Viewing entries in
Bias Series
This is the final episode in the BIAS series. We're sharing our thoughts on creating and releasing this series, and answering some of the questions we've received over the last few weeks.
We're also making an announcement about the future of this conversation in this space, since of course this work doesn't stop here. Please check out our ever-evolving resource page here.
Thanks for joining us for the BIAS series of Smartest Person in the Room.
Follow SPITR on facebook
Follow SPITR on Instagram
This episode is different from any episode of Smartest Person in the Room that I’ve ever recorded. Months ago, when Yasmin and I were planning this series, I mentioned that though I’ve lived in Los Angeles for 17 years now, I’ve hardly ever been to the historically black neighborhoods of South LA. And so, Yasmin decided to take me on a little field trip in our own city.
What you’ll hear in this episode is our recorded conversation as Yasmin drove me along Crenshaw Boulevard, a major vein that runs through South LA. As we pass by churches and schools and neighborhoods where Yasmin grew up, we found ourselves revisiting some of the major points in our ongoing conversation about race in our country, things like lack of access to healthy food in urban neighborhoods and whether or not the way South LA is represented in culture is an accurate view of this part of our city.
We mention:
In Los Angeles, it's South Central No More
Why is it now called South LA instead of South Central?
The LA Riots (often referred to as the Rodney King riots) and the attack on Reginald Denny
Thanks for listening to Smartest Person in the Room! You can follow us on Instagram and Facebook, and sign up below to receive an email with each new episode.
This episode was entirely unplanned. We sat down to work on something else, but I had already hit record and the mic was on. With Yasmin's permission, we're sharing this vulnerable story, and our conversation that came out of it.
In the beginning, we reference a blog post by author Luvvie Ajayi titled "The Weary Weaponizing of White Women's Tears." Click through to read it and understand our comments in context.
Thanks for listening to Smartest Person in the Room! You can follow us on Instagram and Facebook, and sign up below to receive an email with each new episode.
The first three episodes in this series covered a range of heavier angles on the topic of bias. For this show, we wanted to go a bit lighter and look at our differing perspectives on certain pop culture phenomenons. In our real life book club, Yasmin and I often realize that we read and understand stories from a different lens, even beyond our individual preferences. It’s clear that growing up in contrasting areas of the country and, of course, with differing skin color, affects how we see everything from music to movies to the Great American novel.
We discuss:
Beyonce
Lemonade
Halle Berry winning the Oscar for Monster's Ball
GOOD HAIR documentary by Chris Rock
Black Panther
Get Out
Jennifer Lopez
Scandal and Olivia Pope
To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Monster by Walter Dean Myers
I read from these articles:
What It Means To Be Unapologetically Black (CNN)
Hey White People: LEMONADE Isn't For Us (GenTwenty)
*
Thanks for listening to Smartest Person in the Room! You can follow us on Instagram and Facebook, and sign up below to receive an email with each new episode.
This episode is all about racial identity, and how it matters.
I'm speaking with my friends Jason & Yvonne Lee, actors and producers, and the co-founders of The Lagralane Group, a finance and project development company that has been involved in bringing the most fascinating stories to the stage and screen, including the recent Academy Award winning documentary Icarus. See their portfolio here.
I met Jason & Yvonne through our children, and in our very first conversation we ended up talking for hours about Jason's story of being a black man adopted and raised by a white family. He and his wife Yvonne have really interesting things to say about racial identity, and why it matters.
There are so many layers to this conversation. Make sure you listen all the way until the end.
Thanks for listening to Smartest Person in the Room! You can follow us on Instagram and Facebook, and sign up below to receive an email with each new episode.
In this episode, you'll hear the conversation Yasmin and I had with her good friend and former colleague Melissa Kaplan.
Melissa Kaplan has been involved in the Los Angeles charter school movement since 2003, most recently serving as the Head of Schools before becoming Deputy Superintendent of Education at Bright Star Schools. Previously, Melissa was the Chief Academic Officer at ICEF Public Schools, where she was responsible for managing the academic program at 14 schools serving 4,500 students in grades K-12, coordinating and delivering professional development for more than 150 teachers and administrators, and ensuring the alignment of the curriculum with college readiness standards. Melissa has served in a variety of leadership roles including district and site administration, demonstration teacher, and teacher coach. She has also worked extensively as a consultant assisting districts and CMOs nationally in curriculum development and system building, especially in the area of reading and writing across the curriculum. Before joining the charter school movement, Melissa taught English in Palos Verdes Unified School District and Oley Valley School District in Pennsylvania. She holds a BA in Education and Theater from DeSales University and a Masters of Education from UCLA.
When Yasmin told me she wanted for us to sit down with Melissa, a friend and former colleague, I was prepared to have a conversation about systemic racism in education, but the conversation that unfolded became much more personal than that. Melissa tells the story of how she was inspired to take her life experiences of growing up poor with an addict for a father and struggling with a learning disorder to the classroom where she believed she could help her students overcome their challenges the way she had been able to: through hard work and education. It was in the classroom and the mostly black and brown community where she was teaching, however, that she experienced an unexpected awakening to the realities of race in our country that, as a white woman, she had been unprepared to encounter.
This is just one woman's story and one conversation in a vastly complex topic. There is so much to be said around disparities in education and opportunity. As always, we encourage you to seek out further understanding on this and any topic. Click here for our personal resource page.
Thanks for listening to Smartest Person in the Room! You can follow us on Instagram and Facebook, and sign up below to receive an email with each new episode.
This is the beginning of a new series on this show, where we’re trying something a little different by making public a few real conversations that I had with my friend Yasmin Dunn about inherent racial bias. Yasmin and I have been having these discussions privately - or with our close friends in book club - for years now, and we thought that bringing these honest exchanges forward might be helpful for an audience who wants to learn more and ask more about race reconciliation.
That said, Yasmin and I are not perfect people and this is not a perfect conversation. We want to stress that neither of us claim to speak for the entirety of our respective races and in these episodes you’ll hear as speaking as friends do: candidly, with a slight shorthand, and with knowledge that the other is bringing only the best intentions.
We want this series to be a launching point for YOU to start having your own conversations. So while feedback to me and Yasmin directly about our words is inevitable, we really want to point people inward or towards their own community. At the end of the series we’re going to talk more specifically about how to do this in your own life.
In lieu of show notes for this episode, we’ve created a blog post with book, podcast, movie and documentary suggestions that can serve as a resource on this topic. We’ll add to this as the series goes on.
Thanks for listening to Smartest Person in the Room! You can follow us on facebook or Instagram, and sign up for our email newsletter below.
Throughout this series, we'll be updating this list of resources that will help educate and hopefully bring along this wider conversation about race in America.
To get us started, co-host for this series Yasmin Dunn recommends these books:
Laura recommends these resources:
A series is on the horizon. Sneak peek in your podcast feed now.
Make sure you're subscribed to the show in your favorite app.
You can follow Smartest Person in the Room on facebook and on Instagram.
