Speaker 1: Push it. Hey, Before we get started, I just want
Speaker 1: to say a little note about this episode that it
Speaker 1: features one of my best friends talking in the way
Speaker 1: that he truly honestly talks, which means he uses the
Speaker 1: F word a lot. I mean a lot, and so
Speaker 1: just a fair warning you're about to hear it. This
Speaker 1: is such an exciting moment for some of my best
Speaker 1: friends are because I have been dying to essentially probe
Speaker 1: the inner and outer limits of Ben's Judaism and his whiteness.
Speaker 1: And I couldn't think of a better person, better, a
Speaker 1: better whiter or more Jewish person than his actual best
Speaker 1: friend from college. When you guys met. I will say though,
Speaker 1: by the end of this I feel like Ben needs
Speaker 1: to decide who his best friend is. I mean I
Speaker 1: feel like we need we need to see it really
Speaker 1: because listen, I listen to every single fucking one of
Speaker 1: these men, I'm going through a really painful divorce. Every
Speaker 1: single one you gotta say I love you to each other,
Speaker 1: you know, painful that's from me, how much that's hurt.
Speaker 1: I love you, I love you. And I'm just sitting
Speaker 1: there listening to it as I take like was fucking
Speaker 1: walked through New York City, looking at everyone who's happened
Speaker 1: with me, and I gotta listen to that shit. I
Speaker 1: think there was room. There is enough love in the
Speaker 1: world to share you. We love you too, all right, Okay,
Speaker 1: all right, we'll see, we'll see how this goes. I'm
Speaker 1: Khalil Gibron Muhammad and I'm Ben Austin. We're two best friends,
Speaker 1: one black, one white. I'm a historian and I'm a journalist.
Speaker 1: And this is some of my best friends are yep,
Speaker 1: some of my best friends are in this show. We
Speaker 1: wrestle with the challenges and the absurdities of a deeply
Speaker 1: divided and unequal country. And this episode we are marking
Speaker 1: the end of Hanakah, ha ha, Hanakah, done, done and gone. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So we're gonna look at judaism and white ness. We're
Speaker 1: gonna understand race and racism through some of the deepest
Speaker 1: histories and some of the most important questions in this episode.
Speaker 1: And we have a special guest to help us do that.
Speaker 1: How hey, can we can we ask? Can we ask
Speaker 1: Sasha to introduce himself? Yeah? Sure, I am Sasha Pin.
Speaker 1: I am a very old friend of Ben Austin. We
Speaker 1: met in college University of Rochester. I'm a writer. I
Speaker 1: write movies and television shows. I am currently actually on
Speaker 1: set on the show PowerBook three, Raising Canaan, which I
Speaker 1: created and I run. It's a spinoff of Power, which
Speaker 1: was a series on the Stars Network. And this is
Speaker 1: the sort of the third iteration of that. Yeah, Sasha,
Speaker 1: you're actually on location right now in a trailer somewhere
Speaker 1: in Queens filming the second season of Raising Canaan. Can
Speaker 1: you say something about what's going on with the show
Speaker 1: in the second season? I mean, yes, season two, what
Speaker 1: we start to see is like some real distance between
Speaker 1: Rock and Canaan, like that that that relationship starts to
Speaker 1: really evolve all in interesting ways. And so you know,
Speaker 1: that relationship between Canaan and his mother becomes increasingly complicated.
Speaker 1: And I will say that the season does end because
Speaker 1: we're getting close to shooting the end in spectacular fashion.
Speaker 1: You will you love it, You will be stund missed,
Speaker 1: love it. We are. We are really grateful for you
Speaker 1: to take it. Sometimes, man, I'm so happy to be here.
Speaker 1: So let's let's get let's get into this. So I
Speaker 1: think it's really important first to just establish just tell
Speaker 1: tell us how you and Ben met. We met through
Speaker 1: my roommate at University of Rochester one night in our
Speaker 1: dorm and yeah, man, the rest is history there it is,
Speaker 1: you know, Okay, But I want to know that first
Speaker 1: moment when you meet this guy because I send him
Speaker 1: away to college. You know, I've known him from fourteen
Speaker 1: to eighteen. He's my best friend. You know, he doesn't
Speaker 1: wear Judaism on his sleeve. What was your first impression
Speaker 1: of Ben when he showed up at Rochester. Well, I'll
Speaker 1: say like, I would never have known it a million years.
Speaker 1: Ben was Jewish like that, that's you. I'll say that
Speaker 1: right off the back. And I think I probably made
Speaker 1: judgments about him based on the fact that he played
Speaker 1: on the tennis team. Because tennis, as you guys discussed
Speaker 1: in a prior episode, A fantastic episode, a great episode,
Speaker 1: absolutely is a somewhat rarefied sport in terms of what
Speaker 1: your backgrounds, right, because Jews weren't admitted to country clubs
Speaker 1: either tennis club I get it. I get it. I
Speaker 1: was like, Oh, he's he's a guy whos probably pretty wealthy,
Speaker 1: plays tennis. I mean I like Ben, obviously, I mean
Speaker 1: we we we became uh you know, best friends or
Speaker 1: I was like his second best friend. Apparently I didn't
Speaker 1: know that at the time that I was going to
Speaker 1: be the second best friend. And I will say, like,
Speaker 1: interesting enough, Ben was a more observant Jew than me,
Speaker 1: so Ben would go to services. I never did, um,
Speaker 1: but I think that might have been the way I
Speaker 1: found out that Ben was even Jewish. Like he said, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm going to Hillel or whatever the hell it was,
Speaker 1: and I was, and I was like, really, okay, all right, cool.
Speaker 1: That kind of surprises me. I mean because the Jewishness
Speaker 1: of Ben that I knew with Shabat dinner on Fridays,
Speaker 1: which usually went from dinner to poker khalil is like
Speaker 1: I went to Shabbat dinner at your house every Friday,
Speaker 1: and I didn't. I'm not saying that, and you're Jewish
Speaker 1: saying that that was the extent of it. I mean, like,
Speaker 1: and so I don't. I didn't really even understand what
Speaker 1: all of that meant, saying like, obviously, everyone experiences their
Speaker 1: own Jewishness or whatever their culture identity differently. My parents
Speaker 1: were both immigrants, you know, but I did not come
Speaker 1: from a family that really did those kinds of traditions.
Speaker 1: We would go for the high holidays for sure, which
Speaker 1: is like you had a bart I did. I went
Speaker 1: to Jewish day school like Ben early on, and I
Speaker 1: remember like every Friday, the kids at school would have
Speaker 1: like Shabat dinner, and I remember saying to my parents
Speaker 1: like this is my parents were still together. I was
Speaker 1: pretty young, and I was like, you know, we should
Speaker 1: do Shabbat dinner. And I think like we did it
Speaker 1: like two weeks and then they were both like nah, man,
Speaker 1: fuck this were And I remember feeling really like some
Speaker 1: how I was I was failing as because everyone I
Speaker 1: knew was doing it right and I wasn't. And I
Speaker 1: just felt like, wow, we're just we're not good at that,
Speaker 1: We're not good at being Jews. So it was it was.
Speaker 1: It was I had an uneasy relationship I think with
Speaker 1: my Jewishness as a monster Sasha, I get it, man,
Speaker 1: I mean that discomfort. If I'm honest, I probably felt
Speaker 1: that way as a as a young kid in the
Speaker 1: Nation of Islam mosques Like I mean, I went a
Speaker 1: few times, and you know, my parents divorcement was pretty young,
Speaker 1: and so the whole thing was a little weird. When
Speaker 1: I was a kid, you know, but this does have
Speaker 1: me thinking about ben right, and I'm wondering. So at best,
Speaker 1: I'd know you got a lot of you know, your
Speaker 1: Jewish identity, at least from going to a Jewish day school.
Speaker 1: So what was that experience? Like, yeah, yeah, I went
Speaker 1: to that Jewish day school until fifth grade and when
Speaker 1: I transferred to public school, and I wasn't a good
Speaker 1: student at all. I actually failed dobvning, which is prayer,
Speaker 1: and my mom was like, am only God can fail
Speaker 1: fail a kid in prayer? You know? I think, you know,
Speaker 1: I was definitely trying to figure stuff out though about
Speaker 1: about the larger community. So like I lived in a black,
Speaker 1: largely black community, and within it this Jewish community, and
Speaker 1: like moving through space trying to even sort of look
Speaker 1: to the Jewish part to understand the larger part, you know,
Speaker 1: so like trying to understand like what it meant to
Speaker 1: be part of a community. We had this teacher who
Speaker 1: was teaching like an essex class, mister Levy. He was
Speaker 1: the principal of the school, and he asked us one day,
Speaker 1: you know, what should you do if you find five
Speaker 1: dollars outside of a synagogue and you know, we're like huh,
Speaker 1: I don't know, Like we're start to talk about it,
Speaker 1: invested and invest it And so he finally gets around
Speaker 1: to it and that gives the answer and he says,
Speaker 1: you know, you take it inside and give it to
Speaker 1: the front office. You give it to the synagogue. And
Speaker 1: I was like this motherfucker. I was like ah, And
Speaker 1: I raised my hand and I said, mister Levy, what
Speaker 1: if you find it outside a church? And thank you?
Speaker 1: Thank you? And you know, like in south Shore where
Speaker 1: I lived, it was it was all synagogues because the
Speaker 1: neighborhood had been Jewish about about fifteen years before my
Speaker 1: family arrived there, and now all those synagogues were churches.
Speaker 1: And mister Levy like he's this egg shaped man. He
Speaker 1: looks at me with his slid eyes and he said
Speaker 1: keep it. I was like, ah, all right, So like
Speaker 1: I didn't. I wasn't. I wasn't finding lessons in you know,
Speaker 1: a Sasha was saying like sort of the formal religious
Speaker 1: teachings of the school that helped me understand my world.
Speaker 1: And I will say that like where I did find
Speaker 1: it was more in like the cultural Judaism, you know,
Speaker 1: like if it wasn't in religion, like being a cultural Jew.
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, I can understand stuff. You know
Speaker 1: that there were other Jews making jokes, that there were
Speaker 1: other Jews like telling stories, that there were other Jews
Speaker 1: who were who were making sense of a lot of
Speaker 1: these issues and for me specifically like about race and
Speaker 1: like you know, figuring out their place in the world. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, look, obviously, Jews, like black Floks, are not monolithic.
Speaker 1: You know, it's you know, you have you have Reformed Jews,
Speaker 1: you have conservative Jews, you have Orthodox Jews, then you
Speaker 1: have the specific Jews, then you have you know, you
Speaker 1: have Jews of college. Yeah, exactly. It does speak to
Speaker 1: like the complexities of Judaism. Yeah, there's the there's this
Speaker 1: sort of religious aspect aspect to it, and then there's
Speaker 1: also a cultural aspect to it. And also there's a
Speaker 1: very big difference between sort of European Jews, which is
Speaker 1: what my parents were, you know, having fled the Holocaust. Uh,
Speaker 1: we're not even fled living the Holocaust, versus you know,
Speaker 1: American Jews who've been who'd already been here for a
Speaker 1: number of generations, Like I'm the first generation of my
Speaker 1: family would be born here in the United States. Yeah, Sash,
Speaker 1: I guess uh. I don't think about it a lot.
Speaker 1: But I'm on my father's side. I'm first generation too.
Speaker 1: My dad is born in Nazi Germany in nineteen thirty seven,
Speaker 1: and he leaves when he's very young. He leaves in
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty nine, you know, and his father is arrested.
Speaker 1: You know, he manages to get free, So you know
Speaker 1: there was there was real, real, real risk. M Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean listening to both you and Sashatel tell these
Speaker 1: stories about being you know, the first in your family
Speaker 1: be born, you know, in the United States, I am
Speaker 1: curious how did you both learn about the Holocaust? And
Speaker 1: you know what kind of affected did that have? That
Speaker 1: experience of learning about it, of learning about what happened
Speaker 1: to your relatives have on you as a young person, Like, like,
Speaker 1: did it become a defining thing and your understanding of
Speaker 1: being Jewish? I think I think from I mean it,
Speaker 1: did it became the defining aspect of my Jewishness to
Speaker 1: a certain son, Like my last name is Penn. Of
Speaker 1: course that's not really my last name. The last name
Speaker 1: was Penkinski. But when when my family got here, it
Speaker 1: was like, nah, man, we need to change our name
Speaker 1: so they can't track us down. I mean, my father's
Speaker 1: my father's a Holocaust survivor. My mother fled Vichy, France,
Speaker 1: you know, before things got super duper crazy. But my
Speaker 1: dad's was a Holocaust survivor, and so he didn't talk
Speaker 1: about it at all. Really Like one of the things
Speaker 1: about my dad, which of course I didn't realize. I
Speaker 1: didn't learn this until much later, is he lived in
Speaker 1: this house at one point where you had to walk
Speaker 1: up these stairs to get to the main floor, and
Speaker 1: there it was like a really noisy hallway. And I
Speaker 1: would come in and I would open this door and
Speaker 1: I walk up the stairs, and he would always every
Speaker 1: time hello, he panted, who is it? Who is it?
Speaker 1: And I was like, damn, man, it's me, you know, relax, shit.
Speaker 1: And come to find out that when he was a kid,
Speaker 1: he was hidden in basements all the time while people
Speaker 1: walked overhead, and he would hear the footsteps, and so
Speaker 1: when he would hear these footsteps come, it would create
Speaker 1: this incredibly visceral reaction for him. Had a very similar
Speaker 1: reaction when it came to the police, anyone in a uniform.
Speaker 1: My dad would shit himself. I mean, I remember him
Speaker 1: getting pulled over for speeding, and he was like he
Speaker 1: was basically face down on the pavement before they even
Speaker 1: got to the car, you know what I mean. He
Speaker 1: was like, you know, yeah, I give it, I give it.
Speaker 1: And so yeah, I think my my Jewishness obviously is
Speaker 1: inextricably linked to this trauma. But what's interesting is when
Speaker 1: I've had kids, it has felt more important to me
Speaker 1: that they identify as Jewish um, which I didn't. I
Speaker 1: didn't necessarily expect. So so Ben, for you, I mean,
Speaker 1: obviously the same question applies. Yeah, I mean, so m
Speaker 1: my my father's parents still had German accents, you know,
Speaker 1: my whole life, they never lost their accents. And so,
Speaker 1: you know, we we understood this history. We didn't sort
Speaker 1: of like unpack it as a family, you know, at all,
Speaker 1: Like we didn't talk about it in in great length.
Speaker 1: You know, I went to Jewish day school and the
Speaker 1: stuff about the Holocaust was just part of the conversation
Speaker 1: in a way. It's interesting, I mean, that sense of
Speaker 1: being tied to trauma as part of your identity. I
Speaker 1: probably feel differently than Sasha. I mean, I feel very
Speaker 1: much like it's part of my history. As as a Jew,
Speaker 1: but I'm not, but maybe less part of my personal
Speaker 1: you know, like I didn't experience it personally. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, the Holocaust was experienced very differently by different
Speaker 1: Jews around the world at the time, and so what
Speaker 1: I was, for example, my grandmother was really wary of
Speaker 1: quote unquote American Jews because you know, my family was
Speaker 1: being slaughtered in Europe and the Jews in the United
Speaker 1: States weren't doing shit about it. And so you know, ultimately,
Speaker 1: my father, my grandmother, the way they got to this
Speaker 1: country is a Jewish family sponsored them and paid for
Speaker 1: them to come over here. That's how they got here.
Speaker 1: But my grandmother, you know, she sort of felt like
Speaker 1: the the Holocaust had been co opted by people who
Speaker 1: really didn't do enough at the time to really help
Speaker 1: those who were actually victimized by the Holocausts. That's fascinating,
Speaker 1: I think, you know, the interesting conversation to have his
Speaker 1: jewishness and whiteness and and and what is that and
Speaker 1: how what is what is the what is that relationship?
Speaker 1: And how does that work? And all that kind of stuff,
Speaker 1: because you know, as I was raised, I was certainly
Speaker 1: not raised to believe that we were quote unquote white.
Speaker 1: You know what I mean. I was raised to believe
Speaker 1: we were Jewish, which was not white. Yeah. And do
Speaker 1: you think do you think and the difference is that
Speaker 1: white people the other people think of us as lesser.
Speaker 1: I mean my father actually said it to me straight up.
Speaker 1: He said white people tried to kill me. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So you know, for him, it was it was very
Speaker 1: very clear that no, no, no, that's not who the
Speaker 1: fuck we are. Those people want us dead. And David
Speaker 1: Lee Roth and his memoir, you know, the lead singer
Speaker 1: Van Halen Uh. He says that he gives a speech
Speaker 1: at like his nieces bad Mitzvah, and he says, remember,
Speaker 1: you're not white. Nobody thinks you're white, You're Jewish. And
Speaker 1: then he does and then he does this split and
Speaker 1: jumps off and you know, and then he pops the
Speaker 1: balloon and then he jumps up and pops with it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Can I just tell you, guys, I'm sitting here on
Speaker 1: Zoom looking at you both. I'm in between you both,
Speaker 1: which is just the miracle of faith that I used
Speaker 1: to happen to be. And I feel like, for the
Speaker 1: first time in my life, I've arrived at the moment
Speaker 1: when I wanted to be a fly on the wall
Speaker 1: when white people and Jewish people talked about each other.
Speaker 1: You are and here we have it. It's like Jews
Speaker 1: and black people on the screen fighting racism together through comedy.
Speaker 1: All right, man, I am enjoying this. I got Ben
Speaker 1: in the hot seat, I got Sasha dropping bombs everywhere.
Speaker 1: Bring it. I'm learning so much about like about heritage,
Speaker 1: about immigration, about personal choice. It's awesome. And so the
Speaker 1: thing that I'm really curious about now is listen, both
Speaker 1: of you are writers. Both of you have have committed
Speaker 1: your professional lives to making and to creating knowledge. Ben,
Speaker 1: you as a journalist, so much of your work has
Speaker 1: been really about race and racism. And Sasha, I mean,
Speaker 1: You've got this incredible career of these amazing stories, and
Speaker 1: many of them are about black people. So I'm trying
Speaker 1: to figure out, like, Okay, help me understand how did
Speaker 1: this happen? Sasha? You first, look, I've thought a lot
Speaker 1: about this. I have to say, I think about it
Speaker 1: all the time because you know, the the show that
Speaker 1: I created, the show that I run is very much
Speaker 1: you know for a black show. You know it is,
Speaker 1: that's that's what it is and as it it. I
Speaker 1: always gravitated towards like books by Richard Wright, and I remember,
Speaker 1: you know, reading Manshaw on The Promised Lamb, the Claude
Speaker 1: Brown Book, and I've talked about it and those books. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it really resonated with me. And I think part of
Speaker 1: what resonated with me was, you know, I always felt
Speaker 1: a little bit like as a kid, especially because I
Speaker 1: was I was the son of immigrants, and I didn't
Speaker 1: know any other kids whose parents were immigrants, and you know,
Speaker 1: I always felt like I was somewhat looking in from
Speaker 1: the outside. And I feel like in some of those
Speaker 1: books and some of those experiences, you know, there were
Speaker 1: themes and ideas that really resonated with me. Right But
Speaker 1: I think more than anything, I just I mean, my family,
Speaker 1: my family existed in this cauldron of injustice, right um.
Speaker 1: And I think that very much informed my worldview and
Speaker 1: the things that were important to me and the issues
Speaker 1: that were important to me, and this, frankly, the stories
Speaker 1: that were important to me. You know. Yeah, when I
Speaker 1: think of my own identity, I think I think of
Speaker 1: my entity that I'm Jewish, that I'm white. I'm also
Speaker 1: a Southsider, like I'm from the South Side of Chicago,
Speaker 1: and you know, as a writer and a journalist, I
Speaker 1: wanted to solve in some way for injustice, you know,
Speaker 1: I wanted to sort of, you know, investigate inequalities and
Speaker 1: try to make them right. And being on from the
Speaker 1: South side of Chicago and looking at the injustices around here,
Speaker 1: most of them happen to black people, not all of them,
Speaker 1: most of them. And so there are other Jews from
Speaker 1: my community who are also deeply involved in that, you know,
Speaker 1: involved in civil rights back in the day, and also
Speaker 1: like at my synagogue now, who were engaged in these
Speaker 1: issues and these questions. Because that's that those are the
Speaker 1: surrounding communities. That's that's the world we're trying to make
Speaker 1: sense of. I remember this so well, and because it's
Speaker 1: always stayed with me. I think you were on Tavis
Speaker 1: Smiley at one point when Tavis Smiley was still somewhere
Speaker 1: you could still be on. But I remember you said
Speaker 1: the two defining moments of my life so far, we're
Speaker 1: Rodney King and O. J. Simpson. And I remember you
Speaker 1: said that. I'm like, yeah, those are the two defining
Speaker 1: moments of my life too, you know, like that's The
Speaker 1: thing that's kind of amazing about this, which is like,
Speaker 1: if you're our age and you grew up at that time, like,
Speaker 1: how can how can those two things not be I
Speaker 1: don't give a fuck. If you're white right black, how
Speaker 1: can those two things not be the defining moments of
Speaker 1: your life? I mean, it speaks to the American experience
Speaker 1: and and and the truth is we're not talking about
Speaker 1: being black or jew Wish or anything. We're talking about
Speaker 1: just being a good human being and that if you
Speaker 1: see something wrong, you wanna, you want to you want
Speaker 1: to do something about it. I mean, you set up
Speaker 1: an awesome segue to come come back to Sasha. So
Speaker 1: so with the most recent um sequel, The Power Book three,
Speaker 1: Raising Canaan, which just finished its first season, which was incredible.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Stephanie and I were there for the premiere
Speaker 1: this past summer, and you took the stage to really
Speaker 1: introduce the vision for this new Power series and you
Speaker 1: told a story. You told a story about your father's
Speaker 1: immigrant experience in the United States as inspiration for this
Speaker 1: black family story that you were about to premiere. What
Speaker 1: you said is that the struggle of this family is
Speaker 1: a universal story of a lot of immigrant experiences, right,
Speaker 1: and the quest for power, for dignity, for visibility is
Speaker 1: something that you felt from your father's experience, and it
Speaker 1: helped you. It helped you to see in these characters
Speaker 1: something that that you thought the audience would really admire
Speaker 1: and appreciate. Yeah, my father when he came to this country.
Speaker 1: And keep in mind, my father had died about a
Speaker 1: month and a half before the premiere, so you know,
Speaker 1: it was very, very fresh from me. He was on
Speaker 1: your mind a lot. Yeah, yeah, he was, he was,
Speaker 1: and he had died sort of suddenly. So but when
Speaker 1: he came to this country, you know, he um the
Speaker 1: way he learned about America was through popular culture, is
Speaker 1: through movies, through TV. You know, that's how he assimilated.
Speaker 1: Skip Gates wrote something in The New York Times a
Speaker 1: few weeks ago about you know, who gets to tell
Speaker 1: what stories? And what he ends up is like anyone
Speaker 1: can tell anyone's stories, and he says it's important that
Speaker 1: that happens. I agree, and yet at the same time,
Speaker 1: I'm very sensitive, especially given what I do and the
Speaker 1: stories that we tell on this show of who I
Speaker 1: am and how these stories, how these stories are told,
Speaker 1: and listen there may be a lot of people who
Speaker 1: are like, nah, fuck that, and that is certainly their
Speaker 1: right to say that. But I think that if we
Speaker 1: get to a place where like I can only tell
Speaker 1: what you are a story, you can only tell an Asian,
Speaker 1: what does that say about us as a society? Like,
Speaker 1: I'm not willing to take it that far down the continuum,
Speaker 1: right because I don't want my kids to grow up
Speaker 1: in that world, you know, And I do think that again,
Speaker 1: it goes back to I guess the speech I gave,
Speaker 1: but the premiere the stories about ourselves are the way
Speaker 1: that we share our experiences with other people, and they
Speaker 1: share their experiences with us, and we try to understand them.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's the human the human experience, like you know,
Speaker 1: in your in our brain, it's like we turn everything
Speaker 1: into a story. Yeah, I agree with you about about
Speaker 1: you know, the need to tell stories that whatever, however
Speaker 1: we define our limited identity. I mean, like one of
Speaker 1: the things we're talking about is that identity is really
Speaker 1: mixed up. Yeah, Like it's it's you know, there's a
Speaker 1: sort of hybrid sense about who we are, and so
Speaker 1: you're finding universalities and connections and the dangers happen when
Speaker 1: we sort of see otherness and think of it as
Speaker 1: something you know, very foreign and exotic and fixed, and
Speaker 1: there is there isn't either the work to understand how
Speaker 1: people are different or or to sort of see the
Speaker 1: connect plainer than that, right, Like, but I mean because
Speaker 1: the truth is like, oh, they're the overriding tradition is
Speaker 1: is not the moment when people authentically reach for the
Speaker 1: experiences of others and try to understand them on their
Speaker 1: own terms. The experience in this country has mostly been
Speaker 1: to caricature blackness, right Like American popular culture came into
Speaker 1: being caricaturing black life. It was, It was the essence
Speaker 1: of American culture in the nineteenth century, from the vaudeville
Speaker 1: stage to minstrual cy to the blackface traditions. Every seminal
Speaker 1: moment in American popular culture was defined by some moment
Speaker 1: of taking the raw material black life, not out of
Speaker 1: ignorance and distance, but out of familiarity and proximity, by
Speaker 1: actually being close to black people and turning them into
Speaker 1: monsters or children or piccaninnies or sambos or fill in
Speaker 1: the blank. And I'm not saying those things are one
Speaker 1: and the same or you're describing about what happens today,
Speaker 1: but that is the weight of history, that is the
Speaker 1: longer story. And of course, I mean, what is so
Speaker 1: wonderful about this conversation is that both of you and
Speaker 1: Body the counter push against that and for reasons that
Speaker 1: I think have a lot to do with your own
Speaker 1: personal personal journeys. Right then, I mean, and this, and
Speaker 1: I know this is a lot of history in this moment,
Speaker 1: but but this is exactly my point about what you do.
Speaker 1: I mean, I remember you telling me the story about
Speaker 1: someone coming up to you when you were doing a
Speaker 1: book talk about your book about you know, very poor
Speaker 1: black people living in Cabrini Green and all the amazing
Speaker 1: things that they did, you know, to make fuller lives
Speaker 1: for themselves. And I think you told me something to
Speaker 1: the fact someone was like, well, why you Ben Austin,
Speaker 1: did you choose to write this book? Yeah? Yeah, I
Speaker 1: get asked all the time, you know, what made you
Speaker 1: want to do this? And like I'm I'm writing across
Speaker 1: racial lines and class lines and often gender lines, and
Speaker 1: I guess religion lines too, right since we're having this
Speaker 1: talk about judaism. Um. Yeah, but there's there's something about
Speaker 1: telling that story, which felt like such an important story
Speaker 1: to tell. It is the story of Chicago, it is
Speaker 1: the story of the nation, It's the story of cities.
Speaker 1: I could find that connection in there. Sasha was saying,
Speaker 1: like the importance of practicing empathy, which is so much
Speaker 1: of writing, of doing the work to to to feel,
Speaker 1: to put yourself in other people's shoes, to learn about
Speaker 1: their stories and to try to tell them the best
Speaker 1: way possible. You know, It's like I'm listening to this
Speaker 1: whole conversation, which of course has gone way past any
Speaker 1: conversation about Judaism, right, but because of our history, because
Speaker 1: of the stuff we've experienced, Like and I'll speak for
Speaker 1: my own family, you know, my father, my intensely interested
Speaker 1: in politics and intensely interested in current events. Why because
Speaker 1: you know that, by the way, that was like the
Speaker 1: most jewishit I've ever done in my life. Why why
Speaker 1: now you has why I better make it? But yeah,
Speaker 1: because that shit has a material impact on our lives.
Speaker 1: We've seen it happen before, which is that if you
Speaker 1: take your eye off the fucking ball, guess what they
Speaker 1: show up at your door. They take you, They throw
Speaker 1: you in a fucking train and they take your house.
Speaker 1: So you know, it's like, you know, this is the
Speaker 1: stuff that I grew up as a jew being like
Speaker 1: really interested in, because this was the stuff that my
Speaker 1: family talked about, because we felt like it was important.
Speaker 1: Because again, it had a material impact on us. And
Speaker 1: part of the experience of being a child of a survivor, frankly,
Speaker 1: is feeling like at any time shit could go really
Speaker 1: bad at any time. There's not a uniquely Jewish experience.
Speaker 1: I should say that, it's not at all, you know, right,
Speaker 1: I gotta say, like, I mean, listening to what you
Speaker 1: just shared, Sasha, I mean thinking about how I was socialized,
Speaker 1: you know, both to like celebrate the freedoms that came
Speaker 1: with the successes of the civil rights movement, only to
Speaker 1: kind of stumble into and aware, you know, by virtue
Speaker 1: of Rodney King and the stuff that started to just
Speaker 1: seep into my consciousness. You know. It feels actually a
Speaker 1: lot more like Ben's story in terms of like this
Speaker 1: upbringing that wasn't conscious like yours. But the irony is
Speaker 1: that the three of us end up in the same place.
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously I'm living this black experience, but by
Speaker 1: dint of some you know, really diverse path that the
Speaker 1: three of us journeyed. We all end up in this
Speaker 1: space where our understanding of the potential for harm to
Speaker 1: other people animates the work we do. Absolutely, And you know,
Speaker 1: I'm really grateful for being on this journey with both
Speaker 1: of you. Brother, Thank you for saying that. Man Sasha
Speaker 1: was so great to have you on the show. It
Speaker 1: really means a lot that you're participating in this with us.
Speaker 1: And you know, the first question that Khalil asked you
Speaker 1: was how did you meet me? And what was your
Speaker 1: first impression? And I want to ask you about your
Speaker 1: first impression when you met Khalil, because when we were
Speaker 1: in our early twenties, like like just out of college,
Speaker 1: you came to Chicago one winter and it was the
Speaker 1: first time that you met him. Well, it's funny because
Speaker 1: when I met Khalil, he was on this track to
Speaker 1: be like an accountant or something. You were on. You
Speaker 1: were working at PwC Delight, Delight and Too and too
Speaker 1: so okay. So I remember meeting him and being like
Speaker 1: because because of course Ben and I were like we
Speaker 1: had no hope of a career whatsoever, Like it was
Speaker 1: like the best. We were both like we're gonna be
Speaker 1: like writers, which of course is ridiculous. And so I
Speaker 1: remember meeting you and being like, wow, man, Khalil really
Speaker 1: has it together. But here's what I really remember, and
Speaker 1: this is the only thing that matters. I remember we
Speaker 1: went out to dinner. Khalil opened his car door and
Speaker 1: he reached down and he all of a sudden, he
Speaker 1: brought back forty dollars, and I was like, what the fuck,
Speaker 1: because I was like, I just found it, and we're like,
Speaker 1: get the funk out of here. And then he reached
Speaker 1: out again and he pulled out another forty dollars. Remember this, Kalue,
Speaker 1: you found all this money on the street and then
Speaker 1: you took us all out to pizza. It was like
Speaker 1: negative it was like negative twenty. It was negative twenty,
Speaker 1: and we went to we went to Girodano's, and that
Speaker 1: money covered all the paces. This brings us all the
Speaker 1: way back full circle to Ben b mister Levy. If
Speaker 1: you ask Khalil, I take everybody out to pizza. That's right,
Speaker 1: I take the Jews out. I take the Jews out
Speaker 1: for pizza. It's not yet. If you find twenty dollars,
Speaker 1: I take them to pizza. That's what I do, mister leaving.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, Now that's hilarious. That is hilarious. All right,
Speaker 1: Well you know what I think. I think. I think
Speaker 1: it's fair to say Ben that I love Sasha too.
Speaker 1: Is that all right? Is right? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, of
Speaker 1: course I'm not gonna lie. I love you, guys, love you,
Speaker 1: Love you, Sasha. Some of My Best Friends Are is
Speaker 1: a production of Pushkin Industries. The show is written and
Speaker 1: hosted by me Khalildbron Mohammed and my best friend Ben Austin,
Speaker 1: produced by Sheriff Vincent and edited by Karen Shakerji. Our
Speaker 1: engineer is Martin Gonzalez. Our associate editor is Keishell Williams.
Speaker 1: Our associate producer is Lucy Sullivan, and our showrunner is
Speaker 1: Sasha Matthias. Our executive producers are Leeta Molad and Mia
Speaker 1: la Belle. And special thanks, of course to Sasha Penn
Speaker 1: not just one of my best friends, one of my
Speaker 1: two best friends at Pushkin. Thanks to Heather Faine, Harley Nigliori,
Speaker 1: John Schnars, and Jacob Weisberg. Our theme song, Little Lily,
Speaker 1: is by fellow chicagoan AVERYR. Young from his Amazing album Tubman.
Speaker 1: You will definitely want to check out more of his
Speaker 1: music at his website averyryng dot com. You can find
Speaker 1: Pushkin on all social platforms at Pushkin pods, and you
Speaker 1: can sign up for our newsletter at pushkin dot fm.
Speaker 1: To find more Pushkin podcasts, listen on the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. If you
Speaker 1: love Some of My Best Friends Are and any of
Speaker 1: the other shows from Pushkin Industries, consider subscribing to Pushkin Plus.
Speaker 1: Pushkin Plus is a podcast subscription that offers bonus content
Speaker 1: and uninterrupted listening for four dollars and ninety nine cents
Speaker 1: a month. Look for Pushkin Plus on Apple podcast subscriptions.
Speaker 1: If you like this show, please give it a five
Speaker 1: star review, and please tell some of your best friends
Speaker 1: about it, like a lot of your best friends, all
Speaker 1: of your best friends, all of your best friends. Now,
Speaker 1: hey you guys, it's Hanukkah time, and I learned how
Speaker 1: to say Happy holidays. Shock sameya? Right? Oh man? Did
Speaker 1: I get that right? Did I get that? Yes? You
Speaker 1: kill shot? All right? Do you want to correct mersh
Speaker 1: you designegg sa