Speaking about Racial Injustice in our Country (Jun 2020)

Welcome back to the Morning Blend. During the past week, people all over the country have protested in the name of George Floyd, the man who died while in police custody. Some of those demonstrations have turned to civil unrest.

We asked two friends of the Morning Blend to join us for an open conversation about race and relationships in our community. We've got Beth Ridley. She is a leadership expert. And D.J. hines, CEO of Heinz Consulting. Good morning to you both.

Good morning.

Thanks for joining us. You know, let's just first kind of start with checking in. You know, how are you guys feeling? How do you feel about all that's going on right now in our state and in our country having to do with the death of George Floyd?

I mean, for me, you know, if you had asked me how I'm doing a week ago, I would have given you a very different answer. But I would say today, I would say I'm feeling genuinely, genuinely hopeful. I love to see the outpouring of support around injustice from so many diverse communities. So in a way, I feel like we're more united as Americans around this issue and positivity than in the past. So I feel very, very hopeful this morning.

I think you make a good point, Beth, that in a very short amount of time, a lot of people are feeling hope where last week I felt like there was just so much sadness and anger and desperation. How about you, dj?

Yeah, the same. You know, I really feel like we are making huge strides towards justice being served. There's a quote that says, justice can't be served unless those who are unaffected are equally as outraged as those who are. And I think that's what we're seeing. We've never seen a global outcry like we have now associated with racial injustice. So like Beth said, I'm very hopeful, and I think that the unified efforts of the world, they're meaningful right now, and they're giving us rays of hope.

I love it.

And I feel like the conversations that are being had are so important, and some that have never. I've never seen, I've never had before. And I think that's such a unique bridge that's happening right now. But I think what's important is to hear stories and hear the experiences of people. So can you guys share with us? We can start with you, dj. Have you experienced or can you tell us about a time when you've experienced and felt like you were the target of racism?

Most definitely. I mean, 38 years as a black man in America, of course, I've had my prejudice encounters, my racist encounters. But, you know, what I learned over time is what's more important is how I dealt with those situations. Because, you know, growing up, they would, you know, these incidents would catch me off guard and I would become angry. And in a nutshell, I didn't help the situation. I sometimes missed teaching moments. I remember just being in college, in my apartment, and what I noticed is that a lot of the racist encounters that I had were sometimes driven by ignorance. And that's just people not really taking a moment to educate themselves or people not really knowing better not knowing when they cross that line. I was leaving my apartment, and the young man who lived across the hall from me, a young white guy, and he was playing loud rap music. And the owner of the building was coming down the hallway and heard the music, and she said to me, I would have thought that you'd be the one playing the loud rap music. And that's such a racist remark to make. But I understand that sometimes those remarks can be made out of a place of ignorance and as opposed to becoming angry, I have to use those opportunities to help people better understand that that's not okay to say that. And these are the reasons you shouldn't say those things. And I've even had to walk away from moments like that and come back to the situation just to give myself time. So I think that's the most important thing for us is to better understand our role in how to deal with those racist acts and try to do our best to create teachable, excuse me, teachable moments.

I appreciate your attitude about that, dj. It's so positive. And I think that probably comes with maturity. And you've probably had good role models, too. How about for you, Beth, with the same question?

Yeah, you know, it's kind of interesting. So I'll answer it on behalf of a mom. Right. So I'm a mother of three children. So quite frankly, I worry more about the impact of racism on them than on me. Because like you said, I am more mature. I can sort of handle things differently than a child. And so, you know, I will say this. Even though I sort of am very attuned to racism against my children, I would say their experience growing up is far better than my experience growing up, which is far better than my parents experience growing up. So I do see that with every generation, things get better. But with that said, you know, one thing I do want to share is a lot of times we live in a. Our family lives in a predominantly white community. And so I think there's the assumption that Maybe my kids go to school there, but they don't live in the community. And that does come up. And usually when it happens, quite frankly, it's just annoying. But. But there is that concern, especially as my kids get older and more independent. They're walking back and forth and letting themselves in the house. My concern is a neighbor or someone in the community might see my 17 year old son letting himself in our house, assume that he can't live there, and maybe he's intruding. Call the police. And then you can see how a simple call to the police can certainly escalate into something more because of the assumption because they're African American, that, you know, they're bad, they don't belong there. For me, with the case of George Floyd, he's not a family member, but the connection between what happened to him, what could easily happen to my own children, is not lost on me. And that's where the despair and frustration comes. And it's always felt in the African American community. When these things happen for the first time, I feel like it's happening in broader community. And back to the top of our conversation, that's where the hope comes from. We're recognizing this is an American problem that we all need to fix and it's not just an African American problem for us to deal with.

Such a great point.

I love that you guys talk about hope and dj, you kind of sort of hit on that difference between, you know, intent and impact. And I think that's important. And as we talk about some of the hope, can you guys share? And we can start with you, D.J. maybe an experience that you've had of unity, because I do think we need some of these positive, uplifting moments as well to continue to get us through and help us all unpack our role and in racism.

Yeah, most definitely. I think back to a few summers ago, I helped serve on the board of African World Festivals. And you all know that we held our festivals for several years and hit some financial challenges and you know, sometimes within the church community. You all know I serve at Christian Faith Fellowship Church as the chief operations officer and I've been born and raised in the church. Sometimes the closed doors of the church can sometimes make it difficult for churches to work together and to collaborate. But you know, we had some financial challenges. And the executive director at the time, Mark Wade, he reached out to four pastors in the city. And you know, it was My father, Pastor McVicker, Bishop Burt, the late, great Bishop Bates, God rest his soul. They came together and they did a concert, and they packed out, you know, the Milwaukee Theater and raised the money that was necessary for us to continue to do our festival. And I just thought that that was such a significant sign of unity and understanding that the community is not about competition, but it's about collaboration. And we were able to, you know, put programming together for the community of Milwaukee, and that impacted everybody. You know, African World Festival appealed to blacks and whites and Latinos and so many people in our city. So that one gesture of unity made a huge impact in our. Showed me that, you know, we have to build bridges with each other and we have to connect and we have to lock arms, and we have to build and grow together so that we can positively affect our city.

Appreciate that we ran out of time. But, Beth, just really quickly, what's something that we can all do to help heal and to stop racism?

Yeah. So I'm going to focus on what people can do in the workplace, because that's where I spend all my time, consulting around workplace culture. And I think workplaces happen to be maybe more diverse than our personal lives. So reach out to people at work who are different than you and start to replace any stereotypes or biases that you may have with empathy and understanding. It all begins with a simple, simple conversation. That would be my suggestion.

You guys are both beautiful people. Thank you so much for joining us.

Thank you.

A conversation that's obviously well overdue, and we appreciate it. All right, up next on the show, watch those arms. Oh, I wanted to also mention real quick, Beth's free kit. It's a downloadable kit on diversity and inclusion. If you go to thebrimfullife.com you can download that again for free.