CBD & Poetry
CBD & Poetry
Stephanie Webb: Racism & The Built Environment, Season of Sheltering in Place
Activist Stephanie Webb shares how inauthentic conversations, which omit race as a factor in shaping the built environment, cause anxiety.
Resources
Teresa Y. Roberson is a writer, visual artist, producer and Zilis Independent Ambassador (#7161976). Zilis does not endorse the CBD & Poetry podcast nor any material presented as a result. Statements made in CBD & Poetry podcast have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. Non-prescription CBD is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease or medical conditions. The CBD & Poetry discussion is not intended as medical advice and should not substitute advice from a healthcare professional.
Music
- Intro Music: "Green Magic" Cabrini Green, Green Magic Album.
- Outro Music: "Bumpin That Real Shit"Cabrini Green, This Is Ghettostep Album
- cabrinigreenenterprises.com
Racism & the Built Environment
Racism causing insomnia
Surrounded by fake people
Networking with the alleged like-minded
Yet divided by money
New vision turned a blind eye
To indigenous cultures and history
Gushing about beautifying the environment
Because no one supposedly lives there
Without seeing the existing community
Seeing a people isn’t the same
As engaging with a people
Apologies just won’t do
Restorative justice will
Both the so-called good neighborhoods
And the so-called bad neighborhoods
Were built on a foundation of racism
The 1920s roared with planned segregation
Nowadays it’s no longer segregation
It’s urban renewal
The only thing that’s new
Is the branding
Teresa Roberson
Hello, Stephanie.
Stephanie
Hey, Teresa.
Teresa Roberson
How's it going today?
Stephanie
Well, we're still black.
Teresa Roberson
Straight out of the gates. Okay, so I would like to welcome you. You're the first interviewee of my new podcast CBD & Poetry. So welcome and thank you.
Stephanie
Absolutely.
Teresa Roberson
So, I want to begin, and this is just for the future of all, capturing the narrative of what began your path to try or use CBD.
Stephanie
Well, I deal with a lot of anxiety. And because I deal with a lot of anxiety, because of what I study, basically, racial equity in the built environment. It was keeping me up late. And in addition to taking some breaks from social media, and of course, exercise, which is always great. I was like, "Okay." Well, I needed to at least try something else because for a lot of anxiety and depression, which are a result of which are a result of dealing with a highly narcissistic system, I realized that I was going to need something that might temper the anxiety, but not necessarily control, control my feelings and to be to, like, take the emotional control out of my hands and put in the hands was pharmaceutical and because CBD is natural, and I knew several people who were using it that I figured I should at least try it.
Teresa Roberson
Yet you had friends who had tried it and what what was your result?
Stephanie
I, well my result is...
Teresa Roberson
What was your experience?
Stephanie
My experience was that for days when I'd had anxiety attacks, and it would and it just became a little too uncomfortable to deal with and I had to remove myself. It became helpful to kind of get me down to a functioning emotional level where it's like, okay, I'm still anxious, but I'm not so anxious that I can't go to sleep, I can't read. I can't do the things I need to do. It's I didn't think that it was going to be. For me, I don't see it as a long term solution. But I do see it as a, as a temporary fix. And I think that that is what a lot more people are seeing. Instead of just because of our relationship with the pharmaceutical industry, we're like, "Oh, well, this, this is this is not something that I do on the regular, but this is something." Because I had tried ashwagandha before.
Teresa Roberson
What's that?
Stephanie
Ashwagandha is another root that's supposed to kind of basically temper anxiety, in theory, but, but basically, it's like, well, those you have to take two or three pills at once, so it's like, you know, you're looking at a good, you're at least a bottle a month. So, so THC, not THC, this is CBD. THC is not legal everywhere, but CBD is at least, it's at least something where it's like, okay, this lasts me for a good 24 to 48 hours and whether that is both chemical and neurological, I don't care. I get to the good one to two days is is is a good time to be like, okay, I'm a little bit more calm. Because I don't think that I will try THC unless or until it becomes legal or the revolution comes one of the two.
Teresa Roberson
Well just so you know, there are formulations of CBD where they can have up .3% THC. And that is legal anything more than that would be illegal. That's the law of the land. Now. I don't know about what's gonna happen in the future. Now you were saying that the last time you tried CBD because you're not a regular user. You don't want to be a regular user. You're basically, from what I hear you say, sometimes when it gets just a little too overwhelming.
Stephanie
Yes.
Teresa Roberson
You want something to bring down. Do you mind telling us about what triggered the last time? What were you working on the last time because this is your work.
Stephanie
Basically, doing networking is what I've found and my experiences with it has been basically about having a lot of inauthentic conversations with a large group of people. And basically trying to hang on with tenterhooks to some like it's not a comfortable socialization, it's basically, I would rather have a one real conversation with one real person than 10 fake conversations with 10 people, I'll see that one time and never again. So the fact that I was then going to go into a networking situation, I was just like, you know what, I need to come home, I need to get into my safe spot. And it's probably going to be a little bit for me to get to sleep tonight. And so, and so that's, that was the last time I used it.
Teresa Roberson
I'm intrigued when you say "inauthentic conversation," what qualifies certain conversations is being "inauthentic"?
Stephanie
To me if if you're not... the like, because because basically, the point of, in my opinion, many networking conversations are designed to basically get something out of somebody, but not necessarily establish any kind of emotional connection with them. And there are lots of people who are better at that than I am. And I completely accept that. And that is not what they seek out of networking. But because a lot of the networking events that I've been to at the past, they've been very expensive. They've been, there's been a lot of gossip and unhealthy conversation in the background and it's been a business card, business card extravaganza. It's like, you know, all of those things cost money and when you feel like you're going to go into a situation where it's like, we all have money, we all understand we all have money. And the only people who would feel uncomfortable at this sort of thing are people who are not worthy enough of being in our presence. And that's very uncomfortable because many of the people that I know, and including myself, do not have a lot of money. And so the and so basically going into a situation where it's like, the assumption is, we all have money, we all have a lot of money. And if you don't have money, you're not really worthy of participating in this conversation. It's not comfortablefor me. And so, especially since a lot of my research and a lot of my lot of my writing has dealt with the working class and populations in America that are marginalized for no good reason. And so, you know, the the clash of those two experiences. It's, now I went to Yale. So I so I know that, you know, wealthy people are still, you know, they're capable of feelings, but, but at the same time it's like they are inherently trained to go to events like these and get connections. And too many of those connections have led to exploitation and so to have so I associate networking with exploitation. And so when it becomes a conversation about exploitation, it's like, okay, but you're not being exploited, but basically, sometimes it just goes too far to this is about to be about exploitation, and it makes me very uncomfortable and I don't want to be here anymore. And so when I came back from that, I was like, oh, okay, this is okay, now. And You know, I've been to other networking things, I think it's largely because they're more on my terms. And they're smaller, and they're not. And the assumption is not that everybody has money. The assumption is that, you know, they're just two people who don't necessarily know anything about each other, who are engaging with each other for the purpose of learning something. That to me is healthy networking, but some networking events that are anonymous and cost money. It's just, it's not it's not comfortable for me, kind of like the last democratic debate was $1750 per person. That's, that's not designed to engage a populace that's designed to say, "Look at me, I've got two grand I can pop." And to people who can buy presidencies that was the one with Bloomberg. So
Teresa Roberson
Now, I would like if you can, tie some concepts together because not all listeners are going to have a working knowledge of what the built environment is, and then you're concerned with how that is being exploited.
Stephanie
So basically, a good primer for that would be "Segregated by Design." It's a 17-minute film. And it talks about how different racial groups in cities have been separated, but that's been by design. The built environment is basically any area with a local government like a city, like a town, and you could say country, but most people understand the built environment as the city that they live in, the neighborhood that they live in. And so but cities, basically cities and towns because even though it's a middle of nowhere, it's still a built environment. Usually relies on infrastructure of some sort where, whether its water, or power, or sewage very popular. And it's how human beings basically understand community. We understand communities of the forms of neighborhoods, and housing developments, apartment complexes, all of those are part of the built environment. They also have become with a lot of politics, ie displacement, and that a lot of people call "gentrification." And the inequity that is most obvious about the built environment is the fact that the autonomy of some is rewarded more than the autonomy of others. For example, in the city of Austin, the urban renewal agency was created through election by homeowners. You literally could not vote on or on the creation of the urban renewal agency in the city of Austin if you did not own a home. Well, that's all well and good. However, in 1959 of course, that was after several black people had lost their, lost their homes because the city of Austin said by decree you will go over here now. It was it's but it's where a lot of land had already been lost, because cities were now allowed to plan and basically say, okay, black people will go over here and and recently discovered because I don't like to speak for people that there were items such as the Mexican Park and hospitals like Bracken Ridge where they said there should be a specific ward for black and Mexican people because we don't want them mixing with the rest of the population.
Teresa Roberson
A special ward?
Stephanie
A special ward. Yes, ma'am. And so, and these are in and these are not you know, in the archives that you have to get with a land at the bottom of a building somewhere. These are online and public records if you look at City Council records. If you look for if you look for the term "Mexican" because I was trying to figure out well, how did certain parts of Austin get formed? How did, you know, but how did how was their segregation orchestrated? And because I had already done a lot of research on the black part of town since you know, I happened to be black. Hey, this time I was doing a search on what is what we now understand to be "Chicano," but because you have to understand a little bit about the history of racism, what was then called "Mexican," you would you search for "Mexican" and city records. And they say, okay, well, this is the Mexican Park. And this is the Mexican neighborhood. And this is the Mexican and, you know, it's seeing how that was orchestrated. And then the city having to decide, oh, well, urban renewal means federal funds. But we can't just let's, let's have an election, but let's make sure that the people who bring about this agency that we really want so we can get federal funding are definitely on our side. Well, how do we do that? Oh, well, then, what about make sure they're all homeowners? Now don't get me wrong. There were definitely still black and Chicano homeowners at the time this election in 1959, but the majority of homeowners in the city of Austin in 1959 were white. So basically, the autonomy was taken away. And by the way, it didn't matter that there were black and Chicago homeowners, a lot of their neighborhoods, and a lot of their homes were determined at slums, and blight, which is what urban renewal was about. So they were bulldozed to the ground anyway. Even though they had the right to make a vote and say, "No, we don't really want this urban renewal agency." And I think it's one of the reasons why people are particularly disgusted by the consequences of displacement in the city of Austin today, because a lot of the displacement that's occurring now, is not as a result of that 1959 election. It's not even the result of the 1928 master plan, even though everybody just moans with ecstacy when they say the master plan because they love it because it was 1928. And that's almost it's almost 100 years ago. It happened because of then Mayor Kirk Watson and the nonprofit, Save Our Springs, got together and decided to create a quote unquote, new vision for East Austin, where basically nobody in East Austin had any voices. Homes werenot preserved. History was not preserved. And they told very little of the story that happened. And so now, many of the people have been displaced. They can't afford to live there. Housing, their housing valuations are through the roof. So they have high taxes. But any house that's not modified, is of course worth less until it's scraped in a million dollar homes put on it. So that's where I live. And of course, in another urban renewal project, technically, it's not urban renewal, but it has the effect of being urban renewal is Domain Riverside, which is going to basically say, "Oh, well, there's nothing over there, and there's no one over there. So we're going to put the southern corollary to the northern Domain off of Riverside because it's close to downtown and that's where people want to live. And that's where it's happening. And that's what's exciting." And it's basically again, not seeing the autonomy of the people who lived here. And a lot of people said, "No, we don't want that. We live here. We can afford to be here. I don't understand." But the inequity has allowed the local government to basically dispense with respecting community engagement here because we don't make as much money as other parts of town.
Teresa Roberson
So when you say that the history wasn't preserved, you're talking about the people who could not afford to preserve their history.
Stephanie
People who could not afford to preserve their history. Two great examples are the black firehouse that used to be off of 11th Street, East 11th Street, that in the 1970s, an organization called Community United Front, which was black power organization, wanted to buy the building so that they could make a daycare. Because why wouldn't you want to take a residential neighborhood? The city council did not approve of that. In the city of Austin, there was also a historically Chicano university because just like black people had universities, Chicano people at universities as well, because segregation. We were not allowed to go to the same places. It was called Juarez-Lincoln was actually called Antioch Juarez- Lincoln University and the University shut down because as integration occurred, everybody was like, Okay, well, you know, it's, we, we can't maintain all of these universities and we don't have, of course, the revenue because not everybody's going to college. And then people just decided, "We don't need this building anymore. And they're like, I'm sorry, there's murals. There's this there's that there was actually a lot of protest. When it was time to decide whether or not Juarez-Lincoln could stay or not. And the city was like, no. And it was torn down. There is, however, a Dennys, that's there now. And that's important. We want to make sure that there's as many Dennys and IHOPs in the country as possible, but not historically Chicano universities apparently. And so now you know, what is preserved, beyond all logic? A golf course in West Austin. Not because it was actually integrated, but because black people were there sometimes. So it's an integrated golf course. And that again, is the problem with visibility in terms of racial movements. You can't just say, "Oh, we see these people." Because seeing these people doesn't mean that you engage with them. Doesn't mean that you empower them. It doesn't mean anything other than you see them. But that golf course has not been touched. There are so many nonprofit organizations. It gets a lot of protection. And so that history is considered worth preserving. Just like the Hyde Park neighborhood that had a racial covenant, not to include black people in it, was also preserved because we want the character of that neighborhood preserved, but slums and blights in East Austin, were torn down and there's again, we'll never get the first black firehouse in Austin back. We'll never get the historical Chicano university back. And it's what? It's why a lot of racial activists are now saying you can keep your apologies. There are tangible consequences to this malicious malicious behavior. And if you're not really interested in tangible restoration for tangible consequences. You're not really interested in trying to move towards a restorative future.
Teresa Roberson
Okay. So, when you go to, just a circle back to our beginning of our conversation, when you go to these conferences or networking opportunity.
To talk about the built environment and the network and the conversation is about to be based on the built environment, you're going from a perspective of race, that is the lens that you are going. Is that the lens that the network itself...
Stephanie
Oh, yes.
Oh, do we talk about race? Don't we talk about race? No, we don't we don't talk about race. This is about houses. No, no, we don't need all that conversation. We don't, no , no, no. No, we just we just want to talk about, don't you want this part to look nice again? Don't you want this school to have its proper usage? No one wants to have the racial conversation. And we don't want to have the racial conversation, because it is an uncomfortable reality. And it's the same reason why whenever you mentioned to a lot of white people that slavery still exists they say, "Well, I never owned slaves." And we all know that that's a disingenuous conversation because we all wear clothes. They're manufactured in sweatshops. We all eat food that is grown by migrant labor in a continuation of the braceros program that we, quote unquote don't have anymore. So we just call them criminals, even though Sanderson Farms and Dole really, really need them to keep our food prices low. And of course, we have Samsung and Apple, and both, both are companies who have been discovered to be using an oldie, but goldie African slave labor. And so saying that you're talking about the built environment from a racial perspective, reminds people that number one, we still live in segregated communities. Number two, that some people benefit from segregation, but most people don't. And people don't like to remember that we live in segregated communities and even though a lot of people like myself, like to live in neighborhoods where everybody's there. Because I do I, you know, a lot of people are like, oh, well, wouldn't you like to live in an all black community? I'm like, ambivalent about it because no matter how beautiful a prison is, it's still a prison. So I would much rather live in a neighborhood where everybody is, I'd rather live in a world where everybody has autonomy, rather than say, well, yes, you can have all the amenities of the built environment, but number one, they can be taken at any time, by force from you. And number two, people will basically devalue you as a human being, because you come from that area. And people people say, well, that's that's not really understanding the history. That's like, no, there were beautiful black communities. And the black community has been resilient for hundreds of years. But the reality is that we have never experienced full autonomy, which is one of the reasons why they are now having conversations about black citizenship as a result of the Dred Scott decision. But that wasn't recent! No, it doesn't matter that it wasn't recent, nor was the Constitution. But because we are, we are so ensconced with this idea of black people are neither people and they're not citizens. Having any segregated community, even when we run all the banks, all the businesses, all the schools, it's to always be under threat from the outside world. So it's one of the reason why, no, I don't I don't agree with segregation. I don't think that anybody truly understands that segregation didn't really even become an official law until cities planned it that way in 1926 and 1928. That like people just lived where they could live and just lived their lives. That's why there were freedom colonies all over the place. That's why people were just living and growing and having their communities. And why there was a Chicano University in downtown Austin because everybody just lived our lives. The history on the university because I because it's definitely I definitely know that it was there through the 60s, 50s through the 70s, but I don't remember if it was there before then. But it was only because segregation became signed into law that we then said, "Okay, well now you can be moved over here and you can be moved over there and you to be this and you can be that." So it's like No, I'm not for segregation.
Teresa Roberson
So to bring this conversation to a close, I asked you, how did you basically cross paths with CBD? And then you've told us all of this heavy though-provoking
Stephanie
So how do you deal with all of that?
Teresa Roberson
Cerebral. So basically you're looking at the built environment through the perspective of race and when you talk about inauthentic conversations, is that because you can get another person to really talk about a full
Stephanie
Because people really
Teresa Roberson
perspective
Stephanie
Exactly.
Teresa Roberson
about the built environment?
Stephanie
Like they see...Let's see what's a what's a really good example? Um, they are planning a bridge from the park right next to Fiesta gardens that goes across to Oracle. Why are they planning that? There's not any clear answer because they are about to make the, fortify the walkway across Pleasant Valley from, I guess the north bank to the south bank of Town Lake. But they're building this walkway. They're like, "Oh, it's a neglected park." It's not a neglected park. Any time of the year, there's always people in it and there's always people doing things. I've never seen that park empty. I'm pretty sure if I went there at about 11 o'clock on a Tuesday I'd see somebody there. But one of the things that was stated in a video done by Larry Ellison was that he wanted to build a company site that would be the kind of site that he would want to go to. Some background: Oracle, located on the south bank of Town Lake in 2015 to 2016 that's when it basically finished. And in this video, he talks about how "Oh, and I would love to bring my kayak to work every day." So because it'll be a nice little walkway, and this man who saw a pretty lake and some land, and who pretended like there was nothing on the south bank of Riverside, wants to bring his kayak, that's why we need to build a nice little walkway. So you tell people this, and they say, "Oh, but it was a neglected park." Because that's how it was marketed in newspapers, like the Chronicle in the Statesman when they're like, "Oh, nobody was there and it was awful and it was ratchet and it was like, there were murals and baseball parks. And there there are murals and baseball parks right now and recreational facilities, the Odyssey school is there. It's not clear to people that basically this area is considered up for grabs, because the people there are not from Tarrytown, and they're out from West Austin. And many of them are not white. Even Though it has been, even though the neighborhood has been extremely displaced in the last few years, there's still quite a few nonwhite people who live in that area and they like their Park. It's, it's not considered important enough that that community remain intact than it is to quote unquote, see the improvement. And so to have those conversations with people, they're just focused on, but it'll be a really pretty sidewalk, but it'll be a really pretty building over this parish and will bring a whole bunch of jobs here and you can't, you can only have so many conversations where everybody was like, oh, but it was horrible before, especially about a community that they didn't live in, that it becomes stressful. And so it's one of the reasons why, like I said, on occasion, it's like, you know what, I'm a little too angry and it's 11 o'clock at night. So, let me do something to relieve myself of the stress of this anxiety of the fact that it doesn't seem like any conversation, people are having any information they're being relayed is making them understand the depths of how race has shaped the built environment. It is not just happenstance. Race is the reason you know, there's a great meme that goes around Facebook and it says, you know, you look around neighborhoods, every now and then and you're like, I wonder what it what made this neighborhood the way it was and then you find out it's racism in like 72-point font and you get really frustrated and sad and that is how our built environment has been shaped. You know, I could tell you more stories I won't, because we'll all get angry and sad. But but no, understanding that the built environment as we understand it was largely shaped by racism is a very hard conversation to have. And so I enjoy the fact that there are coping mechanisms other than exercise and not paying attention to the news.
Teresa Roberson
Thank you so much, Stephanie, for sharing your CBD story with us.
Stephanie
Absolutely.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai