Speaker 1: Welcome to The Laverne Cox Show, a production of Shondaland
Speaker 1: Audio in partnership with My Heart Radio. Now, there are
Speaker 1: certain people in America that would rather burn into the
Speaker 1: ground than share it with you. Okay, let's be clear.
Speaker 1: They'd rather take it down. No one will have it.
Speaker 1: And there's a fair number of those. We've heard people say, well,
Speaker 1: you know, get the police. You know, a few bad apples.
Speaker 1: It's not bad apples, it's a bad orchard, right, and
Speaker 1: we have to recognize that it's been grown that way.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Laverne Cox Show. I'm Laverne Cox. Last year,
Speaker 1: for the first time, I heard the term post traumatic
Speaker 1: slave syndrome. The moment I heard this phrase, I was intrigued.
Speaker 1: I was familiar with the concept of epigenetics and research
Speaker 1: that found that intergenerational trauma can quite literally be transmitted
Speaker 1: through our d n A and passed down to the
Speaker 1: next generation. I thought about my grandfather and great grandfather,
Speaker 1: who were sharecroppers who were beaten on plantations and then
Speaker 1: trapped and indentured servitude post emancipation, and the painful legacy
Speaker 1: that violence and trauma have had on my family. I
Speaker 1: knew I wanted to talk to the woman who coined
Speaker 1: this term about her research and how we might begin
Speaker 1: our collective healing from post traumatic slave syndrome. Dr Joy
Speaker 1: de Grew is a nationally and internationally renowned researcher and
Speaker 1: educator whose work focuses on the intersection of racism, trauma, violence,
Speaker 1: and American childil slavery. She has published numerous peer reviewed
Speaker 1: journal articles and authored her seminal book, Entitle post Traumatic
Speaker 1: Slave Syndrome America's Legacy of Enduring Injuring. Please enjoy my
Speaker 1: conversation with Dr Joy. Hello, Dr Joy, and welcome to
Speaker 1: the podcast. How are you feeling today? I am well,
Speaker 1: How are you? I'm well. I'm really excited about this
Speaker 1: conversation today about post traumatic slave syndrome. Can you tell
Speaker 1: us a little bit about your background and what brought
Speaker 1: you to um coined the term post traumatic slave syndrome
Speaker 1: and do the research. Yes, my background is I have
Speaker 1: I have a degree in communications and I have a
Speaker 1: degree in ms W social work. I have a master's
Speaker 1: degree also in clinical psychology. I have a PhD in
Speaker 1: social work research. So that's my educational background, but I
Speaker 1: think it's more about my lived experience that really led
Speaker 1: me there. Um, I grew up my families from Louisiana,
Speaker 1: and I grew up with my father went to the
Speaker 1: sixth grade. My mother could have a full scholarship to college,
Speaker 1: but stayed instead and raised a family. But my father
Speaker 1: called himself an asiatic black man. So blackness was something
Speaker 1: that was okay with me. You know, I'm sixty three
Speaker 1: years old, and I grew up with a real healthy
Speaker 1: feeling about my blackness. However, you know, I grew up
Speaker 1: in a time when folks were called negroes and colored
Speaker 1: and all the rest. But I remember as a child
Speaker 1: hearing other kids, uh, and and adults, not just kids,
Speaker 1: that if they got mad at you, they say you black,
Speaker 1: and then fill into blank you black. And of course
Speaker 1: the assumption here is that adding black is an an
Speaker 1: additional injury or an additional insult. And for me, I'm like,
Speaker 1: but you're black, you know what I mean. So it
Speaker 1: didn't make sense to me. And then, you know, I
Speaker 1: started to hear things like, oh my god, you know
Speaker 1: she was so pretty even though she was dark. You know, uh,
Speaker 1: he was he was really attractive. He was light skin,
Speaker 1: diad had good hair. You know, all of those things
Speaker 1: I grew up with and in in in context, I
Speaker 1: guess that makes sense given the time, maybe, But then
Speaker 1: I continue to hear it. You know, it didn't stop
Speaker 1: all the way up until you know, two thousand and nine.
Speaker 1: I think Chris Rock made the movie Good Hair, right. Um,
Speaker 1: So for me, it started there, and it started with
Speaker 1: me trying to understand what the ideology of that. Where
Speaker 1: did that come from? You know, I've been to seven
Speaker 1: countries in Africa. It wasn't an African thing. I heard
Speaker 1: it from folks from the Caribbean. In other words, I
Speaker 1: started to hear it from folks that shared a legacy
Speaker 1: of enslavement, which was a very different and unique experience. Um.
Speaker 1: And what I mean by that is while slavery itself,
Speaker 1: and this is what you know, I got considerable pushback.
Speaker 1: Slavery itself is not a new institution. It's existed for
Speaker 1: a long time. And when people get really tested, they'll
Speaker 1: tell you, well, you people enslaved each other. And I
Speaker 1: was like, correct, and so did you people? Right? A
Speaker 1: matter of fact, most societies in the world had some
Speaker 1: form of indentured servitude or or slavery. So I'm starting
Speaker 1: to look at where did this come from. And so
Speaker 1: I started reading slave narratives. I started interviewing the oldest
Speaker 1: people in my environment that I could that had memory right. Um,
Speaker 1: And on one occasion, you know, actually at Lais Sandford,
Speaker 1: who was the vice chancellor of education in New York,
Speaker 1: I was on a on a radio call. She actually
Speaker 1: called in and mentioned something that her grandmother had said
Speaker 1: to her. Now, Adelaide was up in age at that
Speaker 1: and I think she's in her nineties now, but she
Speaker 1: talked about sitting at her grandmother's knee and hearing her
Speaker 1: grandmother recount what it was like during slavery. So, you know,
Speaker 1: I had enough context to realize that what is this?
Speaker 1: Where did this come from? So I have now a
Speaker 1: context of where it came from. I even have an
Speaker 1: understanding of some of the behaviors, and I examined those
Speaker 1: behaviors contemporary behavior years that folks don't even know why
Speaker 1: they do what they do, right, because our history has
Speaker 1: not been readily available to us, and their history we
Speaker 1: have is a bit distorted, if not outright wrong about
Speaker 1: about black people. And so I mean that's where I began,
Speaker 1: and I began really trying to understand how we could
Speaker 1: really love each other and embrace ourselves um better, you know,
Speaker 1: And so that that's kind of where it starts. But
Speaker 1: when I talk about post traumatic slave syndrome, um, I'm
Speaker 1: talking about you know, some of the adaptive behaviors that
Speaker 1: have been left over. Uh. It is not about a
Speaker 1: pathologizing black people, It is not. It is about really
Speaker 1: trying to tease the poison from the cookies. I'm trying
Speaker 1: to tease out what is healthy, cultural understanding, knowledge and
Speaker 1: relevant from the poison, which was what we had to
Speaker 1: do to adapt to being in hostile environments. The kind
Speaker 1: of things we had to do not look people well
Speaker 1: in the eye, and you know, diminish our children so
Speaker 1: people wouldn't look at our children as having value because
Speaker 1: we didn't want them sold. I mean, all of the
Speaker 1: things that we did. That makes sense. But you know,
Speaker 1: when you start seeing those those behaviors, you know, like
Speaker 1: I asked, so what this usually gets me trouble? You know,
Speaker 1: has anyone heard of anyone saying go get a switch everybody?
Speaker 1: I mean, I spoke to a whole room full of
Speaker 1: psychiatrists and all the black pikers raising the hand, I said,
Speaker 1: how many of them had you get a couple of
Speaker 1: them and they brayed them together. You know, people are laughing.
Speaker 1: I said, how many of them? How do you have?
Speaker 1: You dip it? Leave it in water overnight? And then
Speaker 1: they're like, wait a minute, I said, you know what
Speaker 1: that is? That is pretty much a whip. Right, So
Speaker 1: you're looking at a whip that you've created to hit
Speaker 1: a child, right, and it's behavior. And then in the responses,
Speaker 1: but big Mama loved me, and I'm like, yeah, big
Speaker 1: Mama loved you, and I look at me, I'm okay.
Speaker 1: I said, yeah, you're okay. In spy it of it,
Speaker 1: not because of it. We don't have to hit children
Speaker 1: with parts of branches on trees, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: So there there was that sense of culture, you see,
Speaker 1: But what is it? What is it? Is it really
Speaker 1: cultural or is it adaptive? Mm hmm? What do you think?
Speaker 1: You know, it's really interesting. Many years ago, Jamie Foxx,
Speaker 1: when he won his Academy award, talked about his grandmother,
Speaker 1: you know, whipping him and beating him, and he sort
Speaker 1: of made a joke of it and used in a
Speaker 1: lot of black folks, we make jokes about getting the switch.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, we laugh. It's a knowing laughter, but it's
Speaker 1: traumatizing for a lot of us. What do you think
Speaker 1: that laughter is about? Is it about trying to diminish
Speaker 1: the pain of it? I think what happens. You know,
Speaker 1: there is a wonderful statement by Isabel Wilkerson and her
Speaker 1: book cast And and she talks about it in the
Speaker 1: context of of of living in an old house and
Speaker 1: getting used to the broken pieces and the you know,
Speaker 1: propping up floors and leaking ceiling things. We begin to normalize,
Speaker 1: do you see? We normalize it so it doesn't get
Speaker 1: it doesn't get um really brought into our consciousness as
Speaker 1: a trauma. Right now at the time it's happening is traumatic.
Speaker 1: But what we do is we normalize those behaviors to
Speaker 1: such a degree that we don't allow ourselves to see
Speaker 1: it any other way. But imagine, just let's just unpack
Speaker 1: that for a moment. I'm getting you've done something wrong.
Speaker 1: I'm going to to punish you, and I'm gonna make
Speaker 1: you go get the weapon I'm sending you to get
Speaker 1: the thing to hurt you with. And so there's there's
Speaker 1: so many implications of what's wrong with that, just the
Speaker 1: whole psychological impact. Go get me a switch to hit
Speaker 1: you with. Now again, seven countries in Africa, I didn't
Speaker 1: see people wailing on children in that way. I'm not
Speaker 1: suggesting that they don't somewhere and there, but that wasn't
Speaker 1: the common practice that I have experienced and I've spoken about.
Speaker 1: And I know there's an incredible violence. Don't get me wrong,
Speaker 1: there's violence everywhere. But I think we have to take
Speaker 1: into account. You can train uh elephant without hitting it,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean, so, come on, we don't have
Speaker 1: to hit children. You I'm talked about post traumatic slave
Speaker 1: syndrome as an a set of adaptive behaviors. How would
Speaker 1: you distinguish um Let's colleges pts S post traumatic slave
Speaker 1: syndrome from epigenetics? Right when trauma is passed down through
Speaker 1: our d n A and through our genes, is there
Speaker 1: a difference for you between the two or is there similarity?
Speaker 1: Are connected? They're connected, so that not everything. First of all,
Speaker 1: let me let me kind of set up this this
Speaker 1: reality around trauma, because people are talking a lot about
Speaker 1: trauma in a lot of different ways, and there's a clinical,
Speaker 1: you know, a discussion of trauma where you experience a
Speaker 1: severe you know, someone threatened your life, or something violent happens,
Speaker 1: or it could even be a natural disaster, whatever, and
Speaker 1: it causes your body to go into a certain kind
Speaker 1: of it or flight or freeze kind of behavior. Right,
Speaker 1: So there's that reality. Now, we could both be in
Speaker 1: the same room together, and let's say we're at the conference,
Speaker 1: you and I. We're at the conference and someone um
Speaker 1: shoots somebody in the room shoots him, right, and well,
Speaker 1: we know one that person is traumatized. Probably the person
Speaker 1: seated nearest to them might be traumatized, but not necessarily
Speaker 1: because everybody is not traumatized by traumatic events. Not you
Speaker 1: know everybody that somebody will go wh it was really bad,
Speaker 1: it was horrible. Let's go to lunch. Right, So we
Speaker 1: don't all we don't all have the same response. When
Speaker 1: I talk about post traumatic slave syndrome, I'm not talking
Speaker 1: about a single trauma. I'm not even talking about a
Speaker 1: clinical diagnosis, because a clinical diagnosis means that we could
Speaker 1: get you some medication, get you in the room, people
Speaker 1: talk to you softly couple of times a week, help
Speaker 1: you out with that. Postraumatic slave syndrome requires much more
Speaker 1: than that. It requires social justice. You gotta stop hitting me.
Speaker 1: That's one, and the trauma itself reflects itself in what
Speaker 1: I call social learning. So let me explain the difference.
Speaker 1: So epigenetics that you know, if if something is showing
Speaker 1: up as markers on your DNA, you know, once is there,
Speaker 1: you can do something. You can actually change the trajectory.
Speaker 1: And I'll talk about that. But there's something else that
Speaker 1: we do, and that is called social learning. Social learning
Speaker 1: theory looks at how we are influenced by everyone around us.
Speaker 1: So for you, if if you learned to cook, or
Speaker 1: if I learned to cook, and I know who I
Speaker 1: learned to cook from. I learned to cook from my mother.
Speaker 1: My mother learned to cook from her mother. So I
Speaker 1: begin to do some of the things through my social
Speaker 1: learning that my mother did, right, So that's a social
Speaker 1: learning phenomena. Now let's put it in an advantage point
Speaker 1: of trauma. Okay, there is a door and at that
Speaker 1: door there are guards, and if anyone goes to the door,
Speaker 1: they beat them down. After a while, you know, folks
Speaker 1: stop going to the door because they don't want to
Speaker 1: get beaten down or killed. But I'm learning also from
Speaker 1: those people in my environment. So if you are my champion.
Speaker 1: If you're the person I'm looking up to, and you
Speaker 1: won't go through the door, I then vicariously learn a
Speaker 1: helplessness that says, well, if my hero, my you know,
Speaker 1: the person that that raised me won't go through the door,
Speaker 1: I'm not going through the door. If this is called
Speaker 1: learned helplessness, learned helplessness as well, you know I nobody's
Speaker 1: going through I'm not. There's nothing over there anyway, Why
Speaker 1: does anybody when we start making up reasons why we
Speaker 1: don't go through the door, But the opposite is also true.
Speaker 1: You can confound that because if you go through the door,
Speaker 1: then I go, well, if if she can go through
Speaker 1: the door, then I can go through the door. And
Speaker 1: so what we have is social learning which can end
Speaker 1: up being learned helplessness, which began with animals. They took dogs,
Speaker 1: they put them in an h in a fenced area,
Speaker 1: turned on a red light. Every time the light came on,
Speaker 1: they shocked the dog wherever they were. Then, after all,
Speaker 1: you didn't need the shock, you didn't need the reinforcement.
Speaker 1: The light would come on, dog would move. Then they
Speaker 1: just wanted to see, let's just shock the dog arbitrarily,
Speaker 1: whether the light is on or not. The dog will
Speaker 1: lie down, it will no longer move because it learns
Speaker 1: that no matter what I do, it won't change the outcome.
Speaker 1: That's learned helplessness. And we can learn to be helpless
Speaker 1: if we're in an environment where we are consistently put
Speaker 1: upon by these hostile behaviors, and then we we model
Speaker 1: that behavior for our children. That's modeling, that's not that's
Speaker 1: not epigenetic that that is what we're learning. But then
Speaker 1: on top of that we have epigenetic transference or trauma. Wow,
Speaker 1: that's really deep. And then what that makes me think
Speaker 1: of two are the systems that teach us that no
Speaker 1: matter what we do, we're still going to be in
Speaker 1: the same circumstances no matter who we vote for democratic
Speaker 1: public and they've all been bought by corporate interests, so
Speaker 1: it doesn't really matter, and so we don't vote and
Speaker 1: we feel helpless, and it's just pick up to this cycle.
Speaker 1: So I mean, I think the piece though, for me
Speaker 1: with epic genetics, with post traumatic slave syndrome, what is
Speaker 1: the conversation so that we don't take postmatic slave syndrome
Speaker 1: and say I'm a victim forever and there's nothing we
Speaker 1: can do, but take that as an understanding, as a
Speaker 1: way to heal and understand that we can be agents
Speaker 1: in our own life. Absolutely, And when I wrote post traumatic, originally,
Speaker 1: you know, my whole focus is healing. And you can't
Speaker 1: heal what you don't understand. Amen, And you most certainly
Speaker 1: aren't going to stop behaviors that you have come to
Speaker 1: accept as normal, just like we began to you know,
Speaker 1: in Isabel Wokerson's statement that you began to accept all
Speaker 1: of the problems, you adapt to them, you adopt them,
Speaker 1: and you begin to realize or believe that this is
Speaker 1: how life has to be. And what I do is
Speaker 1: I give people. I said, let's examine what we've learned,
Speaker 1: let's examine why I behave the way I behave, and
Speaker 1: let's make a decision about you know, God blessing my parents.
Speaker 1: They gave us the best that they could given what
Speaker 1: they had. But there there are some things that my
Speaker 1: parents did taught that I did not share with my kids.
Speaker 1: I didn't raise them that way. I had a different experience,
Speaker 1: a different perception of the world. And I think post
Speaker 1: traumatic helps people, um remember where we came from. Right
Speaker 1: If we think this is not nowhere close to as
Speaker 1: deep as it's been. So I know we can move
Speaker 1: beyond this, but we have to again as we move forward,
Speaker 1: we have to do it intentionally. We have to lean
Speaker 1: in in a way and and say, well, you know, uh,
Speaker 1: do I want to call people out of their name
Speaker 1: like that? Do I want to assess black people in
Speaker 1: this way as a total pathological group of people? Do
Speaker 1: I what? What? What is it that I've learned even
Speaker 1: from people we love that I don't want to maybe
Speaker 1: continue on we aren't really necessarily exam I'm in in
Speaker 1: those parts of our lives to say, you know, again,
Speaker 1: I know my family gave me the best they could,
Speaker 1: but there were some gaps there that I had to
Speaker 1: make some decisions about with regard to my own children.
Speaker 1: So I'll give you an example of something that happened
Speaker 1: there was amazing my when I was a little girl,
Speaker 1: I remember being so small. I'm looking up at my
Speaker 1: grandmother's hand, so I'm I'm gotta be a toddler, right,
Speaker 1: maybe three maximum. And I noticed that when my grandmother
Speaker 1: was upset, she always had an apron off and she
Speaker 1: would be holding the edge of that apron in her hand,
Speaker 1: just holding it tight and she didn't even know it.
Speaker 1: She wouldn't even know she's doing it. But what got
Speaker 1: internalized in me is something's wrong. Because I didn't have
Speaker 1: I was maybe even pre verbal. I'm just all I
Speaker 1: know is when I see that hand type, something's wrong
Speaker 1: with grandma. My mother did it. My mother's sister didn't.
Speaker 1: Years later, I would find myself this is an absolute truth.
Speaker 1: I'd find myself after a lecture. You see this, a
Speaker 1: little ball, a piece of tissue. It would be in
Speaker 1: my hand. I wouldn't know when it got there, and
Speaker 1: I never let go of it. And I was like, wow,
Speaker 1: I wasn't holding the side of my dress like my
Speaker 1: mom or my my grandmother or my aunt. But I
Speaker 1: had that balled up tissue in my hand. So I
Speaker 1: called my sister who's older to be right. And I
Speaker 1: called my sister and she said, you too. I found
Speaker 1: out my daughter did it, my daughter. But once my
Speaker 1: sister and I found out about it, talked about it,
Speaker 1: began to do some things to change it. We said, okay,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna zip up the pocket or do something, but
Speaker 1: we're not gonna be holding Now. I understand holding the tissue.
Speaker 1: You ain't gonna hurt me. It's not one way or another.
Speaker 1: But I'm trying to show how things get transmitted without
Speaker 1: you even consciously knowing it. My granddaughter does not do it,
Speaker 1: my grand and part of what happened. You remember, what
Speaker 1: gets internalized, its stressed. That's what I learned. That's what
Speaker 1: I internalized from my grandmother. Something's wrong. It's something stressful.
Speaker 1: And when things were stressful, my grandmother, my mother, and
Speaker 1: my aunt, I did it, and clearly I did it
Speaker 1: enough for my daughter to get it, but she didn't
Speaker 1: do it enough for her daughter to get it. In
Speaker 1: other words, the stress or however we interpreted it, changed
Speaker 1: along the way, but sometimes it doesn't, and sometimes it
Speaker 1: gets worse. And it's not a piece of tissue, right,
Speaker 1: It's a behavior, it's a word you say, it's an assault.
Speaker 1: It could be any number of things that I'm saying.
Speaker 1: We have to pay attention to those things to make
Speaker 1: certain that they're not something that we are unwittingly passing along. Now,
Speaker 1: good news, good news about epigenetics, which I really you know,
Speaker 1: I've been really geeked about. Is they were talking about telomeres.
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna even get into it gets thick in
Speaker 1: terms of these telomeres and the protection of your DNA
Speaker 1: and all that. But they've said that what helps people
Speaker 1: change and regrow healthy cells and healthy telemeres is to
Speaker 1: actually pay attention to the way you're thinking. Your actual
Speaker 1: mindfulness exactly presents practicing being present, not running from things. Right,
Speaker 1: So when I look at black people, it's a lasting
Speaker 1: in the world. I ever consider that we are victims?
Speaker 1: Are you kidding me? For me? Even when I deal
Speaker 1: with other people of color? You know, if listen, let's
Speaker 1: let's be plain about this. A lot of people walked
Speaker 1: in the door that we knocked down. Are you with me?
Speaker 1: We knocked down, we were water holes, we were dogs,
Speaker 1: and lynchings and beatings. We knocked on those doors. And
Speaker 1: what that says to me is that's what we're gonna
Speaker 1: do whenever this happens, whenever it occurs, we are going
Speaker 1: to show up for ourselves and for each other and
Speaker 1: to the benefit of everybody else. To be perfectly honest,
Speaker 1: when we start looking at things like civil rights. So
Speaker 1: you know, I think, and I'm not suggesting there weren't
Speaker 1: people that were involved, but come on, we know, knock
Speaker 1: down the door and the cost of knocking down that door.
Speaker 1: So yeah, we we we have things that we have
Speaker 1: to deal with, I mean any group, and we are
Speaker 1: human beings, so certainly three years of slavery produce injury.
Speaker 1: Con you know, we're humans absolutely, And what you say
Speaker 1: so much in your in your work, in your research
Speaker 1: is that those injuries have continued right through sharecropping, through
Speaker 1: Jim Crow, through math, incarceration, et cetera. That the injuries continue.
Speaker 1: How's that for a little truth after a tiny little break,
Speaker 1: We've got so much more for you. Let's get back
Speaker 1: to our chat, back to the piece around, because we
Speaker 1: talk a lot about trauma on this podcast. I'm really
Speaker 1: interested in trauma resilience, and um, I've interviewed my therapist
Speaker 1: Jennifer burten Flyer about trauma and trauma resilience, and she says,
Speaker 1: the body can experience good things as well as challenging things.
Speaker 1: It's too much, too fast, too soon, and that, um,
Speaker 1: it's not just about understanding trauma is something horrible has
Speaker 1: happened to us. But those stressors that you allude to
Speaker 1: when you're grabbing that bald up piece of paper, and
Speaker 1: the way to sort of, you know, begin to alleviate
Speaker 1: that is to build resilience to these behaviors, having an
Speaker 1: awareness of it, and having a sort of set of
Speaker 1: things that we can do to sort of alleviate all
Speaker 1: of those things. So with post traumatic slave syndrome, right,
Speaker 1: what's deep for me at this historical moment is that,
Speaker 1: like one, you can turn on the television or go
Speaker 1: on the internet and to see people saying that structural
Speaker 1: racism doesn't exist, that white supremacy isn't a thing in
Speaker 1: the United States, that Black people need to get over slavery,
Speaker 1: that we're just being you know, all these all these
Speaker 1: things that people say that invalidates the experiences of black
Speaker 1: folks not owning the history, the real history of what
Speaker 1: happened in the United States. And I love your work
Speaker 1: too because you say that white folks also have post
Speaker 1: traumatic slay syndrome, right, That that white folks were involved
Speaker 1: in this and the dehumanization of black folks, that white
Speaker 1: folks lost their humanity as well. So what ine with
Speaker 1: all of this through disinformation going on around reality and history,
Speaker 1: what do you have to say to that, do we
Speaker 1: just keep pushing back and telling the truth and with
Speaker 1: love and empathy or what girl? Well, that was a
Speaker 1: lot um and you know what, no, no, no, uh. Well,
Speaker 1: first of all, I believe that we have to always
Speaker 1: speak the truth. I believe that truthfulness is a foundation
Speaker 1: of all human virtue, that if you're not truthful, you
Speaker 1: cannot be well. In America's pathology is her denial. And
Speaker 1: so part of what we have to do is continue
Speaker 1: to bring these things to the light. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: it's an eventuality. In other words, it's it's inevitable. Unity
Speaker 1: and oneness as a species is an inevitability, whether it's
Speaker 1: going to be something pretty horrific that gets us there
Speaker 1: or an act of will um, that's what's before us.
Speaker 1: But it's inevitable. And what I mean by that is
Speaker 1: it's like when the tobacco industry, for example, during an
Speaker 1: I was a little kid, I used to go buy
Speaker 1: segress for a body in neighborhood. By the way, I
Speaker 1: was like eight, and the right to know, give me
Speaker 1: the little running the store, get Salem's Winston, you know, Chesterfield,
Speaker 1: all of that. I was eight. And now I just listen, Lavery.
Speaker 1: I believe right now I've been on a gazillion zooms.
Speaker 1: That's no doubt you have also, and I've never even
Speaker 1: seen anybody try to light up a cigarette on a zoom.
Speaker 1: You understand me, you in your own house. It's so
Speaker 1: outside of the of the reality. I used to tell
Speaker 1: my grandkids, you know how we have special ash trays
Speaker 1: for the holidays and all this, and they're laughing. They
Speaker 1: don't even know what ash tray is. So how do
Speaker 1: we move from me at eight years old running to
Speaker 1: the store getting cigarettes to the point now where if
Speaker 1: someone lit up a cigarette in a room, I think
Speaker 1: the peer pressure, but put the cigarette out, And if
Speaker 1: I didn't do it, we start psychoanalyzing them, and they
Speaker 1: did someone dyeing the family? What's wrong with you? You
Speaker 1: have lit up a cigarette? How did that happen? How
Speaker 1: did we see people? We know what happened, And there
Speaker 1: was a paradigm shift so much so, I mean, here
Speaker 1: I am. I grew up with when there was a
Speaker 1: smoking section of airplanes, which is insane, and and I
Speaker 1: remember how you know, all of a sudden there was
Speaker 1: a switch, and what happened was a preponderance of evidence.
Speaker 1: In other words, there was so much evidence that it
Speaker 1: forced the paradigm shift. And you see racism, anti blackness,
Speaker 1: all these things we're seeing there is a preponderance of
Speaker 1: evidence and different than any other time in history. You
Speaker 1: can push your button and see it in lifetime. I'm
Speaker 1: not waiting for ABC or NBC or somebody else to
Speaker 1: tell me. I can see it in real time. And
Speaker 1: because of that is causing too much cognitive dissonance, too
Speaker 1: much dissonance, and the human being that goes. I can't
Speaker 1: I know this. I can't I know it, And I've
Speaker 1: got to make a determination. I said, I said this
Speaker 1: a while ago, that they're gonna look back at this
Speaker 1: time and they're gonna look at you and I and
Speaker 1: everyone else, and they're gonna say, what side of history
Speaker 1: where you want? Because history is happening right now, History
Speaker 1: is being made. But what side of history are you on?
Speaker 1: You know? And like I said, with black people, it's
Speaker 1: it's always amazing to me how it is people always
Speaker 1: tell black folks to get over it. Oy tell black
Speaker 1: people get over it. Oh get over I dare you
Speaker 1: to tell someone Jewish to get over their Holocaust. I
Speaker 1: dare you to do it. I dare you. And what
Speaker 1: I know about the Jewish community, having worked with the
Speaker 1: Jewish community for many, many years, is they don't care
Speaker 1: what you think. Okay, First of all, they honor their
Speaker 1: holocausts how much so that they want their children to
Speaker 1: know who paid for them. It's just so interesting. And
Speaker 1: we're looking at people long try hundreds of years of
Speaker 1: being tortured, beaten, mutilated, raped, sold hundreds of years, and
Speaker 1: right now the world is being asked to to look
Speaker 1: at its own humanity, to look at our intrinsic oneness
Speaker 1: as as a people on the planet the little Blue marble.
Speaker 1: You know, I look at post traumatic and what I
Speaker 1: understood and what I see and what I also know
Speaker 1: clinically it's post traumatic requires social justice. This can't be
Speaker 1: fixed because we all understand our intrinsic worth and nobility
Speaker 1: as human beings. That's great, but you're still hitting me.
Speaker 1: You're still beating me. You know, I not only want
Speaker 1: you to heal from things and to to reevaluate your
Speaker 1: behavior and your decisions. I want you to do that.
Speaker 1: I certainly want you to do that, but I also
Speaker 1: certainly want to stop the processes from ever happening that
Speaker 1: make you have to begin to deal with the injuries.
Speaker 1: I want to prevent the injury. And perhaps that's repert
Speaker 1: rations on a lot of levels. Perhaps that, but most
Speaker 1: certainly involves structural and institutional change and sometimes of total reordering,
Speaker 1: because you know, some things you can't fix. People have
Speaker 1: talked to me about policing, of course, and my airbas
Speaker 1: for these is actually violenced. And so I looked, I've
Speaker 1: looked a lot at violence, and they'll go with you, Joy,
Speaker 1: what do we do to to fix the police? Fix
Speaker 1: the policing as policing isn't broken, it's doing exactly what
Speaker 1: it was designed to do. Every system is designed to
Speaker 1: get the results that against what we have to understand.
Speaker 1: If we understand slave patrols, and we understand the history
Speaker 1: of policing, you want your police officer you're biased. Okay,
Speaker 1: you don't get to be in communities of color. You
Speaker 1: can't be in communities are people you might harm. Except
Speaker 1: for what happened at the Capitol. When that stuff came
Speaker 1: down at the Capitol. You know those senators, all those folks,
Speaker 1: they started vetting the National Guards, they started vetting them.
Speaker 1: They said, wait, wait, we get ready have inauguration, all
Speaker 1: we need to check to see if they may be
Speaker 1: one of them. And they eliminated at least twelve of them.
Speaker 1: Why don't we vetting. Police officers are coming to our community.
Speaker 1: See they they knew the vet to protect themselves. And
Speaker 1: what I think about a lot. You know that you
Speaker 1: heard about the preschool and if you go online, it
Speaker 1: went viral. Right now, it hit me a lot of
Speaker 1: different ways, right, and all this stuff is really you know,
Speaker 1: some of it's very triggering. But for me, I was
Speaker 1: just I was so bad. Everybody knows that that's that's
Speaker 1: Dr Joyce thing right now. Everybody needs to be vetted
Speaker 1: before you put them in front of our children. So
Speaker 1: what happened was it's a pre school, and in the
Speaker 1: preschool they have these cameras and so all parents can,
Speaker 1: you know, look at what their little kids are doing.
Speaker 1: And a black parent checked in to see what was
Speaker 1: going on and captured a picture of every Now these
Speaker 1: are little bit of kids three or four years yearls, right,
Speaker 1: every single white child had to play the food in
Speaker 1: front of and not one Black child had to play
Speaker 1: the food in front of them. Not one. And so
Speaker 1: now again here's here's the thing. Here's what shows up
Speaker 1: for me as a as a you know, I taught
Speaker 1: a human development for a number of years at the university,
Speaker 1: and I'm going so the children are learning something. They're innocent,
Speaker 1: these children, the white children, the black children, they're innocent
Speaker 1: little children, but they're learning something. The white children are
Speaker 1: at the very least learning. We're special and they're learning,
Speaker 1: and we're certainly more special than you. And then the
Speaker 1: black children what gets internalized. They thought, oh god, we
Speaker 1: must have done something wrong. We're bad. That's what happens
Speaker 1: at that age. They begin to try to find between
Speaker 1: their ears a reason for it, and they don't tell
Speaker 1: their parents, they don't tell anyone because they've they've internalized
Speaker 1: I have done something wrong. And that's what angered me
Speaker 1: the most. It's shame, yes, it's shame. Yes. Renee Brown
Speaker 1: tells his great story, UM the shame. Researcher Brene who
Speaker 1: I always make this podcast, tells his great story about
Speaker 1: the difference between shame and humiliation. Um. This happened in
Speaker 1: her research where a teacher skipping back papers and says,
Speaker 1: I happened paper here without a name? Who didn't get
Speaker 1: a paper? And then Chrissie didn't get a paper, And
Speaker 1: so the teacher goes on to say, Chrissy, you're stupid.
Speaker 1: I'll give you a name. S t U p I
Speaker 1: d And now if the child internalizes this as embarrassment
Speaker 1: or humiliation, they'll go home and they'll tell their parents
Speaker 1: this horrible thing happened to me. This teacher called me stupid.
Speaker 1: But if the child internalizes it a shame, they don't
Speaker 1: say anything to the parent because there's no news there.
Speaker 1: The teacher called me stupid, I am stupid. And so
Speaker 1: the way the ways in which we internalized shame made
Speaker 1: me to think about the question that you alluded to,
Speaker 1: you know, a little while back, of like the ways
Speaker 1: in which we internalize these things as black folks, right,
Speaker 1: and the ways in which that the psychic trauma of slavery,
Speaker 1: of white supremacy affects us in terms of shame. And
Speaker 1: so that piece of shame that it's very much also
Speaker 1: linked to trauma, has to be addressed in us if
Speaker 1: we want to not perpetuate these kinds of adaptive behaviors
Speaker 1: that we been unconsciously passing down. Absolutely absolutely, you know,
Speaker 1: I had many years ago, I was in New York
Speaker 1: lecturing and I received a phone call from my oldest son.
Speaker 1: And my oldest son has a taxic cerebral palsy, very
Speaker 1: mild case, but you know, it's affected his whole life.
Speaker 1: And he's calling me and he's really really really frustrated,
Speaker 1: and he's and he's going, Mom, Mom, the police. He
Speaker 1: was talking about his brother, not his brother. Um had
Speaker 1: had was trying to meet him downtown Portland's Lord help
Speaker 1: him downtown Portland's to give them give him his ID
Speaker 1: which he had left at his house. And my younger
Speaker 1: son at the time was nineteen and and so my
Speaker 1: son sees his brother across the street, steps off the
Speaker 1: curb about maybe twelve inches from the crosswalk, so you know,
Speaker 1: like just right outside the cross walk, and he hears
Speaker 1: a little siren and a police turns the car, so
Speaker 1: he steps back on the curb. He doesn't continue to
Speaker 1: he steps back, and the police officer gets out of
Speaker 1: the car and says, improper use of cross wall. And
Speaker 1: he says, but I didn't, I didn't cross what's your name? Right?
Speaker 1: So it starts drilling my son. Soon two or three
Speaker 1: more police cars come. Now, remember he stepped off and
Speaker 1: stepped on, not our three police cars of a cross wall.
Speaker 1: That is what it was. He told, improper use a
Speaker 1: cross wall. Meanwhile, there's a couple, a white couple with
Speaker 1: a stroller and a baby that just crossed the street
Speaker 1: right in the middle street, and and my son looks
Speaker 1: at the police officer goes, what what in The police
Speaker 1: officer goes, police don't please, don't cross there. Oh sorry,
Speaker 1: and they continue across and keep going. Now, remember I'm
Speaker 1: three thousand miles away. Dr Joy's three thousand miles away, right, So, uh,
Speaker 1: what happens is I know my my son is agitated.
Speaker 1: I can only imagine the humiliation he's feeling. So I
Speaker 1: say to my son, tell the police officer, uh, that
Speaker 1: I'd like to speak with him. And I heard the
Speaker 1: police officer say, well, I don't. I don't have time
Speaker 1: to do. I said, tell him, my name is Dr Jeu,
Speaker 1: he grew, I'm a professor porter sat University. So all
Speaker 1: of a sudden he's got the phone. Well, um, uh,
Speaker 1: you know your son was getting loud and making it
Speaker 1: you know. He says, Well, what we'll do is we'll
Speaker 1: let him go with a warning. Now, at this point,
Speaker 1: my son is handcuffed in the back seat of the car. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: you got all the people you know, circling around him,
Speaker 1: you know, the bad, evil, violent whatever. So the police
Speaker 1: take the handcuffs off of him, at which point he
Speaker 1: puts his hand in his pocket. All the guns are drawn.
Speaker 1: Now you put him in there, so you know he
Speaker 1: didn't have a gun, right, he reached in his pocket
Speaker 1: to give his brother his I d that's why they
Speaker 1: were there, at which point I start talking to him
Speaker 1: and I say, listen, you don't have to say anything.
Speaker 1: You don't have say anything. Just listen to my voice
Speaker 1: and start walking. You and your brother start walking and
Speaker 1: tell me when you're two blocks away. So he's walking
Speaker 1: and I'm saying, listen, son, I'm telling him all the
Speaker 1: things that I know that I could say. And after
Speaker 1: two blocks he burst into tears and he says that
Speaker 1: they're gonna kill me. Mom, They're gonna kill me. It
Speaker 1: doesn't matter that you raised me. Well, it doesn't matter
Speaker 1: that I'm a good person, Mom, it doesn't matter. They're
Speaker 1: gonna kill me. And I remember that moment and I thought,
Speaker 1: how dare you, son? How dare you? I said, there
Speaker 1: were people that had a hundred years of slavery behind them,
Speaker 1: and they were gonna look at two hundred years in
Speaker 1: front of him. That's what they had to do with.
Speaker 1: How dare you? Son? Say? Now at this point, you
Speaker 1: cannot give up, not now, And he sucked up his tears.
Speaker 1: He says, I'm sorry, Mom, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I
Speaker 1: got it. I'm okay, I'm okay. And I cried for
Speaker 1: two hours after that talk. I cried for two hours
Speaker 1: because I'm I'm listening to the weight of what my
Speaker 1: son is ring. And I had to have the presence
Speaker 1: of mind to tell him about the shoulders he was
Speaker 1: standing on. I had to tell him about those who
Speaker 1: paid for him, and that we didn't go through all
Speaker 1: this for you to get here and say what you
Speaker 1: can't do. But I was shattered. You know, we gotta
Speaker 1: walk through the world in this skin. We've got to
Speaker 1: help our boys survive in this skin. We've got to
Speaker 1: help our girls survive in this skin. And the last
Speaker 1: thing they need it's someone that looks like them, you know,
Speaker 1: it looks just like them, that begins to berate them
Speaker 1: or or humiliate them, or shame them because of their blackness. Um, Jesus,
Speaker 1: that story is still heroin. Can I ask you your
Speaker 1: thoughts on because I you know, we were talking about
Speaker 1: defunding the police, reallocating resources to some people want to
Speaker 1: abolish the police, there's someone who's the police officers really
Speaker 1: close to me right now, who I understand it's an amazing, sweet,
Speaker 1: loving human being. People have police officers in their lives
Speaker 1: who are amazing human beings. And then it happened to
Speaker 1: your son, right and what happened to George Floyd happened
Speaker 1: to him and Brianna Taylor and etcetera, etcetera. And there's
Speaker 1: the history of that system and every political realities of
Speaker 1: that system right now, what would you say in the
Speaker 1: context of all of that. Okay, So again, I believe
Speaker 1: that certain things are poison at the root, and when
Speaker 1: we look at root cause analysis, then we have to
Speaker 1: recognize that the healing or the change has to happen
Speaker 1: at the root. Think about it this way. Every major
Speaker 1: institution in America, every major institution in America has its
Speaker 1: at its root, white supremacy. I don't care if you
Speaker 1: want to be a doctor, I don't care if you
Speaker 1: want to be an architect, I don't care what you
Speaker 1: want to be. At its root, it's poison. Right. So
Speaker 1: you have institutions, like you have educational institutions that are
Speaker 1: literally they're really late in the game. Actually, each one
Speaker 1: of them had their way of perpetuating it. But we
Speaker 1: have always had to coexist in this reality. Right, these
Speaker 1: systems are designed this way. For example, you look at
Speaker 1: all the Karen's right, I mean, why why do you
Speaker 1: get to falsely accused someone of something that could cost
Speaker 1: in their lives and then you get to walk away
Speaker 1: straight up live. We got it on on tape that
Speaker 1: you're lying. Why do you not get Actually, I know
Speaker 1: in California at least they put it out there it's
Speaker 1: called the Karen Act. Where they are going it is,
Speaker 1: I'm telling the truth. It's an acronym the Karen Act.
Speaker 1: I'm not a certain certain word is in terms of
Speaker 1: having made it through, but it certainly was was something
Speaker 1: that put forth because I'm going, why is there absolutely
Speaker 1: no accountability? My problem with all of this is that
Speaker 1: there's no accountability. Like I said, you can deal with
Speaker 1: the police and you can go so far, and then
Speaker 1: you got the lobbyists, then you've got the police union
Speaker 1: and the awards and all those folks, and ultimately it
Speaker 1: all goes to the judge that could say, yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna dismiss this. Are you following me? So? So what
Speaker 1: what I what I'm recognizing is when people start talking
Speaker 1: about a fix, we're talking about a total transformation that
Speaker 1: has to happen. And in some institutions that's something that's
Speaker 1: easier to do because you have a board of directors
Speaker 1: or you have certain people, and there's diverse voices there,
Speaker 1: and there's power in those diverse voices. That's the crucial piece,
Speaker 1: because I don't care about any of this if there's
Speaker 1: no teeth in it. That's what I'm saying. I need
Speaker 1: you to stop hurting us on every single one of
Speaker 1: those levels. I need to take that power out of
Speaker 1: your hands, because we're just one crazy political person, uh director,
Speaker 1: you know whoever the person is in power away from
Speaker 1: getting sent back twenty years. Right, everything we've built, it's undone.
Speaker 1: That can happen at the Supreme Court any minute now.
Speaker 1: And there's there's a lot of work that it's probably
Speaker 1: going to be undone at the Supreme Court level. And
Speaker 1: then we're seeing it happened in state houses where conservatives
Speaker 1: hold most of the governorship and most of the state legislatures.
Speaker 1: This is a good time to take a little break.
Speaker 1: A lot more is coming now. Okay, Okay, we're back.
Speaker 1: Let's keep the conversation going. What it feels like right
Speaker 1: now is that there is I would say, post Briana Taylor,
Speaker 1: George Floyd in Awakening, that a lot of Americans have
Speaker 1: had of all races writing. We're having these conversations differently,
Speaker 1: and there's different kinds of pushes around on racial equity.
Speaker 1: But what I'm saying is the backlash is ferocious, and
Speaker 1: what was once a dog whistle is now a bark,
Speaker 1: and it is like the blatant white supremacy that is
Speaker 1: just out there now is harrowing, and it's it's a
Speaker 1: it's gagging. It's a gag, girl, it's a lot. I'm like, whoa,
Speaker 1: this is just straight up Nazis that's being fed on
Speaker 1: like national television every night. So we're at this like
Speaker 1: it's like white supremacist last stand or something. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I hope, I hope it's the last stand. But what
Speaker 1: what is what needs to happen right now is like
Speaker 1: it's the big structural change that I'm not convinced is
Speaker 1: going to happen. And so what I'm buoyed by is
Speaker 1: our history as black folks. Right We've we've been through
Speaker 1: a lot, and we found a way to be resilient
Speaker 1: and be amazing and awesome, but it is also really
Speaker 1: scary because you know, inability to pass a minimum wage
Speaker 1: or a pro act or an equality act so that
Speaker 1: we don't go back there in lies. I keep telling
Speaker 1: people that you have to recognize that there is a
Speaker 1: last my father would say, the last gasp of a
Speaker 1: dying dog. There is change in the wind. And we
Speaker 1: have numbers. It's a it's a matter of numbers and time.
Speaker 1: After a while, like I said, the inevitability is going
Speaker 1: to happen. We are going to come to this. Now.
Speaker 1: There are certain people in America that would rather burn
Speaker 1: into the ground than share it with you. Okay, let's
Speaker 1: be clear. They'd rather take it down. No one will
Speaker 1: have it. And there's a fair number of those. And
Speaker 1: we've heard people say, well, you know the police, you
Speaker 1: know a few bad apples. It's not bad apples. It's
Speaker 1: a bad orchard, right, And we have to recognize that
Speaker 1: it's been grown that way. And if we are to
Speaker 1: to move beyond this, we're talking about a change in
Speaker 1: the power. Now, how much do you think it's gonna
Speaker 1: take for folks to exchange that the hand of power?
Speaker 1: Because that's what we're talking about here at the end
Speaker 1: of the day. Money power, greed, That's how we got here.
Speaker 1: And so you have a lane here, right, this is
Speaker 1: your lane. Do do what you can do. Dr Joy
Speaker 1: gonna do what she can do in her lane. And
Speaker 1: I believe that all of us have that to do.
Speaker 1: When I start looking act at all of our leaders,
Speaker 1: all of those who came before us, I mean, I
Speaker 1: keep thinking about the crazy stuff I've heard. You know,
Speaker 1: my guidance counselor telling me I was in college material
Speaker 1: with four degrees, told me I was told me I
Speaker 1: got four degrees. I tell everybody. The only thing that
Speaker 1: angers me is that she didn't live long enough for
Speaker 1: me to go back and blow her hair back, you know.
Speaker 1: But it was just the whole idea that my family,
Speaker 1: you know, even though my parents didn't go to college,
Speaker 1: they knew we were gonna go to college. But how
Speaker 1: about that family that didn't. How many people did this
Speaker 1: woman destroy? How many people did she harm? How much
Speaker 1: shame did she produce? There was a yelled child study
Speaker 1: program actually found a bias and like a hundred and
Speaker 1: thirty five teachers. Right, so now we have evidence hundred
Speaker 1: thirty five and and I'm not saying all those white teachers, right,
Speaker 1: so you have the hunder thirty five teachers, they find
Speaker 1: this bias. Now every black person, Latin next people. We
Speaker 1: all sent our kids into the schools and we just
Speaker 1: hope you're not gonna hurt him. We're gonna, we hope
Speaker 1: because we remember what happened was but we just hope. Well,
Speaker 1: here's where I'm different. This is my lane, right, I
Speaker 1: got skin in the game. I got grandkids in schools.
Speaker 1: My family tends to wrap themselves around the schools our
Speaker 1: kids are in and show up volunteer. I'll train any
Speaker 1: warm body you put in front of me. But here's
Speaker 1: what I'm gonna do. When I go in and say, Okay,
Speaker 1: Miss Wilson, I understand that you're gonna be working with
Speaker 1: my grandson here. I want to know what you're gonna
Speaker 1: do to mitigate any potential harm to him as a
Speaker 1: result of intrinsic bias. Now. Ms Wilson may go, I
Speaker 1: don't think I understand what you mean. I said, well,
Speaker 1: here's the data, Okay I want to give I wanna
Speaker 1: give it to you. I'm gonna give you. Here's the research.
Speaker 1: Here is the current data. Al Right, great, now you
Speaker 1: got that, and that's the piece. That is the piece
Speaker 1: people really are pushing back against implicit bias, right, some
Speaker 1: people who want to be in denial about white supremacy.
Speaker 1: And what I really want to get through to people
Speaker 1: is that you do not have to be a white
Speaker 1: person to internalize anti black bias. You can be a
Speaker 1: back person internalizing anti black bias and perpetuating that onto
Speaker 1: other black people. Black folks are doing it all the time,
Speaker 1: and if black folks can do it to ourselves and
Speaker 1: each other, it is certainly possible. It's not plausible that
Speaker 1: white folks are doing as well. So we have to
Speaker 1: be willing to do that self interrogation and people. It's
Speaker 1: just I wish people would wish we could get past
Speaker 1: folks being so upset being called a racist, because it's
Speaker 1: like that's not calling someone racist is not really even
Speaker 1: useful at this point, It's like, how have I entered
Speaker 1: the question? Really? It's like, Okay, I have internalized this.
Speaker 1: How can I be accountable for the racism that I
Speaker 1: have now perpetuated? Because we all are racist, We've all
Speaker 1: internalized and that needs to become the conversation instead of this.
Speaker 1: I'm not racist. I'm not. It's just it's not useful
Speaker 1: and it's not true, and it's like we're not getting
Speaker 1: anywhere exactly. I'm sorry, I just mbetta rant. I'm totally
Speaker 1: with you. Some of the worst experiences I've had in
Speaker 1: my school career and growing up we're black teachers. Black
Speaker 1: teachers have said things to me that stung me to
Speaker 1: my soul. And part of the reason why it stung
Speaker 1: me so is because I expected something different from them.
Speaker 1: And and again in this study, it wasn't all white teachers,
Speaker 1: you know, it was a combination of teachers. So but
Speaker 1: my point is, I don't care who it is. If
Speaker 1: if it turns out you have biased, then you can
Speaker 1: get your training and people can help you, and you
Speaker 1: could do all that, but you don't get to go
Speaker 1: in front of the kids. And and one last one
Speaker 1: last thing I would say, in terms of interrupting some
Speaker 1: of this, we've we've often normalized stress. And that's something
Speaker 1: that I want to say to people that that's taking
Speaker 1: away years of our lives, that level of stress that
Speaker 1: we carry, that we've normalized, and to find those spaces
Speaker 1: in the importance of touch and the importance of finding
Speaker 1: spaces in our lives to exhale and and to feel
Speaker 1: safe and warm and loved. We've got to be deliberate
Speaker 1: about that, especially right now, so much negative stuff coming
Speaker 1: at us, so many things that we're seeing in you know,
Speaker 1: on the on the television and you know, YouTube and
Speaker 1: everything else. We've got to really be intentional about healing
Speaker 1: and about feeling good and and and recognizing this beauty
Speaker 1: in the world. You know, my grandson when he was little,
Speaker 1: it was I think it was tray Bon that was killed.
Speaker 1: I can't remember who was at the time, but I was.
Speaker 1: I was having a moment and during the time that
Speaker 1: I'm really upset, and I'm talking about the same thing
Speaker 1: we're talking about now, right, keeps coming up and I
Speaker 1: get a little he sends me a text and in
Speaker 1: the text he says, isn't this a pretty lizard? Ema?
Speaker 1: They call me Ema, right, and it's a fluorescent green lizard.
Speaker 1: And it stops me by tracks and I'm like, because
Speaker 1: you see, he sees beauty in the world and I
Speaker 1: need him, and so I had to stop and I said,
Speaker 1: you know what, that is a really pretty lizard. And
Speaker 1: we can't forget those moments you know, every and there's
Speaker 1: so much beauty, so many incredible things Black people are
Speaker 1: doing all over the world is definitely here. Miraculous things,
Speaker 1: amazing things, and every discipline. Let's showcase that. Let's talk
Speaker 1: about the good so that we don't get so weight down.
Speaker 1: You know, we have to give ourselves spaces to be
Speaker 1: well and to be loved and give love. And what
Speaker 1: my daughter would say to beam loved, to be somebody
Speaker 1: I love that I love to beam love. That is
Speaker 1: what I'm I try to be all about. This is
Speaker 1: a perfect segue into the way I like to end
Speaker 1: every podcast with the question what else is true? And
Speaker 1: it's taken from my own therapy, from the community resiliency
Speaker 1: model and the shift and stay right that if I'm
Speaker 1: stressed out or if I'm feeling anxiety and some part
Speaker 1: of my body, um, some part of my body is
Speaker 1: mutual or positive, and can I focus on that thing
Speaker 1: that you think that's mutual or positive? That beautiful? You know, lizard,
Speaker 1: So dr joy for you today? What else it is true?
Speaker 1: What helps you get? Oh gosh, I have such optimism
Speaker 1: and such joy associated with what I see around me.
Speaker 1: That's beautiful. I see so many beautiful people. I was
Speaker 1: so excited to be here with you. Right. This is
Speaker 1: an opportunity to connect with another person that is in
Speaker 1: their lane, that is beaming love and joy and light.
Speaker 1: And that's what else is going on. And that's what
Speaker 1: I'm gonna try and do. That's my name. My name
Speaker 1: is Joy. I'm gonna try to be Joy. I love it.
Speaker 1: I love it and love it where that's so beautiful?
Speaker 1: Thank you, Dr Joy. Where can folks find you? Are
Speaker 1: you on social media or joy brow dot com, Joy
Speaker 1: Group publications. I'm on Twitter, I'm on Facebook, you know
Speaker 1: after join the group. So um, but thank you so much.
Speaker 1: I'm so excited. This is so wonderful. I'm so glad
Speaker 1: to know that you're doing this. Thank you and just
Speaker 1: keep doing it. Thank you. Thank you for the work,
Speaker 1: thank you for the continued work. Thank you for beaming
Speaker 1: love today. Post traumatic slave syndrome a set of adaptive
Speaker 1: behaviors that we've unconsciously passed down. I love that she
Speaker 1: sort of organically leaned into the resilience of the history
Speaker 1: of black people in America, that like, through all of
Speaker 1: this trauma, right, all this intergenerational trauma that continues, that
Speaker 1: we found beauty that we found joy. She She says
Speaker 1: in her book that after emancipation, was their therapy was there,
Speaker 1: like you know from you know, formally enslaved people, Did
Speaker 1: they have sessions to like heal all these centuries long traumas. No,
Speaker 1: that didn't happen. But we have the information now we
Speaker 1: can do the healing work. Now we can use the
Speaker 1: beauty around us to fortify us, to you know, reset
Speaker 1: our nervous systems and not live in this way that
Speaker 1: it's constantly normalized stress, normalized trauma, normalized maladaption. We can
Speaker 1: interrupt those patterns. She does brilliant research that just lays
Speaker 1: out the trauma of it. Right. We have to know,
Speaker 1: we have just own this history so that we can
Speaker 1: move past it. We can no longer be in denial
Speaker 1: about the history of this country. And then we have
Speaker 1: to go through the pain of acknowledging that truth, and
Speaker 1: it's often really uncomfortable, and then we can come up
Speaker 1: on the other side better, stronger, and we got some
Speaker 1: work to do, but we can do it with joy.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to the Laverne Cox Show. Please rate, review,
Speaker 1: subscribe and share with everyone you know. Join me next
Speaker 1: week for my conversation with California Surgeon General Dr Nadine VERG.
Speaker 1: Harris about ACES adverse childhood experiences, how they affect our health,
Speaker 1: and how we can overcome them. You can find me
Speaker 1: on Instagram and Twitter at Laverne Cox and on Facebook
Speaker 1: at Laverne Cox for Real. Until next time, stay in
Speaker 1: the love. The Laverne Cox Show is a production of
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