This does not, by any means, suggest that efforts at addressing inequity or rooting out prejudice should be abandoned. It does not mean that reducing bias and structural injustice is impossible. There are real insights—as we saw with stereotype threat—that can help historically marginalized people succeed. There are interventions—such as those that took place on the soccer fields in Qaraqosh, Iraq—that have bridged differences.

  However, figuring out precisely how to confront inequality and prejudice is more complicated than hiring a diversity consultant or asking workers to attend an afternoon training session. And these complications are heightened by the fact that many people feel that discussing Who Are We? poses real risks. Though we all hopefully recognize that using a racial slur is unacceptable, when it comes to other kinds of dialogues, it can be hard to know what’s out of bounds. How much can we ask a coworker about their background, their life beyond work, their beliefs, their identity, without running the risk of overstepping? How do we overcome the worry that saying the wrong thing, or asking a naïve question, might destroy friendships or careers?

  Who Are We? conversations have a place beyond discussions of race, ethnicity, and gender, of course. Many of our toughest conversations are hard precisely because they touch on social identities that have nothing to do with our ancestry. When we critique an underperforming employee, criticize a spouse, or tell a boss they aren’t giving us what we need, it can easily come off as a denunciation of who they are, a swipe at their abilities and judgments, or an attack on their sense of identity.

  So how do we get better at talking about Who Are We? when we’re discussing the most sensitive subjects? How do we nudge people to discuss differences in ways that bring us together rather than drive us apart? How do we have these vital conversations in settings, such as the workplace, where they can seem so perilous?

  * * *

  —

  Within just a few days of Friedland’s use of the n-word, it seemed as if every one of Netflix’s 5,500 employees had heard about the incident—and most of them had strong opinions about what ought to happen next.

  Human resources opened an investigation. Friedland apologized to the meeting’s participants, his entire team, and then the company’s other divisions. He attended an off-site with senior staff to explain what had occurred and what he had learned from it. He met with human resources to express his contrition—but, during that meeting, while recounting the incident, he said the n-word again. Soon everyone knew about that as well.

  Within the wider Netflix community, some employees began posting angry missives on internal message boards arguing that the company had been ignoring racial tensions for years. Critics of those posts responded by saying that the issue wasn’t racism, but rather oversensitivity by some people who were not cut out for Netflix’s hard-charging culture. There were worker surveys showing that Netflix’s employees of color felt excluded, marginalized, and disadvantaged when promotions were handed out. Others, abiding by the maxim that “silent disagreement is unacceptable,” argued that these people had missed out on advancements not because of prejudice, but because they hadn’t worked hard enough.

  In between these extremes were many employees who acknowledged that Friedland had done something offensive and inappropriate but felt he should be forgiven. “Yes, Jonathan made a mistake, but he admitted the mistake, apologized, and tried to make amends,” a high-ranking executive told me. “That’s what we’re supposed to do. We’re supposed to screw up, give and accept feedback, learn from it, and move on. But some people wouldn’t let it go.”

  Complicating matters further was the fact that all of Netflix’s top executives were white, and nearly all were male. “There was this feeling, like, if the head of communications can use the n-word and there’s no consequences, why shouldn’t every Black employee feel like a second-class citizen?” one employee told me. “I think that was a watershed moment—oh wait, some people thought this was a perfect place, but, actually, there’re some things that ‘farming for dissent’ can’t fix.”

  The controversy seemed to get bigger each week. Finally, months after the initial incident, Hastings told Friedland he had to leave. He then sent a “why Jonathan was fired” email to the entire company explaining that Friedland’s “use of the n-word on at least two occasions at work showed unacceptably low racial awareness and sensitivity…. There is not a way to neutralize the emotion and history behind the word in any context.” Hastings said that he regretted not acting sooner.[*1]

  The move was cheered by some employees and resented by others. More than anything, though, it created confusion: Netflix prided itself on a culture where employees could say nearly anything to one another. Racial insults, clearly, were out of bounds. But what about if you’re discussing a show that, itself, uses a racial slur? Is it okay to specify what a character says, if your goal is to figure out what’s appropriate and what isn’t? Netflix hosted a popular comedy special named Private School Negro. Was it okay to say the title in meetings? What was forbidden and what was allowed? “It was genuinely confusing,” one executive told me. “And Reed’s email didn’t make things clearer, which is the whole point of sending emails like that.”

  The previous year, Netflix had added an “Inclusion” section to the culture deck, asking employees to be “curious about how our different backgrounds affect us at work, rather than pretending they don’t,” and to “recognize we all have biases, and work to grow past them.” The company pushed employees to discuss biases and “intervene if someone else is being marginalized.” One thing everyone could agree on was that, by these standards, the company wasn’t doing great. So Netflix began hiring new executives, including a woman named Vernā Myers, to oversee a newly created division that was devoted to equity and diversity. The goal was to foster dialogues, confront biases, and make Netflix a shining example of inclusivity.

  But how do you discuss the most sensitive topics, the kinds of subjects where an ill-phrased question or an awkward comment might draw anger or hurt, in a culture where relentless debate and scathing disagreement are the norm?

  WHY SOME CONVERSATIONS ARE SO HARD

  In 2019, two researchers from Columbia and UC Berkeley asked more than 1,500 people to describe their toughest conversations from the previous week.

  Their goal was to figure out the specifics of why some topics—such as race, gender, and ethnicity—can be so hard to discuss. To get a cross section of perspectives, they recruited people from all walks of life. Their ages ranged from eighteen to seventy-three; some were rich, others poor. The researchers had found them through online ads—and so, in some respects, the group represented the same kinds of diversity one might find inside a large company.

  The researchers asked each participant a series of questions: Have you been in a recent discussion where you felt like you didn’t fit in? Have you been in a conversation where someone expressed prejudiced beliefs? Have you heard someone make jokes about “people like you,” or pretend to talk like you, or assume you were friends with someone because you were the same ethnicity or gender?

  It quickly became clear from participants’ answers that some of their recent conversations had been challenging because of the topics they had discussed—they had talked about subjects like politics or religion, where some degree of tension is normal. But many other discussions had started out relatively benign—about, say, sports or work or what’s on television—until someone had said something that made someone else feel uncomfortable or upset.

  It was these moments of discomfort the researchers wanted to explore. What exactly had been said, and how had someone said it, that caused another person to grow anxious or angry? What had prompted the listener to withdraw, to grow defensive, to want to fight back?

  The researchers—Michael Slepian and Drew Jacoby-Senghor—found there were lots of things that might make a conversation go bad. Someone might say something offensive, or they might say something ignorant, or cruel. They might alienate their companions intentionally, or it might occur by accident. But there was one behavior, in particular, that consistently made people uncomfortable and upset: If a speaker said something that lumped a listener into a group against her or his will, the discussion would likely go south.

  Sometimes speakers would assign listeners membership in a group they didn’t like—“You’re rich, so you know most rich people are snobs”—and the listener would be offended by the insinuation they were snobbish. Sometimes a speaker would deny someone membership in a group they esteemed—“You didn’t go to law school, so you don’t understand how the law actually works”—and the listener would be insulted by the accusation that they were uninformed.

  Sometimes, when speakers made such comments, they were indirect: “You’re one of the good Republicans, but most of them only care about themselves” or “You got into that college because you’re smart, but some people like you get in because of affirmative action.” Occasionally the person making the comment seemed to have no idea they were offending: “Since you don’t have kids, you might not understand how a parent feels seeing a child treated that way.” Regardless of the phrasing, the result was consistent: Anger and alienation, a conversation that fell apart.

  These kinds of comments sparked irritation because the listeners had been assigned to a group (the wealthy snobs, the selfish Republicans, the undeserving college students) they didn’t identify with. Or, they were denied membership in a group (people who understand how the law works, people who sympathize with children) where they felt they rightfully belonged. So the listener, offended, would become defensive as their sense of self—their identity—was attacked.

  In psychology, this is known as identity threat, and it is deeply corrosive to communication. “When someone says you don’t belong, or they put you in a group you don’t appreciate, it can cause extreme psychological discomfort,” Slepian told me. Studies have shown that when people confront identity threats, their blood pressure can rise, their bodies can become flooded with stress hormones, they begin looking for ways to escape or fight back.

  Identity threats are one reason why conversations about Who Are We? can be so difficult. When some Netflix employees accused their coworkers of being “oversensitive” or “not Netflix material,” it felt to the accused as if they were being forced into a group—petulant complainers—they abhorred, or were being excluded from a group—those prepared to succeed at Netflix—to which everyone wanted to belong. And when those who had been criticized responded by arguing that their critics’ comments came from a place of privilege and were themselves evidence of racial insensitivity, it felt to the critics like they had been lumped in with racists and bigots, which made them defensive in response.

  Identity threat isn’t unique to the workplace, of course. It can occur anywhere: At a party, inside a bar, during a conversation with a stranger while waiting for the bus. Nor is it uncommon, as Slepian and Jacoby-Senghor found. Of the more than 1,500 participants who took part in their study, only 1 percent had not encountered a recent identity threat. “Participants on average had experienced 11.38 identity threats in the past week,” they wrote in their 2021 paper in Social Psychology and Personality Science. “Across 40 percent of our observations, participants felt threatened on a single identity, and 60 percent represent perceiving a threat on multiple identities.”

  The study’s participants reported experiencing identity threats due to where they lived, where they worked, who they were married to, who they were dating, where they had been born, how they spoke, how much money they earned, and dozens of other reasons. Being rich or white or straight—or socially advantaged in any other way—didn’t protect them. And being poor or Black or part of another minoritized group meant they likely confronted identity threats as often as every day.

  We’ve all felt the sting of identity threat at some point, or have said something we didn’t intend as offensive but which came off as insensitive. The mere possibility of identity threat frequently stops people from talking about Who Are We? In a 2021 study, 70 percent of participants said they saw real risks to participating in a dialogue about race, even with friends. “Black friends worry their white friends will say something racist, maybe unintentionally, and it will damage the friendship,” said Kiara Sanchez, the researcher who led that study. “And white friends worry they’ll say something prejudiced by accident. So there’s a lot of anxiety on both sides.”

  But if we care about making the world more inclusive and fair, then talking about Who Are We? is crucial. “The problem of racism can be solved, in theory, with the right information, investment, strategy, and implementation,” Harvard social psychologist Robert Livingston writes in his book The Conversation. “We have to start talking to one another—especially those outside our social circle. Nothing will improve until we begin to have honest and informed conversations about race and decide, as a community, to do something about it.”

  Conversations about who we are—and who we want to be—are essential if we hope society will change.

  * * *

  —

  Conversations about race are some of the most difficult discussions, and so, for researchers, they have served as useful models for studying the dynamics that emerge during challenging dialogues. In 2020, for instance, in an attempt to figure out how to have more honest and open conversations about race and ethnicity, another group of scientists recruited more than a hundred pairs of close friends and brought them, face-to-face, to talk about their experiences with race and racism. The researchers’ goal was to figure out if there is something that can be done before a discussion begins that makes it easier to talk about hard things.

  Every pair of friends was similar in two ways: One person was Black and the other was white. And neither of them were informed, before the experiment, that they would be discussing race.

  At the start of the experiment, some of the pairs were given generic instructions; they would serve as a control group. These pairs of friends were told to discuss “something that has happened to you recently or an experience you had that is related to your race or ethnicity.” Black participants were invited to go first, and since each pair already knew each other, they were encouraged to tell “a story you have not shared with this friend before.” The conversation, it was suggested, should last for around ten minutes.

  The second group of participants—the experimental group—was prepared differently. They were also told to discuss “something that has happened to you recently or an experience you had that is related to your race or ethnicity.” But before the discussion started, the individuals in this group received a quick training: “We want to take some time to share some things that we’ve learned [about] conversations about race with friends of different racial groups,” these participants were told. “Sometimes it feels normal to talk about race, and sometimes it can feel a bit awkward or uncomfortable at first. And that’s reasonable, because people have different experiences. However you feel is okay.” Then the participants were asked to briefly write down “some benefits you think can happen from talking about race with friends of different racial groups.” They were asked “What, if anything, might get in the way of you and a friend experiencing these benefits?” Finally, they were instructed to describe what they could “do to help overcome these obstacles, and experience these benefits.”

  This exercise—acknowledge that this discussion might be awkward; think about what obstacles might emerge, and then come up with a plan for overcoming them—took only a few minutes, and it occurred before the participants came face-to-face. The researchers didn’t instruct anyone on how to speak to each other, and they didn’t declare any topics off limits. They didn’t remind people to be respectful or polite or explain how to avoid identity threats. Participants also weren’t told to share their answers to these pre-discussion questions with each other. They could simply scribble some thoughts and then set them aside, if they wished.

  But the researchers suspected that simply getting someone to acknowledge to themselves, up front, that a conversation about race or ethnicity can be uncomfortable might make that discomfort easier to withstand. And pushing people to think about the structure of their conversation—their hopes for the dialogue; what tensions might appear and how to handle them—might make those obstacles less likely or intimidating.

  Put differently, the researchers hypothesized that nudging participants to think, just a little harder, about how a conversation will unfold, before it starts, might make identity threats a bit less threatening.

  The conversations, when they finally occurred, were relatively similar for both groups. But when the pairs in the control group—those who had received no special training—began talking, some of them struggled. They seemed hesitant to dive in. They fled to safer topics, such as their classes or sports. For one pair, the conversation was so uncomfortable that, even though they were close friends, they said goodbye after just three minutes.

  However, in the experimental group, conversations often went better. Some friends talked for a long time. They got deep, asked each other questions, debated their experiences. They discussed how race and racism felt and described painful or meaningful moments from their own lives, rather than bland generalizations. All the conversations generally went well, but among the experimental group, there were moments of real connection. In one conversation, a Black man told his white friend what it felt like when a clerk had followed him around a store. “I could feel the shop owner, like, looking at me, and watching me, and everything I touched,” the Black man said. Both participants were college friends, but they had never talked about race with each other. “I can’t forget, like, who I am in America, and stuff,” the Black participant said. “I’m a Black man.”