that we create opportunities to contest whatever those initial evaluations are.

Lisa Reyes Mason:

Slowing down the process, I really love that. What do you think are some of the challenges that you’re encountering in doing this work with individuals and organizations? What’s standing in the way of achieving equity, inclusivity and justice?

Chenthu Jayton:

So in this work we typically talk about our work as agitation or disruption. And we use that terminology because we are contesting what has for a long time been considered normal. And we do this contestation both at the institutional level and at individual levels. So for example, it’s kind of “normal” in a lot of organizations to have after-work happy hour gatherings at the local watering [hole] or a bar. Now in corporate culture, that is where a lot of relationships are built, decisions are made, hierarchies and pecking orders are established and so on. But if you look at it through an equity lens, that normal behavior creates all kinds of problems. So if you are a caregiver for kids or elderly, you might not be able to attend. If you have a history of substance use, you might not be able to be in that community. If you have another job or you don't have disposable income, you might not be able to afford to go to these happy hours. So that is at the institutional level. At the individual level, we have rules about attire, hair, body art, and there are kind of different evaluations of these. So the thing is, all of these normal behaviors are invisible to the uncritical eye because they’re norms and they’re established and deeply entrenched in the way we do things. So making these inequities visible and urging that change can create all kinds of feelings of loss and grief, guilt and shame, and all these emotions that we consider “negative” that people have to sit with. Or more problematically, when people choose not to sit with them, that I think is the biggest challenge to doing this work.

Lisa Reyes Mason:

I’m wondering then, as social workers, how can or should we be holding space and helping people who are struggling with that sense of loss or grief or guilt that you describe? I know in some cases, even some of us might be struggling with that ourselves.

Chenthu Jayton:

I think we begin by acknowledging that injustice, oppression, and marginalization are pervasive and omnipresent. That means resistance to it, liberation and healing from it also have to be omnipresent. Now, that can only happen if the struggle for justice and liberation is an addition project where we keep adding more and more people as allies and accomplices and conspirators. Because this work is tiring work, we have to engage in difficult conversations in often toxic spaces. And that means we need rest and we can’t really rest unless we know that when I rest, there is someone else who is stepping in to continue the struggle for justice, liberation and healing. So creating the kind of redundant systems of resistance, liberation, that allows social workers to rest is critical. If you are doing this work, you need to have a community or a network of compassionate people doing the same or similar work around you, and you have to rest knowing that there are other people continuing their work.

Otherwise, the alternative is that people burn out, and if that happens, it’s not an addition project. So justice, equity, diversity and inclusion work has to be an addition project — I cannot emphasize that enough. And the second part of that is recognizing that our struggle is against systems — it’s not against people. Liberation means extricating people from belief and practice systems that have been in place for a long time in the service of those who held power. So whiteness as an ideological system is what we struggle against, it’s not against white people. So to me, making that distinction is key to bringing more people into the justice movement. That’s how it stays an addition project.

Lisa Reyes Mason:

This focus on systems change, that just seems like where … this work gets really exciting, to the centering justice and liberation and social work. Can you tell us more, what might that mean for some of the systems that we work within? Sometimes it can be hard to imagine something different when we’re stuck in the work of the moment every day. Can you say a bit more and help us see some of the possibilities for this change?

Chenthu Jayton:

Yeah. And I love that you used that word, imagine. And I have to wonder, what alternative do we have? If we’ve never lived in a just loving and liberated world, what choice do we have but to imagine it first? Now, yes, it’s hard, but it is possible, and I think more importantly, it is necessary. I think the work begins by examining the starting assumption of some of the most oppressive systems that impact our lives. And you can take your pick — capitalism, education, health care, criminal justice, etc. — any one of those. So if we take for example, the criminal justice system and consider what are the starting assumptions? The starting assumptions might be that ideas about what is good and what is bad [are] arbitrary and subjective. Another assumption might be that goodness is rewarded and badness is sanctioned.

Evaluations of goodness and badness are established by just laws, that might be another assumption. Some badness is beyond redemption, and some aren’t; some can be rehabilitated. These are all a set of assumptions that underpin the current justice system. Now we look at these assumptions through a critical lens to evaluate them for their equity and justice by placing these claims, these assumptions in their proper historical context. Like what was the history around establishing goodness and badness? Were those [kinds] of criteria equitable so that they aren’t giving different communities different experiences? Are some of those assumptions of goodness and badness oppressing some people more than others? Are any of them paving the way for a better, more equitable future? I think those are the assumptions, and if they’re not serving us towards moving us to a more just world, I think we replace them with a new way of thinking. And I think that’s where the imaginary part is.

So I can give you a concrete example. One of the things we are doing at Equity Labs is imagining a workplace where our grounding ethic is love, not productivity. We’re liberating our thinking from the traditional bounds of capitalism and thinking about doing things differently. So in practice what that might look like, we ask ourselves the question: Are the choices and decisions we make in the best interest of the social, professional and spiritual growth of the people we are serving and the people we are asking to do the work? That’s our decision-making criteria. If so, then we move forward with the decision. If not, then we imagine a different way of doing things.

Lisa Reyes Mason:

Wow, Chenthu, a grounding ethic of love, I love that — it’s an incredible vision. It’s like definitely this possible future we should be working toward. It still feels sometimes though that we have this failure of imagination and that keeps us stuck. So for example, even though social work, we have recognized our complicity in white supremacy, sometimes it seems that we still haven’t accomplished a whole lot of change. What do you see as the path ahead there?

Chenthu Jayton:

I think what social work is experiencing is the same tension that many disciplines and organizations are experiencing. It’s the tension between change and stability. Change too fast, and we risk the possibility of losing our identity as a profession and as a community. Change too slow, and you risk losing relevance and standing, especially in the eyes of the people that you serve. I think the trick is to oscillate between the two opposing tensions. So move fast where the urgency of the moment means life and death [for] the people who matter to the discipline, even if that means you disrupt some of the canonical beliefs of the discipline. And you still commit to critically and deliberately examine the belief systems that have sustained the discipline so that you have the chance to carefully imagine social work’s future. So you have to return to that, but you have to move fast when the time calls for it. I think what happens too fast or what happens too often is that we get frozen at the point of disrupting our deeply held beliefs. And I think that’s true of individuals, organizations and large disciplines like social work.

Lisa Reyes Mason:

So Chenthu, help us then, how do we not get frozen but keep moving forward? So what work can our listeners be doing on their own to increase their own understanding and change the organizations and systems that they’re working in?

Chenthu Jayton:

I think the starting point is to investigate the information ecosystems that we live, move and work in. To me, information ecosystems are the source of our information that guide our worldview. So this is the people you hang out with, the books you read, the movies and TV shows you watch, podcasts you listen to, for example. So the more diversity and variety you have in your information ecosystem, the more capacity you have for holding complexity. And when your information ecosystem is diverse, you have more opportunity to experience a counter-narrative, which slows down the decision-making process that we spoke about earlier. And I think the other thing I would urge people to do is dream a little or dream a lot. Some of the Indigenous futurism and Afrofuturism literature speaks to this. People like Octavia Butler or Sheree Renée Thomas or Janelle Monáe or Joshua Whitehead, they can show us a way to dream about a just and liberated world. We haven’t lived in a world like that, so we have to imagine it first, so then we can build it.

Lisa Reyes Mason:

I love that, imagine it first and then let’s build it. Chenthu, this has been such an enlightening and inspiring conversation. Thank you so much for the work that you’re doing at GSSW and with other organizations.

Chenthu Jayton:

Thank you so much for the conversation and the chance to speak about our work. I really appreciate the time.

Lisa Reyes Mason:

Subscribe to our Brave ideas for Social Change podcast for more conversations like this. Learn more at socialwork.du.edu/change. Also be sure to check out the Equity Labs podcast series at equity-labs.org.