Revisionist History - Started From The Bottom with Justin Richmond

Episode Date: March 16, 2023

Today, we dig into the fascinating life of someone Malcolm knows very well: fellow Pushkin host Justin Richmond. Malcolm and Justin talk about being the product of biracial marriages, surviving racist bullies, and Justin's chance dinner with a megastar that changed his life.  Justin created his newest show, Started from the Bottom, to talk with successful people who grew up as outsiders about how they made it against the odds. Origin stories of mostly men and women of color and brilliant people who others counted out. How they climbed their way up the ladder, and the obstacles they overcame along the way. If you’d like to keep up with the most recent news from this and other Pushkin podcasts, be sure to sign up for our email list at Pushkin.fm.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Pushkin co-conspirator, Justin Richmond, who you may know from our music show Broken Record, which Justin has made happen since the beginning. But now Justin has his own gig. He's the creator and host of a new podcast called Started From the Bottom. It's a show about origin stories, particularly the origin stories of men and women of color, how they climbed their way up the ladder, the obstacles they overcame along the way. And for this episode that I'm about to play for you, I turned the tables on Justin and I interviewed him. We did it in front of a group of students and faculty at Medgar Evers College on the side of the old Ebbets Field in Brooklyn, New York. As someone of West Indian heritage, let me just say how gratified I was at the heavy West Indian turnout for this. And in good West Indian fashion,

they asked some pretty good questions at the end too. So here we go. My conversation with my good friend, Justin Richmond. Hello, hello. Is this on? Check, check. Yeah. I if it works. So, welcome. This is the first time I've ever done anything like this, and it is certainly the first live taping of Started From the Bottom. So, thank you so much for doing this.

Not at all. It's my pleasure, Justin. I've long dreamed of being on a stage with you. I can't imagine that's true. But it's very nice of you to say. No, I hope this is the start of many of these, Justin. But I think premise of today's is that I'm interviewing you, right? Isn't that our plan? Yeah, a little.

We want to get the Justin Richmond origin story. It's a little introduction to me, I guess. Yeah. Which, you know, I love these things because I've often I'm a firm believer that if you want to get to know somebody, even if they've done a lifetime of interesting things, if you just do the first 20 years, you get most of what you need. Right. That it's a surprising how much you can glean from. So let's start. Let's do the Justin Richmond analysis. And I wanted to start with the thing we have in common. Now, you might look at us and say, what on earth do they have in common? But we do have one very significant fact in common, which is we're both the product of biracial marriages.

Yeah. And I wanted to start with that. First of all, you're more obviously biracial than me. I don't know how that happened. I'm a little more subtle. My dad would say it's his genes. So tell me about your parents. Let's start with those two. How did they meet, Justin? Start with that. They met at Compton Community College. So he grew up in Compton and my mom was there. I don't even know why she was there, but she was there. She was friends with someone there.

And so she was there. They met. Where did your mom grow up? My mom grew up in a city called El Monte, which is by Pasadena. My mom grew up on the racetrack. Her dad was a racehorse trainer. So she grew up on the racetrack. And yeah, they're very different people even to this day and it might

be because they've never seen them together but my kids still cannot wrap their heads around that my parents are my like you know there's any relationship between them or ever was you know uh they were never together they were never married but uh yeah like they like they just liked each other you know so how long were they together? Off and on about five years, four years. So you have very few memories of the two of them as a couple. Very few. Early on, like I remember being over at his house,

because I have two half-brothers, so early on I remember being over there with them, going to Disneyland on occasion. But yeah, the memories are very sporadic early on, you know, of them. And you're raised by your mom. Raised a bit by both, but primarily by my mom, yeah. And where are you growing, in Long Beach? Yes, in Long Beach.

And then at five, my mom moved to the city of Orange, which is in Orange County, which is about 20 minutes south of Long Beach. What is Orange like? Orange, as far as places in Orange County go, is pretty diverse. There's a large Latino community there. But aside from the Latino population, it's overwhelmingly white. And that was a change. Even having my mom being white and having that whole side of my family be white,

I never thought of it that way until I showed up. She moved there right before I started, a month before I started kindergarten. And I remember my first day of kindergarten, I rolled up and I had a, this was 94, so I had a Power Rangers shirt on, thought I was real cool, Power Rangers lunchbox. I really thought, I was nervous,

but I thought I was fresh. I thought it was real cool power rangers lunchbox i really thought i was nervous but i thought i was fresh i thought it was good right and i'll never forget this kid who was in line in front of me like looked back at me and this is the first time like again i'm like i'm not really realizing the differences between us yet but he turns around and looks at me goes are you poor are you poor yeah yeah yeah and i was like like what do you what do you mean and he looks at me and goes, are you poor? Are you poor? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I was like, what do you mean? And he's like, you look poor. Are you poor? And I was like, what the?

You know, I was just deflated. I didn't know exactly what to think about it at the moment, but I was just deflated. Just because, you know, you're a five-year-old. You're going to kindergarten. You're trying to. We had just moved. And I thought I looked good, but apparently I looked poor. That's to remember his name. Did you tell your thought I looked good, but apparently I looked poor.

That's to remember his name. Did you tell your mom? Yes, I did. That I remember. That I remember. I remember going home and talking to my mom. And, yeah, I mean, that's when, I think her hope was that it would take a little bit long for those dynamic, for that dynamic to set in, right? But that's when she started talking to me about the fact that I am now at this overwhelmingly white place.

And many of the people I'm going to be around are likely growing up, if not out and out racist, racist things being said in their household. They're going to be parroting those things back. At that, if I asked you in, say, middle school, how you would describe yourself racially, what would you have said? Black. I knew I was black. You just... Because of my experience, because of that experience, going to the... So, you know, I would say off and on between kindergarten and ninth grade i was going to overwhelmingly white schools and you know these are places where i would get called a nigger you know so when you're getting called a nigger you know what you are you know and then i'll go talk

to my dad about it he go yeah well you are a nigga so you know that was like his way of trying to be like yeah you are a nigga so yeah you know so i I definitely knew what I was. I knew I was black and where it got. Well, I see where it got difficult was when probably in junior high, when it was teachers who I think sort of interacting with me differently because of my color. You know, like I had I got in a lot of trouble because I grew locks. And I remember they wanted to kick me out of school. There was a neo-Nazi kid named... I'm gonna name names.

I love how you're naming... All these people like on the bulletin board, where are you, man? Right? And every day with him, you know, it was go back to Africa. I mean, it got to the point police got involved, you know? And he never got kicked out of school somehow. back to Africa. It got to the point police got involved.

He never got kicked out of school somehow. But I would say the point in junior high is when teachers, I started getting just weird comments from teachers and weird, nothing I did was ever good enough. There's always a perception that I was lazy. And that's when I think, because I was always a smart kid.

And because my dad played football, and because I was so tall, I was always tall. The perception was always that I was going to go and be an athlete. But from early age, I realized I wanted to cut against that. Like I didn't want. OK, cool. Yeah, I can. I can play ball. I can do that. But what I realized I really wanted was to show people like early on I kind of got this um need to prove people wrong in me and so I felt like I always wanted to be I always wanted to be the smartest person in the room at that point as a young kid and I didn't always have the confidence that I was but I deep deep down somewhere I wanted to be and by the time I got to junior high and the teachers were sort of

I had these these odd interactions I think that's when I started to, that's when my interest in education started to wane and my, I would say my pride in myself started to wane. How many black teachers did you have in your public school experience? Zero. Zero? Do you think that's something to do with it? I think that has a big part to do with it absolutely yeah absolutely you got it and that's the premise of my show if you're not around if you're not around people who look like you who are successful you know and my dad god bless him

you know he was in the NFL so to his degree was a success but my dad and I love him but you know he also like has a very small way of thinking you know and so i never really felt like i had someone what do you mean by a small way of thinking for him was always like yeah just go be a cop you know like that's your money like you can go be a cop you can get a hundred grand a year with overtime you can make like 120 like what are you doing with this college thing what are you doing with school you know like they didn't he couldn't get that I wanted to be that I wanted to be an educated brother you know he couldn't get it I'd say a lot and a lot of my family didn't

it's difficult to talk about because I like in so many ways they were successful you know but at the same time I knew there was a level of life that I wanted to achieve that no one in my family had achieved you know my dad wanted me to go be a cop because he's like that's guaranteed income you can and you can do it uh but I just had other aspirations So it was a weird thing between growing up in a white world that didn't necessarily believe in me and growing up in my black family in a black world that kind of had a way of thinking that wasn't, they didn't understand what I was trying to do. Yeah. Yeah. Your dad's not, he's not 100% wrong. Being a police officer, I'm not saying you should have done it.

I'm just saying from his position, being an LAPD officer, assuming that's what he's talking about, that is a good job. It's a great job. I mean, in terms of if you look at just income and what you could provide for your family, it's a great job. It's the means of, there's an entire generation of largely black men who grew up in la for whom the lapd was the stepping stone i mean you got a job in the lapd and then your kids got to go to college i mean that was like he's reflecting something that was real right no it was a real thing and i don't i at the time i was very i was always upset when you bring it up you know now i understand why why you did. But when you have a dream and something you want to accomplish, hearing things like that don't instill confidence in you.

Because I'd always have to hear these questions like, well, what if school doesn't work out? It's like, well, what do you mean? By the time I get to college and I'm meeting people, I'm like, I can very much tell that this isn't their experience that they had. Like, what if school doesn't work out? It was just expected, you know? Is it your dad, does he not think you're smart enough for college? Or does he think the obstacles facing a young black man are too high? What's his, what's his theory? I don't know. My dad thinks he's the smartest man in the world. So, and I think based, he also thinks he has the greatest gene pool in the world. So I think based on that, he knew I was very smart. That was his belief at least. But with my dad, I think it very much had to do again with like his perception of what was possible in the

world. You know, he grew up in a place called Ujima Village in Compton, which was a housing project that closed down because the soil was toxic. They didn't know it at the time, but the soil was toxic. So people were getting sick and cancer and dying, babies being born deformed. I think it was also a sense of maybe his dreams were limited too, or his dreams were big, but I would say his dreams were at some point, I say his dreams were crushed as well. My dad did get kicked out of the NFL. The story, as it's been told to me, is my dad got drafted by the Colts in 84, I want to say, 85. And the team captain, a white dude, called my grandmother a nigger. And so my dad whooped his ass.

He got reprimanded. They had a team dinner. It happened again. My dad whooped his ass. And he was kicked off the team yeah and i think when that is when that's what happens to your dream i think you start to worry in some way was it his dream absolutely yeah yeah does he still have regrets today i'm sure he does i don't think he he regrets that. I don't think he regrets whooping the team captain's ass or anything. But, yeah, I think he wishes it turned out different.

Absolutely, you know? Yeah. Does he understand what you're doing now? Yeah, yeah. You know, the first time he really got it, well, he got it when I got into Berkeley. He was shocked. I was shocked into Berkeley, he was shocked. I was shocked. My whole family was shocked.

I couldn't believe it, too. So much so that I remember I drove up. I drove up. I wrote the counselor. I was like, listen, I got to talk to you. I didn't want to do it over email. Didn't want to do it over phone. I needed to look this lady in the eye.

So I was like, hey, can I meet you? And she's like, yeah, sure, like yeah sure sure come down this date this time drove up to berkeley and yeah sat with her i was like look i got this deferred admission this is real yeah yes this is real hold on hold on justin justin you're living in orange county at the time i'm living in la in la yeah you L.A.? Yeah. You drove six hours to Berkeley. Yeah, six, seven, eight. To ask an official of Berkeley whether your acceptance that it was real. I came that far.

I wasn't going to like, and then also like try to figure out how to rent a place up there and pay admission just to not. So I drove up there and, you know, so I'm, is this real? And she goes, yes, this is real. So I go, so I can start January 15. Yes, you can. As a philosophy major, yes. Okay. And I can switch my major if I want, once I get in.

Yes. All right. You know, and then, and I'm kind of trying to work up to also, like, so then I ask, I say, listen, I'm going to be honest with you, okay? Like, I don't have a high school diploma. I don't have a GED. I don't have an equivalency. So based on that, now you already said this was real, but based on, now there's new information based on that.

Is this really, can I really come here? We skipped a step. The step we skipped was you didn't graduate from high school. No, I left at 14. At 14? Yeah, yeah, No, I left at 14. At 14? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I left at 14. I also didn't graduate from high school, but that's because my mom called the principal and said,

Malcolm won't be coming in. He's more productive at home. That was it. So everyone was like, okay, fine. Like that's, you know, that's the world I grew up in. It was a sort of forgiving, understanding, do what you want kind of world. Wait, you left high school

at 14 to do what? nothing good yeah nothing good I would say I was pretty beat down by that point you know like confidence wise I just didn't know

what I was doing so yeah I left and I was I was just doing my own thing. What's your mom doing when you're doing this? So what happened was, so basically my freshman year of high school, I was so rock bottom with my confidence. I had basically like a zero point something GPA. I had no GPA. It was literally zero point something. And the highest, the highest grade I got was a,

I thought it was a C, but it turns out it was a D. I got a D in journalism. Yeah. And the teacher pulled me aside. He's like, look, Justin, you're too smart to fail. You deserve an F. I'm not gonna give you an F. I'm gonna give you a D. I was like, oh, thank you, Mr. Mueller. But it was like a zero point something. So they said, you're gonna have to go to continuation school, which was just like a school for fuck ups. And my mom was like, you're not a fuck-up, so you're not going to go there. I go, okay.

She's like, I'm just going to have you stay home. And it sounds crazy, but I got to give her credit because it didn't work for a bit, but then it really worked. She's like, I'm just going to have you stay home. You're going to read the paper every day while I'm at work. I'm going to come home. You're going to have a little report on a couple items you read. And, of course, you know, for the longest, like, I just took advantage.

I didn't do it, you know. Like, I just didn't. She didn't want me being with fuck-ups because she already could see, I think, that my confidence was shot, and that was just going to be worse. So she pulled me out. I took advantage of it I didn't do much um until I was like almost 16 common story I feel like for a lot of people I got a copy of the autobiography of Malcolm X and it really reignited my ambition so then at that point I enrolled in community college

because I didn't really want to deal with, like, trying to start over from my freshman year of high school. So I enrolled in community college and just did that for about four or five years until I could transfer. I transferred. So I started that at, like, just before I turned 16, and I transferred to Berkeley at 21. Oh, I see.

We'll get back to Berkeley and how things turned around for Justin in a moment. Back to my conversation with Justin Richmond at the Edison O. Jackson Auditorium at Medgar Evers College. Justin was finding his place in Berkeley. So you have a kind of loss of confidence. And do you get it back in Berkeley, at Berkeley? Yeah, 100%. Gabrielle Williams right here.

I met Gabrielle at Berkeley she was doing her PhD we met at the black student lounge or was that the um that was like her her student job thing and she was listening to music and I heard so we we connected and um there was a professor there by the name of Ricky Vincent he was like the preeminent funk music scholar and was writing a book on the Black Panthers. And I had a strong interest in the Panthers. So like between like Gabrielle and Ricky Vincent and all these other Black folk that looked like me that I could relate to. And for Gabrielle coming from LA, Southern California, like there was just a lot in common. It definitely a hundred percent helped me, but she also has helped me through a lot because as many times I've called Gabrielle, including when I took this job at Pushkin, like, should I really do this? This is a smart move.

And she'll have to talk, you know, when I got into grad school, man, should I really take out these loans, Gabrielle? I don't know. It's a lot of money. Like, I don't want to be in debt. And Gabrielle's like, Justin, just come on. That's what you're supposed to do as you're going to school you got to pay you know unless you can afford it take the loan out and go so um yeah i definitely got a ton of confidence back there not that i'm you know and then slowly along the way ebbed and flow like as new situations arose and i sort of fell into journalism because i couldn't really i couldn't get a job after college and I knew I kind of went in wanting to be a professor by the time I got to Berkeley I was like I kind of want to do my

bachelor's get a PhD then teach but then I sort of fell out of love with the with higher education just because of the bureaucracy element sorry Alexis and Peter you know you guys are wonderful to have us here but uh I would talk to Gabrielle. I would talk to my guy, Ricky Vincent, and sort of be like, well, what is it that I like to do? Well, I like the idea of writing and connecting with people, communicating to people. I like the idea of researching. And so that's when the idea struck to do journalism. I started getting involved with radio around town, KPFA, which was the Pacifica Station in Berkeley, the campus station. I took

a journalism class. So I kind of, and it just snowballed from there where I fell into journalism. But by the time I get a job, I'm 25, I'm at NPR, and my girlfriend got pregnant, who's now my beautiful wife, Danielle. We now have two beautiful kids, Corinne and Ella. And I was making like $30,000 a year in PR, paying back loans and about to have a kid. My confidence, I'd say at that point, sinks back to all time low. And I have a friend named Drew who took me to Cuba.

It was just like, I sense you're kind of going through it. Let me take you to Cuba. This is when Cuba opened up. I was like, I can't really afford it. He's like, I'm going to pay for it. He sent me back whenever. So me and Drew went down. And this is the most random incident in my life.

This is the most random thing that ever happened in my life. We're in Cuba, in Havana. I've driven to Mexico twice. But other than that, I've never left the country. And I run into Quincy Jones in Havana. And Quincy Jones, I'm like, damn, that's Quincy Jones in Havana. And Quincy Jones, I'm like, damn, that's Quincy Jones. I go, hey, Quincy, can I get a picture?

And he goes, yeah. And he doesn't get up, so I was like, okay, I'm going to sit down and take a picture with Quincy. And he started asking me, what's your sign? I go, Leo. He goes, oh, I'm Leo Rising. Cool. I don't know what that means. He just starts talking to me, and we have like a three-hour conversation.

We have dinner. You never told me. Because you and I met Quincy like five years ago. Yeah, that was a full circle moment for me because we ended up going to Quincy's house. But I had like a three-hour dinner with Quincy Jones in Havana. At my lowest point, I'm making like no money. I'm broke. My wife was looking at me crazy because she's like, why are you in Cuba running around?

She didn't know if I was maybe not going to come back or what. But I met Quincy. And from that, he was like, oh, you're a cool brother, man. Gave me his card. And normally I wouldn't have reached out, but I felt, I was like, okay, this man discovered Oprah Winfrey, Will Smith Charles so I was like you know what am I gonna do now reach out not reach so I could use all the help I could get so I reached out to Quincy and it was like look Quincy like I realized I didn't want to reach out with nothing so me my friends in Ari Clinton one of the few black men NPR that sort of took

interest in me right away sort of noticed when I was there that I needed I needed his guidance. We decided I shouldn't just go to him with nothing to offer. So I was like, look, I'm a journalist. I work in NPR, work in audio. It's 2016. Podcasting is sort of new, but people are starting to have them. You've done everything from everything across media that you could possibly do except for podcasting, we can make you a podcast. And he was like, great. So it wasn't that easy, but it was a couple of meetings, finally got into a great,

got to sign some paperwork. I still have it framed. It's like me and Quincy Jones signature, which is the craziest thing in the world to me. But what happened was I couldn't sell the thing. I realized I didn't know the first thing about business. I've been flying blind my whole life, just trying to figure things out. I'm taking out loans. I don't know the thing I realized I didn't know the first thing about business I've been flying blind my whole life just trying to figure things out I'm taking out loans I don't know what I'm doing

and that's when the idea for this show occurred to me if I could just talk to someone else some other black man who has like money Magic Johnson Byron Allen who at that time just bought the Weather Channel

I was like I bet they could tell me what to do because I was in these rooms just like realizing, like, I don't understand this jargon. I don't understand the speak. And I'm failing, you can point to are successful at this particular thing, how that can really be, it's not the only way to figure things out, but it's, man, it makes things so much easier, you know? Let's go back a moment and say, what's the version of your life where you wouldn't have suffered that kind of crisis of confidence? I can't imagine. Give me a version.

Give me a version where it's easy. In the United States? I don't know. I don't think you can have it easy being born black in the United States. I don't think it's possible. I would say best case scenario is, you know, like a Carlton type or something from Fresh Prince or something, you know, where like, okay, you're successful. But like, are you really, how successful are you if you're not acknowledging the whole part of yourself?

So it's hard for me to answer. But I guess in a scenario where there is no, and this is interesting because i'm also thinking about this from for my kids now like they're they're getting a much different life than i had access to different kinds of people and education and two parents who are supportive of each other and supportive of them together uh so i think but but i mean i guess like for me it's hard for it really is hard for me to imagine but but maybe i guess the best case you know it's hard for, it really is hard for me to imagine. But maybe, I guess the best case, you know, it's funny. I used to dream that I was like a, as a kid that like, like I was like a Huxtable, you know, which is maybe a little controversial now. But like maybe that would have been a best case scenario, you know.

Dad was a doctor. Mom was, you know, whatever, in a brownstone. Give me the worst case scenario. So you don't get into Berkeley. What happens? Is that the key moment? Nah, probably getting the Malcolm X autobiography because I was in a pretty bad spot there.

But I'll say before I came to Pushkin, I almost gave up. Again, like when you don't have examples of success around you and you don't have people who can teach you about money and how to not even like in a gross, like uber capitalist way, but just like how to accumulate it so that you can have the things you want and need in life. Like I didn't have that. So I almost left journalism, even though I love it and I wanted to be in it. I almost left it I had a job offer with ADP the uh payroll processing to do outdoor sales with ADP because I was like well I'll just go do sales you know like I'll just I'll make some money doing sales and I almost took that

offer you know and that was maybe six months before before I got an email from you, from Mila Bell and from you to come over for Pushkin, which I would say changed, again, my trajectory, thanks to you, Jacob Weisberg, you know, Mila Bell. Yeah, man, because it was also bleak then a little bit, you know? It was tough then, man. We'll take a quick break and get back to justin's story we're back with justin richmond in making sense of people's life stories and trying to figure out what's the difference between a, in America, between a black life story and a white life story.

One of the things, and it's very, very difficult to convince, persuade white people of this fact, is it's how many strikes you get or how many chances you get. If you are an upper middle class class well-educated white person you get like 10 chances you can screw up nine times and the system will catch you every time and start you over again and if you're in the same position as a young black person you maybe get two and i remember this is a weird example of this, but there's an incredibly interesting book that was written about a suburb of Buffalo, a wealthy suburb of Buffalo.

I think it's Williamsville, I'm not sure, or Amherst. The book, I think it's called The Safest City in America. It was about how there's no juvenile delinquency in Williamsville. And the reason is not that there's no misbehavior among juveniles. It's that they just call it something different, right? It's hijinks. It's sowing the wild oats. It's, oh, so-and-so just has to learn to be, it's, everything is getting, everyone gets so many different chances that no one ever looks, never comes to the definition of juvenile delinquency.

And that thing, this question of how many chances you get, it sounds, listening to your story, that you were very close to running out of chances. It's even more than that. It's like I didn't even know that I had chances. And maybe I didn't. I never knew I had chances. You know, there's a point where, you know, I guess in your example, the difference would be in those instances, those kids in Buffalo, they're thought to be behaving badly. Whereas when you're a black kid misbehaving, you're bad. You know, you yourself.

Oh, it's defined, absolutely defined differently. Like you're a terrible person. You can't, you can't person. You can't succeed. You can't do, none of this is for you, you know? Yeah. And so that's where I was at, which is a pretty bleak place. Yeah, yeah. My, speaking of, so my father, who passed away a couple years ago,

but actually today, weirdly, is his birthday. My mom always says to my dad that his that his motto was nothing bad will ever happen, which I've thought about a lot. Partly that's a function of his personality. He had this kind of unstoppable, unstoppable personality, but he was also a, came from a stable English family.

He was well-educated. He was very intelligent. The system always worked for my dad. He was a nice person. He was dependable. He was charming. People liked him. So it made sense that his theory of life

was nothing bad will ever happen. My mother, she's a mom, she would imagine all kinds of horrible, and he would look at her uncomprehendingly and it's like, no, no, no. Basically, nothing ever bad is going to happen right and it was essentially true of like in that message i was just thinking as you were talking about your dad the difference in messages sent to the two of us at a young age i have this dad who just thinks it didn't even occur to him that there's ever going to be any detour off

the runway yeah man something about opportunity and something about the way in which society asks you or demands that you think about yourself you know it's like sometimes you don't even get an option in how you want to think about yourself I feel like

the one thing that I don't, maybe it's fine this way, but the transition is still really the way that your life kind of turns around. I don't mean turns around. It's not like you were living a life of crime, but you know what I mean? I'm not incriminating myself on this.

Something happens that's really kind of interesting and mysterious to you in your 20s. It was like, yeah, between, it was just building up my confidence, I guess, between 15 and now. I'm still trying, you know, like from that time I did drop out of high school to like, just getting through college. Like what motivated me was a sense of failure. I was like, man, if I don't get a high school, if I don't get a college diploma, like I would have an eighth grade certificate. Like, what is that going to do for me? You know? So that was kind of like this real, like, it wasn't like a carrot type of motivation was like you know and um and then I was like well then I couldn't get a job and then I went started interning and I got into grad school and then that

gave me another okay now it's grad school I gotta figure out grad school's big scary thing and do that and then I get out of there I get right into this job at NPR and within two months like my girlfriend's pregnant you know and it's like now, well, I got to figure out how to provide. So like my whole, I feel like every step of my life up until recently has been about how do I just, how do I not, how do I not fail? And that's sort of been my motivation to succeed. And I'm trying to figure out a way now to be motivated now that that, like, that's why I'm on this journey of just trying to talk to successful people. I've been lucky enough to be, you know, first time we met in Santa Monica.

I was like, man, I can't believe I'm going to meet Malcolm Gladwell. That's crazy. And, you know, we had a very lovely conversation. I just remember being like, I can't get out of here without asking, like, how did you get comfortable having money? And I asked you that. What did I say? You're like, I just wanted to be able to do my own thing. I wanted to have my freedom.

I never wanted people to sign things to me or to be told what to do and so and i was like damn that's a great answer you know and but that's why that's largely why i'm i'm still you know i'm still trying to figure out this this this world in this life and navigating different things so that's why i'm out that's why i'm doing this and talking to people like charlamagne the god and people like uh suzy orman and just different people who, you know, against the odds, against all odds, like figured this thing out, you know. And my hope is that people listening to it, it inspires them not only to take big swings, but also to seek out real world, real life mentorship. You know, like, obviously, I want this to be a platform of mentorship for people. So hopefully you walk away having learned a lot and feeling boosted.

But also like I think, you know, you need to have real life mentors. And I've been lucky enough to have so many, Gabrielle, you, Jacob, all kinds of different people. I'm hoping as I try to figure this out, people will figure it out along with me. That's lovely. Well, thank you, Justin. Let's do some audience questions. Yeah, Q&A if there are any questions.

They could be for me or Malcolm. Here comes someone. Thank you. My name is Kevin Nesbitt. I'm an educator, one of the administrators that create the blockages you talked about. But thank you so much for the way you presented this. You're a good bureaucracy. I'm a educator, one of the administrators that create the blockages you talked about. No, but thank you so much for the way you presented this. You're a good bureaucracy. I'm a good bureaucracy.

You're the good guy. Good VP, as I call myself. I've had many friends that come from biracial families. And I think as someone that does not come from a biracial family, there's always this belief that there's some sort of protection that you might receive from your whiteness if you choose to adopt it or if you choose to embrace it and because i appreciate the way that you said you understood immediately you were a black man and that you had no choice because um even if you wanted to imagine something other society told you no you're a black man right and you gave many examples for that but i have other friends that um throughout their journey they've been able to say well it's it's not that it's a choice but it's a little messier than that for them because they're both black, they're both white, and they grapple with

what that means. Did you have any moments where you felt that having a parent that was white actually enabled some moments of protection or other, as Malcolm described it, maybe one more choice, right? One more set of options. That's my question. Yeah, I guess I don't want to speak for other people, but my belief is when I hear these stories is just that there's a bit of them deluding themselves, perhaps. But hard to say. I don't want to speak for anyone else,

but I didn't feel that. Maybe if I'd had a different mom, maybe it would have been different, but I was never allowed to think that anything different. Great, thank you. This is my grand theory of biracial marriages. Maybe it would have been different, but I was never allowed to think that anything different, you know? Thank you. Yeah, yeah. This is my grand theory of biracial marriages. There's a big difference between black father, white mother, and white father, black mother.

Which would be your... Yeah, we are actually very different kinds. Historically, what a biracial marriage was, was a white man and a black woman yeah that was the acceptable form for society goes back hundreds and hundreds of years that's what it was it was never the reverse and only really recently have you seen black men marry white women and i think the road is a lot harder both for the for the marriage and the children it's a lot harder when your father's black and your mom is white.

Yeah, and I think if I reflect on the cases, I'm thinking about my friendships. It was largely what you described. Traditional. Traditional, and maybe the household of the fathers, whether separated or not later on, there was some sort of protection that dad would, you'd have another outcome, right?

You have another choice. So I just wanted to hear a bit about that. I think society views a black man, white woman as being subversive and in a way that they don't view the reverse as being subversive. Thank you. It's true.

Hello. Firstly, thank you, Malcolm and Justin. You guys are, it's just been a joy to have you here and I've just enjoyed this whole conversation um I just wanted from you just in like a soundbite or maybe just like a quick statement like words of advice from one biracial man to another biracial man just how to like navigate the professional world and how to just keep your bearings and keep yourself grounded.

Man, I'm not listening to my show because I think there's people far greater than me that are going to be giving advice. But I would say to this point, in the instances where I haven't code switched, I've always been much more successful. You know, I don't know if that's because I've been lucky, but also some of it comes down to my, like, I also think you shouldn't capitulate. So also, like, if someone doesn't want you, like, I do have imposter syndrome. Yet and still, it's like I do somewhere in me have this belief that, like, I can't help but be myself you know and i think as long as you just are true to yourself whatever that is however you view yourself identify yourself behave like yourself like i think that's all you can do and i think in those instances like just knowing that you bring a lot to the table being you then you do you being someone else yeah and

if you don't you'll find out right Like sometimes it doesn't pay to be me in certain situations. And I've, you know, I found out, but okay, then fine. That one's not for me. Let me go to the next situation where it is good for me to be there. You know, I was at NPR before

I was at Pushkin with Malcolm. And that was a place that I was authentic to myself, but it didn't feel like that was, it wasn't appreciated and you know so i got out to go where you're appreciated to go where you're appreciated yeah yeah thank you yeah we have one more question oh welcome uh gentlemen thank you so much so you both men are biracial and i wanted to ask mr gladwell um justin identifies as black and yourself i don't think about it i think that's the difference between having i have a west indian mom

justin as an african-american uh father if you're west indian you don't think about race in the same way. It's not this omnipresent thing in your life. So I was, I just think of myself as, I don't know. I, when I grew up, it was never forced. I mean, it was never, I was never forced to answer that question. My mom thought of herself as a Jamaican, not as a white person or a black person. So I don't have a kind of easy answer to that. You had a couple layers, because Jamaican and then growing up in Canada, which I feel like is probably very different than...

Yes. Canada, again, I never got... The racial experience of, as everyone in this room knows, the racial experience of living in this country is just profoundly different from the racial experience almost anywhere else. Would life have been different if you were darker complexion? Probably, I guess, although...

Well, black people always know that I'm biracial white people don't necessarily know so it would have made my I have to tell my favorite story ever along these grounds is I was running down went for a run one day in LA and running down Ocean Boulevard

and this black guy in a gorgeous open Porsche 911 like one of those tricked out ones like one of these incredibly handsome black men looks at me sees me running stands up so he's like you know he's through the roof of his car raises his hand like this and says I love what you do bro so like I get a lot of love from black people so if I was darker would I get more love from black people

I mean maybe but I can't see how I get even more than I already get thank you very much alright thank you so much, guys. And thank you to Medgar Evers College. You know, higher education is wonderful. This was the perfect way to launch Justin's new show, Started from the Bottom. And I urge all of you to subscribe to it right now. And never forget, if you're a Pushkin Plus subscriber,

you hear all story, no ads. Believe me, it's worth it. Thanks to everyone at Medgar Evers College for hosting Justin and me, especially Alexis McLean and Peter Holliman. Special thanks also to Kishel Williams, our associate editor, who is also a Medgar Evers alum and had the wonderful idea of bringing us there. Revisionist History is produced by Lima Gistu, Amy Gaines, Kiara Powell, and Jacob Smith. Today's episode was produced by Kish, David Jha and Amy Gaines Our showrunner is Peter Clowney

Original scoring by Luis Guerra Mastering by Ben Talladay and engineering by Nina Lawrence Special thanks to Julia Bart I'm Malcolm Gladwell Malcolm Glaber