Speaker 1: Hey y'all, Hey, and welcome back to Let's Red Table
Speaker 1: that I'm Tracy t Rowe and um Klara Pressley and
Speaker 1: I'm so glad that we're back to share the second
Speaker 1: half of our conversation with Ernest Krim the Third and
Speaker 1: Dr Susan. Listen, yes, listen. If you have not heard
Speaker 1: part one, pause the episode right now, scroll along back
Speaker 1: using whichever app you use, and listen to last week's
Speaker 1: episode because it was really impactful. The discussion about the
Speaker 1: Red Table Talk episode of Psychology of Hate was one
Speaker 1: for the books. Yes it was. And today we're sharing
Speaker 1: part two. We will dive even deeper into the topic
Speaker 1: shared at the Red Table and our guests personal experiences
Speaker 1: fighting against hate. Who It's a lot, but let's get
Speaker 1: into it. Dia explained that she used racism as an
Speaker 1: issue of the heart, and she said hate it's not
Speaker 1: something that you can confront with my foxts against your facts,
Speaker 1: because it's emotional. You have to be able to reach
Speaker 1: some these heart So, Earnest, you gave a historical context
Speaker 1: to issues of the present day, so you're coming at
Speaker 1: these issues from a different way from Dia. But what
Speaker 1: results have you seen from teaching your students and others
Speaker 1: true black history. So something really interesting about my teaching
Speaker 1: experience is I've taught in the diverse environment. So my
Speaker 1: intention initially was I'm going to teach all black kids
Speaker 1: all the time. And I quickly realized that I'm in America.
Speaker 1: The overarching goal is to do that because I know
Speaker 1: what this means to us. But I always say, now, like,
Speaker 1: I'm teaching to black people, but if you have a
Speaker 1: ear and a heart for you can listen in too.
Speaker 1: But just know it's not gonna always be for you.
Speaker 1: So I taught at a school where it was like
Speaker 1: predominantly Hispanic. You have kids who undocumented, white kids who
Speaker 1: lived in the rural town. It looked like the South
Speaker 1: in a lot of ways. White kids who live in
Speaker 1: urban environments, White kids who had a lot of money,
Speaker 1: Black kids who had a lot of money, black kids
Speaker 1: who didn't. So I was in a diverse environment racially
Speaker 1: and economically. And one of the things I realized, and
Speaker 1: this is the premise of my book, actually, and this
Speaker 1: is a study done by a professor at Harvard and
Speaker 1: the University of Pittsburgh and says that when black children
Speaker 1: I talked to have racial pride. They performed better academically,
Speaker 1: so like you can really put you can put something
Speaker 1: on these teachings. We are implicitly and sometimes explicitly talked
Speaker 1: to believe that we are inferior. This has been stated
Speaker 1: several times today in on the episode, and white children
Speaker 1: are implicitly and explicitly taught that they are superior. We
Speaker 1: have to consciously nip that in the book. I've had
Speaker 1: kids tell me and I'm glad I have this in
Speaker 1: my phone under favorites because I have to show this
Speaker 1: in people for testimonial sometimes because sometimes people think you're
Speaker 1: just talking to talk, right. I had a young man
Speaker 1: reach out to me, he said, Mr Krem, I wanted
Speaker 1: to tell you your content really helped me, especially throughout
Speaker 1: my chemotherapy, learning about the history of America, especially with
Speaker 1: being Jamaican in America myself learning about this interest and
Speaker 1: keep doing what you're doing. Appreciated and much love to you.
Speaker 1: I had somebody tell me that love your videos. They
Speaker 1: give me a sense of pride I've never had before.
Speaker 1: When I was on Games podcast with my brother John Lucas,
Speaker 1: like we worked together, we are helping kids get into
Speaker 1: HBCUs Ivy League schools, top schools like USC or going
Speaker 1: to entrepreneurship. If they want, we're giving them scholarship money.
Speaker 1: A lot of this oftentimes is helping kids realize that
Speaker 1: they have the potential to do something. But going back
Speaker 1: to my previous point, I've had white students tell me
Speaker 1: that I made a difference and I never thought I would,
Speaker 1: just being really after my first or second year teacher,
Speaker 1: I had a white child. This boy lived in a
Speaker 1: neighboring town, Confederate flag, all of that. Kids you not
Speaker 1: in class, kid was great, right, but online you have
Speaker 1: the Confederate thing. He sent me a message one time
Speaker 1: it was like, Mr Cram, you are the only teacher
Speaker 1: that ever believed in me only, and you're the reason
Speaker 1: why I passed my exam to get into the military. Parents,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm teaching the online black history course. Now. I
Speaker 1: have a parent who's from Philly, but she had to move.
Speaker 1: I believe it was Montana or Wyoming, one of those
Speaker 1: states we always forget about. Don't get mad at me
Speaker 1: if you're listening from no faith, no offense. I'm just
Speaker 1: saying no respect. But she was saying that she loved
Speaker 1: my class because our child is able to learn from
Speaker 1: a black educator who's teaching her these important principles, and
Speaker 1: she's able to be in an environment with other black
Speaker 1: children at the same time. She said, she's learning so much.
Speaker 1: She said, it's almost like the stories you hear when
Speaker 1: you're growing up, like the stories that your family passed down,
Speaker 1: and you can give you courage or it can deflate you.
Speaker 1: And what I'm doing with history is saying we've dealt
Speaker 1: with some horrible things and some amazing things, but at
Speaker 1: the end of the day, we've countered this before. We
Speaker 1: just have to remind ourselves of what was done and
Speaker 1: recreate that in this generation. Yes, yes, yes, no, I
Speaker 1: love that. That was actually my next question. Have you
Speaker 1: seen others involved in real time? And have you been
Speaker 1: in one interaction that shifted someone's mindset? And when I'm
Speaker 1: hearing I feel like I had a little revelation going
Speaker 1: back to of the person who wanted to see that
Speaker 1: fear in someone's eyes. And then like you said, that
Speaker 1: boy was Confederate in one place, but really listening in
Speaker 1: another space, it's like just that false security. I think
Speaker 1: we all want to be affirmed and revered and acknowledged
Speaker 1: and just seen and you're helping people to see that.
Speaker 1: You're helping me see that just right here in this
Speaker 1: and Tracy, I told you too, like I'm constantly evolving
Speaker 1: and learning and unlearning just what I thought I knew.
Speaker 1: And it's a great place to be in. I hope
Speaker 1: everyone's having the same types of revelations as they're listening in,
Speaker 1: because this is all key say. I think the key
Speaker 1: is something I've learned a whole teaching and diverse environments is,
Speaker 1: especially if you're teaching like a white child that comes
Speaker 1: from a history of this is you have to understand
Speaker 1: that these people are individuals and like Dr Gleason experienced,
Speaker 1: like they did not do what was done, but they
Speaker 1: were born into an environment in which it was done.
Speaker 1: Kids are born into an unequal world, and they're born
Speaker 1: into a world and which they've taught that certain people
Speaker 1: have more because they are more, and other people have
Speaker 1: less because there are less. And then as they sort
Speaker 1: of come of age and people start telling them that
Speaker 1: the source of their struggles are those other people who
Speaker 1: don't look like them, that causes them to them hate them.
Speaker 1: So in a way of kids in our society, we
Speaker 1: almost provide them with this unfortunate foundation to hate. So
Speaker 1: you have to make sure you're teaching them the facts
Speaker 1: and removing them individually, but also understanding and letting them
Speaker 1: know that they have the capacity to benefit from those
Speaker 1: tragedies or do something to change the course of history.
Speaker 1: And one of the things that I think is very important.
Speaker 1: I think a Dr. Kenney touched on this as well,
Speaker 1: is making sure that whenever we show our black children
Speaker 1: the negativity that happened, you counter it and show them
Speaker 1: people who fault. And the same thing has to also
Speaker 1: be done if you're teaching a white child that too,
Speaker 1: because if you're going to constantly see that if you
Speaker 1: want to help, but you never see yourself helping, now
Speaker 1: you should have the capacity. So I can still do this,
Speaker 1: but we're talking children, it would make it difficult to
Speaker 1: see how you fit into this puzzle. Right, true, I
Speaker 1: want to acknowledge that the fear has been the common denominator.
Speaker 1: It was true for Jeff, it was true for Jeff's grandfather,
Speaker 1: It was true for the quote unquote Harasser that you
Speaker 1: had earnest the fear and the trauma right from whatever
Speaker 1: someone experienced has translated or manifested itself into trauma for
Speaker 1: someone else. What I love in this is that for you, Earnest,
Speaker 1: you have literally taken your traumatic experience, and the experience
Speaker 1: literally propelled you to the forefront and positioned you for
Speaker 1: your purpose. When you can have students from every socio
Speaker 1: economic background and from every creed and from every race
Speaker 1: and color tell you what you're doing has moved them
Speaker 1: and shifted their mindsets, you're really truly walking in your purpose.
Speaker 1: That is phenomenal. Appreciate that, and the real time will
Speaker 1: pay dividends beyond our existence. Right the people that you touched,
Speaker 1: those fresh hearts that are open to the change, will
Speaker 1: then share that with their friends, and then their family
Speaker 1: members and their neighbors, and it will literally become a
Speaker 1: snowball of goodness and hope, because that's what we really need.
Speaker 1: I'm just grateful that you're doing this, and I'm grateful
Speaker 1: that you're sharing with us, and that you're here at
Speaker 1: this virtual red table. It's so important. Thank you for
Speaker 1: sharing that. Jeff said that all it took for him
Speaker 1: to change was finally experiencing a one on one interaction
Speaker 1: with an actual person for I'm a group that he hated.
Speaker 1: When she was talking to me about how she felt
Speaker 1: as a child, how racism, how hatred made her feel
Speaker 1: diminished or less than. Something inside of me snapped, Susan,
Speaker 1: how have your connections or relationships that you've had with
Speaker 1: people who didn't and don't have the same background as
Speaker 1: you shaped your point of view. I can go all
Speaker 1: the way back to my ninth grade birthday party, right
Speaker 1: where I invited all the kids who had come to
Speaker 1: the first and second grade party, who were all white.
Speaker 1: It was schools had just been desegregated in nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: in Georgia and across the South, And we got ready.
Speaker 1: My mama put out the dog right, she had the
Speaker 1: crystal punch bowl with the sherbet, two sheet cakes. We
Speaker 1: were ready to celebrate. I was counting my lute in
Speaker 1: my head. And I invited a new friend who I
Speaker 1: had met in third grade. Her name was a Lisa.
Speaker 1: And the day of the party came, and the time
Speaker 1: for the party arrived, and no one had come into
Speaker 1: the driveway. And I sat on the porch and I,
Speaker 1: you know, did I take my cootie shot? What did
Speaker 1: I do? What happened? What happened? And my mom's getting
Speaker 1: phone calls inside the house, and what she's being told is, oh,
Speaker 1: my goodness, we just forgot that we had this event
Speaker 1: and we're not gonna be able to come to the party.
Speaker 1: And these are folks we went to church with. And
Speaker 1: then a car pulled into the driveway and it was
Speaker 1: Lisa and she got out and I was a tomboy,
Speaker 1: so I was, you know, whatever, and some messed up
Speaker 1: blue jeans and she had this lovely like apricot confection
Speaker 1: of ruffles and she just looked fabulous immediately, like again,
Speaker 1: I don't even know I'm why am i and what
Speaker 1: am I doing? She's so much better than I am.
Speaker 1: And in that moment, my mother could have done a
Speaker 1: lot of things. She could have been rude to Lisa
Speaker 1: because she's been told that now her child is her
Speaker 1: sona and Garda, because she's invited a black child to
Speaker 1: her party. She could have waited until afterwards and said
Speaker 1: we probably ought not invite folks like that. Over again,
Speaker 1: that's not what my mama did. What my mama did
Speaker 1: it was to say, that's just more cake for y'all.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, I love your mama. I know that
Speaker 1: is the best thing ever. Do you hear me because
Speaker 1: you were getting ready to have a wang dang doodle,
Speaker 1: two sheet cakes and it's good crystal punch. That's a
Speaker 1: real party. I don't know. You just can't get it
Speaker 1: better than that ninth grade here in the South. You
Speaker 1: just that mean you were ready to have a real
Speaker 1: deal party. For me to try to wonder what was
Speaker 1: her experience of that event, right, I don't know. She
Speaker 1: was two grades ahead of me. She was a relative
Speaker 1: of people that my brothers were friends with, which is
Speaker 1: how I got But I needed to try to start
Speaker 1: to wonder how did that affect her? And then in
Speaker 1: twelfth grade, Alison Williams just spectacular person, beautiful human being,
Speaker 1: and she was the first black student to win the
Speaker 1: Miss Evans High School pageant, and I was so excited
Speaker 1: for her. She was my good friend. And the annual
Speaker 1: came out and normally the pageant winner would have been
Speaker 1: splashed across the annual, and all they did was put
Speaker 1: the picture of all of the women who were in
Speaker 1: the pageant and a little corner shot of her right
Speaker 1: and to see how devastated she was to not have
Speaker 1: that celebrated in the way that all the white girls
Speaker 1: who'd want it before had been celebrated, that empathy, the
Speaker 1: ability to be able to start to see life through
Speaker 1: her eyes and through Lisa's eyes, and then going forward
Speaker 1: that this that kind of intimacy. It's not enough to
Speaker 1: be proximant. It's not enough. It's not enough to be
Speaker 1: working side by side. We have to get to know
Speaker 1: each other's stories, we have to touch each other's hearts.
Speaker 1: We've got to listen to what matters to us most.
Speaker 1: And that's what's gonna change what we're dealing with. Were
Speaker 1: those experiences, some of what you had that moved you
Speaker 1: to create the Glistening Group. I've been lucky enough to
Speaker 1: be in Mississippi now for twenty five years, and I
Speaker 1: was the founding director of the Winter Institute for Racial
Speaker 1: Reconciliation at the University of Mississippi, and through that job,
Speaker 1: I helped to force Old Miss to acknowledge the so
Speaker 1: called in quotation marks Old Miss it's the slavery term
Speaker 1: to apologize for the exclusion of African Americans to the
Speaker 1: University of Misissippi in two thousand two at the forty
Speaker 1: anniversary of the of that riot, and that led to
Speaker 1: being invited into Nishoba County on the fort anniversary of
Speaker 1: the murders of the three civil rights workers there, James Cheney,
Speaker 1: Andy Goodman, and Mickey Scharner, and I worked for eighteen
Speaker 1: months with a multiracial group of folks to call for
Speaker 1: justice in that case, then eventually led to the first
Speaker 1: state conviction of the ringleader of the murders. But the
Speaker 1: whole time I was there, the university tried to stop
Speaker 1: me from doing that work. Right, the chancellor at the time,
Speaker 1: while I was invited to n Scheba County, said you
Speaker 1: can do tourism, but we don't really want you to
Speaker 1: get involved in justice. Well, we don't get reconciliation without justice, sir.
Speaker 1: That's right. Luckily, I had mentors and advocates who said,
Speaker 1: you need to keep doing what you're doing, but after
Speaker 1: a while, you just have to You have to leave
Speaker 1: and go to a place where you can do good
Speaker 1: work without having to fight somebody from stopping you to
Speaker 1: trying to do the work. So that's why I've left
Speaker 1: the university after twenty years and created this group. You
Speaker 1: did not want to have to fight someone else so
Speaker 1: that you could fight against something else bigger, exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I get it. That's good. Thank you. For the work
Speaker 1: because it's important, and I can tell you, as a
Speaker 1: woman of color, I get tired of hearing about what
Speaker 1: we're supposed to do to change things. It is exhausting,
Speaker 1: and so I am grateful that you recognize, not just recently,
Speaker 1: it hasn't been this new awakening that you understood long
Speaker 1: ago and far away, the impact and the hate and
Speaker 1: what it does to a person. So I'm grateful that
Speaker 1: you get it and that you identify that you need
Speaker 1: to sit down and get some other white people at
Speaker 1: the table for them to also identify and recognize they
Speaker 1: need to make some efforts to I appreciate that, and
Speaker 1: it's not a drop in the bucket to what needs
Speaker 1: to be done, so there's plenty more work to do.
Speaker 1: I'm really excited I get to share with you all
Speaker 1: something that I haven't been able to tell anybody, which
Speaker 1: is that for the last two years I've been leading
Speaker 1: reconciliation conversations between the descendants of Arlington House, which was
Speaker 1: Robert E. Lee's plantation WHOA. They have come together and
Speaker 1: the first action they're going to take is there was
Speaker 1: a bill that dropped last week jointly in the Senate
Speaker 1: and the House to remove Robert E. Lee's name from
Speaker 1: Arlington House because it's called Arlington House at Arlington Cemetery,
Speaker 1: the Robert E. Lee Memorial, and the descendants have come
Speaker 1: together to ask that name Robert E. Lee be removed
Speaker 1: from the memorial so that all the stories of that
Speaker 1: place can be told. So I encourage folks to reach
Speaker 1: out to your your senators and your congressmen and get
Speaker 1: on board with that vote. Yeah that's huge. Yeah, that's powerful.
Speaker 1: That's Robert Lee is all around Richmond. Yeah. I thought
Speaker 1: about you earlier when you were talking about that, right,
Speaker 1: And this is the descendants of the persons at that pointation,
Speaker 1: and the descendants of Roberty Lee the fifth has joined
Speaker 1: that call to take that name off of that house.
Speaker 1: I wish I could sit down with those standing in
Speaker 1: his grave right now, don't you know so? And you
Speaker 1: mean that in the most southern kind of way, in
Speaker 1: in the most southern listen. Another topic that the people
Speaker 1: at the Red Table got into was gun violence, and
Speaker 1: we heard from forensic psychologist Jillian Peterson who explained that,
Speaker 1: based on her research, mass shootings come from a person
Speaker 1: blaming a group of people for their struggle and getting
Speaker 1: revenge or making a statement in this way. So we
Speaker 1: now collectively witnessed these shootings every day almost it feels
Speaker 1: like when it's going down, but more often than we like.
Speaker 1: And now we even have footage from cell phones and
Speaker 1: things like that. People at this footage and they should
Speaker 1: feel the same way, but they don't. People claim something happened.
Speaker 1: They claimed this happened, they claimed they saw that. So
Speaker 1: they do this by labeling these shootings differently based on
Speaker 1: who is holding the gun and where the shooting happens,
Speaker 1: or passing blame from guns to mental health and mental
Speaker 1: health issues. Earnest, let me ask you, how has video footage.
Speaker 1: We know you have some famous video footage, but how
Speaker 1: has that affected these conversations? How would your situation have
Speaker 1: even changed if there wasn't that footage available. Definitely it's
Speaker 1: twofold because in one respect, speaking about racism, I think
Speaker 1: that for the first time, we are collectively seeing the
Speaker 1: racism that our ancestors dealt with for so long, just
Speaker 1: in a different generation, of course. And when we're talking
Speaker 1: about shootings personally, I feel as though it's retraumatizing us
Speaker 1: collectively because that's one thing that all Americans. I believe
Speaker 1: agree on that these things are tragic, even though oftentimes
Speaker 1: it does not persuade people enough that change things legislatively.
Speaker 1: When you hear about children, when you hear about people
Speaker 1: in schools at parades, we can all relate because we
Speaker 1: have black folks who were stolen with guns, traded for guns.
Speaker 1: We have this land that was concrete with guns. We
Speaker 1: all kind of have that in common a little bit.
Speaker 1: We don't need to see the footage of the police
Speaker 1: and volved Texas. We know how horrible they were in
Speaker 1: that situation. It's re traumatizing us. And the same can
Speaker 1: be said to when we see racist videos for black
Speaker 1: folks that can re traumatize us. For white folks, for
Speaker 1: those who want to know more than for a lot
Speaker 1: of times, that can be their first time seeing something
Speaker 1: like that. And I was envisioning this timetable. I want
Speaker 1: to kind of make you all privy to so black
Speaker 1: folks were brought here for the purpose of enslavement, even
Speaker 1: beyond sixteen nineteen of the English colonies, fifteen twenty six
Speaker 1: for the Spanish colonies in South Carolina, so we're talking
Speaker 1: roughly three hundred plus years of enslavement. We get cameras,
Speaker 1: photography around, they're more ubiquitous around eighteen fifties or sixties.
Speaker 1: Chattow slavery conclude so called concludes in eighteen sixty five
Speaker 1: wards I say transition to the prison. So we're talking
Speaker 1: roughly ten to fifteen years of footage from enslavement. We
Speaker 1: know how bad slavery is and we don't even have proof,
Speaker 1: visually proved. Visual proof is what I mean, right, and
Speaker 1: it's already traumatic. Imagine if we saw a video of
Speaker 1: the Lashes, a video of Culture Kente getting whipped like that,
Speaker 1: It's it's tough for me to watch. I get angry,
Speaker 1: so I have to turn away when it comes on
Speaker 1: a lot of times. Right, I watched Birth of a
Speaker 1: Nation and was traumatized, and I was like, why why
Speaker 1: did I watch that? Imagine what that turner went through,
Speaker 1: and then imagine what he did and then what they
Speaker 1: did to him. They were still passing his skull around
Speaker 1: his recent as five years ago. I just can't imagine.
Speaker 1: I just literally can't. Let me tell you to your point, Earnest,
Speaker 1: there is a phenomenal historical place that you can go
Speaker 1: to when you visit Memphis called Slave Haven. Enslave Haven.
Speaker 1: It's a house. It was part of the underground railroad.
Speaker 1: And if you go to Slave Haven. Dr Susan, I,
Speaker 1: no you're not. You've been there, I know. And it
Speaker 1: gives you the opportunity to go down into what we
Speaker 1: would now call the basement or seller. It's real, it's
Speaker 1: the actual space and it shows just a little like
Speaker 1: one inch diameter whole that they had to breathe from
Speaker 1: while they were literally in the underground railroad, participating, actively
Speaker 1: engaged in trying to be free. Go in that space
Speaker 1: and then come up and see those restraints that were
Speaker 1: used on the next and on the hand, it's a lot,
Speaker 1: it's a lot of trauma. And so when you start
Speaker 1: talking about gun violence and mass shootings, I am absolutely
Speaker 1: horrified when I see that happened period. But then the
Speaker 1: way that it's labeled, the way that it's labeled when
Speaker 1: we have the mass shootings is so different then the
Speaker 1: way that it's labeled when we have gun violence that
Speaker 1: happens allegedly between quote unquote gang members. So I just
Speaker 1: I have a real hard time when it comes to
Speaker 1: gun violence because people are getting killed every day by guns.
Speaker 1: Like we said, right, we just know we have footage
Speaker 1: of it. Now, we know we can see it. But
Speaker 1: when there's a white man with the gun who goes
Speaker 1: to a church and kills people, and after sitting with them,
Speaker 1: he's walked out peacefully and then given something to eat.
Speaker 1: Yet conversely, how many times have we seen footage of
Speaker 1: someone who's just pulled over for an alleged traffic violation
Speaker 1: and literally killed. That's gun violence too, And so I
Speaker 1: just y'all can take this and go where you want
Speaker 1: with it. I'm encouraging people who are listening to us
Speaker 1: to send us emails and tell us more about what
Speaker 1: you think, because this is not just the four of us.
Speaker 1: It's a conversation we're all having. But I'm interested in
Speaker 1: knowing how do we reconcile that who That's a tough one,
Speaker 1: and you bring up some very important disparities and how
Speaker 1: this is discussing, And it's something that being from Chicago,
Speaker 1: when they have the mass shooting in Highland Park not
Speaker 1: too long ago, and seeing that reaction versus the reaction
Speaker 1: of what happens in Chicago, what I really hate is
Speaker 1: when it happens in a white community, it's, oh, how
Speaker 1: could this happen here? I can't believe this. Firstly, we
Speaker 1: need to understand that the reason that community can be
Speaker 1: perceived as safe is because of the violence that happened before. Okay,
Speaker 1: like in any any community that's safe in America, proceeds
Speaker 1: violence Like violence created the walls of the illusion of safety.
Speaker 1: But when it's discussed in our neighborhoods, it's from this
Speaker 1: standpoint of look at them left black on black crop,
Speaker 1: look at no, no, no no. I just saw the
Speaker 1: story recently, y'all. They were talking about the crime in
Speaker 1: Austin on the West Side of Chicago and talking about
Speaker 1: how it's the most violent neighborhood, and I retweeted and
Speaker 1: I said, no, it's the neighborhood that's been inflicted with
Speaker 1: systemic racism the most. The media never wants to give
Speaker 1: us context. It's almost all y'all just tripping and do
Speaker 1: better Black people. No, we didn't create this. We're in
Speaker 1: a structure that's supposed to create what you see. The
Speaker 1: system works the way it is, so we have to
Speaker 1: dissect that bias, and we have to add this context
Speaker 1: so we can understand the different ways in which violence manifests,
Speaker 1: because it's not always the same route. We're dealing with
Speaker 1: trauma on all ends. But when we talk about mental
Speaker 1: health in our community, it's y'all be okay, try harder,
Speaker 1: you always so strong? Yeah, I don't want to be
Speaker 1: oh Man, right. Yeah. Dr Abram X Kendy and Dr
Speaker 1: Jillian Peterson both said that the bird enough change should
Speaker 1: not be put on the oppressed people. In fact, Dr
Speaker 1: Kendy said, particularly in in white supremacist spaces, the people
Speaker 1: who can be the most powerful are the white people.
Speaker 1: If a white person stands up and says no, that's wrong,
Speaker 1: there's going to be a certain level of respect to that. Susan,
Speaker 1: in your work at the Glistened Group, do you find
Speaker 1: you are able to reach the hearts and minds of
Speaker 1: white people? And at the same time, how do you
Speaker 1: ensure that you're approaching your work with humility and acknowledgement
Speaker 1: of your privilege in these spaces. So I'm going to
Speaker 1: tell you a story, because the neuroscientists tell us that
Speaker 1: our brains respond more to story than to facts, and
Speaker 1: that's how our work is effective. I was invited in
Speaker 1: two thousand and five to help try to figure out
Speaker 1: how to commemorate Emmetti and his murder by a group
Speaker 1: of black elected officials, and they is a pastor in
Speaker 1: the room, understandably some suspicious. This white chick comes over
Speaker 1: from old miss and she thinks she's gonna help us
Speaker 1: do something about emmattill and he waited till everyone else
Speaker 1: has spoken, and he said, so, other than being here
Speaker 1: to make money off the blood of a martyr, why
Speaker 1: are you here? WHOA? And that's heavy, right, But he
Speaker 1: had every right and maybe even the obligation to ask
Speaker 1: that question. And my job was to sit there and
Speaker 1: listen and take that because he had no reason to
Speaker 1: trust me until I could maybe do some work that
Speaker 1: would earn his trust. And that's what it took the
Speaker 1: other folks who invited me there. So we invited her here.
Speaker 1: She's just on this work in the show the County,
Speaker 1: you know, so we want to give it a shot.
Speaker 1: And so, thank goodness, unfortunately that folks were willing to
Speaker 1: give me that shot. It's not personal to me, right,
Speaker 1: I'm representing folks who have been traumatized and harmed and
Speaker 1: colonized and all the things. Right, So that's my work
Speaker 1: that I have to deal with. That's not not anybod
Speaker 1: else's problem. So we wanted to move forward with an apology.
Speaker 1: And there was a white man who was the largest
Speaker 1: plantation owner in the Delta at the time, and he
Speaker 1: said he wouldn't have anything to do with it. He
Speaker 1: didn't have anything to apologize for. He didn't kill emat
Speaker 1: till his parents didn't kill him at till he had
Speaker 1: nothing to do with it. And the group was gonna
Speaker 1: break apart, and a white woman in the group who
Speaker 1: he trusted, asked him if he'd be willing to let
Speaker 1: me come and visit with him, and he said, sure,
Speaker 1: but she's not going to change my mind, really, so
Speaker 1: that's okay. If you'll let me come visit with you,
Speaker 1: that'll be great. So I drove over the hour and
Speaker 1: a half. I went into his home with his wife,
Speaker 1: and I said, just tell me what it was. What
Speaker 1: was it like growing up here, What was it like
Speaker 1: in the nineteen fifties when this happened. And he talked
Speaker 1: about the pride that he felt of that community and
Speaker 1: his lament that wasn't more advanced. There's not even a
Speaker 1: traffic light in the county where this happened. And so
Speaker 1: I listened to him talk about that love. Right two
Speaker 1: hours I listened to him share stories with me, and
Speaker 1: at the end, I said, Mr. Much Ner, you love
Speaker 1: your community and you are sad that there hasn't been
Speaker 1: more development. But there's a jury of twelve men that
Speaker 1: stood up and said it was okay to kill a child,
Speaker 1: to torture him overnight and kill him and throw him
Speaker 1: in a river because he happened to be a black child.
Speaker 1: And because y'all didn't stand up at the time and
Speaker 1: say that that verdict was wrong, that's the opinion that
Speaker 1: stands for this community. And why would anybody want to
Speaker 1: put a traffic light here or any other business for
Speaker 1: that matter, Why would anybody want to do that? So
Speaker 1: in lesson, until somebody challenges that narrative from this community,
Speaker 1: nothing is going to change. It's not fair, right, Sure,
Speaker 1: you didn't do it. It's not fair, but is it right? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's right for you to stand up and say that
Speaker 1: what was done in your name by citizens who were
Speaker 1: duly elected to serve on a jury did in your name.
Speaker 1: And so I handed him this statement that we had
Speaker 1: written there was in a statement of apology, and he said,
Speaker 1: give me the statement. I'm probably not gonna change it,
Speaker 1: probably not gonna sign it, but give me the statement,
Speaker 1: and I said absolutely, Just thank you for your time,
Speaker 1: and I left. Two weeks later, we had a meeting
Speaker 1: and he walked in and he said, we need to
Speaker 1: pass this statement as a group. He entered the statement
Speaker 1: into the group's record and said, please, let's vote for this.
Speaker 1: And he'd only changed to words wow, But it was
Speaker 1: listening to his story and taking him seriously and then
Speaker 1: trying to share if you want this dream of your
Speaker 1: community to be manifested, then you've got to do the
Speaker 1: work that it's going to take to remove the obstacles
Speaker 1: in place. I love that you're literally rewriting history. You're
Speaker 1: correcting history with truth, and you're removing those blinders, those
Speaker 1: rose colored glasses, those make believe fairytale stories people have
Speaker 1: given themselves, and you are just giving it the raw,
Speaker 1: unfiltered truth. That is what we need more of. We
Speaker 1: need more truth, we need more treat more true, We
Speaker 1: need more truth, and we need more white folks that
Speaker 1: understand that we need black leadership. We need to listen
Speaker 1: to black leadership. I haven't been able to do anything
Speaker 1: that I've done without black leaders first preparing the way
Speaker 1: for me to come into a community. You're both doing
Speaker 1: great work to change how people think and treat each other.
Speaker 1: But obviously none of us have our minds totally straight.
Speaker 1: We can all kind of veer back and forth. We
Speaker 1: all have our experiences, perspectives, even upbringings that shape certain biases.
Speaker 1: So for both of you who are out here in
Speaker 1: these streets during the work, how do you both work
Speaker 1: to keep your biases in check and fight against them.
Speaker 1: For me, it goes back to understanding that the purpose
Speaker 1: of our system. Now, as an educator, I go to
Speaker 1: the education system, the purpose is not for me to
Speaker 1: be an empowered black man. So I have to start
Speaker 1: from that basis and understand that potentially everything I learned
Speaker 1: was a lie. And not to say that it was
Speaker 1: factually a lot, but it was the facts were skewed
Speaker 1: and used for a particular purpose. I'm not the person
Speaker 1: I am today because of the K through twelve CPS system,
Speaker 1: but I am the way I am because I eventually
Speaker 1: went back and question everything. And Dr Kennedy spoke about
Speaker 1: that about raising anti racist children. It's critical thinking. It's
Speaker 1: forcing them to ask why. I always question why do
Speaker 1: I think that, Why do I perceive that? And I
Speaker 1: think the thing that I can say that probably all
Speaker 1: of us can connect to was the fact that there's
Speaker 1: a black American who descends from those who were enslaved.
Speaker 1: You have a unique history because you don't know exactly
Speaker 1: where you're from, Like I did the African ancestry tests,
Speaker 1: but it still feels weird to not be able to
Speaker 1: see like these were the people who were forced on
Speaker 1: the ship or whatever. Right, So like there's a disconnect
Speaker 1: in a lot of ways. We are unique in this
Speaker 1: country because we have a lot of the African cultural normals,
Speaker 1: but then we had to mix it up and we
Speaker 1: had to hide it a little bit. So when I
Speaker 1: was growing up, my perception of Africa was poverty, it
Speaker 1: was sickness. Like I didn't learn about African school. We
Speaker 1: took World history in high school. We started with ancient
Speaker 1: Greece and Rome, not knowing that they went to Africa
Speaker 1: to learn. I thought it just me. I always thought
Speaker 1: why didn't they come get us? I was always like
Speaker 1: a little upset, like how didn't they just come get us?
Speaker 1: But okay, exactly why didn't they come get up? Because
Speaker 1: there's the door of no return over there, and I'm like, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's heavy. It's heavy. That is super heavy. I
Speaker 1: had a friend, I believe it was sixth grade, yes,
Speaker 1: sixth grade, and I'll talk about him in my book,
Speaker 1: and he was Nigerian, directly from Africa. His family moved
Speaker 1: to the white neighborhood where I was being bussed to
Speaker 1: go to school. So that was my first time meeting
Speaker 1: a black person who was from Africa. I didn't know
Speaker 1: it at the time, but I was unlearning, and he
Speaker 1: would mess with us a lot. There's actually a TikToker now.
Speaker 1: She'll take like these real foolish comments people say about Africa.
Speaker 1: They'll be like, they'll say that you all have air
Speaker 1: conditioner in Africa, and she'll say, no, we don't. We
Speaker 1: wait for the village elephants to come up. She'll say
Speaker 1: something real stilly like she says with a straight face.
Speaker 1: He would play with us like, oh, yeah, I got this,
Speaker 1: that's from a line in our village, and just a
Speaker 1: little stuff like that. And I was learning at the
Speaker 1: same time, understanding that all I saw was the starving
Speaker 1: kids commercials they show with the flies on their face.
Speaker 1: That's all y'all showed us. That's all I saw about Africa.
Speaker 1: We had so much in common that took me to college.
Speaker 1: I want to take African courses and even now because
Speaker 1: my primary focus is Black American history, I'm relearning. So
Speaker 1: I look at that is I was taught wrong about myself.
Speaker 1: We're all fed the same lines about each other and
Speaker 1: talk about feeding. Say something. If you heard you need
Speaker 1: to finish your food, don't waste food because children in
Speaker 1: Africa's star people still say it right, left over slaves children.
Speaker 1: But see that's the thing car that wasn't a leftoffer
Speaker 1: slave thing. To me, that was like marketing genius. Well
Speaker 1: in my mind as well, not only just because the
Speaker 1: African kids, but also the level of the poverty that
Speaker 1: we had. I say, left over slaves stuff because we
Speaker 1: don't know where our next mail coming from. You better
Speaker 1: finish all that food. Like that essence just in the
Speaker 1: black community in general of finishing everything isn't just the
Speaker 1: African kids. But I see exactly what you're saying. Like
Speaker 1: either way, it was all wrong. Literally, we never had
Speaker 1: an issue with food growing up. For me, that part
Speaker 1: the issue was my mom used to say it, though,
Speaker 1: you need to finish your clean your plate. The children
Speaker 1: in Africa start but you're like, okay, how do we
Speaker 1: get that the conditioning of and Susan helped me with
Speaker 1: this as well? Do some white people feel like they
Speaker 1: saved us? I've heard that before. This is actually a
Speaker 1: better situation than which what we took you from. I've
Speaker 1: heard that as wall. It transformed from our founding fathers, right,
Speaker 1: all of whom were slave owners, from being argued as
Speaker 1: being a necessary evil to being a positive good. There
Speaker 1: was exactly that argument. By the time that abolitionists were saying, no,
Speaker 1: we this is horrible, we need to stop this. The
Speaker 1: response then was no, this is We've taken these in
Speaker 1: quotation marks savages, right, and we brought them to this country,
Speaker 1: and we have christianized them, etcetera, etcetera. And that mentality
Speaker 1: certainly us down of nothing. Yeah, and you and we're
Speaker 1: better for it on it. And there were scholars of
Speaker 1: peace and molly in the fourth century BC. So don't
Speaker 1: talk to me about bringing folks over with it. We
Speaker 1: should have been learning and every indigenous culture that we
Speaker 1: colonized and then killed all that wisdom. Dr Susan, how
Speaker 1: do you keep your bias in check? We all have
Speaker 1: biased minds. We get twenty to thirty million pieces of
Speaker 1: information a second, and we can only process thirty to
Speaker 1: forty pieces of information. So my brains make shortcuts. So
Speaker 1: we understand that right and the way to deal with
Speaker 1: them is acknowledged. That's how our brains work. We marry
Speaker 1: that with socialization. Then that's where discrimination, where prejudice attitudes
Speaker 1: come in. Jennifer Eberhardt is this amazing scholar at Stanford
Speaker 1: talks about frictional theory that we just need to introduce friction.
Speaker 1: When we have that thought, stop, take a beat, take
Speaker 1: a breath, and ask yourself right the other way to
Speaker 1: say it, which we use in our work. We have
Speaker 1: guide posts for how to change the way we talk
Speaker 1: about things different conversational norms and Parker Palmer introduce this
Speaker 1: when things get difficult to turn to wonder. When you
Speaker 1: find yourself hearing something and you're starting to shut down,
Speaker 1: ask yourself, I wonder what happened to that person that
Speaker 1: brought them to that place? Or I wonder what my
Speaker 1: own reaction is teaching me? Then I need to learn.
Speaker 1: So turning to wonder, introducing friction. Being humble, I was
Speaker 1: driving with my former partner who is a black man.
Speaker 1: We relate somewhere to a meeting. I said, can you
Speaker 1: put on the gas? He said no, because you know,
Speaker 1: if we get stopped, I might not be able to
Speaker 1: get home because of what the police might do. And
Speaker 1: this was not very long ago, and I just said
Speaker 1: it out of wasn't even paying attention, mortified, really wished
Speaker 1: I could have eaten through the seat of my car.
Speaker 1: But just you gotta okay, that was not good. I
Speaker 1: need to pay attention. But I also can't just stay
Speaker 1: in this place of guilt, and I gotta do something
Speaker 1: with it. I gotta move forward, and I gotta help
Speaker 1: prepare because guilt is not enough. Love that we have
Speaker 1: had a most amazing, engaging, super D Right, it's been
Speaker 1: super d. But it's also been funny thanks to you car,
Speaker 1: because we've had some we've had some moments where I
Speaker 1: had to say, Okay, it's okay, Ernest, you can go
Speaker 1: ahead and laugh. Really, yeah, what all you're doing. We
Speaker 1: appreciate the fact that we can balance just a position
Speaker 1: of your social work, your activism, your great calls. Susan,
Speaker 1: you doing everything you can. Dr Susan. Correction for myself,
Speaker 1: Dr Susan, you worked hard for that PhD and then
Speaker 1: we cut through it and talk about pizza and whiskey.
Speaker 1: So it's a good balance, right, That's kind of what
Speaker 1: makes us Americans. We can look at the hardships and
Speaker 1: learn the lessons and still be able to laugh. Right,
Speaker 1: that's a gift. There's so many more things we could
Speaker 1: talk about, Oh, so many things like I have a
Speaker 1: checklist of things in my head. I still want to
Speaker 1: talk to you all about. However, come, we have got
Speaker 1: to bring it to a close. We have so appreciated
Speaker 1: both of you to have you guys back. I think
Speaker 1: please planning to come back. We appreciate you guys coming
Speaker 1: to the virtual Red Table. We love you to life. Man,
Speaker 1: thank you so much. Where can people find you? Let
Speaker 1: you go? Yes, yeah, you walk and follow me on
Speaker 1: all social media at m r crim three. That's at
Speaker 1: mr crim three, primarily TikTok and Instagram, giving out education
Speaker 1: almost daily on that site. I also have ways in
Speaker 1: what you can enroll in my online black History course.
Speaker 1: I have the book Black History Saved My Life as well.
Speaker 1: Just always looking for ways to pour into our community
Speaker 1: and to people who are actively engaged in this work.
Speaker 1: So thank you all for having me. Absolutely Thank you
Speaker 1: Dr Susan, who was a delight and honor. Always good
Speaker 1: to get into robust conversation with thoughtful, committed people. I'm old,
Speaker 1: so I don't have all that social media stuff that
Speaker 1: I should. I confess. So glisten Group isn't the website
Speaker 1: for our company, and if you go to glisten Group
Speaker 1: dot calm you can find you. Absolutely y'all are fantastic
Speaker 1: and earnest. It was just an honored privilege to be
Speaker 1: with you. Thanks for y'all's work. What a great conversation.
Speaker 1: We're gonna take a short break right now, and when
Speaker 1: we return, we'll share our top five takeaways from this episode.
Speaker 1: I'm so glad we can have that conversation with our guests,
Speaker 1: and now it's time to share our thoughts. So presenting
Speaker 1: da Cammen and Chasey's top five thoughts. I love this.
Speaker 1: This is one of my favorite segments. This is a
Speaker 1: part of the show where we speed through five thoughts
Speaker 1: slash takeaways from the episode. Let's fire them off. So
Speaker 1: number five, no one is born racist, but kids are
Speaker 1: born into an unequal world. Dr Kenny said this. I
Speaker 1: like that number four. When we hate a group of people,
Speaker 1: we are actually stripping away their humanity. Yeah, you think
Speaker 1: about that. And then hate. If you have a universal
Speaker 1: hate for someone, that's a really broad net to cast,
Speaker 1: a lot to carry around. You don't even realize how
Speaker 1: it's impacting you. Number three, if you have found your
Speaker 1: way into an echo chamber, get out, get out, get out,
Speaker 1: get out. We love that. That's good. Number three is good.
Speaker 1: And number two embrace empathy, critical thinking, and diverse environments,
Speaker 1: especially for your kids. Oh that's key. Yeah, you can't
Speaker 1: just be just around only one kind of people. You
Speaker 1: should definitely try to broaden your horizons. Right, that's absolutely right, baby,
Speaker 1: Because and just ask his mom, do you know on
Speaker 1: the white people? And I was like, bo, you're not
Speaker 1: even these fools, right and right, let me see acknowledges.
Speaker 1: That's great. And number one, people are not the source
Speaker 1: of our pain. Conditions are. That's an interestinct perspective. Don't
Speaker 1: fight each other, fight the systems that perpetuate inequality. Love. Yes,
Speaker 1: that's the whole message the people. It's cos it's conditions, y'all.
Speaker 1: Put us here, How can we get home? We want
Speaker 1: to know how you're feeling about this season of Red
Speaker 1: Table Talk, and we are open to talk about anything
Speaker 1: with you all, so send in your questions at Let's
Speaker 1: red Table that at red table talk dot com. Right.
Speaker 1: We can't wait to hear from you, and we are
Speaker 1: so appreciative. Thank you so much for listening. Make sure
Speaker 1: you subscribe on my Heart Radio app, and please rate
Speaker 1: this podcast on Apple podcast. We want a five. We'll
Speaker 1: be back next week for another episode of Let's Red
Speaker 1: Table That. Hey, Let's red Table that, Let's Red Table That.
Speaker 1: A big thank you to our executive producers Jada Pinkett Smith,
Speaker 1: Ellen Racketon and Falon Jethrow. And thank you to our
Speaker 1: producer Kyla Kanaru and our associate producer Yalanda Chaw. And finally,
Speaker 1: thank you to our sound engineers Calvin Baylis and Devin Donnay.