The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – How to Fight Racism Young Reader’s Edition: A Guide to Standing Up for Racial Justice by Jemar Tisby

Episode Date: November 4, 2021

How to Fight Racism Young Reader's Edition: A Guide to Standing Up for Racial Justice by Jemar Tisby Racism and social justice are important topics kids are dealing with today. In this adaptation of How to Fight Racism for young readers ages 8-12, Dr. Jemar Tisby helps kids understand how everyday prejudice affects them and what they can do to create social change. Inside, he explains the history of racism in America and why it is so prevalent, as well as uses Christian principles to provide practical tools and advice kids can use to develop and maintain an anti-racist mindset and make a positive difference in the world. Racism is pervasive in today's world, and in the wake of protests and a call for change, many kids are eager to confront it but aren’t always sure how. Jemar Tisby, author of How to Fight Racism and The Color of Compromise, believes we need to move beyond mere discussions about racism and begin equipping young people with the practical tools to fight against it. In How to Fight Racism Young Reader’s Edition, Dr. Tisby uses history to explore how racism has affected America since before its founding and how it’s continued to grow, as well as examines how true social justice is rooted in the Christian faith. In a format that provides kids with a handbook for pursuing racial justice, readers ages 8-12 will discover: hands-on suggestions and real-world examples of change they can put into action practical ideas for confronting racism in their everyday lives, and how they can use Christian values to change the narrative around race the ARC of racial justice—Awareness, Connection, and Relationships—that help form an anti-racist mindset ways to evaluate their actions and promote biblical principles Throughout, kids will learn how to ask questions of themselves and their communities as they stand up to racism in all its forms. This book is for anyone who believes it is time to courageously confront the racism we see in our society today. How to Fight Racism Young Reader’s Edition: Is ideal for any young person wanting to make a difference in today’s world Can be used by families and church groups to start meaningful conversations with kids Is written at a level kids in grades 4 through 6 and beyond can understand

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain now here's your host chris voss hi folks this is voss here from the chris voss show.com the chris voss show.com hey we're coming here with another great podcast oh my god who knew we'd do it again thanks for for tuning in, guys. Go to youtube.com, Fortress Chris Voss. You can see all the wonderful things we're doing over there,

including the video of the amazing guest we're having on today. I think you're going to really love this guest. And let's see, you can go to goodreads.com, Fortress Chris Voss, and see what we're reading or viewing over there. All the groups on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, wherever those kids are at today. We're just trying to keep up with them and send them videos and clips of what the show is doing and keep them interested in hopefully educating themselves and becoming much smarter.

So we're excited to announce my new book is coming out. It's called Beacons of Leadership, Inspiring Lessons of Success in Business and Innovation. It's going to be coming out on October 5th, 2021. And I'm really excited for you to get a chance to read this book. It's filled with a multitude of my insightful stories, lessons, my life, and experiences in leadership and character. I give you some of the secrets from my CEO Entrepreneur Toolbox that I use to scale my business success, innovate, and build a multitude of companies. I've been a CEO for, what is it, like 33, 35 years now. We talk about leadership, the importance of leadership, how to become a great leader, and how anyone can become a great leader as well.

So you can preorder the book right now wherever fine books are sold. But the best thing to do on getting a preorder deal is to go to beaconsofleadership.com. That's beaconsofleadership.com. That's beaconsofleadership.com. On there, you can find several packages you can take advantage of in ordering the book. And for the same price of what you can get it from someplace else like Amazon, you can get all sorts of extra goodies that we've taken and given away. Different collectors, limited edition, custom made, numbered book plates that are going to be autographed by me. There's all sorts of other goodies that you can get when you buy the book from beaconsofleadership.com. So be sure to go there, check it out, or order the book wherever fine books are sold. Today we have an amazing

author on the show. I'm really honored to have him on here. He is the author of a multitude of books, but the latest one that we'll be talking about is How to Fight Racism, Young Readers Edition, A Guide to Standing Up for Racial Justice by Jamar Tisby, PhD. He is, this book will be coming out January 4th, 2022. This is an edition of his amazing book that he put out on how to fight racism. And we're going to be talking to him about it and getting some of the deets, as the kids like to say, the deets, if you will. And in getting into those, he is the author of the New York Times bestselling book, The Color of Compromise, The Truth About the Church's Complicity in Racism.

His latest book, How to Fight Racism, he has been the co-host of the Pass the Mic podcast since its inception seven years ago. His writing has been featured in the Washington Post, The Atlantic, and the New York Times, among others. He is a frequent commenter on outlets such as NPR and CNN's New Day program. He speaks nationwide on the topics of racial justice, U.S. history, and Christianity. He earned his Ph.D. in history. He studies race, religion, and social movements in the 20th century. You can follow his work through his newsletter, Footnotes,

and on social media at Jamar Tisby. Welcome to the show, Jamar. How are you? I'm still trying to wrap my brain around. You said you were on TikTok as well? Yeah, we got like an account over there. We're trying to figure all that TikTok stuff out. That's impressive. I feel like Instagram is the limit of my social media know-how, and I'm not even that great on that. TikTok is just way beyond. I'm an elder millennial. The new stuff coming, I can't wrap my head around it.

So kudos to you. We're not quite great over there. I got my friend Cara Golden from Hintwater onto there there and she's killing it, but she kills it everywhere. We're, you know, we're trying. They opened up to three minutes now, so it's a little easier. Oh, wow. Okay. Try and put some, because we were having trouble with, you know, three, 30 seconds.

I mean, our intro is 30 seconds. Right. I think it's smart. If you can get good people who understand it, that's the way to go. So just opening yourself up to that and being humble to say, I don't know how to do it. I can't figure it out, but you can get good people who understand it. That's the way to go. So just opening yourself up to that and being humble to say, I don't know how to do it. I can't figure it out, but you can do it.

That's why we're trying to, we need to, I should have had more kids evidently in my older age that were younger so that they could just, you could tell your kids, Hey, you want to eat today? You want some wifi?

Yeah. You need to manage dad's TikTok account. A built in workforce right there. I'm thinking about adopting. Anyway, Jamar, give us your plugs so people can find you on the interwebs. Yes. As a past of my co-host says, follow at your own risk. You can follow me on Twitter at Jamar Tisby, Instagram at Jamar Tisby, and I have a Facebook author page, which is always fun for conversation. My latest venture, if you want to keep up with my work, is that newsletter that you mentioned.

Go to JamarTisby.com if you like what you see there. Of course, you can be a free email subscriber, but the really cool people sign up for the paid subscription. So that is an option as well. And, of course, my books. The first one is the color of compromise the second one is how to fight racism and the third one which we'll be talking about today is how to fight racism the young readers edition so lots of ways to get out there to follow my work and i would love to interact with you i think this is great because i think if anything

we learned in the last five years racism is still sadly alive in america this country is founded on it and we need to really do a lot of you still have a long way to go i see a picture of james ball one behind you a junior i was the one who introduced me to james ball one and i just oh good yeah in his book uh his latest book begin again yeah and i had i had no no idea who James Baldwin was. And wow, I just fell in love with him. I think he's one of my top people that I like to listen to and just so brilliant. But it's amazing how much, so much of what he talked about, you can literally just take it and move it to 2021 and we're still a mess. There's another book in a similar vein. He's not James Baldwin, obviously, but one of my mentors is a guy

named Bill Pinnell. And he wrote a book called The Coming Race Wars, The Coming Race Wars. That he wrote in the mid nineties after the Rodney King uprisings in LA. And he was, it was basically a message to the church, to white evangelicals about increasing racial tensions if we didn't take drastic action then. And that was published by InterVarsity Press. They re-released it this year in 2021, more than 20 years after it was originally published. And the same kind of thing where so much of what he's talking about two decades ago is relevant right now. So unfortunately, like you said, these issues haven't gone away. And my burden is that we, as people of faith, as concerned citizens, would understand the

assignment and take action right now. There you go. I love those TikToks to go understand the assignment. I don't know if you've seen those. We can fake it pretty good. I'm trying to keep up. There's some nights where I get on that TikTok and I swear to God, you can lose like three. Oh, easy. Yeah. Just flicking through. It's incredible creativity. I love the humor. I go there for the laughs and it's endless. So we need some levity in terms of the gravity of our racial situation right now. That's for sure. So you've taken your book, How to Fight Racism, and you've targeted towards young people so they can get a good understanding. And I think this is really important because I think hopefully a lot of us that are enlightened and educated, we realize that

racism is a taught thing. Most children aren't born into racism. This is a belief systems they pick up with their parents or they get it from their education. My belief is a lot of people get it from their parents. I think we had this discussion with a few different people on the show over the years. What do you think about that and where racism kicks in? Yeah, you're absolutely right. And if we want to dive right into the deep end, this book, just like we've been talking about, it's just very timely in terms of a young reader's edition. Why is it timely?

Because one of the battlefronts of the culture wars right now is school boards. Have you seen these images and these clips? It is like a cold civil war being waged. The only thing that's missing for now is the guns, but people getting shouting matches, threatening school board. And what's so interesting about school boards is these are local people. These are your neighbors. You can run into them at the grocery store. These are folks who are not trying to run for president or anything like that. They want to serve their communities. And most of the time, it's a not controversial thing

very much at all. But now it's these local folk who folks are creating enemies out of. And what's that is there's not much reward in it in terms of fame or platform or money. And then when you start getting actual threats on your life or people going to show up at your house or just even screaming matches, you're going to have good people who want to serve say this isn't worth it. And then it's going to be up to literally the loudest voices, which are often the ones who are saying the crux of it is things like don't teach critical race theory in our schools, which by the way, is a legal theory taught mainly in law school. So it's not happening in your kid's sixth grade

classroom. Right. And then other things like the 1619 Project, which they're saying, oh, it's making white people feel uncomfortable. It's making America out to be a bad and evil place, when really it's just telling a fuller story, which has historically, even in the discipline of history, which is not a very old discipline in terms of a formal academic subject going back to the mid to late 19th century has always been dominated by a single narrative. So we're telling more stories now, and that's making people feel uncomfortable. So all of that to say, we got to talk to our kids about race. And we can't count on schools ever to tell the whole story, and much less now

that even the mere mention of race and racism, let alone telling the full scope of the history of it, is being attacked and roadblocks and obstacles put up everywhere. Yeah, I've got some friends here in Utah that they go to all the events and the school board stuff. And we're in Utah. It's Trump State, red states. I'm up here for coronavirus from Las Vegas. And it's just extraordinary red states i'm up here for coronavirus from las vegas and it's just extraordinary how over the last two years we've had a lot of great authors a lot of black authors discussions about racism especially after the george floyd incidents and other things and we and there's been a lot i've learned like i've learned how whitewashed the

history of america is and how much of it is hidden. You read the book Cast and you go, holy crap, there's stuff that's purposely hidden from us in our history and stuff that you do not learn. And I grew up in California, so I had friends with everybody. And so I fortunately, I was friends with everybody. And I just, everybody was my friend. But I never knew, like some of the things I've learned by some of the brilliant authors that we've had on this show over the last two years, just so much history has been hidden from us, whitewashed, buried. And fortunately, my audience has gotten to learn a lot of this stuff, hear a lot of this stuff, and realize how important it is. And I think it was when we had A.D. Claude Jr. on the show, we were debating about when racism really kicks in. And I remember, I think it was with him,

we had discussion that I really think parents are the number one proponents of teaching racism. Yeah. And so I think this is really important, but yeah, the, the critical race theory, I've been seeing a lot of tweets on it too. And I think I saw some from Solon Dan O'Brien. She wrote, someone came up to somebody and said, I don't want that taught in our schools. And she goes, tell me what it is. And they go, I don't know what it is. They're just on marching orders from Tucker Carlson or Fox News or something. Parroting the talking points.

In terms of the history, so I deal with the history of race in the church. One of the things that stuck out to me, which I put in my first book, The Color of Compromise, in 1667, there was a group, the Virginia Assembly, which was the local legislative body in the Virginia colony. And it was a group of white Anglican men, all men, all white and Anglican. And in this day, you had to be a member of a church in good standing in order to have, you know, any sort of public platform. It's just part of the culture. And so they crafted a law which was in response to plantation owners' worries that if you evangelize enslaved Native Americans, Africans, or people who are mixed race, then you would have to emancipate them. And so they crafted a law in response to that concern from plantation owners that said baptism would not emancipate

an enslaved person, which was so profound to me because you get this mix of race, religion, and politics all in one. So these white men creating a law around race that dealt with a religious sacrament baptism that was being passed in a political context. And so that tells us that from the very start, race, religion, and politics have been wrapped up. Now we can talk about each one separately and distinctly, but they can never be completely separated. They're intertwined. The other thing is, in terms of this notion of the United States as this exceptionally good nation, this is 1667 when this law is passed. So that predates the Declaration of Independence, the Revolutionary War revolutionary war the constitution it predates

the political entity known as the united states which means before there was a u.s these issues of race religion and politics were already being formed and crafted and shaped into laws and you can say all those laws are gone those laws are passed but the residual is there the legacy is there for sure so there's lots of different stories like that. And then to add on to it, to add on to my monologue here, the parents. And let me say this, it's not the parents who are teaching their kids to be overtly racist. There are those. You can look even at pictures from the 20th century of lynchings and kids are there, which is absolutely chilling. I think the bigger problem is parents who choose to address race by not addressing it at all.

And the reasoning and the rationale is it's such a sticky topic. It's so fraught. It's so tricky. It's so controversial that even if they want their kids to grow up and be racially open-minded and all that stuff, they're afraid to bring it up for fear of getting it wrong. And that in itself is setting your kids up to have very unhealthy ideas about race, racism, and white supremacy. So the first step, I think, for parents is being willing to talk about it. Yeah. And a lot of people, sadly, aren't educated because of the whitewashing of education.

And I think people are afraid of it from a lot of different reasons. Sitting down and understanding it and just educating yourself is one of the most important parts. Massively important. Yeah. I think that's one of the biggest hesitations is people say to themselves, I don't know enough about this to talk about it. I'd say two things.

One, some, you know, enough to tell your kids not to hold prejudices against people because of what they look like or how they talk or where they come from. And I think generally parents get that and most probably try to do that. But two, it's never been easier to access more information about these topics. If you want to learn, never in the history of the world has the information been more accessible than it is now. Books, podcasts, even through music and art, through documentaries, you name it. Right. It's there. And so you do have to, especially if you're white, you have to be proactive and intentional about educating yourself about it, which is then going to build your confidence to talk to your own kids about it.

Definitely. You have to know there's a problem. I can't remember who it was I had on the show, but they basically said it was shortly after George Floyd. And they go, you know, George Floyd was basically a modern lynching. They choked the man out in broadcast. We all got to see it, unfortunately. And it was an unfortunate event that happened to him as well. The thing I love about your book is it really helps people because not only teaches about racism, talks about racism, but gives people a framework for action. Give us some samples or some details on that so we can understand that a little bit better. So we got to understand the problem. How to fight racism

is a proposal for some solutions, but we need to understand the problem. The color of compromise, which we talked about a couple of times, that's my attempt to elucidate from a historical perspective how we got here, how we got into this racial predicament, this problem of not just the 20th century, but the 21st century echoing Du Bois. So that's one aspect of it. But then there's another problem. First problem is people who don't think there's a problem. People who think racism is a thing of the past and don't think we need to address it at all. These are the folks in the school board meetings who are saying we don't need to teach critical race theory 1619. That's one set of problems. Okay. But let's say you're dealing with a coalition of the willing.

Let's say you're dealing with people who recognize that racism is an urgent issue in the present, and they want to do something about it. In the existing literature, number one, we tend to major on diagnosing the problem, whether from a historical or a sociological or personal memoir standpoint, we're talking about what's wrong at length. And that needs to happen because for so long we've glossed over that. But then when it comes to the practical question, what do we do about it? It may not show up at all. And then if it does show up, it's very scant. It's a couple of bullet points at the end of a chapter or maybe one chapter in a larger book. So it's not addressed in depth. And then there's another problem. Even when it's addressed, to me, it's not addressed in a coherent way that a reader or a learner can take with them and actually put into practice.

By this, the suggestions are often like a list of things, bullet points here and there scattered in terms of the what they address and how they address and all that stuff. And it's good. We're human beings. How do you keep all that in your head? I used to be a sixth grade teacher and I was never a great teacher, but I did get good at knowing when something that I was saying was going in one ear and out the other. And that's often what happens when it comes to the practical suggestions about fighting racism is because we don't have a sort of way of thinking about race and racism and what to do about it specifically that we can keep in our heads as we go. We're supposed to memorize this bullet point list of things. And I've been guilty of this

too. So that's been my approach for a long time. So here's the value in a book like How to Fight Racism and How to Fight Racism, the Young Readers Edition. The value is this. Instead of just giving you a list of suggestions, which I give you plenty, I also give you a framework. The framework is called the Arc of Racial Justice. And that's an acronym that stands for awareness, relationships, commitment, awareness, relationships, commitment, like the legs of a stool. You need all three to have a stable foundation on which to build your racial justice efforts. So awareness is what we're doing right now. If you're listening to this show,

you're building your awareness about race, racism, how it functions and all those kinds of things. It's that head knowledge, but that's not enough. You also need relationships. All reconciliation goes through people. What we cannot do in this fight against racism is dehumanize other people, even those with whom we vehemently disagree. And another aspect of relationships is that in a society that has so intentionally built barriers between people, we have to intentionally build bridges between people. This is especially incumbent upon white people because historically white people have walled themselves off from black people and other people of color. So guess what? You're going to have to work harder to knock those walls down, scale them, build bridges, and reach out to people who aren't like you. But that's not enough either. This is where evangelicalism falls short in a lot of their

racial justice efforts. They locate the problem primarily in bad relationships and not in bad policies or systems. And so this is where the commitment aspect comes in. We have to commit to breaking down the systemic and institutional factors that lead to racial inequality. And so that's doing things like addressing the crisis of mass incarceration, anti-Black police brutality, the maternity-related deaths of Black women being so much higher than for white women, those kinds of things which don't depend on whether you invited a Black person to dinner or not, right? We've got to change laws and policies there. So I think by having this framework of the arc of racial justice and having that as an approach to organize our different racial justice

efforts, then we can have a more holistic approach to it and we can pursue it in a lifelong way, not just this sort of reactive or momentary thing responding to some tragedy or crisis of the moment. And awareness, I love this arc system. I was going to, you beat me to my next question, which is good because we covered it. Awareness is so important. Like I said, I grew up in California. I was friends with everybody. I didn't feel like I had any sort of racial sort of bias or tint. But when Trump got elected and I had friends that were from, I'm trying to think it's a country south of Iraq.

They got invaded by Iraq. But one of my friends, she's from that country. She was thrown out of a cab in San Francisco by a Pakistani and called the N-word. I had gay friends, of course, that their cars were marked up. They were attacked. Just seeing the explosion, like the day after the inauguration of Trump or the day of, was just incredible. I think it was after the election, just when he was elected. Just the explosion, seeing the Southern Poverty Law Center tracking the hate groups expanding. I was just like, holy crap. And I will admit, I lived in a little bit of that sort of thing after Obama where everyone's like, okay, we fixed that problem. And living in that delusion. And so one of the things I did on my own that I was just, I was

like, hey man, I need to make sure I'm clean. Cause I don't want any of this on me. And I started learning these trope code words of these, the new KKK, the white nationalists. And so I did this exercise and I recommend everyone do it. I don't know. I'm not a psychologist, but I started walking around when I would go to store or out in public and I would start really paying attention to the discussion I have in my head when I would look at certain faces because we all do that. We look and we have a fight or flight sort of thing. We go, is this guy a danger? If you're a big white Harley Davidson dude coming at me with your Harley Davidson stuff and maybe a gun on your hip, I make certain decisions about that. And so I started looking at how my brain was processing and making decisions about whether fear or assumptions about people based upon their face, their color, how they walk, their gait.

And I started listening to what that was. And I started questioning it. And I would be like, wait, why are you making that choice, buddy? That's right. Why? Where are you getting that from? Okay. That's not.

Yeah, that's not appropriate. That's not right. You don't know that person. You don't know them from Adam. And it was, it really enlightened me to a lot of slight biases that I had and different conversations that really made me go, hey, man, you still need to do some work. And I think we all need to do that. And so I think awareness is really important.

Your first chapter in the book talks about Christianity and the church. We had a lot of discussions over the last few years about the church. I didn't know so much about the church. And I was trying to find Martin Luther's quote on, I think it was from his letter from the Birmingham jail about how we're not even together on Sunday. And I couldn't find it. It's the most segregated hour in America. Yeah. And I never understood until we had an author on the show that taught me this, how segregated the church has been and started with and how a lot of this. He said it was the Trump, the white evangelical church really supported Donald Trump. And of course, there's so much racism that grows out of that. Do you want to talk some more about that?

Absolutely. Listen, if you want to understand race in the United States, you have to understand religion. Religion writ large, so any religion, but in specific, Christianity, which is the most people identify in the U.S. as Christian if they're religious. So they've been mutually constitutive, is my argument, race and religion, especially when you're talking about white Christians. So going back to that 1667 law that I mentioned, where religion and race are interacting in really unhelpful ways. There are all sorts of other examples. For instance, in the 1950s, when right around the time of Brown v. Board passing and desegregation becoming the law of the land, there were Christians who were making, who were trying

to make theological justifications from the Bible in support of racial segregation. And they would go and they would cherry pick Bible verses that say, see, God wanted black and white people and other people of color separated from one another. And how dare you federal government encroach upon our religious rights to be racially segregated? That's what they were saying. 70s, which is beginning to be the rise of what we call the religious. Historian Randall Balmer shows that the political coalescing of this fundamentalist conservative side of Christianity, a lot of people will say or assume that it was with anti-abortion stances. What historian Randall Balmer is trying to show is actually it started earlier than that. It was Christians uniting in opposition to the IRS, which was going to revoke the tax exempt status of Bob Jones University because the university was enforcing racial segregation. And IRS said, if you're going to do that, you're not going to receive you're not going to be eligible for nonprofit status. Yeah. You don't have to be religious at all. But if you're building your awareness and you want to understand racial dynamics in the United States today, too. We talked about that on the show where we've, one of the things that happened with redlining and racial districting and everything else, and even freeways were designed to separate our neighborhoods and real estate.

And the problem is we don't, we're separated. So we don't integrate very well. We don't understand each other. We have different neighborhoods. And like you mentioned earlier, we don't have dinner with each other very much unless you have good friends. Of course, I don't think we have dinner with anybody during coronavirus, but there's that joke. So it's important to recognize that. The other thing we've had a lot of discussions over the last couple of years is the shame and regret. And then of course,

some of the blowback from the Trump crowd where I've actually heard people say, one of the big issues with the GOP is it's really about white power and money, in my opinion. I don't want to put words in your mouth. And really, they see that things are coming to them. With the recent census and stuff, we know that white people are going to become a minority. It's just a matter of time. That's just the way it is. And they're just trying to do everything they can to hold back that clock and to retain power as far as they possibly can.

And I've actually heard people sadly say that we were so evil to them and so bad to minority groups that when they get in power, they're going to treat us with the same. So there's that fear, and then there's also the shame of it. The shame of if you read caste, it's a really hard book to read. It took me, I had to keep stopping because you just, it was gut-wrenching. But it was really important. And so the shame of it is hard to deal with, and I think that's what a lot of these critical race theory people are exhibiting in their anger and their hate. Mm hmm. Mm hmm.

Yeah, I think so. Again, the race, the religion, the politics are all wrapped up. And so if we want to understand the political landscape, we need to understand the racial and religious landscape as well. One of the things that I think is frequently misunderstood by folks, Christians at least, is that there is a way to be religious without being political, which there's not. Or at least to say what they thought was not political actually was. And so in a lot of like white evangelical churches, the assumption is that you are socially and politically conservative, that you vote Republican. And that is the quote unquote Christian way. Now, it's very different in black churches and other Christian traditions. But since folks seem only to be interested in white Christians, I helped to untangle some misunderstandings there. And what's happening

politically, I think, is similar to what you said in the sense of there's a lot of fear. There's a lot of fear of losing power, fear of losing influence. It's been said that when you're used to oppression, when you're used to privilege, equality feels like oppression. And so what's happening is you have all these groups who have been minoritized, who are pushing for equal rights. And there are so many white people who think that granting the well-deserved rights to other groups means that they're somehow losing something, losing influence, losing power, losing whatever. The reality is that's not true. But it's good in the sense that if you've been hoarding power and resources, then you should have to share it. Yeah.

It's not a bad thing, but they view it as bad, and especially their leaders. And we can't ignore the social media environment and how that's stoking all of this. Because none of these conflicts in terms of their core or the principle are new, but the way of communicating and spreading them is very new. Yeah. Facebook, excuse me, whatever it is this week. Yeah. That's a, that's an interesting diversion that they're trying. Yeah. It's social media is not helping, but that's a whole show. That's a million shows, but yeah, it's, it's just horrifying the path that we're on. And you see, and when you study fascism and the rise of authoritarianism, a lot of this is involved in it and some of the track that we're on. Some of the roadmap that you give to people, because this is the great thing about your book, is you give people a roadmap

and say, here's some action items. You talk about relationships. Chapter five is how to do reconciliation right. Can you give me some insight to how to make friends, which is chapter six? It's hard. It's hard. But also we overcomplicate it. So there's a quote in that chapter, I believe, about a black pastor who's talking about this very topic. And he says, when we were in kindergarten, if we wanted to make a new friend, you just walked up to somebody and said, will you be my friend? And then they said, yeah, you started playing together. And I think that there's a principle there that still holds true with adults. And I can say that to this day, my best white friends are the guys who came up to me and essentially

did just that and say, hey, will you be my friend? There was a guy in, when I was in seminary, we were in summer Greek class and we were all just struggling to keep our heads above water with the content. But after class, he comes up to me in this thick Alabama draw and says, Hi, man, you drink beer? I'm like, are you asking me on a date? What is this? And he just wanted to hang out. And we did and became fast friends after that. And it was that simple. But the tricky part is putting yourself in the way of those kinds of relationships. And that gets harder and harder as an adult. that's going to put you in contact with people from all over your community. That could be a school board if you want to help push back against all this fear mongering.

That could be the local city council. And you don't even have to join. I'm not saying run for election necessarily, but you can show up to the meetings. That could be whatever, a sports league. So really sitting back and just brainstorming some things that are happening in your... It could even happen in and through the kids in your life. So maybe you're not the one playing the sport. Maybe it's your kids. Maybe it's not the sort of private school league that they're in. Maybe it's the community or city league that they're in. There's lots of different ways to do it. It's going out of your way. Even

something as simple, this won't necessarily strike up friendships, but you can even go to a different grocery store and experience different cultures that way. There's lots of, here's one thing that is especially difficult for us to do, but it's really easy once you get started. There's all kinds of sort of cultural events from Hispanic Heritage Month to Juneteenth, that if we're careful about it, we think that these sort of occasions are only for that ethnic or racial group. When in reality, most of the time, if we put on an event like this, we want everybody to come because we want everybody to learn. So what's the festival happening where you are? What is the holiday happening where you are? Can you volunteer to help organize that or just be an extra set of hands because you don't want to come in and take over for people? I don't have all the solutions.

I don't think the best, the greatest value of my book, How to Fight Racism, is the specific suggestions. I think it's that framework we talked about before, arc of racial book, How to Fight Racism, is the specific suggestions. I think it's that framework we talked about before, arc of racial justice, so that as you're trying to become a racial justice advocate, you do not neglect relationships and taking proactive steps to reach out beyond your comfortable group of people who are just like you. And yeah, I think that's super important because we need to recognize sometimes our communities bring us a certain amount of bias or don't expose us to other people and cultures and everything else. I was, like I said, I was lucky enough to grow up in California and in my late teens, my parents moved us to Utah and I was like, where the hell is

everybody? There's a lot of white people here. I went to a Mexican restaurant and asked for hot sauce, and they brought me ketchup. Wow. Yeah, and if you study what you talked about with the religious history, if you study the religious history of the Mormon church that's dominant up here, they have some really ugly stuff. And, yeah, it's still at the center of it. And it was really wild. I was like, where is everybody?

All I see are white people here, and you guys are boring. I know how you guys are,. I know how you guys are. The food is awful. It's just jello here, which means we need some culture up in this place. Did you forgive your parents? I don't know. No, I'm still in therapy. I think one of the insidious things, so I grew up in the Midwest, north of Chicago, if you can fathom that, but it was racially and ethnically diverse. My friend group was mostly Black and Latino folks. But the insidious thing about that is that we can fool ourselves into thinking we have arrived at this level of racial enlightenment and integration that is really not there. So because you can see different people, even because you're friends

with different people, you think that racism is like a Southern problem or a fringe white supremacist group problem. And you don't see the pervasiveness even right where you are because there's this racial and ethnic diversity. But the reality is a place like Chicago is one of the most segregated cities in all of the United States. Every neighborhood is basically an ethnic or racial enclave. A place like Chicago is one of the most segregated cities in all of the United States. Every neighborhood is basically an ethnic or racial enclave. And if you talk about the south side of Chicago, everybody knows what you mean. So that's true in other places from L.A. to New York. And one of the things that I often try to communicate to people is that it's not a they problem. It's a we problem when it comes to racism. And even if you have that sort of aesthetic racial and ethnic diversity

where you are, that doesn't mean that these underlying problems of inequality and racism are not present. They most certainly are. And sometimes they're even more acute because you're actually putting people into contact with each other. It's a lot easier in a racially homogenous setting not to have conflict. But when you're bringing different people groups together, that's when it happens. There was in the 1960s in the San Francisco, Oakland area, somebody called it a powder keg. And they said the same thing that happened with Watts in 1965 can happen here because you had these historically situated groups of Asian descended people who were now coming into contact with Black people who were migrating West out of the South

and white people who were starting to come there. And then mixing all those groups together was actually a recipe for racial conflict. So it's everywhere. It's everywhere we are. Yeah, yeah. I keep referencing the last two years so that people on the podcast will go back and look at some of the stuff. We had Dr. Chatters on the show, and he actually put me through an inclusivity test.

We're asking lots of different questions when I became aware of different things, who my friends are, et cetera, et cetera. So I encourage people to look at some of the inclusion things that are out there. You and I could talk for hours about this, but, of course, we want people to get a good tease out and order the book up. Anything you want to plug, Jamar, that we haven't covered before we go out? Yeah. If you're thinking about particularly educating kids, and they may be your own folks, your babysitter, student, whatever, How to Fight Racism, the Young Readers Edition is great to go through together. So there's the adult version of the book, How to Fight Racism. There's the Young Readers Edition. The Young

Readers Edition has questions at the end of every chapter. It has a glossary of terms. It has suggested resources, and it has a parent's guide all at the end. And so it's really designed to go through together. You can both go through the Young Reader's Edition, or you can read the adult version, and kids can read the young version. But it's really tailor-made to help you have those conversations as parents, as guardians, as caregivers of kids in productive ways. And one of the best things about a book like How to Fight Racism for young readers, by which I mean kids about eight to 12, fourth through sixth grade, you can go a little lower, a little higher, it'll still be helpful. One of the best things about talking about fighting racism with kids is it gives them a sense of agency. It gives them a sense that, yes, there are problems in the world, but I can do something

about them. And they're going to come up with ideas and suggestions that go way beyond the book and way beyond we've thought of as adults. And that's going to be marvelous to see, but we have to instill in young people, the idea that if something isn't the way it's supposed to be, you can do something about it. Yes. And you may not be able to do everything, but you can do something. And I think that is a gift and a treasure that goes well beyond just fighting racism. It's something they can use in their entire lives. There you go. I love that. The Chris Voss Show also has a big review arm.

So we review a lot of gaming stuff. So we have a huge gaming Discord and different online games. One of the places I think that a lot of these young children are picking this up is in gaming and in gaming communities and online. The use of racial epitaphs and different things in gaming is quite, I think they're picking it up and learning some of that stuff from it. And yeah, you get all sorts of hate, people are in competition, you know, your mother this, that sort of thing, your brother's fat, that sort of whatever. I think that's the G-rated version. In a lot of our communities, I've had to

fight racism in our communities, whether it's with our Discord or huge groups we've had. We'll get people that will drop the N-word in and we have to have Sony come in and kick everybody and clean up and everything. And it's just so prevalent. And these are like eight and ten-year-old kids. And so I think that's one element that parents, reading your book, getting your book, getting the kid prepared so that when they're exposed to that sort of hatred they know how to deal with it because a lot of it is with gaming is there's a camaraderie where people go oh my friend's saying that so right i should say that and be toxic and yeah there's it's i think a lot of people pick it up like me i've always built communities and so me having to manage this in a discord or in some of the PS4 groups that we had at one time, we had 1500 people in our destiny game thing and fighting that and just racial crap that people would just come and drop.

It was really heavy, man. It was a constant. It was like whack-a-mole a lot of times. My goodness. Yeah. And so that's a hugely important point. Maybe we should brainstorm on some things, drop in some right there. Um, but you're right. It's such a good point that even at eight, nine, 10 years old, kids are picking up the messages and most of the messages, especially online or through a screen, are going to be negative. So here's the other point, is if you're an adult in a kid's life and you choose not to talk about racism, it doesn't mean they're not learning about it. It means they're learning about it from something or someone else.

It's probably not going to come at them and going to come at them far earlier than we would prefer as adults. So you just bring up a really good point. Yeah, we got to stay ahead of it. Jamar, it's wonderful to have you on the show. You're welcome back anytime. It's been very insightful. Give us your plug so people can find you on the interwebs and order up your book.

Yes. Again, follow me on Instagram and Twitter at Jamar Tisby, facebook.com slash Jamar Tisby and the number one. Would love for you to subscribe to my newsletter, jamartisby.substack.com, jamartisby.substack.com and pick up the book, How to Fight Racism. The adult, is out now wherever books are sold. The Young Readers Edition is coming out January 4th. But guess what? You can preorder and be part of the early adopters, the innovators, the people who saw it coming before everyone else, the tastemakers, and preorder that book right away. I want to be a tastemaker. I like that.

There you go. You can do it. Preorder the book, and you're already on your way. There you go, guys. Order of the book, How to Fight Racism, Young Readers Edition, A Guide to Standing Up for Racial Justice. Check out Jamar's other books. Please read them as well. Jamar, thank you so much

for being on the show. We certainly appreciate it and your enlightening thought and discussion. Are you kidding me? It was a pleasure. Great to meet and talk to you. Appreciate y'all for tuning in. There you go. Thanks, guys. Be sure to go to youtube.com, Fortress Chris Voss, to see the video version of this.

Go to goodreads.com, Fortress Chris Voss, see everything we're reading and reviewing over there. Go to Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, even TikTok, where we're trying to get cool over there. We're working on it. It's still a project in the thing. Thanks so much for tuning in. Be good to each other, and we'll see you guys next time. So we're excited to announce my new book is coming out. It's called Beacons of Leadership, Inspiring Lessons of Success in Business and Innovation.

It's going to be coming out on October 5th, 2021. And I'm really excited for you to get a chance to read this book. It's filled with a multitude of my insightful stories, lessons, my life, and experiences in leadership and character. I give you some of the secrets from my CEO Entrepreneur Toolbox that I use to scale my business success, innovate, and build a multitude of companies. I've been a CEO for, what is it, like 33, 35 years now. We talk about leadership, the importance of leadership, how to become a great leader, and how anyone can become a great leader as well.

So you can pre-order the book right now wherever fine books are sold, but the best thing to do on getting a pre-order deal is to go to beaconsofleadership.com. That's beaconsofleadership.com. On there, you can find several packages you can take advantage of in ordering the book. And for the same price of what you can get it

from someplace else like Amazon, you can take advantage of in ordering the book. And for the same price of what you can get it from someplace else like Amazon, you can get all sorts of extra goodies that we've taken and given away. Different collectors, limited edition, custom-made numbered book plates that are going to be autographed by me. There's all sorts of other goodies that you can get when you buy the book from beaconsofleadership.com. So be sure to go there, check it out, or order the book wherever fine books are sold.