How Competency Checking and Race Collide at Work with Shari Dunn of ITBOM LLC

Kim Allchurch Flick: Good morning everyone. This is Kim Allchurch Flick. I’m here with Shari Dunn and I’m so excited about this episode. Shari Dunn is an author, consultant, and strategist who brings a legal communications and equity focused lens to helping organizations address systemic barriers at work. She’s the author of Qualified How Competency Checking and Rates Collide At Work, a Harper Collins.

Business titled Shortlist for the S-A-B-E-W Best in Business Book Award. A former attorney and media professional. Shari is known for translating complex issues around race, power, and decision making, and declare actionable strategies for leaders. Her work focuses on embedding equity into organizational systems, leadership practices, and communication, not treating it as a side initiative.

Today we’re gonna talk about competency, checking the invisible system, shaping modern workplaces.

What a great title and what an important topic. 

Shari Dunn: Thanks for having me. 

Kim Allchurch Flick: Thank you. So we both live in the Portland area. Yep. And I met you through LinkedIn and have been a follower. I’ve read the work, read the book, and so excited.

And we’ve met in person a couple times and I’m very honored to have you here to talk about the issues at hand. This is February, 2026, and also your writing and your worldview. 

Shari Dunn: Well, thank you. I’m always glad to be anywhere. Actually, I’m gonna snag a copy of my own book just in case there’s a question I wanna answer.

Kim Allchurch Flick: I have one, my one on my bookshelf as well. So for the listeners and I, tell us about the, your journey and the guiding values have had along the way to this point. 

Shari Dunn: Oh wow. What a question. My journey, I am from a working class family in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Both my parents were union people.

I grew up in a working class black neighborhood, which I always tell people the world seems to edit out of existence. So there’s either wealthy people like the Cosby Show or you’re super poor, like good times, but there is a whole world of working class. Black people who worked, factory union jobs and those values that my parents especially my mother, gave me about showing up.

These are uniquely, I think, Midwestern values in a lot of ways. Being as good as your word, doing as best you can and speaking plainly about what you mean. And the older I get, the more I realize how much the Midwest shaped me as a person. Although I’ve lived many places.

I’ve lived in New York and I do consider myself a spiritual New Yorker ’cause I love the directness of New Yorkers. I’ve lived on the West Coast, down south. East. 

Kim Allchurch Flick: Yeah, 

Shari Dunn: north. And now I’m in the Pacific Northwest. And but still at my core there is this Midwestern dynamic. And then also my parents were not highly educated people.

I mean, they both went to high school, but they ne they were very good at communicating that. To be black in the world was not less than and also good at translating a lot of those messages that black children do have to get growing up in a society that does not value you. So that once you’re an adult, those things don’t.

Hurt you. So, I, I tell people it’s like an inoculation that, that black parents have to kinda give their kids to live in a world that is going to question you a lot. So I was a practicing attorney for several years. I was a news anchor. I’ve been an adjunct professor. I’ve run a nonprofit, and now I run my own consulting firm.

Kim Allchurch Flick: That’s a, that’s amazing. Thank you for that history. I truly appreciate that. And with that, how has it shaped your local and worldviews and how do you view community? 

Shari Dunn: Yeah. It’s very interesting. Community for me growing up was my family. Me and my mother had a very big family, and so I had, I have, I don’t know, I have more than 61st cousins, I had a large family and then my mother’s. Ex my mother’s cousins lived in Milwaukee and my grandfather’s siblings, most of them. And, so this is a large worldview of people who I was related to. That, that was enough community, that was a lot of community of people.

And then I would say, and I’ve said this to people, and people find this, I think surprising, Portland, Oregon, of all the places I’ve lived, has been the most community. Engaged place that I have ever lived, actually. I know that in chicago and in New York where I live you find your pockets and you can do that.

But Portland is more, come on, come be a part of this community with us. Which is really, it starts with things like partners in diversity say, hey, right? Like welcome to Portland. There’s these little touch points. And then, for me, I think I have found one of the most robust black communities as far as a community that intentionally tries to create that in Portland.

And I know a lot of people would be surprised by that, but you know, that’s how I found it. 

Kim Allchurch Flick: Yeah, and I, we are so different. I grew up in Victorian England with grandparents who were very, very, very Victorian. It’s small family and we know each other, but everybody’s very disparate. But I would say the same thing about Portland and the black community has been engaging to me as well, white woman.

And I’ve found so much innovation and. So many interesting things happening in the community and I really enjoy learning more, but it also seems like Portland is making some progress with initiatives as well. And so I’m glad you’re in Portland. What are some obstacles and challenges that you see in your work and for the people you serve and community?

Shari Dunn: The biggest obstacle right now is the political environment. There is fear, a purposeful fear being run through the land as well as confusion. There’s just a lot of confusion. I have to say that people are super confused about what they can and can’t do. There’s a lot of fear, and then there are people who, were teetering anyway about inclusion, so.

It’s it’s really complicated and it’s, I, my specialty I’m beginning to realize is really the business world. And the way it should and could, address diversity, equity, inclusion in the workplace and really separating out for people that diversity, equity, inclusion is a workplace initiative is not, it is an extension of what it means to implement affirmative action, but it is not affirmative action.

It is not civil rights law. It is. And partly and the other problem is the unrealistic expectations people had for diversity, equity, inclusion in the workplace. So all of these things are converging at once you have a national level, you have an administration that is expressing disdain and hostility.

Hostility for diverse workplaces, consumers, brands, which is just wild, and then you have fear. People are afraid, you have confusion and then you also have anger and disappointment that DEI couldn’t have undone 250 years of, or 400 years really of racial animus. Like it’s, it is a weird spot to be in.

Kim Allchurch Flick: Oh, in Indeed. And what do you see as solutions and possibilities? With the recognizing that this is 2026, and I’m gonna dial that back just a little bit because I am also, some of the realities are people who do work like yours, and there are others who have been doing DEI work. Even though those three letters aren’t the definition of the work they do they really wanna create e training and equity and platforms and engagement.

The workload has diminished in the last 18 months or so, the contracts are going down, so the work to be able to do that is not as available. And I think it’s a lot. Might be exactly what you just said about the current character of the time. 

Shari Dunn: The thing of it is, and I will say this it might be 2026, but it’s not very far from 1966 or 1866, sure. Some of the foundational things about us never changed, so it’s kinda tricky to. Expect us to be in a different place. I lately have been talking about this with a, an Oro Boris, which is a word I just learned, a snake eating its tail. We stay in a circular. Problem. So in some sense it’s everything everywhere, all at once.

It’s 1886. It’s 1676. It’s, it’s never changing because we don’t break out of the circle and we don’t, we never really, we poke at it a little bit and then we run away and go back to the regularly scheduled programming. And it’s no surprise that we are here and we are still wrestling with foundational questions because we don’t really spend a lot of time getting at foundational questions.

You know what I mean? 

Kim Allchurch Flick: Indeed. And part of it may be early education history often is. Not that deeply taught with the nuances of things that we’re talking about that are somewhat repeatable and could be recognized if we understood historical context. 

Shari Dunn: And that is such a great point because that is exactly why this administration is attacking history, the inclusive, because history.

The phrase he who holds, who controls the past, controls the future. You know what I mean? If you are able to tell us one story, you can direct the future toward a place where certain things stay immutable, they stay in place. If you tell a different story, you can change the course where things change.

Where things become changeable, and so you hit upon something very important. It’s, it is fundamentally a lack of knowledge and contextualization. If we recontextualize how we told our story. There would be a different world possible, but as long as we keep telling the same story or hiding information, it’s much easier to manipulate us back in that, or Boris to keep us back in this circle.

Because I never heard of that. I know that’s not true. We can’t even agree upon things we see with our eyes. There are people who saw. Renee Good gets shot and are convinced she mowed down a police officer or ice officer and he killed her ’cause he was terrified for his life.

There are people who look at the tape and see a man who steps in front of a moving vehicle where a woman is being given multiple directions. She skirts him, does not appear. She touched him and he doesn’t fall. He steps back. Plenty of time fires into her. Riddles her with bullets, walks away and calls her, you know, a f-ing B

You know what I mean? Yeah. That’s what others see. So it’s quite difficult now because. The undermining of truth goes hand in hand with the undermining of history, because if I try to give you an objective fact, but there are no objective facts, that’s the whole thing behind Holocaust denialism, right there, there are these people, and that used to be more fringe where.

You have pictures. Oh they’re made up. You have people. Oh, they’re lying, right? Well, now that’s everything. Everything is in dispute, so it’s kind of crazy, you know? Yeah, I don’t know if I answered that in a positive 

Kim Allchurch Flick: way. I think so. But it also, you just said something that reminds me of something I heard from.

The Guardian a journalist from The Guardian, and this is very recent, within months, went to Tel Aviv to ask people on the beach about what they knew about Gaza. And a lot of people said, oh, those videos are fake. And there can’t be a war down there. It’s only 60 miles away. And look how peaceful it is here.

And he even went to clubs and was. Trying to interview and find out what they knew. And he left actually after being threatened. And, but he has that, I believe it, it’s searchable, but it made that impression that sometimes things don’t change. Sometimes people do say the same things over and over and over again.

Shari Dunn: And deny

Kim Allchurch Flick: all sorts of things. And, 

Shari Dunn: and you would be like, how could there, how could there be how can there be that, but 

Kim Allchurch Flick: Right. 

Shari Dunn: Apparently it is easier to convince people of a lie than it is of the truth. And this must be something with human nature. Because it sure is replicable so easily replicable over history and over time.

So there’s gotta be something about our wiring or something that. The truth seems fantastical, but a fantastic lie seems true. So it’s, it’s not surprising. And that’s where critical thinking skills come into play. And that’s where, high level thinking. And but then we have an administration that’s against that.

Years and years ago when I lived in Texas, there was a state legislator who proposed outlying critical thinking in, schools K through 12 and his reason was it causes people to question God and family. So they didn’t pass. But it still is woven into Texas education actually.

You have a whole group of people who don’t want people to have critical reasoning skills, you know what I mean? Because it’s, it makes it easier to tell the lie. And it makes it so much harder because truth can be nuanced. It can be complicated, it can be shades of gray. Truth is rarely black and white, whereas lies are much easier to make black and white, 

Kim Allchurch Flick: oh my goodness. That’s such a powerful thing and now it makes me. See how some of that, not always, but some of that is deeply rooted in religion to, to be a follower means to believe so. So with all of that, what do you see as possibilities for your community? For you? For, for us, for black people, for workers.

Shari Dunn: Yeah. Oh. We’ve had so many chances in this country to turn a corner, and it looked like we were gonna turn a corner, the Civil War. Okay, we’re gonna turn a corner. But we, we’d never required full reconciliation from the south. And that allowed to flourish this anger that still is with us today.

Right? There was, emancipation like, oh, we’ve turned a corner. But we never fully made a count or restitution or acknowledgement of the period of enslavement. Then there’s reconstruction seems like, oh, we’re gonna do that. We are gonna do that. Then we end it and we go take Jim Crow, and then Jim Crow only ends when I’m born.

And then. We have these episodes, George Floyd me too. We have these things and it’s like, okay, we’re gonna turn a corner, but we go right back. So this opportunity for us is a painful opportunity, but it is an opportunity to perhaps finally. Like I said in we talked about this before we started in some spiritual circles.

There is this idea of a theory of development where your consciousness develops and then it goes back. World consciousness develop, and then it goes back and it’s necessary. And so maybe Donald Trump’s breaking of every norm. Destroying of every structure. His disregard and disrespect means that none of us have to follow any of this and that should there be another chance to change this country.

We don’t have to follow outdated norms either. Not toward domination toward, but toward liberation. A lot of the things that we have been told you can’t do, apparently you can do. Apparently you can do ’em ’cause they do ’em every day. So there’s a opportunity to reimagine on the other side of this.

That we shouldn’t say we wanna go back to business as usual and go we, what we had was not actually working. It looked like it was, but it wasn’t actually working. It certainly wasn’t working for a good portions of the population. So what this strange opportunity gives us is the ability to think.

Differently about a future that doesn’t have to look like our past. We don’t have to go back to the norms. We can make new norms. We can make new things going forward. And I think that is part of it. And then I. I hope for white people, not for black people. I hope for white people to finally metabolize in their systems that the issues around civil rights and race and things were never just about black people.

They were also always about them. That it was always about keeping working class black, white people. Working class, keeping poor white people, poor keeping and it was always about a disenfranchisement that ultimately protects the oligarchy and the wealthy. But race is a key part of that. So we don’t ignore race to fix that.

We run right through it and we try to figure out how we account for, and so I hope for white people that they can see that this has always been their fight. It’s not just our fight, it’s always. Characterizes as black people’s fight, and what I hope for black people is. An ability to have some humanity and have people treat black people with the full spectrum of humanity that we still haven’t received.

The book Qualified talks about that. It’s like, black excellence is great, but black people should have the right to fail without it being indicative and an indictment on their race. They should have the right to succeed without it being threatening and a challenge. They should have the right to be media.

Just like any other human being does. So what I hope for black people on the other side of this is the ability to live in this society as full human beings, and a recognition of the fact that there needs to be a restitution for the harm done to black folks. 

Kim Allchurch Flick: Indeed and the creativity and innovations that have come from black people and often like with music, not given the credit for their creations.

Shari Dunn: Yeah. 

Kim Allchurch Flick: But also with other things along the way. And yet there’s so much innovation and some comes from world experience and some. Because they’re so creative and finding new ways and Well, 

Shari Dunn: and that goes back to your history though, because how many things have been stolen?

We are on Zoom and the the mechanism to develop Zoom was developed by a black woman, right? So she was a black, sciences or engineer. I forget which one, but no one. Like, why is that not in a history book, or why is that not taught? Black people have been a part of this enterprise from the beginning, and yet the things that we’ve done have either been lost. We keep perpetually getting. To history, hidden figures, hidden in history. Lost and hidden and then co-opted and then but again, that’s how you tell a story. If you wanna tell a story that this group of people is lazy, they don’t care.

They’ve never tried, that’s why they fail. Then you keep doing that. If you wanna tell a story that these people keep trying, they keep innovating, they keep participating, we keep standing in their way, that’s a different story. So it depends on where you wanna put your emphasis, what you want the story to be.

Kim Allchurch Flick: Oh indeed. Oh, and I read your book. I also listened to it because I’m a slow reader. And I drive a lot. So listening to books is another way. And I get different things out of it that way. And your book talks about those touch points quite a bit. And that competency checking is like assuming that.

Someone can’t do the job or is not fully qualified to do that even though their background has so much more than maybe a different candidate, a white candidate and how it still plays out even today. And I’m, I was, I always thought that things would get better than every initiative made or every step forward meant that we’re on a trajectory toward better.

And it’s been disproven. Yeah, a few times and we still do make progress, but I thought your book really dealt with psychology 

Of how people think in the workplace and how we really need to reframe what people bring to the table and understand it. So I was wondering if you could speak more to the, more to that in the book.

Yeah. 

Shari Dunn: Yeah, competency checking is the ways in which primarily black, but also other people of color and women are made to meet a higher, harder standard to get the job to advance in the job and to keep the job. And that’s really the three primary things around competency checking and the reason, I highlight black people is because it is different, and I do wanna say this as a. Someone the other day kind of all lives matter me for but related to people of color. In other words, this presentation doesn’t include this group. That’s not DEI. Well, yeah, it is because sometimes you’re gonna focus on the most impacted.

Sometimes you’re gonna use different examples, and in the same way we ask white people to get comfortable with that. Turns out other people of color. Also should get comfortable with that. When we talk about the impact of anti-black bias in the workplace, that doesn’t mean we’re ignoring other people’s bias.

But what I submit to people is that when you cure for anti-black bias, it has historically cured for women, for other people of color, for ethnics, ethnicity, for religion. So it’s and it has still. Black people still lag behind. So caring for anti-black bias has helped so many other people, and yet black people still lag behind.

And so that’s why it’s important to, to identify that because the psychology as you were talking about, is so rooted in the history. The psychology of black intelligence, or lack thereof, the psychology of fear or a fear of black dominance is very different than the psychology people have toward Asian Americans or Latinx Hispanic people, or white women.

These are, they’re very different kind of fears, and because those fears are different and more complex the resistance to those groups. Shows up differently. But there is something entrenched about the nature of anti-black bias, and if you don’t identify it, it remains a blockage. But if you remove that blockage, everybody can flow through so that, that’s why it’s justified to, to focus on that.

And in the workplace we. So we talk now a lot about merit, which I talk about in the book. And the United States has never been a system built on merit. It is absolutely false. I don’t even know why. It’s so laughably false. It’s wild. But again, I guess it’s back to basically reading about history or knowing history or anything like that.

But the United States is a, has always been a system built on class. And access. The planter class comes here. They’re all wealthy English guys, white, Protestant and religion is a big part of it for a long time. Protestant men. They hold all the power, they trade the jobs and things between themselves.

There’s no merit base. It is not one or two people. Might wiggle through, but really this is a system of patronage. If you are a working class white man at that time, if you can get a patron who’s wealthy, that’s still wealth, is access, not necessarily merit. And as I point out in the book, the only time this merit thing really begins to change, it starts a bit after World War I but it really picks up speed after World War II where the GI Bill opens the educational and economic door for white.

Ethnic veterans who returned from World War ii. Not black veterans, but white right. Veterans who and that. And then the second. Thing that knocks it down is civil rights. Civil rights legislation, outlaws housing discrimination for Irish, Italian Catholics and Jewish folks, right? Not just black people.

It changes employment discrimination. I always tell people to remember our workplaces used to be segregated. We, Catholics and Jewish folks didn’t work together. Black economic classes didn’t work together, right? So the modern workplace. From a psychological perspective, there’s a lot going on, right?

In that workplace. And if you are in a workplace and you have for your entire life not seen or worked with black people, and the only thing you’ve really heard is they’re not that smart, or they’re not that competent. If you hire somebody and they make one mistake, what data has found is people tend to highlight and exaggerate that mistake of black people as dispositive of everything, and then they start over micromanaging them over supervising them.

It becomes competency checking and action. I’m gonna keep checking your competency. I got it. I got it. And. While they’re doing that, they’re missing incompetent people who look more like them. And they’re also creating, a space that is inhumane because it is no human can operate before to operate in a space where no mistakes are possible.

And then we do this thing psychologically where we shift our standards. This happens to other people, happens to women, happens to black folks where they come for a job and they wanna do a job. And there was some research with a. There was like a scenario with two police, I think it was police chiefs or sheriff deputies for hire all the same qualifications, but one was a woman, one was a man.

Well, when the people knew one was a woman, they say, oh, she needs more experience, but when they were given, they didn’t. So we are psychologically shifting and people do that to black people. They’ll show up, they’ll have oh, but you know, I think they need more experience. They need to do more of this and more of that.

And it’s the shifting standard psychological. In the workplace. Workplace. And I think this is a bit controversial for some people. But I don’t think you can fundamentally change a human being. Like I always explain to people like this, I don’t think I can train you to unlearn your ABCs.

You know what I mean? Like, I don’t remember when I learned my ABCs. I know them. They’re in there somewhere, but I don’t think you can unlearn them. But what you can do is teach me how to use those. Words in different ways. You can potentially teach me a new language. You can potentially teach me new interpretations.

And I think in the diversity, equity, inclusion space, we’ve spent way too much time trying to unlearn people’s ABCs rather than teaching them ways. To talk and to express and to, you know what I mean? And so when I think about solutions, they look more like that than trying to change people’s, trying to unlearn your ABCs.

Does that make sense? 

Kim Allchurch Flick: It does. And while you were talking, I was thinking, one of the best compliments of having a really good book like yours is that other people are also writing about the same topics. And there was a book, I believe it’s. The first, the few, the only written by a woman for with Indian heritage.

So brown-skinned woman who had climbed the corporate ladder and made it to the C-suite and everyone said, you made it. You’re one of the first. And it was so stressful because upon arrival she was forced to assimilate into the culture that had been, so white man prominent for so many years.

Resulting in physical illness and that whole striving to get there, to prove oneself, to be competency checked, to pass all those bars and then to get there and be told, okay, you, you rose the ladder, now you do the job the way we’ve always done it when this woman also had so much creativity and intellect and knowledge to bring into it, to make change. And that book talks about the. Like the physical detriment to her health.

And how really, really horrible it was. And there was another example, and this was in Portland, it was a few years ago, of a woman, CEO, who was also of color, who talked about going into a big meeting and being the last person in the room.

And when the CEO arrived, there was no seat for her. 

For her. 

Shari Dunn: Yeah, 

Kim Allchurch Flick: no one has saved a seat and usually it CEOs at the, has a prominent position at a table. There was no chair at all. And she talked about walking in saying, okay, this is sending me a signal. And, 

Shari Dunn: well, and the other thing about that is the constant.

It’s, I tell, I don’t know if you’re familiar with these movies a long time ago, or I’ll go with Groundhogs. It’s like Groundhogs Day. You know the movie with Bill Murray where every day you wake up and it’s like, I think for people of color and black folks in particular, it’s like Groundhogs Day.

It’s like. I did all this work on this day and there’s no memory of it, and there’s no restored goodwill and there’s no stored respect. So every day I’m starting from scratch and that is incredibly exhausting to a person that is incredibly tiring, and that is, really hard. For somebody to have to manage and that, they’ve talked about racism and it’s physical implications for a person.

And there are real physical, emotional implications to, to having to live like that to having every day is groundhog’s day. Yeah it’s hard. 

Kim Allchurch Flick: Oh, indeed. One of, one of my best friends from fourth grade is a black woman in, I went west, she went east.

She became a physician and I remember being in Manhattan with her when she was, I think in med school and there was something that happened to her. We were on the street and somebody said something and I was just shocked. And I said, oh, this is. I can’t believe that happened to you. This is terrible. And she said, oh, it’s just another Tuesday.

And that was the first time I realized how really prevalent, and it gave us a talking point where I learned more about her life and her history that I hadn’t even seen, even though we were best friends. From that phrase. 

Shari Dunn: Oh yeah. 

Kim Allchurch Flick: I mean our buddies, they, nobody treated me like that. 

Shari Dunn: It’s something you have to and that’s why I use the word metabolize.

It’s something you have to metabolize into your system and parents. Used to, I don’t know about nowadays, but parents used to spend more time helping black children in particular. Doing that, helping you to understand what is gonna happen and how this works so that it doesn’t rock you so much. Because it could be, it could destroy a person not knowing, going in what’s going on and how this is gonna show up and and I often. Talk about this. I think black people are incredibly pragmatic. Like we don’t get enough credit for our pragmatism. Like we are people who’ve had to figure out things and say, okay, what is the worst of the worst?

What is the lesser of the two evils? How do I, how do I man? But that pragmatism can be incredibly helpful, like in a business setting, in a workplace strategy. But our pragmatism and the things we bring are kind of devalued a lot. But we see things differently because we’ve had to negotiate and navigate.

I remember I did a session with a, a la a Latina woman and. She’s a first generation American. And I talked about how I’m a first generation American, really, I, my family goes back to slavery in the United States. But I am the first fully, legally free generation of black people.

60. I was born in 68. And there was still, some vestiges of Jim Crow when I was born. So I’m the first gener just one generation in that had full access to say housing in theory, even though we know redlining exists still today. 

And discrimination around mortgage valuation lending.

But in theory to have full access to the loss, we’re literally like one generation in and the same way people who speak a different language. Bring different perspectives because they’re, because translating fires up different portions of your brain. And so what people don’t understand is just ’cause somebody speaks different language doesn’t mean they’re stupid.

Because they have accent. It actually frequently means that they’re looking at things for multiple dimensions and so they’re seeing things in different ’cause they have to, to translate. It’s the same thing with being a black person in this world. It may not. I am literally translating different languages, a white normative world language.

I’m translating a whole host of things. I am trying to pragmatically move through life my day, so I’m always translating. And so I think there are these, there’s some values to those things and the things that they bring that could be lifted up more. However, I would love not to have to do that.

In a world of difference when I do my training, I always talk about this in a world of difference, we should always assume we’re translate. Always, no matter who we’re talking to, because you could be talking to your spouse or your cousin, and you may not be agreeing on the fundamental things you’re saying.

So you should always clarify. You should always not assume agreed foundational understanding. Like maybe that’s just the best way to move forward for all of us,

Kim Allchurch Flick: words of wisdom. I think that’s so true. And how wonderful would it be if we did that instead of jumping to conclusions? Actually, 

Shari Dunn: yes.

Just 

Kim Allchurch Flick: ask a question. 

Shari Dunn: And that, but then that goes back to this newsletter I wrote today, which folks can look up, but about pettiness and policy. People have to be okay with being questioned. And we do live in a society where power, wherever that power is, it could be little p just in your neighborhood and your family.

It could be your manager, could be the president. Power doesn’t like to be questioned and that is a foundational problem. 

Kim Allchurch Flick: Oh indeed, and I love getting your substack almost every day. You are amazing at writing and touching on hot button issues, but also realistic issues referring to historical narratives and having read the book, I just encourage everyone to get the book and also sign up for a really good substack.

Called qualified with all of this, what makes you optimistic? 

Shari Dunn: What makes me optimistic is that we are saying things out loud that we’ve never said really before. I love to hear white people talk about white supremacy. I love that white people can identify that it’s not about them personally.

It’s about a system that actually is harmful to them. I love that. I love that we are breaking down barriers. In how we understand each other, even as those who are trying to erect more barriers that people are working so hard to break down those barriers. I love that even as our media is becoming.

Oligarch guys, and you know that there are people doing independent journalism and trying to tell stories and trying to share. I love, a lot of people talked about initially people said, oh, what good did that No Kings Rally do? We saw in the off year election a sweep, and I actually tie that to the activism from the No Kings rallies, where people were like, okay, I’m ready.

Put me in Coach. And as soon as there was a chance to jump in the game, they were there. And that is this huge sense of community. I’m a mid westerner, so I’m proud of Minnesota, I’m proud of, it’s cold man. The cold thing that to play with. And I’m, and I always I’ve known Midwesterners to be more practical than people give them credit for, more decent than people give them credit for.

And I was very hopeful about the way people there showed up. And they and in the face of real danger in the face of you losing their lives. And that is not hyperbole. I don’t know other than Kent State when the United States has had protestors murdered in this fashion now we’ve had black folks murdered where we just ignore it, we’ve had george Floyd in Minnesota, Philando Castile, all these people. But society has, because of the lies told, been able to justify the murder of black folks. But to see white American protestors gunned down in the street.

Does capture something for people. But even more specifically that people would continue to come out after that, that tells you something about the character and the urgency of people. And so I’m proud of that, and. I am proud of everybody who in their way.

And there are so many people who are just trying to do it in their way. It might be in their family, it might be it in their neighborhood, it might be in their church, trying to speak truth to power. I think there is a, I think there is in fact a pent up wave coming in November, and I think that’s why folks are running scared and trying to come up with all kinds of skullduggery and shenanigans because people, it turns out. People are more decent than we thought they were. That there’s a large percentage of people who, who are like, oh yeah, I don’t actually want that.

But they were, they thought they did, and and then there and then.

I think our ability to say race is a factor racism is a factor. Is something that is so necessary for us to get to the other side. And I hear people being more willing to have that conversation, not from a distance. Like I would say that with George Floyd. So many people were involved, but they were involved because they felt solidarity or sadness for black people, or they wanted to be allies.

You are not an ally. You are part of this fight, right? People are getting shot down and they look like you. And so we need to shift that, that the, this isn’t something, and then because I’m an ally, I’ll go back to my nice, safe life. No, because there isn’t a safe life. For any of us if there isn’t a safe life for all of us.

And so that change psychologically is really hopeful to see, 

Kim Allchurch Flick: oh, wow, I concur. You’re not an ally. You’re part of this fight. And it’s and it is pretty terrifying to see people literally come down and, my, my husband remembers Kent State and he wasn’t there, but close enough. And it’s still traumatizing.

So when these things started happening, the, these trauma waves come back and the recognition that, no, this is really, really bad and it has been for other people, and now

it’s happening to more people. Is there anything else you’d like to share and how can people reach you and connect with your website?

Shari Dunn: Yes, the website is the shari dunn.com and it’s S-H-A-R-I-D-U-N-N. So if you look for E you might find me, you might not, but it’s S-H-A-R-I-D-U-N-N. If you just put the shari dunn.com, you’ll find my primary website and links to everything else.

Kim Allchurch Flick: And this will all be in the show notes. And I’m also gonna do that some research on the woman who was the engineering background behind Zoom as a friend.

Yes. Because I think that’s 

Shari Dunn: fascinating. 

Yes. Yes. In fact, let me just quickly see if I can find her name. Which I knew because I did a training and I knew her name, but I’m, I’m getting older. I can’t remember everything all at once. Her name is Dr. Marian. Croak, C-R-O-A-K. And she is the pioneering woman who helped develop voice over internet VoIP, protocol Technology, which is the foundation for Zoom, Skype, Google meets all of this, and she, I think still alive, if I’m not mistaken.

Yes, she’s 70 years old. Yeah, it just, it’s just, it seems like such a little thing, but it’s such an important thing that these stories be woven because, the only reason we have a Black History month is as we close out, we’re in Black History Month. Black people don’t want to have a separate black history month.

This is so interesting, like a lot of, what about White History Month? That’s literally every month. And black people would love to be. A part of the American story in a truthful telling. But Texas as slaves were workers who were treated well. So how can we allow those false stories to stand?

So then we have to go ahead and create this alternate. Version so that people can know this history from what is actually true, what actually happens. So it’s not that black people want to have to have their own history month. We love for American history to be our history. It is our history.

We are American history. And so why are we constantly marginalized out of it? It matters that this woman. Exists today, right? It matters throughout history, the contributions of black Americans to this country. It matters to our perception, and ultimately it matters once we reach the workplace. Because it tells a historical story about who’s competent, who has the ability, who can be promoted, who, you know. It tells that story,

Kim Allchurch Flick: what a beautiful exclamation point for ending this. And we could talk about so much history, but that was a great way to sum it up. And the last question is the random one.

If you could have dinner with anyone living or deceased up to a table of four, including you, who would they be and why? 

Shari Dunn: So it’d be three other people, right? 

Kim Allchurch Flick: Up to you could have one, two, or three 

Shari Dunn: up to, yeah. Okay. Up to three. I would say Malcolm X, James Baldwin, who has had the most influence on me and the historical Jesus of Nazareth.

That’s who I wanna talk to. I got questions. Only those three can answer. 

Kim Allchurch Flick: Oh, I love it. And I, you said James Baldwin in this image came up of this historical footage of James Baldwin with Johnny Carson. And they’re both smoking like crazy. So they have the timing, but it was so insightful.

Shari Dunn: He has such a big impact on my writing and my worldview. Yeah. 

Kim Allchurch Flick: Well, thank you so much. Thank you everyone. Thank you. This is Kim Allchurch Flick signing off. Take care. Bye-bye.