Letter from the President - Exploring our biases: Race, justice and the MAPP Alumni Association

June 6th MAPP Meet-Up for the Brave and Broken-hearted

At the end of May, as Black Lives Matter protests gathered momentum across the United States and around the world, many within our MAPP community were grieving. Viewed afresh after the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmed Arbury, Tony McDade, and so many more, the historical and ongoing trauma of injustices against Black Americans was astounding and the emotional pain undeniable. As people were crying out for justice, many MAPPsters were asking what action we could take that might make a difference.

One place to start was to come together as individuals and as a community to pause and do some courageous reflection of our own. As the alumni association for an applied positive psychology program at an ivy league university, it was worth holding up the mirror before we pointed at others. So on Saturday, June 6th, 2020 we held a special MAPP Meet-Up for the Brave and Brokenhearted. The title comes from a manifesto of the same name by Brené Brown. Our goal was to look at the moments when our words and behaviors do not align with our most deeply held values and beliefs. We wanted to create an opening where we could look at these gaps with curiosity, vulnerability, and courage to begin the work of addressing the divides we see in ourselves and in the world around us.

Designing an intervention

In designing the Meet-Up, Jennifer Beatty (C’18) and I were deliberate in our intentions. Rather than start with collective dialogue or a political conversation, we felt it necessary to ground ourselves in a common education. Rather than air grievances we wanted to explore our own biases through a psychological intervention.

We anticipated it would not be comfortable and it wasn’t. We expected some might feel frustrated or angry - and some were. We were prepared for a fair dose of shame and guilt - and we certainly felt it. But for us, one of the most important things about this Meet-Up was that it happen; that it be the beginning of ongoing education, dialogue, advocacy and action. We knew it wouldn’t be perfect (and it definitely wasn’t), but we were prepared to satisfice.

More than 170 MAPPsters signed-up and over 90 participated. Many have asked for a recording of the session but out of respect to those who told personal stories and spoke from the heart, we will not be sharing one.

I do, however, want to showcase the extraordinary MAPPsters who prepared this intervention to help our community raise its level of self-awareness and to be a voice for change in the practice of applying positive psychology. Our community is blessed with some extraordinary paragons who have devoted much of their lives to helping people understand systemic racism and bias. They were our guides for the Meet-Up and I will share below some of what they conveyed at the Meet-Up.

Starting with the structural and systemic realities

Joan Mooney (C’19) started us off by screening a powerful video on the Mindless Menace of Violence that had been produced and released that day by Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights (please note, this video contains graphic scenes of violence that some may not wish to see). Joan also shared some personal remarks to ground us in the common humanity of this moment. As President & CEO of the Faith & Politics Institute in Washington, D.C., Joan creates experiences that bring members of Congress and leaders of different races, religions and political affiliations together to bridge the divides that arise in democracy.

Christine Robinson ( C’18) widened our focus to reflect on the structural foundations of racism in the United States. Christine is one of our most profound voices for social justice in the MAPP Community. She’s a senior advisor to an impressive array of private foundations, governments and nonprofits, and her work with communities of color, indigenous and immigrant communities from local to national levels has been published in numerous articles. Her full remarks, which she has shared here, ask how we might live in the US as if everybody matters? She challenged us to take a hard look at whether our organizations, neighborhoods, systems, policies and positive psychology itself, are truly encouraging wellbeing equitably in the daily lives of Americans. “We cease to be bystanders when we become actors,” Christine said. “We can become advocates and allies; this is how we begin to develop a community where everyone matters, a beloved community of grace.”

Holding up the mirror

Much of the Meet-Up was led by Jennifer Beatty (C’18). About to start a PhD in social psychology at Washington University in St. Louis’ department of psychological and brain sciences, Jennifer’s primary research interests revolve around prejudice and bias reduction, as well as the exploration of intergroup relations and power dynamics. Since graduating MAPP she’s been working with Adam Grant and Angela Duckworth to coordinate research efforts at Wharton People Analytics. She’s also working with Brené Brown on a co-creation team to operationalize diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts around belonging.

During our Meet-Up, Jennifer took us through an intervention designed to slow us down and look for some of the hidden biases that create a gap between what we value (e.g., racial equality) and we do (e.g., racial discrimination). She asked us to think about our top character strength as a proxy for one of our most deeply held values, and explore how we typically bring that strength to life in behavioral terms. Informed by Dr. Ibram Kendi who courageously shares his own racist beliefs, stories and behaviors as a black man toward blackness in his book How to be an Anti-Racist, Jennifer told us a story about a gap between her top strength of hope and a biased disciplinary call that she made when she was a classroom teacher.

Jennifer reminded us of Brené Brown’s research that shows how guilt (I did something bad) and shame (I am something bad) are natural emotions most of us feel whenever we receive difficult feedback. Learning about our own bias and racism in particular can be some of the most difficult feedback we ever receive. Shame, while natural, is not an effective social justice tool. But shame can also come from the weight of accountability, and if we can craft compassion from it, then real progress can be made.

Reminding us that you do not get to courage without first going through vulnerability, Jennifer invited us to reflect on our own strength gaps and then we were given the chance to share our story with a partner in a breakout room.

Aspiring towards meaningful action

In the RSVP for the Meet-Up we received questions from MAPPsters, many of which boiled down into two main categories: What meaningful action can I take? And what are strategies to start exploring white privilege?

For the first question we turned to Valorie Burton (C’08), whose Facebook Live video on Racial healing when you’re tired, speaking up when you don’t know what to say from May 27, 2020 has been viewed over 18,000 times. Valorie gave us three pieces of advice. To begin with, shift the focus from helping to hearing. “As an African American,” Valorie explained, “many of us are used to not being heard or believed and it’s exhausting.” Her guidance was to focus on our interpersonal relationships. “When you’re uncomfortable hearing certain things, take a breath and decide to listen anyway.” As MAPPsters, Valorie encouraged us to get curious about the intersection between positive psychology and race. Specifically, what the field could teach us about how people can come together and really hear each other.

Second, Valorie pointed out that Americans don’t face the truth of their history. She challenged us to ask, “what elements of American history have I not learned?” She encouraged us to take responsibility for educating ourselves beyond what has happened in our own lifetimes (recommending Edward Baptist’s The Half Has Never Been Told as one place to start). “We can’t come together and become the America that’s possible until we do.”

Finally, Valorie pointed out that so far in America, civil rights movements have only happened when white people decide it’s time. Everyone in the MAPP community, which is largely white, can ask themselves, “how can I influence other people who look like me to understand and advocate to get to where we need to be as a country?”

Addressing White Privilege

Building on that theme, we asked Leora Rifkin (C’16) to give us some pragmatic suggestions for those within our community who want to explore white privilege. As a white woman, Leora has spent years exploring her own racial identity. As she says, “I am not an expert (none of us are), I am not a diversity trainer. I am someone who intentionally works to understand the world through a racial, as well as socio-economic, lens. I seek to listen and understand the world as other people experience it, not just as I experience it.”

Leora grounded her response by quoting Robin D’Angelo, author of White Fragility, who recently defined White privilege as: “the automatic, taken for granted advantage bestowed upon White people as a result of living in a society based on the premise of White as the human ideal and that from its founding established White advantage as a matter of law and today as a matter of policy and practice.” Pointing to the theory and research of Janet Helms, Leora explained that the first thing White people can do is begin to understand their own racial identity and recognize that there will be different stages of that journey. This means pushing past what D’Angelo calls the good/bad binary where we hear people say things like, “he's not a racist he's a really nice guy” or “I lived in Japan and was a minority, so I know what it is like to be a minority” or “focusing on race is what divides us”. Part of this work is being curious and unlearning. Leora reassured us that after 16 years of doing this work she still feels uncomfortable. “That is how you know you’re doing the work. That is normal. Unlearning is uncomfortable.”

Leora encouraged MAPPsters who want to be curious about white privilege in positive psychology to ask questions like:

• Am I actively seeking to interrupt racism in this context? And perhaps even more importantly, how do I know?

• Am I listening to and centering the voices of Black, Indigenous, People of Color?

• How many Black professors and researchers do we learn from in MAPP?

• Who are we including, or not including, when we say “Wellbeing for All?”

• If we truly believed in “Wellbeing for All” what would need to be interrupted and dismantled in order to achieve that outcome? And how can we hold ourselves accountable to that?

Leora had many other pragmatic recommendations for how we might tackle White Privilege. Together with Henry Edwards (C’17), she’ll be writing a MAPP Magazine article about the topic, including the Anti-Racist book club they’ve started, which already has over 58 alumni participants.

Each of the speakers, plus dozens of MAPPsters who RSVP’d for the Meet-Up provided resources for MAPPsters who want to continue their education about Racism in America, engage in advocacy and take action. We have collected all of those resources here and encourage you to add to them.

Back to the classroom

As we moved towards the end of the call, James Pawelski and Leona Brandwene spoke on behalf of the MAPP Program. James thanked those who’d spoken for their bravery. “We know that the positive does not equal the pleasant,” James said. “we know that positive psychology is not about escaping from reality, it's about escaping to reality. It's about leaning in; it's about taking a deep breath. It's about listening. It's about embracing. It's about being open to new perspectives. It's about having hope for a better world and rolling up our sleeves and opening our hearts to take the concrete and specific actions necessary to move us forward.” With that in mind, James and Leona told us that they have already been actively engaging in dialogue with students and alumni about what the MAPP program can do differently. They are committed to making change, but they will need the perspectives of everyone. And so, in conjunction with MAPP Alumni Association, we will be issuing an anonymous survey in the coming weeks to ask for ideas about ways we can make change so that we can try to listen better.

Failing forward

As I said earlier, this call was anything but perfect. There were technical problems, timing issues, and many of us said things in the moment that we wish we could have said in many different ways. But that vulnerability was part of what this event was all about, and it was appropriately uncomfortable. That said, we also made choices that had significant unintended impacts. Unlike other MAPP Meet-Ups, we prevented participants from using the chat or unmuting themselves. We did that because we wanted to maintain a mono-focus on those who are speaking and the topics we were exploring. But we did not anticipate that doing so would also mute the voices of BIPOC participants who wanted to have their voices heard. A current MAPPster, Odilia Rivera-Santos (C’20), who is AfroPuerto Rican, courageously pointed that out to us at the end of the call. “Silencing the voices of Black people is a racist act that Black, Indigenous and People of Colour (BIPOC) experience at work, in school, and in health and legal systems,” Odilia said. “Tone policing and white people speaking for BIPOC are also forms of ‘muting.’” She made real the fact that White privilege is ever-present in the classroom - even in a well-intended Meet-Up designed to challenge it.

While we’d reached the end of the agenda for our Meet-Up the session didn’t end there. More than three dozen MAPPsters remained for an additional hour and a half, engaging in dialogue and story-telling about their experiences of race and equity in MAPP and beyond.

Where do we go from here?

As Isaac Prillentenski says, there is no wellness without fairness. This Meet-Up was only one step in a broader journey the MAPP Alumni Association is committing to around anti-racism, anti-oppression and cultural awareness. Promoting equity takes time, effort, and systemic change. While we know from research that starting at the individual level is critical, one Zoom call can only do so much. But we’re already starting to ask different questions, and we know that we move in the direction of the questions we ask.

I’m incredibly humbled by the virtuous actions that members of our community such as Jennifer Beatty, Joan Mooney, Christine Robinson, Valorie Burton, Leora Rifkin and Odilia Rivera-Santos have taken over the past month. And they are but a few of the dozens of MAPPsters who have been actively participating in different conversations.

In the face of so much trauma, I have hope. Our conversations have already started to spark change. The board of the Alumni Association has started asking questions about our programs, social, membership and communications committees and how we might bring greater diversity, equity and inclusion into focus. As a community we are thinking differently about how we might educate ourselves, advocate, and take action. Our words and actions related to anti-racism can strengthen our community so that MAPPsters have the insight to combat systemic bigotry, to deal with it when they are on the receiving end, and to improve well-being for themselves and all those they touch.

If you have ideas for what the MAPP Alumni Association can do differently or want to get involved, I’d love to hear from you.

Andrew Soren, President of the MAPP Alumni Association

About the author

Andrew Soren is President of the MAPP Alumni Association and CEO of Eudaimonic by Design. Since 2013, he has been part of the instructional team with the University of Pennsylvania’s Masters of Applied Positive Psychology program. He founded Eudaimonic by Design to harness the collective strengths of alumni working at the intersection of organizational effectiveness, design thinking and positive practice. For the past 20 years, Andrew has worked with some of the most recognized brands, non-profits and public sector teams to co-create values-based cultures, develop positive leadership, and design systems that empower people to be their best. Andrew is an ICF certified coach and is board treasurer of the International Positive Psychology Association. He splits his time between Toronto, Canada and Montevideo, Uruguay.