Claude Steele

Churn is my term for the tension that we can all feel in diverse settings, classrooms, workplaces, you know, what to say and what not to say and how to behave.

All this today on Something You Should Know.

Sure, churn is my term for the tension that we can all feel in diverse settings, classrooms, workplaces, boardrooms, et cetera, athletic teams, when they're diverse.

And it's a tension over what to say and what not to say and how to behave and generally how our particular identity will affect our experience in that setting and maybe even how fairly we will be treated in that setting.

So that's what I mean by churn.

It's that tension.

And I offer a new understanding of this tension, one that assumes it has less to do with prejudice and bias, which I think is the more typical way of thinking about this tension, and more to do with just the simple fact that our identities can have on our ability to trust each other.

That's churn.

When you have that kind of feeling, that's what that term is referring to.

exactly i i mean i think we're so used to thinking about the the term diversity in the context of of prejudices we have this sort of assumption that if we could eliminate prejudices and what would the problem be uh but interestingly in turn is something different than that it's it's something that happens to both the prejudiced and unprejudiced alike it's just the tension you just uh described i'm i'm not one of them and they're not one of me and and how's that going to work out here in this situation

And as a society that is very diverse and probably getting more diverse, this can be a significant factor in the important settings of our lives.

I don't mean sitting on a subway or something or on a bus, but in a classroom or in a workplace.

a doctor's office.

I think in those real life important situations where, you know, we're pursuing our goals and the like, this churn can be a factor that can sometimes, you know, make us want to avoid situations and avoid conversations.

And it puts a tension between us.

Yes, if you have that opportunity in a setting, you know, a classroom, I teach a class over the course of a quarter, you know, what is that, about a quarter of a year, and the students there do, you know, pretty soon, as you described, they get comfortable with each other because they've all said things now and they've all learned that in this particular class, we're not going to go into this hyper judging of each other mode.

We're going to trust that people have good intentions and people are going to try to see the best in the situation.

So as that atmosphere takes over, churn lowers and gets manageable.

And then the differences between us become interesting and sources of enrichment.

Lots of good things happen as this apprehension recedes and we begin to see the opportunity and diversity.