Translations

Beyond Survival: Whitney Weathers on Thrivival and Inclusive Leadership

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0:00 | 51:21

Today’s guest is Whitney Weathers, who brings a rare combination of scholarship, strategy, and spirit to every space she enters. A consultant, educator, and thought leader in Black theology, urban education, and organizational culture, Whitney is the founder of Whitney Weathers Consulting, and a doctoral candidate at Nazarene Theological Seminary. Whitney brings a very unique combination of both academic research and lived experience to challenge institutions toward deeper inclusion. She defines the term “thrivival,” (moving past survival into thriving) and what that means specifically for Black women, which can then be applied for all of us to build more inclusive spaces. Listen for Whitney’s truly unique leadership style that centers vulnerability.

Chapter Breakdown:

  • 0:00 - Introducing Whitney
  • 2:25 - Whitney’s research on the experiences of Black women seminarian students
  • 4:52 - Distinguishing between representation and inclusion
  • 6:00 - Whitney’s dissertation, "Resurrecting Resilience”
  • 9:21 - Alice Walker’s concept of “womanism”
  • 12:46 - The assumption of common experiences
  • 19:11 - Identity mapping
  • 25:15 - The intricacies of inclusion work
  • 34:11 - Professionalism and the concept of “hidden curriculum”
  • 38:22 - Inclusion versus assimilation
  • 43:23 - Advice for creating more inclusive spaces

Resources:

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Translations is a new initiative from Project Shema exploring how we can approach complex issues with nuance and empathy. Through conversations with leading academics, practitioners, and community voices, this podcast invites listeners to learn alongside us as we translate big questions into deeper understanding. http://projectshema.org/translations

SPEAKER_01

We're recording on October 9th, 2025. Welcome to Translations. We are thrilled to have Whitney Weathers on with us. She brings a rare combination of scholarship, strategy, and spirit to every space she enters, a consultant, educator, and thought leader in Black theology, urban education, and organizational culture. She's the founder of Whitney Weathers Consulting and a doctoral candidate at Nazarene Theological Seminary. She brings a very unique combination of both academic research and lived experience to challenge institutions towards deeper inclusion to transform spaces. Her work centers voices often unheard, creating pathways for belonging, healing, and sustainable growth in both faith-based and educational communities. Listen for Whitney's truly unique leadership style that centers vulnerability. She'll define a term revival and what that means specifically for black women, but can then be used to understand how all of us can actually seek to build more inclusive spaces, not just for Jews, but for everyone. So thank you for taking the time to be here, and we hope you enjoy the conversation. I'm just so happy to be talking to you. Oh my gosh, Fred! Like, just can we like have I love the energy.

SPEAKER_00

And I don't know how it is on your screen, but I'm in the middle of you two, so you're like reaching across me too.

SPEAKER_02

That's actually perfect. That's actually a good thing. I know that sent you a slack, Elon.

SPEAKER_01

I was like, are you ready to experience the boom that is when Karen Whitney seems like I love it?

SPEAKER_00

Oh my goodness.

SPEAKER_01

We've spent I feel like we've spent too little time together, but every time I get an opportunity just to see your face and talk, it's just such a joy and a pleasure and an honor. And I'm so happy to be doing that. Okay. So we're like so excited to talk to you. I think um, you know, originally when we reached out about like the practitioner side of inclusion and your immense amount of work in uh in DEI, and then to remember that you're also getting your doctorate degree. And actually, this is more of an academic conversation or somewhere in between. And so we're happy to just talk about and around all of those things with you and maybe just starting with your research is about such a personal topic. And I think we're just so curious about what drew you to write about the experiences of black seminary students.

SPEAKER_02

Yes, yes. Well, specifically, my research focuses on black women seminarian students because we know the Pew research, at least up until like this year, black women were the highest demographic enrolling in seminary out of all of the demographics. They even outpaced white men. What is fascinating though is that we are the least studied group in terms of our experiences. So on a macro level, it was like, why aren't our experiences when we make up this huge group, why aren't our experiences studied? Why aren't we leading conversations about what seminary should look like? So that's at the macro level. At the micro level, my first semester as a seminary student, we had something called a koinonia chat. And koinonia is a Greek word that's heavily featured in the Christian New Testament that really talks about building an intimate community. So the premise behind this activity was we're gonna build intimate community. And I got in that thing and they started talking about Taylor Swift and hot dogs with pickles on it. And I was like, this is the whitest situation I have been in in a long time, and it caught me off guard. So Dan Juma Gibson talks about this concept of idealization, and it's where we go into a space where there's diversity, believing that it is going to be a good space. We idealize that space, and Gibson asserts that like that fall from grace is actually what propels us into the next step of whatever we're supposed to be doing. So after I left that conversation, I had a moment where I said, Can I actually belong in a predominantly white seminary space where they don't see me?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

And they thought that by so what's what's fascinating about my particular program is it's a black leadership and ministry program housed in a predominantly white seminary campus. And I think what they take for granted is, look, we had a whole bunch of black people here. We've made it, we've arrived. But white students don't have to take black studies courses unless they want to. They're electives, right? So diversity without inclusion is just a bunch of people sitting around each other. There's no community, right? Or there's no intentional community.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. So do you think it's important at times to distinguish between representation and inclusion? Like, okay, we're here, but like, are we here?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. So that's one of the premises of my research is that especially in the Christian community, we think that the universality of Christianity is enough. That if you're a Christian, I'm a Christian, we all have the same subtext, so all of a sudden we get along. Well, I don't know if you've seen the news lately, but that ain't true. Like, that's just not true. Matter of fact, when I tell people I'm a Christian, I'm like, but not that, please don't, because I don't, I don't, I don't even fool with, I'm not even sure they Christian, right? So it's like this idea that just because we are in a space represented doesn't mean that our voices are actually elevated, right? And so, you know, the disability rights community says nothing about us without us, and yet we are learning about a Christ that doesn't look anything like us or doesn't seem anything like us, and we know that that is just like false. It's just dead ass wrong. Can I say that?

SPEAKER_00

It's just you can say whatever you want with me.

SPEAKER_01

You can say whatever you want.

SPEAKER_00

Can you say more about your research? Like, what specifically are you investigating in your research? What's going on there? What are some of the lessons that you're learning that we might take away from your work?

SPEAKER_02

Yes. So my dissertation title is longer than Broadway, but essentially it's called Resurrecting Resilience. And so what's fascinating is actually while I was a DEI practitioner in the Jewish community, I kept hearing this word resilience. And one day my white boss said to me, You just need to be more resilient. Oh my God. And I said, Wait a minute, white man, you don't get to tell my black self to be more resilient, right? Like, what are you actually saying to me? So we went round and round, and it's so funny because now he doesn't say the word resilient without checking other people about what they mean. And my dissertation title is called Resurrecting Resilience. So it's coming full circle. I argue that the Judeo-Christian faith, as it has been taught to me, gives us lessons about what resilience looks like when we face inter and intracultural conflict. And so I use biblical archetypes to create a framework called throvival. I argue that black women need to do more than survive in predominantly white spaces. We need to thrive.

SPEAKER_01

Okay, Maya Angelou.

SPEAKER_00

Yes, much snapping on this end.

SPEAKER_02

And that the Bible actually teaches us how to do that. It's an inbuilt mechanism that white people cannot take from us, and other people, right, cannot take from us. So, for example, Esther teaches us how to assimilate into a culture to combat bad policy. But if we look at Esther's story, right, her name was Hadassah, and yet she had to change it to Esther. How many times do we whiten our name so that people can pronounce it so it doesn't sound like rocks when it falls out of their mouths? How many times do we have to learn new cultures? Esther, as an example, had to learn what it meant to be beautiful in a foreign culture. How often do black women straighten their hair, wear less makeup, wear different clothing because they are assimilating into a space? And so I argue that there are eight or nine different biblical archetypes that teach us how to overcome. I've categorized the challenges as erasure, isolation, and discrimination. And that if we just look towards our faith, we can figure out how to combat all those things in a way that doesn't put our bodies at risk.

SPEAKER_01

You're amazing. I don't even know. I so like just worth saying, because you are bringing such life to that my Angelo quote of like, right, like my mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive with passion, compassion, and style is that you know, and and to think about um wow, like power that that could have, by the way, for black Jewish women of what would it mean to think about the story of Esther as a story of a of a black woman stepping into her power and what does that mean? And what is that th what was the word again?

SPEAKER_02

Threvival.

SPEAKER_01

Threvival.

SPEAKER_00

Threvival. I like that.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. So how do we move past survival into thriving? It's threvival. I argue that that whole journey is throvival and that the Bible provides a roadmap. You know, as another example, we think of Song of Solomon's Nameless Bride. The first thing she says is, I am black and comely, which means I'm black and fine, right? And then a couple verses later, she says, but wait, don't look at me because of my dark skin. My brothers put me out in a field. And so, how often do color politics play into our experiences in predominantly white spaces? So Alice Walker has this concept called womanism. It's a secular concept, but essentially what Walker introduced to the world is that black women should be at the center of black women's experiences. Because when we try to understand what is happening to us through anybody else's lens, we miss something because they miss the intersectionality that we experience, as introduced by Kimberly Crenshaw, right? Theologians have now adopted the concept of womanism to mean when I read the Bible, I need to think about where black women are present in this experience. Not just philosophically, but quite literally, Hagar was an Egyptian slave. Yeah. And we just like move past that, right? Like we just move past that. That is important that the author of that story thought it was important to put that person's background in there. And so it's important for us to pay attention to that.

SPEAKER_01

And the order, by the way, she was the first person to interact with a Malach in the wilderness. Okay.

SPEAKER_02

And the first surrogate mom, the first baby mama. The first baby out of my league. Remember, right? The first baby mama, the first person to name God. Yep. Right?

SPEAKER_01

Just there's a lot of uh so Wendy. I don't know if I told you, but like last year I was at RRC. I was a rabbinical student. Yeah. Anyway, okay, yes. We're okay, Eli, back on topic.

SPEAKER_00

No, that's okay. It is, it's not off topic at all. This is the topic. But I want to unpack womanism more a little bit. I led a trip to Israel and Palestine a few years ago with a group of black civil rights leaders where we actually talked about womanism a great deal on that trip and differentiating between womanism and feminism. And I'm wondering if you have thoughts on that or can just expand a little bit on how we understand womanism as a different idea than feminism.

SPEAKER_02

Absolutely. So Alice Walker said, womanism is to feminism as lavender is to purple. So it's this concept that they are very closely connected. They even look the same, but one has more nuance than the other. In the case of feminism, that was started as a white woman's journey towards equality, right? And as a matter of fact, there's even language that suggests that white women ask black women to come alongside them and to stop creating such trouble. Because, like, once we get it, y'all can get it too, right? Like, but this concept of womanism says, no, we need it now. So the concept of intersectionality, I mentioned it earlier, as introduced by Kimberly Crenshaw in 1989, argues that black women, because of our multiple identities and intersecting oppressions, cannot pull apart whether we are black or woman when we experience something. So what was happening, Kimberly Crenshaw's work, there's a the Ford plant was um promoting certain people. And black women sued and said, you are ignoring us. But the Supreme Court in Michigan came back and said, Well, white women are being promoted and black men are being promoted, so you don't get your own subcategory. Womanism argues you get your own subcategory. The other nuance about womanism and feminism is that feminism is sort of like singular. It's like, I am woman, hear me roar. Whereas the primary impetus behind womanism is that we are a communal people and that we lift as we climb. And so we don't leave people behind in service of forward and upward mobility. We bring in everybody with us. We all go in. And that's like that's why when Alice Walker said it's like lavender to purple is just such a salient point.

SPEAKER_00

One thing I'm hearing in this, and maybe this will pivot us towards inclusion in a different kind of way, but I heard this when you were talking about sort of Christianity, and I heard it when you were talking about feminism. But this idea that there's an assumed common denominator, an assumed common experience that everyone shares, that isn't actually the case, right? Like that in the feminist movement, there are different experiences that women have had that weren't acknowledged in the initial feminist movement, and there are different experiences that Christians have that aren't acknowledged in Christianity as a whole or in seminary in its seminary experience as a whole, right? So, like how do we create that space for people to be able to tell and share their own experiences so we can all celebrate them as part of our community and part of, you know, the human fabric?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, yeah, that's uh that's the question that undergirds all of my life's work. I think in terms of so Willie Jennings, Dr. Willie Jennings in his book After Whiteness, asserts that theological spaces exist to create self-sufficient white men. So Willie Jennings argues that because theological spaces and Western Christianity in general existed to create self-sufficient white people, that means that universality just means that everybody gotta be white. Christianity means that everybody has to believe this and be resoundingly conservative. And, you know, Jesus has blonde hair, blue eyes, and perfectly quiffed hair. So I think truly. I think that one of the things that we have to recognize is that everybody's story matters. Kelly Brown Douglas says actually, we need to pay attention to the marginalized and the most marginalized in our communities because they have an epistemological lens. They have a lens that is different from everyone else's. And if we can start with those at the margins, if we can start with those that are most underserved by our faith, by our policies, that will actually understand our community better. And so, Eli, to your point, I think that in an attempt to amalgamate everybody, unity doesn't mean community. And I think that we take that for granted because until I can see myself and bring my full self to my community, then you just got diversity, right? Like that's what we were talking about.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, like that unity might be why I showed up, but what keeps me standing in that space and what's required. And it's interesting because I I don't well, I'll throw you this question, but I remember about reading about Willie Jennings and his concepts around like what is a mixed multitude start to look like and getting really complex.

SPEAKER_02

That's right.

SPEAKER_01

And in response to what was done with colonialism of breaking apart like the people place practice, and like, so how do you actually get back to complex identity, stuff that's not as neat and careful? Maybe that is what's ultimately required to get to inclusion, is like we can't actually assume that everybody's gonna check the same boxes. It's how do we make space that there's everybody's a box?

SPEAKER_02

Well, and I think we can't make everybody's check in proximity to whiteness, right? That's the thing, or in proximity to being neurotypical. I'm neurodivergent, which means that I'm going to have a fidget spinner, I'm going to hum, but that doesn't need to be compared to someone who doesn't need those things, right? Our problem is that we think of inclusion as bringing people into a space that already exists as opposed to co-creating the space together, which is problematic, right? In religious communities, in corporate world, right? We we hear all the time like, oh, you should know how to do that. Why? Why should you know how to do that? Why why are your expectations that I should understand how to operate in a space that never included me or thought about me in the first place? That's it's just a false narrative.

SPEAKER_00

One thing that I'm thinking about, just in this conversation now, is that like, first of all, how much I appreciate the work you're doing and the perspective that you're bringing in, Whitney. And also how much it's incumbent on people who look like me and go through the world with the privilege that I go through the world with, to be, you know, willing to make those changes and sort of acknowledge those things. It's not a question. It's just something that I'm, you know, something that I'm thinking about as we're talking.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, I also think though that one of the things, and I'm sure people gonna have something to say, and that's fine. Come check me, come find me, is that DEI practitioners in the beginning spent a lot of time trying to make people forego their identities in service of serving the most marginalized, right? Like your whiteness was the only identity marker that you could have, right? But I worked with a group this weekend, and when I asked them to fill out an identity chart, most of them didn't put their political affiliation or their religious affiliation, or like they just it was very secondary. And I think that when we pick what people have to be, when we are trying to be in community with them, we miss the point. So I'm not saying, Eli, that you don't have work to do. You do. We all do. What I'm asserting is that there has to be joy with the work. There has to be like a why with the work, right? Because if not, then we give a thousand dollars and assume that we've dispelled whatever discomfort we have, right? But this is not that. This is a journey.

SPEAKER_00

For sure. Well, I think what you said, like it's enriching for all of our community, for the entire community. You know, it's not about doing charity for people who haven't had as much before, right? It's about saying I'm gonna be enriched by this experience. And we're enriched by having a community where there's interaction between people who think and believe different things and have different experiences, and we're actually sharing those experiences together.

SPEAKER_02

That's right. I tell people all the time I'm a better Christian because I had the privilege and the honor of working within the Jewish ecosystem and still do. All of my clients are Jewish organizational leaders. So, like it's and in a Christian normative country, which is unfortunate because it's this is our country was founded on religious freedom, but in a Christian normative country, it's very easy to other people instead of thinking about what we share. I wrote an article a while back about being a black Christian DEI practitioner. And one of the things I thought is that all Jewish people were white. And then I went to Israel and mind blown, we're on a call right now with a black Jewish rabbi, which is the I mean, just like working on it. Yeah, uh-huh. You um yeah, mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00

We said it last time rabbi in the traditional sense of the word, even if not in the like fully credentialed sense that Kara is our rabbi.

SPEAKER_02

And it's just it's just the dopest thing on the planet, right? That we can have sacred spaces in these conversations and our differences actually bring us together instead of tearing us apart, right?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, you know, and we've been thinking and talking a lot about that. Like, if we're seeking a pluralistic democratic society, and our expectation as an anti-Semitism organization is that that is the s type of society where Jews are the most safe, and how do we acknowledge the whiteness in the room? Right, right. Like, like how do we do that in a way that's helpful for people to really understand Jewish identity, that's helpful for Jews to wrestle with like those white identifying Jews, like to wrestle with identity without closing out Jews of color. How do we do that? And I think we're still working on it. I think we're still working on how do you think about like I'm interested in learning more about the way you were talking about identity mapping for people and like what happens when you give more options, maybe.

SPEAKER_02

That's right. That's right. It's it's when you ask someone about their identities, at least I have found they talk about the things that they want to work on or the things that they're most ashamed of, as opposed to the things that bring them the most joy. And so I think in whatever space we are in, the first thing we have to do is we have to put representation at the top, right? So if your congregation is diverse, so what if none of the people on the board look a different way or have a different income or have a different educational status, right? So I think some of the work is reframing what it means to be Jewish or what it means to be Christian or what it means to be black or what it means to be this or that, right? Like I think it is offering up opportunities for sacred community and sacred learning moments from people without needing to be defensive, right? So it is, I am talking to you because I want to build community with you. I'm not talking at you, I'm talking with you, and I am holding space for the questions that you might have that might trigger me, right? I'll never forget I was in Israel and uh a woman walked up to me and she said, What are black people doing about anti-Semitism in the United States? And I was like, All of us, or just like some, like me, like who specifically, and so I, you know, I took a minute and I was like, It sounds like you have some things that you need to work through. How can I hold space for you in this moment? What answers can I help you uncover? Right? Like, how can we work together? And by the end, we were like laughing and eating popsicles, but I remember that question being so abrasive. Just like, you want me to solve all the problems for all the black people, please? We got stuff going on in America too. Like, what are we talking about?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Well, and a question built on the assumption that there's like such a bridge already, or you know, such a gap already that needs to be bridged, right? Like, it's not a good place to start.

SPEAKER_01

But and great desperation, probably in that too of like, I have you here.

SPEAKER_02

That's right. Still problematic, but that's right. I have conversations. Like that all the time. You wouldn't imagine, like, how many times people are like, So can you tell me about how to solve all the problems of the world across intercultural blah, blah, blah, blah, blah? And I'm like, Yep, let me take a couple more sips of my coffee. It's just so fascinating that I guess when people find someone who is willing to have those difficult conversations, they assume that I have all the answers as opposed to co-building the answers with them. And that, like, that to me as a DEI practitioner is where the danger is because I think people assume that I can solve lots and lots of problems. But I think that I can just have conversations that help people solve their own, right? Or like build community with people across differences. But I don't, I don't want to have that much pressure of having to be the person that has all the answers because I don't. I'm still learning.

SPEAKER_00

For sure, nor should you, right? But I think part of what I hear in those stories also is like I don't have access to this conversation regularly, which is just again a sign that like the community is not the community's not there. That's right, right? I don't have someone else who I know who's a black woman who I can talk to about this stuff. So as soon as I find out Whitney's willing to talk to me about it, I have to give her every quest, you know, every question I've been sitting on for however long.

SPEAKER_02

And it's an honor and it's also frightening. Like it's also frightening because we know that like when white people do something wrong, it is seen as like a singular incident. But when black people do something wrong, it is seen as like a community flaw or a communal flaw. And so there's this very tight tightrope that I walk, very thin tightrope that I walk all the time of not being characterized as the monolithic representative of all black people with Afro's or all black people who are DEI practitioners, right? Because I'm a black woman, neurodivergent, DEI practitioner, right? Like all of those things inform how I show up to a space. And so even if somebody shared my same identity-based characteristics, it doesn't mean that we're the same person. And people, I think, want to just they want to paint people with broad brushstrokes. Being Jewish looks a certain way, being smart looks a certain way, being rich looks a certain way, because our brains want to be able to quickly categorize to understand, and it gets us in trouble. So this past weekend, I worked with an organization, and one of the things that I did is I put fidget spinners on the table where we were working and coloring pages. I made sure there was food in the room, I made sure that there was like physical representation as well as visual, right? Like, and so before they even entered the space, I showed them who I was non-verbally. And then when I introduced myself, I said, Hey, I'm Whitney, I'm neurodivergent. And as a result, you're going to see me playing with my fidget spinner. You all are welcome to. If you don't want to, that's okay. But this is how I work best within a space. And I think it's like inviting people into elements of my identity, right? I'm a working mom of four who's been divorced, right? And all of those things inform my identity. And instead of hiding from them, I'm very open with people about those things because undoubtedly I find myself in a room with someone who shares the same characteristics or same identity or same like past as me. And that creates a bridge, right? So when people see my face, I don't want white people to say, Oh, I have nothing in common with her. Instead, I want people to say, Oh, there might be some commonality there, but even if it's not, her vulnerability is inviting me to talk to her a little bit more, right?

SPEAKER_00

Very brave.

SPEAKER_02

Well, vulnerability is my superpower because I don't know another way to be. I don't, I don't know another way to exist in a space where I want to be in community. I think that vulnerability opens the door for that.

SPEAKER_00

Sounds like really good modeling, also. I appreciate that very much.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I was gonna say, like, and the role that vulnerability plays in inclusion work.

SPEAKER_02

That's right. That's right. You don't know how to include people unless they tell you what it means to include them. We can't make assumptions, right? We cannot. So, again, as a part of that development session, there was a time where I gave them 10 minutes to read. And I said, however, if you want to, I will read this out loud outside if any of you are auditory learners. And there was one person who came, and that person said, I'm just so grateful that you're reading this out loud to me because I do learn better this way, but I've been nervous about saying that, right? So sometimes people don't even have the language to know what it means to include them, right? They just know that they don't feel included. And so some of that is also offering opportunities to say, Oh, that helped me feel included, or no, actually, I didn't like that at all, right? I think people we take for granted that people know a lot about their identities or know how to activate their identities in a way that benefits them and benefits their community, but that's just not true, right? Pastoral care and pastoral and spiritual formation is teaching people what it means to show up in spiritual places. So my big question is always, what am I taking for granted? What learning am I taking for granted when I'm trying to build spaces of belonging?

SPEAKER_01

That's beautiful. And it it's making me wonder too, to pivot into like what happens when you don't do that, what happens when you don't go outside and read it aloud for the auditory learner, and the harm that can happen when that person then is not deeply included in the work that's happening. And like that's just one example of your losing one voice, but then all the little ways that we lose all these other perspectives.

SPEAKER_00

You talked about what was it? It was isolation and erasure, and what was the third one?

SPEAKER_02

Discrimination.

SPEAKER_00

Is that sort of how you would think about that? And how you would think about the harm of not including somebody?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, so I would argue that a lack of inclusion comes from either erasure, which means that your identity doesn't you can't find your identity in this space. Isolation, you're the only one with your identity in this space, and as a result, you feel left out of the community or discrimination because of your identities. We see that as a negative and we are judgmental against that. In the case of the person who needed auditory reading who had never had that before, that was erasure, right? And isolation because he was alone in that need. And it didn't occur to the folks in the room that someone would actually need that, right? And I I argue in my research that that's what happens far too often with black women. People assume our needs, they don't think we have needs, or our needs are seen as almost like a hindrance to forward movement. And so we get discriminated against. And I think that that's true for any subgroup, right? It happened to me when I worked at Upstart. We had a woman who was observant, and every time we had kosher breakfast, you would hear people say, Oh, here we go with this kosher breakfast again. And she eventually came to me and she said, like, I'd rather just eat in my room instead of having to deal with this. That was erasure, that was isolation, and that was discrimination. And that was within a Jewish space.

SPEAKER_01

Well, and that feeling you can have based on one of those three of like, I'm holding everybody else back because we're so used to adjusting spaces for dominant culture.

SPEAKER_02

That's right, that's right. Or assuming that no one needs it because I don't need it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Well, yeah, I think that's that I feel that very much. I had a colleague who was hard of hearing.

SPEAKER_03

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00

And it was like um, you know, when you're speaking in front of a group and someone offers you the microphone and and then everyone says, Oh, I don't need that.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, I don't need it. I don't need it. I'm loud enough.

SPEAKER_00

Right.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Exactly. And I've been told since I was a child, Ela, your voice carries. Yeah. Right. But it's like, no, I use the mic every time.

SPEAKER_02

Every time.

SPEAKER_00

But I wouldn't have known that before. Yeah, every time.

SPEAKER_02

Absolutely. Or how many times do we play music during silent work time because our brains work better when we do that, but we call it silent work time for a reason, and yet we play music, you know, religious discrimination notwithstanding for people who sometimes have periods where they're not supposed to listen to music at all. Like we make assumptions about what people want to hear, what helps people relax, what helps people write? Like we do it all the time. And we do it in the name of inclusion, and then our feelings get hurt when people don't feel included. And it just creates this cycle. It just creates this cycle of disunity, of I'm not going to go to that thing anymore because those people don't listen to me anyway. It just, it's a very sad, sad thing.

SPEAKER_00

So we've talked about the research piece, and you've shared a lot about your experience in practice in this. What do you see as the relationship between those things? What's the relationship between the academic work and inclusion praxis?

SPEAKER_02

Sure. I think that for me, I can know a whole lot about this, but unless I apply it, it's for not, right? Like, so after the situation with my school, I said, y'all, this ain't right. And I said, okay, well, show us how to fix it. And so I did. I started applying what I learned as a DEI practitioner to it. So I think knowing it without doing it makes you, I'd say, even more culpable than the people who have no clue about what's going on because we just turn it into a philosophical exercise. And I cannot stand that. When it's like, well, let me play devil's advocate. Well, first of all, the devil is a lie. So stop playing devil's advocate. Like, I hate when people say that because it's like, why are you turning my lived experience into like this psychological, physical, like mental exercise? So academically, I learn the things that I need practically. I distill them down into digestible pieces for my community in service of my community. Academically, I do it for me, but then I need to transpose it to my community, right?

SPEAKER_00

I like that.

SPEAKER_01

And what keeps you energized in doing that? Because it's not easy work to be building the space that you need to learn, literally, in the seminary as you're in seminary. Like that's that's heavy work.

SPEAKER_02

It's so funny. In my thick description, it says, I am a black woman seminarian, talking to black women seminarians about our seminary experience. Like it just talks about the layers. Like, I think for me, it's when someone says, Oh, I feel so included. That's what gives me what I need to go forward. Or when someone says, like, thank you for your allyship, or thank you for showing up for me, or thank you for modeling reading aloud, or when I see the neurotypical people playing with fidgets, like, oh, there's something to this fidget thing. Right? It's the small aha's that sort of put coins in my emotional coffers to keep on going because I won't say that those are far and few between, but it is really easy to get caught up in the folks that don't get it. But my philosophy as introduced by Brene Brown, I know, I know, is that you got to work with the willing. So when the willing show up, I'm like, this is what I'm supposed to be doing.

SPEAKER_00

I really like also that sort of celebration of what we might think of as small things, right? Like a neurotypical person using a fidget might, we might think of that as like a small thing. Um, but I'm thinking also of a book that we read together, Emergent Strategy by Adrian Murray Brown. And the idea of fractals in particular, and the idea of the ways that small interactions are echoed out in larger interactions. And so what you were saying about the connection between yourself as an individual and the work that you're doing and how that impacts the community and what you do on you know, sort of on behalf of the community, all of those things. I think it's so, you know, it's so important to draw those connections and to say it might feel like a small thing, but me choosing to do this thing or me, you know, acting in this way that's going to include someone who wasn't otherwise included or whatever it is, is actually gonna, you know, has the potential to make a significant change in terms of how we think about inclusion as a whole society. I think it's so important.

SPEAKER_02

That's right. The leader of that group joked, damn it, Whitney, now I have to have fidget spinners at every meeting. And I was like, There it is.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, good.

SPEAKER_02

There it is, right? There it is.

SPEAKER_01

We had a similar experience at a staff retreat, and we had a few staff members. They're like, Wow, this is a life-changing experience.

SPEAKER_02

That's right. But think about the bias that's attached to fidget spinners. You think about people who use fidgets as having ADHD or or being like non-committed, or they just want to play. And like seeing all of them coloring and playing with their fidgets, but being all in on the conversation. When we debriefed afterwards, they were like, I didn't know I needed, I didn't even know these things were an option.

SPEAKER_00

Right, exactly. Like this is my Kooshball from our last staff retreat, and this is my uh infinite cube from the staff retreat before that. And I and like I'm someone who I thought, like, uh I'll be one of those people. Like, I I was like, I can sit through three days, like whatever. But it's like, how much better to sit through three days with my toys? That's it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

How much of that do you think is, at least from your experience in the in a more corporate space, like how much of that is disrupting our understanding of professionalism?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, so there's this concept of hidden curriculum. And the concept of hidden curriculum is that there are rules, laws, policies that we are not taught that we are expected to know. And hidden curriculum especially penalizes people who have not been raised in like predominantly white middle class spaces. And so to your point, professionalism is a construct, right? And so when someone we know what it means for someone to act unprofessionally, but we very rarely articulate what it means to be professional in a specific space. And it's problematic because with hidden curriculum, you know, with every curriculum, there's assessments. And if I'm constantly failing the assessment, I am seen as a deficient learner or deficient member. And I'll never forget there was a one day when at my previous job, we were talking about how to dress for a meeting. And there were four generations of people represented in this meeting. So one person said, Of course you don't wear your damn jeans with the holes in them. Now, mind you, I was sitting in that meeting with jeans with my damn holes in them, right? So I was like, ah, and then someone else said, Well, you need to have a button-up shirt. And then I said, Well, what about folks who are trans who don't want to wear something that's fitted or don't want to wear this or don't want to, like, how are we defining professionalism? And you know, people were like, not everything has to be a discussion. And I was like, Well, I just want us to be clear that we are leaving out, right? Clarity is kindness, so define professionalism. Does it mean not wrinkled, no stains that I can work with? But if it means that I have to wear a specific set of clothing or a specific thing, then you either need to teach me or provide me the resources to have that.

SPEAKER_01

And you hired me as I was. That's it. Okay.

SPEAKER_02

That's it. That's it. You hired me as I was, and I was professional enough. And to be not to be fair, but I think that they did think it was enough because they had this hidden curriculum that informs their bias and informs their interactions. And that's why it's called hidden because it's not even something that you think about explicitly, right? Like coming to a meeting with paper and pen is considered professional. But if I'm an auditory learner and all I need to do is listen to you, I might seem like I'm not taking care of business because you don't see me writing it down. But whose fault is that? Like, why is that what professionalism looks like? You have to check that.

unknown

Yep.

SPEAKER_00

I know that too. I've never been a note taker and I was told at a job to like start bringing notepads and pens to meetings, and I was like, what the fuck are you talking about?

SPEAKER_02

Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. Why?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, it's like it's up here.

SPEAKER_02

Yes, yes. And we know that professionalism is like a power construct because we have bills like the Hair Act, where black women have had to advocate to wear our hair in its natural baby. I do not wake up with long tresses. I don't remember the last time. And honestly, it's it's so much work to get it to stay that way. It's to my detriment. And yet we still have laws that are regulating what it means to be white, right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

And that we actually needed those laws because I think about now like embracing it. It was really when I started at Project Shema. It was like I embraced my hair in braids, and now I'm embracing my hair locked. And it's like, I never, I never when I was working in foundation work, in business professional, like dress code, in the I never would have worn my hair natural. Or maybe I would have, but I can't imagine it. Like that was not what I that that hidden curriculum was like every other the very few black women that I was exposed to in that environment. It was very clear that like that is just not what you do.

SPEAKER_02

Right. And we know now that black women perming their hair is actually leading to uterine cancer. So us even trying to approximate ourselves to whiteness is killing us. Literally, it is killing us. Absolutely. And I used to get a perm faithfully every four weeks.

SPEAKER_01

And since I was 12. I had perm since I was 12.

SPEAKER_02

It's it's fascinating. Dark and lovely, just me, Justin for And I did that in service of feeling included in a community that said I had to look a certain way to be included.

SPEAKER_01

So that's interesting, right? Like how inclusion or assimilation, I guess, right? Like how much did we learn that the way you actually get included is to fit in. I think I think there's ways in which we talk a lot about Jews and whiteness and what it meant to actually like need to seek assimilation through whiteness for safety. And so now as we're in a new mode of thinking about what inclusion and belonging really means, like all of the different structures that need to break down into order in order to make that possible. That's right. That's right.

SPEAKER_02

And I I think that having values-based foundational understanding is what actually creates inclusion and community, right? Everything else is assimilation. If we look at Ruth and Nomi in the Bible, right, Ruth had to assimilate. Yeah. Had to, had to leave Moab, go to a foreign place, had to learn a new language, had to learn a new word, right? Like, had to assimilate. Carrie Day calls that learning to pass. And she talks about in theological spaces how we learn to pass by using certain language and looking a certain way and doing a certain thing. And that is assimilation, not inclusion. And I think far too often our corporate spaces, our worship spaces actually require assimilation and not inclusion.

SPEAKER_00

100%. 100%. I mean, it's like it's the it's what you were talking about in terms of professionalism, Whitney. I think of it a lot in terms of grammar, in terms of etiquette.

SPEAKER_02

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, it's all, yeah, like that's all assimilation and not the acknowledgement of, you know, difference and celebration of difference.

SPEAKER_02

Well, and some people will say, so you just want everybody to be all willy-nilly. No, but if there are certain expectations, because I've I've I've heard that. I have heard people say, like, so everyone can just do whatever the fuck they want to do. And I'm like, well, maybe, but no. I think that it is about teaching the values of the space that you are in, because those aren't the same values in every space. The values I take to the club are not the same values I take to church, are not the same values, right? So it's about teaching people, it's about modeling, it's about teaching people how to move in and out of spaces as their authentic self, but with parameters. There's nothing wrong with that. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that. There's nothing wrong with saying, no, you can't drink in this space, right? You cannot take a drink into this sacred space. In my case, like when I was growing up, our church never let us bring food and drink into the sanctuary, right? It was just an expectation. You could go out and eat if you wanted to, whatever. Now my church has like a coffee shop in it, and everybody brings their coffee in, and it was a paradigm shift for me, but they taught us that it was okay. That's like that's what inclusion is.

SPEAKER_01

I'm still not sure if I can bring my water bottle into Schul, I'll be very honest with you. I like hide it in my bag. Do you see what I mean? I'm just genuinely not sure.

SPEAKER_02

And then we have to ask ourselves like, why does that rule exist? Like it's okay to interrogate, right?

SPEAKER_01

As humans, right? Like, if we're in we're humans in a in this sacred space, like why would we not that's right have the recognition that as human beings we need water and food and all of those things?

SPEAKER_00

Human needs in human spaces, yeah.

SPEAKER_02

That's right, especially in like multiple hours of services.

SPEAKER_01

Like, I just don't Yeah, I was thinking this recently on Rosh Hashanah.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, Yom Kippur Notwithstanding, right? Yeah, no, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yom Kippur Notwithstanding, like notwithstanding. But yeah, yeah, for like, you know, Rosh Hashanah, like it's a long service, yeah, right? Or even in our case, our revivals last. Baby, listen, you go to sleep and wake up and folks still be in the corner shouting, and you like, can I just have a snack? Like, can I please, can I please just have like a uh Snickers, please.

SPEAKER_01

I have to tell you too, because so there's something about the way you described the Ruth and Naomi story that that clicked for me of like I've always been bothered with how Ruth's response when Naomi tells her to go back. I've always been bothered with how that gets interpreted. But your people are my people. And and I'm just thinking, like, this is her mother-in-law, she has moved her whole life to be here and like whole life, right? Grieving widow. Uh-huh. You told me to go back. Right. Like, right, your people are my people. Your God is my God. Like, I'm going with you. Like, what do you mean?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, absolutely. And far too often we characterize it like, you know, yeah, we we see it as like the mentor minty, blah blah blah blah. Right. But Yolanda Norton, scholar Yolanda Norton argues that Ruth really didn't, like, what choices did she have?

SPEAKER_00

Go back alone through the desert. Sounds super safe and awesome.

SPEAKER_02

Right. As a single, childless, right? So when we when we think about the spaces that we create, how often do we put people in desert situations? Right? How p how often do we force people to come with us?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Because we're like, oh no, you can do your own thing, but you just can't belong in this community, right? Like this, this was I heard Ruth saying, you are my community, and I got to go where my community goes. I got to do what my community does.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

All right, Whitney, I'm gonna ask you our last question, which is what is the advice that you have for people who want to create more inclusive spaces in the US? Sounds like you've done a lot of this. We've heard some of it already in terms of vulnerability and you as a leader and all kinds of things, but what's your advice for folks?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, so I think the first thing is that you can't move forward without acknowledging where you are. Like you have to, and I think to your point, Eli, vulnerability has to be the subtext. Like you have to be vulnerable and saying, we got this wrong. We didn't get this right. We don't have any black people in our congregation, we don't have any people of color in making decisions, we don't write like We just have to do an honest inventory or invite somebody like Whitney Weathers Consulting to come in and help sort of tease out what those gaps and challenges might be. And then I think next they have to understand the difference between inclusion, assimilation, diversity, right? Far too often the amalgamated term of DEI gets dismissed because we use that as a blanket term for everything. But we have to actually say what is the issue we are seeking to solve here. Is it a diversity issue? Is it an inclusion issue? Like, what are we doing? I think inherent in that is resisting urgency and resisting that desire to get it right, getting that, resisting that desire to move quickly. Oh, let's just get a whole bunch of black people in here. That is going to go over like a lead balloon. Because if you just invite people into spaces without normalizing the space, it's for not, right? And then I think finally, people have to be like caretakers of the community. So you just can't create it and say, oh shit, I'm glad I finished that, right? Like you have to create it and take care of it. You have to monitor it. You have to assess if there's something that's wrong. You have to take community problems seriously, right? And you have to infuse joy and play into the work, into the community, into inclusion. Because if we just see this as like this foreboding task that we have to do, then we won't find joy in the community. We'll just head down, try to get it done. Our faiths share a text that says, You must love your neighbor as yourself. And I think that it ends and begins with saying, My neighbor is important to me, my neighbor is important to the community, I'm important to my neighbor, and now I got to get going and do something about it.

SPEAKER_00

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01

I was thinking, like, in hearing you say that, is our goal wrong, right? Like we think it's this, oh, everybody's happy and the room is diverse and and everyone's feeling inclusive. But it's like it's actually hard.

SPEAKER_02

That's right.

SPEAKER_01

And and uncomfortable.

SPEAKER_02

That's right.

SPEAKER_01

And how do we get better at feeling uncomfortable?

SPEAKER_02

That's it, right? So we know that psychological safety is is meaning that I can ask questions, I can question, yeah. I can, when I don't have answers to my questions, perhaps I can work with somebody to work through that. But I would say that a true mark of community is being able to understand where our conflicts are and work through that.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Right. And work through it. Because just again, just having diversity doesn't mean a thing if we are not actually building something together. And so to your point, I think that it's got to be that building of things, yeah, which requires conflict.

SPEAKER_00

Well, it's acknowledgement too. I was gonna say, like, I love that idea of starting with acknowledgement of where we're at and having an honest assessment of what's actually going on. I've talked to so many rabbis, not about actually joining their congregations, but just like for work stuff. And every time they're like, Oh, you know, are you a part of a synagogue? And I'm like, no, you know, as a black Jewish family, we've had extremely uncomfortable situations in basically all of the synagogues we've gone to. And with the exception of one person who actually wasn't a congregational rabbi, every single rabbi I've talked to and had this conversation with says, Oh, it's not like that here. It wouldn't be like that if you came to our synagogue and it's like, but it probably would be.

SPEAKER_02

Right. And I think to your point also, it can't be your family's job to solve the problems. Because I think something that we also do is we say to those who are on the margins or those who have been underserved by our community, well, tell me how to fix it. Tell me how to fix it. And it's like, whoa, whoa.

SPEAKER_00

I don't care enough at this point to fix it. Like you have, you know, like that's yeah.

SPEAKER_02

That's right.

SPEAKER_01

Well, and the question should be tell me what you need.

SPEAKER_02

Right. So I think the question is, in what ways is our community informed by the members that are in it?

SPEAKER_00

Yes, yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Because if it's not informed by all the members that are in it, then that means that we have a breakdown in our community. Yeah. So, Kara, to your point, I don't think it's like, what do I need to do differently? I think it's, oh, I need to do something differently. I'm going to do the work to figure out what it means to do something differently. And I'm not going to put the onus on you to figure it out. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

And also I think the vulnerability to be able to say things aren't perfect here.

SPEAKER_02

That's right.

SPEAKER_00

This isn't a perfect space, and we have things we need to learn and we have things we need to change. And how can we work together, co-create, as you've been saying, Whitney, that experience and that community.

SPEAKER_01

Committed to the process.

SPEAKER_02

That's right. The journey. Because process almost means like once we finish the process, things will be, but it's the journey.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. Leh le ka.

SPEAKER_00

Whitney, thank you so much. This has been an incredibly enlightening conversation about how we create inclusive spaces for all people and what that looks like and the work that we all have to do to create space for us as individuals to be vulnerable, to be respectful of people who have differences and curious about people who have different experiences from us so that we can create those communities together. It's been really inspiring and gives me a lot to think about as we move ahead with our work for sure.

unknown

Yes.

SPEAKER_02

I'm just so grateful for the opportunity. Project Shema, y'all are the cool kids. So that you called me, I was like, yes, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00

On Tuesdays we wear pink.

SPEAKER_01

Wednesdays.

SPEAKER_00

On Wednesdays we wear pink.

SPEAKER_01

No, but you're just your joy, your energy, your passion. It's just impossible not to be inspired by what you do and the things that you say. And I feel like every time I talk to you or I hear you on a stage, I feel like, you know, maybe we can do this thing. Maybe we can be better. And we have a lot of reasons and examples to not feel that way. So just thank you.

SPEAKER_00

The kind of leadership that you're doing is really inspiring. I will echo Kara 100%. Like it feels, it feels so brave. It feels so necessary because I, you know, it's hard to step into that space that says, I am an individual that has this experience, and also it's shared by enough other people that I think I have work to do on behalf of a community. That can be a scary place, but I, you know, I think it's right and good. And I think you're doing such important things. I'm really, I want to be like that. I want to I want to be like that.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, thank you. Thank you all so much for this opportunity.

SPEAKER_00

Thank you for listening. Translations is a production of Project Shema. Executive producers include myself, Carol Wilson, and Orin Jacobson. Translations is engineered and edited by Nathan J. Vaughn of NJV Media. If you're interested in learning more about Whitney Weather's research and her consulting practice, check the show notes for links. Please be sure to like, listen, and subscribe anywhere you get your podcasts. And if you enjoyed this episode, please be sure to share it with a friend. You can also listen to our conversation with DEI practitioner Andrew Mbuvi to go deeper on this specific topic. Thanks again for joining us, and we'll see you soon.