Grace-Led Storytelling for the New World | Live from TEDx Broadway 2022

Our own Nicole Javanna Johnson leads the audience of TEDx Broadway 2022 through her work as a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Director on several Broadway shows. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx 

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Transcript

Nicole Johnson: 0:15

Hey friends. My work as a diversity equity inclusion director on Broadway is a full bodied, joyful, Grace led storytelling experience. That means that I am extremely burnt out. We won't talk too much about what it means to be burnt out today, I hope to unpack that for an audience at a later time. But the idea for this moment, and the one you must hear first is all about storytelling, grace and joy. So I am a storyteller. I believe in the power of telling stories to shift systems and it is joyful. It's soulful, it's transformative. It sounds really fun and deep, right. But you know, you've been going to diversity, equity inclusion workshops over the past two years feeling scared, a little unsure of what's next confused, maybe. Let me tell you how to get to the fun deep stuff. It's the five senses. I believe they are the gateway to this work. It's auditory first, it's about the things you say and how you say them, not just to other people, but first to yourself. Because we're undergoing this deep rewiring, and a lot of people have been calling it the reckoning. Okay, sure, we could go on the reckoning, but I want to try and tell a different story. Ready, cue Lo-Fi music. I need you to plant your feet on the ground. And go and take a nice deep breath through your nose for six counts. Ready. Breathe in 1234. And breathe out. 3456 Yeah, go ahead and relax those shoulders. Go ahead and relax your jaw. And now bring your hands together, bring some heat between your palms, we're going to do this just like I do it in my workshops. And now place your hands on a place where you normally feel stress wherever that's at, it could be your heart, your neck, your face, your knees. So friends, I can tell a different story about the reckoning because of the progress that I've seen. Honestly, it's not a lot of progress. But I am happy that it's progress nonetheless. Okay. Let's say I got you to your state of state through mindfulness and meditation, just like this, right? And then I check in with the room I say, hey, how y'all doing on a scale from one to five? Five being like, yes, Nicole, let's talk about white supremacy culture today. One being like, it's been a really rough day, those trains are not the best and I'm tired. Either way that you show up in the room. It's good. You can relax. See me as a person first before we talk about the marginalization. Before we talk about systemic oppression. I'm your friend, is what I say. And I really am as your dei director, because we need friends in this work. And then you look around the room and you realize Yeah, I'm amongst a whole bunch of people who are just stunned at this moment where we can be so open about workplace aggressions about systemic oppression about our history. So I work in five different industries. But I'm going to talk to my theatre peeps today. I myself was the kick your face little black ensemble girl and lots of theater, regional theater productions and TV and film. Honestly, I was a bit insecure, a bit out of my league, but a sense of urgency to get to the top and perfectionism helped me to land all my gigs. And right. Anyways, nonetheless, somehow, though, on my first non union gig or a couple of my first ones, my non union paycheck was a bit too small. Okay, I was working in a diner at the same time while I was in the shows, and then out of luck and a little bit of grit, my experience shifted to what felt a little bit more like a union contract that was no longer like the typical non union kid who lived in cramped housing, one big company van and no consideration for our quality of life. All of a sudden, I was like hanging with the union kids, nice new housing, lots of perks and benefits. But honestly, it was just out of luck, that I got plucked from one part of the system inserted into another and the difference in my quality of life was stark. It was like, nasty to me. And so I said, I'm out. I am not trying to do this with y'all. I'm just gonna, you know, leave the industry for a bit. I'll come back after the reckoning. And here I am. So, I start off with that, right? That story but then I talked about What I did after I went to the nonprofit world, same junk, then I was like, Okay, how about education, small businesses, city government, same junk. And then I was all like corporate Startup America, of course, was the same junk. You know, same thing in every industry friends, the systems were low on capacity. People were easily being overlooked, disorganized, and all of my colleagues were navigating unclear understanding of their job descriptions, power hoarding, paternalism, sense of urgency, which led to defensiveness, so much defensiveness when we'd say something to advocate for ourselves, racial gaslighting, bigotry, just like straight up bigotry at some points in these workspaces. And then loads of work that were so contrary to work life balance. At first, I thought it was theater. And then I was like, This is America. So I start off with that story, honestly, because I know my share of workplace trauma. But as an organizational theorist, I then ground the rest of my workshops in organizational theory principles around dismantling systemic oppression and wellness in our workplaces. And I can't tell you all the principles now, but in short, it's about aligning your want to do diversity, equity and inclusion with actual actions, right. Now, how about we just go for the first principle organizational theory, principle one DEI has to be enacted as a pervasive system wide principle that begins with the transformation of the individual, and the recognition of their role in the larger ecosystem, other principles that I focused on, navigate things like how intersectionality has to be the guiding paradigm for language and actions, we have to do consistent learning disaggregation of data, questioning our assumptions, clarifying our expectations and goals for the people that we're leading in order to have equitable practices in our workplaces, right. I love organizational theory is just about like, how can we make our systems better systemic oppression is the thing that I love dismantling. And so after I do organizational theory, I jump into history. And I start off with the story of commerce in America, and how our unfortunate buy in to the narrative that white skin was glorious and wonderful, black skin detestable and unworthy. It led us to developing institutions and industries that were built on the labor of enslaved people, the tobacco industry, the cotton industry, right, the rice industry. And I think we forget that that generated a sort of culture, a way we go about life. We underestimate that culture. And Tema Okun calls it white supremacy culture characteristics, things like sense of urgency, make as much money as you possibly can, right? At this moment, get the show up. Then things like quantity over quality, pick as much cotton no matter what. And then defensiveness, power hoarding paternalism, please don't question that decision. We'd be so naive to think that these characteristics don't show up in our rehearsal rooms in our stages. It's not like anyone ever stopped them. And then I jump into a conversation about how America loves to tell a story about well, rather not about but just to make sure that things stay exactly the same. So 100 years after emancipation, people are like, let's go on over to the theater. Right? You want to go see chicken watts?

Video: 8:43

How would you like to go to work for me? How much you gonna bring me home? Well, let's see now. I'll pay you all your worth. No, my oh my god. You know, God, I'm making a picture call the light came on came naturally.

Nicole Johnson: 9:07

So clever, how they're doing this, about the black experience. It's just about not the black but the Negro or whatever word you would have called it. This is funny. This is so clever. Right? Then they jump into talking about how unfortunately, America loves just telling stories that demean marginalized communities creatively. It's like, fascinating how we did this so much. So, history is a little heavy. It's normally why I do it second, but then I go into the thing called the reckoning. And like I said, I know that this like last part of the talk was a bit sarcastic. I'm not being sarcastic when I'm saying this. The Reckoning is not as bad as it sounds. It's just harder than Americans normally think and work and I call it equity as a process. Thanks for what's next? So race Ford is another research organization. They define equity as both an outcome and a process. So as an outcome, it says we define racial equity, or we achieve racial equity when race no longer determines one's socio economic outcomes, and when everyone has what they need to thrive no matter where they live, big utopian grant, I love it. When as a process, we apply racial equity, when those most impacted by structural racial inequity are meaningfully involved in the creation and implementation of the institutional policies and practices that impact their lives. So that means when someone like me who has been steamrolled my sense of urgency, who's experienced lots of racial gaslighting in my workplaces and large scale bigotry in my workplaces, when people like me are put into leadership positions, we should be able to lead more inclusively. Right. And that is great, because then I'm leading from my experience. Unfortunately, we're not great at either of these, in this industry, from my perspective, especially this last one, because unfortunately, when we put people from marginalized communities into leadership positions, we give no resources for them to be able to thrive, and actually ask them to do several additional jobs. And then if things don't work out, it's our fault. I see that happen. So often, it sounds like a little bit of a qualitative moment there. But the data can share that we are unfortunately not great at placing people in positions of shifting our industry further. It's okay, it's because we don't really have the steps for it. So I said, here's what we're going to do, don't have much hope for that last one for another 10 to 15 years, okay. But if we do these next things, five steps on a consistent basis, we might get somewhere. Self Advocacy, self awareness, articulation of your intent to yourself, recognition of the outcome, and then self correction for solutions. Now, it is rather painful sometimes to see all of these things happening at one time within an organization. But it's the glory of it all. Because when you're allowing people to advocate for themselves, you're allowing yourself to actually take the feedback, you're allowing yourself to engage in a conversation about hey, did I practice sense of urgency in that moment, was I practicing a little bit of power hoarding, articulating it to yourself, when we see all five of these steps within an organization, everyone's participating, it's generating a sort of energy, a momentum, and all of a sudden the organization shifts towards the new world. But if not everyone participates, it explodes. And I use a lot of grace in this work, people know me for that. But this is normally where you see the grace and action because the explosion needs a lot of tending to. But before I get to grace, I just want to tell you that these five steps friends is just about telling the truth, the truth about our circumstances, about our decisions about our behaviors, about the behaviors of other people and the consequences of it all, it's good. We're just telling the truth, in effort to get to that equity as a process, right. But the intangible stuff, the stuff that's really like the magic of it all, I think it's the grace, I think we need another story for it. So you know, like when someone tells you that they love you, and you're like, Yay, yeah. And then they're like, No, and they reposition themselves. And they try to make sure that you like lock eyes, and they say, Listen, I love you. All right. When you get all like, Okay, this is gonna be a serious moment. And they put their hands on your face. And you're starting to feel a little something in the back of your heart. And you might put your hands on theirs just to say, Okay, I'm here with you, and they repeat it. And it's just so emboldened, like, it's so emboldened because they just keep saying the same few words. And you might feel that tears start to drop, and you taste the salt on the top of your lip. They just kept saying the same few words over and over again until your soul heard it for what it was. My work as a diversity equity inclusion director on Broadway as a full body, joyful Graceland storytelling experience. It started with the words but when I was really doing as I was, like, talking to your soul, to your core, that thing at the center of you, that just informs everything else. Each time I said, I love you and added another sensory input, I was dispelling all the layers of guilt of shame, of fear of oppression, just to get to your soul. It's a non judgement guided walk back to your core to offer a new information about what America was when it was created and what it continues to be. So Grace, this is it's really just a refusal to give up on telling someone the truth Same things in different ways into your soul hears it for what it is and decides to tell your body to do something differently. And I use grace in this moment. Because the future of American systems, it depends on the rewiring of all of our brains in hopes that we'll make better decisions. Until we do this really intentional work, friends are rewiring the neural networks in our brains and breaking down these cognitive frames in our bodies, you're gonna continue to experience the reckoning, or you do equity as a process, just relinquish sometimes the things that have made you powerful and do that uncomfortable work. And honestly, I shouldn't even say uncomfortable, it's inconvenient. It's the stuff that no one wants to do. Because people in power have always done things that are convenient for them. It is the tagline for capitalism. And unfortunately, it is contrary to our new declared values to do diversity, equity and inclusion work. I did say though, that I was joyful about this. And I am because there's gonna be a lot of people who don't do this work, but there's going to be so many people who do. And at least there are some of us who are at the gate of the new world. I mean, like how lucky we are to be at the gate, we might be the people who usher in the new era. And it's not even that we just know the truth about all of this. But we can manifest new systems freely if we wanted to. It's like we have the keys to a whole new world. And the main key is just figuring out and unlocking how and why we perpetuate the systems that we participate in. Listen, our ancestors will tell us it has never been easier in our lifetime, folks. And Grace will tell you that over and over again. Thank you