The One You Feed - Austin Channing Brown: On the Advancement of Racial Justice

Episode Date: May 30, 2018

Austin Channing Brown is a writer, speaker, and practitioner who helps schools, nonprofits, and religious organizations practice genuine inclusion. She is passionate about the advancement of racial justice and reconciliation and her words will most certainly move you to action. In her work, she shares her experiences as a black woman who "navigates whiteness on a regular basis". After listening to this interview and reading her book, your mind and heart will be broadened towards understanding and inclusion - regardless of where you are on that spectrum today. Visit oneyoufeed.net/transform to learn more about our personal transformation program.In This Interview, Austin Channing Brown and I Discuss...Her book, I'm Still Here: Black Dignity in A World Made for WhitenessThe importance and value of angerHow we can fight the monsters without becoming the monstersThat anger reveals something is wrongWhite fragility - sadness and angerNaming the things that can come in the way of a discussion, before the discussion happensRealising racial biasTransformation comes after a moment of realizationThe idea of "whiteness being normal"Books to read to gain an understanding of racial injusticeDisunity in ChristWhy Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?: And Other Conversations About RaceHow to look for opportunities to talk with others about topics of racial injusticeCheck out "Be the Bridge"The white confessional being a shortcut to true reconciliationSkipping the confessional story and moving straight to the action step you'll take nextWhat reconciliation means to herRacial justice and reconciliationRadical ReconciliationHow reconciliation should revolutionize the relationships we have with each otherThe celebration of blackness that is throughout the bookCultural misappropriation   Please Support The Show with a DonationSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We can use anger to be creative and to build connections and to imagine a new way of being. Welcome to The One You Feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like, garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think ring true. And yet for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. I'm Jason Alexander.

And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really Know Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor, what's in the museum of failure, And does your dog truly love you? We have the answer. Go to reallynoreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. The Really No Really podcast.

Follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Austin Channing Brown, a freelance writer and speaker with a particular focus on Black womanhood and faith. Her writing can be found in Relevant Magazine, Mutuality Magazine, and other places around the web. She also wrote a column called Wild Hope for Today's Christian Women, which is still accessible to readers. to readers. Passionate about racial justice and reconciliation, Austin travels the country preaching and teaching about the ways this work intersects with Christian faith. Her book is I'm Still Here, Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness. Hi, Austin. Welcome to the show. Thanks so much for having me. I'm really excited to have you on. Your book is called I'm Still Here, Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness. Yes. And I am looking forward to jumping in and I've got lots of things to ask you and talk about,

but let's start like we normally do with the parable. There's a grandmother who's talking with her granddaughter and she says, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love. And the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the granddaughter stops and thinks about it for a second and looks up at her grandmother. She says, well, grandmother, which one wins? And the grandmother says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do.

So I write and speak a lot about racial justice. And it could be really easy to feed a sense of hopelessness and loneliness and isolation and even a sense of pride as if it all rests on me, you know, as if I'm the only one out here doing this. I'm sort of complex about it. And I have to work to stay grounded, to stay hopeful, to stay joyful, to stay connected. And for me, that comes through a number of ways. It comes from reading literature that I love. It comes from participating in this work with people that I love. So I'm reminded that I'm not just by myself. It comes from enjoying works of art and appreciating all the different ways that folks approach racial justice and try to make a difference in the world. So yeah, so I find myself thinking more and more about what it means to feed myself well so I don't get burned

out in this work. And now that I'm a mom having to be very intentional about that because my bandwidth for the work is shorter than it was when nobody was relying on me. Yes, yes. Children, children require, require and deserve a lot. That's right. That's right. Well, it's funny in that parable itself, as I read it, one of the things I say is that, you know, the bad wolf represents things like anger and, and hate and, you know, and so I think it's interesting because one of the things that is a theme throughout your book is the importance of anger. Yeah. And how valuable your anger is. And so I'm really interested in kind of what you started with there, which is how do you work with an anger so that it doesn't become corroding?

Or how do you, or you know, the other is, how do we fight the monsters without becoming monsters? Right, right. Oh, that's a cool question. even if I was to instead try and cover it with patience or expressing another quote unquote appropriate emotion, like maybe disappointment or sadness or channel that anger into something else. And I read a book called Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde, and she's got an essay in there called The Uses of Anger. And it was a huge light bulb moment for me when she writes, and I'm paraphrasing, that anger in and of itself is neither negative nor positive. It's just an emotion. But what we choose to do with it could be negative or positive. So we could certainly use anger to destroy and to hurt others and to, you know, sort of rip one another apart. Or we can use anger to be creative and to build connections and to imagine a new way of being.

And so the way that she describes anger, and she's doing it in the context of injustice. She says, anger reveals that something is wrong. When we get angry about something, right, that's something to pay attention to, that we need to notice like, oh, I'm angry because something should have happened and it didn't. Right. Or shouldn't have happened and did. And it did, right? And so we can say that made me angry, Right? And so we can say, that made me angry, so how do I change it? And that can be a really productive way of using anger, and that's been very, very helpful for me. One of the things that I was struck with in the book is you've spent a lot of your time in the church, and a lot of it in what we'd call, I guess, the white church. Sure. in the church and a lot of it in what we'd call, I guess, the white church. And you talk about how frustrating it is when you are dealing with injustice and you're confronting it and people say things to you like, well, you just have to love them more. I think that that strikes me as someone who often thinks that way, not about like, oh,

you know, black people need to act X way, but more about for myself sometimes, like, you know, okay, is this the best way to handle it? And so you sort of talk about how so much of your time is spent dealing with, we'll call it white fragility, and we can talk more about what that is. But dealing with that white fragility. And so you're trying to balance, I think, letting out your anger and also having a productive conversation. And sometimes those things don't seem to go hand in hand. I mean, I can see it in interpersonal relationships, right? Like I might be mad, but if I act mad at you, it's going to be very difficult for us to talk. And so I just was struck by the challenge that must be and is for you. And I'm curious, any thoughts you have on that?

Let me begin by saying that there are a lot of people of color in particular, but a lot of white folks too, who teach about and facilitate conversations about racial justice, right? about and facilitate conversations about racial justice, right? And there are some teachers who really enjoy working with folks who are at the very beginning of their journey, who still need the definition of white fragility, who begin conversations with, I'm not sure I've ever even met a Black person, folks who are like really at the beginning of their journey, you know? And then there are folks like me who have a tendency to work more with folks who have already been on this journey for a while, but are wanting, you know, to continue those conversations, to continue areas of growth,

to continue to be challenged. And so I want to be honest and say that I had more of those conversations when I was younger. I don't have them a whole lot anymore because typically by the time I've gotten the phone call or I'm present, folks are already aware. And I enjoy that because we can have conversations like the one you and I are having where we sit down and we say, okay, so we're going to have a conversation about race. We know that there's a tendency for white fragility to enter the room. What can we do about that? Right? And then that becomes a conversation that we have before we even get to the hard stuff of race, right? people are having, you know, really emotional response, that's great, but we're not going to pause the conversation for them. Right. And if they need to be excused or if they need to get up, like all of that is fine. Um, but that's going to be our rule. And then after like 15 minutes or 20 minutes, we're going to take a break. And that why those who are feeling really emotional can like take a moment and you write, have conversations with whomever they want to have conversations with. Right. But that way we're not interrupting the

flow of what's happening here. So, so to answer your question, to go back, I think, um, I don't, I don't have a, um, like a silver bullet, right. For these things, but I'm really interested in the conversation now that we have a name for it. And now that we know what we're talking about to be able to say, okay, so how can we keep this contained? Right. Cause we want people to experience their emotions. Um, but we don't want it to interrupt the con the larger conversation that's happening. Right. And so why don't you define to you what white fragility means and then maybe talk about how it interrupts conversations that at least start from a point of goodness, right? Right.

But then get derailed. One of the things, and I'll let you answer the question, but one of the things in your book that struck me, I guess the term today is cringeworthy, right? But it was cringeworthy for me reading it. It was cringeworthy for me reading it as somebody who you might, as you were describing where people are on the journey of learning. Right. I'm earlier in the journey in that maybe that typical sort of just not realizing how pervasive the problem is, how endemic the problem is. So a lot of things I read and I thought, oh boy, that sounds like me at some point. Right, right. things I read and I thought, oh boy, that sounds like me at some point. My heart's in the right place, but I'm clearly not understanding a lot here or maybe not even listening enough. So I'd want to throw that in and now we'll go back to white fragility and how that gets in the

way of useful conversation about race. Yeah, that's good. So I feel like what happens during that process that you're discussing when someone's eyes are being opened, right? It's one thing to sit in front of a book, right? And have a very emotional response to a book, right? But what can happen is when people are gathered together. So let's say you and I were like in a small group together or a book study together. And I start to reveal some of this stuff that's in the book. Right. So I started talking about the first time I was called the N word or right. It would be really easy to have a very emotional response in that discussion. Right. You're looking at me in my face. You can see the pain, you can see the emotion. Right. And you're like, oh my gosh, I didn't even know all this

stuff. Right. And you're like having a, like your emotions are building. Sometimes what can happen is those emotions, um, begin to overflow so much that they require or demand that the entire group stops the conversation that's happening in order to take care of this one person's feelings. Does that make sense? And so it could be tears. It could be, um, it could be like a person who just starts rambling about themselves where they're just like, Oh, I didn't know. I didn't realize. I thought this and in my history is this. And I remember when my dad this and you're like, whoa. Yeah. Yeah. Right. So that's one way. And I would say that's a pretty common way where the emotions just get the best of the person. And the problem isn't that they're emotional. The problem

is that it stops the conversation or derails the conversation. I like that term that you used, derails. It turns the conversation off of the issue of injustice use of anger where all of a sudden a white person is shouting at people of color or is, oh, well prove that. Well, how can you say that about me? Well, who's really in charge here? I want to talk to someone who's in charge, right? Like that, just very aggressive. And it's another way to shut down the conversation, right? Or to derail the conversation. But it's so much more forceful

that it makes it a lot scarier, quite frankly. It's a little frightening because you're not sure how far that anger is going to go. You know? I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor.

We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you. And the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by.

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One of the things that can be dangerous or unpredictable is a white person who believes in their goodness. Yeah. And when they find examples that maybe point to something different. This one is hard. So I would say that generally speaking, this whole conversation is like you have to talk in generalities because it's so big, right? But generally speaking, there's a point along their journey for white folks who are on their journey who have to stop.

journey for white folks who are on their journey who have to stop um there's like a line in the sand when when they're like no i'm innocent my family was never part of slavery i didn't do anything i've never said a mean word against a person of color right like i'm i'm one of the good ones my parents taught me you know to love everybody and that's what I've been doing. And then there comes a moment when a white person is like, oh, I have been dealing with racial bias. I have biases. I tell you, there's a story in the book about a teacher who was well-loved in my high school, who had an aha moment when she was making seating charts for her class, which she did at the top of every semester. And in one semester, she realized that she was using her seating chart to separate students of color because she assumed that students of color who

were sitting together would be disrespectful and would talk a lot and would not pay attention to her. And she didn't realize it until she misstepped, right? She tried to use names to figure out who the students of color were. And she missed one of the names and ended up with two black girls sitting together. And she thought, oh, no, this is not going to work out. And she immediately like caught herself, was like, oh, I can't believe I've been using a seating chart to separate students of color. Like she was devastated. But it was really important for her to pause and say to herself, I what I have been doing is racist. I have been making assumptions about my students of color and created my own little internal policy

of keeping them separated. And she had to say to herself, that's not good. Like, this is not me being good. I have to acknowledge that I have been impacted by race in this country and not everything I do is good. I have to acknowledge that I have been impacted by race in this country and not everything I do is good. And that leads towards transformation, right? So that's why it's so important. It's not that I want white people to hate themselves or white people to hate being white or anything like that. It's just that there does come a point when a moment for transformation is possible. And that moment for transformation creates more moments for transformation because now you're not

holding so tightly to the idea that I am perfect or I always get this right or I never do anything wrong. Once you crack that open, then you can give yourself some freedom to say, ooh, there's another bad thought, or ooh, I can't believe I said that out loud, or ooh, right? Like you give yourself the freedom to make mistakes and to admit those mistakes. So one of the things that I heard, it's been several months ago, which was a complete light switch flipping on for me. And it's in your book a fair amount. Is this idea of whiteness being normal?

Yes. So, you know, I grow up in a certain culture and that is what I think is normal. And everything that's outside of that, I judge it as far as its deviance. And I don't mean that in the negative sense of deviance. I mean it in the sense of difference from that culture. And that given that most of this culture, the majority, is white, we judge everything by whiteness. And I have two questions for you there. for you there. One is, it seems to me that there's a normal human reaction to say my culture, the way I do it is right and normal and everyone else is doing it wrong. So that strikes me as normal.

It is. And it also strikes me as that how damaging it is in this culture where there is such a pervasive culture. If we were all split evenly and we had all of us felt like our culture was right but we were divided in 20 each well we'd all go okay but when it's very different than that and when all the institutions and the power see whiteness as being right but that was a eye-opener for me because when I got it, I went, well, I do. I do. Now I can question it and I can go, oh, well, you know, sitting quietly while someone speaks is not right. It's not normal. It just is what this group of people does. And you go to certain, you know, black churches. My first time is I went to B.B. King concert when I was like 15.

And there was, they're just, you know, they're, everybody in the audience is talking to B.B. You know, I mean, they're yelling and carrying on. And I just thought it was so awesome. But that I just realized how often that assumption that the way I do it, the way I see it is normal. That's right. Is pervasive. And once I suddenly start seeing everything through a different lens of like, well, that's not normal. That's just this kind of culture. That's right. Boy, that was a big wake up for me. And your book just sort of drove that home even further. Oh, I'm so glad to hear that because you're right. Every culture has what we would consider normal, right? But what happens, particularly like my story, so as a Black girl who then enters white ministries or white churches or white organizations, I am seen as the deviant

one, right? Like I like that you use that term, even though I know you didn't use it positively or negatively. Right. Just like as a qualification of the difference. What happens is because my supervisors see themselves as normal. When I do something that's different, just different, not wrong, just different. I then become the deviant one. Right. And now my performance review looks different from everyone else's. Um, let's say, because I do talk back. Right. So I'm seen as loud and I'm seen as interrupting people and I'm seen as right. Like all these things when really I'm just being a black girl, like this is just how we talk. Right. That's just normal for us. So I don't, Right. That's just normal for us. And what can be difficult is then I'm expected to change major parts of who I am rather than being seen as valuable. Rather than my difference being valuable and something to learn from, I'm punished for it because I have to fit the normal box as has been defined for me. We'll take it to a certain extent, you know, and once it goes beyond that, then it's disruptive, abnormal, destructive, whatever, whatever those different things are.

That's right. diversity, there's this one sense of me that's like, okay. And so like in a professional corporate career, there's one sense of me that's like, well, I want diversity of different ideas and opinions because that drives innovation and creativity and all that. And then there's this other part of me that goes, but boy, that's a lot of work. It's so much work. Like, you know, like it's so much easier when I can just go into a meeting and say, this is what we're doing. Everybody goes, yes. And we're on our way. It's so true. And again, I've fallen guilty to that. Well, let me rephrase.

I've been conscious of that and the desire to keep everything similar to the way we are. I hire in my own image, I realized. Oh my gosh, that is so real. Oh my gosh, that is so real. And let me say that as someone who has had to hire people, right, myself, and who is easy on yourself? This is a whole lot of personality. This is a whole lot of culture. This is a whole lot of miscommunication. Like this is a lot of work. But I have to remind myself, one, the beauty that we're creating when we do hit the ground running and when we have seen all sides of our vision and of our mission. And I have to remember that it matters. So in my context, I was a resident director who had to

hire RAs every year. And it mattered to all the other students in my residence hall when they could see faces that looked like them on the team and in leadership roles. And so even though it was so hard, I would see other teams, like other halls that were like all white and they'd just be skipping and jumping. And I'd just be like, man, that looks nice. Wonder what that's like. I really appreciate that honesty because it's true. Right.

Diversity is hard to manage. Yeah. I've been struck by since I read your book, and I've known this before, and I've seen it before, but I don't think it ever hit me with the same level of clarity. I've been on the treadmill a bunch of times, and there's a whole bank of TVs, right? And I look at it, and they're all either financial or political shows. Okay. And I realized it is 98% white men. Yes.

And again, I know that, but to see like what we would consider the power, money and government, like what we would consider the power, money and government that it's, you know, it's so predominantly people like me in 20 years, um, almost exclusively. And I was just struck more by it than I have been in the past. Again, I've noticed it before. I knew it was true before. There's something about, um, having read your book that gave me a different perspective on how difficult that must be. Yeah. I tell you, I think one reason why social media has been such a huge phenomenon for people of color is because it's a place where we can go to access one another's thoughts. You know, where pre-social media, we just had to deal with the fact that there were going to be mostly white folks on TV, right, talking about quote unquote black issues without our voices, without our thoughts, without, you know, all of our experience and knowledge. and say, okay, so what do other black women think about this?

So what do other black men think about this? What do, you know, I can access specific black journalists and, you know, and say, what do you think about this? And so social media has opened up our ability to represent ourselves and to find one another. But it can still be really hard to have to do that work, you know, as opposed to it just being accessible all the time. Well, I think the internet for all its flaws, and there are many, there are many has given marginalized people of all stripes, right? Whether it be a racial thing, whether it be a sexuality

or a gender thing, or whether it be even closer to home for someone like me, someone who's a little different than the typical toxic white man. Like there's a different, like suddenly there's a diversity of views and you can find people that are like you. And so I just think in general, the internet has provided that and that's really good. Thank you. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer.

Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Brian Cranston is with us today.

How are you, too? Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really No Really, sir. Bless you all. Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening?

Really No Really. Yeah, really. No really. Go to reallynoreally.com. And register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. It's called Really No Really, and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

A question for you. So as somebody who is, you know, to use the term that you used earlier in this journey, right? Sure, sure. What are some good things for someone like me to be reading, to be doing, to be like, so you've got an audience here of probably 35,000, probably mostly white people. I mean, I don't know the demographic, but if I had to guess, I can't speak for everyone, but most of whom I know to be good-hearted people who want to do the right thing. So what does a person who's in that spot who says, well, you know what? I don't really understand these issues that well. That's good.

I recognize they're difficult. I recognize they're painful. I recognize that on some hand, I'm part of the problem or at least not part of the solution. I like that. Yep. What do I do? Oh, that's such a good question. So, um, I would say, um, first reading truthfully, you might not want to start with my book. Um, I would say if to the degree that you can, to start with books that answer your biggest questions about race. So for example, I think of Christina Cleveland's book, Disunity in Christ. And she's obviously writing from a Christian perspective, but it's a lot of social psychology in her book. So she's answering questions. Well, why do we gravitate towards one another? Why do we like homogenous teams? Like why, right? Like what's behind that? And so in that way, it's really accessible because she's, she's not doing the like emotional memoir that I'm doing, right? She is really talking about psychology and she's hilarious, which is also really helpful when

you're talking about race. So yes, so books, that was one example. I think educating oneself and reading books and trying to get that window into other folks' world is so, so important. Why are all the Black kids sitting at the table is another really, really good just introduction into understanding and answering questions about race. And there's lots of them out there. I don't generally try and like plug Amazon. But one way in which I think Amazon can be useful is that when you find a good book, to then go to what other folks have read, right? You can continue the journey. I would also say to start looking for opportunities

to talk with other people about it. So whether that's through book clubs, maybe like the local library or the community school, excuse me, community college, workshops that are happening in the area, conferences that are nearby. And one organization in particular I'd love to plug is called Be the Bridge. It was started by a woman named Latasha Morrison. And that group is one online. So you can talk to lots and lots of people all over the country. But then they also have their local groups so that you can physically meet folks for coffee and talk about race together. And I think that's a really brilliant way to participate and to start in this conversation. Because one way that white folks have a tendency to like, miss a step is they

go search for their like, black friend, who's going to explain everything, right? Like, I don't think we're at that point in our relationship yet. That struck me in the book, you know, you talked about how exhausting that is. If you're the, you know, one of the few black people in an area, you're going to have white people, again, a lot of whom are well intentioned, but you're going to be answering their questions all the time. And nobody stops to think like, was this hard on Austin? The fact that everybody's asking her about race all the time, like, no, no sense of, you know, and again, struck by like, well, yeah, I bet I've done that before. You know, like, that's, I want to know, you know,

inquiring minds, but never, you know, never struck me. Because again, seeing it from my view of the world. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's why I love this organization that Latasha has started, because it's filled with people of color who are saying, come here with your question, right? If you've got a question, you don't ever have to be afraid to come here. If I don't want to answer it, I won't, right? Because there's 300 other people who can answer it and will answer it, you know?. So I really love that because it gives people an opportunity to start having these conversations, but to know, right? To not wonder, but to know that all these people have opted in to that conversation.

Yeah. The other thing I was struck by, and I'm struck by now how it even threads its way a little bit into my conversation is the white confessional. Yes. The white person who comes to you and unburdens themselves with, well, once I was at the table and Uncle Joe said X, Y, and Z, and I didn't do anything. Or there was a girl in class when I was in third grade or whatever those things be. And again, I kind of noticed it, like just a little of it working its way through me here, despite having read your book, but, but how people are coming to you for absolution and not only that being ineffective and really a sort of shortcut to something that's real, also the impact that it has on you.

Yeah. Oh, I love the way that you phrased that. We're going to have to talk more about this. It is a shortcut because sometimes it's not that confessing is bad, right? It's just you should confess to the person who got hurt. Right. Right. And not to a random stranger. I guess it's not super random, but it is a stranger. I often am like, I'm sorry, what's your name? I don't know who you are, but you are confessing to me. And I think what would be more helpful if the desire is not absolution, right? Often it is, but if the desire really is to just communicate that you were moved by the speaker or moved by the facilitator, um, to, to instead skip the, skip the story, right? Skip the confessional and jump to the action step that you're going to take. Right.

So it would be so much more life-giving for me personally. If someone said, you know what, personally, if someone said, you know what, I have had this book, I've had the new Jim Crow sitting on my desk for a year, and I haven't picked it up, but I'm going to go home and read that book. Or I have been so afraid to talk to my parents about this, but the next time I go home, that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to talk to them. You know, so that would be much more helpful for all speakers who talk about racial justice to hear what commitment is going to be made as opposed to, yeah, this weird like confession. Yeah. Because honestly, I don't know what I'm supposed to say. Right.

Well, I thought your answer now, which is pretty much you said you started to do kind of what you just did there, which is like, okay, so what are you going to do about that what are you going to do about that that's my new response yeah that's my new response that's a good one uh okay right right well i think as a white person on the other side of it we're waiting for you to give us the good white person badge. I'm like, I don't have any. I'm okay, I'm okay. I don't have any good white people badges. I don't have any. There were a lot of faux pas that you've had to go through in the book, but I realized that I know better than to touch a black girl's hair.

I really thought, you know, Eric, I really, really thought that we had like covered that ground in the 90s. I really thought and turns out no. People just walk up and touch your hair, huh? People are still doing it. It's so weird. So listeners start there. Don't. Don't do that. Don't do that. Don't do that. No, not good. Don't do that.

Don't do that. No, not good. You know what's even stranger? So this often happens to Black women with folks who assume that they've got a close enough relationship, right? So like a coworker or someone who's like, you're like, whoa, nope, we're not actually that close. You should not touch my hair. We're in a workplace. But I tell you what's even more strange than that is when it really is a complete stranger to like being in a restaurant or being in the airport. And all of a sudden you just feel

someone's fingers and you're like, what, what is happening? And, and you know what a really common response is? Oh, I was just interested. Or, oh, I just thought it was pretty. Or I just, you know. And you're like, well, that's nice, but that doesn't mean you should touch me. Yeah, by and large, I think a general rule should be don't touch people you don't know under any circumstance, unless it's to pick them up from in front of a train or something. Listeners, don't touch black women's hair. So let's talk about the word reconciliation. What does reconciliation mean to you?

What does it look like? And I guess, again, how do people participate in that yeah oh can i tell you the truth that excuse me that chapter was the hardest for me to write um there were other chapters that were like more emotional to write and difficult for that reason but trying to wrap language around what i think reconciliation should look like was so hard. So I'm just going to confess that I'm going to bumble my way through this. So first let me acknowledge that there are a lot of folks who don't use the term reconciliation anymore because it has been so watered down to basically be the equivalent of like having a coffee date with someone or, um, or the diversity efforts that we

talked about, like just get the right number of people. Um, and we're practicing reconciliation. And so there's, and myself included, I rarely use the term by itself. I usually say racial justice and reconciliation, um, because I just feel like it's clearer somehow. Um, but that being said, so here's another book for folks to read. It's a book called Radical Reconciliation. And it is the most helpful book I've ever read to really infuse the radical nature of reconciliation back into that word. But very attempting to put the cookie on the bottom shelf. I think that the term reconciliation should revolutionize our relationships with one another. So when we talk about the normalness of

whiteness, right, that we already discussed. So whiteness is normal in how we hire people. Whiteness is normal in what we see on our televisions. Whiteness, right? Like, there's so much of America in which whiteness is the norm. Reconciliation would ask the question, how can we revolutionize that fact? Can we make sure that our leadership teams are all 51% people of color? Mm-hmm. Can we commit to only watching networks in which people of color often make an appearance? Mm-hmm. Right? often make an appearance right um can we when when a when a person of color does get their own show can we commit to watching it and letting the network know that we appreciate that person

right so it's just a way of saying how can we participate and change that goes beyond our own like individual desire to meet over coffee and to have a friend who looks different from us, right? It's a bigger way of thinking about how we participate in the world and how we become the solution. And doing that together, doing that as a community. That's, oh, it's so hard. It's so hard to wrap language around. And it's hard because we really are still so divided, right? Yeah. And whiteness is still so normal.

It actually becomes hard to imagine a different way of being and doing this thing. Yep. And the thing that I am struck by in reading the book and listening to you talk and other things is the legitimate cultural differences. Yes. That you're not going to like what I like. You know, in certain cases, I may not like what you like. And to what extent do we have, I don't like the word obligation, but I'll use it, a moral obligation to stretch those boundaries of ourselves.

Yeah, and I really want that conversation to, even though it's hard to do, I want the conversation to bring a sense of life, of joy, of excitement that we're going to try something different. We're going to try something new and see how it goes. And if it doesn't work, then we'll try something else. But let's, let's commit to, to trying something new and to working through the issues that doing something new inevitably creates, you know? Yeah. One of the things I loved about the book was, despite talking about whiteness, its challenges, et cetera, was the celebration of blackness. Oh, I'm so glad.

It was throughout the book. And I found it so interesting in the beginning where you, coming from, you lived in a white community, you had accepted, well, i'm never going to fit in there and when you first went into exclusively black or you know mostly black communities you felt like i'm never going to fit in here either and how how hard that was for you and that thank god that passed right and you and and so that leads me to another question because i hear this term and i don't quite know what it means or what to do with it, which is cultural misappropriation. So I don't quite know when that's good and when that's bad. So for example, there are lots of things about black culture that I love, the music, the writing,

the, I mean, there's just so many things, right? So much, yes. When does that go from an appreciation of a different culture and a celebration of a different culture into this term that I hear, cultural misappropriation, which I don't fully understand? Yeah, that's good. That's such a good question. First, let me say that I think different ethnic groups would have a different answer to this.

Okay. I think different ethnic groups would have a different answer to this. Okay. So as an African American, I think someone who is Latino or maybe Korean, I think that there are things that they would want to talk about that center around, let's say, language. Right? But because I'm African American and speak English, we could talk we could talk about like slang and we could talk about Ebonics and right. Um, but, but I just want to acknowledge that. Right. So I'm going to answer this as a black girl. Um, and I would say just by way of example, um, Bruno Mars, super popular musician, love what he does. definitely borrows from heavily from black folks right yeah but Bruno Mars is

when he does interviews or when he talks about his music he always acknowledges where the music comes from he always says this is what I grew up listening to I love I'm just making up names I don't know if these are the people but Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye and Michael Jackson. I think there's some James Brown in his music too. James Brown. Oh my goodness. So much James Brown. But he makes that very clear. He doesn't try and pretend like he just created this. I would say that there are other artists who I will try maybe not to name so much who just do two things. One, who create music that sounds Black without ever acknowledging where it came from. Right. Or two, do a sort of like really kitschy, I'm a cute white girl, but I've got all these black women in the background who are being black.

Got it. And it's just like this really like messy, why? So what's happening here? Right. what's happening here? Right. So one is sort of rooted in, in, in honor and respect and acknowledgement. Right. And the other is sort of absent of all of that. Um, so, so I would say in terms of like a picture to try and paint a picture, um, that those would be, um, very clearly different. Um, but I would say appropriation, it's a fine line. Um, I would also say like what you're making money off of gets real tricky. Yeah. Um, yeah, the, the appropriation versus

appreciation, it can definitely get tricky. And I think that's why it's so important to eventually get to a place where you really do have friends, like real friends, friends who come over for dinner, friends who, you know, their kids stay at your house, like friends who call you when their lives are falling apart, like friends who are people of color so that folks of color can say, ooh, that feels like appropriation. Right, right. But those become common conversations. Yeah, because it is a tough one. It's a tough one. Well, we are at the end of our time, Austin, but thank you so much. I really appreciated the book. I really appreciate you taking the time to talk with me and teach me. Oh, this was so much fun. I tell you, it makes all the difference when someone is, one, just willing to listen, just willing to listen. And especially in this political moment that we're in, just being willing to listen is a gift. Yep. But also someone who's willing to recognize themselves and is wanting to change and wanting

to grow. I think that white folks will find that people of color are actually extraordinarily forgiving and extraordinarily gracious and extraordinarily kind when they are being received by an open heart and someone who is ready and wanting to do that hard work. Excellent. Well, we will put links in the show notes to several of the books that you mentioned. Also to, of course, your book, your website, and all of that. So thank you so much. My pleasure, truly. Okay, bye. if what you just heard was helpful to you please consider making a donation to the one you feed

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