About Shakil Choudhury

Internationally, Shakil has designed and led peace-building projects for communities in conflict, specifically in Europe and South America. He lives in Toronto and is currently experiencing his most challenging and rewarding management experience: his two toddlers teaching him about fatherhood.

Where to find Shakil Choudhury

Anima Leadership website
Twitter

Deep Diversity: A Compassionate, Scientific Approach to Achieving Racial Justice

With clear language and engaging stories that will appeal to readers of Brené Brown and Malcom Gladwell, Choudhury explains how and why well-intentioned people can perpetuate systems of oppression, often unconsciously. Using a trauma-informed approach that removes shame or blame, he offers us the tools to recognize, take authentic responsibility, and enact deep change. In easy-to-absorb chapters, Choudhury interweaves research into the brain and studies on human behavior with hard-won lessons from his career of helping organizations and CEOs create more inclusive environments. He models vulnerability and mistake-making, sharing examples of his own bias-missteps so readers are encouraged into their own racial justice journey without judgment.

Readers will come away from the book with practical tools and an understanding of:

• How to becomes a systems thinker by developing “racial pattern recognition” skills in order to challenge racism and other forms of systemic discrimination when we encounter them, while minimizing the tendency to shame or blame ourselves or others.
• How to recognize when the unconscious influence of bias, identity, emotions, or power contradict our beliefs about equality, and how to realign our thoughts/words/actions.
• How to break the racial “prejudice habits” we have all been socialized into since birth, using research-based strategies. 
• How the rise in authoritarianism and income inequality (among other factors) contribute to a rise in hate crimes and racial discrimination, and what to do about it.

Traditional approaches to anti-racism overly rely on analyzing history to explain systemic discrimination, which only tells us a part of the story. What’s missing, Choudhury argues, is to understand why humans do what we do, the evolutionary impulses underlying our group-ish nature and our struggles with power, bias, and social dominance. This is why psychology and neuroscience perspectives are critical to integrate into anti-racist work, as is practicing compassion for ourselves and for others. Deep Diversity is a unique, evidence-based approach to racial justice that seeks to overcome feelings of shame that so often block our progress and prevent deep change at individual and systemic levels. 

Deep Diversity meets you where you’re at, regardless of your identity, class, ability, or belief system, and invites you to come along on a journey of self-discovery, social awareness, and lifelong learning. 

It’s only just begun.

Previous Podcasts

• 510 Kelly Weill: The earth is flat and other conspiracy theories
• 509 Vivian James Rigney: Leadership and climbing Mount Everest
• 508 Anne-Marie Slaughter: How to renew ourselves, our work, and our politics