Speaker 1: Hey, y'all. Hey, what's up? And welcome the Les Red
Speaker 1: Table that I'm Tracy t Brow and I'm Cara Pressley.
Speaker 1: How are you feeling a day? Tracy? Do you know
Speaker 1: how I'm feeling? Cara, I'm feeling every day amazing. And
Speaker 1: I know you're feeling successful. Of course I had a
Speaker 1: feeling you might be feeling every day amazing, just the thought.
Speaker 1: But yeah, yeah, I'm definitely feeling successful. Glad to be
Speaker 1: back today. Oh my goodness, yes, today's episode. Okay, mm
Speaker 1: hmm listen, heavy heavy. We have great guests though, we do,
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, amazing. They're doing some phenomenal work. But
Speaker 1: when I say heavy and deep, okay, heavy and deep
Speaker 1: was this episode? So how did you feel about that episode?
Speaker 1: Before we even talk to the guests, Oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: so much to unpack for me. Ka, it was really
Speaker 1: about fear, trauma, and pain. I think all three of
Speaker 1: those things dry life. Hey, Because we don't know how
Speaker 1: to process pain, fear, and trauma. It's easier, I think
Speaker 1: for us to to shift it into hate. All right,
Speaker 1: just let it kind of summer if you will. I
Speaker 1: feel like they're limiting beliefs. Are would hinder us. People
Speaker 1: just know what they know and how they grew up.
Speaker 1: They don't want to hear any other perspective or even
Speaker 1: want to consider the impacts on others. So I think
Speaker 1: that's the biggest part of it. We definitely saw it
Speaker 1: in this episode. I am glad that they got to
Speaker 1: get someone who was reformed to come to the table.
Speaker 1: I can't say that's how person would always be welcome
Speaker 1: at the table, right. You know what? I would like
Speaker 1: to allow myself the luxury of believing that I have
Speaker 1: evolved enough, despite the fact that I gave full side
Speaker 1: eye and hell to the no faces during the episode.
Speaker 1: You are a gam two point oh for real? Go
Speaker 1: and let y'all know that now Heysey's faces straight gam
Speaker 1: this whole episode. Let me say this, it's difficult and
Speaker 1: as heavy and deep as this episode was, it was
Speaker 1: also relevant and necessary. We need to talk more about this,
Speaker 1: especially now that there is so much happening in our
Speaker 1: country and there's so much going on with regard to
Speaker 1: race relations, education awareness. We need to have these kind
Speaker 1: of conversations with groups of people that we can trust
Speaker 1: and groups of people that we can learn from, and
Speaker 1: then we can unlearn with Hello. Yeah, that's a key one.
Speaker 1: I like that you've gotten to hear how we feel.
Speaker 1: But now don't you think it's time to hear what
Speaker 1: your Red Table Talk community has to say? Tracy, Yes,
Speaker 1: I do. We asked our community, how do you keep
Speaker 1: your personal biases in check? And here are some of
Speaker 1: your answers. Kin start us off with our good old
Speaker 1: memphisis to friends friends. Jent Tom says, I up to
Speaker 1: tell myself there are different strokes for different folks, and
Speaker 1: everything ain't for everybody. Man. That's the way to think
Speaker 1: about it. That is a real good, happy neutral You
Speaker 1: just say, sure, what works for you. If you're a
Speaker 1: consenting adult, go forward, not to stamp out. It's a
Speaker 1: process that begins with awareness and recognition. I'm a work
Speaker 1: in progress, Betty Rufel mayor, thank you for that. That's good.
Speaker 1: That's also wise. Those are sage words. I'm work in progress.
Speaker 1: Give yourself some brevity, Zola right More Walker says, I
Speaker 1: remind myself of the beauty of diversity. I'm glad she's
Speaker 1: able to find beauty and diversity. Yeah, I love that
Speaker 1: she gets it and Brown Betty. Betty said, we're all
Speaker 1: biased and sometimes that's okay. I'm allowed to help a
Speaker 1: single mom over a married one because I identify with
Speaker 1: single motherhood. I just asked myself why I feel like
Speaker 1: I feel If the reason is me projecting some trauma,
Speaker 1: I turned my attention to the trauma, literally, just mirroring
Speaker 1: what I said. Right, It's about you identifying what is
Speaker 1: going on with yourself. Why do I feel that way?
Speaker 1: You have to tap in. If you don't tap in,
Speaker 1: then you're only gonna be concerned with what's on the outside,
Speaker 1: and you need to tap out. If you don't tap in,
Speaker 1: tap out, tap tap in. I'd like to play the
Speaker 1: Sweetie song. Let's go to this break. We're going to
Speaker 1: take a quick break, but when we get back, we'll
Speaker 1: be joined by two guests from our Red Table Talk community.
Speaker 1: I love that we have guests on our fantastic podcast. Cara.
Speaker 1: Dr Susan Glistens the president and founder of the Glistened Group,
Speaker 1: a racial reconciliation and community building program based in Mississippi,
Speaker 1: a state notorious for racial violence. Here, Susan used as
Speaker 1: an approach she calls the Welcome Table to facilitate community
Speaker 1: driven dialogue and informed action in the communities that welcome her.
Speaker 1: Her work fights for empathy, healing, and equity as the
Speaker 1: remedy to white supremacy. Thank you for joining us um
Speaker 1: Let's Red Table that Dr Susan so happy to be here,
Speaker 1: Such an honor, happy to be with all of you. Yes,
Speaker 1: I'm calling you my sister from a different mr. You
Speaker 1: know that I love it. I love it and it's
Speaker 1: an honor right right. Ernest Crumb the Third is a
Speaker 1: self proclaimed black history advocate joining us from Chicago. Have
Speaker 1: great Pizza right. He works as a high school history
Speaker 1: teacher and an online educator for all. Ernest is at
Speaker 1: the Virtual Red Table to tell us about his book
Speaker 1: Black History Saved My Life, which he wrote in after
Speaker 1: he and his wife experienced the hate crime that went viral.
Speaker 1: He shares this story to teach the important role black
Speaker 1: history plays and culture today, and he continues to use
Speaker 1: his platform to teach true black history on social media.
Speaker 1: I love that we know you've guessed it on Gammies
Speaker 1: podcast positively gam a little while back, and we're happy
Speaker 1: and glad and appreciate you for joining us as well
Speaker 1: on less Red Table that the Red Table Talk family
Speaker 1: is amazing, So thank you for coming to join us.
Speaker 1: Thanks for having me, Thank you, Welcome, Welcome. This is
Speaker 1: the part of the show where we reveal which moments
Speaker 1: made us pause, I mean, rewind, turn heads and say,
Speaker 1: let me listen to that again. Waiting, wait, wait what?
Speaker 1: Wait what? Right? So, Susan and Ernest, let's kick it off.
Speaker 1: Were there any moments that made you say wait what?
Speaker 1: During the episode? You know? For me and I took notes.
Speaker 1: I took copious notes actually on the educator by trading
Speaker 1: no surprise there, Mr Academia, So I have the mirror
Speaker 1: what I expect from my students, and I did a lot,
Speaker 1: And I think the main thing that stood out to
Speaker 1: me was when they started talking about what drives white
Speaker 1: males to engage in this type of racist violence. There's
Speaker 1: kind of this white male entitlement to what I've owed
Speaker 1: in this world. I expect to have a girlfriend and
Speaker 1: be wealthy and be respected or have resources, and so
Speaker 1: when I don't get those things, my anger and rage
Speaker 1: is very intense. There's always been something that I've wondered.
Speaker 1: And again, being from Chicago, we often hear the tropes
Speaker 1: about black men in the city with gang violence, so
Speaker 1: there's a stark difference between the gang violence we see
Speaker 1: that often doesn't make its way into the school building,
Speaker 1: versus when white males engage in violence, it often does
Speaker 1: in public spaces. And again that is a wait wait wait,
Speaker 1: wait what right? Right? And when they said that, I
Speaker 1: believe it was Dr Jill. Dr Jillian. She said that
Speaker 1: the self hate that they have for themselves or the
Speaker 1: depression that they're dealing with, flips to what's wrong with
Speaker 1: them as opposed to them doing some type of internal reflection.
Speaker 1: And it really made me think about going back to
Speaker 1: even what Jeff was talking about, how in a lot
Speaker 1: of these spaces they take advantage of those who are
Speaker 1: most vulnerable. And I really connected with the part where
Speaker 1: he said they were recruiting in Detroit, they were recruiting
Speaker 1: in places that were economically impoverished, because that's the same
Speaker 1: thing gangs do in the black community. Some mirror mentality,
Speaker 1: is it not? Yeah, that's totally Await what Let me
Speaker 1: say this because a couple of times already I've made
Speaker 1: the Gammy face. So I want you to know throughout
Speaker 1: the episode, let me acknowledge Gammy, you know I love you? Okay,
Speaker 1: I made Gammy facial expressions throughout the entire episode, Gammy
Speaker 1: and I were mirrors on the facial specially with the
Speaker 1: side I turned up lift. It was if words could speak,
Speaker 1: the words would say wrong. The whole episode was yeah,
Speaker 1: gah Man Willow were on the same page. Now, Carrol,
Speaker 1: which one were you? I work to understand. I'm trying
Speaker 1: to understand others, even the main guest who had twenty
Speaker 1: seven years of hate right but now he is just reformed.
Speaker 1: In my mind, I want to understand that at the
Speaker 1: same time as you say, let that go like that. See,
Speaker 1: look at you. You You don't want to forget a man
Speaker 1: at all. What I'm saying not that I don't forgive. Okay,
Speaker 1: you can forgive and leave folks along. Okay, you can
Speaker 1: forgive and disassociate. Right now, I'm making a little bit
Speaker 1: of a stink face. What about you two? Dr Susan Ernest,
Speaker 1: how do you rank his deservedness of forgiveness. That's a
Speaker 1: tough one because I noted that he said he didn't
Speaker 1: feel like he had the right to ask for forgiveness,
Speaker 1: and I really appreciated that because I'm not sure that
Speaker 1: he does. Apologies to the extent that they are effective,
Speaker 1: are usually effective between the person who was the perpetrator
Speaker 1: and the person who was a victim. But he not
Speaker 1: only hurt individual people, his program of hate hurt a
Speaker 1: lot of us out in the world. How do you
Speaker 1: repair that. I appreciated his courage for coming to the table.
Speaker 1: We can't get going to try to change anything if
Speaker 1: we can't come to the table. But yeah, the wait,
Speaker 1: what how does it? Why does it take you that long?
Speaker 1: Why does it take you? Why you're not You're clearly
Speaker 1: not a dumb person. Right. You can read, you can
Speaker 1: watch TV, you can hear what people have to say.
Speaker 1: It shouldn't take you that long to recognize humanity in
Speaker 1: another person. Right. My other question is, like when he
Speaker 1: was in his household and decided to change his life around,
Speaker 1: did your wife, children just forgive you family members? Did
Speaker 1: they just go along with your change? Did that really
Speaker 1: happen like that they just accepted your change because you
Speaker 1: preached this for a long time. Yeah, I had the
Speaker 1: same sentiment because I dealt with the hate crime face
Speaker 1: to face, me and my wife. So I think when
Speaker 1: people talk about forgiveness in this situation, it's more so
Speaker 1: I don't owe you like me tell you I forgive
Speaker 1: you even if I did, but I think oftentimes you
Speaker 1: make it a public spectacle. Forgiveness for me is that's
Speaker 1: something that you have to deal yourself because you hurt yourself.
Speaker 1: It's spewing out hatred means that you hate something about
Speaker 1: yourself to be able to consciously do that as an
Speaker 1: adult too. So for me, if you really want to
Speaker 1: be forgiven and I'm not him, I can't say for sure.
Speaker 1: He seems to be doing great work, and the fact
Speaker 1: that he made an organization and he's working that's great,
Speaker 1: and he has to continue to do that, and it
Speaker 1: has to also translate to economic resources, has to translate
Speaker 1: to policy because just like you an't say when I
Speaker 1: saw twenty seven years, I'm like, bro like, I've been
Speaker 1: actively engaging in learning black history since I was in college,
Speaker 1: and I still have a long way to go, and
Speaker 1: I still have to make sure I am not digesting
Speaker 1: these racial tropes and stereotypes that we're all fan. So
Speaker 1: he has a long way to go, and I hope
Speaker 1: that he's aware of that. But I do commend him
Speaker 1: for taking that step. But it would have been very
Speaker 1: difficult for me to sit there and not be a
Speaker 1: little confrontational about some of the things he did. Do
Speaker 1: you think that he deserved to see at the table
Speaker 1: with all due respect? I think based on the conversation, yes,
Speaker 1: I think that since it was facilitated by black women,
Speaker 1: who we know the history in this country and for
Speaker 1: them to extend that honor, he should have been honored,
Speaker 1: and I think he deserved it. And to me, he
Speaker 1: came across humble, but again, just knowing what he did
Speaker 1: and just the experience I've had, it would have been
Speaker 1: very difficult. But I think it's important to hear that
Speaker 1: perspective because we have to understand that whether we ignore
Speaker 1: these people or not, they're here. I just don't believe
Speaker 1: I'm the person to facilitate that. So I commend people
Speaker 1: like Dia Darryll Davis. But and I will also say
Speaker 1: this about him. I believe that when you have people
Speaker 1: who are that extreme, and I could be wrong, but
Speaker 1: I'm just going based on how I feel right now,
Speaker 1: I think that it's easier to have them switched their
Speaker 1: mindset than someone who unconsciously spews racism and lives in
Speaker 1: this implicit mind's world. If you understand what I'm saying,
Speaker 1: that is all right now, Ernest that's a wait what
Speaker 1: We could have a whole conversation about that, and I'm
Speaker 1: here for it. I want to hear all about that.
Speaker 1: I really do, because I love a good verbal volly.
Speaker 1: I gotta get Dr Susan in On here because I
Speaker 1: want to hear from your perspective. It's a wonderful dynamic
Speaker 1: that we have to have a gift of having a
Speaker 1: black man and a white woman on is our guest
Speaker 1: today to talk about this, right because you're both soldiers
Speaker 1: on the same field. Tracy, I appreciate that so much,
Speaker 1: and I think Ernest has said it so much better
Speaker 1: than I. But when I encounter situations like this where
Speaker 1: there's an opportunity to engage with someone who has harmed others,
Speaker 1: my first question is who are the folks that he's
Speaker 1: harmed and what are their thoughts about this? That needs
Speaker 1: to guide what we do right Working in the Philadelphia
Speaker 1: sipping the show The County, the missisp be burning case,
Speaker 1: I needed to know what the black community in the
Speaker 1: show The County thought about in York there and if
Speaker 1: their suggestion to me was we're not ready or they're
Speaker 1: not ready, we need to take time, then time we take.
Speaker 1: So the fact that Dia connected with him and in
Speaker 1: some ways kind of vouched for him was moving for me.
Speaker 1: I wanted to know what her thoughts were about having
Speaker 1: him at the table and reaching across to him. You
Speaker 1: bring up a really interesting point, and I don't know
Speaker 1: that it was really addressed in the episode. If it was,
Speaker 1: feel free to correct me. None of the victims directly
Speaker 1: were ever given a voice. We didn't hear that in
Speaker 1: the episode. And it's interesting that you bring up the
Speaker 1: point that if the victim isn't ready, then it's not time.
Speaker 1: And in DEA's case, even though she was vicariously because
Speaker 1: so many of us didn't directly feel it, but as
Speaker 1: a result of his efforts and his organizing and his
Speaker 1: almost three decades worth of hate, it's a rippled and snowballs, right.
Speaker 1: So we are victims directly and indirectly, but we didn't
Speaker 1: have that true representation of someone who said that like you,
Speaker 1: Earnest I Direc actually felt the impact and the ill
Speaker 1: effects and the negativity and the direct hate from him,
Speaker 1: and so it's just interesting to me. It's why it's
Speaker 1: so important that Ernest is here to share his story
Speaker 1: but also to Earnest's point earlier. There's plenty of work
Speaker 1: for folks to do until the person who has been
Speaker 1: harmed might be ready. They may never be ready, And
Speaker 1: that doesn't mean that you get to sit around and
Speaker 1: not do anything right. You have to do the inner work.
Speaker 1: You have to excavate, you have to do some archaeology
Speaker 1: on your attitudes, and then, you know what, you gotta
Speaker 1: make some amends. You gotta try to do some things
Speaker 1: the policies, the practices of the procedures. You got to
Speaker 1: reach back to some other white folks and bring them
Speaker 1: along with you too. You don't get to just sit
Speaker 1: and wait while someone is having to do the hard
Speaker 1: work of repairing themselves when they've been harmed. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: good because so often times the burden is kind of
Speaker 1: unspokenly put on the oppressed. Right, thank you, that's what
Speaker 1: I did to you. You know what you did make
Speaker 1: me feel better about what I did. You know exact
Speaker 1: actually what you've done, And if you don't, I need
Speaker 1: you to stop and think about it. I said this
Speaker 1: when we were preparing for this show. Like when they
Speaker 1: ended segregation, who went in and told all the employers
Speaker 1: how to actually treat the employees, nobody like y'all made
Speaker 1: it up and and more so acted like nothing really happened.
Speaker 1: So that cognitive dissidence is a problem for me. Living
Speaker 1: in the Capital and Confederacy, a lot of things are
Speaker 1: just you don't speak on them. You just don't go
Speaker 1: on that street, you just don't turn that way. There's
Speaker 1: so much social conditioning that has happened with the we
Speaker 1: can't go on certain streets and we can't say certain things,
Speaker 1: and we were finally giving a voice. It's just I
Speaker 1: don't know whether I need to get up and cheer
Speaker 1: or take my headset off and weak that it was
Speaker 1: even said, how would you feel sitting at the table
Speaker 1: with Jeff I that's hard to say that. I think
Speaker 1: the difficulty bigger than just sitting at the table with
Speaker 1: him is we're saying that he talked to one person
Speaker 1: of color and his entire outlook was forever changed. Is
Speaker 1: that the goal of the protesting and everything we want,
Speaker 1: because then when someone changes, I hear us even in
Speaker 1: this conversation saying, oh no, I doubt it a little
Speaker 1: bit understood though, because you do twenty seven years of
Speaker 1: a thing. I mean, you're right with your hand for
Speaker 1: twenty seven years and then you gotta go to what
Speaker 1: your left hand the next day, like, is that just
Speaker 1: is just automatically changed like that, so you don't revert
Speaker 1: back at all, You are just completely And I mean,
Speaker 1: if that is the beauty of change, then we would
Speaker 1: like to all have that same grace. Right you would
Speaker 1: be able to sit at the table with him, or
Speaker 1: you wouldn't. I feel like I'd be able to sit
Speaker 1: at the table with him and listen. But I feel
Speaker 1: like there would be a little doubt there as far
Speaker 1: as are you even being genuine? Is this a true
Speaker 1: change you're having? I think I would question it. Mm
Speaker 1: hmm okay, So let me tell you like you earnest,
Speaker 1: I had wait what? Wait what? Wait what? It was
Speaker 1: like a wait what remix in this episode for me,
Speaker 1: one of the wait what mom? This was dea story
Speaker 1: of a man who enjoyed seeing fear in the eyes
Speaker 1: of a person he meet because he had been fearful
Speaker 1: his entire life. Then he said, I saw something that
Speaker 1: I've never seen before, And he said, I loved it,
Speaker 1: and I'm going what was it? He said? Fear? Oh,
Speaker 1: he said, you know, for me, somebody who was afraid
Speaker 1: my entire life. Now somebody else was afraid, ernest you
Speaker 1: go ahead because you touched on it, and just go
Speaker 1: and elaborate for us. Yeah, So that revelation by Dea,
Speaker 1: I think that what we have to realize, and I
Speaker 1: think somebody touched on this on the episode as well,
Speaker 1: is that all of this is deeply rooted in fear
Speaker 1: and hate is just another way that that comes out
Speaker 1: of us when we go back through history and we
Speaker 1: think about the system that's being created. The fear is
Speaker 1: that black people are going to take something from white people.
Speaker 1: Fear is that indigenous people were going to take something.
Speaker 1: The fear coming from maybe living in an environment where
Speaker 1: there were a lack of resources during the MIDI period
Speaker 1: in eury Board during the plague, and you come over
Speaker 1: here and you see what you think is all of
Speaker 1: this opportunity. The fear might be that it's going to
Speaker 1: go away, and we don't often realize how that can
Speaker 1: be talked to people implicitly and care. You brought up
Speaker 1: a great point because you're saying, like when segregation comes down,
Speaker 1: and I've always had this thought. We've never we've never
Speaker 1: had a mass movement where we said, Okay, we need
Speaker 1: to flip all the education we need to make sure
Speaker 1: we're teaching this instead. It's two thousand and twenty two
Speaker 1: and we're talking about teaching about black history and how
Speaker 1: we need to in some ways rephrase it as in
Speaker 1: voluntary working or whatever. They were talking about Texas black people.
Speaker 1: Did you. I just can't even. I can't even if
Speaker 1: that's a whole another episode, and I hate to even
Speaker 1: I really personally, And this might be a way what
Speaker 1: I don't necessarily like using white privilege because I don't
Speaker 1: think it's a privilege to be able to benefit from genocide, slavery.
Speaker 1: I think that there's white access as a result of
Speaker 1: these things, something that whites can benefit from and again
Speaker 1: benefits and quote would be that when you deal with
Speaker 1: your hate, like oftentimes you're nurtured in it. Like people
Speaker 1: might not want to be punitive with you, they might
Speaker 1: want to coddle you. But if I have something hate
Speaker 1: because of the environment I grow up being and not
Speaker 1: realizing the hands that put my hood together with redlining,
Speaker 1: I have police everywhere and watching everything. I do. So
Speaker 1: want fear and hate to be nurtured. But we never
Speaker 1: get that opportunity to figure out why we even have
Speaker 1: that feeling, and then a lot of white folks who
Speaker 1: have that feeling of they don't understand why they have that.
Speaker 1: It's not natural to feel that way, but it's been
Speaker 1: nurtured in some way to maintain this hierarchy. And I
Speaker 1: believe that once we get to the core of that,
Speaker 1: and that also goes again to another weight, what moment
Speaker 1: of the exposure to other people at a young age,
Speaker 1: it takes away that feeling, that anxiety that you have initially,
Speaker 1: so it doesn't have to come later in your life.
Speaker 1: But I think there's a larger there's a larger point
Speaker 1: about the intentionality of the socialization process us. Right. There's
Speaker 1: a really great book that's called The Epistemology of Ignorance,
Speaker 1: and it is about how white folks are specifically socialized
Speaker 1: to have that whiteness and the benefits of power that
Speaker 1: come with it be rendered invisible so that you don't
Speaker 1: question it, so that you don't question it, and that
Speaker 1: black folks and people of color are socialized in the
Speaker 1: exact opposite way. To know that in is a society,
Speaker 1: this hierarchical society, you are in a particular position and
Speaker 1: you're supposed to stay there. You're not supposed to step
Speaker 1: outside of it, right. I've always said that they've been
Speaker 1: conditioned to ignore that. It's not that you don't see
Speaker 1: it because there's a great phrase, I'll believe it when
Speaker 1: I see it, But the opposite is actually true, I'll
Speaker 1: see it when I believe it, which goes back though,
Speaker 1: card to what you were saying about their certain streets
Speaker 1: you couldn't turn on. There's certain things you couldn't say.
Speaker 1: It literally is a it's a mind f right, my
Speaker 1: first inklings of some type of race situation, right, Bless
Speaker 1: my heart. My grandma was driving and she would always
Speaker 1: blink her lights. We lived in the county outside of
Speaker 1: the city. But I'm like, why are you blinking your
Speaker 1: lights at them? And she was like, just to let
Speaker 1: them know that the cops are up there, because nobody
Speaker 1: has time to be pulled over. Yeah, that still happens.
Speaker 1: Now it's translated into something different for no Okay, it
Speaker 1: was just me trying to understand and my mind, I'm like, wow,
Speaker 1: that's so nice. She is warning this person. Not it's
Speaker 1: nice now not thinking about the true implications of what
Speaker 1: that could be, but the origins of it. You're saying
Speaker 1: came from be careful because you need to be on
Speaker 1: your piece and ques because you're potentially coming into contact
Speaker 1: with someone that is representing the law. Sadly Dad has
Speaker 1: circled back around to be true. But what it was
Speaker 1: now it was literally, it's your speeding and I see
Speaker 1: you speeding. Dr Susan. We talked about dea story of
Speaker 1: a man who enjoyed seeing fear in the eyes of
Speaker 1: another person that he beat, and that it was because
Speaker 1: he had seen fear in his entire life. I love
Speaker 1: the Willow's response. I hate to say this, I really
Speaker 1: hate to say this. Some people feel powerless just like
Speaker 1: he did, and don't do that. So her idea was,
Speaker 1: even if the person was fearful and he wanted to
Speaker 1: have someone else demonstrate the fear that he had. To
Speaker 1: Willow's point that just because you had that experience and
Speaker 1: you were traumatized by it, doesn't mean that you get
Speaker 1: a pass. Like other people have had traumatic upbringings and
Speaker 1: they didn't turn to violence. So what's giving you the
Speaker 1: creative license and authority to do that? And not everyone
Speaker 1: has the freedom to respond? Dr Susan, what's your take
Speaker 1: on all of that. Ernest has nailed and Willow nailed it.
Speaker 1: We are socialized differently. And one of the advantages that
Speaker 1: comes from this skin disease I have that's called whiteness,
Speaker 1: is that I have the ability to expect not to
Speaker 1: have any reaction when I transgress. It's more likely that
Speaker 1: I am not going to be held accountable. Not that
Speaker 1: there aren't white folks in prison, right there are, but
Speaker 1: for more often than not, disproportionately, folks who look like
Speaker 1: me are able to transgress and get away with it.
Speaker 1: And how we have that expectation that we will right,
Speaker 1: there is an expectation. Absolutely, We've absolutely been socialized to believe.
Speaker 1: It's why for so many white folks, they didn't understand
Speaker 1: why black folks might be worried about police officers coming
Speaker 1: into their community on mass right, because they have not
Speaker 1: experienced it. Just do what they're asking, We are okay,
Speaker 1: delay it. So it's a socialist in process that has
Speaker 1: to be that has to be excavated, and one of
Speaker 1: the main beautiful tools that does it is actually learning
Speaker 1: black history. What Ernest is doing is so powerful. There's
Speaker 1: work being done in the field of psychology. It's called
Speaker 1: the Marley hypothesis, and it absolutely says that when white
Speaker 1: folks learn accurate history, that's much harder for them to
Speaker 1: deny that racism exists. And it's like a dog. You
Speaker 1: would think that would be the case, but they're actually
Speaker 1: showing that if we teach accurate history, then there can
Speaker 1: be a change. And that's why so many folks are
Speaker 1: attacking critical race theory because they know there's power in
Speaker 1: the truth. We are just learning every day, okay, and
Speaker 1: this episode put some faces and stories to the heavy
Speaker 1: topics of racism and hate crimes that we hear about
Speaker 1: and sometimes just often don't see again. Even as I
Speaker 1: unlearn some of the things that I've gone through, just
Speaker 1: to not minimize others, I'm realizing it is happening to
Speaker 1: a lot of people everywhere. Just because one of my
Speaker 1: police interactions to date didn't end up with me getting
Speaker 1: hurt or you know who knows if I was profiled,
Speaker 1: but I got to walk away, that doesn't mean that
Speaker 1: there are not other people who have truly gone through
Speaker 1: some significant situations and it all for some attention. Earnest.
Speaker 1: Let's jump into your situation. I really want to hear
Speaker 1: about this because you and your wife were at a
Speaker 1: community event a few years ago where a white woman
Speaker 1: harassed and spelled derogatory names of you. What you talk
Speaker 1: all about in your book, of course, and make sure
Speaker 1: I'll get that, but could you please share that story
Speaker 1: with us and why this was really the catalyst for
Speaker 1: you to take your work a step further past that classroom? Definitely.
Speaker 1: So I guess I should preface this by saying that
Speaker 1: I started teaching because I knew the important role Black
Speaker 1: history played in my life, in our life, and just
Speaker 1: like Dr Gleason said, I just knew that when I
Speaker 1: figured out where I came from and I understood how
Speaker 1: rough our ancestors had it, but they still persevered. They
Speaker 1: gave me a lot of pride in college, and it
Speaker 1: helped me to understand why my neighborhood was the way
Speaker 1: it was, and it helped me to understand that it
Speaker 1: wasn't my own doing. So I had the capacity to
Speaker 1: fight through these things. And one of my favorite quotes
Speaker 1: from my mentor, Dr Philippe Matthews is nothing's wrong with you.
Speaker 1: Something happened to you in Black history did that for me.
Speaker 1: So when I graduated and started teaching, this event happened
Speaker 1: in July thirty twenty sixteen, So I have been teaching
Speaker 1: for about six years at that point. I say that
Speaker 1: because I want people to understand that I was already
Speaker 1: in this type of word. I was teaching, I was
Speaker 1: doing mentoring. I would go to protests, but I was
Speaker 1: always in the back, and for me, it was just
Speaker 1: I teaching the class I mentored. But when I closed
Speaker 1: that door my business, I got a private Facebook page,
Speaker 1: Instagram private. I don't do anything like that. But ten
Speaker 1: was a year, it was a summer, it was a
Speaker 1: rise of Trump. You also had Phorlando cast Stile. You
Speaker 1: also had Outside Sterling. I think we were a year
Speaker 1: removed from Sandra Bland, Philando Castile and his Beyonce Diamond
Speaker 1: Reynolds pulled over by Minnesota police for a broken tail.
Speaker 1: Like Reynolds streamed what happened next live on Facebook the
Speaker 1: death of Oton Sterling, shot while being pinned down on
Speaker 1: the ground. The family says Sandra Bland would not have
Speaker 1: committed suicide because she had too much to live for,
Speaker 1: and placed the blame for what happened to her on
Speaker 1: what they called quote over zealous trooper who were stepped
Speaker 1: his authority. So I had all of that on my mind.
Speaker 1: When me and my wife went to this event, it
Speaker 1: was a way for us to decompress because it had
Speaker 1: been a wild summer. We had just gone to Jamaica,
Speaker 1: and Jamaican's were asking us, like, what's going on in America?
Speaker 1: Y'all safe? That's what we do the question. That's the
Speaker 1: hardest part about leaving the country. I promise you, yes,
Speaker 1: someone's gonna ask. They are I wondering what's going on
Speaker 1: on that side of town. So we went to this
Speaker 1: event and it was a majority black event southside of Chicago,
Speaker 1: South Shore Culture of sent there with my wife. It's
Speaker 1: about black. Towards the end of the event, we decided
Speaker 1: to go play a game called cornhole because we noticed
Speaker 1: that there was an open station to play this game.
Speaker 1: We walk over there. There's one being bag though for
Speaker 1: that station, so that's a problem. We looked to our
Speaker 1: left and we noticed there's a group of four people
Speaker 1: to black and too white. They had about fifteen being bags.
Speaker 1: We thought, just rough estimate, Okay, maybe they'll offer us
Speaker 1: some bags. Music is loud. I don't really want to
Speaker 1: go up to them. They're playing, but maybe they'll see
Speaker 1: us looking. Somebody throws a bag really far nobody to
Speaker 1: grab it, so we're just kind of waiting, you know,
Speaker 1: Me and my wife are like, well, maybe we can
Speaker 1: at least have two. She grabs the bag and immediately
Speaker 1: a white lady in that group like power walked towards
Speaker 1: us like we just stole her purse or something and
Speaker 1: started screaming like you could have waited for us to finish.
Speaker 1: We weren't done yet, and I'm thinking, like, y'all got
Speaker 1: somebody you have bags over there, And so because she
Speaker 1: came at us so aggressively, I just was like, no,
Speaker 1: you're not getting it back now. If it was respectful,
Speaker 1: it could have been different. It's just not it's not
Speaker 1: in me. She kept yelling, she called my wife a hole,
Speaker 1: and that's when they kind of escalated from that point.
Speaker 1: So her two black friends almost start to come towards
Speaker 1: us to protect her, and then she begins to say,
Speaker 1: we're acting like a bunch of in words, what happened
Speaker 1: to me? Hold on you? And that's when something just
Speaker 1: went off in my mind. What I was like, I
Speaker 1: can't believe this is really just happen right example jail,
Speaker 1: because it's how many things go through our mind, because
Speaker 1: like we just talked about you don't have the ability
Speaker 1: to react you want, but you had the wherewithal though
Speaker 1: you know I need to record this, yes, yes, so
Speaker 1: the benefit of me, and I say benefit loosely, but
Speaker 1: being able to deal with that as a professional who
Speaker 1: was educated in black history, had a wife, had a family,
Speaker 1: I wasn't the same person I was ten twenty years
Speaker 1: pick ten years ago, where I would have just been
Speaker 1: straight to fighting. So in my mind, I'm thinking, I
Speaker 1: don't even like using that word anymore at that point
Speaker 1: in my life. So when you say this, I know
Speaker 1: it's not a reflection of me, it's a reflection of you.
Speaker 1: I'm still shocked, it still hurts. You can hear it
Speaker 1: in my voice, but consciously it's like, I need to
Speaker 1: at least document this because it's social justice. At this point,
Speaker 1: it's not a crime. You can say that word. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: it escalates as I take it out. I tell you,
Speaker 1: because first I took out my phone and said, okay,
Speaker 1: say it again so I can get all the camera.
Speaker 1: Now I'm recording, right right, I said, go stop now,
Speaker 1: I'm ready with you because I'm thinking World Star, I'm
Speaker 1: thinking Facebook, and she slaps it. I picked it up,
Speaker 1: and she's so frustrated at that point she just goes off.
Speaker 1: It's like no, no, no, no, no no, and then
Speaker 1: just going like a machine gun, and she takes a
Speaker 1: step in the opposite direction, then turns towards us while
Speaker 1: her friends are right there in the middle, and spits
Speaker 1: on me, my wife, primarily my wife, and that's when
Speaker 1: the phone dropped, and the rest is history. As we say,
Speaker 1: here's what I want to know. Okay, the friends, because
Speaker 1: she was playing cornball, corn hole, corn she was playing.
Speaker 1: But what I want to make sure I got that's clear,
Speaker 1: is she was playing and she had black friends were
Speaker 1: playing with her, right, Yes she did, Yes she did.
Speaker 1: And that's always the thing that people don't understand. Not
Speaker 1: is that but they were actively protecting her. I don't
Speaker 1: think they realized what they were doing, because again, okay,
Speaker 1: I saw that, earnest. I saw that in the video,
Speaker 1: and I was like, now, wait a minute. You can
Speaker 1: say you don't see color. Okay, that's all finding good.
Speaker 1: And I grew up in an environment that was fully diverse.
Speaker 1: I'm grateful for that. However, calm, come on, now, you
Speaker 1: cannot stand and it's not even a matter of race.
Speaker 1: At that point, it's right and wrong, and their friend
Speaker 1: was wrong. It's two left feet. I saw them literally
Speaker 1: square up beside her like we're pillars for her in
Speaker 1: the video at that point, how did you feel? I
Speaker 1: felt betrayed. And I say this because my knowledge of history,
Speaker 1: my experience. I was not shocked. Okay, backtrack. I was
Speaker 1: shocked that it happened in that manner, but I cannot
Speaker 1: be shocked if a white person is racist when this
Speaker 1: society wants them to be. But I was shocked at
Speaker 1: that the two black friends did nothing, and in fact,
Speaker 1: a lot of my aggression and frustration went towards the
Speaker 1: guy that was there, because I wasn't going to unless
Speaker 1: I felt like my safety was at risk. I wasn't
Speaker 1: going to striker. I was thinking I was gonna be
Speaker 1: fighting him, and he never once looked at me as
Speaker 1: a man the eye, and that did something to me,
Speaker 1: and I think that hurt more than anything. And in
Speaker 1: her white friend, I think this is like a parallel
Speaker 1: to like just what happens with race issues in our country.
Speaker 1: The white friend was in the back the whole time.
Speaker 1: She was just like, well that sucks. And the two
Speaker 1: black friends immediately came up like, oh wait, no, it's
Speaker 1: not that big of a deal. This doesn't bother us.
Speaker 1: And and I had I just had a revelation as
Speaker 1: you were asking me this question that I never had before.
Speaker 1: I've been speaking about this for five and a half years.
Speaker 1: The proximity to blackness that she had. We also have
Speaker 1: to understand that although segregation was enforced after slavery so
Speaker 1: called ends, black folks and white folks have always been
Speaker 1: close and proximity throughout our history, and some of the
Speaker 1: casest people to white people in this country where those
Speaker 1: who were enslaved. That's right, yes, yes, uncle nearest, the
Speaker 1: whiskey like you know when I hear about right, I like,
Speaker 1: uncle near, Hello, they're in Tennessee. Hello. I love mind.
Speaker 1: When I first started drinking it recently with the key
Speaker 1: in my mind, I was like, I'm waiting on this segway,
Speaker 1: I'm waiting on the parallel this come on, let me here.
Speaker 1: And I was just like this man stole this and
Speaker 1: grew a whole generation of Jack Daniel. I just couldn't
Speaker 1: I love Jack. I'm saying so, like again, how things
Speaker 1: are just stolen from us, even the security and safety
Speaker 1: from person to person, how it goes to others. Okay,
Speaker 1: so now that's a whole another episode as well, because
Speaker 1: that happens repeatedly in history. Has how manny, it's currently happens.
Speaker 1: Name a restaurant that you know of that is in
Speaker 1: your town. Okay, So since Carl's talking about food and liquor,
Speaker 1: we're gonna give her deep dish pizza in Chicago. Right,
Speaker 1: We're gonna give her pond raised catfish in Mississippi. Hello,
Speaker 1: We're gonna give her some fantastic ribs in Memphis. And
Speaker 1: know that every one of those foods categories literally had
Speaker 1: some black folk who had the recipes and or managed hello,
Speaker 1: managed the kitchen, and the recipes were literally lifted from them,
Speaker 1: taken from them, or gifted to them, as some of
Speaker 1: the stories go, and national brands have been created as
Speaker 1: results of them, or just how anything has been flipped
Speaker 1: to their benefit and or entertainment. Like my grandmother used
Speaker 1: to tell me about how after she picked tobacco, she
Speaker 1: said that they used the watermelon rhyns to get the
Speaker 1: tobacco off their hands, so instead they were mocked for
Speaker 1: constantly having watermelon and the wife folks not understand and
Speaker 1: why they're just thinking, looking at me eating on that watermelon,
Speaker 1: you won't let us wash our hands. I don't know
Speaker 1: if you're paying attention, you know what I mean. So
Speaker 1: small stories like that. I think about how we were
Speaker 1: mocked when we actually were out here surviving and just
Speaker 1: trying to live our best lives even with all these stories,
Speaker 1: and how things continue to come to light, and how
Speaker 1: you continue to grow and earnest. You have grown a
Speaker 1: brand and shared awareness through all everything you've gone through.
Speaker 1: Do you think your harasser could change? Do you think
Speaker 1: that woman has the ability to or do you even
Speaker 1: want to sit down and talk to her about how
Speaker 1: she's been since the event? If she had an energy
Speaker 1: to change, could she change? Yeah? I think that she does.
Speaker 1: I think that she actually does have the capacity to change.
Speaker 1: I think most people do. There are some who are
Speaker 1: so far completely gone you go to the extreme levels
Speaker 1: of shooting. I don't have any sympathy for that in
Speaker 1: this situation. I do. I think it would happen on
Speaker 1: her own time. I don't think any of the pressure
Speaker 1: from going viral or anything I said publicly would convince her.
Speaker 1: I think it could happen later in life. Who's to
Speaker 1: say it hasn't happened already. Who knows. She doesn't want
Speaker 1: to what Dr Susan said, excavation, She has to excavate
Speaker 1: some of that stuff. She's gotta unearthen in herself and unlearned.
Speaker 1: Do you think that any of the criminal repercussions that
Speaker 1: she suffered may have made her take a step back
Speaker 1: and say wait a minute. And I know that I'm
Speaker 1: asking you to speak on her behalf, but I'm just
Speaker 1: from your perspective, do you think that may have had
Speaker 1: anything to do with what could have been potential atonement,
Speaker 1: if ever there would be. I think in her situation
Speaker 1: that it could potentially speed up the atonement, only because
Speaker 1: I know when I posted it, there were people posting
Speaker 1: pictures of her saying some of the same type of
Speaker 1: language to people. And she was in high school, so
Speaker 1: she she had a history of it, and she was
Speaker 1: never punished. Why stop exactly? So for me, Dr Kenny,
Speaker 1: I believe said this, it's about who shows up. I'm
Speaker 1: sorry it was Dia. Who shows up when you're most
Speaker 1: vulnerable and broken matters. So I'm hoping maybe somebody showed
Speaker 1: up for her in that situation and showed her the
Speaker 1: air in her ways. But and again for some folks
Speaker 1: the punishment makes them go harder in that direction. It
Speaker 1: really depends on the person. I can't really say, like
Speaker 1: you said, but I will say again that I think
Speaker 1: that it's a possibility, but I would not actually want
Speaker 1: to sit down with her, just because I feel like
Speaker 1: for me, a moment sitting down with her is a
Speaker 1: moment I could have been sitting down with one of
Speaker 1: our kids was harmed by somebody like her, and it's
Speaker 1: a way anything. Okay, So that's interesting to me because
Speaker 1: Dia had the grace that she extended to Jeff, and
Speaker 1: that is literally what shifted the course and trajectory of
Speaker 1: his life. So you would not be in a position
Speaker 1: to offer or extend your harasser that same grace. Never
Speaker 1: say never, But July two thousand and twenty two, I
Speaker 1: just there's so much that I want to do and
Speaker 1: have to do in this life with this issue, and
Speaker 1: only get one of these, I just don't see the point. Again,
Speaker 1: Like after this, I started my colleague and I shout
Speaker 1: out to Rodney Coldeney. We started the Black Student Union
Speaker 1: at our school. After I deal with the situation and
Speaker 1: to hear what our kids dealt with and they never
Speaker 1: had an advocate, They didn't get a chance to record it.
Speaker 1: It happened to them at work in the drive through.
Speaker 1: Nobody cared or they did it in class. So for me,
Speaker 1: it's like, unless you talk about you got a fortune
Speaker 1: that you're gonna give up and I can help you
Speaker 1: redistribute that. I can help you have some conversations for
Speaker 1: that benefit. If we're just talking to talk, no, it's
Speaker 1: a waste of time. But if you if we're talking
Speaker 1: because you have some access that you want to have
Speaker 1: your own personal reparations fund, then yeah, let's do it.
Speaker 1: I feel like with Dear too, cheat was intentional about
Speaker 1: healing pieces of herself, understanding pieces of what she felt,
Speaker 1: trying to get that out. So I feel like when
Speaker 1: she came to him it was a little bit more
Speaker 1: directed and honestly, whether he chose to change or not,
Speaker 1: she was doing a work in her movement of work.
Speaker 1: She's a journalist. Most journalists we were passionate about what
Speaker 1: they're what they're talking, you know, what their person. She
Speaker 1: wanted to share with him how she felt. This is
Speaker 1: how it was truly impacted. Whereas even in this conversation
Speaker 1: we're talking about all the things that we I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna say hid but knew we couldn't speak about, maybe
Speaker 1: not talk directly about it. And I feel like I
Speaker 1: want to tell you we got we need to just
Speaker 1: go ahead and talk about that. Let's just talk about
Speaker 1: that for a quick second. You've said it a couple
Speaker 1: of times that I want to be able to understand more.
Speaker 1: I want to learn more about what you're saying about
Speaker 1: the things that we couldn't say in the places that
Speaker 1: we couldn't go. Will you share with us an example
Speaker 1: of your experience and that I worked for the government
Speaker 1: for twenty years and I have constantly been underneath white
Speaker 1: woman after white woman who has minimized what I've said,
Speaker 1: minimized what I've done at the same time until it
Speaker 1: was time to take on the workload for them. Now
Speaker 1: of a sudden, I'm overly accomplished and successful and amazing.
Speaker 1: And you know so after being in that professional space
Speaker 1: and then growing up through school different sports. I did gymnastic,
Speaker 1: I was a bigger girl on the team, so never
Speaker 1: quite fitting into their cookie cutter mold, not having another
Speaker 1: black girl to turn and talk to, like, are you
Speaker 1: seeing this? You know what I mean, so just having
Speaker 1: someone substantiate my feelings, acknowledging they were valid, and not
Speaker 1: that I didn't feel myself worth. But as you're growing
Speaker 1: up a preteen even young adult in this professional setting,
Speaker 1: we're looking for someone to affirm what's going on. Anybody
Speaker 1: see this? So I found that comfort and my other
Speaker 1: girlfriends and other corporate positions. Let me tell you what happened,
Speaker 1: and this is why I started taking notes. This is
Speaker 1: that's probably why my note taking a successful. It's significant,
Speaker 1: It's intense, you know what I mean. As you were
Speaker 1: growing up, it was a learned behavior where you ever
Speaker 1: told like don't go down this don't go down this
Speaker 1: street because it isn't safe, or it's not my side
Speaker 1: of town, it's not my place to be, or just
Speaker 1: you go through one experience and you never go that
Speaker 1: way again, whether it's being about the police or I
Speaker 1: got to fight down that street. So some things I
Speaker 1: think are just not spoken. If I only ones who
Speaker 1: ever experienced that, I mean, have you always been this outspoken?
Speaker 1: This is a learned behavior for me? Are you asking me? Yeah?
Speaker 1: And not even outspoken. I've always been me, But to
Speaker 1: come fully into who Karral Pressley is I feel myself
Speaker 1: ever evolving, Especially when I became the career cheerleader. That
Speaker 1: was because I had nobody cheering me on and I
Speaker 1: had to reaffirm who I was and what I was doing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I get that, but yeah, would to answer your question
Speaker 1: for me? Yeah, I have always been this outspoken. People
Speaker 1: like my family will say, yeah, that's Tracy, and people
Speaker 1: in elementary school would even tell you that. And I
Speaker 1: literally grew up from K through college all white. I
Speaker 1: went to a predominantly white school. All my whole community
Speaker 1: was like white, and then we were the other and
Speaker 1: it was like two percent was black, where we were
Speaker 1: happy to see the other blacks. It was like, hey,
Speaker 1: it was just this unspoken thing where when you thought
Speaker 1: you're the same skin, major can and that's not true
Speaker 1: now and so right, and so for me, I have
Speaker 1: always been outspoken, But part of that was because I
Speaker 1: was empowered and affirmed and knew that I had a solid,
Speaker 1: firm undergirding with my mother and that she was going
Speaker 1: to back up whatever I said, and that she knew
Speaker 1: I was gonna say something that came from a place
Speaker 1: of logic, right, I wasn't going to challenge some authority
Speaker 1: in a disrespectful and appropriate way. But I was going
Speaker 1: to be able to stand on my own. I have
Speaker 1: had to confront racism, but in the North, my experience,
Speaker 1: it was very much more covert than it is here
Speaker 1: in the South. Dr Susan, you have been fighting this
Speaker 1: good fight in the South consistently, and I want to
Speaker 1: know from you. Jeff said that part of what led
Speaker 1: him down his path of hate was his fascination with
Speaker 1: his grandfather, who fought in Hitler's army. I'm trying to
Speaker 1: figure out what led you down that path in the
Speaker 1: first place. So for me, my grandfather fought in Hitler's
Speaker 1: army in World War Two. Now, my family was not
Speaker 1: for this stuff. They are actually against it and tried
Speaker 1: desperately for years to get me out. But it was
Speaker 1: that fascination with his history, my grandfather and my great
Speaker 1: uncle's fought That was the opening to the Rabbit Horse.
Speaker 1: And you discovered, Susan, that your family has a similar
Speaker 1: background being on the wrong side of history. Your great grade,
Speaker 1: give or take a great grandfather, was a slave owner
Speaker 1: and an ancestor fought for the Confederacy, not uncommon here
Speaker 1: in Mississippi and Tennessee and Georgia or Georgia right, name
Speaker 1: is pick a state, any state. But your reaction to
Speaker 1: learning that history has been completely from from Jeff's because
Speaker 1: I was prepared. So before I learned those histories, I
Speaker 1: learned a question what I was seeing? Right? We talk
Speaker 1: about my mama. Right. A great author was once asked
Speaker 1: how did you get to be from where you were
Speaker 1: to where you came up to where you are now?
Speaker 1: And he said, I walked up my mama's backbone. Right.
Speaker 1: I wish I wrote that line. I walked up my
Speaker 1: mama's backbone. My father died when I was four. My
Speaker 1: older brothers were gone than Marine Corps. And she she
Speaker 1: had been treated badly by her father and had told
Speaker 1: her year to be seen and not heard, and that
Speaker 1: didn't hit her right, right, So she always said that
Speaker 1: my children are going to be able to say whatever
Speaker 1: they want to say, regardless of whether I like it
Speaker 1: or not. And believe me, we tested that theory. And
Speaker 1: so when I was a ten years old in n
Speaker 1: there was one TV in the house and it was
Speaker 1: in my mama's bedroom and Roots came on, and so
Speaker 1: my mother made me sit down and watch Roots with
Speaker 1: her just working class white woman in Evans, George, outside
Speaker 1: of Augusta, whose father, my grandfather, was named for the
Speaker 1: presidents of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis m M. My mother
Speaker 1: sat me down and we watched Roots, and I was
Speaker 1: horrified at how the black folks on the screen were
Speaker 1: being treated. And more than that, I was deeply embarrassed
Speaker 1: that the people who were doing it to them look
Speaker 1: like me. So I was primed, right, it's horrible, as
Speaker 1: you you feel ashamed. I was primed as I grew
Speaker 1: older to then learn that I had folks who fought
Speaker 1: on the Confederacy. That's what I learned first, right, But
Speaker 1: I told myself this little comfort. I said, they joined
Speaker 1: the Confederacy. There was a horrible decision, but data didn't
Speaker 1: know slaves, right, like I can still be like kind
Speaker 1: of okay, that they didn't own human beings. I comforted
Speaker 1: myself with that lie. I didn't know yet it was
Speaker 1: a lie I should have suspected. I'm a historian, But
Speaker 1: it wasn't until December, when I was out West doing
Speaker 1: research in the LDS Library that I found Robert mccaslan,
Speaker 1: who was four great back on my father's side, who
Speaker 1: had been born and raised in uh Northern Ireland county
Speaker 1: that was predominantly Catholic, who would have been treated badly
Speaker 1: by the British, so that he would have known what
Speaker 1: it felt like to be discriminated against. But came to
Speaker 1: this country in the late seventeen hundreds, and what do
Speaker 1: you do to get ahead in this country? If you
Speaker 1: look like me? You go into that industry, right, you
Speaker 1: go into forced labor camps. And so he became an
Speaker 1: overseer first, and then he owned human beings. And so
Speaker 1: I found his will where he names the people that
Speaker 1: he owned. I found where he'd split the forced labor
Speaker 1: camp up between his children, and then Patrick, his clearly
Speaker 1: favorite child, who got more folks passed along to him
Speaker 1: than the others. On the eve of the Civil War
Speaker 1: in eighteen sixty, he took what were three human beings
Speaker 1: and grew his ownership to seventeen human beings, including a
Speaker 1: two year old child. And I sat in that library,
Speaker 1: oblivious to everybody else, and just wept because the facade
Speaker 1: that I had comforted myself with, I couldn't comfort myself
Speaker 1: with that anymore. My family was working class. The reason
Speaker 1: we were working class, I didn't realize was because our
Speaker 1: wealth wasn't owning other human beings. And it's devastating, and
Speaker 1: all you can do is face it, acknowledge it, and
Speaker 1: then do what you can to repair be a part
Speaker 1: of the solution. To Ernest's point about what he ever
Speaker 1: sit down with that woman, it is not his job
Speaker 1: to do that, right that there's a beautiful social justice
Speaker 1: ecosystem that my friend deep I are created. There are
Speaker 1: different roles in the movement, and it's good to be
Speaker 1: clear about what your role is. And Ernest is clear,
Speaker 1: and he is awesome at what he does, and he
Speaker 1: needs to keep doing that. Somebody like me who wants
Speaker 1: to try to get more white folks to come to
Speaker 1: the table, I'd be happy to sit down with her
Speaker 1: and see where she is and and invite her into
Speaker 1: a conversation. The first thing I do is it just
Speaker 1: tell me your story, right, talk to your people, because
Speaker 1: I've always said, like white people got to help white people.
Speaker 1: It's I can't help. I don't even know what you're
Speaker 1: going through. So I'm so glad that you said that,
Speaker 1: because it's not a conversation of me telling them how
Speaker 1: I feel. It's when I leave and y'all are backed
Speaker 1: by yourselves. Dr Susan, the hurt that you must have
Speaker 1: felt because you would tried to give yourself a pass
Speaker 1: and singing Roots and feeling guilt and shame. I remember
Speaker 1: watching Roots, I remember being angry. I remember going to
Speaker 1: school the next day after the first airing and the
Speaker 1: white students coming up to me apologizing. I just want
Speaker 1: to say the for the folks who were afraid of
Speaker 1: critical race theory, who want to try to protect their
Speaker 1: children from that feeling, you need to be celebrating that
Speaker 1: your children see abuse and enslavement on the TV screen
Speaker 1: and they feel bad about it, because that tells you
Speaker 1: that your child has a moral compass. Celebrate that, yes,
Speaker 1: and how we should not be like that. When I
Speaker 1: was growing up, I so despised Roots. Now, mind you,
Speaker 1: I was born at eighty two. I am forty successful
Speaker 1: years old. I despised Roots because I was tired of
Speaker 1: the slaves story. Again. Here I am strong, ten years old, man,
Speaker 1: successful in my life, completely integrated, walking to the Applebee's man,
Speaker 1: living my best life. Segregation where Whitewater fountain Ware. So
Speaker 1: I was so completely separated, I didn't know how close
Speaker 1: it truly was We had so much to recap in
Speaker 1: this Red Table Talk conversation that we need two episodes
Speaker 1: to discuss it all. So you'll have to wait until
Speaker 1: next week to hear the rest of our conversation. We
Speaker 1: got into it in part one of our conversation with
Speaker 1: Ernest and Susan. But next week, oh my, you cannot
Speaker 1: miss part two, right, You'll hear about the shocking message
Speaker 1: Earnest received from a student in this class who proudly
Speaker 1: waved a Confederate flag. And then Susan shares for the
Speaker 1: first time about a successful two year reconciliation project that
Speaker 1: she champions, and we'll talk about the trauma of gun violence.
Speaker 1: It's a lot, but these episodes are so important and
Speaker 1: we're grateful Earnest and Susan could join us for these
Speaker 1: tough conversations. That's right, So come back next week to
Speaker 1: hear the rest. Big thank you to our executive producers
Speaker 1: Jana Pinkett Smith, Ellen Rackittin and Faulon Jethro. And thank
Speaker 1: you to our producer Kyla Knehru and our associate producer
Speaker 1: Yolanda Chow. And finally, thank you to our sound engineers
Speaker 1: Calvin Bayliss and Devin, Donnahey,