March 11, 2021 • 32 mins
Today, we bring you the second episode in our two-part series with thought leader and bestselling author Austin Channing Brown. In this episode, Austin shares her path to home ownership, achieving notoriety during a period of racial inequity, and the support she's received from her husband as her career has skyrocketed.
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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
bring you the second part of our conversation with Austin
(00:23):
Channing Brown, the Thought Leader speaker in New York Times
bestselling author of I'm Still Here, Black Dignity in a
World Made for Whiteness. If you didn't catch part one,
we left off with us talking about how Austin is
changing her trainings to ensure people of color feel seen
and heard as the emphasis rather than focusing on white
people's understanding of racial injustice. As a speaker, as an educator,
(00:47):
you're constantly learning, right, So it's like you're never done. No,
I am always evolving, And it's one reason why I
love doing what I'm doing because I get to learn
from people all over the country. I get asked questions
and all kinds of different contexts, from churches to schools
to corporations. Right. I get to hear about how is
(01:10):
race operating on the ground and people's daily lives every day,
and that learning for me, right, that informs how I
do this work, and honestly, in in some ways it
keeps me excited about the work. Right. So now it
(01:30):
isn't just a daily trudge to like count the number
of white people on my white board, right, how many
white people have I transformed this week? You know? Now
it is about how I show up in this work,
how I bring joy to this work, how my workshops
and lectures or whatever hopefully feel different from that of others.
(01:53):
And in some ways it's a great um experiment because
when I'm trying to prove is that centering black women
is a more effective way of teaching everybody than just
teaching to the white people and hoping that they get
(02:15):
it mhm, right, because that's how we do education, right,
That's where we started this conversation, right, that education is
for white people, by white people. But what if what
if we actually taught from the perspective and with the
emotional um carefulness of black women in the seeds, how
(02:40):
would that transform the way everybody is being educated? The
experiment in my life? What's the next book about? Fingers Crossed?
The next book is a young reader's version of I'm
still here, Oh fingers cross. As for all the black
girls out there who are the only ones in the classroom,
(03:02):
that's great. So you talked about affording this home that
you never thought possible. A lot of what Amy and
I talked about on the show is women and money
and the importance of financial independence. To talk to us
about how how you were able to create this incredible
home for yourself. Oh, that's such a good question. Um.
(03:24):
So when I first started my blog, um it was
during that time when I was like in the process
of being let go Slash asked to leave, and there
were some key women who found the blog, and after
four years that led to an editor who wanted a book,
(03:47):
who wanted you know, the publisher who wanted right And
it's sort of this like evolving career and um I
I still remember the day I got paid a thousand
dollars to speak somewhere and was like, oh my gosh
(04:11):
for a girl who just wanted to afford some cheese
its and a chocolate shape, And that was crazy. You're
gonna give me a thousand dollars to talk for like
thirty minutes. That's bananas. Um. But I was determined. Gosh,
(04:32):
there were so many things I was determined to do.
I was determined to be a black woman who could
always choose freedom all the way from the life that
I want right living where I want to live. Um,
(04:57):
but even down to do I want cheese? It's this week,
you know what I mean? Like even those little tiny
decisions that bring joy and pleasure to my life, you know.
But it still took. I mean, my my husband. I
have been married for eleven years and this is our
(05:17):
first home. So we have been broke, broke. We have
been living in apartments for our entire marriage and previous
before we got married. Um. And at the beginning of
if you had asked me if I would be purchasing
a home by the end of the year, I would
(05:38):
have laughed, that's so cute, that's a cute question. If
you had asked me by March when the pandemic hit,
I would have cried, Okay, I would have sobbed. I've
never I'm never gonna it's not ever gonna happen. And
the truth is is it took a little bit of
(05:58):
a miracle. It took Reese Weatherspoon choosing to put my
book as her book club pick during this national moment
of unrest. And I confess to you all, that's a
hard thing to swallow. Right. So this, the purchase of
this house, is a culmination of both everyday work that
(06:21):
I've been doing over the last ten years, right, but
it is also this monumental thing that happened in my
life because of unarmed black man died over what someone
believed to be a counterfeit twill mhm. And I don't
really know what to do. I don't really know what
(06:42):
to do with that. But that's the truth, right that
it took all of that building, But it also took
this influx of a royalties check that I never could
have imagined in order to do a down payment, in
order to do the you know, all the big things.
(07:03):
It's just ridiculous. Okay, I'm gonna go in a little
bit of a tie rade here. It is utterly ridiculous
that for ten years I have been paying in rent
what I pay as a mortgage. Oh, I right, but
set into buy a house because I didn't have enough
cash on hand to go through the process of paying
(07:26):
what I pay as rent for the last decade. I
needed a miracle. I need a tragedy to have him
in order for me to have a house, so that
my kid can play in the backyard, so that my
(07:47):
dog can play in the backyard. Well, and I just
I mean, there's so much to say about all this, right,
but I think that homeownership is one of the biggest
modern examples of the legacy of white supremacy and how
it played out over the past decades because white homeowners
prevented black families from buying homes post World War Two,
(08:08):
when the one time in American history and it was
something that was attainable to middle class and lower middle
class folks. And then you get generational wealth from buying
house and selling a house and like, and we don't
talk about it, but we should. I mean, like it
really is, like it is just like it's insane and
it's so clear, right, And that's what that's what's frustrating
(08:32):
for black people, black women, is that white people like
to tell themselves this story that your grandfather came over
with five dollars in his pocket from some European country
and like built himself up, right, But the part of
the story that we don't tell is that he wasn't
competing against a black workforce because I couldn't apply for
(08:54):
a job that he was applying for. Right. The part
of the story we don't tell is that if he
employed me, he didn't have to pay me any sort
of wage if he didn't feel like it that day,
because there were no repercussions if he decided not to
give me my two dollars and fifty cent at the
end of the week. Right, Well, we don't tell is
that the government bent over backwards to make sure you
(09:15):
could be a part of this new middle class suburban life.
And now you're worried about welfare. Now, m and white
people show don't like to talk about that home that
they sold, the vacation home that their parents sold, the
trust fund that their parents gave them, the you know,
(09:36):
and it is frustrating that a miracle and a tragedy
had to happen in order for me to become a homeowner.
And now for a quick break, there is an interesting
piece of your story, which is that it was ten
years a very hard work that positioned you to take
(09:57):
advantage of this luck. Right. I think that's such a
critical part of the story, is that you worked your
ass off for this moment to happen. That's right, That's right.
So paying what I pay now in a mortgage, right,
Paying that as a rent still required me to make
sure that I had a certain number of speaking gigs,
(10:18):
that I had a certain advance from the book, that
I was able to make good on that advance, so
that I would have reyalties at all. I mean, this
was all extraordinarily risky, and in fact, while I wrote
the book, I was a resident director at a college
where I maintained a dormitory of two hundred and forty
(10:40):
eighteen and nineteen year olds, making less than twenty thousand
dollars a year because they paid for my room and board. Wow. So, Austin,
there's two more big questions I want us to ask,
And do you want to ask Austin about her marriage?
And then I'll ask my final question. Sure, Sam, I'll
ask it about her marriage. Thanks, Um, what do you
(11:06):
want to know? Okay? So, I mean, so you guys
have been together a really long time, and so how
do you support one another? Oh, my lord, that's such
a wonderful question. So I met my husband as a
senior in college, and I had absolutely no expectations that
(11:29):
I would get married before thirty four. Okay, I was
such a nerd. Oh my god, I was such a nerd.
I had been a minister ordained in the church at
like fourteen, so nobody was interested. Nobody wanted to date
your girl. Right, I was like the perfect best friend.
(11:49):
I imagine like the forty year old men would be
interested in once I was thirty five, right, and they
wanted to settle down and maybe like my nerdiness was
appealing by then. So when I met him at one,
I was like, Oh, this is this adulthood thing is
already going differently than I had planned. And it was
(12:11):
a struggle because I was so young. I go. So
I got married at twenty four, which at the then
felt like, oh I am super grown. And now I'm like,
what the hell were my parents thinking. It's like nobody,
nobody discouraged this. Um. But I'm really really grateful for
(12:35):
the man that I'm married, and I'm going to fast
forward through that first decade UM to like the last
the last three years, because it's been the last three
years that the book released, that I've had to travel
for my job, that I've had a son, that right
that our world has become completely different from what it
(12:56):
was in the first seven years. And and UM, I
couldn't be more grateful for my partner. He has no
desire for this spotlight that I have. Sometimes when we
(13:18):
travel here's a good example. Sometimes when he comes and
travels with me, Um, a man will pull him aside
and we'll be like, so, how does it feel to
like walk around with Austin with like this spotlight on
her and you're like carrying her suitcase? And it'll be like,
explain to me what it is that you mean. I
(13:39):
don't know what you mean. She's my wife, and I'm
extraordinarily proud of her. Did you hear what she had
to say? That was brilliant? Right, so proud and so supportive.
And I'll tell y'all you know I I finished editing
the book when my son was born, and so my
(14:03):
husband had to come home and take the baby so
that I could finish editing this book. And then and
my son's first year of life, I had to get
on and off planes, leaving my husband with the baby
by himself. And thankfully we weren't alone. My parents or
his parents would come up and help, and they were
very committed to coming at least once a month, so
(14:25):
he wasn't by himself, but often he was. Often it
was just him and a newborn baby. And um, he
continues to love me in ways that I know not
every woman has, you know. And that came after a
(14:46):
lot of conversations friends. He was not born this way.
It came after a lot of hard thought conversations. It
came after me being honest about how much I loved
my career and that if I had a child, we
would have to be real thoughtful about how the labor
of that gets split. Um, it has been miraculous to
(15:10):
watch my husband move in and out of what is
thought of a very patriarchal way of being. So by that,
I mean when we were broke broke and Detroit slid
into the river, my husband got the first job that
he was offered because he was going to take care
of his wife, right, but in the same token, he's
(15:35):
also going to take care of the baby while his
wife goes to work. It is really, really beautiful and
I'm really really grateful. What was that first job? I
have to ask it was it was working at um
High School on the West side of Chicago. That was
(15:57):
really hard and really dangerous. It was was one of
those schools where the police have a office inside the school,
so he was regularly watching kids get tazard. He went
to more funerals than any you know, person who was
at a high school should have to go to. It was.
It was rough, and he was there for four years
(16:20):
because we needed the financial stability. In what capacity what
was his role there? He was a guidance counselor. So
my my husband is actually an attorney. So he stopped
practicing and took a job as a counsel student. Yeah,
guidance counselor in the school where I was worried for
his safety every day so that we could live and
(16:43):
now for a quick break. So speaking of police, I
read with a lot of interest the chapter about your
cousin who was a victim of the three strikes law
and then another victor in prison of a freak accident.
But what role does our beyond flawed prison system have
(17:12):
and raised in America and holding people back. Yeah, the
prison industrial complex was built on America's obsession with slavery
and anger that slavery had ended. The prison industrial complex
was a work around for the ending of slavery. So
(17:35):
the formal institution of slavery ends, and then we get
the rise of black codes, which um our laws specifically
that black people must follow or else spend their servitude
in prison. And like the most stupid laws ever, like okay,
(18:01):
a certain number of you can't gather at the same time,
or if you steal a pig, or if you penalizing normalcy,
that's what it was. It was penalizing that black people
could actually live a normal life in the same way
that white people live normal lives. Mm hmm. When those
(18:24):
things were violated, When normal life was violated, being able
to throw us into back into slavery, back into working
for no wages. And it was those um convicts who
built our roads and who erected our state buildings, and
(18:50):
who where the labor force required to enter into the dreds.
There is a direct line to criminalizing blackness that still
exists today. My cousin was guilty. He absolutely so, drums,
(19:11):
There's no question about it, And he got caught more
than one occasion. He also got pulled over for no
reason other than he was a black man. He also
got violated in the streets, police pulling his clothes off
searching his body caddies because he was a black man
and they could. He was also violated by the education
(19:35):
system that he had, by the lack of opportunities he
had to pursue whatever dreams he thought of for himself,
by a lack of opportunity and access, but the ever
presence of police mhm waiting. And at some point I
had to ask myself, even if black men are guilty,
(19:59):
is this what the payment for that crime should be?
That's right? Right? Even if my cousin is guilty, do
I think he should lose at minimum ten years of
his life? Do I think that even if if someone
who was convicted is guilty, that they should be held
(20:19):
in solitary confinement? Nothing is sicker. I mean, our penalsy
seems so sick today. I post an article about there's
a a man who's in his eighties now who just
was released from jail after we put there since he
was fifteen years old. Like what sickness is happening in
this country that we do this to people. It's sick racism,
(20:42):
Like literally, I mean Austin, It's it's like when you say, like,
was your cousin guilty of selling drugs? Yes, but the
entire reason that drugs are illegal is because we needed
to find something to imprison people of color. Like there
are actual recordings of then President Nixon saying that, of course, like,
let's make it illegal, and then let's put drugs in
(21:03):
communities of color, and then let's arrest people. That's right,
like and like we all live in this world where
we continue to accept that because we believe that blackness
is already guilty. Right, we believe that blackness is what
is guilty, right, because it is normal for white people
(21:24):
to commit crimes. White people saw drugs, white people do drugs.
People murder other folks, white people commit domestic violence. White
people like white people do whit people can make crimes,
and many of them start quite young, seenagers running red
lights and doing you know what I mean, Like it
(21:44):
often escalates from driving or drugs. Right, and like white people,
white people commit crimes all the time, but they don't
get accused at the same rate. It is the point
of the show where we do a quick lightning round.
Of course, what are you reading? I am reading The
(22:05):
Some of All Things by Heather Mickee, And what do
you and Tommy watch at night on TV? Right? Now
we're watching Good Girls on Netflix. What is that? I
don't think it's on my list. A show about three
women who commit crimes. It sounds like a good one.
What is your nighttime routine right now? It's putting my
(22:28):
toddler to bed? But I wish it was, Oh, work out,
a shower, my face care and climbing into bed and
an ideal situation. Okay. Final question from me is who
leaves you starstruck? Oh? So many people? Um, I think
the top of that list are like the Big Three, right, Oprah,
(22:51):
Michelle Obama, Barack Obama. They just amazed me. I just
I just want to like hug Oprah. Sometimes I dream
about her. I dream about Oprah on a regular basis.
I've spent my entire life obsessed with Oprah. I once
it came Art found this Oprah. It was I mean,
I'm dating myself now, but it was a VCR tape
of Oprah on some weight lost journey. And I wasn't
(23:12):
interested in the weight lest journey. But I think I
watched it a hundred times just because I'm so obsessed,
and I cry every time I dream about just chatting
with her, Like I don't dream about being on her show.
I don't dream about like her favorite things. I dream
about like being in her garden. I dream about being
at her table. Oh, like her Monatito table. It's like, yeah,
of course, like very godmother ish. And did you see
(23:35):
that Gail lived there for like a large part of
talk about their friendship completely. Oh my gosh. It's like,
my why isn't there following them? Oh my god, I'm
a friendship. I feel like it's the key to her success.
Is that friendship. I am obsessed. I love them too. Okay, sorry, okay,
we'll stop, Lou, Hello, Lou. I love black people, you know.
(24:04):
I'm I'm a part of so many different organizations, um,
and being being a part of the show gives me
the opportunity to meet people like you. I'm I'm a
black man who's been struggling with so many different things
in my life. And I'm finally starting to get like
I'm on like the curve of it all. But it's
still an uphill client, you know, And I'm I'm I'm
willing to go on that journey, you know. Um, And
(24:27):
one of them is is financial literacy. You know, I'm
on this journey right now to a hundred k, you know,
and I'm like, I'm excited about it. I'm like pumped,
you know. And and I got these different avenues that
I'm exploring. As I'm on this journey, I'm starting to
inspire my friends and I'm starting to like share these
things with them, and I'm starting to see how a
(24:49):
lot of them just like like clueless to it. And
I was like, now I'm going to a chance to
realize how I was ninet eleven twelve months ago, you know.
And and and I've battled with racial injustice, you know. So
when I think of racial injustice, the fact that there
is no education, like yes, directly uh pointed at the
(25:12):
black community to say, hey, this is how you get
out of here. This is how we make the community better,
you know, this is how you you create wealth by
using these different tools. So when you when you talk
about racial injustice, um and also finances and stuff like that,
what what what does that sound like? Yeah? So first
let me say, um that for folks who are interested
(25:35):
in this conversation from a historic perspective, I really I'm
staring at it right now so I can get the
title right. I highly suggest a book called The Color
of money, and it is about the history, for lack
of a better word, to the author might not praise
it this way, but the history of shutting black people
out of financial literacy and what we have constantly done
(25:57):
to try to overcome that, you know, from the boycotts
that we've had right to the black banks that we
once had to you know, and trying to sort of
destroy this myth that that we just don't care, right,
that we're just not interested, um, that we're too shortsighted,
(26:17):
that we are naturally different and inferior in the way
we think about money. And so first I just want
to say that you are a part of a legacy, right,
that you are a part of a black legacy that
is trying to overcome and in system that was not
built for us, and in fact was built against us.
(26:40):
And you're not alone in that. Just last week I
was um at my father in law's house. And my
father in law is not rich, but he was a
part of the black middle class that came from the
south up to the north to work at the factories
at Ford and so um, he is solidly stable. My
man still is in the hood, but he he didn't
(27:04):
have to if he didn't love his neighborhood so much. Okay,
he didn't love the city so much. He could move
if he wanted to. And my husband and I were
talking to him about financial planning. We were talking to
him about retirement, about how to create passive income, about
how to make sure that when he could no longer
work at the factory that he and my mother in
(27:28):
law can still live good lives where they can decide
if they want to choose it. He said to me
and my husband, He said, you know what, here's the truth.
The truth is that I know I should be making investments.
I know, He's like, I have the money. I have
the money to be able to try some things and
to take on some risk, he said, But I've been
(27:49):
afraid of being taken for everything that I've got. I
am afraid to trust white people. I am afraid to
tell them really how which I make. I am afraid
that they will not treat me fairly or equally. Right,
(28:10):
So here's someone who could, who has the means, doesn't
have the faith, and doesn't have the faith for really
good reasons. Right. So I say all that to say
that you are not alone in that right, and that
we are constantly fighting two battles, and one is the
(28:31):
history of being shut out, and two is the fear
that whiteness will find a way to continue to shut
us out. And so what we have to do as
a community is one share the knowledge that we do
have right and be willing to support one another right.
(28:51):
So my husband and I didn't walk away from that
conversation and go, well, Dad, you know you really should.
We were like, I got someone for you to talk to.
I have someone that I will vouch for and we
will sit in that conversation with you to make sure
you understand every single thing being said, so that you
feel confident and what it decisions you're about to make right,
(29:15):
that this isn't just about sharing information. It really is
about finding the people that we trust, finding the people
who also love black people. Yeah, that's awesome. Hey. I
also seeing a tweet about amend the show Can we
talk about a man? I started watching it too. Started
(29:37):
the first episode just like took me back I had.
I got out the episode and I was like, WHOA,
what a journey, you know, because it really dives deep
into Frederick Douglas. And I was like, I'm so I
wanted to research him more, and I'm like, Wow, this
man who literally pulled himself up by his bootstraps, you
knows right as as all in slaved people did right.
(30:02):
And this is what American history will not recognize, is
that for anyone who was enslaved right to fight for
their freedom, to live well, to keep their family together
is miraculous. There is no reason why black people should
have made it in this country. But we're still here. Sam.
(30:26):
That conversation was just it was a lot. I learned
a lot. I learned so much. She's so brilliant, and
I just there's just something so lovable about her. I
think a part of the conversation that I was really
into with the part about becoming a homeowner and how
the system is so so just waited against anyone who
(30:52):
doesn't have family money, who didn't grow up white. We
don't talk a lot about home ownership in America and
the sup and the legacy of white supremacy and how
it just carries on through each generation. And and for me,
you know, I am very guilty of constantly saying I'm
listening and I'm learning and not doing enough. And I
(31:14):
think that in home ownership it's it's a collective, like,
what do we do? How do we change that for
the for our generation, not just the next generation, like
for us? Right, so how do we how do we
change that for our peers? Well, and ever since our
conversation with Austin, I've been thinking about the prison system
and how horrific the injustices in our supposed justice system,
(31:38):
and it just it kills me. She also recommended this book,
The Color of Money, which I bought a copy for
me and I bought a copy for lou and Um,
I can't wait to read it. But I think that
so often, you know, we only see the books that
are on the Best Letter list and don't realize how
many other incredible works there are for us to dig into.
(31:59):
Thanks for listening to What's Her Story with Sam and Amy.
We would so appreciate if you would leave a review
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(32:21):
to our producer and editor, Laurel Moglin, our podcast associate
Phoebe crane Thus, and our male perspective lue birds
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
bring you the second part of our conversation with Austin
(00:23):
Channing Brown, the Thought Leader speaker in New York Times
bestselling author of I'm Still Here, Black Dignity in a
World Made for Whiteness. If you didn't catch part one,
we left off with us talking about how Austin is
changing her trainings to ensure people of color feel seen
and heard as the emphasis rather than focusing on white
people's understanding of racial injustice. As a speaker, as an educator,
(00:47):
you're constantly learning, right, So it's like you're never done. No,
I am always evolving, And it's one reason why I
love doing what I'm doing because I get to learn
from people all over the country. I get asked questions
and all kinds of different contexts, from churches to schools
to corporations. Right. I get to hear about how is
(01:10):
race operating on the ground and people's daily lives every day,
and that learning for me, right, that informs how I
do this work, and honestly, in in some ways it
keeps me excited about the work. Right. So now it
(01:30):
isn't just a daily trudge to like count the number
of white people on my white board, right, how many
white people have I transformed this week? You know? Now
it is about how I show up in this work,
how I bring joy to this work, how my workshops
and lectures or whatever hopefully feel different from that of others.
(01:53):
And in some ways it's a great um experiment because
when I'm trying to prove is that centering black women
is a more effective way of teaching everybody than just
teaching to the white people and hoping that they get
(02:15):
it mhm, right, because that's how we do education, right,
That's where we started this conversation, right, that education is
for white people, by white people. But what if what
if we actually taught from the perspective and with the
emotional um carefulness of black women in the seeds, how
(02:40):
would that transform the way everybody is being educated? The
experiment in my life? What's the next book about? Fingers Crossed?
The next book is a young reader's version of I'm
still here, Oh fingers cross. As for all the black
girls out there who are the only ones in the classroom,
(03:02):
that's great. So you talked about affording this home that
you never thought possible. A lot of what Amy and
I talked about on the show is women and money
and the importance of financial independence. To talk to us
about how how you were able to create this incredible
home for yourself. Oh, that's such a good question. Um.
(03:24):
So when I first started my blog, um it was
during that time when I was like in the process
of being let go Slash asked to leave, and there
were some key women who found the blog, and after
four years that led to an editor who wanted a book,
(03:47):
who wanted you know, the publisher who wanted right And
it's sort of this like evolving career and um I
I still remember the day I got paid a thousand
dollars to speak somewhere and was like, oh my gosh
(04:11):
for a girl who just wanted to afford some cheese
its and a chocolate shape, And that was crazy. You're
gonna give me a thousand dollars to talk for like
thirty minutes. That's bananas. Um. But I was determined. Gosh,
(04:32):
there were so many things I was determined to do.
I was determined to be a black woman who could
always choose freedom all the way from the life that
I want right living where I want to live. Um,
(04:57):
but even down to do I want cheese? It's this week,
you know what I mean? Like even those little tiny
decisions that bring joy and pleasure to my life, you know.
But it still took. I mean, my my husband. I
have been married for eleven years and this is our
(05:17):
first home. So we have been broke, broke. We have
been living in apartments for our entire marriage and previous
before we got married. Um. And at the beginning of
if you had asked me if I would be purchasing
a home by the end of the year, I would
(05:38):
have laughed, that's so cute, that's a cute question. If
you had asked me by March when the pandemic hit,
I would have cried, Okay, I would have sobbed. I've
never I'm never gonna it's not ever gonna happen. And
the truth is is it took a little bit of
(05:58):
a miracle. It took Reese Weatherspoon choosing to put my
book as her book club pick during this national moment
of unrest. And I confess to you all, that's a
hard thing to swallow. Right. So this, the purchase of
this house, is a culmination of both everyday work that
(06:21):
I've been doing over the last ten years, right, but
it is also this monumental thing that happened in my
life because of unarmed black man died over what someone
believed to be a counterfeit twill mhm. And I don't
really know what to do. I don't really know what
(06:42):
to do with that. But that's the truth, right that
it took all of that building, But it also took
this influx of a royalties check that I never could
have imagined in order to do a down payment, in
order to do the you know, all the big things.
(07:03):
It's just ridiculous. Okay, I'm gonna go in a little
bit of a tie rade here. It is utterly ridiculous
that for ten years I have been paying in rent
what I pay as a mortgage. Oh, I right, but
set into buy a house because I didn't have enough
cash on hand to go through the process of paying
(07:26):
what I pay as rent for the last decade. I
needed a miracle. I need a tragedy to have him
in order for me to have a house, so that
my kid can play in the backyard, so that my
(07:47):
dog can play in the backyard. Well, and I just
I mean, there's so much to say about all this, right,
but I think that homeownership is one of the biggest
modern examples of the legacy of white supremacy and how
it played out over the past decades because white homeowners
prevented black families from buying homes post World War Two,
(08:08):
when the one time in American history and it was
something that was attainable to middle class and lower middle
class folks. And then you get generational wealth from buying
house and selling a house and like, and we don't
talk about it, but we should. I mean, like it
really is, like it is just like it's insane and
it's so clear, right, And that's what that's what's frustrating
(08:32):
for black people, black women, is that white people like
to tell themselves this story that your grandfather came over
with five dollars in his pocket from some European country
and like built himself up, right, But the part of
the story that we don't tell is that he wasn't
competing against a black workforce because I couldn't apply for
(08:54):
a job that he was applying for. Right. The part
of the story we don't tell is that if he
employed me, he didn't have to pay me any sort
of wage if he didn't feel like it that day,
because there were no repercussions if he decided not to
give me my two dollars and fifty cent at the
end of the week. Right, Well, we don't tell is
that the government bent over backwards to make sure you
(09:15):
could be a part of this new middle class suburban life.
And now you're worried about welfare. Now, m and white
people show don't like to talk about that home that
they sold, the vacation home that their parents sold, the
trust fund that their parents gave them, the you know,
(09:36):
and it is frustrating that a miracle and a tragedy
had to happen in order for me to become a homeowner.
And now for a quick break, there is an interesting
piece of your story, which is that it was ten
years a very hard work that positioned you to take
(09:57):
advantage of this luck. Right. I think that's such a
critical part of the story, is that you worked your
ass off for this moment to happen. That's right, That's right.
So paying what I pay now in a mortgage, right,
Paying that as a rent still required me to make
sure that I had a certain number of speaking gigs,
(10:18):
that I had a certain advance from the book, that
I was able to make good on that advance, so
that I would have reyalties at all. I mean, this
was all extraordinarily risky, and in fact, while I wrote
the book, I was a resident director at a college
where I maintained a dormitory of two hundred and forty
(10:40):
eighteen and nineteen year olds, making less than twenty thousand
dollars a year because they paid for my room and board. Wow. So, Austin,
there's two more big questions I want us to ask,
And do you want to ask Austin about her marriage?
And then I'll ask my final question. Sure, Sam, I'll
ask it about her marriage. Thanks, Um, what do you
(11:06):
want to know? Okay? So, I mean, so you guys
have been together a really long time, and so how
do you support one another? Oh, my lord, that's such
a wonderful question. So I met my husband as a
senior in college, and I had absolutely no expectations that
(11:29):
I would get married before thirty four. Okay, I was
such a nerd. Oh my god, I was such a nerd.
I had been a minister ordained in the church at
like fourteen, so nobody was interested. Nobody wanted to date
your girl. Right, I was like the perfect best friend.
(11:49):
I imagine like the forty year old men would be
interested in once I was thirty five, right, and they
wanted to settle down and maybe like my nerdiness was
appealing by then. So when I met him at one,
I was like, Oh, this is this adulthood thing is
already going differently than I had planned. And it was
(12:11):
a struggle because I was so young. I go. So
I got married at twenty four, which at the then
felt like, oh I am super grown. And now I'm like,
what the hell were my parents thinking. It's like nobody,
nobody discouraged this. Um. But I'm really really grateful for
(12:35):
the man that I'm married, and I'm going to fast
forward through that first decade UM to like the last
the last three years, because it's been the last three
years that the book released, that I've had to travel
for my job, that I've had a son, that right
that our world has become completely different from what it
(12:56):
was in the first seven years. And and UM, I
couldn't be more grateful for my partner. He has no
desire for this spotlight that I have. Sometimes when we
(13:18):
travel here's a good example. Sometimes when he comes and
travels with me, Um, a man will pull him aside
and we'll be like, so, how does it feel to
like walk around with Austin with like this spotlight on
her and you're like carrying her suitcase? And it'll be like,
explain to me what it is that you mean. I
(13:39):
don't know what you mean. She's my wife, and I'm
extraordinarily proud of her. Did you hear what she had
to say? That was brilliant? Right, so proud and so supportive.
And I'll tell y'all you know I I finished editing
the book when my son was born, and so my
(14:03):
husband had to come home and take the baby so
that I could finish editing this book. And then and
my son's first year of life, I had to get
on and off planes, leaving my husband with the baby
by himself. And thankfully we weren't alone. My parents or
his parents would come up and help, and they were
very committed to coming at least once a month, so
(14:25):
he wasn't by himself, but often he was. Often it
was just him and a newborn baby. And um, he
continues to love me in ways that I know not
every woman has, you know. And that came after a
(14:46):
lot of conversations friends. He was not born this way.
It came after a lot of hard thought conversations. It
came after me being honest about how much I loved
my career and that if I had a child, we
would have to be real thoughtful about how the labor
of that gets split. Um, it has been miraculous to
(15:10):
watch my husband move in and out of what is
thought of a very patriarchal way of being. So by that,
I mean when we were broke broke and Detroit slid
into the river, my husband got the first job that
he was offered because he was going to take care
of his wife, right, but in the same token, he's
(15:35):
also going to take care of the baby while his
wife goes to work. It is really, really beautiful and
I'm really really grateful. What was that first job? I
have to ask it was it was working at um
High School on the West side of Chicago. That was
(15:57):
really hard and really dangerous. It was was one of
those schools where the police have a office inside the school,
so he was regularly watching kids get tazard. He went
to more funerals than any you know, person who was
at a high school should have to go to. It was.
It was rough, and he was there for four years
(16:20):
because we needed the financial stability. In what capacity what
was his role there? He was a guidance counselor. So
my my husband is actually an attorney. So he stopped
practicing and took a job as a counsel student. Yeah,
guidance counselor in the school where I was worried for
his safety every day so that we could live and
(16:43):
now for a quick break. So speaking of police, I
read with a lot of interest the chapter about your
cousin who was a victim of the three strikes law
and then another victor in prison of a freak accident.
But what role does our beyond flawed prison system have
(17:12):
and raised in America and holding people back. Yeah, the
prison industrial complex was built on America's obsession with slavery
and anger that slavery had ended. The prison industrial complex
was a work around for the ending of slavery. So
(17:35):
the formal institution of slavery ends, and then we get
the rise of black codes, which um our laws specifically
that black people must follow or else spend their servitude
in prison. And like the most stupid laws ever, like okay,
(18:01):
a certain number of you can't gather at the same time,
or if you steal a pig, or if you penalizing normalcy,
that's what it was. It was penalizing that black people
could actually live a normal life in the same way
that white people live normal lives. Mm hmm. When those
(18:24):
things were violated, When normal life was violated, being able
to throw us into back into slavery, back into working
for no wages. And it was those um convicts who
built our roads and who erected our state buildings, and
(18:50):
who where the labor force required to enter into the dreds.
There is a direct line to criminalizing blackness that still
exists today. My cousin was guilty. He absolutely so, drums,
(19:11):
There's no question about it, And he got caught more
than one occasion. He also got pulled over for no
reason other than he was a black man. He also
got violated in the streets, police pulling his clothes off
searching his body caddies because he was a black man
and they could. He was also violated by the education
(19:35):
system that he had, by the lack of opportunities he
had to pursue whatever dreams he thought of for himself,
by a lack of opportunity and access, but the ever
presence of police mhm waiting. And at some point I
had to ask myself, even if black men are guilty,
(19:59):
is this what the payment for that crime should be?
That's right? Right? Even if my cousin is guilty, do
I think he should lose at minimum ten years of
his life? Do I think that even if if someone
who was convicted is guilty, that they should be held
(20:19):
in solitary confinement? Nothing is sicker. I mean, our penalsy
seems so sick today. I post an article about there's
a a man who's in his eighties now who just
was released from jail after we put there since he
was fifteen years old. Like what sickness is happening in
this country that we do this to people. It's sick racism,
(20:42):
Like literally, I mean Austin, It's it's like when you say, like,
was your cousin guilty of selling drugs? Yes, but the
entire reason that drugs are illegal is because we needed
to find something to imprison people of color. Like there
are actual recordings of then President Nixon saying that, of course, like,
let's make it illegal, and then let's put drugs in
(21:03):
communities of color, and then let's arrest people. That's right,
like and like we all live in this world where
we continue to accept that because we believe that blackness
is already guilty. Right, we believe that blackness is what
is guilty, right, because it is normal for white people
(21:24):
to commit crimes. White people saw drugs, white people do drugs.
People murder other folks, white people commit domestic violence. White
people like white people do whit people can make crimes,
and many of them start quite young, seenagers running red
lights and doing you know what I mean, Like it
(21:44):
often escalates from driving or drugs. Right, and like white people,
white people commit crimes all the time, but they don't
get accused at the same rate. It is the point
of the show where we do a quick lightning round.
Of course, what are you reading? I am reading The
(22:05):
Some of All Things by Heather Mickee, And what do
you and Tommy watch at night on TV? Right? Now
we're watching Good Girls on Netflix. What is that? I
don't think it's on my list. A show about three
women who commit crimes. It sounds like a good one.
What is your nighttime routine right now? It's putting my
(22:28):
toddler to bed? But I wish it was, Oh, work out,
a shower, my face care and climbing into bed and
an ideal situation. Okay. Final question from me is who
leaves you starstruck? Oh? So many people? Um, I think
the top of that list are like the Big Three, right, Oprah,
(22:51):
Michelle Obama, Barack Obama. They just amazed me. I just
I just want to like hug Oprah. Sometimes I dream
about her. I dream about Oprah on a regular basis.
I've spent my entire life obsessed with Oprah. I once
it came Art found this Oprah. It was I mean,
I'm dating myself now, but it was a VCR tape
of Oprah on some weight lost journey. And I wasn't
(23:12):
interested in the weight lest journey. But I think I
watched it a hundred times just because I'm so obsessed,
and I cry every time I dream about just chatting
with her, Like I don't dream about being on her show.
I don't dream about like her favorite things. I dream
about like being in her garden. I dream about being
at her table. Oh, like her Monatito table. It's like, yeah,
of course, like very godmother ish. And did you see
(23:35):
that Gail lived there for like a large part of
talk about their friendship completely. Oh my gosh. It's like,
my why isn't there following them? Oh my god, I'm
a friendship. I feel like it's the key to her success.
Is that friendship. I am obsessed. I love them too. Okay, sorry, okay,
we'll stop, Lou, Hello, Lou. I love black people, you know.
(24:04):
I'm I'm a part of so many different organizations, um,
and being being a part of the show gives me
the opportunity to meet people like you. I'm I'm a
black man who's been struggling with so many different things
in my life. And I'm finally starting to get like
I'm on like the curve of it all. But it's
still an uphill client, you know, And I'm I'm I'm
willing to go on that journey, you know. Um, And
(24:27):
one of them is is financial literacy. You know, I'm
on this journey right now to a hundred k, you know,
and I'm like, I'm excited about it. I'm like pumped,
you know. And and I got these different avenues that
I'm exploring. As I'm on this journey, I'm starting to
inspire my friends and I'm starting to like share these
things with them, and I'm starting to see how a
(24:49):
lot of them just like like clueless to it. And
I was like, now I'm going to a chance to
realize how I was ninet eleven twelve months ago, you know.
And and and I've battled with racial injustice, you know. So
when I think of racial injustice, the fact that there
is no education, like yes, directly uh pointed at the
(25:12):
black community to say, hey, this is how you get
out of here. This is how we make the community better,
you know, this is how you you create wealth by
using these different tools. So when you when you talk
about racial injustice, um and also finances and stuff like that,
what what what does that sound like? Yeah? So first
let me say, um that for folks who are interested
(25:35):
in this conversation from a historic perspective, I really I'm
staring at it right now so I can get the
title right. I highly suggest a book called The Color
of money, and it is about the history, for lack
of a better word, to the author might not praise
it this way, but the history of shutting black people
out of financial literacy and what we have constantly done
(25:57):
to try to overcome that, you know, from the boycotts
that we've had right to the black banks that we
once had to you know, and trying to sort of
destroy this myth that that we just don't care, right,
that we're just not interested, um, that we're too shortsighted,
(26:17):
that we are naturally different and inferior in the way
we think about money. And so first I just want
to say that you are a part of a legacy, right,
that you are a part of a black legacy that
is trying to overcome and in system that was not
built for us, and in fact was built against us.
(26:40):
And you're not alone in that. Just last week I
was um at my father in law's house. And my
father in law is not rich, but he was a
part of the black middle class that came from the
south up to the north to work at the factories
at Ford and so um, he is solidly stable. My
man still is in the hood, but he he didn't
(27:04):
have to if he didn't love his neighborhood so much. Okay,
he didn't love the city so much. He could move
if he wanted to. And my husband and I were
talking to him about financial planning. We were talking to
him about retirement, about how to create passive income, about
how to make sure that when he could no longer
work at the factory that he and my mother in
(27:28):
law can still live good lives where they can decide
if they want to choose it. He said to me
and my husband, He said, you know what, here's the truth.
The truth is that I know I should be making investments.
I know, He's like, I have the money. I have
the money to be able to try some things and
to take on some risk, he said, But I've been
(27:49):
afraid of being taken for everything that I've got. I
am afraid to trust white people. I am afraid to
tell them really how which I make. I am afraid
that they will not treat me fairly or equally. Right,
(28:10):
So here's someone who could, who has the means, doesn't
have the faith, and doesn't have the faith for really
good reasons. Right. So I say all that to say
that you are not alone in that right, and that
we are constantly fighting two battles, and one is the
(28:31):
history of being shut out, and two is the fear
that whiteness will find a way to continue to shut
us out. And so what we have to do as
a community is one share the knowledge that we do
have right and be willing to support one another right.
(28:51):
So my husband and I didn't walk away from that
conversation and go, well, Dad, you know you really should.
We were like, I got someone for you to talk to.
I have someone that I will vouch for and we
will sit in that conversation with you to make sure
you understand every single thing being said, so that you
feel confident and what it decisions you're about to make right,
(29:15):
that this isn't just about sharing information. It really is
about finding the people that we trust, finding the people
who also love black people. Yeah, that's awesome. Hey. I
also seeing a tweet about amend the show Can we
talk about a man? I started watching it too. Started
(29:37):
the first episode just like took me back I had.
I got out the episode and I was like, WHOA,
what a journey, you know, because it really dives deep
into Frederick Douglas. And I was like, I'm so I
wanted to research him more, and I'm like, Wow, this
man who literally pulled himself up by his bootstraps, you
knows right as as all in slaved people did right.
(30:02):
And this is what American history will not recognize, is
that for anyone who was enslaved right to fight for
their freedom, to live well, to keep their family together
is miraculous. There is no reason why black people should
have made it in this country. But we're still here. Sam.
(30:26):
That conversation was just it was a lot. I learned
a lot. I learned so much. She's so brilliant, and
I just there's just something so lovable about her. I
think a part of the conversation that I was really
into with the part about becoming a homeowner and how
the system is so so just waited against anyone who
(30:52):
doesn't have family money, who didn't grow up white. We
don't talk a lot about home ownership in America and
the sup and the legacy of white supremacy and how
it just carries on through each generation. And and for me,
you know, I am very guilty of constantly saying I'm
listening and I'm learning and not doing enough. And I
(31:14):
think that in home ownership it's it's a collective, like,
what do we do? How do we change that for
the for our generation, not just the next generation, like
for us? Right, so how do we how do we
change that for our peers? Well, and ever since our
conversation with Austin, I've been thinking about the prison system
and how horrific the injustices in our supposed justice system,
(31:38):
and it just it kills me. She also recommended this book,
The Color of Money, which I bought a copy for
me and I bought a copy for lou and Um,
I can't wait to read it. But I think that
so often, you know, we only see the books that
are on the Best Letter list and don't realize how
many other incredible works there are for us to dig into.
(31:59):
Thanks for listening to What's Her Story with Sam and Amy.
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 and Sam's company,
park Place Payments at park place payments dot com. Thanks
(32:21):
to our producer and editor, Laurel Moglin, our podcast associate
Phoebe crane Thus, and our male perspective lue birds
Hosts And Creators
Samantha Ettus
Amy Nelson
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