Pabel’s Afro-Latino mother's advice for fitting in and being a professional feels outdated and unhelpful as he navigates racism in the tech industry. And, mindfulness coach Zee Clarke shows us how to breathe through triggering conversations about race and implicit bias at work—and with our loved ones.
Featured Expert:
Zee Clarke is a Harvard MBA that went from leading teams at fortune 500 companies and startups in Silicon Valley to teaching mindfulness and breathwork to people of color. Why? After experiencing a number of race related challenges, from racial profiling and harassment by the police to microaggressions in the workplace, she realized that mindfulness and breathwork were much more powerful outside of the yoga studio and in the context of our everyday lives. Trained in India, Zee leverages her toolkit of yoga, meditation, breathwork, sound healing, and Reiki, to ensure that all people of color have the tools to thrive despite any challenges that race, gender, or sexuality might present. Learn more about her work including her monthly newsletter here, and about her new book, Black People Breathe, here.
If you loved this episode, listen to Her Roots Inspired a Career Change but Mamí Doesn't Get It and Telling Mom She's Also Biased.
We’d love to hear your stories of triumph and frustration so send us a detailed voice memo to virginia@lwcstudios.com. You might be on a future episode! Let’s connect on Twitter and Instagram at @TalkToMamiPapi and email us at hello@talktomamipapi.com. And follow us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and anywhere you listen to your favorite podcasts.
Juleyka Lantigua:
Hi everybody, today we welcome Pabel. He grew up with really specific ideas about how to be a successful professional. Ideas about who he should be at work and around colleagues, how he should carry himself. All of them passed down from his Dominican family, but when he began his career in tech, he realized, trying to live up to those ideals was super stressful. And talking to his mom about it, left him really unsatisfied. Let's get into it.
Pabel: My name is Pabel Martinez. I'm a native New Yorker, former tech executive. And these days I'm the founder and CEO of my own company called Plurawl. Growing up, I would call my grandma Abuela and I would call my grandfather Fefen. His name is Rafael, but I could never say Rafael. So I would call him Fefen. And then my mom, I just called her mom.
I remember growing up, these trips that I would go back to Dominican Republic. I was dressed up like I was going to prom. Business attire, abuelo was in a guayabera and a top hat with like a feather on the side. Looking back at it, I'm just like, "Why did we dress up so much?" But my family was very intentional about their appearance. Growing up my grandparents were the ones that raised me. My grandfather would tell me, "Well, do you see presidents with durags and tattoos and earrings? As a kid growing up in New York, heavily influenced by hip hop and wanting to be just like those hip hop artists that he sees on TV. I get what he was trying to do. He was trying to protect me from people with negative perceptions, but at the same time, the images that he was showing me, as far as presidents and CEOs, they were older white men. So I've always had this idea of if I wanted to be successful in life, I had to be more white. And that really impacted how I showed up, not only to airports, but ultimately to work, when I got into corporate.
Pabel: I also saw other examples of people sort of suppressing their identity as they go into these corporate spaces. For example, my mother was an administrative assistant. I grew up seeing my mother every morning, iron her hair, essentially like damage her curls every single morning to the point these days, her hair doesn't curl anymore. I saw these examples of, if I want to make money, if I want to be successful, I need to suppress parts of who I am.
It started off with aesthetic changes to my appearance and treating my manager like a mannequin. I was like, "I'm going to buy that same exact outfit. I'm going to start tucking in my shirts. I'm going to start doing all that." And eventually it got to the point where I would literally assign myself homework on the weekends to study white, popular American culture. I knew that talking about Bad Bunny and Marc Anthony and watching shows like Insecure on HBO, weren't going to get a conversation going. I wasn't going to feel accepted talking about those shows. So instead I would talk about shows like Riverdale that I would binge watch. I was dedicating hours and weeks out of my life to study things that I had no interest in. I became exhausted from the assimilation. The time commitment became overwhelming to the point I wasn't doing well at my job.
Pabel: I was getting pretty close to being fired. And what I realized is well is like, despite all of the dedication, I was still getting the racism, the microaggressions. I would share a PowerPoint presentation with my colleague and they would call it “ghetto.” Or when I was being labeled “aggressive” for my tone and the way that I was speaking to colleagues and managers. The labels, and I'm like, "Yo, if I'm doing all this work and I'm still getting the labels, well, forget it. I'm going to just be myself. If I'm going to get fired, I'm going to do it being my most authentic self." And what ended up happening surprisingly was that my career actually started taking off, because I was being myself.
It's difficult for me to talk to my mom about these situations, the microaggressions, the racism, and even the sexism that exists in corporate America. And I think it's generational. For example, I don't even think she realized or understands like how ingrained in her, straight hair equals “professional.” I make up a story in my head that she was made fun of for her accent. It's just an assumption. I don't think I have an accent and I get microaggressions and racism. I can only imagine that my mother has experienced some traumatic things in corporate, but she doesn't admit to it. And whenever I ask her about these situations, that's her defense mechanism, is comedy. Just laughs it off. "Well, didn't this happen to you, mom, because it's happening to me, and this is 2022?" She would say, "Oh yeah, maybe that happened. But like it's all jokes. They joke, I joke back."
Pabel: It's not that I want my mom to know something about my particular experience at work. I'm pretty open about those experiences, but I do want her to know that it's okay to struggle, that it's okay to admit that she's had traumatic experiences. I'm not going to judge you. I'm not going to see you as any less. I think she has created this persona and way of presenting herself because she thinks she has to do it this way. And mom, if you're listening, I don't think you have to.
Lantigua: Ooh, Pabel's story hit close to home. In my 25 years in media, I've experienced similar aggressions and some other wild ones, because I'm also a woman, in all types of professional settings. And for a lot of us first-gens trying to talk about these things with our older relatives, racism and sexism and being passed over and being undermined. Things that are really tough to prove in their eyes. It's nearly impossible, especially because the way that they handled things when they were coming up, was so different. And their advice? Typically, “get over it.” just doesn't work in our context. So how can we speak openly and clearly with our families about our experiences with microaggressions and sexism and racism and how can we navigate the frustrations that we feel when they don't seem to even take those challenges seriously? To help us figure it out, you know what I did? I called in an expert.
Zee Clarke: My name is Zee Clark and I am a mindfulness and breath work coach focused on helping people of color heal from racism in the workplace. I train Black and Latino employees at companies like Google, Facebook, Visa, AMC Networks. I started my career in financial services. I went to Harvard Business School. I then spent a lot of time in Silicon Valley, working in tech where usually I was the only, the only woman, the only Black person. I'm also Afro-Latina, right? The only, the only, the only.
Lantigua: Oh, you've been there. So let's get started. What did you hear as you listened to Pabel's story?
Zee Clarke: Oh, my, the biggest thing I heard was just further confirmation that we are not alone when we experience these things. I do polls during my workshops and I list a bunch of microaggressions and I have people anonymously say, which of these have you experienced? And usually 80 to a hundred percent of the people that attend these workshops have experienced the microaggressions. But the one thing that was surprising, that was different, was that he realized that he performed better at work when he was actually himself at work. And that's unusual.
Lantigua: Can you please help us understand what behaviors can be classified as microaggressions in the workplace?
Zee Clarke: An example might be like a demeaning remark or stereotypes, right? Acting surprised at the way you speak or your education. Sometimes just ignoring you. It's like you say something and people don't acknowledge that you said it. Someone else says the same thing and then they get applauded. Mistaking you for somebody that looks nothing like you, just because it's the other Black person or the other Latino person in the room, or asking you to represent the entire race. Like what do Black people think? What do Latino people think? Right. And not to mention hair. I can't tell you how many people have reached in to touch my hair.
Lantigua: Ugh. Yeah. My favorite though is the one that just seems to be the perennial favorite for everyone. When they can figure out how to put the syllabus together to my name, it comes out as Julissa.
Zee Clarke: Right. And in fact, I wrote a book called Black People Breathe, that's coming out in March and I have a chapter called that's not my name. That's not my name. Right?
Lantigua: Ooooh… [laughter] okay. I definitely need that book. So let me get a little bit into the impact of microaggressions, especially at work and in the corporate space, because a lot of people tend to think that it's just emotional and psychological. It just makes you feel bad, but there are actually some real physical and physiological consequences to dealing with this, year, after year, after year.
Zee Clarke: Yes. So the biggest thing is blood pressure. So research shows that discrimination and racism is the direct cause of higher rates of high blood pressure for African Americans. And for Latinos, microaggressions, specifically around making you feel like you're a foreigner and those microaggressions around making you feel like a criminal, increase the blood pressure and cause kind of chronic high blood pressure.
Lantigua: Wow.
Zee Clarke: But there's so many other things, depression and anxiety, weakened immune system, even diabetes, obesity, accelerated aging, and then there's fatigue, impaired decision-making. So there are so many impacts to not only our performance at work, but also our mental and physical health.
Lantigua: So, I listened to his testimonial with a lot of respect because of the self-awareness that he gained through that process. But I also listened with a lot of sympathy, because of how much his colleagues and he himself missed out all that time that he spent trying to fit in, instead of being himself. So when you work with folks that are sort of like at this intersection of self-discovery, but also trying to assimilate to an environment that was not really built around their needs, what do you recommend they do?
Zee Clarke: Yeah. My parents are both immigrants. I grew up with a model, that similar to him, to be successful you need to be as white American as possible. And so with that, I grew up with the assumption that we had to code-switch in order to be successful. And so the advice that I have for folks is to leverage mindfulness, right? I'm a mindfulness coach, which is to pay attention on purpose and make sure that what you're doing is with intention. And so I suggest practicing, there's a framework, a woman named Byron Katie, has something she calls The Work and there are four questions of inquiry that help you address a limiting belief. I'm not going to be successful if I'm myself at work, or for me, I always thought I'm going to get fired if I'm myself at work. So, that's your limit. Start with the limiting belief.
And then here are the four questions. One: is it true? Well, I'm like, "Of course it's true. That's why I'm doing it." Okay. Number two: are you a hundred percent sure that it's true? Like, am I sure I'm going to get fired? Well, no, you can't be a hundred percent sure of anything. Okay. Number three: Who are you, how do you act when you believe that thought? When I believe that I'm going to get fired, if I'm not myself, while I'm nervous, I feel like I'm walking on eggshells. It takes a lot of energy. I'm kind of mean to myself inside anytime I make a mistake and slip up and let something of my personal life come up and I'm bad at my job. Like he was bad at his job. And when he describes being so exhausted. And then the last question, the fourth question is, who would you be without that thought? And so if I didn't believe I would get fired, I would be my best self. I'd share my opinions. I would be able to help the team problem-solve without feeling nervous. I would be more confident. I'd be happier. I would sleep better.
And so by going through these questions, that'll help you decide, should I change myself or not? And I want to say that it's not like a hundred percent of the time, because circumstances really change. Like who you're talking to. Right. How comfortable you feel. I guess my point is, don't always assume that you have to.
Lantigua: I really love those four questions so much. Let's talk a little bit about this notion of bringing your full, authentic self to work, because it's become very fashionable. It's become something that people think is very liberating, but what does that actually mean?
Zee Clarke: Hmm. For me to answer that question, I'll answer what the opposite looks like. It's wearing masks, hiding things about ourselves. And to me, bringing your whole self is to not hide those things anymore. So things like my culture, where my family is from, the things that we do, our traditions, how I grew up. But it's more than your background story. It's also like, what are your opinions right now? What do you think? And often we are scared to say what we think because it might be different, but in fact that difference in opinion helps to make the solution of whatever we're doing better.
Lantigua: Okay. So I want to complicate this for you a little bit because I have worked in both, mostly white environments and I have also had the privilege of working in all types of Black and Brown environments, in media. And one of the things that I have come across that I have always shaved against, is when Black and Brown people take the moral sort of high ground, by saying things like, "Well as a Black woman, or as a Latina, or as someone who comes from an otherized or marginalized identity." That feels actually to me, inauthentic, because you are declaring that anyone and everyone who shares that same identity with you, somehow gets a moral higher ground than everyone else.
Zee Clarke: I think it depends on the context. And like you said, moral high grounds. Why do you think it implies like higher ethics?
Lantigua: Because I've seen people utilize it like that. That's why, and I, very recently had to have a conversation with someone who I literally had to say to this person, you know it's anti-Black to say that Blackness can be filtered through one person's experience.
Zee Clarke: Yeah. How was it received?
Lantigua: I think the person was really shocked. I thought it was actually a really constructive conversation.
Zee Clarke: You called the person out, that in itself is a big deal and a challenging thing. And that was to a Black person. But imagine if it was a white person, imagine if that white person is your boss and they say something offensive, to call that person out is a big deal, that's not to be taken lightly. Oh my God, your heart starts beating fast. And you're like, "Ah, what if they get offended? What if this happens?" And so in those situations, I strongly suggest to do some breathing, some deep breathing beforehand and during. And one of the big techniques that I teach is a belly breath, which is when you inhale and you stick your belly out really big on the inhale. Like do with me, inhale, stick your belly out, exhale belly comes towards your spine. And you do that like multiple times. And they don't even have to know that you're doing it, but that allows you to calm down so that you're not like telling them from this like stressed, triggered place.
Lantigua: All right, Zee. So one of the things that we hear Pabel talk about, is his attempt to understand how the experience was for his mom who also worked in corporate America. And what did you hear as he was telling this part of the story?
Zee Clarke: He said something like, "I want her to know that it's okay to like, feel bad. It's okay to, like, feel." And I would argue that you should meet people where they are, what's in their best interest. And so if his mom is still working, if his mom is still working and still experiencing these things, I do think it is important for her to acknowledge. So she can do something about it. Whether it's the deep breathing techniques that I share, whether it's therapy, but I would also argue if she's retired, if she's not at that job anymore, then what's the point. Is it helpful for her to go back to pain she experienced for 20 years just to feel pain, like why?
And then the other thing is it can be really frustrating to talk to parents and them not understand. And so that deep belly breath that I shared that you might do, if you are calling somebody out on a microaggression. Like, I don't know if you've had conversations with your parents where they say stuff and it just, you feel it in your shoulders, but you can't say anything because you have to have respect. And so with that, I also advise a deep belly breath or an extra long exhale. Do it with me, exhale all your air out really long. Yeah. And do that as they're talking.
Lantigua: I completely agree with you, that sometimes we think that the way that our parents have dealt with things in the past is "unhealthy". But it actually was fine because that's what they did in survival mode. Part of surviving was not letting stuff get to them and keeping it moving.
Zee Clarke: There you go.
Lantigua: Zee, you are wonderful. Please, please come back.
Zee Clarke: I would love to be back.
Lantigua: All right. Here's what we learned from Zee today.
Take deep breaths. Let's try it. [inhales, exhales] Use breathing exercises before, during, and after a triggering conversation to help you recenter, calm down and keep you in respond, not react mode.
Question your code-switching. Notice when you're doing it. And especially when you're doing it on autopilot, try to be more intentional about code-switching. And don't assume you have to hide parts of who you are at work, not all the time.
And remember, meet your parents where they are. When speaking with loved ones, it may not always be in their best interest to revisit past pain and trauma. They may have in fact moved past it. And we should allow that.
Monica Lopez:
Thank you for listening and sharing us. How to Talk to Mami and Papi about Anything is an original production of LWC Studios. Virgnia Lora is our show's producer, Kojin Tashiro is our mixer, Elizabeth Nakano mixed this episode. Manuela Bedoya is our marketing lead, and Juleyka Lantigua is the creator and host. I'm senior editor, Monica Lopez. On Twitter and Instagram, we're @talktomamipapi.
Bye, everybody, same place next week.
CITATION:
Lantigua, Juleyka, host. “Unlearning Mamí’s Lessons for Professional Success.” How to Talk to [Mamí & Papí] about Anything, LWC Studios., August 29, 2022. TalkToMamiPapi.com.
Produced by: