June 23, 2025 • 45 mins
What if the categories we use to define race are more limiting than enlightening? In this episode, Karen and Brittany unpack actor Malik Yoba’s recent statement that he no longer identifies as a “Black man” but as “non-white”—a personal choice that opens the door to a much bigger conversation.
Together, they explore how racial classifications have shifted over time and across borders—from South Africa’s former system to the evolving definition of "whiteness" in the U.S. These categories, they suggest, are not fixed truths but flexible frameworks shaped by history, power, and politics.
The conversation turns deeply personal as they reflect on tracing African ancestry beyond race, reconnecting with specific cultures, regions, and identities that predate colonial borders. They also discuss how identities like Afro-Latino or white Latino often get flattened in current systems that don’t reflect cultural complexity.
Could technology help us move toward a more nuanced understanding of human diversity? And what might it look like to define ourselves based on connection, heritage, and lived experience rather than inherited categories?
This episode invites listeners to think differently about identity—not by denying race’s impact, but by imagining what could emerge if we approached it with more depth, history, and humanity.
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- Follow Brittany on LinkedIn and learn more at BND Consulting Group.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hi Brittany, Hi Karen , how are you?
Speaker 2 (00:05):
I'm good, I am ready for another episode of the
E-Word.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
Yes yes, yes, my favorite time of the week.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
I know, I know.
I hope you had a good weekthough.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
I did, I did, although I'm a little bit
surprised.
What are we going to talk abouttoday?
Speaker 2 (00:24):
So you might have seen Malik yoba made a statement
on social media and he'sbasically proposing that he's no
.
Basically he's saying he's nolonger a black, black man.
He wants to be referred to asnon-white, and I think this
concept is super interesting.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
Okay, I'm a little bit nervous.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
Well, basically, I mean, he's challenging the
social construct and essentiallykind of putting on blast the
focus of what thisadministration is talking about,
right?
So if there's this backlashagainst black people or other
ethnicities, then really thedisparity is between being
(01:21):
non-white or white, essentially,and so we should just call it
what it is, so that it exposesexactly what the intentions are
behind many of these differentchanges, particularly of DEI and
other things that are happeningvery rapidly over the past few
(01:46):
weeks, and so I think it sparksan interesting conversation,
like do we actually need toidentify as our different races
or ethnicities?
Speaker 1 (02:02):
Excellent question.
So the part of me that lovesbeing a Black woman and would
(02:29):
choose to always come back as aBlack woman says yeah,
absolutely my identity and myunique ethnic and cultural pride
, and I also get his point.
So initially, when you saidthat, I was very nervous, I'm a
little less nervous now.
However, getting rid of thepretext is interesting to just
(02:53):
lump us all together.
So, whether you are ChineseAmerican or Black American or
you know wherever, immediately Ithought of you know, being from
Ecuador or somewhere.
But okay, that's my otherquestion.
There are many people who haveethnic origins, right, who may
(03:19):
be Latino, for example, andstill have different race
classifications.
Right, you can be a whiteLatino, you can be a black
Latino.
You can be an indigenousAmerican.
Right, and be Latino, be from aspace that speaks Spanish.
So what would a white Latino?
(03:41):
They would be white.
What would a white Latino?
They would be white.
Speaker 2 (03:46):
Well, they are technically classified that way
anyway, right, because typicallythere are two boxes, so you can
be like right, you just saidthat Latino, and choose to be
white or Latino and choose to besomething else.
I mean, they have choices,which is kind of nice, yeah,
(04:07):
yeah.
But I think it's an interestingconversation because we know
race is a social construct.
The people who are identifiedas non-white and Latino and
black, whatever, we didn'tcreate those.
Those were created by whitepeople in an effort to other us
(04:35):
anyway, to say that we're notwhite.
Yes, white has always been thecenter, yes, white has always
been the center.
And so what if we just rejectedthe construct that they created
?
We could actually identify aswhere we're from, or origins or
(05:00):
nationality, without identifyingas a particular race that they
created Because they said wewere Black.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
That's cool.
What'd you say?
I said I could just be American.
That's cool.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
Exactly, and we know in other countries that
construct is different.
So in South Africa and TrevorNoah talks about this quite
eloquently right, yes, there'swhite, colored and black.
Black is the lowest class, okay, and through the years,
(05:55):
different races have beencategorized based on political
affiliation.
What I can't remember is if,for instance, the Japanese and
the Chinese I can't rememberwhich, I can't remember which,
but through politics one groupwas classified as white and the
other group was classified ascolored, and of course, white
had the most privileges Coloreda little less than whites, but
(06:18):
definitely more than Blacks.
And Blacks don't have muchprivileges at all, don't have
much privileges at all.
And so there's this negotiation, okay, of where you sit in the
class structure, whichtechnically has nothing to do
with how you look.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
Correct, correct.
So this is really interestingOne because there's a pop artist
, tyla, who also is from SouthAfrica and she's received some
criticism throughout her careerbecause she refers to herself as
colored, because that is howshe's referred to and perceived
(06:58):
in South Africa and that is verydifficult for larger markets,
especially in the United States,where racial classifications
are different Right and in UShistory, being called colored is
inappropriate.
That was an antiquateddesignation designation and so
(07:31):
if you look at her you may say,oh okay, this is a Black woman
and for her that doesn't quitemesh because she would say I'm a
colored woman.
This also reminds me in lawschool I read a case and I'll
have to our next episode, I'llhave to get the details but I
distinctly remember a US courtcase where people have sued for
(07:53):
their whiteness.
So there was an Asian immigrantwho actually came from Caucasus
right, the Caucasus mountains,and would very well be
considered Caucasian Right, andso he did not understand why he
(08:13):
was not afforded the sameprivileges as other Caucasians.
Slash white people, right.
So white has evolved in theUnited States.
Of course, the Nell IrvinPainter wrote the History of
White People.
(08:34):
It's a fantastic book.
But white has a differentmeaning in the United States
than it does anywhere else, andit's almost odd to say that in
other spaces.
I've been in other spaces andwhat we would call white people
(08:56):
would say that that doesn't makesense, because in our history
Italian Americans were once notconsidered white Irish.
Americans were once notconsidered white.
Irish Americans were once notconsidered white, and so on and
so forth.
Jewish Americans were notconsidered white.
As we're talking about this, itjust makes it all seem so
(09:18):
ridiculous.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
I'm just going round in circles and it's just like
this is because it's all made upRight, based on what political
influences, what drove theeconomy?
Like it's just.
(09:44):
It's not real and I've nevervisited Africa, but based on
(10:14):
what I've heard, Africans didn'treally consider themselves any
color, essentially untilEuropeans came and designated
them as such, Right.
So why are we still embracingwhat the colonizers dubbed us to
be?
Why are we holding so tight toit as part of our identity?
Speaker 1 (10:23):
Huh Well, maybe, because I mean, history is told
through the lens of the victor,right, the perceived victor.
And to your point, I havevisited the continent and you're
absolutely right.
And even for my friends, forexample, who are Nigerian
(10:44):
American and they've talkedabout their journey to becoming
Black, what it means to be Blackwithin the United of Nigeria,
(11:10):
and all of those ethnic groupsor tribes or however you would
want to describe it, all comewith these prejudices, Right,
Right?
So, for example, Igbo peopleare said to be really good with
money and they're perceived tobe, to look a particular way
(11:30):
European people are perceived to, you know, based on how you
present phenotypically, you know, do you have a high forehead?
Do you have a low nose bridge,high nose bridge a size of your?
All of that can typically havepeople say, oh okay, I think
you're from this particulargroup, and here's what I believe
(11:52):
about this group, for better orworse.
Speaker 2 (11:56):
Mm-hmm.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
And so to and this happens everywhere, right?
One of my cousins is Japanese,and so we spoke about how people
in Okinawa have curly hair,right, and not everyone in Japan
(12:22):
has this bone straight hair,and so the perception of this
curly hair really depends, right, depends on where you're from,
depends on whether or not it'sseen as a good thing or not.
Yep, humans, humans areremarkably consistent, I know.
Speaker 2 (12:43):
I know we are remarkably consistent, I know we
are remarkably consistent, nomatter where we are on this
planet well, the thing is thatwhat I would love for black
people in particular you'retalking about the continent
right to understand theirhistory and like like that
(13:09):
identification that we had priorto being brought to america is
just as important as theidentification that we have now
in order for us to connect backand know what our regions were
(13:29):
called before they were named bythe Europeans.
And so you know, I don't know ifI mentioned this before, but I
went and did my African ancestry, so Africanancestrycom, to
understand what tribe I camefrom.
(13:50):
Okay, because that's how weidentified ourselves.
Right, it wasn't necessarilythe place I mean, yes, the place
, but that was another you knowidentifier.
And so it validated on mymother's side that you know
we're Yoruba people, which wasvery like empowering for me,
(14:13):
because when you think of Africaas a huge continent, it's huge.
When you get your ancestry DNA,it tells you about a region,
but that region is pretty huge.
I can name quite a few regionsthat my DNA taps into, but to
understand that my tribe isYoruba wasn't particularly
important and that tribeprimarily occupied what today is
(14:39):
known as Nigeria.
But then there were, like Ihave DNA, a very
European-centric way about howcould I be from these two
different areas with this onetribe.
Speaker 1 (15:00):
These rigid borders yeah.
Speaker 2 (15:02):
I didn't get it.
And I was traveling one day andI was in the Uber or taxi, I
don't know, and it was aNigerian man and we started
talking about this and he saidsomething so incredibly obvious
to me.
Well, you know, it wasn'tcalled Benin and Togo and it
wasn't called Nigeria, rightLike the Yoruba tribe moved
(15:25):
through this particular area,which is now known as these
areas, and then the Europeanserected these borders, but it
didn't mean that the peopledidn't move across and move
between them.
They operated the same way theyalways operated.
It's just that there's thesecreated boundaries, right?
Speaker 1 (15:45):
Trade, commerce, marriage, et cetera.
Speaker 2 (15:48):
Exactly.
So he basically just educatedme on how people moved about,
particularly the Yoruba tribe,and I'm also part Fulani and I
didn't understand that part too,because that was on my father's
side and he was like, well, youknow, tribes weren't always
warring right, they intermingledand the Fulani really occupied
(16:12):
northern Nigeria and the Yorubaprimarily occupied southern
Nigeria into what now is what isknown Benin and Togo, and so
there's a lot of trade andintermingling and all that type
of stuff.
So this is why you could havethis nice mixture and it just
provided more context to who Iwas and just inspires me to, you
(16:34):
know, dig a little bit further,or a lot further to really
understand my ancestry, whichhas nothing to do with being
Black, white or anything of thatnature.
Speaker 1 (16:49):
Right, and I also want to emphasize, because there
are also Black Americans whostudy Black American culture
here and find that, much like inBenin and Togo and Nigeria,
highly regionalized, highlydependent upon where you grew up
(17:10):
.
So for example, black people.
I have family in the Carolinas,north Carolina specifically,
and the foods we ate, even now,right, this is informed by
hundreds of years of my familybeing there.
And the phrases culturalpractices.
(17:31):
And the phrases culturalpractices, aspects of
spirituality yes, to callsomeone Geechee, right is a
truncated reference to theGullah Geechee people who
enslaved and located within thisregion and have a very, very
(17:56):
specific culture.
Um, I want to say, maybe it wassherwin williams.
Someone recently came out with acolor that indirectly
references this culture, thatwould typically be known as as
haint blue, because there's aspecific shade of blue that is
(18:19):
supposed to be spirituallyprotected.
And so you, if you go intosouth carolina, if you go into
these areas, you will very oftensee porches.
Either the doors or the, theceilings of the porches or the
porches themselves, are paintedwith this very beautiful shade
(18:39):
of blue.
Right, that is very differentthan black Americans who maybe
(19:02):
settled near the Gulf in Texas.
Mm-hmm, it's still happening.
Oh, absolutely Right, even inmusic, right, the way that West
Coast hip-hop sounds versus EastCoast hip-hop, it's so specific
, the accents are so specificand, of course, we have planes,
(19:25):
trains and automobiles.
People move, people marry.
Right, you adopt a little bitfrom here, sprinkle it over
there.
But another question I have foryou as you were speaking, when
you said okay, these tribescommingled, intermarried to
(19:46):
expand their influence said okay, well, this is why white is
created, right, the concept ofwhite within the united states,
and back to malik gilbert'spoint, the concept of not white
is to expand power over andaccess to resources.
(20:09):
Right, because we know thatEnglish, you know English,
descended Puritan descendedpeople, relatively small group,
right, so you had to, at acertain point, expand.
Whether it's to expand your,your political power Right, to
(20:31):
expand your political power,right.
Okay, we want these IrishAmericans.
We're now going to have toconsider them white because
they're a sizable votingpopulation and we can get in and
maintain power, and so we'lljust keep expanding that.
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:50):
I mean they expand also through Latinos, who are a
huge part of our population, yes, who, like we just talked about
, many of which probably checkthe white box, because if you
can get away with it, why wouldyou check?
Why would you not check thewhite box If you could check the
(21:10):
black box?
Because of how it's perceived,and so that makes it seem, in
part, that there are more whitepeople in America.
That actually makes our blockbigger and, in some ways,
(21:41):
creates a different type ofunited front.
Very interesting History hasshown that creating subgroups
actually benefits the majoritygroup, because we can't come
together because we want thesedifferent privileges.
Everybody wants to have moreprivilege.
Nobody wants to give up theirprivilege.
(22:06):
How do you create thatcompetition and that division?
We break off and we fightamongst ourselves and we don't
(22:27):
focus on the real lion in theroom, which is potentially
whiteness, right?
So what if we were like hey,we're, we're all banding
together because we're alltreated pretty much the same,
there's levels of it and if wegot off our high horse and was
like, hey, I'll give up some ofthis privilege to help uplift
(22:49):
the other groups?
That's a very hard concept forpeople to actually grasp.
Let's just dream a little bit.
What would that mean?
What kind of power would wethen wield in society?
Speaker 1 (23:05):
I noticed that you made the distinction to separate
whiteness versus white peopleand I want to uplift that.
Can you share your perceptionof what you think the difference
is?
Speaker 2 (23:22):
I think I start off everybody's pretty much.
We're humans, right?
We, we, we bleed the same.
You know, we have the same typeof capacity, but it's really
around the privilege and theopportunity that is upheld by
being white, right?
So white people actually can bein the same station as black
(23:47):
people when you think ofeconomics and opportunity and
capacity, but their whitenessand the way that the world
perceives that capacity andopportunity is greater for white
people.
So whiteness to me is a conceptbuilt off of how the world
(24:11):
works.
Right, that is primarily thatis applied to white people, but
it's not applied equally to allwhite people.
But it's just that leg up overnon-white people that white
people have, which is calledwhiteness.
I don't know if I havearticulated that well.
Speaker 1 (24:57):
I think it's perfect.
Right, whiteness is better,prettier, good-er, right,
there's not a word, but we'lluse it for these purposes
Smarter, richer, more able, morecompetent, more intelligent,
more Whiteness is more thannon-white, and so it is this
concept that is so seductive,because everyone's in search of
grasping toward whiteness.
(25:18):
You don't have to be white totry to grasp onto whiteness, and
to your point, a lot of peopleare not fully in possession of
this concept of whiteness andalso don't lean into it as much.
Speaker 2 (25:32):
Yes, I mean some parts of it.
They're automatically givenbecause it just exists for them,
just like it just exists for usbecause of the color of our
skin.
But some people leverage thatto provide themselves more
opportunity and some peopledon't, whether they don't want
to or they don't realize it.
Speaker 1 (25:53):
Yeah, you know, I've had family members who are
phenotypically perceived to bewhite be able to exist in spaces
where whiteness abounds and say, oh my gosh you know this is
(26:14):
the conversation that's beinghad, this is the overall
perception and use thatwhiteness that they're gifted to
your point to create safety forothers.
So there are really large wayswhere that can happen and that
(26:36):
has happened in the past.
So, for example, you've hadwith the practice of redlining
and preventing people of color,especially black people, from
buying in certain neighborhoods.
You will have had white peoplewho would show up to the
showings and all of thefundamental parts of the home
(26:57):
buying process and use theirwhiteness to create opportunity
for these people of color, forBlack people, macro way or a
large way of doing it.
You've had, like a John Brownright.
It was a very fierceabolitionist using his station
(27:18):
to advocate for people who wereenslaved and oppressed.
And then you have small, verysmall ways where that works,
where maybe you're in a meetingand you defer to someone with
(27:38):
lesser power who has an ideathat you support and, instead of
taking the idea for yourself,say, oh, karen had a really
great idea we were speakingabout earlier.
Karen, do you want to sharethat?
Speaker 2 (27:54):
Exactly, and I think that this has been.
This concept of whiteness insome ways has been villainized,
and I like how you put it, whereyou said this is a gift.
The universe has given you agift in this social construct
which is called whiteness, andjust how you described.
(28:18):
You can use your powers forgood.
You can use them for really bad, you can use them to be
generally self-serving andneutral, or neutral.
You can use them however youwant.
The first step is understandingyour gift and then the second
(28:38):
is deciding how you're going touse it.
And the third is like.
You might decide to use yourgifts, sometimes all the time or
no time.
Those are your choices, but youfirst have to acknowledge that
you have it.
And it's also not saying thatother groups don't have gifts as
well.
(28:58):
They may not be as powerful aswhiteness in certain contexts.
Other groups may have morepowerful gifts in other contexts
, but when you look at the scale, whiteness far surpasses all of
those groups and you have tomake an individual decision as
(29:21):
to whether or not you believethat it is good for you and
society to not use your giftsfor good, for example.
And that requires in some cases, nobility, because people do
(29:41):
focus on their family first.
If you can get the leg up, areyou really going to bring
somebody with you all the time?
And the fact of the matter isyou're not Right.
It is survival of the familyand that's why this stuff has
been, you know, so pervasive fordecades, because people are
(30:03):
surviving and they also want tothrive and be better and they
focus on themselves and theirfamilies first.
That's the reality of life andwe're trying to get people to
kind of shift their mindset andbe more inclusive of bringing
people along and that bybringing people along, it
doesn't necessarily harm you.
(30:24):
It actually creates abundancefor you, your family and those
outer circles.
Speaker 1 (30:35):
Absolutely, absolutely.
You know, I saw a clip onsocial media of a reality TV
show and the clip was maybe 10years old and there were these
two women that were going tostart a podcast.
One was white and the other onewas black I believe she's black
(30:56):
In any case they're arguing andultimately they decide they're
not going to do the podcasttogether and so they decide
they're going to do their ownpodcasts.
And the black woman says youknow, good luck trying to get
(31:16):
this started without me.
And the woman says I'm white,I'm going to be fine.
And the woman was shocked intosilence, right, because I think
very often we walk around and weeither assume that people are
(31:39):
not aware of their privilege ornot aware of the gifts that they
have.
And for her to say it soclearly and just so openly was
like'm going to be, like this isnot an issue, and it was so
fascinating.
But I also want to take it kindof scope out, because I think
(32:03):
white and black are really easy,yeah to to juxtapose and to put
together and kind of pitagainst each other.
And I think that's always.
You know, there's a, there's atheory that everything is always
reduced to white versus black?
Correct?
Yes, that's true.
And there's the question ofwhat you do when you don't
(32:31):
neatly fit into either of those.
Where's your alignment?
I have a client who's fromBrazil and she is very
frustrated with things like theUS Census or job applications
which may only allow for oneracial identification, because
(32:55):
in her experience in Brazil sheexperienced a lot of racism and
here she's considered a Latina.
(33:19):
She's considered a Latina andshe feels like that flattens her
identity.
Because she says do you knowthat there's so many different.
You can be a white Latina, youcan be a black Latina, there are
Chino Latinos, there are somany different groups that have
melded together within LatinAmerica and have created all of
these other groups that don'tneatly fit within these squares
(33:39):
within the United States.
And so she's proud to be anAfro-Latina and at the same time
she's like well, if I say Black, then I'm ignoring the fact
that I'm Latino, and if I sayLatino, I feel like I'm ignoring
the fact that I'm black.
I have heard the same fromother friends who are white
(34:01):
Latinos and have said otherpeople looking at me One of my
friends she said you know,people refer to me as like a
spicy white person, which islike a lot, a lot to unpack, and
what do you do with that?
Speaker 2 (34:21):
I don't know, because you know these constructs were
created at a time when the worldwas, I guess, not that complex
and as we've, you know,intermingled as people have
voluntarily migrated versusinvoluntarily, the world has
(34:44):
just changed and so it's not.
It's literally no longer blackand white, yeah, no longer black
and white, and you cannot judgepeople A by the color of their
skin.
You have no idea what isunderneath all of that.
And we also have mixed up race,ethnicity, nationality, we've
(35:13):
co-mingled all of that, whichactually just creates more
complexity, which I think makesthe argument stronger for white
versus non-white, except for thefact that it still centers
whiteness.
Speaker 1 (35:30):
You are making the exact point I was going to say,
which was that I think the worldhas always been complex in that
way.
Right?
Obviously, these groups havealways existed and the ability
to access one another has tosome extent existed.
(35:53):
To access one another has tosome extent existed.
The United States and itsparticular brand of racism is
what's new, and so beinginclusive has muddied the waters
.
Right, being inclusive andallowing for our expansion of
(36:13):
identity is what, and I seeexactly why, to your point, a
lot of these people do not wantinclusion to advance, because
then it makes it more difficultto point out the enemy.
(36:34):
Right, or the problem.
Right, because within onefamily, you can have white
Latinos, you can have BlackLatinos, you can have Indigenous
, and the whole family can beconcerned with issues like
immigration or whatever it is.
(36:56):
The whole family can be part ofthat and their whole experience
of the United States can alsobe very different based on the
way that they look, and ourcurrent understanding doesn't
allow for the complexity ofidentity.
(37:21):
So, to your point, it's just no, but maybe we don't need race
anymore.
Speaker 2 (37:27):
Maybe that's not necessary If we want to focus on
those pockets of experience andculture that really have
meeting.
That's really under the icebergthat we need to understand,
because that social construct ofrace actually, like you said,
(37:54):
flattens us in a way that's notrepresentative of truly who we
are, at least today, and sothere could be an argument that
race needs to just go away.
It does, then, still have.
There's still a gap in how doyou now create meaningful
(38:15):
buckets, because any bucket youcreate is not going to be
representative of the totalexperience of any one person,
right.
But what is it that you reallyneed to know?
And not treat people like thismassive monolith, but also not
go down a rabbit hole where youhave so many data points that it
just becomes useless and notsustainable.
Now, to counter that, we nowhave new technology called AI,
(38:41):
right, that has the capacity tounpack all of that, and maybe
that's a new use case for it.
I don't really know the answer.
I know that a couple of yearsago, I did want to work on a
project that really re-imagineddemographics, because it wasn't
inclusive of people and peoplewere feeling left out, and if
(39:02):
you look at a person like me whoI guess would be comfortable
with the term Afro-Caribbean,and then you look at your client
who's Afro-Latina.
Those are two differentexperiences, right that if we
got to know intimately thosedifferences, we can really
(39:22):
understand those audiences in amuch more deeper way.
And that's what we need to doin this new society anyway.
There's so much noise out thereand you really want to connect,
and also, just from a marketingperspective, you really want to
connect with your customersthat you really have to do so in
a very intimate way in order tocut through that clutter.
And how are you going to dothat if you just label me as
(39:44):
black?
Right?
Speaker 1 (39:47):
And assume that you were right.
I mean, I'm just thinking ofresource allocation and, to your
point, marketing.
I'm thinking of Appalachia.
It's a very unique, veryspecific understanding of the
world.
In the United States versus thecoastal United States, which
(40:10):
the coastal United States,anywhere from New York to
Florida and Washington,throughout the state of
California, typically theaverage income is higher.
The level of education, therace will vary, but the concerns
(40:31):
and the perceived focus may bedifferent than a group in the
Midwest or the South orAppalachia or anywhere else.
And so how yeah, I'm just, I'mwrestling with you know how do
you break away race and whatelse do you use to contextualize
(40:53):
the human experience withinthis country?
Speaker 2 (40:57):
Yeah, and I think that's the question that we
should start asking ourselves.
It's time to rethink how wethink about people, because
we're not the same as a hundredyears ago.
We have evolved in manydifferent ways, in ways that we
can't.
It's hard for the human brainto contextualize.
So I think it's a really greatopportunity to leverage
(41:19):
technology to help us thinkdifferently, but we have to be
willing to embrace that thosedifferences are good, are good,
and it requires just are-imagining of all of our
(41:40):
systems too, because they're allbased on these boxes Right,
these highly antiquated versionsof self, and I would say if you
want to get your kind ofperfect answer, you have change
(42:00):
that.
Speaker 1 (42:01):
Americans, at this point, want to see Whatever side
of the aisle they're on.
(42:22):
It's very clear that people aredissatisfied.
Speaker 2 (42:26):
Yeah, that's true.
Because you can't want changeyeah and need change Like we
need change.
Yeah and need change Like weneed change.
It's time.
I don't know what that lookslike.
Maybe the aliens can help usfigure it out.
Speaker 1 (42:43):
You know, maybe that'll be the thing that unites
us all.
Speaker 2 (42:50):
I don't know Cause.
You know they're alwaysportrayed as looking very much
the same.
Yes, in some cases not all,most cases they have huge eyes,
but in some cases they don't.
Vision is very limited, whichI've kind of always said.
I don't want to be around whenthis happens because I don't
(43:13):
want to be blinded.
But if we couldn't see, howwould our experience with people
differ?
Right, if you could not look atskin color and judge based on
that and there's obviously voice, which different dialects and
things of that nature weprobably figure out how to
separate ourselves somehow, someway, because people are very
good at that.
It's a superpower of theirs.
(43:33):
They do not know how to separateourselves somehow some way,
because people are very good atthat.
Speaker 1 (43:35):
It's a superpower of theirs they do not know how to
come together.
Yeah, I mean, I just think.
Who's to say that aliens areanthropomorphic?
Why do they need two eyes?
You know what?
If they're just blobs floatingthrough the air, sentient blobs,
what do we do with that?
Speaker 2 (43:52):
that's just not how it's portrayed in the movies.
Sentient blobs, what do we dowith that?
That's just not how it'sportrayed in the movies.
No, no, star Trek did not coverthat.
Speaker 1 (44:03):
Most of the time they were anatomically different
Exactly, so maybe we'll see oneday.
I don't really want to bearound for that.
Just different Exactly.
Speaker 2 (44:13):
Different color, but you know.
So maybe we'll see one day.
I don't really want to bearound for that, but I don't
want it to happen anytime soon.
I'm not saying I should ithappens tomorrow and I don't
want to be around, but one day.
Speaker 1 (44:29):
I'm going to hope for dogs.
Dogs always bring me joy, so ifthey look like dogs, then I'd
be very happy.
I'd be awesome.
Speaker 2 (44:40):
All right, we're trying to solve the world's
problems and we're relying onaliens and dogs, and so I think
that's a good solution.
Mina thinks it's a greatsolution too.
Thanks, mina, and thanks MalikYoba for sparking this
conversation.
We appreciate you exactly.
(45:04):
Alright, until the next time onthe eWord, bye.
Hi Brittany, Hi Karen , how are you?
Speaker 2 (00:05):
I'm good, I am ready for another episode of the
E-Word.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
Yes yes, yes, my favorite time of the week.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
I know, I know.
I hope you had a good weekthough.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
I did, I did, although I'm a little bit
surprised.
What are we going to talk abouttoday?
Speaker 2 (00:24):
So you might have seen Malik yoba made a statement
on social media and he'sbasically proposing that he's no
.
Basically he's saying he's nolonger a black, black man.
He wants to be referred to asnon-white, and I think this
concept is super interesting.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
Okay, I'm a little bit nervous.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
Well, basically, I mean, he's challenging the
social construct and essentiallykind of putting on blast the
focus of what thisadministration is talking about,
right?
So if there's this backlashagainst black people or other
ethnicities, then really thedisparity is between being
(01:21):
non-white or white, essentially,and so we should just call it
what it is, so that it exposesexactly what the intentions are
behind many of these differentchanges, particularly of DEI and
other things that are happeningvery rapidly over the past few
(01:46):
weeks, and so I think it sparksan interesting conversation,
like do we actually need toidentify as our different races
or ethnicities?
Speaker 1 (02:02):
Excellent question.
So the part of me that lovesbeing a Black woman and would
(02:29):
choose to always come back as aBlack woman says yeah,
absolutely my identity and myunique ethnic and cultural pride
, and I also get his point.
So initially, when you saidthat, I was very nervous, I'm a
little less nervous now.
However, getting rid of thepretext is interesting to just
(02:53):
lump us all together.
So, whether you are ChineseAmerican or Black American or
you know wherever, immediately Ithought of you know, being from
Ecuador or somewhere.
But okay, that's my otherquestion.
There are many people who haveethnic origins, right, who may
(03:19):
be Latino, for example, andstill have different race
classifications.
Right, you can be a whiteLatino, you can be a black
Latino.
You can be an indigenousAmerican.
Right, and be Latino, be from aspace that speaks Spanish.
So what would a white Latino?
(03:41):
They would be white.
What would a white Latino?
They would be white.
Speaker 2 (03:46):
Well, they are technically classified that way
anyway, right, because typicallythere are two boxes, so you can
be like right, you just saidthat Latino, and choose to be
white or Latino and choose to besomething else.
I mean, they have choices,which is kind of nice, yeah,
(04:07):
yeah.
But I think it's an interestingconversation because we know
race is a social construct.
The people who are identifiedas non-white and Latino and
black, whatever, we didn'tcreate those.
Those were created by whitepeople in an effort to other us
(04:35):
anyway, to say that we're notwhite.
Yes, white has always been thecenter, yes, white has always
been the center.
And so what if we just rejectedthe construct that they created
?
We could actually identify aswhere we're from, or origins or
(05:00):
nationality, without identifyingas a particular race that they
created Because they said wewere Black.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
That's cool.
What'd you say?
I said I could just be American.
That's cool.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
Exactly, and we know in other countries that
construct is different.
So in South Africa and TrevorNoah talks about this quite
eloquently right, yes, there'swhite, colored and black.
Black is the lowest class, okay, and through the years,
(05:55):
different races have beencategorized based on political
affiliation.
What I can't remember is if,for instance, the Japanese and
the Chinese I can't rememberwhich, I can't remember which,
but through politics one groupwas classified as white and the
other group was classified ascolored, and of course, white
had the most privileges Coloreda little less than whites, but
(06:18):
definitely more than Blacks.
And Blacks don't have muchprivileges at all, don't have
much privileges at all.
And so there's this negotiation, okay, of where you sit in the
class structure, whichtechnically has nothing to do
with how you look.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
Correct, correct.
So this is really interestingOne because there's a pop artist
, tyla, who also is from SouthAfrica and she's received some
criticism throughout her careerbecause she refers to herself as
colored, because that is howshe's referred to and perceived
(06:58):
in South Africa and that is verydifficult for larger markets,
especially in the United States,where racial classifications
are different Right and in UShistory, being called colored is
inappropriate.
That was an antiquateddesignation designation and so
(07:31):
if you look at her you may say,oh okay, this is a Black woman
and for her that doesn't quitemesh because she would say I'm a
colored woman.
This also reminds me in lawschool I read a case and I'll
have to our next episode, I'llhave to get the details but I
distinctly remember a US courtcase where people have sued for
(07:53):
their whiteness.
So there was an Asian immigrantwho actually came from Caucasus
right, the Caucasus mountains,and would very well be
considered Caucasian Right, andso he did not understand why he
(08:13):
was not afforded the sameprivileges as other Caucasians.
Slash white people, right.
So white has evolved in theUnited States.
Of course, the Nell IrvinPainter wrote the History of
White People.
(08:34):
It's a fantastic book.
But white has a differentmeaning in the United States
than it does anywhere else, andit's almost odd to say that in
other spaces.
I've been in other spaces andwhat we would call white people
(08:56):
would say that that doesn't makesense, because in our history
Italian Americans were once notconsidered white Irish.
Americans were once notconsidered white.
Irish Americans were once notconsidered white, and so on and
so forth.
Jewish Americans were notconsidered white.
As we're talking about this, itjust makes it all seem so
(09:18):
ridiculous.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
I'm just going round in circles and it's just like
this is because it's all made upRight, based on what political
influences, what drove theeconomy?
Like it's just.
(09:44):
It's not real and I've nevervisited Africa, but based on
(10:14):
what I've heard, Africans didn'treally consider themselves any
color, essentially untilEuropeans came and designated
them as such, Right.
So why are we still embracingwhat the colonizers dubbed us to
be?
Why are we holding so tight toit as part of our identity?
Speaker 1 (10:23):
Huh Well, maybe, because I mean, history is told
through the lens of the victor,right, the perceived victor.
And to your point, I havevisited the continent and you're
absolutely right.
And even for my friends, forexample, who are Nigerian
(10:44):
American and they've talkedabout their journey to becoming
Black, what it means to be Blackwithin the United of Nigeria,
(11:10):
and all of those ethnic groupsor tribes or however you would
want to describe it, all comewith these prejudices, Right,
Right?
So, for example, Igbo peopleare said to be really good with
money and they're perceived tobe, to look a particular way
(11:30):
European people are perceived to, you know, based on how you
present phenotypically, you know, do you have a high forehead?
Do you have a low nose bridge,high nose bridge a size of your?
All of that can typically havepeople say, oh okay, I think
you're from this particulargroup, and here's what I believe
(11:52):
about this group, for better orworse.
Speaker 2 (11:56):
Mm-hmm.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
And so to and this happens everywhere, right?
One of my cousins is Japanese,and so we spoke about how people
in Okinawa have curly hair,right, and not everyone in Japan
(12:22):
has this bone straight hair,and so the perception of this
curly hair really depends, right, depends on where you're from,
depends on whether or not it'sseen as a good thing or not.
Yep, humans, humans areremarkably consistent, I know.
Speaker 2 (12:43):
I know we are remarkably consistent, I know we
are remarkably consistent, nomatter where we are on this
planet well, the thing is thatwhat I would love for black
people in particular you'retalking about the continent
right to understand theirhistory and like like that
(13:09):
identification that we had priorto being brought to america is
just as important as theidentification that we have now
in order for us to connect backand know what our regions were
(13:29):
called before they were named bythe Europeans.
And so you know, I don't know ifI mentioned this before, but I
went and did my African ancestry, so Africanancestrycom, to
understand what tribe I camefrom.
(13:50):
Okay, because that's how weidentified ourselves.
Right, it wasn't necessarilythe place I mean, yes, the place
, but that was another you knowidentifier.
And so it validated on mymother's side that you know
we're Yoruba people, which wasvery like empowering for me,
(14:13):
because when you think of Africaas a huge continent, it's huge.
When you get your ancestry DNA,it tells you about a region,
but that region is pretty huge.
I can name quite a few regionsthat my DNA taps into, but to
understand that my tribe isYoruba wasn't particularly
important and that tribeprimarily occupied what today is
(14:39):
known as Nigeria.
But then there were, like Ihave DNA, a very
European-centric way about howcould I be from these two
different areas with this onetribe.
Speaker 1 (15:00):
These rigid borders yeah.
Speaker 2 (15:02):
I didn't get it.
And I was traveling one day andI was in the Uber or taxi, I
don't know, and it was aNigerian man and we started
talking about this and he saidsomething so incredibly obvious
to me.
Well, you know, it wasn'tcalled Benin and Togo and it
wasn't called Nigeria, rightLike the Yoruba tribe moved
(15:25):
through this particular area,which is now known as these
areas, and then the Europeanserected these borders, but it
didn't mean that the peopledidn't move across and move
between them.
They operated the same way theyalways operated.
It's just that there's thesecreated boundaries, right?
Speaker 1 (15:45):
Trade, commerce, marriage, et cetera.
Speaker 2 (15:48):
Exactly.
So he basically just educatedme on how people moved about,
particularly the Yoruba tribe,and I'm also part Fulani and I
didn't understand that part too,because that was on my father's
side and he was like, well, youknow, tribes weren't always
warring right, they intermingledand the Fulani really occupied
(16:12):
northern Nigeria and the Yorubaprimarily occupied southern
Nigeria into what now is what isknown Benin and Togo, and so
there's a lot of trade andintermingling and all that type
of stuff.
So this is why you could havethis nice mixture and it just
provided more context to who Iwas and just inspires me to, you
(16:34):
know, dig a little bit further,or a lot further to really
understand my ancestry, whichhas nothing to do with being
Black, white or anything of thatnature.
Speaker 1 (16:49):
Right, and I also want to emphasize, because there
are also Black Americans whostudy Black American culture
here and find that, much like inBenin and Togo and Nigeria,
highly regionalized, highlydependent upon where you grew up
(17:10):
.
So for example, black people.
I have family in the Carolinas,north Carolina specifically,
and the foods we ate, even now,right, this is informed by
hundreds of years of my familybeing there.
And the phrases culturalpractices.
(17:31):
And the phrases culturalpractices, aspects of
spirituality yes, to callsomeone Geechee, right is a
truncated reference to theGullah Geechee people who
enslaved and located within thisregion and have a very, very
(17:56):
specific culture.
Um, I want to say, maybe it wassherwin williams.
Someone recently came out with acolor that indirectly
references this culture, thatwould typically be known as as
haint blue, because there's aspecific shade of blue that is
(18:19):
supposed to be spirituallyprotected.
And so you, if you go intosouth carolina, if you go into
these areas, you will very oftensee porches.
Either the doors or the, theceilings of the porches or the
porches themselves, are paintedwith this very beautiful shade
(18:39):
of blue.
Right, that is very differentthan black Americans who maybe
(19:02):
settled near the Gulf in Texas.
Mm-hmm, it's still happening.
Oh, absolutely Right, even inmusic, right, the way that West
Coast hip-hop sounds versus EastCoast hip-hop, it's so specific
, the accents are so specificand, of course, we have planes,
(19:25):
trains and automobiles.
People move, people marry.
Right, you adopt a little bitfrom here, sprinkle it over
there.
But another question I have foryou as you were speaking, when
you said okay, these tribescommingled, intermarried to
(19:46):
expand their influence said okay, well, this is why white is
created, right, the concept ofwhite within the united states,
and back to malik gilbert'spoint, the concept of not white
is to expand power over andaccess to resources.
(20:09):
Right, because we know thatEnglish, you know English,
descended Puritan descendedpeople, relatively small group,
right, so you had to, at acertain point, expand.
Whether it's to expand your,your political power Right, to
(20:31):
expand your political power,right.
Okay, we want these IrishAmericans.
We're now going to have toconsider them white because
they're a sizable votingpopulation and we can get in and
maintain power, and so we'lljust keep expanding that.
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:50):
I mean they expand also through Latinos, who are a
huge part of our population, yes, who, like we just talked about
, many of which probably checkthe white box, because if you
can get away with it, why wouldyou check?
Why would you not check thewhite box If you could check the
(21:10):
black box?
Because of how it's perceived,and so that makes it seem, in
part, that there are more whitepeople in America.
That actually makes our blockbigger and, in some ways,
(21:41):
creates a different type ofunited front.
Very interesting History hasshown that creating subgroups
actually benefits the majoritygroup, because we can't come
together because we want thesedifferent privileges.
Everybody wants to have moreprivilege.
Nobody wants to give up theirprivilege.
(22:06):
How do you create thatcompetition and that division?
We break off and we fightamongst ourselves and we don't
(22:27):
focus on the real lion in theroom, which is potentially
whiteness, right?
So what if we were like hey,we're, we're all banding
together because we're alltreated pretty much the same,
there's levels of it and if wegot off our high horse and was
like, hey, I'll give up some ofthis privilege to help uplift
(22:49):
the other groups?
That's a very hard concept forpeople to actually grasp.
Let's just dream a little bit.
What would that mean?
What kind of power would wethen wield in society?
Speaker 1 (23:05):
I noticed that you made the distinction to separate
whiteness versus white peopleand I want to uplift that.
Can you share your perceptionof what you think the difference
is?
Speaker 2 (23:22):
I think I start off everybody's pretty much.
We're humans, right?
We, we, we bleed the same.
You know, we have the same typeof capacity, but it's really
around the privilege and theopportunity that is upheld by
being white, right?
So white people actually can bein the same station as black
(23:47):
people when you think ofeconomics and opportunity and
capacity, but their whitenessand the way that the world
perceives that capacity andopportunity is greater for white
people.
So whiteness to me is a conceptbuilt off of how the world
(24:11):
works.
Right, that is primarily thatis applied to white people, but
it's not applied equally to allwhite people.
But it's just that leg up overnon-white people that white
people have, which is calledwhiteness.
I don't know if I havearticulated that well.
Speaker 1 (24:57):
I think it's perfect.
Right, whiteness is better,prettier, good-er, right,
there's not a word, but we'lluse it for these purposes
Smarter, richer, more able, morecompetent, more intelligent,
more Whiteness is more thannon-white, and so it is this
concept that is so seductive,because everyone's in search of
grasping toward whiteness.
(25:18):
You don't have to be white totry to grasp onto whiteness, and
to your point, a lot of peopleare not fully in possession of
this concept of whiteness andalso don't lean into it as much.
Speaker 2 (25:32):
Yes, I mean some parts of it.
They're automatically givenbecause it just exists for them,
just like it just exists for usbecause of the color of our
skin.
But some people leverage thatto provide themselves more
opportunity and some peopledon't, whether they don't want
to or they don't realize it.
Speaker 1 (25:53):
Yeah, you know, I've had family members who are
phenotypically perceived to bewhite be able to exist in spaces
where whiteness abounds and say, oh my gosh you know this is
(26:14):
the conversation that's beinghad, this is the overall
perception and use thatwhiteness that they're gifted to
your point to create safety forothers.
So there are really large wayswhere that can happen and that
(26:36):
has happened in the past.
So, for example, you've hadwith the practice of redlining
and preventing people of color,especially black people, from
buying in certain neighborhoods.
You will have had white peoplewho would show up to the
showings and all of thefundamental parts of the home
(26:57):
buying process and use theirwhiteness to create opportunity
for these people of color, forBlack people, macro way or a
large way of doing it.
You've had, like a John Brownright.
It was a very fierceabolitionist using his station
(27:18):
to advocate for people who wereenslaved and oppressed.
And then you have small, verysmall ways where that works,
where maybe you're in a meetingand you defer to someone with
(27:38):
lesser power who has an ideathat you support and, instead of
taking the idea for yourself,say, oh, karen had a really
great idea we were speakingabout earlier.
Karen, do you want to sharethat?
Speaker 2 (27:54):
Exactly, and I think that this has been.
This concept of whiteness insome ways has been villainized,
and I like how you put it, whereyou said this is a gift.
The universe has given you agift in this social construct
which is called whiteness, andjust how you described.
(28:18):
You can use your powers forgood.
You can use them for really bad, you can use them to be
generally self-serving andneutral, or neutral.
You can use them however youwant.
The first step is understandingyour gift and then the second
(28:38):
is deciding how you're going touse it.
And the third is like.
You might decide to use yourgifts, sometimes all the time or
no time.
Those are your choices, but youfirst have to acknowledge that
you have it.
And it's also not saying thatother groups don't have gifts as
well.
(28:58):
They may not be as powerful aswhiteness in certain contexts.
Other groups may have morepowerful gifts in other contexts
, but when you look at the scale, whiteness far surpasses all of
those groups and you have tomake an individual decision as
(29:21):
to whether or not you believethat it is good for you and
society to not use your giftsfor good, for example.
And that requires in some cases, nobility, because people do
(29:41):
focus on their family first.
If you can get the leg up, areyou really going to bring
somebody with you all the time?
And the fact of the matter isyou're not Right.
It is survival of the familyand that's why this stuff has
been, you know, so pervasive fordecades, because people are
(30:03):
surviving and they also want tothrive and be better and they
focus on themselves and theirfamilies first.
That's the reality of life andwe're trying to get people to
kind of shift their mindset andbe more inclusive of bringing
people along and that bybringing people along, it
doesn't necessarily harm you.
(30:24):
It actually creates abundancefor you, your family and those
outer circles.
Speaker 1 (30:35):
Absolutely, absolutely.
You know, I saw a clip onsocial media of a reality TV
show and the clip was maybe 10years old and there were these
two women that were going tostart a podcast.
One was white and the other onewas black I believe she's black
(30:56):
In any case they're arguing andultimately they decide they're
not going to do the podcasttogether and so they decide
they're going to do their ownpodcasts.
And the black woman says youknow, good luck trying to get
(31:16):
this started without me.
And the woman says I'm white,I'm going to be fine.
And the woman was shocked intosilence, right, because I think
very often we walk around and weeither assume that people are
(31:39):
not aware of their privilege ornot aware of the gifts that they
have.
And for her to say it soclearly and just so openly was
like'm going to be, like this isnot an issue, and it was so
fascinating.
But I also want to take it kindof scope out, because I think
(32:03):
white and black are really easy,yeah to to juxtapose and to put
together and kind of pitagainst each other.
And I think that's always.
You know, there's a, there's atheory that everything is always
reduced to white versus black?
Correct?
Yes, that's true.
And there's the question ofwhat you do when you don't
(32:31):
neatly fit into either of those.
Where's your alignment?
I have a client who's fromBrazil and she is very
frustrated with things like theUS Census or job applications
which may only allow for oneracial identification, because
(32:55):
in her experience in Brazil sheexperienced a lot of racism and
here she's considered a Latina.
(33:19):
She's considered a Latina andshe feels like that flattens her
identity.
Because she says do you knowthat there's so many different.
You can be a white Latina, youcan be a black Latina, there are
Chino Latinos, there are somany different groups that have
melded together within LatinAmerica and have created all of
these other groups that don'tneatly fit within these squares
(33:39):
within the United States.
And so she's proud to be anAfro-Latina and at the same time
she's like well, if I say Black, then I'm ignoring the fact
that I'm Latino, and if I sayLatino, I feel like I'm ignoring
the fact that I'm black.
I have heard the same fromother friends who are white
(34:01):
Latinos and have said otherpeople looking at me One of my
friends she said you know,people refer to me as like a
spicy white person, which islike a lot, a lot to unpack, and
what do you do with that?
Speaker 2 (34:21):
I don't know, because you know these constructs were
created at a time when the worldwas, I guess, not that complex
and as we've, you know,intermingled as people have
voluntarily migrated versusinvoluntarily, the world has
(34:44):
just changed and so it's not.
It's literally no longer blackand white, yeah, no longer black
and white, and you cannot judgepeople A by the color of their
skin.
You have no idea what isunderneath all of that.
And we also have mixed up race,ethnicity, nationality, we've
(35:13):
co-mingled all of that, whichactually just creates more
complexity, which I think makesthe argument stronger for white
versus non-white, except for thefact that it still centers
whiteness.
Speaker 1 (35:30):
You are making the exact point I was going to say,
which was that I think the worldhas always been complex in that
way.
Right?
Obviously, these groups havealways existed and the ability
to access one another has tosome extent existed.
(35:53):
To access one another has tosome extent existed.
The United States and itsparticular brand of racism is
what's new, and so beinginclusive has muddied the waters
.
Right, being inclusive andallowing for our expansion of
(36:13):
identity is what, and I seeexactly why, to your point, a
lot of these people do not wantinclusion to advance, because
then it makes it more difficultto point out the enemy.
(36:34):
Right, or the problem.
Right, because within onefamily, you can have white
Latinos, you can have BlackLatinos, you can have Indigenous
, and the whole family can beconcerned with issues like
immigration or whatever it is.
(36:56):
The whole family can be part ofthat and their whole experience
of the United States can alsobe very different based on the
way that they look, and ourcurrent understanding doesn't
allow for the complexity ofidentity.
(37:21):
So, to your point, it's just no, but maybe we don't need race
anymore.
Speaker 2 (37:27):
Maybe that's not necessary If we want to focus on
those pockets of experience andculture that really have
meeting.
That's really under the icebergthat we need to understand,
because that social construct ofrace actually, like you said,
(37:54):
flattens us in a way that's notrepresentative of truly who we
are, at least today, and sothere could be an argument that
race needs to just go away.
It does, then, still have.
There's still a gap in how doyou now create meaningful
(38:15):
buckets, because any bucket youcreate is not going to be
representative of the totalexperience of any one person,
right.
But what is it that you reallyneed to know?
And not treat people like thismassive monolith, but also not
go down a rabbit hole where youhave so many data points that it
just becomes useless and notsustainable.
Now, to counter that, we nowhave new technology called AI,
(38:41):
right, that has the capacity tounpack all of that, and maybe
that's a new use case for it.
I don't really know the answer.
I know that a couple of yearsago, I did want to work on a
project that really re-imagineddemographics, because it wasn't
inclusive of people and peoplewere feeling left out, and if
(39:02):
you look at a person like me whoI guess would be comfortable
with the term Afro-Caribbean,and then you look at your client
who's Afro-Latina.
Those are two differentexperiences, right that if we
got to know intimately thosedifferences, we can really
(39:22):
understand those audiences in amuch more deeper way.
And that's what we need to doin this new society anyway.
There's so much noise out thereand you really want to connect,
and also, just from a marketingperspective, you really want to
connect with your customersthat you really have to do so in
a very intimate way in order tocut through that clutter.
And how are you going to dothat if you just label me as
(39:44):
black?
Right?
Speaker 1 (39:47):
And assume that you were right.
I mean, I'm just thinking ofresource allocation and, to your
point, marketing.
I'm thinking of Appalachia.
It's a very unique, veryspecific understanding of the
world.
In the United States versus thecoastal United States, which
(40:10):
the coastal United States,anywhere from New York to
Florida and Washington,throughout the state of
California, typically theaverage income is higher.
The level of education, therace will vary, but the concerns
(40:31):
and the perceived focus may bedifferent than a group in the
Midwest or the South orAppalachia or anywhere else.
And so how yeah, I'm just, I'mwrestling with you know how do
you break away race and whatelse do you use to contextualize
(40:53):
the human experience withinthis country?
Speaker 2 (40:57):
Yeah, and I think that's the question that we
should start asking ourselves.
It's time to rethink how wethink about people, because
we're not the same as a hundredyears ago.
We have evolved in manydifferent ways, in ways that we
can't.
It's hard for the human brainto contextualize.
So I think it's a really greatopportunity to leverage
(41:19):
technology to help us thinkdifferently, but we have to be
willing to embrace that thosedifferences are good, are good,
and it requires just are-imagining of all of our
(41:40):
systems too, because they're allbased on these boxes Right,
these highly antiquated versionsof self, and I would say if you
want to get your kind ofperfect answer, you have change
(42:00):
that.
Speaker 1 (42:01):
Americans, at this point, want to see Whatever side
of the aisle they're on.
(42:22):
It's very clear that people aredissatisfied.
Speaker 2 (42:26):
Yeah, that's true.
Because you can't want changeyeah and need change Like we
need change.
Yeah and need change Like weneed change.
It's time.
I don't know what that lookslike.
Maybe the aliens can help usfigure it out.
Speaker 1 (42:43):
You know, maybe that'll be the thing that unites
us all.
Speaker 2 (42:50):
I don't know Cause.
You know they're alwaysportrayed as looking very much
the same.
Yes, in some cases not all,most cases they have huge eyes,
but in some cases they don't.
Vision is very limited, whichI've kind of always said.
I don't want to be around whenthis happens because I don't
(43:13):
want to be blinded.
But if we couldn't see, howwould our experience with people
differ?
Right, if you could not look atskin color and judge based on
that and there's obviously voice, which different dialects and
things of that nature weprobably figure out how to
separate ourselves somehow, someway, because people are very
good at that.
It's a superpower of theirs.
(43:33):
They do not know how to separateourselves somehow some way,
because people are very good atthat.
Speaker 1 (43:35):
It's a superpower of theirs they do not know how to
come together.
Yeah, I mean, I just think.
Who's to say that aliens areanthropomorphic?
Why do they need two eyes?
You know what?
If they're just blobs floatingthrough the air, sentient blobs,
what do we do with that?
Speaker 2 (43:52):
that's just not how it's portrayed in the movies.
Sentient blobs, what do we dowith that?
That's just not how it'sportrayed in the movies.
No, no, star Trek did not coverthat.
Speaker 1 (44:03):
Most of the time they were anatomically different
Exactly, so maybe we'll see oneday.
I don't really want to bearound for that.
Just different Exactly.
Speaker 2 (44:13):
Different color, but you know.
So maybe we'll see one day.
I don't really want to bearound for that, but I don't
want it to happen anytime soon.
I'm not saying I should ithappens tomorrow and I don't
want to be around, but one day.
Speaker 1 (44:29):
I'm going to hope for dogs.
Dogs always bring me joy, so ifthey look like dogs, then I'd
be very happy.
I'd be awesome.
Speaker 2 (44:40):
All right, we're trying to solve the world's
problems and we're relying onaliens and dogs, and so I think
that's a good solution.
Mina thinks it's a greatsolution too.
Thanks, mina, and thanks MalikYoba for sparking this
conversation.
We appreciate you exactly.
(45:04):
Alright, until the next time onthe eWord, bye.
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