The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Perdita Felicien Unplugged - Want to "#Do Something" Then Listen To This

Episode Date: August 27, 2020

One of the country's most famous athletes with her take on the issues that have made most sports shut down. A special "bridge daily".

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here with the latest episode of the Bridge Daily. It's Thursday of week 24. That means tomorrow's Friday. That means this weekend's special, so get your comments in, the Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com, the Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com. Listen, we got a special program today,

and you know what? It's not about COVID-19. It's not about the U.S. election. It's about that other major topic that we've discussed over these past few months, and that has been the Black Lives Matter question. And last night we saw the NBA shut down for the night. We saw some baseball games shut down. We saw some soccer games shut down. we saw some soccer games shut down,

we saw the NHL do basically nothing. And that's prompted a lot of conversation, a lot of comments, a lot of tweets. And so I read a lot of them last night. And I tell you, the tweeter who I wanted to talk to most today was Perdita Felician. Now you remember Perdita. And if you don't, let me read a couple of lines from my 2009 book,

which featured some of my favorite interviews, one of which was with Perdita. So let me read this because it talks about, well, let me just read it. Pickering Ontario hurdler Perdita Felician was considered a lock when she ran for gold in Athens in the 2004 Olympics. In fact, more than a few analysts were already guaranteeing her gold in the medal counts they were predicting. It didn't happen, and in one of those agony of defeat moments in sports, we all felt her pain. She clipped the first hurdle, something that no one had foreseen,

and there she was, left in a heap on the track as everyone else crossed the finish line. That heartbreaking image was front page news across the land the next day. It spoke to the loneliness of an athlete whose four-year struggle had suddenly gone horribly wrong because of the misjudgment of a fraction of a second. It was months before she wanted to talk about it in front of the cameras, but when she did, it was on one-on-one, and that was the program that I did in those days. And she was fabulous and honest, forthcoming in that interview. Just as she is today when talking about a matter of such consequence to all of us and especially to black athletes like herself

and like the professionals that have been taking this case to the people through protests, have been taking this case to the people through protests, have been taking this case, as the NBA did last night, by shutting down their league and saying, you've got to do something. Well, I wanted to talk to Perdita today because of one particular tweet she sent out last night. So why don't we listen to that interview

and you think about it carefully, what she has to say, because it's not only about her. It's not only about me. It's about us as a society and how we answer that question of what do we do? All right.

So here's my conversation earlier today with Perdita Felician. So Perdita, a lot of people have been saying a lot of things in the last, well, 24 hours specifically, but really over the last few months as a result of the whole Black Lives Matter protests and movement and how it's kind of taken hold. Now, a lot of people last night were tweeting various things, and I kind of latched on to something you tweeted. And let me just read it. If you aren't an athlete and if you aren't black, you may not appreciate the extreme mental, emotional effort it takes to put the burden of anti-blackness aside and then turn around and have to compete at the highest level. Talk to me about what you were thinking when you said that. And yeah, I see a lot of people judging the Milwaukee Bucks and the WNBA players for deciding that they weren't going to play in the playoffs.

They're just not going to play the game and not showing up and walking out. And what I understood by that is they are not in the right frame of mind. It takes such a huge, it takes so much emotional and mental bandwidth to be at your best, to perform, right? On the track, on the basketball court, on any field of play. And I understood what it was with them. They're in this artificial bubble where nobody is, not their family, not their loved one, no one. face these videos and these scenes of Black people just being killed, you know, with no consequence by police who are supposed to protect them as civilians. So they are tired.

They are just exhausted. And I understood them walking off. So that's what I meant. It's not necessarily just one incident of Blake or even George Floyd. It's the sum of these things, day in, day out, that they are tired of. And so for me, I just wanted people to zone in on that and give those players some empathy. You know, most basketball players at that level are black. Do you think the white players at that level understand what you're talking about, about what it means to be black and what you have to go

through as a result of that? I think it's not your lived experience. You don't get to carry the burden and the weight of it, which is privilege, right? You don't get to carry the burden and the weight of it which is privilege right you don't have to think about talking to your child about what to do if approached by a police officer you don't know you don't have to talk to your child about well whether or not they should wear a hoodie or walk in their own neighborhoods after dark for fear that someone might think they're a criminal so they don't have those burdens to bear. And so the answer to that is no. However, I think for them to be that close to Black players and have Black friends, they hear the stories, right? And some of them might have even witnessed them.

And to me, that allows them to maybe have a different lens than people who just don't talk to black people or don't talk to people who don't look like them. And so for me, what has given me a little bit of hope in this whole thing, Peter, is seeing white people, non-black people really stand as allies, you know, in this fight against anti-black racism. And there's no question that has happened over these past few months in a remarkable way. But when you look at last night, and I wonder how you feel about this, because some of your colleagues and my colleagues in the sports world have kind of spoken out about it. I mean, we watched basketball shut down completely. We watched baseball shut down a couple of games.

We watched the Major League Soccer shut down somewhat. But in the NHL, you know, you've got a 33-second moment's silence at the beginning of at least one of the games, and that's it. Now, we know hockey is almost exclusively, but not exclusively, a white person's game in terms of the level of the athletes. But some of the black NHL players have spoken out and been quite upset that the NHL did nothing. Now, is that part of the same thing that you're talking about? I mean, they're seeing it from their perspective, you know, as white players, white privilege,

and they're not sort of getting it like their fellow athletes in other sports are. So the strike that happened with the NBA, that was player-led, right? That wasn't the executives or the owners saying, yeah, we're not going to play in protest of police brutality. So with the National Hockey League, it really was on the players last night to do something.

You can keep your moment of silence, 33 seconds or whatever it was. Not effective to me. And yes, could it be that majority of this league is white? They're European. They might feel that these are black issues. These are American issues, political issues, and they don't want to touch it. That to me, it's convenient. It's convenient

to not have to put yourself in the shoes of somebody else, right? And just turn the blind eye to it, which is why allyship is important. People who are privileged, people who are in a position to use their influence to make things better for other people, right? There's a reason we all are wearing our masks, right? So that you don't infect somebody else, so that you don't hurt somebody else. How much does it hurt you to do something else for another human being, to take up somebody else's cause, even if it costs you something?

To me, we have examples of people doing that through generations, and it really is time for the NHL to step up. Here's the truth, though. I'm not confident that they will. I'm not confident that they will as a league. For months they've been saying, we're listening and we're learning. Well, here's the time to actually do something, and they didn't even do it. So to me, it's all been talk.

It's been performative. It's just been convenient to do it and to say it, but not actually, you know, walk the walk. Okay. Well, let's talk a little bit about walking the walk because one of the most popular hashtags out there over these last couple of months, and there've been many, but one of the most popular ones is hashtag do something what do you do yeah what is the something that that people can do especially those who are not black who want to you know you know there's protests in the streets but beyond that what is there yeah so there's a long list there's a long list of things and i know we have a podcast we can go forever but i'll say some things. So I think I have to, at times I do put myself in the position

of a white person who is hearing this, right? The first thing I will say is white guilt, white shame, don't have that. Because as a white person, you know, you've been born into the system, just like I have a black woman. I think the ask is, do something with the position that you have. Do something with the position that the system has created for you. So what are those some things? Well, they're simple and they're complicated at the same time. So some of the things that I've been trying to help, you know, my white friends with is, it's as simple as talking to your kids about

racism, talking to your kids about what's going on. If you look at the bookshelves of your three-year-old or six-year-old or seven-year-old, what do those books say? What do the characters in those books look like, right? That's an easy thing. What does your circle look like? Who are the people that you're talking to and you gravitate to, right? And if the only people that you do know are white people, right, as an executive, as someone who's hiring, then chances are the only people that you are hiring, if you're a white person, are people that look like you, people who are in your circle. So you've got to break that mold. You've got to get uncomfortable. Is it donating to causes that help with civil unrest or sorry, civil injustice? Absolutely. You know, is it as simple as calling the mayor and calling the politicians in your community and saying, I'm not going to support you or I'm not going to action for me is for every white person, non-person of color, non-Black person of color, to do whatever it is in their power to do.

So don't feel powerless. Don't feel like there's nothing I can do. If you see injustice, call it out. You're a racist uncle at the dinner table saying, you know, Indigenous people are X, Y, and Z, what the other. Challenge that. Check that behavior. We each have something that we can do. So is this complicated? Is it nuanced? Every person's perspective and point of view will be different based on where they stand, based on the shoes that they're wearing and where they grew up. But the point is,

if you can't feel empathy for another group of people who don't look like you, then what the hell are you doing with your life? That's very powerful stuff. And, you know, one of the ways I try to answer that question, none of us are perfect on this, is challenge yourself. You know, look at yourself and see how you behave, how you have behaved, what your own feelings are, how you react to various circumstances. You have to confront your own biases, absolutely. But here's what I will say, and I can appreciate, is that this is a racial uprising.

I've never seen anything like this in my lifetime. I'm turning 40 on the 29th of August, which is soon. And I have to imagine that at times, as a white person, this is almost questioning your very existence, the opinions that you've held maybe about yourself or what you've earned or what you've achieved and accomplished, right? Doing this work of allyship, doing this work of standing beside Black people and Indigenous people and people of color is back-breaking work. And it's not going to be fixed right now or tomorrow or with this NBA season. It's a lifetime calling. And that lifetime calling will add inconvenience to your life.

It will add stress to your life. It will lead you to be questioned online and potentially even bullied. But those are things you have to be okay with, right? Because this work is not easy. for it, but just thinking about, my goodness, what if people back then didn't speak up? They didn't strike. They didn't boycott. The progress that we have made as a society, as humanity, would not have been. So it is the right thing for many of us to live in our discomfort. And like you said, question our own belief system and what we've been told about it. The one piece of advice I'll give you is that turning 40 is easy you know it's good and for you and for you especially you know we're always going to see you as that

person flying over hurdles as a world champ you know we'll always believe that we'll always see you that way one last question i think we all agree we're in a moment. The question is, can this moment really achieve something? Are you optimistic that it can? Quite a lot of questions and people DMing me and people that I don't know. Cause you know, I, like you said, you saw my tweets and I've been really outspoken about this and outspoken about this as someone turning 40 more than I would have been someone who's 22, 23, 24, you know, aspiring to be an Olympic champion. I wouldn't

have had a voice like this. So to answer your question, people have said, well, what will them not playing do? And the truth of the matter is, it's one thing. So let's say it does nothing. That doesn't bother me. The reason it doesn't bother me is because they are standing for something. And they are standing for something unapologetically. Wouldn't we all wish to be that brave and that courageous and that passionate about a cause and be on the right side of history.

But I don't believe that it's not going to do anything. I actually believe it is going to do something. It's at the very least, these athletes of the WNBA and NBA have found their voice and found their power. They are the economic engine of their league. They've suddenly leveraged that power and have gotten the attention of the owners and the stakeholders. And if those stakeholders, Peter, can't understand Black grief, Black pain, Black trauma, what they do understand very well is money. And so if you strike inside of this artificial bubble that costs $22 million to create, then you've gotten your attention.

And so my demand as a WNBA player or NBA player would be to my owner, call your mayoral friend, call the governor of our state where we play, call Congress and lean in and use that power. Use that influence that you have to make our demands happen. Until you do that, I'm not putting this ball in a hoop for you and for anybody's entertainment. We are out. So can it make change? Absolutely. But it's for the higher ups, the people who have the power to actually make these things happen, actually buy it.

And maybe money will make them buy it. Perdita, it's always great to talk to you, and this has been a remarkable conversation. I hope a lot of people listen to it and listen very carefully to some of the things you're saying and suggesting. Thanks for doing this. Thanks for chatting, Pierre. Always a pleasure. See, I told you it would make you think.

And think and act and do something is what we should all do. Again, if you have thoughts on it, don't be shy. Send them in. I found what Perdita had to say remarkable, powerful. You can put any word you want attached to it. So send your thoughts in to mansbridgepodcast at gmail.com. The Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com. A couple of things on the COVID-19 front that are worth mentioning before we sign off for this day.

None of them are overwhelming. We know the facts, the figures. They're difficult enough. I got three little stories here, one of which is the first one. It's difficult. Comes out of Bloomberg. Bloomberg's reporting that the discovery of coronavirus in the bathroom of an unoccupied apartment in Guangzhou, China

suggests the airborne pathogen may have wafted upwards through drain pipes from the contaminated apartment holding five people directly below. Okay? If you live in an apartment, you don't want to hear this. But you should. The findings appear to be consistent with the Amoy Gardens SARS outbreak in Hong Kong in 2003,

when 329 residents caught severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, in part because of faulty sewage pipelines. Okay, so you can't take anything for granted you may have your apartment you know disinfected to the nines but what can you do if the pipes are faulty that are connecting all the apartments in the building in some fashion? Okay.

That's the difficult one to read. And it's a difficult one to keep in mind. You never be sure. You can never be too careful in the way you clean things. Now, some of you know and were upset that I did not mark yesterday as National Dog Day. You know what? I didn't even realize it was, and I'm a dog owner. I didn't realize it was until I saw Mark Critch standing on top of Signal Hill

with a Newfoundland dog telling us it's National Dog Day. Should have known. But, you know, if you listened to last night's podcast, you know, at least Bella, my dog, was on the podcast. So maybe she knew, and that's why she was barking through the opening of the program last night. Well, let's just say she knew, and therefore it was marked. All right. In honor of National Dog Day on August 26,

Gallant, a company advancing stem cell medicine for dogs, surveyed 1,000 Americans to find out how pets and their owners have been faring in quarantine and found that dog owners are exercising more and enjoying working from home during the pandemic somewhat more than they had enjoyed their profile before the pandemic. According to this survey, which was picked up by People magazine, more than 68% of pet

parents, pet owners, have spent more time with their pets than with people during the pandemic. I don't know. I don't know what that says about us. Now, I imagine there's some people, especially some people who live alone with pets, could say that that's just normal. I've spent years spending more time with my pet than with people. But a lot of people now are doing that.

More than 68% of pet owners have spent more time with their pets than with people during the pandemic. Okay, now here's one for you to perhaps have a smile about. It's also COVID-19 related. The Seattle Times reports that the Kentucky Fried Chicken Company announced that it was suspending its iconic slogan, Finger Lickin' Good, in its global advertising out of concerns regarding the coronavirus pandemic,

acknowledging that it was the most inappropriate slogan for 2020. Finger Lickin' good. You're not going to hear that anymore until the pandemic's over. There will be no finger lickin' during the pandemic. Okay.

I'm good with that. Maybe there's some other slogans that need to be reconsidered. We'll have to think about that. I'll certainly listen to any that you may have in mind. Send them along. All right. That's the Bridge Daily for this Thursday. Don't forget, the weekend special comes your way tomorrow. I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks for listening so much, and remember, we'll be back in 24 hours. Thank you.