58 | Unraveling Patriarchy with Anna Malaika Tubbs: A Quest for True Democracy

Have you ever wondered why women’s stories keep disappearing from history—and what that means for our lives today?

In this episode of The Art of Badassery podcast, I talk with two-time New York Times bestselling author and sociologist Anna Malaika Tubbs about her book Erased: What American Patriarchy Has Hidden From Us and how patriarchy was intentionally designed into the United States’ founding structures to keep power with white elite men through rights like land ownership and voting. 

Anna shares how her global, nomadic upbringing shaped her belief that change is possible, and she opens up about personal hardships, including losing her mother at 29 and facing sexism, racism, and ageism in the spotlight as her husband rose in politics. We discuss how American history is a constant tug-of-war between those defending the original social order and those fighting for a real democracy, why Black women have been central to recognizing the system as constructed, why some women still defend patriarchy through proximity to power, and what it looks like to stay spiritually grounded while taking action. 

Connect with Anna Malaika Tubbs

• Website - https://annamalaikatubbs.com/
• Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/annamalaikatubbs
• New Book Erased: What American Patriarchy Has Hidden From US 
• First Book The Three Mothers: How the Mothers of Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, and James Baldwin Shaped A Nation

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

If the Constitution removed the protections of slavery, right, and like removed the disrespect of indigenous nations, et cetera, and used persons to include every person in the United States, and we actually had a shot at the democratic experiment, that's what I'm really interested in seeing. So I don't necessarily think that the direct opposite of a patriarchy is matriarchy. One, because I don't define patriarchy as simply being men against women, but more so that it is that one group of people is given power over all other groups of people, and then power is removed from them, particularly through the right to vote and be heard. But what we're actually trying to accomplish is that everybody in our nation has power because that's when you live in an actual democracy.

SPEAKER_00 0:56

Hi there, I'm Jen Cassetta, your chief badass three officer. If you're feeling drained, hesitant, stuck in self-doubt, or you just have a case of the vlogs, the Art of Badasserie podcast is here to help you unleash your mojo once and for all. We'll provide you with tips, techniques, and real-life examples of how you can kick heads in all areas of your life. You'll learn how to flex your mental muscles, rise above fears, and turn setbacks into superpowers. So let's enter the dojo and let's get to work.

SPEAKER_01 1:32

Hello and welcome to the Art of Badasserie podcast. I'm Jen Cassetta, your chief badassery officer, and today I have a super badass guest. Her name is Anna Malaika Tubbs, and I met Anna recently at a Happy Women Dinners event, an author event where she talked about her book, Erased. We are gonna talk about Erased, but let me give you a little more background on Anna first. Anna is a not one, but two times New York Times best-selling author. Anna, that's my goal. Just one time. I'll take one. You got two. And a multidisciplinary expert on current and historical understandings of race, gender, and equity. She has a PhD in sociology and a master's in multidisciplinary gender studies from Cambridge. Not impressive at all. With also a degree, an undergrad degree at Stanford, right? Yeah. So amazing, so brilliant. Her articles have been published by Time magazine, New York Magazine, Newsweek, The Guardian, and others. Her first book, called The Three Mothers, How the Mothers of NLK Jr., Malcolm X, and James Baldwin Shaped a Nation, came out in 2021. And her second book, Erased, What American Patriarchy Has Hidden From Us, came out just in May of 2025. Her TEDx talk has been viewed two million times. My goodness, Anna. Seriously, hashtag goals. Welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_02 3:10

Thank you so much. Thank you. And I admire you. I'm trying to get to all the places you've been speaking at. So it's a mutual feeling.

SPEAKER_01 3:18

One day, I'm just putting it out there, universe. We will share a stage somewhere in the world, right? That would be amazing. I heard Anna speak, like I said, at a happy women dinner event. If you don't know what that is, folks, sign up for the emails, go to the website. She's got author events in LA, Northern Cal, New York. Sometimes I've seen Dallas or virtually. You can tune in from anywhere. And she just has really brilliant minds like Anna. Come and share about their book and have these discussions. And this is this is just what we need. We need more community, more women in community talking about different topics. But I like this topic specifically. What the American patriarchy has hidden from us. Where do we even begin on a bit you? Let's be mine. Yeah, take us back. What what tell well tell me about your upbringing? Because I think that obviously tied into why you chose this path.

SPEAKER_02 4:22

Definitely. Yeah. So I was born in the United States in Albuquerque, New Mexico. But my parents really really wanted to show us the world as much as possible. This was very important to them. One, because my mom was born and raised in Clarkston, Washington, and she always dreamed of having a more global experience and kind of breaking away from some of the small town mentality, even though she loved where she grew up, but she wanted to explore more. And my dad was from Ghana, or is from Ghana, I should say, and he met my mom in Sweden, actually. That's where they fell in love. And they wanted to move around the world in this kind of nomadic lifestyle. So they prioritized that. And if a teaching position opened up somewhere, they would go and do that. If they could consult somewhere, they would go and do that. So I grew up in Dubai, Estonia, Sweden, Azerbaijan, Mexico. I went back and forth to Ghana, where my dad was from and is from. And I just saw so many different ways of living. And when we moved back to the States, the University of Wyoming had just started an international law program that recruited my parents. And so we ended up in Laramie, Wyoming for four years. And then, which I say is the most exotic of all the places that I've lived. I loved it, but what an interesting kind of sociological study. And then after Laramie, Wyoming, I went to boarding school in Indiana because my parents took projects abroad again. And then I ended up in California for undergrad, went back to England for my graduate work, and now have been in California since. So I've always been very third culture, you know, kind of that kind of experience and seen so many different ways of living, of people organizing themselves, of policy. So everything feels very possible in my mind as a result of that.

SPEAKER_01 6:18

Oh, that's such a great way to view the world. Very possible. And positive. I like that. I'm a very positive person, very optimistic. Then, you know what I love so much because I listened to your book over the last week. You would say like something really positive about, you know, obviously it's a heavy topic, but you'd say something positive, and then there's a lot of however.

SPEAKER_02 6:42

In order to get there, yeah. Because it's not guaranteed. We can get there if we're willing to do the work, but it won't just come to us. So I think that's always the kind of part that you have to attach to positivity is how are we going to achieve those outcomes? How do we have faith in something that could happen and how do we work for that thing to happen? Because I think plenty of people, especially during scary times, can just say to themselves, it's all gonna be okay, it's all gonna be okay. And then they're not participating in getting us to that okay place. So I think the reason I feel so positive is that I see my work contributing to getting us there. So that's why it feels like we're on this path. I'm part of this larger team of good people who want us all to be able to take care of ourselves and our loved ones. How beautiful.

SPEAKER_01 7:30

I'm I'm already inspired. Um, because right now we're we're watching a lot of like really terrible, ugly things come up in the news from the Epstein Files, you know, all just really, really dark. It seems like things get really, really dark. And I have friends that you know, I'm I'm observing, right? And some people are literally like not watching, not not participating, not don't want to know. Other people are going down rabbit holes and spiraling out, and I find myself like, you know, in between there. But it's just really interesting to have this positive approach to it all. But most people that have come onto this podcast have chosen that path to be a black belt in bat in badassy because they've either seen the dark side or experienced the dark side. It sounds like you had such an interesting upbringing. What led you to the work specifically? Like, was there hard times that you've gone through here?

SPEAKER_02 8:37

It's interesting because I I really am such an optimistic, positive person. I think that sometimes the way I view any struggle that I've gone through is very much through the mindset of, yeah, and that made me who I am, or you know, so I don't see it all that much as like this thing that feels so heavy. So I think some of the experiences, of course, you know, I lost my mom four years ago. She passed away when I was only 29. The woman whose career not only inspired me, but obviously being one of my best friends, my mother, my confidant. And I always was really walking in her footsteps and carrying her legacy. And I still am doing that, but it's very different now that I don't have her physically here anymore. And I think that's an experience, of course, of just intense grief. There's something so particular about losing a parent, but especially I think your mother. And I also just really see myself as somebody who thinks, okay, so what does that teach me about life, you know, and the questions I'm supposed to be asking about how do we live and for what and the larger purpose of it all? I think I learned some of these things earlier as a result of that. I would even say, you know, moving from country to country, some people would say, wow, that's really difficult. You know, a lot of times when I mention that, people say, How did how did you do that as a kid? You know, you had to be the new kid all the time and you had to start over all the time, and you had to leave your friends that you'd made to enter places sometimes where you didn't even speak the language, right? And so I could frame it that way too, and say, Yeah, what a struggle to walk into an all-Spanish speaking school in Mexico when I didn't speak a word of Spanish. But on the way I guess my brain often reframes it is wow, what a cool experience that within two months I was then speaking fluent Spanish. The other part of the struggle, I suppose, is the fact that I, and there's not the struggle part, but it's related to it. My husband and I are college sweethearts. And when we met in college, we both had this journey that we were on, both of us big dreamers, both of us wanting to contribute to this larger social justice movement. But he ran for office very early on in the relationship. He ran to be a city council person in Stockton, California, his hometown. So he was 21 years old at the time. I was 19. Oh my God. I would we were both still in college. His campaign overlapped with his senior year and a little bit into the year after. And he won that campaign, which was so wonderful and amazing, but it also put us in the spotlight very early on. And I experienced a lot of the sexism and racism and ageism that comes up when you are being analyzed, and especially next to a man who everybody is saying is one of the rising stars of the Democratic Party. And that's such a beautiful thing. There were two documentaries made about him, but it quickly made me have to stand up and define my story because it was already becoming very obvious that other people were going to try that, try to do that for me. So I often experience people saying things like, Oh, he's the brains and you're the beauty. Like these statements that were just like, let's put her in a box. People telling me, you know, just get used to it. Your opinion doesn't matter. Like, just play your role. And other people, even when they thought they were complimenting me, saying things like, Wow, he's so amazing, and you're the woman behind the great man, which I hate when people say, behind every great man is a great woman because we're not behind them. You know, like Michael and I work so collaboratively, we support each other. We've always been supportive of each other's dreams. So I really had to fight that constantly. And I was, again, 19 years old, like this was very early on. So his second campaign he ran for mayor of Stockton, and this was only four years later, right? So probably a little bit older when he became the youngest mayor of a major American city in American history. I'm like everybody was paying attention. So I just really had to stand up for myself. And I've always been obviously so proud of what he's accomplished, and the erasure has not been his fault. But we as a society don't realize how often we are confining women, defining women, controlling women. And that was thrust upon me at a very early age. So that's another one of the struggles I think I'd I would say I've come up against. And the last thing that is coming to mind for me now is the fact that everybody kind of assumed that I didn't have my own passions or my own talents. I think I'm often underestimated. One, because I am a black woman, two, because I'm young to have done the things that I've done, three, because I have this high-pitched voice. So there's all these people who have these assumptions. I think maybe some people perceive me to be attractive and beautiful. So then they don't at all, in their minds, it's very confusing to them that I have three degrees and that I write about American history and sociology and that I'm a very proud nerd. And I think I'm constantly having to come up against that. No matter how much I accomplish, I have to kind of get over this barrier of people initially thinking, oh, she's so cute and dumb, honestly, is what I think I'm up against a lot of.

SPEAKER_01 14:14

And I think we're all up against that in some way, right? All of us women and out there listening are up against this erasure in in our own ways. So let's start diving into the book. Well, first of all, I just want to say, can you just we're gonna talk about erased your second book, but can you just share with folks um what your first book was about quickly?

SPEAKER_02 14:37

Yes, my pleasure. I love talking about my first, but baby. Excuse me. So it's called The Three Mothers, How the Mothers of MLK Jr., Malcolm X, and James Baldwin Shaped a Nation. It's about Alberta King, Louis Little, and Bertus Baldwin. And all three of them, incredible women who did what their sons later became famous for before their sons were even a thought in their mind. So Alberta King marched and led boycotts, and her parents were the leaders of the famous Ebenezer Baptist Church. So she was born into this church community that always saw their faith as being intertwined with social justice. So her description sounds almost exactly like her son, but nobody knew that before my book. Then Luis Little, Malcolm X's mother, was a radical activist. She was a Marcus Scarvey follower. She was one of the lead organizers in this movement. Her and her husband met each other because they were both organizers and they were sent strategically to the Midwest to really incite the revolutionary spirit of the communities there. And so she's this badass revolutionary that people really had not heard of before my book. Then Bertus Baldwin, she was born in a pretty tragic situation. Her mother passes away either in childbirth or shortly after. And she becomes somebody who's constantly thinking about how do you find the light, no matter how dark your situation might be. She finds that light in her writing and in gifting other people letters where they can make it through the darkest times in their lives as well. And this is during Jim Crow. So she's also thinking about how do we fight against that national darkness and how do we reclaim the light. And so when her son later becomes the famous writer, James Baldwin, and he says that he's a witness to the power of light, and he uses his writing to do that and to be that witness, he's really just following in the footsteps of his mother. So that's the whole premise of the book. It's not what I set out to prove when I initially had the question. I really just wanted to know who the women were. I thought it was interesting enough just to ask who birthed and raised these three incredible men, and their stories deserve to be told. But in the research, and 90% of it is my original research, because there was nothing out there about them really before I wrote it. In the research, over and over again, it became clear these sons really truly walked in the footsteps of their mothers.

SPEAKER_01 17:09

Wow. Beautiful. I just love history. I was never a great historian by any means. And yet I've had now everyone out there, if you remember, Josie Cox came on the book, came on the podcast with Women Money Power. And I remember thinking then, like, I really need to learn more of our even our just US history. Because we we need to look back if we want to change the future, right? We need to know where this all came from. And I think your book did such a beautiful job of teaching us those of us that that aren't great with our history. So let's dive in. Okay. You literally make the case that this country was born on, you know, with the patriarchy baked right into the constitution. So take us back. Explain that.

SPEAKER_02 18:01

Yeah. And the reason I even wanted to write Erased is because when people read that first book, they had this question of how? How is it possible that this happened? How did we not know this information when these men are so well studied and we have dozens of books written about them? How did it take till 2021 for you to tell us that this big piece of the puzzle puzzle was missing? And it was it was for me such an obvious answer, clearly, patriarchy and what causes that. But then I realized, okay, yeah, a lot of people do not understand how patriarchy operates in the United States. It became another moment for me, kind of a moment that I'd seen throughout my life of traveling all over these places and then coming back to the US and really seeing that Americans did not know kind of the fishbowl that they were living in, and that we loved to comment on other places, especially when it comes to patriarchy. Americans love to talk about how men are oppressing women in other countries. And that's also very strategic to keep us from questioning our own, but we don't talk about our own enough. So that's one of the reasons I said, okay, I want to be the person who makes it very clear that we live in a patriarchy and that it was always designed that way. Because we can no longer be shocked and surprised by how it's operating. We actually need to transfer that energy into thinking of how are we going to improve this nation moving forward. And so, even talking about the three mothers, this was very recent history. This is ancient history, very, very recent history. Like Bertus Baldwin's life overlaps with my life. On one end, it overlapped with Harriet Tubman, and on the other end, it overlaps with me. So, all that to say, American patriarchy, here's the definition. Peace. So the founding fathers, when they won the Revolutionary War, we all know they were the underdogs. Nobody was expecting this to really happen. And it's this incredible feat and accomplishment. However, there was this fear that they had that other groups might also carry this rebellion and this rebellious spirit forward and fight for their rights as well, because the founding fathers, as we know, are slaveholders. So they're oppressing people who are enslaved. We know that the monarchy was also patriarchal and that they had picked up on a lot of these habits as well. And so they have oppressed their wives. But to win the revolutionary war, these groups also were participating in the war on both sides, to be honest. But like some were participating for the founding fathers to win. And so, with that fear, they design the constitution, trying to keep power in their own hands. So they say who gets to be considered persons in our nation. So even though the constitution has that kind of language, persons, they are saying that persons is a white elite man. So they say that that person can own land, can vote, can do a bunch of other things, but these are the two most important things. And then they say specifically, not in the constitution, but to each other and in letters, that they're trying to design a republic of men. So they say to their daughters and to their wives in letters that they should not, women should not participate politically by any means. They say that they're aware that, for instance, in France, Parisian women are able to have their own salons and talk about politics, even if they still don't have the right to vote. They at least can express their opinions about it and hold a little bit of power there. That they do not want that in the United States. So they're clear on they know that there's other examples, they know there's other ways of existing and other ways of organizing. They are going to stand firm in patriarchy. So this sets up. This gender binary in the United States, where we have the men who get to do certain things, women who are solely supposed to reproduce the power of men through children. Right. However, this binary that is already very flawed and already limited is leaving out so many different groups of people. It's not considering people who are enslaved. We know that. That's not a controversial statement. We know that because the institution of slavery is protected by the Constitution. So we can't argue with Anna on that. That's clear. We also know that they're not including indigenous people. They're not really including people who are poor white people. They kind of consider to be lesser than them. And that, you know, that this is why literacy tests become very important to them, et cetera. So all of this is set up to leave many people out of being considered fully person in the United States. But those groups are told you might have a chance to join this group in terms of being treated as a human being if you assimilate closely enough to the two groups that we are recognizing. This is when respectability politics becomes very important, where people think, okay, if I can just act like them, if I can just talk like them or do the things that they do or really protect this made-up ladder and hierarchy that they've given me, then maybe I get to ascend it too. So that's when people become much more focused on how do we protect the system rather than dismantle the system entirely, because everybody then individually thinks maybe eventually I can be, I can benefit from it too. I'm gonna be there someday. So this is where the American dream comes in. I can ascend the ladder. It just takes a lot of hard work, but I could get there eventually. And so long as we have a couple of examples throughout American history of these exceptional people and we really celebrate the exception, then you have enough people focused on that dream rather than a collective dream of an actual democracy where everybody is considered a person here, regardless of their status, according to this American patriarchy. Wow.

SPEAKER_01 24:11

I mean, I don't even know where to be. So it's baked into the constitution. Our whole systems are set up to protect white men specifically. Elite important that we say that they consider themselves elite. Right. I noticed you said that. So you said poor white men could didn't have the right to vote or own property.

SPEAKER_02 24:32

They don't have the same right in the sense that there are barriers that are gonna be put in place for them to access those same opportunities.

SPEAKER_01 24:40

And so now here we are. Will it be it's gonna be 250 years this July? So since that document has written, how far have we come, Anna?

SPEAKER_02 24:50

Yeah, yeah. 250 years since the Declaration of Independence. It's a couple years later the Constitution will come out, but still important. It's it, it's still basically the same timeline. And in between that, one of the more important moments for people to maybe look into after this podcast is Shay's rebellion. It perfectly proves what I'm telling you. Where it's like poor white people and like people of color who are rebelling. And everybody's the founding fathers are very concerned about this. So they realize, oh, we really need to get this constitution in order because we weren't able to quell that rebellion as fast as we would have liked to. So everything becomes designed around how do we make sure that these rebellions cannot take place. So, how far have we come since then? So I also summarize American history by saying that really all of the struggles we've seen and even the progress we've seen come down to two groups of people. And I'm not speaking about Democrat or Republican. I'm not speaking about parties right now. One group of people has really wanted to maintain that social order where not everybody is considered person in the United States and therefore not everybody has the right to vote. This is where one group stands. The other group has said that is not democracy, and we want to move closer to the actual democracy that we could achieve if everybody in our nation is considered under the definition of persons, as it's written in the Constitution. That group on this side has progressed our nation. So it's never been that those who wanted to maintain the social order suddenly woke up one day and said, you know what? Actually, I really wanted to share these rights with people suddenly. No, it's always been that the group who could not accept the limited definition of humanity that we were being offered, where they are fighting for us to fully include everybody. And this is why, in particular, black women become very important because black women were the ones who were often cast as the complete opposite of the white elite male. An example of that is when we're told that white women are simply supposed to reproduce the status and the power of men through children, when we look at how the law treated black women and their children, it actually said the complete opposite. In the case of black women, if they were to have children, especially during times of slavery, these children carried the status of the mother. Always. It didn't matter how they came to have the children, especially in these horrific ways in which they were forced to have children. Those children always carried the status of the mother. So this is just one example where black women are told you are the complete opposite, you are completely cast away from any of the benefits of American patriarchy. You're not even close to getting any of this power. And that is why black women have been able to recognize how made up the system is, because it's not divine, it's not some natural order, it's constructed, it's built, it's fabricated, it's made as rules, it's told to us through consequences if we try to defy it. But if you're being told that you're not human, your children don't get to be human either. There is something that happens that says, oh, we're not going to accept that. And in fact, we are going to change this nation to be worthy of our children because they are human beings. They're the most precious human beings and they deserve to be treated that way. So that's when we've seen progress. That's when we see people gaining the right to vote. That's when we see protections or more control over who gets to, you know, get away with their crimes or not, et cetera. And so we've seen that progress throughout American history. And I'll also say that none of it is ever linear in the United States. This is the other thing that people really get confused about here, where they think, okay, great. Women gained the right to vote. Cool. Put a pin in it, it's never coming out. And now we move forward. We, you know, people of color get the right to vote. Awesome, we're really progressing. That's actually never been how American history has progressed. It's always been, okay, we gained something, this group gained something. The other group says, hey, we want to go back. And so we pull. And then there's this constant tug of war. And in reality, even though right now in our nation it really feels like that group that's trying to protect the original social order is winning because, well, the president of the United States is in office. I still see this group that is fighting for progress pulling further ahead. And I think this is the reason we're seeing such a dramatic response, but especially where we're seeing it start to crumble. And we're seeing like the things like the Epstein files, where things are being revealed to us. Yeah. That took incredible persistence. It took people fighting, it took people saying, We are not accepting this cover-up anymore. Yeah. It's been on for decades. Decades. Huge victory. And the question now is okay, so how many people on this side can we get to understand? You need to come over and you need to help us because you should be just as appalled as we are by this information. And now maybe you're finally realizing that system didn't serve you and it didn't serve your children. You need to stop being so focused on ascending that ladder because it's only leading to really horrific things. So where are you going to fall in the next 250 years? Wow.

SPEAKER_01 30:42

Oh my God. I like a million things I wanted to jump in and say, but you're a gift. I'm just like learning so much, listening to you. But okay, so right now I do think I think that all these things coming up to the surface and being revealed is like patriarchy's like last grip. They're fighting so hard because they're being uncovered, right? All the darkness and the sexual abuse. I mean, we can go on and on and on. But today I happen to see a clip of Pam Bondi during a hearing. She starts deflecting and talking about the stock market. And this is this is in front of Epstein's survivors, right? Women that have been abused sexually, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, you know, by these men. Yeah. Have tried to get attention around it for decades, have been ignored, have been erased. And she's deflecting and talking about this. Why is it that some women will defend the patriarchy and act like the patriarchy when right? Right?

SPEAKER_02 31:52

Shouldn't we all be fighting for women's safety? Yeah, I mean, it feels like we all should, and it's heartbreaking every time it happens. But the reason that it happens is that they believe that they as individuals can benefit from the ascending the ladder. I think it's also that, especially a lot of white women, because of how American patriarchy is set up, this, yes, they are oppressed by the men in their lives. This is true, but they also recognize that they are not as oppressed as these other groups that were never fully recognized in that initial binary and in that initial setup. So sometimes it's a very conscious, at least I have some protections in this social order that I can see other people do not have. Or it's subconscious where they are just feeling the comfort and the privilege of being associated with that system that they don't really want to rock the boat. I have this whole theory that, you know, a lot of white women aren't even voting for themselves. I think a lot of times their husbands are just taking their ballots and doing what they please with it. And so I think I really I think we need to look into it. I really think that there's a lot there. But so there's the conscious and there's the subconscious of that. And then there's that individual aspiration, but I could benefit from this. So let me not worry about anybody else. There's something for me to gain by aligning with this, right? Whether that's money, whether that's protection just for me and mine, whether that's this semblance of power that I get to hold. We've seen this historically, and especially, you know, with the KKK, there were a lot of women who felt that at least they had some role to play. There was some power in it, you know, even like cooking for the Klan, like, wow, look how I'm contributing to maintaining this system. Or I, and then justifying it by saying things that further dehumanize these other groups, like, you know, blaming black men, let's say, or coming up with stories that were that never happened. We see this in the example of Emmett Till, where later on, years later, after this child has been murdered, the woman says, I made it up. Right. That's the kind of power that the system grants them. Right. Because the men in their lives are supposed to protect them and and dominate them. But that means that anything that they say becomes powerful. So they cry, so they point fingers, so they say, so they distract from other people that are trying to wake us all up to the fact that this system is the thing that's hurting us the most, that's allowing for children to be all these horrible things to be raped, to be murdered, to be bought, to be sold. And they just don't want to remove themselves from the comfort because they don't think it applies to them. Right. They like to be next to the power.

SPEAKER_01 35:05

Right. Proximity to power. I think that I think you nailed it. That is what so many of us probably don't even realize that we're doing, and we don't realize that it's even a thing inside of us. So and I'm gonna admit something that doesn't sound so great, but you know, growing up when I'm when I was thinking about this, and I grew up in a mostly white suburb of New York, and you know, when I would learn about slavery and how our country was founded, I would, I would, I probably heard it from other people, right? But I probably went something like, oh, my ancestors were Italian, they came here on the boat, they weren't involved in all that. So it's kind of like I felt like, you know, I didn't have that ugliness in me. Yeah, like you're absolved someway. Absolved, thank you. Um, and yet, so what would you say to someone that still kind of carries that? Like, how can we open our eyes and see that this is so pervasive? And how racism and patriarchy are so connected.

SPEAKER_02 36:14

Absolutely. I would say in those examples, well, one, it gives us a really clear highlight of what's happening right now with ICE, right? Where there are many immigrant groups who were able to arrive here peacefully. Yes, there were, there's histories I know of pain, and maybe they weren't always accepted. And initially, Italian people were seen also as people of color. Like there's all this that brings up the arbitrariness of race, first and foremost, but it actually perfectly highlights this notion that some people were going to be allowed to ascend the ladder, depending on how much they could assimilate. And so when you see groups like the Irish or the Italian immigrants, and you look at the difference in the treatment over years of American history, it's a clear symbol of how close can you get to that person that was originally recognized. Can you be white? Basically, yes. And so over time, this definition of whiteness has expanded in order to maintain white supremacy. So you bring some groups into it in order to back it up. Because if enough people see themselves as a part of the marginalized, as a part of, you know, the working people who are keeping everything going as a part of the group that is not being paid enough for their labor, then the system will also crumble. So it's necessary for the system to allow some people in. So what we're also seeing right now with ICE is this is very targeted, obviously, against people of color. People are people who are Italian or who are Irish or who are British or French in the United States, who also enter and don't leave when their visa expires. This is very commonplace, are not the ones who are getting pulled out of their cars right now, whose children are being removed from them. So it it really should be for people. Actually, my family's entrance into this country and our benefit from both white supremacy and the way patriarchy works in the United States that relies heavily on keeping people of color out of this gendered social order is even more reason why I need to lend my voice to this fight.

SPEAKER_01 38:42

Beautiful. Beautifully said. Thank you. I have a just a couple more kind of questions, but as someone also who is what would you say? Like spiritual. I'm, you know, I I don't wanna, I don't wanna almost infect my mind with all of the poison that's going on in the world right now, and even these, you know, these Epstein files, or even just watch it, like literally, my mind was blown this weekend watching this amazing Super Bowl halftime show, Bad Bunny, all in Spanish, such a beautiful cultural event. I'm learning about you know more about Puerto Rican culture, like it was so fun.

SPEAKER_02 39:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 39:30

And then the backlash, it's like, so how what would you say to someone like me and other people that are listening that like how do we stay in the fight to make it a better world? Like, and what are we reaching for? Is it a matriarchy? Is that the goal? Like, what is the goal to dismantle patriarchy? What's left on the other side of that? That's a lot, I know.

SPEAKER_02 39:54

No, yeah. First, I'll speak to the spiritual side of it. For those of us who are spiritual and have a faith in a higher power, that typically means we have a notion of what's gonna happen after this life, right? Like we think something before you have a guess. And that afterlife experience depends heavily on our moral conscience, conscious right now, and what we're willing to do to make sure that we are healing this world, that we are playing a role in making it better. There is nobody who's gonna ascend to whatever it is you could think is gonna happen by ignoring what's happening. So if you're a spiritual person, each reason to say heal this world, heal this world, because it's not the be all end all. There's something else beyond this.

SPEAKER_01 40:41

So and you don't just do that meditating it away, like that is great, and I'm doing it, but then to take action in a to bring more peace and power to those that that need it right now.

SPEAKER_02 40:56

Peace is our goal, right? And this feeling of if this isn't everything, then also maybe I can be less afraid. Maybe I'm supposed to do something right now because I want to either put good karma out into the world or I want the ancestors to receive me proudly, like whatever it is you think is gonna happen after this, being silent about people's struggle right now is not what's gonna get you there. And that's at least that's my opinion, at least. And then in terms of what we're fighting for, the way I summarize it is that if if the constitution removed the protections of slavery, right, and like removed the disrespect of indigenous nations, et cetera, and used persons to include every person in the United States, and we actually had a shot at the democratic experiment, that's what I'm really interested in seeing. So I don't necessarily think that the direct opposite of a patriarchy is matriarchy. One, because I don't define patriarchy as simply being men against women, but more so that it is that one group of people is given power over all other groups of people, and then power is removed from them, particularly through the right to vote and be heard. So I wouldn't necessarily say the fix to that is to give that power to one other group of people to do that to others, even though I would say I don't think that would happen in a matriam leafy. And so I think if I have to choose, I would say matriarchy, like if we need to move fast, let's go with a matriarchy. But what we're actually trying to accomplish is that everybody in our nation has power, because that's when you live in an actual democracy. And so for instance, even though there are things that might seem so impossible to people, they seem very possible to me because I've seen them abroad. If we had mandatory voting in the United States for every eligible voter, including those who have been imprisoned, including, you know, like there are so many people right now where there are barriers to them voting, and where this group that's trying to maintain the original social order makes it so that people can lose their right to vote all the time. There are so many people who cannot vote in our nation right now. So we're not actually seeing a representation of what American people want. This is the reason why it feels so at odds what we're seeing in who's elected, and then when people are taking to the streets, because a lot of people are not being heard right now. So what I'm fighting for is an actual democracy.

SPEAKER_01 43:35

Okay. Sign me up. Sign everyone up on this call. Hopefully, if you're listening out there, I just I really just hope that, you know, no matter what you believed growing up or believe now, that you just listen to this conversation with an open heart and write us. Let us know what you think because I I want to keep this conversation going as much as possible. And if you have questions or comments, Like, write to us. Anna, before we get to your rapid fire questions, can you just tell everyone how they can find you and your books?

SPEAKER_02 44:08

Absolutely. So hopefully my name is in the description of this episode because that's how you can find everything. So my website is Anna Meleikatubbs.com. On Instagram, I'm at Anna Meleica Tubbs. I'm also on Facebook, but I don't check Facebook, it just feeds to Facebook. So if you want to actually talk to me about something, it would be best on Instagram. And my books, again, the first one is The Twee Mothers, How the Mothers of MLK Jr., Malcolm X, and James Baldwin Shaped a Nation. The second book is Erased, What American Patriarchy Has Hidden From Us, and you can buy them anywhere you like to buy books. But I always say that we love to support independent, especially black-owned bookstores.

SPEAKER_01 44:46

Awesome. There's a one called The Lit Bar in New York, I want to go to. I think it's in the Bronx.

SPEAKER_02 44:52

Oh, I love that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 44:54

And there's a bar, like an actual bar, but okay. Four rapid fire questions. Are you ready? Yes. When you were a kid, what was your favorite food? Peanut butter and apples. Ooh, I love that. It still is. Love it. Two, if you could have a drink with anyone, alive or dead, who would it be? And what are you drinking?

SPEAKER_02 45:14

The mothers of my first book, so I could actually interview them. And what are we drinking? I don't drink alcohol much, so I'd say I don't know, a milkshake.

SPEAKER_01 45:27

The mothers of the book. So Louise Little. Go ahead, say them, say them.

SPEAKER_02 45:32

Alergia King, Louise Little, and Bertus Baldwin. And you're drinking milkshakes. And we're drinking milkshakes.

SPEAKER_01 45:37

Love it.

SPEAKER_02 45:39

That's integrated.

SPEAKER_01 45:40

And then third, what's your favorite like self-help book if you read that genre?

SPEAKER_02 45:45

I don't read much of the genre, but I did recently read one by Davy Brown. Oh my gosh, what was the title of it though? Okay, but the author is Davy Brown, and it's all about how you can start these meditation practices and self-care practices if you really don't even know where to begin. And she talks about how grief can be the thing that teaches us how to live life differently. And it's so beautiful. And I'm so sad I can't remember the title right now. But Davy Brown is the author. We'll look it up and we'll get on the list.

SPEAKER_01 46:12

Thank you. And last but not least, what's your favorite hype song? What's gonna keep you going?

SPEAKER_02 46:16

Oh, there's so many good ones. Okay, okay, okay. I need to decide on something. I love the Beyonce Lion King album, the one that went along with the movie. I just find it very inspiring and it's the Afro beats. So something from there, like bigger or spirit. Okay. It's just very motivating.

SPEAKER_01 46:37

We have a Spotify playlist going, so make sure to add one of those songs. Anna, thank you so much for your brilliance, your time, your effort, your energy, what you're putting out into the world. Hopefully, together, all of us, we will be elevating the frequency and vibration of this planet by whatever means possible. Hey, out there, if you haven't subscribed yet, will you do me a favor? Hit that subscribe button, whether you're watching on YouTube and or listening on Apple or Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. It really helps me get the word out to other people. And if you're willing to write a review, that would be even more appreciated. Thank you so much. I love you. And thank you for listening. And thank you for listening with open hearts and open minds. I'll see you next time on the Art of Adasie podcast.