Beyond the Backlash| Up for Discussion with Mary Frances Winters

In this episode of Up for Discussion, we are joined by Mary-Frances Winters, founder and CEO of The Winters Group Inc., a global diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice consulting firm. An acclaimed author and recognised DE&I trailblazer, Mary-Frances brings decades of experience advocating for justice and equity. She shares her unique perspective shaped by coming of age during the civil rights movement and her extensive work advancing inclusive leadership worldwide. 

Throughout the episode, we explore several key areas: 

• Mary-Frances discusses the current backlash against DE&I efforts in the U.S., unpacking the misconceptions about affirmative action and “reverse discrimination,” and why inclusion benefits everyone. 

• We hear about the ongoing challenges organisations face in creating truly equitable workplaces, including unconscious bias and the importance of recognising diverse experiences — from race and gender to neurodiversity. 

• Mary-Frances emphasises the critical role of empathy and dialogue in bridging divides and engaging dominant groups in DE&I work. 

• She shares candid reflections on systemic inequities and the global nature of these challenges, including how political climates impact progress. 

Join us for a powerful and hopeful conversation that offers deep insights into advancing diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice in today’s complex world. Tune in now! 

[Janet Ledger] (0:16 - 1:26) 

Hi, my name is Janet Ledger, CEO at Community Business, and I will be your podcast host for today's episode. Mary Frances Winters is the author of seven books, including Racial Justice at Work, Practical Solutions for Systemic Change, and bestsellers, Black Fatigue, How Racism Erodes the Mind, Body, and Spirits, and We Can't Talk About That at Work, How to Talk About Race, Religion, Politics, and Other Polarizing Topics. She is the founder and CEO of The Winters Group Inc., a global diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice consulting firm. She came of age during the civil rights movement of the 1960s and is a passionate advocate for justice and equity. Named a top 10 diversity and inclusion trailblazer by Forbes, Mary Frances believes in opening doors and amplifying marginalized voices and their allies. So Mary Frances, thank you so much for joining us today, and it's absolutely wonderful to have you back as a collaborator with us here at Community Business. 

  

I wanted to just start by saying how are you, especially in the face of what's happening in the U.S. post the executive orders and the backlash? 

  

[Mary Frances Winters] (1:27 - 2:43) 

Yeah, so thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it, and it's good to be back connected to Community Business. It's been a while, but I finally remember my trips to Hong Kong and to Singapore and to India on behalf of Community Business, so yeah, so those were some very nice trips and very nice sessions that I did. 

  

But you know, yeah, it's a really, really difficult time. How am I doing? I live part-time in Barbados, so I'm in Barbados right now where it's beautiful every day. 

  

The sun shines and the ocean is blue, and I try to take care of my well-being because there's certain things you just can't do anything about, and we have to recognize that, and I know that good will prevail in the end. You know, the diversity, equity, inclusion is about harmony, is about bringing people together, so we know the people who do this work understand that it is not divisive. It is not polarizing. 

  

It really is about helping us to understand each other so that we can live and work better together, so I'm always optimistic. I'm an eternal optimist. 

  

[Janet Ledger] (2:44 - 3:19) 

That's good to hear. I think we're all feeling it, and certainly everybody that we're working with is feeling it, and you're right, like when you know that you're working on something that's fair and is about inclusion and belonging for everybody, it's just holding the course, and it isn't divisive, so yeah. So look, for listeners who might not be fully aware, can you briefly describe what the backlash is entailing, and what are some of the common criticisms or arguments that are currently being made in the U.S. against diversity, equity, and inclusion? 

  

[Mary Frances Winters] (3:20 - 6:21) 

So this is my perspective, and I recognize the limitations of my own lens, so for your followers and listeners, this is my perspective. Diversity, equity, and inclusion is under attack because there's a sense that it gives preferential treatment unfairly to certain groups. So as you well know, and your listeners will well know, the history around the world, but particularly in the United States, we've had a sordid history around exclusion where it was legal before the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in the United States. 

  

It was legal to exclude people. You could discriminate legally, and we had Jim Crow laws, we had separations where Black people couldn't sit in the same place in the movie theaters or drink at the same water fountains, protections for women. Women were excluded from certain roles, certain positions, they couldn't be on the police force, and all of those kinds of things changed with the Civil Rights Act of 1964. 

  

To level the playing field and to correct the past, that's what the affirmative action was about. It was to say, and we haven't gotten there yet, so when you do audits and you look at statistics and you say, wow, are we at parity? Does everybody have a fair chance of of achieving their full potential? 

  

And the answer is no, we still are not there. However, the sense is that the programs designed to level the playing field give an unfair advantage to certain groups, and here's the big piece of it, and those individuals from those groups are less qualified. So that's the argument that's being made, and therefore white men, white heterosexual men, are being discriminated against, and they call it reverse discrimination. 

  

In my way of thinking, there is no such thing as reverse discrimination. Discrimination is discrimination, right? And so because inclusion includes everyone, if you're discriminating against a white male, then that's wrong as well, and white males are protected because they're veterans, because we have protections around family leave now for both men and before it was just women. 

  

So diversity, equity, and inclusion is for everyone, but the mindset of the current administration in the United States is that it is not, and that it unfairly disadvantages white men. 

  

[Janet Ledger] (6:22 - 7:10) 

Yeah, I mean that's a message we've been pushing as much as we can, you know, sitting where we are in Asia around, you know, let's not get lost in the rhetoric here that it is for all. That's what we're talking about. It isn't just for specific groups. 

  

If we think about what can we do about the backlash, because I know within our network at the moment, there's, I guess, there's a lot of reflection going on around, like, what can we do about the backlash and how do we resist it? So, you know, just sort of, it'd be nice to dig a bit deeper into maybe some of the common misconceptions or misunderstandings that you're seeing about DEI and then how we might address that. 

  

[Mary Frances Winters] (7:11 - 12:14) 

Well, the common misunderstanding is that DEI was really for, you know, the United States, race is still, you know, big bugaboo, if you will, and that this disadvantaged unfairly Black people, you know, in particular. And also the other area is the LGBTQ community. So it seems that those are two targeted groups, two targeted areas that the administration is after. 

  

And the third group is women, you know, women as well, because if you just match, you know, so we have protected groups. There are certain groups that have were protected by law from discrimination because of past discrimination. And the idea is, the feeling is, is that they've gone, that they went too far. 

  

They went too far in the correction. But if you look at the data and you look at the statistics, white men still predominate, you know, in all leadership roles. And people of color, women, people who in the United States, the categories would be, you know, Black, Latino, Asian, Hawaiian. 

  

And I know that I'm forgetting, I'm forgetting a group, multiracial, you know, people who are protected by, you know, by the laws. And the idea is that there are things like unconscious bias that, so why, why are the statistics as they are? Why is it that we're not at parity? 

  

You know, why is it that these groups continue to be less represented than their availability in the labor force? Why is that the case? And so we're saying, people who advocate for diversity inclusion is because there are unconscious and sometimes conscious, you know, biases. 

  

But when we think about it, let's even think about neurodiversity. So neurodiversity is one of the newer aspects. So if someone is in the workplace and they're dyslexic and the leader doesn't know that, the leader could make judgments about that individual that could be, you know, quite wrong. 

  

And if some accommodation were made, perhaps, you know, providing Grammarly or, you know, some other, you know, software that's so readily available today, individual, you know, would be a stellar, you know, performer. And so when we think about this, we're not just talking about race, we're not just talking about, you know, gender, we're not just talking about LGBTQ, we're talking about how do we create environments where everyone is able to thrive? And so in leadership development, if leaders don't recognize that there are differences that make a difference, it doesn't necessarily mean that when you see someone not performing well, that there is some difference that's making a difference. 

  

But if the leader can't even put that in their options of what might be going on, then they're not going to go there as a possibility. And so what this, what our work does, from my perspective, it opens up the possibilities of the range of obstacles that could be, you know, possible, precluding, that's keeping a person from, you know, achieving what they might be able to achieve. It helps the leaders to ask the question, was it because of Mary Frances's race that I thought that? 

  

Is that coming into play at all? Was it because she was a woman? I had a leader one time, this is a number of years ago, say he had an aha moment in a session and he said, oh my goodness, he said, I have daughters. 

  

And he said, and they're of childbearing age. And he said, I now realize that the women on my team, I don't think of them for international assignments, because I just assuming that they wouldn't want them, you know, because they're married and they're thinking about having a family. And he said, oh my gosh, I didn't even realize that that's what I was thinking. 

  

But, you know, but I was thinking of my own daughters and what I would want for them. So it's not that we're saying that leaders discriminate purposefully, purposely, we're not saying that they're bad people. We're just saying that there are differences that make a difference and diversity, equity, and inclusion allows us to take into account those differences. 

  

Now, might there be abuse of some of the, of course, there's always some abuse, right? But by and large, diversity, equity, inclusion is about leveling the playing field and about giving everybody a fair chance. 

  

[Janet Ledger] (12:14 - 12:31) 

Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, I don't think you can have, there's a lot of talk about meritocracy. 

  

And I don't think you can achieve that unless you are taking the lens of inclusion. You know, just to me, to me, you can't have one without the other. 

  

[Mary Frances Winters] (12:31 - 13:28) 

And who decides, who decides merit? I mean, how do we, how do we assess, how does one assess merit? So if you look at the qualifications of this individual and you look at the qualifications of the next individual and their qualifications are the same, right? 

  

Who's to say that one is not, you know, you know, more worthy than the other. I mean, it's such a hypocrisy right now in the United States though, because the people that Donald Trump has put in his cabinet, many of them have no qualifications for the job that they're, that they're doing. And so when you start to talk about merit, it just, it just, it just falls apart because how do you define merit? 

  

That means who's deserving, right? And if I have all of the, if I've got all the schooling and the education and whatnot, why am I not just as deserving? 

  

[Janet Ledger] (13:30 - 14:11) 

Absolutely. So, and I, I, we've been doing a lot of reflection as well around how you appeal to those who, you know, are sort of in the, in the, in the majority, depending on where you're actually sitting. So, you know, in your book, In Inclusive Conversations, you know, you talk about the fragility of dominant groups, which I think we're sort of seeing in, you know, and we, we see it here in the region that we're in. 

  

So how do you, can you sort of give us your perspective on how you reach out across the divide to start to work with the dominant groups? 

  

[Mary Frances Winters] (14:13 - 16:59) 

I guess we just have to keep the message going that this is about all of us and to show how those dominant groups are benefiting from diversity, equity, and inclusion as well. When you start to, when you talk about unions, when you talk about, you know, family leave, when you, there are so many type, there are so many benefits and so many, so many aspects of diversity, equity, inclusion beyond hiring, right? Beyond who gets the job so that we're all benefiting. 

  

So there was a situation I was, I'm on the board of my alma mater, and they were talking about a program for the deaf and hard of hearing that has been canceled because of Trump's executive orders. And this program was a supportive program that, that allowed students who are deaf and hard of hearing, it gave them the assistance that they needed, but because it's under DEI, the program has been, has been eliminated. And so I think we have to just continue the message that DEI, you know, because diversity just is, I mean, we can't, we can't legislate diversity away because it just, it just is. 

  

We come in all different sizes, shapes, colors, ages, abilities, it just is. So diversity just is. So how do you manage it? 

  

How do you leverage it in an organization to get peak, to get peak performance? And it's by understanding it, right? It's, it's by, it's by really understanding it. 

  

And so I think that this notion comes from this idea that there's this great replacement theory. So the global majority is not white. And I think that therein lies, you know, I'm being very candid here because I think we have to have candid conversations. 

  

And when you think about the global majority, the global majority is people from all parts of the world and not white necessarily. So I think that that's the issue that, you know, well, we all know this, the type of mentality that says the white race is the superior race. And so I think that's under, underneath it all. 

  

I think that's, you know, and that's a global issue. And I think that's why the current administration in the United States is allying themselves with, aligning themselves with like-minded leaders. 

  

[Janet Ledger] (17:01 - 19:29) 

Yeah, because, you know, I mean, I think that, I think by and large, by and large, the majority won't necessarily, most people are fair-minded. Like, you know, like there's not a, you know, if presented with logic, I think the majority of people are sort of fair-minded and it's, but they might not, I think it's sometimes how, how things are described and, you know, I mean, some of the sorts of examples I think of my work career was working mainly with men and with white men and in terms of inclusion, allowing like surfacing the stories and, and getting them to be comfortable with taking up things like family leave and flexible working and, you know, to play the role of fathers, you know, like to be more active in that. And, and I mean, I'm talking a decade ago and I used to sort of see fear in a lot of the men, you know, in that it was like seen as weakness for them to embrace those sorts of things. 

  

Like when they knew that it was safe for them to do so, because I was going to be non-judgmental, if anything, the opposite supportive of that and, and slowly, but surely you'd see more of them kind of coming out and availing themselves of that. But yeah, it's a, you know, it is it's, it's quite, it's very disappointing to watch. It's very frustrating to watch. 

  

And, you know, I mean, in Asia, what we're also seeing is there are some, some sides of the political spectrum here that are embracing some of what we're seeing as well as a majority, you know, sort of seeing it as a, you know, talking about inclusion very much as a negative. So we're, you know, we're really keen on how we just continue to engage, explain, educate, all those sorts of things. And one of the things we're also seeing here is whether it's on LinkedIn or in person. 

  

And this is way before, this is probably last year, we were seeing this more so than, you know, it's sort of, it's, it's not necessarily attached to what's changed, but we've seen it's really created an echo chamber of voices rather than cross communication perspective. So, you know, it's the same people in the same rooms talking about talking to almost like a closed audience. So I guess, what's your perspective on how we try to bring a broader audience into the conversation? 

  

[Mary Frances Winters] (19:30 - 23:42) 

I think right now, there's just a lot of fear to speak up about anything. And so I know, I don't know that I have a solution like for right now. Right now, I think the, I think those individuals who are fair minded, and I agree with you that I think the majority of people are fair minded, but they're fair minded with a bit of fear. 

  

Yeah, yeah. If I, if I speak on this, you know, am I going to be targeted in some way or, and so I think that we have to be, be, be gentle in a way with people and recognize that the fear is, you know, the fear is real. The fear, the fear is real. 

  

I think, you know, forums like this, where we're openly talking, you know, openly talking about it. We just did a three session series on the book. We can't talk about that at work. 

  

We focused it on how do you have the conversations in this climate, you know, in this climate. And so the first part was really about the I in inclusion and managing the I in inclusion, because people are coming with all sorts of different emotions right now. There's frustration, there's anger, there's fear, there's, you know, there's stress, there's just all sorts of different emotions right now. 

  

And to, and to recognize that and acknowledge that and do the self work to say, you know, where am I, what, what am I going to stand for? What am I willing to take risk on? Because it's just, you know, I just can't do anything else. 

  

I must speak on this. You know, I must stand for this. Everybody's not going to march and protest. 

  

Everybody's not going to write, you know, like I do, but what, what role can you play that, that allows you to, you know, allows you to be a part of the movement towards a notion of, you know, a more, a kinder world, a more empathetic world, a more compassionate world. Because that's, to me, that's what diversity, equity, inclusion is all about. It's about caring about humanity. 

  

It's about caring about individuals who are a part of this planet so that we can all cohabitate it in a way that we're being and fighting. And so I think, you know, I think it's one person at a time. I think it's one, you know, I, but I think right now people are paralyzed. 

  

I think, I think now people need to take care of themselves, whatever their wellbeing, because we're compounding things, Janet. You have, you may have a, an elderly parent that you're caring for. You may have, you know, children who are, you know, have special needs and, and you've got the political climate as well. 

  

Right. And so I think right now that people are just carrying huge, heavy burdens. My colleague, well, many, some of my colleagues have been fired, you know, from their diversity jobs. 

  

And then others don't know if they will be fired from their diversity job. And if you work in the federal government in the United States right now, you don't, you maybe you have a job today. You didn't have it tomorrow. 

  

Now they got it back again. And, you know, there's just so much. And that's, you know, that's really, really difficult when you're toying with people's livelihood. 

  

So I think, I think right now, and I, I did, was not one to agree with changing the language. I now understand, you know, why we have to, you know, for, for now we have to do, do that, but we still have to do the work. We still have to do the work of caring for people. 

  

This is about the human experience. This is about, you know, people being able to live their lives, have their livelihoods and do it with respect and dignity. That's what it's really all about. 

  

Yeah. No, go ahead. I'm sorry. 

  

[Janet Ledger] (23:43 - 23:58) 

No, no, it's just, you're absolutely right. I think one of our last, one of our last sort of, or one of the last comments we sent out was about let's not forget the humans that are impacted in this. It's now while the debate's raging. 

  

Yeah. It's, it's a lot. It's a lot. 

  

[Mary Frances Winters] (23:59 - 24:02) 

It's, it's, it's, it's, it's a lot. Yeah. Yeah. 

  

[Janet Ledger] (24:02 - 24:02) 

It's a lot. 

  

[Mary Frances Winters] (24:02 - 25:04) 

We're in our summit next week and we've got a whole wellness corner. We were just really focusing on people taking care, you know, of their own well-being. I, you know, I believe, I believe good will prevail in, you know, in the end. 

  

I believe people will not want to have this divisive polarizing kind of environment, but when we're in it, it's, it's just really difficult. And like I said to you before we started recording, um, you asked me how I'm doing. Um, I'm doing, um, but I really try to not look at a lot of the, I'm, I'm not a news junkie anymore. 

  

I don't, I don't watch a lot of it. Uh, and I really try to read books that are affirming and, and I think that that's what, for right now, you know, we're in a moment. Hopefully this is not a movement. 

  

Hopefully this is just a moment to adjust really in an upheaval. 

  

[Janet Ledger] (25:08 - 25:36) 

And, you know, the companies that are working with, uh, you know, they're all internally dealing with, with what, what this means, um, in terms of what they can do around the backlash. But have you seen, um, anything, what, what are you seeing in terms of innovation or, or a shift because you touched there on changing the language, but what are you seeing organizations doing that are choosing to hold the course in advancing inclusion in the face of what we're in at the moment? 

  

[Mary Frances Winters] (25:37 - 27:40) 

So one of my clients is using the term impact officer. So the person who was the diversity person is now the impact officer, you know, impact and its impact both internally and externally. So she now has philanthropy under her as well. 

  

What impact are we, you know, are we, are we having, um, I'm going to be speaking, um, in Minnesota in May and they're using terms like fairness and opportunity. Um, so, uh, and I know that, uh, I think it was JP Morgan has changed theirs from, um, equity to opportunity. Um, so how are we, how are we providing, you know, equal opportunity, equitable opportunity. 

  

So they're using, they're using that language, seeing organizations, we've been saying this for years, but seeing organizations, um, paying more attention to integrating this work into the entire business rather than having it as a separate. Um, but we've been saying do that for a long time. Um, it's not a new concept, but I think now they're, um, they're implementing that, um, you know, so, so that it's integrated. 

  

We're working with a client where at the manufacturing client, and they just had a lot of issues with trust and, um, just a lot of, um, toxic environment. And, and, and some of it did have to do with, with racial, um, diversity. However, we're not doing the work under that, under that umbrella. 

  

We're doing the work under organization, organizational change, and we're looking at safety, um, physical safety because they're in a manufacturing environment as well as psychological safety. So we put those two together. Um, and within that, you know, how do we have all employees feel psychologically safe regardless of what their race is? 

  

And so, so we're finding, and we're helping organizations to, um, implement in earnest this time, integrating this work into all of their, uh, operations. 

  

[Janet Ledger] (27:41 - 28:46) 

Yeah. I've always been a firm believer in that. And I think, I think it's the way that I came to, um, community business was from being an operational leader. 

  

So, you know, and, and, and working for a company that had fantastic policies and practices and being able to embrace those and implement them, um, you know, cause I think the real change happens at that middle layer of the organization. And if the, if those leaders aren't equipped to, to, you know, and you're right, I mean, it's, you touched on it earlier on around the biases that they come with. They're inherently not bad people, but they're coming with their own, their own sort of worldview and that might not, you know, yeah. 

  

So, and that's interesting cause we're seeing, um, you know, clients shift the, keep doing the work, but shift the work into different parts of the organization. Some of it in around CSR, um, in the CSR groups, which is interesting because that's actually where it sits in a lot of the Hong Kong businesses. So, you know, like they've sort of come at it from that perspective first, um, you know, even though we know. 

  

[Mary Frances Winters] (28:46 - 28:51) 

That's under, that's under attack in the United States as well. Right. Okay. 

  

That's interesting. 

  

[Janet Ledger] (28:51 - 28:52) 

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 

  

[Mary Frances Winters] (28:53 - 29:02) 

They've kind of shifted that language over the past few years to ESG environment, social and governance. Yeah. So the ESG is, is under attack as well. 

  

[Janet Ledger] (29:03 - 29:58) 

Right. Okay. Yeah. 

  

So, and we're finding one thing as well that the social, the social, um, social mobility research that we've done has been quite timely because it's, we're, we're finding a broader audience is wanting to engage with that than, than we've, you know, the, and I think it's cause most people, most people, even those that are potentially more right leaning can understand a social mobility story. So, you know, that's helping. Yeah. 

  

So just didn't, you, you, you have given some advice through the conversation that we've having, but the final question here is around, you know, for those who are working in diversity, equity, and inclusion roles that are affected, you know, or are discouraged, you know, how, how, what's your advice to them to not become completely overwhelmed in this, in this challenging environment that we're in.