Lettie Gore is a Black woman, historian, and racial justice educator living in Wilmington, NC. She is also the host and owner of her podcast History Shows Us. Lettie is passionate about telling the often-overlooked sides of history and connecting the past to today’s racial and social justice issues.
What Lettie has to share is crucially important. We all have biases that we view the world through and it is so important to understand different perspectives and different lived experiences than our own.
As Lettie says, "You have to do the work. That's on you. That's no one else's responsibility."
So let's do the work...
Instagram: @sincerely.lettie
Twitter: @sincerelylettie
Patreon: www.patreon.com/lettiegore
Podcast: History Shows Us
Other Resources on Racial Injustice:
American Dream and the American Negro: James Baldwim
Code Switch Podcast: NPR
Check your Privilege: Myisha Hill (IG)
Professor Kena Reed (IG)
Medical Apartheid: Harriet Washington
How to Be Less Stupid About Race: Crystal A Fleming
They were her Property: Stephanie Jones Rogers
Lettie Gore is a Black woman, historian, and racial justice educator living in Wilmington, NC. She is also the host and owner of her podcast History Shows Us. Lettie is passionate about telling the often-overlooked sides of history and connecting the past to today’s racial and social justice issues.
What Lettie has to share is crucially important. We all have biases that we view the world through and it is so important to understand different perspectives and different lived experiences than our own.
As Lettie says, "You have to do the work. That's on you. That's no one else's responsibility."
So let's do the work...
Instagram: @sincerely.lettie
Twitter: @sincerelylettie
Patreon: www.patreon.com/lettiegore
Podcast: History Shows Us
Other Resources on Racial Injustice:
American Dream and the American Negro: James Baldwim
Code Switch Podcast: NPR
Check your Privilege: Myisha Hill (IG)
Professor Kena Reed (IG)
Medical Apartheid: Harriet Washington
How to Be Less Stupid About Race: Crystal A Fleming
They were her Property: Stephanie Jones Rogers
When we talk about the word freedom, and we talk about the word free. We hear these words, our whole lives. What does that really mean though? Freedom for who? Who gets to decide what freedom is?
Michael Bauman:Welcome back to Success Engineering. I'm your host, Michael Bauman. I have the pleasure of having Lettie Gore on. She's a black woman. She's a historian, a racial justice educator. She's the host of her podcast, History shows us. And that's really her passion. It's for telling history's truths, connecting the path to what's going on today with racial and social justice issues. And that's evident in everything that she does, everything that she champions. And so I'm really excited to have you on the show here today, Lettie.
Lettie Gore:Thank you so much, Michael. I'm very excited to be here! Excellent.
Michael Bauman:So I wanted to start off. I mean, you're a historian, you love it. It's, everything that you do, but it wasn't always the case. Right. So you actually grew up hating history. So I I wanna start with that and talk about where the switch was for you. So from hating it to actually going this lights me up, I love this. This is, you know what I wanna study in multiple things.
Lettie Gore:yeah. So I yeah. I grew up not liking history at all. I remember I used to love social studies and I love social studies because you can learn about different countries and that sort of thing. And I remember I was in seventh grade and I did a project on Botswana. And at this time there wasn't Google and that kind of stuff that we used. So I was in the library, looking at these books and all this stuff, and I was like, oh my goodness, everything's so colorful. This is nothing like the commercials and infomercials. They would show on TV of African children starving. Right. I was like, this is amazing. Wow. I had no idea. Right. And so, I remember that impacted me a lot. And then I went to high school and I was like, why am I still learning about all of these old white men and all these people with wars. And then you have three pages that are about the civil rights movement. Right. And so I just did not understand how the history that I would see on TV sometimes through movies or something like that wasn't in the books that I was reading and things I was learning in K through 12. And so I went to college and I went to a community college for two years. And my first history teacher that I had there, he actually was my history teacher for American history, one and two in college. He lectured without a book without a PowerPoint, anything, he just talked the whole time. And I was amazed at his storytelling. He told so much more about history. And then I went to a four year college and I met a professor there, Dr. Glenn Harris. And I'm naming him because he's been very, just instrumental in my life and me becoming a historian. But he introduced me to James Baldwin. And I remember in college, it wasn't just Dr. Harris. It was also other professors, but history was so much more than just old white men fighting battles and wars, there was much more to it. There were many more moving pieces, right? There was seeing the connections. There was all these little facts that actually were huge and very integral to understanding the bigger picture about history. And I was like, wow, this is awesome. Right? This is actually really interesting to me. This makes me want to know more things. We want to dive into doing the research and I loved seeing the immense massive amount of black history that I did not know about that I never learned about in, in that way. And that was just an undergrad. Then I went to grad school and I got master's in history. I loved it so much that I did that and that was very rigorous. It was a very rigorous program because at the school where I went there was no PhD in history, so the professors poured everything into the master's students. and so, that's really the easiest way to answer that question is just, I had professors that saw beyond sugarcoating the history. I had professors who studied history who traveled places. You can't study history, truly study history and not tell the whole story. That's just not how it works.
Michael Bauman:Yeah. I love that. And that's, I mean, that's even part of the reason why, you know a lot of our listeners know, so I grew up, overseas in Papua New Guinea,. My wife grew up in, in Turkey. We both were exposed to those different cultures. We were back in the states and then we decided to move to China partially for that reason, too. And to give our kids the opportunity to grow up in different cultures and experience different perspectives and different viewpoints is really valuable. Both for us and for them as well. And I had Dr. Dana Crawford on who talks about when the patterns of sometimes racism and distinguishing between skin color even begins at such an early age. They'll differentiate at like six months and then you'll see them start to favor different friends and stuff like two years. And that exposure I think is so, so important growing up. So can you talk about, I mean, cuz we, we have this history, right. And for I'm a white, obviously I'm a white male. I fit into that. Like, very privileged part of society. But you know, in our minds, sometimes we think of history as like, oh, it's just the facts of what happened, but can you talk about, get into whiteness, get into how history is written by the winners it's written by the white, male people and what you started to discover in that passion, that passionate discovery around history and black history and things around racism.
Lettie Gore:Yeah. And I'm gonna get right to that. There's something that you mentioned previously about how young children differentiate, and people really don't believe that. They don't believe that children that are six months old start to gravitate towards the white person or towards the black. Like, they don't think that's true, but it is. It's absolutely a fact. And so whenever people ask me, when is it a good time to start talking about racism and justice? As soon as possible, that's always my answer. There's not a right time. It should always be time because we live in a society that is plagued by white supremacy. We're born into a white supremacy culture period. There's no arguing that. People try to argue that with me a lot. And I'm like, there's not no, there's no arguing that we're, this is what we're born into. Right. And so, yeah, I just wanted to mention that part. But as far as whiteness and all of that jazz, yeah. Whiteness is and I want people to understand this this isn't just something that people make up, right? This isn't a, this isn't a jab to shame white people. This isn't a jab to make white people feel guilty. I'm prefacing this with that because that's often what I see people are on the defense. And so this is foreign. This is for you to understand that. In order to even talk about progress in order to even talk about racial justice, you have to choose to confront and acknowledge and accept the fact that whiteness is an entire culture that this society continues to show it favors. So there's also, and I'm gonna go on a rant here, Michael, go for it. but right, is people want to refer to their ancestors or people who came over here from Ireland or from whichever country in Europe they want to name or whatever it is. Right. And I'm not in any way telling people that they should not tap into their cultural backgrounds, but I'm gonna tell you something. And you came over here to the United States. You may have been that at first, and then you assimilated into whiteness. You were able to assimilate into white culture because of your skin color. And that's an entire conversation about race and ethnicity. And those two things being different whenever it comes to certain people. But I just get really frustrated when people say, oh, but I'm not white. I'm Italian. Nah you're white. You are white. People may be listening to this and getting defensive, but no, like you're white because see, I, as you're looking at me, Michael, I am a black woman. There is no arguing that whenever it comes to me, I am a black woman. But there's a book it's called Fatal Invention. It's by Dorothy Roberts. And there's a phenomenal book. It talks about basically the invention of race and how that has benefited our society, particularly white society. So I just wanted to say that for people to go and look that up and read it if they would like, it's a incredible book and it's much, much needed. But something that I often have to tell people is you can't talk about racism and you can't talk about white supremacy without doing your own internal work. Right. And in order to do your own internal work, you have to understand that's gonna come with being uncomfortable. It's not gonna be a walk in the park. That's just not it. And here in the United States, over the last oh seven years, seven, eight years, we've really seen a lot of what many people are shocked about. Right? I mean, a lot of people are shocked at the number or the level of white supremacy. That's been overt. That's been very blatant. It doesn't surprise me at all. Does this surprise me one bit? I've been black, my whole life. Does that mean that I have necessarily experienced the Klan marching through a town? No. Have I seen the Klan before? Yes. But that's not all racism is right. That's not all that it is. And what this society does. This is through propaganda. This is through shows. This is through movies. This is through stories. What it does is it paints this image that white supremacy and racism only show up a certain way. It's white only signs. It's colored only signs. It's the KKK, it's only these things, right? It's only this. It's only calling someone a racial slur. It's only being obviously mean to someone who is a black person, right. Or who is a brown person and you're the white person who's doing the harm. No, that's not all race. Racism is systemic. Racism is in everything in every single way. There's nothing anyone could ever say to me that I cannot trace back to that. And people have to accept that. This country has to reckon with that. Has to want to accept that. And I've seen over the last several years this move to want to just look at these events that happen and say oh, so this is white supremacists. So those are white supremacists. No the whole system is white supremacy. The whole thing, these people didn't just come from nowhere. They did not just come out and start being in this way because of the previous occupant of the white house here. That's not, it they've been here. They've been here. What happened is they were emboldened. But only looking at it like it's only been the last seven or eight years that completely absolves this country from any responsibility and any accountability. And its founding, which was rooted in white supremacy, you we're founded on this. You enslave my ancestors, you went, you enslave us. That's a fact, that' a fact. And it wasn't just some accident. It wasn't just some, oh, well that, that was just the way at the time. Absolutely not. Absolutely not. And slavery was not just these pictures of people that you see in cotton fields. It was brutal. It was horrific. It was the economic source for this country. It was the money that the Carnegie and the Morgans had in the twenties. People wanna glorify it was everything. It was everywhere. It was not just in the south. It was in the north. It was everywhere. And so. I'm going off on a whole other thing and completely, probably going away from your question that you asking. No, I love it.
Michael Bauman:This is so I, this
Lettie Gore:is just, this is just what happens. This is just what happens. I start talking my history,
Michael Bauman:no, I mean, this is exactly what I want to dive into because it's like the fish swimming in water. Right? Like they, they can't see that it's, they're swimming in water and it's the same. And granted, I have a different experience cuz I grew up in a different country. And. I still, like, there was things that I started to realize having guests and stuff on my show that I'm like this stuff I just don't know about because I I haven't seen it. I'm so in the water, so to speak that I can't see that I'm like swimming in the water. So can you talk about, cuz it's like you said it's literally the system that our entire country in the west. Right. So I have listeners from all over, but and it's it is all over too but can talk about in the us. So it's like, can you talk about how that system developed in, in the us and even how it was codified into the laws? Cuz the other thing that people think is like, oh, that was back then we had emancipation and we had the civil war and whatever. Talk about how that's still systemic today.
Lettie Gore:Yeah, that's a wonderful question, especially with the timing. So two days ago was June 19th and that was Juneteenth here in the United States and Juneteenth. For those of you who do not know that are listening that comes from June 19th, 1865. So just some quick history. That's the day that the last enslaved black people here in the United States were freed. And I say that with quotations freed, because. Ugh. There's so much more nuance in context to this, and it's not just cut and dry. So January 1st, 1863, president Abraham Lincoln signed the emancipation proclamation. I grew up learning that. That is what freed the slaves, which PS, I don't say slaves. I say enslaved people because enslaved people gives humanity to the people, African people who are stolen. It does not glorify the enslaver So I always say enslaved people just for the record. And other people should too. But but I learned that Abraham Lincoln free the enslaved people in 1863. And then I remember thinking, but there was still an entire civil war going on. Like, how are you doing? That's not how it worked. Also. People did not just say, oh, alright, well, Lincoln signed that. Let's just free all of our property. Are you kidding? Did you really think that racist white people did that? Absolutely not. Absolutely not. You kidding me? So then what happened is two years later, basically June 19th, 1865. You had about 2000, 2,500 union soldiers who marched into Galveston bay, Texas. And they announced that all enslaved people in the state of Texas were free. There were about 250,000 to 300,000, enslaved black people in Texas at the time. Now mind you, civil war was over. But you still had black people who were enslaved. This was across the south, this wasn't just in Texas. Let me make that very clear. And so on June 19th, that's the day that newly freed black people designated as Juneteenth, but that did not free all black people. And especially because people wanna say, oh, that officially freed them. No, you had the 13th amendment. The 13th amendment was introduced in January, 1865. And then it was official December 6th, 1865. That's six months after June, 1865. So other thing you know, to understand with the 13th amendment is the 13th amendment abolished slavery. In the constitution of the United States. Okay. The thing though is there's a line in the 13th amendment and it basically says that you're free unless you are convicted of crime. And what the 13th amendment did is it re enslaved black people here in the United States. There's a book by Douglas Blackman. It's called Slavery by Another Name. And that is a book that I will always, it can be 50 years from now. I tell people to read it because it is essential to the historical discourse about the re enslavement of black people. And so when we talk about the word freedom, right, and we talk about the word free, people we hear these words, our whole lives. What does that really mean though? Freedom for who. Who gets to decide what freedom is, right. Am I free because I'm no longer enslaved and getting whipped every day and my child is not being torn from my arms or literally from my womb as an enslaved black woman, am I free because of that? Or is it, or is the freedom now? Me out here being re enslaved still being owned by the same person who enslaved me, but now it's just, I'm just working for them. Is freedom then being subjected to Jim Crow, laws, being subjected to black codes, not still not being able to vote for a hundred more years. Is that what freedom is? Is freedom just, oh, well you should just be grateful. Right? And so there's all of that. It's very similar. And with the word violence for me,
Michael Bauman:Well, I wanna double click on that for a second. Both for you personally, and then also on a bigger level, I'm curious, just in your own personal life, what would, how would you define freedom for yourself? Cuz this is an interesting concept when I was talking with Andre Henry or mutual friend and he talked about like, what if racism, the discussion around racism anti-racism shifts to going, how can we help, how can we like focus on black joy? Like he's like, I just wanna make music. Like I wanna be joyful. I wanna have that opportunity. And I don't have massive amounts of mental space taken up with all of this, so I'm curious for you, like what is freedom for you and then what would freedom be on a global scale or on a national scale?
Lettie Gore:Yeah. Wow. That's a. That's a great question. And I have so many things I could say. I mean, just starting freedom is the first thing I think of is freedom is not having to, for me, is not having to worry about how, oh, how is racism gonna affect me in this situation? How is that's and that's a blanket statement. But that's one thing, because something that I've learned about myself over the last couple of years is how much I'm just not desensitized to things. Cuz being desensitized is that's where things get dangerous. I'm not desensitized, but it's just, I'm just so used to so much. I'm just so used to. Having to code switch. Right. And what code switching is talking one way around my friends or people I'm uncomfortable with, and then talking one way in corporate America right. Having to put on my proper voice, so to speak. And I don't do that anymore. Right. And but it's still a cost that comes with that. Sometimes I'm not presenting in the way that white America is fine with. Freedom is being able to feel that joy. In a way where, you don't have to turn it off. Like you don't have to tone it down. You don't have to worry about it being taken away by society. Right? Because as people, we're not gonna be joyful every single day of our lives, that's just not realistic. Right? Because life, and a lot happens. But being able to move in a way where we don't have to hold this tension in our bodies, but I think too, yes, it's about today. But I think freedom is also very much tied to people who cause harm and continuing to cause harm. And I'm holding the systems that cause harm to acknowledge it and to do something about it. It not just acknowledge it, but do something about it. Right. That's another level of freedom to me because what that does is it then. It then allows others who are oppressed and who are experiencing these harms to have another layer of trust in a way. And I don't think you can have freedom without trust. So that's the simplest way I can answer that question though. I feel like that was not just a simple answer.
Michael Bauman:Well, it's not an, it's not an easy, it's not an easy question. And I feel like it's something that ties. So, I mean, even in the discussion around success, it ties so much into that people have to figure out what does freedom feel like for themselves, in the different areas of their life. But I think what you touched on is so important because it gives that insight into your experience of like, One, like I have this constant, almost the fear, the constant fear. You mentioned like the fear of what I have being taken away. Like I can't just experience this joy. It's like, what if this is taken away or also, and this is just the journey for everybody in general, but how can I actually show up authentically and be accepted for who I am around that? Can you talk, dive into, I'm curious to dive into that fear. Talk about just that fear, one of it being taken away, and this is, again, gets back to systems. You know what I mean? it's just, it's all the time and that's why I love having you share your experience. Cuz it's so, so important.
Lettie Gore:Yeah. So. One angle. I wanna take to answer this question is to look at generational trauma and just how generational trauma does impact present day fears and things like that. Whenever we talk about trauma, what happens is people just look at trauma as oh, a car accident, right. Or something that we've seen in a TV show or some something physically like very harmful, right? Like some kind of trauma, like that, but trauma is much, much deeper. Trauma affects us on a molecular level. My first master's is in history, but I went and got a second one in conflict management and resolution. And I did that because, well, I didn't bring know at the time why, but now I see why I had to take many grad classes on trauma. The mind. Psychology. And I had professors who were therapists and who were psychiatrists, and they're also academic professors, which I'm like, how did you do all that schooling? But anyway I learned so much about how trauma affects us. And I remember I was able to take it and tie it into history because there's not enough written about generational trauma and how it affects all of us because of the history that our ancestors have experienced that gets passed down through our DNA. It gets passed to us. Right. And so whenever I think about fear with people, it's I have this conversation more than I even realize it. Now that I'm saying this out, out loud, but. There's a fear that people have of not wanting to give up what they know is going to keep them in a position of power. And that is again, back to white supremacy culture here in the United States and how white supremacy functions here in the United States. It's all throughout history. It's everywhere throughout history. I mean this actually, Michael ties back to what you asked me before about some history things and racism and everything like that. And I think about generational trauma with slavery. For example, there's so much that's in that, but two examples. One is black enslaved women and how black enslaved women were, trigger warning for people raped mutilated Just realized in ways that people wouldn't even believe and not just the physical act of that, but also the experiments the psychological trauma, the just the immense amount of it that is passed down right now. I'm 34 years old and my eggs that are in my body whenever I experience right now, that's happening. And so my future child that I'm hoping to one day have could be affected by whatever trauma I experience. And so, but with that, I think about two things Things like how fear affects the black community in the United States. And I can't speak for the entire black community. We are not a monolith, but I can speak for what I know, how I feel. I can speak for how, what my parents have told me what my grandparents used to tell me. And just their stories. If you listen, you can hear how fear shows up. It has nothing to do with not being strong, not enduring, not having hope. Has nothing to do with that. We are people with feelings, with emotions, right? And there are fears that we have and how they show up and what we do with those fears as far as survival goes. But the other part of this is also white people in the United States. I think about how much history shows us. Fear showed up in white people. And I don't mean that in a way to give sympathy to white people in this country and their ancestors and the horrific things that they did cuz that's not what I'm about. But what I will say is there is a fear of losing this identity that you created. Race was created because white people needed an identity. That's why it was created. I mean, James Baldwin talks about this. Race is a social construct and you look at how many horrific things happen to black people, to brown people, to indigenous people in this country's history and what were you so afraid of? Or like, what were you afraid of losing so much that you annihilated people. Just genocide. Just burned down homes. Burned down churches. Burned down home communities. You enacted laws to prevent black people from voting. Indigenous people from voting. You stole land. All of this in the name of white supremacy racism. Right. But it's, what are you afraid of? And then I think about lynchings here in, in the United States and the fact that you would have 4,000 white people show up to celebrate a black person being burned, right. Being Lynched. It was racial terror. Lynchings. And that gets passed down. And at the same time though, and again, to like mention James Baldwin, I know I mentioned him like four times. He's my absolute favorite black intellectual in history. But he talks about the price of the ticket often. And what he means by that though, is the price that this country has been willing to pay for so long to hone on, to cling so tightly to these systems, to racism, to fight supremacy. And that includes the fear. And that's why I ask people sometimes I'm like, what are you afraid of? What are you so afraid of losing? Right. And that's the question that I could ask at any moment throughout history as I'm talking about it. I wanted actually Michael to go back really quickly. Cause I never even answered the second part of your question regarding the history stuff and racism, but yeah, I started talking about Juneteenth and I immediately then thought about after the civil war, something that people say is, oh, well the civil war was just over and that was that. And black people were free. And so why are y'all still complaining about. And I always just chuckle at that now. I used to get very mad about that, but now I'm just like, wow. The level of ignorance. But it's everywhere. People would just read something beyond what they want to feel good about. You'll see it all there. But you had the reconstruction era right from 1866 to 1877. So a 11 year period. And it's painted as this time of oh, when they did help black people. So they did do all these things. They did do all this. That's not it. The entire federal government, like just tapped out of the south and they were like, we're not actually gonna help y'all anymore. We thought that we could at first, but actually we just care more about money and we care more about getting who we want in these different positions. Senators, congressmen, presidents. Money has always talked. Money has always been the biggest motivator for, oh my gosh, so much in this country. But the reconstruction era was sabotaged. It didn't just fail. It was sabotaged. It was sabotaged in every way. And then in, in that you had massive violence, just tons of violence against black people. And you had black people were still not allowed to vote. Even though there was an entire amendment that was been in place, right. For black men to be able to vote. That didn't happen. You had racist stereotypes that existed during slavery, just so much that just went into, that just continued on. It didn't it didn't just stop. Right. And I want people to understand that for, because this, for some reason, people think that just because something is a law or just because something is said, that means everyone abided by it. No. Do you see people doing that today? Whenever it comes to laws or anything, do you really think that these states, these people just said, you know what, we're actually just gonna let them be free now. No, that's not at all what happened. Right. And so you see black cones come up, you see the Jim Crow era just emerged and that continued on for another century. You see. Every turn in every way you see it. And I'm, I mean, I can list off even more books. There's a book by Isabelle Wilkerson. It's called the warmth of other sons. And it's about the great migration in the United States. And the great migration in the United States happen from the end of the 18 hundreds into like the 1960s. There were three different waves of it and it's whenever black people were fleeing the south, they were not just moving away for better jobs. Cuz that's what the book's gonna tell you. Oh, they were just moving better jobs. No, they were fleeing. There's a difference between the phrase that someone's leaving a place versus someone's fleeing that's in danger. I can go into detail so much, but throughout this country's history, you see how systemic racism has showed up and people wanna take a little part and they wanna say, oh, no, see, but there's this black person that did this. Well, see what black people did have schools, or they did do this or what, whatever it was. That's like today, if I said, oh see, but I exercised. And I worked out for my whole life and I'm not sick now at the age of 70 and someone's mother did the same exact thing and they're sick. It doesn't matter that I did not experience that. Because at the end of the day, this person still has this problem. It's not about playing this cherry picking game. When, whenever it comes to history and I see that all the time. I live in North Carolina. You see the Confederate flag everywhere. And people say, oh, but it's just Southern heritage. We saw the Confederate flag used for violence, because you would see the Confederate flag being held up or put up above a body that was lynched. You, you saw it in Selma, Alabama during the marches in 1965, you saw the sheriffs holding the Confederate flag. You would see it throughout the history. It's not just Southern heritage, it's racism, right? You saw the Confederate flag being held as the KKK, March down Pennsylvania avenue in Washington, DC in 1925, like thousands of men, tens of thousands of clan members marching through for true Americanism. In the state's capital. Right? And then people look at what happened here in the United States on January 6th, 2021. And they're like, this has never happened before. Yes, it has. Matter of fact, here in Wilmington, North Carolina, there was an actual insurrection here in 1898 on November the 10th, 1898. There was a successful insurrection in coup. The government, the local government here was overthrown by white supremacists and the black people who were here, many of them were murdered. And then they were, many of them were ran out of town. Some stayed, but many were ran out of town. So not only was it a successful coup and a successful insurrection here, but it was a race massacre. I find is there's this issue with history and memory. If people create these very comfortable truths to feel good about them, themselves to hold themselves up. You, you can't just look at history in a vacuum. History is not linear, right? Everything in history is connected. You have to see the whole picture. And so even then with history, people look at things like the civil rights act here in 1964, the voting rights act in 1965. They're like, oh, okay. See that solved everything. And I have two parents. That are 70 years old and 77. And thank God they're still here. But my dad was 18 years old in 1963 and he couldn't vote. He still couldn't vote after 1965. It wasn't like he just had these places, these local areas these states that were like, oh, alright, well let's time to just change the laws and just let'em vote now. Absolutely not. Maybe they did right. Let them vote. Maybe you see the lines and the pictures, people voting and all of that thing. But then what happened to those ballots? Did they actually get cash? Did they get thrown out? Right? What actually happened? Right? We still see things like this being affected today. We still see infringement of rights. We still see disenfranchisement of black voters. Whenever you see these areas where they're changing voting places for example, where it used to be maybe two miles from this person's home and now almost 15 miles away, like for what? Right? Like for what? But we already know the answer. There's gerrymandering. There's the way that these things that happened before people can look at and point at and say, oh, that was overtly racist. Now it's just evolved in something different. It's just evolved. We see it with the prison system here, we see it with mass incarceration. Mass incarceration in this country there's a direct throughline to slavery. There's a direct throughline to convict leasing. Which happened during the reconstruction era and continued on afterwards. There's a direct line. It's infuriating, honestly. And the reason why I talk about these things, how I talk about them, I do it because I want people to just see I want to be able to convey these stories to people so that they can say like, oh, if they just have one, oh, wow moment, then that's one moment right. Where I'm like, okay, say I got that and they're gonna go tell somebody else. And they're gonna hopefully try to continue to educate and be uncomfortable. And, but I can't, I'm not gonna hold people's hands. Right. I'm not gonna coddle people, but. In order to talk about progress in order to talk about love and unity. You cannot talk about love and unity and do what you're doing in this country. What are you talking about? There's a quote by James Baldwin. It's actually tattooed on my side. It's"Love is a battle. Love is a war. Love isn't growing up." But James Baldwin in this, he's not talking about the sentimental love the like eewy, gooey love. He's not talking about that. He's talking about the love of justice. The love that you have to have in order for justice to be seen. James Baldwin taught me how to see history. How to read history. How to feel and I just, I really want people to understand that you can't take bits and pieces of history and you can't mold it to fit your agenda. And this comes with so many small things even every August, talking about the women's right to vote here, in the United States. Language is so important. It's not okay to just say women got the right to vote in 1920, no white women got the right to vote. You have to put those words, you have to put that there. White women got the right to vote. But there's so much I see with people wanting to take half of the truth and wanna take whatever makes them feel good, but I promise you that looking at the whole picture and dealing with that discomfort and confronting the fact that you've been lied to about history. There's much more freedom in that. Just to bring it back to freedom. There's a lot more freedom to that. Racism is about power. It's about structural power. It's not just about a white person doing something to a black person physically. Racism is about power and all of these people who want to quote Dr. Martin Luther king, Jr. They wanna quote Malcolm X. They wanna quote Rosa parks, right. Rosa parks was this docile black woman, as you were just sitting down one day, no Rosa parks actually before that day Rosa parks used to be a field secretary for the NAACP here in Alabama. And she used to go out and she used to talk to black women who were essentially assaulted by police officers by sheriffs. She did the interview for Reese Taylor. I don't know if anyone's ever heard of Reese Taylor, but you should Google her and you should see what happened to her. Rosa Parks was not just this little old white-skinned black woman who decided to just sit down because she was tired. No, that was planned. That was very deliberate. And another thing too is I want people to realize it has not been a long time since slavery happened here. Has not been a long time at all. There was a black woman named Mary Church, Terrell. She, again, people should Google her, but she helped desegregate Washington, DC. I want people to understand that she was born in the late 18 hundreds, still alive in 1987. It's so easy to look and say, oh, well that happened in 1890. That wasn't a long time ago, people. Anyway, I've been like talking, Michael,
Michael Bauman:but I just, no, I it's really important. Right. And that's what is important to realize. And like you mentioned, like once you start, even if it's just the little things and you start to realize, oh, wow. Like this is a totally different perspective than I might have seen before. My question for you is like, where. And this is, again, another very difficult question to answer, like where does the work begin? Like what does that look like for individuals? Because there's so many layers, right? There's layers of education, there's layers of resource distribution. Like you're talking about like there's layers of fear. Where would you recommend people either going for resources to, to educate themselves or, how do they handle the fear? How do they handle the scarcity? How do they become aware of, their privilege? If that's the case.
Lettie Gore:Yeah. I love this question. I love this question because, and I'll never get tired of answering this question cuz it's so important. It will always be very important. And the first thing I would say is people need to follow and listen to black educators. Brown educators. People who have experience. What they're wanting to know more. And use your own discernment and use your own judgment about that. Because what I will say too is not all skin folk are kinfolk. That's the saying here. I don't know that same before, but that's not how it works but definitely start there. That's one thing also read books that are about racism that are about white supremacy. And I know there are some people out here on social media that are saying, oh, well, I'm tired of you all saying that you're gonna read books and there should be more than reading books. Okay. Yes. There's more than just reading books and listening to podcasts. However, start there though. You gotta start with education. So reading books like a few that I've mentioned here reading Medical Apartheid by Harriet Washington, which is about the experimentation of on black people throughout history. Read How to be less Stupid about Race, which is by Crystal A fleming. Read Stephanie Jones Rogers. They were her Property. There's so many, I have a huge bookshelf. Take time to listen to James Baldwin. Start with just Google the American dream and the American Negro it's by James Baldwin. He wrote it in the 1960s. That's where I would tell you to start with that. I have a Patreon where people can subscribe to me. I offer lessons each month, a Lettie's list, which is a list of resources and things. I do webinars live Q and A's just a ton for people to learn more. There are many others too. Follow me on Instagram at sincerely.lettie. Also follow Check your privilege, which is Myisha Hill. Follow Professor Kena Reed. She's the anti-blackness reader. Just a ton of others are also doing this work. But start there, start by listening to podcasts, listen to Code Switch through NPR. That's just one that I could think of. My podcast obviously, which is called History Shows Us there's so many more, but. Do that, but also, and also challenge people that, it is not okay to know that your friend or one of your family members just said something that you know was not okay. And you didn't say anything about it. Right. And so what I often have people asking you is, well, well, how do I know what to say? Well, if you have a presentation at work, you're gonna prepare for it, right? Like, you're gonna prepare for possible questions. Someone's gonna ask you, you don't know what people gonna ask you, but you prepare yourself because you wanna be able to answer those questions. I tell people often something that you can do is if you're gonna go to a family dinner or if you're gonna be out with friends or something, and that there's that person who will be there, that's gonna probably say something, have some things ready. Right. Have some things ready where you know, okay. They might say this or they might say that, what could I say to that? Say something. It is not okay to not say anything. We are past that. We are past that. Like, absolutely not. You need to say if someone says something that's racist, you need to say something. If someone makes a racist joke, why is that funny? That is not funny. Right? Say something And it's about that. It's taking action and doing something. It's about giving money. Paying black people. Paying brown people. This isn't saying that there aren't white people out here that are working hard. I'm not saying that at all. What I am saying though, is we have to have a conversation about reparations. And though this country still does not want to acknowledge the fact that reparations need to happen on a federal level. There are ways you can do that on an individual level. You can decide that you want to give X amount of dollars to a local community organization directly. I mean directly, like there are local places where you can help or you can give your funds. There's just so much that people can do. But what I will tell people is do that internal work because I've been in therapy for the last couple of years, just for my own mental health. Cuz I think everyone should be able to get therapy. It should be free. But they should also be paid for the work that they do. It should be free because we are all out here living. But I have seen just with therapy for me and just my own life. Take what I do out of it. I've had to work on myself in order to show up in relationships. How I wanna show up yeah. I have to take responsibility for past actions. I have that's some people have to understand, you have to do that too. It's not enough to post on Instagram, to post on Twitter, to post on Facebook, to say that you are happy about Juneteenth or something like that. It's not enough. It's not enough. It's about doing the work to actually dismantle the system. If that means going to your city council meetings asking questions about racist laws, asking maybe why do I live in this community? And there are no black people here. Why? Right. Asking these questions. Right. Asking yourself, why don't you have any friends that are people of color and that are black and that's not so you can go out there and say that you have black friends. No. But why are you only surrounded by white people? Right. Like what in you is subconscious and is biased and is racist, which has led you to not gravitate towards people who are not white and that do not have white skin right? What about that. You need to do that. You gotta do that work. That's on you. That's no one else's responsibility, so there's answer to that.
Michael Bauman:There is the answer to that. No, but I think what you mentioned, I mean, that is the work, right? And so you talked about, I mean, that's where that undercurrent of fear, right? You see something happen and you go, that's not right. That is the work right there to step in. And that's like the micropractice basically, it's like, how do you dismantle a huge system? Well, you start with those instances, you recognize that fear in yourself that goes, I'm scared of saying something right now, or this could have negative effects for me. And then you still do it anyway, regardless of how eloquent it is, or the result that comes from it, or whether you feel like you did a good job or not, you went, that is not okay with me. And I am going to talk about it. I'm gonna step into that situation. And so I feel like that's like the internal work, But then you also talked about like, do the cognitive work, like do the cognitive work to actually gain a better understanding, talk to people that experience the world in an entirely different way than you and go, wow, let me see if I can understand where they're coming from rather than, how can I prove them wrong? Cuz where I'm coming from is obviously right. Going like, let me just understand. Let me understand the people that look differently and think differently that have different skin colors that come from different places. And then do the, do the work of the research and stuff around that as well in terms of the books and all of that. And I think those two things are excellent things to leave people with. Recognize that fear, still do it, and then do the cognitive work of actually trying to understand people that are different than you and I think that's awesome. So, yeah. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you so much for the years and years that you have dedicated into this space. I'll put the links, to the stuff that you do, your podcast and all that in the show notes. Is there anything that you wanna leave? The audience before we wrap up here?
Lettie Gore:Yes. One thing I want leave with people is a quote by Tony Morrison. It's from an interview that she did in the early nineties, but basically what Toni Morrison said in this interview was What are you without Racism? And there's more that she says after this, but I want people to Google that, I mean, you could just type into your Google bar, Toni Morrison, What are you without Racism? It'll bring up the interview clip, but I wanna leave people with that. Cause I want people to go look that up. I want people to just listen to it and I also will leave cuz I don't ever close out a podcast episode without another James Baldwin quote that's just a thing that I do. There's the quote by James Baldwin. And he said,"People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them." And he wrote that in 1953 in his essay, Stranger in the Village. And I have that tattooed on my left forearm. Literally I looked at my arm every day and I see that cuz it's a reminder for myself for the work that I do, but I want people to hear that because it's so deep, it has such a deep meaning and it's tied to fear, but it's also tied to freedom. And that's why I have it on me. But I wanna leave people with that and I wanna leave people to with hope there's a lot going on in the United States right now. And I know Michael, you have listeners all over. There's a lot happening in the world right now, but I can speak directly about the United States and this is where I live. But I want people here in the US and also globally to just take care of yourselves in every way, because life is a lot, but also so are these oppressive systems and so is doing the work like you doing the work is a lot and it's worth it.
Michael Bauman:There you go. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you again. So, so much just tons and tons of excellent starting places for people. And there's always more to be done. Always more to be done, so yes. Really appreciate you taking the time to share.
Lettie Gore:Thank you so much. This has been wonderful, Michael. Absolutely.
Michael Bauman:Before you go, I would love it. If you actually just shared this episode with a friend, I'm sure. While you were listening, you know, someone just popped into your head and you're like, oh, they would probably like this as well. So it's really easy. You just click the share button on either the website or whatever podcast platform you're on and send it over to them. And chances are, they'll probably like it, too until next time, keep engineering your success.