Jamil Smith - Pt. 1

In honor of Black History Month, Work in Progress in honored to have journalist and Emmy-award winning television producer Jamil Smith on the podcast for a two-part special. Jamil joins Sophia to talk about growing up in a feminist household, the importance of fueling the intellect of children, understanding the black experience, telling the Beverly Johnson story, and so much more.

Executive Producers: Sophia Bush & Rabbit Grin Productions

Associate Producers: Samantha Skelton & Mica Sangiacomo

Editor: Josh Windisch

Artwork by the Hoodzpah Sisters

This show is brought to you by Brilliant Anatomy

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
On today's episode, in honor of Black History Month, we
are bringing you a special, never released episode with journalist
and Emmy Award winning television producer my friend Jamiale Smith.
Jamiale is an extraordinary person who I will tell you
all about in just a minute. But first a little secret.
We actually recorded the bulk of this episode in early

(00:21):
Jamale and I, after the beginning of the pandemic, ended
up recording a second episode that we decided to release
that year instead, which you'll hear in next week's re release.
But after going back and listening to both parts of
our conversation and totality, I felt that this deserved to
make its way into your home, your car, your earbuds,

(00:42):
or wherever you find yourself listening to this podcast. There
are portions of this conversation that we had been they
feel even more relevant to me now and as we
all look at the landscape of the world around us
and how best to show up for each other. One
of the people who I love to have conversations about
showing up, speaking up, and loving up with is my

(01:06):
friend Jamil I'm thrilled for you to hear this conversation
with someone I am beyond honored to know. So let's
get to it. Listeners. I am so excited, honored, and

(01:28):
just thrilled for you to hear my conversation today with
journalist and Emmy Award winning television producer my friend jamial Smith.
Through his work, Jamiale explores a range of political and
cultural topics, including national affairs, race and racism, politics, identity,
police brutality, feminism and gender roles, and pop culture. Jamiale's

(01:52):
career has been nothing short of incredible as a journalist
and a commentator. He's been featured in The New York Times,
esquiy Or, The Washington Post, Huff Post, and the Los
Angeles Times, among others. He's served as a senior editor
at The New Republic, launching and hosting the magazine's first podcast, Intersection,

(02:13):
and he was a senior national correspondent in MTV News.
Jamille also worked as a segment producer for NFL Films,
earning him three Emmy Awards, after which he went on
to join MSNBC, serving as a producer for both The
Rachel Maddow Show and Melissa Harris Perry. While he was
a senior writer for Rolling Stone at the time of recording.
He is now a senior correspondent at Vox and co

(02:38):
host of his very own podcast, Box Conversations. Today, I'm
sitting down with Jamille to discuss his early life growing
up in Ohio, the incredible journey into the depths of
our country's politics and culture that his career has taken him, on,
the Black Lives Matter movement, what it would really mean
for us to love each other a little more, and
so so much more. Enjoy. I love to start with people,

(03:15):
uh by going backwards, because yes, you you are an
incredible journalist. You are a beautiful writer. You report for
Rolling Stone on on some of the most important issues
in regards to politics and identity. You come from the
world of Rachel Maddow. You you are often first to

(03:35):
report on things the world needs to know about. But
how did you get like this? Like what happened? Because
I know that you grew up in Cleveland, and so
I wonder about my friend Jamal, who I know in
the present? Like who were you as a kid? Who

(03:56):
were you at ten years old? Were you were you
writing stories where you really curious? What? What was your
life in Ohio? Okay? So it's an interesting it's an
interesting start be on a number of levels. So I'm
I'm the son of a Vietnam veteran. My father and
my mother, who is, you know, phenomenal intellectual, is now professor.

(04:20):
My mom went to graduate school while I was in
high school to get her masters, and then while I
was in undergrad was getting her PhD. So we were
both in college at the same time, and I'm enormously
proud of I'm enormously proud of both of them. So
my parents were divorced when I was very young, and
that is it's you know, significant, because I don't really

(04:43):
remember them being married. I don't remember us all as
a unit, but we were. It's the most well adjusted,
you know, family unit you could have considering that situation, because, uh,
they are. They're wonderful to each other. And um, it
is good that I have this one memory of that
time when I'm about three or four years old. Um,

(05:06):
they took me to a concert because I was crazy
about Shaka Khan. I remember this even Befo, when I
was like three or four years old and crazy about
Shaka Khan and this album she did, Rufus and Shaka Khan,
and they took me to the now defunct uh closed
Front Row Theater is Amphitheater in Cleveland. To see Shaka

(05:27):
Kan and Shaka Khan. Long story short comes out into
the crowd singing. You know, singers do sings. I guess
my little cute afrow itself and picks me up, holds
me in her arms and sings to me. And I
remember this because I remember the look on my parents
faces even when when I when I was that young, uh,

(05:50):
and sings to me, kisses me on the cheek and
sets me down. And um, you know it is possibly
my earliest memory. Uh, it's Shaka Khan and doing that.
But it's also really sweet because it's one of the
only memories I have of the three of us together.
So from there, Um, I grew up in you know

(06:11):
you read a little Flyers everywhere. It's in my book stack.
It's one of those books I haven't gotten to God. Well,
that is the neighborhood in which I grew up, Shaker Heads,
Ohio and so and the author of the book went
to my high school and you're just reading the book.
It's just the details in it are so uncandid. She

(06:32):
just nailed it. Um. It was a really unique place
to grow up because you know, it's like ostensibly racially
diverse neighborhood pretty much fifty fifty high school. But and
and this is a city city, by the way. In
the sixties, Jaker Heights was celebrated as this wonderful like
beacon of diversity and perfection. It's one of the only

(06:52):
I think it's the first planned community in the United
States of its type. So, you know, you get to
the high school and then once the cafeteria are all
the white kids, and all the other side of the
cafeteria all the black kids. And I come into this
from a private school where I was one of very
few black kids, and I got along with everybody. So

(07:12):
I just I sat with people who I wanted to
see this want to sit with. I vibe with people
who I vibe with. You know, I still have a
ton of black friends and a ton of white friends
and son of Asian friends from high school. And I
carried on through through college. When I really came out
of my show, it was very shy uh in high school,
but came out of my show in college at University
of Pennsylvania. And that's kind of like where I kind

(07:36):
of became who I am as a person. Um, I
think I got my values from my parents and my
grandparents in terms of my my my strong feminist beliefs. Uh,
it came from not just having strong women in my life,
but caring about their lives and their outcomes. You know.
It wasn't just like, hey, my mom and my grandmother
are really strong individuals and and go to work and

(07:58):
provide for their families. But it's about investing in that
outcome for them and people like them that I think
is something that was instilled in me very early. And
I'm not sure who did that. I mean, my father,
you know, is very progressive. I just think that being
around people who who nurture you and who actually believe

(08:20):
in you makes all the difference when you're a kid.
And that's that's what I was blessed to have. When
you talk about those beliefs being instilled in you as
a kid, you know, investing in the women and your
family being even aware enough to be concerned with their outcomes.
Are there things that in hindsight you realize showed you

(08:42):
how to do that? Are there are there things that
you now see as an adult man that you grew
up witnessing in your home that maybe some less less
feminist men did not. That's interesting question. I think that well.
With my grandmother, when I was very young, she would
take me to work with her. She worked for the

(09:02):
magistrate in Pittsburgh. My whole side of that family is
from Pittsburgh. And she would take me to work with
her and not just kind of dote on me as
a child in the office, but set me up with
the typewriter and say like, Okay, you know, I gotta
do work. I this is important, but I need you
to sit here and behave. And I was a good kid.

(09:23):
That wasn't really hard for me. But I you know,
I sat there and and I observed. And I think
this is where my early development of my power of observation.
I think it helps me in my work. I think
that I observed what was happening in that office. I
observed the gender dynamics, the racial dynamics. I observe how
people talk to one another. I observed what was respectful

(09:45):
and not not respectful. And I think that too large
to large extance. Seeing my grandmother, though she was a secretary,
have a position of power in that office because she
was competent and she was treated well. That probably had
a big effect on me. And you know, knowing that
my mom was a single mom and working hard to provide,

(10:08):
and but I was seeing my dad, you know, she
was she made sure that she stayed in Cleveland so
that she I could have a relationship with my father,
and I was there with him every other I feel
like almost every other day. It's almost like I was
growing up in just the same house, but just two
different houses. And I think with the key to that
is you have parents who have a really healthy relationship

(10:29):
and they prioritize you. And then you also see good
examples in your life of people who embody the values
that you can. You hold there and not just say
that they're about them, but they actually practice those values.
And so the whole saying, you know, don't talk about it,
be about it, that really uh sunk in early. So

(10:52):
I think that that's where that comes from. And also
I was a pretty well read kid, So I was
always reading stories, maybe a little bit beyond my age
my age range, but I was reading about things that
that really gave me perspective on the world, maybe a
little bit prematurely. And I think that it might have
been a good thing. So I think overall it was.

(11:17):
It was a good childhood. You know, I had people
who supported me and supported my intellectual pursuits. And as
far as writing, I mean, eighth grade, Mrs Handy in
the English class hands me my assignment back and says,
this is this is great. You're a really good writer.
And that's the first time a teacher had really told

(11:37):
me that I was good at something. And I gave
you a copy of the assignment to my grandmother. She
had it on her fresh so that she died, and
I have it framed here in my housecial. Yeah, I
think there's something so amazing that happens when kids are
really supported and encouraged for their intellect. Because intellectual pursuits,

(11:59):
by their nature, make you a more expansive human being. Yes,
they make you more in touch, they make you more curious,
they make you want to learn about others. So if
we fuel the intellect of children, they often become more
well rounded and fair human beings. Right, And you know,

(12:19):
I'm I'm a libra. I'm inclined towards balance and fairness
as it is. But I I had people around me
who said, hey, you're smart, you're good. So no matter
what you may be hearing at school from these kids
who maybe peer pressuring you or bullying you or what
have you, you are good. And I was always coming

(12:40):
home and feeling valued all the time. And so I
would ache for those kids who don't, who don't have that,
who have probably more intellect than I did, and don't
have that nurtured because they have terrible schools, because they
have bad housing with environmental concerns that can either affect
them physiologically in terms of their intellect or affect their

(13:04):
health in other ways. Yes, and and then but then
we see something like this pandemic happen, and then those
people suffer disproportunately, and then you have a president gets
up on the mic and says, I don't know why
this is happening. I have no idea. I just I
don't understand. Yeah, we know exactly why it's happening. Actually, yeah,
So I'm I'm curious. You know you you talk about

(13:26):
Mrs Handy, and I love that. I My favorite English
teacher in high school, UM was my teacher, Mr Goss.
He was just the greatest, the greatest, Um and and
certainly helped me become the writer, you know, the amateur

(13:46):
journalist that I am today. Um. And that was further
fueled by my favorite professor in college, Christopher Smith, who
I just spoke to yesterday, which is so funny. I
was actually I was on a zoom meeting with a
with a writer that I love, talking about a project
we want to work on together. She's this phenomenal screenwriter
and I was telling her about interviewing my college professor

(14:08):
on my podcast, and he texted me and I was like,
what the universe? What is happening? It was so bizarre.
So it's funny. He's like, if I get a text
message for him and get him again right now, I'm
gonna lose my ship. Um. But I you know, I
think about those teachers who really become so formative for us.
And you know, you talk about this paper you still
have from the eighth grade and and while you were

(14:32):
in high school, you know, before we get into u PEN,
you started writing for the student paper. Was that later
in your high school career or was it was it
in the beginning. Do you remember what you first wrote about?
How how did that happen? Not only what I first
wrote about But the very first day, I walked into
Sally Schwartz's office, she was our journalism teacher, and said,

(14:54):
I want to write for the school paper. This is
the like the first week of school. I'm in brand
new at Shagerhand's Ide School, and I walked into Sally
Schwartz's office and my little confident self is like, I
want to work for the paper. And she's like, well,
you gotta take my class. You had to take the
journalism class in order to qualify to write for the Shaker, right,

(15:14):
And so I said, fine, I'll do it. I took
the class, and eventually I became one of the news editors.
But the very first thing I wrote about had to
do with race. So, Shaker Heights borders Cleveland, and there
are traffic barriers that when you're coming from Cleveland into
Shaker in certain streets, in certain certain passageways, there are

(15:39):
little traffic barriers there to slow down extensively the traffic
coming from Cleveland, which is it's it's stereotypes clevelanders as
more wild or reckless, and it's very heavily black area
that's right outside of Shaker. So I believe, as a
councilman had taken a banner and stretched it over the

(15:59):
main Throwaway Lee Road that runs through Cleveland and into Shaker,
and it had in apartheid Shaker on banner and I
was I said, okay, I think I'm gonna go right
about that, and yeah, yeah, it was. It was a thing.
It was a thing. And so it's because it was

(16:20):
viewed as racially discriminatory again, because you had this very
heavily black neighborhood that's being essentially told that we need
to protect ourselves from you with these traffic barriers. And
it's to me, I saw plenty of dangerous things and
Shaker growing up too, and I saw the councilor's point,
and so it didn't lead me. I didn't start opinion

(16:42):
writing until much later. But I think, and it's I
think it's really important for opinion writers to train as
reporters because you need to learn how to actually do
the journalists and you can't just go out there and
just scout off, you know, whatever you want to say,
you have to back it up in terms of your reporting.
And so I think that train was very very good.
As I went to college and then became an opinion

(17:03):
writer for the Daily Pennsylvania. Wow, So why you penn
How did you make that decision? So I was down
to the two schools that had the best to college
dailies in the country, uh, Daily Northwestern and The Daily Pennsylvania.
And I decided I wanted to go to school in
an urban environment. I wanted to do it in a

(17:25):
city that I was not familiar with or had not
really ever been to. So Chicago and Philadelphia both met
that bill. But I went up to Northwestern on a
minority scholars weekend after I was accepted, and even though
I vibed with a whole lot of people there, I
just was in the Midwest again. Um. I saw the
lake was right there, and I knew what kind of

(17:46):
whether Chicago had, and so yeah, I don't need to
tell you, uh. And then I said, yeah, I think
I'm gonna go to Philadelphia. I don't know anything about Philadelphia,
had been there once. Of this the campus, they did
not show us the rough parts. But I had a
really positive experience overall through my four years pen and

(18:09):
I had, you know, wonderful friends that you know, I'm
still in touch with out of that experience, and wonderful
professors al phil reis Herman Beavers and Greg Campfield, Uh,
to name a few who are really positive and important
in my life and remain so. And so it was.
It was a hard a lot of respects because I

(18:30):
felt like I didn't have family. But the thing is,
I also picked pen in part because my parents, my
grandparents were in Pittsburgh and it was a bust drive
away from Philadelphia, whereas if I was in Chicago, I
don't have a family there. So that and then there
was you know, I believe thing you know, which got
you know, I was disabused to that. I think about

(18:53):
a month in once I saw some of my classmates,
but um, you know, Donald Trump went there, so yeah, yikes,
what what did you study there? I was an English
major and I saw I was throwing in there thinking
I was going to do English and history double major.
But I wanted to study abroad, and I figured that

(19:14):
that I wasn't gonna be able to do that while
trying to do two majors, So I I cut it
down to the English because I really viewed undergraduate UH
study as a time to learn how to think, rather
than trying to absorb all the information. I really wanted
to basically train my brain for the world. And I
was doing it, you know, with one of my favorite pastimes,

(19:36):
which was reading and writing, and so I really enjoyed
in Farall Griffin, another professor who was now at Columbia,
it was really important to me. That's where I really
feel it first fell in love with what the major
was in her class and in Greg Campfield's class, and
they in the recent Why It's because they both encouraged
me to have critical thinking in every aspect of what

(19:58):
I was doing. I remember there was one in Professor
Campfield's class. His t A gave me a C plus
on a paper I had written about Walden Henry Throws Walden,
in which I basically argued that this was an equivalent
of basically what we would call a reality stunt nowadays,
that no matter what, he could always go back, and

(20:19):
this idea that he was just like living off the land.
I just to this day, I still think it's a crock.
And I wrote this whole paper basically interrupting it and
you know, laying up my analysis, and the t gave
me a C plus and like, but no real explanation.
So I went to Professor Campfield. I said look, I
think this guy gave me a C plus because he

(20:40):
disagrees with me, and that is not how you argue,
and that's not how you you do things. I would
love you if you could reevaluate this paper. And if
I deserve the C plus, great, I'll take it. But
just read, just read it and see if my argument
makes any sense. And he gave me an a minus

(21:03):
tenacity tenacity. But it also it was a good lesson
in how to approach your arguments calmly, as calmly as
you possibly can, because you know, I could have gotten
in that t S face and shouted him down and
custom out, and you know that wouldn't have gotten me anywhere. Now,
there are times for that in this world, sure, as

(21:23):
you well know. But to your point, critical thinking should
be the root of everything. We have to look past
what our initial response is because of an opinion or
a feeling or a personal experience and look critically at
what is happening. And I think you know as and
and we'll get there. But sort of the asterisk for

(21:47):
present day politics is that nobody wants to think critically
about policy. They just want to play party lines and
look at the detrimental effects that this is having on
all of our communities, and in particular historically oppressed ones.
It's it's a god damn mess. And we've got to
return to a time where we are looking at science,

(22:09):
where we are looking at fact, where we are looking
at financial data, and we're making decisions based in critical thought.
There's something that I I love just because I know
about it, uh, in your experience at you Pen while
you were I believe it was your senior year, right,

(22:31):
you were a rape crisis counselor. And I think that
that's just such a testament to who you are. And
I'm curious because I think about most of the boys
I knew and what they were doing their senior in college,
and they certainly weren't volunteering to be rape crisis counselors.
How did you decide that that was something that you

(22:52):
wanted to do? And then how as a young man
do you show up in an arena like that and
get the role and and and get taken seriously as
as someone who wants to be an ally and who
wants to to serve in that way. The impetus for
me join uh what was then known as students Together

(23:14):
against acquaintance rape was. You know, I think two things. One,
I knew and had seen a number of people who
had been traumatized by the really you know, pervasive rape
culture at our in our campus. And I'm not talking
about people who just simply sexually suffered sexual assault but

(23:35):
or harassment, but just simply because I saw people's behavior
change to accommodate for it. And that's men and women.
So men, I saw guys who were you know, previously
kind of with it, you know, they got sucked into
this culture and then they started spouting off this all
massogynist garbage. And then I saw women who were traumatized

(23:59):
by that that that climate. And I felt like I
wasn't doing my job as a as a student who
was aware of these things if I didn't actually try
to do something about it. And so I thought about it,
and my friend Katie was part of this group, and
so she told me a little bit more about what

(24:19):
was involved, and you know, we had take back the nights,
you know, on a locust walk in our in our campus,
and that deeply affected me. But it wasn't really until
I actually became a counselor and I really started talking
to you guys in particular, because it was required for
all the fraternities on campus to have one of these

(24:41):
workshops from our group. And it's really good thing they
did that today. It's a really good thing because a
lot of these guys didn't know what rape was. They
didn't understand that if you forced a woman down or
you don't get her consent, and affirmative consent, as my
friend Jessica Valenti and Jacke Freedman have so ably defined,

(25:03):
affirmative consent is so vital. You have to it doesn't
ruin the mood. Guys, if you hear yes, or you
have to ask for a yes, it doesn't ruin the mood.
Just get affirmative consent. Then then you both are on
the same plane. And frankly, it makes makes it better,
I'll be perfectly frank Um. You know when you when

(25:25):
you're not, when you both are on the same page
as to where your consent is. I want to be here,
I want to have this experience. I'm I'm all in
for it, that's what it means. And getting these guys
to understand that I was really rewarding in a lot
of ways, because I really hope it's sunk in and

(25:45):
maybe prevented them from, if not becoming rapists. And for
sexual abusers per se, just knowing how to interact with
women better, knowing how to you know, possibly you know,
be better part nurse. And now you know, I'm I'm
not perfect in that regard, but I think that it's

(26:06):
certainly taught me a lot about how we learn behaviors
unconsciously in the society and how we have to actively
take an interest in unlearning them or else they just
think right in and then they surface it sometimes at
the worst times, and we just need to invest in

(26:28):
that for ourselves. And whether that comes in the form
now if you're an adult in therapy, whether it comes
in the form of talking to friends and commiserating, or
simply removing yourselves from negative situations, you gotta do it.
You have to do it, and do it now. It's
never too late. There's been so much exposure and reporting

(26:51):
on the prevalence of sexual assault on college campuses. Why
do you think because what a progressive idea. You know
that when you were in college, fraternity has had to
meet with rape crisis counselors. Why do you think that
hasn't been instituted as a policy in all colleges. Why
why do you think we haven't made more progress teaching

(27:14):
young people that other young people's bodies are not for
the taking. I think to some degree, sexual violence is
still regarded as an individual crime rather than a systemic problem.
It is, you know, hey, this bad seed did this
or this one thing happened, and we don't know what happened,

(27:35):
and it's really tragic and it's terrible, and that just happened.
It happened, just the thing that happened. Whereas I view
it more systematically, I think that there is a culture
that teaches us how to behave towards one another, and
then if you are in those individual situations, things can't happen.

(27:57):
But those are consequences, often of learned behavior from a
system that needs to be changed. And that is why, Um,
that's why you know, we need, like I was saying before,
we need to invest in it. We need to invest
in creating that change rather than simply hoping that someone
else does it for us. Now, I think that's a

(28:19):
hell of a thing for a journalist to say, considering
I write about the things that people other people do,
But I think what I try to use my journalism
to do is to inform people about what I think
is important, especially through my commentary in my opinion, and
give them a perspective on things that helps them perhaps
reconsider there previously held beliefs. And sometimes also people need

(28:46):
a rallying cry. So if I'm writing something that it's like, hey,
we need to be paying attention to this problem because
it's important, and I think it's important, and you should
think it's important, and it's a little bit of a
you know, sort of juvenile way of quitting it. But
I think that it's that really is the essence of
what we deal as opinion writers is just try to

(29:07):
give people perspective on something that we should think we
should be shouting everyone should be shouting a light upon
and and reconsidering. And because I think that you know,
if you're write an opinion and you're just simply regurgitating,
you know, sort of the commonly held wisdom on Twitter
or what you may be, you know understand from your training,

(29:27):
from you know, wherever you may come from, then you're
not necessarily offering something that's valuable in the in the
marketplace of ideas m HM. Because I think there's inherent
in that there's a refusal for the writer to consider
whether or not she or he is wrong. And I

(29:48):
think I approached I try to approach every column that
a right understanding that I could be very wrong about
the argument that I'm presenting, and that's why I try
to substantiate it the best that and and I also
leave open the possibility that things could change number one.
Number two, that other facts may come to light which

(30:11):
may change my mind. And number three, I think that
you know, there there's world events that happened that shifts
our entire lens on what we've been thinking about and
forces us to re consider everything anew. And I hope
that you know, people are you know, you pining, whether

(30:31):
it's in a tweet or in a column or a
feature length essay or poem, even that they consider the
fact that they're not infallible. And I just think that
that's the that's the healthy approach that we need to take.
And it's something that I've had to learn because sometimes
you get carried away with yourself and hey, um, i

(30:52):
know I'm right that this guy is an asshole. I
know I'm right that this guy is hurting people. I
know I'm right about this this, and um, I mean,
thank you're right, but leave open the possibility for being wrong.
I like that a lot. Do you think that that
was a skill that you were honing in college, because
you know, you talked about being an English major. I
imagine you were writing a lot. And and after college

(31:17):
you you get into TV, you get into sports, you
know what, what is the transition there? And and how
do you think you brought this this consciousness of you know, justice, parity, equality,
your experiences with you into that world which is so

(31:40):
highly competitive and perhaps not always so open to the
more empathetic exploration and examination of how we as humans
treat each other. Right, Um, I think that it's a
lot of learning and a lot of mistakes. Um. And
and honestly, wasn't Again, I mean, as much as I

(32:02):
may have been assertive in my writing, I think this
is still a little bit true today. I was not
nearly as assertive, as far as you know, having couraged
to really even start the career that I wanted. I
came out of college and I looked at a bunch
of journalism jobs that weren't paying much. I'm a kid
from Cleveland who has no real connections. Um. I've done

(32:24):
an internship out here in l A at production company
Disney Studios, but after commencement, that job fell through, and
so I'm sitting you know, that summer back home, wondering
what I'm gonna do, um and how how this is
all gonna work out? And I end up working at
William Morris as an assistant for four years when just

(32:47):
I guess, sort of my graduate school uh in a
lot of ways, but I think that it really comes
from you know, there's a there's a through line through
all of my strange career, which is that I love
telling stories, and whether it's inventing stories, you know, for fiction,
um or having really mostly my career has really been

(33:08):
about news and documentary stuff. That yeah, that's it really
teaches you how to see something through someone else's eyes.
And I think that as much as I may have
been empathetic in college, I really that empathy really grew
once I started telling other people's stories. And so I'm

(33:29):
at CNN as a p A and HBO Sports as
an as social producer. Then I go into NFL Films,
making football movies for Steve Sabole UH for six years
and you know, that's an aspect of my career. I
think a lot of people aren't really cognizant about UM
and that is the time. Also, you know, I try
to encourage people, especially young people, when I speak to them.

(33:51):
You have to not just go on every interview because
you can always learn something, but if you have different passions.
I had passed for film and TV. You know, at
one point in my high school years, I was going
to be the next Spike Lee. I had these passions
that I wanted to develop, but also the journalism and
in the writing, and I didn't really see how they

(34:14):
were gonna mesh quite but I just took the time
in my life to pursue both. I took the time,
you know, to be at NFL films and to enjoy
what it was like to do highlights and you know,
do documentary segments and and and be on the NFL
field during the game and all these different things that
I will, you know, I loved as a kid. And

(34:38):
then I got the chance to go and work for MSNBC,
work under intellects like Rachel and Melissa and and really
understand how a TV show should run. And then once
I was done with cable news. I feel like I
was done with that phase of my life. It was
time to write full time because I you know, Rachel Battle,
you know, found me on Twitter. That's how that got

(35:00):
that job. And I was oppinting writing this blog that
no one was reading because I had a passion for
doing that, and then later on I had a passion
for right full time. And with with her, you know,
Melissa's blessing, I went off to the New Republic, became
a senior editor, and then I was nearly forty years

(35:21):
old starting my writing career full time. And what was
going on at the New Republic in what was the
landscape there. It was fresh off of the mass affection
following Chris Hughes taking over the magazine, the Facebook co founder,
and so Chris was our boss and Gabriel Snyder was

(35:43):
my editor in chief and Gabe is the one who
really brought me in. And at the time, I think
I became the the the in terms of like African
Americans at the New Republic, the highest ranking on the
masthead they've ever had in one years of the magazine,
which didn't say a lot. I didn't say a lot

(36:03):
at all, but it doesn't say a lot. And also
you're like, yeah, I kicked that door down. I'm happy that. Yeah,
both both end, both end. But you know, that was
the place where I really learned how to work in
a you know, a daily journalistic environment. Um. That was
about the kinds of things that I knew. I was like, Okay,

(36:24):
this is what I want to do, I think, for
the rest of my life. And this is where I'm
getting the training. I know this as I'm as it's happening.
I'm getting the training two do what I hope to
be doing, you know, maybe until I'm seventy eight years old.
And I just I didn't take it asn't like an
internship or anything. By no means. I had a podcast,

(36:47):
you know, I was writing my tail off, but I
just I just found it. It It was a really interesting
learning round. And when it all fell apart, when when
Chris decided to sell the magazine, I already had an
exit door to MTV News. We're became a senior national
course comment and that was fun. I've had. I've got
a lot of luck at micro. Yeah, only so the

(37:09):
New Republic shutters. You go to work for MTV News
and then and then over the last five years. How
do we how do we get to this place where
you are writing these incredible pieces for Rolling Stone, a
cover story for Time magazine, you know, all across this
journalistic landscape. While the landscape of journalism has really been changing,

(37:33):
it's a it's such a strange time for magazines, online publications,
print papers, editors and formats have been shifting around. You know,
how have you created a path on a road that
seems to be moving constantly? I think a lot of
it You have to own it up to look I

(37:54):
think I just say, hey, I got lucky that I
had this opportunity with MTV right as Republic under Chris
Hughes at least was crumbling. It's obviously still still publishing.
But I get to MTV and I while we have
a wonderful, amazing team of all stars. I mean, Dorian
st Felix is now with The New Yorker at Madison,

(38:16):
Who's now you know, the podcast can keep it just
this like Murderers Row of Writer. It's just a hopper
Carlo Wallace, And somehow the corporate overlords don't understand the
value of what we're doing or of what we can bring,
the value that we can bring to their organizations. So

(38:39):
it was like I like it, and you sports metaphors,
but it's like a coach getting fired after his first year,
you know, like you haven't even a chance to change
the culture yet, even even a chance to really make
mistakes and and and be forgiven for them. I just
think that it was one of the most fulfilling professional

(39:00):
experiences I've ever had. And I just even today, you know, folks,
who are you know with that crew, we still talk
about the fact that we could have really done some
damage if we've been given another chance. But the problem,
as you mentioned the changing landscape of news, is that
we got caught up in the whole pivot to video thing.

(39:20):
You know, this whole thing based off of false Facebook,
all the algorithms, these corporate media folks thinking like, Okay,
we're gonna make more money with video as opposed to
the written word. Let's get rid of all of these
journalistic all stars, and we're gonna bring in video crew.
And you know, since then they pivoted right back to print,
you know. So, uh, it's a real shame because I

(39:45):
think people a little bit jumpy in this business. Um.
I think you know, one of the things I really
love about working for Rolling Stone is that they've invested
in the print product. You have this wonderfully beautiful, revised
magazine that's on this wonderful paper it and and you have
this great journalism that's still in it, and they've invested
in it. And that, to me is the kind of

(40:06):
place that I want to be at, a place that
invests in the journalistic product and understands that, Look, you
don't buy magazines necessarily to make money. You buy it
so that you can help perpetuate something that's good in
the world. You know. One of the adages that I
always remember from my time with Rachel Metal is that

(40:29):
she would always say, you know, I want to increase
the amount of useful information in the world. And whether
that's through your reporting, or that's through your opinion, whether
that's through your being essayist or a poet. If you
can increase the amount of useful information in the world,
especially as a journalist, you're doing the right thing. But
one of the reasons why I am a journalists I

(40:51):
think it's different. So when I was fifteen years old,
um my cousin Andrea was murdered and he had been
missing for thank you. It's still something I'm wrestling with.
And you know, I'm fifteen years old. I'm coming back
from Martin Luther King Day program and my my mother

(41:13):
gives me the terrible news once I get in there,
and I want to get home. And you know, he
was the closest thing I ever had to an older brother,
and he's just experiencing that loss and checking the papers
in Cleveland to see if anyone wrote it up, and
in Michigan where he was found, to see if anyone

(41:35):
wrote it up. Actually went to the library. I don't
think I ever told my mother this, but actually went
to the library, you know, asked for like the micro
fiche of like the Detroit Free Press, so that I
could see if there is anything there about him, and
there was nothing. And it sticks with me because there's
so many people out here who don't get their stories told.

(41:57):
Because there are certain people in or whether it be
in media or government, who don't think that they matter,
or they don't have the time. You know, they got
this other story to cover. And you know, I hate
turning down pictures sometimes because of that, because I know
that that story means everything to that person. That's why

(42:20):
they're reaching out to me at this big platform, and
when I told them, hey, I'm working on this feature,
don't at the time, or I'm really sorry, um, but
I don't have the ability right now to investigate it.
It hurts my heart because I think of that moment
when I was a kid and I didn't see my

(42:45):
you know, my my big cousins life valued in the
same way that I have valued him. And that needs
to be a goal of our of our journalism I
think in this country is to make sure that we're
not going to accomplish it every day. It's just not
it's not possible, but we need to shoot for it. This,

(43:07):
especially with opinion journalism, that to make people's stories, to
illuminate them in ways that the reader sees a completely
different person that they may have otherwise just walk past
on the street. I think one of the masters of
that is right here in Los Angeles, Steve Lopez at
the l A Times. He's brilliant at it. There are

(43:30):
other columns are Bread growing Up, Dwayne Wick Oleman, Ralph Wiley.
You know, these these masters of the written word who
are able to bridge different mediums sometimes if they have to.
But really in that journalistic medium make people feel valued
who would otherwise be ignored. And if I can do

(43:52):
that with what I'm doing, uh, then I'm gonna keep
doing it. And as long as I don't get distracted
from it too much. You know, if I decided to
go on and tell stories, you know, through television, medium
or film, those avenues may be available. But for right now,
this is this is who I am, and this is

(44:12):
what I do. Yeah, And I think to your point
about what it can do to people when their stories
are not told, when no one takes a moment to
honor their experience. There is such a profound opportunity for
closeness in really exploring the story of a person. You know,

(44:36):
when when you can feel because of something you've read
that you you empathize, you sympathize, you understand a person,
it's really profound And and there's a there's a way
that you told a story of someone that I would
love to touch on because it really ties to all

(44:57):
the things we've discussed too, you know, experiences of race
and gender, to the complexity of what it means to
be in um in a body. I mean essentially that is,
you know, not a white cis gendered male body. And
I'm sure there are some people who have heard that
term a lot, and I would imagine most of the

(45:18):
listeners of my podcast understand where we're going to go
with this, but I'm sure there's some people who go, like, God,
I'm so sick of hearing about it. But the reason
I feel like we have to come to the table
of conversations like these openly and be willing to repeat
um subject matter is because it takes a while for

(45:39):
things to really get in. And I know that I
experienced proximal power to you know, white male supremacy because
I'm a white woman. But I also know that there
has never been a day that has gone by in
my entire life when I have not been reminded out
in the world that I am a woman and that
I'm either sexualized again my will or diminished because I

(46:03):
couldn't possibly be a female and have a high intellect
or be pretty and smart. That's got to be impossible.
Whether there's always no never, or or can't you just
sit still and shut the funk up so I can
look at you. I hear that a lot on the internet. Um,
there is never not a reminder that someone has an
expectation because of my gender, and thus I would be

(46:27):
remiss and honestly moronic to not recognize that they farther
someone gets from their proximal relationship to white head or
normative male supremacy, the more complex that daily experience in
the world gets. So when you are a person of color,
when you are a woman of color, and you are

(46:47):
not only dealing with racialized tension, but gendered tension, I
don't think it does me any harm, disservice, or or
reduces my potential to simply admit that I can sympathize
and want to understand the experience other people have. And

(47:09):
yet no matter how many stories I hear it, it
is an empathetic sympathy. But I can't walk in someone
else's shoes unless I read something that really helps put
me there, unless I I get to have the specific conversation.

(47:29):
And you mentioned your two of your friends earlier, Jessica
Valenti and Jaqueline Friedman, too incredible journalists, and they put
together this beautiful book of essays called Believe Me, and
it's how trusting women can change the world. And you
wrote an essay for this book that really affected me
so profoundly because it managed to personalize and specify this

(47:55):
intersection of of a racial and a gendered experience that
Beverly Johnson, who is one of the women who was
assaulted by Bill Cosby, experienced in the aftermath of that assault.
And you wrote this thing that has really stuck with
me because in a way, I think we can all

(48:17):
relate to this in whatever relative experience we have in
our lives. But you talk about how Beverly feared reporting
Bill Cosby, not because of the backlash she might receive
or or what people might immediately assume would cause her fear,
but she she was thinking about ghosts. And when I

(48:43):
read that, it gave me the chills, because I really
I could viscerally feel those words, because the ghosts on
her mind were the ghosts of black men and boys
whose bodies are so often discarded in America. And Beverly
was thinking, here is Bill Cosby who had who achieved
this upper echelon status in America despite his blackness, When

(49:09):
boys like Trayvon Martin and Alton Sterling and men like
Eric Garner have been cast repeatedly in this spotlight, that says, well,
they did something to deserve what happened to them, And
the other side of that experience is so often, as

(49:29):
you said earlier, that the violence perpetrated against women societally
has been described as a singular experience. It's not systemic.
Especially when rich white men like Harvey Weinstein or serial rapists,
it's well, he has a problem where he's from a
different era, or you know, the Santa Barbera shooter is

(49:49):
called a lone wolf. We're not talking about the culture
of male entitlement to female bodies. We're not talking about
cultures of supremacy. We're claiming that if it's sexual violence,
it's it's some weird guy with a weird issue. And
so here is Beverly sitting at the crux of this experience,

(50:10):
wondering if she reports her abuser, will she somehow pull
the progress of black men who aren't rich and famous.
Will she pull these men backwards? If she tells people
what Bill Cosby did to her? I mean, what what
an impossible decision and what a service you did for

(50:34):
all of us to tell her story so clearly and complexly.
How how do you begin to make sense of this
when you speak to her? And what did it feel
like to try to tell this story as a man
who exists in a black body every day. UM, I

(50:57):
knew it was really important first of all for me
as a black man understanding what or how I exist
in the world and how I moved through the world
to present that argument. You know, I think that you know,
first of all, it's it's it's so often left to
black women to essentially make the interpretation, even of their

(51:22):
own actions in a way that that you know, frankly
doesn't get heard or listen to enough when we talk
about privilege. I understand my male privilege as I, as
Hannibal Burris understood his when he called Bill Cosby out.
You know, he was louder, he was more public, but
he was also male, and that got him listened to.

(51:47):
And so I understand that even if it's on a
subtle level as a storyteller, um, as a person making
an argument, as a person writing an essay where I
sit in the world and how I exist in the
world and why people may or may not listen to me.
And also, frankly, given the argument that I was making,

(52:08):
and I really appreciate your kind words about it. The
fact is it's there's only so much air. There's only
so much life in all of us. And if black
women are forced or compelled to essentially hold black men
so tightly to them that in a metaphoral, metamorphical, metaphorical sense,

(52:29):
they're so closely holding us that they have no room
themselves to breathe anymore. They basically forced all the air
out of their lungs for our benefit. And that's really
how I saw the Beverly Johnson story. I saw a
woman who had wrestled with an impossible choice with it,

(52:54):
you know, very logical thinking. I think, you know, hey,
I see tray Von, I see Freddy Ray, I see Um,
you know Eric Garner, all these people who have been
victimized because they are black, and they were doing the
most minor of things moving throughout the world. Um, if

(53:16):
I say this about Bill Cosby, it will ruin this
avatar of black manhood that has been actually accepted by
American popular culture by and large. He was America's dad.
He's selling Puttin Pops and you know he's the guy
on Fat Albert when I was a kid. This is
the guy who people trusted to be a presentable image

(53:40):
of a black man. As much as we may laugh
at Richard Pryor and Eddie Murphy and a bunch of
these other folks. Bill Cosby was the guy who people
would welcome into their homes and to ruin that I
understand the kind of pressure, you know, to a certain extent,

(54:00):
what you might have been feeling, and I can only
you know. I can only sympathize, of course, but it
must have been unbearable. And what I hope to do
with this essay is for women who are suffering this
less publicly and to be able to see that and say, hey,
we are being heard by our men number one, but

(54:24):
by the world at large, and also to tell people
to acquaint people who are not at all familiar with
black experiences plural, that this is something that happens, This
is something we have to worry about. This is something
that's on our minds. It's much like right now with
the covera coronavirus pandemic. I told somebody, I said, I

(54:45):
can't wear a bandana outside of the house around my face.
You understand what that looks like. I'm a black man
of reasonable size and we're a bandana on my face.
I'm gonna either be look regarded as a crook, or
as a game member. And there are people who said, oh,
game members brought this on themselves, Well they didn't. Game

(55:06):
members did not bring this on themselves. All game members
are violent, and the police regards them and as criminals.
They criminalize them unfairly, puts them on lists, you know short,
you know, it introduces them cavalierly into the criminal justice
system without having, you know, them having done anything wrong

(55:27):
in a lot of cases. And so I knew that
I couldn't move in my in this shell through the
world with a banana on my face without maybe either
some significant covering or what have you. It's just not
as free as everybody else. And I was lucky enough
a friend of mine sent me a masses can't take cloth.

(55:49):
So I'm celebrating my blackness in different ways during this pandemic.
But just to get back to the point, I think
that with this essay offered me, you know, Jacqueline and
Jeff offer me a unique opportunity to really speak to
how black men hopefully should perceive the ply to black
women and understand that, you know, no matter how hard

(56:13):
we have it, there is a double whammy. Unlike perhaps
any other people in the world, right now on black
women in this country, and we need to appreciate the
struggles that they go through and also find ways to
not make it worse. So I just we can't not

(56:35):
make it worse by not dying at police hands. That's
on the police, that's on the agents of the state.
But we need to understand this rape culture and how
racism intertwined within and they combine to form this leviathan

(56:56):
that we yet to get rid of. And people frown
at the term intersectionality that Kimberly Crunchhall created, but this
is this is the reality of America. And if that's
too academic a term for you, I don't care. I
needed to to understand what that means because that is
the reality that we all live with. And if you

(57:17):
don't live with it, or you don't think that you do,
then you still have a duty to learn about it.
We need to be an inquisitive people as Americans if
we're ever going to get this right. Thank you for that.
You know, as you were talking about verticals of experience,
whether we're talking about the intersectionality of sexual violence experience

(57:42):
differently in different communities, or to your point, talking about
what's happening with this virus currently. You know, as you said,
you said to me a moment ago, you are a
black man of reasonable size, you can't walk around with
a bandana over your face. And I think out the
video that came out of what I believe was a

(58:03):
Walmart of a man being escorted out by a police
officer saying, you can't be in here wearing that mask.
He was a black man, and the guy is saying,
but we're supposed to wear masks in public, and there's
this whole experience, and the man took a video. And
then just yesterday I saw a news article about a
black man who was arrested outside of his home unloading

(58:26):
his car. He had a mask on, and the police
arrested him. They thought that he was disturbing the peace
or breaking into the car, or whatever excuse they gave.
And and the guy was like, hey, by the way,
I'm a doctor. I'm just like a doctor outside of
my house unloading my car with a mask on, because
it's I'm a doctor. And it's a pandemic, you know,

(58:49):
and it is a real reality that's happening everywhere. And
I think, to your point, a lot of people perhaps
don't experience it. So maybe they don't know how pervasive
it is, or or and I understand this, maybe don't
have as much time to read the news as you
and I do, and so they don't see it. And

(59:10):
and then I think there is this other side to
it to reference a very different kind of story that
you wrote, where you know, Black Panthers on the cover
of Time magazine and people say, we'll see, look, that
movie was one of the biggest movies ever and it's
a black superhero movie, and Lena Waite has a production deal,
and look at all these cool things that are happening,

(59:32):
and and you know, there's there's plenty of there's plenty
more parody than there used to be. And people are
not understanding the differential of a success story, which by
the way, it took until ten for Black Panther to
come out, which is insane. Ah, they're not understanding the

(59:52):
differential of that movie doing well on a global scale
and the daily experience of people who have suffered generational opression.
And again my desire to acknowledge it, and and the
deep way in which I'm affected by the oppression of
communities is because your oppression is my oppression. We are

(01:00:16):
all in this together. Where I can be oppressed because
of my gender and you can be oppressed because of
your skin, the root of that ugliness is the same.
The desire to subjugate people is oppressive. It is authoritarian,
it is it is about a hoarding of resources. It
is about the denial of humanity. And I can't imagine

(01:00:41):
being able to say, well, I don't like being oppressed,
but my oppression is pretty livable. So maybe I'm not
going to go ruffle feathers over there where those people
are being oppressed in a way that's not livable, because
I kind of don't want to be a target. It's
like we're all targets until none of us are targets.
And that is the thing we need to learn about
this community that America has has has become, and as

(01:01:04):
much as we may deny it or once you know,
avoid realizing that we are all in this together, and
this frankly, this disease is making us understand that at
a new level. But even even with that understanding in hand,
people hold tight to their to their beliefs, and to
their their own sense of reality. So when I when

(01:01:26):
I covered Black Panther, that that was a really interesting
experience because I thought, you know, when I got the
assignment that I was just gonna be writing essentially, not
a review of the piece, but but just kind of
a an analysis through my sort of political and racial
lens of what the movie was. And it would be
in the art section and thousand wordans and I would

(01:01:49):
be that. And I end in the first draft and
the editors say, look, now we want you to expand this,
we want you to let this grow. And that's when
I added the section at the top where I really
kind of tried to help people who aren't black understand
what this movie means to us. You know, even before
it had come out, I said, you know, look, if

(01:02:12):
you're white, you have heroes all day, all day, you
see yourself and your reality reflected all around you all
day long. And and and to say nothing of your
reality but your history as well. There's different forms of
white period pieces. I mean generally with this black period pieces,

(01:02:35):
it's like y'all were slaves and we're gonna tell that story.
Not that those movies haven't been good. Some of them
have been good, some of them not. But the point
is is that our reality encompasses in our history encompasses
such a wide variety of experience and and I just

(01:02:56):
think that that multiplicity, uh needs to be a little
bit more on display. And I think that Black Panther
offered an opportunity that I think yet it is yet
to be seized to be frank since it came out
for Hollywood to understand that the multiplicity of blackness can
be reflected on screen. It needs to be reflected in

(01:03:17):
order not just for our benefits so that we can
go around, you know, doing condosolutes and and having pride
for a good couple of months while the movie is out,
but you know, so that white people can understand this reality,
get to understand this as multidimensional. Honestly, it's not on

(01:03:38):
us anymore to teach white people about how and why
we deserve to exist in the world. It is also
on white people to learn this and to take an
active interest in learning it. And whether that they learned
it by going to the Shopberg Center, New York and
immersing themselves in research for a week, or they learn
it by watching documentaries or pressing their teachers to black literature,

(01:04:01):
or they learned it by seeing Black Panther and saying Hey,
that's beautiful. Those are my heroes too. H. It has
to come somehow, and and it has to be conspicuous
and willful and and not by accident. It's you know,
it's cool. If it happens by accident, we'll take it.

(01:04:21):
But I think if we're ever really truly going to
get ourselves out of this morass, just as sexism and
misogyny are problems for men to fix, because that's on us.
We are the perpetrators of that. It's on white people
to fix racism in America. It's not. Don't all that saying,
you know, if it as it was on us, uh

(01:04:41):
to fix it, it's not. And we can make people
aware of it increasingly, often repeating ourselves at nauseam. But
it is. It is. You know, things like Black Panther
why they're so significant. It is not merely so that
you know, the five year old version of me or
a ten year old version of me and can go

(01:05:03):
to a movie and see himself reflected on a big screen.
That is important, But it's about understanding how multifaceted our
communities are and and and understanding that, you know, if
I go into West Indian communities, black had from a while,
there's no none of that heritage. I'm there too, you know,

(01:05:25):
when I lived in Brooklyn and Crown Heights and Prospect Heights,
I learned a lot about that particular facet of blackness.
I think people would just really benefit from being more
curious and again thinking more critically. I love that. I
think about some of the young people who listen to
this podcast, and I don't know why. I'm just like,
I'm sort of picturing the archetype of a girl who

(01:05:49):
is seventeen and might be sitting at home listening to
us talk and thinking, I don't know if I've been
exposed by my high school English teacher to my black literature.
Are there's three books that you would say, make these
your pandemic homework? Yeah, I mean I will. I will

(01:06:11):
echo that. Let let you know if you if you're
listening to this and you're thinking that, man, I haven't
been assigned in a book by a black author, for
you know, in particular a black woman my entire high
school career. Yeah, well, I'd say join the club, because
I can't think of too much that I was assigned

(01:06:31):
even you know, it's wonderful Shaker Rights High School is.
I can't think of too many black books that I
was assigned. And I think I'm thankful that I had
parents who were conscious and conscientious enough two supplement my
education more or less by feeding my curiosity. Uh says, okay,
you're gonna devour these books. Well, here to devour some
of these two. And also having people who were prideful

(01:06:56):
in their jobs. You know that people often dismiss My
grandfather was a custodian at the school, my grandmother was
a secretary. But seeing them take pride and and and
honor in their work, maybe I understand from early age
if that wasn't something that they looked down upon. Despite
the You know, my wealthy friends at my private school,
whom I have fathers who are heads of banks and

(01:07:18):
corporations and whatnot. These these are my people. And so
I would say it's tough to narrow it down. But
I would say, if you want to narrow it down
to say three books, I would read My Bondage in
My Freedom by Frederick Douglas. I would read The Souls
of Black Folk by W. E. B. Two Boys, and

(01:07:39):
I would read Their Eyes Were Watching Gods or No Hurston.
You know there's those are three books. And I say,
in my formative years in terms of coming into my
sense of black consciousness, a kid who is going to
private school and didn't have that reflected around him on
a daily base, is at least in the environment that

(01:08:03):
really helped me understand the kind of places that my
people were coming from. And in terms of contemporary books,
if you're up for reading one of the best memoirs ever,
which is Heavy by my Man, yes a Lehman, if
you're up for reading folks like Octavia Butler, sci fi
and k j Emison. These are people writing in different

(01:08:25):
genres that are still reflecting our experiences in our realities.
And I'll tell you one of the reasons I love
Star Treks so much is that it visualized the future
in which we were present. The visualized the future in
which in Nyota Huru is an incredibly important person on
this starship, she is a part of that reality. And

(01:08:49):
the fact that they did that in the nineteen sixties
it was recognized as revolutionary in some circles, but not
not more broadly because they kind of, you know, they
limited sci fi. I think science fiction is one of
the most prophetic genres that we have of storytelling because
it reflects our reality, and then it's asked to project

(01:09:10):
into the future something that we cannot see and envision
how our reality is going to lead to that or not,
or just a scenario of how human behavior would operate
in an environment that we've never seen or ever encountered.
And that takes some thinking. That takes a brain power.
And it's just not you know, me pitching your to

(01:09:32):
like reboot Alien or anything. But that would be cool
if you did that honestly, like sign me up, I'm ready,
You're ready to train, right, Yeah, you know I love
an action job. I'm ready, So I mean, but it's
still you think about movies like Arrival Amy Adams, where
you're seeing an entire perspective on this wild scenario through

(01:09:57):
a woman's eyes, and I think people didn't understand or
appreciate how revolutionary that was when when Sigourney Weaver did
in an Alien and and Jamie Lee Curtis and Halloween
even we have to think about how we can articulate
our stories through the lens of people who aren't white men.
And that's one of the things that Black Panther Getting
back to the point, one of the things that Black

(01:10:17):
Panther really drove home. There's not just a black man
whose whose perspective you see? I mean it had one
of the most complex villains in film history. Who's who
you really took over as the protagonist almost for a
little bit, and you I've never felt so much empathy
for a villain. And also at the end of the

(01:10:39):
at the end of the film spoiler alert, Deschalla realizes
to a certain degree that the kill Monger is correct
and adopts essentially a modified version of his plan. I mean,
what movie, what movie do you see where the hero
triumphs over the villain and then basically says, Okay, I

(01:10:59):
like plan. I'm just gonna adopt some changes make it
more mean, you know well, And I might argue that
that more even than saying I like your plan. What
he says when our hero looks at a villain and says,
I understand that your heart broke in your childhood trauma,

(01:11:20):
and that you have been trying to avenge that trauma
your whole life. I also want to avenge traumatized people,
but I don't want to do it by harming others.
I want to do it by creating a more just world,
and by breaking down borders and by sharing resources. I mean,
it was an incredibly profound message and I loved it.

(01:11:46):
I mean, I want to talk about people's unprocessed childhood
trauma all day. You know. That's that's one of the
things I think is so important about our ever widening consciousness.
You know, you have all these resources. I talked to
my parents about this recently, and my mom said, you know,
you guys have all these resources we didn't have, you know,

(01:12:07):
these conversations about trauma and and the popularization of therapy
and and that it's cool to take care of your
mental health. You know, We're in this really special time
and and I think that is why so many people
are opening their eyes to systems, are are looking at
who gets to tell the stories. You know. I think

(01:12:30):
about something you mentioned a while back before we you know,
we got into movies and books, but when you were
talking about how coronavirus are our current pandemic situation is
so disproportionately affecting black and brown and indigenous communities, and
it's so that article. I mean, I read it and

(01:12:51):
it's it is a gut punch, and I mean that
in the best way possible. It's so important to look
at it, you know, And and through the storytelling lens,
you said, we always die first, and and we are
we are seeing And you wrote about the administration. You wrote,

(01:13:12):
they are not just complicit but accelerants in the conditions
that made black people more vulnerable to the novel coronavirus
to begin with. And these are the things we've been discussing,
these generational systems of oppression, denial of access to care,
maybe not overt violence, but a withholding of resources. And

(01:13:32):
now we see what's happening in these communities, and and
being the journalists that you are and having that kind
of expertise that comes from such exposure to people's realities,
what do you think are the steps that need to
be taken? And how would you suggest, without co opting

(01:13:53):
the narrative or taking the mic, how can the rest
of us advocate for and with communities of color who
are being denied the resources that they need at this time?
I think what we have to do is be humble.
Number One. Humility is key. When I wrote that essay
in that book, I had to be humble to understand that, hey,

(01:14:15):
I don't have the experience of black women have. So
I think that if you want to be a true ally,
you have to first humble yourself and understand what you
don't know and and be willing to learn and absorb knowledge,
but don't depend wholly upon the people who you're trying
to represent to give you that knowledge. If that, if

(01:14:35):
that makes any sense, there has to be an inherent
drive and curiosity that you exhibit, and it's easily recognizable.
It's like, Okay, this person is actually trying to advocate
for me because they understand what they don't know and
they're trying to go out and learn it. But they're
not depending upon me to like school them in all
things black, you know, and and so that they can

(01:14:58):
help me. That gets a exhausting and you know, I'm
sure for women it gets exhausting. Men try to help
and they're like, okay, well tell me what it's like
being a woman in America. Won't like how much time
do you have? You know? You know? Uh? And So
I think that that humility is is key. I think
that a true grasp on the facts is essential. You

(01:15:22):
can't just come out with outrage everyone like odd people
are piste off a lot of people are angry about
what's going on in the world. But you need to
have the data. You need to have the information. And
that doesn't mean that everyone needs to be reporters per se.
But we all have cameras in our hands. Now, we
all have this, you know, these computers in our hands,

(01:15:43):
and I don't think enough of us to using them
and the way they should be used. I think those
are two steps right off the bat. Be informed and
be humble. It's just essential. Well, my friend, the time
has come for me to ask you my very favorite question.
Oh man, here we go. We're have in a conversation
on work in progress. And when you hear the phrase

(01:16:04):
be it something personal or professional? What comes up in
your mind and heart as a work in progress in
your life? Right now? Um, two things, one personal and professional.
I'll start with the profession. What comes to mind when
I hear that phrase, especially as I listened to the show,
is that the work is progress and we need to

(01:16:25):
understand that the work that we put in every day,
it needs to be understood that it's it's it's while
it may feel like we're standing still so often, it's
it's helping progress something somewhere that maybe we don't see
I is tempting in this business to get worried about

(01:16:46):
who's retweeting you, how many, how many likes you have?
Is that a measure of your your your scope of influence?
And I encourage people who are in and out of
media to to understand that what you're doing on a
daily basis has has value beyond this easily quantifiable measures

(01:17:07):
that social media and other things have introduced in order
to frankly profit all of us. We need to understand
that this is this work that we do every day
moves us forward. And if you truly feel like your
work isn't moving you forward, then yes, perhaps some introspection
is needed. But yeah, I think people to understand and

(01:17:28):
I certainly needed to understand it too, even even recently,
that the work is progress and personally, on a personal level,
even at forty four years old, um, I think I
still and getting to know myself and going through a
traumatic time right now. Is we all are on a

(01:17:51):
collective level, and as I am on personal level, I
think that you really get to learn more about who
you are and you really need to have that firm
basis in mind. I really, as much as I know
my predilections and my precadillos. I think you learn new
things about yourself when you go through trauma. Given that
my career essentially stems from a moment of trauma with

(01:18:17):
my cousin's death, I'm constantly re examining that, not just
as far as what I do every day, but as
far as how I moved through the world. And I
know that he would not want me so preoccupied per
se with what happened to him. At least maybe I

(01:18:40):
feel that way. But at the same time, you have
to work through what you got. So that means, especially
men out here and listen and go to therapy. It's
not an indication that you're soft. It's not an indication
that you're not masculine. Um, it's not an indication that
you are somehow faulty. Even it just means such, you're vulnerable.

(01:19:05):
That's a good thing, and vulnerability to burn a Brown's point,
you know, as a researcher, actually requires the most courage.
So I look around and I'm like, oh, boys, you
want to prove to me that you are masculine. How's
your vulnerability going, because otherwise otherwise you're just playing right

(01:19:26):
right for lack of better word, it's acting, and not
all of us are very good actors, unlike you President
company here, So thank you, m Yeah, that's those are
the things. You're very welcome, And thank you for your
vulnerability and for your commitment and and your unwavering pursuit

(01:19:49):
of progress and the truth. It really means a lot,
and I'm very honored to be your friend. The feeling
is very mutual. Oh,