June 30, 2021 • 32 mins
For a long time Don Lemon was America’s only Black prime-time news anchor. He now hosts Don Lemon Tonight on CNN every weeknight and serves as a CNN correspondent. He is also the author of a new, deeply personal and reflective book called, This Is the Fire: What I Say to My Friends About Racism. Lemon shares his experience as a Black gay man, the racism and homophobia he’s faced, witnessed and battled against. He and Dr. Kendi discuss how the antiracist struggle includes the struggle against homophobia, transphobia, and all forms of bigotry targeting members of the LGBTQ+ community. For further reading, resources, and a transcript of this episode visit https://www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/be-antiracist-with-ibram-x-kendi.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin. Most people in this country, quite honestly, haven't even
examined their homophobia, and that goes for black and white people.
All different ethnicities haven't even begun to examine their homophobia.
(00:37):
And most people haven't even begun to examine their racism
because they are afraid of what they're going to find
out about themselves. On a spring day in nineteen eighty,
Audrey Lord stood before an audience at Amherst College in
(00:58):
western Massachusetts to self describe black lesbian mother warrior. Poet
said something that resonated with me decades later. Too often,
Lord said, we pour the energy needed for recognizing and
exploring difference into pretending those differences are insurmountable barriers or
(01:19):
that they do not exist at all. This results in
a voluntary isolation or false and treacherous connections. Either way,
we do not develop tools for using human difference as
a springboard for creative change within our lives. We must
deal with our differences and the differences that are not
(01:41):
being dealt with or provided for. Now. Once we deal
with those differences that aren't being provided for, we do
it in a context it says, hey, then we can
use these differences. We don't have to eradicate, and we
don't have to wipe them out. We also don't have
to remain with them. And that's how I see it.
In other words, I'm talking about the creative use of difference.
(02:05):
This radical black lesbian feminist, this literary very icon gave
us these tools, if only we'd use them. I'm abramex Kendy,
and this is be anti racist. We have all been
(02:27):
programmed to respond to human differences between us with fear
and loathing, and to handle that difference in one of
three ways. Ignore it and if that is not possible,
copy it if we think it is dominant, or destroy
it if we think it is subordinate. These are the
words of Audrey Lord. Like most cis gender heterosexual Americans,
(02:51):
I was taught to fear the difference of gay men
of transgender women. I was taught to fear what I
didn't know, what I didn't understand, what was different. I
was taught to fear the very people fighting for their liberation.
And my own Lord showed us another way. Why can't
(03:13):
we relate across human differences as equals? The term equals
not equal. We are different and we are the same.
We may love different people, but how we love is
the same. We are equals in all our differences. Lord's
(03:34):
words echo the statement of a group of black lesbian feminists,
the Kombahee River Collective of Boston Shout Out to Boston
in nineteen seventy seven. Barbara Smith, Demita Frasier, and Beverly
Smith wrote, we reject pedestals, queenhood, and walking ten paces behind.
To be recognized as human, lovely human is enough. To
(04:00):
reflect on the words of these women is to reflect
on two critical aspects of being anti racist, seeing and
appreciating and respecting difference, and leveling difference. We have not
been taught to level the humanity of different races and
genders and sexual orientations, but we must. This is the
(04:24):
anti racist perspective that can liberate humanity from sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia,
and their intersections. As we celebrate Pride Month this June,
we must remember that queer people of color have always
(04:45):
been at the center of fights for human freedom. They
have always been at the center of the human struggle
to be who we want to be, to appreciate who
we want to appreciate, to love who we want to love.
They have taught me that for humans to truly be free,
humans must be free to be different. Welcome to be
(05:12):
Anti Racist in action podcasts where we discuss how to diagnose, dismantle,
and abolish racism, how to save humanity from the divisiveness
of racist ideas and the destructiveness of racist power and policy,
How to free humanity through the unity of anti racist
ideas and the constructiveness of anti racist power and policy.
(05:37):
On be anti Racist, we discuss how to make the
impossible possible, and how to bring into being what modern
humans have never known, a just, inequitable world. You ready,
let's roll. How could we not have expected that if
(06:08):
Joe Biden came the president elect of the United States,
that the streets would not erupt after what had happened
in this country? Don Lemon was for a long time
America's only black primetime inchor. He now inchors Don Lemon
Tonight on CNN every weeknight and serves as a CNN correspondent.
(06:29):
Over the course of his career, Lemon has been called
many terrible things, some of which you will hear him
say throughout the episode. Now, I'm just talking about the
last eight months. I'm not talking about all the stuff
that we dealt with before, the fake news and people
yelling at us on the street and people calling me
nigger and fag and all kinds of things, and your
fake news and all of that. Never before that I've
(06:50):
been in this business since nineteen ninety one have I
ever had to deal with the crap that I've had
to deal with over the last four years. It is disgusting.
Don Lemon just dropped a deeply personal and reflective book
called This Is the Fire What I Say to My
Friends about racism. He and I sat down to discuss
(07:12):
his experience as a black gay man, the racism and
homophobia he's faced, he's witnessed, he's battled against, and how
the anti racist struggle includes the struggle against homophobia, transphobia,
and all forms of bigotry targeting members of the LGBTQ community.
Don thank you so much for taking some time before
(07:35):
we jump into conversation. Yesterday was the anniversary of George
Floyd's murderer, and I'm just curious, what were you feeling
then about that anniversary and thinking and reflecting on and
what are you thinking I'm feeling now. I couldn't believe
that it had been a year. Yeah. Yeah, even though
you didn't feel like a year, it felt like so
(07:58):
much had happened. We had a verdict, we had an insurrection,
we had a trial, we had an election. So much
has gone on. But yeah, it just brought me back
to where I was a year ago. I thought about
being in quarantine and not being able to see my
loved ones, and then watching this man die in the
middle of a street and very few people, very few
(08:20):
people then at least have the tenacity or gumption, whatever
you want to call it, to make an excuse for it,
and now so many people are So I was sad,
obviously that George Floyd was dead. I was happy that
the verdict had happened, and was looking over the last
year wondering what's going to happen next. Were you thinking,
(08:41):
especially as summer demonstrations spread around the country and the
levels of awareness of systemic racism grew, did you think
that we would be at a different place now? Are
you surprised that many cases were still arguing over whether
systemic racism diedn't existing. Well, Look, I'm a man of
(09:02):
a certain age, which means I've been around for a
long time, and I've seen a lot, and I hope
that things would change, Yes, And I think that it
was a significant moment. Absolutely, did I think that this
would end racism. I know that's not what you're asking me. No.
I mean, just as Obama's election his presidency didn't make
me think that, oh my gosh, we're all of a
(09:22):
sudden living in a post racial society. Deep down, I
hope that they would change, even but I think even
deeper down, I knew that racism runs so deeply in
our society and in our culture that it was sadly
going to take more than the death of one black
man in the middle of a street with a knee
on his neck for nine minutes and twenty nine seconds
actually make a difference. Now, every little bit counts, don't
(09:45):
get me wrong. And I think that in order to
honor George Floyd and the many, many people who were
out there trying to do the right thing or doing
the right thing, and trying to move society and the
culture along, we must be respectful and optimistic and supportive
of those efforts and of George Floyd's life and of
his death for what that meant for the world. But
(10:06):
I didn't really have that much hope that things going
to change. Although I'm optimistic, it seems as if the
pulse of the racial story right now it's really the
attack on those of us who are acknowledging or recognizing
and studying racism. And indeed, I think people of a
(10:26):
certain age would know that this is typically what has
happened in the past. Yeah. Look, I felt that attack
for a long time. Is the only black person in
cable news, especially dealing with the environment that we're dealing with,
and especially over the last five years, I felt that
attack from Trump supporters, from Donald Trump himself. So I'm
not surprised by the attack. Sometimes I'm surprised by the
(10:48):
intensity of it, just how organized the attackers are. I'm
curious at a personal level, You've been the focus of
so many attacks for so long, and you know, over
the last year, in particular the last two years, I've
had to see some of that on some level, and
it's been an adjustment for me. How have you been
able to deal with it over the course of your
(11:09):
life in your career, Well, it's been really tough. I
don't want to say that I'm glad. I'm not glad
about it. It makes me feel that I'm not alone anymore.
And listen, I wouldn't want those things to happen to
you or anyone of people who are trying to teach
people about race. But for the longest time, I felt
like I was the only person out there receiving and
sustaining those attacks. And sometimes, you know, when I got
(11:32):
criticism from my own I was like, if you guys
only knew what I went through, you would cut me
some slack, like this is crazy. But people now know,
and I think that's in large part because of the
last administration. I really knew, you know. I write in
my book that Donald Trump was the president we deserved
and probably the one we needed, because we had people
believing somehow that we were going to post racist society
(11:54):
and we were not. For white Americans, it was just
beneath the surface, and he uncovered that for Black Americans
it was I told you so, like we never thought
that it was gone. But how have I been able
to do it? It's been very stressful. I've aged, I'm
not kidding, I have a lot of therapy bills. I've
dealt with some depression, and the attacks have been consistent,
and now people see just how much the people who
(12:17):
are like our former president lie to people, and how
much they try to create their own reality. They try
to bend lies into their own reality. And so I
think it's out in the open and people can see
it as awful as it is, as awful as it's
been for me and for others. At least people know now,
and I think that those of us who are dealing
with this need to expose it and continue to let
(12:38):
people know about it so that hopefully it will make
a difference. And as much as certainly people are racist,
there's also, of course systemic homophobia. So how much for
you do you think the attacks have been because you're black,
because you're gay, because you're black and gay, and how
do you even come to terms with that? Listen, I'm
(12:59):
attacked more for my blackness than for my gayness, but
that doesn't negate the homophobia. I've often said for years now,
I think for the last ten years or so that
the criticism of me is often steeped in racism and homophobia.
If you look at social media, if you look at
even things that people write about me and legacy media
or say about me, they don't even recognize their own
(13:20):
racism and homophobia, So I think it's both. I think
the homophobia actually helps with the bigots because it's another
layer on top of their bigotry that they can add to, like, oh,
you know that in word or that bag or whatever.
So I think that they get off on it. Look
it's a double negative if you look at it that way.
I choose to look at as a double positive. Now.
(13:41):
I didn't want to come out for the longest time
because I was already black, and I said, Okay, I'm black,
Do I really need another strike? Now I welcome it
because it's made me who I am, and it's given
me the urgency that I needed in order to be
able to use my platform in a way that I
think is more informative and that is more useful to
people who are like me. June, of course is Pride month,
(14:04):
and you of course going to have some people who
may visit some parades or may get some rainbow colors.
But I suspect if they truly committed to the rights
of the LGBTQ community and the freedom and power folks
should be thinking much broader than that performative or symbolic way.
(14:26):
Although that's not to say that that isn't important. That
certainly has its level of importance, But what do you
tend to do and what do you talk about? That's
a performative part before the question, because as you were
saying that, you made me think about what happened after
George Floyd. And I'm sure you dealt with this as well,
when people, especially your white friends or white people you know,
reaching out to you saying, oh my god, this is awful.
(14:47):
I don't want my kids to live in this world
or grow up in this world. I don't have a
language of a tool to be able to teach my
kids or just to be able to talk about or
have these conversations. And initially, you know, I mean, it
came from a good place, but it was performative. Yeah,
And what people didn't realize or don't realize I think
many people, is that the work goes on beyond just
the performative part of it, the part that draws you in,
(15:09):
makes you realize, like, oh my gosh, the thing that
makes you realize that maybe black people were telling the truth.
I think it's the same thing with Gay Pride. You know,
we have this one month and really like a weekend
right where people all good into the streets and they
do whatever, and they had this performative thing. Yeah I
support my gay brothers and sisters. But for any marginalized community,
(15:30):
you have to do that consistently, which is what your
whole concept of anti racism is about. It's the same thing.
You have to be anti bigoted, anti homophobic twenty four
to seven. You've got to reach beyond just the performative aspect.
Everywhere you go, oh my gosh, this is so awful,
or yeah, I support my gay brothers and sisters. Yeah
you should get married. But then when people make homophobic comments,
(15:52):
or you see someone being homophobic in the workplace or
whatever it may be, you need to call it out
and be anti homophobic definitely. And it seems as if
when people think of women, they think of white women,
and when people think of gay men and lesbian women,
they also think of white white age. And part of
(16:14):
that is this whitewashing of LGBTQ history. In many ways,
the history has been centered around these sis gendered white men.
And so how do we sort of break free of that.
How do people really begin to see and denormalize whiteness,
specifically when they think of the LGBTQ community. Well, I
(16:36):
think that has to be done, just as we do
it with black history as well. We need to teach people.
People need to know about Bayard Rustin, Yes, right, people
need to know about all the and I call them
my sisters who fought during Stone Wall, and all the
drag queens who led the movement, and there trance brothers
and sisters who have been leading the movement, literally putting
(16:57):
their bodies and lives on the line throughout this whole
LGBTQ movement. We have to teach that that has to
be part of history. Years ago, when I was out,
I didn't talk about it, but I would so be
out and I would host, you know, for my local
stations in Chicago or Philadelphia, wherever it was. I would
host these gay pride events and I would typically be
(17:19):
one of the only people of color in the room
because black as and white as didn't really intermingle, and
it was kind of a class thing. And so I
think we need to teach history. You know, if you
really want to know how the civil rights movement for
the March on Washington, the person who created that and
facilitated it was a black gay man who the LGBTQ
(17:41):
movement took their cues from and are doing the same
sorts of things because of bad Rustin's work, that we
have effective civil rights legislation, no compromise, no filibuckt and
(18:01):
that it did include public accommodation, deson housing, des agraded
education as they and the rights to vote. What do
you if you get people to appreciate the contributions of black, gay, lesbian, bisexual,
transgender men and women, then you can't help but include
(18:23):
them and not exclude them from the process exactly. But
at the same time, as you know, they are all
these current efforts to ban books in schools, in libraries
that teach about racism and homophobian, transphobia, those three types
of books. And so we're in this moment right now
(18:45):
which there's all these organized and unorganized, formal and informal
efforts to ensure that kids are not systematically learning this history,
whether it's the history of folks who are fighting for
gay rights or the history of folks fighting for black rights.
What is it about blackness and gayness and its intersection
(19:07):
that people especially do not want their kids to be
exposed to fear. It's fear it's religion, it's control. People
are afraid of things that they don't know, or they're
afraid of things that are inside of them that they
haven't yet explored. They have been told is because of
(19:27):
our puritanical so called founding of the country that you know,
we cannot explore those things. Because if people explore those
things and they really learn who they are, and they
learn that sexuality is fluid, and they learn that blackness
is actually good and not bad, that they may be
freed from the control of society and the control of
(19:48):
organized religion. And so that's what they're afraid of. And
they're also afraid of not having a preeminent voice. The
thing that people look up to is what heterosexual, whiteness, christianity,
and so what organized religion does is it keeps you
from exploring those things, or understanding those things, or even
questioning those things. And there's a reason that that is done.
(20:10):
People want the status quo. If you were the person
that has a pre eminent voice, the person who has
all the access in the ease in society, who has
the control in society, even why would you want that
to change? Exactly? I don't know if I ever told
(20:41):
you this done when I was researching for Stamp from
the beginning, this history of anti black racist ideas. That's
when I first learned that in parts of the United
States and parts of Western Europe, being gay or being
trans was a crime. Like literally it was a crime,
just as in many ways to be black is to
(21:04):
be a criminal in this society. And so as a result,
there's been this consistent and constant over policing and all
sorts of surveillance historically on the LGBTQ community as well
as the black community and certainly black and people of
color within these communities. And it's not so far removed.
(21:26):
It's sort of still operationalizes as a crime. Like people
still treat being trans as almost like a crime against
society and respond accordingly. People still treat yes, trans yes,
and also gay people gay people too, yeah, and black people. Listen,
if you look at our criminal justice system, right that
(21:46):
the whole process of having a jury of your peers
and so on and so forth, in the way it's designed,
it was designed for a certain group of people. It
certainly wasn't gay people, and it wasn't black people. Was
for white head of sexual people. And so if you
look at the way people are treated in the criminal
justice system. There is a huge degree of homophobia that
is layered on top of how justice is meeted out
(22:07):
in this country. There's a huge degree of racism that
sprinkled on top of how justice is handed out in
this country. If you go into a courtroom, people can
play on the juries homophobia, People can play on the
juries racism, and they don't even have to be subtle
about it, and it is acceptable. It's acceptable in the media,
it's acceptable and broader culture because they say, yeah, well,
(22:28):
you know, of course those flags are those in words,
are the black people or whatever, because that's how it
should be. That's why they think it should be. Like
most people in this country, quite honestly, haven't even examined
their homophobia. And that goes for black and white people
all a different ethnicity haven't even begun to examine their homophobia.
(22:49):
And most people haven't even begun to examine their racism
because they are afraid. This goes back to your other
question of what they're going to find out about themselves.
Maybe you're examining your racism and you find out, well,
maybe I actually am racist, or maybe I actually do
have racial bias. What does that say about you? Doesn't
put you in a good place. If you start to
examine your homophobia and you realize, well, maybe I do
(23:11):
have some homophobic tendencies, What does that say about you?
That makes you re examine your entire world? And so
that's where all of that fear comes from. So we
haven't even begun to do that. But let me say this,
if anyone wants to examine blackness and gayness, pick up
Giovanni's Room, First Boy, written by black gay man James
(23:33):
Bowen James Baldwin. You won't even know that James Baldwin
is black. When I first read gioboness Room, I think
it's like high school or freshman year in college. It
was just so beautifully written, and it was just a
beautiful love story that happened to be about two men,
and neither character in the book was black. If you
thought you would be like, well, who is this blonde man,
you know, American white man writing about his love affair
(23:55):
with this person in France? And then you start to
read the Baldwin cannon, you pick up the fire next time,
and then you begin to realize, well, wow, this is
a gay and black man who's writing about the beauty
of blackness and the beauty of homosexuality. It may open
your eyes and the homosexual questions, like what there's on
the racial question, Nobody, no man, and no woman's precisely
what they think they are. Love it's where you find it.
(24:17):
They don't know where it will carry you. And it
is a terrifying thing. Love, it's the only human possibility.
But it started lying. And a man can vote in
love with a man, and woman can vute another woman.
There's nothing anybody can do about it. It's not in
the problence of the law. It's only to do with
the church. And if you lie about that, If you
lie about that, you lie about everything. And no one
has a right to try to tell another human being
(24:38):
whom he or she cattle should love. So if we
want to help in all of those aspects that you're
talking about, first pick up Gabanna's room, then pick up
the fire next time, then go to another country, and
then go to go tell it on the mountain just
above my head, or any of those beautiful books by
James Ballwin, and then you'll start to get it. Sorry,
I went off on a ramp bibro No. I mean
(25:00):
you gave us a reading list. You gave folks to reading.
Just read everything. James Ball was the price of the ticket,
and just go on, just read it. It seems to
me also because of the fear that you describe, the
fear that people have of LGBTQ people, and the fear
that people have of black people, of Latin X people
of Latin X immigrants, of Native Americans, of Asian Americans,
(25:24):
that that is part of the reason why there's not
an effort to ensure that those people are no longer
subjected to police violence or other forms of violence because
of their sexual orientation, or because of control, control, control,
fear and control. Those people must be controlled, because if
(25:44):
they're not controlled, then what are they going to do?
Perhaps they will somehow find agency in society, which means
that society will change and we will no longer have
control over the levels of society. I mean, that's how
I see it. I think it's just as simple as
that people are afraid. Listen, think about it. If you
(26:06):
came to a country and conquered it and took land
from people, subjugated them, enslaved them, wouldn't you be afraid
that maybe if those people found some sort of freedom
and autonomy, that they may do the same thing to you.
Even though that's irrational. That would never happen. People would
never start enslaving white people or with any sort of
(26:28):
monumental or profound effect, be able to discriminate against white people.
It's an irrational fear, and it's control it is. So
what about those folks who aren't just going to be
performative during Pride Month, who truly do want to fight
against homophobia and transphobia? But they have this blind spot because,
(26:51):
as we talked about earlier, when they think of the
LGBTQ plus community, they really think of white people and
they can't see how that racist idea is preventing them
from seeing people of color who are gay and trans
and lesbian, and like, how do people overcome that? How
do people recognize that there's no way to truly fight
(27:14):
for all people in the LGPT community if you also
have racist ideas, how do you get people to see it?
But listen, then it's just racism or homophobia by degrees. Right,
It's not that you're anti racist or you're anti homophobic,
it's just that you're just not as racist as everybody else,
but not as homophobic as everybody else. If you don't
(27:36):
see that, and if you don't understand it, I think
the way that you get people to do that is
quite simply by pointing it out. The only way that
we're going to solve this problem in a substantial, in
a profound way, is going to be through relationships with people.
For people to be in relationship with, in friendship with
an acquaintance with people who don't look like them. And
(27:57):
that means if you're straight and you don't have a
gay friend, get one. If you're gay and you don't
have a straight friend, which I think it is hard
to do to get and I think that is the
way that you're going to do it. It's really interesting.
I believe racism is like a spell. It's programmed into
you for so long. It's just ingrained. It's like Genie
or be which you gotta snap out of it. You
(28:17):
gotta people start to do racist things or homophobic things,
Hey snap out of it. They're being homophobic, and then
they get their attention and you explain to them why
they're being racist or homophobic, and then sometimes they'll get it.
And then when they start to get it, they become
more aware, and then you will see them become the
anti whatever it is, homophobic or racist, definitely, You know, Don,
(28:41):
It's always a pleasure to sit down and wrap with
you and to think about these larger critical issues and
just think about how we can transform and make the
lives of so many different people better. I am deeply
(29:01):
grateful to Don Lemon for a very profound conversation. Don's
experience has proved that individual success in fame are not
enough on their own to vanquish homophobia and transphobia and racism.
According to a recent survey, more than one in three
LGBTQ Americans faced bigotry in the past year. Gender nonconforming people,
(29:25):
transgender people, people of color in women experience the highest levels.
More than half of LGBTQ Americans hit a personal relationship
to avoid homophobia, and nearly half of transgender people avoided
doctors offices to protect themselves from transphobia. As I say
these words, at least twenty eight trans and gender nonconforming Americans,
(29:49):
mostly Black and Latin X transgender women, have been killed
this year. To be anti racist is to actively oppose
homophobia and transphobia in ourselves and in our society. Whether
it's a homophobic joke from a friend or transphobic policy
in our community that trans women are kids, it is
(30:11):
our responsibility to call out injustice. The US Senate is
currently considering the Equality Act, passed by the House of
Representatives in February twenty twenty one. If the Equality Act
becomes law, it would prohibit discrimination based on sex, sexual orientation,
(30:33):
and gender identity in areas including public accommodations and facilities, education,
federal funding, employment, housing credit, and the jury system. Of course,
one piece of legislation won't root out homophobia and transphobia
and United States, but securing such basic protections for LGBTQ
(30:53):
people is long overdue. Queer folks, especially queer folks of color,
have been fighting for a long time. I'm thinking about
Audre Lord, the women of the Kombahee River Collective, black
self identified drag queens like to p. Johnson, Latin X
trans women like Sylvia rivera Native lesbians like Barbara May Cameron,
(31:16):
black bisexuals like a Billy Jones Henning, an Asian gay
men like Kyoshi Kromia. The fight for racial justice and
LGBTQ justice are inseparable. Collective action frees us all. As
Audrey Lord once wrote, without community, there is no liberation.
To fight. To liberate the community is to be anti racist,
(31:50):
be anti racists. In production of Pushkin Industries and Our
Heart Media, it is written and hosted by doctor Ebramex
Kindy and produced by Alexandra Garriton with associate producer Brittany Brown.
Our engineer has been Talladay, Our editor is Julia Barton
and our showrunners Sasha Mathist. Our executive producers are only
Time Mullard and Mio Lobell. Many thanks to Tammy Win
and doctor Heather Sandford at the Center for Anti Racist
(32:12):
Research at Boston University for all of the help at Pushkin.
Thanks to Heather Fame, Carlie mcgleiori, Sean Schnarz, and Jacob Wiseberg.
You can find doctor Kendy on Twitter at d r
Abram and on Instagram at abram x k. You can
find Pushkin on all social platforms at pushkin Pods. You
can sign up for our newsletter at pushkin dot fm.
(32:33):
To find more Pushkin podcasts, listen on the our Heart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen,
Pushkin. Most people in this country, quite honestly, haven't even
examined their homophobia, and that goes for black and white people.
All different ethnicities haven't even begun to examine their homophobia.
(00:37):
And most people haven't even begun to examine their racism
because they are afraid of what they're going to find
out about themselves. On a spring day in nineteen eighty,
Audrey Lord stood before an audience at Amherst College in
(00:58):
western Massachusetts to self describe black lesbian mother warrior. Poet
said something that resonated with me decades later. Too often,
Lord said, we pour the energy needed for recognizing and
exploring difference into pretending those differences are insurmountable barriers or
(01:19):
that they do not exist at all. This results in
a voluntary isolation or false and treacherous connections. Either way,
we do not develop tools for using human difference as
a springboard for creative change within our lives. We must
deal with our differences and the differences that are not
(01:41):
being dealt with or provided for. Now. Once we deal
with those differences that aren't being provided for, we do
it in a context it says, hey, then we can
use these differences. We don't have to eradicate, and we
don't have to wipe them out. We also don't have
to remain with them. And that's how I see it.
In other words, I'm talking about the creative use of difference.
(02:05):
This radical black lesbian feminist, this literary very icon gave
us these tools, if only we'd use them. I'm abramex Kendy,
and this is be anti racist. We have all been
(02:27):
programmed to respond to human differences between us with fear
and loathing, and to handle that difference in one of
three ways. Ignore it and if that is not possible,
copy it if we think it is dominant, or destroy
it if we think it is subordinate. These are the
words of Audrey Lord. Like most cis gender heterosexual Americans,
(02:51):
I was taught to fear the difference of gay men
of transgender women. I was taught to fear what I
didn't know, what I didn't understand, what was different. I
was taught to fear the very people fighting for their liberation.
And my own Lord showed us another way. Why can't
(03:13):
we relate across human differences as equals? The term equals
not equal. We are different and we are the same.
We may love different people, but how we love is
the same. We are equals in all our differences. Lord's
(03:34):
words echo the statement of a group of black lesbian feminists,
the Kombahee River Collective of Boston Shout Out to Boston
in nineteen seventy seven. Barbara Smith, Demita Frasier, and Beverly
Smith wrote, we reject pedestals, queenhood, and walking ten paces behind.
To be recognized as human, lovely human is enough. To
(04:00):
reflect on the words of these women is to reflect
on two critical aspects of being anti racist, seeing and
appreciating and respecting difference, and leveling difference. We have not
been taught to level the humanity of different races and
genders and sexual orientations, but we must. This is the
(04:24):
anti racist perspective that can liberate humanity from sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia,
and their intersections. As we celebrate Pride Month this June,
we must remember that queer people of color have always
(04:45):
been at the center of fights for human freedom. They
have always been at the center of the human struggle
to be who we want to be, to appreciate who
we want to appreciate, to love who we want to love.
They have taught me that for humans to truly be free,
humans must be free to be different. Welcome to be
(05:12):
Anti Racist in action podcasts where we discuss how to diagnose, dismantle,
and abolish racism, how to save humanity from the divisiveness
of racist ideas and the destructiveness of racist power and policy,
How to free humanity through the unity of anti racist
ideas and the constructiveness of anti racist power and policy.
(05:37):
On be anti Racist, we discuss how to make the
impossible possible, and how to bring into being what modern
humans have never known, a just, inequitable world. You ready,
let's roll. How could we not have expected that if
(06:08):
Joe Biden came the president elect of the United States,
that the streets would not erupt after what had happened
in this country? Don Lemon was for a long time
America's only black primetime inchor. He now inchors Don Lemon
Tonight on CNN every weeknight and serves as a CNN correspondent.
(06:29):
Over the course of his career, Lemon has been called
many terrible things, some of which you will hear him
say throughout the episode. Now, I'm just talking about the
last eight months. I'm not talking about all the stuff
that we dealt with before, the fake news and people
yelling at us on the street and people calling me
nigger and fag and all kinds of things, and your
fake news and all of that. Never before that I've
(06:50):
been in this business since nineteen ninety one have I
ever had to deal with the crap that I've had
to deal with over the last four years. It is disgusting.
Don Lemon just dropped a deeply personal and reflective book
called This Is the Fire What I Say to My
Friends about racism. He and I sat down to discuss
(07:12):
his experience as a black gay man, the racism and
homophobia he's faced, he's witnessed, he's battled against, and how
the anti racist struggle includes the struggle against homophobia, transphobia,
and all forms of bigotry targeting members of the LGBTQ community.
Don thank you so much for taking some time before
(07:35):
we jump into conversation. Yesterday was the anniversary of George
Floyd's murderer, and I'm just curious, what were you feeling
then about that anniversary and thinking and reflecting on and
what are you thinking I'm feeling now. I couldn't believe
that it had been a year. Yeah. Yeah, even though
you didn't feel like a year, it felt like so
(07:58):
much had happened. We had a verdict, we had an insurrection,
we had a trial, we had an election. So much
has gone on. But yeah, it just brought me back
to where I was a year ago. I thought about
being in quarantine and not being able to see my
loved ones, and then watching this man die in the
middle of a street and very few people, very few
(08:20):
people then at least have the tenacity or gumption, whatever
you want to call it, to make an excuse for it,
and now so many people are So I was sad,
obviously that George Floyd was dead. I was happy that
the verdict had happened, and was looking over the last
year wondering what's going to happen next. Were you thinking,
(08:41):
especially as summer demonstrations spread around the country and the
levels of awareness of systemic racism grew, did you think
that we would be at a different place now? Are
you surprised that many cases were still arguing over whether
systemic racism diedn't existing. Well, Look, I'm a man of
(09:02):
a certain age, which means I've been around for a
long time, and I've seen a lot, and I hope
that things would change, Yes, And I think that it
was a significant moment. Absolutely, did I think that this
would end racism. I know that's not what you're asking me. No.
I mean, just as Obama's election his presidency didn't make
me think that, oh my gosh, we're all of a
(09:22):
sudden living in a post racial society. Deep down, I
hope that they would change, even but I think even
deeper down, I knew that racism runs so deeply in
our society and in our culture that it was sadly
going to take more than the death of one black
man in the middle of a street with a knee
on his neck for nine minutes and twenty nine seconds
actually make a difference. Now, every little bit counts, don't
(09:45):
get me wrong. And I think that in order to
honor George Floyd and the many, many people who were
out there trying to do the right thing or doing
the right thing, and trying to move society and the
culture along, we must be respectful and optimistic and supportive
of those efforts and of George Floyd's life and of
his death for what that meant for the world. But
(10:06):
I didn't really have that much hope that things going
to change. Although I'm optimistic, it seems as if the
pulse of the racial story right now it's really the
attack on those of us who are acknowledging or recognizing
and studying racism. And indeed, I think people of a
(10:26):
certain age would know that this is typically what has
happened in the past. Yeah. Look, I felt that attack
for a long time. Is the only black person in
cable news, especially dealing with the environment that we're dealing with,
and especially over the last five years, I felt that
attack from Trump supporters, from Donald Trump himself. So I'm
not surprised by the attack. Sometimes I'm surprised by the
(10:48):
intensity of it, just how organized the attackers are. I'm
curious at a personal level, You've been the focus of
so many attacks for so long, and you know, over
the last year, in particular the last two years, I've
had to see some of that on some level, and
it's been an adjustment for me. How have you been
able to deal with it over the course of your
(11:09):
life in your career, Well, it's been really tough. I
don't want to say that I'm glad. I'm not glad
about it. It makes me feel that I'm not alone anymore.
And listen, I wouldn't want those things to happen to
you or anyone of people who are trying to teach
people about race. But for the longest time, I felt
like I was the only person out there receiving and
sustaining those attacks. And sometimes, you know, when I got
(11:32):
criticism from my own I was like, if you guys
only knew what I went through, you would cut me
some slack, like this is crazy. But people now know,
and I think that's in large part because of the
last administration. I really knew, you know. I write in
my book that Donald Trump was the president we deserved
and probably the one we needed, because we had people
believing somehow that we were going to post racist society
(11:54):
and we were not. For white Americans, it was just
beneath the surface, and he uncovered that for Black Americans
it was I told you so, like we never thought
that it was gone. But how have I been able
to do it? It's been very stressful. I've aged, I'm
not kidding, I have a lot of therapy bills. I've
dealt with some depression, and the attacks have been consistent,
and now people see just how much the people who
(12:17):
are like our former president lie to people, and how
much they try to create their own reality. They try
to bend lies into their own reality. And so I
think it's out in the open and people can see
it as awful as it is, as awful as it's
been for me and for others. At least people know now,
and I think that those of us who are dealing
with this need to expose it and continue to let
(12:38):
people know about it so that hopefully it will make
a difference. And as much as certainly people are racist,
there's also, of course systemic homophobia. So how much for
you do you think the attacks have been because you're black,
because you're gay, because you're black and gay, and how
do you even come to terms with that? Listen, I'm
(12:59):
attacked more for my blackness than for my gayness, but
that doesn't negate the homophobia. I've often said for years now,
I think for the last ten years or so that
the criticism of me is often steeped in racism and homophobia.
If you look at social media, if you look at
even things that people write about me and legacy media
or say about me, they don't even recognize their own
(13:20):
racism and homophobia, So I think it's both. I think
the homophobia actually helps with the bigots because it's another
layer on top of their bigotry that they can add to, like, oh,
you know that in word or that bag or whatever.
So I think that they get off on it. Look
it's a double negative if you look at it that way.
I choose to look at as a double positive. Now.
(13:41):
I didn't want to come out for the longest time
because I was already black, and I said, Okay, I'm black,
Do I really need another strike? Now I welcome it
because it's made me who I am, and it's given
me the urgency that I needed in order to be
able to use my platform in a way that I
think is more informative and that is more useful to
people who are like me. June, of course is Pride month,
(14:04):
and you of course going to have some people who
may visit some parades or may get some rainbow colors.
But I suspect if they truly committed to the rights
of the LGBTQ community and the freedom and power folks
should be thinking much broader than that performative or symbolic way.
(14:26):
Although that's not to say that that isn't important. That
certainly has its level of importance, But what do you
tend to do and what do you talk about? That's
a performative part before the question, because as you were
saying that, you made me think about what happened after
George Floyd. And I'm sure you dealt with this as well,
when people, especially your white friends or white people you know,
reaching out to you saying, oh my god, this is awful.
(14:47):
I don't want my kids to live in this world
or grow up in this world. I don't have a
language of a tool to be able to teach my
kids or just to be able to talk about or
have these conversations. And initially, you know, I mean, it
came from a good place, but it was performative. Yeah,
And what people didn't realize or don't realize I think
many people, is that the work goes on beyond just
the performative part of it, the part that draws you in,
(15:09):
makes you realize, like, oh my gosh, the thing that
makes you realize that maybe black people were telling the truth.
I think it's the same thing with Gay Pride. You know,
we have this one month and really like a weekend
right where people all good into the streets and they
do whatever, and they had this performative thing. Yeah I
support my gay brothers and sisters. But for any marginalized community,
(15:30):
you have to do that consistently, which is what your
whole concept of anti racism is about. It's the same thing.
You have to be anti bigoted, anti homophobic twenty four
to seven. You've got to reach beyond just the performative aspect.
Everywhere you go, oh my gosh, this is so awful,
or yeah, I support my gay brothers and sisters. Yeah
you should get married. But then when people make homophobic comments,
(15:52):
or you see someone being homophobic in the workplace or
whatever it may be, you need to call it out
and be anti homophobic definitely. And it seems as if
when people think of women, they think of white women,
and when people think of gay men and lesbian women,
they also think of white white age. And part of
(16:14):
that is this whitewashing of LGBTQ history. In many ways,
the history has been centered around these sis gendered white men.
And so how do we sort of break free of that.
How do people really begin to see and denormalize whiteness,
specifically when they think of the LGBTQ community. Well, I
(16:36):
think that has to be done, just as we do
it with black history as well. We need to teach people.
People need to know about Bayard Rustin, Yes, right, people
need to know about all the and I call them
my sisters who fought during Stone Wall, and all the
drag queens who led the movement, and there trance brothers
and sisters who have been leading the movement, literally putting
(16:57):
their bodies and lives on the line throughout this whole
LGBTQ movement. We have to teach that that has to
be part of history. Years ago, when I was out,
I didn't talk about it, but I would so be
out and I would host, you know, for my local
stations in Chicago or Philadelphia, wherever it was. I would
host these gay pride events and I would typically be
(17:19):
one of the only people of color in the room
because black as and white as didn't really intermingle, and
it was kind of a class thing. And so I
think we need to teach history. You know, if you
really want to know how the civil rights movement for
the March on Washington, the person who created that and
facilitated it was a black gay man who the LGBTQ
(17:41):
movement took their cues from and are doing the same
sorts of things because of bad Rustin's work, that we
have effective civil rights legislation, no compromise, no filibuckt and
(18:01):
that it did include public accommodation, deson housing, des agraded
education as they and the rights to vote. What do
you if you get people to appreciate the contributions of black, gay, lesbian, bisexual,
transgender men and women, then you can't help but include
(18:23):
them and not exclude them from the process exactly. But
at the same time, as you know, they are all
these current efforts to ban books in schools, in libraries
that teach about racism and homophobian, transphobia, those three types
of books. And so we're in this moment right now
(18:45):
which there's all these organized and unorganized, formal and informal
efforts to ensure that kids are not systematically learning this history,
whether it's the history of folks who are fighting for
gay rights or the history of folks fighting for black rights.
What is it about blackness and gayness and its intersection
(19:07):
that people especially do not want their kids to be
exposed to fear. It's fear it's religion, it's control. People
are afraid of things that they don't know, or they're
afraid of things that are inside of them that they
haven't yet explored. They have been told is because of
(19:27):
our puritanical so called founding of the country that you know,
we cannot explore those things. Because if people explore those
things and they really learn who they are, and they
learn that sexuality is fluid, and they learn that blackness
is actually good and not bad, that they may be
freed from the control of society and the control of
(19:48):
organized religion. And so that's what they're afraid of. And
they're also afraid of not having a preeminent voice. The
thing that people look up to is what heterosexual, whiteness, christianity,
and so what organized religion does is it keeps you
from exploring those things, or understanding those things, or even
questioning those things. And there's a reason that that is done.
(20:10):
People want the status quo. If you were the person
that has a pre eminent voice, the person who has
all the access in the ease in society, who has
the control in society, even why would you want that
to change? Exactly? I don't know if I ever told
(20:41):
you this done when I was researching for Stamp from
the beginning, this history of anti black racist ideas. That's
when I first learned that in parts of the United
States and parts of Western Europe, being gay or being
trans was a crime. Like literally it was a crime,
just as in many ways to be black is to
(21:04):
be a criminal in this society. And so as a result,
there's been this consistent and constant over policing and all
sorts of surveillance historically on the LGBTQ community as well
as the black community and certainly black and people of
color within these communities. And it's not so far removed.
(21:26):
It's sort of still operationalizes as a crime. Like people
still treat being trans as almost like a crime against
society and respond accordingly. People still treat yes, trans yes,
and also gay people gay people too, yeah, and black people. Listen,
if you look at our criminal justice system, right that
(21:46):
the whole process of having a jury of your peers
and so on and so forth, in the way it's designed,
it was designed for a certain group of people. It
certainly wasn't gay people, and it wasn't black people. Was
for white head of sexual people. And so if you
look at the way people are treated in the criminal
justice system. There is a huge degree of homophobia that
is layered on top of how justice is meeted out
(22:07):
in this country. There's a huge degree of racism that
sprinkled on top of how justice is handed out in
this country. If you go into a courtroom, people can
play on the juries homophobia, People can play on the
juries racism, and they don't even have to be subtle
about it, and it is acceptable. It's acceptable in the media,
it's acceptable and broader culture because they say, yeah, well,
(22:28):
you know, of course those flags are those in words,
are the black people or whatever, because that's how it
should be. That's why they think it should be. Like
most people in this country, quite honestly, haven't even examined
their homophobia. And that goes for black and white people
all a different ethnicity haven't even begun to examine their homophobia.
(22:49):
And most people haven't even begun to examine their racism
because they are afraid. This goes back to your other
question of what they're going to find out about themselves.
Maybe you're examining your racism and you find out, well,
maybe I actually am racist, or maybe I actually do
have racial bias. What does that say about you? Doesn't
put you in a good place. If you start to
examine your homophobia and you realize, well, maybe I do
(23:11):
have some homophobic tendencies, What does that say about you?
That makes you re examine your entire world? And so
that's where all of that fear comes from. So we
haven't even begun to do that. But let me say this,
if anyone wants to examine blackness and gayness, pick up
Giovanni's Room, First Boy, written by black gay man James
(23:33):
Bowen James Baldwin. You won't even know that James Baldwin
is black. When I first read gioboness Room, I think
it's like high school or freshman year in college. It
was just so beautifully written, and it was just a
beautiful love story that happened to be about two men,
and neither character in the book was black. If you
thought you would be like, well, who is this blonde man,
you know, American white man writing about his love affair
(23:55):
with this person in France? And then you start to
read the Baldwin cannon, you pick up the fire next time,
and then you begin to realize, well, wow, this is
a gay and black man who's writing about the beauty
of blackness and the beauty of homosexuality. It may open
your eyes and the homosexual questions, like what there's on
the racial question, Nobody, no man, and no woman's precisely
what they think they are. Love it's where you find it.
(24:17):
They don't know where it will carry you. And it
is a terrifying thing. Love, it's the only human possibility.
But it started lying. And a man can vote in
love with a man, and woman can vute another woman.
There's nothing anybody can do about it. It's not in
the problence of the law. It's only to do with
the church. And if you lie about that, If you
lie about that, you lie about everything. And no one
has a right to try to tell another human being
(24:38):
whom he or she cattle should love. So if we
want to help in all of those aspects that you're
talking about, first pick up Gabanna's room, then pick up
the fire next time, then go to another country, and
then go to go tell it on the mountain just
above my head, or any of those beautiful books by
James Ballwin, and then you'll start to get it. Sorry,
I went off on a ramp bibro No. I mean
(25:00):
you gave us a reading list. You gave folks to reading.
Just read everything. James Ball was the price of the ticket,
and just go on, just read it. It seems to
me also because of the fear that you describe, the
fear that people have of LGBTQ people, and the fear
that people have of black people, of Latin X people
of Latin X immigrants, of Native Americans, of Asian Americans,
(25:24):
that that is part of the reason why there's not
an effort to ensure that those people are no longer
subjected to police violence or other forms of violence because
of their sexual orientation, or because of control, control, control,
fear and control. Those people must be controlled, because if
(25:44):
they're not controlled, then what are they going to do?
Perhaps they will somehow find agency in society, which means
that society will change and we will no longer have
control over the levels of society. I mean, that's how
I see it. I think it's just as simple as
that people are afraid. Listen, think about it. If you
(26:06):
came to a country and conquered it and took land
from people, subjugated them, enslaved them, wouldn't you be afraid
that maybe if those people found some sort of freedom
and autonomy, that they may do the same thing to you.
Even though that's irrational. That would never happen. People would
never start enslaving white people or with any sort of
(26:28):
monumental or profound effect, be able to discriminate against white people.
It's an irrational fear, and it's control it is. So
what about those folks who aren't just going to be
performative during Pride Month, who truly do want to fight
against homophobia and transphobia? But they have this blind spot because,
(26:51):
as we talked about earlier, when they think of the
LGBTQ plus community, they really think of white people and
they can't see how that racist idea is preventing them
from seeing people of color who are gay and trans
and lesbian, and like, how do people overcome that? How
do people recognize that there's no way to truly fight
(27:14):
for all people in the LGPT community if you also
have racist ideas, how do you get people to see it?
But listen, then it's just racism or homophobia by degrees. Right,
It's not that you're anti racist or you're anti homophobic,
it's just that you're just not as racist as everybody else,
but not as homophobic as everybody else. If you don't
(27:36):
see that, and if you don't understand it, I think
the way that you get people to do that is
quite simply by pointing it out. The only way that
we're going to solve this problem in a substantial, in
a profound way, is going to be through relationships with people.
For people to be in relationship with, in friendship with
an acquaintance with people who don't look like them. And
(27:57):
that means if you're straight and you don't have a
gay friend, get one. If you're gay and you don't
have a straight friend, which I think it is hard
to do to get and I think that is the
way that you're going to do it. It's really interesting.
I believe racism is like a spell. It's programmed into
you for so long. It's just ingrained. It's like Genie
or be which you gotta snap out of it. You
(28:17):
gotta people start to do racist things or homophobic things,
Hey snap out of it. They're being homophobic, and then
they get their attention and you explain to them why
they're being racist or homophobic, and then sometimes they'll get it.
And then when they start to get it, they become
more aware, and then you will see them become the
anti whatever it is, homophobic or racist, definitely, You know, Don,
(28:41):
It's always a pleasure to sit down and wrap with
you and to think about these larger critical issues and
just think about how we can transform and make the
lives of so many different people better. I am deeply
(29:01):
grateful to Don Lemon for a very profound conversation. Don's
experience has proved that individual success in fame are not
enough on their own to vanquish homophobia and transphobia and racism.
According to a recent survey, more than one in three
LGBTQ Americans faced bigotry in the past year. Gender nonconforming people,
(29:25):
transgender people, people of color in women experience the highest levels.
More than half of LGBTQ Americans hit a personal relationship
to avoid homophobia, and nearly half of transgender people avoided
doctors offices to protect themselves from transphobia. As I say
these words, at least twenty eight trans and gender nonconforming Americans,
(29:49):
mostly Black and Latin X transgender women, have been killed
this year. To be anti racist is to actively oppose
homophobia and transphobia in ourselves and in our society. Whether
it's a homophobic joke from a friend or transphobic policy
in our community that trans women are kids, it is
(30:11):
our responsibility to call out injustice. The US Senate is
currently considering the Equality Act, passed by the House of
Representatives in February twenty twenty one. If the Equality Act
becomes law, it would prohibit discrimination based on sex, sexual orientation,
(30:33):
and gender identity in areas including public accommodations and facilities, education,
federal funding, employment, housing credit, and the jury system. Of course,
one piece of legislation won't root out homophobia and transphobia
and United States, but securing such basic protections for LGBTQ
(30:53):
people is long overdue. Queer folks, especially queer folks of color,
have been fighting for a long time. I'm thinking about
Audre Lord, the women of the Kombahee River Collective, black
self identified drag queens like to p. Johnson, Latin X
trans women like Sylvia rivera Native lesbians like Barbara May Cameron,
(31:16):
black bisexuals like a Billy Jones Henning, an Asian gay
men like Kyoshi Kromia. The fight for racial justice and
LGBTQ justice are inseparable. Collective action frees us all. As
Audrey Lord once wrote, without community, there is no liberation.
To fight. To liberate the community is to be anti racist,
(31:50):
be anti racists. In production of Pushkin Industries and Our
Heart Media, it is written and hosted by doctor Ebramex
Kindy and produced by Alexandra Garriton with associate producer Brittany Brown.
Our engineer has been Talladay, Our editor is Julia Barton
and our showrunners Sasha Mathist. Our executive producers are only
Time Mullard and Mio Lobell. Many thanks to Tammy Win
and doctor Heather Sandford at the Center for Anti Racist
(32:12):
Research at Boston University for all of the help at Pushkin.
Thanks to Heather Fame, Carlie mcgleiori, Sean Schnarz, and Jacob Wiseberg.
You can find doctor Kendy on Twitter at d r
Abram and on Instagram at abram x k. You can
find Pushkin on all social platforms at pushkin Pods. You
can sign up for our newsletter at pushkin dot fm.
(32:33):
To find more Pushkin podcasts, listen on the our Heart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen,
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