Claude Steele

What worked?

And by work, I mean, what enabled those white participants to move their chairs close together with two black conversation partners talking about racial profiling?

What frame of mind reduced their churn enough to do that?

And what it was, was we simply said, look,

You know, these are difficult conversations.

Nobody really knows how to have them be perfectly smooth.

It's part of our societies, our history.

So, look, just relax and view this as an opportunity to learn about somebody else's experience.

And when you're in doubt, don't try to prove that you're not biased or prejudiced.

Don't do that at all.

That could be a red flag.

Just relax and ask questions.

When in doubt, ask questions.

And with that instruction, with that mindset, so to speak, they moved in close for, they put their chairs close together to have a conversation with two black guys about racial profiling.

That says a number of things.

They really did want to have this conversation.

They were interested.

They just didn't know how.

And the churn that they felt in this situation

what was you know made them initially just want to avoid the conversation to not really uh have it if they didn't have to they would have left but with a simple shift of mindset one that said look just relax listen ask questions uh use it as a chance to to just uh learn about somebody else in a situation like that that