In the book Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, historian Yuval Noah Harari argues that each human is an amalgam of constantly updating algorithms, evolved to optimize for the survival and reproduction of one set of genes (Harvill-Secker London, 2016). Sanhita attributes how her many experiences have contributed to the “algorithms” that direct her life.

In this episode of The Nine Oh Six she deconstructs how her class, career, education and race motivate and fuel her passion for finding ‘individual justice’. She challenges with kindness on how we can be intentional in what we choose to challenge and how uncomfortable we are willing to get. She walks us through the power of being the opressor and being opressed and her continued journey to challenge the underlying power conversation which requires an investment in imagination.

TRANSCRIPT

Sanhita: [00:00:00] There is this drive to create tribal identity around a characteristic that has nothing to do with the individual, to just create a power structure that benefits your own group. That's the driving underlying political force, like the cast of bones.  So when people say we are diverse, because we have some speakers and German speakers, so we don't need to worry about what we are doing with Syrian refugees, or whatever, frankly, usually what I'm hearing is let's look at this part we're doing well. And not talk about this other part that's more uncomfortable. That's more difficult. Which hasn't been resolved and is not about to get resolved. So again, people are always running from the fundamental underlying power conversation, because really what do you do with that? How do you create a world that is free of that? It requires a real investment in imagination.

Archita: [00:01:11] Welcome to Season Three of The Nine Oh Six.

This is Archita and joining me is Olivia Cream. I am thrilled for Olivia to join The Nine Oh Six family on Season Three as our guest cohost.

For The Nine Oh Six, a podcast where we interviewed driven women who are mapping their own unique success stories. Making an impact both in their professional lives and in their communities

Olivia: [00:01:41] I'm so excited to kick off season three with Sanhita Sen, the Assistant District Attorney for Philadelphia. She shares how she is choosing to challenge 60 years of systemic racism in the criminal justice system, as part of the truth, justice and reconciliation commission. Sanhita was born in Calcutta, India and spent the majority of her childhood in Michigan and Virginia.

She encourages us to be intentional in what we choose to challenge if we do have the privilege to do so. The heavy work is when you're standing up to be a voice on systemic racism. She believes we are all just molecules hurdling through space and we should spend the limited time we have in any given molecular combination being as kind and as curious as possible.

Archita: [00:02:42] Hello Sanhita, welcome to The Nine Oh Six. We are so excited to have you kicking off season three.

Sanhita: [00:02:52] Thank you so much for having me. I am so excited to be here.

Archita: [00:02:58] Our focus for Season Three,  Choose to Challenge, which is what the international women's day organization has taken up as a team for this year. And , I'm so excited that they've chosen to go so strong, because women who choose to challenge and always questioned and just numerous different ways. So what does that word choose to challenge or that phrase mean to you?

Sanhita: [00:03:24] Difference between the challenges that fall on you, that you had no choice, but to deal with and challenges that you choose. So I really appreciate the phrasing of this theme of thinking about the world, not just as not your life just happening to you. But what are the challenges that you want to take on that you want to bring all of your energy and, talent and everything you have to give that you would choose to take on.

And you have to obviously have a certain amount of privilege maybe to even ask yourself that question in time and space. But if you're able to, I think that's the core of a meaningful life that you are able to intentionally choose things that might be difficult, but it means something to you.

 Archita: [00:04:19] That's such an amazing way to kick this off.  At any time in any day and age that are lots of challenges that are out there. And sometimes people just get caught up in the passion of the moment, the anxiety of the moment, the frustration of the moment, the desire to find a solution of the moment and you take on a cause and then you end up having 15 causes that you're choosing to challenge, but with no intentionality, but just to be there because you want to occupy that space and that moment in time,

Sanhita: [00:04:52] Or just coming at you and you aren't necessarily, finding the space to I see it like double Dutch, like once you're in a certain rhythm, keeping up as one thing, but sometimes just. Engaging figuring out how do I enter? When do I enter? Is this the right thing to enter? That can be really intimidating to people so much so that well-meaning people with resources, with good hearts that look around and want to do something to make the world better, a better place. Can't figure out that timing or can't figure out that rhythm so that they get plugged into something meaningful. And I see that all around me. And I think, people feel depressed, they feel isolated, they feel alienated. Even if they have good jobs and are employed and are healthy and, everything seems okay, but they just don't feel like they've found their calling in life or they've really contributed to the world. Trying to do something with our limited time on this earth, whatever that is. I think is really grounding and inspiring.

Archita: [00:06:02] Wow.  It's asked me when you mentioned the story about,  what you said is. Absolutely true. And I'm smiling and I'll have to share this with you later. Why, but yes, people do feel isolated. People do feel alienated. So how have you gotten through these kinds of challenges to find your meaning.  So walk us through, what is the journey you went through to help find that meaning to then know what is, what are those things you're going to stand up and choose to challenge in your life.

Sanhita: [00:06:34] Sure. That's a great big question, but I will try. I think if you are asking yourself, I really struggled with this question, so I'm very sympathetic to, what are we passionate about? And there's this reaction of what am I supposed to say? Maybe if you're an artist and all you've ever wanted to do is play the saxophone and you're passionate about the saxophone that's a really easy question for you.

 But I very much lived in a cerebral, headspace for a chunk of my life. I really focused on school and professional achievement and, passion isn't, doesn't live in headspace, right? It lives in the heart. It lives in your body. It lives in how you feel when you think about something and how it moves you to sacrifice or, work hard or be generous.

 To me, so many really smart, capable people find it really hard to tune in to that inner voice. And you hear that language all the time. Find your voice, find your passion. How do you do that? For me, it has been focusing on ,through meditation and self-reflection, it has been really helpful for me to just track what gives me joy and what is the priority, right? Like on a given day, what am I prioritizing? I remember seeing on YouTube, this little thing where it was a jar and you had all these ping pong balls and sand, and you had to fit it into the jar.

That jar was meant to symbolize your life. And the ping pong balls were meant to symbolize the things that were really important to you and the sand was meant to symbolize like everything else. And it was very obvious that if you put the sand in first and then tried to cram into the ping pong balls, you were going to leave out some things that you actually consider really important.

But if you put the ping pong balls in first and then just fit the sand around it. Yeah. Then it'll all fit or it won't when you don't care. It's a simple thing, but that really is the key. So if you sit down and ask yourself, what do I care about most? Like when I get up in the morning, what gives me joy?

What gives me excitement? What gives me energy? Where do I want to be doing all day? There's sometimes there's an answer that is not convenient. That is, I'm a lawyer. I went to law school. I've been practicing for almost 10 years. And on a really deep level, I have felt that something about legal practice and the cerebral nature of it. The very confined nature of conflict, subject to lots and lots of rules, there's things about it that appealed to me.

And that's why I got into it, but it does leave something out. And it leaves something out about human experience, which is not so well confined, not so easily combined. So the work I'm doing now , it gets to that middle space between the cerebral nature of legal practice and the emotional nature of human life.

And you got to draw on both, I think. To really reach people and make progress on whatever it is. You care about whoever you are.

Archita: [00:10:02] You're passionate about the concept of individual justice ? What does this mean? And how does it tie into what you're focused on right now that you are choosing to challenge?

Sanhita: [00:10:13] I have been practicing as a trial attorney at the District Attorney's Office of Philadelphia, where I spent about a year and a half prosecuting criminal cases in court.

  And then I have now moved over, I guess it's been about two years doing that and I've just moved over to this new project truth justice and reconciliation commission, intended to address racism in the criminal justice system.  So individual justice,  it is different from there's something, there's a concept in civil cases. As opposed to criminal physics, where you're trying to make a post and someone has been hurt, and you're trying to make that person whole.

So whether you were, intentionally hurt that person or not, maybe it was, they slipped on your sidewalk. You didn't mean for them to get hurt, but they did and you didn't put salt down and that was your fault. And now you owe them and you pay their hospital bills. Okay. So that is not about.

Punishment. It is not about rehabilitation. It is not about sending a message to society beyond salt your sidewalks, but in the criminal justice system, it's different. So we are expressing a collective outrage at a certain kind of behavior, and we are punishing the person, regardless of whether or not that is helpful to anyone he or she has harmed.

So we, we have built an entire complex around that, right? So when we talk about individual justice, the idea is to go back to that concept of, Hey, you have brought this person here to punish them and ideally alter their behavior and create someone who is behaving in a way that society approves of, as opposed to expresses outreach over.

But we have a system in place that is operating every day that disproportionately impacts particularly black men, but people of color in general. And it really is a system. So people get confused when you say something abstract like that, right? Okay. It's a system. Are you accusing me of being racist?

What do you mean? It's a system? What are we talking about? So let me give you an example of what I mean, when I say it's a system. So as a DA, as a prosecutor, I would routinely go into court with 12, 15 cases, some days 40 cases, if it's just what we call preliminary hearings, not full trials. So the volume is very high and most of your case files necessarily are dealing only with the crime that is being alleged, that's being charged, right?

 It's not like you're getting a case file on the whole person. Like you're getting a little bit about their criminal history, but if they're nice to grandma on the weekends and getting groceries for grandma and her neighbors, that's not part of your case spot, right?  All you are seeing is this little slice of their life, where they did something that got pulled them into this  and the allegation itself, whether it's, the sale of narcotics or a simple assault or whatever it is, that language is almost exactly the same for each person. It changes a little bit. The name and address, who the complainant is or where the drugs were being sold.

Those things are gonna change, but necessarily the actual description of the crime is going to be more or less the same. So unless that person has a lawyer who is going to go to great lengths to really bring to the prosecutor, that's me in this situation, a fuller picture of that person. Each defendant I'm prosecuting is pretty much indistinguishable from the next.

So unless someone has a really long record or, something stands out in some way, for the most part, you can't tell the difference between, someone who needs, who is going to respond well to a slap on the wrist versus someone who really needs, a lot of counseling, a lot of, would respond well to therapy or, other  social services, right?

 Versus someone who really poses a public safety risk. Like no one is distinguishing that way. We're trying to, so are we talking about individual justice? We're trying to get to a place where we do better, not just at quote, punishing a person in this abstract sense. But in doing a goal that actually serves the public good. Meaning that person, that their victim, if they have one, their victims, families, their families, their communities taking into account is broader.

A pool of people that are necessarily affected every time we prosecuted a case. And again, we do it thousands and thousands of times a year.  So there is a systematic nature and you feel that systematic nature in the anonymity of the files or not anonymity. You have names, but just the lack of depth of information that you get.

And then adding to that, I've really felt this in court, right? You're standing in front of the judge. The defendant is at a table next to you also facing the judge with his or her counsel and usually his right. Almost always male, almost always black. And that person is represented by an attorney who is the person you're speaking with.

You're not speaking to the defendant, right? You're speaking with that person's counsel most of the time. And sometimes you're not even really having a conversation with their counsel depending on the nature of the case or whatever else is going on. But at no point, am I speaking directly with the defendant?

And the defendant has a right to silence. The defendant has a right to remain silent. That's core in our system and really important. And I believe in it that protects the defendant legally, but we lose something in the sense that we never get a sense of the defendant's humanity, because I never get to hear him speak.

The court certainly never gets to hear him speak until he's already pled guilty and has being sentenced or, is expressing remorse and whatever else is going you might get to it after the fact, but in that crucible, which is an open criminal case is a crucible of sorts. You're never getting a sense of that person.

And I find that I didn't even really realize how much that mattered until I started working on these cases where I prosecute over the last year I've been prosecuting police officers and the complainants in those cases are often, poor young people that were defendants in a different criminal case.

And during which the police somehow abused their rights. So all of a sudden you start hearing the rest of the story, all of the context, everything else that was going on. Before they were brought in for trial and I'm looking at their case file and thinking to myself, what would I have thought of this person based on the case file, how would I have prosecuted this case versus how do I feel now that I've spoken to this person?

Do I perceive this person as a public threat in the same way? And which is the truth, right? Is the case file, the more objective truth. Or is the more objective truth the part that includes something about this person's humanity, and we are so afraid of making a mistake in the criminal justice system, we are just we're just almost afraid to look this problem in the eye and really acknowledge the humanity of the people that we are sentencing because.

The effect is it becomes very difficult to just throw people away. You just can't do it, but it tells you something. So what I'm doing now is working on something called the truth, justice and reconciliation commission. It been the original version of this w as created in South Africa after the fall of apartheid when Nelson Mandela became president. The idea was to allow people an extra judicial body that wasn't subject to standard legal rules of evidence or testimony and prosecution, all of that, and allow them to come forward and thousands of them dead to tell their stories.

About what happened to them during apartheid. What happened to them, what happened to their families, what did they explore? The violence and human rights violations that they experienced at the hands of the state. And at the same time, people who had participated in that violence and, members of the state police officers, and otherwise who wanted to come forward and say, this is what we're doing, or ma'am, I'm sorry to tell you, this is what happened to your son, right? I was there. I saw it. These are the records. I can tell you what happened to him and finally give you some answers as to how he died. That had a huge effect of healing and addressing pain and questions and human connection, and would not have been possible in a standard judicial context, because the perpetrator obviously would be prosecuted or would never come forward would never admit to anything without some kind of. Understanding that we're moving forward from there.

Archita: [00:19:55] I did not realize that this was so tied into the work you are doing and what you are trying to uncover in a country that does not believe this is a problem.

Sanhita: [00:20:10] How do you explain to people? Explain to people that this is a problem without presenting the testimony of the people that can explain that this is a problem, right? So these are people that so often are marginalized, discriminated against and just not taken seriously. So that they never get a platform to tell their story, to just tell their story. This is what happened to me, because you can argue all day about opinions. This is what I think we should do. Defund the police, abolish prisons, send them all to jail. You know what, whatever you can go back and forth about political opinions all day, but everyone has a right to their own story.

If they're telling the truth or trying to tell the truth, from a sincere place. Everybody knows what happened to them, right? So if you get people to share their stories, it's much easier to understand where people are coming from. And when they're saying a political opinion, underlying it is always a story, or many stories about how they got to that opinion. So part of it is giving marginalized people, a platform to speak. With the credibility and just audience that being associated with the district attorney's office can provide. So we are lending our authority to folks that should have that authority on their own, but don't get it.

So we're trying to address that. And at the same time, offer a forum to address some of the most difficult, painful, disputed issues facing our country at a time where everybody is divided very deeply in a hyper-partisan hyper hostile environment. So to try to get out of that framework and move into a space where let's talk about what's going on, right?

What is your story? Forget political opinions. What is your story? Let's hear it. And let's see what we hear because people have something to say. And I think we would all benefit from that. And we're at a point in our national history coming out of the killing of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown in Ferguson and through you know this summer with the murder of George Floyd. The ascendance of the black lives matter movement, right? There has been a real energy and urgency around addressing racism, not just poverty, not just, some of these other phrasings that allow us to dodge the issue of race. Because it's uncomfortable.

It's uncomfortable. It's hard to talk about, but we're doing it, we are feeling we are experiencing a willingness in this country for the first time, in a long time. What we're calling a national reckoning on race, where people are willing to talk about it. I remember I studied abroad in Cape Town in 2006 when I was a junior in college.

And people talked about race in Cape town. I think talked about it because the history of apartheid was so fresh in the fall of it was so fresh. Yeah. I'd only been like 15 years or less. And I remember coming back to the US and being like we don't talk about this year. Does that mean it's not an issue?

You elect Brack Obama president, and then you've elected Donald Trump president the next time around, like, how does that happen? What's going on? Are we schizophrenic or are we just not able to engage? So we're having these strange manifestations at the highest levels of politics and much deeper rooted issues that we're not able to connect on a human level.

Archita: [00:24:12] You really have a way with words and like really helping people understand really complex things.   One of the things I learned about you was that you worked at the international criminal tribunal.

Sanhita: [00:24:26] It was a tribunal that was founded in the early nineties while the war in Bosnia was still ongoing. And the portion I worked on related to something called the Schreiber meets on massacre when the basis of which a general named Ratko Mladic was charged with genocide among other things. So I worked on that piece of it as an intern not of just case on a different individuals case general Tolimir, who was also charged based on the same incidents in history. I worked on that as an intern when I was in law school. And then I came back five years after graduation to work on general Mladic's case. That's one of the, one of the biggest fish you could say one of the highest level individuals who's military defender that was responsible for the deaths of seven to 8,000 mostly men and boys over the course of five days in in an area in an enclave known as Srebrenica.

He was convicted so I had been brought in just to help put together the final trial brief on the prosecution's case. I will tell you it's heavy work, right? It's heavy work.

Archita: [00:25:39] That's what I was going to ask you like fuels your passion for justice.  I guess there's nothing that's easy then you're trying to fight for justice, but these are not the simplest of convictions or cases. They probably take an emotional toll on you as well as you're processing all of this.

So what fuels your passion and how do you manage your energy, emotional energy as you work through this?

Sanhita: [00:26:04]  Yeah. When I first arrived, I was really struggling.  I was having bad dreams every night. Really feeling up on an intense, emotional level that this work was really tough. And yeah, and enjoying work, motivated and very immersed  but this feeling of hopelessness or despair.

And I asked my colleague, Arthur, I was like, you've been here for years. How you get through the day. I'm trying to, I'm trying to be zen, meditate, think about, meaning and, humanity and et cetera, et cetera. And people do crazy things to each other that are really bad.

How is, how do we live in this world? And he said something to me that really stuck with me forever. And I think about frequently. And he said, you read these case files and you're often reading about the worst part of a person's life. Especially for victims, the worst thing that ever happened to them.

And that's all that's all you focus on as a prosecutor. But I've been here long enough that I see these guys, that were shot and walked through the woods for five days with injuries or whatever, right? Like that's all you know about him, but I've seen him 20 years later and he has grandkids and he has a life and that's not to say he isn't traumatized.

And he isn't carrying that burden. And some people really never recover. That really does happen. And obviously some people just die right. They're not here for it, but for those that survived and some did, there is the sense that life goes on and there is something to live for and you can be joyous again, and you can recover.

People are resilient. Shockingly resilient. And I think about this,  how do you lift from this place that is so dark, and the thing is people do. They really do. And it's similar actually, as I'm saying this, I'm realizing that there's a link between what I'm attributing to my colleague in what he said to me and what I was saying earlier about the case files about defendants, right? You're seeing only that little slice of the worst thing often that they've actually done. And Brian Stevenson, who's an activist activity so much more than activist is an inspiration, writer, right?

A founder of something called the Equal Justice Initiative. He's argued court cases to the Supreme court? The movie Just Mercy is about him.  He likes to say no one should be judged on solely on the worst thing they've ever done. And  there's something about that, that I just didn't understand for a long time, like you'd would say. And I'm like, okay, but what if the worst thing you ever did was really bad, right? But I understand now what he's trying to say. As I'm starting to realize how little I've given case can tell you about a person, it's just our viewpoint as prosecutors is limited. And that's not our fault. Like we have, we have our own burdens, we're coming from a place of wanting to do justice. But the thing is, I don't know if you can, I don't know if you can, without really taking into account the full picture of a person and not just a person, their relationships around them, the relationships with victims, the community, and like how, systematically we are addressing what we're calling crime.

 And this is, I, I'm talking to you for almost 40 minutes and we haven't talked about race at all, really. And it has everything to do with everything, right? Like that tribal picture of who is a threat, who is a victim. So many of the lynchings that took place in the US of black Americans who were killed usually verbally.

By civilian mobs most of them were white and generally often accompanied or at least allowed to do what they were doing by police, by law enforcement. So many of those lynchings, so many of those murders were built around this idea that the person who was being lynched was being killed, committed a crime.

Because once you say that person committed a crime. We just it's okay to do whatever you want to them. Even the 13th amendment that abolished slavery creates an exception for anyone that has been convicted of a crime. So we have used it to just teach, humanize an entire group of people that we were dehumanizing long before we were charged with crimes. We used to as a country enslave black Americans, then we muddled through reconstruction after the civil war and posed segregation through Jim Crow laws, and then moved into mass incarceration. So  race has everything to do with everything and anyone anywhere can be both oppressor or oppressed.

 But here today in America, we have a human rights problem, and we cannot talk about it without talking about race. And it's not just all lives matter. There's a reason the movement is Black Lives Matter. I am not Black, but I can see that we should all be able to see that once we get, once we're able to focus and accept that look race is hard to talk about.

It's just hard. It's just hard. It's easy to offend. It's easy to make a mistake. It's easy to say something stupid or ignorant, but you have to talk about it. We have to talk about it and focus on it specifically, because if you give people an out to give people an exit and to take it, they will talk about anything other than race.

We'll talk about poverty. We'll talk about immigration. Talk about gender.

Archita: [00:32:06] Growing up in India.  There is the caste system. It's rampant, it's all around you. And  that is very much, the beginnings of a lot of what we're seeing with racism

Sanhita: [00:32:16] I just wanted to come in on just what you just said. So Isabel Wilkerson has written this book Caste, which is phenomenal. And she talks about race being the skin color or the skin of a system, but caste being the bones. So the fundamental power structure is underneath. And what is the outward marker of whether you're high status or low status dominant caste or subordinate castecan change from context to context.

So in India, we do not distinguish black versus white because that doesn't make sense, right? Everybody's Brown, but we distinguish along a gradation. We distinguish based on, light-skinned or dark-skinned we distinguish according to caste, we distinguish according to the religion. But all the underlying, all of those distinctions is a power politics of asserting dominance and placing a certain group and a certain, unfortunate group into a place where, everyone else tries to keep them subordinated.

So that human. A pattern. We see it everywhere. So this is not to say that this that's why that's the key piece. I think, to understanding race, to not vilify individuals that are participating in a system as if they are just morally reprehensible, because the system itself puts you in that position.

And in order to not engage in that system requires real thought and real effort to be anti-racist right. To be fighting that system. Because if you're just going about your day and thinking to yourself, but I didn't hurt anybody, what's the problem, right? Like you're part of a system. And I was part of a system as a DA, as a prosecutor.

I was part of a system, right? As, someone in India who comes from a family of landowners that is educated, that is now educated. I come from a certain level of privilege as a young person who was Brown sounds, foreign immigrant female growing up in a largely white part of Michigan. I was also part of a system, but a different part.

So you can experience when been experienced land privilege, we all experienced varieties, but to me, none of that should lose sight of the long running deeper flagrant, human rights violation that is sewn into the fabric of American history. In specifically in its treatment of African-Americans like we just cannot run from that.

And the longer we run from it, the ghosts of that history has followed us from the founding of slavery in 1619 through the revolution, through the civil war, through reconstruction, through the civil rights era and well into the 21st century. Guys, we gotta just deal with it. We just deal with it.

But if we do many of us see it as the key to liberation for everybody else, right? If you can look this monster square in the eye and slay it, you can do anything in my view. So that's where I'm coming from. That's why I'm invested in this work. And I really want to come at it from a place of love for humanity and what people are capable of in the good sense, even while acknowledging what they're capable of in the monstrous sense.

We are both. We are capable of both and it takes real work and real, intentional courage, I think on everyone's part to engage with these issues, because you want to talk about choose to challenge, right? If you were angry to racism on a day-to-day basis, you're not choosing that challenge it's coming at you, whether you like it or not.

And that sucks. That's unfortunate and it's. It is what it is, but if you were choosing to acknowledge your own privileges and recognize the ways that the system we're in is serving you no matter who you are. We all have some privilege, right? If you're willing to engage with that, not because you want to apologize to make yourself feel better.

 It's not about that, but to recognize that it's in operation, that if, there's a step that I find helpful for this purpose. They did an experiment where they sent out resumes with black sounding names and white sounding names, with a criminal record and without no record. And they found that if you were black with no criminal record, you are less likely to get a call back from an employer with the same resume, same qualifications than if you were white with a criminal record. That's racism, it's just racism. And it's subconscious often. It's just, and the less we talk about it, the more likely you are to engage in it, to make mistakes, not even to make mistakes, maybe. Some people have intentionally bigoted attitudes, and that's a different thing. But you were vulnerable to race-based because you don't grasp the history. You don't grasp it. This isn't the first time we've considered just choosing to be racist or choosing to be fascist or choosing to be segregationist. We know how that goes. That cannot be the future of humanity does not work.

And honor, what is best in each other? That's really important.

Archita: [00:38:29] The thing is that it's been so much done, to document and we've all witnessed

what's happened in the US, in America for most of the world. But systemic racism has tie-ins to colonialism in numerous ways as well, and has been perpetuated by colonialism. And the challenge I've been struggling with, to be honest with you this past year, ever since George Floyd, is just by the nature of where people come from, people say we are diverse. So in Europe it would be like, Oh, we're diverse. This is not a problem here. I am continuing to educate myself on this, but it irks me because it's such a cop-out when we say that this is not a problem here. And my question is how do we go about unearthing and engaging in conversations to even make people realize that we should consider this as a problem.

Forget that it's a problem.  I'm just thinking about listeners, especially who are here in Europe, how do they act? How do they inform themselves? What should they be doing to really  decide if they choose to, or not choose to challenge that misconception that because we're diverse. We have equity, we have belonging. We have inclusion in this part of the world.

 Sanhita: [00:39:57] Yeah. I think if you are looking at Europe, one of the things that becomes fairly clear fairly quickly is that whiteness as an identity, right? Whether it's in Europe or it's in the us has grown out of a diverse pool of people, right?

Like some people identify as Germans. Some people I've been identified as French. There was a period where Italians didn't count as white or Jews didn't count as white. But once you introduced black people, all of a sudden those folks are white, right? So there, there is a history around that psychology of in-group out-group who you are willing to let in based on who you are keeping out and vice versa.

So Europe's racism problem and I'm not as well versed in obviously what is happening necessarily in Europe  but in the work that I've done in Europe, of course, the Bosnian Muslims that were subject to this massacre were ostensibly white. So in that sense, it's not a racial issue.

But there is this drive to create tribal identity around a characteristic that has nothing to do with the individual, his or her character traits or contributions or thoughts or feelings, just on a group level and to just create a power structure that benefits your own group, right? That's the driving underlying political force like the cast of bones, right? So when people say we are diverse, because we have some speakers and German speakers, so we don't need to worry about what we are doing with Syrian refugees, or whatever, frankly, usually what I'm hearing is let's look at this part we're doing well. And not talk about this other part. That's more uncomfortable. That's more difficult. Which hasn't been resolved and is not about to get resolved. So again, people are always running from the fundamental underlying power conversation, because really what do you do with that? Like how do you create a world that is free of that? It requires a real investment in imagination, but I truly believe that it can be done. And not just that it can be done that it's essential. Then it's the only way humanity moves forward, right out of the dark ages of tribalism and into a future where we can really see each other.

Archita: [00:42:44] I love this investment in imagination. That is so powerful for people who want to do this kind of work and are sitting in corporate rooms around the world. Is it worth their time investing in trying to engage, trying to drive an investment in imagination support within those structures which are corporations that are going to do things a certain way.  They have certain rules and they're happy to do some things, but they're not going to do everything. Cause they've got to do, they've got to their goals are different.

So do people spend their time there or do they step away and say that, what, if I truly want to make an impact, I got to take this energy and go give it somewhere else out there in society where I can make an impact versus within the structural code of sorts.

Sanhita: [00:43:41] That's a great question.  Because I think you would get different answers from different people,  so some people would say, if you're not spending every day, dismantling capitalism, you are wasting your life.

 I should say I spent four years at a law firm from in Manhattan. And I love my firm, they were good people. It was one of the more diverse offices because I was in New York. And I know that there was a lot of intention around hiring and support for individuals that weren't whatever, white male privileged image you might have of corporate lawyers. And I understand that struggle. I really do. And you have to remember, like a job is a combination of lots of things for different people. So for some people, it really is just a livelihood.

Like I gotta pay my bills, I gotta eat. And I'm working in order to eat. If I didn't have to work if someone paid me this money and I didn't have to work, I wouldn't work. I would throw in my apron and not report to work. Like I'm done. And then for some people it's more of a calling. It's more like I would do this for free.

I wouldn't do this all day every day. And I'm just looking around to find an opportunity to get someone that allows me to make a livelihood out of this thing. I already, wanting to do all day. So for some people it's that other extreme. Corporate professionals I've found are for the most part neither.

So they certainly are well off enough that they're not really operating at a subsistence level, but I do, I have noticed a certain psychology around it that doesn't totally recognize that. There's this kind of like bottomless desire to feel financially secure and to feel emotionally secure.

I don't know who I am without this institutional prestige attached to my name. Like I am not sure that I will. So I do see that in people. And I say this with a lot of gentleness. I understand. I understand that. But especially, and I understand that, especially if you're a minority and you are, everyone takes you seriously because you're an associate at so and so law firm, but what if you're nobody and then nobody listens to you anymore.

And then what happens to you? Are you just going to disappear? And the answer is no, you're not going to disappear. You're not going to, if you have a strong voice and you can find it under any circumstances. But I'm not going to tell anybody what to do. People have different needs, they have different priorities.

They have different drivers. They have different things that make them happy that give them joy. But I will say only that there's a quotation attributed to Gandhi, that something like. When you, what you think and what you say and what you do is in harmony. That is the basis of a good and happy life.

The Greeks Greek philosophers. Talk about it. Like unhappiness is a division between your mind and what you are doing all day, right?

That is deep root of unhappiness. But if this is important to you and I would argue it should be, should doesn't really mean anything in this world. Like you have to figure out what is, or isn't important to you. If it is important to you. And you want to engage in, you're not going to leave your corporate job, right?

Like you want to, within the corporate context, be as true to your values as you can possibly be. There are ways to do that. And I think that people, when people change their minds. Like they rarely change their minds because somebody like yelled at them. Some of them they don't know or don't trust or don't like, But if they're close to some or have a relationship with someone and they respect that person as a peer, or they have a relationship in trust, and that person says to them, something that strikes them as, Oh, I didn't think about that.

Or I wouldn't have picked up that book or I wouldn't have gone to that rally. You wouldn't, there's, there is a. This is the code that all the social networking websites have cracked, right? If you hear it from a friend it is the most effective advertising there is.

Isn't going to be as compelling as hearing it from somebody you trust saying, I love this works. This is awesome. So it's there's a social networking aspect to dismantling racism. So if you are certainly if you're a white man in one of these contexts, and you can use your privilege and your platform to make room for voices that don't naturally have access to that privilege, right?

Pay attention to your female colleagues. Are they getting drowned out, pay attention to when you talk about racism, is it three white guys that occupy most of the space in that conversation? Like when someone speaks from an authentic experience, are people able to listen without getting defensive, that in itself is a huge part of the conversation.  Even folks we're trying to dismantle racism in our system are constantly falling over themselves to try and, not say something ignorant, especially if you're not a minority, right? If you're coming from a well-meaning place, but you keep asking, but what am I supposed to be saying?

What am I supposed to be doing? And the right question to ask. I think is how do I make space, right? It's not about what you're saying. It's can you listen, can you absorb? It is very hard to explain to people that have occupied a lot of space for most of their lives, that this doesn't require you to speak.

The thing that we're asking of you is give up your platform. Give up your space and give it to someone that is not getting it, but has something relevant to say,

Archita: [00:49:43] In the carpet realm? When a minority is the one who is give me the space.  I'm one of few who was able to speak and raise their voice.  You're guilty of wanting the limelight. And not doing it for the sake of, truly the cause, which is you cared about this so deeply. You want to educate folks on it because you hear these questions constantly. There was a study that just came on from Harvard business review, I think two days ago around this is that when minorities lean in and speak up on conversations around DEI, race, etc, whatever within a corporate structure is they're penalized for speaking up  versus white men or women, they're given space, they're given space and minds of everybody to speak up.

And that is exhausting because then, when I think about, individuals  who come from so many different backgrounds. And I continuously encouraged them to use their space to speak up if they are willing to, or able to do or want to,  I almost have to ask myself the question.

Should I even encourage that? Because they're not white, they're not, a man, and if I do that, do I put them at risk of that same kind of discrimination or bias that others before them have experienced? And then do they get disillusioned?

Sanhita: [00:51:06] Talking about makes me think of a chapter I'm reading Barack Obama, his new book A Promised Land. And he's talking about making the decision to run for president and the level of hubris that requires just like pure self aggrandizement and megalomania and narcissism. He's like am I just a crazy person?

So he's taking us into his mind as he's making this decision. And the way he tells the stories his wife, Michelle asks him , why does it have to be you? Why do you need to do this? Which is to be a version of  are you doing this for the limelight or do you actually, are you actually trying to help somebody?

And the response of games is, regardless of what I do as president, the fact that I ran at all and won at all if I ran, we'll give people young people a sense of what is possible, and that is enough. And there's something in that I think is really important. So if you speak up in these corporate settings, which by no means are more impregnable, and then British colonial government, for example, there's people are willing to listen.

They just may or may not always give you the feedback that makes you feel heard. So you really have to take care of yourself too, right? To do this kind of work. Yeah. You have to connect with people and support you. That's why I reached out to Meha and you and this group. So it was just like this working hard and I feel lonely and I feel terrified and I feel stressed all the time, but it's really important.

I want to do this well, and I want to stay charged because otherwise I can't do it. So how do I do that? What do I need, how do I build solidarity with other folks that are experiencing this? How do I help them? How do I help them and ask them to help me and who are the people that are making me crazy and.

What is the approach that I want to take with that conflict, if I'm really angry and that anchor is real, and it's tied into my professional advancement and everything else. So that may be worth the fight. And if it's, junior people, how am I advising them? Like how do I tell them fight this fight?

When I know it's going to cost them  a level and the payouts in the future. So there's a concept around this. Also a Gandhi quote, but something like, you never know what fruit your actions are going to bear. But you have to do the right thing and it may not bear fruit in your time, in your place or your time.

But if you do nothing, there will definitely be no fruit. And I think of it, there's also a saying in the Unitarian and you want to say, we all sit in the shade of trees we did not plant. And that is as it should be so long as we plant trees for others, that is the nature of human connection.

We don't always see the benefits of our own work. But we benefit from the good works of others and we try to do good works to benefit posterity. So I hear you. And somewhere between committing to doing the right thing, no matter what, and taking care of yourself, when you need to. I think there's an answer, right?

Archita: [00:54:07] But you said this and I was like, Oh shit.  She's describing me, which is, people really associate their sense of security, emotional security sense of belonging and everything with this carpet brand. When I came to America. I was still, the only thing you need to ensure is that the end of four years you have a job, so you can  have a better life for yourself, because you're not going to have that if you come back to India or wherever else. So that's what I was told, as I got on a plane, got to the US. God, I'm going to get emotional about this, but my quest as a 17 year old, overcompensating on doing a million activities, so having eight jobs on campus doing so many different things that I, and I enjoyed all of that. , but like really stretching yourself to get a job. And at 18. I still remember this. I went to the career fair. I went to IBM first and I shook hands and I was like, hi, I'm Archita, nice to meet you. The first question the recruiter asked me was.  Archita, nice to meet you, do you need a visa? He did not even ask me. Nothing else. First question. That was my first experience with what they had told me you need to do here. And this first sense of anxiety, like if I don't get this, because his first question is, do I need a visa? And I said, yes, I do. He said, Oh, I'm sorry, I can't talk to you. And I was like, what? And so then the next company I go to is my company. And that person doesn't ask me, do you need a visa? That person asks me, tell me more about yourself. I want to get to know you. And then when that company like brings you in you have such a strong sense of yourself in that place because you were only going to be worthy for people back home. If you had a job after those four years.

Sanhita: [00:56:00] The pressure is real.

Archita: [00:56:02] I'm struggling right now to disassociate with it.

 So this is,  I'm really trying to understand like what a lot of us immigrant minorities who moved over here, where we have lived in constant fear. 

Sanhita: [00:56:12] There's something about this story that is so humanizing of you and what drives you and your fears and your ambitions and your goals and the things that are built into your algorithms and how you process he world around you. So I just want to go back to that point of how important stories are and realizing what your own narratives are and what your own idea of the world is and where it comes from. That in many ways is essential.

So there's that, but I'm also really moved by your story. Because, I know so many people that have experienced that and my parents and I was born in India, but my parents did the real hard work of coming over here. And I became a citizen when I was 15. My best friend went through this.

So many people I know, went through this story always strikes home. So many Black Americans go through this who are also immigrants. In addition to everything else they're dealing with on a day-to-day basis, because they're, the families came from Haiti or the Dominican, or other parts of the Western world. But so there's this is a deeper cultural trauma. The thing that underlies it is the same thing that underlies racism or the other structural oppressions we experience, which is. The first question you're gonna ask me is this, and it's the only question you're going to ask me. So it doesn't matter what else I've done. I helped run this by working harder, by being smarter, by giving more of myself. Somehow I can't outrun this that's oppression, right? That's that is the nature of oppression, right? It's it doesn't matter who I am. So when we talk about individual justice, or we talk about this idea that there's a person here, there's a person here, it matters who you are. And we are here for that. Correct. I want to connect to who you are, who I am, wants to connect to who you are, or that basic humanity is always cut short by these oppressive structures. A root for empathy for other people. Yeah. Because that suffering is the root of empathy. If you suffer, it gives you a language to understand how other people suffer.  And trauma has this effect where not only does the underlying incident impact your life, whatever that is, but then how you coped with that trauma, how you got through the day. By being hard charging by being, taking up space, whether someone gives it to you or not developing that raw energy. That's like your coping mechanism and it isn't until five years later, 10 years later, 15 years later, maybe when you're like, do I get to scale?  My brother.

And I talk about this idea of being in a lifeboat in the ocean when you're young. And this lifeboat is your life, right? It saves you and you cling to it. And it is the thing that gets you through rough seas. And then one day you emerged from a difficult childhood or whatever trauma is or suffered, and you find yourself on land.

And you're so grateful and you're so happy to reach, stability, but you're not letting go of your lifeboat. And for the next 10 years, you're showing up at dinner, you're showing up at class and you've got your lifeboat with, that is what defense mechanisms are like. They follow you because you can not imagine letting go of this piece of you that kept you safe.

But what are you going to do?

Archita: [00:59:35] My lifeboat is my visa status. And I know that I do not have that sense of freedom

Sanhita: [00:59:40] totally. I, and I'm thinking of Nina Simone. And she's asked at some point what is freedom or what do you think freedom is?

And she says, Freedom is no fear. Freedom is no fear. And that's so deep,  like the opposite of love, I think, is not hate it's fear and fear will crush you in all kinds of ways, even if you're not actually under threat, you will pull back your own dreams. You will, set your own limits.

And we all do it. It seems to be, have to be practical. We be real. We're trying to survive. We're all trying to do that. Some, facing more challenges than others. So again, to your theme of choosing the challenge, you have to choose what you are willing to take on what you're willing to add to your plate that isn't already there, right?

Because some of these challenges you did not choose, right?  But for those of us that, especially those of us that are close to that oppression, right? We're one generation out, or we're only a few years out or we're not even out yet.

I hope to be. That oppression is so real. So we have to find light and find a joy in our lives. Despite that oppression that's important. We have to connect with others and empathize with them through that suffering as a vehicle for connection. And then, if that energizes you enough and gives you solidarity and makes you feel brave, then you choose to challenge that oppression and you take on the fight in whatever way you can.

 It's important that we honor that experience of our own and not just berate ourselves for not, trying to do everything all the time.

It doesn't work. No. No. Exactly.

Archita: [01:01:27] I love that. Honoring, so  this is this question we ask on our guests on The Nine Oh Six. Oh, what do you love the most about yourself Sanhita?

Sanhita: [01:01:37] The most about myself?

Wow. What a question. I think the capacity to learn. I think if you have a capacity to learn and approach the world with curiosity, you can avoid a lot of just unnecessary suffering. You're still going to suffer. Everybody suffers. If someone says something rude to you, for example, and your first reaction, isn't almost, I'm a mess that person, not because they wronged me and I'm angry.

You're feeling this, but if your first reaction is instead, now I wonder why they just said that to me. Like I wonder why they just came at me with that. It makes it much easier to just be like, because it's not me, this isn't me. This is you. You are having an issue. I don't know what it is.

Maybe I can help you, maybe not, but I'm not going to internalize negative abuse or energy from someone else. And that's really tough. That's really really hard. So it doesn't always work to be honest, but sometimes it does. I think that I have tried to develop that capacity very intentionally. And it has always served me because whenever I feel stuck, I feel confident that I have seen such a small slice of the world in my life that someone somewhere in space or time in history or across the world, someone somewhere has dealt with this problem, and it, hopefully just a Google head away, but maybe not, maybe I need to do more searching to find some wisdom that can guide me here. But be open to that that there's wisdom out there, whether you have it yet or not. Yeah. I think keeps you grounded and keeps you from losing your mind or despairing. None of that.

Archita: [01:03:27] This has been such a beautiful conversation. It has been deeply empowering.  Thank you so very much for kicking off Season Three for us.

Sanhita: [01:03:38] Thank you.

And I don't want to leave. I don't want to get off this podcast without saying that I grew up in the nine oh six and I should mention that this is an area code that is near and dear to my heart. I will point out that it is snowing out here in Philadelphia. And I just feel like I just had this little drift into my childhood, this piece of my life. Thank you for that.

Archita: [01:04:07] Absolutely.  Thank you for choosing to challenge within the spaces that you have chosen to give your energy. And thank you for empowering all of us here today on The Nine Oh Six to identify and explore whether we should choose to challenge and give our energy where needed as well in the spaces that need them. Thanks for being on The Nine Oh Six.