No Need To Ask with Amani Duncan
No Need To Ask with Amani Duncan
No Need to Ask | Special Edition
This episode means a lot to me. It was difficult to record but my soul was yearning so I had to heed the call.
This was not the episode I was planning to release. It was the episode I needed to release.
Thank you for listening.
Children are not born racist. Children do not identify each other with a color. I know this to be true because I lived it. Welcome to a special edition of no need to ask. I am your host Amani Duncan. I was born in Los Angeles, California in the year 1970 my parents were fantastic, conscious, educated, worldly, and both were descendants of slaves and sharecroppers. When my sister and I were quite young, we moved to Oakland, California. My sister went to headstart while there and I stayed at home with mom and my dad went to work every day. Then my Baba, who I refer to as my father, he got a job at Aramco, which was located in South Pasadena, California. So we relocated to that area and my dad started working at the company as an electrical engineer. Now South Pasadena is quite interesting. I actually love the town. It's small, it's charming, but when we moved there, we quickly found out that in the area of South Pasadena, a beautiful tree lined street, we lived on Fremont lane to be exact. We were the only African American family in all of South Pasadena. My mother was quite alarmed when she found out, but my dad calmed her down and we stayed there. I went to kindergarten, first and second grade, and so did my sister and the school was Lincoln elementary school and we were the only children of color in the entire school. We made tons of friends. We had the best childhood, we, we didn't want for anything. It was just magical. My mom was a stay at home mom and she was in charge of our Bluebird group and she was our homeroom monitor mother. It was just amazing and we played with all the kids in the neighborhood and life was life was nice. And then we moved to Los Angeles proper. My dad still worked at Aramco in South Pasadena, so he commuted every day. And the school that my mom and dad enrolled, my sister and I in was third street elementary school in the Hancock park area of California. And I remember I was in the third grade when I first entered the school. My sister was in the fourth grade and my third grade teacher was an African American woman. I mean other than my mom and my grandma and my cousins I did wasn't really around a lot of African American kids in my formative years. And so I was over the moon, Mrs. Wilson, I will never forget her. She was just glorious. I thought she was besides my mom, the prettiest, prettiest lady I ever saw. And so when my mother picked me up that afternoon from school, I was just elated and my mom was so happy and so she proceeded to ask a bunch of questions as we drove home and I couldn't explain to her what my teacher looked like in the way that she wanted me to explain it. I told her she was tall and I explained what she had on that day and how she wore her hair. And you know, that was the way I explained there, described people. And my mother kept pressing and pressing and pressing me. And I finally pointed to my hand and I said, she looks like me. She looks like me. And my mother told me this story many, many years ago when I was older. And it just demonstrated that I, I didn't see people as a color. You were either a boy or a girl or a man or a woman. And then reality set in. As I started getting older, I learned very quickly that people do identify each other by a color, you're black or white or Brown. And it was so jarring to me because I had to quickly learn this because I was being bullied by kids of color and white kids. So it was a really challenging time in my life, but we made it through because children are resilient. And you know, I learned a lot of hard lessons along the way. My dad would go to work every day in a three piece suit, white shirt, tie, three piece suit every single day. And he looked like a Prince to me. I loved the way he dressed. I loved way he spoke. I loved the way he carried himself. I want it to be exactly like him as a professional for myself. Um, I got a deeper appreciation of the things my father must have gone through. He never, ever, ever spoke of his challenges. In the workplace as an African American man, as an electrical engineer. He never came home and talked about it, but as I got older, he would say certain things like he recounted a story that happened in um, Mississippi. Uh, while he was working for Aramco. He was the project lead and they had to travel. Him and his team had to travel to Mississippi, uh, for a project and when they were met at the airport by an escort and taken to the, to the hotel in the town, my father was denied a hotel room. His team members who were all white, they were told they could stay here, but my father had to stay somewhere else. And this was probably in the 1980s. So as a professional myself who has been the first African American woman in almost all of the positions that I've held, I began to have this tremendous appreciation for what my father must've gone through. I have been called derogatory names at various companies I've worked at, always allowed whisper and behind my back. But I would always hear it. I kept looking straight when I would see people stare at me or look at me in a mean way, but I kept pushing on because I knew I needed to be there. I deserved the right to hold the positions that I held and I wasn't going to be scared off. The past week has been really hard,
Speaker 2:really, really hard.
Speaker 1:I'm scared not only for myself, but for every person of we're all scared and when people get scared and they feel defenseless, they become angry. I live in a upper middle class neighborhood and I was driving down the street the other day and I passed a police car and my grip on my steering wheel got a lot tighter. I clench my teeth and it felt a knot in my stomach. I was scared and the reason why I was scared was what happened to George Floyd. What happened to Ahmed and the countless others could happen to me.
Speaker 2:[inaudible]
Speaker 1:when these incidents happen, they're not concerned. If you're educated, they're not concerned. If you're well off financially, all they see is the color of my skin and so and so. Therefore we're all a potential victim. I remember walking recently in my neighborhood and I saw a young African American boy on a bike and he passed me and we greeted each other and I found myself saying maybe a little too strongly to be careful out here to please be safe. I feel like we're living in a mad, mad world
Speaker 2:[inaudible]
Speaker 1:but I also know I've done it. This is new
Speaker 2:[inaudible]
Speaker 1:the only difference is that now it's being video taped. This type of behavior has gone on for hundreds of years. What happened in central park has happened so many times before. What happened to George Floyd has happened so many times before. My heart is heavy, but I decided I'm not going to be a victim. My if you are white, we need your help. We need to band together in the name of humanity. I know it must be hard, but try to imagine if George Floyd was your son or your husband. If Ahmed was your uncle, brother, husband, or son, and I know, I know this is hard for you to understand or believe that this could even be your reality because it's not, I believe in humanity. Therefore, I believe that all lives matter, but right now, black lives are under siege and we need to band together in the name of humanity
Speaker 2:to make a change.
Speaker 1:My brothers and sisters who are people of color, we have to, we have to use our voice in a nonviolent way. We have to get out and vote every election, local and national. I know it may seem daunting because you go out and vote and you try to make your voice heard, but yet you feel like nothing's changing. But it will change if we stay United and use the power of our voices and our actions to bring about the change we seek. This was not the episode I was planning to post today, but it is the episode that I needed to post. Thank you for listening.