Erik Fleming hosts historian Dr. Karlos K. Hill and cultural strategist Aurora Archer in a conversation about healing through truthful history and cultural change. They discuss teaching the Tulsa Race Massacre, confronting sanitized narratives, and building compassionate, action-oriented leadership.
The episode centers on narrative change, collective healing, and practical steps for educators, leaders, and listeners to care, resist erasure, and work for justice.
00:00:00 --> 00:00:06 Welcome. I'm Erik Fleming, host of A Moment with Erik Fleming, the podcast of our time.
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00:01:11 --> 00:01:16 The following program is hosted by the NbG Podcast Network.
00:01:20 --> 00:01:55 Music.
00:01:56 --> 00:02:01 Hello, and welcome to another moment with Erik Fleming. I am your host, Erik Fleming.
00:02:02 --> 00:02:11 So today, I'm very fortunate to have two guests who are all about healing.
00:02:11 --> 00:02:19 And we know that in our nation, right this minute, that is the prevailing deal.
00:02:20 --> 00:02:27 We need more love, more compassion, more healing, because we're not getting
00:02:27 --> 00:02:30 it from the White House, and I'll get into that a little later.
00:02:31 --> 00:02:36 But I'm really, really honored to have a young man who is doing the healing
00:02:36 --> 00:02:39 through teaching accurate history.
00:02:40 --> 00:02:45 And then I have a sister that's on that's doing healing through her podcast
00:02:45 --> 00:02:52 and her company, helping people in the corporate world and all that stuff,
00:02:52 --> 00:02:58 deal with cultural healing, dealing with how to be more in tune with the people
00:02:58 --> 00:03:01 that you interact with, whether it's at the job or in society, right?
00:03:01 --> 00:03:05 So I'm really, really glad that those folks were able to make the time.
00:03:06 --> 00:03:10 As you know, this is the beginning of the school year.
00:03:11 --> 00:03:17 And it's also the year where folks are, if you're in a company,
00:03:17 --> 00:03:20 whatever, you're starting to put together your budgets and all that kind of stuff.
00:03:20 --> 00:03:25 So for my guests to be able to take the time out, I really appreciate that.
00:03:25 --> 00:03:27 And I hope that you enjoy their interviews.
00:03:29 --> 00:03:36 Housekeeping note, still trying to get subscribers. Go to patreon.com slash a moment, Eric Fleming.
00:03:36 --> 00:03:41 Let's get those numbers up. The ultimate goal is 20. If we go over that,
00:03:41 --> 00:03:44 great. You know, and whatever we get, we appreciate.
00:03:45 --> 00:03:51 So, you know, just go ahead and do that. Always check on the website, momenterik.com.
00:03:52 --> 00:03:58 And, you know, to not only keep up with the episodes, if this is your first
00:03:58 --> 00:04:03 time listening, make sure that you can go to that website and you can get every
00:04:03 --> 00:04:06 episode that we've done since 2019 is on the website.
00:04:08 --> 00:04:12 And if you like what you're hearing, go ahead and put a review on there.
00:04:13 --> 00:04:17 I mean, you know, just, you know, the interaction is good. People have been emailing.
00:04:19 --> 00:04:22 They'll let me know that they've been listening and they appreciate it and all that.
00:04:22 --> 00:04:26 And they've been talking to me personally, but they're not posting it on the
00:04:26 --> 00:04:32 website, which is fine. I mean, you know, but the reviews and the five stars actually helped too.
00:04:32 --> 00:04:38 So thank you all again for listening. And I hope that this episode is another
00:04:38 --> 00:04:41 one that is engaging, entertaining to you.
00:04:42 --> 00:04:48 All right, so enough of me. It's time to go ahead and kick this episode off.
00:04:48 --> 00:04:51 And as always, we kick it off with a moment of news with Grace G.
00:04:52 --> 00:04:57 Music.
00:04:58 --> 00:05:04 Thanks, Erik. A lone gunman, identified as a former student of the Annunciation
00:05:04 --> 00:05:09 Catholic School in Minneapolis, opened fire on the church during an annual all-school
00:05:09 --> 00:05:13 mass, killing two children and wounding 17 others before taking his own life.
00:05:14 --> 00:05:19 The FBI searched the home of former Trump advisor John Bolton as part of a national
00:05:19 --> 00:05:23 security investigation into the potential release of classified information.
00:05:23 --> 00:05:28 Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook sued President Donald Trump to prevent her
00:05:28 --> 00:05:33 firing, which Trump announced after alleging she engaged in deceitful and potential criminal conduct.
00:05:34 --> 00:05:40 The NAACP and the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights under law sued Texas,
00:05:40 --> 00:05:44 alleging its new congressional map is unconstitutional because it dilutes the
00:05:44 --> 00:05:46 power of black voters and other minorities.
00:05:47 --> 00:05:52 A federal judge ruled that Wisconsin Judge Hannah Dugan, accused of helping
00:05:52 --> 00:05:56 a migrant evade an immigration arrest, cannot claim immunity from criminal charges.
00:05:57 --> 00:06:02 A Utah judge ruled that the state must redraw its congressional map after the
00:06:02 --> 00:06:06 Republican-controlled legislature illegally overruled a voter-approved measure
00:06:06 --> 00:06:09 that created an independent redistricting commission.
00:06:09 --> 00:06:14 A federal judge blocked the Trump administration from withholding federal funding
00:06:14 --> 00:06:19 from several sanctuary jurisdictions that have refused to cooperate with the
00:06:19 --> 00:06:21 president's immigration policies.
00:06:22 --> 00:06:26 Ghislaine Maxwell told a Justice Department official that she was unaware of
00:06:26 --> 00:06:30 a client list belonging to Jeffrey Epstein and never witnessed inappropriate
00:06:30 --> 00:06:32 behavior from Donald Trump.
00:06:32 --> 00:06:37 President Trump signed executive orders to end no-cash bail in Washington, D.C.
00:06:38 --> 00:06:42 A Gambian man was sentenced to over 67 years in U.S.
00:06:42 --> 00:06:46 Federal prison for his role in the torture of victims in Gambia as a member
00:06:46 --> 00:06:51 of a unit run by former dictator Yaya Jame in 2006.
00:06:51 --> 00:06:57 And the Menendez brothers were denied parole for the 1989 murder of their parents.
00:06:58 --> 00:07:01 I am Grace G., and this has been a Moment of News.
00:07:02 --> 00:07:07 Music.
00:07:08 --> 00:07:11 All right. Thank you, Grace, for that moment of news.
00:07:12 --> 00:07:18 And now it is time for my guest, Dr. Karlos K. Hill.
00:07:18 --> 00:07:24 Karlos K. Hill is a writer, speaker, and community-engaged scholar who brings
00:07:24 --> 00:07:27 deeper perspective to historical racism.
00:07:28 --> 00:07:32 Dr. Hill works with students, leaders, and communities to understand our collective
00:07:32 --> 00:07:37 past and heal in relation to our most traumatic history.
00:07:38 --> 00:07:43 Dr. Hill is Regions Professor of the Clara Looper Department of African and
00:07:43 --> 00:07:46 African American Studies at the University of Oklahoma.
00:07:46 --> 00:07:51 Dr. Hill is the author of three books, Beyond the Rope, The Impact of Lynching
00:07:51 --> 00:07:53 on Black Culture and Memory,
00:07:53 --> 00:07:59 The Murder of Emmett Till, A Graphic History, and The 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre,
00:07:59 --> 00:08:02 A Photographic History. Dr.
00:08:02 --> 00:08:07 Hill founded the Tulsa Race Massacre Oklahoma Teachers Institute to support
00:08:07 --> 00:08:11 teaching the history of the race massacre to thousands of middle school and
00:08:11 --> 00:08:17 high school students He also serves on the boards of the Freedom Center Planning Committee,
00:08:17 --> 00:08:22 the Clara Luper Legacy Committee, and the Board of Scholars for Facing History
00:08:22 --> 00:08:27 and Ourselves And is actively engaged on other community initiatives working
00:08:27 --> 00:08:30 toward racial justice Ladies and gentlemen,
00:08:31 --> 00:08:36 it is my distinct honor and privilege to have as a guest on this podcast, Dr.
00:08:37 --> 00:08:39 Karlos K. Hill.
00:08:39 --> 00:08:49 Music.
00:08:50 --> 00:08:55 All right, Dr. Karlos K. Hill. How are you doing, brother? You doing good?
00:08:56 --> 00:09:01 I am great. Thank you for asking. Well, thank you for coming on the show, brother.
00:09:01 --> 00:09:07 I really appreciate that. As I tell my listeners know that I have a soft spot
00:09:07 --> 00:09:11 for historians and educators, teachers, whatever.
00:09:11 --> 00:09:19 I just believe that y'all are doing the Lord's work in trying to educate the
00:09:19 --> 00:09:24 masses. So I greatly appreciate, especially in the field that you're going, you're, you're into.
00:09:24 --> 00:09:33 So I want to get into that in the interview, but I always kick off my interviews with icebreakers.
00:09:34 --> 00:09:39 Yes. So the first icebreaker is a quote. The history that we learn in American
00:09:39 --> 00:09:46 public schools does not encompass the true history of everyone that American schools teach.
00:09:46 --> 00:09:48 What does that quote mean to you?
00:09:49 --> 00:09:55 It really means that we have received a white supremacist version of history,
00:09:56 --> 00:10:01 one that has erased the contributions of Native peoples, the contributions of
00:10:01 --> 00:10:05 Black people, the contributions to a certain extent of women.
00:10:05 --> 00:10:14 And so when I think about the ways in which we are fighting for inclusion and not just inclusion,
00:10:15 --> 00:10:21 compassion for those histories so that we understand how those histories show
00:10:21 --> 00:10:26 up today and what we need to do in response to them, right?
00:10:26 --> 00:10:30 Our histories of America are
00:10:30 --> 00:10:36 often devoid of inclusion of those groups and compassion for those groups.
00:10:36 --> 00:10:43 And the reason why I say that is there is and will continue to be resistance
00:10:43 --> 00:10:50 to addressing those histories and how they show up today because we don't have
00:10:50 --> 00:10:52 a compassionate understanding.
00:10:52 --> 00:10:56 And because we don't have a compassionate understanding, we don't have a willingness
00:10:56 --> 00:10:59 to really engage with these histories authentically.
00:10:59 --> 00:11:05 And so that quote to me really, you know, helps me to understand,
00:11:05 --> 00:11:11 you know, that in our country, historically, we've had white supremacist versions of history.
00:11:11 --> 00:11:15 And my job today as a black studies historian in my classroom,
00:11:15 --> 00:11:16 outside of my classroom.
00:11:17 --> 00:11:22 Is to provide a different narrative and to provide a different way of understanding
00:11:22 --> 00:11:28 the history, not just with our brains, but with our hearts, understanding it compassionately.
00:11:28 --> 00:11:33 That's what our historical education is really devoid of right now. Yeah.
00:11:34 --> 00:11:37 All right. So my next icebreaker is what we call 20 questions.
00:11:37 --> 00:11:41 So I need you to give me a number between 1 and 20.
00:11:42 --> 00:11:48 Three. How should we balance rights, freedoms, and responsibilities?
00:11:49 --> 00:11:57 I think we have to balance it while being really grounded in a communal ethic, right?
00:11:57 --> 00:12:03 And an idea that all of us matter, right?
00:12:03 --> 00:12:09 And when we are grounded in the idea that we all matter and that community,
00:12:09 --> 00:12:14 creating community is of the utmost importance.
00:12:15 --> 00:12:21 Rights, responsibilities, I think, flow from that, right?
00:12:21 --> 00:12:26 I think when we start to talk about individual rights, we often lose sight of
00:12:26 --> 00:12:32 collectivism and community. And so there has to be a balance.
00:12:32 --> 00:12:36 But I think grounding us first, right,
00:12:36 --> 00:12:44 in community and communalism, right, helps people sort through what are my,
00:12:44 --> 00:12:49 not just what are my rights, but what are my rights in relationship to community?
00:12:49 --> 00:12:51 What are my rights in relationship to others?
00:12:51 --> 00:12:55 What are my rights in relationship to marginalized people, et cetera?
00:12:55 --> 00:12:59 And how should I use, how should rights be used to protect them,
00:13:00 --> 00:13:04 not protect those groups, not just have individual rights so that I,
00:13:04 --> 00:13:08 you know, can have some sort of safety bubble around myself.
00:13:08 --> 00:13:14 And so I think for me, grounding that conversation and community and communalism
00:13:14 --> 00:13:16 is where I would want to take it.
00:13:17 --> 00:13:23 Yeah. All right. How did a young man from the Mississippi Delta end up being
00:13:23 --> 00:13:25 a distinguished professor at the University of Oklahoma?
00:13:26 --> 00:13:29 Long journey, long journey, long journey.
00:13:29 --> 00:13:35 But I can say in a nutshell, I had parents who were educators, who were teachers,
00:13:35 --> 00:13:43 who infused in me a work ethic to, you know, to do to get good grades,
00:13:44 --> 00:13:47 but also a curiosity about the world.
00:13:47 --> 00:13:52 And, you know, through, you know, my parents pushing and prodding me,
00:13:52 --> 00:13:58 I kind of became kind of a lifelong student, a career student.
00:13:58 --> 00:14:05 But I really got passion for black studies in college. I had some great mentors.
00:14:05 --> 00:14:08 One of them just passed away earlier this year.
00:14:08 --> 00:14:15 But I had some great mentors in college who really gave me a new and a deep
00:14:15 --> 00:14:20 understanding of history and why it mattered and why it mattered today and how
00:14:20 --> 00:14:25 history shows up today in the form of policies and practices,
00:14:25 --> 00:14:28 but also mindsets and ideologies.
00:14:28 --> 00:14:34 And so I had great teachers who really helped illuminate history,
00:14:34 --> 00:14:36 its power, its significance.
00:14:36 --> 00:14:44 And so from college and having great college professors, they really are the
00:14:44 --> 00:14:50 people responsible for pushing me, tilting me towards graduate school and getting me involved.
00:14:50 --> 00:14:55 Connected to other professors in graduate school who could really help to elevate me.
00:14:56 --> 00:15:00 You know, I am because of my mentors, not just because, you know,
00:15:00 --> 00:15:03 some sort of individual talent or ability.
00:15:03 --> 00:15:09 You know, I show up the way I show up because I've been mentored and molded
00:15:09 --> 00:15:12 and shaped by those people.
00:15:12 --> 00:15:20 And so I would say the mentorship that I've received is why I've become a team.
00:15:20 --> 00:15:23 And if I am distinguished, that's why I've become distinguished.
00:15:24 --> 00:15:30 I have been taught by a long line of distinguished historians and scholars.
00:15:31 --> 00:15:35 Yeah. You know, I don't know if you had a chance to do any background on me,
00:15:35 --> 00:15:39 but I lived in Mississippi for 34 years.
00:15:41 --> 00:15:46 I attended. I went there to go to Jackson State and ended up staying there for a minute.
00:15:46 --> 00:15:49 My dad was actually born in Mississippi. He was born in Marks.
00:15:50 --> 00:15:56 And then he, I guess him and his sister left when they were like two and well,
00:15:56 --> 00:15:58 she was three then and he was two.
00:15:58 --> 00:16:02 So, and they ended up in, in, in Illinois.
00:16:03 --> 00:16:07 And so that's how I ended up being born in Chicago. Yeah.
00:16:07 --> 00:16:12 So, yeah, I, I, you know, anytime I can try to find a Mississippi connection,
00:16:12 --> 00:16:13 I'm going to do it. Right.
00:16:13 --> 00:16:18 So speaking about Mississippi Connections, the three books that you have written
00:16:18 --> 00:16:22 focus on the horrors of racism in America.
00:16:22 --> 00:16:27 Why did you decide to hone in on that aspect of American history?
00:16:27 --> 00:16:30 And why do you feel that it's important to present those stories?
00:16:31 --> 00:16:41 Yeah, I can't say that this is something that I knew that I wanted to study,
00:16:41 --> 00:16:45 knew that I wanted to write about when I became a historian.
00:16:45 --> 00:16:53 It was a gradual progression, me arriving at this place of focusing in on the
00:16:53 --> 00:16:59 history of lynching, racial violence, race massacres. It was a an evolution.
00:16:59 --> 00:17:02 But I would say the most important thing, again, is mentorship.
00:17:02 --> 00:17:07 My my advisor in graduate school, Sundiata Chajua, is a historian,
00:17:07 --> 00:17:10 a distinguished historian of lynching and racial violence.
00:17:10 --> 00:17:16 And in my first years of working with him, I threw myself into his research,
00:17:16 --> 00:17:20 researching lynchings across the country.
00:17:21 --> 00:17:29 And I did that work with him for him for two to three years. And when you...
00:17:30 --> 00:17:34 Reading about, studying, and researching the history of lynching and racial
00:17:34 --> 00:17:37 violence, for me, it was deeply emotional.
00:17:38 --> 00:17:44 It really troubled my spirit and my soul researching these stories of how Black
00:17:44 --> 00:17:48 people's lives were upended by lynchings,
00:17:48 --> 00:17:56 how Black bodies were desecrated in the public square for alleged crimes,
00:17:56 --> 00:17:58 not actual crimes, for alleged crimes.
00:17:58 --> 00:18:06 And so that really tormented my spirit and weighed heavily on me.
00:18:06 --> 00:18:11 And so I had to deal with that. I had to work through that.
00:18:11 --> 00:18:17 And ultimately working through all of that is what produced me as a scholar
00:18:17 --> 00:18:19 of lynching and racial violence.
00:18:19 --> 00:18:24 It was such an emotional impact that doing that early research had on me.
00:18:24 --> 00:18:31 It created so many questions. It created so many curiosities that by year four,
00:18:32 --> 00:18:34 I asked my advisor, Sundiata Chajua.
00:18:35 --> 00:18:40 Would it be possible for me to, you know, take a little piece of your research
00:18:40 --> 00:18:43 and make it mine and write about it?
00:18:43 --> 00:18:48 And he was, of course, enthused and excited that I would have that interest
00:18:48 --> 00:18:49 and want to follow that interest.
00:18:49 --> 00:18:54 And so it really began as a graduate researcher with my advisor,
00:18:54 --> 00:19:00 the emotional experiences that I had with the research and ultimately wanting
00:19:00 --> 00:19:06 to understand and be more compassionate to these histories that I was reading about.
00:19:06 --> 00:19:10 Ultimately, becoming a professional historian.
00:19:11 --> 00:19:18 My goal has been to really help other people build a relationship with the black
00:19:18 --> 00:19:22 past in the same way that I have. Right. My goal.
00:19:22 --> 00:19:27 My journey as a black studies historian has been very emotional,
00:19:27 --> 00:19:30 like getting deeply enmeshed in these stories,
00:19:31 --> 00:19:36 caring about the not just the stories and the history, but the people connected
00:19:36 --> 00:19:39 to those histories and how those histories show up today.
00:19:39 --> 00:19:43 That's where my heart went in those early days.
00:19:43 --> 00:19:46 And that's where my heart still is today. But the way
00:19:46 --> 00:19:49 in which I talk about it today and why I
00:19:49 --> 00:19:56 do it today and why I think it's important is what I truly have taken away from
00:19:56 --> 00:20:01 the study of the history of lynching and racial violence is the indifference
00:20:01 --> 00:20:06 that white people and white society have had to black people and black bodies.
00:20:07 --> 00:20:09 Particularly lynch victims.
00:20:09 --> 00:20:14 And so the work that I try to do, particularly in the classroom,
00:20:14 --> 00:20:15 but also when I get a chance to
00:20:15 --> 00:20:22 speak publicly, is to bear witness to the sacred nature of black people,
00:20:22 --> 00:20:29 black lives, especially lynch victims, and to elevate the memory of those victims
00:20:29 --> 00:20:32 in a way that we can approach them as sacred,
00:20:33 --> 00:20:34 understand them as sacred.
00:20:34 --> 00:20:39 And so that's number one. I try to bear witness to victims, survivors,
00:20:40 --> 00:20:43 and descendants of American lynching, of American slavery.
00:20:44 --> 00:20:49 And in doing so, I try to pierce that indifference,
00:20:49 --> 00:20:55 that default indifference often to Black people and definitely stories of Black
00:20:55 --> 00:20:59 racial violence against Black people.
00:20:59 --> 00:21:06 And so, you know, I'm a historian committed to bearing witness to Black people,
00:21:06 --> 00:21:09 Black people's stories, especially those involving oppression,
00:21:09 --> 00:21:15 so that we can counter, so that we can disrupt, so that we can replace that
00:21:15 --> 00:21:16 indifference with compassion.
00:21:17 --> 00:21:22 Replacing it with compassion, I believe, is the most effective way of activating
00:21:22 --> 00:21:26 people to do something about how those histories show up today.
00:21:26 --> 00:21:33 And so ultimately, my message in relationship to the history of lynching and
00:21:33 --> 00:21:37 history of slavery is how we need to heal in relationship to it.
00:21:37 --> 00:21:42 And I believe that healing is a process. It's not a transaction.
00:21:42 --> 00:21:49 It's not saying I'm sorry. It's really learning, understanding and caring about
00:21:49 --> 00:21:52 our relationship to these histories.
00:21:52 --> 00:21:55 And we don't have to be black. We don't have to be white to have a relationship
00:21:55 --> 00:22:00 to the history of slavery or the history of lynching. We just have to care about it.
00:22:00 --> 00:22:02 And so I teach from that place.
00:22:03 --> 00:22:08 Of bearing witness and then from bearing witness,
00:22:08 --> 00:22:14 helping people learn that they too can bear witness if they're sufficiently
00:22:14 --> 00:22:21 compassionate, if they are sufficiently grounded, not just in knowing, but in caring.
00:22:21 --> 00:22:28 And so for all those reasons, you know, my work, because of where I began in
00:22:28 --> 00:22:35 this deep space of emotional distress and in all these feelings of anger, rage, resentment.
00:22:36 --> 00:22:40 Deciding that that's not the relationship that I wanted even.
00:22:40 --> 00:22:44 And so how can I, as a historian doing this work, have a healing relationship?
00:22:44 --> 00:22:50 How can I teach students and public to have a healing relationship with our
00:22:50 --> 00:22:55 most traumatic past, slavery and the history of lynching and racial violence.
00:22:55 --> 00:23:02 And so I teach history from a place of trying to transform people, not educate them.
00:23:03 --> 00:23:12 And, you know, that sort of approach is something that I didn't just learn by myself.
00:23:12 --> 00:23:19 Again, this is an approach that is, you know, taken from my many mentors over
00:23:19 --> 00:23:22 the years and turned it into my own.
00:23:22 --> 00:23:27 But that's what I think is at stake in talking about the Black past.
00:23:27 --> 00:23:31 It's not just that it happened. It's not just that it shows up today.
00:23:31 --> 00:23:37 It's because it shows up today, what are we going to do to address it?
00:23:37 --> 00:23:42 And the language for me to talk about that is healing history. Yeah.
00:23:43 --> 00:23:48 All right. So are you familiar with Jillian Michaels and the comments she made on CNN.
00:23:49 --> 00:23:53 I saw a little bit of an excerpt, but, but tell me your thoughts on this.
00:23:53 --> 00:24:01 Well, you know, she, she got on the show and, and I forget exactly what they were talking about.
00:24:01 --> 00:24:04 I think they were talking about the museums and there was a question I was going
00:24:04 --> 00:24:09 to get to on the museums, but she said, you know, she was trying to make it
00:24:09 --> 00:24:15 a point that, you know, only 2% of white people, you know, owned slaves.
00:24:16 --> 00:24:21 And, you know, it was, you know, just to put the onus on white people.
00:24:21 --> 00:24:28 She kind of felt that history was trying to make white people villains, right?
00:24:28 --> 00:24:32 And she was very uncomfortable with that. And of course, the black folks on
00:24:32 --> 00:24:34 the panel were very uncomfortable with her saying that.
00:24:35 --> 00:24:40 So my question to you is, if Jillian Michaels was a student of yours,
00:24:40 --> 00:24:42 right? She said that in your class.
00:24:43 --> 00:24:47 Would that inspire you? Would that deflate you?
00:24:47 --> 00:24:53 How would you react to that before you went in to try to address her misconceptions?
00:24:54 --> 00:25:00 Yeah, I mean, I'm at the beginning of the semester right now at the University
00:25:00 --> 00:25:03 of Oklahoma teaching Introduction to Black Studies.
00:25:04 --> 00:25:07 And, you know, today and in a couple hours,
00:25:08 --> 00:25:14 I'm going to have a conversation with my students about not about black history, black studies,
00:25:14 --> 00:25:22 but getting us grounded in how we need to talk, how we need to develop a norms
00:25:22 --> 00:25:27 and an ethic for talking about black history, black studies.
00:25:27 --> 00:25:34 And so I think for me, I do a lot of work trying to ground the students,
00:25:34 --> 00:25:38 not in just sharing what they know or sharing what they think,
00:25:38 --> 00:25:44 but get them grounded in a kind of communal ethic of sharing with empathy,
00:25:44 --> 00:25:46 with compassion. Right.
00:25:46 --> 00:25:51 And so I think in the before we can really launch into a conversation,
00:25:51 --> 00:25:56 we have to ground ourselves in the principles and the ethos that we're trying
00:25:56 --> 00:25:58 to establish in having that conversation.
00:25:59 --> 00:26:04 And so I I typically don't have those kinds of encounters with students because
00:26:04 --> 00:26:09 we've done so much preparatory work building up to talking about those difficult
00:26:09 --> 00:26:11 histories like slavery.
00:26:11 --> 00:26:18 But if she if if after all the grounding that we do and I and I ground students
00:26:18 --> 00:26:21 in African philosophy, I'm a black studies historian.
00:26:21 --> 00:26:26 I ground them in African philosophy. I ground them in the in the South African
00:26:26 --> 00:26:30 philosophy, which is a continental African philosophy of Ubuntu.
00:26:31 --> 00:26:46 Ubuntu is a Zulu phrase, South African Zulu Hosa phrase, that means literally, I am only because we are.
00:26:46 --> 00:26:55 I am only because we are. And so I ground our conversations in that principle.
00:26:55 --> 00:27:03 That principle is a principle of interconnectedness, interdependence, and compassion, right?
00:27:03 --> 00:27:10 Ubuntu ultimately means a person is a person through other people.
00:27:10 --> 00:27:14 You can't be a person all by yourself.
00:27:14 --> 00:27:21 And our humanity as people is expressed not just because of our biology,
00:27:21 --> 00:27:27 it's our humanity is ultimately expressed in how we show up and treat others
00:27:27 --> 00:27:30 with compassion, right?
00:27:30 --> 00:27:36 And so you can only be truly human through being humane to others. That is Ubuntu.
00:27:37 --> 00:27:45 And so when you lay out an Ubuntu dialogical framework for talking about the
00:27:45 --> 00:27:50 black past rooted in that ethos, you tend not to get those kinds of comments.
00:27:51 --> 00:27:54 But but if but let's say if
00:27:54 --> 00:27:57 it does happen we treat
00:27:57 --> 00:28:04 that we treat that comment with compassion i can't turn around and and sort
00:28:04 --> 00:28:10 of lash out at her or that student because they said something like that that's
00:28:10 --> 00:28:15 counter to our principles and ethics we got to treat that comment with compassion,
00:28:15 --> 00:28:19 try to understand it without traumatizing the other student.
00:28:19 --> 00:28:26 And so what I would say is, I mean, I've had those kind of very random one-off,
00:28:27 --> 00:28:31 you know, insensitive comments happen around the issue of slavery.
00:28:31 --> 00:28:36 But because my method of teaching is not to tell the students what to think
00:28:36 --> 00:28:41 or even how to think, but to really guide them.
00:28:42 --> 00:28:49 Through dialogue, we would receive it as a class compassionately and respond
00:28:49 --> 00:28:52 to that student compassionately, pointing out.
00:28:52 --> 00:28:54 And this is where it comes.
00:28:55 --> 00:29:03 Well, don't you remember us talking about how 10 of the first 12 presidents owned slaves?
00:29:03 --> 00:29:09 So we can talk about only the two or 3% of Southerners that did,
00:29:09 --> 00:29:12 but the most important people in America owned slaves.
00:29:12 --> 00:29:18 So let's not minimize it. Let's not pretend that on the eve of the Civil War.
00:29:19 --> 00:29:27 That 50% of the American gross domestic product was wrapped up in cotton and
00:29:27 --> 00:29:30 enslaved people, right?
00:29:30 --> 00:29:37 Let's not pretend that slavery didn't exist for 250 years in our country.
00:29:37 --> 00:29:42 And in every state, there were laws on the books, even slaves that didn't have
00:29:42 --> 00:29:45 enslaved people had laws prohibiting.
00:29:45 --> 00:29:50 Slavery was central to law, culture, and economy.
00:29:50 --> 00:29:58 And that just can't be disputed. Even if we want to say Only the privileged few had owned slaves.
00:29:58 --> 00:30:06 Our economy, our society, our culture revolved around it for 250 years.
00:30:06 --> 00:30:11 And more than that, we fought a four-year civil war, the bloodiest war in American
00:30:11 --> 00:30:14 history, to bring slavery to an end.
00:30:14 --> 00:30:24 So let's not minimize it. Let's talk about it in a way that honors first and
00:30:24 --> 00:30:27 foremost enslaved people and their sacrifices.
00:30:28 --> 00:30:33 And so let's not minimize it because ultimately that's what we're talking about, right?
00:30:33 --> 00:30:40 To minimize slavery is to minimize the suffering and the oppression of black people.
00:30:40 --> 00:30:45 And that's where I just that's where that's where that's the only place that
00:30:45 --> 00:30:50 we might truly but has if there was a true minimization of black people and
00:30:50 --> 00:30:52 black suffering under slavery.
00:30:52 --> 00:30:56 But but but even then, it's going to be a compassionate conversation,
00:30:56 --> 00:31:01 because if my goal is to transform Jillian.
00:31:02 --> 00:31:08 I have to give her the same compassion that I want her to give to the history.
00:31:09 --> 00:31:14 If I don't, there's no way that she's going to hear me and there's no way that
00:31:14 --> 00:31:16 I'm going to have that transformation.
00:31:16 --> 00:31:23 So for me, those kinds of things are present opportunities in the class,
00:31:23 --> 00:31:27 not sort of, oh, my God, somebody thinks that. How could they?
00:31:28 --> 00:31:32 Well, there's an American education system responsible for it.
00:31:32 --> 00:31:34 She ain't responsible for that point of view.
00:31:35 --> 00:31:42 She's giving voice to it, but she ain't responsible for it. That is rooted in our culture.
00:31:42 --> 00:31:49 That is rooted in our relationship to slavery. And so what we need to do is
00:31:49 --> 00:31:52 to depersonalize it with her.
00:31:53 --> 00:32:01 Connect it to that strand of thought in our culture that is ashamed and embarrassed of slavery.
00:32:01 --> 00:32:04 And because of that, let's minimize it.
00:32:04 --> 00:32:11 Let's say it wasn't that bad. In fact, some enslaved people got wages for their
00:32:11 --> 00:32:15 work. And, you know, how bad could it be if there were wages involved?
00:32:15 --> 00:32:21 And they must have had some kind of choice. And like all the ways that evil
00:32:21 --> 00:32:28 and oppression can be rationalized when it's shorn of context and humanity,
00:32:28 --> 00:32:31 that's what we experience on a daily basis in America.
00:32:32 --> 00:32:34 And that's what she represents. Yeah.
00:32:34 --> 00:32:39 So in line with that, what was your reaction when you heard the Trump administration
00:32:39 --> 00:32:44 say the Smithsonian museums and exhibits should be accurate,
00:32:45 --> 00:32:47 patriotic and enlightening?
00:32:48 --> 00:32:55 It can, it's already that the, the, the, the exhibits are, I've been to the
00:32:55 --> 00:33:00 Smithsonian, the African American, the American multiple times. Right.
00:33:00 --> 00:33:08 And the, the exhibits in the, in, in both institutions, while one could argue
00:33:08 --> 00:33:14 are critical of, of past actions and no way,
00:33:14 --> 00:33:18 shape, form or fashion, are they anti-American or unpaid.
00:33:18 --> 00:33:24 Or don't ultimately talk about the redeeming qualities of America,
00:33:25 --> 00:33:30 its constitution, its pursuit of justice for all the things, right?
00:33:30 --> 00:33:36 What I really feel in relationship to those comments is erasure.
00:33:37 --> 00:33:39 Right? This isn't about patriotism.
00:33:39 --> 00:33:47 This isn't about making sure that Americans understand an authentic history of America.
00:33:47 --> 00:33:55 This is about erasing aspects of American history that not only make us uncomfortable,
00:33:55 --> 00:33:59 but force us to reckon with the past, right?
00:33:59 --> 00:34:07 When I say reckon with the past, one just glaring, one glaring,
00:34:07 --> 00:34:14 glaring way that America has not addressed the institution of slavery is repair, is restitution,
00:34:14 --> 00:34:22 is reparation for a 250 years assault on black people and black bodies.
00:34:22 --> 00:34:27 And that repair isn't just financial, right?
00:34:27 --> 00:34:33 There's psychological, there's emotional, there's health.
00:34:33 --> 00:34:41 There's all kinds of ways in which we can repair and do repair work in relationship to this history.
00:34:41 --> 00:34:44 Financial repair is important,
00:34:44 --> 00:34:52 particularly when the latest estimates that I have seen related to the global
00:34:52 --> 00:34:56 slave trade amount to 20 trillion dollars to repair.
00:34:57 --> 00:35:03 Right. The the the the the liquidation of black wealth or excuse me,
00:35:03 --> 00:35:07 the capturing of black wealth under slavery. Right.
00:35:07 --> 00:35:12 That black people experience no benefit from when you when you understand the
00:35:12 --> 00:35:18 scale and the magnitude of a 500 year, you know, global slave trade.
00:35:19 --> 00:35:23 And when you understand how it depopulated Africa.
00:35:23 --> 00:35:29 And how how how it took from Africa its most critical resource, its people. Right.
00:35:30 --> 00:35:36 You begin to you and you begin to realize that it's not just,
00:35:36 --> 00:35:40 you know, freeing enslaved people, whether they're in the United States,
00:35:40 --> 00:35:42 Brazil or else or the Caribbean.
00:35:43 --> 00:35:49 Right. It's really about making those individuals whole, given all that they lost.
00:35:49 --> 00:35:54 We are still trying to recover what was lost from that 250 years,
00:35:54 --> 00:36:00 actually 500 year process, beginning with the Portuguese in the 16th century.
00:36:00 --> 00:36:05 Or 15th century with the Portuguese action. They were the first to truly,
00:36:05 --> 00:36:12 they inaugurated the transatlantic slave trade and sent millions of our people, African people,
00:36:12 --> 00:36:16 into bondage more than any other colonial power.
00:36:16 --> 00:36:23 It took Portuguese the longest to get, to undo or to eradicate or to abolish slavery.
00:36:23 --> 00:36:28 And so the debt is something that we are very,
00:36:28 --> 00:36:32 very very very uncomfortable with because
00:36:32 --> 00:36:35 it comes with implications for today how we
00:36:35 --> 00:36:38 need to show up today to combat
00:36:38 --> 00:36:45 that history that's why president trump donald trump doesn't want slavery or
00:36:45 --> 00:36:53 crit or critical takes on slavery included in in museums you know it forces
00:36:53 --> 00:36:56 a reckoning yeah All right.
00:36:56 --> 00:37:01 So I got one more question that I guess would, I don't know.
00:37:01 --> 00:37:06 Not a positive tone, but I want to hear your take on it.
00:37:06 --> 00:37:09 And then I'm going to get to something positive that you're doing.
00:37:10 --> 00:37:15 As an educator in Oklahoma, what are your thoughts on Ryan Walters?
00:37:18 --> 00:37:28 My goodness. Ryan Walters is the superintendent of education for public schools in Oklahoma.
00:37:28 --> 00:37:33 And, you know, he since he's,
00:37:33 --> 00:37:38 you know, I want to say 2021 been in that role,
00:37:38 --> 00:37:48 he's done everything in his power to essentially erase difficult racial histories
00:37:48 --> 00:37:51 from from the curriculum. Right.
00:37:51 --> 00:37:58 And not only that, try to replace those difficult histories with one that sanitize
00:37:58 --> 00:38:02 slavery, the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre.
00:38:02 --> 00:38:12 I just wrote an op-ed about PragerU, this conservative company that creates
00:38:12 --> 00:38:15 educational, you can maybe call them educational,
00:38:15 --> 00:38:19 videos about American history.
00:38:19 --> 00:38:23 These videos, short videos, animated videos,
00:38:24 --> 00:38:34 essentially minimize slavery and most controversially suggest that slavery was
00:38:34 --> 00:38:37 OK because had black people not accepted it,
00:38:37 --> 00:38:43 genocide would have been in order or genocide would have been the ultimate effect.
00:38:43 --> 00:38:50 And so the choice, these videos present American slavery as a choice between
00:38:50 --> 00:38:54 oppression and genocide, right? And so...
00:38:55 --> 00:39:05 And no free people, no conscious people can accept that as a framing of their history, right?
00:39:05 --> 00:39:09 No logic, like, that just doesn't make sense.
00:39:09 --> 00:39:13 And so Ryan Walter, similar to Donald Trump,
00:39:13 --> 00:39:20 has been leading an effort in Oklahoma to eradicate the kinds of histories that
00:39:20 --> 00:39:25 I want to talk about, the kinds of histories that I want to bring us closer to.
00:39:25 --> 00:39:30 Like the main premise for
00:39:30 --> 00:39:40 Trump or Walters is talking about difficult or even divisive histories are counter
00:39:40 --> 00:39:46 to patriotism or counter to building an American community. Right.
00:39:47 --> 00:39:55 I argue that they are essential discussing, debating, but more than that,
00:39:56 --> 00:40:01 building a relationship, understanding why we care about these histories in
00:40:01 --> 00:40:03 the first place in our relationship to them,
00:40:04 --> 00:40:12 our personal and collective relationship to them is how we begin the healing process. Right.
00:40:12 --> 00:40:17 And I know when people hear healing, they think it's all murky and it's and
00:40:17 --> 00:40:20 it's about singing Kumbaya together.
00:40:20 --> 00:40:25 Healing truly is really about the acknowledgement and recognition of what the
00:40:25 --> 00:40:31 history has done to us and how it shows up today and what we're going to do
00:40:31 --> 00:40:34 about it in the present and how we're going to work.
00:40:34 --> 00:40:40 The key is, and this is where Ubuntu comes in, how are we going to work together
00:40:40 --> 00:40:42 because we can't get there by ourselves?
00:40:43 --> 00:40:47 If we could have, black people would have gotten there. We would have gotten there.
00:40:47 --> 00:40:52 If we could have gotten there by ourselves, we can't get there by ourselves.
00:40:53 --> 00:40:59 Right. Ubuntu teaches us that we are interconnected and we are interdependent. Right.
00:40:59 --> 00:41:08 And so healing is a collective process that takes all of us because we are all a part of this history.
00:41:08 --> 00:41:13 They are afraid of that conversation because what it would mean for our politic,
00:41:13 --> 00:41:16 what it would mean for how we would relate to each other, what it would mean
00:41:16 --> 00:41:21 for how we would create new, not only new policies, but new politics.
00:41:21 --> 00:41:28 And so this is ultimately about power and the power of repressing this history.
00:41:29 --> 00:41:38 How does that create power? Well, in getting people upset and angry about them
00:41:38 --> 00:41:42 having to even learn about these histories, that builds power.
00:41:43 --> 00:41:47 Telling people that black people truly had it all right under slavery.
00:41:48 --> 00:41:53 And what are we really complaining about here? It was just so few people who owned slaves.
00:41:54 --> 00:41:59 What are we really talking about? We're just mad about that.
00:41:59 --> 00:42:09 And so all those moves are to minimize and to create power and to insulate from
00:42:09 --> 00:42:14 us from any conversation about reckoning with that past, how it shows up today.
00:42:14 --> 00:42:20 And so I think Ryan Walters, as Oklahoma superintendent,
00:42:20 --> 00:42:26 has tried to more so than Donald Trump to erase our past and to and to create
00:42:26 --> 00:42:35 a situation where we we understand the black past in particular as something that's marginal,
00:42:36 --> 00:42:41 as something that, you know, something that we really if we talk about it,
00:42:41 --> 00:42:43 we need to talk about it in ways that.
00:42:44 --> 00:42:48 That don't bring these issues to the fore. And we've seen that.
00:42:48 --> 00:42:53 We're experiencing that across Oklahoma, whether it's these videos that I mentioned
00:42:53 --> 00:43:00 regarding PragerU and or the kind of book bans that have happened in relationship
00:43:00 --> 00:43:02 to Black literature, Black authors.
00:43:02 --> 00:43:05 Even Frederick Douglas' book is banned in Oklahoma.
00:43:06 --> 00:43:10 So whether it's book bans, whether it's educational videos, Those are where there is,
00:43:11 --> 00:43:16 you know, I don't want to go into this too deep, but HB 1775 that seeks to curtail
00:43:16 --> 00:43:22 how racial topics are taught in classrooms across Oklahoma and all those ways.
00:43:22 --> 00:43:28 Ryan Walters has been at the center of that and been a major proponent of that.
00:43:29 --> 00:43:38 And, you know, the only the only thing that has protected myself and other academics
00:43:38 --> 00:43:41 in Oklahoma is that, you know.
00:43:42 --> 00:43:48 For the most part, the governor and Ryan Walters has left universities and colleges
00:43:48 --> 00:43:51 alone because of academic freedom.
00:43:51 --> 00:43:57 But outside of that, there is a lot of pressure on our universities and colleges
00:43:57 --> 00:44:03 to kowtow to the same things that are happening in K-12 institutions.
00:44:04 --> 00:44:08 Yeah. And that's what I was thinking, too. You know, it's like because you you're
00:44:08 --> 00:44:16 at a state school and and he's sending basically sending these kids.
00:44:16 --> 00:44:18 Most of them are going to go to the state school.
00:44:18 --> 00:44:23 So, you know, I just wanted to get your take on it, man, because it's like,
00:44:23 --> 00:44:29 you know, I know if I was a professor and I'm at the University of Oklahoma
00:44:29 --> 00:44:31 and I'm watching what this dude is doing.
00:44:31 --> 00:44:34 And I'm like, especially if I'm a history teacher, I'm like going,
00:44:34 --> 00:44:36 oh, my God, what are these freshmen?
00:44:37 --> 00:44:41 What am I going to experience, especially intro classes? You know what I'm saying?
00:44:41 --> 00:44:45 So I just wanted to get your take on that. But let's go ahead and close this
00:44:45 --> 00:44:46 out with something positive.
00:44:46 --> 00:44:51 Talk about your work at the Tulsa Race Massacre Oklahoma Teachers Institute
00:44:51 --> 00:44:55 and what impact you have seen since its inception.
00:44:55 --> 00:45:01 Well, I would just state, just so that the audience has context,
00:45:02 --> 00:45:06 that I am a historian of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre.
00:45:07 --> 00:45:13 I try to bear witness to victims of virus and descendants of that massacre.
00:45:13 --> 00:45:18 I try to elevate how society not only understands the massacre,
00:45:19 --> 00:45:26 but understands their lives in relationship to that sort of took me that that
00:45:26 --> 00:45:29 that sort of commitment has taken me a lot of different places.
00:45:29 --> 00:45:36 But in Tulsa, the way in which I thought I could be of service to the community
00:45:36 --> 00:45:42 was creating a Tulsa Race Massacre Centennial Institute that occurred across
00:45:42 --> 00:45:44 three years, three summers,
00:45:45 --> 00:45:47 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021.
00:45:47 --> 00:45:55 And we taught, you know, in that time or we taught or we facilitated conversations
00:45:55 --> 00:46:01 with, you know, dozens of teachers from Tulsa and across Oklahoma,
00:46:02 --> 00:46:08 not just about how to teach the race massacring ways that are accurate, but.
00:46:08 --> 00:46:14 But how do we teach the race massacre in a way that it hadn't been taught for
00:46:14 --> 00:46:20 100 years, teach it as a massacre rather than a riot?
00:46:20 --> 00:46:25 And so my main job was narrative change.
00:46:25 --> 00:46:32 That was the main impact of my work in the Institute was narrative change within
00:46:32 --> 00:46:36 Tulsa public schools because the Institute was based in Tulsa.
00:46:36 --> 00:46:43 And in creating narrative change, that it was actually a massacre rather than a riot,
00:46:43 --> 00:46:50 the responsibility and the culpability of it was shifted to city and to citizens
00:46:50 --> 00:46:52 versus the Black community.
00:46:52 --> 00:46:59 As long as it was understood as a riot, the Black community of Greenwood had
00:46:59 --> 00:47:01 been blamed for what had happened to them.
00:47:02 --> 00:47:10 And so the work that we did in the institute was to shift that narrative and
00:47:10 --> 00:47:17 in shifting that narrative from riot to massacre, also shift compassion, right?
00:47:17 --> 00:47:23 As long as black people were the responsible, there was not only indifference
00:47:23 --> 00:47:26 to the suffering, there was hostility to the community.
00:47:26 --> 00:47:35 And so I engaged in narrative change in that institute in order to bring a more
00:47:35 --> 00:47:41 victim survivor and descendant centered understanding of it,
00:47:41 --> 00:47:44 not just because that's what really happened, a massacre,
00:47:45 --> 00:47:51 but so that we could address how the history shows up today in Greenwood.
00:47:52 --> 00:47:58 And, you know, positioning teachers in that institute to understand that it
00:47:58 --> 00:48:02 was a massacre, to understand that they needed to send their victim survivors
00:48:02 --> 00:48:04 and descendants in the telling of the story.
00:48:04 --> 00:48:08 And when you center them, these are the issues that emerge.
00:48:08 --> 00:48:16 These are the concerns that one maybe ought to have in relationship to this history.
00:48:16 --> 00:48:25 And so teaching or facilitating conversations that really brought the race massacre
00:48:25 --> 00:48:31 to teachers in a way that they could relate to, that they could get proximate with, and in turn.
00:48:31 --> 00:48:38 Share those same lessons and ethos with students was the goal of the Institute.
00:48:38 --> 00:48:47 And so it's the best work that I've ever been a part of because of the impact
00:48:47 --> 00:48:49 and the change that it seeded.
00:48:49 --> 00:48:57 I will always say to anybody who asks me that I was remade and reborn as a Black
00:48:57 --> 00:49:03 Studies historian in Greenwood because of the gravity of the history and the
00:49:03 --> 00:49:07 gravity of reckoning with it and the stakes involved,
00:49:07 --> 00:49:09 right, for that community.
00:49:09 --> 00:49:18 I'm so proud that I stand today with descendants of that massacre doing work
00:49:18 --> 00:49:22 with them to address how that history shows up today.
00:49:23 --> 00:49:29 Like the most proud thing that I can say is I'm in service to descendants who
00:49:29 --> 00:49:35 are trying today to get justice for their families, for their ancestors.
00:49:35 --> 00:49:41 Like that's my most as a as a black studies historian working alongside and
00:49:41 --> 00:49:47 with community, seeing what we have been able to do to to.
00:49:48 --> 00:49:54 To create a new narrative, to create narrative change around a massacre that
00:49:54 --> 00:49:59 happened a hundred years and to see today what has happened,
00:49:59 --> 00:50:01 what has even flourished because of that.
00:50:01 --> 00:50:06 We have Greenwood Rising, state of the art history museum that tells that story
00:50:06 --> 00:50:13 of a victim survivor descendant story that ultimately millions of people will
00:50:13 --> 00:50:15 visit and be impacted by.
00:50:15 --> 00:50:21 That is why I'm so proud. That is why I would say the Teachers Institute.
00:50:21 --> 00:50:25 Which was a part of all of that, is my most proudest moment.
00:50:26 --> 00:50:34 And because of all of that work and just, I talked about how emotional I was
00:50:34 --> 00:50:38 as a graduate student studying the history of lynching and racial violence.
00:50:38 --> 00:50:42 Think about me between
00:50:42 --> 00:50:46 2016 and 2021 learning
00:50:46 --> 00:50:50 for the first i knew about the race mascot but i didn't know about it from the
00:50:50 --> 00:50:55 vantage point of victim survivors and descendants until i began to engage with
00:50:55 --> 00:51:04 with with the greenwood community that that changed me in the very much in the same way that, you know,
00:51:04 --> 00:51:10 getting proximate with lynching changed me and propelled me to really bear witness to it.
00:51:10 --> 00:51:18 And so I was remade by Greenwood in that institute. And it's so gratifying to
00:51:18 --> 00:51:24 see how, how narrative change has happened because of it. All right. So.
00:51:25 --> 00:51:30 Dr. Hill, how can people outside of enrolling at the University of Oklahoma,
00:51:30 --> 00:51:32 how can they get in touch with you?
00:51:32 --> 00:51:35 How can they reach out to you? All that kind of stuff.
00:51:36 --> 00:51:37 Oh, man, I'm easy to find.
00:51:41 --> 00:51:49 I'm easy to find. All they got to do is I have a website, carloskahill.com.
00:51:49 --> 00:51:57 I try to keep it up to date with articles or appearances that I have,
00:51:57 --> 00:52:00 but it's also a way to just contact me in my email.
00:52:01 --> 00:52:05 Excuse me, not my email, but there's a contact form that people can fill in
00:52:05 --> 00:52:09 if they want to send me an email and I answer everything.
00:52:09 --> 00:52:15 So that's probably the easiest and best way to learn a little bit more and connect with me. Yeah.
00:52:16 --> 00:52:21 Well, Dr. Karlos K. Hill, I, I greatly appreciate the work that you're doing, brother.
00:52:21 --> 00:52:25 I, like I, you know, in the intro, you know, I have an affinity,
00:52:25 --> 00:52:27 but especially, you know,
00:52:28 --> 00:52:34 those of you all who are really, really trying to make sure that all the gaps
00:52:34 --> 00:52:38 are filled and that the real story is being told.
00:52:38 --> 00:52:42 And so I just commend you for doing that.
00:52:42 --> 00:52:47 I wish you much success continuing that work and for this academic year.
00:52:48 --> 00:52:53 So most importantly, though, I want to thank you for coming on and sharing your
00:52:53 --> 00:52:54 thoughts with the listeners.
00:52:55 --> 00:52:58 And you have an open invitation. That's the rule.
00:52:58 --> 00:53:02 Once you accept the first invitation, you have an open invitation to come back.
00:53:02 --> 00:53:06 Anytime you say, Brother Erik, I got something on my mind. I need to talk about
00:53:06 --> 00:53:08 it. We'll turn the mic on and get it going.
00:53:09 --> 00:53:13 Hey, well, that's beautiful. Thank you for that open invitation.
00:53:13 --> 00:53:22 The last thing that I would say to the audience is my profound commitment to
00:53:22 --> 00:53:28 teaching the history of Black people is rooted in love, right?
00:53:28 --> 00:53:35 A love for not just Black people, but the ways in which Black people and Black
00:53:35 --> 00:53:39 culture has allowed me to live and have life today.
00:53:39 --> 00:53:44 I try to teach from that place of love and compassion for how our ancestors
00:53:44 --> 00:53:47 sacrificed suffered so that we could.
00:53:47 --> 00:53:55 And so getting in touch with that as much as I can is sort of where I am located.
00:53:55 --> 00:54:01 But I would say for for the audience who is thinking through these issues and
00:54:01 --> 00:54:04 trying to figure out for themselves what all this mean,
00:54:04 --> 00:54:11 I think the easiest way to simplify this and to and to think about this in a
00:54:11 --> 00:54:14 way that you can wrap your arms around it is,
00:54:15 --> 00:54:19 you know, not only what is your relationship to the black past,
00:54:19 --> 00:54:22 because that's hard to think about. Right.
00:54:22 --> 00:54:32 I always say everybody, no matter who they are, has a relationship to the black past.
00:54:32 --> 00:54:37 Right. The black past is central to modernity.
00:54:37 --> 00:54:42 We can't talk about modernity without enslavement and colonialism.
00:54:43 --> 00:54:47 Enslavement and colonialism produced the modern world alongside of capitalism.
00:54:48 --> 00:54:52 So everybody got a relationship with the black past, whether they know it or not.
00:54:52 --> 00:54:59 The only thing that one has to decide is whether they care about it or not.
00:55:00 --> 00:55:06 You have a relationship with the black past. Figure out why you care about it,
00:55:06 --> 00:55:08 and that will transform you.
00:55:09 --> 00:55:15 Well, thank you for that. and all right guys on that note we're gonna catch y'all on the other side.
00:55:16 --> 00:55:35 Music.
00:55:34 --> 00:55:40 All right. And we are back. And so now it is time for my next guest, Aurora Archer.
00:55:41 --> 00:55:47 Aurora Archer is the CEO and founder of The Opt-In, a certified B corporation
00:55:47 --> 00:55:52 on a mission to prepare leaders in organizations for a new world of work.
00:55:53 --> 00:55:57 One where all identities are able to see themselves reflected in leadership,
00:55:57 --> 00:56:03 see their narratives and needs reflected in products and services and given
00:56:03 --> 00:56:04 the conditions to thrive.
00:56:04 --> 00:56:11 The multidisciplinary consultancy offers bespoke expertise across human-centered
00:56:11 --> 00:56:15 business strategy and cultural competency learning programs,
00:56:15 --> 00:56:22 which allow executives to future-proof their organization's presence by enhancing recruiting,
00:56:22 --> 00:56:28 retention, and delivering growth by being relevant in a rapidly evolving marketplace.
00:56:29 --> 00:56:35 Aurora Archer draws on over 25 years of experience, leading success in four
00:56:35 --> 00:56:39 distinct industries, retail, technology, health and wellness,
00:56:40 --> 00:56:41 and content publishing and media.
00:56:42 --> 00:56:48 She has built a reputation as a courageous business transformation leader and strategic thinker.
00:56:48 --> 00:56:53 Aurora has developed and successfully executed business strategic planning and
00:56:53 --> 00:56:58 transformation initiatives in Fortune 100 companies, driving key business initiatives
00:56:58 --> 00:57:01 into technology, consumer markets,
00:57:01 --> 00:57:08 enterprise e-commerce, and big farmer integrated digital strategy innovation, to name a few.
00:57:08 --> 00:57:14 As an Afro-Latina, Aurora is fluent in Spanish, first-generation graduate of
00:57:14 --> 00:57:18 Syracuse University, the subject of a cover story in Working Mother magazine,
00:57:19 --> 00:57:24 the recipient of the University Science Center Nucleus Convener Award,
00:57:24 --> 00:57:30 as well as the PM360 Trailblazer Award and host of the Opt-In podcast.
00:57:31 --> 00:57:35 Ladies and gentlemen, it is my distinct honor and privilege to have as a guest
00:57:35 --> 00:57:38 on this podcast, Aurora Archer.
00:57:41 --> 00:57:50 Music.
00:57:49 --> 00:57:53 All right, Aurora Archer, how you doing, ma'am? You doing good?
00:57:54 --> 00:57:58 I am doing great. It's lovely to be with you. It's all good.
00:57:59 --> 00:58:02 Well, it's an honor to have you on and I know your time is valuable,
00:58:02 --> 00:58:07 so we're going to go ahead and get it started. it. I do a couple of icebreakers.
00:58:07 --> 00:58:10 So real quick, the first icebreaker is a quote.
00:58:11 --> 00:58:15 When you live with racism, you live in a constant state of stress.
00:58:15 --> 00:58:17 What does that quote mean to you?
00:58:17 --> 00:58:24 Oh, my goodness. It means the lived experience of so many beautiful humans that I love and cherish.
00:58:24 --> 00:58:35 It means the incredible opportunity that humanity has to transcend its delusion
00:58:35 --> 00:58:37 of separation and hierarchy.
00:58:38 --> 00:58:42 Yeah. All right. So now the next icebreaker is 20 questions.
00:58:43 --> 00:58:46 So I need you to give me a number between one and 20.
00:58:47 --> 00:58:52 Eight. All right. What is one thing you hope the new administration will do
00:58:52 --> 00:58:54 or not do during their term?
00:58:55 --> 00:58:58 And when I say new, I mean the current one.
00:58:59 --> 00:59:06 I hope that consciousness prevails. I hope love prevails.
00:59:07 --> 00:59:15 And I hope voice prevails to mitigate the harm and destruction that embodies
00:59:15 --> 00:59:17 this administration. Yeah.
00:59:19 --> 00:59:24 I'll join you in that prayer. At what point in your life did you decide to be
00:59:24 --> 00:59:28 a cultural whisperer? I think I've always been a cultural whisperer.
00:59:28 --> 00:59:37 I think that calling was embedded into me by higher powers than myself.
00:59:37 --> 00:59:45 As an Afro-Latina, I have always found myself living in between worlds.
00:59:45 --> 00:59:51 I grew up with a Black father from Cuero, Texas, spending my Sundays at Baptist
00:59:51 --> 00:59:58 Church doing dance skits, the latest rhythms with my cousins.
00:59:58 --> 01:00:06 I also spent my summers in Mexico because my mother was a Mexican immigrant
01:00:06 --> 01:00:07 from Monterrey, Mexico.
01:00:08 --> 01:00:11 And as domestics, my parents couldn't afford childcare.
01:00:11 --> 01:00:18 So I would get shipped to Mexico to hang out with my abuelita and 32 cousins there.
01:00:18 --> 01:00:25 And in the process of that, I was exposed to the richness of the Mexican culture,
01:00:25 --> 01:00:32 its rhythms, its sounds, its music, its colors, its wisdom. And...
01:00:33 --> 01:00:38 Oddly enough, my cousins would call me the gringa, meaning the American,
01:00:38 --> 01:00:46 and it was always sort of at odds to me because I didn't perceive myself as an American,
01:00:46 --> 01:00:49 didn't feel I belonged to what was America.
01:00:49 --> 01:00:54 So, culturally, I had the incredible,
01:00:54 --> 01:01:01 incredible honor and experience to constantly be living in between worlds,
01:01:01 --> 01:01:06 to constantly be living in between people, countries,
01:01:06 --> 01:01:14 conversations, and spirit that made me finally attuned to listening to the whispers
01:01:14 --> 01:01:17 of people's hearts and desires. Yeah.
01:01:18 --> 01:01:22 So I'd spent a week in Monterey and it's it's a beautiful city.
01:01:22 --> 01:01:27 I love the fact that the river kind of divides the old part of town with the
01:01:27 --> 01:01:30 new part of town and stuff. It's and it's surrounded by mountains.
01:01:30 --> 01:01:35 It's really a beautiful place. It has been stated that goal that the goal of
01:01:35 --> 01:01:40 the opt in podcast is to transform our culture by dismantling white supremacy
01:01:40 --> 01:01:46 from the inside out one uncomfortable conversation at a time. How's that been going?
01:01:47 --> 01:01:55 So it's been going slow, but it has been going well with those leaders and individuals
01:01:55 --> 01:02:01 that choose to take us up on the invitation.
01:02:01 --> 01:02:07 On the invitation to their self-awareness, to the invitation of their self-reflection,
01:02:08 --> 01:02:13 to the invitation of their growth, and to the invitation of the expansion of
01:02:13 --> 01:02:15 their joy and happiness.
01:02:16 --> 01:02:20 Yeah. Because that's what's waiting at the other end of the work.
01:02:20 --> 01:02:25 That's what's waiting at the other end of the journey. Yeah. Yeah.
01:02:26 --> 01:02:35 And we know it's going to be a long journey, but I'm glad that you have taken that course to do that.
01:02:35 --> 01:02:39 And you had a co-conspirator with you, I guess.
01:02:39 --> 01:02:44 It is Journey. Kelly Croce Sorg. I think I'm saying it right. Right.
01:02:45 --> 01:02:51 Now, she has written, I've read an article where she talked about how you have challenged her.
01:02:51 --> 01:02:56 How has she challenged you in conversations about race?
01:02:57 --> 01:03:03 You know, I think the challenge always for me, and certainly Kelly embodied
01:03:03 --> 01:03:11 that, is how do I, in the most difficult of conversations,
01:03:11 --> 01:03:17 in the most trying of conversations, in the most repetitive conversations,
01:03:18 --> 01:03:21 because these conversations are not new to many of us of color,
01:03:21 --> 01:03:30 is to stay in a place of openness, to stay in a place of compassion,
01:03:30 --> 01:03:33 and to stay in a place of love.
01:03:35 --> 01:03:38 Yeah. Yeah. And that's that's the important thing, right?
01:03:39 --> 01:03:42 That, you know, the other guest is going to be on the podcast.
01:03:43 --> 01:03:46 That's what he was talking about. He's a history professor.
01:03:47 --> 01:03:54 And and he said his motivation for teaching history accurately is love and healing.
01:03:55 --> 01:04:04 And I look at the opt-in podcast as very similar and very deliberate in that goal. All right.
01:04:04 --> 01:04:08 You want to add some? Yeah. No, I mean, love is one of our values.
01:04:09 --> 01:04:17 And I think more so right now, we are being challenged to double down,
01:04:17 --> 01:04:22 to triple down in our value of love.
01:04:22 --> 01:04:25 I was very, very lucky.
01:04:25 --> 01:04:29 I was raised by a Black, dark,
01:04:29 --> 01:04:37 beautiful father in the South who navigated things that I can't even fathom
01:04:37 --> 01:04:40 and sadly continue today.
01:04:41 --> 01:04:47 One of the biggest lessons that he shared with me in moments when I saw my father
01:04:47 --> 01:04:50 in the most dehumanizing,
01:04:50 --> 01:04:59 in some of the most atrocious, atrocious moments of his life, being oppressed,
01:04:59 --> 01:05:07 he would look at me and put his hand on my shoulder and say, baby,
01:05:07 --> 01:05:14 love them, even when they don't know how to love themselves.
01:05:15 --> 01:05:25 The profoundness of what my father instilled in me from the moment I was a child. It took me years.
01:05:25 --> 01:05:32 It took me years, Erik, to unpack the true depthness and meaning of what he
01:05:32 --> 01:05:36 had been instilling in me. because that's not normally our first reaction.
01:05:37 --> 01:05:45 Our first reaction is to combat hate with hate, to combat force with force, fight with fight.
01:05:46 --> 01:05:49 And that is the opposite of what my father did.
01:05:49 --> 01:05:55 He would stand in the most deepest expression of love.
01:05:56 --> 01:06:02 Yeah. All right. What has been the most difficult thing for you to maintain?
01:06:03 --> 01:06:07 Scheduling mental breaks, prioritizing your physical health,
01:06:07 --> 01:06:11 making time for prayer, or putting yourself first?
01:06:12 --> 01:06:16 I would say all of those because all of those things, you know,
01:06:16 --> 01:06:21 you mentioned four things, but the last one is actually a combination of all three.
01:06:21 --> 01:06:30 And so as a Black Latina woman from conditioned by domestic parents,
01:06:30 --> 01:06:37 I have been programmed to overproduce and overperform and to overdeliver.
01:06:37 --> 01:06:41 That is my programming. And so when we have that programming,
01:06:41 --> 01:06:47 we are at the service of everyone around us, except ourselves.
01:06:47 --> 01:06:51 And so the greatest, I've had many big lessons in life,
01:06:51 --> 01:06:59 but the biggest lesson was the lesson of prioritizing myself first and beginning
01:06:59 --> 01:07:04 my day by pouring into myself first,
01:07:04 --> 01:07:08 that then allows me the opportunity to be of service to everyone else.
01:07:08 --> 01:07:12 So I am very grateful to say that I have learned my lesson.
01:07:13 --> 01:07:19 You know, sometimes I get off track, but for the most part, I start my day with prayer.
01:07:19 --> 01:07:24 I start my day with meditation and silence, and I start my day with movement.
01:07:25 --> 01:07:32 So recently you just had a, I guess, seminar or whatever event.
01:07:33 --> 01:07:40 I would say whatever because I'm trying to, you'll help me with the right wordage, a verbiage on that.
01:07:40 --> 01:07:47 But it was about having conversations with children, with our children about race.
01:07:47 --> 01:07:54 So my question is, what is the most important thing to remember in having conversations
01:07:54 --> 01:07:56 with children about race?
01:07:56 --> 01:08:03 You know, with my child, it was about, and my child grew up in Mississippi.
01:08:04 --> 01:08:08 So it was about just navigating.
01:08:08 --> 01:08:15 Fortunately, they were in an environment where they were always around other
01:08:15 --> 01:08:18 cultures, from kindergarten all the way through to high school.
01:08:18 --> 01:08:23 And so it wasn't, you know, it was kind of like the conversations were more
01:08:23 --> 01:08:28 like, well, dad, did you did you realize that those folks like this kind of
01:08:28 --> 01:08:31 music or they do certain things?
01:08:31 --> 01:08:36 And, you know, we just kind of talked about it, but it never was anything negative.
01:08:37 --> 01:08:43 And they they they've gotten more of a negative response in their lifestyle
01:08:43 --> 01:08:46 choice as opposed to their race.
01:08:47 --> 01:08:48 But that's just my personal thing.
01:08:50 --> 01:08:55 And I didn't get a chance to listen to the seminar, but what do you think is
01:08:55 --> 01:08:57 the most important thing to remember in these conversations?
01:08:59 --> 01:09:05 So one, I think what's important to remember is to ground our children in a
01:09:05 --> 01:09:07 clear understanding of who they are.
01:09:08 --> 01:09:12 And the clear understanding of who they are is that they are a child of God.
01:09:12 --> 01:09:17 They are a spirit. They are a spirit having a human existence,
01:09:17 --> 01:09:23 and that human existence is through what we call in our family the earth suit.
01:09:24 --> 01:09:29 My kids were very blessed to grow up in a multi-generational,
01:09:29 --> 01:09:38 multi-cultural home between their European, Irish-born and lived father to myself,
01:09:38 --> 01:09:43 to my Mexican mother, to my African-American father.
01:09:43 --> 01:09:50 So my kids grew up in a household where they literally experienced the United
01:09:50 --> 01:09:53 Nations in different languages and different accents and different cultures
01:09:53 --> 01:09:57 and different ways of being every single moment of their lives.
01:09:57 --> 01:10:04 And so I think it's very important for kids to understand you are a spirit having
01:10:04 --> 01:10:09 a human experience through an earth suit that one happens to look this way,
01:10:09 --> 01:10:11 another happens to look another way.
01:10:11 --> 01:10:15 One has curly hair and dark chocolate, beautiful skin.
01:10:15 --> 01:10:21 Another one has straight hair, pale white skin and blue eyes.
01:10:21 --> 01:10:28 That is just the form by which we are being given an opportunity to experience
01:10:28 --> 01:10:30 what it is like to be here.
01:10:31 --> 01:10:38 The part that we got twisted is that we believe that the earth suit is who we are, and it is not.
01:10:39 --> 01:10:44 And so one, that was the conversation that we had in our household.
01:10:44 --> 01:10:48 And so then you are able to have conversations that say, okay,
01:10:48 --> 01:10:52 based on this earth suit, there are people that are not going to like this earth
01:10:52 --> 01:10:56 suit or that earth suit, and they're going to have a lot of opinions about what
01:10:56 --> 01:10:58 that earth suit means or doesn't mean.
01:10:59 --> 01:11:05 Who's smart, who's not smart, who is worthy or not of being in the room.
01:11:05 --> 01:11:08 That's an earth suit thing. That is not who you are.
01:11:08 --> 01:11:10 But understand that people will
01:11:10 --> 01:11:14 have different opinions and different points of view on an earth suit.
01:11:14 --> 01:11:16 And you have to be clear on who you are.
01:11:18 --> 01:11:24 And you also have to be able to navigate spaces, rooms, and situations based
01:11:24 --> 01:11:28 on different people's perceptions of that earth suit. and the consciousness
01:11:28 --> 01:11:30 that they bring to that moment at that time.
01:11:32 --> 01:11:35 Yeah. Well, and that's transcendent beyond race.
01:11:36 --> 01:11:42 You know, when I was talking about my child and their lifestyle choices, my child is non-binary.
01:11:43 --> 01:11:49 So they, you know, in Mississippi, they encountered a different attitude than
01:11:49 --> 01:11:51 where they are now, right?
01:11:52 --> 01:11:58 But that whole concept about the earth suit still applies even to them.
01:11:58 --> 01:12:01 Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. So.
01:12:01 --> 01:12:06 Absolutely. Yeah. I think that's a great message and a great foundation,
01:12:06 --> 01:12:11 not just for parents, but for some of us adults to kind of reprogram ourselves, right?
01:12:12 --> 01:12:18 Yes. And so this is, we're in an era where we are all choosing,
01:12:18 --> 01:12:20 and this is why we talk about it at the opt-in.
01:12:20 --> 01:12:26 It's an invitation, an invitation to examine the programming,
01:12:26 --> 01:12:31 examine the belief systems that we have all been inculcated into,
01:12:31 --> 01:12:33 whether that is white supremacy,
01:12:33 --> 01:12:41 whether that is hierarchy, hierarchy of human value, whether that is who belongs, who doesn't belong.
01:12:41 --> 01:12:47 These are all belief systems that we have been programmed with,
01:12:47 --> 01:12:53 and we all have an incredible opportunity to examine them and to say, does that make sense?
01:12:54 --> 01:13:00 Did I choose that or did I just fall into something because that's what my mama
01:13:00 --> 01:13:05 did or that's what my grandma did or that's what my culture did or the city
01:13:05 --> 01:13:08 that I was born in or the country that I was born in?
01:13:08 --> 01:13:13 What is true for me inside my heart?
01:13:14 --> 01:13:17 Yeah. Well, that's a beautiful way to end it.
01:13:18 --> 01:13:23 And I hate that I have to end it, but I know that you're on a schedule and I
01:13:23 --> 01:13:26 greatly appreciate the time that you've given me for this.
01:13:27 --> 01:13:31 So this is normally the part of the program where I allow the guests to kind
01:13:31 --> 01:13:36 of talk about what they're doing, how people can reach out to them and all that.
01:13:36 --> 01:13:39 So go ahead and do your thing. Sure.
01:13:40 --> 01:13:46 So folks can find us on theoptin.com.
01:13:47 --> 01:13:49 That is our website. You can find us on LinkedIn.
01:13:49 --> 01:13:52 You can find me, Aurora Archer, on LinkedIn.
01:13:52 --> 01:14:00 We are so excited to partner with leaders and organizations that understand
01:14:00 --> 01:14:05 that at the end of the day, it is about humanity.
01:14:05 --> 01:14:11 It is about people who deliver against the results or objectives of their organization,
01:14:11 --> 01:14:17 and that we have an incredible opportunity to foster the thriving of all individuals
01:14:17 --> 01:14:23 inside of a workplace to achieve the objectives and performance of the organization.
01:14:23 --> 01:14:28 And so we welcome the opportunity to connect with those leaders,
01:14:28 --> 01:14:33 courageous leaders, visionary leaders who are willing to go on the journey.
01:14:33 --> 01:14:37 Well, hopefully one day you might be able to get our president on there,
01:14:37 --> 01:14:40 or at least a couple other folks I could suggest.
01:14:40 --> 01:14:43 But, you know, we'll just we'll just keep it at that.
01:14:43 --> 01:14:46 Aurora Archer, I greatly appreciate you taking the time, sister.
01:14:47 --> 01:14:51 And hopefully the next time we get together, because, you know,
01:14:51 --> 01:14:55 the rule is once you've been invited and you've come on the show,
01:14:55 --> 01:14:57 you have an open invitation to come back.
01:14:57 --> 01:15:03 It would be my pleasure. Yes, ma'am. So again, just thank you for coming on. I appreciate it.
01:15:04 --> 01:15:09 Thank you. Thank you for all that you do. I appreciate you. Keep on, keep on, my friend.
01:15:09 --> 01:15:12 Yes, ma'am. All right, guys, and we're going to catch y'all on the other side.
01:15:13 --> 01:15:24 Music.
01:15:24 --> 01:15:28 All right. And we are back. So I want to thank Dr.
01:15:28 --> 01:15:33 Karlos K. Hill for coming on before he had to teach classes.
01:15:34 --> 01:15:39 And I want to thank Aurora Archer for fitting me in her busy schedule.
01:15:39 --> 01:15:45 And just glad she kept a place for me in order for us to do this.
01:15:46 --> 01:15:49 This Archer's interview is probably one of the shortest ones I've done,
01:15:49 --> 01:15:52 but I think there was one other about the same amount of time,
01:15:52 --> 01:15:59 but, you know, we got in everything that we needed to, excuse me, needed to discuss.
01:16:00 --> 01:16:05 So I'm just grateful that they came on. Those individuals are very special people.
01:16:06 --> 01:16:11 And like I said in the intro, their heart's in the right place because it's
01:16:11 --> 01:16:14 all about love, healing, and compassion, right?
01:16:15 --> 01:16:21 And that's what we need. But we also, there's one other element I wanted to touch on before we go.
01:16:21 --> 01:16:24 And we need to have some fight in us too.
01:16:24 --> 01:16:32 I was watching a TikTok video where this Black man who's about my age was talking
01:16:32 --> 01:16:38 to a young man who I think was about to quit the football team.
01:16:38 --> 01:16:45 And he was really, really passionate in convincing that young man to stay and practice.
01:16:46 --> 01:16:52 And, you know, he used some rough language and somebody from a distance may
01:16:52 --> 01:16:56 have thought he was fussing at him, but all he was doing was showing him some
01:16:56 --> 01:16:58 love. He was fighting for him.
01:16:58 --> 01:17:02 He wasn't fighting against him. He was fighting for him.
01:17:02 --> 01:17:08 He was telling him, you know, I can't do anything for you if you leave,
01:17:08 --> 01:17:13 but as long as you're here, I will do everything in my power to make sure that
01:17:13 --> 01:17:16 you're successful, not just on the field, but in life.
01:17:18 --> 01:17:25 And it is possible in this day and age and in this political arena even to love
01:17:25 --> 01:17:32 and to be compassionate and to achieve healing with a fighting spirit.
01:17:33 --> 01:17:36 I think that, you know,
01:17:36 --> 01:17:42 we've gotten to a point where either we're looked at as either belligerent or
01:17:42 --> 01:17:50 out of pocket or going against the grain if we resist. Right.
01:17:50 --> 01:17:54 It's just easier to go along, get along, keep your head down,
01:17:54 --> 01:17:58 keep it moving. As long as it doesn't affect me directly, I'm good.
01:17:59 --> 01:18:02 And, you know, let the chips fall where they may.
01:18:02 --> 01:18:07 And we really can't afford to do that. And I'm speaking through a political
01:18:07 --> 01:18:12 lens because if we don't have compassion, if we don't have love,
01:18:13 --> 01:18:16 then we can't do the right thing, right?
01:18:17 --> 01:18:22 We can't be there when the citizens need us to be there.
01:18:23 --> 01:18:29 So when I'm, and I didn't watch it, watch it, but I just saw the clips and then,
01:18:29 --> 01:18:34 you know, to hear the reports, when you have a cabinet meeting, right?
01:18:34 --> 01:18:37 If you're the president of the United States and you have a cabinet meeting
01:18:37 --> 01:18:42 and you're trying to get an assessment of where we are and you're allowing the
01:18:42 --> 01:18:47 public to see how the cabinet of the,
01:18:47 --> 01:18:52 of the president of the United States is working for the American people,
01:18:52 --> 01:18:58 you expect to hear things like, I don't know, with the Department of Transportation.
01:19:00 --> 01:19:06 How we're coming on fulfilling the obligations of repairing roads, bridges, and highways,
01:19:06 --> 01:19:14 how we're working on making air travel safer, or with the Department of Education,
01:19:14 --> 01:19:17 even if your mission is to end it, right?
01:19:18 --> 01:19:23 Figure you hear some updates about how we're going to transition from having
01:19:23 --> 01:19:28 a cabinet-level position to allowing the states to do their thing, right?
01:19:29 --> 01:19:32 Whether you agree with that position or not, you expect to hear an update.
01:19:32 --> 01:19:38 Or Homeland Security, especially. It's like, where are we at with Border Patrol?
01:19:38 --> 01:19:43 And, you know, how are we dealing with all of these detentions and arrests,
01:19:43 --> 01:19:46 how fast are the immigration courts going?
01:19:46 --> 01:19:49 You expect to hear those kind of things.
01:19:49 --> 01:19:52 Again, whether you agree with the positions or not, those are the things you
01:19:52 --> 01:19:54 expect to hear at a cabinet meeting.
01:19:54 --> 01:19:58 Secretary of State, how's the negotiations going in Ukraine,
01:19:59 --> 01:20:00 between Ukraine and Russia?
01:20:00 --> 01:20:04 How's the negotiations going between Hamas and Israel? Where are we at in the
01:20:04 --> 01:20:08 Congo, you know, those kind of things.
01:20:08 --> 01:20:13 You don't expect to hear three and a half hours of people kissing somebody's ass.
01:20:14 --> 01:20:17 That's not what anybody voted for.
01:20:17 --> 01:20:23 Democrat, Republican, Independent, Libertarian, Green, nobody voted for that.
01:20:23 --> 01:20:26 Nobody voted for grown men and women.
01:20:26 --> 01:20:30 And these are all grown men and women who have accomplished things in life, right?
01:20:30 --> 01:20:34 These are not people who, well, maybe a couple of them, but the majority of
01:20:34 --> 01:20:36 these people are not folks that,
01:20:37 --> 01:20:44 you know, just the president pulled from Trump Tower in the butler's pantry
01:20:44 --> 01:20:47 and said, hey, I need y'all to serve in the government, right?
01:20:47 --> 01:20:53 You got people that were former members of Congress, former governors, right?
01:20:54 --> 01:20:58 People that had some sense of accomplishment in their lives,
01:20:58 --> 01:21:04 who kind of understand how politics work and kind of understand how government is supposed to work.
01:21:04 --> 01:21:10 At least that's a perception you were given, right? Because of their background and their resumes.
01:21:11 --> 01:21:16 So to see these grown people, right, even if they're coming from the business
01:21:16 --> 01:21:19 community, most of them have been CEOs, right?
01:21:20 --> 01:21:28 To see these grown folks, just, you know, I guess to them, it wasn't humiliating.
01:21:28 --> 01:21:36 But for those of us who still believe in the word pride and self-esteem, that was embarrassing.
01:21:36 --> 01:21:42 That was embarrassing to me as a citizen, right? You know, we laugh at North
01:21:42 --> 01:21:50 Korea when we see these generals in full military dress kneeling and bowing to Kim Jong-un, right?
01:21:50 --> 01:21:55 We thought that was funny. But that's actually happening now,
01:21:55 --> 01:21:58 here, in the United States of America.
01:21:58 --> 01:22:02 That's totally insane to me, you know?
01:22:02 --> 01:22:08 I mean, God, that picture now of Nancy Pelosi standing up and pointing at the
01:22:08 --> 01:22:12 president during his first administration, right,
01:22:12 --> 01:22:18 is like even more iconic now than it was then.
01:22:19 --> 01:22:26 Because at a cabinet meeting or at a meeting with leaders, you kind of expect some pushback.
01:22:26 --> 01:22:31 You expect some dialogue, you know, because you're trying to get something done.
01:22:31 --> 01:22:34 And you're floating ideas out there, right?
01:22:34 --> 01:22:37 And then, you know, there are some people who say, well, you know,
01:22:37 --> 01:22:41 if everybody's harmonious, that's a good thing, right?
01:22:41 --> 01:22:43 If you're talking about policy, yes.
01:22:44 --> 01:22:49 But if you're trying to throw accolades and flowers to the dear leader,
01:22:50 --> 01:22:51 no, that's embarrassing.
01:22:52 --> 01:22:54 That's terrible, right?
01:22:55 --> 01:23:01 So now we have to rally around people who fight back.
01:23:01 --> 01:23:04 We have to rally around somebody like a Lisa Cook.
01:23:06 --> 01:23:12 Is fighting to keep her job as a Federal Reserve governor, right?
01:23:12 --> 01:23:16 Who the president is trying to find some way to kick her out so he would have
01:23:16 --> 01:23:23 enough votes to force Chairman Powell before he steps down to reduce interest rates.
01:23:23 --> 01:23:29 Now, the chairman has said, I think we might could lower the rates a little bit in September.
01:23:30 --> 01:23:34 He said that already, but that's not quick enough for Donald Trump.
01:23:34 --> 01:23:42 He wants him to do it yesterday just because he wants it, not what the long-term
01:23:42 --> 01:23:44 economic impact will be.
01:23:44 --> 01:23:48 Will it boost the housing market?
01:23:50 --> 01:23:53 All those factors that you have to weigh in.
01:23:53 --> 01:23:59 The consumer is going to have more money to buy goods, even with these high tariffs, right? Right.
01:24:00 --> 01:24:06 That's what you have to weigh in when you're making a decision about interest rates going up or down.
01:24:06 --> 01:24:12 Because if you if you let the interest rates go up, you're trying to limit spending and limit inflation.
01:24:12 --> 01:24:18 Now, I am not an economist. It's just, you know, basic stuff I've learned doing
01:24:18 --> 01:24:21 this podcast and remember from college and all this stuff.
01:24:21 --> 01:24:28 But basic principle is if you want to slow down spending, right,
01:24:28 --> 01:24:30 then you raise interest rates.
01:24:30 --> 01:24:34 If you want spending to increase, you lower the interest rates,
01:24:34 --> 01:24:37 right? That's about as simplistic as a non-economist can tell you.
01:24:37 --> 01:24:41 If you want to get into the weeds, the Internet is there for you.
01:24:42 --> 01:24:46 There are books out there. There are actually people who do this for a living, right?
01:24:47 --> 01:24:50 So, you know, but there's other factors, of course, that's involved.
01:24:50 --> 01:24:55 And, you know, so it's not about playing musical chairs with who should be on the board.
01:24:55 --> 01:25:02 It's about trusting the people who have been appointed to make these decisions.
01:25:02 --> 01:25:04 And most of these people have a background.
01:25:04 --> 01:25:10 Most of these people have been that serve as governors have been chairs in their
01:25:10 --> 01:25:13 respective Federal Reserve districts. Right.
01:25:13 --> 01:25:18 Because I think Miss Cook is at one point was here in Atlanta. Yeah.
01:25:19 --> 01:25:24 So, you know, and she's the first black woman to sit on the board of governors.
01:25:24 --> 01:25:26 She's not the first black because it was this brother named,
01:25:26 --> 01:25:29 I want to say Andrew Brimmer.
01:25:29 --> 01:25:32 Y'all can double check that and make sure.
01:25:32 --> 01:25:36 But because that was a big deal as a kid growing up, it was like,
01:25:36 --> 01:25:40 oh, wow, we got a black guy on this, on the Federal Reserve Board.
01:25:40 --> 01:25:44 Now, I probably was the only young kid that was excited about that.
01:25:44 --> 01:25:46 But I'm just saying, especially in my neighborhood.
01:25:47 --> 01:25:51 But that was a big deal to have a black man on that board.
01:25:51 --> 01:25:53 And so now we got the sister here
01:25:53 --> 01:25:56 and the president is trying to kick her out, which is not a good look.
01:25:56 --> 01:26:01 No matter how he'll try to say this is not racist and blah, blah, blah.
01:26:02 --> 01:26:05 Why are you picking on a black woman? Why are you trying to get her up?
01:26:06 --> 01:26:10 You're trying to dig dirt on her to justify you getting rid of her, right?
01:26:11 --> 01:26:16 So, you know, Sister Cook said, no, brother, I'm not leaving.
01:26:17 --> 01:26:20 Matter of fact, I'm going to sue you to get you off my back.
01:26:21 --> 01:26:26 Because she cares about the American people. She cares about the economy.
01:26:27 --> 01:26:31 Because if the economy goes sideways, that's going to affect people that she
01:26:31 --> 01:26:34 knows. That's going to affect American citizens.
01:26:34 --> 01:26:38 And she's taking her role seriously and she doesn't want to be caught up in
01:26:38 --> 01:26:42 games to hinder her from doing her job, right?
01:26:42 --> 01:26:49 Same like with these governors, you know, Wes Moore and Gavin Newsom and J.B.
01:26:49 --> 01:26:51 Pritzker and Tim Walz, right?
01:26:52 --> 01:26:55 I think Ferguson is the governor in Washington State. You know,
01:26:55 --> 01:26:58 these individuals are like Kathy Hochul in New York.
01:26:58 --> 01:27:03 These folks are like, look, this is not a game to us.
01:27:04 --> 01:27:11 You know, when you send troops, and I guess you can put Muriel Bowser in that
01:27:11 --> 01:27:17 because she's the mayor of Washington, D.C. That's the highest position in the district.
01:27:17 --> 01:27:24 You can put her in that line with governor, I guess. But, you know, that's a real thing.
01:27:24 --> 01:27:37 And some of us are old enough that if we didn't actually see it or wasn't actually related to it,
01:27:37 --> 01:27:40 it was relatively new to be teaching us.
01:27:40 --> 01:27:45 We were young kids learning about federal troops going into Little Rock,
01:27:45 --> 01:27:48 Arkansas to make sure that kids go to high school, right?
01:27:49 --> 01:27:51 Or New Orleans, right?
01:27:52 --> 01:27:58 So when you, you know, or, you know, when you have uprisings in these cities,
01:27:59 --> 01:28:03 you know, after the King assassination, the National Guard show up or Kent State,
01:28:03 --> 01:28:08 right, which was right around the time the shootings took place at Jackson State,
01:28:08 --> 01:28:12 same months, probably the same week, as a matter of fact.
01:28:13 --> 01:28:18 Deal when the National Guard shows up. If it's not a natural disaster happening,
01:28:18 --> 01:28:24 the National Guard shows up in your community, in your town. It's a big deal.
01:28:24 --> 01:28:28 And you got these governors and mayors fighting back saying,
01:28:28 --> 01:28:31 don't do that. It's not that serious.
01:28:32 --> 01:28:34 It's never been that serious, right?
01:28:35 --> 01:28:39 Whether the crime rate is high or low or whatever, we can handle it.
01:28:39 --> 01:28:42 That's why we are elected to
01:28:42 --> 01:28:45 these positions. You are elected to deal with stuff at a national level.
01:28:46 --> 01:28:49 We deal with the stuff at a more local level. We can handle it.
01:28:50 --> 01:28:54 If we need your help, we know how to call you. We know where the White House is.
01:28:55 --> 01:29:00 Most of us have at least been there at least once or twice. If we need you, we'll call you.
01:29:01 --> 01:29:05 You don't need to be proactive, right?
01:29:05 --> 01:29:13 And that's given the benefit of the doubt that there's no undertones with the actions, right?
01:29:13 --> 01:29:20 So it's just a reminder that even though we want the nation to be healed,
01:29:20 --> 01:29:27 even though we want unification or some semblance of it, let's say an orderly society, right?
01:29:27 --> 01:29:32 And we want people to respect each other and love each other and,
01:29:32 --> 01:29:37 you know, protect each other's space, protect our own space.
01:29:38 --> 01:29:42 You know, Coretta Scott King, and I'm paraphrasing, said, yeah,
01:29:42 --> 01:29:43 you got to fight for that, though.
01:29:44 --> 01:29:48 Every day. It's not just going to happen.
01:29:50 --> 01:29:56 Because whether you believe in natural, supernatural, whether you believe,
01:29:56 --> 01:30:05 you know, have a faith core or not, Evil is present, however you define what evil is, right?
01:30:06 --> 01:30:12 We know that evil is the opposite of good. So we know that there is a force out there.
01:30:13 --> 01:30:16 There's a movement out there not to do good.
01:30:16 --> 01:30:20 And we have to fight against that all the time.
01:30:20 --> 01:30:28 It doesn't have to be an overexertion, although some of us have taken that cause.
01:30:29 --> 01:30:37 But you have to fight for good You have to fight for freedom You don't have
01:30:37 --> 01:30:44 to be mad about it Or angry all the time Because there is such a term as a happy warrior Right?
01:30:45 --> 01:30:55 To fight. So I am glad that somebody decided to run in a district where Donald
01:30:55 --> 01:31:00 Trump got beat Kamala Harris by 11 points in the last election,
01:31:00 --> 01:31:04 and they fought and they got elected.
01:31:04 --> 01:31:09 I'm glad that we've got people running in offices where it's like in cities
01:31:09 --> 01:31:14 where it's like, hey, the Republicans run this, there's no way you can do it,
01:31:14 --> 01:31:16 and they're fighting back. Right.
01:31:16 --> 01:31:22 The only reason, the main reason why Democrats in the South are,
01:31:22 --> 01:31:28 you know, majority black as far as voting and elected officials and all that
01:31:28 --> 01:31:30 is because we fought for that.
01:31:31 --> 01:31:34 You know, people always want to talk about, well, you know, it was the Democrats
01:31:34 --> 01:31:38 that were for slavery and the Democrats, you know, Jim Crow and all that stuff.
01:31:38 --> 01:31:41 Yeah, historically, all that is true, right?
01:31:41 --> 01:31:47 What you fail to mention is during 1850s and 60s, there was a branch of the
01:31:47 --> 01:31:51 Democrats, primarily the Northern Democrats, that broke away from that, right?
01:31:52 --> 01:31:59 But then you also fail to mention the 1960s, which started with the Mississippi
01:31:59 --> 01:32:04 Freedom Democratic Party challenging the Mississippi Democratic Party,
01:32:04 --> 01:32:07 saying that Black folks have a voice, right?
01:32:08 --> 01:32:13 Making sure that they fought for their seats, their credentials at the 64 convention
01:32:13 --> 01:32:15 in Atlantic City, right?
01:32:15 --> 01:32:20 Forget about the Southern strategy that Nixon employed, which came to fruition
01:32:20 --> 01:32:27 by the 1980s, but that was to get the Southern Democrats to switch over to the Republican Party.
01:32:28 --> 01:32:37 You bypass all that to try to make a point, but history is history and you need to learn it.
01:32:38 --> 01:32:43 So, you know, and then, of course, the policies from Kennedy and all that stuff, right?
01:32:43 --> 01:32:47 You know, there's a reason why things are the way they are.
01:32:48 --> 01:32:53 But the main reason is because people fought for this country to go forward.
01:32:54 --> 01:32:58 They didn't sit around a table for three and a half hours and kiss anybody's ass.
01:32:58 --> 01:33:02 They fought for what they needed to fight for, whether they turned water hoses
01:33:02 --> 01:33:08 on them, dogs on them, lynched them, whatever. They fought.
01:33:10 --> 01:33:16 And now we're at a place where there's generations of folks that actually can make the claim,
01:33:17 --> 01:33:21 hey, I'm a full-class citizen and I need to be treated as such and I'm not going
01:33:21 --> 01:33:26 back to whatever that was 50, 60, 70 years ago.
01:33:27 --> 01:33:33 That's not happening. So all I'm saying is this, guys. I want you to be nice.
01:33:34 --> 01:33:38 I want you to be respectful, But I need you to fight.
01:33:39 --> 01:33:44 We cannot allow this to be our normal.
01:33:44 --> 01:33:50 We cannot be sensitized to this or desensitized. Right.
01:33:51 --> 01:33:58 We got to keep pushing that Boulder may seem to have gotten bigger.
01:33:59 --> 01:34:08 Dr. King even said, you know, during his time, there were people that were hoping against hope, right?
01:34:08 --> 01:34:14 It can be depressing. It can be daunting. It is definitely challenging.
01:34:15 --> 01:34:22 But human history teaches us that if we fight, we win. All right, guys.
01:34:22 --> 01:34:24 Thank you all for listening. Until next time.
01:34:27 --> 01:35:12 Music.