Dr. Marc Johnston-Guerrero on Monoracism, Belonging, and Building Community Beyond Categories

What does it mean to live in between?

In this episode of Our True Colors, Dr. Shawna Gann sits down with scholar and thought leader Dr. Marc Johnston-Guerrero for a powerful conversation about liminal identity, multiracial experiences, and the systems that shape how we are seen and understood. From his personal journey navigating identity through something as intimate as his name, to his groundbreaking work defining monoracism, Marc offers language and insight for experiences many people have felt but struggled to name.

Together, they explore how identity is shaped not just by who we are, but by the structures around us—from higher education to the workplace. Marc shares how his own experiences led him to study multiraciality, the importance of both specificity and shared experience in research, and why building community often happens later in life or outside traditional spaces. The conversation also dives into leadership, highlighting how navigating complex identities can influence empathy, perspective-taking, and the way we show up in the world.

This episode is a reminder that identity doesn’t have to fit neatly into predefined boxes—and that there is real power in embracing complexity, creating space, and building community where it doesn’t yet exist. 

Connect and Learn More:

•  Learn more about the Critical Mixed Race Studies Association
   
•  Listen to the episode about the CMRSA Conference
   
•  Learn more about Dr. Shawna Gann’s work and sign up for updates on her upcoming book Mixed Signals:
   

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Transcript

Intro  0:06  
welcome to our true colors, hosted by Shawna Gann. Join her as she explores the challenges of being a racial riddle, an ethnic enigma and a cultural conundrum. Let's dive in.

Guest  0:26  
It still feels new. It still feels sort of in between.


Shawna  0:44  
Hi friends, welcome back to another episode of our true colors. The voice You heard right at the top of the show belongs to my guest today, and the thing he's describing as still feeling new, still feeling in between. It isn't what you might guess. It isn't his racial identity or his career or a new city, it's something surprisingly more personal than that. 

Marc: Hi everyone. I'm Marc Johnston Guerrero. 

Marc is a scholar whose work on multiraciality in higher education has shaped how a lot of us think and talk about mixed race identity. He's credited with introducing the term monoracism into academic literature, we met up in the critical mixed race Studies Association Conference in LA if you haven't already, check out the special episode about that conference. The conference itself was so amazing, but there's so much more. You really should consider joining the critical mixed race Studies Association. I'll be sure to include those links for you in the show notes. Marc is a very prolific writer, so you may have seen his work out there, including his bio, but I thought it would be fun to ask him to tell something about himself that isn't in his bio. Here's what he said.

Marc 1:57  
One thing that people probably don't know or wouldn't know from a bio is that I am a rower. So I do crew, and I've been rowing pretty much all my life, and I say that because it's not a very diverse sport. 

Shawna: Today, in this conversation, we get into how Marc came to study multiraciality, what he's learned from his decades Inside Higher Ed, and why the workplace, including the University itself, is still catching up to people whose identities don't sit in a single box. I can't wait for you to hear what he had to say, so let's get into it. Enjoy the show. 

Shawna  2:30  
Welcome Marc. Thank you so much for joining me for this conversation. I've been trying to SG as a guest for a minute, and then we caught up with each other at critical mixed race Studies Association in LA. This is really cool. Yeah, no, thank you. I'm really excited to have this conversation. Yeah, it's been a long time coming. So I really am glad we were able to connect at the conference. Me too. Thank you for being willing to share your brilliance. I do have some questions that are not necessarily academic today, but I know that there are folks who listen, who are students and who would appreciate some of the other stuff too. Are you cool to explore a few different things? Let's do it awesome. So I talk a lot about complex identity, and not just what it is to be a person with complex identities, because really anybody can argue complexity, right? But also having an identity, or identities that face you in a liminal space, these in between spaces. On this show, we talk a lot about mixed race, obviously, but also things like being a transracial adoptee or even a third culture kid. But some folks may not realize, like, oh, I guess when we're talking about gender identity, there could be a liminal space, even veterans who are separating or retiring from a career like multi decade career of active duty, and then going into civilian world like that could be a liminal space. So my question for you is, When have you ever felt some sense of in betweenness or liminality? Yeah, no, this is a great question, and it's making me think of one of my mentees, Lisa de la Cruz combs, because her dissertation research was all on what she was calling liminal identity experiences. And so even though her focus, like mine has been around multiracial students and multiraciality in higher ed, she was like, but I think there's some common experiences that's not just about multiraciality. And so she was trying to get at this liminal and so yeah, I'm just like, totally on board. Yeah, it's funny, because I never really used that term for myself, but I think I've always felt it. I've always felt sort of in between. And I think a lot of it comes down to this sort of the social forces and structures that force.

Marc Johnston Guerrero  4:59  
Force people to choose to be one or the other. And I think that comes down to sort of Yeah, like the monoracial categories that I go between being Filipino and also white. I think I'm often navigating the world and this sort of liminal experience. But I think for me, I mainly feel it now because of my last name being Guerrero, but I didn't grow up with that. That is my husband's last name, who is also Filipino. And so when we got married, we had our commitment ceremony in 2010, then five years later, we got legally married, when it became legal, and at that point, I took his last name and moved Johnston, the name I grew up with, to my middle name, which is a common sort of tradition in the Philippines, and of like, yeah, the maiden name going to the middle name. And so I think now I'm feeling it a lot, because I'm moving through this world with this name that often people think I'm Latino. They know I'm Asian American, then they'll have some sense of, oh, okay, his last name is Spanish sounding. He must be Filipino, but yeah, sort of it still feels new. It still feels sort of in between. I publish with a different name than my legal name. So yeah, there's a lot of still in between this and liminal sort of interactions and feelings around my name, as I interact with people, as I meet new people, as I'm introduced, and as I publish a scholarship, you know, trying to figure out, like, how will people connect my name? And so that's one of the things at the conference. I'm like, I don't know if people know when I just say, Oh, I'm Marc Guerrero, because that's my legal lesson. Like I'm like, do they know I'm the Johnston, and in the Johnston, sort of where we get credit coining the term mono racism in the academic literature. So yeah. So all of that kind of plays out to how I often am navigating and these feelings and experiences of being in between.

Shawna  7:03  
Wow. Thank you so much for sharing that I have this whole list of all these different liminal or ways of maybe identifying with liminal identities because of being caught in the middle or maybe not being counted in some significant way. Now I'm going to add marriage name changes, but not just marital like status, because I recently got an email from somebody who I didn't recognize, was because she had a divorce and she changed her name. You know, my husband and I, we've been married 28 years. When I say my maiden name, it sounds foreign to me now, wow, it's bizarre. Now, my brother, he still, he still has the name, and so does my younger sister, but I say their name, it doesn't sound weird. It sounds weird when I say it for myself. Just you sharing your story about your name came up for me. Not only that, that's another liminal space, but also when I talk to folks about this in betweenness, especially when we talk about gender. A lot of folks, I mean, I'm cisgender, so I can't say from experience what it's like to be trans, but people don't always understand. Like, how can that be? What does it mean? The way you identify doesn't fit you and fit your body. But then if folks think about trying on a new name, like, Does it fit? Does it feel weird? Then it kind of gives people that hook that, oh, that's how it could maybe not fit, but if you're just walking around in the world with the privilege of not having to think about your name or your body or how you identify and show up in the world with other folks, you're not going to think about that. So thank you for adding that as a new one, and it's so valid. You're telling me the story, and I'm like, oh my god, I remember having to write my name? Okay, back in the day, y'all, we had to write checks, okay? Like learning how to, you know, rewrite my name. What's my new signature gonna look like? All that stuff. Wow, so cool. Thank you for that. Yeah, thank you. Obviously, you're a prolific writer in these spaces. You've been studying multi raciality for a while. What drew you to the study?

Marc Johnston Guerrero  9:03  
Yeah. So a lot of it is just my own experiences growing up, encountering questions like the What are you kinds of questions? I mean, I definitely got that growing up, and then then it became like, oh, what's your background, or What's your ethnicity? Where are you from? Where are you really from? All those questions. Oh, yeah. And I didn't really understand, like, Well, why? Like, until I was maybe in high school, and I grew up in Michigan, born and raised in Michigan, so Midwest, not a lot of Filipinos around where I was growing up. And so I think people saw me as some sort of ambiguous Brown and would, like, immediately either think I spoke Spanish or would speak Spanish to me. And there was a point in time where I was like, well, maybe I am, you know, Latino or something. And so there were points in time where I, like, tried that identity on, as you were talking about trying things on and seeing if they fit, not sort of knowing a lot of the history and background. So I joined, like, our rasa Club. Club in high school, and I chose to go to University of Tampa for college because I wanted to be around more Latinos, and so this was, like, part of my identity exploration. And it wasn't until I transferred to Michigan State University as an undergrad where then I started to like, Okay, well, maybe this is opportunity to explore what it means to be Filipino, American and Asian American. So then I got really involved, and I started to realize, okay, well, yeah, I'm not necessarily Latino, even though the Philippines was colonized by Spain. And so there are some commonalities that, yeah, yeah, we call each other cousins or Primos. So that's where in undergrad, I sort of like immersed myself when we think about racial identity development models, you know, I really did immerse myself and tried to learn everything I could about being Filipino, being Asian American. I was dancing and a lot of, like, cultural performances, and not necessarily having that experience growing up like it felt a little, not inauthentic, but maybe like I'm just like, Oh, am I posing? And so there was a God, yeah, really questioning it. And I don't know if I ever got a lot of pushback from, you know, like people who were fully identified as Filipino American, but I did like it did feel different. It didn't feel like this is was what I grew up with, and it was my one of my mentors, Dr Kevin Nadal. He was pursuing his master's degree at Michigan State when I was undergrad there, and he was our advisor. He introduced me to thinking about multiraciality and introduced me to the term Hopper, which, at the time, you know, like, I was like, Oh my gosh, there's a term that, like, you know, names my identity. Like, this, is it like? I was like, Oh my gosh, like this. Finally, something that fits, something that feels right. I started a hopper club at Michigan State. I got everybody on board with Hapa. And then a few years later, realized, like, this is so problematic, as Native Hawaiians were sort of calling attention to the CO opting of their native language and asking people not to use it. And so I'm like, Okay, I'll stop and move away from there. And then I started to identify more as mixed or multiracial broadly, and have been doing that ever since. And so a lot of it is that personal connection and exploration, and then finding community through undergrad and continuing with my master's as well.

Shawna  12:31  
I'm grinning over here because I found myself doing a lot of this. I took African dance in high school and college. Also in high school, I was in the Hispanic club. I am not Hispanic. People speak to me in Spanish all the time. I studied Spanish. What was I doing in the Hispanic club? But then I thought, You know what that seems to be, the groups of people that I was drawn to and who accepted me because, maybe because I was that. Would you call it ambiguous, brown? You know, I had black friends. I had white friends, whatever. But I'm always drawn to other brown folks, even though, for most of my life, I identified as being monoracially black, but I just never fully fit into those places. You know, when I started my research, my dissertation, that was the first time I started looking at anything multiracial, because I didn't consider myself to be multiracial even then. So in terms of academia, research, all that stuff, I feel behind some other scholars out there who have taken sociology, racial history classes, ethnic studies classes, all that stuff. I didn't do that. I was an elementary school teacher and then moved into business psychology, but people ask me the same questions you talked about. That's been huge in my life, and then I also lived outside of the US for so long that it just felt natural to explore what these different identities felt like, looked like, sound like, whatever, in the workplace. As a business psychologist, that being said, now that I'm a little bit further down the road, there are things that I've learned that I'm like, dang it. I didn't have that representation in school for someone to direct me. I didn't have a mentor that could say, hey, Shawna, you're doing stuff about mixed race studies, multiracial studies. Look here, look here, look here. This is where you want to begin. So some of the stuff that you did years ago. I found recently, and then there were other things that you've done that I was like I was doing that at the same time. How did I not see this? And that was one of the best things I think about being at the cmrsa conference is seeing all this work come together, and many of us don't know that we're doing things simultaneously. What have you learned about how to research multiracial experiences over all this time, all these different things that you've done? Has anything changed in your mindset? Like this is how I need to go about research now?

Marc Johnston Guerrero  14:52  
Yeah, wow. I love that question, and it was, I have to think about it thing, because I'm so focused on the what I. But you're you're right about this idea of like, hey, people are living this experiences, and maybe we're not connected in the same way, to know that there is this commonality and themes and experiences. So that's been what has driven a lot of my work, is trying to figure out the commonalities and how that can be used to build community. I'm also incredibly indebted to another one of my mentors, Dr Kristen Wren, who literally wrote the book called mixed race students in college, so I use a lot of her guidance and model for how to conduct research, especially from her being a monoracial white woman, like studying multiracial people and sort of that dynamic as well helps me realize, like, even though I am an in group and identify as multiracial, like I am only one kind of multiracial when there's so Many kinds, right, and I also have to be very upfront, like, Okay, I don't know the black experience or mixed, multiracial black experience, biracial experience, and that is very unique. And I think people have to realize those kinds of insider, outsider dynamics as they're researching multi raciality. And we're seeing a lot more people sort of focus on specific kinds of mixed heritage. And for me, and I'm like, I love that. I support you, and I still think there's something beneficial for thinking about sort of the commonalities across, yeah, work has tried to look at Mono racism as a system and structure of oppression that is often a common force we're all dealing with, and that's where, even if you're mixed with this or that, or other kinds of combinations, we're all sort of still grappling with the demand to only identify As one in these structural forces. So I encourage people to keep that in mind. Yes, go specific. Figure out, are there differences, but also, are there commonalities?

Shawna  17:09  
Heck, yeah, man, I feel like you're just going through my list. I'm like, and number four, like you got the segways set up perfectly. Yes, Ren, my work isn't focused on here's these different ways of being mixed, but I do think it matters, especially when you talk about phenotype learning new terms like you, you were like, Haha, that's me. Let's go. That's how I felt exactly when I learned the term multi generationally mixed. Because I'm like, there it is. There it is. That's me. That's who I am. You know, you dig that. But also you brought up the term mono racism, everyone Johnson and a doll Johnson, a doll Johnson. So gotta talk to us about it, because what we just spoke about, you and me, this idea of trying to find like, what fits, even while maybe simultaneously feeling like, don't label me. But also, can I have a thing that's that describes me? It's hard to find that language. How in the world did you all come up with mono racism for someone hearing it for the first time? Though, could you explain it a little bit?

Marc Johnston Guerrero  18:16  
Yeah? No. I mean, yeah. I think there's always that tension of, like, wanting to have language that uniquely describes one's experiences without them feeling like, Oh, I'm better than or I'm special, right? Like, you know, like, we don't want to distance ourselves too much, because then that could cause for critique. And so, yeah, identity language is different than, I think, when we're naming sort of structural and systemic kind of language. And so I'll share some of the background. And story from my perspective is that my mentor, Kevin Nadal, is sort of credited with doing a lot of work on microaggressions. Daryl Wing Sue was Kevin's mentor, I think, dissertation advisor, and so was doing a lot of work with him. There's also people out of UCLA, Danny, so Larson, know, also doing interesting work with microaggressions on that time, like I was thinking, like, Okay, well, I'm learning about microaggressions. And to me that started to name this experience that I was having that was like, I can't say that's racism, right? So I'm like, Okay, well, it's a microaggression clearly. And now I have this framework to understand these kinds of experiences. And even when they would go around, initially, in the late 2000s sort of talking about microaggressions. It was Danny so larsenal would talk about, it's finally being able to give a name to the pain that experiencing. And Daryl, too talks about making the invisible visible, and that, I'm like, okay, that's the power of language in this concept. And there's been a lot of critiques since then, sort of saying, Oh, well, you're minimizing it. You should just call it racism. This isn't a microaggression. That's a macro aggression, right? But at the time when it was coming out like it was part. Powerful, because it put the onus on the targeted person to be able to determine whether this or was or was not microaggression or was because of racism. And so it didn't matter what the perpetrator did, and that was part of the definition, no matter if you didn't intend it. It's about the impact. And so there was a lot of that. And so I was talking to Kim. I was like, Hey, is anybody doing anything on multiracial people in this concept? Because I think it could work really well. So we started with work on a piece and building for Maria roots work and looking at all her experiences that outlined that multiracial people experience that was like, Okay, let's, let's try to categorize these experiences into a microaggression sort of typology and taxonomy. And so we were writing that, and I was like, but it feels weird to just sort of have this microaggressions without it connecting to some larger system. So that's when we were like, oh, there's some larger system here, and I will never try to claim credit for mono racism because it was out in the vernacular. There were workshops. There was people talking about mono racism as the system that targets people who don't fit mono racial categories. But we were, we are accredited with first to putting it in academic literature, and there you go. So as I always try to clarify, like I didn't create that. I just, we just put it out in the world for other people and defined it, because a lot of times it wasn't defined. And so that's where we were trying to be intentional defining it. And you had mentioned about, you know, trying to make those connections between somebody who is transgender and sort of not having that fit. And so we did the same thing. We looked and I think Chris Wren was actually the one that said, Hey, you're working on this. There's this person who just completed their dissertation, Brent billidu, on genderism and how it impacted trans and non binary students. And he defined genderism in this way. And we're like, that's exactly what we're talking about with mono racism. So we actually used his definition to come up with our definition of mono racism. So it's all very closely tied together. And so yeah, back to the definition again. Mono racism is the system of oppression that operates on both interpersonal, institutional, systemic levels, to target people who do not fit monoracial categories. And I say that definition important because it's not just about multiracial people. It's about anybody who doesn't fit the monoracial categories.

Shawna  22:30  
Ooh, tell me more.

Marc Johnston Guerrero  22:32  
It could encompass transracial adoptees, Third Culture kids, other people that you know before Middle Eastern and North African sort of had its

Shawna  22:40  
own category. Talk about Mina, Yep, yeah.

Marc Johnston Guerrero  22:43  
Like, oh, like, you don't fit the White category. And so that's stemming from sort of this desire to have clean, neat, sort of five racial groups, or this ethno racial pentagon, as Hollinger and others have called it. That's where a lot of it's coming from. So it's not even just if you identify as multiracial, it's people who don't fit. Yeah, I'm also a very US centric person, and so I admit that too as a limitation. But I think it's sort of broader in this desire to have people only identify as one for whatever reason, to be able to put people in boxes, make sense of data, just categorize people for cleanliness or, like, making sense of the world. And so that's where mono racism sort of comes up. And there's been a lot of critique around, like, Well, is it really systemic? What is institutional mono racism?

Shawna  23:34  
Y'all can't see my face. I'm like, Uh huh.

Marc Johnston Guerrero  23:36  
People are just saying, oh, that's just an individual level, like, I can only see it on individual interactions. And you know, yeah, you're making a big deal out of it. It's the distraction from the real racism and oppression we should be focusing on. And so, yeah, that all comes up. And I've

Shawna  23:55  
all, I'm getting all like, upset,

Marc Johnston Guerrero  23:58  
yeah, and I face it a lot, and I'm like valid critiques, and I think, you know, we can all be working better together, rather than trying to put us down for trying to dismantle systems of white supremacy, because the hierarchy mono racism sort of is there and is upholding the hierarchies by policing the boundaries. And so we're just trying to tackle it in another direction, but our ultimate goals are the same. Is liberation through the abolishment of these racial categories. And not to say you can't identify, because I did, I think I did listen to a recent episode where it felt like, oh, the of yours where it was like somebody was saying, like, oh yeah, like, it's all in your head. And I was

Shawna  24:46  
like, wait, what you're talking about.

Marc Johnston Guerrero  24:49  
Wait, but I want people to feel more freedom and to have this sense of agency and being able to claim a racial. Social and or ethnic identity that aligns with who they are, but it could also be multiple. It can be situational, and that's where we don't have the flexibility or the ability to capture that kind of complexity in our monoracially designed society we're in now.

Shawna  25:16  
Sorry, I spent a lot there. If I had a church fan in here right now, I'm the fan and shouting Amen and Amen, because I feel all of that. And again, remember, I didn't even identify that way for the longest time, yet it was still something that applies to me. I appreciate your positionality too. I also say that, like it matters where you're At too, if that makes a difference, I

Shawna  26:02  
SG, one of the reasons I'm doing the work, from the point of view that I'm doing it the workplace, is because, when I was learning and researching, there's so much out there in sociology journals, psychology, what It's like to be mixed growing up, and I found that it sort of stopped at the college level. And I reasoned, now, I don't know if this is true, but I was like, well, maybe because a lot of the people that are writing these articles are in college or in a university, or they're part of an r1 school, and that's who's churning them out. But what happens when the students leave college and they go into the workforce. So that's really what kind of was the catalyst that and I was coming at it from this sort of business psych perspective as well. A lot of your work also focuses on like campus or clinical settings. I wonder what you think might be different in the dynamics between what you see happening in college or university and then out in the air quotes the real world, so to speak.

Marc Johnston Guerrero  27:09  
Yeah, I love that observation and so important because, you know, I always thought, Oh, the focus on multiracial college students or what's happening in Higher Ed was because of this sort of idea that that's the first time that people are free to be able to explore identities and choose their own they're, you know, away from their family, maybe for the first time, or they have this scaffolded and maybe protected environment where they're able to explore student orgs, all of that. But I think you're actually probably also accurate that, like many of us producing this scholarship, are in higher ed as researchers, and we probably have had more access to college students to recruit and be part of our participant pool. So yeah, I totally get that. One of the things I wanted to say is I've been having intergenerational collaborations and conversations with like Charmaine, we just sing it, who created this factor model of multiracial identity. And I think the people she interviewed for her dissertation were, you know, it was a lifespan kind of, it didn't have to just be college students. And so then we, Charmaine and I have been working together. We edited this book called multiracial experiences in higher education that came out in 2021 and then we've been working with some of our mentees and and it's been really rich in terms of understanding how far we've come along. And I've been able to gain a lot through thinking outside of higher ed too, because Charmaine is a now, I think, retired consultant, like she's not in higher ed. So that's been really helpful for me. And then also, I want to plug Farzana nayani, she had this book called Raising multiracial children, and she has a whole chapter at the end about post college and navigating the workplace, and she talks a lot about the importance of employee resource groups or ERGs that like there's not a lot of multiracial ones, right?

Shawna  29:06  
So none of the people I interviewed 29 I had 14 a few years ago or several years ago, and then another 15, none of them, yeah, encountered an erg for mixed race people, and all of them talked about, I can't go there because I don't look like that enough. So they're going to be like, Why is she in here? I can't go there because I don't feel like that, so I look like that, but I'm going to feel weird because that's not my experience. So that one particular example came up so much I appreciate you sharing that too,

Marc Johnston Guerrero  29:38  
yeah, but we see it in higher ed too, as a faculty member, there are not Faculty Associations or groups for multiracial faculty or staff either, right? So, yeah, I've been trying to do some work on that too, and it feels similar to navigating the workplace, even though there's probably more likelihood of creating community in higher ed because we often have students. In groups that we might advise and so then we connect with other faculty and staff. But there aren't often the structures and mechanisms in place that help to, you know, support staff and faculty in higher ed. So I think it's similar in workplaces and industry as well. One of the other things I wanted to mention is alumni, right? So I've been doing a little bit of work on mixed alumni and how they're navigating, yeah, just being alums and that sort of lifelong perspective. And so UCLA is one of the first, maybe the only, still university that created a mixed Alumni Association. I know the founder, Jennifer, would talk about how the people getting involved in the mixed Alumni Association weren't necessarily always recent graduates who were involved in the mixed Student Union as undergrad Oh, it was like older folks, older alums, people who graduated in the 70s, 80s, like they didn't have access to Talking about mixedness back then. And so they're like, I want to get involved in this Alumni Association, because now I have the flexibility and openness to be able to identify in this way. And I'm like, oh, yeah, that is so important, too. And so we think finding community, if there are ways to, you know, build an erg, just throw it out there, if there, if you can take that on as a founder, right? Like, that's important leadership experience. But also, you know, getting involved in associations, or groups like critical mixed race Studies Association, which, even though it says studies in it, and it is a lot of faculty and grad students, it's very inclusive of community members too, and activists and artists and all of that. And so I love that community that's there. And so there are those kinds of sort of community groups or things that intersect with industry and the workplace where I think people navigating the workplace can still also maybe find support, even though maybe it's not in their particular organization.

Shawna  32:00  
I love that so much. Of course, that's possible, that's fantastic. And I also appreciate you bringing up that critical mixed race Studies Association isn't just about the academic side. I often describe myself as a scholar, practitioner, but not an academic, as in, I'm not part of the academy, because that's just not my world. It is in that I love research. I think it's important. But I so wanted practical stuff for folks. That's why, anytime I can, I try to make something open source. Because I'm like, why are you putting stuff behind a paywall? Nobody can use it unless you're got access to WorldCat or something where you can go get all these things. And so what's the point of having the research if it's not going to be applied in everyday life. So that's my jam. So I always love when somebody can say, yeah, here's the research now, here's how we can use it in everyday life. And it isn't always scholarly or academic or in a journal. Those things are important, don't get me wrong, obviously, but I also love to be able to bring that together, that convergence.

Marc Johnston Guerrero  32:58  
So I appreciate that. And that's like, this podcast, and your work is so important because I'm still stuck just like, research, research, research, and then I, like, ask my students to write the implications, because I'm so removed from practice at this point in my career. But I'm like, your work, yeah, just getting it out to a larger audience is just so important, because we need that. Like, it can't just stick in the ivory tower and behind the pay walls. So so appreciative of your work.

Shawna  33:23  
Thank you. I really appreciate that. I appreciate hearing that. Obviously I have a lot of passion about it, but I shouldn't say selfishly, but maybe selfishly, I've also gotten to have so many great conversations like this one that I'm having with you, but from all these different perspectives, from parents who would identify monoracially, but they have mixed race kids. Those things are real life, and it does exist outside of journals. So thank you so much for that.

Shawna  34:02  
As we close, I had a couple more thoughts for you that I'd love for you to weigh in on as we think about what it looks like going forward. You mentioned looking at how far we've come and wow, that's fun for me too, even though I'm still relatively new in this particular space, but we still got a ways to go. And so I'm thinking about this again from the perspective of work. So even if you are talking about being a faculty member, that's still your workplace and so on. What do you think this work looks like when organizations get it right? So when we're talking about making spaces checking out the ergs, being willing to found an organization where people can have community, but beyond things like policy and that sort of thing, what about workplace culture? What would that look like, getting it right?

Marc Johnston Guerrero  34:59  
Yeah. Yeah, I love this, and I'm like, I don't know who gets it right. I wonder if there's anybody that's getting it right, and what would that look like. But I do believe and agree that culture is the first place to focus on and how welcoming for people who might have these identities that don't necessarily have an easy space to be able to be placed or navigate to because of the current structures and models that are there. So them being open to sort of receiving feedback, thinking, if somebody was just like, I want to create a group right for mixed multicultural like professionals in this organization, is the culture welcoming of that and open to that, and I think that that is a first place to try to make sure cultures are open too often. I think that what happens and organizations and workplaces are this idea of like constrained resources and competition for resources, or, Hey, if we create a group for this specific group of people, is that fair? We gotta go do right? Yeah? Like, oh, we're gonna get a smaller piece of the pie, rather than thinking expansively and broader about, like, oh, well, more people, there might be just more pie. Like, there is no pie, right? Like, how do we think, like that from this more expansive mindset, rather than feeling really constrained by resources? And so I think that's part of the culture too, is sort of navigating that and understanding how to become more welcoming and inclusive and open to these new kinds of ideas. And how do you how does somebody, maybe an organizational leader, sort of maybe even take a step back and just observe what's happening in their organization, who's finding belonging, who's maybe not, and does it have something to do with their identities? And how can you then, kind of create some, you know, workshops, or invite a speaker that sort of represents that identity, because you've noticed, hey, like, we see a pattern, all the speakers are this idea or represent this group. How do we mix that up a little bit more and diversify so that we can reach more of our members. So, yeah, I think that's kind of the main thing, is to understand these cultural practices and be able to identify certain patterns that might be taking place, and then making sure the organization is just more open, to allow things to emerge right from the ground.

Shawna  37:20  
That's scary, Marc, just let stuff happen. I don't know. Just let things emerge. Yeah. Are you serious? We got to have control over everything. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it can be scary, and I'm glad that you're saying that, because I work with leaders a lot. I work a lot with emerging leaders as well, people who are just now finding themselves into leadership roles, and maybe I'm going to say this, but maybe prematurely, sometimes just because of attrition or turnover, people get promoted because there needs to be somebody in that role, and they're not even ready, and they feel like they have to have all the answers to everything, lest someone believe that they were not qualified to do what they're doing, and in all of the scramble to prove themselves as some leader what they think it's supposed to be, they miss these other cues that are happening in the culture space of work, not just the operational space.

Marc Johnston Guerrero  38:12  
Yeah, when thinking about leadership, I often think people that have a mixed background or are multicultural and upbringing. Often use that as a sort of lens, or to say, Oh, I'm able to build bridges, or I'm able to navigate multiple kind of perspectives. I'm guilty of that too. Like, I often say, like, when I'm writing cover letters, I'm like, oh, yeah, because of my multiracial background, I can, like, see different sides of arguments and negotiate, I don't know, and I'm just like, I don't know how much of that is true versus that's just one of the stories we maybe tell ourselves. Because I don't think that there's something inherent about that, or maybe there is, if we made it this far in our lives, I mean, to navigate mono, racist environments and organizations, maybe we have developed sort of a new lens for understanding some of that constraint, and can use that to see multiple sides of arguments and perspectives. But I also don't think it inherently makes us better as leaders. Leadership, like you said, has to be developed. I don't think it just because you are means, you know, right, like so that can be framed in leadership as well. But I do think there maybe are some benefits or advantages to having had to navigate sort of these multiple systems that could be helpful for understanding what that might look like for others as a leader.

Shawna  39:41  
I wish you had said that 20 minutes ago. Man, I'm ready to dive into that conversation right there. How interesting your book, right it is. It is. So I will say this. I don't think it would be accurate to say that people who are mixed race have those abilities to see multiple perspectives and all that inherently Exactly. However, very much like there's this notion that when you face headwinds and you achieve despite the headwinds, because you've had to find ways to navigate through all of those difficult barriers, when you come out on the other side, you will have picked up skills along the way. Okay, I'm careful to say resilience, that word sets some people off, sometimes so but I, I will also, I, why not? I might as well just say it. I also believe that resilience is part of it. People don't like that. You know, for me, I like to separate saying that someone has resilience, or they are resilient. I separate that from they have to be or that it should be expected that they are. Now, here's where I I don't know you said maybe you changed it a little bit, but here's where I maybe see this a little differently than you. Is in that same way, I think that if your life experiences as a mixed race or multi racial or a person with complex identities and other liminal spaces give you the opportunities to learn and develop the skills to have greater empathy and perspective. Taking it definitely shows up at work. That's that's the way I see it, and I'll tell you why I interviewed folks who are like, Yeah, I'm mixed, but I didn't grow up with this side of my family. That's the same with me. I mean, I didn't grow up with my father's side of the family, and I have all this great Creole heritage out there, but I can't say it's part of my culture. So I would never claim just because I have Creole ancestry or heritage that that makes me automatically have perspective taking that somebody else wouldn't. However, I've been through some ish, and I know that that has helped me go about the world in the way that I do. And I think it does give me some perspective taking that maybe somebody

Marc Johnston Guerrero  41:49  
else wouldn't have, yeah, no, I love it. And that is just gets to the importance of sort of separating race, ethnicity from culture. Because as you're like you were saying, you might be multi racial in heritage, but you maybe grew up mono culturally, right? Like, absolutely. I mean, who you have access to, and parents, and that's where some of the trans racial adoption sort of comes in too. And being able to separate sort of racial ancestry from cultural upbringing and help people understand those differences is just really important, yeah, 100%

Shawna  42:42  
Wow. Thank you so much for this conversation, for sharing this with us. I really, really appreciate it, and I hope that we get to do stuff like this some more in the future.

Marc Johnston Guerrero  42:54  
Yes, too. Thank you so much. All right, take care. Marc you too.

Shawna  43:10  
I am such a sucker for these kinds of conversations. I love it so much. Do you feel smarter? I feel smarter. Thank you. Marc also his insights on mono racism really highlight how systems, not just individuals, can limit the way we're allowed to show up and identify I also loved the conversation around community, how sometimes we find it later in life, how it doesn't always exist in the spaces we expect, and how important it is to create new spaces when they don't already exist, whether That's in higher education, in the workplace or somewhere else, there's real power building environments where complexity is welcomed. You know, I'm going to talk about that. So Marc, keep on preaching and that piece about leadership, that is huge. The idea that navigating complex identities can shape how we see the world, how we build empathy, how we hold multiple perspectives. That's something that so many of you are probably already doing, even if you haven't named it yet. If this conversation resonated with you, I'd love to hear your thoughts. Be sure to check out the show notes for all those different things we talked about before and for ways to connect. You can also feel free to reach out to me directly. I love that you can learn more about my work and sign up for updates on my upcoming book. Mixed signals at true culture consulting.com, until next time, stay curious, stay connected and keep embracing your true colors. Spread the Love y'all. I'll talk to you soon. 

Intro  44:45  
You've been listening to our true colors.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai