Black Boomer Besties from Brooklyn
This is what the world needs now: two free-thinking “seasoned” Black women speaking their truth and inspiring others to do the same. Shaped by 45 years of friendship that began at the prestigious Brooklyn Technical High School through the Ivy League, medical school, marriages, divorces, triumphs, parenting queer children, life-threatening illness and many many amazing adventures. Each week, besties Leslie Osei-Tutu and Angella Fraser will push against boundaries in love, culture, careers, faith, politics and out-dated assumptions about women of a certain age. Remember, you’re never too old to change your mind…or your hair! (but more on that later :-)All views are our own and do not reflect the views of our institution/company. Information provided is not intended to serve as medical advice.
Black Boomer Besties from Brooklyn
Back to White Affirmative Action in American Universities
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Another crushing step backwards. This is our view of the recent SCOTUS decision to strike down affirmative action in university admissions (except military schools, cunningly).
Plans were in place for a different episode this week but we were so intensely troubled by this breaking news, we decided to lend our voice and experiences to the chorus of outrage. It seems that America is destined to find opportunities to move further away from its promise.
Connecting the imposition of Jim Crow Laws upon Black people after they had been given a glimpse of self-determination during Reconstruction to the chipping away of meager opportunities for equity since the Civil Rights Act of 1964. We reflect on white affirmative action being the law of the land for over 300 years, and again now, with this ruling.
Our Blackness is a source of pride and resilience, despite experiences where it is acknowledged with suspicion (Angella at Penn) or made invisible by color-blinded ignorance (Leslie at the hospital). We get into our feelings, our history and our hopes in this compelling and unapologetic conversation.
References:
The Delaney Sisters
Sadie and Bessie Delaney were civil rights sisters born in 1889 and 1891 respectively, to a formerly enslaved father, just before the Jim Crow Laws bloomed into full-blown viciousness in the mid-1890s.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Having_Our_Say:_The_Delany_Sisters%27_First_100_Years
With freedom came death & disease
About a quarter of the 4 million enslaved people freed during the American Civil War died from disease and hunger after being liberated, according to a new book by historian John Downs.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/jun/16/slavery-starvation-civil-war
Visit Black Boomer Besties from Brooklyn website for behind-the-scenes extras.
So Ange, I know you thought it was important that we do a recording, uh, an unanticipated recording today because of the Supreme Court decision that came out um earlier. Um you and I talked about it per a little bit personally, so um, but there's so many thoughts that I've had in my mind, and yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, it's um I want to kind of sensationalize this, but I the idea of it and so many things that are going on, it made me feel like um to some degree that we're we're going so backwards. And um I don't I enough people are not noticing or enough people are um busy all the all the things, all the um human things that we're doing that makes us not focus on this and and realize that um for this and so many other things we're going backwards. You know, and this is not the same, but one of the things I thought about is when during the period of Reconstruction, right, when former enslaved people were getting their freedoms and Esmond would say rubbing their two nickels together and eking out eking out a life for themselves and for that moment in time um the law was actually bending in their favor. And then Jim Jim Crow happened and just sucked the life out of everything. The the the the promise of America to me was sucked out of what was possible when that happened. Because as we know, there were so many communities, um, and I I don't even know offhand how long the period of reconstruction was, and really I know you know this, but just to complete the context, it was after the Civil War, the Union won, they um the the country was not being torn apart, and there were um if if you see these um old photos of black men who were in political office who were congressmen and things like that, that was just that period of time that was Reconstruction when um black men, not women, um had some political um power and um and then the federal government just abandoned the South, right? Oh, they didn't do it for us, you know, they didn't do it for the black folks who were there. Um and so they left, and um those in power just decided, nope, y'all too up and not having this, just took it all back.
SPEAKER_01I'm glad that you took it back to the Reconstruction area and didn't go um right up to the time of Jim Crow because that's when so many pivotal things happened after the Civil War. And that whole remember, the Reconstruction period um was only a couple years. It wasn't decades. Right.
SPEAKER_05Right.
SPEAKER_01Oh yeah, that's all it was all a number of years when one could say that the country made some half-hearted attempt to um, I'm not gonna say reparations, but they acknowledged the wrong that had been done for so long and wanted to um make amends in some way.
SPEAKER_05Yeah. And I and I wouldn't even say, Les, to be honest, um nothing was ever given to black people in America, right? Everything was was was fought for. Nothing was ever given. So I don't I don't think that the the the lens on this is that there was some kind of awakening and they decided. Yeah, they decided to be to be good to the darkies, and it it wasn't that at all, right? We we didn't get our 40 acres in a mule. They were giving land um away to um the um European peasants and things like that. It wasn't it wasn't a let's be good to them. That wasn't it at all. And I know you know this, right? It wasn't that at all. It wasn't let's make the promise of America real. It wasn't that at all. It was a moment where we were free. It was a moment where um there was enough of voting ability for us to put some people who looked like us to represent us, right? We we took that. People took the chance to do that. It wasn't, hey, come on, join us, be one of us, you know, you're in the family now. Um they took advantage of an opportunity that they saw, and they far they formed their little banks or little um, what do we call it, potna, we call it in Jamaica, where you kind of pool your money, and at certain times, whoever, when your time is up, you get the entire pool to do whatever, to start your little business and whatever, and then it rotates. They have different names for it in the Caribbean Susu and things like that.
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_05So they rub their money together and they made a lie for themselves. Sorry, I have such a lump in my throat about this. It's just yeah, it's just really sad. It's just really, really sad when I think about all of this. And you know, when we were talking to Pam, um Pam Skinner, I don't know when her episode is going to air. It may be before this or after, I'm not sure. But um uh she's a friend of ours who has many of um the photographs that depict her family over over decades. Both her parents have now passed away, and so when she posts them, you know how I get really emotional about seeing black people enjoy and then wondering who was trying to take it from them, who was trying to take their joy, and did they get back from the beach safely and and you know, when they were at home and when they were celebrating. Um, and so I'm just um a few years ago, uh, it was my first um weak supervisor role at North Carolina Theater, and it was the story of the Delaney sisters having our say. Remember when that that book came out? Yeah, we're in Brooklyn, yeah. And it was a story about them, and they and the play um depicted their lives, so their father and mother were formerly enslaved people, and so a part of the play had photographs, and they they were actually um in this local community because their father, I think, was a pastor at St. Augustine Um College, which is a um HBCU in this area. So they're from this area, and so they're people who know their family, and they were there, and you know, there was um there was a um space set up for memorabilia from these two women. But anyway, so there were a lot of photographs of the the play shared with the audience some of what went on just after emancipation. Um people were given their freedom. But for many of them, they were given the freedom to starve. They didn't have money, they didn't have they barely had things.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_05They didn't have a way to farm. Um, so I'm gonna look up the number and put it in our episode notes, but many, many formerly enslaved peoples starved. Um, which which is not talked about. You know, you don't go from being chattel, being a horse to someone, and then you hit the horse on the back.
SPEAKER_01And it was illegal to educate them. It was illegal to educate. Education they had, they had to sneak and do it in a hidden way.
SPEAKER_05Yes. Um, yes, everything.
SPEAKER_01Families were broken up and separated at this time, so very many people were uh individuals.
SPEAKER_05Absolutely, just lost. Um just lost, right? Just lost, like, you know, um, you know, maybe even looking for children who were sold away from them or their families, you know. Yeah, yeah. Um, and then um, and then um just the elements cold, wet, no place to go, many of them died, many, many of them perished just after um emancipation.
SPEAKER_01And so those that survived, that they had the fortitude to run for office, to vote, that they had a fortitude to create communities and almost like um the audacity of hope.
SPEAKER_05The audacity of hope.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_05You know what I mean? Um so I think about that, and so I'm not, and and so I say that that was a moment in American history, which I don't think is taught very much. I know that I don't recall, and I was really into history, um, but you know, mostly European history is what I remember um being taught in school. But um, my children actually were taught more about reconstruction, I think, than than I did. And so through them I learned some of this.
SPEAKER_01And so um But just think about you're speaking about the education, um educational culture these days, especially in the South and places like Florida. I'm thinking of DeSantis how there are generations of students that are not allowed to learn this history of their country. Yeah, they're not it's not allowed to be taught lest someone feel ashamed or made to feel bad.
SPEAKER_03Right.
SPEAKER_01That's the reaction to this kind of education. What I'm thinking of also as you're speaking about this um these communities that were built up um during the Reconstruction era, unfortunately, was the massacre. Um I was thinking of uh the uh in North Carolina, yeah, Wilmington, but I'm also thinking of Black Wall Street.
SPEAKER_05Black Wall Street, you know, Tulsa, which which many people know about now. But the last record that I saw about this um thriving black communities that were destroyed, um, one I just heard about the other day in uh where was it? Um I'll I'll remember I'll put it in the notes. But um Rosewood, um where a um black person was said to have done something to a white woman and they went in, they burnt down the whole town. The whole thing. The last record I heard that there were a hundred, there were at least a hundred of these um black communities. It's like, why can't why why? Why can't just leave them alone? Why? Why? So anyway, yeah, we well we know why, you know, anyway, so I I that came to mind because I was just thinking about that moment in time when the promise that is America could have started to show itself in a real way. And it was it was too much. It was it meant too much freedom for us. And so we were Jim Crow was imposed upon us. The union didn't come back and say, Oh, you can't do that. No, they were gone, they did their scorch thing, they they were they were gone. And so the southern states were able to to do this, and you know, we know northern states people were enslaved there too, but but anyway, you just told me, I think, that um Yeah, I reminded you that Juneteenth was not actually the end of slavery in the United States, right?
SPEAKER_01It was only the end of slavery in the Confederate states, but in the Union states like uh New Jersey, right, uh Delaware, Maryland, um slavery existed for several years after that uh 1865.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, yeah. So so I I those um events came to mind and you heard about the decision today. Yeah, and I'm in I'm in no way, I'm in no way um comparing the two. What I'm doing is just responding to forward movement and then a pullback. Whenever it kind of, oh, they're mm, they're making too much they're making too much headway, let's let's let's pull it back, right? So I use 1619 as when the first um enslaved Africans were brought to what is now uh what we now know as America, right? 1619, the 1619 project. Um and so from 1619 to 1965, when by executive order um affirmative action was um was made law.
SPEAKER_01The Civil Rights Act.
SPEAKER_05Right.
SPEAKER_01That's part of the Civil Rights Act.
SPEAKER_05Part of the Civil Rights Act. So I think this was an article in the Civil Rights Act, maybe, I'm not sure about that. But it was 1965. So from 1619 to 1965, that's 345 years. Somebody's gonna check my math. That's around 340 years, let's say, right? Where, as my brother pointed out to me today, that was 345 years where there was white affirmative action. When there was not the affirmative action that gave black people opportunities. Before then, everything was because we weren't allowed everything. Everything.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_05Everything.
SPEAKER_01So much so that it didn't have to be spoken.
SPEAKER_05It didn't have to be spoken. And but but wait a minute, but it was law. It was law that black students couldn't go to certain universities that black students couldn't get it, it was law. So it wasn't like somebody just decided, it wasn't like a corporation who said, No, you can't, I'm not gonna hire you because you were black. It was law.
SPEAKER_01So until 1965, we we couldn't go to certain universities, we couldn't live in certain places, places, all of that.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, law, legal. Yeah, we couldn't marry couldn't marry and marry legal. These were the laws of the United States. So when people say, Oh, this is not America, where's the evidence that this is anything? This is this is exactly what America is what America is. Exactly.
SPEAKER_01I know Justice Thomas mentioned something um to the effect that um he wanted to um return to the unbiased constitution. I may be paraphrasing.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01And Justice Brown and Justice Sotomayor, in their minority opinion, said the constitution has never been unbiased. It was built on the fact that blacks were three-fifths of a human being.
SPEAKER_03Right.
SPEAKER_01We were never, the constitution, this whole country was built up of inequality, right, of subjugation, right, of domination, and white supremacy, white supremacy.
SPEAKER_03Right, right.
SPEAKER_01So in writing this decision, they um have determined that affirmative action should not, or I should say, um, race should not be used as um a factor in determining whether uh in admissions. However, they made no mention of legacy admissions. Or veterans, or all the other, yeah. Or speaking of veterans, I'm not sure if you know this because this was nuanced in their decision today, but they said that their decision applies to all universities except military institutions.
SPEAKER_04Wow, really? What is that about?
SPEAKER_01So just think about this. As many blacks as want to enter our military institutions, come on in. So you can man our bunkers, fight our wars, get connected in a military way. But if there's an institution for academic prowess, yeah, we gotta we gotta tamp that down.
SPEAKER_00I mean just think of the implications of that something to so specifically make that exception.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, yeah, it's a it's uh so so when I was looking at the numbers, I was like, okay, 365 years where just by default, just by default, white people get in, black people don't get in. By default. In 1965, they say, okay, you can't discriminate against um uh race, religion. Um there were I forget all the rest. Anyway.
SPEAKER_01This is not a this is not an intellectual Was that the uh equal protection clause?
SPEAKER_05Yes, that's that's what it was, right. And so it's been sixty years since then, roughly sixty years. And they to believe that in the 60 years since then, and believe you me, you you know that it's not all been um butterflies and and daisies over the over that period of time, when you compare those numbers, that just like hit me right between the teeth. It's like now you decide that despite all of the disparities that have been created in those 365 45 years and since 1965 there was some attempt to rectify some of that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_05And now you say that it ought not be that way. Like I just don't I just don't get it. So I want to mention something that um I don't think I've ever told you, but when I was um freshman year at Penn we were um I was in a dorm that was only freshmen. It was one of the high-rise dorms, and so you know, get together, there's parties and things like that, and um and um these are people from all over the world, all over America. Like hold hold please. Okay, listen, uh we're not gonna laugh at w we're not gonna laugh at this, okay? This is just okay? It got it got it got broken in the suitcase. I I had to make it happen. So I put some tape up on there. So it's working. That's all. It's working. Don't let me. Nothing, nothing to see here. Nothing. I can turn like this. Nothing to see here.
SPEAKER_01But you were saying it.
SPEAKER_05That's all I'm seeing. And you know, so we're all kind of getting to know each other. And they're they're people, I've met people who had never, never met a black person before. A couple people, actually.
SPEAKER_01So by the time they got to be 18 years old, freshman in college, they've never met a black person?
SPEAKER_05Never met a black person.
SPEAKER_01Oh my gosh. Never met a black person, much less spoken to one, much less being in a university with one, not much less being on the same, you know, so that means that the only exposure that they had to people of color or black people was what they saw on TV.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Or rumors or music that they might have heard and they had no personal experience. And you know, and and I'm um I don't want to cut you off too much. I'll allow you to return to that. But what that reminds me of, and I've been thinking about this, what this decision does, it makes me wonder well, what is the reason that people go to university? What is the goal of higher education? Uh, you know, it's supposed to set you up to be an ambassador of the world.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01It's the place where you can spend four years getting to understand a diversity of people, of thought, of culture, um, the richness of different communities. And I can't even imagine what universities may look like in a decade from now.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Or in um, you know, our children or our grandchildren, what their universities are going to look like.
SPEAKER_03Right.
SPEAKER_05Well, I mentioned that about these um people that I met uh freshman year, and this is me, you know, I'm coming from Brooklyn, Jamaican, and I want to talk about some of that immigrant stuff too. Um and come to this huge Ivy League university. Um and it was more than once, more than twice, I would say probably five or six times if I just kind of imagine back and look at remember some of the faces and where I was when this was presented to me, that I was only there because of affirmative action. And it used to bother me and I and and my mother my mother kind of set me straight and she said, What if you were? That doesn't make you any less any less um uh valid, any less smart, any less worthy of being made. Any less worthy. So so what? That's not something that you should feel any shame about if you were or weren't. It's it should not be you should not be ashamed of anyone else who is. If you find out that you were not, it you shouldn't be ashamed if you were. Because so what? That's what it was there for to give other people opportunities that came to be.
SPEAKER_01They might not have otherwise had.
SPEAKER_05They may not have otherwise had, not because of a lack of intelligence, but a lack of access.
SPEAKER_01And I think that's where people misunderstand this whole concept. They get the sense that if you were at University of Pennsylvania, you were not worthy of being there. You were not intelligent enough, but you got in solely because you're an underrepresented minority. Right.
SPEAKER_03Right.
SPEAKER_01And that's not the way that admissions work.
SPEAKER_03It isn't the way that they work.
SPEAKER_01You know, you have to be academically sound in order to be even considered for admission. And then they take a second look at what some of the factors that you are or you've had in your life that would make you a good fit for their university.
SPEAKER_03Right, right.
SPEAKER_01You know, Ern and I had a lengthy conversation about this earlier as well. Now, Ernest grew up in Ghana. Neither of his parents were ever educated. And I'll just say of the five children that their parents had, three of them are physicians. And Ernest just recounted a story that he's told me several times of his studiousness and his tenacity and how hard he worked. He said that he had to take an SAT, and English was not his first language, and he was not used to taking bubble tests, he was used to being tested in essay form. So he recalls them asking some questions about baseball innings, and he said that he had never even heard of an inning. What's an inning? Because baseball is not a sport that is common in Ghana, they play football or soccer or or cricket, or cricket. So Ernest took his ACTs. He did not, his parents were not, they didn't have money, so he did not have prep courses. He studied through his own will and intelligence and applied and got into Cornell. He got into Brown and he was waitlisted at Yale. He decided to go to Brown.
SPEAKER_03Right. Right.
SPEAKER_01So just think about the studiousness that is required, that this the type of student and study habits that Ernest has had to acquire in order to get into an American Ivy League institution without having the benefit of prep courses, parents who were literate, etc., etc.
SPEAKER_03Right, right.
SPEAKER_01So you can't tell me that he did not deserve to be in a university with students who made it from legacy admissions, um the finest prep schools, etc. etc.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01And I can go on and on about him getting into his medical school and this, this. I mean, if anybody um deserves to be there, somebody like him does.
SPEAKER_05Yeah. And and here's here's um something that came to mind too is um the idea is that it should be the best people, it should not be race, race, race should not be a factor, it should be the best person. But I ask you, do and you know, um Ernest'er Ernest's um uh journey was nothing less than miraculous, remarkable, like extraordinary, extraordinary. Um should not have to be extraordinary to get something that other people get just ordinarily. Just you know what I mean? Just just just get good grades, or just you know what I mean? Yeah. If there are things that are placed in the way of certain children so that they can't succeed to the level that other people succeed, even to reach the criteria to get into these schools, even to so what I'm saying is that there are other ways of of judging someone's intelligence, right? It doesn't have to be through these taking these standardized standardized tests or things like that. The fact that, well, everyone takes these standardized tests, these tests are not necessarily designed for people who get their wisdom in in other ways. Do you know what I mean?
SPEAKER_01Right. But not only that, it these standardized tests, which is a reason why many of the universities are getting rid of that, um, it doesn't determine whether or not you're a good fit for their university. Right, right. It doesn't determine whether or not you can be successful and graduate with an advanced degree from that university.
SPEAKER_05Exactly, exactly. I remember when um we were doing university hiring while I was at Cisco, I was responsible for that in my organization, and um so I was responsible for bringing in candidates and then um putting certain candidates in front of certain managers for them to for them to um interview and so on. And we made decisions that we were not going to only look at grades. Grades is a factor, but for example. And there was one one um young woman I remember, um, she struggled um one year in school, and it came to it came to be known that it's because something happened to um her parent. Um one, I think one parent had passed away, something happened to the parent, and she had to go back to work to take care of her siblings and then came back to school. Now that's somebody that I want to hire. Right, right. And the fact that her grades were affected by that. I want someone who's gonna have the wherewithal to do what is required and the grit and the grit. And have developed grit. And so to say, to have the idea that that person Right, that person was less qualified than someone who had a 3-5, and you know, do you know what I mean? Or three nine. Yeah it's just, it's just kind of just a just a really silly notion, and it's something that people just say just to say something. Um, it's it's almost like a sound bite, but it has no meat behind it. It has no meat behind it because, you know, that is not the only way that people um are qualified for something, is is how well they did in these quote-unquote standardized ways that that we look at this.
SPEAKER_01Um and and and I think the bottom line about this whole thing is really what Mark said is that you may take away this affirmative action from the books, but let's not make any mistake. Affirmative action is alive and well, yeah. It's just that all you've changed is who's going to benefit from it. Exactly. And I think that the bottom line is that the universities and the cultures and the population at large, meaning the whole population, right, is gonna be at a deficit as a result of it.
SPEAKER_03Oh, yeah, absolutely.
SPEAKER_01I don't I would not want to be at a university or in a workforce or in any setting where there's just homogeneous thought. What's the point of that? Experiences or yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_05Yeah. Um so you mentioned Mark. Um Mark is um the younger of my two brothers. Um he's older than me, I'm the baby, but um so you know, he's someone who's he's really and gosh, I get um just so he's a real straight shooter, right? Nothing much ruffles his feathers. He's very, very, very politically astute and always plugged into news sources around the world. He's always had um Al Jazeera and um the BBC and um Jamaican Jamaican radio and the Gleaner and and anyway. He gets his news from all over the world. And he was the first person to text me this morning um about this and uh you know, he said he had to take a mental health break. A mental health break. And he left work and went to a um a coffee shop in his area that um he always meets interesting people there, and he met someone who has a mentoring program um and they serve primarily African American um young young folks. And he as he was talking to Mark, they'd never met before, he asked whether Mark would consider being a mentor. And um and he said yes. And as we continued talking what became apparent is that, you know, there sometimes when these things happen when you feel like um the air is being sucked out of your chest, you know what I mean? When you know, like what else? What else? What he recognizes the thing to do is to help other people. You know, you still you still have your gifts. You there's still someone whose life you can you can impact in a positive way.
SPEAKER_01Right, right. When you feel helpless.
SPEAKER_05When you feel helpless in a larger sense. When you feel helpless, comma help.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_05And I was so um I was so proud of him because he he he said something. Um, oh, the guy asked him, he was like, oh Mark, uh, you know, have you ever considered um I'm talking like him, this is not what the guy sounds like. Um it's a white guy nobody, he said, have you ever considered podcasting? He was like, nope, I'll leave that to my sister. That's my sister's, that's my sister's platform. But um, so he said, but would would you consider, you know, um be being a mentor? And that he could do. So he found the thing that he could do, and you could tell it lifted his spirits, just the potential, um, the possibility, the future, um that he could make more positive in his own in his um you know, small way, that that um that really helped him. And he mentioned a few things that that he was going to do. And so it's um it's really it's it's really um it's really something else. I tell you what, when I heard out of heard about it, the first thing that I wanted to do is you know, I have a small group of um white friends. I know I have a lot of white associates, but I have a small group of white people who are friends, who are who I who I consider friends, confidants, um, who I often send things to so they know, so they're in the know because my belief um my lived experience is that they will take information and bring it into their world, right, in a way that could be helpful um overall. And so um I I thought about them and what I might want to say to them to make them kind of you know, in a way, feel the weight of it, and um to not think, oh, because you know, Angela's out of school, or this isn't something that directly would impact me per se. My children are out of school, that that we don't feel it, you know. We're we're a community, we're not a monolith by by any sort of thing.
SPEAKER_01And you want people who who say they care about you and who who you care about, you want them to try to understand how it impacts you, you know, how what I've always said, and you I bring it up enough that um it it still affects me so deeply. I remember when Trump was running for the first time, and I mentioned um to uh a white friend of mine that his presidency makes me fearful, would make me fearful, fearful. And I just remember her saying, like, what do you have to be afraid of? You know? And I tried to explain to her. She was like, she is a friend. Um but I tried to explain it to her, and she really, I know she never got it and and didn't want to speak about it because speaking about race and issues such as that, um, I knew she wasn't prepared to hear it. But to this day, it still hurts me.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, sure.
SPEAKER_01It still hurts me because someone who I love and I know she loves me, yeah, I would think that she would have had the courage to hear about my concerns.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01But but it's difficult, yeah. But we do hard things for people we love, right?
SPEAKER_05Yeah, and your concerns are difficult too. It's like um uh yeah, so another reason why I wanted to reach out to them is is that I remember that um when I was at Cisco, one of the leaders of the um black employee um resource organization, um we held a big kind of what we call uh town hall to talk about um at the time what was going on, there was um a series of um violent actions by police against um young um black people, and it was really affecting our organization, CBP Connected Black Professionals. Um and so we held this forum and um it it just grew. The since I created the meeting, I could see to whom the meeting invite was forwarded. And so I saw it go all the way up the ladder, I saw it go to to the CEO and his direct reports, and so some of them attended the meeting. And one of the one of the things that um came to light is that in more than one occasion they were surprised that the things that were happening, let's say, on the street in in communities, they didn't think that they affected us well educated, um uh high income black people.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_05They didn't think that yeah, they didn't they didn't think that that we were them and they were us.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_05You know, and so the idea that it would be it would impact us as a workforce they couldn't imagine, they couldn't understand that. And you know, there there's there's ignorance, and and this is another thing that I discovered at at Penn freshman year, is that there's there's ignorance. Um, ignorance has different forms. You know, one of the people who had never talked to a black person before, he became a friend, you know, and he didn't talk to a black person before. He never talked to a black person before. That was just a fact. So he had a lot of questions. He had a lot of questions. He had a lot of questions. And I had to hair all the things. Why do you why do you straighten your hair and then curl your hair? If you're straightening it, why do you curl it? All right, just okay, just leave me alone. Let me eat. Um but so there's that type of what I call ignorance. It's still ignorance. Not knowing, right? Not not knowing. Um and um and then there's the ignorance. Well, you really ought to, you could. Google wasn't around at the time, so I give people a lot less grace now. But you know, there's so many opportunities to to learn things that you um, you know, that your friend group or or whatever, yeah, um, you wouldn't hear it from them. There are ways that you can learn now that that's it. If they're that interested. If they're that interested. If they're interested, yeah. Exactly, exactly. But you know, when was this 19 um 81, 82? Um, and so there there is that, and I'm always willing to address that type of ignorance, right? Um maybe now I'm more willing to say, well, this is what I want you to go search on and learn something about, and then come back to me because I'm not your Google. Do you know what I mean? And I'm tired, and this stuff is triggering, you know, and I can't be that for you all the time because, you know, I'm I'm worrying about my children. Do you know what I mean? And so, you know, not every issue you come to me to figure out, but I understand that there is there is that type of ignorance, and I just wanted to have my white friends not be a part of that group, that they would understand that this affects um me, their friends, someone they love um very deeply, and so they can impart that to their friend group or or their own children. One of them has a um two um two of them have young children.
SPEAKER_01Um, and so yeah, so anyway, that just reminds me also of a um one of my colleagues, my partner at work, um relatively close, a um a white guy, and we were speaking one time about one of these issues, it could have been about Trump, um, because he was a uh unabashed Trumpster. So we would sometimes have these conversations, you know, about it. And um, and one time he said to me, Well, I don't see you as black.
SPEAKER_00That thing, that right, you know, and I said, Well, then you don't know me, then you don't see me. How could you not see me as black?
SPEAKER_01Right, right, yeah, you know, and he thought he was doing you a favor to release you from your color, and and and and and that means that you've never even considered a whole my whole experience, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00You know, yeah, yeah, that I mean that right there. I see you as orthodox. I'm not gonna offer you a bacon sandwich.
SPEAKER_05Not a bacon sandwich, Leslie. Stop it. Um you know, I'm just I get it, yes.
SPEAKER_01You're absolutely disrespectful. Oh, you're absolutely right. You're absolutely right. I do my best to see him and others as the whole person.
SPEAKER_05Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. If I care and I do, sure, sure.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, for real. Yeah, so but but I do that that that is a telling statement that I think a lot of people experience.
SPEAKER_01You know, people put folks in categories, so we only think of black people as who we see on the evening news, yeah, or who we see in rap videos, right, or who we see, you know, people talk about. Um and we don't see they don't see us in in in our entirety, yeah. They compartmentalize us conveniently, right, right, right. You know, of course I'm a physician, but I'm a black physician, so that means that my whole experience through medical school and in the practice of medicine is different than his. Right, right, yeah, you know, and it informs how I doctor, sure, how I treat my patients, yeah, what I think about when I go home. What I think about when I go home. Yeah. You know, all those things. So if you don't see me as a black person, then you're missing a lot. A lot. And if there are no black people in the university that you go to, you're missing a lot. Just what would a philosophy class be like if you don't hear about experiences like how Ernest grew up and what he had to do in order to sit next to you in your class?
SPEAKER_05Right, right.
SPEAKER_01You know, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_05You know, I see where I just can is there time for me, is there is there one, is there time for me to talk about one other related thing or not?
SPEAKER_01You're missing your class.
SPEAKER_05I know, I know. I have a I have a eight o'clock, but um I I I just want to say something to the black and brown immigrants out there. I know I know that there's a part of the way that a a dominant belief in our culture is that we're better than black Americans. And yet we come here we take advantage of these uh opportunities that were hard fought for. And some of us have to fight for it, because Stokely Carmichael and Jirley Chisholm, you know, these are people from the Caribbean and many others. But we come here and we have this attitude of of um being better than you know, having this elevated attitude comparing ourselves to um black Americans. And that's another thing that I was thinking about when I heard this result is because you know that affects that affects the diaspora coming to America. Right? It's it's you know what I'm saying? And so you know, we all we're we're all in the fight, and we can't just think that the opportunities that we've had here they were not that the groundwork wasn't laid by someone. Someone who they now look at and say, you know, you you you're you're it's it's because of laziness why you don't have what you have type of what we have and what you haven't done, what we've done. I'm talking about Caribbean, African, um, South South Asians. I'm talking about black and brown people who come here with an attitude, and y'all know um even if you you personally don't feel that way, you know that that's a part of our culture, and it's so freaking wrong. It's just it's uh so anyway, just one to get that into. Just one to get that into. But yeah, I gotta go to my class, Les.
SPEAKER_01People come here with a green card, and they're taught to assimilate to American culture. But remember, American culture is the dominant culture, it comes with it, it's racist, racist laws.
SPEAKER_05We're taught those things at home too, Les. Sure, sure. Because the all the stuff that is put on all the media is exported.
SPEAKER_01When you want to become Americanized, yeah, yeah. That's what these things mean. So it's a lot to think about, and we need to revisit this, Ange. We will. It's not it ain't over.
SPEAKER_05It ain't over. But I thank you, Les. I know that this this stuff is, you know, it's heavy, and and I know sometimes I want to just go under my pillow and just um like I did. But um, yeah, but I know that you're well, I know that you're coming from two um long shifts, and um, but I know that you also, because we talked about whether you had the stamina to talk about it, and I'm grateful that you said yes, because I wouldn't have forced you, because sometimes we do need to just suck our thumbs and you know, just kind of just baby ourselves and yeah, and you know, just just get a get a pacifier and just soothe ourselves in whatever way we can. So I appreciate that, and I love you.
SPEAKER_01Oh, thank you. And you better get to class. All right, so this has been another episode of Black Boomer Besties from Brooklyn, Brooklyn. Bye.
