Media Reckoning
6/19/20 - On the conflict between outward facing antiracist messaging (ads, content, “solidarity” statements) and internal office behavior: who’s hired, who’s promoted, who’s given a raise, how Black people feel at your place of work, whose ideas are supported and welcomed—in media, and beyond.
Transcript below.
Listen on Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Overcast | Pocket Casts | Spotify.
CREDITS
Producer: Gina Delvac
Hosts: Aminatou Sow & Ann Friedman
Theme song: Call Your Girlfriend by Robyn
Composer: Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs.
Associate Producer: Jordan Bailey
Visual Creative Director: Kenesha Sneed
Merch Director: Caroline Knowles
Editorial Assistant: Laura Bertocci
Design Assistant: Brijae Morris
Ad sales: Midroll
LINKS
Bon Appetit: “Food has always been political.” / Business Insider article
Sohla El-Waylly on The Sporkful podcast
The racial reckoning in women's media
Dude, where’s my magazine? This isn’t just happening in media: The Wing, Reformation, Ban.do
TRANSCRIPT: MEDIA RECKONING
[Ads]
(0:52)
Aminatou: Welcome to Call Your Girlfriend.
Ann: A podcast for long-distance besties everywhere.
Aminatou: I'm Aminatou Sow.
Ann: And I am Ann Friedman.
Aminatou: Hi Ann Friedman.
Ann: Hi Aminatou Sow.
Aminatou: Well what are we talking about today?
Ann: Oh, wow. We are talking today about the very obvious conflict that has emerged between the many outward-facing statements that companies are making "in this moment": ads, content, solidarity statements, pledges to do better, etc., and the same companies' internal behavior, i.e. who is hired, who's promoted, who's given a raise, how people feel at your place of work and essentially do the black lives of your employees matter? Or is this just a statement that you feel like you have to make in order to continue to do business?
[Theme Song]
(2:15)
Aminatou: Was it you that I was telling, or maybe it was on this very podcast last week, that I really wish I had been compiling every single brand apology that I've seen? Because there is something darkly funny to me about the fact that someone is telling a designer at every single company right now "Hey, can you make a statement about Black Lives Matter?" or alternatively "Can you make a statement of my apology for racism but please make sure that it's in the brand identity?" [Laughs]
Ann: In the brand identity but also mostly black. Can you make that happen?
Aminatou: There is just something about that that is really darkly funny to me. Designers across brands please unite and tell your stories because the level of comedy and just darkness of it all is not lost on me.
Ann: It's true. When you think about the fact that there are people who are implementing these statements, like the poor social media manager who has to post the very obvious two-faced embarrassing statement from whatever corporation they're running the social feed for, I mean everyone up and down the chain is implicated in the bad behavior of the people who are actually in a position to change things and who have not.
Aminatou: Man. Well so I think a good entry point into this conversation is to talk about whatever is happening at Bon Appetit. I can't believe I just said Bon Appetit.
Ann: I was just going to say, I was expecting a [French accent] Bon from you, not a . . . [Laughs]
Aminatou: Listen, I would never. One of my main beefs with Bon Appetit is truly the name Bon Appetit. It's so . . . I hate the fact that I'm saying it in an American English accent.
Ann: Croissant. [Laughs]
Aminatou: I hate how cheesy it is. I hate, yeah, my ancestors are rolling in their grave that I'm saying these words. But, you know, Bon App as the insiders call it is the food magazine within the Conde Nast company of magazines and they have recently been at the forefront I would say of this conversation in media about what does it mean when the media property puts out a statement saying that they are in solidarity with black people and also acknowledging that maybe the work that they do can be political? And there is a huge disconnect with the way that people who work inside those companies is treated.
(4:45)
I had never seen a Bon App video on YouTube even though it is a huge YouTube empire until maybe the week before this happened and so it's been personally jarring for me that I picked my favorites just as the entire empire collapsed.
Ann: [Laughs] No!
Aminatou: But I'm happy to report that in my one week of watching Test Kitchen videos I had zeroed in on truly a favorite person in this series who has turned out to be the person who has been the most vocal about the nightmare that is happening at Bon Appetit.
Ann: Ugh. I'm guessing your fav is Sohla El-Waylly.
Aminatou: Ugh, one hundie P.
Ann: I have been made aware of her Test Kitchen genius because I am also not a long-standing fan but she came onto my radar this week because she is a person who had the courage to call out what was happening at that organization publicly.
Aminatou: Yeah. So Sohla is an assistant food editor at Bon Appetit and she has also appeared in a lot of their YouTube video content which the Bon Appetit YouTube channel is the real cash cow of the company. If you know anything about media it's collapsing all the time.
Ann: [Laughs] If you know one thing about media make it that, yeah.
(6:02)
Aminatou: If you know one thing about media it's that media is collapsing all the time and most of these magazines are not profitable but Bon Appetit has found this really profitable way of making videos and so this is why we keep referring to the YouTube channels and to the Test Kitchen. And so Sohla unlike most of the cast essentially and the other people who star in these videos is not white. There are very few non-white people in these videos and there are two ways to appear on this Bon Appetit channel. Some people like Sohla are actual staff members at Bon Appetit which means they have other responsibilities: they're editors, they're writers, they test recipes, and then there are people who are employed directly by Conde Nast Entertainment to appear in the video. So it's like the distinction is a person who works there and then a person who is just contracted to come, you know, like appear in the videos.
The revelation of this week has been that Sohla has said that she felt she was used, to quote her, as a display of diversity and that unlike the rest of the white people who appear on these videos that the people of color were not compensated for their time and for their appearances.
Ann: Right.
Aminatou: While at the same time bolstering the diversity of Conde Nast cooking YouTubes.
Ann: And in general bolstering the quality of their content. Not only being this kind of visual presence that like oh, hey, don't worry, we have some people of color who work here. But truly doing lots of work, you know what I mean? Like actually weighing in on how are these people who are paid with the contracts you've described who appear on video, how are they doing their jobs? Like supporting those people and doing a very similar job to many of them without the same contract or pay.
(7:55)
So basically what happened is the editor of Bon Appetit, Adam Rapoport, published a statement/column that was headlined "Food Has Always Been Political." And after this statement -- shortly after that statement -- a number of writers started coming forward about their experiences in pitching stories to the magazine, trying to get the magazine to care about their perspective and their recipes and ideas. Shortly thereafter a photo of him in brown face -- I think the photo was from 2006 but was posted in like 2013. I mean definitely we're not talking about something from the '80s; we're talking about some recent like he is an adult dressing in brown face. That also surfaced.
Aminatou: And also a picture that had been on the Internet for a long time honestly. I just want to impress upon everyone that it's not some sort of gotcha. No one went and looked through his personal archive and found this photo. This is a photo that in previous years other people had seen and it was not . . . while it was registered as a problem very smartly by a lot of people it did not cause any waves because of the fact that people didn't think it was important at the time.
Ann: Right. And it definitely -- you're right that people were aware of this photo. I mean originally someone went and found it on Adam Rapoport's wife's Instagram, like that's where it originally appeared, but as many people have pointed out that's the kind of thing you don't go looking for unless there are lots of other problems right? It's not like someone was like "This guy seems really great. Let me see what sort of misbehavior is happening in these other corners of the Internet." No. This is because there is some sort of systemic issue where people who work for you personally are feeling dismissed or that maybe you're the kind of person who would mock other cultures or do something like appear in brown face and that's sort of the story of how it started originally to circulate. But you're totally right, like many things that fit in this category of more powerful people being held to account, it was like open secret status I guess I would say among people who were working for this person.
(10:15)
The day after he released this statement. It has since come out that he denied a request for a pay raise from Ryan Walker Hartshorn who at the time was the only black woman on the magazine's staff. So there's like that. And then I want to recommend folks listen to the Sporkful podcast which is a podcast that does a Tik Tok of kind of the events specifically as they relate to Bon Appetit. After this statement came out and this photo recirculated there was an all-staff meeting via Zoom because that's what happens now and in that meeting he was sort of like oh, I apologized, cool. Anyone need to talk about it? And it was silent. And then as Sohla said in this interview on The Sporkful she was the person to say "Yeah, actually I do want to talk about it and are you going to resign?" I'm paraphrasing. You should listen to her tell the whole story. And in essence she also had to be the one to say "Hello all of my colleagues, most of you white, who have your cameras turned off, who have your audio turned off, do you care to chime in here?" She was the person who was raising it internally.
And then after that Zoom call she decided to post publicly about the pay disparity in the videos and that's when it came to my attention that all of this was going on. I think that was my point of entry. I don't think I had seen his statement because who can keep track of all the statements? So that is the high-level view or the real beat-by-beat view of what's happening at Bon Appetit right now. And of course it's not just happening at Bon Appetit right? [Laughs]
Aminatou: Right. You know, I think that what's really interesting about this moment is that these kinds of conversations are not just happening at Bon Appetit. If you've been plugged into the world of media you know that a lot of people are resigning and facing a lot of consequences over this kind of behavior. This is happening at Refinery 29 which is a publication that their stated goal has been to uplift women and to be fun and creative and smart. And it's really interesting to see that even in a space where people proclaim to be feminists and proclaim to be doing things to make people feel good about themselves that every single dynamic of oppression in the real world also manifests itself in the workplace and manifests itself in all sorts of insidious ways.
(12:40)
So I've been really following the story at Refinery 29 because it's a site that I've been reading and Ann you and I come from the Internet where we saw the rise of these kinds of websites that were aimed towards women. The story there is not unlike the story that is happening in other places, you know, where a former employee Ashley Alese Edwards noticed that Refinery 29, like all big media properties and big brands, had blacked out their homepage and were putting squares -- like little black squares on social media ostensibly to say they were in support of black lives. And she tweeted at her former employee saying "Hey, cool blacked-out homepage. That was not my experience there." And to quote the tweet she says "But you know what real allyship looks like? Paying your black employees fairly. Having black women in top leadership positions and addressing the microaggressions your black employees deal with from management on a daily basis."
And then friend of the podcast Ashley C. Ford also went on the record talking about her experience there. So this story to me I think is so important because sometimes women's media likes to put themselves above the fray because they say that they care about either women's empowerment or feminism which as we know are two different things but I'm not going to dispute those semantics here today. [Laughter] But, you know, it's interesting that companies that say they care about that will also not look inwards and say "Hmm, what kind of women are we really celebrating? And what kind of women are we giving opportunities to here?"
(14:12)
Ann: Right. And I think that there is something going on in particular when it comes to companies that have white women at the helm wherein we had Me Too and yeah, that was about power and abuse of power and people not recognizing the power they had. But like that was a men thing mostly right? Or that was about like sexual misconduct mostly, right? And I think one thing that we have always tried to talk about as it relates to the Me Too reckoning is that fundamentally this is about power and what can happen when someone misuses their power, when someone doesn't acknowledge the power they have over coworkers or office culture? All the ramifications of that. And what I'm really seeing happening here is at its base it's the same kind of story. It's just in this case the editors are white women. You know, and white men in the case of like Bon Appetit and other cases but specifically with the Refinery 29 example a white woman who I'm sure -- I haven't looked at the archives -- but I'm sure Refinery 29 published a slew of articles related to Me Too. And it's like I think it is so important to say look, we don't need to draw a parallel between various kinds of reckoning and all of the specifics but at a fundamental level how are you dealing with the power that you have? And how are you deploying it is part of this story.
Aminatou: Right. And, you know, to look at the stories of other women who have worked at Refinery 29 another ex-employee Channing Hargrove really details her own experience there and talking about how she understood that favoritism was at play in every way that decisions are made there and so she says that at one point a manager told her to start complimenting her editor-in-chief because, quote, "Because she has all these issues with you and it really comes down to the fact that she thinks you don't like her."
(16:12)
And, you know, for black women this is something that cuts to a really, really, really painful place, this idea that one minute people really like you for the difference you bring. You bring diversity and you bring a new perspective and you bring a fresh kind of energy. But the minute that you actually use your voice to start to do something you are seen as a threat. And so, you know, this is the pet-to-threat workplace phenomena that so many black women are aware of.
Again you're so right about even though they're not the same thing the parallel with Me Too where we're really talking about challenging a power structure. You know, the fact that white women are really failing to see that it is power that is at play here and not just an accusation of oh man, you don't like a black lady at work. It's like no, no, no, you come to work with your own set of privileges and your own baggage and your own whatever and it is completely possible that you're getting screwed over in a system that is male-dominated and at the same time it is possible that you can perpetrate that same kind of inequality down the line to women of color. And it's just really disappointing that properties and magazines that say they are about showing what's up with women don't seem to understand that.
Ann: I agree. And I'm glad you mentioned that story that Channing Hargrove told about how she had been asked to basically play nice or make sure your boss -- which is Christene Harberich who was the editor of Refinery 29 -- make sure she knows you like her. That really strikes me as part of the heart of this. Channing Hargrove is doing Channing Hargrove's job, right? Then all of a sudden this whole like "Oh but I feel like if you don't like me if you are presenting a challenge to this system." It feels very, very much a problem that is related to this dynamic of white womanhood, right? It means I have no way of seeing myself as part of the system you're challenging and so I'm going to take it as personal. I think I'm doing great.
(18:25)
There is just so much to unpack in that quote about like she thinks you don't like her because wow. And I do think it is related to not being able to accept that for all the empowerment language and for all of the ways in which maybe you are exposing other injustices or maybe you are actually helping women navigate difficult situations that you still have a lot of work to do and are also part of the problem. These are nuances that I think are a lot easier to talk about from a critique point-of-view and I think speaking for myself personally can be in real-time very hard to unpack. Or you really have to have a lot of self-accountability in order to unpack that in a day-to-day way.
Aminatou: Yeah. You know, I really hear you about the accountability because I think that one thing that is so apparent here, right, is obviously we are living in a time of just great upheaval. In the middle of a pandemic people are marching in the streets like all over the United States to uplift black lives and to uplift trans lives and we are just in a moment that is I think really, really special but also really transformative. I was so heartened to see that this weekend there was, at the march for Black Trans Lives, 15,000 people showed up.
Ann: Right.
(19:45)
Aminatou: That is something that if you had asked me about that even two months ago I don't know that I would've believed it was possible. Or if you had told me that the killing of George Floyd in Minnesota would spark this huge show of support and outrage and that as a country more people than not would say that they think that police brutality against black people is a real thing that happens and is a problem, even a couple of weeks ago I wouldn't have believed that was possible. So the moment to me really does feel electric and it does feel different. And it also feels dangerous in the sense that, you know, a lot of brands and a lot of media properties understand it's a moment to capitalize on and the way that they're doing it is in doing these empty statements. And even if the statement is not empty, right, even if the statement is like yes, food is political, I'm glad that you have come to that awareness Adam Rapoport in 2020. [Laughter] Like even if you're saying that it's how you know who is paying attention and who is also . . . who is reading the room of what's going on.
We're having a serious conversation in this country about defunding the police. It is not a fringe belief or, you know, like a thing that leftist people are secretly whispering to each other about; it is a real conversation that is happening now and is a change that is possible. If we can defund the police we are 100 percent going to defund fucking Bon Appetit. Are you kidding me? Like this is so nuts.
And so the fact that people will make these statements and not understand the real political implications of them, to use the Bon Appetit example, if you are saying that food is political and that's something you believe, if you cannot connect the dots from that to the way that you treat the employees at your company and connect those dots to here is historically how our magazine has just elevated all sorts of just fine, white food to the detriment of food that people of color in this country are eating and telling them that actually every summer we're going to run another crawfish boil or lobster boil thing because comfortable food is accessible food, if you can't see all of that you have no business saying that food is political because you're lighting a match inside your own house.
Aminatou: Yeah.
(22:05)
Ann: And that for me has been -- it's been really . . . I've had a really hard time grokking that because I generally come from a cynical perspective with all of this. But there is really a part of me that is also just not discouraged but not understanding how you can with boldness say "Oh, I stand with . . ." You know, like make a political statement and not understand the implications of that political statement.
Aminatou: Right. These are people who are words people, right? In theory. And theory media people are words people and so you should know the difference between word tenses, right? Can you say we have done this? Like we have done an internal audit. One meaning of reckoning is taking an account of. Can you understand the meaning of your words in order to say this is what we have done and this is what we are in the process of implementing, like as in a concrete thing, as opposed to a high-level or ultimately quite passive statement like frankly Black Lives Matter. Like I believe the sentiment of that statement but if you are a concrete organization responding in this moment that is not a concrete thing. That is a great thing to be in solidarity with but it does not actually speak to anything that you're doing internally.
And so I have been really attuned to the fact in my correspondence with people I do business with, with companies that I buy from, looking at these statements and sending an email that is like "Hey, cool statement. I also very much agree that black lives matter. Can you fill me in on what the bullet list plan is for what you're doing internally? How are you actually making that true? Whatever that looks like for your business." And I think most businesses have employees so that's a good place to start, like who are you hiring? What is your hiring pipeline? And not just like what race are the interns you're hiring but how are you enabling a true cross-section of people to apply and actually get and make a living wage at your entry-level positions? How are you really receiving ideas and criticism and feedback from those people? How are you promoting people? How do you handle ideas that might be at odds of your self-conception of who you are as a person, as an editor, as a boss?
(24:25)
These are the kinds of questions that those statements just never even touch and I think that, you know, it's really quite funny to me that I'm pretty sure that Adam Rapoport thought his food has always been political essay, I'm sure he wrote that and felt fucking great. You know? I'm sure he wrote that and was like here I am writing something that's specific to who we are. And it's like no. [Laughs] That's still the same kind of high-level sentiment which is not actually what is called for from you, a person with considerable power.
Aminatou: Let's take a break.
[Ads]
(27:34)
Aminatou: Well you know the other way honestly that the whole scam is laid bare is when you realize that the company is always worried about the wrong audience. I'm like yes, the audience of your Instagram should probably know that you believe, I don't know, Black Lives Matter, food is political, whatever the statement is. But the barometer to me is how do the people inside the house feel, you know? And you can always tell. It's like if you are not communicating about it inside it will go all sorts of sideways for you outside. And so my hope has been really renewed and I'm so inspired by people who work at these companies who are really doing the painful work of excavating all of the ways that structural racism is playing out at their companies, you know? Like watching Sohla's Instagram stories or all of these women that are speaking out at Refinery 29, the other women that are speaking out at Conde Nast, the women that are speaking out at all sorts of companies risking their own employment and a lot of times risking NDAs that they've signed to say hey, actually this place is not cool. It's not lost on me that they are taking really big risks going up against these behemoths and I think that it's important to not let those risks go to waste. We have such an opportunity to transform these places that we work at and some of them frankly I'm like burn them to the ground. We don't need them as institutions.
Ann: 100 percent. Also a part of this story for me is about the inherent conservatism of big media properties. And I mean that not in the left/right political sense but in the like we want to do what feels safest. We want to do what we've done in the past. And what's really funny about that is we have talked about this 2011 Women's Wear Daily article which the aforementioned Adam Rapoport makes an appearance in along with a handful of other men who were then in their 30s and 40s who had been elevated to top-level editing jobs. The headline memorably was "Dude, where's my magazine?" which I believe is a reference to the movie Dude, Where's My Car?
Aminatou: I know. I know. I know. All sorts of problems.
(29:45)
Ann: But also not just this article, like the New York Times article announcing Adam Rapoport's ascent to editor-in-chief.
Aminatou: Do you remember what that was headlined, Ann? Do you remember what that was headlined?
Ann: A new flavor at Bon Appetit. A new flavor.
Aminatou: [Laughs] I know.
Ann: Like what? And I do think that what's going on there is we like the idea of ourselves as people who are really doing something new and exciting but at the end of the day a lot of conversations that happen internally in media are about like oh, but will people recognize this thing that we're talking about? Have people already heard of this person we're trying to highlight? And it's like actually the way many people consume media is to find out about guess what? New things they haven't heard about before. And I think that a lot of the conversations that happen behind closed doors, choices that are made about who should be an editor or a voice that gets elevated, who gets to be a person in front of the camera, a lot of prejudices are couched using this kind of faceless audience as the excuse. Like actually what they want is the white person they've already heard of.
Aminatou: Right.
Ann: What they want is the man they're already comfortable with.
Aminatou: Ann what they want is each other. It's like I remember my visceral reaction to reading this, you know, Dude, Where's My Magazine? piece in 2011 where the story is ostensibly that all of these media guys are cool, right? It's like oh yeah, they're cool. I'm like hmm, you're cool for a dude who works in media which is not cool at all. [Laughter] That's like one problem. Truly I was like the heart of my darkness really about all of this is I won't even name them, you should go read the piece for yourself, but all of these people in their industry have developed a reputation for being "cool" people which generally just means that you are a white man who is around their 30s and has a sneaker budget. You know? I was like there is no world in which being in a fraternity at Duke makes you a cool person but that's a story for another day. That's a story for another day.
Ann: The opposite, yeah.
(31:45)
Aminatou: But you know, it's like just thinking about just how homogeneous that world is and they are only talking to each other. They're only referencing each other. They are only making media for each other which I guess at some point was helpful. But I am someone who a long time ago subscribed to Bon Appetit and no longer did because it's a lifestyle magazine that's masquerading as a food magazine. It's truly just travel-as-food. And when you are someone like me who actually I have traveled a lot. I come from a lot of different places. I too know that Oaxacan food will be hot one day. There's something just very . . . there's something very grating about the repetitiveness and truly the colonial mindset of just a white man who thinks that he's teaching you something because he ate a taco for the first time like two days ago. And the thing that honestly, when we have these conversations, that I think always gets lost is I really wish businesses would understand everything they lose when they decide that only one kind of person can work there.
Ann: Ugh, yeah.
Aminatou: Yeah, I don't think that diversity is a moral imperative. I'm like if you want to be racist inside your house go be racist inside your house. That does not keep me awake at night. Diversity as a business imperative though and as a creative imperative is something that I think about all the time. It's like watching the other people in food whose stories have been shut out of this magazine because they were not accessible to the editor-in-chief, I'm like that is actually a huge loss. It is a huge loss on a business level and is a huge loss for the audience as well because we have decided that only one kind of person gets to be in charge at a media company or a tech company or you name it. Not to keep ranting on and on about it but I think that that to me, it's really like the core of my frustration and the core of what makes me mad. And when I was watching Sohla on the Test Kitchen videos and she's literally cooking circles around the other people in those videos and she technically knows so much. She used to run a restaurant called Hail Mary which was amazing.
(33:50)
When I think about someone like that who is so technically skilled bring so much to the table then to find out that she was so vastly underpaid, it's so infuriating. It's so infuriating on so many levels and it's the story of pick a company, there is a Sohla, you know? There are many, many, many Sohlas. And I just hope we can get to a point where this conversation gets to happen out loud and it gets to happen more often because the result is truly a lot of pain for people who are not white and work in companies that are run by mostly white people. I think it is lost on the white people that it's actually a very painful experience to be somewhere where you're not reflected or you're not allowed to be yourself and on top of that they are not paying you correctly. It's really insulting and it happens to so many people.
Ann: I 100 percent agree with all of that and I think that once you . . . this is where I have galaxy brain moment of when you expand, okay, it's not just media. When you think about all the other companies where this is replicated, like literally a sea of these statements and all of these places where, you know, the one or two like black people who work there are not able to do their best work, are not able to kind of make the things that you and I want to read and see and buy and experience. Like the enormity of that loss. You know, I guess what I'm trying to say is I hear you and also if every one of those black squares represents this happening at an internal level, because I think we can wager a fair guess that in a lot of places it does, just wow. The enormity, you know?
Aminatou: I know, the loss. It's everywhere and it's bad for the audience. So, you know, before you just make an empty statement to your audience actually think about what they want and what would serve them. And truly if your business model is that in order to be successful you are going to not pay people of color well, you know, I'm like we have other words for that. So that is a concept that historically we have really understood in this country so it's infuriating and it's also very sad.
(36:05)
Ann: Yeah. And I think that one thing that's going on here, I'm sorry that I cannot remember the person who tweeted this so I cannot credit them, but what they were essentially saying is it's all well and good to make a statement about the future but is part of your process going back and talking to people who are no longer working for your company about what their experience has been? And really wanting to sit with the knowledge of the pain that you've created or the frustration that they felt for years and years? Because to me that is a part of this process too, about as these companies look to and really try to hold up and finally be like "Well what do you think?" and all the eyes turn to the one black administrative assistant in the room or something like that, really asking yourself like okay, who's not here and why? Who has passed through these doors and what might they have to tell us about all the growth that we have to do?
Because the other truth is that someone who's still employed might not want to take the risk to say this. You know, not everyone is in a position where they can be honest about this experience on Twitter. And so if people in charge are really serious, especially people with professed feminist ideals like at many of these companies, the question is who are you asking for some real feedback from and how are you compensating them for that feedback?
Aminatou: Whew, that's real. Yeah, you know, and like we said this is not just happening in media. I think and I hope that we will see a lot of different people speaking up about the injustice that they're incurring at work. This is a conversation that's very much top-of-mind for me because I have moderated many conversations at The Wing, I'm a member at The Wing, and I will say it's a space that I've really championed and I have enjoyed going there both for like myself and also because it's a company that is built by people who are my friends. And all of the work that I've gotten to do there has been so meaningful to me because I get to work with my friends all day.
(38:05)
You know, and The Wing is a space that I have enjoyed personally and professionally. It is a space that has afforded me a lot of visibility and frankly I've gotten a lot of very well-paying work from there. I only have amazing things to say about the people that I have worked with and the way that they have treated me. And it's also true to say that that was not the experience of the women of color, mostly black women, who work there. And that is something I am contending with a lot.
I am not an employee there but it's really important for me to recognize publicly that I'm someone that has benefited greatly from having that as a platform and I'm also someone that a lot of people have trusted to go into that space. And even though I've always made the distinction between like there's capitalism and there's feminism and there's business and those things do not mix very well, I went into it full-steam ahead like everyone else and hearing the stories from employees this week about how they have been treated has been . . . it's been really, really eye-opening for me as well. And I know that a lot of people who are a member of that space have been talking about it.
And so I think it is both true that one can be treated very well, and like I'm a black woman who has benefited greatly from this platform. That can be true. And it's also true that a lot of black women who have worked there, mostly in hourly positions, have not been treated that way at all and it's not acceptable. You know, and this for me, it's where it really comes . . . you know, living out your politics is something that we talk about on the show all the time. The conversation series that I host at The Wing is really about using your power and using your voice and also calling into question all sorts of systems. And this was one system that was clearly not working.
(40:00)
Ann: Right. And I think that as you say there can be multiple truths at once, right? You can see part of the story. This goes for all kinds of situations like the kind of collaboration you're talking about where you're not actually an employee. It can go for how you experience a workplace. Again not to draw a neat parallel but in the way that when we saw Me Too stories start to come out some people would say "Well that guy was always totally fine to me. He wasn't a creep at all." You know what I mean?
Aminatou: Not the point. Not the point.
Ann: Exactly. People can have really different experiences. And I think one thing for me is really thinking about again myself as a person of great power and how do I leverage that power moving forward? You know, and how do I say like okay, this is an institution or company that's bought into me and how am I using that fact to ask for some of the concrete things that I wish companies were putting in their statements?
And some of that happens in an email like in this moment but I think also some of that happens in an ongoing way in the questions that you ask. You know, the conditions that you create for agreeing to work somewhere. And also frankly in the kind of friendships and alliances that you form.
I have been really thinking a lot about my own experiences when I worked on staff in media and many of those positions were positions of hiring power and boss-level positions and really asking myself like what did I know? What did I really know about the experience of my coworkers and the people I managed who were black or who were people of color? And that's a question that -- this is now in the rear view -- but I also think that those are the kinds of questions I'm trying to apply now moving forward, like what info do I really have?
Aminatou: Right. And also, you know, with the full knowledge that working at a company [Laughs] puts you in bed with capitalism which is a system that is not great and with the full knowledge that institutions will always fail you even though we work with them and we work inside of them and we work alongside them. These are questions that we're going to have to keep asking ourselves all the time and when we're challenged not be defensive about outcomes or about really having a reckoning with our own part in the system because I think that where this really breaks down for me when I was reading so many accounts of like CEOs getting fired or people stepping down, the element of defensiveness of just saying like I'm just a person or I tried my best, to me, you know, it really breaks down there because we are not talking about whether someone is nice or not if someone is someone you want to have at your dinner table or whether they're a good parent or friend or whatever. We are really talking about entrenched systems. So it doesn't actually matter who you think you are; it only matters how each of us are leveraging our power and what we are doing to protect each other.
(43:00)
Ann: Right. And catching yourself doing things like -- you know, for me being like whew, I'm not a member of The Wing. It's like please, I am a member of so many institutions and places and places that my power can be leveraged. There's this feeling right now I think of a lot of like intensity and heat on this question and on this issue. You know, the sense of like oh, is it my time to have the email receipts dragged out and to have things that I don't remember pulled into the spotlight is really the wrong question, right? The right question is where's my power now and how am I deploying it?
Aminatou: Yeah, it feels -- I keep saying it, it feels a little bit dangerous but it also feels really exciting. I love that we are just like in a moment where some really important things centered around liberation are coming more and more to the foreground and are becoming more and more mainstream positions. That's good for all of us. It also means that it will be painful for a lot of us.
Ann: Right. Who has ever been through a major upheaval without some pain? Like on a personal level, right? And then extrapolate that to huge entrenched ideas that we have about ourselves as workers or about the institutions we're bought into or about companies we thought were cool or about the United States of America, you know what I mean? It's really like . . . there is really a lot of pain that comes along with the possibility.
Aminatou: Whew, whew. On that hopeful note I will see you on the Internet my friend.
Ann: See you on the Internet.
Aminatou: You can find us many places on the Internet: callyourgirlfriend.com, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, we're on all your favs. Subscribe, rate, review, you know the drill. You can call us back, leave a voicemail at 714-681-2943. That's 714-681-CYGF. You can email us at callyrgf@gmail.com. We're on Instagram and Twitter at @callyrgf and you can buy our book Big Friendship anywhere you buy books. Our theme song is by Robyn, original music composed by Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs. Our logos are by Kenesha Sneed. We have editorial support from Laura Bertocci. Our producer is Jordan Bailey. This podcast is produced by Gina Delvac.