Bridging Divides: Michele Lamont's Vision for a More Inclusive Society | Ep. 060

Episode Transcript

Michele: 0:00

the fact that they have high status tends to overshadow how they think about who's worthy. And that's complicated because it also leads many people to think less highly of those who don't make much money. the US is a country where low income people are deeply stigmatized. They're viewed as unworthy. Because many people think they're poor because they're lazy or because they're stupid

CODY: 0:34

Welcome to another episode of The Mind Hack podcast. Today we have Professor Michelle Lamont, a renowned Harvard sociologist, and an expert in the field of dignity and recognition. She's the author of the book, seeing Others How Recognition Works and How It Can Heal a Divided World. Professor Lamont brings a wealth of knowledge and insights into how we perceive and interact with each other and our increasingly complex society. Her work delves deep into the heart of social inclusion, the effectiveness of diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, and the pivotal role of dignity and respect in our personal and professional lives. With her expertise, she challenges us to rethink how narratives and media shape our perceptions and how we can collectively work toward a more inclusive and equitable world. In today's episode, we'll explore the power of recognition and the ways in which it can bridge societal divides, the unique role of Generation Z in driving societal change, and the broader implications of Professor Lamont's research for future societal theories. So without further ado, please welcome Professor Michelle Lamont. Welcome to the podcast professor.

Michele: 1:50

Thank you so much and thank you for inviting me.

CODY: 1:53

Now, I'm curious, could you share what initially drew you into the social sciences and ultimately what led to you writing the book on the topic?

Michele: 2:03

Well, one of my early memories of social sciences is, to discover the word, a stereotype when I was maybe 14 and thinking, oh, that's very interesting. There's a difference between the representation of a group we have. In this case it was woman. And, who they actually are. So I became really interested in this disconnect, and I think it kind of put me on the path of wanting to become a social scientist in the context of this particular book. I decided to write this book during the Trump presidency because I could see that various groups that had been gaining recognition and inclusion over the last decades were. Suddenly really experiencing a lot of exclusion through Trump shortly after he became president. He. Passed an executive order to ban travel to Muslim countries. And at the same time, he started passing on new executive orders that would affect the status of, trans and gay people. So, I was conscious that many Americans don't have the tools to understand what was going on, and I felt it's important that social scientists step up and give people tools. So that's why I decided to write this book, which is my first trade book.

CODY: 3:16

And in your book you mention the effectiveness of DEI or diversity, equity and inclusion programs. Could you explain what they are and why they're effective?

Michele: 3:28

my argument is not that they're effective, in fact, it's more that they're not effective and that we need to do much more to make workplaces more, inclusive. So the way this approach is typically implemented in corporation is to ask people of color to be in charge of, adding a few more people of color to the workforce, and typically not that much is done to make the environment more welcoming or. more inclusive. And the book, my book is very much about how to, focus not only on people of color, but on creating a workplace that recognizes the dignity of everyone, including older workers and people of color, and, members of, religious minorities. So it's, it's quite complimentary, but also different. I draw here on the book of, Frank Dobbin and Alexandra Kalev titled, getting to. Uh, diversity, which demonstrates clearly what are the, downsides of, uh, typical DEI programs, which, tend to rely too much on people of color to create diversity as opposed to asking to making this a responsibility for all mid-level managers.

CODY: 4:40

So instead you're saying that having force program that tries to force diversity. Is actually less effective than trying to promote the benefits of diversity and allowing it to be more voluntary.

Michele: 4:57

no, it's not so much making it voluntary. It is to say everyone who has a supervisory function, every mid-level manager, it should be part of their functions to try to create an environment that is more inclusive for everyone so that all workers, not only people of color, but all workers feel that their dignity is recognized in the context of work that you don't only ask. Workers to be productive, but also that you acknowledge the importance of contributing to their wellbeing and contributing to creating a workplace where they feel supported in their role, not only as workers, but also as caregivers, so that see for instance, if they need to. to go to, the school of their kids to meet with the teacher. They can have a little bit of time to do this. the point is more generally to create an environment where people feel like they're fully recognized as human beings, not only as, producers of, people whose role it is to increase the productivity of their employers.

CODY: 5:57

And so in your book, you really emphasize the importance of dignity and respect and professional settings. Could you share some insights on how these values impact workplace dynamics? How does having a diverse, a more diverse workforce? Help everybody, in the company and so forth.

Michele: 6:17

Well, this goes way back, you know, there's a book by one of our colleagues here at Harvard Rosabeth Kanter, who published in 1977, a book titled Men and Women of the Corporation, which shows that in, offices where you have, only a small number of women. What she called then tokens, which she's the creator of the term tokenism. the few women who were in this workplace that she studies were taken to be the representative of all women. And, women then had to work against the stereotype of women being more volatile, being more emotional, and this has moved in different direction. One of them is to, you know, she demonstrated that you need at least 30% of a, a workplace to, to have, uh, you know, members of a certain group, whether people of color or women, so that they don't come to. Carry on their shoulder the burden of representing everyone who's in their group. So in general, yes, there's a real advantage to broadening the diversity of any work group. so that's one of the, the many insights from that literature. In my book, I talk about, the research of, Erin Kelly and Lisa Berkman and other colleagues also here at Harvard who show that they study, healthcare workers who are given by their employers. the option or the possibility of taking some time off precisely to bring their mother to the doctor or to take care of other roles as caregivers. And this translates into a much higher level of loyalty toward the, employers. And a feeling that, this is a good quality environment, which, makes, the workers much more likely to want to be more productive and to be there fully, as they are performing their roles in the corporation. So the payoff is not only in terms of subjective wellbeing for their employers, but also in terms of what the employers gain in terms of a more committed workforce. And that became partly important in the context of the great resignation, which, followed, COVID where a great many people felt like it was simply not worth it to, to keep on jobs where they felt that they were not treated as human beings. And this is also reverberating right now in the labor movement where many of the strikes that we've seen over the last year have to do with recognition and with people wanting to feel like they're treating it like human beings. Like if you think, for instance, of the demands of the Amazon workers. The idea that they would have a restroom break is of course to attend to their physiological needs, but also to, express their desire to be treated with dignity. That this is an essential needs that should be acknowledged by the employers. And I think that is directly connected to, the greater awareness of issues of social justice that came, from, the Black Lives Matter movement. So many of the millennials are now working in services, whether we talk about, the Starbucks strike or many of the recent strike, a lot of the demands they have. Have to do with dignity and with things that some, traditional unions might be viewed as crumbs. when the demands don't have to do with money, but have to do with work conditions and also with asserting people's dignity. These may be viewed as not serious demand, but I think in the eyes of many workers, they're very serious because they have to do with the fact that they don't want to be treated like machines and they want to be treated in a more human way. And those are things that traditional DEI programs do not take into consideration.

CODY: 9:52

You mentioned some things like tokenism, which reminded me of South Park who has a black character named Token. And I didn't know for the longest time that that was a reference to a character being in the show as a means to just add diversity. And I found that quite intriguing. but.

Michele: 10:09

Absolutely. That's where it comes from.

CODY: 10:11

Uh, so you mentioned, say like the Amazon workers and, it reminded me of something else where there was an Amazon worker who actually sold an energy drink on Amazon and he was selling his own urine and urine of other Amazon workers who couldn't pee. And they showed the ridiculousness of the fact that it ended up being, it went on Amazon, but that was a way for the workers in an attempt to reach out over this lack of dignity that they felt from Amazon. I. And so ultimately, I don't know how Amazon has revised their, their policies. I know they have done to some extent, but what are some ways that other companies, have you seen or worked with any companies that have helped to revise their internal policies so that workers do feel like they're being treated with more dignity and respect?

Michele: 11:03

Well, I know about some of the demands. So for instance, when the UPS drivers were on strike, they asked to have air conditioning in the cabins, of their truck, and you think, okay, of course if you're a truck driver and you have to drive to the Mojave Desert, I mean, there's a lot of context where having air conditioning and cabin seems pretty essential if you're gonna spend hours and hours driving. I don't know how this was resolved, whether it was included in the negotiation. there's also the case of the, Starbucks workers. I know that one of the demands that some of the, Starbuck, cafes in, red states, were pressured to not, allow workers to put, rainbow flags in the shops and some of the demands of, uh, the, the, the workers was precisely to be able to express their own identity and their convictions by, you know, putting a, rainbow flags. So I did not follow exactly how these various demands, how did the conflict end up, ended up, how it was resolved. But we can also think about the workers strike in Hollywood where their demands about AI and creativity, their rights to keep, you know, to not have their works stolen from them. To me, this is directly connected to, to demands about social justice as well, because it's about, alienation having your own creativity stolen from you. So I think it's a kind of recurrent theme that is very different from the traditional demands of unions, which have to do largely with, you know, okay. Historically, yes, work conditions and money, but I think there's always a dimension of dignity that is behind these things. So, which we need to put much more emphasis on, there's a big movement now to move toward the four day week, which is often justified, in terms of productivity. The people who are pushing this are saying, yes, it's possible for many workers to do their job in four days. Instead of five days a week, which would leave them more time. And the arguments in favor of that is often in terms of workers' wellbeing, but also in terms of productivity to say they can be equally productive by working five days a week. But I think it's, the whole debate should be not only about productivity and the, the, the wellbeing, the psychological wellbeing of workers. It's also about what kind of message do we send to people about their value as human beings. That we're not only producers, we're also very much multi-dimensional humans beings. And we need to be able to express our identity as caregivers or as Spiritual beings or there's a large number of other dimensions that we could express at work.

CODY: 13:40

Yeah. you mentioned how so much of our self-worth. Is based on the assessment that others seem to make or our perception of how others perceive us. And so much of that takes place now, whether it's in school, we grow up leaving a certain view of ourselves and that gets amplified whenever we join a workforce. And if we end up working for an employer that's a very large corporate company, they tend to have policies. That demoralize and look at people as parts of, a machine that tend to remove all facets of what it means to be human. when you have these people working for you.

Michele: 14:23

Yes. the, the first two chapters of the book are really locating what's happening to the, in the workplace in the context of neoliberalism, which is basically a way of organizing our society that became dominant since, Reagan came to power in the early, 1980s. And the idea is to subordinate all dimensions of social life to profit maximization. And with it you saw the, diffusion of ways of understanding collectively who's a worthy person that is even more directly connected to productivity and to higher education and to our ability to consume. So that's in the book. I describe this as a kind of. Gini or the dominance of the upper middle class. Only people who are college educated and who are professionals and managers come to be viewed as worthy. And the people who don't have this, the people who are not college educated, the blue collar workers have experience progressively over the last 40 years are feeling that they really don't matter. While, in fact, they're essential workers. They make our society work that during the pandemic, of course, there's a moment where we really celebrated essential workers, but overall, the message that they get. All the time is that they're not that important. And there are studies, content analysis of entertainment television that shows that they are very rarely represented in the shows. And when they are represented, they're often viewed as buffoons or fools or, you know, lazy peoples. So there's a real issue with, trying to diffuse a, a more pluralistic understanding of who's worthy. And that's one of the argument of the book, what can we do to make sure that the largest number of, you know, members of our society are perceived as worthy people? Well, it's by promoting a more pluralistic understanding of who's worthy and to disconnect to a greater extent that we are doing now. The notion of who's worthy through how much education we have, How competitive we are and how much we can consume. So really for the upper middle class people like me who are highly educated, often the question of how worthy you are is tied to your consumption. What kind of car you can buy, how much money you bring home. And this confusion between status and worth is very common. Among people who are in the upper middle class. But for people who don't have a college degree, their conception of their own worth is quite separate from their conception of their social status. They may have low social status, but they might think they're very worthy because they view themselves as people who stand by their friends, even when their friends are in trouble, who try to be good parents, even if they don't have the resources they need to give their kids everything they would want to give them, that they are good, human beings that's also present too in the upper middle class. But the fact that they have high status tends to overshadow how they think about who's worthy. And that's complicated because it also leads many people to think less highly of those who don't make much money. the US is a country where low income people are deeply stigmatized. They're viewed as unworthy. Because many people think they're poor because they're lazy or because they're stupid, you know? Well, this is not universal. There are countries where the poor are far less stigmatized than they are in the US so we need to do more work to, the argument of the book is really that we need to think about how to provide people alternative stories of narratives about who low income people are and why they are where they are. So there's a lot of efforts that are being made in the cultural sphere. to try to diffuse alternative narratives. So one example I would give is the film Roma, which won, an Oscar. it was a film, that came out in 2019. I think that represented the life of two, women who are domestic workers in Mexico City. They work for a middle class family. And the film is really centered on them, not on the family. And one of them needs an abortion. So you follow the moral dilemmas that she's facing in having an abortion. And it really makes visible this group of domestic workers that are typically totally invisible or presented in a unidimensional way, and it makes you understand their life condition. And that film was. produced in part with the support of the Ford Foundation, which is one of the largest foundation in the us and they worked, together with the, the Alliance of Domestic Workers, which is a union of domestic workers, a group that is not unionized typically, and that works under really challenging conditions. many of them are underpaid and they are undocumented. So the Ford Foundation is among other foundation that. Really put a lot of money toward transforming how Americans think about poverty so that most people become better informed about the structural challenges that low income people face, so that they're not only stigmatized because they're blamed for being poor due to their. Moral weaknesses, but that we understand better how conditions under which they live makes it extremely difficult for people to be upwardly mobile. So that's an example. So in other words, the solution I promote in the book are not only about mental health and wellbeing, it's really about how can we transform our society in such a way that we can transform the perception that we have of groups that are deeply stigmatized and how this can be achieved, not. mindfulness for me is not the solution for me. The solution is really to transform the narratives, the stories to which we have access to concerning various groups, whether it is, low income people or people with hiv aids or, obese, which is also a deeply stigmatized group, people who live it with obesity. So it's a story about the transformation of society by transforming the narratives. That are made available to people.

CODY: 20:18

Yeah. as human beings, we tend to form tribes and we tend to look For traits and those who are most like us. And therefore we tend to therefore stigmatize groups who we don't identify with. And you mentioned one movie and there's been really an onslaught of movies and TV shows coming out. And many of the last few years I. That is a far cry from where we saw, say in even the late nineties where they would make jokes about races, or sexuality. That today would just be completely unacceptable. Do you think that movie and film production companies, have they been doing enough to help spread this message of diversity and helping. The general population to see what it's like to say, to be a hardworking Latina mom in Mexico or wherever.

Michele: 21:12

Mm-Hmm. Yeah, I mean that's certainly one of the themes that is at the center of the book. The book also draws on 75 interviews that my research, assistant and I, conducted with, Hollywood Creatives and with standup comics, and we show how central it is to the people we interviewed, and many of them are really very important leading people in the entertainment industry and how they dedicate a lot of their energy to transforming these very narratives. we come up with the typology of how they do this. For instance, we talk about what we describe as the Trojan horse strategy where they say, well, our goal is of course to make people laugh, so we don't want to force our audience to, you know, eat their vegetables. But at the same time as we're telling our jokes, we're also planting messages about the fact that being racist and narrow-minded is just stupid. You know, they pass on a lot of messages. So there's no question that the entertainment industry has played an important role. At the same time, there's also backlash as we can see. If you think about what's happening right now in Florida with, the census banning critical race theory, there's a lot of, stigmatization, I think conservative. Republican party in part are really, contesting a lot of the changes. So it's not a linear change. Every social movement, every social change brings about a counter movement, and this is something that we also need to be very, very attuned to. So it goes in both direction. But incidentally, you started. You open this question with the question of tribalism. So one of the arguments of the book is also that I'm very critical of the psychological perspective that says we're all tribal because that argument is often, based on a conception of human nature, which I think is far from being well established. In general. It's very difficult to study human nature. We have a lot of. Narrative or representation about what is human nature. And, it's true that some people have a tendency to, to support only people who are like them. But there's a number of social conditions that makes this more or less likely to happen. One of them is how much contact there is across social groups. And another one is, how much scarcity there is for resources and how much groups have to compete with each other for resources. So the last chapter of the book is really about what we can do to change the current situation. And I argue that it's important, you know, in the US one of the main mechanism that, drives poverty and inequality is the fact that the budget for, the school systems is really determined by local taxes. So I live in Boston in an area where. the incomes are higher and the schools are excellent, in part because, it's kind of small part of Boston that has been cut off, that has a better school system, and just across the, the river that separates. My town, which is called Brookline from Boston. The schools are really, really bad. So the fact that, you have extremely high school, uh, segregation that is coupled with this mechanism for funding private school is really feeding inequality because lower income kids have access. To much worse education. And you have in general in, not only in Massachusetts, but in other states as well, a growing class segregation. People who are college educated are now much less likely to know well people from other classes because of this segregation based on the cost of real estate and the cost of renting apartments. and, this means that they're much less likely to understand what the life of someone who doesn't have a college degree is like. So this lack of exposure is really feeding stereotypes and feeling stigmatization. So it means that it's also feeding us, moving collectively to toward a society that is increasingly more unequal, but also increasingly more separate. And balkanized, it's becoming harder and harder. For people with college degree to understand what the life of people, what without college degree is like, and that really is driving a lot of the polarization that we're experiencing right now.

CODY: 25:25

Right. I remember many theories early on before the internet was that it would allow everybody to connect with each other more, and that there would be way more diversity and acceptance across society. But as we all know now, what's happened is that everybody has formed their own bubbles and their own talking groups because we only want to hear what we want to hear. And therefore it distances us more from others. one thing I see is so, so I'm gay, and when I went to school, I was, I was picked on for that. And it, I see today in high school, middle school, that possibly, because there's so many television shows. That include a gay character now where the gay character is not picked on that I hear that there is a lot less bullying for sexuality or race, or ethnicity than there used to be. Do you think that the internet is shaping generation Z into a more positive direction? not necessarily from the diversity, but because of, the internet and the TV show and the culture.

Michele: 26:30

Yeah, I think the impact of the social media is certainly, and as I said earlier, the impact of entertainment is huge. At the same time, there's large segments of the population that are not as much on, on the social media as, the Gen Zs. another source of data in the book is 80 interviews with Gen Zs, and, I make the argument that. As they have experience, the decline of the American dream, you know, the millennials, they come on the job market, after 2008. It's very difficult for them to find jobs, and that's a generation that is not buying houses and that is not making children in part because they just don't believe in the American dream. And this couple with climate change means that there's just a very high level of uncertainty about the future for both of these age groups. And, I argue in the book that they are as they are really losing their faith in the American dream. They're also investing in inclusion. As a new form of collective dream that is, giving them hope. You know, it's also, those two generations are generations that have experienced a lot of mental health problems. So as I was thinking of writing this book, it was in part because during the Trump Precia was depressed. A lot of people were, and everyone was thinking, where are we gonna turn to, to find hope? And I think you know what we've seen with the, these interviews that we did with 80 Gen Zs living in the Midwest and the East Coast, they very much embrace the possibility of creating together a society that is more inclusive, where people are not judged by the color of their skin or by their sexual orientation, but are judged also by how inclusive they are. So the group that becomes deeply stigmatized in that context are the racist and the homophobic and the anti-Semitic people. So those are people. As those people are being rejected, you know, the people who are rejecting them are criticized for being woke, but at the same time, they express very much the fact that they believe in the possibility. Of creating a different world where people like you, who is gay, is able to live authentically to live according to who you think you are and who you want to be. And the notion that we would have a society that is far more accepting. So it's a very alternative way of understanding where we're going as a society then was. The assimilation that was driving the American dream in the fifties, where you had plenty of Jewish people who would transform their names so that they sounded like wasp names, many, uh, you know, Italian American. Everyone was really trying to fit into the dominant culture, and that's this era has come in large, You know, to an end, to the extent that we have now a society that is more like a mosaic, different groups express who they want to be. Do you have different neighborhoods? I live close to a Jamaica Plain here in Boston, which is very largely a Latino neighborhood, which has also a large, gay population. So people create, different communities which allow them to live authentically. And that also comes with this process of destigmatization that I talked about before. So one of the papers that I draw on in the book is a paper where, together with two of my former graduate students, we studied the process by which people who have hiv aids ended up. You know, when the AIDS crisis started in 1980, I had just arrived at Stanford University when I was a postdoc, and there was enormous. Fear about people who had aids, but also great stigmatization. It was largely viewed as a disease that was hitting, gay men who were spending too much time in public back rooms, having sex with random people. And over the last 40 years, this people with HIV aids have become largely de-stigmatized. And we ask in our paper. How did this happen? And we show drawing on the secondary literature that there was a lot of collaboration between the social movement activist, and also the knowledge workers. So medical expert, legal expert, journalists, social scientists who said, no, this is actually a disease that can hit anyone, and it has nothing to do with morality. And so this is like any other disease. So there was a lot of cultural work to provide another, narrative about, what this disease was about. And this did not happen for obesity. The people who were obese were very stigmatized 40 years ago. They're still stigmatized today. So we ask ourselves, why is it that it didn't happen? Well, this connection between the social movements and the knowledge. Experts simply didn't happen in this case. The doctors continued to say, no, this, social movement, was pushing for the recognition that people can be healthy even if they're obese and the medical profession just refused to interate this notion and it really limited the ability of obese. You know, people still today think that people are obese and to be lazy or lack in self-respect or spend too much time on their couch eating french fries and, watching tv. so the stigmatization of the obese has remained very much a fact. So all this to say these things can change. They have changed, they can change more. So the book is oriented toward giving people hope to say we can create a society that is recognizing the value of a large number of people precisely by diffusing and creating together alternative narratives. And Gen Zs are very much part of the answer, and I think. they are often criticized for wokism or, cancel culture. But a lot of this has to do with their impatience with living in a society that is so organized toward consumption and also because they're so worried about climate change and, that they feel strongly that we should reduce our consumption and use cars less and. buy fewer new clothes. You know, the very critical of what they call the hedonistic treadmill of consumption. you know, you buy a new car next year, you need another new car. this, need for new, consumption is never, fully satisfied. And it just, leads us to tie, happiness to the fact of consuming, which is really. Terrible for our environment and also for our own sense of what kind, what might define a meaningful life. So I think it's, we are in many ways showing the way at the same time, unfortunately. I think they're not, sufficiently aware of how, people in other generations can be allies. Like they don't, they think of boomers often simply as the people who really screwed up with the environment. Well. They forget that boomers created a lot of social change as well concerning, the second, gender, revolution, for instance, the sexual revolution. A lot of things that they take for granted were achieved by the previous generation. So. this is something that is bear repeating.

CODY: 33:24

So I know that there's been this whole, this whole debate about woke culture, and I've met a lot of older people who've expressed views to me privately that were somewhat racist and out of date, but they wouldn't dare mention that in a public platform because they realize society has changed and so they're not going to express that view. But it makes me wonder. Do these large societal changes about how we have the society diversion or diversity, is that, does that always have to come from the next generation? I mean, what is it about the human condition that causes somebody who grew up hating on a specific race or ethnicity can they ever let that go? Can they ever find acceptance or empathy with this type or group of people that they once distaste?

Michele: 34:20

Well, as I said earlier, you know, the cultivation of these exclusionary attitudes is connected to the life condition that people experience. So if you think about When, African American workers came north, to take, jobs in the industrial sector, in part to escape racism and poverty in the south, that of course fed a lot of conflict with white workers in the north, in Boston, for instance, where I live, where, there was forced school segregation, integration rather that was, put in place. So there's the issue of zero sum, like when the, the relative status of groups , is measured by how much resources each have. I mean, in principle, dignity is not like a piece of pie. Like I can have dignity at the same time as you can have dignity. But once this gets. Tied to resources, people think, okay, this is zero sum, so we have to fight to get what's our own. At the same time, as you noted, some of these attitudes have become extremely outmoded and people have lost prestige if they're viewed as, olding attitudes that are really, racist or out of date. So that's the process that we've experienced in the US since World War ii, and that, of course, was helped by the denunciation of. Of the racism and the exclusionary ideologies of the Nazi movement. And this has been well documented that there's been, since World War ii, a process of growing integration of all groups. You know, women. having more access to, engagement in politics, immigrants, gaining a lot of advantages that they didn't have before. So this movement of social inclusion is a broad movement that has happened for, many decades. And often, yes, it's the younger people who bring in more. views that are oriented towards social change at the same time, it's, if you think of the literature on how people learn about new norms, they learn new norms through the peer to the contacts, the people they come in contact with. So, parents, friends. People in churches, institutions play a crucial role. So especially institutions such as religious institutions of school or the family institutions that everyone has to go through. And then employers. So that's where the DEI program, for instance, the notion that it's just, and then the law. during the Civil Rights movement, we pass all these laws that says it's simply illegal to discriminate against people that really reinforced also. So you have to think in terms of various institutions, and we talked earlier about the impact of the cultural industry, which, diffuses alternative norms about how we should be treating each other and what is acceptable and what is not acceptable. So you, you need to think in terms of all these ways that messages are being diffused. So peers, institutions, the law, entertainment. So the law, just to give you one more example, after 32 states passed the same sex marriage law, the frequency of the number of high school students who attempted suicide, this declined by 32%. So there was, you know, these laws told them, you're part of mainstream society now. You can get married well. There, it was heard by young people as a message that says, you're part of us, we value you, and it resulted in less suicide. So it's, there's no doubt that laws include, implicit messaging about who's in and who's out that really contributes to how these groups perceive themselves in our society. So you have all these factors that have to do with the messages that people are exposed to, but you also have factors that have to do with the social conditions and the material conditions in which they live, which have to do with, for instance, intergroup contacts, what I talked about earlier about school segregation and the fact that people with college degree are now. Very rarely in contact with, people who don't have, college degrees in our country and class and race are interrelated in our country. So this is one of the factors that has fed racism. And then there's also, um, intergroup contacts, as I mentioned earlier, not only class segregation, but also and in scarcity, whether or not we're in a period of economic growth or not. So you really have to bring in all these things. what I'm telling you here is pretty basic for a sociologist, and it's basic in the sense that it's not about human nature, it's about the social conditions in which we live, and the fact that a lot of this can be changed. Like if our media diffuse, views of gay people that are more productive and positive, then of course people will come. One of the example I give in the book is the person who created the show, transparent, Joey Soloway. Is one of the people that I interviewed for the book and when I interviewed them about why they created the show and what they were trying to achieve in creating the show, they said, well, my goal is really to give the general, uh, public a much more. Three-dimensional understanding of what trans people are about so that people are able to put themselves in the shoes of trans people. And this, the main character is an advanced middle aged woman who has to negotiate with her adult children, her identity as trans. she lived most of her life as a man, and now she's a woman. And this really the goal. According to the producer is to say, I'm trying to humanize this person so that the viewers can connect with her and say, yeah, this is just a person who's trying to maintain her relationship with her adult children, and this is something that we all want to do. So these narratives are really pointing to what we have in common as human beings as opposed to stereotyping or vilifying or you know, viewing people as morally. unworthy, if you will. So that's why the role of narrative is so important in the argument that I'm developing in this book.

CODY: 40:16

Well, on one hand, sharing narratives that show perspectives from different groups can certainly help one empathize with a different group, but also don't you think that. Those who are already either identify as gay trans, or have a friend who is trans and want to understand that more, might they be the ones who are most likely to watch a, movie or show like that rather than somebody who has a completely opposing view.

Michele: 40:44

Yeah, there's for sure a question of self-selection. And certainly one of the explanation for, the decline in homophobia is the fact that more and more American know personally, L-B-G-T-Q person and understand them better because they've been able to have conversation. So this is where the contact theory really kicks in, you know, so there's self-selection for sure, but also the diffusion process is very progressive, so. Once someone has been exposed, they can also have conversation at work with other people who've never been exposed. Or if they know someone who knows someone who's gay and they are, in the workplace and someone says something very homophobic, well they're more likely to stand up and say, I'm sorry. I don't think that's okay. If you think about how many women had to be in workplace where they had to be exposed, and I'm old enough that I've experienced this, you know, quite. Open, derogatory comments about women on the workplace or, sexy things that were being said in professional context that would really make the woman very, uncomfortable because they were aware that as these things were being said, this was about power. This was about the man trying to put the woman back in their place so that they could assert their own position. So there's a progressive. increase in understanding how sexuality has been used to assert, power in the workplace. And that was basically absent. If you watch madman, for instance, shows that tells us about, power relationships in the workplace. In the fifties, it's almost a variant to see how women are treated On and on. You know, it's not only through contacts, it's very much through exposure through entertainment, media. I mean, a lot of the things that when we talk about gender, for instance, a lot of things that have changed are now taken for granted. It's less the case, I think, about race or about sexuality, but things are changing also quite rapidly.

CODY: 42:39

I've read a lot of books on empathizing with others better, and I've ended up encountering situations where I recognize my own judgment, and then I take that back and I look at this person from a different perspective. Do you think that there's a place at all for say, teaching empathy as a skill rather than trying to push narratives? So for people to

Michele: 43:01

Yeah. Well, I'm a little critical of the empathy. Argument. I mean, I think it's totally complimentary to mine, and I don't say that we should not be empathic, but if we put too much emphasis on, goodwill or on, willingness to change, I think it's quite different and simply populating our environment with images, for instance of, L-B-G-T-Q, people that are more positive so that subconsciously people, little by little get to understand or be more critical toward those who are always negative. So. I think we cannot re rely too exclusively on, on people's goodwill to produce change, like engineering our environment slightly differently so that the frequency of exposure to a more positive message is very likely also to have very positive outcome So. This is also to complicate, I think in the, social science literature that reaches the wide audience. So much has been made now of nudging of all the psychological factors of mindfulness. You know, any action we can take that are within the control of the individual has been highlighted to an exaggerated extent, I think, as compared to the ways in which we can transform the society, the broader. Social phenomena, just not only to rely on the agency the individual, and the book tries to reestablish a balance there a little bit.

CODY: 44:28

And so I know that we're short on time, and so I'd like to ask one final question, which is really how can employers, it's a combination of how can employers recognize their own bias so that they're hiring a more diverse workforce? How can parents help teach their kids so that they're more diverse in their views and say, how, if you're a part of a group, how can you help create more diversity within that group or community? What are some practical steps?

Michele: 44:55

Wow, that's a big question. And in some ways they're, each of them are a little bit different, I think, concerning children and parents. in moments of economic insecurity, parents often, especially I think in a individualistic context like the American context, a lot of parents think, how can I just. Engage in opportunity hoarding and give as many advantages to my kid as possible. And for many parents, this means putting them in, the school districts that have the most performing classes, And that can also lead the kids to hear the message that in order to be loved by their parents, they need to be really, really good performers all the time. And that we know has resulted in a big mental health crisis among the kids because they think they can only be loved if they are extremely good at school and if they meet all the parental expectations. And parents themselves suffer a lot from this because they come to think that. You know, many upper middle class people now suffer from, both feeling overwhelmed and overworked and anxious because they feel too much pressure. So if they themselves come to measure their life just in terms of how much money they make and how much they can keep in security at bay, it can have a lot of negative impact. So the book in that penultimate chapter says, expose your kids to diversity. Make sure that your kids has access to a lot of different friends, that they're not just raised with children of dentists who are like obsessed with being upwardly mobile, because that is proving to be really bad for the kids because they end up having too narrow an understanding of who is worthy and what defines a good life. So That's one. And I think, concerning diversity in the workplace, kind of the same thing holds, you know, if you are in a workplace where the employers are giving the most central offices in terms physically, in terms of space to the young graduates from elite schools, and they put the older workers in a corner back there, and they're always celebrating achievements of the same. People who have the most, elite achievement. Well, it sends a very negative message to, to most of the other workers. So it's also the role of a good manager to promote the wellbeing of all workers. And that involves, as I said earlier, not only hiring a more diverse workforce. But also, making sure that you can recognize the value of everyone you work with and you do what you can to really allow them to be all they can be. not only as producers and contributors to the mission of the employer, but also to lead lives that are balanced and that are sustainable, in terms of how much work they're gonna do and how they're gonna behave on the long term. So, that's also something that needs to be taken into consideration. So, that's basically it. Yeah. And community. Well, it's the same thing, like it's a difference between engaging in the culture of shared deliberation and communication and explaining to others who you are and what's your perspective versus just, getting stuck in your ways and insisting on only being with people like yourself, which is often not very good in terms of mental wellbeing.

CODY: 48:07

Well, professor Lamont, it's been an absolute pleasure to have you on today. Thank you for sharing this message of diversity. it's much needed in our society today.

Michele: 48:17

Okay. Well my pleasure. Thank you so much for inviting me and good luck with everything