November 20, 2020 • 18 mins
Host Z and Host Jess compare events involving law enforcement in Kenosha, WI and Rochester, NY.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey listeners, we hope everybody's doing well and
staying safe.
In today's episode, we will becomparing incidents in Kenosha,
Wisconsin, and Rochester, NewYork, both involving law
enforcement and discussing theimportance of learning to disarm
in a non-violent way.
We hope you find itenlightening.
And as always, we appreciate youtuning in.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
You're listening to awaken in America, two minds on
a journey to create dialogueabout diversity inclusion and
optimism.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
So Kenosha, so let's talk about Jacob Blake and the
way that was, um, in front ofhis.
So yeah, that's the part thathit the hardest for me was
thinking he's got three smallchildren in the back.
He was on armed getting in, youknow, getting into his car or
something like that.
And he's shot seven times in theback.
(01:04):
And, um, I just can't believeany child and that's not the
only case, you know, of coursenow these other ones have come
to light where African-Americanpeople have been shot in front
of their children by lawenforcement.
Um, but I just don't know atwhat point in, uh, in a law
enforcement person's training,is that the appropriate response
(01:26):
to whatever the call was about adomestic disturbance or
something like that, you know,on an unarmed person.
Um, so yeah.
Can you just get your thoughtson that seat?
Speaker 3 (01:38):
Yeah, I, and again, I say that, uh, in that particular
instance, it probably would havebeen helpful if there had been a
social worker or someone whodeals with mental health on the
scene that could assess thesituation because, you know,
(02:02):
deer trigger.
Yeah.
And I did do social work.
One of the many hats I've won.
So, um, yes, and honestly, I, sowhen I speak, I speak from a
place of understanding how itcan be to enter an unknown
situation, because I had toanswer people's homes in New
(02:24):
York city.
And, you know, it was a childprotective services doesn't
discriminate.
So someone makes a call.
It can be, you know, a person ofany ethnicity.
It doesn't matter.
Um, and many times I would go tothe homes by myself and it was
(02:44):
scary for me, I'm a new Yorkerand it was scary for me because
you never know what situationyou're walking into.
And I don't carry a weaponright.
As a social worker.
Um, but in my training, Ilearned how to disarm people.
And I think that that's whatneeds to happen is police either
(03:06):
they need to learn how to disarmAfrican American people.
If they're enabled to do that,if you're unable to do that,
then perhaps I don't know.
Maybe they need to do somethingdifferent.
I mean, honestly, yeah.
Maybe because working, and Idon't know that I don't know how
(03:31):
you can untrain someone when wetalk about implicit bias.
And then I talked about thebrainwashing, if you're shown
over the course of your life,that, you know, the blacks are
criminalized over and over andover and over again.
And you've also had someexperiences that are negative.
(03:53):
I mean, you know, that's thetruth.
Then you may just come to melike, you know what, I'm just
grouping them all the same.
You're on that block.
So you're, you are a part ofthat type of neighborhood.
And therefore you act the sameway and it, and it may have
nothing at all to do with thespecific person, obviously, but
(04:14):
it's just that mind frame.
So I don't know how you candisconnect a person from their
implicit bias or their racism.
Um, you know, if they don't, ifthe only blacks the associated
with, or the blacks on thepolice force with them.
Yeah.
You know, that's probably notgreat.
(04:35):
That's probably nervous.
Yeah.
So if you're not spending anytime in the community, other
than when you go there with yourweapon and you're trying to
arrest someone or, you know,you're trying to, um, you know,
do a bus or whatever the casemay be.
If that's the only time you'rehaving a connection with that
community, then it's probablygoing to be negative.
(04:57):
Okay.
And so we know that communitypolicing works, but in many
segments of our population,people don't want to do that.
And you're not gonna find a lotof community policing in the
South.
You know, we still have ahistory here that we're dealing
(05:18):
with.
There's a history here.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And so you're not gonna you're,you're just in certain areas,
you're not going to find it.
So what is the solution?
I don't know, but I do know asan African-American that I'm not
going to give up, um, I'm notgoing to quit.
And I know that there are somany others, like you just, who
(05:38):
are also not going to stopinvestigating and teaching and,
and, and trying to change thesituation because who can live
like that, who can live underthis constant pressure and, um,
and who should lose their life,who should lose their life for
needless things like acounterfeit$20 bill, right.
(06:03):
That may or may not have been
Speaker 1 (06:04):
Five minutes or eight minutes or, yeah.
I mean, that's yeah.
Unimaginable.
Speaker 3 (06:09):
I mean, I, I don't, so yes, I understand that their
policemen are facing a seriousthreat when they enter certain
areas.
I get that.
But if you feel like every timeyou answering that certain area,
that your gun needs to beunholstered, you're not
benefiting them, and you're notdoing your job to serve people
(06:33):
who are you serving to justincarcerate black people, maybe
that is serving someone, but,you know, in the United States
of America, that's not, that'snot the way we're supposed to
work here.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
Right.
And I think if there are anypeople questioning, whether
systemic racism is real in thiscountry, we can point to
implicit bias, you know, on thistopic specifically and say, if
you, if you're a white personand you're on the sidewalk and
you're showing anAfrican-American person and a
(07:05):
white person side by side, andyou had to decide which one was
the criminal, and you say, it'sthe African-American person you
have been affected by implicitbias, you know?
And that, and what that means isyou're basically saying they're
born more inclined to commitcrime because of the color of
their skin, which makes nosense, you know?
And then you can say, but by thenumbers, percentage wise more
(07:30):
criminals are African-American,but that's because of this
bigger problem that we have withsystemic racism.
Speaker 3 (07:36):
And it's also because people are looking for it.
Right.
You can find, and you're lookingfor it, whatever you want.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, you know, there havebeen statistics that have shown
that police more frequentlystopped, right.
People of color.
I mean, that's a statistic.
It's not, I don't have this as asick, but I know it's higher
(07:59):
than it is for whites.
So, you know, if you keep doingthat in a way, you're also like
you're looking, you're lookingfor something it's like, you're
trying to dig and make upsomething, even if it doesn't
exist.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
So I think like to your point, we all owe it to
ourselves as white people to beaware that this implicit bias
exists and it's so dangerous forour African-American
counterparts, it is sodangerous.
People are losing their lives.
And we know that now GeorgeFloyd elevated that more than
ever in this country.
So, um, doing your part todiffuse that amongst your family
(08:36):
and your friends, and, you know,the whole getting to know your,
your police force and the waythat they're protecting your
community, those are all thingsthat we can be doing more of
myself included for sure.
On that
Speaker 3 (08:52):
Attending city council meetings.
Yup.
Speaker 1 (08:56):
Yeah.
Learning more about what's goingon in your community, because a
lot of these things too, arekind of buried in the headlines
and to that end segue to whathappened in Rochester, New York,
which was back in March, butit's just now getting some
press.
And, uh, I think that's becausethe case just went to a grand
jury finally, but there was a, aman there who was killed at the
(09:19):
hands of police and a few hoursbefore he was killed.
He, his brother had asked forhim to be admitted to a hospital
to be evaluated.
So to your point about doingproper psychiatric evaluation,
that's important released afterjust a few hours and then, um,
began interacting, actingirrationally, something like
(09:41):
that.
Next thing, you know, uh, policetried to arrest him, but because
he was spitting, they put a hoodover his head.
And then he, over the course ofhowever many minutes, you know,
was saying he couldn't breatheand you know, that sort of
thing.
And then his, his words turnedto Google.
So they, it was a series ofevents they knew.
(10:02):
And then his heart actuallystopped.
So,
Speaker 3 (10:05):
And they had put the hip and they put him down face
down.
So he had a mask on the spitmask and then they had him on
the pavement.
It's snowing.
The man has like just someshorts on, and then they're
holding him down just like theydid George Floyd.
And he's saying he can breathe.
Speaker 1 (10:27):
And then he, uh, had no heartbeat by the time the
paramedics arrived.
They tried to revive him.
I think they were able to whenhe died in the hospital later,
but it was reported by thecoroner as a homicide and then
somehow or another, you know, asthese things kind of go,
sometimes it was later foundthat he had PCP in his system.
(10:47):
So then it was kind ofmanipulated in the news to say
that he died of a drug overdose.
So, um, yeah, just kind of astark contrast.
If, if a white person wereacting irrationally, would we
get a mask or whatever, thrownon our head because we were
spitting and acting rationally,someone's acting irrationally.
(11:09):
Don't you want to just diffusethe situation, get them, help
get them the medicine that theyneed or whatever, typically
isn't that where we should bestriving, you know, as a police
force.
But, um, that's not the case.
I just don't understand how lawenforcement is hearing this
man's words turned to gurglesand they're still not letting
(11:32):
up.
And so that he can breathe,making sure he can breathe, you
know?
Um, so that's been a,
Speaker 3 (11:41):
And it's happened according to, again, the New
York times article at least 70people that they could find at
least 70.
Yeah.
So how many more do we not knowabout?
And so, you know, again, youknow, we can't, we can't just
look at one incident.
(12:02):
Yes.
There are people that use drugs.
We know that, um, there arepeople with mental illness, but
it's the way that the policeinteract when it's a person of
color versus a white,progressive typically.
Okay.
Of course.
Um, there are always exceptionsto the rule, but we can see with
(12:24):
the numbers that more often thannot, not it's happening, it's
happening too many times
Speaker 1 (12:32):
And it's not being publicized that, uh, people,
like I said, when Leland, um,the astronaut Leland, Melvin is
coming out, speaking publiclypublicly about his own fear of
the police, you know, workingfor NASA and flying for over 500
hours into space and all thissort of thing.
It doesn't matter if you'resuccessful, accomplished,
(12:54):
wealthy that follows you, thatstigma
Speaker 3 (12:58):
Just, they don't discriminate.
You look black then that's, andthen
Speaker 1 (13:07):
One other thing, too, this is related to these two
more current things in theheadlines right now, but I
didn't discuss we, uh, you and Iknow we watched the John Oliver
episode that pointed out a reallife example of the sequence of
events in Kenosha after JacobBlake was shot, uh, the protests
(13:29):
that ensued and the 17 year old,who also was at a Trump rally,
not too long ago, showed up atthe protests with an automatic
weapon, you know, right aroundhis chest or his neck or
whatever, and proceeded to shootand kill two protesters.
And the way that it was covered.
(13:52):
Um, John Oliver actually hadfootage of him walking away
after he had shot these twopeople with his arms up in the
air, but as automatic weapon,you know, in plain view and
these armored tanks, you know, Iguess his national guard or
whatever, driving up the streetand they almost pull over, it's
almost like they pulled over androlled down the window.
(14:12):
They, they got on theloudspeaker of the tank or
whatever, and they say, Oh,somebody injured up there or
something like that and just gotit done.
And he's got his hands up.
So to contrast that with JacobBlake, which is the reason the
protests are happening, man wasunarmed.
Probably wasn't asked a lot ofquestions before he was shot
(14:33):
seven times in the back, youknow, and, um,
Speaker 3 (14:36):
Fruit and water too.
Don't forget that they offer
Speaker 1 (14:40):
Water.
And they said something like,thanks for helping protect or
something insane like that.
So here's this guy who's, youknow, this is a guy who's not
even old enough to vote showingup, but he's
Speaker 3 (14:52):
A Patriot, don't forget he's a Patriot.
Speaker 1 (14:54):
So, and this reminds me of something that we've been
listening to on audio, the Timwise, why like me and the
parallel that he makes in thevery beginning of the preface of
the book, which resonated withme saying there's such a stark
contrast in the way a white mancan show up to a protest with a
(15:17):
gun.
And somehow in our psyche here,that's associated with
patriotism.
But if an African-American doesthe same thing and shows up with
a weapon, you should probably beprepared to be arrested at the,
at that minimum, you know, youknow, terrorists,
Speaker 3 (15:39):
Terrorists, hello weekend, that was a mouthful.
It was difficult for us to havethat conversation.
And to be honest, many of theseconversations are difficult for
us.
And, um, we want you to knowthat everything we say we take
(16:03):
to heart, um, the discussionsare not always easy.
Um, sometimes they sound lightwhen we, you know, are
discussing them with you.
But to be honest, they'redifficult when we have them
initially many times and, um,individually, um, when we talk,
(16:24):
we realize that these topics arehard.
These are real lives.
These are real people that arebeing impacted by what's going
on, including myself, I'm beingimpacted.
I'm a person of color.
It affects me.
It affects my family.
Um, and whether or not you're aperson of color, these are
(16:45):
issues that affect Americans.
And as an American, we shouldall care about things that
impact each other.
So I like to leave you todaywith a thought, if you could do
one thing today, one thing thatcould change something for a
(17:09):
person of color, whether it be ahealth issue, um, whether it be
a financial issue, um, whetherit be, you know, supporting a
petition, what is one thing youcould do today to help change
(17:30):
the inequalities, the injusticein America, if you could do one
thing, what would that be?
I challenge you to that today.
And as always, we appreciateyour comments.
We appreciate you listening.
Um, please, you know, check outour Instagram page.
(17:51):
We're always trying to promote,um, optimism and positivity and
we appreciate you just beingavailable.
Thanks again,info@awakenedinamerica.com take
care.
Speaker 2 (18:11):
Thank you for listening to awakened in
America.
If you enjoy today's podcast, besure to subscribe and leave a
review.
You can also find us onInstagram at awakened in
America.
That's awakened underscore inunderscore America and remember
be mindful, be grateful.
(18:33):
And most of all be you.
Hey listeners, we hope everybody's doing well and
staying safe.
In today's episode, we will becomparing incidents in Kenosha,
Wisconsin, and Rochester, NewYork, both involving law
enforcement and discussing theimportance of learning to disarm
in a non-violent way.
We hope you find itenlightening.
And as always, we appreciate youtuning in.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
You're listening to awaken in America, two minds on
a journey to create dialogueabout diversity inclusion and
optimism.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
So Kenosha, so let's talk about Jacob Blake and the
way that was, um, in front ofhis.
So yeah, that's the part thathit the hardest for me was
thinking he's got three smallchildren in the back.
He was on armed getting in, youknow, getting into his car or
something like that.
And he's shot seven times in theback.
(01:04):
And, um, I just can't believeany child and that's not the
only case, you know, of coursenow these other ones have come
to light where African-Americanpeople have been shot in front
of their children by lawenforcement.
Um, but I just don't know atwhat point in, uh, in a law
enforcement person's training,is that the appropriate response
(01:26):
to whatever the call was about adomestic disturbance or
something like that, you know,on an unarmed person.
Um, so yeah.
Can you just get your thoughtson that seat?
Speaker 3 (01:38):
Yeah, I, and again, I say that, uh, in that particular
instance, it probably would havebeen helpful if there had been a
social worker or someone whodeals with mental health on the
scene that could assess thesituation because, you know,
(02:02):
deer trigger.
Yeah.
And I did do social work.
One of the many hats I've won.
So, um, yes, and honestly, I, sowhen I speak, I speak from a
place of understanding how itcan be to enter an unknown
situation, because I had toanswer people's homes in New
(02:24):
York city.
And, you know, it was a childprotective services doesn't
discriminate.
So someone makes a call.
It can be, you know, a person ofany ethnicity.
It doesn't matter.
Um, and many times I would go tothe homes by myself and it was
(02:44):
scary for me, I'm a new Yorkerand it was scary for me because
you never know what situationyou're walking into.
And I don't carry a weaponright.
As a social worker.
Um, but in my training, Ilearned how to disarm people.
And I think that that's whatneeds to happen is police either
(03:06):
they need to learn how to disarmAfrican American people.
If they're enabled to do that,if you're unable to do that,
then perhaps I don't know.
Maybe they need to do somethingdifferent.
I mean, honestly, yeah.
Maybe because working, and Idon't know that I don't know how
(03:31):
you can untrain someone when wetalk about implicit bias.
And then I talked about thebrainwashing, if you're shown
over the course of your life,that, you know, the blacks are
criminalized over and over andover and over again.
And you've also had someexperiences that are negative.
(03:53):
I mean, you know, that's thetruth.
Then you may just come to melike, you know what, I'm just
grouping them all the same.
You're on that block.
So you're, you are a part ofthat type of neighborhood.
And therefore you act the sameway and it, and it may have
nothing at all to do with thespecific person, obviously, but
(04:14):
it's just that mind frame.
So I don't know how you candisconnect a person from their
implicit bias or their racism.
Um, you know, if they don't, ifthe only blacks the associated
with, or the blacks on thepolice force with them.
Yeah.
You know, that's probably notgreat.
(04:35):
That's probably nervous.
Yeah.
So if you're not spending anytime in the community, other
than when you go there with yourweapon and you're trying to
arrest someone or, you know,you're trying to, um, you know,
do a bus or whatever the casemay be.
If that's the only time you'rehaving a connection with that
community, then it's probablygoing to be negative.
(04:57):
Okay.
And so we know that communitypolicing works, but in many
segments of our population,people don't want to do that.
And you're not gonna find a lotof community policing in the
South.
You know, we still have ahistory here that we're dealing
(05:18):
with.
There's a history here.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And so you're not gonna you're,you're just in certain areas,
you're not going to find it.
So what is the solution?
I don't know, but I do know asan African-American that I'm not
going to give up, um, I'm notgoing to quit.
And I know that there are somany others, like you just, who
(05:38):
are also not going to stopinvestigating and teaching and,
and, and trying to change thesituation because who can live
like that, who can live underthis constant pressure and, um,
and who should lose their life,who should lose their life for
needless things like acounterfeit$20 bill, right.
(06:03):
That may or may not have been
Speaker 1 (06:04):
Five minutes or eight minutes or, yeah.
I mean, that's yeah.
Unimaginable.
Speaker 3 (06:09):
I mean, I, I don't, so yes, I understand that their
policemen are facing a seriousthreat when they enter certain
areas.
I get that.
But if you feel like every timeyou answering that certain area,
that your gun needs to beunholstered, you're not
benefiting them, and you're notdoing your job to serve people
(06:33):
who are you serving to justincarcerate black people, maybe
that is serving someone, but,you know, in the United States
of America, that's not, that'snot the way we're supposed to
work here.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
Right.
And I think if there are anypeople questioning, whether
systemic racism is real in thiscountry, we can point to
implicit bias, you know, on thistopic specifically and say, if
you, if you're a white personand you're on the sidewalk and
you're showing anAfrican-American person and a
(07:05):
white person side by side, andyou had to decide which one was
the criminal, and you say, it'sthe African-American person you
have been affected by implicitbias, you know?
And that, and what that means isyou're basically saying they're
born more inclined to commitcrime because of the color of
their skin, which makes nosense, you know?
And then you can say, but by thenumbers, percentage wise more
(07:30):
criminals are African-American,but that's because of this
bigger problem that we have withsystemic racism.
Speaker 3 (07:36):
And it's also because people are looking for it.
Right.
You can find, and you're lookingfor it, whatever you want.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, you know, there havebeen statistics that have shown
that police more frequentlystopped, right.
People of color.
I mean, that's a statistic.
It's not, I don't have this as asick, but I know it's higher
(07:59):
than it is for whites.
So, you know, if you keep doingthat in a way, you're also like
you're looking, you're lookingfor something it's like, you're
trying to dig and make upsomething, even if it doesn't
exist.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
So I think like to your point, we all owe it to
ourselves as white people to beaware that this implicit bias
exists and it's so dangerous forour African-American
counterparts, it is sodangerous.
People are losing their lives.
And we know that now GeorgeFloyd elevated that more than
ever in this country.
So, um, doing your part todiffuse that amongst your family
(08:36):
and your friends, and, you know,the whole getting to know your,
your police force and the waythat they're protecting your
community, those are all thingsthat we can be doing more of
myself included for sure.
On that
Speaker 3 (08:52):
Attending city council meetings.
Yup.
Speaker 1 (08:56):
Yeah.
Learning more about what's goingon in your community, because a
lot of these things too, arekind of buried in the headlines
and to that end segue to whathappened in Rochester, New York,
which was back in March, butit's just now getting some
press.
And, uh, I think that's becausethe case just went to a grand
jury finally, but there was a, aman there who was killed at the
(09:19):
hands of police and a few hoursbefore he was killed.
He, his brother had asked forhim to be admitted to a hospital
to be evaluated.
So to your point about doingproper psychiatric evaluation,
that's important released afterjust a few hours and then, um,
began interacting, actingirrationally, something like
(09:41):
that.
Next thing, you know, uh, policetried to arrest him, but because
he was spitting, they put a hoodover his head.
And then he, over the course ofhowever many minutes, you know,
was saying he couldn't breatheand you know, that sort of
thing.
And then his, his words turnedto Google.
So they, it was a series ofevents they knew.
(10:02):
And then his heart actuallystopped.
So,
Speaker 3 (10:05):
And they had put the hip and they put him down face
down.
So he had a mask on the spitmask and then they had him on
the pavement.
It's snowing.
The man has like just someshorts on, and then they're
holding him down just like theydid George Floyd.
And he's saying he can breathe.
Speaker 1 (10:27):
And then he, uh, had no heartbeat by the time the
paramedics arrived.
They tried to revive him.
I think they were able to whenhe died in the hospital later,
but it was reported by thecoroner as a homicide and then
somehow or another, you know, asthese things kind of go,
sometimes it was later foundthat he had PCP in his system.
(10:47):
So then it was kind ofmanipulated in the news to say
that he died of a drug overdose.
So, um, yeah, just kind of astark contrast.
If, if a white person wereacting irrationally, would we
get a mask or whatever, thrownon our head because we were
spitting and acting rationally,someone's acting irrationally.
(11:09):
Don't you want to just diffusethe situation, get them, help
get them the medicine that theyneed or whatever, typically
isn't that where we should bestriving, you know, as a police
force.
But, um, that's not the case.
I just don't understand how lawenforcement is hearing this
man's words turned to gurglesand they're still not letting
(11:32):
up.
And so that he can breathe,making sure he can breathe, you
know?
Um, so that's been a,
Speaker 3 (11:41):
And it's happened according to, again, the New
York times article at least 70people that they could find at
least 70.
Yeah.
So how many more do we not knowabout?
And so, you know, again, youknow, we can't, we can't just
look at one incident.
(12:02):
Yes.
There are people that use drugs.
We know that, um, there arepeople with mental illness, but
it's the way that the policeinteract when it's a person of
color versus a white,progressive typically.
Okay.
Of course.
Um, there are always exceptionsto the rule, but we can see with
(12:24):
the numbers that more often thannot, not it's happening, it's
happening too many times
Speaker 1 (12:32):
And it's not being publicized that, uh, people,
like I said, when Leland, um,the astronaut Leland, Melvin is
coming out, speaking publiclypublicly about his own fear of
the police, you know, workingfor NASA and flying for over 500
hours into space and all thissort of thing.
It doesn't matter if you'resuccessful, accomplished,
(12:54):
wealthy that follows you, thatstigma
Speaker 3 (12:58):
Just, they don't discriminate.
You look black then that's, andthen
Speaker 1 (13:07):
One other thing, too, this is related to these two
more current things in theheadlines right now, but I
didn't discuss we, uh, you and Iknow we watched the John Oliver
episode that pointed out a reallife example of the sequence of
events in Kenosha after JacobBlake was shot, uh, the protests
(13:29):
that ensued and the 17 year old,who also was at a Trump rally,
not too long ago, showed up atthe protests with an automatic
weapon, you know, right aroundhis chest or his neck or
whatever, and proceeded to shootand kill two protesters.
And the way that it was covered.
(13:52):
Um, John Oliver actually hadfootage of him walking away
after he had shot these twopeople with his arms up in the
air, but as automatic weapon,you know, in plain view and
these armored tanks, you know, Iguess his national guard or
whatever, driving up the streetand they almost pull over, it's
almost like they pulled over androlled down the window.
(14:12):
They, they got on theloudspeaker of the tank or
whatever, and they say, Oh,somebody injured up there or
something like that and just gotit done.
And he's got his hands up.
So to contrast that with JacobBlake, which is the reason the
protests are happening, man wasunarmed.
Probably wasn't asked a lot ofquestions before he was shot
(14:33):
seven times in the back, youknow, and, um,
Speaker 3 (14:36):
Fruit and water too.
Don't forget that they offer
Speaker 1 (14:40):
Water.
And they said something like,thanks for helping protect or
something insane like that.
So here's this guy who's, youknow, this is a guy who's not
even old enough to vote showingup, but he's
Speaker 3 (14:52):
A Patriot, don't forget he's a Patriot.
Speaker 1 (14:54):
So, and this reminds me of something that we've been
listening to on audio, the Timwise, why like me and the
parallel that he makes in thevery beginning of the preface of
the book, which resonated withme saying there's such a stark
contrast in the way a white mancan show up to a protest with a
(15:17):
gun.
And somehow in our psyche here,that's associated with
patriotism.
But if an African-American doesthe same thing and shows up with
a weapon, you should probably beprepared to be arrested at the,
at that minimum, you know, youknow, terrorists,
Speaker 3 (15:39):
Terrorists, hello weekend, that was a mouthful.
It was difficult for us to havethat conversation.
And to be honest, many of theseconversations are difficult for
us.
And, um, we want you to knowthat everything we say we take
(16:03):
to heart, um, the discussionsare not always easy.
Um, sometimes they sound lightwhen we, you know, are
discussing them with you.
But to be honest, they'redifficult when we have them
initially many times and, um,individually, um, when we talk,
(16:24):
we realize that these topics arehard.
These are real lives.
These are real people that arebeing impacted by what's going
on, including myself, I'm beingimpacted.
I'm a person of color.
It affects me.
It affects my family.
Um, and whether or not you're aperson of color, these are
(16:45):
issues that affect Americans.
And as an American, we shouldall care about things that
impact each other.
So I like to leave you todaywith a thought, if you could do
one thing today, one thing thatcould change something for a
(17:09):
person of color, whether it be ahealth issue, um, whether it be
a financial issue, um, whetherit be, you know, supporting a
petition, what is one thing youcould do today to help change
(17:30):
the inequalities, the injusticein America, if you could do one
thing, what would that be?
I challenge you to that today.
And as always, we appreciateyour comments.
We appreciate you listening.
Um, please, you know, check outour Instagram page.
(17:51):
We're always trying to promote,um, optimism and positivity and
we appreciate you just beingavailable.
Thanks again,info@awakenedinamerica.com take
care.
Speaker 2 (18:11):
Thank you for listening to awakened in
America.
If you enjoy today's podcast, besure to subscribe and leave a
review.
You can also find us onInstagram at awakened in
America.
That's awakened underscore inunderscore America and remember
be mindful, be grateful.
(18:33):
And most of all be you.
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