WEBVTT - Flying and Crashing 0:00:00.200 --> 0:00:07.040 Family Secrets is the production of I Heart Radio. I 0:00:07.080 --> 0:00:09.240 cared about the way you get your teeth when you 0:00:09.280 --> 0:00:12.240 beat me for not being perfect. I cared about girls 0:00:12.320 --> 0:00:16.800 at school seeing my welts. I cared about you days 0:00:16.800 --> 0:00:19.240 and often hours before you beat me. You touched me 0:00:19.320 --> 0:00:21.960 so gently. You told me you loved me. You called 0:00:22.000 --> 0:00:24.079 me your best friend. You forgave me for losing the 0:00:24.200 --> 0:00:27.440 Kinnis to the house. You codd the ashy cracks in 0:00:27.480 --> 0:00:31.280 my face with vasiline slick palms. You use your w 0:00:31.400 --> 0:00:33.839 thumbs wet with saliva to clean and sleep out of 0:00:33.840 --> 0:00:37.440 my eyes. You made me feel like the most beautiful 0:00:38.159 --> 0:00:42.520 black boy in the history of Mississippi until you didn't. 0:00:45.800 --> 0:00:49.880 That's Kisa Layman reading a passage from his masterful memoir Heavy, 0:00:50.240 --> 0:00:53.120 a memoir that has been receiving just about every accolade 0:00:53.159 --> 0:00:56.440 a book can get. I sat down with Kis on 0:00:56.440 --> 0:00:59.360 a chilly summer morning in the mountains at the Aspen 0:00:59.440 --> 0:01:14.160 Ideas for staff. I'm Danny Shapiro, and this is family Secrets. 0:01:14.600 --> 0:01:16.959 The secrets that are kept from us, the secrets we 0:01:17.080 --> 0:01:20.479 keep from others, and the secrets we keep from ourselves. 0:01:23.480 --> 0:01:26.880 Tell me about the landscape of your childhood. Whoa you 0:01:26.959 --> 0:01:33.120 start big huh? The landscape of my childhood. So that's 0:01:33.120 --> 0:01:36.400 a great question. You know, my my parents were nineteen 0:01:36.400 --> 0:01:38.720 and twenty when I was born on the campus of 0:01:38.760 --> 0:01:42.000 Jackson State University. My mom claims the first time she 0:01:42.040 --> 0:01:44.840 had sexually got pregnant. My father claims the first time 0:01:44.880 --> 0:01:48.560 he had sex, they got pregnant, and then they went 0:01:48.600 --> 0:01:51.800 on to go to grad school University Wisconsin. When when 0:01:51.840 --> 0:01:53.000 they went there, I was there for a little bit 0:01:53.040 --> 0:01:54.880 and I want to stay with my grandmother and that 0:01:55.080 --> 0:01:59.040 rule black town majority black town called far Ast, Mississippi. 0:01:59.760 --> 0:02:02.320 And then when my mother and my parents my father 0:02:02.600 --> 0:02:06.320 got separated, my mother moved to Jackson, and then I 0:02:06.360 --> 0:02:09.560 came up from Forest, Mississippi to stay with her in 0:02:09.639 --> 0:02:12.880 Jackson around eighties, so like six or seven. Um, So, 0:02:13.080 --> 0:02:15.800 like my early early childhood was like partially in Jackson, 0:02:15.800 --> 0:02:19.280 a little Tason, Wisconsin. And most of my memories of 0:02:19.320 --> 0:02:23.440 my childhood are in Farest, Mississippi, partially because of my grandmother. Mean, 0:02:23.480 --> 0:02:25.360 the landscape was kind of cool, but my grandmother was 0:02:25.440 --> 0:02:29.240 just you know, complicated. She was just really good at loving, 0:02:29.680 --> 0:02:34.200 really good at record being, really good at keeping secrets. Um. 0:02:34.240 --> 0:02:36.680 So for me, she is my She is the landscape 0:02:36.680 --> 0:02:39.240 of my childhood. And then when when my mom came 0:02:39.240 --> 0:02:41.560 and got me, moved to Jackson, Um, you know, she 0:02:41.639 --> 0:02:44.919 was very young single, so you know, I watched her 0:02:45.000 --> 0:02:47.200 the young black woman in Mississippi go through with a 0:02:47.280 --> 0:02:49.359 lot of young black single women in Mississippi go through, 0:02:49.639 --> 0:02:54.000 lots of heartbreak, lots of economic procarity. We moved around 0:02:54.040 --> 0:02:58.440 a lot. The only thing that was actually solid was 0:02:58.480 --> 0:03:02.799 just her pushing book and writing on me and disciplined 0:03:02.919 --> 0:03:04.840 me if I didn't do with the books and writing 0:03:04.880 --> 0:03:07.200 what she wanted to. So my landscape is like it's 0:03:07.240 --> 0:03:10.600 filled with Grandma is ms, is filled with my mom 0:03:10.600 --> 0:03:13.200 pushing education. I don't really have many memories of my 0:03:13.240 --> 0:03:15.480 father being there. I know he was there, you know. No. 0:03:15.560 --> 0:03:18.120 One memory I do have is that he froze a 0:03:18.240 --> 0:03:20.840 snowball when we lived in Wisconsin for a little while 0:03:20.840 --> 0:03:22.239 and he broke it back out in the summer. We 0:03:22.400 --> 0:03:24.200 had a snowball fight. That's the only member I had 0:03:24.240 --> 0:03:26.399 with my father before I was eight. But he was there. 0:03:26.440 --> 0:03:30.320 I just don't remember him unless pictures trigger some memory. 0:03:30.360 --> 0:03:33.560 But I don't know if that's make believer actual. And 0:03:33.600 --> 0:03:36.360 then the rest of my sort of childhood is just 0:03:36.480 --> 0:03:39.120 living with Mama, just trying to watch her go from 0:03:39.160 --> 0:03:41.640 like really a girl to a young woman to a 0:03:41.720 --> 0:03:44.320 to a woman, and watch her teach while I was 0:03:44.360 --> 0:03:46.000 just trying to do it. Most kids are trying to do, 0:03:46.040 --> 0:03:49.360 you know, figure out life, deal with puberty, figure out 0:03:49.440 --> 0:03:52.200 my feelings from my mother. We were so tight. I 0:03:52.280 --> 0:03:54.960 was a big boy. People always thought that was my sister. 0:03:55.560 --> 0:03:57.040 Man would always come up to me and asked me 0:03:57.080 --> 0:04:00.560 for my sister's numbers. I would get upset up about that, 0:04:01.680 --> 0:04:04.520 but yeah, we were very close. Variants. We slept in 0:04:04.520 --> 0:04:07.080 the same bed for a long time, do you know 0:04:07.120 --> 0:04:09.720 what I'm saying? And I think that sort of heightened 0:04:09.720 --> 0:04:13.960 a lot of the things that came post essays. Mother 0:04:14.040 --> 0:04:18.200 is an academic, a college professor. She's consumed with elevating 0:04:18.279 --> 0:04:23.160 Kisa and protecting him. She insists that he speaks proper English, 0:04:23.440 --> 0:04:28.520 the King's English, because that's how educated people, white people speak. 0:04:29.480 --> 0:04:33.200 She's not just Kissa's mom, she's his teacher. She gives 0:04:33.279 --> 0:04:36.359 him assignments to write papers, for instance, one about the 0:04:36.360 --> 0:04:41.159 politicians Benjamin Franklin Wade and Thaddeus Stevens, and another to 0:04:41.240 --> 0:04:45.120 read the first chapter of William Faulkner's Absalom Absalom and 0:04:45.160 --> 0:04:50.160 then imitate Faulkner's style, and Kisa knows he'd better complete 0:04:50.160 --> 0:04:57.240 those assignments in a timely manner or else that's just 0:04:57.240 --> 0:05:00.400 gonna have to laugh and always have to laugh before 0:05:00.440 --> 0:05:03.680 I talk about that, right, Like, it's not even it's 0:05:03.720 --> 0:05:06.560 just it's just bodily. You know. When I was really 0:05:06.600 --> 0:05:08.320 young and she gave me lots of assignments. If I 0:05:08.360 --> 0:05:09.919 got them wrong, she sit down with me and we 0:05:09.920 --> 0:05:13.400 would revive we get it right. Um. But when when 0:05:13.440 --> 0:05:16.000 when she moved back to Jackson for a few years 0:05:16.120 --> 0:05:17.919 and I met a man that she would fall in 0:05:17.920 --> 0:05:21.279 love with, who's a really powerful man in my city. Uh, 0:05:21.360 --> 0:05:24.440 the or else is became a lot more physical and 0:05:24.480 --> 0:05:27.640 a lot more emotionally abrasive. I think sometimes it made 0:05:27.640 --> 0:05:30.200 this distinction between physical abuse and emotional abuse, but I don't. 0:05:30.720 --> 0:05:32.400 I've got lots of whims in my life, and they 0:05:32.400 --> 0:05:37.560 were all emotional in addition to being physical. And when 0:05:37.560 --> 0:05:40.239 people have emotionally abused me, or if I've been emotionally 0:05:40.240 --> 0:05:43.440 abusive to people have seen the physical manifestations of it. 0:05:43.680 --> 0:05:46.320 So I'm saying, yeah, there's a lot of physical abuses, 0:05:46.360 --> 0:05:48.479 emotional abuse, and some of it had to do was 0:05:48.560 --> 0:05:51.359 because she was afraid that if I didn't master she 0:05:51.400 --> 0:05:53.880 called the King's English, the white people, white police, white teachers, 0:05:53.880 --> 0:05:56.719 what whatever, would go harder on me. That was definitely 0:05:56.760 --> 0:05:59.400 something she believed. She got that from her grandma. And 0:05:59.400 --> 0:06:01.479 then it was just a lot of like, my life 0:06:01.520 --> 0:06:05.520 isn't fucking shambles, Like this dude is terrorizing me. I 0:06:05.560 --> 0:06:08.760 cannot effectively terrorize him. I go home to this big 0:06:08.800 --> 0:06:10.600 black boy who was my son, who I love more 0:06:10.600 --> 0:06:12.560 than by in the world. He's kind of hard head. 0:06:12.640 --> 0:06:15.440 He's not doing what I wanted to do. And you know, 0:06:15.480 --> 0:06:18.360 I don't want to mythologize. The beatings are whippings. I 0:06:18.400 --> 0:06:19.920 don't have children. Part of the reason I don't have 0:06:20.040 --> 0:06:23.279 children because I'm afraid. I don't want to punish my children. 0:06:23.839 --> 0:06:26.119 Never ever, ever would put my hands on my kids. 0:06:26.480 --> 0:06:27.720 But I just noticed a lot of different ways to 0:06:27.920 --> 0:06:30.839 use people other than that, and so my mother she 0:06:30.960 --> 0:06:32.960 just started to, like, you know, beat me a lot 0:06:33.440 --> 0:06:35.400 um for things that she said I was doing wrong. 0:06:35.480 --> 0:06:38.840 But also when she and her partner got into it, 0:06:39.320 --> 0:06:41.159 I just knew I was gonna get it, you know. 0:06:41.320 --> 0:06:43.479 And and sometimes it was because I didn't do my homework. 0:06:43.920 --> 0:06:46.880 Sometimes it would be like key, when I was away, 0:06:47.520 --> 0:06:50.080 I noticed that my bed wasn't made up. Did you 0:06:50.120 --> 0:06:51.680 get in my bed? Were you in the bed with 0:06:51.720 --> 0:06:54.120 the babysitter? And this was actually before I was in 0:06:54.160 --> 0:06:55.560 bed with the babysitter, and I was like, no, I 0:06:55.600 --> 0:06:57.479 wasn't in bed with the babysitter. Mama, yes you were. 0:06:58.000 --> 0:07:00.760 But I realized early that my mom had a hard 0:07:00.800 --> 0:07:04.080 time with her partner. I was gonna get it somehow 0:07:04.200 --> 0:07:05.919 or another. She was gonna take it out on me. 0:07:06.520 --> 0:07:10.320 And and then after I got it, she was gonna apologize, 0:07:10.360 --> 0:07:12.400 She was gonna hold me tight. We were gonna she 0:07:12.440 --> 0:07:14.440 was gonna, you know, and that I always am. I 0:07:14.480 --> 0:07:15.920 tell her that I said this in a book. That 0:07:16.040 --> 0:07:18.360 was the confusing part, because I loved him more than 0:07:18.400 --> 0:07:20.200 anything in the world. I was my first teacher, my 0:07:20.240 --> 0:07:22.960 best friend, anything you can imagine, you know what I'm saying. 0:07:23.240 --> 0:07:25.320 And I just was like, man, I would never ever 0:07:25.920 --> 0:07:28.880 strike my mother. And at that point I was as 0:07:28.880 --> 0:07:32.680 big as she was. And then I was like, I 0:07:32.720 --> 0:07:36.000 don't really want to hurt my mom at all. At 0:07:36.000 --> 0:07:37.720 that point. But when I you know, when I got 0:07:37.760 --> 0:07:40.400 to high school, like most high schoolers, I was like, Okay, 0:07:40.400 --> 0:07:42.800 I'm gonna get you back by doing stuff like trying 0:07:42.800 --> 0:07:44.680 to have sex with my girlfriend in her bed when 0:07:44.680 --> 0:07:46.840 she wasn't there, you know, breaking into the house, getting 0:07:46.960 --> 0:07:48.760 terrible gray like all of these things that I know 0:07:48.880 --> 0:07:51.760 would hurt her without physically, And I would never cuss 0:07:51.800 --> 0:07:54.320 out anything, but you know, I was trying to hurt her. 0:07:54.400 --> 0:07:56.280 I was trying to retaliate for what I felt was 0:07:56.320 --> 0:08:01.000 like unfair treatment, and I want be held accountable for 0:08:01.040 --> 0:08:02.320 that tool do you know what I'm saying? Not just 0:08:02.360 --> 0:08:05.400 as I'm not saying it's the same sort of abusiveness, 0:08:05.440 --> 0:08:08.120 but I was definitely trying to hurt my mom without 0:08:08.120 --> 0:08:11.200 touching her. Do you think you knew that then or 0:08:11.200 --> 0:08:15.000 do you know it now? I mean I want to 0:08:15.040 --> 0:08:17.360 say I didn't know what I was doing, but I 0:08:17.440 --> 0:08:19.800 knew what I was doing. Do you know what I'm saying? Like, 0:08:20.920 --> 0:08:22.840 there's so many seas, you know, there's so many I mean, 0:08:22.880 --> 0:08:25.920 this is all families. There's so many secrets. But my 0:08:25.960 --> 0:08:28.840 mother and I never talked about sex, and she had 0:08:28.840 --> 0:08:32.040 a hard time, like keeping money, so we were the 0:08:32.080 --> 0:08:33.880 type of family who are like, we'd have cable TV 0:08:34.559 --> 0:08:36.800 one month out of the year and then she wouldn't 0:08:36.800 --> 0:08:39.560 pay the bill and then the ship would be gone. Right, 0:08:39.559 --> 0:08:42.600 But when we had it, Remember one time she called me, 0:08:42.640 --> 0:08:44.400 I don't know if you remember this, but if you 0:08:44.600 --> 0:08:47.200 if you did not have cinemax and you turn the cinemax, 0:08:47.559 --> 0:08:49.800 it would be all blurry. Do you know what I'm 0:08:49.840 --> 0:08:52.680 skinnamax dudel kind of make out Nikki people in there. 0:08:52.720 --> 0:08:55.079 So one time she saw me watching cinemax. Really, I mean, 0:08:55.080 --> 0:08:56.440 it wasn't you coudn't see anything? She said, what are 0:08:56.440 --> 0:08:59.840 you watching? Keep I'm like nothing, And then she kind 0:08:59.840 --> 0:09:03.439 of a us sort of conversation with me about pornography, 0:09:03.800 --> 0:09:05.480 and I was like, oh, my mama doesn't like me 0:09:05.520 --> 0:09:09.400 to watch NIKKEI things so right. So we didn't have 0:09:09.400 --> 0:09:12.960 a VCR. I brought my my friends VCR. His father 0:09:13.040 --> 0:09:15.640 had all these porn tapes. I brought him to my house, 0:09:16.320 --> 0:09:19.959 snug him in my room, and watched something that night. 0:09:20.080 --> 0:09:22.800 But I left it there in my room. Of course, 0:09:22.840 --> 0:09:25.120 I wanted her to see it, and when I got home, 0:09:25.160 --> 0:09:29.320 I got it. Do you know what I'm saying? Changed 0:09:29.360 --> 0:09:31.439 his schools in middle school and ends up one of 0:09:31.480 --> 0:09:34.559 a small number of black students in a predominantly white school. 0:09:35.320 --> 0:09:37.160 Well we knew, I mean, you know, we we're never 0:09:37.160 --> 0:09:40.280 going to school with white kids before and in the Mississippi, 0:09:40.440 --> 0:09:44.760 you know, whiteness, a particular kind of whiteness, is pervasive. 0:09:45.559 --> 0:09:48.800 And we all had televisions and we went to the movie, 0:09:48.840 --> 0:09:52.640 so you know, we weren't unfamiliar with whiteness and white people. 0:09:52.679 --> 0:09:55.240 We were we were unfamiliar with real white people. And 0:09:55.280 --> 0:09:57.959 because we didn't have any contact with real white folks, 0:09:57.960 --> 0:10:02.439 you know, we knew Jack Tripper and Laverne as surely 0:10:02.640 --> 0:10:06.560 and all the cartoons. You can imagine. It isn't a 0:10:06.559 --> 0:10:10.160 happy situation. And k s A's grades start falling. His 0:10:10.280 --> 0:10:14.440 mother gets his report card and becomes physically abusive, but 0:10:14.520 --> 0:10:17.120 she only strikes him in places on his body where 0:10:17.120 --> 0:10:20.680 bruises won't be seen. This is something Kis and his 0:10:20.760 --> 0:10:24.560 friends the other black students have in common. They talk 0:10:24.679 --> 0:10:28.240 openly with each other about the difference between getting a whooping, 0:10:28.559 --> 0:10:33.200 getting a beating, and getting beaten the funk up. I mean, 0:10:33.360 --> 0:10:36.640 I wasn't the only kid who went from getting those beatings, 0:10:36.720 --> 0:10:39.200 like where you could come to school and you can 0:10:39.240 --> 0:10:42.520 see the wells on people's bodies. And again, my culture, 0:10:42.559 --> 0:10:45.040 and I think American culture generally even didn't one admitute 0:10:45.040 --> 0:10:47.040 like we use human to kind of sue. Right. So 0:10:47.240 --> 0:10:49.120 back with other school we would come to school and 0:10:49.120 --> 0:10:51.160 we'll be like, yo, you got a web in his morning, 0:10:51.200 --> 0:10:55.280 you know, like laughing. And at St. Richard to school 0:10:55.320 --> 0:10:57.560 I went to. If I acted up and my mom 0:10:57.640 --> 0:10:59.600 daught I acted up, you know, she would get me 0:10:59.640 --> 0:11:02.600 in play is. It's complicated because we also had to 0:11:02.600 --> 0:11:06.040 wear uniforms, so you know there were long sleeve shirts 0:11:06.040 --> 0:11:09.520 and stuff like that. But she definitely would not get 0:11:09.559 --> 0:11:12.000 me on my neck, you know, she wouldn't get me 0:11:12.040 --> 0:11:14.960 anywhere in my face because she didn't want those white 0:11:15.000 --> 0:11:18.480 people to think to pathologize her and us, and she 0:11:18.480 --> 0:11:19.920 didn't want them to be like, oh, look at these 0:11:19.920 --> 0:11:22.000 poor black kids come to school with wels on their body. 0:11:22.520 --> 0:11:24.560 And that happened to me, and that was and that 0:11:24.600 --> 0:11:27.360 happened to a lot of people. But what's important is 0:11:27.400 --> 0:11:29.320 that you know, by eighth grade, you know, I played 0:11:29.360 --> 0:11:31.240 a lot of sports. I was like eighth grade, I 0:11:31.240 --> 0:11:34.840 was like five ten, two oh five, five eleven, two 0:11:34.880 --> 0:11:38.000 oh five. My mom was five four hundred, So I 0:11:38.000 --> 0:11:41.880 just think it's something very very very unspoken and intimate 0:11:41.920 --> 0:11:44.079 about the ways. I don't know how much of it 0:11:44.120 --> 0:11:46.720 has to do with race either, but like sometimes smaller parents, 0:11:47.360 --> 0:11:50.000 you know, beat up on bigger kids, and for me, 0:11:50.360 --> 0:11:52.400 like I was bigger than her partner too, you know, 0:11:52.480 --> 0:11:55.000 so she was part of me. Thinks she thought she 0:11:55.040 --> 0:11:57.000 could not hurt me. That's what I want to believe, 0:11:57.000 --> 0:11:58.320 that she was hitting me like that because she thought 0:11:58.320 --> 0:12:00.079 it was so big and she couldn't hurt me. But actually, no, 0:12:00.200 --> 0:12:03.440 that's not true, because I let her know early on 0:12:03.440 --> 0:12:05.079 that it did hurt. But then after a while it 0:12:05.120 --> 0:12:08.200 stopped hurting and stopped hurting because I was so angry 0:12:08.800 --> 0:12:10.360 she tried to hit me. I just catched a belt. 0:12:11.440 --> 0:12:13.680 Just look at her. She keep on doing I just 0:12:13.720 --> 0:12:16.319 catched the belt, and you know, one point, I called 0:12:16.360 --> 0:12:18.160 her not threw it, and I looked at her in 0:12:18.200 --> 0:12:19.800 a way for the first time my life where I 0:12:19.880 --> 0:12:22.559 was like, nah, it's not gonna happen again. I was 0:12:22.640 --> 0:12:24.760 never gonna touch my mom, but I just wanted her 0:12:24.800 --> 0:12:26.840 to know that, like, you know, I'm You're not just 0:12:26.880 --> 0:12:30.360 gonna beat me I mean, I'm done. I'm letting you 0:12:30.440 --> 0:12:32.240 beat me, right, you know you can. You can keep 0:12:32.280 --> 0:12:34.480 trying to beat me, but it's not gonna work anymore. 0:12:35.000 --> 0:12:37.600 You know, it strikes me as you're talking about this 0:12:37.720 --> 0:12:40.120 that there was something that there's like an element of 0:12:40.160 --> 0:12:44.040 it that was like ritual, absolutely, because you each had 0:12:44.080 --> 0:12:49.160 these different roles to play and and both were controlled. 0:12:49.679 --> 0:12:53.320 Like your mom was controlled in that she didn't hit 0:12:53.360 --> 0:12:55.520 certain parts of your body. She wasn't out of control. 0:12:56.360 --> 0:13:01.560 You know, it's so profoundly complicated at it because in 0:13:01.600 --> 0:13:04.600 the dynamic between k. S A and his mom, she's 0:13:04.640 --> 0:13:07.719 acting out of a kind of maternal terror, but that 0:13:07.760 --> 0:13:12.240 maternal terror actually terrorizes her son. She knows what can 0:13:12.280 --> 0:13:15.080 happen to young black men, and so she tries to 0:13:15.160 --> 0:13:18.040 teach k. S A to write and learn and think 0:13:18.120 --> 0:13:23.560 his way towards protection. But protection isn't possible, so she 0:13:23.640 --> 0:13:26.679 beats him. It makes all kinds of sense and no 0:13:26.840 --> 0:13:30.480 kinds of sense, something he explores in his book Heavy. 0:13:31.760 --> 0:13:33.679 I think the story is much more complicated. Right then, 0:13:34.760 --> 0:13:38.320 young black mother beats big black son. Big Black Son 0:13:38.400 --> 0:13:40.439 becomes a writer and writes about the beatings. Right. The 0:13:40.440 --> 0:13:42.200 book is about much more than that. But but, but 0:13:42.320 --> 0:13:44.880 the odd part about it is that my mom's fear 0:13:45.000 --> 0:13:48.240 was that that the nation and my state, white supremacy, 0:13:48.240 --> 0:13:51.640 white power manifested in my state in the nation, would 0:13:51.640 --> 0:13:54.280 harm me in ways she could never and she wanted 0:13:54.320 --> 0:13:56.800 to protect me. Like I grew up in the era 0:13:56.800 --> 0:13:59.160 where police officers would come to your school. They'd be 0:13:59.200 --> 0:14:02.400 called officer, and they bring up sometimes the biggest kid 0:14:02.440 --> 0:14:04.680 in the school, make an example of him. If you 0:14:04.679 --> 0:14:07.640 don't do right, this is how we're gonna treat you. Okay, fine, 0:14:07.920 --> 0:14:10.160 But you know I had a lot of problems in 0:14:10.240 --> 0:14:12.960 high school. I didn't but drinking wasn't one of my problems. 0:14:12.960 --> 0:14:14.840 Smoking wasn't one of my problems. I saw how addiction 0:14:14.920 --> 0:14:17.120 ravaged my family. I wasn't about to do that. But 0:14:17.960 --> 0:14:21.600 cops still jack me up saying I had cracked. Cops 0:14:21.600 --> 0:14:23.440 still would be like, I saw you throw crack out 0:14:23.440 --> 0:14:25.760 of a window. You know what I'm saying. Cops would 0:14:25.760 --> 0:14:28.720 still like have me embarrassed outside of the road, handcuffed 0:14:28.720 --> 0:14:30.720 in front of people. And I know how people think 0:14:30.760 --> 0:14:32.880 people dry body said a big black boy in handcuffs, 0:14:32.880 --> 0:14:34.800 They're gonna be like, oh, that mocker there's something wrong. 0:14:35.240 --> 0:14:38.360 Often I never I'm not trying. Ian. I am not 0:14:38.440 --> 0:14:40.920 somebody who bleeds innocent. I'm not innocent, but I am 0:14:40.960 --> 0:14:43.760 definitely innocent of ever doing anything or police officers that 0:14:43.880 --> 0:14:45.840 I did, But that didn't stop me from calling them 0:14:45.880 --> 0:14:48.240 negative and stopped them from putting guns to my face 0:14:48.600 --> 0:14:51.560 guns to my head several times before I was eighteen 0:14:51.600 --> 0:14:55.400 years old. This reminds me of something kiss mother says 0:14:55.440 --> 0:14:59.280 to him before he starts school at St. Richard's. Here's Kisa. 0:15:00.400 --> 0:15:02.840 I sat in the principal's office thinking about what you 0:15:02.920 --> 0:15:05.760 told me the day before we started, saying, Richard, be 0:15:05.880 --> 0:15:08.320 twice as excellent and be twice as careful from this 0:15:08.360 --> 0:15:12.320 point on. You said everything you thought your new changes tomorrow. 0:15:12.840 --> 0:15:14.800 Being twice as excellent as white folks will get you 0:15:14.800 --> 0:15:17.560 half of what they get. Being anything less will get 0:15:17.560 --> 0:15:21.080 you hell. I assume we were already twice as excellent 0:15:21.120 --> 0:15:24.200 as the white kids at St. Richard's, precisely because their 0:15:24.280 --> 0:15:27.360 library looked like a cathedral and ours was an old 0:15:27.360 --> 0:15:30.480 trailer on cinder blocks. I thought you should have told 0:15:30.520 --> 0:15:33.320 me to be twice as excellent as you, my grandmama, 0:15:33.800 --> 0:15:38.320 since y'all were the most excellent people I knew. I 0:15:38.360 --> 0:15:40.320 got kicked out of school for taking a library book 0:15:40.320 --> 0:15:42.440 out of the library. And I just think it's interesting 0:15:42.440 --> 0:15:47.000 because my mom's belief was that, like, if you immerse 0:15:47.040 --> 0:15:50.200 yourself in books, you can protect yourself from them. And 0:15:50.240 --> 0:15:53.960 what I learned, like eighteen nineteen, is that sometimes sometimes 0:15:53.960 --> 0:15:56.960 the appearance of being like well read or uppity or 0:15:57.000 --> 0:15:59.360 whatever to police officers or white folks don't have your 0:15:59.360 --> 0:16:02.280 best interests at would make them punish you more. You know, 0:16:02.320 --> 0:16:04.880 I got I got kicked out of school, literally for 0:16:05.000 --> 0:16:07.040 taking the library book out of the library that I 0:16:07.080 --> 0:16:09.680 paid to go to and taking it back. It was 0:16:09.720 --> 0:16:11.840 all on the news, so it embarrassed my grandmama because 0:16:11.840 --> 0:16:13.680 it looked like her grandson got kicked out of school 0:16:13.720 --> 0:16:16.120 for theft. That was the most painful thing to happen 0:16:16.120 --> 0:16:17.680 in my family at the time because it was so 0:16:17.760 --> 0:16:19.720 public and it was and I didn't do I didn't 0:16:19.760 --> 0:16:21.480 I took a library book and I brought it back. 0:16:21.880 --> 0:16:23.720 You know what I'm saying something. My point is she 0:16:23.880 --> 0:16:26.080 was right that these people won't do whatever they could 0:16:26.240 --> 0:16:28.560 to harm and hurt me and people who look like me, 0:16:29.760 --> 0:16:31.720 But she was wrong in that, like the meetings would 0:16:31.720 --> 0:16:34.840 help because when that should happen to me, what I 0:16:34.880 --> 0:16:37.200 wanted to do is fight them. I wanted to I 0:16:37.240 --> 0:16:40.480 wanted to physically fight them. When you put handcuffs on me, 0:16:40.800 --> 0:16:42.840 I'm gonna try to. I am gonna try to fight back. 0:16:42.880 --> 0:16:44.280 And that's gonna make it worse. Do you see what 0:16:44.280 --> 0:16:46.520 I'm saying, Because I was talking like you do fight? 0:16:46.560 --> 0:16:48.280 You fight? You fight when people do things wrong, do 0:16:48.400 --> 0:16:51.720 you fight. You can't fight the police unless you have guns. 0:16:52.240 --> 0:16:55.880 I didn't have guns. We're going to take a short break. 0:17:08.240 --> 0:17:11.480 His mom tries hard to control the unruly son she 0:17:11.560 --> 0:17:16.439 loves so much, pushing him to read right, speak quote 0:17:16.480 --> 0:17:20.200 unquote properly. But then there's another way she tries to 0:17:20.240 --> 0:17:23.960 control him, having to do with food, what and how 0:17:24.040 --> 0:17:28.480 much he eats. My mama was somebody who just like 0:17:28.560 --> 0:17:30.679 his adamant and she was that I read all these books. 0:17:30.960 --> 0:17:33.439 She was equally admit that I don't eat um, not 0:17:33.440 --> 0:17:35.159 that I start myself, but like I only eat it 0:17:35.359 --> 0:17:38.160 like asparagus, and I mean when I'm like between eight 0:17:38.200 --> 0:17:41.960 and fourteen years old asparagus. And she like Brussels sprouts. 0:17:42.000 --> 0:17:44.600 And her money was really weird too, so she would 0:17:44.600 --> 0:17:47.040 buy like all this booty food we really couldn't afford 0:17:47.080 --> 0:17:49.879 at the beginning of the month. I lives in fucking 0:17:49.920 --> 0:17:52.800 pump and nickel brow, Like no twelve year old, I 0:17:52.800 --> 0:17:54.440 didn't know. I didn't know what's over? Who want to 0:17:54.440 --> 0:17:56.000 eat that kind of ship? And I definitely didn't want 0:17:56.000 --> 0:18:00.119 to eat that um. But it's signified the same thing 0:18:00.280 --> 0:18:03.760 as the King's English. Absolutely, she really believed that if 0:18:03.800 --> 0:18:06.320 you ate light white people, read light white people, walk 0:18:06.400 --> 0:18:08.720 like white people, you can protect yourself a white people. 0:18:09.000 --> 0:18:11.560 But she raised a kid who was like sort of curious, 0:18:11.600 --> 0:18:13.040 you know, I always just I was like, my look 0:18:13.040 --> 0:18:15.800 at dr King like they blew his damn head off, 0:18:15.880 --> 0:18:18.720 damn near and he was. He dressed well, he had 0:18:18.760 --> 0:18:21.440 like a beautiful Southern twine, but he was one of 0:18:21.480 --> 0:18:24.480 the most eloquent speakers ever. Right, look at you, Mama, 0:18:24.560 --> 0:18:27.199 like you do speak to kings English in public, and 0:18:27.280 --> 0:18:30.439 I can see you suffering. So this sort of like 0:18:30.560 --> 0:18:34.240 deprivation in the hopes that the deprivation will make you 0:18:35.359 --> 0:18:40.240 less scary. I don't know. Maybe it works, but it 0:18:40.240 --> 0:18:42.840 didn't work for me. So when I left my mama's house, 0:18:43.320 --> 0:18:45.560 partially because the food she she did have in the 0:18:45.640 --> 0:18:47.520 house if we have food was not it was kind 0:18:47.520 --> 0:18:49.159 of like not gross, it was gross, you know what 0:18:49.200 --> 0:18:51.159 I'm saying to me? And I go to my friend's 0:18:51.160 --> 0:18:55.560 house yea, and they have you know, Golden Graham and 0:18:55.680 --> 0:18:58.119 like all kind of like those little frozen hamburgers in 0:18:58.119 --> 0:19:00.639 the box you can sizzlin and that. So I would 0:19:00.640 --> 0:19:04.199 just I just I just eight and eight and eight. 0:19:04.240 --> 0:19:07.520 Whenever I left with my grandmother, who cooked a lot 0:19:07.560 --> 0:19:09.280 of healthy food because she had a massive garden, but 0:19:09.320 --> 0:19:11.359 she also like like to cook cars and cake. Did 0:19:11.400 --> 0:19:14.040 she encourage me to eat? And I never heard the 0:19:14.040 --> 0:19:16.720 word fat in her house from her, Do you know 0:19:16.760 --> 0:19:18.760 what I'm saying. So I'm going to say, yes, I 0:19:18.760 --> 0:19:21.119 was trying to protect myself, but also part of me 0:19:21.200 --> 0:19:23.959 was trying to push back. I guess my mom's like 0:19:24.560 --> 0:19:28.800 I think easy mode of discipline, which was like a 0:19:28.920 --> 0:19:32.080 kind of like deprivation. There's a way in which I 0:19:32.119 --> 0:19:35.399 think certain things lodge in the body, right, Like I 0:19:35.440 --> 0:19:37.080 have a long time yoga practice, and one of the 0:19:37.119 --> 0:19:41.160 things that the yogis won't say is that certain emotional 0:19:41.240 --> 0:19:43.479 states actually live in the body. Like if you do 0:19:43.560 --> 0:19:47.480 like a a hip opening pose eventually, if you stay 0:19:47.480 --> 0:19:50.560 in it long enough, grief will like start to rise 0:19:50.600 --> 0:19:53.120 to the surface. You know, you'll actually start to cry. 0:19:53.560 --> 0:19:57.080 I mean, I've experienced like the ways in which certain 0:19:57.080 --> 0:20:02.399 emotional states kind of sit dormant, you know, but like 0:20:02.440 --> 0:20:05.840 their stories, they're complete. The Yogis called them some saras or, 0:20:06.160 --> 0:20:10.479 which also translates a scar interestingly, like they live within us. 0:20:10.520 --> 0:20:16.080 And I think when we are driven or there's a 0:20:16.160 --> 0:20:21.280 kind of undercurrent of shame that most of us experienced 0:20:21.400 --> 0:20:23.040