Have you ever wondered how to have difficult conversations around race, or just how to
have difficult conversations in general?
Then you're in luck.
By the end of this video, you're going to have tips and tricks on how to do just that.
Hi, I'm Rebecca Zung, top 1% attorney and the bestselling author of the books Negotiate
Like You M.A.T.T.E.R, And Breaking Free: A Step by Step Divorce Guide.
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So today we are so lucky to have Kwame Christian here with us.
This is part one of my two-part conversation with him, on how to have difficult conversations
around race, and how to have difficult conversations in general.
Kwame Christian is an attorney.
He's a TEDx speaker.
He is the founder of the American Negotiation Institute and he is here with me for this
conversation.
So without further ado, let's dive in to part one of this conversation.
Hello and welcome Kwame Christian.
I am so excited to be talking with you.
First of all, you have the number one negotiation podcast in the world with 1.5 million downloads,
which is pretty exciting.
You are also a lawyer or the founder of the American Negotiation Institute.
You are a Ted Talk person.
You've had an amazingly successful Ted Talk, and you talk a lot about how to have difficult
conversations and how to turn your passion into persuasion, and all kinds of things.
But today we're going to be talking about something really, really near and dear to
my own heart.
And also super important, which is how to have difficult conversations around race.
So welcome, welcome Kwame.
Thank you so much for having me, Rebecca.
So I was so excited that I ended up on your radar somehow, in looking at my negotiation
podcast.
That tickled me to no end because you are the 800 pound gorilla in this space.
Well, thanks.
I tell you, there are all these various lists out there on ranking podcasts and whatnot.
And I was talking to my team and we realized the negotiation podcast landscape has changed
significantly.
Your show is fantastic, but it's not listed anywhere on any of these major lists.
So I said, "Hey, I think we should get you a little bit more recognition."
I didn't know you, but I thought it would make sense to get you more exposure because
you should be rewarded for the amazing work that you do.
So incredibly generous of you.
And so obviously anti narcissistic, since it's something that I talk about is narcissism
a lot.
It's so incredibly generous and altruistic of you.
So I really appreciated that.
And so I reached back out to you when I got your email.
And I said, "Well, hey, thank you for putting my podcast up there for this list, but let's
also interview each other for each other's podcasts."
And you had mentioned that you are doing a lot of conversations around race and for those
people who are listening to this podcast and not watching this podcast, let me mention
that Kwame is African American and I am half Chinese, just so that people understand that
this conversation around race is very personal for both of us.
I just think it's important that people understand who's having the conversation, and interestingly
enough, and kismet enough, I really believe in synchronicity.
It just so happens, we're having this conversation on Juneteenth, which I think is pretty awesome.
Yeah, it is fantastic timing.
Yes.
So let's talk a little bit about your background first.
Tell us who you are, how you got where you are now.
Yeah, so I'm a first generation Caribbean American.
Family came from the Caribbean to further their education.
And I grew up in small town, Ohio.
And so you can imagine what a small town of Ohio looks like.
I love my friends love the community I grew up with.
They're great people, but it just wasn't very diverse.
And then went to school, Ohio State University, or sorry, as a good Buckeye, I should say
the Ohio State University.
Yes.
As a Hurricane, I have to say...
We'll mot go there.
Oh, you just made my day.
I'm very happy now.
Yes yes yes.
That may be even more difficult than the race conversation.
Right.
Oh that's funny.
But, yeah.
So OSU undergrad in psychology and then law school, and master of public policy at OSU.
And so the first job out of law school was a civil rights job.
Talking about health equity, criminal justice, doing trainings, implicit bias types of trainings
for police officers, lawyers, and health professionals.
But it was very emotionally taxing, just being confronted with some of the darkest parts
of American society over and over, and over again.
And I became emotionally burnt out.
And that's what led to my transition to business law.
Working with small and medium sized businesses.
And I started to rekindle my love for psychology through focusing heavily on negotiation.
So doing more mediations as a mediator.
And then I started the American Negotiation Institute to help other people to have these
difficult conversations.
And the motto we have, and it's really our guiding principle for everything that we do
is that, the best things in life were on the other side of difficult conversations.
And so with that, we feel tasked with empowering as many people as we can to have these difficult
conversations.
And right now in the US, the topic of the day is racial equity.
But people don't know how to talk about it.
It's very difficult to talk about for everybody involved.
It's highly emotional.
Sometimes it's embarrassing.
Sometimes there's shame associated with it.
And really for many of us, our parents told us not to talk about it because it was impolite.
And so it's difficult having the conversations, but if we're trying to create a more just
an equitable society, we have to have those conversations.
So I've been focusing a lot recently on helping people to have those tools so they can be
more effective.
Yeah.
And I can tell you that as somebody who is also of a race that has felt a lot of oppression
in this country over the years, you and I were talking a little bit before we got on
the air here, about how my family was also affected by the Chinese Exclusion Act, which
is the only piece of legislation on the books of the United States that is racist on its
face, and actually singles out one group of people.
And so the Chinese Exclusion Act was actually on the books for, I think, 80 years, something
like that.
And my grandfather came over with his wife, my grandmother, and the four children, including
my father.
He was able to come in 1937, when the Japanese were invading Shanghai, and burning everything
to the ground, basically.
They were able to come on a merchant visa, which is the only type of visa that was allowed
for Chinese people at the time.
And my grandfather ended up dying in 1948 of a heart attack.
And his wife and kids were all still here.
So immediately they became illegal aliens.
And my father was in medical school at Columbia at the time, and was in danger of being deported.
So he somehow got a stay from Congress because they...
You can actually look it up online, that he had to get a stay from Congress from deported.
Here he was in medical school at Columbia.
It's not like he was in prison or something.
And he ended up having to join the Navy as soon as he was out of school, so that he could
get citizenship here.
And so my uncle actually sent an a letter to me this morning talking about DACA and
how this legislation affects children of immigrants.
Who, some of these children know no other home other than here.
So it's still very much alive in this country.
And all of the events that are taking place right now are around George Floyd and on and
on and on, so many names, too many, unfortunately, too many to mention here.
Are finally bringing light to the fact that racism still exists, and very much so in this
country, unfortunately.
And it is a difficult conversation to have.
And I think, for those of us who are not white people who were born here, a hundred percent
white.
People don't even realize sometimes when they say things that are racist, I don't know if
you've had that experience, but where you go, "Did that person just say that with me
standing right here?"
Can you relate to that?
Yeah.
Remember my upbringing, in small town, Ohio, right?
But even today, as a lawyer, a fellow attorney, we run into attorneys who say certain things
that are highly inappropriate.
But think about this when, you're able to understand things when you learn them.
But for a lot of people, when have they had the opportunity to learn how to have conversations
about race, to learn about racial inequality, structural racism, institutional racism, those
types of things.
There's not a pure curriculum for it.
And it's fascinating to me.
And because when we think about our childhood growing up in school, we learn a lot of useless
stuff.
We learn a whole lot of useless stuff in elementary school and whatnot.
We don't learn about truly how the history from the past, how the past influences the
inequity that we see in society today.
We don't understand that.
We don't understand how to have difficult conversations, no matter which industry or
what job you have.
You're going to have situations where you need to work through with a colleague, no
matter what you do.
But we don't teach people how to have these conversations.
So it's not at all surprising that we run into these situations where just in general,
people struggle with conflict and negotiation, but in this situation and this topic in particular,
it's equally not surprising, but it doesn't make it less hurtful.
Yeah, for sure.
I mean, even just recently, I'm part of a high end networking group, they're very, very
selective of the people that they allow into the group.
And I love the people and I love the friendships that I've created there.
And one of the guys is... he sends out emails that are very, very conservative.
He's a very conservative Republican, which is fine, which I totally respect whatever
people's opinions are, as long as they're not, racist or biased against people or whatever,
but that's what he is.
And so he sent out this email, which I'm on the list and he's talking about Coronavirus,
and how we should all demand that China pay reparations to the world for infecting everybody
with Coronavirus.
And I'm on the list and I'm Chinese.
And I'm thinking, I can't even believe that this person, and I know that he likes me very
much.
I just think that he doesn't even realize how offensive and racist that is.
Yeah.
And we see that all the time, but what's so interesting is talking about reparations for
this instance, which is very clear to him.
Well, let's think about racial subjugation that occurred throughout the entirety of the
history of the United States.
Are there going to be any reparations for those type of things?
Right.
And so the concept is understood, but as it relates to things that are foreign to them,
they miss it.
And here's the thing that's really interesting too, because whenever people talk about racism,
I think people who are white and conservative get an undeserving amount of focus too.
Because people who are progressives can be racist in ways that are equally damaging.
And I think the fact that people who see themselves as woke as they say, or the people who see
themselves as progressive and very liberal.
They think that they're almost cured of that, when they're not.
In psychology, they have a term called moral licensing and with moral licensing, what happens
is that you feel as though you've done well, so it makes you more likely to fail in the
future.
So for example, if you're on a diet, if you go to the gym and you have a really, really
great workout, that actually makes it more likely for you to cheat on your diet later
on.
Because you say, "Hey, I did a good job earlier."
And so if we bring that same concept to racial equity, if you're somebody who thinks that
you're doing such a great job, and you're so above these base human instincts, then
that makes you even more likely to be blind to the racial issues that you have in your
own life, to your own biases too.
And so I think when we have these conversations, if we equip people with the skills to use
the negotiation skills that you and I talk about all the time, to help people to investigate
thoroughly themselves, and the world that they live in, I think we can solve a lot of
these problems or at least some of them as it relates to our community, and our workplace,
and our home with our families.
But again, people just largely are not equipped with the skills to handle these types of conversations.
Yeah, I totally agree.
I mean, I think that to a certain degree, it's like it's always a lot easier to be against
people if you don't actually know them, or if you haven't taken the time to get to know
them.
Because human beings are human beings, regardless of the amount of melanin they have in their
skin, everybody is a human being.
And I think that...
Or if they have slanty eyes or if they, regardless of what they look like on the outside, we're
all human beings.
And I think that once you get to know people as people, it really makes a difference.
My parents were living in Northern Virginia when they got married and it was 1964.
And so Loving versus the State of Virginia did not come out until 1967.
So they actually were not allowed to get married in the state of Virginia, because my father
was Chinese and my mother is German.
Or she's American.
She was born here.
And they had to get married in D.C.
Because that was the only place it was legal at the time.
We're not talking about 200 years ago, we're talking about my parents.
So I think part of the problem with the racist stuff that's still going on in this country
is it's still fairly new that there's these laws about equality.
I mean the civil rights act was 1964.
I mean, that's not a hundred years ago, right.
I mean, this is still fairly...
And, and slavery was going on for hundreds of years before that.
So it takes a long time to fix those wounds, that pain, I think.
Yeah, absolutely.
And the thing is, again, that speaks a lot to structural racism.
Thanks for joining me on this part.
One of my incredible conversation with Kwame Christian, if you haven't already make sure
you hit subscribe, hit that notification bell, so that you can get notified when I upload
part two.
And in part two, we're going to dive even deeper into how to have these difficult conversations
around race, and also in general.
If you are getting ready to negotiate with a high conflict personality, or just negotiate
it all, you can grab my free, Crush My Negotiation Prep Worksheet, it's 15 pages.
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