S3E12: Storytelling with Eli Saslow

Harjit: Hi, y'all. This is Harjit and today I'm with Leen. We're at the AAMC conference in Phoenix, Arizona, and we are so excited to talk to Eli Saslow, the author of "Rising Out of Hatred: The Awakening of a Former White Nationalist."

We were so fortunate to attend his session where he was able to talk to us a little bit more about this book, but also his journey of storytelling. And since we also consider ourselves storytellers, we thought this would be a great time to have a conversation with such a great storyteller.

Eli: Thanks. I'm really glad to be here, and really glad you all are doing this podcast.

Harjit: That makes us so happy. I really resonated with something that you said in your talk about we want people to be seen and heard, and that's something that we strive for on our podcast and we've mentioned a lot. And I just kind of wanted to know a little bit more about you. How do you pick the stories that need to be seen and heard, and how is that connected to your identities?

Eli: Yeah, what a great question, and something I think about a lot. So I have a huge amount of privilege in how I get to pick the stories. Mostly for "The Washington Post" and the work that I do, I get to choose usually what I write about, so I'm following the things that I care about, which I guess, just based on who I am and my interests and also where the country is at this moment, is usually writing about the effects of power on the disempowered and the ways that the major issues in the country play out in people's lives.

And usually that happens with proximity and going to spend a lot of time with the people that I'm writing about. So if I'm writing about victims of a mass shooting, instead of just calling them or reading about it, I'm going and I'm spending day after day in the house with the parents who just lost a kid at Newtown and writing about what those days are like.

And hoping that by writing with some immediacy and intimacy about those moments, people who aren't in those rooms maybe can feel, for a few seconds, what it's like in some fractional way to have somebody else's experience in the country, and that by doing that, maybe that fosters some kind of empathy or understanding that brings about more justice in the country.

Harjit: It sounds like you're very kind and compassionate with the people that you work with. Where does that kindness and compassion come from?

Eli: That's a generous judgment. I hope it's true. I think it's true. I think it comes from . . . you know, I've always been, I hope, pretty naturally empathetic and fairly good at seeing the world through other people's eyes. But also, it's an empathy that's earned from one story to the next and that builds from one story to the next, because my entire professional experience is going and spending time with other people as they're dealing with hard things.

So I may have started out as empathetic and as understanding about what those experiences are like, but now I have the immense gift and privilege of going and seeing that up close again and again and again, which of course builds my empathy, because every time I'm with people in those situations, I feel connected to them and I feel like what's happening to them and in their houses and to their families and in their homes is important. And so I carry all of that with me into the next story. So I think, in some ways, it's snowballed over time.

Harjit: Yeah, that's beautiful. That's kind of the longitudinal relationships we hope to form when we become physicians with our patients.

Eli: You're going to do it.

Harjit: Hopefully it'll be getting there. Leen?

Leen: That resonates with me so much. It's definitely the reason I went into medicine. Being a Palestinian-American woman raised in southern Utah, I always used to tell people, "I can't really exactly tell you what's going on behind the wall or in rural Utah," but if you go there, you know, you're on the ground with them. That's definitely . . .

Eli: Right.

Leen: That's why I went into emergency medicine. I feel like it's the specialty that's on the ground, right?

Eli: Yeah.

Leen: Oftentimes many communities are nervous to talk to the media, journalism, or there's just a mistrust because their view has been skewed or their population has been skewed. How do you approach those communities and how do you get them to open up about their experiences?

Eli: I think in some ways, actually, it's a little similar maybe to fostering and building trust as a physician or as a doctor. We all go into every interaction with assumptions about the people that we're interacting with, right? So, you know, people go into a doctor's office or people see me arrive at their house and they think, "This is a 'Washington Post' journalist?" And they have a certain idea of what that is, right? They probably think I'll be dressed really nice, and I'll have a recorder out, and I'll have a notebook in my pocket, and I'll be taking notes all the time.

But typically then I show up and I'm just a guy, right? And I'm hanging out and talking to them and hearing about them. And pretty soon, I'd say usually after about the first half an hour, they're not thinking of me anymore as a "Washington Post" journalist. They're thinking about me as Eli, this guy who just is hanging out at my house and won't leave.

So, you know, some of that is the power of taking the time to work past the labels and to, as a doctor or as a journalist, in some ways connect in some common ground situation with the people that we're working with.

Because I think oftentimes people feel nervous when they're talking to me, and probably when they're talking to physicians, right? It feels like you're talking about vulnerable stuff. You could be judged really quickly. You're telling people, strangers essentially, something that you oftentimes wouldn't tell a close friend.

And so our ability to hear that with kindness, with empathy, and to be genuine in our interest in hearing those concerns I think puts us hopefully on the same level as we all are with the people that we're trying to care for here. And that usually builds trust more quickly than anything else that I've known to do.

Leen: I guess I've never thought about it and compared to it medicine where they're also talking about vulnerable things, as well. I always wonder, I'm like, "You know, how am I going to ask these people these questions?" But we do it all the time.

Eli: I know. And there are a lot of similarities.

Leen: Yeah.

Eli: I would actually say . . . if I can complain for a minute about my job compared to your job.

Harjit: Yes.

Leen: Yes.

Eli: You guys . . . so when you're asking somebody something, when you're asking them to tell you something, when a doctor is asking that, they're doing it with the implicit promise and the backing of HIPAA that nobody else is going to know about that, right? It's like, "You're telling me this and this is where it stays, and I'm doing this because I'm caring for you."

I'm going in and I'm trying to build that same trust with the implicit understanding that I am going to try to tell everybody, or at least the certain number of people who will read an article or a book, you know? So what I'm really asking people to invest in is the importance of their own stories, like the idea that this thing that you're dealing with matters, and I'm here because it matters, and I think more people should know about it.

So, you know, it is sometimes difficult to sort of get people to be comfortable with being vulnerable, but I think if you can reframe it as those vulnerabilities are valuable and they also have something important to say to other people who might also be feeling vulnerable in those same ways, then that vulnerability and talking about that vulnerability can actually be empowering.

One of the great things about writing a book is that I have lots of time to do it. So then I'm talking and spending time in person with all the people that I'm writing about.

So, you know, many of the students of color on that campus who had been and continue to be the victims of white supremacy in general, but also Derek's pushing of that ideology, were people I spent a ton of time with.

I learned a lot in reporting this book about the differences in the approaches of outreach, of discourse and conversation, and of resistance, and I think I actually came away having a much better understanding of the power of sometimes rejection, and the power of, in some ways, resisting somebody's ideas instead of inviting them into a conversation.

You know, a lot of the students of color in particular on that campus, first of all, they felt afraid of Derek, for good reason. They didn't want to be like, "Hey, guy who's been saying terrible things about me as an immigrant to the country. Do you want to have dinner?" Right? That would be a frightening thing to do.

And Derek also, in addition to expressing racist ideas himself, was the moderator of a racist message board where he had 300,000 Neo-Nazis and Klansmen at his fingertips. So that fear was super legitimate and something that Derek had worked to instill.

So I think for those people, the idea that the only way to go about changing somebody's mind is to talk to them is not fair and not true. And also, for those people, to ask them to make the emotional investment and change this racist kid's mind when that ideology had been disempowering them for a long time, that's not their work. That's not their obligation.

Some people still chose to take it on that way, and I think that's great. But other people, others of those students, said, "Let's find a way to send a message that this is not okay. And let's do that with other students of color on campus, with white allies, with whatever means that we can. Let's shut the campus down and let's bring in people who do diversity training. And also, let's make sure that suddenly just because we have this one racist kid on campus, let's not allow everybody to just point at him and say, 'Hey, racist bad,' and allow the subtle racism and pernicious racism to continue on campus. Let's use this as an opportunity to talk about, you know, why are students of color getting IDed at the dorms when white students are not? Why are all of these things continuing to happen around us?"

So I think there are different approaches that are both really effective, and I think if Derek had just experienced rejection on that campus, it wouldn't have changed his mind. I feel sure about that. But it would've protected the campus as a safe space. It would've made people of color on that campus feel valued and heard and supported, and it would've forced Derek somewhere else, which is valuable in and of itself.

The fact that also the next thing happened, where some of those students began to decide to try to talk to him and to try to impact him, I think that began to foster a real transformation instead of just sort of a protecting of the campus space.

Harjit: I think that's a beautiful lesson even for us, because I identify as a student of color, and oftentimes I wonder who should I talk to, who's safe to talk to. We have all spoken about our fears of voicing our opinion. Even our first season of this podcast, there were times where we wanted to do topics and we were unsure if we should put it out into the world. And so understanding how other students go through the same thing and what is their responsibility and what's not and what's their choice, I think is really important to get to the root of.

Eli: Yeah, absolutely. And I think, you know, it's really interesting to talk about these competing ideas in different parts of the country and with different people. Particularly primarily white audiences in some parts of the country, there's an idea to uphold the people who included Derek as the real heroes of the story. Like, "Oh, these kids invited him to dinner and that changed his mind." But that doesn't honor the full, complicated truth of what it is and what it took.

You know, I'm always very careful because it's the truth to say that the act of protesting Derek was also an act of courage, and that required its own emotional labor and its own investment and I think was fundamental in the story and how it happened.

So, yeah, I think the big thing that everybody on that campus decided to do with something. Like, "Let's figure out, Here's a problem. Let's solve it. Let's invest ourselves into figuring this out," which is, in the America of this moment, I think, a really important lesson, because there's so much apathy. It's very easy to sort of throw up your hands and say, "Well, we're not going to change this."

Which honestly is one of the . . . like, that's the power of a podcast like this. It's things like that that bring different ideas into this space and different perspectives into this space that show that we care about where this country's going and what's happening to it. So I think it's really valuable.

Harjit: Absolutely. And I always say I'm a Punjab, I was born in Punjab, but I'm American too. And this is my country, and when I am critical of it, it's because I love it, because this is my community where I'm going to be forever, and that's why these type of things are so important to me, and getting those voices out are so important to me.

So as a future . . . or I guess we're current storytellers. As current . . .

Eli: You're doing it at this moment.

Harjit: As current storytellers, is there any advice for you . . . I guess I never really saw myself as a storyteller, but we talked about a lot of different people on our podcast. What kind of advice do you have for us budding storytellers?

Eli: Well, you're doing, it seems like, a really good job of it already. I guess I would say build what you already have, which is the passion to speak about the things that you care about, about the communities that you care about, and about the experiences in the country that you care about, because that takes courage.

You know, we were talking earlier today about sort of protecting your career from speaking out about things that might be controversial or expressing opinions that might be controversial, and I think that that is a really unfortunate choice to have to make. I think certainly as a storyteller, and even in medicine, I hope that in the best version of any career, you can find a way to center it on the things that you really care about.

It's too much time to just give away, right? Having a job is a big part of your life, and if you're doing work that feels like you can't be honest to yourself or to the things that you care about, that feels like too big of a sacrifice to me.

And it's something that I've run into sometimes in talking about this story in the book in places where politics don't feel very welcome, like in going, say, to a majority white audience in the South and talking about these white nationalist ideas. It's easy for me to feel like I shouldn't talk about the presidency. I shouldn't talk about what's happening right now in the country. But that would be totally dishonest for me to do, right? How can I talk about white supremacy and white nationalism without talking about what's going on in the Oval Office and what's happening all around us?

So I think part of it for me in my continued journey has been trying to make sure that I'm being truthful, even in spaces when I know that message is not going to be heard necessarily in the way that I want it to be heard.

So I guess I would say try to build up the courage to share those messages in places where they aren't otherwise hearing it.

Harjit: Thank you. That was such useful advice, I think, even for . . . you know, no matter what careers anyone chooses, I think that's such useful advice. We always tell our listeners that the best way to lead is to be yourself and understand who you are and what your identities are. And so it was really nice to also hear you resonating with that.

Bushra: Is this thing on? I'm just kidding. Hi, guys. It's Bushra. I was just sitting on the sidelines listening to this great conversation. But my question for you is that I think the setting of this transformation that Derek took is pretty important. He went away to college and so was confronted with people who think differently than him, and not only in the classroom setting, but in his everyday interactions. Do you think that this transformation would've been possible if he didn't leave his hub of, you know, white nationalism?

Eli: No, I think, is the honest answer. I think he had to get outside of those spaces. You know, he'd been basically barricaded in many ways from any kind of diversity of ideas or diversity of people, and I think he needed, in a very basic way, to begin bumping into people whose experiences were not like his own.

You know, it's easy, I think, in stereotyping, and really in anything, to be certain about things that you don't know anything about. It's easy to think things are obvious if you actually don't begin to understand them or the issues themselves.

So I think, for Derek, it took being in a space where he began to have encounters with people who were unlike him. That was the first thing to begin opening up his mind.

The bigger thing, though, I think, is that in a college community, first of all, it's a stage of life where you're most likely to sort of question identity and your big ideas about the world and all of these things.

Derek had some physical remove from home and from his family and this confirming community, and also in some way, he saw all of these people around him as in his in-group, right? They were smart. They'd gotten into the same college. He liked the college. He couldn't dismiss them as, "These are total idiots." In many ways, they were like him. They were the same age. They got good scores. They got into the same school. So Derek, I think, opened up his ears in a way to that community that he wouldn't have and that he hadn't to other communities.

It's not like he hadn't heard before that his ideas were hurtful. I mean, his father had taken him on "The Jerry Springer Show" when he was, like, 10 years old for a "Meet a Racist Day"where Derek said terrible things behind a fog machine and, you know, people in the crowd shouted and tried to attack him.

But Derek had always depersonalized that. He'd have been like, "That's the enemy." None of those people were people to him. And I think at college, as he began to be in more proximity and spend consistent time around them, they became people. So in addition to hearing their ideas, he began to trust them slowly and like them. And then he cared about the things that they were saying. So I think that was a really big part of it.

Bushra: I think that it's interesting because I think a lot of the times when we think about people who hold deep-seated racist ideologies, we think of them as uneducated, and Derek kind of defies that because he's a very smart guy.

And so I think with Derek, you can appeal to his logic and you can appeal to his empathy within the interactions that he has in that academic setting and the people that he got to know.

But also, I think on various fronts, there are a lot of people who are very passionate with their views, and so you can't necessarily appeal to their logic. So if you don't have a baseline of "These are the agreed-upon things that we both believe in," how do you even begin that conversation?

Eli: I mean, I think it's really difficult, but I do think [Haval 00:18:19], who was speaking earlier today on the stage, too, in his own life has modeled that really well by trying to find ways as a doctor to begin to use some of that trust and also the credibility that comes with that job in part by modeling to people, as a Syrian refugee, to give them a different idea of what that might look like in their head, but also to go beyond just the patient interactions and take that out into the community to play a leadership role doing it.

I would also say that sometimes I think we think of racists as not smart, or we think of them almost in caricature to comfort ourselves. It's easier to believe that somebody like Derek's father, Don Black, who led the KKK in the United States for a decade, it's easier to think of him just as a monster. It's safer for us. Then it's like we can't be possible of that kind of hate.

The awful truth, of course, is that Don Black, Derek's father, in many ways is like us. He loves his kid. He in some ways was a good parent. He still was capable of living his life doing monstrous and horrible things, you know? So it's like honoring both of those truths at the same time was a really hard part about writing this book.

Also, some people have sometimes said, "By writing about somebody like Don Black as a full person, are you worried that you've humanized him in some ways?" And the truth is, in general, I would say our biggest problems as a world happen when we dehumanize people and not when we humanize them.

But also, the acts of Don Black's life, he asks for no redemption and he deserves no redemption. But he can still be a father who really, really loved and was proud of his kid.

And in this story, I think it's very important for people to know how genuine and real that love and that connection between them was, because otherwise it's hard to understand why it was so hard for Derek to walk away. What he knew ultimately he was going to be doing was he was going to be stabbing a knife in his father's heart, you know? That was the hardest part in the end, right?

So I think that made it for me so that I knew I had to write about Don Black not just as a racist monster in United States history, but also as a dad who was so pathetically and desperately but purely proud of his son and loved him so much. You know, honoring both of those truths at the same time was a really complicated part of the writing and reporting process.

Bushra: Yeah, I think it's hard to think of people with those views as a full person, and I think that everybody is capable of doing the best in the world and everybody is capable of doing the worst things in the world. And I'm sure that we all like to think of ourselves as pure, but the fact is that human beings are fallible, and their ideologies are also fallible, and to just keep that open mind and to have a whole truth instead of half truths.

Eli: Yeah, and also I think a big part of this podcast that you guys are doing, and I hope my own work, and certainly this book, is also the stories that we tell ourselves, especially in the United States, about who we are and who we've been are really, really important.

We lie to ourselves. At least, you know, white Americans lie to themselves about what America has been in horrific ways. And in fact, it's very much become the mythology of the country.

The idea in white parts of America that America is a great meritocracy where everybody has their fair shot and we don't see color and, you know, the American dream is an equal opportunity proposition, none of that is true. And by lying to ourselves in those ways and creating that as the mythology of what America is, it doesn't honor actually what we've been. And unless we can stare honestly at what we've been, how do we ever confront the incredible racism that is still so much a part of the country that we live in?

So I think a big part of it is changing the stories that we tell, which is why I think the podcast and the work you all are doing is really important.

Bushra: Well, thank you.

Eli: Yep.

Bushra: Do you have anything . . .

Eli: Just pumping up the podcast there.

Bushra: Woo-woo.

Eli: Listen!

Bushra: Well, actually, to that end, I wanted to add that you mentioned during your talk how hard it is to face and confront your own biases, because we do have them. We do have racist and sexist and all the isms within ourselves because of the communities or environments in which we grow up, but to actually face those things and recognize that they're there, that's such an important thing, especially for us. Actually, for everybody, but for us who are becoming physicians and who are going to take care of people from different walks of life, and we are going to have those biases against them, but we need to be able to recognize that and to be able to give them the best care that we can give them.

Eli: I think that's right. And I also think taking blame out of it, right? Stereotypes and racist ideas, we all have them, and it's not necessarily because we are bad or because it's our fault or because we choose to have them. It's because, you know, the country and the world that we live in structures them into us and bonds them to emotion and everything else from very early on in life.

So just being honest about the fact that this is something we're all up against, I think that's really important, because it's not something that we can be passive about. Being passive about racist ideas or disempowering ideas allows them to continue. So instead, we have to say, "Yes, this is who we are. These are the kind of things that I'm thinking. These are the kind of assumptions that I'm making. What can I do about that?" First being aware and then what can I do to silence those or change those narratives in my own head?

Bushra: Awesome.

Harjit: I love that. Do you want to just say . . .

Eli: This is "Bundle of Hers."

Leen: Do you want to do it?

Eli: Sure. This is "Bundle of Hers." We are in Phoenix, Arizona, at AAMC 2009. It has been a pleasure. 2019, not 2009. Do you want me to redo it?

Harjit: This is our general lifestyle.

Eli: I think we should let it stand.

Harjit: Yes.

Eli: You've got to just let it stand. We are correcting our own history. We can't amend our history.

Harjit: Yes.

Eli: We are correcting our history.

Harjit: We're de-learning all the stuff that we've learned.

Eli: That's right. It is 2019, not 2009. I'm Eli Saslow. It has been a pleasure to be on "Bundle of Hers." Thank you for listening.

Harjit: Thank you so much.

Leen: Thank you so much.

Eli: Thank you. Yeah. I appreciate it. Thank you. I enjoyed it.

Harjit: Thank you so much.

Eli: Thank you. It was super fun.

Harjit: That was a beautiful conversation.

Eli: Oh, it was so fun. Thank you.