Black Lives Matter: Silence Is Not An Option
The following is a conversation between Monika Samtani, co-founder of The Fem Word, Linda McGhee, clinical psychologist, and Andrea Roane, award-winning journalist | Maryland & Washington D.C.
Monika Samtani:
Hello everyone. This is The Fem Word and I'm Monika Samtani. 2020 has been a year of struggle for the world. First, the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, and recently the mistreatment and tragic events surrounding black Americans, which has been caught on camera and in turn given what has existed in this country, heightened exposure including the deaths of people like Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd plus the mistreatment of Christian Cooper in New York recently. And if you feel sickened and saddened by the state of affairs in our country right now, we are right there along with you. At the Fem Word we say silence is not an option. The discussions are happening alongside the rallies and the protests, and non-black people are asking how can we be better advocates and what can we do? So to answer just that question, I am honored to have with me two women with us to talk about that. Dr. Linda McGhee, she's a clinical psychologist who speaks about disparities and treatment and race, and she's also working on a book on education and race. She's based in Chevy Chase, Maryland. Thank you so much Linda for being with us.
Linda McGhee:
Thank you for having me.
Monika:
And Andrea Roane, a retired, award-winning journalist. She's a colleague and a close friend based here in Washington, D.C. Hi Andrea.
Andrea Roane:
Hi Monika. Hi Linda. Great to be here with both of you.
Monika:
Always nice to see you. You and I had a conversation yesterday and you mentioned a viral video where a white woman, Jane Elliott, an anti-racism activists asked a group of white citizens, "How many of you would change places with any black person in America?", and not one person raised their hands. Not one person. The question you ask is why not in America, the land of the home, the brave, and the free, did no one raise their hand? Talk to us about your feelings around that.
Andrea:
When I saw that post, I was like, okay, this is great question, but not a soul raised their hand and that's because not a soul would want to change places with black people in America today because they see the injustice and it's right smack in their face now. You can't hide. You can't run from it. It's right there. It's always been there. It's been there since the first boat brought African slaves to this country. But here it is. Emmett Till we only heard about - and his mother said we needed to see what they had done to his son. So, there was the graphic video in Jet magazine of him in his coffin. We saw Rodney King, but there was still a way that police talked their way out of what we saw with our own eyes. And then you have Eric Garner. We saw him and we kept seeing, we kept seeing, we kept seeing. What was so different about what happened with George Floyd was that we watched. This was not a cop. Usually you hear the excuse, I feared for my life. Philando Castile: “I feared for my life”. Well here was an officer, with his knee to the back of someone's neck with his hands nonchalantly in his pocket. He was obviously not fearing for his life, but not hearing what this man subdued on the ground with two other officers holding down his buttocks and his legs saying, "I can't breathe. I can't breathe.." and it has just horrified all Americans. Quite frankly, until white America gets horrified, black America can keep talking about justice for all, but nothing will be done until they join us in asking and demanding changes.
andrea roane
“Quite frankly, until white America gets horrified, black America can keep talking about justice for all, but nothing will be done until they join us in asking and demanding changes.”
Monika:
Why? I mean, but we have seen horrific things in the past. What is it about this incident and the other two or three that came back to back to back that has just exploded in this country? What do you think it is, Andrea?
Andrea:
I think it's just too much in my face, and now that we're in an era of social media and we see all of this happening in real time. Rodney King, we didn't see it happen in real time. Eric Garner, it wasn't happening in real time. We saw it afterwards, but this was happening right then and there. The guys who stalked Ahmaud Arbery and what happened with George Floyd, it was just too much. It was too much and it was the kind of statement where we hear enough is enough. Linda, what do you think?
Linda:
I think you're definitely right. I think it was a catalyst. And just the casualness of it, like looking at the camera as if to say, "film me". He didn't try to get the people to stop filming him. The man called out for his dead mother and I'm gonna tell you it's kept me awake. His mother had died two years previous on the same day. So it just gets me.
Andrea:
Linda, I don't know if you have any children, but I have a son and a grandson and I was telling my son, I said, "I fear for you every time you leave our house and go to your home because I want to make sure you get there safely" and he said, "mommy, I do what you've told us to do and what daddy told us to do. You're respectful and you answer the questions and you keep your hands on the wheel if you're at a traffic stop at nine o'clock and three o'clock." ButI told him, I said, "I still worry because you never know which cop is going to stop you. The cop who is a professional that you're showing respect and he responds to that, or the one who had a bad day or a built in bias." And that's what white America doesn't understand, what black Americans live with, the fear they live with every day, no matter what their socioeconomic level is.
Linda:
Economics are not a protector. My child has been stopped by the police. He's 20. He's been stopped by the police at least three or four times. As a matter of fact, the last time he was stopped by the police, he called me. So it ended up where he and the cop were talking to me cause my son was so shaken up and he was like, "Son, is that your mother? Well, let me just talk to your mother" because my son was so shaken up and so discombobulated by being stopped by the police that the cop had to actually speak to me to reassure me that everything is okay. And again, as Andrea says, that's just our way of being. My son went to 7-11 the other night and I was just like, so many things are happening, should I tell him not to go? You know, it's that kind of thing. You just don't know whether your child is going to come back home or not, or come back in one piece.
Monika:
It's just unbelievable that this is the state of our world in 2020 in America. But you know, according to the law, equality has been there between all races for a while, according to the law. But enforcement is where this huge disparity occurs every single time it seems and what you're speaking about.
Linda:
It's not necessarily been there that long. We've only been in a state of desegregation since the sixties so we're still in like the 50 to 60 year radius of it. And when you think about when the first slave ship came, I know it was around 1619, we're talking about 400 years versus 60 years. So you know, we're still in a nascent stage if you look at the whole continuum.
Monika:
What do non-black people have to do to stop the stereotyping, and undo a history of conditioning to really see equality in this country, moving forward in the next decade? There has to be these real actions in place at this point.
Linda:
I think that people need to get out of denial. You know, I'm just going to be blunt about it. There are still a lot of people that you hear say, "Well, that wasn't me. That was my ancestors.", not even understanding that they benefited from the system that's set up. It's also a moral issue. There's a book called "A Person You Want To Be" and when I go out to speak, I use that book a lot because it requires you to do a lot of self examination of how you want to be in the world, how you want to raise your children, what your morals are, and what are your belief systems are with regard to race. It's a call to action for people to educate themselves, not separate themselves. One of the things that's so easy to do, Monika and Andrea, is if you live separate from people, it's easy to ‘other’ them. All the statistics tell us that we're still a segregated country in terms of where we live and how we interact with other people. We have large parts of the country that have very small African American populations. However, you have to still try to involve yourself about national conversations about race and still try to go beyond stereotypes and understand that unconscious bias does exist and it exists for everyone.
Linda mcghee
“We all have these internal classification systems that we use to classify people, and to understand that unconscious bias is a factor in everyone's life and it's not being a racist. It's a journey to monitor and analyze your own actions.”
We all have these internal classification systems that we use to classify people, and to understand that unconscious bias is a factor in everyone's life and it's not being a racist. It's a journey to monitor and analyze your own actions. What are you saying to your children? Who are you leaving out? A kid told me the other day that he was the only one in his class who wasn't invited to something and he was the only black kid in the class, and someone made a conscious decision to do that. That just didn't happen accidentally. So, you know, it's evaluating yourself, making some more decisions and then acting. It's not enough to say, "well, I don't see any black people" or "I wasn't responsible for that". Like you started the show off, what can you do? You can start by analyzing your own actions and thoughts. You can educate yourself by reading books, but you can get involved. There's always something people can do and I feel like as a community, if we are still a community of Americans, then there's things that you can do and not just in our own silos.
Monika:
So following the killing of George Floyd and nationwide protests, now dozens of music industry members have pledged to join a grassroots campaign and they're making June 2nd ‘Blackout Tuesday’. It's billed as a day to disconnect from work and reconnect with our community. So as an expert Linda, who speaks about disparities in race, what does a day of reconnecting actually mean? And how do we put that into practice? Not only just by posting it on social media.
Linda:
I think that it means reconnecting with the people that are closest to you first. Your home, your own family, and having discussions about what has gone on. I'm a child psychologist, so processing this with your children is very, very important. But I also think about between now and particularly in this election season, what are some of the ways that you're going to get out there and show yourself? How are you going to affect a change? Are you going to volunteer? Are you going to be more of a part of a community? Are you going to black out tomorrow? I saw something for July 7th where people are vowing to not spend money. You know, there's just ways to get involved and I always say "Not everyone is a marcher." Not everyone can be in the street, but you could find other ways to get involved and don't shame people for their ways of getting involved. The whole point is to get involved.
Andrea:
It is kind of complicated too, Linda, getting involved outside of your home environment in the era of COVID-19. However, what you're talking about is being a part of the community. You being a part of the community. In thinking about this, I read something called "The Building From The Ground Up Toolkit" for promoting justice in policing. The 15 points that they came up with in this reading was that in order for trained police to be members of the community, not just armed guards, it has to be a two way street. We know that if the majority of police were like Officer Chauvin, we'd really be in deeper trouble than we are now. We know that the majority of policemen and women are hardworking and professionals, but they need something from us. They need trust from us, we need trust from them. And as you said earlier, we have to admit our own racial biases and the police have to do the same thing.
I'm from New Orleans and there is an operation within the New Orleans Police Department called EPIC and it stands for ‘Ethical Policing Is Courageous’. It was developed by and for the New Orleans Police Department. One of the things we saw in the video was the officer who was standing to the left of officer Chauvin and wasn't doing anything. The only thing he said to a group of kids, and again, you could hear him because they had their cell phones going and somebody videotaped it: "This is what happens when you do drugs". Well, he was arrested for passing a counterfeit bill, not for drugs. All kinds of excuses. This program is the peer intervention training program. Police train each other on how to handle situations, diffuse situations, how to remove a cop who's doing something wrong, getting him out of it and not just getting him off that day, retraining him, and finding out maybe he doesn't belong, but that's something that they do internally. And when we see that police are trying, then we will be more involved.
However, I believe in the power of the vote. And I will tell you, I remember too, I think it was two or three years ago, President Obama addressed the graduating class at Howard University and he talked about what they needed to do, especially for his second term. They needed to vote and the millennials stayed home in this last election. Even the Bernie Sanders supporters stayed home. They didn't come out and vote for the candidate who was running and leading the democratic party. They stayed home. Staying home is no longer an option.
Monika:
Right. If you want to be a voice for change, then part of it is being part of the process of leadership.
Andrea:
It's not just one political party that has people that think the way you do. You have to look at a candidate and vote for a candidate who feels the injustice like you do and wants to make a change, but you can't do it staying home and tweeting. You've got to get out there and vote, and take a buddy with you. Do like they did in the sixties where they got people in cars and took them to the polling places. For the first time after retiring from TV, I was able to help out with voter registration of young people. It was the most satisfying thing that I had ever done. I was a teenager. I volunteered and I did all kinds of things like that and to be able to be part of the solution rather than just gripe about it makes so much of a difference.
Monika:
So we have to get out and vote, and have that conversation at home as well because really, if you think about a child being born into this world, he or she isn't born into this world with a bias. It's coming from something environmental. So really coming back to the core and future generations in this country, we have to start with what happens at home and in the community around our children. So you emulate what you see and hear growing up. You're not born with these biases.
Linda:
Yes. But you know, it also has a historical context. You learn these things, but the people that you've learned them from, typically the lessons you learned earliest or from your parents' personalities, are formed psychologically and developmentally when someone is really young. So, the primary teachers are your parents and your relatives and if you're in a home where people are saying certain things, then you're more than likely to adopt those things. I think about the many good things that my parents taught me, but I think about some of the things that they thought that weren't as progressive. The same goes in homes all across America, right? So, you do learn it. You see everyone's posting these pictures this week of black children and white children playing together and have their arms around each other. The sweetest one I saw was a little girl who has her head on the knee of a little boy. However, you learn these things and you're programmed and it's very hard as people, particularly for the older Americans, to see things in a different way because they have always been separate and they've never really integrated in a way that some of our children and probably grandchildren will have been.
Monika:
The way I look at it as this country, at least right now, is divided and segmented. How do you begin to integrate people and create that culture of tolerance and real understanding of other races when there has been systemic racism. I mean, I've been just reading prolifically, all the articles out there, everything that's going on and people are openly now talking about something really uncomfortable, which is white privilege. How do you address that? How do you talk about that openly and create that conversation around understanding?
Linda:
I think that when I go and speak to schools, because I mainly talk to schools and boarding schools, one of the things that I try to do is make it a blunt conversation, but one in where I use facts and figures. I also try to make it one of compassion because I feel like a lot of times people are really defensive when you try to talk about race and they don't want to talk about it. So at least you want to have some things that you can start the conversation on. For instance, showing examples of privilege that everyone has seen, like maybe some of you've seen that picture of people standing on ladders behind a fence and some of them are placed higher than others. It's an illustration of privilege. To have some concrete examples when you're talking about race is important because people will be like "that wasn't me" or "that wasn't even my parents", so the examples show that they've benefited from the system that's in place. So I think a lot of direct conversation and a lot of listening is important.
A protester in Washington DC holds a sign featuring George Floyd. Photo by Obi Onyeador on Unsplash
One of the things that I always emphasize is that when you talk about impact, I can't tell Andrea what her impact is on something and she can't tell me how something impacted me. So when someone says "I was sitting there and I was crying because I thought that he was making a racial comment", you saying you didn't mean it or you didn't intend it, or you're not racist because you have a black friend, that's not really taking in the point of the deep pain and impact that the person felt. And then at some point in time there's a time to listen to how other people, like white people, feel when race is discussed. It's a very, very uncomfortable thing, but not talking about it, as I said to you earlier, is really talking about it, right? It's almost like like by not talking about it, you're letting things sit. We're letting people be silent and acquiescent and it's a decision in and of itself, right? You're going to keep those closely guarded views.
Andrea:
That's the argument.
Monika:
But how do you open that conversation? You know, whether you're white or not white or brown or any race or color, what is that protocol? Is there any at all or do you just say, "Hey, I want to talk about this?”
Linda:
There's no protocol and quite frankly it's really, really hard and some people are not ready. I'm just going to be honest with you. They're just not ready, but some people are and if you have the right facilitators and the right topic, I think that there are people that are willing to do it. Andrea, what's your experience?
Andrea:
Well, I was getting ready to say when you were talking about the facilitator, do we have to do it in such a formal setting where we have a facilitator? I've had a lot of friends like Monika called and wanted to know what is it that we can do? What's the next step in the conversation? It also means that our circle of friends needs to be expanded. I don't know if you saw this article in the Washington Post yesterday, but in Minnesota, they say it doesn't have a racist history, but things have just kind of happened in Minnesota that put black people in one little community, isolated from the greater community, and the wealth gap in Minnesota is one of the largest in the country. I-94 went through a black neighborhood and decimated it. You know, all of these things that are beyond just a conversation, it's policy. To me, that's where I go back to that fact that you have to vote. In Ferguson, there was a mayor that was there, a district attorney, and a chief of police, all elected officials. Well, how did they get in office and how do you stay in office if you had been complaining about inequality and police brutality for decades? You're a voter. Go vote. You know? I mean, that's what I always go back to. We've got to change the system. We had the conversation and we empower people to believe that if they go to the polls and make a change, that it will be a change that will benefit them.
Linda:
And that was what I was trying to play on earlier is that in addition to having the conversation, we're trying to build leaders and kids who go out there and change the system, not just be in a defensive posture against the police. To go out there, effectuate policy, and to be strong in the face of discrimination and injustice.
Monika:
What does the future in the ideal situation look like for both of you? What is that ideal situation where equality exists in your mind?
Andrea:
I think that justice being really blind is a measure of equality. That you don't just hear of a crime and think it's a black person. You don't just think that you can make a phone call and tell the cops it's a black person doing something to me. You know, I've been on this earth for a long time and we haven't figured it out yet and we're starting to figure it out and as Linda said, my kids came up in a more integrated environment than I did, and my grandson is even more than his parent. I'm not sure what the answer is, but I know that we need to keep talking. We need to keep asking questions. We need to look inside ourselves and then we need to take action.
Linda:
I still think I'm very action oriented. Voting to me is part of my generational pool. Policies and elections matter. Look at this last national one. Look at where we are right now. It matters. But I also think that we need to work on minds, hearts, and souls because all of the law changing and policies in the world, in the face of hate, are not as effective. I like to say, I'm positive in that I'm an optimist, but right now this has been a really rough couple of weeks and I don't want to minimize anybody's pain and grief, including my own. I want to say it's okay that I'm not hopeful today, but I am holding onto the day that I am hopeful again.
Andrea:
There's the phrase "This too shall pass" and I believe that this will pass, but what keeps me up as well, Linda, is what does it look like when it passes?
Linda:
A lot of things have happened in the last three and a half years that it really makes me wonder how we're going to undo some of this stuff because the pain is very, very deep. We're in the middle of a pandemic, which we only mentioned once, and we're going to have to probably vote in the middle of a pandemic. The economic implications of COVID-19 mean that we're going to have people who are in economically desperate. So all of this does not point toward easy solutions or quick fixes.
Monika:
I was reading a list of what we need to do to come together. Earlier, I was telling you I've been reading everything to figure out in my mind what is it that I can do for racial justice. Listen without ego and defensiveness to people of color, truly listen. Don't be silent about that racist joke because silence is support. Thank you again, Linda and Andrea. Your insight is invaluable and it is my hope that we do see true change and equality in our country for black people.
This is The Fem Word. We have compiled a list of petitions and resources on our website if you're looking to take action. Thank you again so much Linda and Andrea. I really appreciate your time today.