Transcript:

Intro: Hi, I'm John Iino, and welcome to the Reed Smith podcast, Inclusivity Included: Powerful Personal Stories. In each episode of this podcast, our guests will share their personal stories, passions, and challenges, past and present, all with a goal of bringing people together and learning more about others. You might be surprised by what we all have in common, inclusivity included.

John: Hey there, everyone, and welcome to the podcast. Today's episode is the third in our series on deconstructing white privilege, and today we are focusing on allyship and calling out all upstanders. I'm fortunate to have as our co-host, our global D&I advisor, Iveliz Crespo. Welcome back Iveliz.

Iveliz: Thanks for having me, John.

John: And we have two of our special guests today. First is a longtime friend and former partner, Mike Scott. Mike was a partner at Reed Smith for over 30 years now. He has his own firm, Mike Scott Law, where he's doing both pro bono work and a number of other cases. And you'll get to hear all about Mike's activities now in particular. Hey, Mike, great to have you back.

Mike: Thanks for inviting me, John. Pleasure to be here.

John: And we also are joined by Lora Spencer. Lora is an associate in our life sciences healthcare industry group, and Lora is based in both our Houston and Philadelphia offices. Welcome, Lora.

Lora: Thank you, John. Thanks for having me. Happy to be here.

John: It's great to have you as well. So let's just kick it off, Iveliz talking about a little bit about allyship and upstanders. How do you define an upstander and the difference between kind of a bystander versus an ally?

Iveliz: John, it's really great that you asked that because I think this is a topic that's really important to people. I think right now people are looking for ways to get involved. They're looking to educate themselves. And so when I think of allyship, I think of someone who stands with or advocates for individuals or groups that are other than their own. And I'd like to say that because I think there's a distinction when we're talking about an ally, we're talking about someone that's standing with a group, a marginalized community. I like the concept of being an accomplice or being an upstander because that focuses more so than just standing and passive allyship. It focuses on people actually disrupting systems that oppress. And there is a difference there. There's a difference between allyship and being an upstander because it's a lot easier to just stand with a group and understand what those issues that they're facing is. But it's a different thing to work to actively dismantle those structures that are oppressing that group to begin with.

John: And I can't think of a better pair of allies, people that have really been great upstanders than Mike and Lora, for those of you who don't know, Mike and Lora worked on the case to have the confederate symbol removed from the Mississippi State flag. Just recently, the governor of Mississippi formally signed the law that is removing that from the state flag. But the work that Mike and Lora have been working on has gone on for a long time. Before this. Mike, you want to just talk a little bit about that case and what got you involved in that and what made you be an ally to really support the effort?

Mike: Sure. Well, we've come a long way in the last five years in getting governments out of the business of displaying that flag and its white supremacy connotations. My involvement in the issues started at the same time a lot of peoples did back five years ago when nine people were murdered in Charleston, South Carolina in a church. And it shocked me at that time to learn that South Carolina on its state capitol was displaying the Confederate flag every single day. Absolutely shocked me. And I started to research it at that point, the whole legal underpinnings and the constitutional issues and the equal protection issues involving a government displaying that flag. And I turned that into an op-ed piece that fortunately didn't even have time to get published because Nikki Haley took down the flag from the South Carolina capital at that time. But as I started to dig into it deeper, I realized, well, Mississippi has an even deeper problem because their own state flag, official state flag has the confederate flag embedded in it. And I started thinking about ways to address that. And I read an article during the Democratic convention here in Philadelphia about the Mississippi delegation to the convention, seeing a whole display of every state flag that the city of Philadelphia had put up and the Mississippi delegation objecting and protesting to the display of their own flag. And the city of Philadelphia promptly took it down. And in reading that article, I started googling the issue again and realized that a fellow by the name of Carlos Moore, a lawyer in Mississippi, had filed pro se a case challenging Mississippi's flag on equal protection grounds. And I just emailed Carlos and said, Hey, great thing you're doing, and if you need any help, I'm happy to join the effort. And I think he called me in about 45 minutes and we progressed from there.

John: That's fantastic. And just what did it mean to you seeing that the recent law being signed into law by the governor of Mississippi?

Mike: Well, it was wonderful. It was wonderful to see it. We didn't have all that much success in the courts, unfortunately. We lost at every level on standing. And I remember when I was arguing in the Fifth Circuit, Judge Higginson, who ultimately wrote the opinion, said to me, why isn't this really a matter for the legislature to deal with? Why is this something we should deal with? And my answer was, well, this flag has been flying for over 120 years, and the legislature hasn't done anything except keep it up there. So ideally, this would be a matter for the political branch of government to deal with, but since they haven't done it, it's time for the courts to intervene. Well, he didn't buy that. And ultimately, I guess he was right, because unfortunately it took another death, another tragic death to get people to pay attention to the display of this flag. South Carolina acted when they had a murder in their own murder of many people in their own town. And now it took the death of George Floyd to get the ball rolling for Mississippi. Unfortunate that it took those kind of events. But progress is progress.

John: Progress is progress and will obviously relish in the winds. Lora, what did it mean to you to work on the case as well as the recent events with the passing of the law?

Lora: Well, first I was really excited and honored that Mike asked me to join him on the case. Growing up in the South, of course, you see the flag and I understood what it meant. I also understood that racism is an emotional commitment and it's embedded deeply. So when the flag came down, when they voted to get rid of the flag, obviously I was very excited about that because if you think about it, at its core, you cannot have the flag, humanity, compassion, respect, and love for each other or one another. All those things cannot coexist. And one of our black leaders, former black leaders who has since passed on once said that if one room in our house is dirty, then you have a dirty house. And so with this country, our dirty room was Mississippi, and so now we've taken down the flag, we have a chance to actually clean our house. And what I really hope that it will be that this is the first step. It's not enough to just clean our house. I really would like to see the flag banned nationwide, similar to how the swastika is banned. I would just like to see it just totally just banned in the United States.

Mike: An idea of how far the Mississippi legislature has come. There was a guy by the name of Carl Oliver, who when New Orleans took down confederate statues about three years ago, was quoted on Facebook saying people doing that kind of thing should be lynched. And he was a Mississippi legislator. We sued him, Carlos and I, because basically he was inciting violence against Carlos because we were working pretty hard to take down Confederate symbolism in Mississippi. But Carl Oliver even voted to take down the flag this weekend. Amazing.

Lora: Yeah, and along those lines, I believe, wasn't it, the great great grandson of Jefferson Davis also has expressed his advocacy for taking down the flag.

Mike: And the number one leading alternative to be the new Mississippi flag was designed by the granddaughter of John Stennis, a long time Mississippi segregationist senator. So I guess I agree with what you said about Mississippi, Lora, but even Mississippi is making some progress for sure.

Lora: Absolutely. Absolutely.

John: Mike, let's explore a little bit in terms of some of your motivations in getting involved and beyond just the Mississippi case, just what have been some of your motivations to be an ally here and an upstander for fighting against the flag, fighting against Confederacy and supporting blacks and African-Americans?

Mike: Well, John, I think it comes really just from a common belief in fairness and justice, whether it's women, blacks, anybody being mistreated, I've always felt very strongly about and tried to make sure that justice and fairness was in place. I don't, and I guess I don't feel like I have any motivation that ought to be any different from anybody else. I think there are a lot of people who have the right feelings, the right thoughts, and they just don't act on those impulses enough. And I think the only thing I've done is try to take my beliefs and turn them into action.

John: Big thing that we talk about in terms of allies is not only being supportive, but educating and whether you are educating yourself or helping educate others to be effective allies. A big part of our series on deconstructing White privilege focuses on that. It's not up to the black community or it's not up to people of color to educate the white community. It's actually incumbent upon everyone. So what have you done in terms of both self-education as well as just helping educate others?

Mike: Well, let me address the educating others part, because I think one of the hardest things for white people to do in this realm is to confront other white people when they say things or when they're thinking things that are racist or veering in that direction. And I grew up in a town that was a hundred percent white, and I've talked to and been acquainted with a lot of people over the years who have some pretty bad views on race relations. And so there've been a lot of times over the years when somebody has said something and I haven't spoken up, and I later kick myself for not doing it, but I've gotten a lot better, a lot more comfortable. In fact, I look forward to the opportunities to tell people when I think they're expressing views that are intolerable to me and I think should be intolerable to society in general. And a lot of times people are willing to listen and change their views, or at least you can get them to having an open mind. But that really is the job of white people to confront and deal with other white people who have racist thoughts and feelings.

John: And Mike, that's fantastic. Just give us a sampling of how do those conversations go specifically? What do you say? What are you comfortable saying in a situation like that?

Mike: Well, all right. I'll share with you probably the most unpleasant experience I've had along those lines. I had an uncle, my father's older brother, he'd be 96 now I think, and he moved to Maryland during World War II and stayed there. And I would only see him maybe once or twice a year, but inevitably he would say something and he would use words that shouldn't be used in polite society. And I started hearing this when I was 10, 12, 14 years old, and it wasn't until I started college that I finally decided next time I saw him, I was going to have to say something. And I did in front of my father. And my father, I could see was tensing at my father, who never uttered a racist thought or word in his life, was still uncomfortable with me, challenging his brother, but I did, and it didn't go all that well. My uncle said things that made it worse, and I didn't talk to him for a couple of years, but we eventually reconciled and he eventually came around to saying that he should have listened to me earlier, and he regretted the way he had spoken and the thoughts that he had in his head.

Iveliz: Great story. I really, yeah, it's a great story. I love that you use the example of a family member because I think that it's a lot easier to call out when you see things online on Facebook or on LinkedIn. It's a lot easier for folks to call that kind of behavior out because they're somewhat removed from it. But having those conversations with family members can be some of the most difficult conversations to have.

Mike: It was tough.

Iveliz: Yeah. And I want to point out, I think you said something that's really important. You said that it's up to white people to challenge other white people. I agree 100% with that. And I also think that as a person of color who's not black, I certainly think it's also up to non-black people of color to challenge anti-blackness in their own communities. And when you share that story, it's so funny because I'm thinking of just hearing my family who has backgrounds of being indigenous, of being indigenous Puerto Ricans, and hearing sometimes the things that they say that perpetuate the ideas of white dominance and anti-blackness. And I think often about my conversations with those people, with those members of my family, it's exhausting work. It's hard to have. And there are certainly family members that I think that I no longer speak to because their ideals don't align with mine. But I think it's incredible that you use that example because those are the hardest conversations to have. It's so much easier to just go online and argue with someone that you don't have that kind of relationship with. But to have those conversations is really important, and we need to have more people doing that, right? We need to have folks that are sitting around Thanksgiving dinner tables and having those tough conversations and changing people's viewpoints by giving them information that they ordinarily wouldn't have access to.

Lora: If I could just jump in here and say, I totally agree with what you just said. And as I was listening to Mike share his experiences, two things jumped out at me, and that is his level of curiosity and his level of engagement. He demonstrated the curiosity just by his story about the DNC and the Confederate flag, and that is the epitome of the first step of allyship, right? You got to be curious about what's going on around you. And then it wasn't enough to say, okay, this is the issue. But then he actually took action and he engaged. He went to the fight, he read an article, he called Attorney Moore down in Mississippi and said, Hey, how can I get involved? I think that just really underscores what it really means to be an ally, and that ally is an action verb. And so that has been at Mike's core, it sounds like, from a very young age, and he's lived that. And to your point about educating white people, that is so true. I had this conversation recently with someone and I said, you know what? Black people, we didn't create this system and we can't dismantle it. White people have to carry the burden. They have to educate other people. They also have to be careful not to get bogged down into white work when they're educating white people, but they also have to seek out other ways to align and collaborate with black people, with organizations, entities, and other allies to move the needle. And really where this start is at home, and in Mike's case, it started at home with his uncle, but some of us who are older or who are just now being made aware of the issues, it can start at home, wherever your home is, whether that's home at work or your home home, but we have to start to disrupt the systems where we have access to and where we have an opportunity to.

John: Great points, Lora, and specifically think about in your own experience, what does it look like to be an ally for you or for the black community?

Lora: Wow. So as I just said, it's just simple. It's just action. It's not enough to self label yourself as an ally. You got to roll up your sleeves, you got to put in the work. You got to educate yourself on the systemic and institutional racisms practices that really have taken, that's taken over in this country. A lot of my friends and people that I know, they'll say, what can I do? What can I do? But again, it just goes back to the fact that you have to own it. And sometimes when I think about when people say, what can I do? When I think about the system as a whole, because we as black people didn't create the system somewhere at some point in time, there were these backroom meetings, there were brainstorming sessions, there was research that was conducted in order to create the system. So it just baffles me that people can't come together and research and brainstorm and have these meetings now to figure out a way to dismantle and disrupt the system. So I think we have to start there by realizing that there's a lot of work to be done, and it's just not about saying, Hey, I'm an ally. And some of that actually starts with just taking notice. You may have seen or heard this quote, stay woke or woke, and that phrase, and that term has really taken off since George Floyd, but what does this mean? The phrase stay woke on the term woke, when you see it on social media as hashtag stay woke or hashtag woke, it's a political term of black origins that references one's awareness of social justice and racial justice and stay woke or woke in the grammatical. cis and aspect means continue awareness. And so that's what we have to get to. We have to be continually aware. You have to take notice. You have to notice how things are being said, how things are being done, who's speaking, who's invited to speak and who isn't invited to speak. You have to notice when situations are being oppressive. You notice the cold words and the dog whistles of race. You have to notice who's at the center of power, who's at the center of attention. You have to notice how racism is denied, discounted and justified. You have to notice the policies and the procedures, the patterns and the platforms and all those implications that each of these things bring to race. And it's really interesting because when people say, oh, I'm not colorblind. I don't see color. And that's just certainly not true because skin color is one of the first things that people notice. And so if you can notice someone's skin, then you have to notice the difference that the skin makes. So we all have to get woke and stay woke because now that the world is waking up, there are some people that are allies, but then everyone that's woke because you understand the issue, they're not yet allies. So those people have to get woke and stay woke.

Iveliz: Absolutely. And that ties into this quote that I recently saw that I read, and it just resonated so deeply with me. You must become, and it's about allyship. And the quote is that you must become the person who always makes everything about race. I assure you, once you start paying close attention, you'll begin to realize if you haven't already, that when examined, most critically, most things are informed by race in one way or another.

Lora: Absolutely Iveliz. And if you think about it, I mean just as economics and considerations influence everything we do, so does racism. And I think if we start with the premise that racism exists every day, all day in every situation, the same way that economics and gender considerations exist every day, all day, and every situation. So does race.

John: Well stated. Lora, I don't know if you're willing to share some of your own personal stories and your relationship with Mike and his role as being an ally for you?

Lora: Well, of course, I'm going to take that last piece first because I don't want to embarrass Mike, but to me, he just walks on water. Mike Scott has been my day one ally, my day one accomplice, my day one upstander, whatever you want to call it. He has been there from day one. And if I may code switch, he's been my ride to die. He's been by my side wherever I failed or fly. That has been Mike Scott. And I was really blessed to meet Mike. I met him actually in DC at our Reed Smith office at the Congressional Black Caucus Event, and the National Bar Association sponsors a CBC annual reception, and Reed Smith hosted it in their office. And there was Mike Scott. He had taken the train down from Philly and interesting enough, the National Bar Association for those who may listen to this podcast and not be familiar, but that is the African-American Bar Association in this country. And so here is Mike Scott, and he was in a room full of black legislatures, black attorneys, and he was the minority. I don't recall there being any other white people in attendance, and I'm sure there were, but if they were, you can certainly count 'em on one hand. And he walked up to me, introduced himself, we visited, and at the end of that encounter, he ended up saying, send me your resume. And obviously I did, and I was granted an interview here at Reed Smith and ultimately hired, that was the origin of him being an ally to me. But it didn't stop there. Once I got hired, my actual first billable assignment came from Mike. And then after I completed the assignment, as my grandmother would say, down south in church, he issued what we would call a praise report. He sent an email out that was visible. It was open, it was intentional, I'm sure, to elevate my voice through my work. And then subsequently, as I now been at Reed Smith two and a half years, he's elevated my voice by advocating for me front and center. I know he advocates for me behind closed doors. He speaks for me when I couldn't speak or wasn't allowed to speak or wasn't invited to speak for myself. That's my relationship and my experience with Mike Scott. So I wasn't surprised to even hear his account of his experience as a youth, but that's been my experience with him. And now really, John, he can't get rid of me.

John: Mike, your thoughts on that?

Mike: Well, I've worked over the years with other black women attorneys at Reed Smith, and I know from their experience that it can sometimes, just like any law firm, any corporate world, be a tough place to prosper. And when I met Lora, first thing I thought is this woman will prosper at Reed Smith. She's got the determination and the toughness, and obviously the intellect to thrive, and I couldn't wait to get her hired, and I'm so glad that it's working out so well. I'm sorry she left to go to Houston from Philadelphia, but what are you going to do?

Lora: I'm still part of the Philadelphia family.

Mike: I know, I know.

John: What a great story. So Mike, Lora, Iveliz, thank you for coming in today for just a great discussion. Really appreciate all the observations and sharing.

Lora: Thank you for having us, John.

Mike: Thank you, John. Thank you, Iveliz.

Iveliz: Thank You.

Outro: Inclusivity Included is a Reed Smith production. Our producer is Ali McCardell. This podcast is available on Apple Podcast, Google Play, Spotify, Stitcher, PodBean, and reedsmith.com.

Disclaimer: This podcast is provided for educational purposes. It does not constitute legal advice and is not intended to establish an attorney-client relationship, nor is it intended to suggest or establish standards of care applicable to particular lawyers in any given situation. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome.

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