February 25, 2021 • 49 mins
Original Broadcast 09/03/2020
SNT shares the mic with her friend Jennifer Farmer, the PR Whisperer who has written the best love letter there is, “First & Only: A Black Woman’s Guide to Thriving at Work and in Life.” These two life-long besties share the love in this episode that is all about that – LOVE. Lean in and learn how we can do good and do well; how love of self is one of the grandest forms of resistance out there – especially for Black women; how you can light your soul on fire by being and doing what you love…and how Lucy shoulda been Black. These two humanitarians show Black Girl magic works like hell. Hello Somebody!
First & Only: A Black Woman’s Guide to Thriving at Work and in Life
https://www.broadleafbooks.com/store/product/9781506466842/First-and-Only
First & Only Podcast
https://www.jenniferrfarmer.org/first-and-only-podcast/
Books to read:
So You Want To Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07QBQF4GS/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1
White Fragility by Robin Diangleo
https://www.robindiangelo.com/publications/
How To Be An Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi
https://www.ibramxkendi.com/how-to-be-an-antiracist-1
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to Hello Somebody, a production of the Black Effect
Network on our Heart Radio. Before we begin, I want
to give a big thank you to my team, the
team that makes this show happen every week. Thank you
Grace and Co for graphics, Pepper Chambers the Hot One
for writing, Angelo Greco and Anna Mason for social media,
(00:26):
Tiffany Hell for everything, Erica Ecklin for Patreon support and
production by the folks at Large Media. That's l A. R. J. Need. Also,
I want to tell you about the special Hello Somebody
family over on Patreon. If you go to patreon dot
(00:49):
com forward slash Hello Somebody, you can become a member
and join us over there for special video content, asking
me anything, experiencing and all kinds of surprises. All the
proceeds go to making this production happen every week, and
we would love your support, So come on and join
(01:11):
and become a Patreon family member. This is just amazing.
I mean, Hello Somebody, I don't know what to say.
Every single week we have such incredible guests and we
(01:32):
are learning so much, and so I am beyond delighted,
like almost jumping out of my skin, happy, Hello Somebody,
to be with someone who I admire so very much
who I hold in high regard and someone who we
have built a relationship with one another I know as
(01:53):
well past ten years. Right now. She is an incredible
force of nature. And her is Jennifer Farmer. She is
known as the pr Whisperer. She's an author, a lecturer, baby,
and she has a podcast called The First and Only,
which we are going to talk about her new book
(02:14):
that's coming out titled The First and Only, and it
really is about black women. It is a love letter
to black women, and that love letter is very much
needed in today's climate, and it is needed every single generation.
And Jennifer Farmer, we have with us my special advisor
(02:37):
J Three himself, so just in case if he wants to,
he might have a few things to say as we
talk today. How are you? I am doing well and
I'm so happy to be looking for your podcast to
load somebody. I'm so glad to have you. You have
been with me through many moments, highs and loads. So
(02:59):
this is certainly a great moment for us to share
with folks how we first met, how are incredible paths crossed,
and how we have been lifting and edifying one another
ever since and that magical moment happened in the Ohio
Senate where I was serving as a state senator and
(03:19):
you were the deputy chief of staff. Deputy chief of staff,
I have campaign manager in my mind because you've done
so much. You were the deputy well you got pretty
much was like managing you had to manage us, though
you had to manage the senators, but deputy chief of
staff for the Ohio Senate Caucus. And we have been
going strong together ever since. How was that experience and
(03:43):
how did that experience set you on the path to
what you are doing right now? So at that time,
I believe this was two thousand and one, so that
was more than nineteen years ago, and it would make
so we've known each other actually for nineteen years. Oh
(04:03):
my god, you have done it all. I mean, how
in the world have you been able to do all
of those things? And you are a mother as well.
I remember your baby boy, who's not such a baby
anymore now. Oh my god. When we met, I remember
he had such a love for art and and and
(04:25):
we we did some things together to enrich him on
the art side. I'm sure he doesn't remember that, but
I'm just smiling from ear to ear thinking about he
was just a little boy and now he's a grown
young man. They'll always be our babies. But you're you
know what, You're absolutely right, and this just reminds me.
So I think I had a lapsed earlier because I've
(04:45):
worked in the Senate twice. When I first worked in
the Senate, it was two thousand and one, and I
don't believe you were in the Senate at that time.
I came in two thousand exactly. And the second time,
when I came back as the deputy keep the Stass,
that was two thousand and n You are right. It's
known each other for about eleven years. I think that's
from eleven to nineteen. But you know, it's good. Oh good,
(05:09):
that's okay. I've received it because the way we work,
it seems like we've been together for a lifetime. So
obviously those nine teams obviouldly those teen years and so
and you you've just had a plethora of experiences, and
I with each and every opportunity that has been presented
to you, you've been able to build on those experiences
(05:32):
so much so that you put out your own shingle.
I know, that's what attorneys say. But you started your
own PR firm, Spotlight PR. You wrote a book about
PR on on a on a budget because it's so
hard for small businesses and individuals who don't necessarily have
(05:52):
a lot of money to be able to afford the
PR specialists like yourself. Until again you were thinking about
the common woman and man and even created a powerful
guy for how folks can and should have a strong
PR person. Absolutely, I mean, you know, I think that
(06:13):
the only thing that we're responsible for is what we
can do and the gifts and talents that each of
us have. And I've decided that I'm going to live
full and that I'm going to give back what God
has given to me. And so when I died, there
will be no unused talent. You know, God will not
look at me and say, well, Jennifer, I gave you
this and you didn't use it. He will say you
(06:34):
have squeezed the life out of everything that I've given you,
you know, and from that lends uh. You know, be
be proud and and happy. I do believe that your
life is you. You personify the ability to do well
and to do good at the same time. You can
do well and you can do good at the same time.
(06:56):
It does not have to be a trade off particularly
and you lean into the gifts that come to you
so easily. So for instance, with you, you are phenomenal speaker.
Uh you, you can take a complex issue and not
only make it understandable to the masses, but to get
(07:17):
people fired up. That's the gift. And if we lean
into the gifts that we have, then you definitely can
do well and do good at some time. And I
and that that, to me is an obligation for people
to do that, to find their purpose and to just
just saturating that thing and try not to get caught
(07:38):
up in what other people are doing and how fabulous
it may seem their lives are, and focus on what
the creator as we were believers, and I know some
people don't necessarily believe in that way, but what the creator,
the universe, what forces are calling you to do, to
do good, to do great things? And once you find that,
(07:59):
you know they're there is a way to to make
to make a living from doing good. One of the
best pieces of advice but I've ever received it came
from the dean of my college. He now passed away
uh Dean Paul Brigett, and I remember I was a
sophomore or a junior in college and I was really
(08:20):
stressing about how he's going to make money. I don't
know why I was worried about this, but I was stressing.
And Dan Brigett said, don't worry about the money. Do
what you love and the money will come. And whenever
I got to a point in my career where I
was worried or where you know, I was going to
entertain worry, I would think about what he said is
(08:42):
do what you love and the money will come. And
that has been so true for me professionally, guess and
I can certainly relate to that as you as you
will know too, so I'm sure a lot of people
can definitely relate to that. Do practicing your gifts and
just know that it's coming. That with ord so to speak,
is coming, and it's okay to live a good life.
(09:03):
I think so many, especially Jennifer, working class people are
poor people. They're struggling every single day, and you get
to a point sometimes where you don't feel like you
are deserving, and moments in your life where you don't
believe that you are worthy of actually living a good life.
I think that when you come from a community and
(09:25):
when you've seen other people struggle, or perhaps when you've struggled,
you can question whether or not that is your life's
experience or whether that is supposed to be your life's experience.
And when you get to the point where you know,
you start having a level of success that can change
your day to day, it can be tempting. You know,
(09:47):
you could so guilty. But what I say and what
I pray is, you know, God bless me to be
a blessing to others, to be a blessing to myself
and my family, but to be a blessing to others.
I want to be the person and who can give.
I wanted to be the person who see something that
is worth investing in and have the means and the
capacity to do so. Little embody on that. And you know,
(10:10):
and the great thing is a lot of times we
think that we have to start, we have to wait
until we get exactly well, everything is exactly perfect, and
that is not true. I think you start from where
you are, and you do what you can with where
you have, and in time it may grow. But even
if it never does, There's always something that you can
(10:31):
do from where you are. That's it. I totally agree.
I say that all the time. Do what you can
where you are, what you have, what you have. Yeah,
we all we all have a level, We all have
something that we can do, no matter what level we
may be on, and no matter what we may be
dealing with in our day to day lives, we can
all do something. So I, oh my god, I live
(10:54):
by that as well. We prayed that a similar the
same prayer, not just similar, the same prayer, Jennifer Farmer,
we do. Oh my god. I'm on people to absorb
this because it is such a heavy time right now,
as you and I know, from the COVID pandemic that
has engulfed not only our country but the entire world.
We are approaching fifty million people unemployed as we speak,
(11:19):
which is so unbelievable, sad, heavy, and we know that
a lot of those folks will not have health insurance
because their health insurance is tied to their employment, which
begs the question why do we continue to do things
in that way? And so that's the pandemic. And then
right there in the swirl of the pandemic, we have
(11:41):
civil unrest that has been bubbling up for weeks in
the United States of America has taken hope. This entire
movement has taken hope internationally as well, coming off of
being being sparked by the murder of George Floyd. But
we also know their other aims that are within that
(12:02):
moment that has caused people to say, particularly the African
American community, in the words of our dear Fannie lou Hamer,
I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired. Yes,
And you work a lot in that space, Jennifer, from
working with or working for the Advancement Project to even
(12:25):
in your own firm, you do a lot of training
about ratio bias and particularly implicit bias and anti blackness.
Share with us because you are an expert in that issue.
And I feel like we are at a synergistic moment
where more people they're open to having some of the
harder conversations that this country has not been willing to have,
(12:49):
and then on a micro level, just even individuals have
not wanted to have. But it's just something about this
particular moment where we have an opportunity to go deep.
So I want to go deep with you. This is
your not only your your area expertise, but it is
your passion and how you are able to peel back
the layers. I've been in trainings with you. I mean,
you did a training for the Sanders campaign as well
(13:12):
at my request. But that's a whole another story for
another time. Talk to all of us, Speak to us
about racism itself, implicit bias, and anti blackness. One of
(13:32):
the things that I think organizations and people fail at
or make mistakes and is they they think because they
have noble aspirations, because they proclaim progressive values, that their
work is done. And when you talk about race, race
(13:54):
has to be addressed on an individual level as well
as a collective and a structural level. You can't say.
You can't say, well, you know, I I want to
be anti racist, and so I'm gonna go and work
for this organization and not do the work to transform yourself.
It doesn't look like that any person who was born
in the United States, who have lived here, who has
(14:16):
spent any length of time, they are impacted by race,
and so an anti racism it has to be unlearned.
When I worked for advancement projects, probably one of the
best aspects of that experience was really brounding and what
anti blackness is. And when I think about the animosity
and the hatred that you see towards people of color,
(14:40):
it is rooted and that person having an ounce of blackness,
it's rooted an anti blackness. So if there were no
anti blackness, I don't believe that we would have the
hostility that many Latin American immigrants space. It's all reading
an anti blackness. I also think that you can't just
(15:00):
say that you're anti racist, and you can't just do
the work. You have to examine the way that racism
has been internalized within yourself. And so there is work
for each and every one of us to do. Even
black people can harbor internalize oppression and anti blackness, and
sometimes we see that show up and colorism. Sometimes we
(15:24):
see it show up in dating preferences. Sometimes we see
it show up. And even how we care for our
body and how we care for the messages that we
send to ourselves every day, we have to understand that
in this country it is inherently racist. And no black
people can't be racist because racism is about power. It's power,
(15:47):
you know, structural powers, but we do have to understand that,
you know, we still have work to do to ensure
so we race, internalize depression. And if you wonder how
that show shows up our entire system set up to
despise black people, from the images that we see, to
what we're talking from children, that what is beautiful and
(16:07):
what is not, to what is smart and what is not?
To who has capacity and who does not? Rooted in race,
and so we all have We're all on the journey.
The question is are you running? The question is are
you continually making past and strides forwards? And in this
day age, there's simply no excuse to say I don't
(16:29):
you know, I don't know where to start. There's so
many wonderful resources and books like I love UH so
you want to talk about race, I love White Fragility.
There's so many different books. I love UH Ebram Candy's
UM How to Be Anti Racists. There's so many wonderful resources.
(16:50):
I also think at the moment that you open your
mind and you open your heart and you put out
in the universe your commitment to doing better, your commitment
to learn, I believe that people show up and and
and and help you along your journey and point to
areas where you can be enlightened. And so one of
the reasons that I do this work is I think
(17:11):
that as a black person in America, you have to
do the work to stay same, You have to do
the work to uh through of a happy life. You
have to do the work to counter the many messages
that you get that you are not good enough, you
are not smart enough, you are not beautiful enough, you're
not worthy enough. Jennifer, I mean, you're preaching down so
many streets right now. I mean, you and I can
(17:32):
do at least ten of the shows based on everything
you just said. And I am bubbling over right now
with emotion. As you know, you and I have had
many a conversation, many a tear jerker over over anti blackness,
over microaggressions, over the fact that this society is set
(17:53):
up that way, the systemic racism, the system wide racism
that still exists, that exhibit itself all the time, And
it is all of those microaggressions that build and build
and build and build. And it's so wonder that black
people as a collective, as a collective have not just
totally combusted. It really is. I saw a meme the
(18:16):
other day and it said something. It read something like,
America is lucky that black people only want justice and
not revenge because of all that we have endured and
that we continue to endure in this country. And your
point about colorism, which is leading me exactly where I
want to go, because this love letter that you've written
to black women the first and only, but colorism as
(18:39):
has been my one of my heavy burdens, you know,
being a chocolate chocolate sister and just experiencing those things,
you know, being a child of the You know, I
was born in the late sixties, and so it was
coming of age in high school in the eighties, and
I remember, you know, not being able to quote unquote
by a date because I wasn't a light skin system.
(19:00):
I didn't have good hair. And then dark skin came
in with Wesley Snipes. You know, we got we kinda
kind of joke about that a little bit just to
continue to function. But you are absolutely right. I have
horror stories. I remember Jennifer being in elementary school and
one of my lights lighter skinned classmates, we were standing
(19:20):
in line and we were on our way to a
field trip, and I don't know, just out of the blue.
She she took her hand and she rubbed it across
my face, and then she rubbed her same hand across
her face and she said something like my skin meaning
her skin was softer than minds because she was lighter
than me. Now, this was an elementary school, and I'm
(19:42):
sure her parents didn't sit her down and tell her that,
But it was those images, those messages that you that
you were talking about, that got into her subconscious that
she really thought she was better than me. And imagine
the life that I had to live every single day,
you know, every year, really and and just coming to
believe that in my my psyche was was was messed up,
(20:06):
because over the course of my life, I am constantly
reminded even to this day, that the lighter you are,
the more beautiful you have seen, the closer to white
you are, the more your beauty is elevated and projected
and put out there, and that if you don't have
those euro centric attributes, somehow you are lacking. And so
(20:31):
multiply me by millions of little black girls and black boys,
but particularly black girls because of the way the society
is set up, who somehow believed that they were less
worthy because they are not as close to white. And
I say that, even as an accomplished black woman, that
I still harbor that pain, that kind of pain to
(20:53):
this day. And I want to share one of the
story with you, and and and I want you to
weigh in on what I'm talking about. Just one of
the quick story. When I was in high school and
I tried out for a play and I was really good.
A proast might not notice about me, Jen, We're gonna
reveal somethings. Sister was good, you know, if I'm driving
a class baby, I was good. I could pane my
(21:14):
my behind off. I was just good like that. And
so we were having tryouts for a play. I was
in the ninth grade. I remembered this like it was yesterday.
I was in the ninth grade and the play was
Charlie Brown. And so I tried out for the character
of Lucy. And I did that. I mean, if I
(21:36):
must say so myself, I did that thing, and I,
Jennifer Jen, I gave a performance of a lifetime, and
I knew, have you ever done something you just walk
off and you just know you did that, And so
you know, they put the after a while and a
couple of days, they'll post on on the wall who
won what parts? And I was devastated. I didn't get
the part of Lucy. So I went to my drama
(21:57):
teacher and I asked the question, what happened because I
knew I did that. And he said to me, he said,
you know, Nina, you did. You were absolutely the best.
But Lucy ain't black. Wow. Wow, Oh you talking about
being crushed. Lucy ain't black. I'm just gonna let you
(22:18):
take go on, go on and take to take it
over from So. I think that every day that we
live has to be an active resistance. And the and
and part of what we're resisting is not just the
messages that we received today or the messages that we
received yesterday, but the cumulative impact of the messages that
(22:39):
we've received our entire lives. I recently went to Atlanta
and I took my my babysitter, who is in her
early twenties, and she's a duck skined uh Duckskins sister.
And sometimes we got on a conversation and I asked her,
she's very very dright. I was asking her about, you know,
high school. She told she told me something that I
(23:01):
will never forget. And she said that it was miserable.
And she said it was miserable. And she said, every
day of my senior year, I was called a nigger
every day And she said that, um, you know, as
a dark skinned girl. She said that it was very
clear to her that no one wanted to date her. Uh.
(23:24):
She also told me that she when she finally was
invited to the Crown, she was really really excited about it,
only to have her hope dask to find out that
someone told the guy, someone made a bet with a
guy and to ask her out. It was not since here,
and she told me that it was not until she
went to a historically black college that she she came.
(23:47):
She started to say, Okay, well, maybe these messages that
I've heard about my sin are not true. And I've
heard similar messages from my brother, who's a lot darker.
I remember its growing up and the things that people
would say to him him. And also in my family,
you know, our family ran the rainbow. We had we
have people who are very very fair skinning, we have
(24:09):
people who are very very dark, and so all of
this I remember, and you know the only thing that
I can say is it's very very painful. People used
to say fits and stones can break my bones, words
to never hurt. And that's just alive because once you've
heard these things, you don't you can't. I'm here, you know.
(24:30):
And so it's it's I feel like it's a constant
resisting the messages. And then in addition to like resisting
the messages that we hear, it's also thinking about, okay, well,
how do we see um, how do we move beyond
it and not get resentful? And for me, I remember,
(24:50):
you know, my son's father when he decided to h
to marry his wife was very fair, fair or she
is very fair, and I remember thinking, okay, everyone in
his family is fair. I was just too dark and
and that, you know, so we have all these questions,
and I finally got to the point where I said,
(25:10):
you know what, I'm just going to accept who I am.
And every day, you know, you watch TV and you
see the movies, and there's a black family. The father
is dark and his wife is very very fair, and
then their kid, their son is dark and the daughter
is fair. I'm like, I was like, what message are
you really going to send us? And so I resist
(25:31):
that and UM, and I do it continuously. It's not
a message just to it once. You have to do
it every time, the emotion, every time, the pain rising up.
Amen to that. Gin I'm signed deep, deeply here you
what you said. Every day that we live has to
be an act of resistance. Amen to that. And we
(25:52):
don't talk enough about colorism. We talk about racism in
a very generic way. We are starting to talk about
anti blackness. And then within all of that is the
whole notion of colorism and the impact. I remember the
powerful speech that Lapida gave during a luncheon for Essence magazine,
and she she recounted, you know how she felt as
(26:13):
being a dark skinned black woman. I hope that my
presence on your screens and in magazines may lead you,
young girl, on a similar journey. That you will feel
the validation of your external beauty but also get to
the deeper business of being beautiful inside. That there is
(26:37):
no shade in that beauty. Thank you, and what it
meant for her to be where she is today and
understanding the symbol, the symbol that she carries a big
burden because there are so many other dark skinned people,
particularly dark skinned black people and black women in particularly.
(26:58):
I'm not saying that black men go through that as well,
because they do. But because of the way that our
society uh reflects or or puts out portrays beauty, it
impacts women in a different and deeper way. But anybody
that is darker skin certainly understands what you and I
(27:19):
are talking about, and it really is so superficial. But
it goes back to how the Eurocentric world view of
beauty permeates everything. The entire world has adopted those standards
of beauty. It is one of the reasons why Black women,
why we relax our hair. It is one of the
(27:40):
reasons why we go through generational iterations of what I
would call black power consciousness where there is a resistance
to European standards of beauty. And I'm really glad to
see that re emerged right now in our time, with
so many Black women reclaiming their natural hair texture. And
(28:00):
I'm certainly not one of those that believes if you
got to furrow you down and if you relax your hair,
you're not what I do affirm though a lot of
the things we do to ourselves as black women, we
don't do it in a conscious way. We relax our
hair because we were taught before birth that again that
the closer you are to the Eurocentric standard of beauty,
(28:25):
for example, having straight hair, this in fact makes you
more peeling and more beautiful. And there's just a consciousness
that is uh that that's out there percolating that is
very powerful, Jennifer, and I hope that it continues and
that black women know however you come, it's fine. But
for some for a society to tell you that the
hair that you were born with is not good enough,
(28:48):
that's heavy. Yeah, And the messages come up in a
variety of different formats, Oh, your hair is difficult, or
your hair is is not marriageable, you have to you
have to you have to relax it, or just something
wrong with your hair. And when people tell you there's
something wrong with any aspects of yourself, what they're saying,
is there something wrong with you. And so the messages
(29:10):
that we received about our hair, that we received about
you know, our full lips, that we received about our nose,
that we received about our body. I mean, women are
so analyzed. Black women are so analyzed. You you were
telling a story about a play I remember, and this
one that I'm going to stay with you. It was
from a black teacher. But I remember going to try
(29:31):
out for the track team and I was really excited
because I wanted to I wanted to run, and I
remember running and I thought, okay, you know, maybe it
wasn't the fastest, but that was fun and uh telling,
you know, being really excited, and the teacher saying, oh, well,
you'll never be a runner. Your your better is too big,
and I was maybe closed. I mean I was. I
(29:53):
was in middle school and those were stuck with me. Similarly,
I remember wanting to try out for ballet and and
the teacher saying something about my body and what I've done,
you know, and what I'm mindful of not only as
an active resistance for myself, but I now have a daughter,
(30:16):
is I don't comment on my body, you know. So
if I feel like I've gained weight, I don't. I
don't acknowledge it. If I see a part of my
body that I would like change, then I I speak
to that part and I speak lovingly to that part.
But my daughter will never hear me blathing my body
because I don't want I don't want to transfer that
(30:38):
to her. And that's regardless of the size that I am.
I'm always going to find a way to say something
positive until I get to a point where they're genuine
and deep appreciation, with the hope that regardless of what
she hears in the world, she can say. I never
heard my mom complain that she was you know, that
she was not the right size. I never heard my
(30:59):
mom complained that this part of her body was too
big or too small. We just didn't. I don't want
her to hear that. Well, you talk about a love
letter that is using the word show enough, as my
grandmother would, that has show enough, a beautiful thing, and
how how blessed she is to have you lived that
out loud, and you you recently went through transformation with
(31:21):
your with your hair too. Definitely, yeah, definitely. You know
what you were saying about relaxed hair. For years I
felt like, Okay, well, there's something wrong with my hair,
and in order to be accepted, I need to have
my hair, I need to have a relax er. Well.
I stopped getting relaxed in ten, but I still wanted
(31:41):
that street look, and so every week, and if I
couldn't go every week, every other week I went to
the salas he would flat eye on my hair. He
would do a crow, you know, put the blow dryer
in it, and I would have the same effect, hair
that was really really straight. And over time, you know,
I would myself, Okay, why are you doing it? And
(32:02):
what does it say about you if you don't do it?
With all of this transformation and as I as I
identify areas in my life that needs to change, or
is I'm just aware of different thoughts, patterns, I'm trying
to deal with myself as gently and as lovingly as possible.
So when I've noticed things, I try not to condemn
myself and I try not to make self condemnation have
(32:26):
it And so I would just notice these things and
I would be curious about it, and then I just
started thinking, you know what I've thought about? Um. I
thought about changing my hair for a while. I thought
about going natural, truly natural. And what I decided was that,
UM I decided to grow dread to grow locks. And
(32:48):
I started growing locks in March of and I'm going
to continue to do so. And part of the thinking
for me is and part of the process is question mean,
what is beautiful and and developing my own standards for
what is for what is beautiful, but also distancing myself
(33:08):
from the needs to be seen as beautiful in the
eyes of others. If I'm comfortable with myself, hello somebody.
And that takes a great deal of not only self reflection,
but actual courage, because you are resisting in your own
way as an individual, and then there are others who
do it for their own reasons too, but it is
(33:29):
a resistance to what this country and what the world
says the standards of beauty are. And that, I mean,
that really takes a lot, Jennifer, and I just commend
you so very much and just a healthy outlook that
you have and that didn't happen overnight. You had to
deconstruct your construction and do that every day. And I'm
sure you still, even in this transformation, probably still have
(33:50):
moments where you have to do the self talk to
remind yourself that you are doing this for yourself first
and foremost, you're doing it for all the right reasons.
And you are as symboled not only to your baby girl,
but to other black women who constantly question their value
and their beauty in this society. They're worth, which is
(34:12):
tied to a whole lot and it just remind in
in the nineteen forties, you made me think about psychologists
Kenneth and Mamie Clark, both Dr Clark's. You may recall
they did they did an experiment. They conducted an experiment
to to examine the psychological effects that segregation had on
(34:33):
black children. And it was it was called it's known
as the doll test. Which is the black doll? And
which one is the white doll? And the dolls I
think it was about four dolls, and all of the
dolls looked exactly alike. The only thing that was different
about these dolls was the their complexion, the tone on
(34:56):
the dolls and all of the subjects. I think they
examined children who were in the age range from three
to seven years old, and they were asked. All of
the dolls were set up and they asked him questions
and why is that dog pretty cut? She's like? Which
(35:18):
doll is the ugly dog? Why is that dog ugly head?
He's black? And to a to a child, they picked
time and time again that white dog. And why did
they do that? I mean, all of the positive characteristics
were assigned to the white doll. That subliminate like I
(35:42):
don't feel like Karen's had to be perfect. Sometimes it's
just small steps. And I remember when I was a
little girl, my dad would take me and my sister
and my brother. He took this toy shopping every two weeks.
Every time he got paid, he took this toy shopping
and we could get one thing. And I remember as
a girl when I would go and get the doll,
and sometime times we were drawn to the white doll.
My dad would say, why don't you want this one?
(36:04):
She's pretty, and he pushed us gently into getting the
black doll. And so we had a ton of a
black dogs growing up. And when I had my daughter,
I said, okay, uh, she only gets she only gets
dolls who looked like her. So if if you if
you give Jennifer's daughter a doll and the doll does
(36:25):
not look like her, we're gonna donate that dollar. We're
gonna give her back every day. That has to be
an act of resistance. Jennifer Farmer said that it's an
active resistance. And so I remember someone gave someone gave
my daughter two dolls and one was white, and my
sister just started laughing and she said, oh, they clearly
don't know you and I said, though they don't and uh,
(36:47):
and we we donated. It was around Christmas and we
donated the doll and that's you know, that's that is Uh.
I can't control what happens outside of my house and
even inside the house that you can't control everything. But
I try to be aware and I'm trying to raise
my daughter as intentionally as as possible, and so her
(37:07):
her dogs look like her old enough and I will
you know, I will explain it absolutely. And you are
influencing her and she will be an influence on others
and hopefully there will be a ripple effect. And my
my goal for her is to teach her to love herself.
And I want her to love herself and I have
(37:28):
to love myself. So having a daughter has been it's
been a huge growth growth curve because I can't I
can't leave her to where I have not been. And
so I say, you know, I want to love myself
that she loves herself, but I want to love myself
because I am God to give very apart from her.
(37:48):
There it is it's just amazing, and you know it's
it's mainstream society is basically co opted. Our culture are
our our swag, if you will, although it was never
good enough for us. I mean, people are getting lip injections,
but injections just you know, and making mega money off
of what we naturally have for for the most part
(38:11):
of me, none, none of us were not homogeneous in
our body types either. But there is a cultural type
in terms of how you know, our our hips and
behinds and lips and noses are different from the European
and but but now, I mean this, this thing has
been happening where people appropriate have been appropriating our culture
and and monetizing it in ways where those same black
(38:35):
women were told that they were not attractive. So I
I applaud you, Jennifer for all that you are doing,
both on a personal level and a professional level to
make this world a better place. Which leads me to
an idea. Is something that you wrote. You are a writer,
you're a prolific writer. That you have a blog, and
(38:55):
one of your blogs assertive communication. And I feel like
everything that we've been talking about falls into that realm
in some way. The way our hair looks, the way
we dress, all of that communicates something. The way we
respond to situations, it communicates something about ourselves in the
society that we live in. And so the title was
(39:18):
the under belly of assertive Communications, and you wrote, I
learned that sometimes perceptions to communication styles could be genderized
and racialized. A white person could say something and would
be perceived one way, and I could say the same
thing and be perceived an entirely different way. In writing
(39:44):
that blog, to me, you were building it was a
building block to your new book title, first and only,
A Black Woman's Guide to Thriving. Let's go on and
live in this space for a minute. Here, yeah, let's stay.
Here's busy here. For me, I wrote personally a Black
(40:05):
Woman's Guide to Thriving as I was analyzing different professional
experiences that I was having. And you know, when you're
interested in something, you read as much as you can
in that area. I've always been interested in leadership. I've
always been interested in how people become CEO, of how
they move up the platters, and so I would read
(40:27):
a lot of leadership books, and I will be very
fulfilled from these books, and I will go into different
work situations or work experiences, and I would find that
even though I read these books, they could only take
me so far and what I realized is that many
of the leadership and the management books that exist today,
(40:48):
we're written by white men, white men over fifty and
then written by white women. And when they when these
books were written, they did not speak to the racism
that black women experience, or the agenda the sexism that
black women experience. And so they could only take me
so far. They weren't speaking to the ways that I
(41:11):
was seeing Black women judge based on our tone, based
on our appearance, based on even our bodies and what
we were. And so you you take a principle, like
you know, it's important to be a third that's a
principle that you will see in many leadership books. What
(41:31):
you won't see is the reaction that that many black
women get when they are assertive. And assertive is about
being able to to say what works for you and
what does not work for you. It's about being able
to articulate your needs. It's a bit it's about being
able to stand with and for yourself. And I noticed,
you know, as someone who would you know, try to
(41:52):
take a stand with and for myself, that depending on
the environment that I was in, people would not like that.
What they wanted is wanted the doscile Jennifer who lived
to serve everyone else except for herself. They wanted the
person who was willing to sacrifice herself in service of
everyone else. They wanted the person who would just say yes,
(42:13):
even when it was apparent if she could not do it.
And so the underbelly of a sort of communication is
that while we say we want a sort of communication,
we have to make space for what that looks like
birth based on a person's race, their gender, and their
professional experience. And so in my book I talk about,
(42:34):
you know, a sort of communication, I talked about something
called the ass penalty. We're all told that a closed
mouth won't get fed and that you should ask for
what you need. But I have found that as a
black woman, there have been times when I've articulated what
I've need, what I've needed, or what I wanted, and
(42:55):
people took exception to that. And when I say the
as penalty, I not just referring to major things like
asking for a raise. They're asking for a certain amount
of bacation time before you take a job. I'm talking
about that as well as saying what works for you
and what doesn't. Articulating a vision for your child. You
(43:16):
know what you want for your child. So when I
take my daughter to the doctor, I want to know
what you're I want to know what they're doing. I'm
going to ask questions about that. And you know, I
want people to be asked to be comfable with that
means they're not, and I'm willing to live in that
that discomfort. When I go to church, I don't leave
(43:39):
my critical thinking skills at home. I'm always questioning, I'm
always wondering, and I want to be able to assert
what I need. So when I wrote First and Only,
I was speaking to the experience that a lot of
black women have when they show up as the first
in a space, when they reach a certain pinnacle of
success and they're the only person there, when they're the
(44:01):
only person to hold that leader, like what they experience
and then how they overcome. And I would be remiss
if I did not tell your audience how grateful I
am that you wrote the foreward for the book. And
when I tell you the foreward is just beautiful. It
moves me to tears. It's just it's phenomenal. So thank
(44:23):
you for that. It is my high honor. Jennifer You
got me tearing up right now. This is a book
that we certainly need. It is a love letter to
black women and to people who love black women. Until
you want folks to go out and not only purchase
your books, but gifted to somebody who needs it, who
may need to have Jennifer's voice speak a word of
(44:48):
life into them to give them more encouragement to go
along this journey called life. Jennifer Farmer, you really are
the pr whisperer you are. You know, people don't understand
how skilled you know. I often say black girl magic
is real, but we work like hell to get it.
That's that's the part that they that they don't know
(45:10):
it's real, but we work like hell to get it.
You are indeed an author, a lecture, a leading professional
in communications strategy. You actually care so deeply and so much.
You are a professional. You are a bright light. You
are a force of nature and the little blur. I
(45:30):
just gotta because this touched me so much as I
was reading through your book. People must get the book.
I want them on the edge of their seats about
this book and her podcast. I hope that Jennifer gets
a chance to do something with this on on TV.
At some point I put that into the universe because
(45:51):
so many black women need to hear this message. But
other people who love black women need to hear this message.
People who just love humanity to you need to hear
this message. But you dedicated this book to your daughter
and to your nieces, and this is what you said,
and this is it. This is it, this is this
is it? Right here, hello, somebody, I want everybody to
(46:14):
just kind of rest right here with Jennifer and myself.
You said these words leap off the pages of your
book in your dedication to your daughter and to your nieces.
May you go without being asked, speak without seeking permission,
and create without fear of failure. Now, if that don't
(46:35):
like your soul on fire, I don't know what. Will
black women go without being asked, speak without seeking permission,
and create without fear of failure. Jennifer Farmer M m M. Yes,
I want my daughter. I dedicated the book to my daughter.
(46:55):
And I have five beautiful nieces and I dedicated it
to them and they are all uh, they're all in
their twenties. I have one who's probably around eighteen, but
the other ones, my other nieces are in their twenties
and they're just starting out in their careers, and I
want them to walk into space and say, we can
(47:16):
do this because, uh, we don't know our aunt. You know,
we saw what our aunt did. And um, my nieces,
they were my babies before I had my daughter. They
were my baby girls before I had my daughter. And
I have such a love and appreciation for black women
and I absolutely adore my nieces and I want them to, um,
(47:40):
you know, I want them to say we can because
she did and because she did and because she did,
and I want them to to move forward with that legacy,
move forward that legacy and grace and power and black
girl magic. Whoa this has been This is than a word.
(48:00):
Y'all listen, please, Jennifer, How how can folks connect with
you your website, social media or so you can follow
me on Instagram and Twitter at PR Underscore with Fur
and on Facebook at PR with Fur. So that's how
you can find me on social media. For first and only,
a Black Woman's Guide to Thriving. You can order that
(48:24):
from Broadly Books, Amazon or any other bookseller. And then
you know, if you are interested in PR you want
to hear about that, you can order that from any bookseller,
any book retailer. All kinds of hotness going on. Jennifer Farmer.
Thank you. You know how much I adore you, Darling.
I love Jennifer Farmer. I want the world. Hello Somebody
(48:51):
is a production of I Heart Radio and The Black
Effect Network. For more podcast from our Heart Radio, visit
the I Heart Radio Apple Apple Podcast, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Hello Somebody, a production of the Black Effect
Network on our Heart Radio. Before we begin, I want
to give a big thank you to my team, the
team that makes this show happen every week. Thank you
Grace and Co for graphics, Pepper Chambers the Hot One
for writing, Angelo Greco and Anna Mason for social media,
(00:26):
Tiffany Hell for everything, Erica Ecklin for Patreon support and
production by the folks at Large Media. That's l A. R. J. Need. Also,
I want to tell you about the special Hello Somebody
family over on Patreon. If you go to patreon dot
(00:49):
com forward slash Hello Somebody, you can become a member
and join us over there for special video content, asking
me anything, experiencing and all kinds of surprises. All the
proceeds go to making this production happen every week, and
we would love your support, So come on and join
(01:11):
and become a Patreon family member. This is just amazing.
I mean, Hello Somebody, I don't know what to say.
Every single week we have such incredible guests and we
(01:32):
are learning so much, and so I am beyond delighted,
like almost jumping out of my skin, happy, Hello Somebody,
to be with someone who I admire so very much
who I hold in high regard and someone who we
have built a relationship with one another I know as
(01:53):
well past ten years. Right now. She is an incredible
force of nature. And her is Jennifer Farmer. She is
known as the pr Whisperer. She's an author, a lecturer, baby,
and she has a podcast called The First and Only,
which we are going to talk about her new book
(02:14):
that's coming out titled The First and Only, and it
really is about black women. It is a love letter
to black women, and that love letter is very much
needed in today's climate, and it is needed every single generation.
And Jennifer Farmer, we have with us my special advisor
(02:37):
J Three himself, so just in case if he wants to,
he might have a few things to say as we
talk today. How are you? I am doing well and
I'm so happy to be looking for your podcast to
load somebody. I'm so glad to have you. You have
been with me through many moments, highs and loads. So
(02:59):
this is certainly a great moment for us to share
with folks how we first met, how are incredible paths crossed,
and how we have been lifting and edifying one another
ever since and that magical moment happened in the Ohio
Senate where I was serving as a state senator and
(03:19):
you were the deputy chief of staff. Deputy chief of staff,
I have campaign manager in my mind because you've done
so much. You were the deputy well you got pretty
much was like managing you had to manage us, though
you had to manage the senators, but deputy chief of
staff for the Ohio Senate Caucus. And we have been
going strong together ever since. How was that experience and
(03:43):
how did that experience set you on the path to
what you are doing right now? So at that time,
I believe this was two thousand and one, so that
was more than nineteen years ago, and it would make
so we've known each other actually for nineteen years. Oh
(04:03):
my god, you have done it all. I mean, how
in the world have you been able to do all
of those things? And you are a mother as well.
I remember your baby boy, who's not such a baby
anymore now. Oh my god. When we met, I remember
he had such a love for art and and and
(04:25):
we we did some things together to enrich him on
the art side. I'm sure he doesn't remember that, but
I'm just smiling from ear to ear thinking about he
was just a little boy and now he's a grown
young man. They'll always be our babies. But you're you
know what, You're absolutely right, and this just reminds me.
So I think I had a lapsed earlier because I've
(04:45):
worked in the Senate twice. When I first worked in
the Senate, it was two thousand and one, and I
don't believe you were in the Senate at that time.
I came in two thousand exactly. And the second time,
when I came back as the deputy keep the Stass,
that was two thousand and n You are right. It's
known each other for about eleven years. I think that's
from eleven to nineteen. But you know, it's good. Oh good,
(05:09):
that's okay. I've received it because the way we work,
it seems like we've been together for a lifetime. So
obviously those nine teams obviouldly those teen years and so
and you you've just had a plethora of experiences, and
I with each and every opportunity that has been presented
to you, you've been able to build on those experiences
(05:32):
so much so that you put out your own shingle.
I know, that's what attorneys say. But you started your
own PR firm, Spotlight PR. You wrote a book about
PR on on a on a budget because it's so
hard for small businesses and individuals who don't necessarily have
(05:52):
a lot of money to be able to afford the
PR specialists like yourself. Until again you were thinking about
the common woman and man and even created a powerful
guy for how folks can and should have a strong
PR person. Absolutely, I mean, you know, I think that
(06:13):
the only thing that we're responsible for is what we
can do and the gifts and talents that each of
us have. And I've decided that I'm going to live
full and that I'm going to give back what God
has given to me. And so when I died, there
will be no unused talent. You know, God will not
look at me and say, well, Jennifer, I gave you
this and you didn't use it. He will say you
(06:34):
have squeezed the life out of everything that I've given you,
you know, and from that lends uh. You know, be
be proud and and happy. I do believe that your
life is you. You personify the ability to do well
and to do good at the same time. You can
do well and you can do good at the same time.
(06:56):
It does not have to be a trade off particularly
and you lean into the gifts that come to you
so easily. So for instance, with you, you are phenomenal speaker.
Uh you, you can take a complex issue and not
only make it understandable to the masses, but to get
(07:17):
people fired up. That's the gift. And if we lean
into the gifts that we have, then you definitely can
do well and do good at some time. And I
and that that, to me is an obligation for people
to do that, to find their purpose and to just
just saturating that thing and try not to get caught
(07:38):
up in what other people are doing and how fabulous
it may seem their lives are, and focus on what
the creator as we were believers, and I know some
people don't necessarily believe in that way, but what the creator,
the universe, what forces are calling you to do, to
do good, to do great things? And once you find that,
(07:59):
you know they're there is a way to to make
to make a living from doing good. One of the
best pieces of advice but I've ever received it came
from the dean of my college. He now passed away
uh Dean Paul Brigett, and I remember I was a
sophomore or a junior in college and I was really
(08:20):
stressing about how he's going to make money. I don't
know why I was worried about this, but I was stressing.
And Dan Brigett said, don't worry about the money. Do
what you love and the money will come. And whenever
I got to a point in my career where I
was worried or where you know, I was going to
entertain worry, I would think about what he said is
(08:42):
do what you love and the money will come. And
that has been so true for me professionally, guess and
I can certainly relate to that as you as you
will know too, so I'm sure a lot of people
can definitely relate to that. Do practicing your gifts and
just know that it's coming. That with ord so to speak,
is coming, and it's okay to live a good life.
(09:03):
I think so many, especially Jennifer, working class people are
poor people. They're struggling every single day, and you get
to a point sometimes where you don't feel like you
are deserving, and moments in your life where you don't
believe that you are worthy of actually living a good life.
I think that when you come from a community and
(09:25):
when you've seen other people struggle, or perhaps when you've struggled,
you can question whether or not that is your life's
experience or whether that is supposed to be your life's experience.
And when you get to the point where you know,
you start having a level of success that can change
your day to day, it can be tempting. You know,
(09:47):
you could so guilty. But what I say and what
I pray is, you know, God bless me to be
a blessing to others, to be a blessing to myself
and my family, but to be a blessing to others.
I want to be the person and who can give.
I wanted to be the person who see something that
is worth investing in and have the means and the
capacity to do so. Little embody on that. And you know,
(10:10):
and the great thing is a lot of times we
think that we have to start, we have to wait
until we get exactly well, everything is exactly perfect, and
that is not true. I think you start from where
you are, and you do what you can with where
you have, and in time it may grow. But even
if it never does, There's always something that you can
(10:31):
do from where you are. That's it. I totally agree.
I say that all the time. Do what you can
where you are, what you have, what you have. Yeah,
we all we all have a level, We all have
something that we can do, no matter what level we
may be on, and no matter what we may be
dealing with in our day to day lives, we can
all do something. So I, oh my god, I live
(10:54):
by that as well. We prayed that a similar the
same prayer, not just similar, the same prayer, Jennifer Farmer,
we do. Oh my god. I'm on people to absorb
this because it is such a heavy time right now,
as you and I know, from the COVID pandemic that
has engulfed not only our country but the entire world.
We are approaching fifty million people unemployed as we speak,
(11:19):
which is so unbelievable, sad, heavy, and we know that
a lot of those folks will not have health insurance
because their health insurance is tied to their employment, which
begs the question why do we continue to do things
in that way? And so that's the pandemic. And then
right there in the swirl of the pandemic, we have
(11:41):
civil unrest that has been bubbling up for weeks in
the United States of America has taken hope. This entire
movement has taken hope internationally as well, coming off of
being being sparked by the murder of George Floyd. But
we also know their other aims that are within that
(12:02):
moment that has caused people to say, particularly the African
American community, in the words of our dear Fannie lou Hamer,
I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired. Yes,
And you work a lot in that space, Jennifer, from
working with or working for the Advancement Project to even
(12:25):
in your own firm, you do a lot of training
about ratio bias and particularly implicit bias and anti blackness.
Share with us because you are an expert in that issue.
And I feel like we are at a synergistic moment
where more people they're open to having some of the
harder conversations that this country has not been willing to have,
(12:49):
and then on a micro level, just even individuals have
not wanted to have. But it's just something about this
particular moment where we have an opportunity to go deep.
So I want to go deep with you. This is
your not only your your area expertise, but it is
your passion and how you are able to peel back
the layers. I've been in trainings with you. I mean,
you did a training for the Sanders campaign as well
(13:12):
at my request. But that's a whole another story for
another time. Talk to all of us, Speak to us
about racism itself, implicit bias, and anti blackness. One of
(13:32):
the things that I think organizations and people fail at
or make mistakes and is they they think because they
have noble aspirations, because they proclaim progressive values, that their
work is done. And when you talk about race, race
(13:54):
has to be addressed on an individual level as well
as a collective and a structural level. You can't say.
You can't say, well, you know, I I want to
be anti racist, and so I'm gonna go and work
for this organization and not do the work to transform yourself.
It doesn't look like that any person who was born
in the United States, who have lived here, who has
(14:16):
spent any length of time, they are impacted by race,
and so an anti racism it has to be unlearned.
When I worked for advancement projects, probably one of the
best aspects of that experience was really brounding and what
anti blackness is. And when I think about the animosity
and the hatred that you see towards people of color,
(14:40):
it is rooted and that person having an ounce of blackness,
it's rooted an anti blackness. So if there were no
anti blackness, I don't believe that we would have the
hostility that many Latin American immigrants space. It's all reading
an anti blackness. I also think that you can't just
(15:00):
say that you're anti racist, and you can't just do
the work. You have to examine the way that racism
has been internalized within yourself. And so there is work
for each and every one of us to do. Even
black people can harbor internalize oppression and anti blackness, and
sometimes we see that show up and colorism. Sometimes we
(15:24):
see it show up in dating preferences. Sometimes we see
it show up. And even how we care for our
body and how we care for the messages that we
send to ourselves every day, we have to understand that
in this country it is inherently racist. And no black
people can't be racist because racism is about power. It's power,
(15:47):
you know, structural powers, but we do have to understand that,
you know, we still have work to do to ensure
so we race, internalize depression. And if you wonder how
that show shows up our entire system set up to
despise black people, from the images that we see, to
what we're talking from children, that what is beautiful and
(16:07):
what is not, to what is smart and what is not?
To who has capacity and who does not? Rooted in race,
and so we all have We're all on the journey.
The question is are you running? The question is are
you continually making past and strides forwards? And in this
day age, there's simply no excuse to say I don't
(16:29):
you know, I don't know where to start. There's so
many wonderful resources and books like I love UH so
you want to talk about race, I love White Fragility.
There's so many different books. I love UH Ebram Candy's
UM How to Be Anti Racists. There's so many wonderful resources.
(16:50):
I also think at the moment that you open your
mind and you open your heart and you put out
in the universe your commitment to doing better, your commitment
to learn, I believe that people show up and and
and and help you along your journey and point to
areas where you can be enlightened. And so one of
the reasons that I do this work is I think
(17:11):
that as a black person in America, you have to
do the work to stay same, You have to do
the work to uh through of a happy life. You
have to do the work to counter the many messages
that you get that you are not good enough, you
are not smart enough, you are not beautiful enough, you're
not worthy enough. Jennifer, I mean, you're preaching down so
many streets right now. I mean, you and I can
(17:32):
do at least ten of the shows based on everything
you just said. And I am bubbling over right now
with emotion. As you know, you and I have had
many a conversation, many a tear jerker over over anti blackness,
over microaggressions, over the fact that this society is set
(17:53):
up that way, the systemic racism, the system wide racism
that still exists, that exhibit itself all the time, And
it is all of those microaggressions that build and build
and build and build. And it's so wonder that black
people as a collective, as a collective have not just
totally combusted. It really is. I saw a meme the
(18:16):
other day and it said something. It read something like,
America is lucky that black people only want justice and
not revenge because of all that we have endured and
that we continue to endure in this country. And your
point about colorism, which is leading me exactly where I
want to go, because this love letter that you've written
to black women the first and only, but colorism as
(18:39):
has been my one of my heavy burdens, you know,
being a chocolate chocolate sister and just experiencing those things,
you know, being a child of the You know, I
was born in the late sixties, and so it was
coming of age in high school in the eighties, and
I remember, you know, not being able to quote unquote
by a date because I wasn't a light skin system.
(19:00):
I didn't have good hair. And then dark skin came
in with Wesley Snipes. You know, we got we kinda
kind of joke about that a little bit just to
continue to function. But you are absolutely right. I have
horror stories. I remember Jennifer being in elementary school and
one of my lights lighter skinned classmates, we were standing
(19:20):
in line and we were on our way to a
field trip, and I don't know, just out of the blue.
She she took her hand and she rubbed it across
my face, and then she rubbed her same hand across
her face and she said something like my skin meaning
her skin was softer than minds because she was lighter
than me. Now, this was an elementary school, and I'm
(19:42):
sure her parents didn't sit her down and tell her that,
But it was those images, those messages that you that
you were talking about, that got into her subconscious that
she really thought she was better than me. And imagine
the life that I had to live every single day,
you know, every year, really and and just coming to
believe that in my my psyche was was was messed up,
(20:06):
because over the course of my life, I am constantly
reminded even to this day, that the lighter you are,
the more beautiful you have seen, the closer to white
you are, the more your beauty is elevated and projected
and put out there, and that if you don't have
those euro centric attributes, somehow you are lacking. And so
(20:31):
multiply me by millions of little black girls and black boys,
but particularly black girls because of the way the society
is set up, who somehow believed that they were less
worthy because they are not as close to white. And
I say that, even as an accomplished black woman, that
I still harbor that pain, that kind of pain to
(20:53):
this day. And I want to share one of the
story with you, and and and I want you to
weigh in on what I'm talking about. Just one of
the quick story. When I was in high school and
I tried out for a play and I was really good.
A proast might not notice about me, Jen, We're gonna
reveal somethings. Sister was good, you know, if I'm driving
a class baby, I was good. I could pane my
(21:14):
my behind off. I was just good like that. And
so we were having tryouts for a play. I was
in the ninth grade. I remembered this like it was yesterday.
I was in the ninth grade and the play was
Charlie Brown. And so I tried out for the character
of Lucy. And I did that. I mean, if I
(21:36):
must say so myself, I did that thing, and I,
Jennifer Jen, I gave a performance of a lifetime, and
I knew, have you ever done something you just walk
off and you just know you did that, And so
you know, they put the after a while and a
couple of days, they'll post on on the wall who
won what parts? And I was devastated. I didn't get
the part of Lucy. So I went to my drama
(21:57):
teacher and I asked the question, what happened because I
knew I did that. And he said to me, he said,
you know, Nina, you did. You were absolutely the best.
But Lucy ain't black. Wow. Wow, Oh you talking about
being crushed. Lucy ain't black. I'm just gonna let you
(22:18):
take go on, go on and take to take it
over from So. I think that every day that we
live has to be an active resistance. And the and
and part of what we're resisting is not just the
messages that we received today or the messages that we
received yesterday, but the cumulative impact of the messages that
(22:39):
we've received our entire lives. I recently went to Atlanta
and I took my my babysitter, who is in her
early twenties, and she's a duck skined uh Duckskins sister.
And sometimes we got on a conversation and I asked her,
she's very very dright. I was asking her about, you know,
high school. She told she told me something that I
(23:01):
will never forget. And she said that it was miserable.
And she said it was miserable. And she said, every
day of my senior year, I was called a nigger
every day And she said that, um, you know, as
a dark skinned girl. She said that it was very
clear to her that no one wanted to date her. Uh.
(23:24):
She also told me that she when she finally was
invited to the Crown, she was really really excited about it,
only to have her hope dask to find out that
someone told the guy, someone made a bet with a
guy and to ask her out. It was not since here,
and she told me that it was not until she
went to a historically black college that she she came.
(23:47):
She started to say, Okay, well, maybe these messages that
I've heard about my sin are not true. And I've
heard similar messages from my brother, who's a lot darker.
I remember its growing up and the things that people
would say to him him. And also in my family,
you know, our family ran the rainbow. We had we
have people who are very very fair skinning, we have
(24:09):
people who are very very dark, and so all of
this I remember, and you know the only thing that
I can say is it's very very painful. People used
to say fits and stones can break my bones, words
to never hurt. And that's just alive because once you've
heard these things, you don't you can't. I'm here, you know.
(24:30):
And so it's it's I feel like it's a constant
resisting the messages. And then in addition to like resisting
the messages that we hear, it's also thinking about, okay, well,
how do we see um, how do we move beyond
it and not get resentful? And for me, I remember,
(24:50):
you know, my son's father when he decided to h
to marry his wife was very fair, fair or she
is very fair, and I remember thinking, okay, everyone in
his family is fair. I was just too dark and
and that, you know, so we have all these questions,
and I finally got to the point where I said,
(25:10):
you know what, I'm just going to accept who I am.
And every day, you know, you watch TV and you
see the movies, and there's a black family. The father
is dark and his wife is very very fair, and
then their kid, their son is dark and the daughter
is fair. I'm like, I was like, what message are
you really going to send us? And so I resist
(25:31):
that and UM, and I do it continuously. It's not
a message just to it once. You have to do
it every time, the emotion, every time, the pain rising up.
Amen to that. Gin I'm signed deep, deeply here you
what you said. Every day that we live has to
be an act of resistance. Amen to that. And we
(25:52):
don't talk enough about colorism. We talk about racism in
a very generic way. We are starting to talk about
anti blackness. And then within all of that is the
whole notion of colorism and the impact. I remember the
powerful speech that Lapida gave during a luncheon for Essence magazine,
and she she recounted, you know how she felt as
(26:13):
being a dark skinned black woman. I hope that my
presence on your screens and in magazines may lead you,
young girl, on a similar journey. That you will feel
the validation of your external beauty but also get to
the deeper business of being beautiful inside. That there is
(26:37):
no shade in that beauty. Thank you, and what it
meant for her to be where she is today and
understanding the symbol, the symbol that she carries a big
burden because there are so many other dark skinned people,
particularly dark skinned black people and black women in particularly.
(26:58):
I'm not saying that black men go through that as well,
because they do. But because of the way that our
society uh reflects or or puts out portrays beauty, it
impacts women in a different and deeper way. But anybody
that is darker skin certainly understands what you and I
(27:19):
are talking about, and it really is so superficial. But
it goes back to how the Eurocentric world view of
beauty permeates everything. The entire world has adopted those standards
of beauty. It is one of the reasons why Black women,
why we relax our hair. It is one of the
(27:40):
reasons why we go through generational iterations of what I
would call black power consciousness where there is a resistance
to European standards of beauty. And I'm really glad to
see that re emerged right now in our time, with
so many Black women reclaiming their natural hair texture. And
(28:00):
I'm certainly not one of those that believes if you
got to furrow you down and if you relax your hair,
you're not what I do affirm though a lot of
the things we do to ourselves as black women, we
don't do it in a conscious way. We relax our
hair because we were taught before birth that again that
the closer you are to the Eurocentric standard of beauty,
(28:25):
for example, having straight hair, this in fact makes you
more peeling and more beautiful. And there's just a consciousness
that is uh that that's out there percolating that is
very powerful, Jennifer, and I hope that it continues and
that black women know however you come, it's fine. But
for some for a society to tell you that the
hair that you were born with is not good enough,
(28:48):
that's heavy. Yeah, And the messages come up in a
variety of different formats, Oh, your hair is difficult, or
your hair is is not marriageable, you have to you
have to you have to relax it, or just something
wrong with your hair. And when people tell you there's
something wrong with any aspects of yourself, what they're saying,
is there something wrong with you. And so the messages
(29:10):
that we received about our hair, that we received about
you know, our full lips, that we received about our nose,
that we received about our body. I mean, women are
so analyzed. Black women are so analyzed. You you were
telling a story about a play I remember, and this
one that I'm going to stay with you. It was
from a black teacher. But I remember going to try
(29:31):
out for the track team and I was really excited
because I wanted to I wanted to run, and I
remember running and I thought, okay, you know, maybe it
wasn't the fastest, but that was fun and uh telling,
you know, being really excited, and the teacher saying, oh, well,
you'll never be a runner. Your your better is too big,
and I was maybe closed. I mean I was. I
(29:53):
was in middle school and those were stuck with me. Similarly,
I remember wanting to try out for ballet and and
the teacher saying something about my body and what I've done,
you know, and what I'm mindful of not only as
an active resistance for myself, but I now have a daughter,
(30:16):
is I don't comment on my body, you know. So
if I feel like I've gained weight, I don't. I
don't acknowledge it. If I see a part of my
body that I would like change, then I I speak
to that part and I speak lovingly to that part.
But my daughter will never hear me blathing my body
because I don't want I don't want to transfer that
(30:38):
to her. And that's regardless of the size that I am.
I'm always going to find a way to say something
positive until I get to a point where they're genuine
and deep appreciation, with the hope that regardless of what
she hears in the world, she can say. I never
heard my mom complain that she was you know, that
she was not the right size. I never heard my
(30:59):
mom complained that this part of her body was too
big or too small. We just didn't. I don't want
her to hear that. Well, you talk about a love
letter that is using the word show enough, as my
grandmother would, that has show enough, a beautiful thing, and
how how blessed she is to have you lived that
out loud, and you you recently went through transformation with
(31:21):
your with your hair too. Definitely, yeah, definitely. You know
what you were saying about relaxed hair. For years I
felt like, Okay, well, there's something wrong with my hair,
and in order to be accepted, I need to have
my hair, I need to have a relax er. Well.
I stopped getting relaxed in ten, but I still wanted
(31:41):
that street look, and so every week, and if I
couldn't go every week, every other week I went to
the salas he would flat eye on my hair. He
would do a crow, you know, put the blow dryer
in it, and I would have the same effect, hair
that was really really straight. And over time, you know,
I would myself, Okay, why are you doing it? And
(32:02):
what does it say about you if you don't do it?
With all of this transformation and as I as I
identify areas in my life that needs to change, or
is I'm just aware of different thoughts, patterns, I'm trying
to deal with myself as gently and as lovingly as possible.
So when I've noticed things, I try not to condemn
myself and I try not to make self condemnation have
(32:26):
it And so I would just notice these things and
I would be curious about it, and then I just
started thinking, you know what I've thought about? Um. I
thought about changing my hair for a while. I thought
about going natural, truly natural. And what I decided was that,
UM I decided to grow dread to grow locks. And
(32:48):
I started growing locks in March of and I'm going
to continue to do so. And part of the thinking
for me is and part of the process is question mean,
what is beautiful and and developing my own standards for
what is for what is beautiful, but also distancing myself
(33:08):
from the needs to be seen as beautiful in the
eyes of others. If I'm comfortable with myself, hello somebody.
And that takes a great deal of not only self reflection,
but actual courage, because you are resisting in your own
way as an individual, and then there are others who
do it for their own reasons too, but it is
(33:29):
a resistance to what this country and what the world
says the standards of beauty are. And that, I mean,
that really takes a lot, Jennifer, and I just commend
you so very much and just a healthy outlook that
you have and that didn't happen overnight. You had to
deconstruct your construction and do that every day. And I'm
sure you still, even in this transformation, probably still have
(33:50):
moments where you have to do the self talk to
remind yourself that you are doing this for yourself first
and foremost, you're doing it for all the right reasons.
And you are as symboled not only to your baby girl,
but to other black women who constantly question their value
and their beauty in this society. They're worth, which is
(34:12):
tied to a whole lot and it just remind in
in the nineteen forties, you made me think about psychologists
Kenneth and Mamie Clark, both Dr Clark's. You may recall
they did they did an experiment. They conducted an experiment
to to examine the psychological effects that segregation had on
(34:33):
black children. And it was it was called it's known
as the doll test. Which is the black doll? And
which one is the white doll? And the dolls I
think it was about four dolls, and all of the
dolls looked exactly alike. The only thing that was different
about these dolls was the their complexion, the tone on
(34:56):
the dolls and all of the subjects. I think they
examined children who were in the age range from three
to seven years old, and they were asked. All of
the dolls were set up and they asked him questions
and why is that dog pretty cut? She's like? Which
(35:18):
doll is the ugly dog? Why is that dog ugly head?
He's black? And to a to a child, they picked
time and time again that white dog. And why did
they do that? I mean, all of the positive characteristics
were assigned to the white doll. That subliminate like I
(35:42):
don't feel like Karen's had to be perfect. Sometimes it's
just small steps. And I remember when I was a
little girl, my dad would take me and my sister
and my brother. He took this toy shopping every two weeks.
Every time he got paid, he took this toy shopping
and we could get one thing. And I remember as
a girl when I would go and get the doll,
and sometime times we were drawn to the white doll.
My dad would say, why don't you want this one?
(36:04):
She's pretty, and he pushed us gently into getting the
black doll. And so we had a ton of a
black dogs growing up. And when I had my daughter,
I said, okay, uh, she only gets she only gets
dolls who looked like her. So if if you if
you give Jennifer's daughter a doll and the doll does
(36:25):
not look like her, we're gonna donate that dollar. We're
gonna give her back every day. That has to be
an act of resistance. Jennifer Farmer said that it's an
active resistance. And so I remember someone gave someone gave
my daughter two dolls and one was white, and my
sister just started laughing and she said, oh, they clearly
don't know you and I said, though they don't and uh,
(36:47):
and we we donated. It was around Christmas and we
donated the doll and that's you know, that's that is Uh.
I can't control what happens outside of my house and
even inside the house that you can't control everything. But
I try to be aware and I'm trying to raise
my daughter as intentionally as as possible, and so her
(37:07):
her dogs look like her old enough and I will
you know, I will explain it absolutely. And you are
influencing her and she will be an influence on others
and hopefully there will be a ripple effect. And my
my goal for her is to teach her to love herself.
And I want her to love herself and I have
(37:28):
to love myself. So having a daughter has been it's
been a huge growth growth curve because I can't I
can't leave her to where I have not been. And
so I say, you know, I want to love myself
that she loves herself, but I want to love myself
because I am God to give very apart from her.
(37:48):
There it is it's just amazing, and you know it's
it's mainstream society is basically co opted. Our culture are
our our swag, if you will, although it was never
good enough for us. I mean, people are getting lip injections,
but injections just you know, and making mega money off
of what we naturally have for for the most part
(38:11):
of me, none, none of us were not homogeneous in
our body types either. But there is a cultural type
in terms of how you know, our our hips and
behinds and lips and noses are different from the European
and but but now, I mean this, this thing has
been happening where people appropriate have been appropriating our culture
and and monetizing it in ways where those same black
(38:35):
women were told that they were not attractive. So I
I applaud you, Jennifer for all that you are doing,
both on a personal level and a professional level to
make this world a better place. Which leads me to
an idea. Is something that you wrote. You are a writer,
you're a prolific writer. That you have a blog, and
(38:55):
one of your blogs assertive communication. And I feel like
everything that we've been talking about falls into that realm
in some way. The way our hair looks, the way
we dress, all of that communicates something. The way we
respond to situations, it communicates something about ourselves in the
society that we live in. And so the title was
(39:18):
the under belly of assertive Communications, and you wrote, I
learned that sometimes perceptions to communication styles could be genderized
and racialized. A white person could say something and would
be perceived one way, and I could say the same
thing and be perceived an entirely different way. In writing
(39:44):
that blog, to me, you were building it was a
building block to your new book title, first and only,
A Black Woman's Guide to Thriving. Let's go on and
live in this space for a minute. Here, yeah, let's stay.
Here's busy here. For me, I wrote personally a Black
(40:05):
Woman's Guide to Thriving as I was analyzing different professional
experiences that I was having. And you know, when you're
interested in something, you read as much as you can
in that area. I've always been interested in leadership. I've
always been interested in how people become CEO, of how
they move up the platters, and so I would read
(40:27):
a lot of leadership books, and I will be very
fulfilled from these books, and I will go into different
work situations or work experiences, and I would find that
even though I read these books, they could only take
me so far and what I realized is that many
of the leadership and the management books that exist today,
(40:48):
we're written by white men, white men over fifty and
then written by white women. And when they when these
books were written, they did not speak to the racism
that black women experience, or the agenda the sexism that
black women experience. And so they could only take me
so far. They weren't speaking to the ways that I
(41:11):
was seeing Black women judge based on our tone, based
on our appearance, based on even our bodies and what
we were. And so you you take a principle, like
you know, it's important to be a third that's a
principle that you will see in many leadership books. What
(41:31):
you won't see is the reaction that that many black
women get when they are assertive. And assertive is about
being able to to say what works for you and
what does not work for you. It's about being able
to articulate your needs. It's a bit it's about being
able to stand with and for yourself. And I noticed,
you know, as someone who would you know, try to
(41:52):
take a stand with and for myself, that depending on
the environment that I was in, people would not like that.
What they wanted is wanted the doscile Jennifer who lived
to serve everyone else except for herself. They wanted the
person who was willing to sacrifice herself in service of
everyone else. They wanted the person who would just say yes,
(42:13):
even when it was apparent if she could not do it.
And so the underbelly of a sort of communication is
that while we say we want a sort of communication,
we have to make space for what that looks like
birth based on a person's race, their gender, and their
professional experience. And so in my book I talk about,
(42:34):
you know, a sort of communication, I talked about something
called the ass penalty. We're all told that a closed
mouth won't get fed and that you should ask for
what you need. But I have found that as a
black woman, there have been times when I've articulated what
I've need, what I've needed, or what I wanted, and
(42:55):
people took exception to that. And when I say the
as penalty, I not just referring to major things like
asking for a raise. They're asking for a certain amount
of bacation time before you take a job. I'm talking
about that as well as saying what works for you
and what doesn't. Articulating a vision for your child. You
(43:16):
know what you want for your child. So when I
take my daughter to the doctor, I want to know
what you're I want to know what they're doing. I'm
going to ask questions about that. And you know, I
want people to be asked to be comfable with that
means they're not, and I'm willing to live in that
that discomfort. When I go to church, I don't leave
(43:39):
my critical thinking skills at home. I'm always questioning, I'm
always wondering, and I want to be able to assert
what I need. So when I wrote First and Only,
I was speaking to the experience that a lot of
black women have when they show up as the first
in a space, when they reach a certain pinnacle of
success and they're the only person there, when they're the
(44:01):
only person to hold that leader, like what they experience
and then how they overcome. And I would be remiss
if I did not tell your audience how grateful I
am that you wrote the foreward for the book. And
when I tell you the foreward is just beautiful. It
moves me to tears. It's just it's phenomenal. So thank
(44:23):
you for that. It is my high honor. Jennifer You
got me tearing up right now. This is a book
that we certainly need. It is a love letter to
black women and to people who love black women. Until
you want folks to go out and not only purchase
your books, but gifted to somebody who needs it, who
may need to have Jennifer's voice speak a word of
(44:48):
life into them to give them more encouragement to go
along this journey called life. Jennifer Farmer, you really are
the pr whisperer you are. You know, people don't understand
how skilled you know. I often say black girl magic
is real, but we work like hell to get it.
That's that's the part that they that they don't know
(45:10):
it's real, but we work like hell to get it.
You are indeed an author, a lecture, a leading professional
in communications strategy. You actually care so deeply and so much.
You are a professional. You are a bright light. You
are a force of nature and the little blur. I
(45:30):
just gotta because this touched me so much as I
was reading through your book. People must get the book.
I want them on the edge of their seats about
this book and her podcast. I hope that Jennifer gets
a chance to do something with this on on TV.
At some point I put that into the universe because
(45:51):
so many black women need to hear this message. But
other people who love black women need to hear this message.
People who just love humanity to you need to hear
this message. But you dedicated this book to your daughter
and to your nieces, and this is what you said,
and this is it. This is it, this is this
is it? Right here, hello, somebody, I want everybody to
(46:14):
just kind of rest right here with Jennifer and myself.
You said these words leap off the pages of your
book in your dedication to your daughter and to your nieces.
May you go without being asked, speak without seeking permission,
and create without fear of failure. Now, if that don't
(46:35):
like your soul on fire, I don't know what. Will
black women go without being asked, speak without seeking permission,
and create without fear of failure. Jennifer Farmer M m M. Yes,
I want my daughter. I dedicated the book to my daughter.
(46:55):
And I have five beautiful nieces and I dedicated it
to them and they are all uh, they're all in
their twenties. I have one who's probably around eighteen, but
the other ones, my other nieces are in their twenties
and they're just starting out in their careers, and I
want them to walk into space and say, we can
(47:16):
do this because, uh, we don't know our aunt. You know,
we saw what our aunt did. And um, my nieces,
they were my babies before I had my daughter. They
were my baby girls before I had my daughter. And
I have such a love and appreciation for black women
and I absolutely adore my nieces and I want them to, um,
(47:40):
you know, I want them to say we can because
she did and because she did and because she did,
and I want them to to move forward with that legacy,
move forward that legacy and grace and power and black
girl magic. Whoa this has been This is than a word.
(48:00):
Y'all listen, please, Jennifer, How how can folks connect with
you your website, social media or so you can follow
me on Instagram and Twitter at PR Underscore with Fur
and on Facebook at PR with Fur. So that's how
you can find me on social media. For first and only,
a Black Woman's Guide to Thriving. You can order that
(48:24):
from Broadly Books, Amazon or any other bookseller. And then
you know, if you are interested in PR you want
to hear about that, you can order that from any bookseller,
any book retailer. All kinds of hotness going on. Jennifer Farmer.
Thank you. You know how much I adore you, Darling.
I love Jennifer Farmer. I want the world. Hello Somebody
(48:51):
is a production of I Heart Radio and The Black
Effect Network. For more podcast from our Heart Radio, visit
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