"In the world of work, I didn't see the bias until I had elevated myself from the circumstances. And I always looked at myself first, and what I could do to make the circumstance better things I always say in my training, and my speaking is sometimes you can't see the picture because you're in the frame."
Voices of Diversity host Rocki Howard speaks to guest Dwayne Bennett who is an author, coach, educator, speaker, and founder of the Black Careers Matter Success Society.
Wayne shares his "beautiful destruction". His journey from attorney, to being incarcerated to being a successful entrepreneur. He discusses his passionate desire for reprogramming the flawed, systemic career beliefs that are prevalent within the black community
Dwayne talks to us today as a Voice of a Formerly Incarcerated Successful Black Man.
"In the world of work, I didn't see the bias until I had elevated myself from the circumstances. And I always looked at myself first, and what I could do to make the circumstance better things I always say in my training, and my speaking is sometimes you can't see the picture because you're in the frame."
Voices of Diversity host Rocki Howard speaks to guest Dwayne Bennett who is an author, coach, educator, speaker, and founder of the Black Careers Matter Success Society.
Wayne shares his "beautiful destruction". His journey from attorney, to being incarcerated to being a successful entrepreneur. He discusses his passionate desire for reprogramming the flawed, systemic career beliefs that are prevalent within the black community
Dwayne talks to us today as a Voice of a Formerly Incarcerated Successful Black Man.
Welcome to the Voices of Diversity podcast. I'm your host Rocki. Howard, and the purpose of this podcast to humanize diversity, one story, one conversation at a time. I want our listeners to understand the significance and the impact that racism, bias and inequity have on real people. I want our guests to have the opportunity to share the challenges that we the underrepresented face in the corporate world, the media's eye, and the overall world that we live in. Through sharing, listening, understanding, and committing to take small actions towards change, together, we can impact the diversity narrative, one story, one conversation at a time. And by changing the narrative, we can change the world.
Dwayne Bennett:In the world of work, I didn't see the bias until I had had elevated myself from the circumstances. And I always looked at myself first, and what I could do to make the circumstance better things I always say in my training, and my speaking is sometimes you can't see the picture because you're in the frame.
Rocki Howard:Voices of Diversity guest Dwayne Bennett is the founder of Black Careers Matter Success Society. He is an author, coach, educator and speaker. Dwayne shares his beautiful destruction, his journey from attorney to being incarcerated to being a successful entrepreneur. He discusses his passionate desire for reprogramming the flawed systemic career beliefs that are prevalent within the black community. Dwayne talks to us today as a voice of a formerly incarcerated, successful black man. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening from wherever you are in the world. And welcome to the voices of diversity podcast. I'm your host Rocki Howard, and I identify a she/her/black/Christian/GenX/wife/mom, and I am so happy to be joined today by Dwayne Bennett. Dwayne, please introduce yourself to our audience and, and tell us given the multiple dimensions of diversity how you identify?
Dwayne Bennett:Well, I'm super excited to be here. Rocki Thank you so very, very much identify as a black man with a purpose of helping to uplift our race to his next level through being a father being a son, being a speaker, being a coach and a trainer. So I'm excited to be here today.
Rocki Howard:That is awesome. And you mentioned being a coach and a trainer. So tell us really quickly who you work for what what what do you do for a living?
Dwayne Bennett:I'm so excited you Tim asked me who I work for because I work for me.
Rocki Howard:Right? Right.
Dwayne Bennett:Yeah, I have my own business. And it's the company name is yes to success, LLC. But I have various divisions on one division that I have is the black Cumbria's madness success society. And that's for black professionals to help them get to their next level. I have also the coaching area, which I help people in general, a specific in a specific area in their life. And then I have my overall corporate and global speaking, which I go around the world with motivational, inspirational messages to help people move from where they are, to where they know, they need to be.
Rocki Howard:Wow, that is incredible. And what a way to spend your days. And that was an evolution as I've done my research, Dwayne. So here's what I want you to do walk us through, I know that you have a JD I know that you taught law, you practice law. And then there seemed to be this pivot right into speaking and coaching. So tell us you just told us a little bit about what you do for a living, but help us understand the journey of how you got there.
Dwayne Bennett:Alright, look, it sounds like you know more about me than I do.
Rocki Howard:Research my friend research.
Dwayne Bennett:You name it some stuff. I'm like, Oh, my God. I know, but I'm gonna try to be succinct because it has been a journey and as a continue, we're evolution and I I'm probably doing an unorthodox way to be succinct. I always knew I wanted to be in business. Most people, they go to law school because all of their life they wanted to be a lawyer. I went to law school with the go to business route to be able to help businesses and be That mix from a higher bird's eye level. So going from high school, to college, to, um, to last. Oh, I forgot on the way to law school, I had a couple of jobs, right. And then what what shifted me from my job to law was I was working as a senior claims adjuster. And as a senior claims adjuster for an insurance company, I had to audit the bills of the law firms that we work for. And one day I was sitting there, and this is a long time ago, and I was auditing the bills in this firm called I never forget it meditating and monotone out of New Jersey, I was auditing their bills and was two people in the law firm. And the bill came to for that year $256,000. Wow, we paid them $256,000 that year for their law services. And I'm looking at as a young man, I'm saying I'm making $35,000 I got oil on the table.
Rocki Howard:Yeah, I gotta go.
Dwayne Bennett:Bam. So I shifted me to go to law school, go to law school, we come out, I said, we come out one of my closest friends, start our own law firm from scratch, sometimes challenges and adversity puts you in a position we had offers, but nothing that really was exciting enough, and I really was gonna support our families. So we got together and we started our own law firm, we grew it to be able to support I always say, I look at it this way to support seven families. And then we got there and continuing to continue to go. And then after that, this is where the challenge got really interesting. We brought on a lawyer to help us in another area of our firm, and he got involved in some unscrupulous practices got us involved in some unscrupulous practices. You didn't see this in the notes. But I ended up going to prison messing around with this guy, because he's put the law firm in a fraudulent situation. But this is what I've learned over time. Sometime in life, we go through these periods, which which I've learned to be we call beautiful destruction. Come on for destructions. So my life was destroyed, destructive, broken down, so I can come out on a beautiful side. And then that really brought me to my gifts of speaking, writing, and training. So then, as the evolution occurred, I literally when people say yeah, To start off, I look at it like this, some people go from rags to riches. Well, again, from my history, I'm not gonna I'm just gonna be honest, I came from the hood. Y'all know,
Rocki Howard:I came from the hood too. And you can, you can take the girl out the hood, but you can never take the hood out the girl. And I'm proud of that.
Dwayne Bennett:I love it. Because we've learned so much about perseverance. We learned so much about tenacity, when not so much about courage, we learned so much about being resourceful, we learned so much about never giving up, we learned so much of how to navigate through sensitive and dangerous faces from an experience. So I say sometimes I went from from from from rags to riches from below, right back up again. And I'm glad you asked about that, because I don't get to share that pot, often. But in that beautiful destruction, I came out and why with two books, one book is called from worry to winning. And that was for corporate America. And I had a book for youth that came out of me doing an experience called the seven winning ways to college success. So I was able to pivot to shift to turn a negative into a positive. And I went from I call it always I call it going from the DOJ, Department of Justice to the d. o. d, because I was able to excel all the way and be able to train speaking coach at the Department of Defense. Wow,
Rocki Howard:what a powerful story, brother, I'm so proud of you. I'm so I'm so proud of you. And you know, it's interesting, we may have to do a whole episode just on that I may have to have you come back. But I'm curious because now you've got a couple of perspectives. You've got a perspective from a lawyer, you've got a perspective, from a returning citizen point of view, you've got a perspective of someone who's been incarcerated. And so when you look through those lenses on all of the social justice issues that we're hearing in the news today, you know what, as we're recording this episode, we're in the middle of the trial for George Floyd, we have been inundated with matters of Asian hate in the US and those incidences are, are going up, I think, how does your perspective as a lawyer as someone previously in Carpe carcere rated, affect your perspective on these social justice issues we're seeing in the news?
Dwayne Bennett:Well, for me to be just being open and transparent. This is the America that has always existed. So a lot of our, if you will, counterparts they never seen this type of view of America, and I always knew it existed from my humble beginnings, from being on one side of the law, from going to the other side of the law from being able to persevere to get from on the DOJ to the DL D from being an author from that. And as I was going through America, I saw all of these things all the time, always saw me getting pulled over for no reason, I saw my son who's in the military, he's in a Navy because he's in a fluent neighborhood, he gets pulled over for no reason to man put he put it please put a gun out on him, said he ran a stop sign, then he never gave him a ticket, tell them go and have Have a good day. So as these things start to here, we go appear in the media. And you notice Rocky, me and you notice existed all along. So we just glad that this land is being magnified. So not only America, and the world can see it. So but now the work that you're doing, the work that I'm doing, hopefully can be amplified in a way that it can be more meaningful, but more impactful. And here we go in a quick way, you know, both of us identify as Christians. So you say our word is shopping in a two edged sword. So we already have one edge. Now we got to an age, other age now we're trying to cut this thing and get rid of the nastiness the craziness and get to a level where now that has been exposed. And you know what, couple my friends are going going through addiction. You can't get past the addiction until you identify you have a problem? Oh, well, hopefully now, America has identified that they really have a problem, right? Going through insurrection, going through a fluid and in the middle of his trial. And then this, this big lie that where we had so much different than the world, we're so much above the world, but we just like everybody just like me, just like you just like the person down the street, just like my name is we're all the same. And when we come to that realization and find a common spaces with each other, then we can build. So I had a unique perspective, like you said, to go from a go from a lower socio economic level and seeing the world from that view, go to a PMI what they call the predominant white institution, you can see it from that view, then go to law school to an HBCU and see it from that view, then coming back and seeing it inside the DOJ, then coming outside the DOJ then go on to the DOJ and what I'm saying I hope I'm answering the questions. It's the same view, no matter where I've been in America is what it is. People are who they say say they are, we can do what we say we can do. And it's always the same view. And it's really not as for me as dramatic, as it has been for a lot of the world maybe because of my unique travels and even even around the world. That's one thing if you want to see how America really is you got to get outside the country. Yeah. And I'm in India, and I'm watching the news. I'm like, that doesn't look like the news. I'm used to.
Rocki Howard:I understand that. And I think it's really interesting. I'm not sure that I've shared this on the podcast, when the world had such a response to the murder of George Floyd. I was pretty angry. And I was angry, because I felt like this has been happening in the black community for 400 years. And I'm not sure why everybody it felt to me, like people were jumping on a social media trend. That's what it felt like at the time. And I my initial reaction was to be angry. I'm really happy, though, that I think what we have found is at least a sustained interest in moving the needle forward. And so, you know, you talked about the experience that you and your sons have had my sons have had my husband and pad can't tell you driving while black is real. If you folks don't know that, um, but tell me this, when you think about being in some of the circles that you walk in when you think about having graduated from law school, and you mentioned not getting the kind of offers that could sustain a family when you thought about practicing law. As you go out and represent john Maxwell, can you give us some examples of when you have been on the receiving end of bias in the world of work, you've told us what it feels like in the world. But do you have some examples that you would share in the world of work?
Dwayne Bennett:Well, in the in the world of work, and I have a unique perspective on that. I'm in the world of work. I didn't see the bias until I had had had elevated myself from the circumstances. And I always looked at myself first and what I could do to make the circumstance better and then as I elevated it, got away from it. And one of the things I always say in my training in my speaking is sometimes you can't see the picture. Because you're in the frame, you can't see the picture because you're in the frame. So I was in the frame and the situations, and I didn't know what was going on around me, but I always looked at myself and see can had I got by. So that being said, once I look back in specific, specifically, when I was in the insurance industry, when I looked back and saw, I saw my white counterparts getting promoted faster than me. And, and I knew, they knew they weren't swatted me, they didn't work. I'm not gonna say even hard, their work wasn't as productive as mine. And I didn't necessarily understand that that was bias. And this is this is the interesting thing until a white manager pulled me and said, Dwayne, one of the reasons why you're getting not getting promoted as other people. And he didn't say directly, but I think indirectly is because you're not participating in a way that they participate in the social aspects of things. Because, you know, come on, right, let's, let's get for real. I mean, I'm a young, black man in Java, like, I'm not doing anything, unless I'm getting paid for it. That was the wrong I'm
Rocki Howard:playing golf, I'm not going out drinking. I'm not going to the basketball game. Cuz I cuz a lot of times when you're first generation into that white collar world, you don't understand the importance of that level of engagement.
Dwayne Bennett:That is, that is 100%. And that was the thing. So it, it's a bias in the way that they just see the world the way they do things, but from us is just a deficit mindset of not knowing the importance of that. Now is that was that changed everything? I'm not gonna say it changed everything. But when you look back, you're like, Okay, I see why. Because. And one of the one of the big things was he say it was, they had like a social hour or happy hour, like once a month. But then a lot of the again, in my white counterparts, they were going like, once or twice a week. And he was like, going, I never see those. I'm like, cuz I never go. But he was saying, those were some of the relationships have been made. And if you notice, he was right, when I did go, a lot of the people that were going they were the ones that getting promoted. Because give you another example. And this and this, this is a really interesting example, when I was a lawyer. And, you know, we I'm not always represented by people. But the difference in the way that the black judges work with us versus the white judges, and me and my partner, we were white, we had our own law firm. And it was one in particular, it was a one white female judge. And we always had some problems with my clients. I don't know, she always treated them fairly, but it was always me and her going back and forth. I'm like, why, why? why it's always this tension between us. And then even one day I saw her behind the court area with only lawyers and judges and got and we had few words right and she lambaste me just then always going high. Right. Okay. That's, that's, that's why we were in court while we were in the building. But then one day, I represented one of the members of sugary linens to boxes, sugary linens, entourage, when it came to Charlotte when I was in Charlotte, and he and he got sick. And so Sugar Ray Leonard invited me and my partner to this big old, it was a nonprofit ball. And again, I'm so gross. Oh, yo, is a nonprofit ball is the biggest thing in the city. He gives us tickets and say, Hey, come and go, right. My partner we come, you know, back then we had on leather coats at best leather coats, if you will. Yeah, tails and jeans. We go in and everybody stick out on a dinner jacket, tuxedos gowns, and we like where we are right? And the lady looked at us funny. And we looked at her funny. She said, Well, sir, who you heard she I said, with sugary Linux guests. Okay, so they took us to Sugar Ray Lynch table because he was the guest of honor. He comes in, we felt good. He just had on a sweater and some jeans. He was fine. And we were at his table. I mean, we're having a good time. He had his guests at his table. Everybody was around when it comes to the table the whole night. But this is where it gets interesting. The judge comes and she whispers in my ear, right lady, Judge dog and me and my clients in court all the time, and says Dwayne, can you introduce me to shoot a limit? Right? I heard I say, huh, otherwise, you might introduce me to shoot Maitland and get a good autograph. I looked her in her face. And she looked at me in my face. And she knew what the deal was. I said, Yeah, I introduced you to sugar, right. And then when it came out, introduced, she got an autograph and all those things went in. But here we go again, is now I'm a human now. Now you can speak to me in a respectful manner. Now. Now you can see me maybe as a man or whatever Now maybe because it's something you want. Now we got and you want to switch to relationship as opposed to when I'm working in my space as a lawyer, you're working in space as a judge. Now we are we're adversaries, you're going hot the whole night. So it shows itself in different ways. And again, sometimes, like I said, when you're in it, you don't always see it. But sometimes you can feel that something's not right. So So those those two examples, I hope, I'm kind of fit fit in with you the question, Did that answer the question?
Rocki Howard:Absolutely. So let me ask you this. After doing that, after showing up, you know, again, here's how we roll. So when when I get dressed up, and I go out, this is how I roll? Did you learn something from that? Or did you find yourself doing things to assimilate more into what the perception of what a corporate or professional attorney should look like? What What else did you carry away from that experience?
Dwayne Bennett:Well, I'm just so happy that my mom brought me up and my oldest siblings with a sense of confidence, and a sense of knowing who I was that, and again, this this is, this is one big part of my story. I'm just green. I didn't know any better. Nobody taught me. Nobody said to me be different act different. So I just acted the best I could to know how I excuse me coming from inside. Excuse me. So in some of these spaces, sometimes it may have been inappropriate. I say, when I look back from their standpoint, me when I dress right, maybe not carry myself, right. But I was just being me. And then when I look back, I was like, no, what I probably should have to dress different advise you to got that a different time, handle things in a different way, or sell things in a different light. But most of my experiences, were from a reflection standpoint. And then I this is what I don't like though, the further I extended up the corporate ladder and into different spaces in the corporate world, if you will, then I did feel myself start to change somewhat, start to kind of try to assimilate a little bit more. And that's where when we when we talk about the imposter syndrome comes in the code switching comes in. Because now because you have this awareness of how you're supposed to act, or how you're supposed to be seen, then you do that. I like that when I didn't know any better, right? When I did go out and going in, and they were doing what they were doing, and I was doing what I was doing. And it probably was a glass ceiling. And it probably slowed me up. But I just felt a little happier and a little freer, just being who I was, as opposed to Okay, let me see who's in the room. Let me see. Where are we going? Let me see what time it is. I mean, let me see what Okay, let me see what everybody else has on do. They had a jacket on it had a jacket off, it had a neck town it had a neck tie off, then started doing all of those things that made me feel more uncomfortable than when I was I just didn't know any better.
Rocki Howard:That's it though. I felt happier and freer when I could just show up and be myself. And it really shouldn't be that hard to go through the world and just show up and be yourself. Right. So let me ask you this. You founded the black careers matters success society that's focused on how helping black career professionals tell us a bit about it. And I'm curious, did you found it because of this, each one reach one each one teach one? Did you feel a responsibility to go back and reach out to people in your community? 100%
Dwayne Bennett:I gotta try to be succinct a couple of years ago, and I'm getting my years mixed up with COVID. So this is what this is. 20
Rocki Howard:we all are.
Dwayne Bennett:Yeah, let's see this. 2021 that was 2020 2020 2019. Okay, I believe it was 2019, maybe 2018. The year of 20. We're gonna say 2018 2019, the year of 2019. I have three speaking engagements in corporate America. And I'm gonna talk about them as one. But after each one, or doing a q&a session, a brother or sister came up to me and I teach this concept of for leaders, this bill leaders now don't create a to do list but create a stop doing list leaders to create a stop doing list. We're doing too much. We're not delegating. We're getting burned out. So I teach this concept. Right. So then afterwards, q&a afterwards, three African Americans, if you will, I like black brothers and sisters came up to me and said, Look, you're telling us to stop doing things when we've always been taught got to go twice as hard work twice as long do so many things. And and when they told me that I was like, You know what? I got to go back. share my story of how I overcame things in corporate America. One of one of my one of my claim to fame is is once I've figured things out, I was able to get promoted six and a half times and excuse me six times and four times half years, I wouldn't get a $20,000 raise in 30 days, when there was no money in your budget, I had a position to create for me. And I was like, they don't know how to do this. So I gotta go back and tell them, because here we go, we got to shift this paradigm of work of grind of going hard. Now what I mean by that, when I say this is, now we're in the information age, is not about the hours all the time, it's not about the effort, it's about problem solving. So when you take things off your plate, it frees your mind to be able to see an identified a problem and solve the problem. And if you can do that for your whoever you, your, whoever you report to, could be your manager or supervisor or whatever, then the probability of your success in that position increases that don't have anything to do with working 80 hours, they have to value, exactly the value. But we in this paradigm of grind, grind, grind, grind, grind? Hahahahaha, go, go, go, go go. And it's not necessarily it's not serving us, right? Can you notice, people tell me all the time, I'm doing all these things, I'm doing all those things, but you're not doing the right things. So my thing is, you work hard, you got two degrees. So you already put in the work. So identify the fact that you've already put in the work, you got two degrees, you put in all those hours, you got that now lean in to the things that you were taught, those concepts are relevant, they're probably they work lean in to the people that you know, lean into this concept of finding an ally. Meaning to, I can ask my manager some of the things that is hard for him, I can take them off the plate, says one of the things that black people I still hear, I'm not doing them. But what my job description say, well, that's why are you there's, there's no reason why you only get paid that amount, you're not gonna get paid. But yeah, your job description is what I learned unless you do somebody on that. That's not working 60 hours
Rocki Howard:add value,
Dwayne Bennett:yes, add value, let's make an adjustment. So the black careers matter. Well, this society came out of that thought, and those brothers and sisters asking me those questions. And I knew I had to go back and help them shift this paradigm of going so hard all the time, and really not sitting back and looking for the opportunity, as opposed to looking for the time.
Rocki Howard:And I love that because what that points to is systemic conditioning in the black community on how to be successful in spaces where we actually haven't been exposed and don't have the perspective always as to what it takes to be successful. So I really, really appreciate that point of view. Look, I know we're coming down on our 30 minutes. So I've got two things I want to ask you.
Dwayne Bennett:Can I say one thing on that point? Of course, the reason I'm saying this is is okay, I'm an author. I'm a speaker and a coach. My mom still doesn't understand what I do. She don't know how to get paid. Why is that important in terms of what we're talking about, because our parents, they only knew Work, work, work, work, work, they only knew long hours, they only knew jobs. So it's not it's in us to have that mentality. But we It has been a shift. I'm not saying it's going to solve all the problems. But at least if you got to believe that I may not have to work 80 hours, and maybe that I can get you another 60. Maybe you have some time with your parents, or your with your with your with your family. So I just want I didn't want to interrupt, but I want to go and see where we got that from.
Rocki Howard:Now, it's a great point, because again, it's that generational systemic conversation that we're hearing. And we do need to shift the paradigm.
Unknown:Thank you. Thank you.
Rocki Howard:You talked about a manager that obviously earlier in your career was a bit of an ally to by giving you this perspective of Hey, look, man, this is what's really going on. I'd like for you to tell us one thing, just one thing, that an ally who's listening to this today can do to go out and help improve this diversity narrative. What's one thing an ally can do?
Dwayne Bennett:I think, I think the ally needs to take not so also such not always this, if you will, global this, I got to change this whole situation, his whole system and just grab one person. And if they work with that one person and get that one person to that next level, and allow people to see them working with that person to get to that next level. Then it gives hope for all of us that's around that's looking sometimes we try to grab so many you try to do so much that hey, it all gets lost in the mix. Take one we'll get look Dwayne, get them. Take them through walk. Through, get them to this next level now, and even with that now you establish a way to seeing things in that space that you are because they don't always see things in that space that without someone they're talking to know, Dwayne. And I say, look, Dwayne is my alter ego when when I was younger, when you're talking to little Dwayne, then you didn't date the lmsc. Oh, I didn't even perceive that. I didn't know you were doing that. I didn't know what the situation is now bofur learning. Now we got this body of knowledge, we have this experience on both sides that that is unique. This is one thing I learned about the career space. It's nuanced. This is the thing. It's very nuanced. It could be one thing you say one day to somebody that either send you forward, or to send you back. So it's very nuanced, not only for the individual, but for the workspace, but for the company, for the corporation and for the industry. So when they are on this, looking on this lovely platform and looking down and say I can do I can do some here we go to ally to help down there. No, you can't you need to be down here. Because that nuance of I should have went to that meeting, doing Why didn't you go to that meeting the other day was very, very important. This, could they tell us they were there, that's I didn't know, I could go. And one thing I didn't include me. So one thing I can do not to make a big deal become small, as opposed to not a small but have a focused vision on how I can help an individual. And then I can use that as a framework, if you will, for the space that we in to help other individuals with Li can do.
Rocki Howard:It's the very foundation of what we do here. One story, one conversation, one action at a time. So look, I need you to close me out today. I can't believe these 30 minutes. I've really just
Dwayne Bennett:wasted everything.
Rocki Howard:Yeah, no, no, no, we appreciate all that you've thrown down to us today. So you know that our platform is built on the concept of giving a voice to people who are underrepresented, right? This is your time. What would you like to say to people? What picture would you like to paint for people on what it feels like to walk through the worlds of work the corporate world, the entrepreneurial world, as someone who's underrepresented?
Dwayne Bennett:The thing is this is you have to take personal responsibility. If you turn over your life, to people, systems and situations, then you're giving away your power. Keep your power by understanding is, and you've heard this before, no one's coming to save me but me. And if you start there, and you start working your way out, then you're fine. There's other help on the journey along the way. But if you're wait at the space for someone to come and grab you, did you bring you along to take you the change of circumstances, then you may be sitting there for a while. I remember we talked about Christian faith, it was a man about it, who's a protester. And he was sitting there for 28 years waiting, I think 2032 years waiting for someone to push him into water in order that he can be healed. Why don't you think of those 28 I heard a preacher saying those 2832 years and he could have wiggled could have rolled, grab somebody you know, and then got into water by waiting. But if he had to take personal responsibility on day one, and started to get to that water started work through that water, started moving himself, then he would have found that as people were going by, they probably would have took them along. I believe in personal responsibility. Start here. Empower yourself, personal development, I believe in that. And I just, I'm trying not to get on my house, but we don't believe in that as much as other other races, getting better reading books, you know how to use Rocky, we want to have some fun black man put in a book, gotta get past that stuff. take personal responsibility, become the best version of you have a vision. Take the first step. My Luther King said, Take the first step in faith. And as you go along, you're going to find allies, you're going to find help, you're going to find money, you're going to find resources you can find if I'm on the wrong path and get on the right path. But the key over and over again, if I hadn't said it, it's got to start with you got to start at home, stop giving your power away. We notice things going on in the world we notice things not right we notice things that people are not right and not the same things. But it starts with us. Personal Responsibility. And then let's go Don't say let's go unless you let you go.
Unknown:Let's go. Let's go.
Rocki Howard:Dwayne, thank you so much for being here today. And thank you for you know, being a voice of someone who has really persevere. Thanks for being that that voice from the DOJ to the DOJ. We appreciate you
Dwayne Bennett:Thank you so much.
Rocki Howard:Thank you for listening to today's episode. The mission of this podcast is to give a voice to diversity. I believe that the interactions between all voices, minority and majority can change the narrative of how the world communicates. And by changing that narrative, we can change the world. Join our mission to humanize diversity, one story, one conversation at a time by sharing our episodes, especially with those who are privileged and in positions of power. Help the voices of diversity podcast, be a catalyst for courageous conversations, and most importantly, for change. I'm your host, Rocki Howard