118. Examining Our Relationship to Language and Implicit Bias with Hanneke Antonelli
Summary
Hey guys, where do you stand on language usage? If you aren’t already picking apart the previous sentence, it’s time to cultivate greater awareness around the societal and cultural conditioning that lurks beneath seemingly innocuous words and phrases.
Erica and India are joined by author and award-winning life coach Hanneke Antonelli to examine the impact our word choices have on promoting implicit gendered, ableist, and racist biases, among others. They also provide actions for incorporating inclusive language into everyday exchanges, complete with a teachable moment in real time.
In this discussion:
The lifelong process of deprogramming from historically acceptable, offensive language
How your word choice impacts others
Cultivating an awareness of cultural and community nuances
The power of accountability and accepting feedback
Establishing boundaries around what words or phrases you will and won’t accept
Questioning word usage and making a subsequent course correction in real time
Keep The Dialogue Going
When you’re in conversation with others, you gain perspective, question conditioning, and create change. These moments don’t happen unless you feel comfortable talking, sharing, and being yourself in a shame- and blame-free space.
Here’s your invitation to join Erica Courdae and India Jackson at Dropping The Veil, their 3-day virtual event featuring a diverse panel of guests. Details at pauseontheplay.com/events.
Article
Being in conversation offers us a chance to gain perspective, but have you ever considered the words you use while engaged in dialogue with others? Here at Pause On The Play, we talk a lot about language with good reason. When you consider the implicit bias behind some of the words and phrases used in everyday life, you begin to recognize how language is weaponized against various groups––Black and Brown folks, women, members of the LGBTQIA+ community, and the disabled community.
Meet Hanneke Antonelli
A native of South Africa, Hanneke Antonelli is the author of The Up Level Project and award-winning certified life coach with 16 years of experience growing businesses in various industries. Based in Boston, MA, she draws on her business degree, Wall Street sales experience, and a decade as an entrepreneur to help business owners upgrade their leadership skills. With Hanneke’s help, they’re able to focus on the path to sustainable growth that will reap higher profits and more freedom.
Today, she works with established businesses to rise above plateaus and reach high-level earnings goals. “There is only so much time in a day,” she says, referencing the biggest challenges facing her clientele. “So, how do you effectively delegate and also lead in a way that is effective, helps you to relax and release the control, and trust your team?”
“I find that there is no evolution that can happen if you're holding control,” Erica agrees.
Leveling Up Starts from Within
Hanneke spent the earliest days of lockdown editing her book, much of which was written ahead of the pandemic. While some may call her timing lucky, she takes a more accurate view. “I had done all the hard work, and then it just became the discipline and the focus of tuning out the things that are out of my control right now and focusing on this thing that I want to bring into the world that I know will help so many people to be able to create change in their lives, create impact in their communities.”
The Up Level Project provides a deep dive into Hanneke’s formula of the same name. “It sort of mimics how your brain works,” she says. “If you want to improve your experience, you want to think that your beliefs plus your language plus your thoughts plus your feelings plus your actions are going to give you an experience or result. So these are the only things that are in our control, that we can take ownership of to have an impact, or to have the experience that we want in this world.”
The book addresses the effects of conditioning––societal, cultural––and offers actionable steps folks can use to build awareness and affect the change that they want to see. Ultimately, Hanneke says, “It starts with you.”
“That! I always feel like I don't care what comes down from the top. If the bottom doesn't want to do it, they're not going to do anything,” says Erica. “And so that, to me, is where it has to start: with you. It does have to tap into your beliefs, which of course, is going to inform your language, your thoughts, and your feelings. Because, if you don't kind of get a grasp on that, then you can almost put yourself in a place of being prepped for anarchy because it's like, follow these rules! And the people are like, I'll be damned; I’m not doing that!”
“We all have to cultivate that awareness, but before we can even start doing that, there's something that comes before that, and that's the commitment that you make to yourself, that you're like, ‘I don't like this about myself or society anymore so, therefore, I'm committing to starting to work on myself and whatever it is that I want to change to get a better experience in my current situation,” says Hanneke.
By default, accountability provides the momentum for your commitment. When you’re in community with others who have a similar focus, the support helps you stick to your intentions when the going gets tough. “Asking for help is a huge, huge problem for a lot of people,” says Hanneke. “We are conditioned to think that we should somehow be able to do everything by ourselves. And, I think that is also a cultural thing or a societal thing of not showing vulnerability, right? Asking for help is a sign of weakness.” Societal conditioning doubles down on that trope. Hanneke reminds folks that “asking for help is not a failure; it's allowing them to step closer to what they want.”
Retiring Biased Dialogue For Good
Hanneke shifted her thoughts and beliefs about the language she uses while crafting The Up Level Project. While writing the book, she repeatedly referenced the challenging process to her editor using a phrase she’d never given much thought to. “I'm a writing white lady from South Africa, and I go, it felt like a slave-driver,” she says, “And he's like, in his note back to me was like, ‘Hey lady! This is not the language to use! What do you know about slave-driving? Please tell us!’ So, he would just push back on me,” she says. “I mean, it's just socially acceptable to say these words, but when you actually stop and think where that word comes from, you're like, yeah, why are we saying these things? Like, why would I use that language? And it sort of made me aware, you know, again, growing up in South Africa, we had Apartheid; there's, still a lot of racial tension and, all of a sudden, I became aware of all of these things that we just say because...your parents were saying it.”
The painful history behind slave-driver is brazenly apparent, and yet, its usage persists. “it gives you this idea that someone's life is worth more than someone else's,” says Hanneke. “Like, all these little things in language that we say, and we don't think about it twice!” As a native South African, she made the extra effort to ensure that the language she used remained sensitive to multiple cultures. Her American editor, for example, wouldn’t pick up on racist phrases woven into South Africa’s culture. “It really has had me think a lot about how often we use language, and we don't understand the impact or the effect or the nuance that is wrapped up in simple little words.”
“First of all, thank you for being vulnerable and acknowledging that because a lot of people would just say, ‘Oh, nobody knows I did it. I'm never going to talk about this; I'm not going to be transparent,’ because that's a teachable moment,” says Erica. “I think that there's, one, that place of being receptive enough to receive feedback from somebody of like, yeah, ‘Let's not say this,’ but then there's also that place of having that awareness of, ‘Let me make sure that I'm not only checking this for the culture that I currently exist in but outside of that as well.”
Erica acknowledges the commitment necessary for Hanneke to maintain that level of awareness and its importance at a higher level. “To make that change, knowing who your intended audience is, who's likely going to be reading it, and how that can be perceived, that's a large responsibility to not take on because that's where I feel like it really gets big, it's when you don't take it on.”
Hanneke agrees. “I wish people would just take fucking responsibility,” she says. “I'm okay with you messing up; it's going to happen. We're not going to go through life and not offend one single person. It's just going to happen. But, when it happens, can you be the person that accepts responsibility and doesn't delete the posts? Doesn't deny that it ever happened? Just own up to it. Just go, ‘Yes, I did that. I see that it's wrong…’ and just be sincere. I'm not saying just sort of, you know, spew the bullshit words at us; really just own it!”
Make Mistakes And Keep Going
Hanneke isn’t one to shy away from responsibility. Much to the dismay of her editor, she’s comfortable sharing her mistakes in public as well as the lessons she’s learned related to language rooted in racist, sexist, and ableist soil. “I was writing this book, and let me tell you, I definitely did mess up at times because I think we have to give people permission to say, ‘I did this wrong. I understand now I've come to a new understanding and, on a deeper level, I have uncovered some things.’ And, it's okay to do that.”
“We're so unaware of programming,” says Erica. “It's meant to be innocuous. It's meant to kind of seep in and to be something that is very imperceptible; it’s just there. However, once you recognize it, it doesn't go away.”
“We are waking up; we’re becoming more aware,” says Hanneke. “It takes time to effect this change. If you were previously unaware of your bias, once that penny drops, I think a lot of people are afraid... but actually, once that penny drops, you really do feel like, oh, I can make a lot of impact just by email, having these conversations with my friends who maybe are not understanding, or parents, or whomever.”
“I'm so glad that you see that that way,” says India. “I'm not sure if everyone takes that approach, but I do think that change happens with that approach of saying the penny’s dropped, I'm going to own what's happened here, and I'm going to keep the conversation going because there's power in that. It's not an easy thing to do, but it's where the change happens.”
“It's understanding that that penny is likely going to drop again, maybe somewhere else, maybe in a different way, but it likely will,” Erica says, adding, “It’s what do you do now?”
“I know for me, as I started waking up to a lot of things language-wise in 2020, because the more that I realized, ‘Oh, this phrase, I don't even know where this phrase came from. Let me unpack it,’ I started realizing more and more and more phrases.”
Hanneke had the same experience, especially with phrases she’d grown up hearing and using in South Africa. She’s engaged her family in ongoing conversations, including instances when racist language shows up around the interracial relationships within her extended family. The process can get uncomfortable.
“If the damage is caused, at least from my point of view, I would rather cause that damage,” says Erica, “than to leave the damage unspoken that you created to begin with because that just festers.”
Hanneke agrees, and she’s more than willing to stand her ground. “Like, even if you're not going to change your thinking and feelings around this, then I need you to understand that in my house, this is not acceptable. Or when I'm in conversation with you, I am not gonna stand for this.”
Erica pauses for a moment to direct attention to her own boundary-setting and deprogramming efforts. “Like, even just now, when you said ‘...what I won’t stand for.’ I have been consciously trying to take that out of my vocabulary and even redirecting the kids because it's very common to say. But, then when you recognize that the disabled community can be challenged by it, it's like, Wait, I got to work on that. And, again, it’s just like ‘you guys.’ It is such a constant effort in being diligent, of paying attention to what you say and what you have normalized.”
“And for me, it’s been like a big question mark of how did these things even get started?” India asks. “Why did these become the norms in the first place?”
Deprogramming In Real Time
As the conversation winds down, Hanneke leans into the concepts of asking for help and accepting subsequent feedback.
“So, why not ‘you guys,’” she asks.
“It’s patriarchal,” Erica says, providing a more inclusive alternative. “I say y'all or everyone because I don't want to self-gender anyone––”
“Especially if we haven't had a conversation about gender,” India adds.
“Right,” agrees Erica. “You don't want to assume that there has been a conversation or that they want to have that conversation.”
“I did a post about how I'm breaking up with you guys (the phrase, not our Pause On The Play followers),” India says, “and I ended up getting so many responses because I think it's one of those things that we all say and don't think twice about. And then when you really unpack how it's been so normalized, and yet it's so problematic, it really opens up your eyes to see how many other phrases there are we’re using that we're not thinking about. I'll also raise my hand and say the moment I decided to break up with you guys, it came back with a vengeance, and I found myself saying it all the time out of trying not to say it.”
“What I think is actually happening here is a little bit like when you decide you're going to buy a certain car and all of a sudden that car is everywhere on the road now,” Hanneke says. “Your attention has shifted to it, and that's the beautiful thing, right? And this is about what your podcast is all about. This is what our work in the world of effecting change is all about. The more we can bring awareness to these things, the more we are focused on them. And, when we're focused on something that we do not like, we can go, Hmm, this does not belong, has never belonged. And therefore, we're going to release this now and do something differently.”
“You just changed my belief about the words you guys. And so, because you changed my beliefs, I can now change my thoughts around it,” Hanneke says in the spirit of the topic. “I'm now ‘Oh, wow! Yes! Patriarchal!’ because it's patriarchal. I'm eliminating that from my language, and now my actions are going to be different.”
“You’ve got to break down what you're thinking, believing, saying, and then also integrate that into what you're doing,” India confirms.
“I'm all for when you learn something, take some time to start to integrate it into your life, to see the results, because the little silver magic bullet that you're looking for is not out there; it’s right inside of you.”
Quoted
Hanneke Antonelli
“We all have to cultivate that awareness, but before we can even start doing that, there's something that comes before that––and that's the commitment.”
“It really has had me thinking a lot about how often we use language, and we don't understand the impact or the effect or the nuance that is wrapped up in simple little words.”
“The little silver magic bullet that you're looking for is not out there. It's right inside of you.”
Erica Courdae
“I find that there is no evolution that can happen if you're holding control.”
“I always feel like I don't care what comes down from the top. If the bottom doesn't want to do it, they're not going to do anything.”
“We're so unaware of programming. It's meant to be innocuous. It's meant to kind of seep in and to be something that is very imperceptible; it's just there. However, once you recognize it, it doesn't go away.”
India Jackson
“You’ve got to break down what you're thinking, believing, saying, and then also integrate that into what you're doing.”
Guest Contact & Bio
Born in South Africa, Hanneke Antonelli is an author and award-winning certified life coach with 16 years of experience growing businesses in various industries. Now based in Boston, MA, Hanneke draws on her business degree, Wall Street sales experience, and her decade as an entrepreneur to help business owners upgrade their leadership skills. With her help, they are able to focus on the path to sustainable growth that will reap higher profits and more freedom.