Stop Playing Diversity – Monica Cox, PhD

In this episode, I talk with Dr. Monica Cox, who is a disruptor, trailblazer, change agent, and leader who believes in living an authentic life even if it makes people uncomfortable. She grew up an only child in rural southeast Alabama, where she was raised by her educator parents to persist in the face of personal and professional adversity. She is a Distinguished Professor of Engineering at The Ohio State University. Dr. Cox also provides coaching in the areas of career development; business strategy; and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). Dr. Cox shares her experiences in navigating higher education and DEI as a Black woman, particularly around performative diversity and organizational issues. She has a way of speaking on these issues in a personal way that explains how systemic racism is deeply manifested in these spaces, how it has impacted her, what she has done about it, and encouraging others. I’ve found her words to cut through the BS and really hit home. You are going to want to hear what she has to say. She vulnerably shares her journey with us. For some, her words will be affirming because you know the reality. For others, her words will shake you up because things need to change, and you have a choice to make. I hope this conversation inspires you to action.

www.drmonicacox.com
X, Instagram & TikTok @drmonicacox
LinkedIn www.linkedin.com/in/drmonicafcox

Music credit:

“District Four” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

TRANSCRIPT

Shimon Cohen:

Welcome to Doin' The Work: Frontline Stories of Social Change, where we bring you stories of real people working to address real issues. I am your host, Shimon Cohen.

Hey, Dr. Cox, I am so thrilled to have you joining me for the podcast. Like so many others, found you on Twitter because you were posting, just about, posting in a very authentic, no holds barred way of your experiences as a Black woman in academia and the racism and sexism you've experienced and just the way you write, it just really just hit me right in my heart. So, I'm really glad to have you on here. So thank you so much.

Dr. Monica Cox:

Thank you so much, Shimon. It is great to be here. And I always love meeting a Twitter friend. I feel that we're always connected and it's just an honor, like I said and so, yes, yay, I can't wait for today. It's going to be great.

Shimon Cohen:

Yeah. I'm so excited. So I guess just to start is what got you started deciding to just be public about all these experiences that you've had.

Dr. Monica Cox:

Ooh. I met a person who worked with Oprah Winfrey and I attended a workshop and it was a Women of Color workshop and they were talking about branding. So this was several years ago and he talked about the power of social media and how it has created his community, how he has gotten video opportunities, but networking opportunities. And it's just been a part of his business. So I was interested in entrepreneurship and I said, "Let me try this out." One of the things that he told me was that you have to be consistent. So every day you need to post something and you need to respond to people. And so I used just those two tips to find my voice and to kind of say what is it that I want to share with people? How do I want to build community? And so that's how this started. And believe me, when I started, it was very empty. No one was out there talking and they weren't being real, but I was consistent. And that's when I started finding the community.

Shimon Cohen:

Yeah. I want to read one of your tweets. This tweet is from July 8th, 2021 and this had 27,900 likes. So very viral. And this is just, I think, really speaks to what draws people to you, part of what draws people to you, the way you put this together. So this one you say and I want to get your take on this, go into more detail on it. So this is your tweet: "Instead of showing me your diversity statement, show me your hiring data, your discrimination claims stats, your salary tables, your retention numbers, your diversity policies and your leader's public actions against racism and performative allyship."

Dr. Monica Cox:

Yeah. So there's a story and the story is that I have a brand called Stop Playing Diversity. So the performative allyship is a play on that. So I mean or Stop Playing Diversity is a play on that, where it's just about being authentic when you do this work. So many people put on, they know the right thing to do, but they're not doing the right thing and it's not really moving the diversity needle, so to speak. So I created a course called, "You've Met Your Diversity Quota Now What?" And I had a slide where I presented all of these examples of how you can move past quotas. So I just took the bullet points that were on the slide and I put them in 280 characters and that's where this tweet came from. So it was just me translating material from a workshop into a tweet that I wanted to get out. And that tweet just happened to resonate with so many people.

Shimon Cohen:

Yeah. And let's break that down in terms of what is behind that, your workshop and you know, why does this need to exist based on the experiences you've seen and put into this work that you do.

Dr. Monica Cox:

Yeah. So in a way I feel that I've had a bait and switch in higher education. It's always looked very pretty. The recruitment part is just beautiful. Everyone says, "We want you because you're qualified." It's the dog and pony show. It's the wine and dine. It's the honeymoon period. But I have found that whenever I would get into the organization, there were so many issues that I wasn't aware of and there were so many questions that I did not ask before. So I created this tweet because I wanted to get to the heart of what anyone who's going to a place should ask when it comes to what's happening. So, I'll give you an example. When I was at my first institution and I was on the tenure track, I didn't see anyone else who looked like me. So I just went up to an administrative assistant and I asked, "Am I going to be the first Black woman to get tenure in the college of engineering?" And people researched and they said, "Yes, you are going to be the first."

Dr. Monica Cox:

And I'm just thinking, I had to educate so many people. It was not just about the academic part of my life, but because I was in Indiana, I was in the cornfields of Indiana. There were so many people who did not understand diversity. And it's just this heavy burden that happens when you're not prepared to be this trailblazer just at your institution, but in the community, we're talking about everything from hair and is the correct term Black or African American and some people say colored, and I'm like where are we going? What's happening? And it is a distraction when you are trying to do your daily job. So this is just my, I mean, my whole brand is based on trying to prepare people, trying to make people aware, particularly people who come from underrepresented groups to say, it's not just the pretty picture that everyone paints, you're going to have to do the work and depending on where you go, it's going to be really hard for you. And you're going to be that trailblazer, whether you want to be that person or not.

Shimon Cohen:

Right. Because I mean, your field is engineering, right. And there's a lot when people delve into those, people who are not like... That's not my field, right. My field is social work, counseling, education although I know you also have a whole focus on education with teaching engineering. So I'm assuming when you started, you were saying, you were just focused on wanting to study and publish and research your focus and this clearly went in a different direction in some ways, correct?

Dr. Monica Cox:

Yes. I think that for every article that I've read about the issues that happen in higher education, like I experienced it and it's that part that got me where it's, oh, people have looked at the empirical research and that's why this is happening. But I started to question why there was nothing after that. So, there are plenty of people who say, well, if you come into an engineering environment and you're a woman, all the chilly climate, leaky pipeline, microaggressions, pioneerism, tokenism. I mean, it's just the laundry list of all the bad things that people experience. And we now have the research to say it happens, but I was concerned that over 20, 30, 40 years you just had to endure it.

Dr. Monica Cox:

That's it. If you talk to anyone, it's like, why is this culture not changing? Why is it that this is just the battle scar that you get for being in this profession? And I knew that I wanted my legacy to focus on ensuring that I didn't spend, 30, 40 years of my life going through it, making it out just for someone, 30 years from now to say, oh, I'm still going through the microaggressions, the pioneerism, the tokenism, et cetera. You have to do something to change the system. You have to just disrupt it if you are going to have an out outcome that is different from what you started doing.

Shimon Cohen:

Yeah. Something I wonder is as you got into these spaces, right and were having these experiences, did you always know exactly what was going on? Was it always clear to you what was happening or did it take you time to figure out all these dynamics at play?

Dr. Monica Cox:

Yeah. Oh my gosh. I was, I was naive. I was very ignorant. And I would say as an only child growing up in Alabama to older parents, I was, I think I was very sheltered. I did a lot of reading and when you read, you often have those happy endings and yeah, stuff is rough, but I mean, I did learn a lot about persistence and resilience as someone who grew up in areas where the civil rights movement happened, but I am also a very literal person. So if you say that I am a professor, then I have this image of a professor of, we're all professors in this field and I didn't really conceptually break it down of, oh, my experience is going to be different as a Black woman professor versus someone else.

Dr. Monica Cox:

But I noticed that people were just treated differently. For the first I learned that people were paid differently. I learned that some people had access and other people didn't. And usually I was the one who did not have the access and it didn't feel good. And so I learned about the inequities in the culture from being one of the only people in the room and just being keenly aware that something was wrong, something was different in how I experienced my world versus other people who seemed to be extremely excited about every aspect of academia.

Shimon Cohen:

Hmm, so there were things you weren't so excited about.

Dr. Monica Cox:

Oh no. Not at all. Not at all. No, no. I mean for example, you think about teaching a large engineering class and the research talks about bias, gender bias and racial bias that happens. And with some of my engineering students, they had never had a female professor. Some of my engineering students had never had a woman of color. So I noticed that there's a way that I would speak or there are examples that I would provide that were just not aligned with the majority of the students in my class. And my humor was different. So it's everything that made me, me that somehow was this learning curve for people. But you don't have time for people to learn about you when you have course evaluation, it's like, oh, okay, give her two semesters. And one story, I will say that kind of illustrates this is that.

Dr. Monica Cox:

I was teaching a first year course. And I think I was very strict, came from that Southern Alabama upbringing, very much like I wanted people to pay attention in class. I would call them out for stuff. And I was at the Indianapolis 500, a couple of years after I taught this one class and I saw one of the students who was in my class. So he said, Professor Cox, I told my mom about you and you really frightened me in class. I understand now what you were doing, but I want to apologize because I was just silly. I wasn't focused. I was this freshman who didn't get it, but now I understand what you were trying to teach me. Now at the time that didn't help with my course evaluations, but it's this whole people have to get to know you. And it's that part that's very, very disheartening.

Dr. Monica Cox:

It's frustrating many times because you have to prove your credibility and you don't automatically get that sometimes when you're in the field. It's presumed incompetent. There's a book that's out there Presumed Incompetent and it does talk about women of color and how that's how it starts, oh, you're a diversity hire, you're an affirmative action hire. Not, oh, you're a brilliant engineer. You're a brilliant engineering educator. Let me now give you that respect and then everything else comes. So I feel it's always this proving being a first is about proving, but that wears on you over time because you know who you are and at some point it's like bump out, I'm not here to prove that I deserve to be here anymore. I don't owe you that.

Shimon Cohen:

Yeah. The whole qualification thing always is an issue. And we're in different fields. I was in higher education for a number of years and the director of the program I was at when there were positions that were open and there was talk of who's going to get those positions, because at the time there were no Black faculty, none in a school of social work where a large number of students were Black and Latino/Latina/Latinx/Latine, and had been asking we want faculty who look like us, the students had been vocal and the director said to me behind closed doors, she said, "I really want to hire Black faculty but only if they're qualified" and I'm like, I've never heard that about a White man. Like I really want to hire a White man, but only if he's qualified. I mean, it just sounds like the most ridiculous statement, which just shows how embedded it is.

Dr. Monica Cox:

Yeah. Yeah. I think that's real. And I could say as a full professor and as someone who's been in the field for so many years, I often have to call people out when they have those biases and yeah, I think that's what leadership is about many times. And so that's like another level and I wish that I could just tell people who are in these fields that it's just an act of service. When you become, when you enter this profession, yes, you have that teaching, research service but service is so much bigger because you're paying it forward for people who will come after you and you do not even know what your service will look like, it is just the weight is so heavy and if you're not prepared for it, it could really take you out. It's a lot. You have to turn it off because there is always work to do. And there's always a way to educate people and you will never be compensated enough for the tax that is on you in this position.

Shimon Cohen:

I think, something, I think about a lot because of just some of these experiences, when I was at this one institution and that comment and many other things and then obviously stuff I've read about and heard about from others is just the people in these powerful positions though that do have these beliefs and then also the fact that they think that they don't, like they think that they're not but no one wants to be racist, right? There's racism, but no one's racist except like KKK and Nazis. So how do, what's been your experience trying to break through or how that goes with those kinds of conversations with people like that?

Dr. Monica Cox:

I think they're always hard because what you're referring to, too, I often talk about like the patriarchy and for me, it's just a way of doing work that is very capitalistic. It's very competitive. It's very Western, so to speak. And I tell people, many of us who are people of color or people who come from minoritized communities are very communal. We're very team based. We're very inclusive and connecting to people and coming together to succeed is really important. And so that is that tension that I also see. So it is hard to teach people about that. It's hard in academia for people to understand that everyone can win. Maybe you have impact in different ways but the focus is usually like there's going to be one president, one provost, one dean, one whatever and so you have people who are so competitive and you learn how to play the rules.

Dr. Monica Cox:

I mean, you learn how to play the game and I often tell people, academia is not hard, not trying to sound snobby, but it's not hard. You know what it is. It's learning how to play the game. It's learning how to speak. It's learning how to fit into a system that has been designed a certain way. And if you even want to break it down, yes, you have to have X number of papers, X number of grants and you just figure out who do I collaborate with to get to where I need to go? Who is my mentor? What do I spend my time doing? What students do I recruit? It is so strategic. But I think the tension that's happening now is that people are wondering if it's worth playing the game to the point that you lose your soul, you lose your happiness, you lose your joy.

Dr. Monica Cox:

And with the pandemic, with everything that's happening, I think people are saying, hold up, is this my life? I'm going to be 65 and then I'm going to be like, Ooh, I played that game well and I have my home, I have my car, I have my material things, but I lost my soul. I left a little bit of me back in the academy and I can't get that back. I can't get my time back. I can't get that joy back. So I went all over the place and I would say that it is difficult for people to understand why the academy sucks life out of you. But one other thing I'll say about this real quick and I had an aha moment this week and I wrote on Twitter, of course, but it's about imposters.

Dr. Monica Cox:

And I think that, imposter syndrome is something that a lot of people say they have, because let me just tell you higher education is just all consuming. The thing is you will never be enough. You will never be good there. So you're going to always feel like an imposter, but the imposter is higher education. It makes you think that it has it together. It makes you think that they know how to do diversity well or it's an inclusive place. But when you get in there aren't always answers. They don't know what to do when things go wrong. And you're just buying into this facade. That sounds very bad and negative, but I feel that's my reflection after almost being here for 20 years, it's like, y'all sold me something that I don't think is great. Like, y'all say you like 6' 2" and fine but you like 5' 3" and a little stocky and yeah, you're not sexy like that.

Shimon Cohen:

I mean, it's almost, I think a lot with how the United States, you know, American exceptionalism and all that. And there's like this higher education exceptionalism. They really go together like that.

Dr. Monica Cox:

Yes.

Shimon Cohen:

Like saying that these are ideals when all these contradictions are the reality.

Dr. Monica Cox:

Exactly. And it's like what I said. I mean, I'm even at this point and of course I had a tweet today. It's like, do I tweet all day? I probably do. But it was a moment where it's like, I really think about leaving academia sometimes because it doesn't represent my values. And it's like, I had my values before I came in. And when I coach as an authenticity coach, I often I talk about this visual that I have and just imagine a bookshelf, I talk about the core and I talk about your legacy as the bookends. And so you have the books that are in between. And so often we move away from our core. The very thing that we did when we were young, the thing that gives us life and makes us who we are and our legacy is that thing that we're going to leave. But we focus so much on the in between, like the check boxes and just busyness. But when you really think about the bookends of your life, that helps you to determine what you focus on.

Dr. Monica Cox:

And so I'm just trying to take more time to say, I know my legacy is that I want to help people come out of this hole. I want to be whole, I don't want to be broken in life. And so how can I be there for my family and for my son and then talking is something I've always done and tweeting, like having a gift with words, but I'm an engineer. I'm like, I have to go back to that and Twitter gives me, it returns me to that space that sometimes academia said was unacceptable, but I'm ignoring the noise of academia to say, I'm making a difference with who I am. And I'm not going to apologize for that. I'm not going to change who I am. And that is so hard. That's the thing.

Shimon Cohen:

Yeah. Do you, I have a few questions just based on that, I want to ask you.

Dr. Monica Cox:

Okay.

Shimon Cohen:

The first one I think is, do you feel like you could do that if you were starting out and still junior faculty, starting out on a tenure track, are you able, because there's always people who are like, I got to wait for tenure, I got to wait for tenure, but for me I was faculty who was non-tenure. So it was like, we were never going to get tenure anyway. So what do you just never say anything, you just always try to play the game, which that doesn't work for me.

Dr. Monica Cox:

Yeah, it depends on the environment. And I think that if you're in a place that is more open to communicating and expressing yourself and changing and connecting, then yes, you probably could. But if you're in a very rigid environment, that's not used to anything other than the bureaucracy, you're probably not going to get tenure. So I would say as a junior faculty, I didn't do it as much, but I had a moment where I was in a meeting and you know, I had done things by the book. When I look at my office and it's like, I have a Presidential Award with President Obama. I have my picture with John Lewis. I have my picture with Michelle Obama.

Dr. Monica Cox:

And so, I did those things that took me to really great places in higher education. But when I was in a meeting, I was disrespected, I had a moment and I said, you know what? I played the game and I still got disrespected. So I might as well be myself. I might as well be more vocal and be this person who sometimes ruffles feathers, but people know where I stand. And I know that I'm going to make an impact in spaces that are important to me. So, I often just tell people, no matter how well you play the game, if the system does not welcome you, I mean, you're still not going to succeed the way that you would like to.

Shimon Cohen:

Yeah.

Dr. Monica Cox:

So it's like go big or go home.

Shimon Cohen:

Right, right-

Dr. Monica Cox:

At some point

Shimon Cohen:

-And getting to what you were just saying before too and this connects to it and this is one of the things I wanted to ask you is, you said, you want to heal, you want to be whole, you don't want to be broken. So part of that, it sounds it is go big or go home, but what else is that for you? What else is being whole for you?

Dr. Monica Cox:

Yeah. Being whole is not being afraid. It's being courageous and it's being brave and is owning who I am, is being able to sleep at night because I'm just authentically me. I think, and this was an aha, I feel I have moments in my life, it is almost like having a play by play. And since the pandemic started, this is what moved me from being an administrator and the thoughts I had to say I need to do more entrepreneurship and I need to be more vocal, even more vocal than I am. It's the fact that I had talked to so many Black women in my organization. And so many people were hurt and they said, I can't speak out. And it was such a pattern that after a while I said, it feels wrong for me to be this full professor when so many other people are hurting.

Dr. Monica Cox:

Like, it's like a fork in the road. Do I continue on this administrative path knowing that if I play the game, I will get everything that I've wanted since everything I thought I wanted since I was 19 years old or do I shift down this path that is uncertain, knowing that I may never get another administrative position, knowing I could be blackballed, knowing that, I'm that person, I'm that target, in higher education. And, I will just say this really quickly, something that changed me is that I got a direct message on Twitter one day and I said, this is the direct message that sealed it for me. A woman who was a grad student, in engineering direct messaged to me and she told me that she was thinking of taking her life, but my words kept her going-

Shimon Cohen:

Wow.

Dr. Monica Cox:

They kept her moving. And I'm like, my words, what words, are we talking about? Me tweeting about my experiences, but I get things like that all the time. And one of the best comments that someone also told me, someone who was a full professor, she said, I see how you tweet. I see how you say things. And she said, you have this unique ability to build as you battle. Yes. It's hard, but you're building. And it's that part and another person who has a business who is a financial representative said you speak the words that are in me. So I just kept getting all these responses where I'm just like, I just want to be an administrator. I just want to go and do my work. And there was even this embarrassment of like, why am I Twitter famous? That just seems, Wordle, it's kind of a Wordle moment, it's like, Ooh, I'm the Wordle queen. I can get Wordle in two tries.

Dr. Monica Cox:

I mean, that just doesn't sound great when you're programmed as an academic to be so scholarly and have your H index and be empirical. But I mean, I could tell you Shimon, time and time again, I will be on presentations. Presidents of universities, professors are like, I follow you on Twitter. I was on a $15 million project and people were recruiting me to be on the project, because they're like, you need to get Monica Cox from Twitter to be on the project. Like what, what, what, so I still don't quite know what to do with that because it feels, I hate to say shallow, but you know what I mean? It feels like, it's something that academics don't value and I'm still trying to figure out how to process something that was never what I planned to do. I was not trying to be Twitter famous. I just wanted to tell stories and help people and now it's just a lot.

Shimon Cohen:

I mean that story of the student reaching out to you. I think that's what I really felt reading your posts. And, I mean, so many do, is that you say the things that so many people wish they could say and you just get right to it. There's almost like a, I mean, this might sound strange, but there's almost like a spiritual aspect of the way you write. That's just so affirming because it just strips it, you strip away all the BS and you just always cut right to the heart, to the heart of it. Now I want to ask you some stuff about like organizational change. Because I know that's part of the work you do. I know you've done obviously that through your engineering positions, but you also with your stop playing diversity work that you do and something that's pretty clear is that a lot of these diversity, equity and inclusion efforts are performative and fail and actually do harm, right? A lot of them do harm.

Shimon Cohen:

So for people following the podcast who really care about this, which most of the people following this podcast already care about social justice, racial justice, they're just looking for ways, how do I go about implementing this? Because a lot of them are getting crushed within the organizations that they're in, right. And social workers don't make a lot of money. Some do, but not like, there's people that are just, they're getting crushed. They see these problems. They're feeling the problems, especially based on who they are and the oppressions that they're up against. And they feel stuck in terms of like, how do they go about initiating change? Then there's other people in leadership positions who are trying to implement change, but it's like, not everyone's on board with it. So just maybe some key things that you recommend that people can do.

Dr. Monica Cox:

Yes. Oh my goodness. It's a lot. I think maybe I said it before we started, but I have this aha moment where, we are in a system, we're systems, inside systems, inside systems, inside systems and a lot of those systems, I mean, you need structure. So when you think about organizational change, I love structure. I love processes, policies, et cetera. But you find that there are issues where sometimes policies are not implemented well. There are policies that don't exist. Policies need to be created when you bring new people into the system. And so there's like that whole element that should be focused on all the time. And I tell people in a system, like we are renters and leasers, like that's something I did not think about until 2020. When I was in a position and at the drop of a hat, it was like, we don't want you in that position anymore in higher education.

Dr. Monica Cox:

And it's like, but I produce, but I did whatever. And so you have to understand when you don't own something because I think a lot of burdens come when it's like, oh my gosh, I'm in here and I have to change everything. Guess what? One person does not change a system and two, you don't own the system. So even if you think that you control it, you don't. And so really managing your expectations is important. And I know that's not what a lot of people want to hear because the romanticized version of it is we're going to dismantle, we're going to get five people together and just break it down. No, it's not that. You could break a system down, but how do you sustain the system? Who's running the system, what's going on? And that's why like, a side note, when I talk about dismantling, I'm like, we don't have a plan.

Dr. Monica Cox:

I get that everybody wants to be like gung-ho let's like change stuff, but we have to put more thought into what it looks like. So if everything changes, then what does leadership look like? How do we monitor this? How do we hold people accountable in ways that are equitable? But I went off, but what do I say? Man, I sound like a pessimist, but I really do believe in the power of entrepreneurship. I believe in the power of doing things outside of system. And so I think that there are ways to do it when you're creating nonprofits. When you're just starting things with your own resources, that's how you begin to build community as well. And that's what I've done. And so my whole story with Stop Playing Diversity is that, out of the millions of dollars after all the initiatives, I'm still in pain, I'm still struggling.

Dr. Monica Cox:

And I said, let me take the lessons that I've learned as a professor and talk to people and create communities of people on Twitter and other places where we're having these conversations, but we're now going into not just a single institution, but multiple institutions. And we are on the same page about the work that needs to be done. And so, I mean, just to kind of end the spot, my vision is, I used to say, I want to be a university president, but I got to a point where I said, that's too small because a single institution is ruled by a board of trustees and all that system. But we, if we're going to really do this work well, we have to elevate. We have to use media like our podcasts, like our social medias, we have to take it to levels that academia or the brick and mortar spaces are not used to.

Dr. Monica Cox:

So I'm rambling a little bit, but I will say-

Shimon Cohen:

I love it.

Dr. Monica Cox:

-It's the virtual part. You think about it, if things were built in the buildings where we work and the structure is there, you have to do something in spaces that the patriarchy doesn't yet control. So I love social media because the very people who would try to police what's happening in the brick and mortar, they're not policing because they don't know TikTok. They don't know Twitter yet. People think it's fluff, but movements are happening virtually. And it's like the underground railroad. It's like you don't need to understand that space, stay on the plantation, do what y'all do because we got some other stuff going on behind the scenes, in the churches, in the services that people don't want to come to.

Dr. Monica Cox:

Oh we have some stuff happening. Keep, it's okay. That's beneath you. But we got it. We gon' tweet in 280 characters, we started the entire movement. It's all good. We just dismantle your system in 280. It's good. We just, you know what I mean? Like you look at what happens. Entire systems are crushed on social media. Like you get one influencer, academic influencer to be like, did y'all know, blah, blah, blah what's happening at mm institution. Did you know, blah, blah, blah and all of a sudden there are people who didn't get tenure and they're getting tenure because of a hashtag there's, you know what I'm talking about?

Shimon Cohen:

Oh yeah.

Dr. Monica Cox:

It's moving.

Shimon Cohen:

The administrators are terrified of their institution getting tweeted about. When I was going through my stuff where I was at, they were monitoring me and it was coming up. Admin would bring it up, "You're writing about this, you're writing about that." And then when I gave my notice to leave, I gave eight and a half years of my life to this place and all they wanted to say is, "What are you going to post? What are you going to post? What are you going to write about, what are you going to say about us?"

Dr. Monica Cox:

Exactly.

Shimon Cohen:

I'm going to say the truth.

Dr. Monica Cox:

And you know what I tell people. It's so funny because I feel like, every, there were a lot of people who are really obsessed with my Twitter. And I'm like, can you be as obsessed about the content of the tweet as you can about the fact that I tweeted it. I had this thing that I said one time and I'm like if someone's working in media or communication, if you see something like that, then maybe instead of being like, oh my gosh, somebody is making those look bad, say there seems to be an issue as it relates to diversity, equity and inclusion. And maybe you all need to look at this because if this person is bold enough to put their name, their identity and who they are out there, then this is something that is probably problematic.

Dr. Monica Cox:

And so that's what I'm saying. It's like reframing how people look at things. And there's just such a powerful opportunity for leaders who are proactive to say like, "Shimon, oh, what are you saying? What's going on? Okay. Well, you know what, I have some really real data here. And so there's something that you're telling me that I need to be aware of before it blows up or I need to address, X, Y, and Z." And I just think people want their voices to be heard in ways that no structure coming back to the original tweet I told you about, I think it resonated because that's not what institutions do.

Dr. Monica Cox:

But Twitter is also that space where you collect exit interview data, you collect real time feedback about what's happening and organizations are not asking these things. People are just like, "Let me tell y'all, it sucks here. Don't do it. Stranger danger. Don't come to this institution because they don't do this well." And there's just this disconnect between the reality and people saying, "I want to comb all the data, like to do something with it," that's what future leaders should be, but they're not. Many of them are not.

Shimon Cohen:

Yeah. I think that's a really good point. It's like, look, you want to do DEI, you want to really make these changes. Like, as you say, you want to stop playing diversity. The research is, the data is there like that-

Dr. Monica Cox:

Absolutely.

Shimon Cohen:

-That's very clear. So where do these places get hung up? I mean, to me and just let me know what you think and please expand on this. To me, they get caught up because they don't want to change. They're steeped in white supremacy. They're steeped in capitalism. They're steeped in patriarchy. They're steeped in ableism, heterosexism. They wanna say this stuff, but they don't really want to change.

Dr. Monica Cox:

I agree. I mean, I always use the example of the pandemic and I say, I mean, it was funny how with the quickness, everybody was remote, like Zoom boomed and people who didn't even know how to use a computer were all on the computer. Entire universities had all their courses online and they had never done anything like that before. So, I said, as my mom says, people do what they want to do and so when it was about the dollar and losing $40,000 of tuition from students, people figured out how to use that technology.

Shimon Cohen:

Yeah, they moved really quick.

Dr. Monica Cox:

So you're right. I mean, when you look at what we have known as historical problems, as it relates back to diversity, there is not a quickness because I think there's a lot of fear. So what happens and you see the polarities that are happening. Before I got on today, I saw about Florida and the Stop Woke Act and Don't Say Gay, I think, both of those were out there. And it's like being approved in the Florida House and it's just this whole thing of what is it, I don't know. I just keep saying it's a mess. I'm sorry. I got kind of caught up because I was just thinking about it and it's just-

Shimon Cohen:

It's insane.

Dr. Monica Cox:

Yeah. So it's not even that people aren't trying to address diversity, but if anything, it's like trying to do things that squash it to the point of saying, we don't even want to talk about it and if you dare do it, we're going to penalize you in ways that impact your life. And it's intimidation. It's retaliation. It's a lot of stuff that just, look it expresses the fear that people have of losing control. That's ultimately what's going on. People don't know what it looks like when you bring everyone to the table. Will it mean that everything that they have been working for their entire lives will no longer be there? Will they no longer have the American dream that they wanted to have? So you have to address the fear. That's the thing I tell people.

Dr. Monica Cox:

So often we look at diversity, equity and inclusion, but I feel that the heart of our conversations should be simple questions such as: What are you afraid of? Why can't we be on the same page? Why do you think that way? What have you done? What has proven to you that, that's true? What frameworks are you using to define that as fact? And I think people get caught up in the emotion and it's just a lot of distractions, but we need to always remember to come back to that core and just the questions that center, why things are the way they are. Why didn't we move quickly? Why did people not move past diversity statements after the murder of George Floyd? Why do we not hold people accountable? Why are people afraid to hold people accountable?

Shimon Cohen:

Yeah. I mean, I think one thing that I've seen is and I'm just so glad we're having this conversation. One thing I've seen is because when I was going through it was, at times, I didn't have language for it. And I felt very, honestly, I felt pretty crazy because of what was going on and they would say stuff like, "Is everything okay at home?" And things like that. Yeah, and it was like these issues keep getting brought up. It's not me, it's not my problem. But things would happen for example, hiring Black faculty, that was always a major thing that would come up and it should, it should because it was such an issue, which of course you're not going to hire Black faculty if the environment isn't conducive for that. And then you're not going to retain people and then also people are just not going to be able to thrive and be whole like you're talking about in these spaces.

Shimon Cohen:

But they would say stuff like, "Well we posted the position in this Black organization and we did this and we did this and oh Miami, Black people don't want to move to Miami." Like I literally heard this stuff or "where's the Black professional community in Miami?" I heard a White person... These are all things White people were saying. It's like, first of all, what do you know about that? And I would sit there and listen to this stuff. And when I finally started speaking up about it, I was like, "Why can't, why aren't we looking at ourselves? It's like, where's the relationship, the other, however many months of the year with the organization that you want to post this in their newsletter. Where are these ongoing relationships?" You know where, it was like, you just want to be who keep everything the same and then post it here and you think someone's going to apply. But you really don't care that much if they're going to, because otherwise you'd be doing this work year round.

Dr. Monica Cox:

Absolutely. And you know what? You make it. I mean, to me it seems very simple, but it's like what you said about relationships. When you think about a courtship and you meet someone, I'm sure there are these relationships or people like, love at first sight, let's get married in like a month, Love is Blind. That's the show on Netflix that I look at sometimes. But people need to think about how they would like to be courted. Is it a hit it and quit? Is this a one-night stand? Because really people are claiming that they want, this really loving relationship, but they're really being carnal in how they connect. And if you want that, then that's cool. But you're not going to, I mean, this isn't a marriage and I feel people want a marriage, but they're acting like they just want a one-night stand. And that does not-

Shimon Cohen:

Did you just call academia a one-night stand?

Dr. Monica Cox:

-I think that recruitment, like how people recruit-

Shimon Cohen:

I love that.

Dr. Monica Cox:

It's really lazy. You know what? I mean and I love my metaphors all day and it's like, you know what, taking me to Burger King and being like, oh my gosh, I want you to commit to this five-year relationship. And it's like, you can get a Whopper, you can get you some fries and a drink and maybe a dessert. But it's like, boo, that's like a $10 meal. But you expected me to make a $20,000 commitment or whatever. You know what I'm saying? That is not enough to woo me. And I feel that people want to get by being so cheap when it's like, I want the filet mignon experience. I want you to fly me to the private island. I want you to, I mean, your resources, that's another point. Like you have to use your resources. If it didn't cost you anything, if it was $15, guess what, you are about to get a $15 return because I'm about to walk to the person who's going to wine and dine me and treat me valuable, like I'm valuable and precious.

Dr. Monica Cox:

And that's why I said it just sounds so commonsensical because even in life, do you really expect to woo somebody when you're so cheap, when you're so disrespectful, when you're so shallow, when you showed that you don't want anything, you don't want me for more than my body. And I mean, that's a really interesting metaphor, but it's real. Like you just want the quickness. You don't want my heart. You don't want my personality. You don't want everything that I can bring to add to the relationship. You want a servant. You want to dictate. You want to rule me, but I want to think. I want to have ownership. I want some property. I want all these things that will help me to be better. And so hopefully people can take that from this session and just really always think about that. How are you treating this person? And based on how you're treating that person, is the return what you think it should be? Because if you're expecting too much, you're delusional.

Shimon Cohen:

Yeah. And to me, it's like beyond that one person, it's like the group or like the community. Because if you're in a field, if you're in a profession and you're only interaction with the Black organization within your same profession is when you're recruiting and you just post in a newsletter, but you have no interaction with this organization the rest of the year, right, for many years.

Dr. Monica Cox:

Right.

Shimon Cohen:

People see right through it. I mean-

Dr. Monica Cox:

Absolutely.

Shimon Cohen:

People aren't stupid, like- I mean-

Dr. Monica Cox:

And talk about you like a dog behind your back too, to be like, mm, not only do we see through you, but they are terrible. Please stay away, no.

Shimon Cohen:

Exactly. It's ridiculous. And it just doesn't, I don't know, it just doesn't seem that hard to me to just have relationships with people. I just, I don't know why it's so complicated for people.

Dr. Monica Cox:

Yes. I agree.

Shimon Cohen:

But it's people are in their bubbles and a lot of, I mean, I don't want to try to come off, like I'm like some enlightened White person either or anything like that, but a lot of White people are just in their White bubbles and just don't want to be, maybe want to think they're out of it because they're liberal, but a lot of us are really deep within it.

Dr. Monica Cox:

And I think too, there's just this humility that you have to have, this vulnerability to say my your view is not the dominant view, but it's so hard because it's everything that you want. And I'm not saying it's anyone's fault, but you know, in society, your view is the dominant one. And to say, "What is it like to do this differently? What is it like to think differently?" That is an exercise that just requires a lot of reflection and like I said, humility and also accountability. So you have to let someone tell you when something is offensive, tell you when something is off. And I think so often as humans, there's that pride of, like, you can't tell me what to do. Like I'm trying. And it's like what you said, you don't want to be labeled, but it's like, you're doing this wrong. And do you have someone who is giving you permission to tell you when you're wrong and will you not lash out at that person or use your power and or privilege if they tell you the truth about yourself?

Shimon Cohen:

Yeah. That's the deep internal work that, especially with emotional regulation for that moment when, because I know for me when I've been called out on stuff, I get a, or even before I say something, I'll have a physical feeling. I feel it in my body. I feel so uncomfortable. So, it's like, have I done enough work? So I can regulate through that to be able to be present, to grow, Because in the end it's about the growth that can come from it.

Dr. Monica Cox:

Absolutely.

Shimon Cohen:

And doing the right thing. I mean, beyond just the growth that can come from it, but doing the right thing. There's a couple of other things I want to ask you about before we wrap up. So I know you're a full professor. You've been a department chair, correct me if I'm, got the terminology wrong. So you've got like, you've had job security with tenure and things like that, but how have you and how do you coach people on being prepared for retaliation as they do this work?

Dr. Monica Cox:

Man, I feel I'm just learning that myself and I feel you have to really dig deep for this because the consequences are real. There are so many things that you can lose when you do this work. And I talk about building your muscles, your courage muscles and really just, you have to know very deliberately what your risk, I talked in one of my Stop Playing Diversity podcasts and I said, "What's your diversity threshold?" And I used to be really upset because I was like, why am I the one that's out here stepping out, being brave, but I have the grace to do this. I feel that for whatever reason, probably since I was little, I'm the one who was always outspoken and you have to move at your level of comfort.

Dr. Monica Cox:

I think that if you want to grow, you have to do deliberate work to grow in this space because it is taking the risk and saying, "Okay, I'm in a room and I know if I put myself out there or something could happen to me, but am I willing to say something today?" That is an example of being very deliberate about what you do, but you have to make those choices. It's like exercising. You're not going to be able to run a marathon just by sitting and watching a marathon. You have to, with diversity, use your voice, use your title, use your power that you have your positionality bit by bit to say this is a decision that I'm going to make.

Dr. Monica Cox:

And I understand there's heat, but I own it. I've thought it through and I stand by it and that's it. And that's courage. That's an example of it with everything that happens. But unfortunately with this work, you don't have a lot of, how do I say it? I said, you have to build it, but you don't have a lot of opportunities to practice in a safe way because every time you do it, there could be a consequence of like, you just lost your job. You just got demoted. You just got called out. You got threatened because you tried it. I wish it was pretty and neat, but it's not.

Shimon Cohen:

I mean, I think, people, talk about, make sure you've got receipts, document and everything and I think those are obviously really important things to do. Eventually a situation could end up at HR, but we know HR is not your friend, but I think about Brian Flores with, I don't know if you follow football.

Dr. Monica Cox:

Yeah, well, I don't follow football, but I know about the case.

Shimon Cohen:

Exactly. Right. This is something that transcends whether someone likes football or not, but he is hired, he did get hired now, but as an assistant, but a lot of people thought he's probably risked his entire career at this point with taking on racism within the NFL. I mean-

Dr. Monica Cox:

Like Colin Kaepernick perhaps-

Shimon Cohen:

Exactly.

Dr. Monica Cox:

Who never played ever again.

Shimon Cohen:

Yeah. I mean, he was one pass away from winning a super bowl, like literally an incomplete pass away, but he's [Flores] got, it'll be interesting to see when evidence gets presented because he he does have, he kept records and he talks about that and of course that's a super high profile situation, but it could be that he still, there's no recourse for him even with all his level of position, because what he's up against is so big.

Dr. Monica Cox:

Yeah. And I do think that sometimes when you do this work, you move past that point where it's about the job because you've seen something that is bigger than you are. And I even say this when I think about civil rights activists, of course, I don't know what Martin Luther King's mindset was, but I can imagine after he was threatened by the FBI, by the U.S. government, people kept coming for him. I've seen this, you're either going to move forward and say, it's got to be worth it for me to do this or it's like, I just retreat to what, it is like, you just, there is a point of no return in this. If he's never hired again, I don't know if that's his purpose anymore. I think by the time you get to this point, it's like I need to make sure that no one else goes through what I go through. And I understand that my career may be jeopardized, but this is a moment in history that's bigger than my career.

Dr. Monica Cox:

With Colin Kaepernick, I don't think he kneeled to be a martyr. It's just the fact that the response was so terrible and long lasting that he realized I'm onto something and now I have to continue moving because there are other issues and other sports where this is happening and this can now be the thing that knocks the door down. So those are examples of the trailblazers and trailblazers don't trailblaze just to be seen. Trailblazers trailblaze because it needs to be done, like they're on a path and then they realize there's no pathway here. And what do you do? I stay in the forest or I continue moving to get out of here. And that's what you have to do.

Dr. Monica Cox:

And it is so scary because you do not know if there is a cliff in front of you. You do not know if there's poison ivy or bees. It's very Hunger Games to me. When you think about doing this work, you're just out there and you have to survive, but yes, I'm just saying people see it. I believe that the people who do this work many times have to be visionary, because you cannot continue to get up and do it every day. If you did not see something in your mind as the purpose, you don't just wander in this space because it's not fun to wander. It's not fun to just do this. You don't do it just for, you do it because your eyes are on a prize. And I promise you for each of those people at some point it's like, I keep moving every day because I see the prize. I know where I'm going. Even if no one else sees it, I know what this has the potential to be.

Shimon Cohen:

Yeah, and for people who, I mean, people who have like health conditions and are like, am I going to lose my health insurance? You know? I mean. It is, it's terrifying. That was one of my situations. Because I have a health condition and I have to take medicine every day. So it was always, I think people should need to have exit plans, backups to the backup plan of what am I going to do if this doesn't work or they come after me. Other than having the proper documentation, there might need to be legal counsel, something like that. But people, people economically just need to be prepared for what other job can you do? You know, that-

Dr. Monica Cox:

Absolutely.

Shimon Cohen:

-And obviously in academia, there's tons of people leaving academia right now and are actually doing better outside of academia.

Dr. Monica Cox:

Absolutely. And you know what, and I think too, people are just more aware of what the potential could be, but I often tell this story about Black women and how so many Black women I know who are academics and have fought this fight or passing, or have passed in their forties, their fifties and their sixties. So the life expectancy is not, oh my gosh, you live to be 95 as an academic and it's that part that I look at too. And I feel there's so people who say, if we don't make these environments better, if we don't say something, then this could be my life. And that's a whole different movement right now too, with people. One example I often give. And I think about at the time that we're talking the former Miss USA, I think about her all the time, Cheslie Kryst, who jumped from the 29th floor of a building.

Dr. Monica Cox:

And, I've looked at her TikTok videos. I have looked at so many things. I did not know her before, but you look at her, she was gorgeous and smart and talented and she seemed to always be happy. But I am in a space where I keep asking these questions of, "Am I okay?" I'm trying to be more conscious of it. And I think so often and I can speak about it as a member of the Black community. We don't self reflect on things like that. And I was talking to one of my clients about this. I was doing a check in with my clients and I'm like, "Hey, let's reflect how you are doing, what's going on?" And I was like, "We need to take a break." And she asked, "Do we have permission to take a break? Does anyone allow us to take a break?"

Dr. Monica Cox:

And it's just based on history and Black women as property and as just whatever they want to call us, we were not brought here to be the pristine people, who should be placed on a pedestal. We were brought here to breed. We were brought here as property and over time we have become a part of the civil rights movement, the women's, all these things, but we were never the first thought. And so I think a lot of the things that I say and do come from the fact that I have to be very deliberate in taking care of myself. And you talked about healing because institutions don't do that for me. And I think that's going to be the next movement that people realize where it's like, "Okay, how do I define this for myself? How do I do this so that I don't have this heart attack so that even if I work out the stress is not making me not be able to lose weight" because you know, that's just a whole thing I was talking to someone about too, where it's just that constant stress is just killing people.

Shimon Cohen:

Yeah.

Dr. Monica Cox:

And it's not worth it and academia does not tell us that it's not worth it, but you have to get to a point where you say, "I'm not going to die for this." It is like, this is not it. I will work at McDonald's, no shades McDonald's, I will do whatever it means and I used to say, "I will fry- as a Southerner, I said "I will sell fish plates on a corner if I need to, instead of dying. I have to be here for my family. I have to be here for myself." So that's also why I tweet the way I do getting back to that part as well. I'm going to be free and I want other people to be free too. I want us to live long lives.

Shimon Cohen:

Yeah. I think that's so important of the compounding negative health effects of racism and sexism and capitalism and what it does to folks in these situations. And then I get, I feel frustrated and angry of because there's other folks making these institutions this way. Yes, these are systems, but there's people running these systems that are causing Black women to die early from working in these systems.

Dr. Monica Cox:

Or not paying Black women and they have to get extra jobs or they have to do other things or it's just putting more stress on them as, I mean, or us them as we live and take care of our communities as well, because that's like another thing too where it's like, it's not just about us. Many of us don't come from multi-generations of wealth. So it's always, thinking about the people around us and how do we use what we have learned in our wealth, our income to empower other people, that's important.

Shimon Cohen:

Yeah. A hundred percent. As we're wrapping up, I just want to thank you so much for your time. And I just want to give you if there's anything else you want to put out there on this time we have together,

Dr. Monica Cox:

Let's see. Yeah. I mean, always follow me and so hopefully you'll have all that information.

Shimon Cohen:

Of course.

Dr. Monica Cox:

That's really important– @DrMonicaCox –but I think that, I mean, I talked about courage. That is the thing that I want to leave with people where I say it is hard to do this work, but it is worth doing this work and you have to push past the pain and it is not going to happen in a day. But when you tired, when you're tired, what do you do? You rest and then you build, you get back up again and you start it. And so that's just how this is done. That is how you continue to see beyond yourself. This is not about one person and if you have kids or whether you don't have kids, I talked about legacy early on. We only have one life to live. And what we do in this life matters whether we think so or not. And so that one time that we speak up or the one time that we do something, that's brave, it's a seed that hopefully will grow.

Dr. Monica Cox:

And I'll say it reminds me of my father. And so this is an example where my father has passed away, but my father bought some land in Alabama and before he passed, he took me out to that land and he said, "I'm giving this to you." He said, "I won't see what you do with it, but this is my gift to you." And it is that, that I think about. We may not see the impact of this podcast. Somebody could listen to this a hundred years from now. You don't know how this is going to influence people, but every time you do this work, do it hoping that, like I said, that one woman who said I keep her moving, the words hit and you don't know how they hit. And you may never know. Someone may never tell you that they chose to keep moving because of something you did, but it happens. People need encouragement and to know that they're not alone. So, that's what this is about. It's bigger than we are. And always remember that.

Shimon Cohen:

I appreciate you so much. And I'm so glad we got to connect finally like this. And again, I want to thank you for taking your time to come on here and talk with me and also thank you for doing the work.

Dr. Monica Cox:

Yeah. Yeah. I have to, you know what at some point you just have to, it is my calling. It is what I'm meant to do. So it is my pleasure to do this. Thank you for asking.

Shimon Cohen:

Thank you for listening to Doin' The Work: Frontline Stories of Social Change. I hope you enjoyed the podcast. Please follow on Twitter and leave positive reviews on iTunes. If you're interested in being a guest or know someone who's doing great work, please get in touch. Thank you for doing real work to make this world a better place.

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