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Quiet No More
My truth about family, life and history. No longer quiet about the truth of feeling alone at school, work and home. A place for women (and men) to hear what being open about what shaped their life and purpose is all about.
About Carmen Cauthen:
Carmen Wimberley Cauthen is an author, speaker, and lover of history, Black history in particular. As a truth teller, she delights in finding the hidden truths about the lives of people who made a difference - whether they were unknown icons or regular everyday people.
Quiet No More
We Must Honor Our History When No One Else Will
"Unseen, unheard. We've lived like that far too long." These powerful opening words set the stage for an intimate conversation with her brother Peele Wimberly, a music producer and record company owner, in this revealing episode of Quiet, No More.
We explore the concept of respect from multiple angles, challenging conventional wisdom about how it functions in relationships and society. "Respect should be given until it's deemed unnecessary," Peele asserts, offering a fresh perspective on human dignity that doesn't rely on power dynamics or hierarchies. Our conversation weaves through personal experiences, family history, and broader societal structures, revealing how respect (or its absence) shapes everything from family interactions to national policies.
I share remarkable stories about our family legacy - pharmacists across generations, land ownership dating back to our four-times great grandfather who amassed 200 acres in eastern North Carolina, and how their mother's family was never enslaved. These personal histories stand in stark contrast to the limited narratives often taught in American classrooms, demonstrating why preserving and sharing such stories is an act of resistance against historical erasure.
The discussion takes unflinching looks at systemic issues - from America's disrespect toward other nations to the capitalist underpinnings of racial hierarchies. We explore how following the money reveals uncomfortable truths about American institutions, including how slave patrols evolved into modern law enforcement and how Social Security initially excluded farm workers and domestic servants. Through it all, my brother and I emphasize the importance of speaking up, voting in local elections, and recognizing privilege within our communities.
Join this powerful sibling conversation that will challenge you to examine your own understanding of respect, history, and responsibility. Then ask yourself: What truths have I kept quiet about that need to be spoken?
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Carmen Wimberley Cauthen is an author, speaker, and lover of history, Black history in particular. As a truth teller, she delights in finding the hidden truths about the lives of people who made a difference - whether they were unknown icons or regular everyday people.
To Learn more of Carmen:
www.carmencauthen.com
www.researchandresource.com
Unseen, unheard. We've lived like that far too long. I'm Carmen Coffin and this is Quiet, no More.
Speaker 2:So hello, this is a new thing. Today I have my first guest and it's his own fault for being here at Quiet no More with his sister. This is my brother, peel Wimberly, who is just an amazing young man. Aw Aw, there's five years difference between us. He has a recording studio and that's where I am. He is a producer and a record company owner. His company is Harmonic Valhalla. Did I say that, right?
Speaker 2:And I was talking about honor and respect, and I finished the first part and he looked at me and he said, well, I feel like respect is, and said something and I thought, okay, well, you come around on the other side of the table and we'll just have this conversation, so let me give you, um, this, this one is going to be a little bit more about respect than honor, and let me give you the definitions that I found. So respect is esteem for, or a sense of, the worth or excellence of a person, a personal quality or ability, or something considered as a manifestation of a personal quality or ability, of a personal quality or ability. Synonyms are honor, homage, reverence and estimation. So deference to a right, privilege, privileged position, or someone or something considered to have certain rights or privileges, proper acceptance or courtesy. And then the third is the condition of being esteemed or honored. So welcome Peele. Let's talk about respect, okay, so tell me what you said, if you remember what you said.
Speaker 3:Oh, I remember, yes, okay. So I feel like respect should be given until it's deemed unnecessary and based on our human condition. We're all here, going through whatever we're going through, learning whatever we're learning, and one of the reasons I think it's important to look at it from that perspective is if you look at it from the other perspective, then there's always power in the situation. So when I say respect should be given, like, I feel like constituents have to respect their authorities, but the authorities also have to respect the constituents. Um, or if you look at it from a gang perspective, they say respect has to be earned. Well, what happens if they don't respect you? You get, you get on. What do they call it? Unalived.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:So, um, yeah, yeah, we have to all respect each other for just for our existence.
Speaker 2:Right, and that's you know. That's important. I've been talking about it in terms of family, but when you consider that we are all part of the human family, then everybody should get respect and it should be an equal thing. And that's what Peel's saying and that's important. It's not, and I'm not saying that you don't respect in terms of hierarchy, but what he's saying also is that hierarchy needs to respect down. So there's a two-way street here. Respect down, so there's a two-way street here. So you respect your elders, but your elders respect you.
Speaker 2:They don't say that just because you're young, whatever you think or say is unimportant, or whatever your feelings are should not be taken into consideration. That doesn't mean necessarily that because they take something into consideration, that they make a decision, if they are in decision-making authority, that they choose to do what you would like for them to do, but they hear what you have to say and they weigh it in. And sometimes that's hard, because a lot of us weren't raised that way. We were raised that whoever's got the authority makes the decision, and they might have heard what you said, but they ignored what you said, and so there's a different that.
Speaker 3:Right, there's also a time factor. Sometimes you don't have time to stop and explain something. You have to make a choice, but I think it's good to revisit it and explain that choice. Uh, and when you're taking let's say you're taking your child's perspective uh, I forgot the phrase Into consideration. Into consideration, yes, you want to explain to them why it might not be the best way to make that choice.
Speaker 2:We could go deep from there, but yeah, yeah, just when we're looking at our country today, there is not, there's a lack of respect for other countries. It's like there's this hierarchy that has been created in the minds of many Americans and the president that America is the greatest, it is the best, it is the biggest. That America is the greatest, it is the best, it is the biggest. And is that true? Were all the countries, all the continents, were they all created at the same time? Should they have equal weight?
Speaker 2:You know, for years and years, when you look at the continent of Africa, those countries were taken over by Europeans, and one of the questions that I've been reading about this week, something that I did not know, was that South Africa, in its apartheid, even though that land was originally African, black African, only 7% of the land is owned by people. No, 7% of the people are white Africans, who are European Africans, who own all of the land, and so they have now a policy of trying to work with that history and repatriate some of the land, and that's causing all kinds of frustrations here in America. It's like we didn't do that with the Indians.
Speaker 3:Right. You know, Well, and that's what kills respect is the power structure? Yeah Right, that's the. That's what kills respect is the power structure yeah Right. So, um, it's hard to think for people who have decided that they own whatever it is they own to want to respect anybody who encroaches on that ownership. So what do we do about that?
Speaker 2:So my part is to tell all history and tell it truthfully, because something has to combat that I would say ignorance. But I don't think it's ignorance. I think it's willful determination that I want to do what I want to do, and that's not the same as ignorance of the truth and so, but there are so many people who are ignorant of the truth, regardless of race, regardless of gender, because that truth has not been taught in our school systems. And of course, that's another pushback is that we don't want to teach the truth, so we don't wipe it out. We're not going to let you tell it, but you can't wipe out what I know and you can't wipe out what I'm sharing, because you don't control me. I am not going to be quiet and, as one of my friends from college said, he didn't understand why I was calling this podcast quiet no more, because he'd never known me to be quiet to begin with. But it is so important for the things that Peele and I learned when we were growing up at home. There were things that weren't being taught in the classroom. Our family history obviously was not being taught in the classroom. Our family history obviously was not being taught in the classroom. Our, the people that we were around and the things that we saw them do. We saw on a regular basis, I would even say daily. We saw black teachers, we saw black pastors, we saw black doctors and lawyers and pilots and all the things. And so for someone to come now and say, oh, you can't do that. We're in our 60s. We've been seeing this for 60 years, so I know that that's not true. And so when I was talking in the earlier podcast about honor and wanting to honor my mother our mother, it's because she made sure that those things stayed forefront.
Speaker 2:Our father was a pharmacist. Our grandfather was a pharmacist. That was on my father's side and he was two generations from enslavement On our mother's side. Our family was never enslaved. On our grandfather, on our grandmother's side of the family, on our grandfather's what four times great grandfather, grandpa Tom. He amassed 200 acres of land in eastern North Carolina and made sure that his children were given land. He made sure that his children, in his will, everybody got some land. Everybody was trained. The boys were trained in a specific trade, but some of them one of those sons sold his land in order to pay for dental school and went on to become a dentist and dean of Howard's Dental School, but the family still owns the land.
Speaker 2:We didn't get rid of land, we didn't get rid of education, we didn't get rid of the importance of any of those things, and it was passed down to our generation. And from our generation down I think there's at least two more generations under us. We have cousins, we have first cousins, we have great-grandchildren. So all of that is still important and you have to share it, you have to teach it. You can't wait on a school system to teach that. You have to teach all of the pieces, the respect, the education, the knowledge about your history. And if you don't know it, then you go look for it.
Speaker 3:What I was going to say is that a good response to your friend would have been well, now I'm speaking with purpose, you know You'd say yeah, and anyone that you encounter who's doing something with purpose. They certainly deserve respect, even if you don't agree with what they're doing. It's the people who are sitting by and just watching and waiting, and whatever lamenting or not, I mean, you still respect them for what they're dealing with as human beings. But then it's time to try and talk them into action.
Speaker 2:Action is important and that is one of the things that too often when I'm talking to young folk, I'll never forget going to the doctor last summer and going to have some blood drawn in the lab and asking the young lady that was drawing my blood, the phlebotomist I said are you planning to vote? Are you registered to vote? And she said oh no, I don't do that, it's not, it's not gonna make a difference. And I thought who in the world raised you? It's like you were out in the wild.
Speaker 2:You had to fend for yourself, because it does make a difference and you know, when people talk about voting today, so many of us think in terms of national elections, but when you consider a local election, there's someone who determines what happens with your water, and we want to be able to drink it, so it needs to be cleaned and purified, and so there's a board that handles water in every district.
Speaker 2:There's a board that handles water in every district, and in our mother's hometown there has been an issue with the water for years and you know, has to deal with somebody in the government, and that's somebody that you probably had to vote for, or if you have an issue with something if you didn't vote.
Speaker 2:I mean, they still have to represent you, but it makes a difference if they can put a face to a vote or a face to a name, or know that you're not the person who's going to be quiet, because they don't necessarily have to pay attention to you. And the other thing that our mother in particular and it wasn't that our father didn't teach any of this, but daddy was always at work at the store, and so we would have these conversations. But most of these conversations were growing up, with mama at home at the dinner table telling us about things that were going on, and one of the things that we learned was, when we affected change or we voiced our opinion, it wasn't just about us, it was about our community. Whatever our community was, whatever our community was if it was our community of playmates, if it was our community of classmates, if it was our community of a larger group of people it was important to have an opinion and to share it with others.
Speaker 3:How are some of the ways that you do that? Today I talk to my coworkers about maybe ways that they're not being treated fairly. I push things to my friends to try and get them to look at different perspectives and consider what somebody else might be going through other than you know trying to be cool, or you know they're set up to make money already. So who's not who in our friend group doesn't have that ability and you're talking about privilege.
Speaker 3:I'm talking about privilege Absolutely Same thing within the music business. I talk about how the business, being part of our capitalist society, is also part of the systemic racism, especially that our Black artists are being treated in the same way that white artists were by their Black record label execs and the managers and all that sort of thing, instead of trying to change the game and do better. It's the same old system. So there's a lot of that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's a lot to unpack there. When we talk about systems and systemic racism, it's what's built into every system that we have, not just the music business, not just when we, even when we just talk about history. The capitalist system is what created the history of America. The history that was written down was written by people who could read and write and people who were doing that to take care of their finances. So if you're able to go back, if you are Black and your family was enslaved and you are able to find out information about them, it's because you were able to go back to the slave records, the sale records of an enslaver and especially those who had large plantations, because they had to keep a track. They had to keep track of where the money was going, and Black people were the money. They were the commodity, just as much as the horses and the corn and the wheat and all those things, and that's hard to think about that. We were a commodity.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, we were three-fifths a human by law. And when that's written into law, that's in the Constitution, right, it was in the Constitution. So when that's written in, that's immediate disrespect, right. And if you're not considering our history based on that, then you're not really getting our true history. You can't. When it's written that way, that means that those people never expected to to respect us, to ever have to deal with us, for us to ever have a voice or have any kind of power in the system. Same thing for women. They never thought that that was going to happen or that they were going to have to deal with that. And you see what's happening now that we're pushing these ideas forward Certain people that don't want to have to deal with it. They don't want to push back, right, and they're the same people, they're the descendants of or they're the same types of people who wrote the Constitution. So and they feel it they don't want to feel that I don't have power or they don't want to feel something that's unfair to them, right.
Speaker 2:It's unfair to their money. Yeah, I don't think they consider it unfair to their personal self. They think it's unfair to the money that they make. It all goes back. You always have to follow the money line and that was something that I had to learn because I think when we were taught things, when we would have these conversations growing up I don't think I recognized and I don't know that mama talked about that it went back to the money. So it's follow the money, always, always, and so when you don't, you don't get the full, the true sense of what's going on. Right, and you know when we, when we read all these articles about the billionaires taking, it's the money.
Speaker 3:It is the money, but money also often is a part of where it's really a big part of people's identities. Yes, so they may not be thinking specifically about the money the people you're talking about are. They're talking about money all the time, but a lot of people aren't thinking about that money as part of the power structure. They're thinking about their identity, their identity.
Speaker 2:But their identity still has been tied to money, absolutely, even the fact when we think about the slave patrollers, which is where the sheriff's offices came from. In America, slave patrollers were poor white men who were hired to chase after escaped slaves, and that was how the sheriff's office came. While it was based on what was in Great Britain, it was specific to money and in that process, overseers and slave patrollers were paid more money in order to subjugate Blacks. Now that says a lot, and it says a lot about the hierarchy there as well. So you will find that a lot of times, the hierarchy in the financial system is poor. Whites are used to make these grandstands and they're the ones who are going to get affected, and we see that in the changes in DEI and immigration.
Speaker 2:Dei. Diversity is not black. Diversity's definition is not black. It is diverse. It is difference, and that is one of the things that's being pushed. We are different and different must mean black.
Speaker 2:Different doesn't mean that you have a disability. Now, I have a disability. I'm considered disabled because I had a rare disease that put me on oxygen, so that's a diverse thing. If you have a family member who's in a wheelchair, that's diverse. They have a hard time getting around where they need to get. And if you consider that if there is a health diversity that takes your money, it's expensive to be sick, and so that pushes down, and so that pushes down.
Speaker 2:A lot of you don't know that, in terms of the Social Security, up until I would say, the 50s, people who worked on farms, or farmers, or housekeepers, maid service, janitorial workers, were not allowed to get Social Security benefits, because that was one of the compromises that was made for in order to get the Social Security Act passed. So you know, there are a lot of things that we don't know, that we need to know because they affect everybody. And you're concerned about the price of eggs today. I like to bake cakes. I'm concerned about them too.
Speaker 2:But think about the people who are making laws or making these changes. They don't go to the grocery store and buy something. They pay somebody else to do that, and as long as they can afford to pay somebody else to do that, they can afford to pay for what they're sending them for. So it doesn't affect their budget like it affects yours. So I've gone way away from respect, but it's all part and parcel of the same thing. Peele, I want to thank you so much for coming on the other side of the table, from the executive producer side, and talking with me and helping people to understand that it's important that we be quiet, no more.
Speaker 1:You've been listening to Quiet no More where I share my journey so you can be quiet.