Welcome to the Inclusive Minds Podcast! In this episode, your host, Dr. Carolyn Coker Ross, sits down with Dr. Dietra Hawkins to discuss the transformative power of equity dinners. Dr. Hawkins, a renowned clinical psychologist and CEO of Both And Partners, shares her passion for these unique gatherings that use storytelling and food to spark meaningful dialogue and build community.
Dr. Hawkins explains that the purpose of the dinners is to foster dialogue, not debate. By encouraging individuals to share their stories without fear of judgment, the dinners help break down barriers and build empathy. We discuss how these shared meals can lead to powerful outcomes, from personal growth and healing to real-world policy changes within communities. Dr. Hawkins shares inspiring examples of how these dinners have moved people beyond anger and into a place of genuine connection and understanding.
- Equity dinners use art and trained facilitators to guide conversations about race, trauma, and social justice.
- The focus is on dialogue, allowing people to share their lived experiences without being challenged or debated.
- These gatherings can lead to profound personal and systemic changes, moving people from passive observation to active engagement.
Guest Links:
https://www.instagram.com/bothandpartners/
July 2024 Webinar: Why Equity Dinners?
Dr Carolyn’s Links
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carolyn-coker-ross-md-mph-ceds-c-7b81176/
TEDxPleasantGrove talk: https://youtu.be/ljdFLCc3RtM
To buy “Antiblackness and the Stories of Authentic Allies” – bit.ly/3ZuSp1T
Hi, this is Dr. Carolyn Coker Ross, bringing you the Inclusive Minds Podcast. This podcast was inspired by the book of which I’m a co-editor entitled Anti-Blackness and the Stories of Authentic Allies. Lived experiences in the fight against institutionalized racism. If you’re a psychologist, a social worker, an addiction professional, or a healthcare provider, or anyone who wants to broaden your horizons, then this podcast is for you.
The goal of the podcast is to help you understand some of the more complex issues facing our culture today. My guest. Are experts in their fields, and we’ll be talking about a wide array of topics including cross-cultural issues, the intersection of race and trauma, social justice and health inequities.
They will be sharing both their lived experiences and their expert opinions. The goal is to give you a felt experience and to let you know that you are not alone in being confused by these complex. Issues. We want to provide nuanced information with context that will enable you to make your own decisions about these important topics.
Hi everyone. This is Dr. Carolyn Coker Ross and welcome to the Inclusive Minds Podcast. I’m here with my special guest, Dr. Dietra Hawkins. Dr. Hawkins is a licensed clinical psychologist and the CEO and founder of. Both and partners. She is an executive coach, author, speaker, researcher, and visionary dedicated to equipping forward thinking leaders with tools, support and strategies for creating transformative change.
Dr. Dietra also serves as an assistant clinical professor at Yale Universities. Program for Recovery Health, where her research and work focused on systems change and community engagement. She’s a passionate reader, dance Enthusiasts, and Memphis, Tennessee native. Her work is grounded in faith, integrity, and a deep love for bridging people together to foster healing and connection.
Welcome to the show, Dietra.
Dr. Dietra Hawkins: Thank you. I’m excited to be here with you.
Dr. Carolyn Coker Ross: Now are you in Memphis right now?
Dr. Dietra Hawkins: Actually, I’m based in Atlanta, but I will be visiting my family for a family reunion in just a, just a couple weeks actually. So looking forward to being back home. Yeah.
Dr. Carolyn Coker Ross: Yeah. So I wanted to start by talking about something you’re are very passionate about, which is something you call the equity dinners.
Can you tell us a little bit more about what is an equity dinner? I.
Dr. Dietra Hawkins: Absolutely, uh, excited to always talk about any, any dinner event, any opportunity to bring this work to light. So just to, to share that part of what I’ve been doing lately with the dinners. And for some groups they call them equity dinners, some groups, um, call them, you know, whatever the city is before the name of the dinner.
So this really started and is based in what’s called the Chicago Dinner Model and. In the last, you know, the last seven or eight years or so, there’s been an opportunity, I’ve had to partner with a group called Out of Hand Theater where we, we have a piece of art, um, often a play that launches a conversation.
So this is a, a dinner conversation, sometimes virtual, sometimes in person. Sometimes with, you know, 12 or so people, and many times with up to 400 or more in small tables facilitated by someone who has been trained. And a, a big part of my work is training those facilitators to help lead the conversations because these, you know, if we think about equity still, um, just to bring that word into it, and I’m sure you’re very aware, a lot of people still don’t really know what that is.
Right. A lot of people talk about equity as if we’re still talking about equality. Mm-hmm. One of the things that I’ve been doing recently is rereading Priya Parker’s, um, book The Art of Gathering. I don’t know if you’re familiar with this or not at all.
Dr. Carolyn Coker Ross: No, I’m not
Dr. Dietra Hawkins: this book here. Okay. Well, the, the reason I’m bringing this in and sort of thinking about the gathering and art and, you know, just, you know, dinner and equity and all of these different things is we need stories.
Like we connect based on stories. We don’t necessarily connect and make changes based on data, quote unquote, you know, in terms of, of of numbers. And so being able to have people come together, maybe strangers, uh, share their story, and, and most recently had a person who. Um, is biracial, raised, adopted, um, parents were very unaware of, of what it was like to be a biracial student in high school.
You know, lots of support at home, but really struggled and was bullied, um, at school. And, um, like at the dinner, it was like basically it was their first time talking about what that was like. You know, and
Dr. Carolyn Coker Ross: so, so the underlying, the underlying purpose of the equity dinners is what is it to bring people together from different diverse backgrounds?
Or is it based around racial healing? What is that purpose?
Dr. Dietra Hawkins: So the original purpose for the Chicago dinner model was to have people come together and talk about their experiences of race and racism. Clarence Wood, who is the person who helped establish that was on a trip and they’re sitting around a fire.
They’re in another country actually. And he realized in all of his work that he had done, especially with boards and, and those sorts of things, that food and then stories really help people connect around these hard conversations. And I think, like most of us know, we typically dance around things instead of being able to talk honestly about it.
The other piece that happens is that with the model, you’re often talking to strangers. And sometimes you can be more open, like you can be freer to like share a story that maybe you haven’t thought about before. But yeah, so when I think about what the dinners do and talking about equity or racism or those sorts of things, it’s not just a space to like lament as much as actually just be heard. ’cause so often, like we tell our stories and then someone wants to say, oh, it wasn’t about that. Right. Or, I’m sure they didn’t mean it that way. Right. Or I don’t even, you know, that’s not how I see it. And this is in a place to debate what your experience is.
Everybody’s story is valid.
Dr. Carolyn Coker Ross: Okay, so it’s based around telling your own narrative in the hopes that other people will hear and see you. As who you really are and just take that in. There’s no like discussion or, you know, any kind of, you know, challenging of your story or anything like that.
Dr. Dietra Hawkins: I’m not sure that there’s not a challenging of stories as much as the foundation of the, like, the purpose of the dinner and why I like doing this is that it’s not about a training.
It’s not about like. You have to be part of, you have to be really skilled to show up for this. The goal of this, like I’ve done dinners with sixth graders, Right? Yeah. Like this is to say that this is an ordinary conversation we should all be having and that it shouldn’t be something that we reserve for a special time or only one time, or only for people who are woke or something like that, right?
Like this is meant to say, and for, I don’t know. You know, some of us, it is a conversation you have every day, but for many people it’s not. And so doing the dinner and making it part of dinner is saying that this is an ordinary conversation that we should be able to have, and that that then leads to more healing and an opportunity to really talk about what is true in the world and not avoid those things.
So there’s really are like really great things that happen with having the dinners like this. But the first part. When I first talked to the Human Relations Foundation about like what was the goal of the dinners, they were like to have the dinner. I was like, and what is the, you know, well, what is the successful outcome?
People showed up and had dinner, you know, and I, so let me say one thing about that. What I’ve learned over the years is that it actually is risky. To show up to someone’s home. Or to be in a conversation that you are not in control of. And so I had to kind of get over myself since this is the kind of work I do all the time to really appreciate that, you know, many other people, this is not their day to day.
And so it is risky to be able to have that conversation, but then once people have have done it, it makes it easier for them to talk and continue to have those conversations and open up and do more. 3
Dr. Carolyn Coker Ross: So how does being at dinner discussing equity, telling your story, break down those barriers? Because like you said, often and even I, I guess increasingly having these conversations can be very uncomfortable for some people or, or they may feel like.
Why are we still talking about this? Like why do we still need a Black Lives Matter movement or, mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. When is it gonna be enough? And all of that kind of stuff. So how did the dinners get over those humps?
Dr. Dietra Hawkins: What I’m thinking about is I was at a, we had a dinner quite a, a little while ago, and there is a white gentleman who was there who hadn’t really said much the, the entire time that we were there, but as we were doing our closing, he shared that he had, you know, young children or teenagers actually, and that his takeaway from the dinner was that.
A talk to give to his kids about how to intervene when their friends who were people of color were being harassed by the police. And so for me, when I think about like what happens out of the dinners or what are the outcomes and what are the pieces of stories like that at the end that you don’t know, I mean, someone who.
You know, I might have thought wasn’t really invested in the conversations and the stories that had been told, but his takeaway and what he did as an outcome of that and the positionality of saying the talk is not gonna just be relegated to the black families that have to have the talk with their kids.
He was also going to have that talk and explain that history to his children so that they would be able to intervene and act differently. Um, so I, I don’t know if that like conveys to you like what it conveyed to me in the moment, but I’ve always, uh, held onto that. And there are plenty, I have tons of stories of like, you know, people who realize that like they’ve been neighbors for years but never have been in each other’s homes.
Mm-hmm. Right. Living next to each other. They’re all these certain, never actually had a meal. In their neighbor’s home. And that the dinner events, especially when we did them within communities, opened up windows and helped people to share parts of themselves and then also be able to intervene later. So then what happens is that those stories carry into work.
They carry into their voting, they carry into policy. That actually makes a difference in one of our. Uh, communities. We know now that they’ve put in policy, um, an affordable housing component that no new building structure would be built in this particular community that we are working with that did not have units that were affordable, you know, for people coming in, which had been one of the, the major issues that had led to, and we know, you know, redlining and history and, you know, all of the things that happened with, um, structural racism.
So I think of those are the. Some of the things that are like really important to, to recognize that can happen from these experiences.
Dr. Carolyn Coker Ross: So, you know, I’ve been in a lot of groups myself and, and done quite a few trainings and conversations with people and hearing their stories, but I also hear that there’s still an undercurrent.
Especially from people who are not people of color. So from, you know, uh, white individuals in America that says, you know, that there’s a lot of resistance to having these kind of stories. And so do you think that dinners. Mainly attract people who are more open. That’s why I was asking you about is there any kind of challenging or you know, backpedaling or backlash within the dinners?
At least half of Americans, feel that, you know, people of color have gotten enough attention and they, they don’t want immigrants in their communities. They don’t want people who are different from, um, being around them. So how do you explain the benefits of the dinner or how does the being at dinner get over these barriers?
Dr. Dietra Hawkins: I think a couple things happen. One, I, I’ve often been asked, aren’t we preaching to the choir? So I think that’s part of that, right, is like, are we preaching to the choir? And so I think it’s important that we recognize that the choir sometimes thinks it’s on the same page and singing and tuning, and we often are not.
And so one of the things that the dinners have done in the past is that people get to show up and see that they’re not alone, that actually they are part of a choir. And that they may need to tweak some of what they’re talking about. So oftentimes I think our allies don’t have enough other stories beside their own, so that when they are in conversations, when they’re in spaces, that they can be brave enough to, when they’re at the grocery store or when they’re, you know, in a.
Part of their church community that they can then challenge someone else or offer another perspective to those viewpoints. So I don’t know that it has to happen at the dinner itself. Often what will happen is someone will say or share, I. This is a struggle I’m having, and then someone at the dinner table will have a story about how they could intervene.
So there are ways in which those things happen. The other part that happens is that, uh, in some of the communities we’ve worked with, the dinners are not meant to be one off. Right. They’re not meant to be the only thing that happens and you, you go to one and now you’re good. Uh, so, so that’s, that’s an important part.
So the energy of the dinners. Actually allows them to have more and more and to bring friends or people who, you know, I’ve seen couples who are on different sides of the aisle, right? Who are there at those dinner events and are able to hear something from someone else that they can’t hear from their, someone who’s that close to them.
The other thing that happens is that we, what we’ve learned to do, especially with the art component, is start the conversation at a much more, um, intensive level from the beginning. So. The original model, what I would find is that it would take a while for people to kind of warm up and then ask their real question.
Right? Um, we used a piece of art now to sort of go right in there, you know, from the beginning. When you say beginning,
Dr. Carolyn Coker Ross: when you say a piece of art, you, the, what I saw in one of the videos was, um, like a play, a short play. Yes. And characters are talking about a certain experience that might then bring forth more questions and open people up Yes.
And help them start the conversation. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Is that mainly what it is, a, a little short play or are there,
Dr. Dietra Hawkins: it’s been all different kinds of things, so we, what I love being able to do is actually have parts that resonate with that particular community. So I’ve done dinners that have been around the immigration conversation. And so we had a spoken word artist who came and did a couple of pieces that helped to start that conversation in their own lived experience. I’ve done dinner, some of my favorite dinners in recovery community centers, so that does a couple things that actually brings the community into a space that is not always like part of that.
And then maybe we use a film. So I’ve used a couple of different pieces. There’s Ted Talks that we’ve often used. We’ve worked with groups to co-create. But the goal is, is that everybody has to have some common experience. So whether that’s a play, listening to music, a piece of art of some sort, that helps to launch the conversation and then we have facilitators at the tables that we talk about how to facilitate differently than like the way that maybe a typical conversation would go, so that means that the person who’s facilitating often if there’s a lull, like they can use their own lived experience to help, you know, bring that conversation to that more, you know, to that point,
Dr. Carolyn Coker Ross: I think you’re hitting on a couple of important points, and one is that.
Art does open us up. Yes. And you know, I just recently went to see a play called uh, Jaja’s African Hair Braiding Salon here in San Diego, and I actually wasn’t really clear about what the play was. About, which was good really. ’cause I thought it was gonna be something like the old barbershop movies that were just kind of fun and maybe at a little touching moment.
And it ended up being about, uh, uh, immigration actually. And so near the. Uh, last fourth of the movie, you know, someone got picked up, character’s, mother got picked up by ICE and, you know, was in, uh, a holding facility and that brought up so many things for the daughter and blah, blah, blah. But. What I was most surprised about is it brought up a lot for me.
You know, I, I know where I stand on all of these issues. I talk about them all the time. But I think for many of us, so much is happening so fast these days that you don’t stop to process it. Yes. Don’t stop to, you know, feel how it feels and, you know, I just found myself, you know, feeling very emotional about it at the end of the play.
Mm-hmm. The, the other thing, what came up for me as you were speaking, is just how true it is that when people know our stories and when they know us, that the old rules often are thrown out. I just think of this Asian woman who was uh, in the country for 26 years. She was in a small community. She was in the news, and a lot of people just loved her because she was so, you know, all of the American values.
She was so hardworking and involved with people, knew them by name and all of that, and she was picked up by ICE and then the community just rose up and like, wait a minute, she’s part of our community. Yes. She’s not in other. It’s not somebody who we think should be being deported. And so I don’t think people are stopping to think what is happening, you know, with, especially with the immigration issue that yes.
People who are getting deported or picked up are often deeply embedded in their communities. They’re often well-liked and thought to be, you know, really hardworking and good people. So it’s kind of been a wake up call, I think, for a lot of Americans who may have thought that, oh no, we don’t want immigrants, but, but.
That doesn’t apply to Carol, or that doesn’t apply to my, you know, my ex-mother-in-law, or mm-hmm. Fill in the blank.
Dr. Dietra Hawkins: Absolutely. I think what you’re, what you shared is slowing down enough to get deeper into the story, you know? And that I. Too much of where I think energy has been is like, you know, how do we make change through social media or, I haven’t seen that be where change really happens.
I, I like to, in my other work, I like to ask people questions about like, what has actually helped you do something different, do something hard. And when we look at like what. What motivates someone to like change their behavior and, and those sorts of things. It’s not the 32nd thing, you know, it’s not like, I mean, it’s not to tell, say that we shouldn’t learn how to do an elevator speech, right?
That’s how you’re capturing that attention. But then you have to do something with the attention. You know, there has to be another part of it. So what I was saying that I think that’s unique about the dinners. Is that typically we, we have at least two hours, but many of the dinner events, especially in the Decatur dinners that we did, and the ones that we do in people’s homes, those dinners can go four hours.
You are usually kicking people out. They are still talking out on the sidewalk. Right? There is still like conversation that is happening. There are groups of people who come to the dinners. And then decide to meet again. There are people who’ve been part of these dinner events that 20 years later they’re still getting together.
So it’s, uh, it’s really interesting to think about, you know, how can we have deeper conversations and also give people room so, you know, as a facilitator. I need to have space where I let people maybe not even talk and just be present. You know, just listen. And some people, I’ve had people come, we had a wonderful woman, she was 90 years old, showed up and she said, I showed up because I wanted to make a new friend.
Dr. Carolyn Coker Ross: It’s hard to make friends when you’re 90.Well, it is, but it was, your friends have died yet, you know,
Dr. Dietra Hawkins: and, and you know, like her stories were so rich, right? And she was also so distraught by like, I’m back here again. You know, but it was, it was heartwarming real, you know, and we just need more things like that.
Dr. Carolyn Coker Ross: Yeah, I agree. Do you find that the, that the groups come to any kind of consensus, or is there anything that you know comes out of the groups in the long run other than people getting together again
Dr. Dietra Hawkins: It really depends on some of the coordination of the dinner. So one of the things that I’m doing now is actively supporting what we call dinners by design so that there can be another part or piece that sort of comes out of it all, depending on what the host wants.
So just to take a couple steps back, right? To do a dinner, you need a host, you need facilitators. And you need a guest, and then we bring some of the other pieces in, and so it’s really up to the host on what they want to have as an outcome of the next piece.
Dr. Carolyn Coker Ross: What are some of the outcomes you’ve seen from the data?
Dr. Dietra Hawkins: Yeah, so like one, some of the outcomes have been actually starting to change ideas around legislation, depending on what this. You know what that community was like focused in on. We’ve seen groups that actually formed like their anti-racist committees that then led to changes in like the name of the high school and monuments that were removed and, you know, other kinds of policies, especially around at that particular time who, what kinds of punishments were happening for students of color versus white students within schools.
When I think of other, like organizations that do the dinners and, and use that as a a component in terms of connection, one of the things I’m looking at a lot more is that networking is very difficult. You know, we’re sort of in an epidemic of loneliness and people don’t have the skills, and so we are seeing that people are connecting deeper and better, um, and that that is making a difference in how the rest of the experiences go.
When I go back to it, I just have to remember that the dinners are meant to be a party. And so there’s ancillary things that we can look at, but the goal from the way it started was really to take it out of this sort of, you know, totally academic space. What I do see though is that it has changed the facilitators a lot.
Dr. Carolyn Coker Ross: And are the facilitators people of color, or are they mixed?
Dr. Dietra Hawkins: Yeah, everybody. Any and everybody.
Dr. Carolyn Coker Ross: So can anybody do a dinner like this?
Dr. Dietra Hawkins: As far as I’m concerned, anybody can do a dinner. I mean, my favorite, of course, as I said, have been sixth graders. You know, like if a sixth grader can do this, then I think anybody can do this.
Dr. Carolyn Coker Ross: I think they can do it easier than the older people, but So if someone wants to do a dinner though, how do they find a facilitator?
Dr. Dietra Hawkins: Well. I have a group of people that I’ve trained to be facilitators. So often what we’ve done is work in that direction. Um, I also find that organizations want their, they have cadres of people who want to be better at leading conversations.
And so I’ll go in and train people to be facilitators.
Dr. Carolyn Coker Ross: Okay. So they can find facilitators through you for sure.
Dr. Dietra Hawkins: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Carolyn Coker Ross: Yeah. I was, uh, noticing in your YouTube video that you quoted the author of a book, think Again. His name is Adam Grant, and he said, hearing and opposing opinion doesn’t necessarily motivate you to rethink your own stance.
It makes it easier for you to stick to your guns. Presenting two extremes isn’t the solution. It’s part of the polarization problem. How do you relate to that and how do the dinners help with that?
Dr. Dietra Hawkins: Well, one of the things that I do and all of my work is rooted in what we call appreciative inquiries.
It’s the other AI, for real, and one of my favorite things to talk about is that we have to talk about things that are true, good, impossible. And what that does is that it allows us to stay out of the binaries of things. And so what Adam Grant is talking about, and if you, you know the Think Again book, there’s so many good stories in there about like, what that really plays out to be is that when we help present information and tell a story about information
Then what you find, like right now our culture wants us to think that people are. Are solidly on two sides. But what you really have is a lot of people in the middle who are, if you present an idea, they’ll be like, oh, that’s a good point. Mm-hmm. And then you present another idea, they’ll be like, oh, that’s a good point.
So what he is saying and what is in the work, and then what the dinners does is that it is, it’s asking people to just share your lived experience. From your perspective,
Dr. Carolyn Coker Ross: I’m not trying to convince anybody to come over to your side.
Dr. Dietra Hawkins: One of the best things is to not fix. My favorite thing as a facilitator is to tell people there’s no fixing here.
Yeah. And what we learned, you know, I am a clinical psychologist. One of the things that I am very aware of is that the first thing people want to know is that you see them as a person. I need to be seen and valued first. Then I can reveal what I’m struggling with Before I go to the next thing.
But if we go in immediately with you are the problem, right? Then you are pushing someone into that corner and they’re gonna fight you. Right? So then we we’re activating the fight, you know, fight, freeze, fight, you know? All of our, our responses fond, you know, all the other things. And we don’t wanna trigger that.
We wanna be, you know, mindful of how to keep people in that space. So, you know, as a dancer. So I wanna keep people in this space of movement.
Dr. Carolyn Coker Ross: There’s a lot of anger though, in our country right now. I think you can compare it to the anger that. Was in our country around the Vietnam War, for example, or around the Civil rights movement when Martin Luther King was leading that.
So that kind of anger often can get in the way of really having truthful open communication. How do the dinners get around the anger, or are the angry people just not coming to the dinners?
Dr. Dietra Hawkins: Yeah, I often wonder. You know, when I think about anger, I think that sometimes we have to let people be angry and, and then get to the deeper part of what the anger is about.
So my assumption around that and, and what I think about with the dinners, one, I don’t think people come, you know, if they’re angry, they’re not ready to sit down. So, you know, I think that there’s a piece of that, but what I think happens though is that then it might be their partner or family or someone else who’s gone.
And so that helps there in that, in that space. But I, I think the other part is that people are allowed to, I mean, all of that is welcomed. You know, to, to just be where you really are. And I, I’ve just never seen anyone who’s shared their anger. I. And then had someone listen to them and that get it, like it get, there’s like a, like a thank you from that.
Dr. Carolyn Coker Ross: Okay. So you, your theory is that angry people just wanna be heard.
Dr. Dietra Hawkins: Oh, no. Okay. What, what, what is your thought on that? No, I wouldn’t say it in that way. I wouldn’t make it like, oh, they just wanna be hurt. But what I, what I am saying is that we don’t have to meet the anger with anger. Right. That’s true. You know?
And that what we don’t do enough of is to try and get, understand it even better. Right. So what it reminds me of is that we have to do the work of what Desmond Tutu helped us think about. It has to be about truth and reconciliation. It can’t be about just either or. Yeah. We have to bring those pieces together and then there has to be a foundation for why we’re here.
So with. The way that we do these events, which is why I tell people, like it does help to have some guidance in leading a dinner because they could go badly.
Dr. Carolyn Coker Ross: Yeah. That’s kinda what it’s getting at. Yeah. People may be listening thinking, oh, I’ll just invite all my neighbors over and we’ll sit down and talk about these difficult topics.
Dr. Dietra Hawkins: Right. That could be arrested for disa. So there’s a lot. There’s still my assumption is that. You’re gonna invite people over, like you invite them over for any kind of dinner party. And there are unspoken expectations for how we gather.
Dr. Carolyn Coker Ross: Yeah. There’s an expectation at least of civility. Right? You don’t have to agree with me, but there should, right?
And as the host, there should be no guns pulled, in other words. Right?
Dr. Dietra Hawkins: Well, we use our forks to eat right. We’re not gonna use them to attack each other. I mean, this is the, this is what this is. And. And as the host, you can invite someone to leave, you know, and we’ve had not too often related to that. All of it starts before the people even arrive though.
Right? There’s a whole process for inviting people in, telling them what it’s about. You know, why are they coming? Often actually giving them a piece that’s important for the dinner, right? So that they do show.
Dr. Carolyn Coker Ross: Yeah. Okay. Well that makes sense. I just wanted to be clear that this isn’t kind of, everything works if you sit down to dinner and tell your story.
I love the fact that you are emphasizing that there’s a process and that there are facilitators who help people stay in the process. Yes. ’cause without that, we have what we see on in the media now, everybody. Talking about things in multiple different ways?
Dr. Dietra Hawkins: Well, I don’t think what we see in the media is dialogue.
What you see in the media is debate, and so the goal of the dinner is to create conversation and dialogue, which is very different.
Dr. Carolyn Coker Ross: Yeah. Mm-hmm. That’s a good distinction. So I’ll just ask you the final question, which is, given that we’re living during some pretty chaotic times right now, how do you keep your inspiration and hope alive?
Dr. Dietra Hawkins: You know, it is an interesting time for sure that we are in, and community makes a big difference for me in being able to continue. I. And find ways to be focused on what I am actually called to do. So I’ve been telling everyone that the, the latest thing that has really given me purpose is that, uh, there’s a story, a masterclass by Melody Hobson, and she conveys a story about how do you, in the city of Chicago, where they’re blizzards, what do you do in a blizzard?
And the key with that is that you have to watch your feet and keep moving. So, and you don’t, you don’t focus on the storm. You’re not going to make the storm stop, right? So I think of my ancestors, I think of the work that I’ve always been part of Again, I did the, all of this is rooted in the Chicago dinners.
So Chicago and the story like made complete sense to me. I make sure that I, I read and stay connected to stories of resilience. Um, I look for that in everything that I do, and I make sure to focus on the things that I know that I’m called to do. I keep moving, watch my feet, and keep moving and do the best I can to bring other people with me.
Dr. Carolyn Coker Ross: So this is a perfect time to end the podcast, and I just wanna remind people that this podcast is inspired by the book that I’m a co-editor of Anti-Blackness and the stories of authentic Allies lived experiences in the fight against institutionalized racism.
I really have appreciated having you on the show, Dr. Dietra Hawkins, and, uh, wish you all the best with your dinners. Thank you, the show. Thanks for listening. Please subscribe to the Inclusive Minds Podcast so we can let you know when the next great guest comes on. The link to subscribe is in the caption below.
