Speaker 1: Hey, fam, I'm Jada Pinkett Smith and this is the
Speaker 1: Red Tabletop podcast, all your favorite episodes from the Facebook
Speaker 1: watch show in audio produced by Westbrook Audio and I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Please don't forget to rate and review on
Speaker 1: Apple podcasts. Hearing your stories, this sounds evil to me.
Speaker 1: Didn't even make me angry, like it hurt my feelings.
Speaker 1: Outrage And she's like, well, why don't you have your
Speaker 1: credentials with you? You don't have your diploma with You're
Speaker 1: out of here. Tragedy, ultrasound show that I had been
Speaker 1: in labor for almost two days. Shocking stories that will
Speaker 1: shake you to your core. When I had Jada, I
Speaker 1: was not treated well. I was denied the pain that
Speaker 1: I was having. He made me step off the flight
Speaker 1: and he asked me, did I know how to behave
Speaker 1: the invisible black woman? The epidemic we need to talk about.
Speaker 1: Well today it's gonna be a great show. Yeah, I'm excited,
Speaker 1: and we're gonna talk about the invisibility of black women.
Speaker 1: Now that's a topic. Yeah, it's just so deep rooted. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's great to see you and have you back at
Speaker 1: the table. Thank y'all for inviting me back. I didn't
Speaker 1: know you get to come back again. Well, it just
Speaker 1: didn't depends. It just depends. Our friend Tamika Mallory is
Speaker 1: one of the most powerful social justice leaders of today.
Speaker 1: Her new book spells out the urgent state of black
Speaker 1: people in America. One of the things that I love
Speaker 1: is that you show up for the invisible black woman.
Speaker 1: You really do. You know, you were out there for Brianna.
Speaker 1: If it was up to the world, Brianna Taylor would
Speaker 1: have been forgotten. She was murdered on March thirteenth. I
Speaker 1: think because there was no video, a lot of people
Speaker 1: were like, uh, you know, I don't know, They're there
Speaker 1: was a young woman, she had six bullets in her body,
Speaker 1: she was sleeping in the bed. They woke her up
Speaker 1: for nothing. That's what happened, right. Black women are ignored
Speaker 1: and disrespected in general. People don't want to talk about
Speaker 1: McKay Bryant right now, you know. They want to say that, well,
Speaker 1: you know, she had a knife, and it's justified, and
Speaker 1: a lot of it is trauma. I spent some time
Speaker 1: talking with her family and she had told them she
Speaker 1: was also in communication with her biological mom. Although she's
Speaker 1: in foster care. She had told them that she was
Speaker 1: experiencing something, she was going through something, and that adults,
Speaker 1: not children, has been attacking her bothering Right now, officer arrives.
Speaker 1: He doesn't know any of this, right, but here's the
Speaker 1: bottom line for me. Would he have shown up where
Speaker 1: there was white women and shot center mass at a
Speaker 1: young woman. It's unfortunate that this young girl's story ends
Speaker 1: this way. And in fact, I attended her funeral, And
Speaker 1: the reason why I went is because I know that
Speaker 1: if she was sixteen years old and perfect, the perfect victim,
Speaker 1: everyone would be all over it. Everyone would be all
Speaker 1: over it. People would have been there to support. She
Speaker 1: deserves the same care and attention and for someone that's
Speaker 1: to advocate for her and her situation, even though she
Speaker 1: might have she may have had a knife, you know, right,
Speaker 1: it's that she's a child and we saw her laying
Speaker 1: on the ground. The fact that you went to the
Speaker 1: funeral for that young sister, because I just feel like
Speaker 1: there's always an excuse of why not to show up
Speaker 1: for us, For black women, there's always freaking excuse, but
Speaker 1: yet we are always expected to show up. So to
Speaker 1: Mek and when were the times that you felt invisible,
Speaker 1: and I think I feel invisible all the time. That
Speaker 1: invisible feeling is one that I have probably felt my
Speaker 1: whole life, from school days all the way until now.
Speaker 1: And people don't understand what feeling invisible means because they
Speaker 1: because it's like I'm loud, I talk a lot, talk
Speaker 1: all the time, and then like you can't be invisible
Speaker 1: because we can't miss you. You're always there. But my
Speaker 1: feelings are not always value my opinion of things. I'm
Speaker 1: constantly having to raise my temperature in order for people
Speaker 1: to know that I know what I'm talking about. You
Speaker 1: know what I mean. It's been difficult for so long
Speaker 1: to feel like, um, I've been ignored, and when I
Speaker 1: was with the Women's March, I experienced that, you know,
Speaker 1: I really did. I think there were days when I
Speaker 1: started being like, why am I here dealing with y'all?
Speaker 1: And I got my own problems and like I'm getting
Speaker 1: beat up left and right. It was just too much
Speaker 1: to think about. So I started taking Zanex, taking whatever
Speaker 1: you could do to sleep, because that sleep is an
Speaker 1: issue when you're stressed and not able to rest. Any
Speaker 1: pill that somebody would give me that had the ability
Speaker 1: to make you calm down and to deal with anxiety.
Speaker 1: I wanted them I got addicted, and now you want
Speaker 1: me to go get unaddicted, Like I don't even understand
Speaker 1: the concept of how this happened to me, of all people,
Speaker 1: but I was. And so then I had to go
Speaker 1: to rehab. And while I was in rehab, they were like,
Speaker 1: you need PTSD support because you're having a problem that's
Speaker 1: deeper than this drug. You're going through some soul issues.
Speaker 1: So I had to do all of that, and it
Speaker 1: was like tearing down and building me all back up.
Speaker 1: But look at me, I'm still cute. You are. It's
Speaker 1: interesting when you talk about needing to turn up the temperature,
Speaker 1: because I don't know how many times I felt like
Speaker 1: I've had to turn up the temperature and then ostracize.
Speaker 1: It makes me just it breaks my heart, that stereotype
Speaker 1: because that has been stuffed down and repressed and all
Speaker 1: that and feeling invisible and then it's like, oh, you're
Speaker 1: just the angry black woman, but it's so much deeper.
Speaker 1: I was having a conversation with my boy Dwayne Martin
Speaker 1: the day because he called me. He was like, what
Speaker 1: y'all talking about at the Ranta and then talk a
Speaker 1: bit about the invisibility and black women. He said, can
Speaker 1: I just tell you something, He said, I realized that
Speaker 1: society has used the best parts of black women. He said,
Speaker 1: from historically, you know, you guys using your breast to
Speaker 1: feed other children and raising other children. And he said,
Speaker 1: from the surgeons who steal your body parts and put
Speaker 1: them on other people, from the ass to the lips,
Speaker 1: to the hips to the thighs. And he said, and
Speaker 1: you know what, they steal the best parts of you
Speaker 1: guys and throw the rest away. That's exactly right. And
Speaker 1: he said it's like you know, in slavery women, they
Speaker 1: would take the best parts of the pig or the
Speaker 1: chicken and they give us the scraps, the scraps. But
Speaker 1: when he broke it down like that, just like dang,
Speaker 1: I was like, that's deep. So that goes along with
Speaker 1: that foundation of invisibility. One of the most shocking consequences
Speaker 1: of black women being invisible is when it comes to healthcare.
Speaker 1: Check this. Trussey mcmillancottom says she was pregnant and in crisis,
Speaker 1: and all the doctors all was an incompetent black woman.
Speaker 1: When I got pregnant, I wanted the very best for
Speaker 1: my baby. That's why I chose the hospital uptown where
Speaker 1: the white women went to have their babies with white doctors,
Speaker 1: thinking I would get better care. And I got anything.
Speaker 1: But I was about four months pregnant when I started bleeding.
Speaker 1: My husband rushed me to the doctor's office, where I
Speaker 1: sat in the waiting room for about thirty minutes. The
Speaker 1: doctors the nurses really ignored the crying, bleeding, pregnant woman
Speaker 1: in the waiting room. I was in extreme pain. I've
Speaker 1: never felt more invisible. After I bled onto the chair
Speaker 1: in the waiting room, the doctor finally saw me, but
Speaker 1: he dismissed my concern, told me that spotting was normal,
Speaker 1: especially for someone as fat as I was in his words,
Speaker 1: and he sent me home. As the pain got worse
Speaker 1: throughout the night, I went back to the hospital. The
Speaker 1: doctor was again dismissive and told me that probably just
Speaker 1: eaten something bad. After are constantly pleading and begging with
Speaker 1: the doctor, he did finally agree to give me an ultrasound,
Speaker 1: and what we saw in the ultrasound was shocking. The
Speaker 1: image showed what looked like three babies, except I was
Speaker 1: only pregnant with one the other two were fairly large tumors.
Speaker 1: I was checked into the maternity ward, where I asked
Speaker 1: repeatedly for an epidural. I was pushing before I knew
Speaker 1: what was happening, and my daughter was here. She died
Speaker 1: shortly after her first breath. Oh yeah, sorry, so sorry,
Speaker 1: thank you. Ultrasound showed that I had been in labor
Speaker 1: for almost two days and my baby was worn too
Speaker 1: early to survive, and I left the hospital without my daughter.
Speaker 1: What happened is both traumatic but not singular. Happened to
Speaker 1: a lot of black women um which is something that
Speaker 1: was totally preventable. If we had an ultrasound. When you're
Speaker 1: supposed to do an ultrasound, they would have known mine
Speaker 1: was a high risk pregnancy. Nurse, I know the difference
Speaker 1: between bleeding and spotting. Spotting. She was bleeding when they
Speaker 1: had to remove the chair after I left the waiting room,
Speaker 1: right and I still did not signal to them that
Speaker 1: was an emergency. By the way, still did not go
Speaker 1: to the emergency room at that point. At every step
Speaker 1: of the process, no one really took seriously that I
Speaker 1: knew what was happening to me, one or cared enough
Speaker 1: to at least do an assessment. Let's do an exam,
Speaker 1: Let's do a test. They didn't even care enough to
Speaker 1: do that. Childbirth is when you're most vulnerable. You really
Speaker 1: are relying on people to see your pain, right, and
Speaker 1: people's ability to see your pain relies on their ability
Speaker 1: to see you as human. Yes, the experience for me
Speaker 1: was a loss that shouldn't have been a loss, but
Speaker 1: worse than that, a loss that no one treats like
Speaker 1: a law. It is just traumatic. There's no aftercare when
Speaker 1: it was a child. The nurse doesn't come to check
Speaker 1: on you six weeks out, there's no postpartum right at
Speaker 1: the time, I was working, you know, full time, as
Speaker 1: most women aren't, especially women of color and black women.
Speaker 1: It's no longer maternity leave when your baby dies. What Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's no longer maternity leave. So it's not just the
Speaker 1: trauma of the event, it's the way the world treats you.
Speaker 1: I never even heard from the doctor's office again, except
Speaker 1: for the nurse to call and tell me just so
Speaker 1: you know, there was nothing we could have done. Okay,
Speaker 1: So you know that's one of the reasons why I
Speaker 1: never had another child, Because I was eighteen pregnant, and
Speaker 1: the experience was so horrible that I was like, I'm
Speaker 1: not doing that again. Imagine a young black girl, you know,
Speaker 1: and they treated me really bad, just like sit over there,
Speaker 1: we'll get to you in a minute. My water leaked
Speaker 1: for a month. It was just so much trauma that
Speaker 1: after that, I was like, never again. It's interesting that
Speaker 1: you say that, because now that I'm thinking about my
Speaker 1: own experience when I had Jada, it was pretty similar.
Speaker 1: I was not treated well, I was not cared for,
Speaker 1: and I was in a hospital where my father was
Speaker 1: head of anesthesia at the time, so they knew exactly
Speaker 1: who I was. I was denied um the pain that
Speaker 1: I was having at the time, Oh, it's not that bad.
Speaker 1: And there was so much invested in telling me that
Speaker 1: that I wasn't feeling what I was feeling. You know
Speaker 1: how they do the pain scale level of one to ten.
Speaker 1: Where are you? I was in the middle of a
Speaker 1: contraction and I'm vibrating. It hurts so bad, right I'm vibrating.
Speaker 1: I knew if i'd say ten, they tell me I
Speaker 1: was exaggerating. If I say anything less than five, they
Speaker 1: leave the rum. And I remember negotiating with myself to
Speaker 1: settle on seven because if they left the room, the
Speaker 1: anesthesiologist wasn't gonna come. And she told me, if you
Speaker 1: complain too much, he doesn't like complaint, he won't come.
Speaker 1: And I was terrified that he wouldn't come because I
Speaker 1: wanted the apaturial badly by that point, Yeah, I terrified.
Speaker 1: I hate to bring it this far, but you're looking
Speaker 1: at a woman in pain, the most vulnerable place she's
Speaker 1: ever been in her entire life, and you're just going
Speaker 1: to like that seems evil to me, Like that seems
Speaker 1: like an evil thing to do. That did have to
Speaker 1: start to think about how did I end up in
Speaker 1: a room where there was no one to speak for me?
Speaker 1: What could not have done differently? What is too much
Speaker 1: to ask for from somebody else to advocate for you? Right?
Speaker 1: I have a family health insurance, all those things that
Speaker 1: are supposed to matter. Advocacy takes somebody willing to hear you.
Speaker 1: You can say a lot of things. If people won't
Speaker 1: hear it, it really doesn't matter. And I tell people
Speaker 1: all the time I'm asked to testify before Congress and etcetera. No,
Speaker 1: you don't bring me in unless you're serious, Because I
Speaker 1: don't perform trauma for people who are not invested in
Speaker 1: fixing the problem. That is so. Yeah, that was very
Speaker 1: extant to the idea of performing trauma for the same
Speaker 1: public that wouldn't have cared about what happened to me
Speaker 1: in the hospital. Yeah. So it's not that people don't know,
Speaker 1: it's that they don't care. Yeah. What is your advice
Speaker 1: for black women who find themselves feeling invisible, especially when
Speaker 1: it comes to medical issues. Has anybody ever told you
Speaker 1: that if the doctor starts talking crazy that you should
Speaker 1: get up, leave, should leave. I want black women to
Speaker 1: treat doctors like we treat a service provider. Black women
Speaker 1: don't play if the food is cold, right, you know,
Speaker 1: I play if the service man, the cableman is late.
Speaker 1: But the medical profession, it's shape for you to follow
Speaker 1: directions to not question authority. But it is the one
Speaker 1: place where questioning authority can save your life. You have
Speaker 1: to do your research and if the plan that they
Speaker 1: are creating for you doesn't work, then go to somebody
Speaker 1: who's planning it does work for you. Yes, I tell him,
Speaker 1: don't even let him finish you, right, like, get up,
Speaker 1: you can get dressed in the hallway, get your clothes,
Speaker 1: and you walk out. Exactly if we had the same
Speaker 1: crisis facing middle class, suburbon white women, if they were
Speaker 1: dying at the rate that we die trying to give birth. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: the inequity is undeniable. Yeah, there would be a public
Speaker 1: health crisis, would be a public health campaign. Boards would
Speaker 1: be conveniing tribunals. Right, they don't think it's a loss.
Speaker 1: That's the crux of the process, that's at the cool
Speaker 1: right there. Yeah, trustee, thank you, this was important. Thank you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: thank you. And a Facebook post seen by millions, Dr
Speaker 1: Cross revealed an incident on an airplane that left her
Speaker 1: feeling more invisible than ever. Thank you for joining us today.
Speaker 1: So explaining us what happened. I was on an airplane
Speaker 1: and I heard somebody shrieking two rows a head of me.
Speaker 1: It was a husband and wife and the husband was unresponsive,
Speaker 1: so the wife was screaming. The flight attendant immediately rushed
Speaker 1: over there. She said that she needed a medical personnel
Speaker 1: or physician. Immediately. I just flagged her down. She said,
Speaker 1: oh no, no, no, sweetie, we don't have time, you know,
Speaker 1: to talk right now. We're looking for an actual physician.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to explain to her that I'm the physician
Speaker 1: that you're looking for. She just continued with her condescending remarks.
Speaker 1: At that time is going on on the overhead where
Speaker 1: they're saying we need a medical personnel. And I stared
Speaker 1: her and pressed my button and so that's when she's like, oh,
Speaker 1: you're an actual physician. That's when she started asking more questions.
Speaker 1: It wasn't like, Okay, you're a doctor, great, come over here,
Speaker 1: mind you he's still responsive, still unresponsive. She's like, well,
Speaker 1: if you're a doctor, you know, well what are you
Speaker 1: what are you doing? What are you Why are you hearing?
Speaker 1: Why are you in de trade? And she's like, well,
Speaker 1: why don't you have your credentials with you? You don't
Speaker 1: have your diploma with you know, I don't like you
Speaker 1: don't have a business card. No, I don't have a
Speaker 1: business card on me. This continues back and forth, and
Speaker 1: then there's a middle age Caucasian mail coming from the
Speaker 1: front of the plane and she said, well, he's a physician,
Speaker 1: he has his credentials, but of course my blood's boiling
Speaker 1: on inside. That's ridiculous. Did you complain to the airline?
Speaker 1: I did. She basically offered me sky miles an exchange
Speaker 1: for the miscommunication, and I said, I'm good. I got
Speaker 1: off the plane and then I went and reported it
Speaker 1: to the gate agent, and the gate agent was like,
Speaker 1: I'm so sorry for it and handed me a free
Speaker 1: drink ticket for my next flight, and I was like,
Speaker 1: y'all don't get it. So I put it on social media.
Speaker 1: I got on my next flight, got off, and it
Speaker 1: was viral that quickly. You had an issue to the
Speaker 1: same thing happened to airline and the same thing. I
Speaker 1: had to put some information on social media because I
Speaker 1: tried and no one cared. A pilot threw me off
Speaker 1: of a plane for no reason. In my situation, the
Speaker 1: gay agent was the problem, and it was a black woman.
Speaker 1: I was communicating with her and she was so nasty.
Speaker 1: The white man who was the pilot happened to be
Speaker 1: off the plane standing there next to her, and I
Speaker 1: watched them as I walked through the door to go
Speaker 1: get on the plane, have a little conversation that you
Speaker 1: know whatever she said to him, and he just decided
Speaker 1: to come and throw me off the plane. He made
Speaker 1: me step off the flight and he asked me, did
Speaker 1: I know how to behave, and he asked me to
Speaker 1: repeat those words that I would behave and I did
Speaker 1: and it threw me off anyway. I said, yes, sir,
Speaker 1: I will behave and that was like he was like,
Speaker 1: oh no, So to me, are you saying that they
Speaker 1: threw you off the plane because you and the gate?
Speaker 1: Because I had about because my seat. I have claustrophobia
Speaker 1: and I was upgraded to first class and then all
Speaker 1: of a sudden my seat got and I was complaining
Speaker 1: about it. We were just having a quiet conversation, but
Speaker 1: he happened to be standing there and he decided to
Speaker 1: use his authority against me. The funny thing, though, is
Speaker 1: that the flight attendant who's on there looking like what
Speaker 1: is going on because she doesn't know anything, she recognizes
Speaker 1: who I am. She's looking at me and she's like,
Speaker 1: oh my god. She was a white woman. So you
Speaker 1: need to fight this. She said, what he's doing to
Speaker 1: you is wrong, and she began to cry. When he
Speaker 1: came back with six police officers, six I verified. I said,
Speaker 1: so you're throwing me off the fan and do anything
Speaker 1: he told me? He said yes. I said, okay, I've
Speaker 1: commenced to every MF F and so and so. I
Speaker 1: told a whole plane up at that point that my
Speaker 1: nice little four letter words. And at some point in it,
Speaker 1: I said, and you will not forget me. I said,
Speaker 1: you don't know who I am. And I told him,
Speaker 1: I said, I will go to hell fighting. And he
Speaker 1: looked at me, and then she said something and he
Speaker 1: realized that I have messed up. And do you know
Speaker 1: that that man had the audacity to say to me, um,
Speaker 1: would you like to talk? Like, why don't you just
Speaker 1: calm down and we can just have a conversation. And
Speaker 1: I said a conversation, you know. But the follow up
Speaker 1: of that was one no one called me back. They
Speaker 1: didn't take it seriously until puff Puff Daddy did he
Speaker 1: we call him puff right until he retweeted what was happening,
Speaker 1: and then it became a thing. Yeah, it went viral.
Speaker 1: One thing they did do they started instituting a branch
Speaker 1: of changes, Like they looked at their policies and procedures
Speaker 1: and they began to really work inside the company. Because
Speaker 1: that's what I wanted. Wasn't about money, it wasn't about
Speaker 1: any of that. Was like, this has to change. This
Speaker 1: can't happen to another woman. And I was on the
Speaker 1: way to a wedding that was really important to me
Speaker 1: and I missed it. Then these changes happened in regards
Speaker 1: to your incident. Yeah. Absolutely, But I went all the
Speaker 1: way up to the CEO of the airline and went
Speaker 1: down to Atlanta, met with them, and then two months
Speaker 1: later they actually changed their policies because they did have
Speaker 1: a policy saying that they're supposed to verify. I'm sure
Speaker 1: there is some kind of policy. What I do want
Speaker 1: to say, it was all that question about where you going,
Speaker 1: why were you in Detroit? All that's insane. That's not
Speaker 1: part of the policy. You know. In meantime, you're jeopardizing
Speaker 1: somebody's life. Yeah, well, thank you so much for coming
Speaker 1: and sharing your story, but thank you for having me so.
Speaker 1: Dr Romeny, a good friend of the table. Has an
Speaker 1: important message and it's something you might be doing that
Speaker 1: is very harmful and not even know it. It's called
Speaker 1: racial gas lighting. Dr Romeny, how are you? It's so
Speaker 1: good to see it. I feel so privileged to be
Speaker 1: part of this conversation. We are always so happy to
Speaker 1: have you and you talk about racial gaslighting. Give us
Speaker 1: some examples of what that looks like. When we're talking
Speaker 1: about racial gas lighting, you're denying the experience as a
Speaker 1: person has as a person of color, especially as a
Speaker 1: woman of color. It's very very easy to guess like
Speaker 1: any woman of color. So when we look at it
Speaker 1: that way, then it's things like, you're making this about race,
Speaker 1: and it's not. There's no more racism. We've had a
Speaker 1: black president, they've changed the laws. Denying your experience of pain,
Speaker 1: You're not in that much pain. You didn't earn that degree.
Speaker 1: Why are you at this elite university? Was it affirmative action? Right?
Speaker 1: The immediate assumption is you did not earn that. Somebody
Speaker 1: cut you a break because you're and that already weakens
Speaker 1: that person in that position and makes them less likely
Speaker 1: to have their voice. That's a denial of your experience.
Speaker 1: And then when a person of color fights back, calm down, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's gaslighting, because it's the whole idea is you're being
Speaker 1: too sensitive, you're perceiving things that aren't happening. And it's
Speaker 1: not one person doing this, it's the entire system is
Speaker 1: doing this. What someone's done is they've taken away your reality.
Speaker 1: And when you gaslight someone, someone has told me it's
Speaker 1: really just not that serious. Yes, my head just wants
Speaker 1: to explode. Think of this one. One of the ultimate
Speaker 1: examples is when people say I don't see race, right,
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't see color. Slighting you know, because yes,
Speaker 1: you do, right right, be able to see you're wearing
Speaker 1: a green shirt, you can see that. And I understand
Speaker 1: what the intention is, but the fact is that it
Speaker 1: invalidates a person's experience. When you steal someone's reality, you
Speaker 1: steal their power, right because they're they're doubting themselves. They're
Speaker 1: walking around saying, am I being too sensitive? Maybe I'm
Speaker 1: the one who wrong? Right, So now you've lost even
Speaker 1: more power and the person who's gas lighting gets even
Speaker 1: more power back. Right. So it's that idea of calm down,
Speaker 1: calm down, you're overreacting. Is it becomes, especially for black women,
Speaker 1: this idea of being unhinged. I have to say, I
Speaker 1: understand that people have their opinions, and I always respect
Speaker 1: the opinions. But when I did hear certain politicians speaking
Speaker 1: of how America is not racist. I get that not
Speaker 1: all Americans are. There a lot of Americans that are not,
Speaker 1: but it felt like it was denying the reality that
Speaker 1: we are that they are living and watching right now,
Speaker 1: right now, exactly every day. And it was hurtful. It
Speaker 1: didn't even make me angry, like it hurt my feelings, yes,
Speaker 1: and and those hurt feelings are real. But when you
Speaker 1: take that into the system and say my feelings are hurt,
Speaker 1: they'll say, Jada, you're being You're too sensitive. You know,
Speaker 1: right here she going agin, Yes, that's right. And then
Speaker 1: on the other side of it is this phenomenon called
Speaker 1: healthy cultural paranoia, and it's the idea that particularly black women,
Speaker 1: who hold the least societal power of any women. Right
Speaker 1: when you think of the history of black women in
Speaker 1: our country, they've always been at risk. So there may
Speaker 1: be a tentativeness. You know, you're going a new situation,
Speaker 1: you're being very very careful, right, And then what will
Speaker 1: people say about a black woman. Then she's aloof she's
Speaker 1: up pity, you know, right, she's not living to those roles.
Speaker 1: You're not being the big hug you know, the mammy
Speaker 1: that I can hug. You're not playing to the role
Speaker 1: when you're not playing the sassy exactly. I mean, we
Speaker 1: get this in Hollywood all the time. These boxes that
Speaker 1: we put in many many times, women of color, especially
Speaker 1: Black women, will go into a situation, a professional situation,
Speaker 1: even a social situation, and they'll feel unsettled. I don't
Speaker 1: feel comfortable here, I don't feel hurt here, I don't
Speaker 1: feel respected here. And the other people in the room
Speaker 1: will say, nothing's going on here. You're sensing something that's
Speaker 1: not happening. You're being ridiculous. Stop making such a big deal. Gaslight, gaslight, gaslight,
Speaker 1: and the whole systems in on it. So when that
Speaker 1: woman tries to go to HR or goes to a
Speaker 1: person in authority, they'll say, what documentation do you have?
Speaker 1: I think you might have been misperceiving the situation. You're
Speaker 1: talking about invisible black women. You want to make someone
Speaker 1: invis sable deny their reality? Yeah, Can I ask the
Speaker 1: question what about when it's not reality? Like if someone
Speaker 1: is saying, well, you harmed me because you did these things,
Speaker 1: and you're like, I didn't actually do those, they're still
Speaker 1: gas lighting because you didn't do those things. They deny
Speaker 1: the realitybody even saying you did something you didn't do.
Speaker 1: Dr Romeny, you're a woman of color as well, and
Speaker 1: I just want to know has there ever been points
Speaker 1: in your life where you have felt invisible. Yeah, people
Speaker 1: just see they see brown. And it's been my whole
Speaker 1: life from people telling me this name of yours is
Speaker 1: too difficult. We're going to change that name to something
Speaker 1: we can say. As a child, people would say, I
Speaker 1: can't say romany let's just change your name to something
Speaker 1: that's easier for us. You're talking about airplanes. Anytime I fled,
Speaker 1: I would say seventy of the time, when I'm in
Speaker 1: that first class line to board, someone come up to
Speaker 1: me and say, ma'am, this is the first class line
Speaker 1: all the time. I get that right all the time.
Speaker 1: It's like death by a thousand cuts, isn't it. How
Speaker 1: many times do you have to experience those microaggressions before
Speaker 1: it effect your own identity. There were times I'd go
Speaker 1: back and look at the boarding pats. I'm like, maybe
Speaker 1: I am in the wrong line. Wow, Yeah, I laugh
Speaker 1: because I've experienced that true. And it's typically like a
Speaker 1: bunch of European businessman, you know, they just kind of
Speaker 1: move right on past. You may be walking up to
Speaker 1: the line and they walking past you like you can
Speaker 1: possibly they're all in first class, right, Nascy. So the
Speaker 1: systems are designed to silence the voices and to leave
Speaker 1: people of color in self doubt. So then everyone's walking
Speaker 1: around confused, and if everyone's confused, it's really easy for
Speaker 1: another group to hold the powers. That was really well said. Personally,
Speaker 1: I think it's all really terrible, slimy design. I think
Speaker 1: it's a design. Thank you, Dr. Thank you for having
Speaker 1: us conversation. You have no idea that even if you
Speaker 1: unguessed like one young black woman who's doubting herself today,
Speaker 1: you've done something so powerful. So thank you. The brilliant
Speaker 1: Dr Candice nor Cut has some critical information we all
Speaker 1: need to hear about how black women become invisible. Hi,
Speaker 1: thank you for having me. So happy to be here.
Speaker 1: Dr Norcut, can you tell us what you think is
Speaker 1: one of the factors behind the Black women invisibility epidemic.
Speaker 1: One of the ways this happens is because they don't
Speaker 1: fit into a prototype. The prototype for black is man
Speaker 1: black man, and the prototype for woman and femininity is
Speaker 1: white woman. There's something called the non prototypicality hypothesis, and
Speaker 1: what that means is that we're really poor at seeing
Speaker 1: things that lie outside of our norm, outside of the prototype.
Speaker 1: Think about this as an example you being confused for
Speaker 1: the other black woman in the office, right, or you
Speaker 1: get called the name of the other black girl that
Speaker 1: is the only other black girl in your class. You
Speaker 1: don't look anything alike, but you get confused. So this
Speaker 1: blind spot right, right, that blind spot so intense, as
Speaker 1: really intense. And when you start to talk about systemic racism,
Speaker 1: the system was designed to make black women feel like
Speaker 1: they don't belong. And so Patricia Hill Collins called these
Speaker 1: stereotypes that create these rigid roles for black women controlling images.
Speaker 1: They not only control what society sees about black women
Speaker 1: and kind of most distressingly, can impact how black women
Speaker 1: see themselves. The mammy is one of the oldest controlling images. Right.
Speaker 1: So black women are meant to be in domestic servitude, right,
Speaker 1: and controlling images justifies the economic oppression of black women, right,
Speaker 1: because they are meant to serve. They're meant to support
Speaker 1: the white family and the nation's economy. They're not meant
Speaker 1: to lead it. They're meant to supported on their very
Speaker 1: black body. Right. They're not sexualized, they're not humanized, they're objectified.
Speaker 1: The matriarch is an example of the strong black woman,
Speaker 1: and this idea that there's this castrating strong man like
Speaker 1: woman that's at the center of the family to make
Speaker 1: the black man feeling masculated, like we don't need him.
Speaker 1: What's so interesting is that, you know, later research showed
Speaker 1: that there weren't actually that many people that fit the
Speaker 1: stereotypes of mammy or matriarch. These were created stereotypes the media,
Speaker 1: like literally the media, you'll notice. So the matriarch and
Speaker 1: the mammy, they don't get to have sexual lives, right,
Speaker 1: Their purpose is for the family. Their de sexualized. And
Speaker 1: so when we bring sexuality into the picture for black women,
Speaker 1: it's this Jezebel's a ductress, right, justifying the sexual violence
Speaker 1: and abuse that was brought upon and put upon the
Speaker 1: black female body. Right. And so it was the enslaved
Speaker 1: person that seduced the white slave owner. She had to breed,
Speaker 1: and her purpose was to breed to support chattel slavery
Speaker 1: because that was a very economic force. All of these
Speaker 1: support the place in which black women were meant to
Speaker 1: be oppressed into. They say that the first thing that
Speaker 1: you have to do in order to be able to
Speaker 1: oppress any people, or to enslave any group of people,
Speaker 1: is to demean them. You also have some current images
Speaker 1: that you say affect black girls. Um, first, the angry
Speaker 1: black woman. Mean, so these lords, these images aren't new,
Speaker 1: they're evolved. When you just label somebody and pigeonholed them
Speaker 1: as angry, you don't get to inquire why, why, what
Speaker 1: other emotions are happening that's causing this emotional reaction. And
Speaker 1: look how young they started. That. That was me in
Speaker 1: the Women's March. People would see when I was like
Speaker 1: going off, and they'd be like, what's wrong with you?
Speaker 1: All this happened right for the last week I've been
Speaker 1: dealing with Right, But you get you see me, and
Speaker 1: then you're like, oh, she's just too much, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know I've been through too much. All it is
Speaker 1: is trauma. All it is is just unhealed wounds. But
Speaker 1: whatever it is the reason for it's not for no
Speaker 1: reason exactly. Defense. Then you have the strong black woman.
Speaker 1: Oh that's the evolution of the matriarch. No, WHOA. So
Speaker 1: we're castrating our men. We are unreasonable, we cannot be
Speaker 1: compromised with. Therefore we get to dismiss any opinion from
Speaker 1: casual conversation to the boardroom because she's just you know,
Speaker 1: she's just you know, she's extreme, right, So again it's
Speaker 1: the oppression. I've even felt that, like amongst the younger people,
Speaker 1: I'm very opinionated about misogynistic rap music, and I've always
Speaker 1: have been very vocal about how I just would rap.
Speaker 1: They're not have that going into my mind while we're together,
Speaker 1: and a lot of my peers when I come around,
Speaker 1: it's like, well, she's here, so just don't worry about her.
Speaker 1: She's just going off on her usual rant about whatever
Speaker 1: it is. Yeah, it's interesting that Michelle Obama was on
Speaker 1: the last slide because that's what they did to her.
Speaker 1: That's what they did. She was too buffed, you know,
Speaker 1: it was always like yeah, it was always something wrong,
Speaker 1: and she's perfect exactly that part. So now we have
Speaker 1: the baby mama. Mean, yeah, that's sir. So this evolves
Speaker 1: out of the Jezebel, the breeder um. It's evolved into
Speaker 1: the welfare queen or baby mama. This evolves into justifying
Speaker 1: rules about welfare, justifying rules about types of contraception that's offered,
Speaker 1: um forced on black women. Dang, that is dr norcutt um.
Speaker 1: When did you feel the most invisible? My earliest memory
Speaker 1: of invisibility was in high school. So I had applied
Speaker 1: to seven Ivy League colleges and I got into the
Speaker 1: mall and my friend said she got in because she
Speaker 1: was black. Mind you, I was try varsity sport captain,
Speaker 1: I was president of the school, and yet would that comment.
Speaker 1: He erased all of that down to one part of me. Wow,
Speaker 1: that's deep, that's awful, that's painful. Thank you, Dr Norcutt.
Speaker 1: It's always a pleasure having you. Thank you so much
Speaker 1: for having this conversation. Those images. Man, Yeah, that's heavy,
Speaker 1: and now you get to associate it with like what
Speaker 1: it means because that little girl I would have shared
Speaker 1: that a thousand times, like y'allow online earves. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: really perpetuating a negative seal. It makes me feel like
Speaker 1: I need to pay more attention to these means that
Speaker 1: you're sharing on social media. We all do so. To Mika,
Speaker 1: tell us just a little bit about your book. So
Speaker 1: State of Emergency really is a revisitive history. There's so
Speaker 1: many people who are just coming to this work into
Speaker 1: the movement now, and they're like, where do I go?
Speaker 1: What do I do? I'm ready, I'm in. It has
Speaker 1: a prescription for how we work together to go forward.
Speaker 1: The book is my gift to a lot of folks
Speaker 1: who are trying to just figure it out. You are
Speaker 1: actually one of those who have contributed your thoughts about
Speaker 1: the book, and we appreciated my book. Now you made
Speaker 1: the dedication to your son for State of Emergency. I
Speaker 1: don't really talk much about my son in public. You know,
Speaker 1: a lot of people don't even know I have a son.
Speaker 1: But I'm starting to because I realized that I've been
Speaker 1: fighting for everyone else's child and he has been has
Speaker 1: lacked so much as a result of it, but he
Speaker 1: still has always been such a great supporter. His father
Speaker 1: was killed when he was too He started to get
Speaker 1: older and noticed that other people had their fathers and
Speaker 1: he didn't. He's like, you don't know what I'm going through.
Speaker 1: He started going into this deep depression, and by the
Speaker 1: time he was seventeen and eighteen, it was really bad
Speaker 1: and there was nothing I could do. My child needed
Speaker 1: his dad, and I realized there were things I just
Speaker 1: couldn't teach him. I couldn't I couldn't talk to him
Speaker 1: about him. We weren't seeing eye to eye, and that
Speaker 1: caused a lot of conflict intention between the two of us.
Speaker 1: The guilt of that weighs on me all the time.
Speaker 1: So your son, your son, he is here, my child.
Speaker 1: I've heard so much about you. I'm so glad we
Speaker 1: finally get to me. What do you want us to
Speaker 1: know about your mom? She's amazing through just having her
Speaker 1: around as a role model every day. It pushes me
Speaker 1: so much to keep striving to, you know, be on
Speaker 1: the same level as she's on. I am doing a
Speaker 1: song about you. A lot of my life. You know,
Speaker 1: she's been going of course, and I've had to deal
Speaker 1: with that. In my song. Um, I said, me and
Speaker 1: mom used to fight a lot, but I know why
Speaker 1: she left. Um, she was fighting for my rights. So yeah, beautiful. Well, Tarika,
Speaker 1: I also want to say thank you for your sacrifice. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because a lot of people don't understand the sacrifices that
Speaker 1: family members make when important people in their lives make
Speaker 1: the kinds of decisions that your mom has made to
Speaker 1: be in service to the community in a way and
Speaker 1: what she has. Thank you so much to all the
Speaker 1: women of color out there. I hope you feel seen today.
Speaker 1: And we've talked about so many things that we hope
Speaker 1: will bring change, but most of all, just as we
Speaker 1: love to do at the Red Table, deepening that love
Speaker 1: and compassion for one another, deepening that understanding. That was
Speaker 1: good the whole show. Wow to me, guy, Yes I'm back.
Speaker 1: When I pulled them today, I tell everybody in the
Speaker 1: car I'm moving here for thirty days and when ver time,
Speaker 1: I got a space for you, We got a way
Speaker 1: because like, oh, what's happening? What you said? Are you saying? Day?
Speaker 1: Where I know you needn't girl way with me. To
Speaker 1: join the Red Table Talk family and become a part
Speaker 1: of the conversation, follow us at facebook dot com slash
Speaker 1: red table Talk. Thanks for listening to this episode of
Speaker 1: Red Table Talk podcast, produced by Facebook, Westbrook Audio, and
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio.