WPC Ep.8: Morality, Racism, and finding Common Ground

Join a discussion between the Whole Person Center Director, Dr. Aurélia Bickler, and Professor, Chair and Author, Dr. Brian Tilley, as they explore ways to find moral ground through the current US political climate. 

Websites
APA Division 45: Society for the Study of Culture, Ethnicity, and Race, https://division45.org/

Braver Angels: a network of groups designed to bridge political differences and address controversial issues through thoughtful conversations, https://braverangels.org/

Books
Higher Ground: Morality and Humanity in the Politics of Race – Book by Brian Tilley covering the concepts described in the podcast as well as the history behind them and how the concepts might be adopted by or apply to the current politics of the US.

Moral Tribes by Joshua Greene - To understand how morality influences our behavior and how it especially is related to emotional reactions

Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria by Beverly Tatum and The Sum of Us by Heather McGhee – to illustrate how racism harms everyone, including perpetrators, so called bystanders, and the supposedly colorblind, and how our communities suffer because of it. Shows we all need to buy in

So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo – as a starter text for a variety of information about racism and how it is experienced by people of color, including a great starter discussion of how microaggressions harm

Anger and Racial Politics by Antoine Banks and The Emotional Politics of Racism by Paula Ioanide – describes the role of emotion, particularly anger, when it comes to beliefs about race and racism.

Any of David Roediger’s three books (How Race Survived History, Wages of Whiteness, and Working Toward Whiteness) on White Identity – for an expertly-written history of Whiteness in this country, how it evolves, and how it affects our communities and public policy

For a deep dive, Racialized Politics (edited volume by Jim Sidanius et al.) and White Identity Politics by Ashley Jardina – to see how racial beliefs influence voting and public policy.

Almost anything by James Baldwin, Audre Lorde, Richard Wright, Langston Hughes, or W. E. B. Du Bois especially for our White brothers and sisters who want to understand about the experience of racism, what it means in this society, and (profoundly) how it feels.

Anything by Bell Hooks.

Transcript

Dr. Aurélia Bickler
0:01 
Welcome to the whole person center podcast. Our mission is to improve the human condition by providing resources, research and training opportunities, and direct health services while supporting the development of highly competent professionals. Bozo listeners, thank you for tuning in. I am Dr. Aurélia Bickler, director of the whole person center. And I'm here with a very special guest, Dr. Brian Tilley, Professor and Chair of the Department of Counseling Psychology, and Social Work at National University. Today, we're speaking about morality, racism, and finding common ground. So hi, Brian, thank you so much for being here.

Dr. Brian Tilley
0:40 
Hi, really, thanks for having me.

Dr. Aurélia Bickler
0:42 
How you doing today? Doing? Well. Good. Tell us a little bit about yourself, your professional background? And what drove you to this interest, this important topic?

Dr. Brian Tilley
0:51 
Thank you, again, for having me. And thank you for that question. It'll, it's sort of a circuitous route, believe it or not, but I think it started when I sort of, as many people do, I kind of awakened in my 20s, to start paying attention to what was going on around me in the world. And at the time, the US was in a couple of wars. And it kind of, it didn't make sense. And I didn't really know how to make sense of it. I was, but but I was going through counseling training, at the time, I was training to be a professional counselor, counseling psychologist.

And one a big cornerstone of that training was empathy, learning how to show empathy. And that completely unlocked me, and that's a full conversation for another day. But it just like, opened me up and totally changed. How I relate to other people how I saw the world. And just, I don't know, it was just like, realizing, oh, my gosh, there's this whole, there's so much more to human experience. So having that unlocked, through training, which is just, it feels weird, but it's true. What started to really appeal to me and interest me, aside from my studies was the concept of justice, what's just what is correct in the world. And that pulled me in a political direction, to just start getting interested in politics, and paying attention to what was going on in the world politically.

And at that time, we were going through a lot of changes, doesn't feel like the changes were as rapid as the ones of the last five years or so. But it was still, it's still time, a lot of change. And, and so I think I began just kind of dipping my toe in that and getting interested in it. And then by the time I became a professional, and I, my, my research background was really about just training people or training people how to do test career testing, like vocational testing, how do you match somebody up with the career that's really going to work best for them. And, and so I know, I really know a lot about that area. And I learned a lot about how to create tests and how to how to work on, you know, how to create items that really assess how aligned you are with your career, and your interests and all of that. But I wasn't really getting anywhere on the research side of things, as a professional as a, as a professor. That was one of the things that we needed to do is to keep up a research agenda.

And I knew that was expected of me, but I was just sort of spinning my wheels. And I began thinking about the saying that probably exists in 100 different ways that you should, if you do what interests you, then you won't be at work. And it was a lot of hard work to get research started. And so I thought, let's just start looking at my interests and see how I can take my interest in the political stuff. And I can start studying that as a psychologist. So I, I learned about this group called the the International Society of political psychology, I had no idea that existed, and I wanted to study, you take my counseling background and apply it to how politics worked. And around that time, I read a book, really interesting book called Moral politics by George Lakoff. Now he's a he's a linguist, he's not a psychologist or therapist, or, or even really, I don't even think he's a philosopher. But what he wrote about was how morality can intersect with politics, how our sense of morality and justice, depending on on how the texture of that really influences the politics that we have.

And, and right after I finished that book, I was like, hungry for more. I wanted to read more books like that. And I was walking through the library and just exploring, which is a good plug to go to a library. If you don't go to the library. You can just you can just explore and like just look at all The different like, you look at a book and you see what other books that are related to this, you know, you just you can start learning in that way. And I just bumped into this book called The ethnic myth. And on the back of it, it says, in your hands, you hold a dangerous book or something to that effect. And I was just like so. And I was like, I need to read this book now, too, by the way. Exactly. It was a really cool book. It was by a guy named I think his name's Steven Steinberg. So it, it totally blew up my concept of like whiteness in America, of ethnicity in America of, of how we think of this idea of like an immigrant narrative, like, Italians coming to America.

And, you know, Germans coming to America and working their way up the immigrant ladder. And this book really blew up that concept for me and explained to me that, really what they were doing was becoming white. And I thought, Okay, that's a totally different way of thinking about this. And so I think the last piece of this puzzle is, I began to think, as I was opening up to the moral side to the political side of how do I fit this into a psychology research agenda? How do I study any of this? I also thought about my mom, who learned as an adult that she had been adopted. And all her life, she had been asking questions like, Who am I? What? Like, where do I come from? She she knew that she loved her parents, and that they loved her very much. And I had loved them dearly. They were wonderful, my grandparents. But they, they just didn't look like her. And so she just started to you know, they were too. I wouldn't say patrician. But they were their old school. Irish white folks, for a while my my Nana, especially my grandma, and my mom said she was from Boston. My grandpa was from Texas, but they were just like kind of old school white folks.

And here she was, she kind of had this olive skin, this brown skin. And she didn't really know, she they told her that she had some Native American blood or something like that when she was younger, or that southern Italian blood or something like that. Which I would say, which actually means a little bit more than that she was she understood at the time, but came to find out when that she was adopted that she was she had a biological father who was black, and a biological mother who was white. And so she had been raised kind of white.

And because their skin was light enough, she she presented as white and was able to sort of pass as they say. And so I also thought about that, and how that was part of my identity and part of my heritage, too. And that was what got me into morality and racial politics. And that thirst for justice really finally started driving me and getting me into that research of how can we address the injustices with racial issues in this world? And how are they manipulated by politicians? And how do people? How does their politics get in the way of them being able to see like, a common ground, a higher ground than where we are right now? And that was what opened me up to this. And I know it's quite a road, but I thought it was.

Dr. Aurélia Bickler
8:18 
It's so beautiful and I love how it started with okay, what could I be curious about and then you ended up driven by just life and the things you were seeing. But the way you connect that, to your own origins, your own family is just so beautiful. And I often think about how really great things come from just truth, right from our inner exploration of truth. And our curiosity about our roots ourselves, our paths, I just, I'm loving the way that all of this kind of ignited such a powerful connection of topics for you and for all of us, because I think it's an important conversation for all of us to continue. I'm curious, what are your thoughts about morality? How does it factor? How does morality factor into racism?

Dr. Brian Tilley
9:15 
Oh, thanks. Well, that's, that's really important. I mean, I to me, I think it fits most immediately with the discourse when people talk about racism, like That's racist. The point is to tell somebody stop doing that. That's bad, that's hurting somebody. This isn't good. When I mean, the, the easiest example for me, I mean, I know we have many more recent examples, but it's to look back at the Civil Rights area era because when I was growing up, that's what we were. We were taught about how it was such a clear moral line between here's these evil sheriffs hosing down these peaceful protest protesters. Here's, here's these young kids just trying to say it at the same table as one another. And because of the color of their skin, they got thrown out of the restaurant or people spitting on them and yelling in their face.

And this peaceful demonstration was met with so much bile and anger. And that drew a really clear line in the sand of okay, this group is acting in a moral, just way, this group is acting immorally This is a violation of what we have our shared community. And that discourse continues to this day. I mean, you think about what happened in 2020, with George Floyd and, but, I mean, it also goes through all of the other I mean, the the rise of Black Lives Matter and, and all the, all the unfortunate deaths that we've seen it that, you know, in, in police custody or during police chases, and that motivates so many people to say, Okay, this is wrong, this is, this is such a violation, this, this should not be happening to human beings. So, it starts with that, but, but I also think, I was also able to learn through research that when people draw that line, that's when they start acting, that's when real change starts happening. Because people are there, we saw in 2020, they go march, it's the middle of a pandemic.

It's scary out there. And this was like, peak scary time, because nobody knew when a vaccine was coming, or what was going to happen next. But people were out in crowds. The one thing we weren't supposed to be doing, we're out in crowds, but but for an important cause, right marching, because it's so important that they're willing to put their comfort aside. And these aren't people who had not everybody had personal stakes in that there were lots of white people who saw the moral, moral outrage and what was going on, and they were removed, to activate and get out there. And people also not only become activated, but they also go vote. And voting matters, because that changes the politics around us.

And that gets in different voices. And that can change the policy. So morality and racism are intertwined, to the extent that racism and racial issues have become politicized. And so anytime there's a politics around it, you start looking at what's a driver, what moves people to change those politics, and for, for me and racism for where I look at it as a clear moral issue. And it's an it's a moral injustice. And it's an inhumanity to act to not just behave in in, you know, demean racial way and spit at somebody or use epithets, but also, to try to take away the power of people because they don't look like you or to exclude them, because they don't look like you.

Those are those are also moral and justices to me. So having, I wanted to study that I wanted to see how the much the majority belief that we all share, I think most people share not both parties, right. Both Republicans, Democrats, independents everywhere in between most of those people believe Yeah, racism. That's, that's a problem. Now, how we define racism might differ between the two parties, but the belief that that word carries a lot of weight and carries what I would say is moral weight with it. And, and that's how I see those two intersecting.

Dr. Aurélia Bickler
13:21 
It's so powerful I, I'm in I'm in, there's so much going on internally for me right now, as you're speaking, I'm so grateful of the way that you express this important message. It's just so I'm curious. When you look back at you know, for example, the 2020, you know, events that George Floyd's death, the demonstrations during the pandemic, as you mentioned, how did this how did the How did these impact or influence the current conversation about race? And where do you think we are now?

Dr. Brian Tilley
13:56 
Okay, so that's a really hard question. I think because, and the reason I say it's hard is because it's, it's heartbreaking what's happened since 2020. Certainly what happened in that year, what we saw on that video, those nine minutes of that poor man, and that at the end of his life, that was heartbreaking. But what's what's happened since then, the retrenchment, the reactionary response to that is also heartbreaking. So, what people came together was we're talking about they took a great risk to say, We've got to change something about this.

We've got to restart this conversation about race that that keeps getting delayed, or it has false starts like we were supposed to have it in the 90s around Rodney King never really happened. was supposed to have it in the 80s with the rainbow coalition that never really happened. We tried to have it in the 1960s and got great gains and incredible legislative gains, right Real change Civil Rights Act Voting Rights Act, but then it was intentionally derailed by politics. So, in 2020, there was a lot of hope that this was going to be different.

And actually, when I say hope I should also mention in 2008, we are going to have that conversation too, with the rise of President Obama. And then that was also derailed, not long after he got elected. So all these it's a shame because this concept, this moral concept that brings people together, independents, Republicans, Democrats, however you define yourself from the put the politics aside, people marching people, caring, people willing to hang Black Lives Matter signs in front of their house, when you don't know anything about them that you don't know nothing, you walk down the house, walk down the street, and you see a black lives matter, or you see, you know, everyone's welcome here, you see, just like the sense of community that was building at that time.

And it was heartbreaking to see the backlash to that. And because, again, I bring politics back into it, political forces saw a way to benefit from that and say, Why should we have to sit here and take our medicine? Why? Why do we have to sit here and listen to this, when, when that's not helping us at all. So let's start creating boogeyman like, the evil spectre of critical race theory. And let's start banning books let this this new thing about Florida black history, where we're talking about how enslaved people might come to learn some skills along the way. It's just like that sort of like silly stuff, that has nothing to do with helping anybody or bringing us forward as a country. And, and I, I mean, I'm laughing at it, but you kind of have to laugh to not continue having your heart broken again. And again, that sort of thing. And, and that's really where I come in is I, I just see that common ground it was, it was there and it can be gotten again, and the conversation is still kind of in the ether, people are still much more aware of racial issues.

And I know it's been polarized and politicized, unfortunately, where it's like we're aware of them. But we're also very aware that some people really don't want to talk about them, or that bringing them up is racist in itself, which is, again, sort of silly, but I just want to, from a humanistic standpoint, let's get back down to the big thing that got us together in the first place and focus on that, because that's where we can get some real change. And that's, that was the basis of the work that I did and that, and the book that I wrote, which was take that sense of morality, and humanity? And how do we channel that into getting some change with racial issues with respect to racial issues, that matters to the people of color in the United States.

And it can be applied in other places, but I start with the United States, that's my frame of reference. So that matters and helps them it makes that and makes their lives better not just make certain people feel better, but makes actual change in people's lives that we've got to start from that common ground. Because if we don't come at it from that, it's just a political thing. And it only helps one half or the other half for this segment or that segment.

Dr. Aurélia Bickler
18:18 
In regard to the political system, the US political system, what do you think? What do you think the US political system role is in our society's approach to racial issues?

Dr. Brian Tilley
18:33 
Well, I think politicians know that one thing drives votes more than anything else. And it's emotion. They understand very clearly that if you can get people excited or full of hope, we've seen that they'll show up and vote. But also on the other side of the spectrum, if you make them anxious, you scare them, or you make them angry, they will vote. And it's it's proven really hard to create a sense of hope. It's much easier to create a sense of anger and anxiety, especially when the world can feel upside down to so many people. And that because we know because we know that the politicians have been using the specter of race and racism to motivate votes for a long time.

And it's been used in positive ways, and certainly in a lot of negative ways, too. But we all suffer when that happens, because it again derails that conversation about race that everybody seems to say we want to have this conversation, but it keeps getting knocked off the tracks because well, somebody else could have benefited by not talking about it, or by taking it in a direction that serve them kept them in power got them more power, took power away from other people.

So it's easy, it's easy to see why we don't have progress. When the progress needs to be channeled in a Republican democracy, it needs to be channeled through a political system, it starts at the grassroots, but until, like a law gets changed, we don't, we don't really feel the change. And it's not institutionalized. It's has the effect of, you know, like, these executive orders that presidents make, like, as soon as they come in, they don't bother talking to Congress, or anybody that just like, I'm gonna change this, I'm gonna change that. It feels like an executive order, if it's not something that's really put into law, because an executive order can get overturned by the next guy, or next woman at some point, have gotten there yet, unfortunately. But it Yeah, it's it's easy to see how these natural impulses of fear and anger are played on. And that really pushes us away from what we need. So unfortunately, politics, even though it can heal, it's pushed us into a kind of negative place more often than not, yeah.

Dr. Aurélia Bickler
21:01 
You highlighted the importance of that emotional, you know, intensity to get voters out to get people to even continue having a conversation, or or just or to stand for themselves or to stand for each other. What do you say to people who believe that racism is not really a major issue, or maybe not a major issue anymore?

Dr. Brian Tilley
21:22 
What people What do you mean, they don't? Yeah. There's a lot of those folks, I know those folks, I, I have those folks in my family and, you know, in my social circle, circles, and yeah, I think I think the first start, or the first way to start is to, is to approach that person with curiosity and empathy is, okay. racism doesn't exist. Okay. Tell me about that. Why, you know, how did you arrive at that conclusion. And that's the curiosity piece. And I was, I was taught that a long time ago, when I was learning how to do group therapy is when you have somebody who's who's who's really monopolizing the group and causing problems, you respond to them with curiosity, rather than trying to find ways to sideline them and, and shut them up, because it doesn't work. You've got to gotta find a way to integrate them and keep the group moving.

So you respond with curiosity, but also with a sense of empathy. Instead of it's like, Okay, tell me how you got it that and then saying that that's, that's all? Nonsense, forget it. Here's, here's the truth, instead of going at it that way, because nobody's going to absorb a lesson that way, then we're now we're back to taking our medicine, right? Nobody wants to take their medicine. So you, then you go to a place of empathy of let me try to understand why you might be coming at it from this angle. And let me engage with you on that human level, that common human level. And let's start to talk about what, what's unfair, what's fair, and What's unfair. And where do you draw that line between what's what's fair?

And I would even take it up to that level of just an injustice. What is, what's an injustice to you? And let's start talking about what's occurring in the world right now. And then you tell me whether this is just or not, right? So that that becomes a much more powerful conversation with somebody who who comes at it from that perspective, than arguing back and forth. Because this happens, you can go anywhere and see that you can go online and see and see all the people talking right past one another. Here's my stats, here's your stats. Here's the facts that I've selected that fit my argument, here are the facts that you've selected.

And it doesn't, it doesn't really get anywhere, people might get an edge because they have a better mastery of the facts. But it doesn't really it's not painting the picture of reality of how it affects human beings. So if you say this is how this is how human beings are being affected in our world. And you know, if you don't believe me, we can talk about that part, too. But here's what's happening. listen to the voices of the people who have been through it right now. And then you tell me whether that's just or unjust. And to me that the term racist actually, because I know a lot of people get caught up on that term. It's, it's not fair to call somebody racist if they sent out a racist tweet. Well, that doesn't mean they're racist. You don't know their heart. That's what people say. Or I know, I know, I don't have a racist bone in my body. Well, there is no racist bone. Nobody knows what we don't know. We don't know. We haven't found it yet. If we found it, we've been getting racist bone. ectomy is out of everybody. So that's not the issue. Right? It's not about having a racist bone in your body. And it's not about knowing somebody's heart. It's about how you affect the people around you. And if you make a mistake, it's okay to make mistakes.

We're all human beings. But if somebody says, hey, after you make that mistake, hey, that hurt me. And then you don't change Each well now it's a problem. But if you didn't know, then, then we've got to have that conversation. And I think we don't we skip that first part of the conversation and we and we skip the empathy and we skip the connection. And we tend to, and this is a societal issue, but but we just tend to go to the, to the back and forth, and see who has better facts or who's who's, who has more mastery of, of the research out there.

And that that serves nobody. So when when I hear people say that I just, I want to learn more about where they're coming from, but I also want to leave them with something to think about of not, hey, I'm right, you're wrong. But have you considered it this way? And have you? And then maybe I'll walk away with something like, you know, let me now I understand why you might think that a little bit better.

Dr. Aurélia Bickler
25:47 
Yeah. All I keep hearing all of that keeps coming up for me is we have to listen more, and maybe think before we put stuff out. But really, there's a lot of people who, like you said are just putting information out there factual or not. They're not listening to to, to anybody else, really. And it this piece keeps coming to, to me as how do we move forward from here? How do we how do we reach each other in a way that actually connects us and helps each of us understand different perspectives and open our hearts open ourselves to, to other people's experiences, other people's realities? So I'm curious, how do we reach common ground or higher ground to increase equity and reduce racial disparities?

Dr. Brian Tilley
26:39 
So that's, that's the, that's the big question. And I, I try to, I try to do my best to answer that. Because I think there's a lot of us who, who struggle with how to get to that place. And I call I call the common ground higher ground. And that was, that's the title of my book, which I guess we should talk about, too. So I wrote this book called Higher Ground, morality and humanity, in the politics of race. And so that concept was, it's built on people having a common sense of humanity with one another, is just boiling it down to sitting across from one another and saying, we share, we need to accept one another into our moral community, this idea of, I'll take care of mine, and you take care of yours.

That's, that is that hurts us, that doesn't just hurt the people who are excluded, that hurts the people who are doing the excluding, because now they're invested in separation, rather than being invested in flourishing, or whatever they could be there, they'd become focused on that. So it's, you know, an A, there's been a controversy recently about this song called small town. Or try that in a small town. Well, I've lived in some small towns. And I'll, I'll say throughout my years, and I visited a lot of small towns, and got to know people from small towns, and in a small town, you kind of you take up, everybody takes care of each other. Now, everybody's all in each other's business, too. And so there's, there could be some drawbacks to that. But, but that's, that's, that's the idea of coming together.

And that's a community and we've we've got to accept each other. And realize we're all human beings and accept when each other, each other into a moral community. And by that, I mean, when somebody gets hurt, we notice that and care about it, instead of saying, well, that's them. That doesn't matter. That's not us. As long as it's not us. It's okay. Now, what's even worse is saying, it's not, it's not us, that's good, that they got hurt. And there are people who are doing that, and happy to do that online. But those are the those are the children acting up in the room. They're not, I would hope they're not the adults, or it's the adults giving into their worst impulses. But we've got to accept each other into that moral community. And once we realize we share something, we share that humanity with everybody around us, then we start to think and start to thinking, okay, so how is that being injured?

And how can we protect one another from being injured? And like I said, this affects everybody. So it affects certainly the people of color who are victim of discrimination of racist interactions and confusing interactions and microaggressions and that sort of thing. But they're also on the losing end of these disparities of wealth and education and incarceration in a justice system, and political power and, and economic power in all of these areas. It's certainly that that stands out. Most of all, I mean, that's what we think of first when we think of racism, but we also think of how it hurts and impairs our white brothers and sisters who are caught in traps of guilt and fear and anger. are in shame and discomfort with what's going on around them and trying to understand this world.

And of course, it hurts society at large, because when society is diverse and Letson, new points of view and new different skill sets and different people, then it can grow and, and get stronger. And it can be a community that people want to be part of instead of one that people start fleeing, or hiding from. So the, the, we have to bring a moral conviction to, to racism. And I think that's where that because the moral conviction is what gets people act devised and going out and voting and making real change. But the way that we get that moral conviction is by starting from that common base of humanity of, we're all people. And when we see something happen to somebody that is just so outside of what should happen to another human being we do something about it, instead of saying, Well, I'm still okay, so I'm not I'm not, I can't get involved with that. I don't want to pay attention to it.

Dr. Aurélia Bickler
31:02 
That gives me some hope. This hearing your words gives me hope that a this conversation is beginning to happen or is happening. Maybe it's not the beginning, maybe it's been happening, but on different levels. Maybe it is the beginning, I'm not sure. But it gives me hope to know that. There are ways for all parties to come together and discuss such an important part of who we are as a society. For those of us who would like to dig deeper into this topic, where might we find information? And please tell us a little bit more about your book in particular, because I think it's an incredible resource for us. If there are any other resources that you can think of, Could you could you lead us in the right direction to continue this this conversation?

Dr. Brian Tilley
31:57 
Of course. So thank you really, for the kind words, I'm glad I'm bringing some hope. That's that I think that's the goal, right? We I mean that we can we can motivate from Hope, like we were talking about before motivates a good hopes a good place to be. So my book, higher ground morality and humanity in the politics of race, just recently came out. And it outlines everything that I've been talking about with you today. Starting with the history of how morality has been sort of inter woven throughout our, throughout our approach to racial issues, going going back to something as early as the Christian imperialism and the beginning of the chattel slave trade, all the way through United States history up through the Civil Rights area era and into black lives matter in the modern era, and in the upright, the Fed Up risings in 2020, and on to today, so I start with that, and then I talk about what's, what is the what's our moral imperative? Where Where do we see the the human injustice?

And look at what's what's occurring around us right now. So all the ways that racism affects people, black and white, brown, whoever you are, how does it affect you? And then finally, I look at the politics side of it, in there, and I end kind of on a similar note to that previous question that you asked, which is a great question, which is kind of what do we do with this. So I try to, I try to pull those themes together at the end of that book, but there's so many excellent books out there, and so much interesting stuff. And and there was like a flood of it in 2020, which was great, because people were getting super interested in the topic and starting to get engaged again. And of course, there's great websites out there too, but, but for just starting with the books, there's a book called Moral tribes by Joshua green, really interesting about how morality influences our behavior, and especially how emotions come into things.

And then there's a couple of books that are pretty famous. I think people know about, why are all the Black Kids Sitting Together in the cafeteria by Beverly Tatum, it was I think it was an Oprah's book club. So a lot of people have read that book already. And the some of us by Heather McGee, and that really illustrates how racism harms everybody. So that's a that's a really good entry to that. And then there's a book out there called so so you want to talk about race by Ijeoma Oluo. And she writes, it's kind of like a starter text, like all the little questions that you might be asking, and why is this racist? Or why is this a problem? It was kind of kind of a cool entry point for a lot of people.

And there's also any of David rediger is three books. How race survived history, wages of whiteness, and working toward whiteness, on white identity. It's like an it's an expertly written really, really well written, like history, but from the perspective of like, the social history of this country and how racial identity, especially white racial identity has kind of evolved and how it's affected people of color in the country and how it's sort of sort of morphed and absorbed.

And it just these are really interesting books. And then to for how race affects the political side, a couple of books, anger in racial politics by Antoine banks, and the emotional politics of racism, by Paula ironite. describes the role of emotion, especially anger, unfortunately, when it comes to belief about race and racism, so those are the ones that stick out to me, but there's probably some other ones out there that we can include too.

Dr. Aurélia Bickler
35:44 
Thank you so much. Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us about this topic. Thank you for offering so many resources. Thank you for addressing so many different perspectives and parts of what makes this topic so complex. And I just I, I am grateful. I'm grateful that you are contributing to our field to our society with with your incredible work. So thank you so much. Thank you all for tuning in. Until next time, take care of each other. Take time for yourself and love yourself.

Dr. Brian Tilley
Thank you