Annahid Dashtgard on "Bones of Belonging: Finding Wholeness in a White World"

Joeita Gupta:
I am Joeita Gupta, and this is The Pulse.
As an adult, I've often found myself straddling two worlds. First, as an immigrant, growing up in India, then settling in Canada as an adult, never quite fitting in anywhere. I sound, quote-unquote, too white when I go to India, and in Canada, my accent, which is supposedly a mishmash of Canadian, British, and Indian, marks me as, quote-unquote, a foreigner, and, quote-unquote, an outsider. The question that is so flippantly and often asked, "So where are you from," still shores up the boundary of who belongs. But belonging isn't just about physical belonging, the actual being in a space, it is also a sense of being part of a community and a group of people. And belonging to somewhere, anywhere really, can be as painful as it is promising. Today we discuss belonging. It's time to put your finger on the pulse.
Hello, and welcome to the Pulse on AMI-Audio. I'm Joeita Gupta, and I'm joining you as I do every week from the Accessible Media studios in Toronto. My hair is in a ponytail and I have on my set of headphones, they're black and they're over the ear. Today I'm wearing a short sleeve shirt. It has a V-neck and it's kind of a taupe-y pink, is how Matthew McGurk, my videographer, describe it. More earth tones than pink he says. I'll leave it up to you to decide and you can let me know in the comments down below what this actually looks like to you. But it's a nice stretchy, comfy T-shirt that I feel really snug in. Ready to do this interview, talking to someone that I've been delighted to welcome onto the program.
Annahid Dashtgard is the co-leader and founder of Anima Leadership, which is a leading inclusivity organization in Canada, and also the author of a new book. It's in a fantastic set of essays called Bones of Belonging, which explore some of the intricacies of being a racialized person, an immigrant, in Canada. Annahid, hello and welcome to The Pulse. I am so delighted you could join me today.

Annahid Dashtgard:
Oh, it's lovely to be here.

Joeita Gupta:
I've been trying to rack my brains as to where I might have met you. Sometimes you get that sense that you've seen somebody before. You're scratching your head going, "Where have I met them? Where have I met them?" And then when I realized that you were the co-founder of Anima Leadership, that's when I realized that I've had your partner, Shakil, on the show, I want to say a couple of years ago now. So it's really nice to have you come back in a manner of speaking, to talk about the work of inclusion and to talk about the challenges of being a person of colour in Canada.
Let's talk though about your book, Bones of Belonging. It's a fantastic set of essays, very punchy. Where does this idea come from?

Annahid Dashtgard:
Oh, well, I love that question. So the whole title for the book is Bones of Belonging: Finding Wholeness in a White World. And I also, in my day-to-day work life, am CEO of an equity and inclusion company, which I co-founded with my partner Shakil, who you interviewed. And in that work, one of the biggest things that I see missing in this conversation toward really creating equity and equality in our societies is people understanding what this whole conversation is really about. And I see it, and I think this is why we're in a very polarized moment around this topic, where you have academics that have this theory and the politics around it that are pushing, pushing, pushing ... Or academics and activists. And then you have the alt-right on the other side. And there's most people in the middle that I believe would be fully aligned with equity if they really got what we're talking about.
So back to the book, stories I think reach people in a way that facts and statistics don't. It's my biggest teacher. I go to books to learn and to understand and gain insight. And I wanted to write a series of stories and vignettes that would bring people behind the scenes to understand what does discrimination, particularly racial discrimination, look like, feel like, moment to moment. How can we bear witness? And most importantly, what can we do to shift things on a personal level in our day-to-day lives?
And the feedback I've gotten so far has been rewarding because it has been from racialized folks, but also a lot of white folks that have said, "Wow, I really get it," or, "You really help me understand what people are talking about when they use this particular word. And it helped me understand how I can just do things a little bit differently."

Joeita Gupta:
In one of the essays in the book you talk about your experience facilitating training for a group of, I'm going to say largely white, not all white, but predominantly white care-taking staff at a school. And just before the training, the day before, there's an article that's come out about this training in a right-wing publication. So you are going into the space feeling pretty shaky.
I wanted to ask you about some of the takeaways and some of the experiences from that particular training and what it taught you about facilitating conversations about inclusion? Because some really interesting things start to happen in the room when people start to share their experiences and their firsthand accounts.

Annahid Dashtgard:
Yeah, I love that question. I think that the chapter you're describing, just to set it up, is I was going into, like you said, work with a group of caretakers in a school board. And before that there was this article published that I found out had been somebody inside the organization had contacted the newspaper person, and I was worried about facing a lot of resistance and even possibly personal attack.
And instead what I found was people by the end of the day putting their cards on the table, talking very directly and openly about their concerns, doubts, hesitations with, quote-unquote, political correctness, this whole equity conversation, why people of colour are taking all the jobs. And I think that's the only way we ever create change is when we can actually have those brave and honest conversations with one another. And what I find is that it's interesting, the higher up people are in their organizations, the less permission people feel to actually ask those questions, even though I think that they have them. So when I'm working with executive teams, the resistance comes out in much more sophisticated and passive-aggressive ways. It's actually harder to respond to.
And so a learning for me with a caretaker staff was, oh, I went in feeling shaky and kind of nervous and afraid. And what happened was me realizing, this level of honesty is refreshing and I can respond to it and it was invigorating and exciting. And I came out wishing I had more time than when I'm working with other groups, where it just takes so much longer to get people to that place where they feel like they can actually say what they're thinking. Because only when we say what we're thinking can we actually shift it.
And this is a big problem in racial justice is I feel like we just, we're playing these roles, it becomes a game of ... We adhere to scripts, and when we're adhering to particular scripts it's not real and it's harder to get to a level of realness or transformation or a shift in thinking can actually happen.

Joeita Gupta:
One of the things I often say on air, and I've actually heard other people say here on air as well when it comes to people with disabilities, is how important it is to empathize things like, well, you don't have a disability today, but you might have one down the road. So we're really drawing on this idea of empathy for somebody else and trying to translate your experiences of oppression onto other people's lived realities of having a disability.
In that training that we were talking about you hear from a lot of people about their firsthand accounts and their frustrations with how they get treated by their superiors. There's one person who says, "I got called in to clean up someone's oatmeal, which they had spilled from their own breakfast." Somebody else says, "I had to go in and clean my principal's car." The people are really angry. And yet, when you have towards the end of the workshop a discussion about racism, you've still got people saying things like, "I don't like it that immigrants are coming in and taking my job."
So how do you deal with the fact that people aren't always quick to make those connections, and that the experience of one form of oppression doesn't necessarily translate into an understanding of another type of oppression?

Annahid Dashtgard:
It's a really important question and I think the most misunderstood. For example, we see it in the feminist community, how many feminists have trouble aligning and supporting trans rights. So there's many examples of, "My own experience of marginalization does not translate."
Here's what we found from the years of doing this work is, and part of our approach, we do not talk about systemic oppression in the first couple sessions at all. It's really important to start where people are at and to get people to connect to their own felt experiences of exclusion. At one point or another everybody on the planet has experienced what it is like to not belong. And we know from neuroscience research that that is never a neutral experience. When we feel excluded even for short periods of time, the reality is we tend to feel under threat. There's strong emotion that comes with it. Everybody has some experience of that.
And part of our methodology is getting people to connect to and remember that experience for themselves. And some people it might be years back for being too tall for that semester in high school, or having facial acne for that particular period of time. And when people are able to articulate and connect to and remember their own experience of exclusion and have that validated, in other words tell their own story and have it affirmed, we find that they're more easily able to empathize with the experiences of groups of people that experience exclusion on a regular basis. In other words, creating equity literacy, bringing more people into becoming allies for addressing invisible systems of discrimination, is an emotional literacy process, it is not cognitive. The understanding of the ideology and the analysis comes second.
And this is what drives me nuts because so many people doing this work don't get it. It's not about throwing facts and statistics at people. That is important, but fundamentally we need to help people go through an emotional journey, connecting people to what it feels like to not belong.

Joeita Gupta:
We're talking a bit about emotions here, so I would be remiss if I didn't ask you about your emotions, particularly anger. And you talk a lot about the role that anger plays in your life and in your writing. You clearly have some amount of anger expressed in your writings, which stems from the exclusion of being a person of color, and also the trauma of being relocated from Tehran at the age of six, this forced migration from Iran that you talk about in your writings.
So what then would you say is the role that anger plays in your life and in your writing? What is your relationship to anger?

Annahid Dashtgard:
The longer we live our lives, I believe the more we realize that answers to questions like this are just not pithy, one little kind of sentence answers. So with anger I would say two things. One, the anger was an important survival emotion, so for many years anger was a protective cloak. And looking back I realized how much I needed it, otherwise I would've fallen more deeply into depression, anxiety, things that I believe would've altered my path and made my path through life much more difficult. So the anger allowed me ... It was a prop, was a crutch. The anger was also useful in becoming an advocate for others and engaging in social change work organizations and movement building for many, many years.
But of course, what is true for myself and any of us, is that when we become lost in one emotion above all others, it's like we become a single-trick pony. And that gets you so far, but it doesn't equip you to go through the rest of ... To be able to address so many other things in life that life presents. And I needed to deal with my anger because it was, as much as it was protection, it also became a liability at a certain point.
And for me, what forced me to deal with anger was the moment of September 11th, where there was huge opened racism toward many brown, Black folks at that time, but particularly brown people who looked Middle Eastern. And all the stuff I hadn't dealt with just came to the surface, and I was forced to go into therapy. I started meditation. I started body-mind practices like yoga was one of them. And it took a few years to really go through the process of understanding what role anger had played, understanding my own story, being able to grieve. At one point I went back to the elementary school that I had attended when we first moved from Iran to Canada, and was able to touch and grieve the child in me that had experienced all of what she had experienced. And that was really important.
And it's ongoing work, but now I'm at a point in my life where I can notice the anger when it comes up, and rather than the anger taking over, I can invite her to sit at the table and have a dialogue, "What's happening here?" And I think make better decisions of what to do in the situation that I might find myself in. Do I need to put a boundary in place or do I need to actually deal with the anger and come with more empathy? Do I need to get more information? And so the anger is an informant rather than what I would say, did before, which was react sometimes without thinking, which is not helpful. And I don't think it's helpful in the world we live in, because when we react without thinking we feed the polarization. I don't want to be part of that anymore. I don't think that's helpful. I want to be a bridge, not a one-trick pony barking the same message, despite the situation or person I'm in front of.

Joeita Gupta:
Yes, the phrase that you used in the essay, which I really loved, is using anger as an ally or treating anger as an ally. And I think I'm going to be meditating on that one for a really long time.

Annahid Dashtgard:
Yes.

Joeita Gupta:
And now of course just towards the end of the essay, and this is the part that I find really cool, is the fact that your son is the one correcting everybody's mispronunciation of your name, whether it's the parents of other kids or if it's the barista at the cafe, making sure nobody is saying your name wrong.
Now I know you've done a lot of training, a lot of work around inclusivity, you've talked to caretakers, you've talked to executives, you name it, you have a long resume, but how does that conversation become a different conversation, maybe more challenging even, when you start to have conversations about the impact of racism and exclusion with your own kids? Because you have two children and I'm sure they are both very inquisitive.

Annahid Dashtgard:
Many children come in with natural doses of empathy. And as a parent it's been so interesting to watch how quickly they pick up. You know what, I think it takes adults a lot longer, like what exclusion looks like, how to step in and look after people in their environment. And if I can, I'd love to just ... This is a really short little vignette in the book.

Joeita Gupta:
Oh, yes. Please, go ahead.

Annahid Dashtgard:
And I'd love to read it because names are important because they're actually the first signal we give to people as to whether we are welcoming them into our orbit. Even yesterday I was on a national council of a board that I'm working with and my name constantly was mispronounced. And I thought to myself, "We've just reviewed all the equity policies and strategies that this organization has adopted, and yet really simple behavioural [inaudible 00:18:14], we're not able to manifest what this looks like in relationship." So I had to pause and correct a couple of times.
So I'd love to just read this because I think this is something that we can all do and it's a really easy behavioural practice to pause and ask somebody how to pronounce their name. And if we can't remember, "Hey, sorry, I just can't remember. Can you just remind me again how do I pronounce it?" So this vignette is called Names.
"It's a furnace of a day, thanks to climate change and this being the peak of summer weather. To cool off, the four of us head over to the local outdoor pool to go swimming. We have to check in at reception, a couple of makeshift folding tables first. When we finally reach the front of the line the teenage attendant asks, "Names," in a bored, monotone voice, with pen poised to record them on the sheet in front of them. I suddenly get an image of immigration lines at ports of entry into this country about 100 years ago. I always feel a slight tightening inside whenever I'm asked for my name still."
"My son Koda, four years old, declares in a trying-to-be-helpful and sound-like-an-adult tone of voice, 'My mama's name is Annahid. I know it sounds kind of weird, but that's really her name.' I laugh, while inwardly cringing. From the mouth of babes, not even my own son is exempt from the learned discomfort with names like mine, cultures like mine, ancestry, like mine. Annahid is such a common name in Iran, the Middle East and beyond, but here it bears a stamp of foreigner, outsider, someone to be wary of."
"We enter the change room and the intensive gymnastics of getting swimsuits onto two hyperactive children quickly chases any memory of my own name right out of my head. Submerging myself in the cool waters of the pool is a welcome relief. I talked to my son later that night. 'That hurt me a little bit when you said my name was weird. What's different about my name versus Sally or Rachel?' 'It sounds different,' he replies. 'But for who?' I ask. 'I used to go by Anna, but then I realized my real name comes from a place where it represents water and stars, the name of a goddess, a powerful name people used to worship and still do. It was only when I moved here that people bullied and teased me about it.' He squeezes my hand and I continue gently. 'People still get it wrong most of the time, but that's okay because now I choose to use it. I'd like you to use it as well.' 'Okay, mama,' he nods staring at me solemnly, his brown eyes wide and rounded in his small face. 'Thanks. Baba,' I whisper, 'time for some hugging.'"
"A year later I arrived to pick up Koda from a play date and his friend's mother comes out to greet me. 'Oh, Annahid,' she says, 'I have ...' She doesn't get any further because Koda comes out and carefully, yet confidently, interrupts her, 'Actually, my mom's name is pronounced Annahid.' I feel a little embarrassed but also proud. He has overcome his default absorption of the norms around him because of the desire to do better by his mama. As we walk home together I squeeze his hand in mine, realizing I feel more than pride or momentary self-consciousness. I feel loved."
"Sometimes at busy coffee counters, I will shorten my name to Anna, just once in a while when the line is long and my time is short. If Koda is with me though I can't get away with it. 'Your name is Annahid,' he'll admonish, and then loudly correct the barista as well. He has become my name guard, on the lookout for occasions where I may be slighted or minimized through the mispronunciation of my birth title. I relish how my child self is now protected by my own child, his generation learning from and correcting the erasure mine faced. Names are the first signal as to whether and how much we are welcomed anywhere. My son reminds me that a key measure of belonging will be when all names matter."

Joeita Gupta:
That is so powerful. Really, it is. And I'm just looking at the clock here and honestly, I probably have about two minutes so I'm going to ask you a question that, in retrospect, I should have probably asked you right off the top, which is why did you go with the format that you went with? You've gone with the short essay format. It's short, it's punchy, it's powerful, I love it. But why not just go with a memoir? What is it about this particular format that lends itself to getting the message across to the reader?

Annahid Dashtgard:
Well, my first book was a memoir called Breaking the Ocean: A Memoir of Race, Rebellion and Reconciliation, and that plays a particular role. But like you said, I think stories reach people in a different way. And these stories are like the bones in the human body. There's the 10 longer stories that each talk to a different relationship of belonging, and smaller vignettes in between. And I wanted it to be the book that somebody could pick up, read two pages and think about it. Reflect, put it down, and then pick it up two weeks later and read another. And perhaps take it into the workplace and share the story, two pages, that moved them and open up a conversation.
So I think Bones of Belonging, this book is very accessible and relatable for anybody, wherever they're at in their journey, whatever identity they might have, whatever community they find themselves in, it touches like bones.

Joeita Gupta:
Yeah, belonging to anywhere, it's a tricky concept to handle. Belonging to a group of people or even just a community is a really fundamental concept for a lot of people. And it's a bit like your bones really. This is, I think, making a reference to the illusion of the title of your book, where bones are really holding up your entire body. And it's a feeling of belonging that a lot of people take for granted, but which I suspect you and I, as immigrants, most certainly do not take for granted to talk about what it is to actually belong to a space and to be part of a community.

Annahid Dashtgard:
That's right.

Joeita Gupta:
Annahid, it was really lovely speaking to you today. Congratulations on the book. It's so well written, and I am still reading through it. I try to get through books fairly quickly ahead of the show, but I really had to take some time to think about this one and absorb it. So thank you very much for speaking to me today. It was a pleasure having you on the program.

Annahid Dashtgard:
My pleasure.

Joeita Gupta:
That was Annahid Dashtgard, who is the co-founder of Anima Leadership, an inclusivity organization in Canada, and the author of Bones of Belonging, a series of short essays talking about the experiences of being a person of colour in Canada. I hope you will pick up that book, published by Dundurn Press.
And folks, we have got to run, but we have Just a few things to let you know about. Any feedback for the program, write to feedback@ami.ca. Give us a call at 1-866-509-4545. That's 1-866-509-4545. Don't forget to leave permission to play the audio on the program. You could find us on Twitter as well. On Twitter you can find us @AMIaudio, use the hashtag #PulseAMI. You can find me on Twitter @JoeitaGupta.
Our videographer today has been Matthew McGurk. Marc Aflalo is our technical producer. Ryan Delahanty is the coordinator for AMI Podcasts, and Andy Frank is the manager for AMI-audio. I've been your host, Joeita Gupta. Thanks for listening.