June 11, 2020 • 25 mins
FIRST THING: So with all of the confusion and emotions running high, how do we navigate these times? Amy shares a viral Facebook post about answered prayers and how open conversations about race are exactly what we need to start healing our country. SECOND THING: Amy plays a clip of her Pastor Matt Smallbone{@mattsmallbone} and youth Pastor Charles’ sermon on racism and his views as a black man. This is an eye opening conversation and a great reminder of how important it is to listen and learn. THIRD THING: What is it like being a black country music fan? Rachel Berry{@rberry313} is here to read her instagram post about her experiences attending country concerts as a black woman. Her testimony definitely brings some issues to light and were so thankful to her for sharing her story. FOURTH THING: Taking a stand for what you believe in may not make you the most popular. It will probably bring some opposition, but Amy shares why she will continue to create a space for these discussions and important topics. She also shares a listeners email with a great practical tip to help us learn how to shift our perspective.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Okay, little food for yourself life. Oh it's pretty Bay,
(00:20):
it's pretty beautiful than that. A little moth kicking with
four Happy Thursday, everybody. Amy here, And before I get
into the four Things for today's episode, I want to
go over a few changes. If you are new to
(00:42):
the podcast, then this won't really matter to you, But
if you've been listening for a long time, I just
wanna let you know that I am going to continue
to do the intro, but try to get to the
point a lot faster. I mean, depending on other things
that maybe come up where I need to address something,
I'll try to get to the four things right away
so you know what to expect. And then also I'm
(01:02):
doing away with the outro, which is normally where I
would do an email shout out. Now, I still want
you to email me. Those are still something that I'm
going to incorporate into the episodes, but it will be
in the things like they'll come up from time to time,
and you never know. Some episodes might have three different emails,
some might have to so might have one, so might
(01:24):
have none. But you never know when your email might
pop up in an episode, so still reach out. Four
Things with Amy Brown at gmail dot com. I love
getting your feedback, constructive criticism, guess that you would like
to hear, and then of course your questions for the
Tuesday Q and a episode called the Fifth Thing. So
(01:44):
now that I got that all the way, let me
get into what we're gonna talk about today. The first
thing is going to be a little tell me something
good story, because I want to just start it off
on a really strong positive note, and it is a
story of hope that I'm going to share with you.
The second thing we're gonna cover is about humanity race,
and it's something that came up during my church service
on Sunday that I thought was very interesting and I
(02:06):
wanted to share it with you all. The third thing
is a girl that posted on Instagram. Her name is Rachel.
She posted about what her experience has been like being
a black woman who loves country music. So I had
her come on to read her post and we didn't
really talk too much. She's pretty shy. She said she
(02:27):
doesn't normally do this kind of thing. Even afterwards she
was like, was that, Okay, I don't really do this
sort of thing. So I wasn't trying to put her
on the spot at all, but I'm super grateful that
she was willing to come on and read the post
for us, which I think is better than me just
reading it. And then also in the third thing, email
shout out, I've got one in there that pertains to that.
And then the fourth thing, I have another email as well.
(02:49):
That just made me feel super encouraged because we'll be
talking about how I've lost followers and listeners in the
last week or so, and I've still felt encouraged by
a lot of you, So I appreciate that. Okay, so
now that you know what to expect from today's episode,
let's get started first. So I'm gonna read a story
(03:13):
that maybe you have seen online but maybe not, and
if you have heard it, hearing it again definitely will
not hurt because it's a story about an answered prayer,
about acknowledging when we have failed. It's about having conversations
and connecting, and it's a story about hope that that
I have that we have I think for our country.
And the version of the story that I'm gonna read
(03:35):
is from people dot Com and here it is. When
a black flight attendant came over to chat with a
white passenger about a book he was reading on the
flight she was working. She had no idea how much
their discussion would impact both of them. She also had
no idea that the passenger was American Airlines CEO Doug Parker.
In a Facebook post, Southwest Airlines flight attendant Jackie ray
(03:58):
Hill shared that she had gone to work with a
heavy heart, devastated by the state of the country following
the death of George Floyd at the hands of police
officers on May As I was driving to work, I
had to really go to God with my thoughts because
it would make it hard to smile with everything going on,
wrote the flight attendant of fourteen years. As we are
(04:19):
boarding my first flight of the day, I smile and
I greet people when they come on, and I saw
a man holding a book that has been on my
to read list. The book is called White Fragility by
Robin D'Angelo. Hill made a mental note to ask him
about it when she was finished with her duties. About
an hour into the flight, she did just that, sitting
(04:39):
down near him in his empty row. The man told
her that he was only about halfway through the book,
but that was great so far. It really points out
how important these conversations on race are Their chat was
an emotional one, which Hill says moved her to tears.
I've been so sad every day, and I just want
to understand and be understood so we can begin to
(05:01):
fix it, she explained. The two continued to talk about
racism in America for the next ten minutes, with the
man apologizing to her for the shortcomings of his own
race and the ways he felt the nation has failed
in response to systemic oppression. It was everything I needed,
He'll said, going on to say that she told the
man about her talk with God on her drive to work,
(05:23):
and that this conversation was God's answer to her prayer.
It was then that the man asked her her name,
and then he told her that his was Doug Parker,
the CEO of American Airlines. I told him that my
mother works for him in d C. And then I
reached over and gave him a big hug. I had
to yes, we were both masked. Hill's mother is a
(05:44):
customer service manager at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in Washington,
d C. I thanked him for being open and allowing
this conversation to happen because I just needed to hear it,
and I walked off. He'll said, on his way off
the plane, he ends me a handwritten note, and I
thank him again and ask for a picture. Then, in
a message sent to American Airlines employees on Sunday, Parker
(06:08):
explained the situation from his own perspective, explaining that he
was flying Southwest because seats on his American Airlines fly
were sold out. I felt wholly inadequate, but I knew
it was a special moment, Parker wrote. The best I
could do was tell her that the book talks about
how white people are horrible at talking about racism, and
(06:28):
that what we need are real conversations. She agreed. I
told her I was trying to learn, and through tears
in a mask, she said, so am I. During Sunday's
online church service, our Pastor Matt Smallbone, who you may
have heard on my podcast last week, had our youth
(06:48):
pastor Pastor Charles joined him for a conversation about racism
and his thoughts as a black man. And while I
can't play back the entire service, there was a part
that Pastor Charles shared about the history of racism against
black people, the roots of it, and it was stuff
I had never heard before. So I want to share
(07:09):
it with you now because I think it's a topic
that I'm going to dive into myself on my own
time so that I can better understand the history in
the roots, and I hope that it will encourage you
to do the same. Here's that part of their chat
as as a gift to me as as I learned,
I'd love to hear some of the American history because
I think a lot of people, a lot of people
(07:29):
know something's not right. I think some people don't fully
understand honestly that this didn't get solved in the sixties. Yeah,
I think there's been an assumption of that. So for
I would love you to speak to me as I'm learning,
but just just help us with with some history. Yeah. Currently,
right now, I think there's a lot of words and
(07:50):
things kind of being thrown around, a lot of rhetoric.
But in order for us to really kind of talk
about this, I think we have to get to the
root of actually what is at the heart of everything
that we're feeling in this angst as a culture that's
kind of going on in And so when we look
back at history, what we see is that in the
past there were white Christians that justified slavery because they
looked at Africans and blacks and and they saw them
(08:11):
as less than human. And they justified that by saying
it is because of their dna. Um. When they would
look at Africans, they would say, oh, man, you know,
because of their skin color, their facial features. You know,
we think that, um, they evolved from these apes that
they saw, and that they're that there primates, you know.
Simeon's is the word that goes with that. And so
there was this scientific racism that began to be in play,
(08:33):
and for centuries, this this notion continued to move forward.
And when Darwin's theory evolution kind of came out where
it said, oh, actually human beings we evolved from apes.
What then they did at that poement as they took
it as kind of as a spectrum, like, uh, if
you're white, you're way more evolved on the spectrum, and
the darker your skin tone, the less evolved that you are.
(08:53):
And there was actually literature at that time that suggested
that Africans and in and in blacks were only three
fits of a human being. Um that they weren't even
truly fully human. They didn't see us as human beings
made in God's image, but instead more like animals. And
that's perpetuated to today and everything that we're seeing, um
(09:15):
in the civil rights movement and slavery, it continued to
happen to where uh, there was this superiority complex over
other uh cultures and religious and so this this uh,
this idea, the scientific racism began to make its way
in too many different fields archaeology, biology, into medicine, even
um psychology and into theology you know, to study about
(09:38):
God and understanding the divine. It made its way into
that as well. And white Christians at the time used
this line of scientific racism as a means to to
have power over their black brothers and sisters in a
way that is really really painful. Um. And when hundreds
of years ago, hundreds of years ago, yeah, that was
(09:58):
kind of the leading science of three fists. I mean,
there's there's actually a book that I discovered it and
looking at some things in the last few days. It
was actually published in the mid eighteen hundreds. It's called
Types of Mankind, where it gives this approach to where
it says, hey, this kind of person is is this
and these kind of people this colored people. Yeah, we
have a similar story in Australia. Our stories of racism
(10:20):
are more tied to you know, the doctrine of discovery. Now,
racism in Australia is more similar to the Native American
story in America. But the Australian Aboriginals um were always
in that same literature day were the least of all humans.
So really at the heart of this, you know, in
both situations, it's this idea of looking at people that
(10:41):
God has created, that his breath is in, that were
made very good, and saying that no, actually you are
not human. You know, I'm me and my wife right
now we're looking at our baby girl and we're saying, hey, baby,
you are fully human. You know. Like the fact that
that has to even be a conversation is just a
really fascinating thing right now. And it's time for that
kind of rhet rhetoric, that type of ideology to end,
(11:04):
because it is it has truly seeped its way into
American culture, into systems and everything else. And it's why
this idea of a black people being lest in human
is at the core of everything that we're seeing right now.
It truly is. It's just kind of hung on out
of hundreds. So we can talk about white supremacy, we
can talk about white privilege, we can talk about all
these different things, but at the core of it, I
(11:25):
believe that that's the issue. So if you'd like to
watch their entire chat, then you can just go to
YouTube and then search out Church of the City East,
Nashville and it's the service from Sunday, June seven. And
in their talk, Pastor Charles also mentioned a documentary called
(11:45):
on Netflix. So I decided to watch it and it
was very interesting, heartbreaking, but interesting, and it's an in
depth look at our nation's history of racial inequality and
the prison system in the United States that I had
just never been exposed to or thought about. So I
encourage you to watch it if you got some time.
(12:07):
So in relation to what Pastor Charles mentioned in the clip,
I I want to share a little video that Stevenson
made the other day and I put it on Instagram,
and it's about him talking about a potato. Hey hello,
where nothing is wrong with the potato look like a heart?
So I posted this video on Instagram and I'm going
(12:29):
to read what I wrote because given what Pastor Charles said,
it breaks my heart that at a certain time in
this country, and maybe even to some right now, my
son would be seen as less than human. So here's
what I wrote. When I watched this, I see more
than Stevenson appreciating a rejected potato that was in our
(12:50):
misfits market box, a company that sells fruits and veggies
that failed to meet beauty standards for food. I see
a glimpse of how some will reject Stevenson and treat
him differently because he is black. So let me put
this in simple terms like Stevenson did for the heart
shaped potato. Hey, hello world, nothing is wrong with Stevenson.
(13:12):
He looks like a human. If you want to see
that post, you can go to at Radio Amy, which
is my Instagram. And yeah, it was crazy. There was
this potato and our our misfits market box and I
love that it was shaped like a heart. Of like,
how in the world would this not make it to
a grocery store to be sold? It brightened my day.
(13:35):
And then, speaking of Stevenson, his handwriting heads up as
the artwork for our be the Change tease with a
of the proceeds going to fight racial injustice to organizations
that are doing that. So you can check out the
tease and support by going to radio Amy dot com
and scroll down until you see Stevenson's big smiley face
(13:56):
and you can click on that. Okay, So I have
Rachel Berry on for this thing. And last week you
posted about your experiences as a black country music fan
(14:17):
and it got almost a thousand comments and tons and
tons of reposts and likes from Marion Morris to Thomas Rhett,
to Hillary Scott, Steve Moakler, CMT, and and so many more.
And first of all, I just want to say you're
very brave for what you put up. But for my
listeners that don't know exactly what you put up, I
(14:38):
was wondering if you would mind introducing yourself and then
reading the post for those that didn't see it. My
name is Rachel Berry. Like Amy said, I wrote a
post about how I do being black and a country
music fan. So I wrote this girl loved country music
and she loved going to country music concerts. However, I
would be lying if I said that she has never
(15:00):
felt uncomfortable when she's at one when I hear a
song that moved me and makes me want to stand up,
which is often if you know me. I've realized that
I unconsciously thank quickly in my head moments before I
stand up. What if someone else a racial lear at me.
Hearing sit down is very common for my friends and I,
But what if someone were to throw in an extra
(15:22):
word at the end, just for me? Before you buy
tickets to a show, have you ever looked up the
name of the town or city and then racism. I have.
There have been a few shows that I've had to
pass on because the first two or three links that
popped up were about active racism that have happened there.
I've also had to plan out stops on long ro trips.
(15:43):
There's a possibility that getting out of my car and
walking into a gas station or rest stop where I'm
not welcome could end that. Festivals and fairs are also touchy.
I love a great music lineup, being with friends for
food and drinks, the amusement rides, and the game. What
more could you ask for? So I felt uneasy walking
through a crowd of tailgaters and seeing Confederate flags flying
(16:05):
high from their truck. I find myself almost wishing I
was invisible, so I could walk through the crowd without
being seen or noticed. I don't say all of this
pre sympathy, because it is what it is, and every
day I'm still working on how to become comfortable in
my own skin. But all I ask from not only
the country music community, but every human being on this earth,
is that if you see or hear something that is wrong,
(16:27):
speak up, call people out on it. Don't just ignore it,
look away or last. Educate yourself, your children, and your families.
For a chance to happen, we all have to be
more vocal. We all have to stand together and stand
up for what's right. We all breed read there should
be no racial divide period. And Rachel, I know when
you originally posted it, I think you had something in
(16:50):
the beginning that said, you know, I don't know if
anybody will even see this correct, and you know that
would be my encouragement to everybody is that, Yeah, used
will put that out there because you felt it on
your heart and you knew that you wanted to use
your voice here, and so I am just super proud
of you for putting that up. And then I think
(17:10):
you could be encouragement to others. So what's your advice
for someone that's listening right now that might be scared
or or maybe just hesitant to post something and to
use their voice. But just say, I've noticed from the
responses that I've gotten that there are so many people
that relate to me and that you know, haven't gone
to country music shows because of those feelings. So I
feel like, you know, if you feel a certain way,
(17:31):
you know, speak on it because there are people out
there that agree with you and I feel the same way,
and that you're not alone. Well, we definitely have your back, Rachel,
and just thank you so much for bringing to lights
some of the stuff that a lot of people haven't
thought of or had to consider even once because of
their privilege. I hope that people will go to shows
and look out for their black friends that may be there.
(17:52):
And I do call us all friends, even though we
don't know each other. I mean, the country music community
is so tightened it and I feel like concerts are
a way to meet people and connect and just make
sure that you're being kind to everybody there, no matter
what they look like, especially now knowing somebody maybe had
to google before they went to a concert in a
(18:13):
particular city, whether or not they would be safe or not. Yeah,
I have no idea what you've had to experience at
concerts at all, but I'm with you. Thank you. I mean,
I need to really appreciate that. Okay, well, hopefully I'll
see you in Nashville. Sounds good. Thank you, Amy. Okay, bye, Okay.
So you just heard my little chat with Rachel. And
after I talked with her, I opened up my four
(18:34):
Things email and I had an email from a listener
named Linda, and I thought it fit really well here
and I like what she suggested. And it's actually similar
to something that we had to do years ago for
interracial adoption training, when my husband and I, as white people,
were asked to attend an all black church. Really, the
assignment was part of several things that we had to
(18:56):
do to be aware of how our kids will feel
if we only have the around white people all the time.
And I thought it was really helpful for us to
go through that training. So now I want to read
to the email from Linda. Being white, I don't think
I fully appreciate what my black friends live with on
a daily basis. Thank you for the reminder that we
(19:16):
have work to do. Everyone has the right to live
without fear and in peace. Some years ago, a friend
asked me and another friend to go to the local
African American festival. It was terrific. One lady did yell
at us, what are y'all doing here? This isn't for you.
Several of her friends pulled her aside. Anyway, our friend
asked if I felt out of place. I said a little,
(19:39):
because I was pretty much one of the only pale
people in attendance. He looked me in the eye and said,
now you know how I feel most of the time.
I challenge anyone, when say from the virus, etcetera, to
put yourself in a similar situation. It was an amazing epiphany.
Thanks for your time, Linda. So this last week I
(20:06):
lost a lot of followers on Instagram and I lost
listeners of this podcast. And my hope would be that
the people that disagree with anything that they're hearing would
actually continue to follow along and listen, because I hope
that one day they hear something that will click for them.
But those people have already left pretty much. But I
(20:26):
would encourage anyone else still listening, while maybe disagreeing, to
just continue to listen with an open mind and to
really really listen, to engage with others and just listen,
ask questions and then listen to what people have to say.
My friend Jamie Ivy posted a video on Instagram talking
(20:47):
about this exact thing. She's at Jamie Ivy, and you
can go to her page and watch her i G
t V video from about five days ago. At this point,
she's wearing sunglasses and a tank top just to give
you reference, and like talking straight into the camera, and
she's just encouraging people to to listen without having a
guard up, without coming up with a defensive response in
(21:10):
your head while someone is talking. You just simply listen. Anyway,
back to my point about losing followers. While that is
happening and I've received some not so nice notes, I
still feel super encouraged by a lot of you, and
I want to share an email that I got that
was very encouraging to me. And I want you to
know that you're not alone if you're reevaluating what you
(21:34):
consume from here on out, and that I'm going to
do my best to make this podcast a good resource
for you by continuing the conversation of racial injustice now
it may not be every single episode, but it will
now be forever a part of the fabric of the
Four Things podcast. And now here's the email that I
(21:54):
got from a listener named Emily. Hey, Amy, I have
no idea what kind of response you're getting from last
Thursday's episode about racial topics, including white privilege, So I'm
reaching out today to be someone positive in your inbox.
Thank you for using your platform to talk about topics
like race. Thank you for centering black voices like Brittany
and Dr Tatum. Last Thursday's podcast was a fantastic educational resource.
(22:19):
Thanks for making it happen. Thanks for using Black Lives
Matters on your social media, and for the work that
The Shot Forward is doing to raise money for organizations
fighting racial injustice. I see you're doing all the things,
and probably doing even more than we listeners don't see,
and I just want to say thank you and encourage
you to keep going. I realize you're doing all these
things with some risk to your career, and I'm proud
(22:41):
of you for doing them anyway, in a time when
I'm reevaluating the media I consume, I'm excited and relieved
that I can still listen to your podcast. I hope
Thursday's podcast wasn't a one time thing. I look forward
to hearing how you continue to do this work. Maybe
one of each of your Four Things is dedicated to
the topic of race or social just dis work each week.
(23:01):
Thanks again, Emily read ten plus your Bobby Bones show
listener and dedicated Four Things listeners since the beginning, And Emily,
I just want to thank you for the email. Is
very nice and I hope you'll know. My point in
sharing that is because your encouragement means a lot to me,
but I think it can also be encouragement to others
by hearing that. It's not because I want to repeat
(23:22):
back to you all someone that is thanking me for something,
but there are a lot of people that I have
on here, like my guests last week. That's that's an
appreciation and a thanks to them. That's an appreciation and
a thanks to Rachel for coming on today to share
her voice and for you know that Southwest flight attendant
(23:42):
for posting her story on Facebook and others picking up
the story and putting it out there so that we
can spread the positivity and share those types of stories.
It's about my future guests and thanking them ahead of
time for coming on and being a part of this conversation.
And again, like I said, I don't know that it'll
be every week, um, but it will be part of
(24:04):
this show and something that you can expect from this podcast.
I know that Mary and I are super excited about
our Empowered Women's series that we're gonna be doing. It's
going to take us a couple of months to put together.
We don't have an official release date, but we already
knew we wanted some diversity included in it for sure,
But now we know that racial injustice has got to
(24:26):
be a topic and how as women we can support
other women, not just making sure that we have black
women on to talk about x y Z, but that
we have people on that can talk about this very
thing that's happening in the country right now. So, if
you have any other thoughts on the Empowered Women series
that we're doing, we created an email for that, which
(24:47):
is Empowered Women at the shop forward dot com. Send
us suggestions of women you want to hear from, Send
us suggestions of topics you would like for us to cover.
We definitely want to hear from you on this, so Yeah,
we hope that we will empowered women at the shop
forward dot com. All right, I hope you'll have a
(25:07):
great Thursday, and thank you for continuing to listen and
continuing to follow me on Instagram. For those of you
that still are not mistake Okay, Cass up road thing,
(25:27):
little food for you. So life ain't Oh it's pretty Bay,
It's pretty beautiful things beautiful laugh A little mouths use
said he you're kicking with four with Amy Brown
Okay, little food for yourself life. Oh it's pretty Bay,
(00:20):
it's pretty beautiful than that. A little moth kicking with
four Happy Thursday, everybody. Amy here, And before I get
into the four Things for today's episode, I want to
go over a few changes. If you are new to
(00:42):
the podcast, then this won't really matter to you, But
if you've been listening for a long time, I just
wanna let you know that I am going to continue
to do the intro, but try to get to the
point a lot faster. I mean, depending on other things
that maybe come up where I need to address something,
I'll try to get to the four things right away
so you know what to expect. And then also I'm
(01:02):
doing away with the outro, which is normally where I
would do an email shout out. Now, I still want
you to email me. Those are still something that I'm
going to incorporate into the episodes, but it will be
in the things like they'll come up from time to time,
and you never know. Some episodes might have three different emails,
some might have to so might have one, so might
(01:24):
have none. But you never know when your email might
pop up in an episode, so still reach out. Four
Things with Amy Brown at gmail dot com. I love
getting your feedback, constructive criticism, guess that you would like
to hear, and then of course your questions for the
Tuesday Q and a episode called the Fifth Thing. So
(01:44):
now that I got that all the way, let me
get into what we're gonna talk about today. The first
thing is going to be a little tell me something
good story, because I want to just start it off
on a really strong positive note, and it is a
story of hope that I'm going to share with you.
The second thing we're gonna cover is about humanity race,
and it's something that came up during my church service
on Sunday that I thought was very interesting and I
(02:06):
wanted to share it with you all. The third thing
is a girl that posted on Instagram. Her name is Rachel.
She posted about what her experience has been like being
a black woman who loves country music. So I had
her come on to read her post and we didn't
really talk too much. She's pretty shy. She said she
(02:27):
doesn't normally do this kind of thing. Even afterwards she
was like, was that, Okay, I don't really do this
sort of thing. So I wasn't trying to put her
on the spot at all, but I'm super grateful that
she was willing to come on and read the post
for us, which I think is better than me just
reading it. And then also in the third thing, email
shout out, I've got one in there that pertains to that.
And then the fourth thing, I have another email as well.
(02:49):
That just made me feel super encouraged because we'll be
talking about how I've lost followers and listeners in the
last week or so, and I've still felt encouraged by
a lot of you, So I appreciate that. Okay, so
now that you know what to expect from today's episode,
let's get started first. So I'm gonna read a story
(03:13):
that maybe you have seen online but maybe not, and
if you have heard it, hearing it again definitely will
not hurt because it's a story about an answered prayer,
about acknowledging when we have failed. It's about having conversations
and connecting, and it's a story about hope that that
I have that we have I think for our country.
And the version of the story that I'm gonna read
(03:35):
is from people dot Com and here it is. When
a black flight attendant came over to chat with a
white passenger about a book he was reading on the
flight she was working. She had no idea how much
their discussion would impact both of them. She also had
no idea that the passenger was American Airlines CEO Doug Parker.
In a Facebook post, Southwest Airlines flight attendant Jackie ray
(03:58):
Hill shared that she had gone to work with a
heavy heart, devastated by the state of the country following
the death of George Floyd at the hands of police
officers on May As I was driving to work, I
had to really go to God with my thoughts because
it would make it hard to smile with everything going on,
wrote the flight attendant of fourteen years. As we are
(04:19):
boarding my first flight of the day, I smile and
I greet people when they come on, and I saw
a man holding a book that has been on my
to read list. The book is called White Fragility by
Robin D'Angelo. Hill made a mental note to ask him
about it when she was finished with her duties. About
an hour into the flight, she did just that, sitting
(04:39):
down near him in his empty row. The man told
her that he was only about halfway through the book,
but that was great so far. It really points out
how important these conversations on race are Their chat was
an emotional one, which Hill says moved her to tears.
I've been so sad every day, and I just want
to understand and be understood so we can begin to
(05:01):
fix it, she explained. The two continued to talk about
racism in America for the next ten minutes, with the
man apologizing to her for the shortcomings of his own
race and the ways he felt the nation has failed
in response to systemic oppression. It was everything I needed,
He'll said, going on to say that she told the
man about her talk with God on her drive to work,
(05:23):
and that this conversation was God's answer to her prayer.
It was then that the man asked her her name,
and then he told her that his was Doug Parker,
the CEO of American Airlines. I told him that my
mother works for him in d C. And then I
reached over and gave him a big hug. I had
to yes, we were both masked. Hill's mother is a
(05:44):
customer service manager at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in Washington,
d C. I thanked him for being open and allowing
this conversation to happen because I just needed to hear it,
and I walked off. He'll said, on his way off
the plane, he ends me a handwritten note, and I
thank him again and ask for a picture. Then, in
a message sent to American Airlines employees on Sunday, Parker
(06:08):
explained the situation from his own perspective, explaining that he
was flying Southwest because seats on his American Airlines fly
were sold out. I felt wholly inadequate, but I knew
it was a special moment, Parker wrote. The best I
could do was tell her that the book talks about
how white people are horrible at talking about racism, and
(06:28):
that what we need are real conversations. She agreed. I
told her I was trying to learn, and through tears
in a mask, she said, so am I. During Sunday's
online church service, our Pastor Matt Smallbone, who you may
have heard on my podcast last week, had our youth
(06:48):
pastor Pastor Charles joined him for a conversation about racism
and his thoughts as a black man. And while I
can't play back the entire service, there was a part
that Pastor Charles shared about the history of racism against
black people, the roots of it, and it was stuff
I had never heard before. So I want to share
(07:09):
it with you now because I think it's a topic
that I'm going to dive into myself on my own
time so that I can better understand the history in
the roots, and I hope that it will encourage you
to do the same. Here's that part of their chat
as as a gift to me as as I learned,
I'd love to hear some of the American history because
I think a lot of people, a lot of people
(07:29):
know something's not right. I think some people don't fully
understand honestly that this didn't get solved in the sixties. Yeah,
I think there's been an assumption of that. So for
I would love you to speak to me as I'm learning,
but just just help us with with some history. Yeah. Currently,
right now, I think there's a lot of words and
(07:50):
things kind of being thrown around, a lot of rhetoric.
But in order for us to really kind of talk
about this, I think we have to get to the
root of actually what is at the heart of everything
that we're feeling in this angst as a culture that's
kind of going on in And so when we look
back at history, what we see is that in the
past there were white Christians that justified slavery because they
looked at Africans and blacks and and they saw them
(08:11):
as less than human. And they justified that by saying
it is because of their dna. Um. When they would
look at Africans, they would say, oh, man, you know,
because of their skin color, their facial features. You know,
we think that, um, they evolved from these apes that
they saw, and that they're that there primates, you know.
Simeon's is the word that goes with that. And so
there was this scientific racism that began to be in play,
(08:33):
and for centuries, this this notion continued to move forward.
And when Darwin's theory evolution kind of came out where
it said, oh, actually human beings we evolved from apes.
What then they did at that poement as they took
it as kind of as a spectrum, like, uh, if
you're white, you're way more evolved on the spectrum, and
the darker your skin tone, the less evolved that you are.
(08:53):
And there was actually literature at that time that suggested
that Africans and in and in blacks were only three
fits of a human being. Um that they weren't even
truly fully human. They didn't see us as human beings
made in God's image, but instead more like animals. And
that's perpetuated to today and everything that we're seeing, um
(09:15):
in the civil rights movement and slavery, it continued to
happen to where uh, there was this superiority complex over
other uh cultures and religious and so this this uh,
this idea, the scientific racism began to make its way
in too many different fields archaeology, biology, into medicine, even
um psychology and into theology you know, to study about
(09:38):
God and understanding the divine. It made its way into
that as well. And white Christians at the time used
this line of scientific racism as a means to to
have power over their black brothers and sisters in a
way that is really really painful. Um. And when hundreds
of years ago, hundreds of years ago, yeah, that was
(09:58):
kind of the leading science of three fists. I mean,
there's there's actually a book that I discovered it and
looking at some things in the last few days. It
was actually published in the mid eighteen hundreds. It's called
Types of Mankind, where it gives this approach to where
it says, hey, this kind of person is is this
and these kind of people this colored people. Yeah, we
have a similar story in Australia. Our stories of racism
(10:20):
are more tied to you know, the doctrine of discovery. Now,
racism in Australia is more similar to the Native American
story in America. But the Australian Aboriginals um were always
in that same literature day were the least of all humans.
So really at the heart of this, you know, in
both situations, it's this idea of looking at people that
(10:41):
God has created, that his breath is in, that were
made very good, and saying that no, actually you are
not human. You know, I'm me and my wife right
now we're looking at our baby girl and we're saying, hey, baby,
you are fully human. You know. Like the fact that
that has to even be a conversation is just a
really fascinating thing right now. And it's time for that
kind of rhet rhetoric, that type of ideology to end,
(11:04):
because it is it has truly seeped its way into
American culture, into systems and everything else. And it's why
this idea of a black people being lest in human
is at the core of everything that we're seeing right now.
It truly is. It's just kind of hung on out
of hundreds. So we can talk about white supremacy, we
can talk about white privilege, we can talk about all
these different things, but at the core of it, I
(11:25):
believe that that's the issue. So if you'd like to
watch their entire chat, then you can just go to
YouTube and then search out Church of the City East,
Nashville and it's the service from Sunday, June seven. And
in their talk, Pastor Charles also mentioned a documentary called
(11:45):
on Netflix. So I decided to watch it and it
was very interesting, heartbreaking, but interesting, and it's an in
depth look at our nation's history of racial inequality and
the prison system in the United States that I had
just never been exposed to or thought about. So I
encourage you to watch it if you got some time.
(12:07):
So in relation to what Pastor Charles mentioned in the clip,
I I want to share a little video that Stevenson
made the other day and I put it on Instagram,
and it's about him talking about a potato. Hey hello,
where nothing is wrong with the potato look like a heart?
So I posted this video on Instagram and I'm going
(12:29):
to read what I wrote because given what Pastor Charles said,
it breaks my heart that at a certain time in
this country, and maybe even to some right now, my
son would be seen as less than human. So here's
what I wrote. When I watched this, I see more
than Stevenson appreciating a rejected potato that was in our
(12:50):
misfits market box, a company that sells fruits and veggies
that failed to meet beauty standards for food. I see
a glimpse of how some will reject Stevenson and treat
him differently because he is black. So let me put
this in simple terms like Stevenson did for the heart
shaped potato. Hey, hello world, nothing is wrong with Stevenson.
(13:12):
He looks like a human. If you want to see
that post, you can go to at Radio Amy, which
is my Instagram. And yeah, it was crazy. There was
this potato and our our misfits market box and I
love that it was shaped like a heart. Of like,
how in the world would this not make it to
a grocery store to be sold? It brightened my day.
(13:35):
And then, speaking of Stevenson, his handwriting heads up as
the artwork for our be the Change tease with a
of the proceeds going to fight racial injustice to organizations
that are doing that. So you can check out the
tease and support by going to radio Amy dot com
and scroll down until you see Stevenson's big smiley face
(13:56):
and you can click on that. Okay, So I have
Rachel Berry on for this thing. And last week you
posted about your experiences as a black country music fan
(14:17):
and it got almost a thousand comments and tons and
tons of reposts and likes from Marion Morris to Thomas Rhett,
to Hillary Scott, Steve Moakler, CMT, and and so many more.
And first of all, I just want to say you're
very brave for what you put up. But for my
listeners that don't know exactly what you put up, I
(14:38):
was wondering if you would mind introducing yourself and then
reading the post for those that didn't see it. My
name is Rachel Berry. Like Amy said, I wrote a
post about how I do being black and a country
music fan. So I wrote this girl loved country music
and she loved going to country music concerts. However, I
would be lying if I said that she has never
(15:00):
felt uncomfortable when she's at one when I hear a
song that moved me and makes me want to stand up,
which is often if you know me. I've realized that
I unconsciously thank quickly in my head moments before I
stand up. What if someone else a racial lear at me.
Hearing sit down is very common for my friends and I,
But what if someone were to throw in an extra
(15:22):
word at the end, just for me? Before you buy
tickets to a show, have you ever looked up the
name of the town or city and then racism. I have.
There have been a few shows that I've had to
pass on because the first two or three links that
popped up were about active racism that have happened there.
I've also had to plan out stops on long ro trips.
(15:43):
There's a possibility that getting out of my car and
walking into a gas station or rest stop where I'm
not welcome could end that. Festivals and fairs are also touchy.
I love a great music lineup, being with friends for
food and drinks, the amusement rides, and the game. What
more could you ask for? So I felt uneasy walking
through a crowd of tailgaters and seeing Confederate flags flying
(16:05):
high from their truck. I find myself almost wishing I
was invisible, so I could walk through the crowd without
being seen or noticed. I don't say all of this
pre sympathy, because it is what it is, and every
day I'm still working on how to become comfortable in
my own skin. But all I ask from not only
the country music community, but every human being on this earth,
is that if you see or hear something that is wrong,
(16:27):
speak up, call people out on it. Don't just ignore it,
look away or last. Educate yourself, your children, and your families.
For a chance to happen, we all have to be
more vocal. We all have to stand together and stand
up for what's right. We all breed read there should
be no racial divide period. And Rachel, I know when
you originally posted it, I think you had something in
(16:50):
the beginning that said, you know, I don't know if
anybody will even see this correct, and you know that
would be my encouragement to everybody is that, Yeah, used
will put that out there because you felt it on
your heart and you knew that you wanted to use
your voice here, and so I am just super proud
of you for putting that up. And then I think
(17:10):
you could be encouragement to others. So what's your advice
for someone that's listening right now that might be scared
or or maybe just hesitant to post something and to
use their voice. But just say, I've noticed from the
responses that I've gotten that there are so many people
that relate to me and that you know, haven't gone
to country music shows because of those feelings. So I
feel like, you know, if you feel a certain way,
(17:31):
you know, speak on it because there are people out
there that agree with you and I feel the same way,
and that you're not alone. Well, we definitely have your back, Rachel,
and just thank you so much for bringing to lights
some of the stuff that a lot of people haven't
thought of or had to consider even once because of
their privilege. I hope that people will go to shows
and look out for their black friends that may be there.
(17:52):
And I do call us all friends, even though we
don't know each other. I mean, the country music community
is so tightened it and I feel like concerts are
a way to meet people and connect and just make
sure that you're being kind to everybody there, no matter
what they look like, especially now knowing somebody maybe had
to google before they went to a concert in a
(18:13):
particular city, whether or not they would be safe or not. Yeah,
I have no idea what you've had to experience at
concerts at all, but I'm with you. Thank you. I mean,
I need to really appreciate that. Okay, well, hopefully I'll
see you in Nashville. Sounds good. Thank you, Amy. Okay, bye, Okay.
So you just heard my little chat with Rachel. And
after I talked with her, I opened up my four
(18:34):
Things email and I had an email from a listener
named Linda, and I thought it fit really well here
and I like what she suggested. And it's actually similar
to something that we had to do years ago for
interracial adoption training, when my husband and I, as white people,
were asked to attend an all black church. Really, the
assignment was part of several things that we had to
(18:56):
do to be aware of how our kids will feel
if we only have the around white people all the time.
And I thought it was really helpful for us to
go through that training. So now I want to read
to the email from Linda. Being white, I don't think
I fully appreciate what my black friends live with on
a daily basis. Thank you for the reminder that we
(19:16):
have work to do. Everyone has the right to live
without fear and in peace. Some years ago, a friend
asked me and another friend to go to the local
African American festival. It was terrific. One lady did yell
at us, what are y'all doing here? This isn't for you.
Several of her friends pulled her aside. Anyway, our friend
asked if I felt out of place. I said a little,
(19:39):
because I was pretty much one of the only pale
people in attendance. He looked me in the eye and said,
now you know how I feel most of the time.
I challenge anyone, when say from the virus, etcetera, to
put yourself in a similar situation. It was an amazing epiphany.
Thanks for your time, Linda. So this last week I
(20:06):
lost a lot of followers on Instagram and I lost
listeners of this podcast. And my hope would be that
the people that disagree with anything that they're hearing would
actually continue to follow along and listen, because I hope
that one day they hear something that will click for them.
But those people have already left pretty much. But I
(20:26):
would encourage anyone else still listening, while maybe disagreeing, to
just continue to listen with an open mind and to
really really listen, to engage with others and just listen,
ask questions and then listen to what people have to say.
My friend Jamie Ivy posted a video on Instagram talking
(20:47):
about this exact thing. She's at Jamie Ivy, and you
can go to her page and watch her i G
t V video from about five days ago. At this point,
she's wearing sunglasses and a tank top just to give
you reference, and like talking straight into the camera, and
she's just encouraging people to to listen without having a
guard up, without coming up with a defensive response in
(21:10):
your head while someone is talking. You just simply listen. Anyway,
back to my point about losing followers. While that is
happening and I've received some not so nice notes, I
still feel super encouraged by a lot of you, and
I want to share an email that I got that
was very encouraging to me. And I want you to
know that you're not alone if you're reevaluating what you
(21:34):
consume from here on out, and that I'm going to
do my best to make this podcast a good resource
for you by continuing the conversation of racial injustice now
it may not be every single episode, but it will
now be forever a part of the fabric of the
Four Things podcast. And now here's the email that I
(21:54):
got from a listener named Emily. Hey, Amy, I have
no idea what kind of response you're getting from last
Thursday's episode about racial topics, including white privilege, So I'm
reaching out today to be someone positive in your inbox.
Thank you for using your platform to talk about topics
like race. Thank you for centering black voices like Brittany
and Dr Tatum. Last Thursday's podcast was a fantastic educational resource.
(22:19):
Thanks for making it happen. Thanks for using Black Lives
Matters on your social media, and for the work that
The Shot Forward is doing to raise money for organizations
fighting racial injustice. I see you're doing all the things,
and probably doing even more than we listeners don't see,
and I just want to say thank you and encourage
you to keep going. I realize you're doing all these
things with some risk to your career, and I'm proud
(22:41):
of you for doing them anyway, in a time when
I'm reevaluating the media I consume, I'm excited and relieved
that I can still listen to your podcast. I hope
Thursday's podcast wasn't a one time thing. I look forward
to hearing how you continue to do this work. Maybe
one of each of your Four Things is dedicated to
the topic of race or social just dis work each week.
(23:01):
Thanks again, Emily read ten plus your Bobby Bones show
listener and dedicated Four Things listeners since the beginning, And Emily,
I just want to thank you for the email. Is
very nice and I hope you'll know. My point in
sharing that is because your encouragement means a lot to me,
but I think it can also be encouragement to others
by hearing that. It's not because I want to repeat
(23:22):
back to you all someone that is thanking me for something,
but there are a lot of people that I have
on here, like my guests last week. That's that's an
appreciation and a thanks to them. That's an appreciation and
a thanks to Rachel for coming on today to share
her voice and for you know that Southwest flight attendant
(23:42):
for posting her story on Facebook and others picking up
the story and putting it out there so that we
can spread the positivity and share those types of stories.
It's about my future guests and thanking them ahead of
time for coming on and being a part of this conversation.
And again, like I said, I don't know that it'll
be every week, um, but it will be part of
(24:04):
this show and something that you can expect from this podcast.
I know that Mary and I are super excited about
our Empowered Women's series that we're gonna be doing. It's
going to take us a couple of months to put together.
We don't have an official release date, but we already
knew we wanted some diversity included in it for sure,
But now we know that racial injustice has got to
(24:26):
be a topic and how as women we can support
other women, not just making sure that we have black
women on to talk about x y Z, but that
we have people on that can talk about this very
thing that's happening in the country right now. So, if
you have any other thoughts on the Empowered Women series
that we're doing, we created an email for that, which
(24:47):
is Empowered Women at the shop forward dot com. Send
us suggestions of women you want to hear from, Send
us suggestions of topics you would like for us to cover.
We definitely want to hear from you on this, so Yeah,
we hope that we will empowered women at the shop
forward dot com. All right, I hope you'll have a
(25:07):
great Thursday, and thank you for continuing to listen and
continuing to follow me on Instagram. For those of you
that still are not mistake Okay, Cass up road thing,
(25:27):
little food for you. So life ain't Oh it's pretty Bay,
It's pretty beautiful things beautiful laugh A little mouths use
said he you're kicking with four with Amy Brown
Feeling Things with Amy & Kat News
Host
Amy Brown
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