March 4, 2021 • 27 mins
In our first 2-part series since Glennon and Abby, we feature bestselling author and racial justice thought leader Austin Channing Brown. We talk about her New York Times bestseller, "I’m Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness," how she addresses race with her 3-year-old son, and so much more. Austin's passion is infectious and her perspective is powerful. Listen and you will understand why this conversation deserves two episodes!
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hi, I'm Sam Edis and I'm Amy Nelson. Welcome to
What's Her Story? With Sam and Amy. This is a
show about the world's most remarkable women. They're professional and
personal journeys. Together, we'll hear from Gold medalists, best selling authors,
and leaders of the world's most iconic brands. Today, we
(00:21):
have Austin Channing Brown on the show. She's a thought leader,
speaker in New York Times, best selling author of the
book I'm Still Here, Black Dignity and a World Made
for Whiteness. You know, Aim, it was my fifteen year
old daughter Ella who saw Austin speak at her school
and immediately texted me and said, you have to have
her on the show. Was really cute when I when
(00:44):
I invited Austin to the show, she said, I'll come
on as long as I can meet Ella. Oh that's amazing.
I'm so glad she invited her, and I cannot wait
for our audience to hear this thought provoking conversation. But Sam,
before we get started with our question, let's have Ella
ask the first one. Okay, so it's such a big topic,
so there might not be, but if there's one big
(01:06):
thing that you could tell parents, I guess, regardless of race,
but also whose kids maybe aren't in communities that are
super diverse. Like one message that they could bring to
their kids, what would that be, Yeah, it's um, it's
that you have to be the one to talk to
(01:26):
your kids about race, right. I think there are a
lot of parents who opt out, And funny enough, for
either reason. They opt out because there's all kinds of diversity, right.
And then if you're like, well, we don't need to
talk about it because our our city, our suburb, our
neighborhood or whatever is overflowing with diversity. It's all around us, right.
(01:48):
And then on the opposite end, parents think, well, since
there's no diversity, there's no reason to talk about it.
You know. There was someone with a podcast and a
parent called in and said, when should I start talking
to my kid about race? And the podcaster said somewhere
around the time that they're six months old, And the
(02:09):
parent was like, I'm sorry, what what do you mean
six months? And she said, not for your kid, for you,
because you need to start practicing right now, and you
need to get comfortable with the conversation, and you need
to start reading, and you need to start preparing so
that by the time your kid is asking questions, you
already have answers and you already know how you want
(02:31):
to approach it. So I wish I could tell parents
that it is part of your responsibility and preparing for
what I hope we all want, which is an anti
racist world, right, that you have a role in that. So, Austin,
you have a three year old sent right, do you
talk to him about race? You know what? Right now,
(02:53):
we try really hard to let him enjoy being a
little black boy. So the ways that we um, so
we don't talk to him about race outright, but we
do what I think a lot of black parents do,
which is when we put lotion on him, we talk
about how beautiful his skin is. And we're intentional about
telling him how smart he is. Um, we play a
(03:14):
lot of black music in our house. Um, we just moved,
and so I am very intentional about the art that
we put up, Um, the fabric choices that we make,
the you know everything. But I know that the day
is coming when we won't be able to well, we'll
have to talk the other side, you know, we won't
(03:36):
just be able to talk about the beauty of what
it means to be black. But we will have to
also talk about the ugly side of America. Um, but
we have we have not done so yet because we
just want him to maintain his little innocence and his
little joy for as long as makes sense. You know,
what will that conversation look like? Yeah, I'm not sure.
(04:00):
I think part of it will depend on his school
and his teachers and his principle in his curriculum. You know. Um,
I suspect that to some degree these conversations will unfold
naturally because of my job. I like I mentioned, I
just bought a new house and so we just picked
up these new chairs and as you all can see,
(04:22):
there's like a million books in the chairs. Um, and
they're they're all about racial justice. So where do you
live now? Where did you move? We're outside Detroit. How
different is the community you've moved to from the community
you grew up in? Yeah, that's a great question. Um,
Well this neighborhood is really nice, really nice. And where
(04:45):
I grew up to is it in like shambles or anything.
I remember being in college and talking with my roommate
about what we would do after we graduated and what
our you know, goals were and everything, and we were
both very socially mind it even then, and we both
agreed that as long as we could make thirty dollars
(05:05):
afford cheese It's and chocolate shake at least once a week,
that that was it. That was all we needed to
now be living in a house that my dad walks
through and he's like, okay, let me make sure I
don't break anything, because okay, replace nothing in here. It
feels miraculous. UM. But as we were choosing a neighborhood,
(05:26):
in some ways thankfully, UM, we were looking during the
election season and so we were able to see how
many signs were in the yards and what those signs said.
We were very intentional about what the demographics would look
like in the neighborhood. In the schools, UM, we were
(05:46):
adamant that my son not be the only one in
his classroom. Ever, that's just not an experience that we
want for him. And we chose a daycare in which
there are other little black boys. Is just like cam.
He's in a community that at least most of the
time feels safe. And unfortunately, we have to wait to
(06:09):
see if the neighborhood proves me right. Can you talk
a little bit about what the experience of being the
only is like both at work and in school. It's
not fun. It feels like the weight of your entire
(06:29):
community is sitting on your shoulders. It is the double
consciousness that um W A B. Two Boys talks about,
where I am aware that I am a human and
an individual. Right, my name is Austin Channing Brown, and
I am responsible for me and my actions only, right.
(06:49):
But I am also aware that teachers, if if if
I do something, say something, that that is now going
to be a reflection on every black kid in school,
perhaps every black kid that they meet, right, that when
the topic of black history comes up, that I am
carrying the way of making sure that my community is
(07:10):
now well represented and that I speak for it. And
um And honestly, it's just it's isolating because I think
white people do not realize how often a lecture, a curriculum,
references ice breakers are built around the idea of their
(07:32):
own normality and therefore universality, and so often when you're
the only one, you just want to scream, that's that's
not my life, that's not how things work for me.
It's exhausting, but most white people have never experienced that
level of exhaustion. I believe that. I want to ask
another question about school. You wrote in your book this
(07:55):
chapter around the stories we tell and talking about how
you know, we erase, we erased many of the ugly
parts of American history, like we we don't really talk
about slavery even in school, or the reality of slavery. Right,
we say this existed, but we're not going to talk
about how it existed. That's right? Did you did you
(08:16):
know that when you were growing up? Like? Did you
were you cognizant of that when you were taking American
history when you were a teenager? Yes? I remember my
mother having a book called why is My teacher told
me yes, And I don't remember anything in that book, y'all,
any details in that book, but I remember her having it,
(08:39):
and and I remember she wanted so badly to round
out my education, right to say, Okay, glad you're learning
about Christopher Columbus, but let's think about this word discovery.
Did you discover something where people already live? You know,
unless unless talk about what happened when he arrived? Okay? Um,
(09:04):
So I feel like a lot of black household education
looks like that. And now for a quick break. So,
in terms of the system and the American school system,
how close is that to being dismantled in terms of
what we learned the curriculum and changing it because it's
(09:24):
I mean, the more I read about it, the more
infuriated I am. And when I hear what my kids
are learning in school, I feel angry. So how do
how does that? How do we erase that? How do
we go backwards? Well, it's really important that white parents
say exactly what you just said, right, because the dominant
feeling is that black folks are the only ones who
(09:47):
are upset, and that because we're the only ones upset,
we must just be in our feelings and it must
not be that important. But for parents, for white parents
to say, there are not enough black female teachers in
the school there, I don't I don't like this curriculum.
This is not we are not teaching the whole history
(10:07):
of America. For white parents to say, my child is
also suffering by not having a more diverse, inclusive curriculum
and being taught by the diversity that exists in the world.
My child is losing out too. Is there any organization
that everyone can get behind that's like close to changing.
(10:29):
This is who's at the forefront of this movement? I
honestly don't know because there are so many battles being fought. Right.
There is the battle around curriculum. There is the battle
around hiring and retention. There's the battle around specific problematic
teachers and or professors. There's right that it isn't just
(10:50):
one thing. And so if this is something you're passionate about,
my encouragement would be to find out if there's something
local happening where you are. You know, are their parents
who have already been speaking to the principle about this?
Are there is there sort of a multicultural subsection of
the UM, the p t A, or of the right.
(11:13):
What is happening Where is the conversation happening where you are? UM?
Is the question that I would start with, because it's
entirely possible that people have already started working on this
and you just didn't know. You're just not on the newsletter.
So your your parents, UM, you've already talked to us
about They named you Austin, and in your book you
write that they did that to outwit everyone by giving
(11:36):
their daughter a white man's name. Let me tell you
what your parents like, how well it works the male
I get. Um, my parents are characters. Um. My mother
is an intellectual butterfly. She is. She is extraordinarily smart
(12:00):
and questions everything and loves debate and conversation. But she
also has a real estate license. She also can She
has like a ceramic making classes. My father is a
very um, big personality. He's one of those personalities who
(12:21):
knows everybody and everybody knows him. He had a very
similar upbringing to the one I had. So my dad
is actually is from an all black community. But by
the time he was sixteen, Um, he because of um,
a basketball scholarship, he was I'm about to say he
was able to go away to school and he went
(12:41):
to boarding school, but he didn't really want to be there,
so I'm not sure able is the word. He would.
He talks all the time about how he called home
and was like, I'm gonna be around all these white folks,
like get me here, what is happening? Take me home?
And so yeah, So he went to boarding school where
he was the only black kid and most of his classes,
(13:02):
and then he went to a private white college or
once again he was kind of the only one and
a lot of his courses. Um but I don't think
there's any doubt that both of those things have made
him who he is. So on the one hand he
is like, really hood and really down with the cause,
and on the other hand, he is like, but what
(13:25):
do I need to do to maneuver around these white people?
So I can do what I need to do. And
I think those things have both come out in the
way he raised me. How has your experience with race
as a child impacted your adult life. I really thought,
because I was educated around white folks, that I was
(13:47):
the white culture whisperer. I thought that I could not
even so much code switch though maybe, um but I
thought I knew what they wanted to hear. I knew
who was expected to be, and I was pretty good
at walking the line between who I actually was without
(14:09):
losing too much of myself when I had to be
involved with white folks, and to some degree I was
advantaged even and that I attended the same elementary school
from the time I was in preschool all the way
until the eighth grade. So I think there's there's one
teacher who was at my school longer than me. So
(14:29):
I very much felt like I owned the place. Yeah,
I know, that's that is actually great for building confidence.
That's awesome exactly. Sometimes I would walk around the hallways
with no hall pass because I knew I could. If
anybody's not me, they would just be like, oh hey
Austin yees. So even though is at a predominantly white school,
I can't say that I felt like an outsider. I
(14:49):
very much felt like, no, this is my school. I
would not change my educational experiences. I would not change
where I went to high school, which again was a private,
white um Catholic high school, but had diversity and was
located in the hood. And so again it's just felt
like my school that did not prepare me for adulthood.
(15:11):
When my paycheck, when my paycheck, when my health benefits
were attached to whether or not I could make white
people like me and my education, the only thing that
happened was maybe I got a bad grade and I
was shocked. I didn't think whiteness had the power too,
(15:35):
that whiteness would be so powerful that I might lose myself.
Do you remember that first moment when you experience like, oh, whoa,
this is a new world for me. I remember my
very first job out of college, and I was promised
I would have been a business major in college. And
(15:58):
I was promised by the scene EO of the organization,
who was a woman, a white woman, that she would
teach me and trade me on fundraising and how to
ask for money and how to write grants and right, so,
even though my position was probably, you know, an administrative assistant,
something someone right out of college would have, she was like,
(16:18):
but don't you worry, because we are going to like
rock this right. And before I knew what friends, I
was putting rolls of toilet paper in the bathrooms if
the janitor didn't show up. And the like board of
directors was almost entirely white, and it was my job
(16:39):
to go like get them food when they had their
big meetings. And so I would run around the city
collecting everybody's orders and then drop it off. And when
I tell you how weird it is to be a
young black woman dropping food off for a bunch of
old white people, it is not it. Oh you all
don't see this? Does nobody see this? And I had
(17:00):
started to try to speak up, really by thinking the
people around me who didn't make me feel weird. And
then I got in trouble for that and was told
that I was trying to stir up conflict and I
was just like, wow, none of my tools are working here,
(17:20):
and it was it was jolting. And now for a
quick break. So what was your career trajectory after that?
I mean, how did you get to this place where
you are now? This you know, award winning writer chosen
as Hello Suntines book of the Month. And can I
just add to that to which like sorry Sam to
(17:40):
jump in, like why did you start writing your blog?
Like how did all of that plan to it? God?
It's all divine intervention. Friends. So Trayvon Martin is murdered
at the hands of George Zimmerman. Um a couple full
years later, I want to say too, but don't quote
(18:02):
me on that. Two years later, the actual trial of
George Simmerman is happening, and I'm working at this church.
The church has two services, a Saturday night service and
a Sunday morning service, and it just so happens that
one of my friends from college is going to be
the one who is preaching during this weekend that the
(18:24):
George Zimmerman verdict comes down. So she comes on Saturday night,
she does her thing, she talks about whatever it is
that she talks about. That Sunday, we all, I mean Saturday,
we all go home. We get the news that George
Zimmerman is not going to face justice for what he
did to trade on Martin. We come back the next
(18:45):
morning and my friend who's going to be preaching that
morning is supposed to do the exact same sermon she
did the night before. She says, so, how are we
changing the service today? Are we doing an all black
panel on how folks feel? Are we turning this into
like a prayer service? Like? What what are we doing?
How do we need to do this differently? And she
(19:09):
is explicitly told that she should not mention one word
of what happened, not Trayvon, not George Zimmerman, not the verdict.
She is to say nothing. And then the pastor, after
telling her you do not say anything, says, I hope
(19:33):
that since this is my church, that you will respect
the authority that I am casting over you right now,
and then bows his head to pray over the service.
So what happened? So what happened? Next? She got up
and she gave mostly the same sermon, also mentioning what
(20:03):
happened didn't right she said. She said, before she got
on stage, she did tell one of the other like
staff people on the show, if you let me on
that stage, I am going to say something. So if
there's something you need to do right now to make
sure that I never make it on that stage, by
all means. But there's no way, she said. There are
(20:24):
people here who have come who expect me to say something,
and I can't not say something. She said. Now, I'm
not going to be disrespectful. I'm not going you know,
I'm not gonna start yelling and screaming. I'm not gonna
right like it will be embedded in the sun. There's
(20:44):
a lot of headshaking happening right now. Friends. But but why,
but why? Fear Fear of pissing off major downers to
the church, Fear that people would get up and walk out.
I mean, I don't know, whatever the hell white people
are afraid of. What a conversation about race happens. And
(21:06):
it was weeks later that I was called into my
supervisor's office for a meeting that was supposed to be
about helping me, supporting me and my workload, and instead
I was asked to give my two week notice so
that the week that I would be gone forever, my
(21:28):
whole staff would be on a retreat and when they
would come back, I would simply be gone, and you
would have quit. You were not fired, because that would
have been more convenient for them. Yeah, it's not a
shocking story. It's probably a story that happens every single
day and every single city across America. And that is
why I had to write a book about it, right,
(21:49):
because here I am aware and obviously this is multi layered, right,
so I tell that story. But it's also that black women,
in certain positions, maybe an repositioned but in different ways,
are expected to be just like all the white people
until they need us to be whatever their version of
blackness is. Right. So, in a church context, I have
(22:13):
a girlfriend, God, I have a girlfriend who was in
like the music department, and she was constantly expected to
say white Christian contemporary music right to the best of
her ability, and to make all the white people feel
all their feelings until m Olka Day and then on
'm okay day. She needed to like built out the
gospel and do the spoken word and like show up
(22:34):
in all her black female glory. Right, and and that
microcosm happen is happening across America, right, that black women
are expected to be just like white women until you
need someone who's sassy, until you need someone who's angry,
or you too need some inspiration, or until you and
then I'm supposed to be the genie where you rub
my sides and I come out and give you all
(22:55):
this black culture, and then I put it back so
that we can all go back to normal. And that's
why I had to write a book. I had to
write a book so that black women knew they weren't
making this up, that these experiences were real and they
were happening, and the expectations around whiteness, if they go uninterrogated,
can rip apart our souls. And I wanted to try
(23:17):
to be a part of putting a band aid on
the souls of black women. Do you feel you accomplished that?
Most days? Most days I've had to really um adjust
how I approached this work. So, for example, this is
so embarrassing. But when I first started doing this work subconsciously,
(23:42):
I I would try really hard to make white women cry.
If I was like doing a lecture or a workshop
or something on racial justice. And that's just the whole truth, friends,
It's the whole truth. Because I thought, if I could
get white men to cry, then that must mean they care, right,
that must mean they finally see me as like a
whole person, and now they're going to go out and
(24:04):
do the right thing. Mm hmmm, said, maybe that's not
what happened. And more importantly, it was exhausting for me,
and when it was always exhausting for the people of
color in the room, right for that to be like
our secret mission is to make all the white people
in the room get it. And so now when I
have a lecture, when I give a workshop, when I
do anything publicly, I am consciously thinking that my standard
(24:29):
of success is whether or not black women feel seen
and affirmed and heard. So that if I was to
do it all over again, black women would say, I'll
be there if instead of black women be like child
that wore me out, than I have failed. So I'm
I'm learning. I am learning how to do this differently,
(24:49):
so that black women are the definition of whether or
not this was successful at all, that their emotional well
being is of the utmost importance what led to that
transformation and goal? Yeah, I I was in a training,
(25:12):
a like white privilege, get your stuff together, White People
Right kind of training, and the trainer was using the
exact same like format that I would be using. She
was doing like the same activities and right same thing.
And at the end of the activities, um, she had
(25:39):
physically turned her body so that she could only see
the white people in the room. And there were a
handful of people of color who were now standing behind her,
but who had their hand raised because they wanted to
contribute to the conversation that was happening. But she was
so focused on making or that the white people in
(26:01):
the room got it. She literally couldn't see the hands
of the people of color behind her. And I thought
never again, never again, Because it wasn't until I saw
someone else doing what I do right that I realized, Oh,
(26:23):
I am treating this conversation as if white people are
the lynchpin to racial justice, so much so that the
people of color in the room are being ignored. We
can't see them, we can't hear them. They're raising their
hands and we don't notice that have something to contribute,
and we don't get to hear it, and I decided
right then I would never do it the same way.
(26:45):
Our conversation with Austin was fire reaching and we covered
a lot of ground, so Sam and I felt that
it deserved two parts, So tune in next week when
we dig into Austin's supportive marriage, the racist origins of
the modern day prison system, and our share obsession with Oprah.
Thanks for listening to What's Her Story with Sam and Amy.
(27:06):
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(27:28):
Phoebe crate Us, and our male perspective Luberns
Hi, I'm Sam Edis and I'm Amy Nelson. Welcome to
What's Her Story? With Sam and Amy. This is a
show about the world's most remarkable women. They're professional and
personal journeys. Together, we'll hear from Gold medalists, best selling authors,
and leaders of the world's most iconic brands. Today, we
(00:21):
have Austin Channing Brown on the show. She's a thought leader,
speaker in New York Times, best selling author of the
book I'm Still Here, Black Dignity and a World Made
for Whiteness. You know, Aim, it was my fifteen year
old daughter Ella who saw Austin speak at her school
and immediately texted me and said, you have to have
her on the show. Was really cute when I when
(00:44):
I invited Austin to the show, she said, I'll come
on as long as I can meet Ella. Oh that's amazing.
I'm so glad she invited her, and I cannot wait
for our audience to hear this thought provoking conversation. But Sam,
before we get started with our question, let's have Ella
ask the first one. Okay, so it's such a big topic,
so there might not be, but if there's one big
(01:06):
thing that you could tell parents, I guess, regardless of race,
but also whose kids maybe aren't in communities that are
super diverse. Like one message that they could bring to
their kids, what would that be, Yeah, it's um, it's
that you have to be the one to talk to
(01:26):
your kids about race, right. I think there are a
lot of parents who opt out, And funny enough, for
either reason. They opt out because there's all kinds of diversity, right.
And then if you're like, well, we don't need to
talk about it because our our city, our suburb, our
neighborhood or whatever is overflowing with diversity. It's all around us, right.
(01:48):
And then on the opposite end, parents think, well, since
there's no diversity, there's no reason to talk about it.
You know. There was someone with a podcast and a
parent called in and said, when should I start talking
to my kid about race? And the podcaster said somewhere
around the time that they're six months old, And the
(02:09):
parent was like, I'm sorry, what what do you mean
six months? And she said, not for your kid, for you,
because you need to start practicing right now, and you
need to get comfortable with the conversation, and you need
to start reading, and you need to start preparing so
that by the time your kid is asking questions, you
already have answers and you already know how you want
(02:31):
to approach it. So I wish I could tell parents
that it is part of your responsibility and preparing for
what I hope we all want, which is an anti
racist world, right, that you have a role in that. So, Austin,
you have a three year old sent right, do you
talk to him about race? You know what? Right now,
(02:53):
we try really hard to let him enjoy being a
little black boy. So the ways that we um, so
we don't talk to him about race outright, but we
do what I think a lot of black parents do,
which is when we put lotion on him, we talk
about how beautiful his skin is. And we're intentional about
telling him how smart he is. Um, we play a
(03:14):
lot of black music in our house. Um, we just moved,
and so I am very intentional about the art that
we put up, Um, the fabric choices that we make,
the you know everything. But I know that the day
is coming when we won't be able to well, we'll
have to talk the other side, you know, we won't
(03:36):
just be able to talk about the beauty of what
it means to be black. But we will have to
also talk about the ugly side of America. Um, but
we have we have not done so yet because we
just want him to maintain his little innocence and his
little joy for as long as makes sense. You know,
what will that conversation look like? Yeah, I'm not sure.
(04:00):
I think part of it will depend on his school
and his teachers and his principle in his curriculum. You know. Um,
I suspect that to some degree these conversations will unfold
naturally because of my job. I like I mentioned, I
just bought a new house and so we just picked
up these new chairs and as you all can see,
(04:22):
there's like a million books in the chairs. Um, and
they're they're all about racial justice. So where do you
live now? Where did you move? We're outside Detroit. How
different is the community you've moved to from the community
you grew up in? Yeah, that's a great question. Um,
Well this neighborhood is really nice, really nice. And where
(04:45):
I grew up to is it in like shambles or anything.
I remember being in college and talking with my roommate
about what we would do after we graduated and what
our you know, goals were and everything, and we were
both very socially mind it even then, and we both
agreed that as long as we could make thirty dollars
(05:05):
afford cheese It's and chocolate shake at least once a week,
that that was it. That was all we needed to
now be living in a house that my dad walks
through and he's like, okay, let me make sure I
don't break anything, because okay, replace nothing in here. It
feels miraculous. UM. But as we were choosing a neighborhood,
(05:26):
in some ways thankfully, UM, we were looking during the
election season and so we were able to see how
many signs were in the yards and what those signs said.
We were very intentional about what the demographics would look
like in the neighborhood. In the schools, UM, we were
(05:46):
adamant that my son not be the only one in
his classroom. Ever, that's just not an experience that we
want for him. And we chose a daycare in which
there are other little black boys. Is just like cam.
He's in a community that at least most of the
time feels safe. And unfortunately, we have to wait to
(06:09):
see if the neighborhood proves me right. Can you talk
a little bit about what the experience of being the
only is like both at work and in school. It's
not fun. It feels like the weight of your entire
(06:29):
community is sitting on your shoulders. It is the double
consciousness that um W A B. Two Boys talks about,
where I am aware that I am a human and
an individual. Right, my name is Austin Channing Brown, and
I am responsible for me and my actions only, right.
(06:49):
But I am also aware that teachers, if if if
I do something, say something, that that is now going
to be a reflection on every black kid in school,
perhaps every black kid that they meet, right, that when
the topic of black history comes up, that I am
carrying the way of making sure that my community is
(07:10):
now well represented and that I speak for it. And
um And honestly, it's just it's isolating because I think
white people do not realize how often a lecture, a curriculum,
references ice breakers are built around the idea of their
(07:32):
own normality and therefore universality, and so often when you're
the only one, you just want to scream, that's that's
not my life, that's not how things work for me.
It's exhausting, but most white people have never experienced that
level of exhaustion. I believe that. I want to ask
another question about school. You wrote in your book this
(07:55):
chapter around the stories we tell and talking about how
you know, we erase, we erased many of the ugly
parts of American history, like we we don't really talk
about slavery even in school, or the reality of slavery. Right,
we say this existed, but we're not going to talk
about how it existed. That's right? Did you did you
(08:16):
know that when you were growing up? Like? Did you
were you cognizant of that when you were taking American
history when you were a teenager? Yes? I remember my
mother having a book called why is My teacher told
me yes, And I don't remember anything in that book, y'all,
any details in that book, but I remember her having it,
(08:39):
and and I remember she wanted so badly to round
out my education, right to say, Okay, glad you're learning
about Christopher Columbus, but let's think about this word discovery.
Did you discover something where people already live? You know,
unless unless talk about what happened when he arrived? Okay? Um,
(09:04):
So I feel like a lot of black household education
looks like that. And now for a quick break. So,
in terms of the system and the American school system,
how close is that to being dismantled in terms of
what we learned the curriculum and changing it because it's
(09:24):
I mean, the more I read about it, the more
infuriated I am. And when I hear what my kids
are learning in school, I feel angry. So how do
how does that? How do we erase that? How do
we go backwards? Well, it's really important that white parents
say exactly what you just said, right, because the dominant
feeling is that black folks are the only ones who
(09:47):
are upset, and that because we're the only ones upset,
we must just be in our feelings and it must
not be that important. But for parents, for white parents
to say, there are not enough black female teachers in
the school there, I don't I don't like this curriculum.
This is not we are not teaching the whole history
(10:07):
of America. For white parents to say, my child is
also suffering by not having a more diverse, inclusive curriculum
and being taught by the diversity that exists in the world.
My child is losing out too. Is there any organization
that everyone can get behind that's like close to changing.
(10:29):
This is who's at the forefront of this movement? I
honestly don't know because there are so many battles being fought. Right.
There is the battle around curriculum. There is the battle
around hiring and retention. There's the battle around specific problematic
teachers and or professors. There's right that it isn't just
(10:50):
one thing. And so if this is something you're passionate about,
my encouragement would be to find out if there's something
local happening where you are. You know, are their parents
who have already been speaking to the principle about this?
Are there is there sort of a multicultural subsection of
the UM, the p t A, or of the right.
(11:13):
What is happening Where is the conversation happening where you are? UM?
Is the question that I would start with, because it's
entirely possible that people have already started working on this
and you just didn't know. You're just not on the newsletter.
So your your parents, UM, you've already talked to us
about They named you Austin, and in your book you
write that they did that to outwit everyone by giving
(11:36):
their daughter a white man's name. Let me tell you
what your parents like, how well it works the male
I get. Um, my parents are characters. Um. My mother
is an intellectual butterfly. She is. She is extraordinarily smart
(12:00):
and questions everything and loves debate and conversation. But she
also has a real estate license. She also can She
has like a ceramic making classes. My father is a
very um, big personality. He's one of those personalities who
(12:21):
knows everybody and everybody knows him. He had a very
similar upbringing to the one I had. So my dad
is actually is from an all black community. But by
the time he was sixteen, Um, he because of um,
a basketball scholarship, he was I'm about to say he
was able to go away to school and he went
(12:41):
to boarding school, but he didn't really want to be there,
so I'm not sure able is the word. He would.
He talks all the time about how he called home
and was like, I'm gonna be around all these white folks,
like get me here, what is happening? Take me home?
And so yeah, So he went to boarding school where
he was the only black kid and most of his classes,
(13:02):
and then he went to a private white college or
once again he was kind of the only one and
a lot of his courses. Um but I don't think
there's any doubt that both of those things have made
him who he is. So on the one hand he
is like, really hood and really down with the cause,
and on the other hand, he is like, but what
(13:25):
do I need to do to maneuver around these white people?
So I can do what I need to do. And
I think those things have both come out in the
way he raised me. How has your experience with race
as a child impacted your adult life. I really thought,
because I was educated around white folks, that I was
(13:47):
the white culture whisperer. I thought that I could not
even so much code switch though maybe, um but I
thought I knew what they wanted to hear. I knew
who was expected to be, and I was pretty good
at walking the line between who I actually was without
(14:09):
losing too much of myself when I had to be
involved with white folks, and to some degree I was
advantaged even and that I attended the same elementary school
from the time I was in preschool all the way
until the eighth grade. So I think there's there's one
teacher who was at my school longer than me. So
(14:29):
I very much felt like I owned the place. Yeah,
I know, that's that is actually great for building confidence.
That's awesome exactly. Sometimes I would walk around the hallways
with no hall pass because I knew I could. If
anybody's not me, they would just be like, oh hey
Austin yees. So even though is at a predominantly white school,
I can't say that I felt like an outsider. I
(14:49):
very much felt like, no, this is my school. I
would not change my educational experiences. I would not change
where I went to high school, which again was a private,
white um Catholic high school, but had diversity and was
located in the hood. And so again it's just felt
like my school that did not prepare me for adulthood.
(15:11):
When my paycheck, when my paycheck, when my health benefits
were attached to whether or not I could make white
people like me and my education, the only thing that
happened was maybe I got a bad grade and I
was shocked. I didn't think whiteness had the power too,
(15:35):
that whiteness would be so powerful that I might lose myself.
Do you remember that first moment when you experience like, oh, whoa,
this is a new world for me. I remember my
very first job out of college, and I was promised
I would have been a business major in college. And
(15:58):
I was promised by the scene EO of the organization,
who was a woman, a white woman, that she would
teach me and trade me on fundraising and how to
ask for money and how to write grants and right, so,
even though my position was probably, you know, an administrative assistant,
something someone right out of college would have, she was like,
(16:18):
but don't you worry, because we are going to like
rock this right. And before I knew what friends, I
was putting rolls of toilet paper in the bathrooms if
the janitor didn't show up. And the like board of
directors was almost entirely white, and it was my job
(16:39):
to go like get them food when they had their
big meetings. And so I would run around the city
collecting everybody's orders and then drop it off. And when
I tell you how weird it is to be a
young black woman dropping food off for a bunch of
old white people, it is not it. Oh you all
don't see this? Does nobody see this? And I had
(17:00):
started to try to speak up, really by thinking the
people around me who didn't make me feel weird. And
then I got in trouble for that and was told
that I was trying to stir up conflict and I
was just like, wow, none of my tools are working here,
(17:20):
and it was it was jolting. And now for a
quick break. So what was your career trajectory after that?
I mean, how did you get to this place where
you are now? This you know, award winning writer chosen
as Hello Suntines book of the Month. And can I
just add to that to which like sorry Sam to
(17:40):
jump in, like why did you start writing your blog?
Like how did all of that plan to it? God?
It's all divine intervention. Friends. So Trayvon Martin is murdered
at the hands of George Zimmerman. Um a couple full
years later, I want to say too, but don't quote
(18:02):
me on that. Two years later, the actual trial of
George Simmerman is happening, and I'm working at this church.
The church has two services, a Saturday night service and
a Sunday morning service, and it just so happens that
one of my friends from college is going to be
the one who is preaching during this weekend that the
(18:24):
George Zimmerman verdict comes down. So she comes on Saturday night,
she does her thing, she talks about whatever it is
that she talks about. That Sunday, we all, I mean Saturday,
we all go home. We get the news that George
Zimmerman is not going to face justice for what he
did to trade on Martin. We come back the next
(18:45):
morning and my friend who's going to be preaching that
morning is supposed to do the exact same sermon she
did the night before. She says, so, how are we
changing the service today? Are we doing an all black
panel on how folks feel? Are we turning this into
like a prayer service? Like? What what are we doing?
How do we need to do this differently? And she
(19:09):
is explicitly told that she should not mention one word
of what happened, not Trayvon, not George Zimmerman, not the verdict.
She is to say nothing. And then the pastor, after
telling her you do not say anything, says, I hope
(19:33):
that since this is my church, that you will respect
the authority that I am casting over you right now,
and then bows his head to pray over the service.
So what happened? So what happened? Next? She got up
and she gave mostly the same sermon, also mentioning what
(20:03):
happened didn't right she said. She said, before she got
on stage, she did tell one of the other like
staff people on the show, if you let me on
that stage, I am going to say something. So if
there's something you need to do right now to make
sure that I never make it on that stage, by
all means. But there's no way, she said. There are
(20:24):
people here who have come who expect me to say something,
and I can't not say something. She said. Now, I'm
not going to be disrespectful. I'm not going you know,
I'm not gonna start yelling and screaming. I'm not gonna
right like it will be embedded in the sun. There's
(20:44):
a lot of headshaking happening right now. Friends. But but why,
but why? Fear Fear of pissing off major downers to
the church, Fear that people would get up and walk out.
I mean, I don't know, whatever the hell white people
are afraid of. What a conversation about race happens. And
(21:06):
it was weeks later that I was called into my
supervisor's office for a meeting that was supposed to be
about helping me, supporting me and my workload, and instead
I was asked to give my two week notice so
that the week that I would be gone forever, my
(21:28):
whole staff would be on a retreat and when they
would come back, I would simply be gone, and you
would have quit. You were not fired, because that would
have been more convenient for them. Yeah, it's not a
shocking story. It's probably a story that happens every single
day and every single city across America. And that is
why I had to write a book about it, right,
(21:49):
because here I am aware and obviously this is multi layered, right,
so I tell that story. But it's also that black women,
in certain positions, maybe an repositioned but in different ways,
are expected to be just like all the white people
until they need us to be whatever their version of
blackness is. Right. So, in a church context, I have
(22:13):
a girlfriend, God, I have a girlfriend who was in
like the music department, and she was constantly expected to
say white Christian contemporary music right to the best of
her ability, and to make all the white people feel
all their feelings until m Olka Day and then on
'm okay day. She needed to like built out the
gospel and do the spoken word and like show up
(22:34):
in all her black female glory. Right, and and that
microcosm happen is happening across America, right, that black women
are expected to be just like white women until you
need someone who's sassy, until you need someone who's angry,
or you too need some inspiration, or until you and
then I'm supposed to be the genie where you rub
my sides and I come out and give you all
(22:55):
this black culture, and then I put it back so
that we can all go back to normal. And that's
why I had to write a book. I had to
write a book so that black women knew they weren't
making this up, that these experiences were real and they
were happening, and the expectations around whiteness, if they go uninterrogated,
can rip apart our souls. And I wanted to try
(23:17):
to be a part of putting a band aid on
the souls of black women. Do you feel you accomplished that?
Most days? Most days I've had to really um adjust
how I approached this work. So, for example, this is
so embarrassing. But when I first started doing this work subconsciously,
(23:42):
I I would try really hard to make white women cry.
If I was like doing a lecture or a workshop
or something on racial justice. And that's just the whole truth, friends,
It's the whole truth. Because I thought, if I could
get white men to cry, then that must mean they care, right,
that must mean they finally see me as like a
whole person, and now they're going to go out and
(24:04):
do the right thing. Mm hmmm, said, maybe that's not
what happened. And more importantly, it was exhausting for me,
and when it was always exhausting for the people of
color in the room, right for that to be like
our secret mission is to make all the white people
in the room get it. And so now when I
have a lecture, when I give a workshop, when I
do anything publicly, I am consciously thinking that my standard
(24:29):
of success is whether or not black women feel seen
and affirmed and heard. So that if I was to
do it all over again, black women would say, I'll
be there if instead of black women be like child
that wore me out, than I have failed. So I'm
I'm learning. I am learning how to do this differently,
(24:49):
so that black women are the definition of whether or
not this was successful at all, that their emotional well
being is of the utmost importance what led to that
transformation and goal? Yeah, I I was in a training,
(25:12):
a like white privilege, get your stuff together, White People
Right kind of training, and the trainer was using the
exact same like format that I would be using. She
was doing like the same activities and right same thing.
And at the end of the activities, um, she had
(25:39):
physically turned her body so that she could only see
the white people in the room. And there were a
handful of people of color who were now standing behind her,
but who had their hand raised because they wanted to
contribute to the conversation that was happening. But she was
so focused on making or that the white people in
(26:01):
the room got it. She literally couldn't see the hands
of the people of color behind her. And I thought
never again, never again, Because it wasn't until I saw
someone else doing what I do right that I realized, Oh,
(26:23):
I am treating this conversation as if white people are
the lynchpin to racial justice, so much so that the
people of color in the room are being ignored. We
can't see them, we can't hear them. They're raising their
hands and we don't notice that have something to contribute,
and we don't get to hear it, and I decided
right then I would never do it the same way.
(26:45):
Our conversation with Austin was fire reaching and we covered
a lot of ground, so Sam and I felt that
it deserved two parts, So tune in next week when
we dig into Austin's supportive marriage, the racist origins of
the modern day prison system, and our share obsession with Oprah.
Thanks for listening to What's Her Story with Sam and Amy.
(27:06):
We would so appreciate if you would leave a review
wherever you get your podcasts, and of course, connect with
us on social media at What's Her Story podcast. What's
Her Story with Sam and Amy is powered by my company,
The Riveter at the Riveter dot c o in Sam's company,
park Place Payments at park place payments dot com. Thanks
to our producer and editor Laurel Moglin, our podcast associate
(27:28):
Phoebe crate Us, and our male perspective Luberns
Hosts And Creators
Samantha Ettus
Amy Nelson
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