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Brian Lehrer: It's the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. Now after an election that a Republican won in Virginia, partly by promising to ban talking about race in certain ways in school, we welcome back journalist Celeste Headlee with her new book Speaking of Race. You may know Celeste Headlee from her time on WNYC as co-host of The Takeaway, or even more likely, from her very popular TED talk seen 20 million times-plus, from what I've read, that offers 10 ways to have better conversations with people in general about anything, like don't set a goal of changing someone's mind before you even engage.

She was on with us for her book about that called We Need to Talk: How to Have Conversations That Matter. Now she has turned specifically to hopefully successful conversations about race. The full title of the book is Speaking of Race: Why Everybody Needs to Talk About Racism - and How to Do It. Hey, Celeste, thanks for coming on. Welcome back to WNYC.

Celeste Headlee: Thanks, Brian. It's good to be back.

Brian Lehrer: I will note that the Boston Public Radio story on your book started by saying, "As a self-described light-skinned Black Jew, journalist and author Celeste Headlee often hears things that people otherwise wouldn't say." Would you take that as a starting point for us, about your relationship with your own racial identity and some of the things that has made you privy to?

Celeste Headlee: Sure. I'm one of those racially non-descript people. People have a tough time knowing what I am. It's quite common for people to assume I'm whatever they are. This happens all the time with white people especially, and so they end up making casually racist remarks that they would not make if they knew that I were Black. It's been a journey in my life in figuring out how to respond when that happens because it happens all the time.

Brian Lehrer: Did some of that inspire you to write this book?

Celeste Headlee: I think so. What's ended up happening for me is that, partly because I am, again, difficult to place, I have ended up talking about race in a way that not a lot of people have talked about for a very long time. In other words, I have to establish my identity from the very beginning. Sometimes people are angry with me that they feel duped into having said something that they wouldn't have said if I were wearing a t-shirt that says, "Hi. I'm Black and Jewish, and my name is Celeste."

I joke all the time about whether I should have a shirt like that made just so that people will know what to say and what they shouldn't. Frankly, I think it's probably more helpful that they do say those things. I don't think most of us are honest about race in our own biases, even to ourselves.

Brian Lehrer: Speaking of Race: Why Everybody Needs to Talk About Racism - and How to Do It. There are reasons, as you know, that people don't want to talk about race these days. Many Black people say they're exhausted explaining the Black experience to white people and not having it change much anyway. Many white people feel put on the defensive about race, like anything they say is going to be criticized or that if they actually disagree with some Black people's takes on things, they're going to unfairly get tagged as racist. How much do you see those, if you agree that those exist or other barriers to even engaging in a personal way about race?

Celeste Headlee: Yes. Those things come up all the time, and to Black folks, I say, "Of course, you're exhausted." It is exhausting to have a conversation in which someone is telling you how to feel, how you should feel, and what your experience actually is. It's especially exhausting to have a conversation about something that is, in some cases, literally life or death and the other person doesn't seem interested in actually making any changes or learning. Of course, that's exhausting.

To white folks, I say, "Yes, you're defensive." That is also understandable in that we have a society in which defensiveness is the most common and natural reaction. In other words, many people are so afraid of being called racist. That's a real fear. Now, whether you believe that's founded or not, whether you believe that being called racist is the worst thing someone should be called, that's another issue, but the fear is real. I understand where both of those particular viewpoints come from.

On the other hand, when you have a really good conversation about race-- Frankly, I talk with my Black friends about race all the time. That doesn't exhaust me. Why? Because we're having the conversation in which they are, number one, "I'm believed, I'm heard and I'm allowed to tell my story and my viewpoints without someone else telling me that's not true, you're wrong about your own experience."

I am not a white person, but I have to understand that when you have a really good and in-depth conversation with someone else, in which you feel like you've made a connection, in which you feel like you've been heard, and maybe even learned something new, that can also be energizing rather than scary and depleting. I don't think it's so much that we shouldn't be afraid of talking about race, but I think the fear comes from the fact that our conversations so far have not been either healthy or productive.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, does anyone have a story about successfully having a productive conversation about race across racial lines? I'm sure Celeste and other listeners would love to hear it. Maybe it can help others to have similar conversations that would be good for themselves as individuals and good for the country and good for the world. 212-433 WNYC, 212-433-9692.

If you have a story about successfully having a productive conversation about race across racial lines, or maybe about one that didn't go so a well, or maybe you want advice for a conversation about race that you want to have with someone but don't quite know how, we'll go down part of Celeste's concrete list of tips for how to have these conversations. 212-433 WNYC, 212-433-9692.

I guess we could do that right now. Let me start down a list of suggestions that you have for speaking about race. Many of these are similar to items in your book and TED talk about productive conversations generally. I'll read these first two from the press release for book. One, consider the time of day. That's going to surprise people. Number two, much more broad, set a goal that does not involve proving someone else wrong or changing their mind before you engage. Want to talk about each of those first briefly? Why does time of day matter?

Celeste Headlee: One of the things I try to get across in this book is that we actually have a lot of science that tells us how to have a good conversation. We don't consult it very often, [chuckles] but there's actually a great deal of research in this field going back decades. One of the things that we know is, even for people who don't like mornings, even for people who are night owls, we all tend to be more open-minded and a little bit less testy in the morning.

It's good to try to schedule, if it's all possible, to try to find a way to have this conversation at a time of day when that person is most likely to be not tired, not angry, not frustrated, and that may very well be in the morning. Also, you can-- This goes into location as well, but sometimes the time of day might be during their coffee break or their lunch break, at a time of day when they all ready are set up to feel comfortable.

Very often we make a mistake of having these conversations at a time when the other person and even ourselves are tired. The end of the day after a long day, not a great moment to do that. If this isn't about morals, this isn't that you should be willing to talk about this anytime, it's about just being honest and realistic that we're human beings and we have physical and mental limitations.

You want to find a time of day when the person is set up for success and when you are set up for success. When are you at your best? When are you most focused? When are you most able to really dig into research, for example? What time of day is that? Maybe that's the time of day when you should have this conversation.

The second part was not to go in with a goal of changing anybody's mind. Again, this is very realistic. The reason you don't go in with a goal of educating someone or changing their mind is because it's not going to happen, it's just not. We have been, again, testing and retesting to try to figure out how one would go about changing somebody's mind of the course of a conversation only to find out that it happens so rarely, it's a statistical non-entity.

Why keep having this goal that you can't accomplish? Of course, that's going to be frustrating.

Brian Lehrer: Let me jump in on that, because from a political or a social progress, racial justice progress standpoint, isn't that central, isn't that crucial unless people in power get their minds changed about certain things that will reduce structural racism, that will reduce inequality in our society, and we know along what racial lines that runs, then what's the point?

Celeste Headlee: In fact, my whole book comes from a place of optimism that we can change minds. The thing is that you don't change minds by debating people. That's what doesn't happen. You can't dump a bunch of statistics and facts on somebody's head and then they suddenly say, "Oh my God, you're absolutely right. Your sources are better than mine. I'm convinced."

Interestingly enough, you talked about the race in Virginia and I saw this interview with this older man in reference to the gubernatorial race. The journalists said, "What's the most important issue for you? You've basically said it's CRT," and so the journalist said, "What is CRT?" The man said, "I don't really know much about it, but what I do know about it I don't like," and the journalist said, "Okay, well, then what do you know about it?" He said, "I don't really know anything. I just know that I don't like it."

This is just an example of the fact that these conversations are rarely logical. The feelings that people have, the stubbornness that people feel all of those things are not factual often, and you have to operate at a different level than trying to argue them into submission. It's not going to happen.

Brian Lehrer: Let's go there. I'm going to play a clip, it's from the new governor elect of Virginia that helped him get elected, statements like this, by appealing to a white fragility, to cite the author, Robin DiAngelo's book title White Fragility. Youngkin framed this on Fox over the summer, for example, in terms of avoiding calling white kids privileged by teaching CRT, Critical Race Theory.

Glenn Allen Youngkin: We've watched critical race theory come into our schools and try to divide our children based on seeing everything through a lens as opposed to the content of their character.

Brian Lehrer: Then he said on Fox last week, adding to that, that critical race theory, "Teaches children to see everything through a lens of race and then to divide them in buckets and have children who are called privileged and others who were called victims." What are you thinking from your lens about trying to encourage productive conversations about race when you hear things like that?

Celeste Headlee: The first thing that-- Factually, many of the claims about CRT are bogus. A ban on CRT in elementary schools is essentially a useless ban because nobody's teaching CRT in elementary schools, which tells me what else is going on here. I don't know why people are so angry at CRT, I have to find out. Obviously, I'm not going to agree with the people who want to ban CRT, but I'd be very interested to know what's really at the heart of it. What goes through my mind is I want to dig into this person's objections and to CRT, what's really happening here and can they articulate it? Can they say in detail what it is exactly that bothers them and why they are so upset about it?

One of the whole points of all of these conversations is to get someone to the point of self-persuasion. Even though I'm not very persuasive trying to convince someone to agree with me, we are all quite persuasive when we're trying to get ourselves to change our minds. Self-persuasion is actually quite powerful. This is the whole point, that if you present someone with information, with a new perspective and you make that empathic bond, over time they can become to see things differently from a different perspective and they will persuade themselves.

That's the point of asking the pointed questions that require them to interrogate their own views. In order to explain it to me, they have to dig deeply into what it is that they're saying. As long as I don't have a hostile tone, they usually are willing to do that. People are quite willing to talk about themselves and why they believe things and that's the whole point of learning how to do this.

Brian Lehrer: That's why some of your other tips in the book are, "Ask questions instead of making statements or citing facts. Avoid yes or no questions. These really creating an impression that you're truly interested in an answer. Whenever you're probing for information, remember that less is more. Don't counter what someone tells you about their own lives experience." Some of the tips from Celeste Headlee's book, Speaking of Race.  Let's take a phone call. [unintelligible 00:15:13] in Harlem, you're on WNYC. Hi, [unintelligible 00:15:16]

Speaker 3: Hi, good morning, Brian, and good morning. Thank you so much for mentioning the book. I'm so excited and I would like to say to read it and research and talk about optimizing best ways to actually engage people because I think that that is something that doesn't happen. When talking about race, people just shut down and they hide behind their pain or their trauma and their triggers. As was stated, they get defensive instead of actually embracing it.

What I use is humor. [laughs] I use humor to heal the racial divide and that's higher as a solution for racial inequality because I feel that, number one, on the scientific level, biologically speaking, when we laugh, we're actually inhaling a lot more oxygen, and so our brains are actually stirred of oxygen, and so endorphins are released, and there's other ways in which humor or laughter can actually lessen the level of defensiveness.

Now, mind you this, I would say, proceed with caution with using humor because we don't want to make light of the situation of 400-plus years of racial oppression in America and globally, and at the same time, we don't want people to be empowered to think that you can just laugh it away, that we can make light of it and not take it seriously. [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: Perhaps, [unintelligible 00:16:38], from the other side, when you talk about using satire to open up the conversation about race, some white people might hear that and think, "Oh, satire. Well, I might feel mocked by satire about racism."

Speaker 3: Oh, yes, that as well. I also think that when using satire, again, satire is not new and it's used in other ways. Like the Saturday Night Live, there's In Living Color, there's Kyle Burnett. That's who I really reference and model my practice around. There's ways in which humor can literally highlight things that we might take for granted or just think is normal, and then when you look at it through this heightened lens or filter, as people do on Instagram, the filter of satire, you can literally see like, "Hey, wait a minute, why do we agree to that? Why do we say that? Why do we not question or protest or end this particular practice or old ways of thinking, doing, and choosing?"

People then think, "Well, maybe I do have some agency, maybe I can't speak out about this even though it seems normal." That's how racism is insidious. My Black issues on Instagram is where I have a lot of content. Specifically today, I'm talking about how racism is a roof when it comes to this education hockey puck wedge issue that they're utilizing, and so Black issues on Instagram, I'm going to be posting all day as I have [unintelligible 00:18:20]. Thank you so much for that, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: You got your Instagram plug-in there and that's okay. Let's go on to another caller. Here is Patrick in Brooklyn Heights, you're on WNYC with Celeste Headlee. Hi, Patrick.

Patrick: Hi. Brian, how are you?

Brian Lehrer: Okay.

Patrick: First of all, I'm a white male baby boomer. I'll even go on so far as to call myself an oldster. You used that term a little while ago in your previous segment, Brian. I'm sure that [inaudible 00:18:47] a lot of where I come from. I want to talk about the term people of color, which is so much a part of our discourse these days. On the one hand, I get it, on the other hand, in terms of political pragmatism, after Biden got elected, he had already been elected and he gave a speech talking about how he's going to really increase efforts to fight COVID, particularly in communities of color. I thought, "Why could he not just say disadvantaged communities?" I thought that might be more politically pragmatic.

The term people of color obviously is a binary. The opposite of a person of color is a white person and I get that, but there's language that's fair to use and I get that's based in reality, but there's a question of what's politically pragmatic? Because when I hear the term people of color, I know they're not talking about me. Again, I totally admit [unintelligible 00:19:52] my ancestors and my Irish American ancestors have been privileged by their white skin-

Brian Lehrer: Patrick, let me jump in and ask you a follow-up question and then Celeste, who's really the expert on conversations like this can participate too. What's wrong with that? If people are talking about people in different racial groups and they're talking about people who are not white, certainly that term would exclude you as it would exclude me, but what's wrong with that? Why does that make you feel weird?

Patrick: First of all, it makes me-- I'm thinking more of the politically pragmatic. I'm fortunate, I'm not a disadvantaged person, but I'm just thinking in terms of the political pragmatism. I'm drawing a distinction between language that's fair and justifiable [inaudible 00:20:46]

Brian Lehrer: Don't put things in racial terms if you want to be successful politically. All right, Celeste, where do you want to jump in on any of that?

Celeste Headlee: The first thing I would say is that, one of the questions you asked was a mistake that you made. You said, instead of using people of color, you said, why can't he say disadvantaged communities? I hope when I say it that way, you can see that you're using disadvantaged communities as a synonym for people who are not white. That's problematic, first of all. That's a mistake I want to make you aware of.

Another one I would say is the same thing that Brian said, is that, look, I'm about being realistic here. There are differences in people's access to opportunities and people's access to healthcare, there are differences healthcare inequalities for a Black men versus a white men, even if they have the exact same insurance and go to the same hospital. We know this. This is measurable and it is trackable.

If you're going to talk about racial difference, it's based on reality. It's interesting to me that oftentimes when I talk about these things and one of the responses I get is, "Why do we have to make everything about race?" people often quote the one line from Martin Luther King Jr.'s, "I have a dream," speech, which is, "Someday I hope the content of my children's character will matter more than the color of their skin." I'm paraphrasing. Now I ask people who say that to quote me one other line from that speech. "Give me one other line," and so far, no one has been able to do so. Then I ask, "Why is that the one line that to you is the most important in that speech?"

This rush for colorblindness to stop drawing the line at race is unrealistic. That is not the experience that millions of Americans are having. Racial differences exist because racism exists, and so we have to be honest about it.

Brian Lehrer: Can I play you another example from the campaign of how hard this is? This happened during this show, maybe you've even heard about it because it made some news. The New Jersey Republican candidate for Governor, Jack Ciattarelli, was asked by a caller to the show to define white privilege and Ciattarelli couldn't come up with anything and instead said the caller must have some problem. We're going to play the clip. This is a minute, it begins with the caller.

[clip playing]

Caller: Hello. Thank you so much, Brian, for taking my call. I was very appreciative of your introduction and the candidates introduction in regards to his life experience and I'd be very curious to hear his definition of white privilege.

Brian: Mr. Ciattarelli.

Jack Ciattarelli: Yes, Brian, what's the next question?

Brian Lehrer: Oh, he asked your definition of white privilege. If you didn't hear the beginning of the call, he said he was interested in hearing you talk about your middle-class upbringing at the beginning of the segment, and with your life experience and your experience in politics, how would you define white privilege?

Jack Ciattarelli: I don't really understand the question, Brian, so either you'll have to go further in explaining the basis of his question or we can move on.

[end of clip]

Brian Lehrer: Well, that went on for a while after that, but Celeste, do you hear that as just a political strategy to identify with white grievance or maybe something deeper about how difficult it is to talk about race and racism?

Celeste Headlee: I think it's both. There is a natural reaction. When someone becomes defensive, it's really important to understand what's happening underneath the hood, inside our brains, and what makes these conversations difficult. We live in a verbal society, which means that the attacks that you encounter on a day-to-day basis will most likely not be somebody punching you in the gut, they will be a verbal attack and those attacks are serious.

For human beings, our social standing is literally the difference between life and death and it always has been. Our body reacts to what we perceive as a verbal attack in almost exactly the same way that we respond to someone punching us. Our thinking processes are changed or we become physically primed to retaliate, to fight back, to freeze, or to run, your fight or flight response, fight, flight, or freeze.

The outer part of our brain, where the executive functioning and higher reasoning live is not engaged anymore. Only our lizard brain is taking over. Our muscles tense, our pupils dilate so that we can have more light in our eyes and our vision improve. That's how serious our response are to these attacks. What he did just there was to flee. He fled. "I'm not going to take that question," he turned away and he fled.

This is the [unintelligible 00:26:10] chance to deny the question that was asked, to run away from it and not even give it space or air or acknowledge that it'd been asked, that's a flight response. Is it political? Yes. Is it also just an emotional reaction to someone who has become defensive because of a question? It is that too.

Brian Lehrer: Let me conclude, coming out of that, with a question about the title of your book, which is Speaking of Race and the subtitle is, Why Everybody Needs to Talk About Racism - and How to Do It. Should we take the way you use race and racism in the title and the subtitle, first race then racism, as the same or different? Because I'm imagining a lot of American white people walking through the aisles of the bookstore and they see a book that says, "Let's talk about race," or "Speaking of Race," and they go, "Yes, we need to speak about race in this country." Then they see, "Why Everybody Needs to Talk About Racism," and they go, "Oh, I'm getting accused again." How do you use those two words and how do they fit in to the overall message that you're trying to deliver? Last thought.

Celeste Headlee: Race doesn't exist biologically. There's no test you can take to tell you what race is. Married and mated in order to produce you. Race is real only because racism is real. Therefore, when we talk about race, what we're really talking about is racism. That's what we're talking about. Again, I just want people to be realistic.

Brian Lehrer: Celeste Headlee's book is called Speaking of Race: Why Everyone Needs to Talk About Racism - and How to Do It. Thanks so much for talking about it with us.

Celeste Headlee: It's been a pleasure. Thank you.

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