October 24, 2022 • 51 mins
Lettie Gore is a Black woman, historian, and racial justice educator living in Wilmington, NC. She is also the host and owner of her podcast History Shows Us. Lettie is passionate about telling the often-overlooked sides of history and connecting the past to today’s racial and social justice issues.
What Lettie has to share is crucially important. We all have biases that we view the world through and it is so important to understand different perspectives and different lived experiences than our own.
As Lettie says, "You have to do the work. That's on you. That's no one else's responsibility."
So let's do the work...
Instagram: @sincerely.lettie
Twitter: @sincerelylettie
Patreon: www.patreon.com/lettiegore
Podcast: History Shows Us
Other Resources on Racial Injustice:
American Dream and the American Negro: James Baldwim
Code Switch Podcast: NPR
Check your Privilege: Myisha Hill (IG)
Professor Kena Reed (IG)
Medical Apartheid: Harriet Washington
How to Be Less Stupid About Race: Crystal A Fleming
They were her Property: Stephanie Jones Rogers
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Lettie Gore (00:00):
When we talk about the word freedom, and we talk
about the word free.
We hear these words, our wholelives.
What does that really meanthough?
Freedom for who?
Who gets to decide what freedomis?
Michael Bauman (00:53):
Welcome back to Success Engineering.
I'm your host, Michael Bauman.
I have the pleasure of havingLettie Gore on.
She's a black woman.
She's a historian, a racialjustice educator.
She's the host of her podcast,History shows us.
And that's really her passion.
It's for telling history'struths, connecting the path to
what's going on today withracial and social justice
(01:15):
issues.
And that's evident in everythingthat she does, everything that
she champions.
And so I'm really excited tohave you on the show here today,
Lettie.
Lettie Gore (01:23):
Thank you so much, Michael.
I'm very excited to be here!Excellent.
Michael Bauman (01:26):
So I wanted to start off.
I mean, you're a historian, youlove it.
It's, everything that you do,but it wasn't always the case.
Right.
So you actually grew up hatinghistory.
So I I wanna start with that andtalk about where the switch was
for you.
So from hating it to actuallygoing this lights me up, I love
this.
This is, you know what I wannastudy in multiple things.
Lettie Gore (01:49):
yeah.
So I yeah.
I grew up not liking history atall.
I remember I used to love socialstudies and I love social
studies because you can learnabout different countries and
that sort of thing.
And I remember I was in seventhgrade and I did a project on
Botswana.
And at this time there wasn'tGoogle and that kind of stuff
(02:12):
that we used.
So I was in the library, lookingat these books and all this
stuff, and I was like, oh mygoodness, everything's so
colorful.
This is nothing like thecommercials and infomercials.
They would show on TV of Africanchildren starving.
Right.
I was like, this is amazing.
Wow.
I had no idea.
Right.
And so, I remember that impactedme a lot.
(02:35):
And then I went to high schooland I was like, why am I still
learning about all of these oldwhite men and all these people
with wars.
And then you have three pagesthat are about the civil rights
movement.
Right.
And so I just did not understandhow the history that I would see
(02:58):
on TV sometimes through moviesor something like that wasn't in
the books that I was reading andthings I was learning in K
through 12.
And so I went to college and Iwent to a community college for
two years.
And my first history teacherthat I had there, he actually
was my history teacher forAmerican history, one and two in
college.
(03:18):
He lectured without a bookwithout a PowerPoint, anything,
he just talked the whole time.
And I was amazed at hisstorytelling.
He told so much more abouthistory.
And then I went to a four yearcollege and I met a professor
there, Dr.
Glenn Harris.
(03:39):
And I'm naming him because he'sbeen very, just instrumental in
my life and me becoming ahistorian.
But he introduced me to JamesBaldwin.
And I remember in college, itwasn't just Dr.
Harris.
It was also other professors,but history was so much more
than just old white men fightingbattles and wars, there was much
(04:01):
more to it.
There were many more movingpieces, right?
There was seeing theconnections.
There was all these little factsthat actually were huge and very
integral to understanding thebigger picture about history.
And I was like, wow, this isawesome.
Right?
This is actually reallyinteresting to me.
This makes me want to know morethings.
We want to dive into doing theresearch and I loved seeing the
(04:25):
immense massive amount of blackhistory that I did not know
about that I never learned aboutin, in that way.
And that was just an undergrad.
Then I went to grad school and Igot master's in history.
I loved it so much that I didthat and that was very rigorous.
It was a very rigorous programbecause at the school where I
went there was no PhD inhistory, so the professors
(04:49):
poured everything into themaster's students.
and so, that's really theeasiest way to answer that
question is just, I hadprofessors that saw beyond
sugarcoating the history.
I had professors who studiedhistory who traveled places.
You can't study history, trulystudy history and not tell the
(05:14):
whole story.
That's just not how it works.
Michael Bauman (05:16):
Yeah.
I love that.
And that's, I mean, that's evenpart of the reason why, you know
a lot of our listeners know, soI grew up, overseas in Papua New
Guinea,.
My wife grew up in, in Turkey.
We both were exposed to thosedifferent cultures.
We were back in the states andthen we decided to move to China
partially for that reason, too.
And to give our kids theopportunity to grow up in
(05:38):
different cultures andexperience different
perspectives and differentviewpoints is really valuable.
Both for us and for them aswell.
And I had Dr.
Dana Crawford on who talks aboutwhen the patterns of sometimes
racism and distinguishingbetween skin color even begins
at such an early age.
They'll differentiate at likesix months and then you'll see
(06:00):
them start to favor differentfriends and stuff like two
years.
And that exposure I think is so,so important growing up.
So can you talk about, I mean,cuz we, we have this history,
right.
And for I'm a white, obviouslyI'm a white male.
I fit into that.
Like, very privileged part ofsociety.
But you know, in our minds,sometimes we think of history as
like, oh, it's just the facts ofwhat happened, but can you talk
(06:24):
about, get into whiteness, getinto how history is written by
the winners it's written by thewhite, male people and what you
started to discover in thatpassion, that passionate
discovery around history andblack history and things around
racism.
Lettie Gore (06:39):
Yeah.
And I'm gonna get right to that.
There's something that youmentioned previously about how
young children differentiate,and people really don't believe
that.
They don't believe that childrenthat are six months old start to
gravitate towards the whiteperson or towards the black.
Like, they don't think that'strue, but it is.
(07:00):
It's absolutely a fact.
And so whenever people ask me,when is it a good time to start
talking about racism andjustice?
As soon as possible, that'salways my answer.
There's not a right time.
It should always be time becausewe live in a society that is
plagued by white supremacy.
(07:21):
We're born into a whitesupremacy culture period.
There's no arguing that.
People try to argue that with mea lot.
And I'm like, there's not no,there's no arguing that we're,
this is what we're born into.
Right.
And so, yeah, I just wanted tomention that part.
But as far as whiteness and allof that jazz, yeah.
Whiteness is and I want peopleto understand this this isn't
(07:43):
just something that people makeup, right?
This isn't a, this isn't a jabto shame white people.
This isn't a jab to make whitepeople feel guilty.
I'm prefacing this with thatbecause that's often what I see
people are on the defense.
And so this is foreign.
This is for you to understandthat.
(08:03):
In order to even talk aboutprogress in order to even talk
about racial justice, you haveto choose to confront and
acknowledge and accept the factthat whiteness is an entire
culture that this societycontinues to show it favors.
So there's also, and I'm gonnago on a rant here, Michael, go
(08:25):
for it.
but right, is people want torefer to their ancestors or
people who came over here fromIreland or from whichever
country in Europe they want toname or whatever it is.
Right.
And I'm not in any way tellingpeople that they should not tap
into their cultural backgrounds,but I'm gonna tell you
(08:47):
something.
And you came over here to theUnited States.
You may have been that at first,and then you assimilated into
whiteness.
You were able to assimilate intowhite culture because of your
skin color.
And that's an entireconversation about race and
ethnicity.
And those two things beingdifferent whenever it comes to
(09:09):
certain people.
But I just get really frustratedwhen people say, oh, but I'm not
white.
I'm Italian.
Nah you're white.
You are white.
People may be listening to thisand getting defensive, but no,
like you're white because see,I, as you're looking at me,
Michael, I am a black woman.
There is no arguing thatwhenever it comes to me, I am a
black woman.
But there's a book it's calledFatal Invention.
(09:32):
It's by Dorothy Roberts.
And there's a phenomenal book.
It talks about basically theinvention of race and how that
has benefited our society,particularly white society.
So I just wanted to say that forpeople to go and look that up
and read it if they would like,it's a incredible book and it's
much, much needed.
But something that I often haveto tell people is you can't talk
(09:57):
about racism and you can't talkabout white supremacy without
doing your own internal work.
Right.
And in order to do your owninternal work, you have to
understand that's gonna comewith being uncomfortable.
It's not gonna be a walk in thepark.
That's just not it.
And here in the United States,over the last oh seven years,
(10:18):
seven, eight years, we've reallyseen a lot of what many people
are shocked about.
Right?
I mean, a lot of people areshocked at the number or the
level of white supremacy.
That's been overt.
That's been very blatant.
It doesn't surprise me at all.
Does this surprise me one bit?
I've been black, my whole life.
Does that mean that I havenecessarily experienced the Klan
(10:40):
marching through a town?
No.
Have I seen the Klan before?
Yes.
But that's not all racism isright.
That's not all that it is.
And what this society does.
This is through propaganda.
This is through shows.
This is through movies.
This is through stories.
What it does is it paints thisimage that white supremacy and
(11:03):
racism only show up a certainway.
It's white only signs.
It's colored only signs.
It's the KKK, it's only thesethings, right?
It's only this.
It's only calling someone aracial slur.
It's only being obviously meanto someone who is a black
person, right.
Or who is a brown person andyou're the white person who's
(11:25):
doing the harm.
No, that's not all race.
Racism is systemic.
Racism is in everything in everysingle way.
There's nothing anyone couldever say to me that I cannot
trace back to that.
And people have to accept that.
This country has to reckon withthat.
Has to want to accept that.
And I've seen over the lastseveral years this move to want
(11:50):
to just look at these eventsthat happen and say oh, so this
is white supremacists.
So those are white supremacists.
No the whole system is whitesupremacy.
The whole thing, these peopledidn't just come from nowhere.
They did not just come out andstart being in this way because
of the previous occupant of thewhite house here.
That's not, it they've beenhere.
(12:12):
They've been here.
What happened is they wereemboldened.
But only looking at it like it'sonly been the last seven or
eight years that completelyabsolves this country from any
responsibility and anyaccountability.
And its founding, which wasrooted in white supremacy, you
we're founded on this.
You enslave my ancestors, youwent, you enslave us.
(12:36):
That's a fact, that' a fact.
And it wasn't just someaccident.
It wasn't just some, oh, wellthat, that was just the way at
the time.
Absolutely not.
Absolutely not.
And slavery was not just thesepictures of people that you see
in cotton fields.
It was brutal.
It was horrific.
It was the economic source forthis country.
(12:58):
It was the money that theCarnegie and the Morgans had in
the twenties.
People wanna glorify it waseverything.
It was everywhere.
It was not just in the south.
It was in the north.
It was everywhere.
And so.
I'm going off on a whole otherthing and completely, probably
going away from your questionthat you asking.
No, I love it.
Michael Bauman (13:16):
This is so I, this
Lettie Gore (13:16):
is just, this is just what happens.
This is just what happens.
I start talking my history,
Michael Bauman (13:21):
no, I mean, this is exactly what I want to dive
into because it's like the fishswimming in water.
Right?
Like they, they can't see thatit's, they're swimming in water
and it's the same.
And granted, I have a differentexperience cuz I grew up in a
different country.
And.
I still, like, there was thingsthat I started to realize having
guests and stuff on my show thatI'm like this stuff I just don't
(13:41):
know about because I I haven'tseen it.
I'm so in the water, so to speakthat I can't see that I'm like
swimming in the water.
So can you talk about, cuz it'slike you said it's literally the
system that our entire countryin the west.
Right.
So I have listeners from allover, but and it's it is all
over too but can talk about inthe us.
So it's like, can you talk abouthow that system developed in, in
(14:04):
the us and even how it wascodified into the laws?
Cuz the other thing that peoplethink is like, oh, that was back
then we had emancipation and wehad the civil war and whatever.
Talk about how that's stillsystemic today.
Lettie Gore (14:17):
Yeah, that's a wonderful question, especially
with the timing.
So two days ago was June 19thand that was Juneteenth here in
the United States andJuneteenth.
For those of you who do not knowthat are listening that comes
from June 19th, 1865.
So just some quick history.
(14:38):
That's the day that the lastenslaved black people here in
the United States were freed.
And I say that with quotationsfreed, because.
Ugh.
There's so much more nuance incontext to this, and it's not
just cut and dry.
So January 1st, 1863, presidentAbraham Lincoln signed the
(15:01):
emancipation proclamation.
I grew up learning that.
That is what freed the slaves,which PS, I don't say slaves.
I say enslaved people becauseenslaved people gives humanity
to the people, African peoplewho are stolen.
It does not glorify the enslaverSo I always say enslaved people
just for the record.
(15:21):
And other people should too.
But but I learned that AbrahamLincoln free the enslaved people
in 1863.
And then I remember thinking,but there was still an entire
civil war going on.
Like, how are you doing?
That's not how it worked.
Also.
People did not just say, oh,alright, well, Lincoln signed
that.
Let's just free all of ourproperty.
(15:41):
Are you kidding?
Did you really think that racistwhite people did that?
Absolutely not.
Absolutely not.
You kidding me?
So then what happened is twoyears later, basically June
19th, 1865.
You had about 2000, 2,500 unionsoldiers who marched into
(16:02):
Galveston bay, Texas.
And they announced that allenslaved people in the state of
Texas were free.
There were about 250,000 to300,000, enslaved black people
in Texas at the time.
Now mind you, civil war wasover.
But you still had black peoplewho were enslaved.
This was across the south, thiswasn't just in Texas.
(16:24):
Let me make that very clear.
And so on June 19th, that's theday that newly freed black
people designated as Juneteenth,but that did not free all black
people.
And especially because peoplewanna say, oh, that officially
freed them.
No, you had the 13th amendment.
(16:46):
The 13th amendment wasintroduced in January, 1865.
And then it was officialDecember 6th, 1865.
That's six months after June,1865.
So other thing you know, tounderstand with the 13th
amendment is the 13th amendmentabolished slavery.
(17:07):
In the constitution of theUnited States.
Okay.
The thing though is there's aline in the 13th amendment and
it basically says that you'refree unless you are convicted of
crime.
And what the 13th amendment didis it re enslaved black people
(17:27):
here in the United States.
There's a book by DouglasBlackman.
It's called Slavery by AnotherName.
And that is a book that I willalways, it can be 50 years from
now.
I tell people to read it becauseit is essential to the
historical discourse about there enslavement of black people.
(17:48):
And so when we talk about theword freedom, right, and we talk
about the word free, people wehear these words, our whole
lives.
What does that really meanthough?
Freedom for who.
Who gets to decide what freedomis, right.
Am I free because I'm no longerenslaved and getting whipped
(18:09):
every day and my child is notbeing torn from my arms or
literally from my womb as anenslaved black woman, am I free
because of that?
Or is it, or is the freedom now?
Me out here being re enslavedstill being owned by the same
(18:29):
person who enslaved me, but nowit's just, I'm just working for
them.
Is freedom then being subjectedto Jim Crow, laws, being
subjected to black codes, notstill not being able to vote for
a hundred more years.
Is that what freedom is?
Is freedom just, oh, well youshould just be grateful.
Right?
And so there's all of that.
It's very similar.
(18:49):
And with the word violence forme,
Michael Bauman (18:52):
Well, I wanna double click on that for a
second.
Both for you personally, andthen also on a bigger level, I'm
curious, just in your ownpersonal life, what would, how
would you define freedom foryourself?
Cuz this is an interestingconcept when I was talking with
Andre Henry or mutual friend andhe talked about like, what if
racism, the discussion aroundracism anti-racism shifts to
(19:13):
going, how can we help, how canwe like focus on black joy?
Like he's like, I just wannamake music.
Like I wanna be joyful.
I wanna have that opportunity.
And I don't have massive amountsof mental space taken up with
all of this, so I'm curious foryou, like what is freedom for
you and then what would freedombe on a global scale or on a
(19:34):
national scale?
Lettie Gore (19:36):
Yeah.
Wow.
That's a.
That's a great question.
And I have so many things Icould say.
I mean, just starting freedom isthe first thing I think of is
freedom is not having to, forme, is not having to worry about
how, oh, how is racism gonnaaffect me in this situation?
(19:57):
How is that's and that's ablanket statement.
But that's one thing, becausesomething that I've learned
about myself over the lastcouple of years is how much I'm
just not desensitized to things.
Cuz being desensitized is that'swhere things get dangerous.
(20:18):
I'm not desensitized, but it'sjust, I'm just so used to so
much.
I'm just so used to.
Having to code switch.
Right.
And what code switching istalking one way around my
friends or people I'muncomfortable with, and then
talking one way in corporateAmerica right.
Having to put on my propervoice, so to speak.
(20:39):
And I don't do that anymore.
Right.
And but it's still a cost thatcomes with that.
Sometimes I'm not presenting inthe way that white America is
fine with.
Freedom is being able to feelthat joy.
In a way where, you don't haveto turn it off.
Like you don't have to tone itdown.
You don't have to worry about itbeing taken away by society.
(21:02):
Right?
Because as people, we're notgonna be joyful every single day
of our lives, that's just notrealistic.
Right?
Because life, and a lot happens.
But being able to move in a waywhere we don't have to hold this
tension in our bodies, but Ithink too, yes, it's about
today.
But I think freedom is also verymuch tied to people who cause
(21:27):
harm and continuing to causeharm.
And I'm holding the systems thatcause harm to acknowledge it and
to do something about it.
It not just acknowledge it, butdo something about it.
Right.
That's another level of freedomto me because what that does is
it then.
It then allows others who areoppressed and who are
(21:48):
experiencing these harms to haveanother layer of trust in a way.
And I don't think you can havefreedom without trust.
So that's the simplest way I cananswer that question though.
I feel like that was not just asimple answer.
Michael Bauman (22:02):
Well, it's not an, it's not an easy, it's not
an easy question.
And I feel like it's somethingthat ties.
So, I mean, even in thediscussion around success, it
ties so much into that peoplehave to figure out what does
freedom feel like forthemselves, in the different
areas of their life.
But I think what you touched onis so important because it gives
(22:23):
that insight into yourexperience of like, One, like I
have this constant, almost thefear, the constant fear.
You mentioned like the fear ofwhat I have being taken away.
Like I can't just experiencethis joy.
It's like, what if this is takenaway or also, and this is just
the journey for everybody ingeneral, but how can I actually
(22:46):
show up authentically and beaccepted for who I am around
that?
Can you talk, dive into, I'mcurious to dive into that fear.
Talk about just that fear, oneof it being taken away, and this
is, again, gets back to systems.
You know what I mean?
it's just, it's all the time andthat's why I love having you
(23:07):
share your experience.
Cuz it's so, so important.
Lettie Gore (23:11):
Yeah.
So.
One angle.
I wanna take to answer thisquestion is to look at
generational trauma and just howgenerational trauma does impact
present day fears and thingslike that.
Whenever we talk about trauma,what happens is people just look
(23:33):
at trauma as oh, a car accident,right.
Or something that we've seen ina TV show or some something
physically like very harmful,right?
Like some kind of trauma, likethat, but trauma is much, much
deeper.
Trauma affects us on a molecularlevel.
My first master's is in history,but I went and got a second one
in conflict management andresolution.
(23:54):
And I did that because, well, Ididn't bring know at the time
why, but now I see why I had totake many grad classes on
trauma.
The mind.
Psychology.
And I had professors who weretherapists and who were
psychiatrists, and they're alsoacademic professors, which I'm
like, how did you do all thatschooling?
But anyway I learned so muchabout how trauma affects us.
(24:18):
And I remember I was able totake it and tie it into history
because there's not enoughwritten about generational
trauma and how it affects all ofus because of the history that
our ancestors have experiencedthat gets passed down through
our DNA.
It gets passed to us.
(24:39):
Right.
And so whenever I think aboutfear with people, it's I have
this conversation more than Ieven realize it.
Now that I'm saying this out,out loud, but.
There's a fear that people haveof not wanting to give up what
they know is going to keep themin a position of power.
(25:00):
And that is again, back to whitesupremacy culture here in the
United States and how whitesupremacy functions here in the
United States.
It's all throughout history.
It's everywhere throughouthistory.
I mean this actually, Michaelties back to what you asked me
before about some history thingsand racism and everything like
that.
And I think about generationaltrauma with slavery.
(25:22):
For example, there's so muchthat's in that, but two
examples.
One is black enslaved women andhow black enslaved women were,
trigger warning for people rapedmutilated Just realized in ways
that people wouldn't evenbelieve and not just the
physical act of that, but alsothe experiments the
(25:47):
psychological trauma, the justthe immense amount of it that is
passed down right now.
I'm 34 years old and my eggsthat are in my body whenever I
experience right now, that'shappening.
And so my future child that I'mhoping to one day have could be
affected by whatever trauma Iexperience.
(26:08):
And so, but with that, I thinkabout two things Things like how
fear affects the black communityin the United States.
And I can't speak for the entireblack community.
We are not a monolith, but I canspeak for what I know, how I
feel.
I can speak for how, what myparents have told me what my
grandparents used to tell me.
(26:28):
And just their stories.
If you listen, you can hear howfear shows up.
It has nothing to do with notbeing strong, not enduring, not
having hope.
Has nothing to do with that.
We are people with feelings,with emotions, right?
And there are fears that we haveand how they show up and what we
do with those fears as far assurvival goes.
But the other part of this isalso white people in the United
(26:53):
States.
I think about how much historyshows us.
Fear showed up in white people.
And I don't mean that in a wayto give sympathy to white people
in this country and theirancestors and the horrific
things that they did cuz that'snot what I'm about.
But what I will say is there isa fear of losing this identity
(27:17):
that you created.
Race was created because whitepeople needed an identity.
That's why it was created.
I mean, James Baldwin talksabout this.
Race is a social construct andyou look at how many horrific
things happen to black people,to brown people, to indigenous
people in this country's historyand what were you so afraid of?
(27:40):
Or like, what were you afraid oflosing so much that you
annihilated people.
Just genocide.
Just burned down homes.
Burned down churches.
Burned down home communities.
You enacted laws to preventblack people from voting.
Indigenous people from voting.
You stole land.
All of this in the name of whitesupremacy racism.
(28:03):
Right.
But it's, what are you afraidof?
And then I think about lynchingshere in, in the United States
and the fact that you would have4,000 white people show up to
celebrate a black person beingburned, right.
Being Lynched.
It was racial terror.
Lynchings.
And that gets passed down.
And at the same time though, andagain, to like mention James
(28:28):
Baldwin, I know I mentioned himlike four times.
He's my absolute favorite blackintellectual in history.
But he talks about the price ofthe ticket often.
And what he means by thatthough, is the price that this
country has been willing to payfor so long to hone on, to cling
so tightly to these systems, toracism, to fight supremacy.
(28:48):
And that includes the fear.
And that's why I ask peoplesometimes I'm like, what are you
afraid of?
What are you so afraid oflosing?
Right.
And that's the question that Icould ask at any moment
throughout history as I'mtalking about it.
I wanted actually Michael to goback really quickly.
Cause I never even answered thesecond part of your question
regarding the history stuff andracism, but yeah, I started
(29:10):
talking about Juneteenth and Iimmediately then thought about
after the civil war, somethingthat people say is, oh, well the
civil war was just over and thatwas that.
And black people were free.
And so why are y'all stillcomplaining about.
And I always just chuckle atthat now.
I used to get very mad aboutthat, but now I'm just like,
wow.
(29:31):
The level of ignorance.
But it's everywhere.
People would just read somethingbeyond what they want to feel
good about.
You'll see it all there.
But you had the reconstructionera right from 1866 to 1877.
So a 11 year period.
And it's painted as this time ofoh, when they did help black
people.
So they did do all these things.
They did do all this.
That's not it.
The entire federal government,like just tapped out of the
(29:54):
south and they were like, we'renot actually gonna help y'all
anymore.
We thought that we could atfirst, but actually we just care
more about money and we caremore about getting who we want
in these different positions.
Senators, congressmen,presidents.
Money has always talked.
Money has always been thebiggest motivator for, oh my
gosh, so much in this country.
(30:15):
But the reconstruction era wassabotaged.
It didn't just fail.
It was sabotaged.
It was sabotaged in every way.
And then in, in that you hadmassive violence, just tons of
violence against black people.
And you had black people werestill not allowed to vote.
Even though there was an entireamendment that was been in
place, right.
For black men to be able tovote.
(30:36):
That didn't happen.
You had racist stereotypes thatexisted during slavery, just so
much that just went into, thatjust continued on.
It didn't it didn't just stop.
Right.
And I want people to understandthat for, because this, for some
reason, people think that justbecause something is a law or
just because something is said,that means everyone abided by
(30:58):
it.
No.
Do you see people doing thattoday?
Whenever it comes to laws oranything, do you really think
that these states, these peoplejust said, you know what, we're
actually just gonna let them befree now.
No, that's not at all whathappened.
Right.
And so you see black cones comeup, you see the Jim Crow era
just emerged and that continuedon for another century.
(31:23):
You see.
Every turn in every way you seeit.
And I'm, I mean, I can list offeven more books.
There's a book by IsabelleWilkerson.
It's called the warmth of othersons.
And it's about the greatmigration in the United States.
And the great migration in theUnited States happen from the
end of the 18 hundreds into likethe 1960s.
(31:45):
There were three different wavesof it and it's whenever black
people were fleeing the south,they were not just moving away
for better jobs.
Cuz that's what the book's gonnatell you.
Oh, they were just moving betterjobs.
No, they were fleeing.
There's a difference between thephrase that someone's leaving a
place versus someone's fleeingthat's in danger.
I can go into detail so much,but throughout this country's
(32:08):
history, you see how systemicracism has showed up and people
wanna take a little part andthey wanna say, oh, no, see, but
there's this black person thatdid this.
Well, see what black people didhave schools, or they did do
this or what, whatever it was.
That's like today, if I said, ohsee, but I exercised.
And I worked out for my wholelife and I'm not sick now at the
(32:30):
age of 70 and someone's motherdid the same exact thing and
they're sick.
It doesn't matter that I did notexperience that.
Because at the end of the day,this person still has this
problem.
It's not about playing thischerry picking game.
When, whenever it comes tohistory and I see that all the
time.
I live in North Carolina.
(32:51):
You see the Confederate flageverywhere.
And people say, oh, but it'sjust Southern heritage.
We saw the Confederate flag usedfor violence, because you would
see the Confederate flag beingheld up or put up above a body
that was lynched.
You, you saw it in Selma,Alabama during the marches in
1965, you saw the sheriffsholding the Confederate flag.
(33:13):
You would see it throughout thehistory.
It's not just Southern heritage,it's racism, right?
You saw the Confederate flagbeing held as the KKK, March
down Pennsylvania avenue inWashington, DC in 1925, like
thousands of men, tens ofthousands of clan members
marching through for trueAmericanism.
(33:36):
In the state's capital.
Right?
And then people look at whathappened here in the United
States on January 6th, 2021.
And they're like, this has neverhappened before.
Yes, it has.
Matter of fact, here inWilmington, North Carolina,
there was an actual insurrectionhere in 1898 on November the
10th, 1898.
There was a successfulinsurrection in coup.
(33:58):
The government, the localgovernment here was overthrown
by white supremacists and theblack people who were here, many
of them were murdered.
And then they were, many of themwere ran out of town.
Some stayed, but many were ranout of town.
So not only was it a successfulcoup and a successful
insurrection here, but it was arace massacre.
(34:19):
I find is there's this issuewith history and memory.
If people create these verycomfortable truths to feel good
about them, themselves to holdthemselves up.
You, you can't just look athistory in a vacuum.
History is not linear, right?
Everything in history isconnected.
You have to see the wholepicture.
(34:40):
And so even then with history,people look at things like the
civil rights act here in 1964,the voting rights act in 1965.
They're like, oh, okay.
See that solved everything.
And I have two parents.
That are 70 years old and 77.
And thank God they're stillhere.
But my dad was 18 years old in1963 and he couldn't vote.
(35:04):
He still couldn't vote after1965.
It wasn't like he just had theseplaces, these local areas these
states that were like, oh,alright, well let's time to just
change the laws and just let'emvote now.
Absolutely not.
Maybe they did right.
Let them vote.
Maybe you see the lines and thepictures, people voting and all
(35:24):
of that thing.
But then what happened to thoseballots?
Did they actually get cash?
Did they get thrown out?
Right?
What actually happened?
Right?
We still see things like thisbeing affected today.
We still see infringement ofrights.
We still see disenfranchisementof black voters.
Whenever you see these areaswhere they're changing voting
(35:45):
places for example, where itused to be maybe two miles from
this person's home and nowalmost 15 miles away, like for
what?
Right?
Like for what?
But we already know the answer.
There's gerrymandering.
There's the way that thesethings that happened before
people can look at and point atand say, oh, that was overtly
racist.
Now it's just evolved insomething different.
(36:07):
It's just evolved.
We see it with the prison systemhere, we see it with mass
incarceration.
Mass incarceration in thiscountry there's a direct
throughline to slavery.
There's a direct throughline toconvict leasing.
Which happened during thereconstruction era and continued
on afterwards.
There's a direct line.
It's infuriating, honestly.
And the reason why I talk aboutthese things, how I talk about
(36:27):
them, I do it because I wantpeople to just see I want to be
able to convey these stories topeople so that they can say
like, oh, if they just have one,oh, wow moment, then that's one
moment right.
Where I'm like, okay, say I gotthat and they're gonna go tell
somebody else.
And they're gonna hopefully tryto continue to educate and be
(36:49):
uncomfortable.
And, but I can't, I'm not gonnahold people's hands.
Right.
I'm not gonna coddle people,but.
In order to talk about progressin order to talk about love and
unity.
You cannot talk about love andunity and do what you're doing
in this country.
What are you talking about?
There's a quote by JamesBaldwin.
(37:10):
It's actually tattooed on myside.
It's"Love is a battle.
Love is a war.
Love isn't growing up." ButJames Baldwin in this, he's not
talking about the sentimentallove the like eewy, gooey love.
He's not talking about that.
He's talking about the love ofjustice.
The love that you have to havein order for justice to be seen.
James Baldwin taught me how tosee history.
(37:31):
How to read history.
How to feel and I just, I reallywant people to understand that
you can't take bits and piecesof history and you can't mold it
to fit your agenda.
And this comes with so manysmall things even every August,
(37:52):
talking about the women's rightto vote here, in the United
States.
Language is so important.
It's not okay to just say womengot the right to vote in 1920,
no white women got the right tovote.
You have to put those words, youhave to put that there.
(38:13):
White women got the right tovote.
But there's so much I see withpeople wanting to take half of
the truth and wanna takewhatever makes them feel good,
but I promise you that lookingat the whole picture and dealing
with that discomfort andconfronting the fact that you've
been lied to about history.
(38:33):
There's much more freedom inthat.
Just to bring it back tofreedom.
There's a lot more freedom tothat.
Racism is about power.
It's about structural power.
It's not just about a whiteperson doing something to a
black person physically.
Racism is about power and all ofthese people who want to quote
(38:53):
Dr.
Martin Luther king, Jr.
They wanna quote Malcolm X.
They wanna quote Rosa parks,right.
Rosa parks was this docile blackwoman, as you were just sitting
down one day, no Rosa parksactually before that day Rosa
parks used to be a fieldsecretary for the NAACP here in
Alabama.
And she used to go out and sheused to talk to black women who
(39:18):
were essentially assaulted bypolice officers by sheriffs.
She did the interview for ReeseTaylor.
I don't know if anyone's everheard of Reese Taylor, but you
should Google her and you shouldsee what happened to her.
Rosa Parks was not just thislittle old white-skinned black
woman who decided to just sitdown because she was tired.
No, that was planned.
(39:39):
That was very deliberate.
And another thing too is I wantpeople to realize it has not
been a long time since slaveryhappened here.
Has not been a long time at all.
There was a black woman namedMary Church, Terrell.
She, again, people should Googleher, but she helped desegregate
Washington, DC.
(39:59):
I want people to understand thatshe was born in the late 18
hundreds, still alive in 1987.
It's so easy to look and say,oh, well that happened in 1890.
That wasn't a long time ago,people.
Anyway, I've been like talking,Michael,
Michael Bauman (40:12):
but I just, no, I it's really important.
Right.
And that's what is important torealize.
And like you mentioned, likeonce you start, even if it's
just the little things and youstart to realize, oh, wow.
Like this is a totally differentperspective than I might have
seen before.
My question for you is like,where.
And this is, again, another verydifficult question to answer,
(40:33):
like where does the work begin?
Like what does that look likefor individuals?
Because there's so many layers,right?
There's layers of education,there's layers of resource
distribution.
Like you're talking about likethere's layers of fear.
Where would you recommend peopleeither going for resources to,
to educate themselves or, how dothey handle the fear?
How do they handle the scarcity?
(40:54):
How do they become aware of,their privilege?
If that's the case.
Lettie Gore (40:58):
Yeah.
I love this question.
I love this question because,and I'll never get tired of
answering this question cuz it'sso important.
It will always be veryimportant.
And the first thing I would sayis people need to follow and
listen to black educators.
Brown educators.
People who have experience.
(41:18):
What they're wanting to knowmore.
And use your own discernment anduse your own judgment about
that.
Because what I will say too isnot all skin folk are kinfolk.
That's the saying here.
I don't know that same before,but that's not how it works but
definitely start there.
That's one thing also read booksthat are about racism that are
about white supremacy.
And I know there are some peopleout here on social media that
(41:40):
are saying, oh, well, I'm tiredof you all saying that you're
gonna read books and thereshould be more than reading
books.
Okay.
Yes.
There's more than just readingbooks and listening to podcasts.
However, start there though.
You gotta start with education.
So reading books like a few thatI've mentioned here reading
Medical Apartheid by HarrietWashington, which is about the
(42:02):
experimentation of on blackpeople throughout history.
Read How to be less Stupid aboutRace, which is by Crystal A
fleming.
Read Stephanie Jones Rogers.
They were her Property.
There's so many, I have a hugebookshelf.
Take time to listen to JamesBaldwin.
Start with just Google theAmerican dream and the American
(42:26):
Negro it's by James Baldwin.
He wrote it in the 1960s.
That's where I would tell you tostart with that.
I have a Patreon where peoplecan subscribe to me.
I offer lessons each month, aLettie's list, which is a list
of resources and things.
I do webinars live Q and A'sjust a ton for people to learn
(42:48):
more.
There are many others too.
Follow me on Instagram atsincerely.lettie.
Also follow Check yourprivilege, which is Myisha Hill.
Follow Professor Kena Reed.
She's the anti-blackness reader.
Just a ton of others are alsodoing this work.
But start there, start bylistening to podcasts, listen to
(43:09):
Code Switch through NPR.
That's just one that I couldthink of.
My podcast obviously, which iscalled History Shows Us there's
so many more, but.
Do that, but also, and alsochallenge people that, it is not
okay to know that your friend orone of your family members just
said something that you know wasnot okay.
(43:31):
And you didn't say anythingabout it.
Right.
And so what I often have peopleasking you is, well, well, how
do I know what to say?
Well, if you have a presentationat work, you're gonna prepare
for it, right?
Like, you're gonna prepare forpossible questions.
Someone's gonna ask you, youdon't know what people gonna ask
you, but you prepare yourselfbecause you wanna be able to
answer those questions.
I tell people often somethingthat you can do is if you're
(43:53):
gonna go to a family dinner orif you're gonna be out with
friends or something, and thatthere's that person who will be
there, that's gonna probably saysomething, have some things
ready.
Right.
Have some things ready where youknow, okay.
They might say this or theymight say that, what could I say
to that?
Say something.
It is not okay to not sayanything.
We are past that.
We are past that.
(44:13):
Like, absolutely not.
You need to say if someone sayssomething that's racist, you
need to say something.
If someone makes a racist joke,why is that funny?
That is not funny.
Right?
Say something And it's aboutthat.
It's taking action and doingsomething.
It's about giving money.
Paying black people.
Paying brown people.
This isn't saying that therearen't white people out here
(44:34):
that are working hard.
I'm not saying that at all.
What I am saying though, is wehave to have a conversation
about reparations.
And though this country stilldoes not want to acknowledge the
fact that reparations need tohappen on a federal level.
There are ways you can do thaton an individual level.
You can decide that you want togive X amount of dollars to a
(44:56):
local community organizationdirectly.
I mean directly, like there arelocal places where you can help
or you can give your funds.
There's just so much that peoplecan do.
But what I will tell people isdo that internal work because
I've been in therapy for thelast couple of years, just for
my own mental health.
(45:17):
Cuz I think everyone should beable to get therapy.
It should be free.
But they should also be paid forthe work that they do.
It should be free because we areall out here living.
But I have seen just withtherapy for me and just my own
life.
Take what I do out of it.
I've had to work on myself inorder to show up in
relationships.
How I wanna show up yeah.
I have to take responsibilityfor past actions.
I have that's some people haveto understand, you have to do
(45:39):
that too.
It's not enough to post onInstagram, to post on Twitter,
to post on Facebook, to say thatyou are happy about Juneteenth
or something like that.
It's not enough.
It's not enough.
It's about doing the work toactually dismantle the system.
If that means going to your citycouncil meetings asking
questions about racist laws,asking maybe why do I live in
(46:04):
this community?
And there are no black peoplehere.
Why?
Right.
Asking these questions.
Right.
Asking yourself, why don't youhave any friends that are people
of color and that are black andthat's not so you can go out
there and say that you haveblack friends.
No.
But why are you only surroundedby white people?
Right.
Like what in you is subconsciousand is biased and is racist,
(46:27):
which has led you to notgravitate towards people who are
not white and that do not havewhite skin right?
What about that.
You need to do that.
You gotta do that work.
That's on you.
That's no one else'sresponsibility, so there's
answer to that.
Michael Bauman (46:46):
There is the answer to that.
No, but I think what youmentioned, I mean, that is the
work, right?
And so you talked about, I mean,that's where that undercurrent
of fear, right?
You see something happen and yougo, that's not right.
That is the work right there tostep in.
And that's like themicropractice basically, it's
like, how do you dismantle ahuge system?
Well, you start with thoseinstances, you recognize that
(47:09):
fear in yourself that goes, I'mscared of saying something right
now, or this could have negativeeffects for me.
And then you still do it anyway,regardless of how eloquent it
is, or the result that comesfrom it, or whether you feel
like you did a good job or not,you went, that is not okay with
me.
And I am going to talk about it.
(47:29):
I'm gonna step into thatsituation.
And so I feel like that's likethe internal work, But then you
also talked about like, do thecognitive work, like do the
cognitive work to actually gaina better understanding, talk to
people that experience the worldin an entirely different way
than you and go, wow, let me seeif I can understand where
(47:51):
they're coming from rather than,how can I prove them wrong?
Cuz where I'm coming from isobviously right.
Going like, let me justunderstand.
Let me understand the peoplethat look differently and think
differently that have differentskin colors that come from
different places.
And then do the, do the work ofthe research and stuff around
that as well in terms of thebooks and all of that.
(48:12):
And I think those two things areexcellent things to leave people
with.
Recognize that fear, still doit, and then do the cognitive
work of actually trying tounderstand people that are
different than you and I thinkthat's awesome.
So, yeah.
Thank you so much for your time.
Thank you so much for the yearsand years that you have
dedicated into this space.
I'll put the links, to the stuffthat you do, your podcast and
(48:35):
all that in the show notes.
Is there anything that you wannaleave?
The audience before we wrap uphere?
Lettie Gore (48:40):
Yes.
One thing I want leave withpeople is a quote by Tony
Morrison.
It's from an interview that shedid in the early nineties, but
basically what Toni Morrisonsaid in this interview was What
are you without Racism?
(49:01):
And there's more that she saysafter this, but I want people to
Google that, I mean, you couldjust type into your Google bar,
Toni Morrison, What are youwithout Racism?
It'll bring up the interviewclip, but I wanna leave people
with that.
Cause I want people to go lookthat up.
I want people to just listen toit and I also will leave cuz I
don't ever close out a podcastepisode without another James
(49:23):
Baldwin quote that's just athing that I do.
There's the quote by JamesBaldwin.
And he said,"People are trappedin history and history is
trapped in them." And he wrotethat in 1953 in his essay,
Stranger in the Village.
And I have that tattooed on myleft forearm.
Literally I looked at my armevery day and I see that cuz
it's a reminder for myself forthe work that I do, but I want
(49:46):
people to hear that because it'sso deep, it has such a deep
meaning and it's tied to fear,but it's also tied to freedom.
And that's why I have it on me.
But I wanna leave people withthat and I wanna leave people to
with hope there's a lot going onin the United States right now.
And I know Michael, you havelisteners all over.
(50:08):
There's a lot happening in theworld right now, but I can speak
directly about the United Statesand this is where I live.
But I want people here in the USand also globally to just take
care of yourselves in every way,because life is a lot, but also
so are these oppressive systemsand so is doing the work like
(50:29):
you doing the work is a lot andit's worth it.
Michael Bauman (50:33):
There you go.
Thank you.
Yeah.
Thank you again.
So, so much just tons and tonsof excellent starting places for
people.
And there's always more to bedone.
Always more to be done, so yes.
Really appreciate you taking thetime to share.
Lettie Gore (50:48):
Thank you so much.
This has been wonderful,Michael.
Absolutely.
Michael Bauman (50:52):
Before you go, I would love it.
If you actually just shared thisepisode with a friend, I'm sure.
While you were listening, youknow, someone just popped into
your head and you're like, oh,they would probably like this as
well.
So it's really easy.
You just click the share buttonon either the website or
whatever podcast platform you'reon and send it over to them.
And chances are, they'llprobably like it, too until next
time, keep engineering yoursuccess.
When we talk about the word freedom, and we talk
about the word free.
We hear these words, our wholelives.
What does that really meanthough?
Freedom for who?
Who gets to decide what freedomis?
Michael Bauman (00:53):
Welcome back to Success Engineering.
I'm your host, Michael Bauman.
I have the pleasure of havingLettie Gore on.
She's a black woman.
She's a historian, a racialjustice educator.
She's the host of her podcast,History shows us.
And that's really her passion.
It's for telling history'struths, connecting the path to
what's going on today withracial and social justice
(01:15):
issues.
And that's evident in everythingthat she does, everything that
she champions.
And so I'm really excited tohave you on the show here today,
Lettie.
Lettie Gore (01:23):
Thank you so much, Michael.
I'm very excited to be here!Excellent.
Michael Bauman (01:26):
So I wanted to start off.
I mean, you're a historian, youlove it.
It's, everything that you do,but it wasn't always the case.
Right.
So you actually grew up hatinghistory.
So I I wanna start with that andtalk about where the switch was
for you.
So from hating it to actuallygoing this lights me up, I love
this.
This is, you know what I wannastudy in multiple things.
Lettie Gore (01:49):
yeah.
So I yeah.
I grew up not liking history atall.
I remember I used to love socialstudies and I love social
studies because you can learnabout different countries and
that sort of thing.
And I remember I was in seventhgrade and I did a project on
Botswana.
And at this time there wasn'tGoogle and that kind of stuff
(02:12):
that we used.
So I was in the library, lookingat these books and all this
stuff, and I was like, oh mygoodness, everything's so
colorful.
This is nothing like thecommercials and infomercials.
They would show on TV of Africanchildren starving.
Right.
I was like, this is amazing.
Wow.
I had no idea.
Right.
And so, I remember that impactedme a lot.
(02:35):
And then I went to high schooland I was like, why am I still
learning about all of these oldwhite men and all these people
with wars.
And then you have three pagesthat are about the civil rights
movement.
Right.
And so I just did not understandhow the history that I would see
(02:58):
on TV sometimes through moviesor something like that wasn't in
the books that I was reading andthings I was learning in K
through 12.
And so I went to college and Iwent to a community college for
two years.
And my first history teacherthat I had there, he actually
was my history teacher forAmerican history, one and two in
college.
(03:18):
He lectured without a bookwithout a PowerPoint, anything,
he just talked the whole time.
And I was amazed at hisstorytelling.
He told so much more abouthistory.
And then I went to a four yearcollege and I met a professor
there, Dr.
Glenn Harris.
(03:39):
And I'm naming him because he'sbeen very, just instrumental in
my life and me becoming ahistorian.
But he introduced me to JamesBaldwin.
And I remember in college, itwasn't just Dr.
Harris.
It was also other professors,but history was so much more
than just old white men fightingbattles and wars, there was much
(04:01):
more to it.
There were many more movingpieces, right?
There was seeing theconnections.
There was all these little factsthat actually were huge and very
integral to understanding thebigger picture about history.
And I was like, wow, this isawesome.
Right?
This is actually reallyinteresting to me.
This makes me want to know morethings.
We want to dive into doing theresearch and I loved seeing the
(04:25):
immense massive amount of blackhistory that I did not know
about that I never learned aboutin, in that way.
And that was just an undergrad.
Then I went to grad school and Igot master's in history.
I loved it so much that I didthat and that was very rigorous.
It was a very rigorous programbecause at the school where I
went there was no PhD inhistory, so the professors
(04:49):
poured everything into themaster's students.
and so, that's really theeasiest way to answer that
question is just, I hadprofessors that saw beyond
sugarcoating the history.
I had professors who studiedhistory who traveled places.
You can't study history, trulystudy history and not tell the
(05:14):
whole story.
That's just not how it works.
Michael Bauman (05:16):
Yeah.
I love that.
And that's, I mean, that's evenpart of the reason why, you know
a lot of our listeners know, soI grew up, overseas in Papua New
Guinea,.
My wife grew up in, in Turkey.
We both were exposed to thosedifferent cultures.
We were back in the states andthen we decided to move to China
partially for that reason, too.
And to give our kids theopportunity to grow up in
(05:38):
different cultures andexperience different
perspectives and differentviewpoints is really valuable.
Both for us and for them aswell.
And I had Dr.
Dana Crawford on who talks aboutwhen the patterns of sometimes
racism and distinguishingbetween skin color even begins
at such an early age.
They'll differentiate at likesix months and then you'll see
(06:00):
them start to favor differentfriends and stuff like two
years.
And that exposure I think is so,so important growing up.
So can you talk about, I mean,cuz we, we have this history,
right.
And for I'm a white, obviouslyI'm a white male.
I fit into that.
Like, very privileged part ofsociety.
But you know, in our minds,sometimes we think of history as
like, oh, it's just the facts ofwhat happened, but can you talk
(06:24):
about, get into whiteness, getinto how history is written by
the winners it's written by thewhite, male people and what you
started to discover in thatpassion, that passionate
discovery around history andblack history and things around
racism.
Lettie Gore (06:39):
Yeah.
And I'm gonna get right to that.
There's something that youmentioned previously about how
young children differentiate,and people really don't believe
that.
They don't believe that childrenthat are six months old start to
gravitate towards the whiteperson or towards the black.
Like, they don't think that'strue, but it is.
(07:00):
It's absolutely a fact.
And so whenever people ask me,when is it a good time to start
talking about racism andjustice?
As soon as possible, that'salways my answer.
There's not a right time.
It should always be time becausewe live in a society that is
plagued by white supremacy.
(07:21):
We're born into a whitesupremacy culture period.
There's no arguing that.
People try to argue that with mea lot.
And I'm like, there's not no,there's no arguing that we're,
this is what we're born into.
Right.
And so, yeah, I just wanted tomention that part.
But as far as whiteness and allof that jazz, yeah.
Whiteness is and I want peopleto understand this this isn't
(07:43):
just something that people makeup, right?
This isn't a, this isn't a jabto shame white people.
This isn't a jab to make whitepeople feel guilty.
I'm prefacing this with thatbecause that's often what I see
people are on the defense.
And so this is foreign.
This is for you to understandthat.
(08:03):
In order to even talk aboutprogress in order to even talk
about racial justice, you haveto choose to confront and
acknowledge and accept the factthat whiteness is an entire
culture that this societycontinues to show it favors.
So there's also, and I'm gonnago on a rant here, Michael, go
(08:25):
for it.
but right, is people want torefer to their ancestors or
people who came over here fromIreland or from whichever
country in Europe they want toname or whatever it is.
Right.
And I'm not in any way tellingpeople that they should not tap
into their cultural backgrounds,but I'm gonna tell you
(08:47):
something.
And you came over here to theUnited States.
You may have been that at first,and then you assimilated into
whiteness.
You were able to assimilate intowhite culture because of your
skin color.
And that's an entireconversation about race and
ethnicity.
And those two things beingdifferent whenever it comes to
(09:09):
certain people.
But I just get really frustratedwhen people say, oh, but I'm not
white.
I'm Italian.
Nah you're white.
You are white.
People may be listening to thisand getting defensive, but no,
like you're white because see,I, as you're looking at me,
Michael, I am a black woman.
There is no arguing thatwhenever it comes to me, I am a
black woman.
But there's a book it's calledFatal Invention.
(09:32):
It's by Dorothy Roberts.
And there's a phenomenal book.
It talks about basically theinvention of race and how that
has benefited our society,particularly white society.
So I just wanted to say that forpeople to go and look that up
and read it if they would like,it's a incredible book and it's
much, much needed.
But something that I often haveto tell people is you can't talk
(09:57):
about racism and you can't talkabout white supremacy without
doing your own internal work.
Right.
And in order to do your owninternal work, you have to
understand that's gonna comewith being uncomfortable.
It's not gonna be a walk in thepark.
That's just not it.
And here in the United States,over the last oh seven years,
(10:18):
seven, eight years, we've reallyseen a lot of what many people
are shocked about.
Right?
I mean, a lot of people areshocked at the number or the
level of white supremacy.
That's been overt.
That's been very blatant.
It doesn't surprise me at all.
Does this surprise me one bit?
I've been black, my whole life.
Does that mean that I havenecessarily experienced the Klan
(10:40):
marching through a town?
No.
Have I seen the Klan before?
Yes.
But that's not all racism isright.
That's not all that it is.
And what this society does.
This is through propaganda.
This is through shows.
This is through movies.
This is through stories.
What it does is it paints thisimage that white supremacy and
(11:03):
racism only show up a certainway.
It's white only signs.
It's colored only signs.
It's the KKK, it's only thesethings, right?
It's only this.
It's only calling someone aracial slur.
It's only being obviously meanto someone who is a black
person, right.
Or who is a brown person andyou're the white person who's
(11:25):
doing the harm.
No, that's not all race.
Racism is systemic.
Racism is in everything in everysingle way.
There's nothing anyone couldever say to me that I cannot
trace back to that.
And people have to accept that.
This country has to reckon withthat.
Has to want to accept that.
And I've seen over the lastseveral years this move to want
(11:50):
to just look at these eventsthat happen and say oh, so this
is white supremacists.
So those are white supremacists.
No the whole system is whitesupremacy.
The whole thing, these peopledidn't just come from nowhere.
They did not just come out andstart being in this way because
of the previous occupant of thewhite house here.
That's not, it they've beenhere.
(12:12):
They've been here.
What happened is they wereemboldened.
But only looking at it like it'sonly been the last seven or
eight years that completelyabsolves this country from any
responsibility and anyaccountability.
And its founding, which wasrooted in white supremacy, you
we're founded on this.
You enslave my ancestors, youwent, you enslave us.
(12:36):
That's a fact, that' a fact.
And it wasn't just someaccident.
It wasn't just some, oh, wellthat, that was just the way at
the time.
Absolutely not.
Absolutely not.
And slavery was not just thesepictures of people that you see
in cotton fields.
It was brutal.
It was horrific.
It was the economic source forthis country.
(12:58):
It was the money that theCarnegie and the Morgans had in
the twenties.
People wanna glorify it waseverything.
It was everywhere.
It was not just in the south.
It was in the north.
It was everywhere.
And so.
I'm going off on a whole otherthing and completely, probably
going away from your questionthat you asking.
No, I love it.
Michael Bauman (13:16):
This is so I, this
Lettie Gore (13:16):
is just, this is just what happens.
This is just what happens.
I start talking my history,
Michael Bauman (13:21):
no, I mean, this is exactly what I want to dive
into because it's like the fishswimming in water.
Right?
Like they, they can't see thatit's, they're swimming in water
and it's the same.
And granted, I have a differentexperience cuz I grew up in a
different country.
And.
I still, like, there was thingsthat I started to realize having
guests and stuff on my show thatI'm like this stuff I just don't
(13:41):
know about because I I haven'tseen it.
I'm so in the water, so to speakthat I can't see that I'm like
swimming in the water.
So can you talk about, cuz it'slike you said it's literally the
system that our entire countryin the west.
Right.
So I have listeners from allover, but and it's it is all
over too but can talk about inthe us.
So it's like, can you talk abouthow that system developed in, in
(14:04):
the us and even how it wascodified into the laws?
Cuz the other thing that peoplethink is like, oh, that was back
then we had emancipation and wehad the civil war and whatever.
Talk about how that's stillsystemic today.
Lettie Gore (14:17):
Yeah, that's a wonderful question, especially
with the timing.
So two days ago was June 19thand that was Juneteenth here in
the United States andJuneteenth.
For those of you who do not knowthat are listening that comes
from June 19th, 1865.
So just some quick history.
(14:38):
That's the day that the lastenslaved black people here in
the United States were freed.
And I say that with quotationsfreed, because.
Ugh.
There's so much more nuance incontext to this, and it's not
just cut and dry.
So January 1st, 1863, presidentAbraham Lincoln signed the
(15:01):
emancipation proclamation.
I grew up learning that.
That is what freed the slaves,which PS, I don't say slaves.
I say enslaved people becauseenslaved people gives humanity
to the people, African peoplewho are stolen.
It does not glorify the enslaverSo I always say enslaved people
just for the record.
(15:21):
And other people should too.
But but I learned that AbrahamLincoln free the enslaved people
in 1863.
And then I remember thinking,but there was still an entire
civil war going on.
Like, how are you doing?
That's not how it worked.
Also.
People did not just say, oh,alright, well, Lincoln signed
that.
Let's just free all of ourproperty.
(15:41):
Are you kidding?
Did you really think that racistwhite people did that?
Absolutely not.
Absolutely not.
You kidding me?
So then what happened is twoyears later, basically June
19th, 1865.
You had about 2000, 2,500 unionsoldiers who marched into
(16:02):
Galveston bay, Texas.
And they announced that allenslaved people in the state of
Texas were free.
There were about 250,000 to300,000, enslaved black people
in Texas at the time.
Now mind you, civil war wasover.
But you still had black peoplewho were enslaved.
This was across the south, thiswasn't just in Texas.
(16:24):
Let me make that very clear.
And so on June 19th, that's theday that newly freed black
people designated as Juneteenth,but that did not free all black
people.
And especially because peoplewanna say, oh, that officially
freed them.
No, you had the 13th amendment.
(16:46):
The 13th amendment wasintroduced in January, 1865.
And then it was officialDecember 6th, 1865.
That's six months after June,1865.
So other thing you know, tounderstand with the 13th
amendment is the 13th amendmentabolished slavery.
(17:07):
In the constitution of theUnited States.
Okay.
The thing though is there's aline in the 13th amendment and
it basically says that you'refree unless you are convicted of
crime.
And what the 13th amendment didis it re enslaved black people
(17:27):
here in the United States.
There's a book by DouglasBlackman.
It's called Slavery by AnotherName.
And that is a book that I willalways, it can be 50 years from
now.
I tell people to read it becauseit is essential to the
historical discourse about there enslavement of black people.
(17:48):
And so when we talk about theword freedom, right, and we talk
about the word free, people wehear these words, our whole
lives.
What does that really meanthough?
Freedom for who.
Who gets to decide what freedomis, right.
Am I free because I'm no longerenslaved and getting whipped
(18:09):
every day and my child is notbeing torn from my arms or
literally from my womb as anenslaved black woman, am I free
because of that?
Or is it, or is the freedom now?
Me out here being re enslavedstill being owned by the same
(18:29):
person who enslaved me, but nowit's just, I'm just working for
them.
Is freedom then being subjectedto Jim Crow, laws, being
subjected to black codes, notstill not being able to vote for
a hundred more years.
Is that what freedom is?
Is freedom just, oh, well youshould just be grateful.
Right?
And so there's all of that.
It's very similar.
(18:49):
And with the word violence forme,
Michael Bauman (18:52):
Well, I wanna double click on that for a
second.
Both for you personally, andthen also on a bigger level, I'm
curious, just in your ownpersonal life, what would, how
would you define freedom foryourself?
Cuz this is an interestingconcept when I was talking with
Andre Henry or mutual friend andhe talked about like, what if
racism, the discussion aroundracism anti-racism shifts to
(19:13):
going, how can we help, how canwe like focus on black joy?
Like he's like, I just wannamake music.
Like I wanna be joyful.
I wanna have that opportunity.
And I don't have massive amountsof mental space taken up with
all of this, so I'm curious foryou, like what is freedom for
you and then what would freedombe on a global scale or on a
(19:34):
national scale?
Lettie Gore (19:36):
Yeah.
Wow.
That's a.
That's a great question.
And I have so many things Icould say.
I mean, just starting freedom isthe first thing I think of is
freedom is not having to, forme, is not having to worry about
how, oh, how is racism gonnaaffect me in this situation?
(19:57):
How is that's and that's ablanket statement.
But that's one thing, becausesomething that I've learned
about myself over the lastcouple of years is how much I'm
just not desensitized to things.
Cuz being desensitized is that'swhere things get dangerous.
(20:18):
I'm not desensitized, but it'sjust, I'm just so used to so
much.
I'm just so used to.
Having to code switch.
Right.
And what code switching istalking one way around my
friends or people I'muncomfortable with, and then
talking one way in corporateAmerica right.
Having to put on my propervoice, so to speak.
(20:39):
And I don't do that anymore.
Right.
And but it's still a cost thatcomes with that.
Sometimes I'm not presenting inthe way that white America is
fine with.
Freedom is being able to feelthat joy.
In a way where, you don't haveto turn it off.
Like you don't have to tone itdown.
You don't have to worry about itbeing taken away by society.
(21:02):
Right?
Because as people, we're notgonna be joyful every single day
of our lives, that's just notrealistic.
Right?
Because life, and a lot happens.
But being able to move in a waywhere we don't have to hold this
tension in our bodies, but Ithink too, yes, it's about
today.
But I think freedom is also verymuch tied to people who cause
(21:27):
harm and continuing to causeharm.
And I'm holding the systems thatcause harm to acknowledge it and
to do something about it.
It not just acknowledge it, butdo something about it.
Right.
That's another level of freedomto me because what that does is
it then.
It then allows others who areoppressed and who are
(21:48):
experiencing these harms to haveanother layer of trust in a way.
And I don't think you can havefreedom without trust.
So that's the simplest way I cananswer that question though.
I feel like that was not just asimple answer.
Michael Bauman (22:02):
Well, it's not an, it's not an easy, it's not
an easy question.
And I feel like it's somethingthat ties.
So, I mean, even in thediscussion around success, it
ties so much into that peoplehave to figure out what does
freedom feel like forthemselves, in the different
areas of their life.
But I think what you touched onis so important because it gives
(22:23):
that insight into yourexperience of like, One, like I
have this constant, almost thefear, the constant fear.
You mentioned like the fear ofwhat I have being taken away.
Like I can't just experiencethis joy.
It's like, what if this is takenaway or also, and this is just
the journey for everybody ingeneral, but how can I actually
(22:46):
show up authentically and beaccepted for who I am around
that?
Can you talk, dive into, I'mcurious to dive into that fear.
Talk about just that fear, oneof it being taken away, and this
is, again, gets back to systems.
You know what I mean?
it's just, it's all the time andthat's why I love having you
(23:07):
share your experience.
Cuz it's so, so important.
Lettie Gore (23:11):
Yeah.
So.
One angle.
I wanna take to answer thisquestion is to look at
generational trauma and just howgenerational trauma does impact
present day fears and thingslike that.
Whenever we talk about trauma,what happens is people just look
(23:33):
at trauma as oh, a car accident,right.
Or something that we've seen ina TV show or some something
physically like very harmful,right?
Like some kind of trauma, likethat, but trauma is much, much
deeper.
Trauma affects us on a molecularlevel.
My first master's is in history,but I went and got a second one
in conflict management andresolution.
(23:54):
And I did that because, well, Ididn't bring know at the time
why, but now I see why I had totake many grad classes on
trauma.
The mind.
Psychology.
And I had professors who weretherapists and who were
psychiatrists, and they're alsoacademic professors, which I'm
like, how did you do all thatschooling?
But anyway I learned so muchabout how trauma affects us.
(24:18):
And I remember I was able totake it and tie it into history
because there's not enoughwritten about generational
trauma and how it affects all ofus because of the history that
our ancestors have experiencedthat gets passed down through
our DNA.
It gets passed to us.
(24:39):
Right.
And so whenever I think aboutfear with people, it's I have
this conversation more than Ieven realize it.
Now that I'm saying this out,out loud, but.
There's a fear that people haveof not wanting to give up what
they know is going to keep themin a position of power.
(25:00):
And that is again, back to whitesupremacy culture here in the
United States and how whitesupremacy functions here in the
United States.
It's all throughout history.
It's everywhere throughouthistory.
I mean this actually, Michaelties back to what you asked me
before about some history thingsand racism and everything like
that.
And I think about generationaltrauma with slavery.
(25:22):
For example, there's so muchthat's in that, but two
examples.
One is black enslaved women andhow black enslaved women were,
trigger warning for people rapedmutilated Just realized in ways
that people wouldn't evenbelieve and not just the
physical act of that, but alsothe experiments the
(25:47):
psychological trauma, the justthe immense amount of it that is
passed down right now.
I'm 34 years old and my eggsthat are in my body whenever I
experience right now, that'shappening.
And so my future child that I'mhoping to one day have could be
affected by whatever trauma Iexperience.
(26:08):
And so, but with that, I thinkabout two things Things like how
fear affects the black communityin the United States.
And I can't speak for the entireblack community.
We are not a monolith, but I canspeak for what I know, how I
feel.
I can speak for how, what myparents have told me what my
grandparents used to tell me.
(26:28):
And just their stories.
If you listen, you can hear howfear shows up.
It has nothing to do with notbeing strong, not enduring, not
having hope.
Has nothing to do with that.
We are people with feelings,with emotions, right?
And there are fears that we haveand how they show up and what we
do with those fears as far assurvival goes.
But the other part of this isalso white people in the United
(26:53):
States.
I think about how much historyshows us.
Fear showed up in white people.
And I don't mean that in a wayto give sympathy to white people
in this country and theirancestors and the horrific
things that they did cuz that'snot what I'm about.
But what I will say is there isa fear of losing this identity
(27:17):
that you created.
Race was created because whitepeople needed an identity.
That's why it was created.
I mean, James Baldwin talksabout this.
Race is a social construct andyou look at how many horrific
things happen to black people,to brown people, to indigenous
people in this country's historyand what were you so afraid of?
(27:40):
Or like, what were you afraid oflosing so much that you
annihilated people.
Just genocide.
Just burned down homes.
Burned down churches.
Burned down home communities.
You enacted laws to preventblack people from voting.
Indigenous people from voting.
You stole land.
All of this in the name of whitesupremacy racism.
(28:03):
Right.
But it's, what are you afraidof?
And then I think about lynchingshere in, in the United States
and the fact that you would have4,000 white people show up to
celebrate a black person beingburned, right.
Being Lynched.
It was racial terror.
Lynchings.
And that gets passed down.
And at the same time though, andagain, to like mention James
(28:28):
Baldwin, I know I mentioned himlike four times.
He's my absolute favorite blackintellectual in history.
But he talks about the price ofthe ticket often.
And what he means by thatthough, is the price that this
country has been willing to payfor so long to hone on, to cling
so tightly to these systems, toracism, to fight supremacy.
(28:48):
And that includes the fear.
And that's why I ask peoplesometimes I'm like, what are you
afraid of?
What are you so afraid oflosing?
Right.
And that's the question that Icould ask at any moment
throughout history as I'mtalking about it.
I wanted actually Michael to goback really quickly.
Cause I never even answered thesecond part of your question
regarding the history stuff andracism, but yeah, I started
(29:10):
talking about Juneteenth and Iimmediately then thought about
after the civil war, somethingthat people say is, oh, well the
civil war was just over and thatwas that.
And black people were free.
And so why are y'all stillcomplaining about.
And I always just chuckle atthat now.
I used to get very mad aboutthat, but now I'm just like,
wow.
(29:31):
The level of ignorance.
But it's everywhere.
People would just read somethingbeyond what they want to feel
good about.
You'll see it all there.
But you had the reconstructionera right from 1866 to 1877.
So a 11 year period.
And it's painted as this time ofoh, when they did help black
people.
So they did do all these things.
They did do all this.
That's not it.
The entire federal government,like just tapped out of the
(29:54):
south and they were like, we'renot actually gonna help y'all
anymore.
We thought that we could atfirst, but actually we just care
more about money and we caremore about getting who we want
in these different positions.
Senators, congressmen,presidents.
Money has always talked.
Money has always been thebiggest motivator for, oh my
gosh, so much in this country.
(30:15):
But the reconstruction era wassabotaged.
It didn't just fail.
It was sabotaged.
It was sabotaged in every way.
And then in, in that you hadmassive violence, just tons of
violence against black people.
And you had black people werestill not allowed to vote.
Even though there was an entireamendment that was been in
place, right.
For black men to be able tovote.
(30:36):
That didn't happen.
You had racist stereotypes thatexisted during slavery, just so
much that just went into, thatjust continued on.
It didn't it didn't just stop.
Right.
And I want people to understandthat for, because this, for some
reason, people think that justbecause something is a law or
just because something is said,that means everyone abided by
(30:58):
it.
No.
Do you see people doing thattoday?
Whenever it comes to laws oranything, do you really think
that these states, these peoplejust said, you know what, we're
actually just gonna let them befree now.
No, that's not at all whathappened.
Right.
And so you see black cones comeup, you see the Jim Crow era
just emerged and that continuedon for another century.
(31:23):
You see.
Every turn in every way you seeit.
And I'm, I mean, I can list offeven more books.
There's a book by IsabelleWilkerson.
It's called the warmth of othersons.
And it's about the greatmigration in the United States.
And the great migration in theUnited States happen from the
end of the 18 hundreds into likethe 1960s.
(31:45):
There were three different wavesof it and it's whenever black
people were fleeing the south,they were not just moving away
for better jobs.
Cuz that's what the book's gonnatell you.
Oh, they were just moving betterjobs.
No, they were fleeing.
There's a difference between thephrase that someone's leaving a
place versus someone's fleeingthat's in danger.
I can go into detail so much,but throughout this country's
(32:08):
history, you see how systemicracism has showed up and people
wanna take a little part andthey wanna say, oh, no, see, but
there's this black person thatdid this.
Well, see what black people didhave schools, or they did do
this or what, whatever it was.
That's like today, if I said, ohsee, but I exercised.
And I worked out for my wholelife and I'm not sick now at the
(32:30):
age of 70 and someone's motherdid the same exact thing and
they're sick.
It doesn't matter that I did notexperience that.
Because at the end of the day,this person still has this
problem.
It's not about playing thischerry picking game.
When, whenever it comes tohistory and I see that all the
time.
I live in North Carolina.
(32:51):
You see the Confederate flageverywhere.
And people say, oh, but it'sjust Southern heritage.
We saw the Confederate flag usedfor violence, because you would
see the Confederate flag beingheld up or put up above a body
that was lynched.
You, you saw it in Selma,Alabama during the marches in
1965, you saw the sheriffsholding the Confederate flag.
(33:13):
You would see it throughout thehistory.
It's not just Southern heritage,it's racism, right?
You saw the Confederate flagbeing held as the KKK, March
down Pennsylvania avenue inWashington, DC in 1925, like
thousands of men, tens ofthousands of clan members
marching through for trueAmericanism.
(33:36):
In the state's capital.
Right?
And then people look at whathappened here in the United
States on January 6th, 2021.
And they're like, this has neverhappened before.
Yes, it has.
Matter of fact, here inWilmington, North Carolina,
there was an actual insurrectionhere in 1898 on November the
10th, 1898.
There was a successfulinsurrection in coup.
(33:58):
The government, the localgovernment here was overthrown
by white supremacists and theblack people who were here, many
of them were murdered.
And then they were, many of themwere ran out of town.
Some stayed, but many were ranout of town.
So not only was it a successfulcoup and a successful
insurrection here, but it was arace massacre.
(34:19):
I find is there's this issuewith history and memory.
If people create these verycomfortable truths to feel good
about them, themselves to holdthemselves up.
You, you can't just look athistory in a vacuum.
History is not linear, right?
Everything in history isconnected.
You have to see the wholepicture.
(34:40):
And so even then with history,people look at things like the
civil rights act here in 1964,the voting rights act in 1965.
They're like, oh, okay.
See that solved everything.
And I have two parents.
That are 70 years old and 77.
And thank God they're stillhere.
But my dad was 18 years old in1963 and he couldn't vote.
(35:04):
He still couldn't vote after1965.
It wasn't like he just had theseplaces, these local areas these
states that were like, oh,alright, well let's time to just
change the laws and just let'emvote now.
Absolutely not.
Maybe they did right.
Let them vote.
Maybe you see the lines and thepictures, people voting and all
(35:24):
of that thing.
But then what happened to thoseballots?
Did they actually get cash?
Did they get thrown out?
Right?
What actually happened?
Right?
We still see things like thisbeing affected today.
We still see infringement ofrights.
We still see disenfranchisementof black voters.
Whenever you see these areaswhere they're changing voting
(35:45):
places for example, where itused to be maybe two miles from
this person's home and nowalmost 15 miles away, like for
what?
Right?
Like for what?
But we already know the answer.
There's gerrymandering.
There's the way that thesethings that happened before
people can look at and point atand say, oh, that was overtly
racist.
Now it's just evolved insomething different.
(36:07):
It's just evolved.
We see it with the prison systemhere, we see it with mass
incarceration.
Mass incarceration in thiscountry there's a direct
throughline to slavery.
There's a direct throughline toconvict leasing.
Which happened during thereconstruction era and continued
on afterwards.
There's a direct line.
It's infuriating, honestly.
And the reason why I talk aboutthese things, how I talk about
(36:27):
them, I do it because I wantpeople to just see I want to be
able to convey these stories topeople so that they can say
like, oh, if they just have one,oh, wow moment, then that's one
moment right.
Where I'm like, okay, say I gotthat and they're gonna go tell
somebody else.
And they're gonna hopefully tryto continue to educate and be
(36:49):
uncomfortable.
And, but I can't, I'm not gonnahold people's hands.
Right.
I'm not gonna coddle people,but.
In order to talk about progressin order to talk about love and
unity.
You cannot talk about love andunity and do what you're doing
in this country.
What are you talking about?
There's a quote by JamesBaldwin.
(37:10):
It's actually tattooed on myside.
It's"Love is a battle.
Love is a war.
Love isn't growing up." ButJames Baldwin in this, he's not
talking about the sentimentallove the like eewy, gooey love.
He's not talking about that.
He's talking about the love ofjustice.
The love that you have to havein order for justice to be seen.
James Baldwin taught me how tosee history.
(37:31):
How to read history.
How to feel and I just, I reallywant people to understand that
you can't take bits and piecesof history and you can't mold it
to fit your agenda.
And this comes with so manysmall things even every August,
(37:52):
talking about the women's rightto vote here, in the United
States.
Language is so important.
It's not okay to just say womengot the right to vote in 1920,
no white women got the right tovote.
You have to put those words, youhave to put that there.
(38:13):
White women got the right tovote.
But there's so much I see withpeople wanting to take half of
the truth and wanna takewhatever makes them feel good,
but I promise you that lookingat the whole picture and dealing
with that discomfort andconfronting the fact that you've
been lied to about history.
(38:33):
There's much more freedom inthat.
Just to bring it back tofreedom.
There's a lot more freedom tothat.
Racism is about power.
It's about structural power.
It's not just about a whiteperson doing something to a
black person physically.
Racism is about power and all ofthese people who want to quote
(38:53):
Dr.
Martin Luther king, Jr.
They wanna quote Malcolm X.
They wanna quote Rosa parks,right.
Rosa parks was this docile blackwoman, as you were just sitting
down one day, no Rosa parksactually before that day Rosa
parks used to be a fieldsecretary for the NAACP here in
Alabama.
And she used to go out and sheused to talk to black women who
(39:18):
were essentially assaulted bypolice officers by sheriffs.
She did the interview for ReeseTaylor.
I don't know if anyone's everheard of Reese Taylor, but you
should Google her and you shouldsee what happened to her.
Rosa Parks was not just thislittle old white-skinned black
woman who decided to just sitdown because she was tired.
No, that was planned.
(39:39):
That was very deliberate.
And another thing too is I wantpeople to realize it has not
been a long time since slaveryhappened here.
Has not been a long time at all.
There was a black woman namedMary Church, Terrell.
She, again, people should Googleher, but she helped desegregate
Washington, DC.
(39:59):
I want people to understand thatshe was born in the late 18
hundreds, still alive in 1987.
It's so easy to look and say,oh, well that happened in 1890.
That wasn't a long time ago,people.
Anyway, I've been like talking,Michael,
Michael Bauman (40:12):
but I just, no, I it's really important.
Right.
And that's what is important torealize.
And like you mentioned, likeonce you start, even if it's
just the little things and youstart to realize, oh, wow.
Like this is a totally differentperspective than I might have
seen before.
My question for you is like,where.
And this is, again, another verydifficult question to answer,
(40:33):
like where does the work begin?
Like what does that look likefor individuals?
Because there's so many layers,right?
There's layers of education,there's layers of resource
distribution.
Like you're talking about likethere's layers of fear.
Where would you recommend peopleeither going for resources to,
to educate themselves or, how dothey handle the fear?
How do they handle the scarcity?
(40:54):
How do they become aware of,their privilege?
If that's the case.
Lettie Gore (40:58):
Yeah.
I love this question.
I love this question because,and I'll never get tired of
answering this question cuz it'sso important.
It will always be veryimportant.
And the first thing I would sayis people need to follow and
listen to black educators.
Brown educators.
People who have experience.
(41:18):
What they're wanting to knowmore.
And use your own discernment anduse your own judgment about
that.
Because what I will say too isnot all skin folk are kinfolk.
That's the saying here.
I don't know that same before,but that's not how it works but
definitely start there.
That's one thing also read booksthat are about racism that are
about white supremacy.
And I know there are some peopleout here on social media that
(41:40):
are saying, oh, well, I'm tiredof you all saying that you're
gonna read books and thereshould be more than reading
books.
Okay.
Yes.
There's more than just readingbooks and listening to podcasts.
However, start there though.
You gotta start with education.
So reading books like a few thatI've mentioned here reading
Medical Apartheid by HarrietWashington, which is about the
(42:02):
experimentation of on blackpeople throughout history.
Read How to be less Stupid aboutRace, which is by Crystal A
fleming.
Read Stephanie Jones Rogers.
They were her Property.
There's so many, I have a hugebookshelf.
Take time to listen to JamesBaldwin.
Start with just Google theAmerican dream and the American
(42:26):
Negro it's by James Baldwin.
He wrote it in the 1960s.
That's where I would tell you tostart with that.
I have a Patreon where peoplecan subscribe to me.
I offer lessons each month, aLettie's list, which is a list
of resources and things.
I do webinars live Q and A'sjust a ton for people to learn
(42:48):
more.
There are many others too.
Follow me on Instagram atsincerely.lettie.
Also follow Check yourprivilege, which is Myisha Hill.
Follow Professor Kena Reed.
She's the anti-blackness reader.
Just a ton of others are alsodoing this work.
But start there, start bylistening to podcasts, listen to
(43:09):
Code Switch through NPR.
That's just one that I couldthink of.
My podcast obviously, which iscalled History Shows Us there's
so many more, but.
Do that, but also, and alsochallenge people that, it is not
okay to know that your friend orone of your family members just
said something that you know wasnot okay.
(43:31):
And you didn't say anythingabout it.
Right.
And so what I often have peopleasking you is, well, well, how
do I know what to say?
Well, if you have a presentationat work, you're gonna prepare
for it, right?
Like, you're gonna prepare forpossible questions.
Someone's gonna ask you, youdon't know what people gonna ask
you, but you prepare yourselfbecause you wanna be able to
answer those questions.
I tell people often somethingthat you can do is if you're
(43:53):
gonna go to a family dinner orif you're gonna be out with
friends or something, and thatthere's that person who will be
there, that's gonna probably saysomething, have some things
ready.
Right.
Have some things ready where youknow, okay.
They might say this or theymight say that, what could I say
to that?
Say something.
It is not okay to not sayanything.
We are past that.
We are past that.
(44:13):
Like, absolutely not.
You need to say if someone sayssomething that's racist, you
need to say something.
If someone makes a racist joke,why is that funny?
That is not funny.
Right?
Say something And it's aboutthat.
It's taking action and doingsomething.
It's about giving money.
Paying black people.
Paying brown people.
This isn't saying that therearen't white people out here
(44:34):
that are working hard.
I'm not saying that at all.
What I am saying though, is wehave to have a conversation
about reparations.
And though this country stilldoes not want to acknowledge the
fact that reparations need tohappen on a federal level.
There are ways you can do thaton an individual level.
You can decide that you want togive X amount of dollars to a
(44:56):
local community organizationdirectly.
I mean directly, like there arelocal places where you can help
or you can give your funds.
There's just so much that peoplecan do.
But what I will tell people isdo that internal work because
I've been in therapy for thelast couple of years, just for
my own mental health.
(45:17):
Cuz I think everyone should beable to get therapy.
It should be free.
But they should also be paid forthe work that they do.
It should be free because we areall out here living.
But I have seen just withtherapy for me and just my own
life.
Take what I do out of it.
I've had to work on myself inorder to show up in
relationships.
How I wanna show up yeah.
I have to take responsibilityfor past actions.
I have that's some people haveto understand, you have to do
(45:39):
that too.
It's not enough to post onInstagram, to post on Twitter,
to post on Facebook, to say thatyou are happy about Juneteenth
or something like that.
It's not enough.
It's not enough.
It's about doing the work toactually dismantle the system.
If that means going to your citycouncil meetings asking
questions about racist laws,asking maybe why do I live in
(46:04):
this community?
And there are no black peoplehere.
Why?
Right.
Asking these questions.
Right.
Asking yourself, why don't youhave any friends that are people
of color and that are black andthat's not so you can go out
there and say that you haveblack friends.
No.
But why are you only surroundedby white people?
Right.
Like what in you is subconsciousand is biased and is racist,
(46:27):
which has led you to notgravitate towards people who are
not white and that do not havewhite skin right?
What about that.
You need to do that.
You gotta do that work.
That's on you.
That's no one else'sresponsibility, so there's
answer to that.
Michael Bauman (46:46):
There is the answer to that.
No, but I think what youmentioned, I mean, that is the
work, right?
And so you talked about, I mean,that's where that undercurrent
of fear, right?
You see something happen and yougo, that's not right.
That is the work right there tostep in.
And that's like themicropractice basically, it's
like, how do you dismantle ahuge system?
Well, you start with thoseinstances, you recognize that
(47:09):
fear in yourself that goes, I'mscared of saying something right
now, or this could have negativeeffects for me.
And then you still do it anyway,regardless of how eloquent it
is, or the result that comesfrom it, or whether you feel
like you did a good job or not,you went, that is not okay with
me.
And I am going to talk about it.
(47:29):
I'm gonna step into thatsituation.
And so I feel like that's likethe internal work, But then you
also talked about like, do thecognitive work, like do the
cognitive work to actually gaina better understanding, talk to
people that experience the worldin an entirely different way
than you and go, wow, let me seeif I can understand where
(47:51):
they're coming from rather than,how can I prove them wrong?
Cuz where I'm coming from isobviously right.
Going like, let me justunderstand.
Let me understand the peoplethat look differently and think
differently that have differentskin colors that come from
different places.
And then do the, do the work ofthe research and stuff around
that as well in terms of thebooks and all of that.
(48:12):
And I think those two things areexcellent things to leave people
with.
Recognize that fear, still doit, and then do the cognitive
work of actually trying tounderstand people that are
different than you and I thinkthat's awesome.
So, yeah.
Thank you so much for your time.
Thank you so much for the yearsand years that you have
dedicated into this space.
I'll put the links, to the stuffthat you do, your podcast and
(48:35):
all that in the show notes.
Is there anything that you wannaleave?
The audience before we wrap uphere?
Lettie Gore (48:40):
Yes.
One thing I want leave withpeople is a quote by Tony
Morrison.
It's from an interview that shedid in the early nineties, but
basically what Toni Morrisonsaid in this interview was What
are you without Racism?
(49:01):
And there's more that she saysafter this, but I want people to
Google that, I mean, you couldjust type into your Google bar,
Toni Morrison, What are youwithout Racism?
It'll bring up the interviewclip, but I wanna leave people
with that.
Cause I want people to go lookthat up.
I want people to just listen toit and I also will leave cuz I
don't ever close out a podcastepisode without another James
(49:23):
Baldwin quote that's just athing that I do.
There's the quote by JamesBaldwin.
And he said,"People are trappedin history and history is
trapped in them." And he wrotethat in 1953 in his essay,
Stranger in the Village.
And I have that tattooed on myleft forearm.
Literally I looked at my armevery day and I see that cuz
it's a reminder for myself forthe work that I do, but I want
(49:46):
people to hear that because it'sso deep, it has such a deep
meaning and it's tied to fear,but it's also tied to freedom.
And that's why I have it on me.
But I wanna leave people withthat and I wanna leave people to
with hope there's a lot going onin the United States right now.
And I know Michael, you havelisteners all over.
(50:08):
There's a lot happening in theworld right now, but I can speak
directly about the United Statesand this is where I live.
But I want people here in the USand also globally to just take
care of yourselves in every way,because life is a lot, but also
so are these oppressive systemsand so is doing the work like
(50:29):
you doing the work is a lot andit's worth it.
Michael Bauman (50:33):
There you go.
Thank you.
Yeah.
Thank you again.
So, so much just tons and tonsof excellent starting places for
people.
And there's always more to bedone.
Always more to be done, so yes.
Really appreciate you taking thetime to share.
Lettie Gore (50:48):
Thank you so much.
This has been wonderful,Michael.
Absolutely.
Michael Bauman (50:52):
Before you go, I would love it.
If you actually just shared thisepisode with a friend, I'm sure.
While you were listening, youknow, someone just popped into
your head and you're like, oh,they would probably like this as
well.
So it's really easy.
You just click the share buttonon either the website or
whatever podcast platform you'reon and send it over to them.
And chances are, they'llprobably like it, too until next
time, keep engineering yoursuccess.
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