Speaker 1: Good morning, Keeps, and welcome to woke F Daily with
Speaker 1: Meet your Girl Daniel Moody recording from the Home Bunker. Folks,
Speaker 1: I'm very excited to introduce this guest to you today
Speaker 1: who is making their first time appearance on WOKF, Esa McCauley,
Speaker 1: who is a New York Times contributing opinion writer and
Speaker 1: the author of a new book out today entitled How
Speaker 1: Far to the Promised Land? One Black Family Story of
Speaker 1: hope and survival in the American South. Esa McCauley is extraordinary,
Speaker 1: and you will hear that as we get into the
Speaker 1: conversation around his book, but around what it means to
Speaker 1: be black, to be a theologian, to write a story
Speaker 1: about the narrative of your family, but a lot, hundreds
Speaker 1: of thousands, if not millions, of Black families whose experiences
Speaker 1: mirror your own. At a time and in a society
Speaker 1: that doesn't want to see us, that doesn't want to
Speaker 1: hear us, that wants our capitulation to white supremacy and
Speaker 1: our pended knee to their power. It is an extraordinary time, folks,
Speaker 1: that we are living in where I got to say,
Speaker 1: you know, I know that in dark times, a lot
Speaker 1: of art is created, a lot of literature is created,
Speaker 1: and there are cracks of light that break through. There
Speaker 1: are just some days though, that as a black queer
Speaker 1: woman in America, that some days are just too much,
Speaker 1: you know, like they're just it's just too much. It's
Speaker 1: like every headline everywhere you look, is just something to
Speaker 1: erase the scraps of rights and equality and freedom that
Speaker 1: you've gained, that your ancestors gained, and to really understand
Speaker 1: and put it into perspective. Folks, it was four hundred
Speaker 1: plus years of enslaved brutality terrorism that was state sanctioned,
Speaker 1: country sanctioned, president after president after president, and even after
Speaker 1: the practice, the abhorrent, disgusting practice of slavery was condemned,
Speaker 1: there is still past. Jim Crow, after one hundred years
Speaker 1: of again state sanctioned terrorism, thievery of work of labor,
Speaker 1: rite in justice, and indignities that black people experience at
Speaker 1: the hands of white people in this country, still in
Speaker 1: the twenty first century, fighting to have their acts of
Speaker 1: violence against us be on record, be known. Ask yourself
Speaker 1: that if white people are so goddamn proud and so
Speaker 1: goddamn exceptional, then why are they so fucking afraid of
Speaker 1: the truth. They want to talk about everyone who wants
Speaker 1: to highlight and make people aware of the terrorism, the brutality.
Speaker 1: You're talking about people that lynched pregnant women and cut
Speaker 1: babies out of their stomachs. You want to talk about
Speaker 1: people that blew up children, that beat them that, let
Speaker 1: me tell you something, that sent them to alligators as bait.
Speaker 1: There are mass gravesites all over this country, soil soaked
Speaker 1: with the blood and bones of Black people, enslaved and
Speaker 1: free children, women and men. So this story that Isa
Speaker 1: McCauley tells in his new book is a story that
Speaker 1: needs to be told of so much so I hope
Speaker 1: that you will click the link in the bio of
Speaker 1: today's episode and buy his book for yourself, for your family,
Speaker 1: for your friends. It is entitled How Far to the
Speaker 1: Promised Land by Esau McCauley. My conversation with him is
Speaker 1: coming up next, folks. I am so excited to welcome
Speaker 1: to okaf Daily for the very first time, doctor Esa McCauley,
Speaker 1: who is the author of the new book How Far
Speaker 1: to the Promised Land, One Family, One Black Family, story
Speaker 1: of hope and survival in the American South He is
Speaker 1: a contributing opinion writer at The New York Times and
Speaker 1: a theologian in residence in Chicago. I want to start
Speaker 1: off with what I just said before we started recording,
Speaker 1: which is that I read one of your pieces and
Speaker 1: you have any and I will say that your ability
Speaker 1: to weave a story is absolutely beautiful, Like I just
Speaker 1: arrive in the place that you're describing. And as somebody
Speaker 1: who you know reads a lot of opinions, writes a
Speaker 1: lot of a lot of my own opinion, it is
Speaker 1: never lost on me when a piece can bring me
Speaker 1: to tears at a time when I feel like I
Speaker 1: am almost dried out from tears. So my first question
Speaker 1: for you is as a theologian in residence, as someone
Speaker 1: who is writing and is putting out a book at
Speaker 1: a time when books are being banned, a book on racism,
Speaker 1: a book on being black, a book on the black
Speaker 1: family that is provoking questions and thought, What is it
Speaker 1: like to be an author, a theologian, a Christian during
Speaker 1: this time?
Speaker 2: I would say it's very hard and one of the
Speaker 2: things that I had devoted myself to do it even
Speaker 2: if it cost me, Like readers or viewers or cliques
Speaker 2: is to say, with all of the noise that's going
Speaker 2: on around, I want to tell distinctively black stories rooted
Speaker 2: in my community and my experience, and tell stories that
Speaker 2: don't edit out the things that are important to me.
Speaker 2: And things that important to me are my faith and
Speaker 2: being black and actually being Southern. I remember when I
Speaker 2: first got to college and I would have these teachers
Speaker 2: and they would tell me about They would use analogies,
Speaker 2: but the analogies I never got there. They would talk
Speaker 2: about what's that British show Monty Python or whatever, or
Speaker 2: they talk about Seinfelder France. No shade to those shows,
Speaker 2: But growing up I wasn't watching France in China, but
Speaker 2: I felt in Monty Python. And so I always felt
Speaker 2: like my culture and our stories and our narratives weren't
Speaker 2: worthy of being the center of attention. And I said
Speaker 2: to myself when I began writing, at first, I tried
Speaker 2: to tell stories that everybody would identify with whether you
Speaker 2: were black or you're white.
Speaker 3: Then everybody would get it.
Speaker 2: And I realized that the best way to tell the
Speaker 2: universal story to tell the true story from the place
Speaker 2: that you know. And I can't describe the only thing
Speaker 2: I can say this is I can't describe any of
Speaker 2: the place like I can describe the Black South. I know,
Speaker 2: I know what like what the food tastes like, I
Speaker 2: know what like the neighborhood feels like. I know the
Speaker 2: rhythms of the jokes and all of those things. And
Speaker 2: so for me, I felt like, in this moment when
Speaker 2: they're erasing our stories, it was crucial for me to
Speaker 2: tell our story as a way of saying it's with
Speaker 2: us as the protagonist. You know what I mean by
Speaker 2: that is that it's easy, and this is no shade
Speaker 2: how other people do their writing, because all of it's necessary.
Speaker 2: It's easy to tell the story of black response is
Speaker 2: to whatever's happening to us. But to put this in
Speaker 2: the center of the narrative over and over again is
Speaker 2: something I strived to.
Speaker 3: Do as a writer.
Speaker 1: I love the idea of first as a writer right
Speaker 1: trying to recreate other people's stories. I think I can remember,
Speaker 1: you know, listening to one of Oprah Winfrey's many interviews
Speaker 1: where she said that when she got in front of
Speaker 1: a camera, she tried to be Barbara Walters. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: that's what she that's what she knew. She's like, I'm
Speaker 1: just gonna try and be her, and then through course
Speaker 1: of time realife there is already a Barbara Walter. Then
Speaker 1: I can't be that. I can't be her, and I
Speaker 1: can't be her. And I think that for black writers,
Speaker 1: particularly those who find themselves inside of legacy newsrooms and places,
Speaker 1: are often told that by telling our stories or making
Speaker 1: ourselves the protagonist, then we are and the ability to
Speaker 1: be neutral. Yeah, so I want to yeah, so please please,
Speaker 1: I think.
Speaker 3: I think.
Speaker 2: I remember when I first got the job and I
Speaker 2: was writing these opinion pieces, and I said, I need
Speaker 2: to write these big, huge, universal stories with these grand,
Speaker 2: sweeping themes. And then I realized, actually, the most important
Speaker 2: stories are the small stories. And so whenever something happens nationally,
Speaker 2: it's not that I put myself at the center of
Speaker 2: the narrative. That's not what it's about. It's I try
Speaker 2: to provide a way in that it's actually authentic. So
Speaker 2: when all Made Aubrary was murdered while he was out
Speaker 2: on a run, I thought about what it was like
Speaker 2: to run as a black man in a white neighborhood.
Speaker 2: When when the children were murdered in at the Covenant
Speaker 2: School in Nashville, I thought about, like what it would
Speaker 2: be like as a parent to have to pick out
Speaker 2: funeral clothes for your children. And because I thought about,
Speaker 2: you know, one of the things you do with children
Speaker 2: when you have them is you get them dressed in
Speaker 2: the morning, and like you think about them. And there's
Speaker 2: an a ridiculous part at least we go to church
Speaker 2: on Sunday, when you have like a little person in
Speaker 2: a suit, it's like it doesn't match right. It's like
Speaker 2: they're too little, they shouldn't be in those outfits. And
Speaker 2: so what I was, what I was trying, what I've
Speaker 2: tried to do, is tell the truest stories I know
Speaker 2: how to tell. And I wanted, I wanted so much
Speaker 2: for a black person who who opens one of my
Speaker 2: articles and clicks through them to see themselves and to
Speaker 2: imagine themselves being represented. I'm not all black people, and
Speaker 2: I'm a particular black person I think is recognizable to
Speaker 2: people who grew up like I did.
Speaker 1: I want to talk about your book How Far to
Speaker 1: the Promised Land and its title first, and as a
Speaker 1: person who this is me, as a person who has
Speaker 1: struggled with organized religion. Yeah, I am a black queer woman,
Speaker 1: child of immigrants, and I have struggled with organized religion
Speaker 1: for all the ways that it has showcase nos in
Speaker 1: people's lives right and because of those no's, people have
Speaker 1: in fact minimized their lives or ended their lives. So
Speaker 1: when you say how far to when you talk about
Speaker 1: the promised land, we know in biblical terms what the
Speaker 1: promised land is, but I'm also wondering, in our daily lives,
Speaker 1: in regular life, is there a promise land that we're
Speaker 1: actually reaching and seeking for.
Speaker 2: Interesting because it's a religious book, and well there's religious
Speaker 2: elements in the book, but the term promised land here
Speaker 2: doesn't actually refer to heaven or like the hereafter the origin,
Speaker 2: the kind of the beginning event that kind of starts
Speaker 2: it starts the book is. My father dies in twenty
Speaker 2: seventeen in a single car accident. He was a truck
Speaker 2: driver in California. We grew up in the South, and
Speaker 2: he was far from everybody that he knew and he loved.
Speaker 3: And when he was a part of.
Speaker 2: Our life, he was often dealt with drugs and addiction
Speaker 2: and abuse, and that kind of marked with my experienced
Speaker 2: it for that reason I didn't know him, and to
Speaker 2: be honest, I didn't like him very much because of
Speaker 2: the things he did growing up. But my family had
Speaker 2: asked me to do the eulogy for which required me
Speaker 2: to learn about his history and the things that shaped him.
Speaker 2: And anyone you know, you gotta know about their life,
Speaker 2: and so I didn't know about my own father's life
Speaker 2: in his background. So I sat down with members of
Speaker 2: my family and found.
Speaker 3: Out about who he was.
Speaker 2: And in the process of finding out about his past
Speaker 2: and this background, for example, I found out that his
Speaker 2: father one of the last days, his father said to
Speaker 2: him that he wasn't no good and he was never
Speaker 2: going to be anything. I learned about my family's history
Speaker 2: and what I saw in this story that ended up
Speaker 2: becoming a multi generational epic. He said, a lot of
Speaker 2: people in my family were struggling to arrive in this
Speaker 2: place that I described as the Promised Land. And the
Speaker 2: promise Land is just a place where you can be loved,
Speaker 2: safe from harm. Right growing up in the gymical South,
Speaker 2: it was just like there. It was just dangerous, and
Speaker 2: a lot of people in my family don't arrive what
Speaker 2: the American dream describes as the promised Land, kind of
Speaker 2: this safe middle class life. But Nonetheless, the lives that
Speaker 2: they lived mattered. The struggles that they went through to
Speaker 2: live with dignity and respect.
Speaker 3: And honor matters.
Speaker 2: And so what I was trying to say in hel
Speaker 2: Far to the Promised Land is here all of the
Speaker 2: ways in which society push these roadblocks in front of
Speaker 2: black flourishing. And here's the ways in which their struggle
Speaker 2: to find meaning and purpose matters, even if they don't
Speaker 2: arrive through what we describe as the Promised lad And
Speaker 2: so it's really not a book about a bunch of
Speaker 2: people trying to find their way to happen. It's about
Speaker 2: people struggling in the South, across generations in my family,
Speaker 2: to find meaning and purpose in their lives. And because
Speaker 2: it's a black family spanning from the nineteen hundreds all
Speaker 2: the way up to the present, like every black family
Speaker 2: experiences all of America, in the sense that the traumas
Speaker 2: and the brokenness and the dysfunction of America always lands in.
Speaker 3: A lap of Black people. So Jim Crow's in.
Speaker 2: Abstraction, it's something that actually happened. Tendant forming happens, Brown
Speaker 2: red boy of education happens. And so it's the journey
Speaker 2: of all of these people are trying to try to
Speaker 2: find meaning and purpose. Now where God comes into it
Speaker 2: in my family's life is that I have to tell
Speaker 2: the stories that occur in my family across these generations,
Speaker 2: and for many of those people, God, for them and
Speaker 2: for me, was a source.
Speaker 3: Of comfort and.
Speaker 2: Encouragement in the world that often traumatizes black people. So
Speaker 2: I know that that's not everybody's experience with religion, but
Speaker 2: in my family, for many of us, God was a
Speaker 2: helper and not necessarily a burden.
Speaker 3: And that's once again not even universal because.
Speaker 2: The people in my family who like you, reject or
Speaker 2: have troubles with make a system organized religion. So it's
Speaker 2: not like a story of all Christians. It's about people
Speaker 2: who make different decisions about how to even deal with
Speaker 2: things like God.
Speaker 3: And faith and religion.
Speaker 1: When you think about the legacy of your family that
Speaker 1: you learned through this book, through your conversations, and you
Speaker 1: juxtapose it coming out at a time when those very
Speaker 1: stories are being erased, are are literally Governor Rohn des
Speaker 1: Santis stood in a front of a podium yeah and said,
Speaker 1: there's no merit to it. There's no merit to their experience.
Speaker 1: There's no merit to their story.
Speaker 2: One of the weird things are the odd things about
Speaker 2: being black in America, is that our stories are always
Speaker 2: under attack, and so they're always tinily like. There's always
Speaker 2: this persistent effort to erase our narrative. And so when
Speaker 2: I wrote, when I started writing Half Out to the
Speaker 2: Promised Land, I didn't know that it was going to
Speaker 2: come out in a time.
Speaker 3: Where these stories were being pushed back.
Speaker 2: But one of the narratives that I that I talk
Speaker 2: about is my grandfather on my mother's side of the family,
Speaker 2: who grew up in the nineteen forties under Jim Crow
Speaker 2: and he started he started as a tenant farm when
Speaker 2: he was four years old.
Speaker 3: Four years old working on the tenant farm.
Speaker 2: And him and all of his siblings would like pitt cotton,
Speaker 2: and then they would go to school and they were
Speaker 2: they would they would let them out for extended breaks
Speaker 2: so they can come back and pick cotton during harvesting season.
Speaker 2: And no matter how well the crop did at the
Speaker 2: end of the year, he said that his grandfather who
Speaker 2: raised him, would come and they would tell him, you
Speaker 2: just broke even. And all my grandfather got in the
Speaker 2: nineteen forties, now where a pair of overalls, some shoes,
Speaker 2: and some books. It's almost like functional slavery. And because
Speaker 2: of that, he was sent to segregated schools and he
Speaker 2: was sixteen or seventeen years old when he's a freshman
Speaker 2: in high school. Not because he was under educated, because
Speaker 2: he was economically exploited and mistreated.
Speaker 3: Now because my.
Speaker 2: Father, my grandfather, went to segregated schools and he was
Speaker 2: overworked and under educated. We all know that the biggest predictor,
Speaker 2: the biggest predictor of college future is the education of
Speaker 2: one's parents. That means my mother became was educated, but
Speaker 2: was raised in the household that was directly impacted by
Speaker 2: Jim Crow economically and as relates to education. And my
Speaker 2: mother becomes the first person in generation in my family
Speaker 2: to go to integrated schools. This is the nineteen sixties,
Speaker 2: in nineteen seventies, your massive resistance. And she goes to
Speaker 2: school and see the half to teacher don't want to
Speaker 2: teacher because they don't want to teach the black kid.
Speaker 2: And so we talked about this like long history of segregation.
Speaker 2: We tend to believe that integration happened and there was
Speaker 2: no long term economic or social impact, and that even
Speaker 2: the integrated school integrated. Children with the integrated schools were
Speaker 2: treated fairly. And when the schools integrated, the school integrated.
Speaker 2: You know what happened. All of the money left Northwest
Speaker 2: Hunstville I was from, and I came into a failing
Speaker 2: school academically. Why because all of the money and the
Speaker 2: resources left in redlining. And so all I have to
Speaker 2: say is through the narrative history of my family, my grandfather,
Speaker 2: my mother and me, you see the long economic and
Speaker 2: social tale Jim Cruw. The funny thing about it, we
Speaker 2: do health far to the problems land Part two would
Speaker 2: see that now my exact my same neighborhood is gentrifying.
Speaker 3: If they tore down.
Speaker 2: My school where I went to school, and now there's
Speaker 2: literally a white neighborhood right there where the place where
Speaker 2: I used to play football with this re county in
Speaker 2: their store. I went to where my football field was
Speaker 2: last weekend and there was a park and there was
Speaker 2: one black family at that park. And so this is
Speaker 2: a long legacy of the economic legacy of Jim Crow.
Speaker 2: And this is the story we need to tell. Is
Speaker 2: of course you have to ask ourselves, is this justice?
Speaker 2: This actually what we want? America? To do or we're
Speaker 2: comfortable with America doing this to black people. And so
Speaker 2: I wanted to tell my family story as a way
Speaker 2: of highlighting not through statistics and argument, because that stuff exists,
Speaker 2: but through the story of one family what America.
Speaker 3: Does to Black people.
Speaker 1: How do you stay faithful? I mean, in all honesty,
Speaker 1: like I guess, and this is a place that I struggle,
Speaker 1: and you know, but I tell people, I obviously wouldn't
Speaker 1: turn on a microphone every single day to talk about
Speaker 1: the issue, to talk about injustice, to talk about the headlines,
Speaker 1: to try and wake people up if I did not
Speaker 1: have faith in the fact that people can change.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: However, it is the consistent cycle of trauma and violence
Speaker 1: and erasure that this country gobbles up the same way
Speaker 1: they do fast food. And so, how do you stay faithful?
Speaker 1: And what advice do you have for others that find
Speaker 1: themselves struggling so much?
Speaker 2: Right now, I'll give you two answers. One is the
Speaker 2: kind of practical one and the one that's whatever I'm
Speaker 2: going to call the second.
Speaker 3: The first one is.
Speaker 2: I remember that when George full Actually this goes all
Speaker 2: the way back to twenty sixteen, when my writing career
Speaker 2: really begin to they seriously, we're heading towards we're heading
Speaker 2: into what was Donald Trump elected?
Speaker 3: My goodness, it feels like this.
Speaker 1: Is January seventeen.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I remember heading sorry, I remember heading into
Speaker 2: the summer before that, and it was the rise of
Speaker 2: anti black violence, and if anyone knows anything about history,
Speaker 2: felt a lot like Red Summer when the African Americans
Speaker 2: came back from World War One and they said, can
Speaker 2: we have justice? They were responded, they met with a
Speaker 2: large way with anti black racism. And I saw the
Speaker 2: end of the Obama presidency and I saw what was
Speaker 2: coming and I said, oh no, we're about to go
Speaker 2: through it. And I didn't think that anybody would listen.
Speaker 2: But I felt I have small children, and I felt
Speaker 2: there needed to be a record. They needed to be
Speaker 2: a record that there was somebody who said, we see
Speaker 2: what's happening, and we understand what you were doing to us.
Speaker 2: Because for me, even if there was no one who
Speaker 2: could change it, something like the existence the Souls of
Speaker 2: Black Folks, the existence of that book by W. E. B.
Speaker 2: The Boys, the existence of some of James Baldwin's writings
Speaker 2: was a comfort to me. There was someone who could
Speaker 2: explain to us what was happening. And I felt like
Speaker 2: one day I was going to have my children going
Speaker 2: to reach the age of kind of like that point
Speaker 2: as a black child where you kind of go this
Speaker 2: world is messed up and it feels like it's riggered
Speaker 2: against me. And I had this real idea that what
Speaker 2: if my son or daughter looks at me and says, Dad,
Speaker 2: what did you do? And I really want to be
Speaker 2: able to say here like, this is a literary output
Speaker 2: that I put out in this moment to help make
Speaker 2: the world a little bit better for you. Maybe nobody
Speaker 2: read it but you, But I wanted to have something
Speaker 2: I can say. I'm not an activist, I'm not their
Speaker 2: skills that I lack. All I can do is right.
Speaker 2: So I wrote in some sense for my children. And
Speaker 2: on one level, I can't give up hope because I
Speaker 2: can't just say I'm going to give the world as
Speaker 2: it is to the next generation, because I felt like
Speaker 2: other black people did do that. This may get to
Speaker 2: the second reason why I have hope. One of the
Speaker 2: interesting things to do is to go back and read
Speaker 2: African American literature at these key turning points in history. So,
Speaker 2: for example, if you go back to the Emancipation Proclamation.
Speaker 2: You can see black people gathering in churches all over
Speaker 2: America and they will say, clearly, it wasn't Abraham Lincoln
Speaker 2: who freed the slaves, it was God. And they seemed
Speaker 2: to say that at each moment when they got a
Speaker 2: little bit of freedom, they saw the hand of God's providence.
Speaker 2: Now we might look back and say they were naive
Speaker 2: for thinking that, but I don't actually think that what
Speaker 2: they're saying it's true. And in the end, I kind
Speaker 2: of believe, like doctor King, that there is a God
Speaker 2: who orders their affairs of humanity, and that white supremacy
Speaker 2: is his sovereign over human history, that God is sovereign
Speaker 2: of human history. Because I believe that God is sovereign
Speaker 2: of human history, I never completely without hope, because I
Speaker 2: can't look at any moment in American history and from
Speaker 2: that moment hope to get to the future, because every
Speaker 2: single time he got a little bit of justice, it's
Speaker 2: been a massive backlash. But I want to say that
Speaker 2: even in mister of that cycle of a progress backlash,
Speaker 2: progress backlash, there is to me a moral order to
Speaker 2: universe that that gives me a sense of hope. And
Speaker 2: meaning it allows me to go forward. One of the
Speaker 2: things that I think about a lot, and I'm not
Speaker 2: figuring it from going on. It's like I think it's
Speaker 2: Plasy versus Fergus in whichever one. It was, like they said,
Speaker 2: there is no law given as relates to a black
Speaker 2: man that a white man is man. There is still
Speaker 2: bye bye. So that's like eighteen, like fifty eight or
Speaker 2: whatever that is. And it feels like the entirety of
Speaker 2: the abolitionist movement was at its conclusion, there was no
Speaker 2: way for what you lost at the highest core in
Speaker 2: the land, and somehow the civil rights the Civil War
Speaker 2: happens and black people are free within a decade, And
Speaker 2: I wonder a lot it's like after that laws passed
Speaker 2: and there is no hope, there's no there's no logical
Speaker 2: there's no trick or move that the abolitionists had left
Speaker 2: after lotion in that case to go forward. But they
Speaker 2: went forward because they believed in the truth.
Speaker 3: Of the thing.
Speaker 2: And somehow, I'm not saying we've got freedom like equality,
Speaker 2: but slavery end in a way that was unimaginable in
Speaker 2: the aftermath in that court case. So sometimes I do
Speaker 2: think that a lot of justice. Work is a stumbling
Speaker 2: around in the darkness and hoping that that you meet
Speaker 2: the light as as as you go forward. And that's
Speaker 2: the only thing that you can do, because because laying
Speaker 2: down and quitting feels like a victor for the bad
Speaker 2: people who.
Speaker 3: Want to oppress you.
Speaker 1: That just gave me hope. Just that just gave that
Speaker 1: just gave me.
Speaker 3: Also say, like, I have like.
Speaker 2: Three or four friends and we decided that we can't
Speaker 2: all be realistic at the same time.
Speaker 4: Yes, it's very today today, today, today, I need to
Speaker 4: call you and go through it, right, I need to
Speaker 4: call you and talk about these people driving me crazy,
Speaker 4: and like, but every now and then, sometimes this is true.
Speaker 2: Sometimes there's three or four of us, it's only one
Speaker 2: of us. It's only one of us who got to ope.
Speaker 2: But there is there is a text thread that like
Speaker 2: I text through it, and so I say to people,
Speaker 2: like what you may hear from me publicly, it's not
Speaker 2: a facade. But you don't get everything right, you don't
Speaker 2: get everything that's in my life. And there's conversations that
Speaker 2: I have that are real and raw and unfiltered that
Speaker 2: I must process off camera or off microphone. But then
Speaker 2: I can go on and have something to say, like
Speaker 2: on microphone, and so that's also something.
Speaker 3: That I found really helpful.
Speaker 1: No, I one hundred percent agree. If not for my
Speaker 1: own circle of friends, if not for like the privacy
Speaker 1: cloak that I put around my life, I would go
Speaker 1: off the deep end all the time, and rightfully so,
Speaker 1: because there is a there is a lot to be
Speaker 1: upset about.
Speaker 2: But sometimes I think it's also important because I'm not
Speaker 2: I'm not like put together. Sometimes people need to feel
Speaker 2: that unfiltered pain, frustration and anger. And I feel like
Speaker 2: as a writer, and this is the hard part because
Speaker 2: it means that like, I couldn't do your show because
Speaker 2: I can't deal with this every day.
Speaker 3: I write once a month, but sometimes.
Speaker 2: I have to allow all the feelings to come inside
Speaker 2: so that I can write in a way that other
Speaker 2: people can see and identify with. So you had the
Speaker 2: event in Jacksonville, and I had to I had to
Speaker 2: feel the the frustration and the anger and the rage
Speaker 2: and communicate that in a way that that people need
Speaker 2: to understand that.
Speaker 3: The answer isn't always black patience.
Speaker 2: And kind of it's like we can be angry at
Speaker 2: being murdered and we can tie one murder to another
Speaker 2: murder and run that through history. And I feel like
Speaker 2: that is an important part of the work that we do.
Speaker 2: As well we articulate the hope, we also have to
Speaker 2: articulate the frustration. If you're going to be authentic to
Speaker 2: the varied experiences that go on in the hearts of
Speaker 2: black people.
Speaker 3: It's that James Baldwin quote.
Speaker 2: You know to be a Negro in America to be
Speaker 2: slightly constantly in the constant state of rage.
Speaker 3: And so I try.
Speaker 2: I try to balance both being reserved and knowing when
Speaker 2: to be as honest as I know.
Speaker 3: How to be.
Speaker 1: Well. I can't thank you enough for your work, for
Speaker 1: your honesty, for your faith, and I really appreciate you
Speaker 1: making the time to talk with me today. Folks. The
Speaker 1: book is How Far to the Promised Land. Pick it up,
Speaker 1: get it, read it, discuss it, use it as a
Speaker 1: guide in all the ways possible through this moment. Isa mcaulay, doctor,
Speaker 1: I appreciate you.
Speaker 3: Podcast, Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1: That is it for me today, Dear friends, on Woke
Speaker 1: a f as always power to the people and to
Speaker 1: all the people. Power, get woke and stay woke. As
Speaker 1: fun