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This is Rainamoto's Podcast, The Creative Mindset.
Rainamoto氏とDarren Wesley Martin Jr. & Dr. Rubina Malikの経験
Hi everyone, welcome to The Creative Mindset, a podcast about what the future holds at the
intersection of creativity and technology. I am Rainamoto, the founding partner of I&CO,
a global innovation firm based in New York and Tokyo. Today's episode is part two of my
conversation with Darren Wesley Martin Jr. and Dr. Rubina Malik of Bold Culture,
a multicultural communication firm that provides inclusive talent management and consumer marketing
research, insights, and consulting to media, marketing, advertising, and technology practitioners.
In this episode, we go into the specifics of tips and insights that they shared,
particularly in the communication industry. Darren and I met working together on a project
a couple of years ago, and my firm, I&CO, hired his firm to be a D&I consultant on a project that
we were working on at that time. And even though it was only about a couple of days that we worked
together, there was a lot that we could learn from his practice, his expertise, and his firm's
point of view that I wanted to share in this episode. And he shares the specific instances
コミュニケーション業界での包括的なアプローチ
and specific insights that we should look for when particularly working in the communication industry.
So, let's get started. So, let me dig a little bit deeper this word that you use, assumption.
And I'm going to bring up a couple of examples and stories. One, a specific example where Darren,
you know, your firm and my firm worked on a previous project, where you helped us understand the
cultural context of what was being represented in the piece. So, to paint the picture,
we were working on a series of mini documentary video series for an apparel client.
And the point of that series was to feature multiple apparel products like shirts and pants
and things like that. One of the products that we needed to feature was a cotton shirt.
And there were five people in those films. Each film was actually representing one person or
one group of people. And there was a couple of Caucasian people, one Asian person, and two
black people. And the stylist, who by the way, I don't know what ethnic background that stylist had,
but the apparel items that were assigned to these characters, there was a white cotton shirt
that was assigned to a black female. I didn't pick out on this. Your firm correctly pointed out that
hey, Ray and your team, you have to be careful about the cultural and the historical context,
particularly white cotton shirt could bring up.
As consumers, we get an ad and that's all we do is assume, right? Especially if we don't have a
cultural background or understanding. And we're pulling from, and this is a bias, but we're
pulling from our experience, how we perceive the world, what maybe our culture has gone through,
right? And in that case, what was interesting is not only the white shirt, but possibly the
setting in which the white shirt was placed, right? With the talent. And so, if we're looking
at the type of flower that is being, because I think she was a florist or something.
She was an urban gardener.
Urban gardener, yeah.
Yes, urban gardener. Yes. And I think the type of flower was a little white at that. I think it was
a white flower or a leaning white flower. And so, the thing that comes up to us is like picking
cotton for the first thing, right? And that of course goes back in America to slavery, which of
course was a global feed in the horrible, right? So, I think that one of the things we always want
to think about, especially as slavery globally still has effects on my underrepresented communities,
black and brown people, is think about not only the styling, but also the setting and also the
person. Another thing is she is a beautiful dark-skinned woman, right? And we know that
globally people with darker skin suffer the most, right? They have the most, I say, challenges, harm
across global communities in many cases. And so, for us, it was looking at who's being presented,
what are they wearing, what setting are they around, and what is the storytelling,
and then what can it be perceived as to Dr. Malik's point? How can someone assume that,
oh, is she picking cotton? And that's the only thing that we don't want, right? Because of
course not everyone's going to hearken that back to it, but who's to say they aren't, right?
Because another example of that is H&M doing a shirt that said coolest monkey in the jungle,
バイアスの問題とは？
right? And it was with a dark-skinned young black boy. And the idea is people were saying, well,
what's the big deal? Well, black people were compared to monkeys and are still compared to
monkeys to this day. And it is a bias. It's harmful. It's more than a microaggression, right?
And it has both contemporary and historical connection to it. And so, in that experience,
we loved going through it. We thought the work that you all did and continue to do was great.
And we appreciate you all being open to that and saying, okay, we get that, right? And I understand
that in your case, it was also an immediate campaign. And so, what I loved about you all
is that it's not, you know, we're saying like, it's, you know, in a few days, X, Y, and Z,
but we're still going to make a change or consider this before we start producing.
And that's what companies need to do, right? Is to really assess before production
at all levels in order to really reduce the chance for harm.
You know, we were working against a pretty tight deadline and it wasn't like we had weeks and weeks
of preparation time to talk to you about. We only had like literally a couple of days
to talk to you and then react to. But the point that I want to bring up is that
those couple of days was enough to address. And just having a pause and then, you know,
ask that question and then ask somebody else to look at it objectively was enough to be able to,
for us to make just a little modification to what we were doing to be more just and more appropriate.
Absolutely. And it takes that knowledge though, as Dr. Malik was saying, right? You have to have
that historical, you work with people, you know, like bold culture and others, where you have that
cultural knowledge to bring it out and say, okay, I can think of this or how audience will assume
us per certain position immediately. And I think to you all's point, it takes your effort and
willingness to take action in those days, right? Because it's easy to say the shoots in, you know,
two days, we're not changing anything or we don't have the time for that. But clients who listen to
it, right? And take action immediately are the clients who reduce their chance for, you know,
harm and also for social media to be coming after them, right?
Yeah. Just the H&M example that you cited. I mean, just hearing it makes me cringe.
Like why?
Horrible.
Yeah.
Yeah. It was just horrible. And it resulted in both financial and physical violence,
right? And in many cases, people were like trashing H&M stores globally, right? Think of this,
it's sometimes just an American issue, but it's such a global issue that we have to think about.
対処法：教育と文化的な知識
Dr. Malik, you know, in the corporate world, and again, where you work and where you are versus
say Japan might be drastically different, but what are some of the blind spots when it comes
to diversity, equity and inclusion in the workplace? And, you know, from your profile,
I understand that you do a fair amount of coaching and advisory work to companies,
but one of the challenges and tricky things is that people don't know what they don't know,
right? So the biases that they might have, subconscious biases that they might have,
they might not be aware that they have those biases. But yeah, what are common blind spots
or pitfalls that you've seen that are helpful in understanding or making, you know, DEI better
in the workplace?
Yeah. And, you know, what a great question that you're asking me. So just so you know,
like one of my philosophies is to educate, you know, before making an acquisition
or an assumption is to either I get educated on something I don't understand or, you know,
educating others because they may not understand, you know, and, you know, you have to have,
you know, you have to give people some grace, just like you would want someone to give you grace.
And I think that's definitely something that's missing is sometimes I feel like we jump to the
conclusion that someone should know and they don't honestly sometimes know. And what are some of
those blind spots as you're asking, you know, and I think a lot of it is just cultural things.
We make a lot of assumptions. We may hear something on TV. We may hear something on,
you know, see something. We hear somebody say something, you know, because one of the things
that we definitely aren't doing these days is critically thinking, right? Like getting more
無意識のバイアスと文化の盲点
research, asking more questions. So we just assume. So in those assumptions, I think there's
where the blind spots might come around culture. You might create some biases and you don't even
know you have those biases. So understanding that, okay, I might have a bias. Maybe what I'm saying
is not politically correct, right? So I am by birth, I'm Pakistani, right? And, you know,
by country, by citizenship, I'm American. And so, and I'm a Muslim Pakistani woman,
you know, living in America. So there's, you know, biases that one has to filter through
when meeting someone. And so those filters that we all have and those blind spots, as you said,
we can alleviate them if we take the time. And one, it's a dual responsibility. I'm not saying
it's one person's response. It's both of our responsibility, my responsibility to educate you
and your responsibility to ask questions and not make assumptions and not take your biases
and put them on me. So I think biases is a big blind spot. I think not understanding culture,
that we just assume everybody is like us, right? You know, I got an email from inclusion officer
that said, I believe Ramadan starts on Thursday. And I actually found it to be offensive. I believe
it starts, go do your research, go find out, ask questions. Don't make assumptions. There's plenty
of Muslims people that you could ask and say, Hey, tell me when is Ramadan? And they say it's
Thursday. I mean, we've gotten better now to be able to predict, but they say it's Thursday. Is
that true? Like, what is it? So, but you know, like you believe it's Thursday versus like it
カルチャーアセンションを通じたバイアスの緩和
is Thursday or it's going to start Thursday. There's the possibility of it being on Thursday.
So, you know, like people doing their research around culture, understanding
versus just making assumptions. And now we're believing.
What was your response to that person when you, when you heard that and when you felt that?
So it wasn't a, it wasn't a message to me. This was a message to the general company.
I'm still sitting with it. I'm trying to sort out like how I want to address it. Because remember,
like I said earlier, we want to educate people. So I could come from my emotion and say,
or I could come from, Hey, I'd like to share with you my experience.
My experience was when, when I saw this, this is how I felt. And this was my reaction.
Right. Or like having a conversation where I'm leaving the person empowered and educated.
From, you know, like, like having something new, learning something new,
having a new experience for next time. So I was just taken back personally because this
person is the DNI person. They're the inclusive, inclusivity, belonging person.
You know, I think that what we think about with diversity is that many times people
go to diversity and inclusion, the first thing is race, right. Which does have a large,
you know, hold on us, you know, in different parts of the world. But diversity is everything
from gender, ability, sexuality, socioeconomic status, right. Skin color in many cases,
as we talked about before. And so it's important to let that Japanese company know that diversity,
you know, when we think about diversity, we're thinking about diversity in a more expansive lens
across many groups. And so it's very disrespectful, clearly, to represent women
多様性の拡大と文化の変革
in this way. And of course, then we will then need to, as Dr. Malik was saying at the beginning of
this, train and educate on the history, right, of women in Japan and then women globally
being underrepresented, being stereotyped, being harmed, right. And why, if you are going to be
a next level company, you need to reduce the chance for it happening in your company,
but also speak out about it if you see it in culture. Because that's how we change culture,
is by calling people in, by having conversations. But it's also by expanding your scope of what
diversity actually is to including women, to including trans people, to including, you know,
people across socioeconomic backgrounds. We always mention two ways to, when you hear something
that, you know, may be microaggressive or biased, and you do want to speak up, there are two
approaches is calling in and calling out. The calling in is what did you mean by that? Or what
creates this assumption? Or can you unpack this for me a little bit, right? I think asking people
what do they mean about, you know, what they just said, in some cases, allows them to step back
無意識の偏見を乗り越える
and kind of think about what they just said and why they just said it. And in many cases,
if they double down on like being anti-diversity or not getting it right, then that's a chance
to say or have a conversation to educate that person. Calling out would be like, hey, no,
we need to stop here. Like clearly something is wrong. Clearly diversity is important.
Clearly this community is important and we shouldn't be disrespecting them. And I think
that that's more of a blatant, you know, stopping someone, but both calling out and calling in
could work. We love calling in because again, it allows people to really assess what they've said
and how they said it. And it really gives them time for self-correction in many cases, where
calling out is innately done to stop something that is harmful, right? So they're talking about
a community and they're like, I don't get diversity or I don't understand why they care
so much about gay people, or I don't know why they care so much about women. Then I think that's a
good time to say like, that's harmful language, right? Like, do you have people in your family
who may be, you know, queer or gay? Do you, you know, speak like this to your mother or your
grandmother or other people, right? And so it is a challenge and that's why I wanted to pause. It is
a challenge to think, but you always can win with calling in, in my opinion, right? To them,
it may come off as less combative, right? Which allows you to have a conversation,
even though you want to really tell them like, no, what you just said is a pile of, you know,
bleep, bleep, bleep and stuff like that. That was part two of my conversation with
Darren Wesley Martin Jr. and Dr. Rubina Malik of Vogue Culture. As I'm recording this in the
post-affirmative action era, like in the first part of this conversation, there were a lot of
things that went through my mind. And as I said, in part one, I have kids who will be going to
college in the future and they'll be going to college in a very different era than I did.
I came to the US in the 90s as a college student and I have to think that my ethnic background
coming from Japan, being a minority, may have had some impact on the decision that the admission
officer made looking at my application. And the fact that in the next several years, as my kids
go to college, that they might not have the admission officers, might not have the same
lens. They may want to have that lens, but they are now forced to be a lot more careful than they
were until, say, last year. That could have an impact on my kids' future. That gives me a lot to think
about. And in this part of the conversation, there was one episode that Dr. Malik shared that really,
really stood out to me. She shared an episode where in the company that she was working for
at the time, the diversity officer sent an email to the team and in that email, this person
somewhat naively said, I believe this week is Ramadan. Dr. Malik, as you heard in the episode, she
is by birth Pakistani and a Muslim and Ramadan is a religious practice that she observes. To her,
it's obvious when Ramadan is, which by the way, changes every year. But to this diversity officer,
ironically, wasn't obvious. And Dr. Malik said that she was offended by the fact that this diversity
officer wasn't quite sure and didn't take the time to look up when Ramadan was, specifically that year.
I have to say that when she brought up that episode and she said that she was offended,
Dr. Malik was offended, I had to scratch my head a little bit mentally. I didn't do that
on screen with her. And as she explained, I understood where she was coming from. And by
listening to her explain the logic and an emotional reaction that she may have had
to this really benign and naive phrase, I believe Ramadan is this Sunday,
as opposed to just saying definitely Ramadan is this Sunday. The fact that this other person
didn't take literally 15 seconds to look up on Google to confirm that kind of detail. And I'm
sure that person had absolutely, well, I assume that that person didn't have any malicious intent
behind that simple comment, but how that could have come across somehow offensively to the other
side of the communication. And even something as small as that, that made me realize just
Dr. Malik sharing that episode and the mental state that she went through and the kind of reaction
他の文化についての前提を持たないことの重要性
that she had to something that's so innate and natural to her culture. I'm sure if I were in a
situation where somebody may be making a comment about my culture, and they didn't know what it
was or when it was, I might take offense to it. To be fair, they don't know what they don't know.
But at the same time, it is everybody's responsibility to not assume what might be
normal to us is normal to other people. And especially if you are making a comment about
a culture or about a group of people or about a certain situation that somebody might be in,
not make an assumption and just take an extra step. It might not be hours of research that
you have to do or hours of education or days of education that you have to do. It might
literally be 10 seconds of your time to take that step. And that can make a big difference
in the way you make others feel inclusive and provide that kind of equity in simple daily
communications that we all do, even if you're not facing the other party face to face.
That was part two of my conversation with Darren Wesley Martin Jr. and Dr. Rubina Malik
of Bold Culture. I'm Ray Namoto, and this is The Creative Mindset. See you next time.
