138: How to Ease Discussions on Race, Racism and Other Complicated Topics with Jeffrey Blount

Conversations around race and racism have always been difficult to manage. That's why some choose to avoid them altogether. But 2020 changed all that silence in a time when racism is consistently a front page or top of the hour story can send the worst type of message of them all. Welcome to the Confident Communications Podcast, helping communicators find the right response at the right time and deliver it in the right place. In this episode, gaining a better understanding for how to discuss race with truthfulness, openness and honesty. But even more helpful, I believe, is the idea of embracing the discomfort of not knowing what to say, especially if you are a non minority. Just as important if you are communicating on behalf of a business or an organization. My guest, Jeffrey Blunt is going to help us approach the conversation of race, first with context as a black man processing the past year, then with guidance for how to have meaningful conversations about race both internally and externally, as a company, as a person. Jeffrey is the award winning author of three novels. His latest, the Emancipation of Evan Walls, was the winner of the 2019 Reader's Favorite Book Award, winner of the 2019American Book Fest Best Book Award, winner of and a Shelf Unbound 2019 notable book. He is also an Emmy Award winning television director with 34 years at NBC News and he also directed a decade of Meet the Press, the Today show and NBC Nightly News. This is Jeffrey's second visit on the podcast. The first time I spoke with him was back in 2019 on episode 14, how to talk about Racism Without Sounding like a Racist. I have the link in the show notes. Back then he completely changed the way I looked at race. I heard from many of you that he did the same for you and I promise he will do the same for you in 2021 in this episode. Jeffrey, I've had many guests on this podcast and I've enjoyed every one. But there was something about your episode when I spoke with you that really stuck with me. And I have been wanting to speak with you ever since the day that George Floyd was killed in Minneapolis at the hands of the Minneapolis Police Department. You were one of the first people I thought of because I thought, what is Jeffrey thinking? So let's just start there. Let's go back to the last day in May 2020. What were you thinking?

Well, I actually wrote a piece right after the day after because it took me that long to gather my thoughts. But that morning when I first saw the footage, it was unbelievable as it occurred because you just can't believe that another human being could be killing a human being. Know that they're putting their life, that person's life at risk, and look so nonchalantly at the camera as if to say, I don't care. This person isn't worthy. And as an African American, you think, well, what can change this? Okay, maybe we need some. You often say you need white people to intervene. So then you see a white woman who is a first responder, say to the officers, check his pulse. Check his pulse. And she tries to get them to give him some medical care, and they don't. They just look at her as callously as they looked at everybody else. And so in that moment, all of what we try to say, racism is, is crystallized in nine and a half minutes in Chauvin's face. And there should be no doubt among Americans, among people with a heart, people who are in touch with their humanity, that racism exists. The ugly face was clear and concise in its hatred and its lack of care for another human's life. And it was devastating. Because at some point you say, as an African American, well, what can I do? Where is the hope if this can happen in today's country and people want to make excuses for it? You know, because George Floyd was. I don't know, we, you know, he. He took something from the store or he did something else, whatever excuse it was. If we can make excuses for that kind of behavior, then we are right back to the days of hanging people from trees and burning their bodies and taking their body parts and shipping them across the country and sending out postcards of. Of the lynchings. So you get to a point and you wonder how far we really have come. So it was a devastating day for me. It was a day where hope felt like hope was lost. But I tell you, one of the things that saved me constantly with regard to race is being married to a white woman and is being part of a white family who I know at the core love me for who I am. And so if you have some representation in your life of people who care for you despite all the things that some people say are wrong, then you cannot go down the rabbit hole of thinking everything is lost. I have no hope. And that makes a huge difference. Which is why having people of all colors, of all creeds in your life widen your scope of humanity, and it can soften the blows of something like George Floyd's death.

But you have a spouse who is white who could remind you of that.

Absolutely.

But certainly there are plenty of people, African Americans out there, who don't have that. So do you feel that that incident, among others, have pushed the needle backward or forward in terms of acceptance.

In terms of acceptance by white America, white America, with.

With black America, do you feel that we've moved forward or in some ways, have we moved backwards? Is it still just as frustrating to now, a year later?

No, because I do think we have stepped forward. And I think there has been a reckoning in our country. And not just in our country, but George Floyd's death caused a reckoning around the world. And whenever you're in the process, a reckoning or something that you are changing, particularly when it's a controversial thing, you're coming out of something controversial, you're trying to change it, it's painful. It's going to be painful. But you have to recognize that there are steps forward. Now, if we go back to 1963, when the young people's movement, that the kids decided they were going to do something in Birmingham, Alabama, and many adults didn't want them to do it, folks had to convince Martin Luther King that it might be a good thing. But the kids have made up their mind. They're doing what they were going to do. So they come out into Kelly Ingram park across from the 16th Street Church, and they protest. And what happens is Bull Connor arrives. What happens is they take water hoses. They take two water hoses, and they compress the power from those two water hoses into the nozzle, into one nozzle, making it many times more powerful, powerful enough to. To take the bricks off of some of the buildings. They turn that on children, and they lacerate their skin, they knock them down, they set dogs loose on those children. And this appeared on the news. So what happened? It hit America at its moral core. And then America had to decide who it was. What will we stand for? And so that moved us forward and kept moving us forward until the Civil Rights Act, Voting Rights act, those major things occurred. And the children, I believe, had a monumental influence on that because they tugged at the moral fiber of who we are now. Watching a man be killed for nine and a half minutes, watching his life taken away from him, drained away from him while he called for his mother. Put America back in that same position where it had to test its moral fiber, had to ask itself, who are we now? A lot of people are coming out of that, trying to say, this isn't who we are. This isn't America. It is who we are. Because I always say, if your body has a cancer in it, that cancer is you. And so if we have racism in it, that Cancer is us. And it showed itself. Chauvin showed us that cancer. So on the other side, look at the streets, look at the amount of young and old white people who were in the streets with African Americans all across the world. In London, I remember seeing a shot in London and I was like, that's incredible. It was like looking at an old Benetton ad. I mean, there's so many people of so many races and everything. It was incredible. So this is a step forward after George Floyd. It's a painful step forward because we got to go through. Some people have to. Some people have to search themselves. And that searching is painful. To come to the conclusion that, okay, what happened there was inhumane and just something that we can't tolerate as a nation. The only thing that worried me was if Chauvin had been, was not guilty, if the jury had said he was not guilty, then I was really scared for who and what we were going to become as a country.

Understood. Understood. Jeffrey, you're mentioning that it was a day of reckoning, which it certainly was for anyone, all race, all ages, no matter where anyone was located born. Me being from the Twin Cities, even more so. But you also mentioned the news coverage. Now, you had a 34 year career at NBC News. You were director of Meet the Press Today show, NBC Nightly News. Do you notice the change in news coverage, like even all of that George Floyd coverage, the coverage of his trial? Do you think Back to your 34 years in network news? What has changed there in a year just in terms of the coverage and how reporters are speaking about it?

Well, I don't think it's changed because of Floyd. I think it's changed because of other things and that Floyd just heightened it or made it, in my opinion, worse.

How so?

I think that we are. The news business is having a reckoning too.

Okay.

And I'm not sure on which side it's coming out. I mean, I have to say I'm a bit embarrassed by the continual coverage everywhere. The only place I see the real journalism, attempt to real journalism is on evening newscast. If you're talking to broadcast and of course in the papers, you're more apt to find that, that reasonable coverage. But most people get their news still from television or other media clips and things like that. Msnbc, cnn, Fox are all, how should I say? It's about talk and not necessarily about facts. It's about insinuating the feelings of the anchors and not always about facts. And you can go, there are extremes on both sides where you see anchors Making sarcastic REM marks. You see them rolling their eyes and doing those kinds of things. Well, that's not journalism and that's also trying to sway people to your side. I would prefer that if you were able to look at the coverage of what happened in 1963 in Kelly Ingram Park. I would prefer that kind of journalism because it wasn't about what we assumed, it was about what happened. And then people were able to see that and people were able to be in touch, as I said, with their hearts and make a difference. I think the media is in a crisis point, particularly broadcast journalism and my time. And I've seen that change go from when I entered the business when the news departments were a public relations part of the network. They didn't even have to make a profit. Their job was to inform the network. But once the news departments were forced to make money to show a profit and to compete according to ratings, everything went downhill. And so I think that's where we are right now. And I think that what we've seen, I don't, you know, I think most of the good coverage about George Floyd has been in the print media. In my, my opinion, I think that television has, broadcast journalism has let us down tremendously there. I don't, I mean, the video speaks for itself, but you hear people preaching and people testifying about this and that. I would say I appreciate the actual evidence based coverage by folks like Laura Coates, who is a lawyer who appears on cnn, but is very old school in that she responds to what happened and her questions and her answers are about what happened and not about what she feels. It's about what will happen in the courtroom, not about what she thinks. So there are few people like that. But in general, I think broadcast journalism in particular failed in its coverage, Floyd, as it is, it is failing in its coverage of many things.

Now, so what you're stating, and this is from your experience, your decades long experience in news is any of the institutions that can remain unbiased will be able to, to share the news factually. But it sounds as if you're saying you feel as if the industry in general is falling more towards opinion based news and we're losing the foundation of journalism 100%.

And as a person who spent his life in journalism, that worries me tremendously.

Yeah, I can understand that. Now where I want to go now is I'm going to insert some of the quotes that you had from the original interview that you and I did. Okay. And this first one was about the mega hat, the red Hat that we saw when you and I spoke was in the beginning stages of President Trump's campaign. Take a listen now, Jeffrey, when you mentioned the hat, you mentioned to me, you sounded very cautious as you were connecting the mega hat with the white pointed hat. Do you feel like it's getting closer in terms of showing and displaying the equal amount of hate?

Yes. I mean, obviously, nobody's killed anybody wearing a MAGA hat or lynched anybody wearing a MAGA hat. So let's be clear about that difference. But what's growing is the feeling of people of color and not just African Americans and women, and that this hat symbolizes the stances of the man at the top. And when you wear it, you're wearing it to show that. And you can't separate yourself from it. You can't just say, I'm wearing it, because it comes with a whole package. And so it is growing in its intensity. And I do believe that it is beginning to. Without the physical damage that came along with the hood, it's beginning to rival it in terms of its symbolism.

So, Jeffrey, when you had stated that seeing a mega hat was like seeing a pointed white hat, I was stunned by that, but I understood it, and it is so remarkable, in a way. You almost called back then what was going to happen.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, that was, that's what everybody. That's what black people were feeling, and that's what everybody understood to be the message that was being sent to us. And people. It's another thing, like in a little bit of, you know, George, Floyd, we don't want, we didn't want to believe that was possible. That, you know, and it can't be that bad. No, that's not what the, what that hat means or that's not, you know, people who wear it. It's just about political differences. It isn't about how they feel about you. No, it is about how they feel about me. I wouldn't put on a hat that said women belong in the kitchen and in the bedroom. I wouldn't do that because what would it say about me? Every woman should slap my face if they saw me wearing a hat like that. So if you wear a hat, you wear a hat that's attached to a racist. Why would you expect black people to have a reasonable conversation with you about that hat?

Now, the New York Times, Mara Gay, did you see that statement with the New York Times? She's on the editorial board. I believe that she said she was disturbed by American flags in a, in a, in a meeting that she was in. And they had stated that she was taken out of context. But really what she was talking about was almost the signal calling of these. Of these emblems and signage. So you have American flags like the mega hat. The iconography of it has changed so much, I think, in the past two years. So what are your feelings? And I think you can also look to what happened at the Capitol. What about some of these icons now? I mean, are they. Is there any confusion about how some of these icons are used in terms of the thoughts on racism?

Well, where African Americans are concerned, all of those icons have been problematic at some point in history. So, you know, you could go and you could fight, and many people died in war for that flag, and you could come home as a soldier and not be able to walk down the street or actually be killed because you were a soldier, because we need to keep you in your place. There were, you know, in a novel I wrote recently there, there was a scene where one father, who had been a military man and who'd come home and felt this. He burned the American flag. And he did so. And I wrote that in because knew that that had happened. And so a lot of things have happened to African Americans under the American flag. So there is a love, hate, or love, maybe hate's too strong. Love, concern, relationship. We loved our country, which is why black people wanted to go and fight. I mean, think about that. You could say, we don't want you to fight. You could say, okay, why should I go and kill myself? No, I want to take ownership of my country, so I'm going to go and fight for my country and my flag. But then these things happen to me. And so, you know, so that becomes problematic. And then we have all these situations now where the statues are problematic have been over time in history. Robert E. Lee's statue is sitting on Monument Avenue in Richmond, Virginia, right now. And they're fighting over whether or not they're going to take it down. Well, to a lot of people, he's a great American hero, but to most African Americans, that's not the case. And so what has been wholly felt as real American has always been a struggle for African Americans. Now we get here to a place and time where we have had an African American president, where we have black billionaires, that group growing, we have black folks who are leading universities and doing all kinds of things, and we think things are getting better. And then we meet the red hat that is calling on the history of the pointed sheet, the pointed hat. And then we have to fight that battle again. So it's a continuation in history. And each time we have to do that. I'm trying to. Senator Moynihan, who was in charge of a report on African American in the 60s, he said, and I'm paraphrasing, but any other race of people he could imagine would have just died out. He can't even begin to imagine what it takes to. To have been an African American in this country and to continue to survive. So there's a thoughtful, intellectual, white American senator saying, after having studied the black culture and the black experience, I don't know how you're still alive. So when you get to this point and the MAGA hat comes up, it's really hard to want to hear somebody try to explain why that isn't what it really is.

And I think that is what's changed so much just in these past two years, or at least during that presidency. What was once accepted where it could be rationalized away as, oh, it's just campaign merchandise. People understand what it means now. What we're talking about today is really complicated conversations. And the name of the podcast is Confident Communications. But I feel that so many people like myself, white people, find the conversation of race, the communications around it, to be complicated. And another area that I think more people feel more comfortable talking about now that came out in the last two years was a statement that you said about color. So take a listen. Okay, so if we needed to filter it down to the basics, right? In general, if you are meeting a white person and when they address you, is it ideal for them to make the situation colorblind, or should the race be addressed?

Well, it should never be colorblind because then you ignore who I am. But here is how I would. This is my one piece of really good, I think, really good advice for white people who really want to talk to African Americans about race. Approach the situation with your humanity on your sleeve. Approach the situation letting that person know that you are above all, above all, the mistakes you could make in talking about this, that your heart starts your politics, and your heart and your belief starts with, you are human, I am human, we are equal. Now, here's this construct of race. I wanna figure this out with you so we can relate on the basis of our humanity rather than on the basis of our skin color.

Jeffrey, at least for myself, you taught me such a valid, valid lesson there about you want to see color. I mean, that truly changed my thinking. You brought color into my thinking. Do you feel that more people understand those rul now about seeing color.

Absolutely. And I do think, in an unfortunate way, George Floyd's death was a huge help in that regard, because people who have allowed themselves to be tone deaf or allowed them. They could say those kinds of things. Oh, I don't see. I don't see color. I don't see that when you see a white man take a black man's life in that way, and all of the history comes to fruition in that moment, the conflict in this country around race and that moment when he takes the life and when people then hit the streets and say, see me. See the struggle I have in yours. And so constantly I have been hearing more and more and more of. I have a white friend who was an author who just. Her book launched last week, and I was watching her last night speak, and she started to speak about her white privilege. And she said, I never really talked about my privilege before, but now I see it, and that's why I put it in this book that I just wrote, and that's why I'm talking about it. So I think George Floyd helped a lot of people to see the privilege, to see why they wouldn't be held down that way, to see why they probably would have walked away from that situation. And once you see that, you can take it a step further and see why I get this, maybe why I had an opportunity that, you know, George Floyd's kids might not have or that sort of thing. So I think a lot of realization occurred after that. And I do. And I do think that's good. That's what I'm talking about. And part of the reckoning is recognizing, okay, these people are black people. These people are African Americans. And because they are, the culture is different in how it approaches them. And therefore, if I want to make things better in this country, then I need to recognize that and help celebrate that, because there's a lot to celebrate, and that's why. And we can celebrate each other. And that's what my family teaches me. So. And I think that that is what's happening to a lot of people. I really do.

And I mean, anyone hearing the sound of your voice can hear the passion also mixed with the hurt and the fear of something that you've lived with your whole life. And this day of reckoning and watching it on television would be scary. As you mentioned, Derek Chauvin, I thought you probably went through life looking a lot of Derek Chauvin's in the eye.

Yes.

As you've had to navigate your life.

Oh, absolutely.

Yeah. Yeah. So I Wanted to make. This is a hard turn and I don't want, I wanted to make it as less clunky as possible. But I strongly believe this in my core. I help people. What I do like my mission is to help people feel confident when they communicate. And there are areas where people don't have confidence, not because they're skilled, but they feel clumsy. They feel that they may say something wrong. In many cases, they choose to say nothing because they feel that it's safer. Something that has changed in me as a communicator in the past year since George Floyd's death is I feel that silence can be the loudest message of them all. And I notice when brands and leaders and companies are silent. Would you agree with that statement as an African American man?

Absolutely.

Do you notice when people don't speak up? Okay, now let's get into someone who they may be. There's the corporate space, of course, but there's people who run small to medium sized businesses. They might run it, they may own it, they may manage one. They're a communicator for one. I, you know, you talk about your day of reckoning, you know, for race in a very small way. I just think in the last year, the day of reckoning just for our profession, you know, as communicators, people are starting to value the importance of strong communications, like how it can hurt, but how it can heal as well. And I want to help leaders, business owners, communicators, feel more comfortable and confident speaking about race. So one thing that's come up just in the past year, the idea of allyship and being an ally, what does that really mean for a company or for a leader to be an ally.

To do exactly what I said before, recognize the group, whether it's an African American group or whether it's women or whether it's gays, to recognize those contributions of those groups, to celebrate those contributions, it's kind of hard. But in some ways, if it's possible to create some sort of sincerity and vulnerability around the issue where you, as a particularly a smaller company, in terms of being able to see all the people you work with and touch the people you work with, vulnerability around the subject is the only way for success. Because otherwise people recognize when you're just making a political statement or when you're just trying to say something because HR says we need to say this and it'll mean we won't get in trouble. As a company, we need to be vulnerable and speak to our failures in the area of race. And speak to our hopes in the areas of race. And I think that's what people are typically afraid of when they say, well, I'm afraid to talk, I'm afraid I might say something wrong. That's because you're thinking too hard. That's because you're trying to work at, oh, what can I say? How are I say. How about if you just spoke from the heart? How about if you just said, you know what, here's what I want. I want to have a conversation with you about your culture, your race, your experience, as opposed to mine. And I'm going to probably make some missteps, but I know that I need to have those missteps. And I know in response you might say some things to me that might shock me, but I'm going to keep moving forward because this is the goal. So I grew up in a small town, rural town in Virginia. Black man born in the 50s, raised in the 60s and 70s. And I became, I am dear friends with a white woman from my hometown who's 84 years old, born across the racial divide in another time ahead of me. And we have come to, we have had the most amazing conversations. And the reason why we're able to say I love you or love Jeffrey and love Mary when we sign our emails is because we trust that we have heard each other's heart and we trust that we have laid it all out. And at the end we recognize each other's humanity. It's a hard thing to do, I recognize in a corporate world, even in a small business, but I have spoken to a fair number of corporate groups and one of the things that I have said that has been reported back to me that has worked is that having a sensitivity group is one thing. Having somebody in to sensitize everybody, that's one thing. But typically you get lectured to at that point and you don't. You may learn some facts and you may learn how people feel, but you don't get to really explore yourself in the relationship. So I said, if you really want to have the. To cross the racial divide with your co worker, have your co worker over to your house. And I ask people, how many people have been to each other's home? Nobody goes to anybody's house. Why is that? Well, we don't think each other would, you know, we live in different cultures outside of work and. Well, of course you do, because you never try to cross it. So how about instead of having a sensitivity meeting, you guys pair off and then go to each other's homes and meet each other's family, go out to dinner, go to church with that family, do some things that make you see family life, put yourselves in their shoes in the best way and the most vulnerable way that you can and show yourself as being vulnerable and that you're learning something and that you can make a difference there over time. It's not going to happen overnight, but you keep the relationship going. And my response, my emails response has been thank you, thank you. Because it is about one on one individual getting to individuals getting to know each other and becoming, as I keep saying, because it's my mantra, becoming vulnerable with each other. And when people see you put your heart out there, they're not apt to step on it. They're going to want to know, well, what can we do to make each other better? And the responses I've been getting is that that's the case. And so I continue to press that case. I'll be given a talk next week and I'm going to say the same thing.

The issue of diversity and equity inclusion, I mean, certainly in this year there's such a push for it, right. That we're hiring people to head the division. We're creating web pages to show our commitment to it. We are adjusting mission statements, value statements, right. But what I hear that now I am adding, that you've just taught me is, you know, showing that vulnerability side. It's these steps here, right? You're showing vulnerability, which I hear as if I had to, if we wanted to sanitize it in a corporate sense, we'd call it sincerity. Sincerity. But it's the do. Don't just say, right. Don't just tell you have to do. Because if you don't do, then you haven't done it and you don't.

And then people get more cynical about you because they know you don't mean it. And then the wall gets thicker and thicker and so the next time you try is harder and harder. So yeah, I mean you just, and I do understand, like I said, in a corporate world, but companies have cultures and that's why, that's why you're trying to find a mission statement and that's why we have diversity and inclusion, because you're trying to establish some sort of culture and all of that is good. And a war can be fought on many different fronts. So all of that's good, but at the same. But to me, the core where I have seen actual change is when people meet each other and take off the vice president label and they take off whatever they have, and they get out of the C suite and they go to the home of, I don't know, a worker, a worker bee. And you invite that worker bee to your house. You try to break the cultural line. And it doesn't mean you're obviously, you're not going to be that person's boss, but you have a more. You have an understanding. And when somebody comes to you and say, this happened to me, you don't automatically discount it because now you're part of their world and you understand that and you say, okay, well, now I hear you. I'm not going to just say that, oh, John wouldn't do that because he's a nice guy. Well, John might be biased in a ways he doesn't even know. But I didn't know that until I got to know you. And I understood the microaggressions that you have to deal with on a daily basis. And so now I'm able to be a better boss because I've come to know you in a way that's.

Through.

The heart rather than through some paperwork and rather than through a lecture or seminar. And I know that's hard to do because people don't want to put themselves at risk because they feel it can come back and hurt them somehow sometimes. But nothing is gained without the risk.

Oh, wow. My head is spinning right now just thinking like you are. I'm now making this paradigm shift in regard to communicating diversity and equity inclusion. I really am, because for the past year, and even I'm. I'm creating this, this diversity kit, if you will, to help, you know, communicators. And so much of it is about how. How do we effectively communicate and how do we talk about our value statements. You know, it's all. It's all fine and good, but the element that is. That is missing, that I now need to add to it, that everyone needs to add is from 2021 and beyond now is just the action behind it. It's not just about. It's not just speaking it. It's. It's doing it. So it reminds me when Morgan Freeman, I believe, who sat down in an interview and when someone had asked him about Black History Month, he said he doesn't celebrate it because it's one month. To him now it's under like, okay, that's a great line, but I hate this sounds so trite, Jeffrey, based on what we're talking about. But let's just get into the month for a moment, if you would. So we have February, and one February People are starting to celebrate it and they do it throughout the month and then it ends. Should we be celebrating Black History Month? And then how do we feel about the rest of the calendar? Like truly, how do we do it right?

Oh, I think we do celebrate Black History Month. I understand what Morgan Freeman is saying and I agree with him. It should be a year long thing.

But.

You have a group of people who have historically been diminished in the eyes of the stronger culture, the dominant culture. And people don't even recognize the gifts that African Americans have given. And so I think that's one of the things that Black History Month does on a regular basis now. I think it needs to go beyond Harriet Tubman. It needs to go beyond mlk. One of the things I've been talking about with regard to my novel is this is about a little boy who wanted to be something. And people kept getting in his way, trying to keep him from being that and like him, when children withhold their gifts from the world, we all lose. And so people need to know that Dr. Kizzmicki Okorbut, who is one of the two doctors working at NIH who were the scientific leads for the Moderna vaccine that we have today, people need to know that she's involved in that. People need to know that the reason they have GPS in their phones is a black woman named Gladys west who worked in the Air Force, who was a mathematical genius like Katherine Johnson from Hidden Figures, and she mathematically mapped the globe, which became the foundation, the cornerstone of what we have as gps. So these are the kinds of things that Black History Month can highlight. And I think that's a good thing because like I said, wars can be fought on many different fronts, but one of the fronts that needs to be to fought now, and I think that Morgan Freeman is pointing to this and I agree with him. At the end of February, it stops. So I had a good friend, I, a mentor of mine who was white, who was a huge influence on my career. And here's a white guy who used to complain about Black History Month only being a month. So he and Morgan Freeman would have a good talk. He used to say to me, you know, Jeffrey, what's today? And I would say, It's March 1st. And he said, you know what that is, Jeffrey? And I said, no, what is that? Because I knew what he was gonna say. He said, it's the beginning of White History Year.

There you go.

And so, and so what he was saying, what he kept saying to people is, this is when we stop talking so the rest of the year, we don't even know what black people have contributed. And I was thankful to him for saying things like that out loud in a newsroom where reporters could hear it so they could say, oh, well, maybe we need to cover more stories about African Americans throughout the year and what we have now all across the country and legislatures, people are trying to diminish the history of African Americans in this country. Whether you call it critical race theory or whatever things happened. And people are trying to say those things didn't happen. And people are trying to say we need to not teach our children about that. So we do need to teach our children about that. We do need to keep marching month after month so that people will know who the Gladys west are and the Kizzmakia Corbett's are. We need to know the influence that African Americans had in World War II. People, you know, you watch Private Ryan and you don't see any black people on the beach on D Day. That's incorrect. Black male soldiers were on the beach. But you will never see that and you will never hear that in class because we don't teach that history. This is what Morgan Freeman was saying, let's teach that history all year, all the time. But there's no point, there's no wrong thing in highlighting it. Let's say jump starting the year, every year with Black History Month.

Oh, my goodness, I'm so moved. So then let me ask one last question before we get into the indestructible tip that I want to ask you about. For listeners on this topic of race, what about the other minorities? You know, so this month, in the month of June, is Pride Month. And they would. If you spoke. If you spoke to someone, you had spoke to someone with LGBTQ audience, they would say the same thing. July 1st still is, you know, Pride Month. But what about other minority groups? What should we just be doing overall in a year? Just in terms of our communication, our recognizing and acknowledging race?

We need to. We just need to be truthful and be honest and not try to be political and talking about what's safe. And let's do what's safe. Let's not say this because somebody might get upset if we talk about the fact that Gladys west created or was a foundation for gps. It might get upset if we acknowledge the fact that this black scientist had something to do with Moderna vaccine. Let's downplay that. We need to just tell the truth. Truth, it solves so many things. Why do we work so hard to cover things up? Or to push them aside, or to not say what is the truth. I just read the other day that history isn't to please us.

History.

History isn't to be nice to us. History is history. History is facts. They happen. We should learn from them. So, you know, I'm going on and on about that, but I guess just say that's just where I am there. I don't know how to emphasize it anymore.

I hear you loud and clear. And I think anyone listening to this episode hears it loud as clearly as well. I want to ask you one final question here. You had mentioned your book, which I will have to add the title, the Emancipation of Evan Walls, which I read, and it's so timely. I had to pull it out again just in the past year. And I've been following you on your book tour, and you're quite a hit at the book clubs. Like, people love hearing from you. You're everywhere. There's a lot of female book clubs. I mean, people can't see you. But I've said this to you. You have the best cover photo of any author I have ever seen in my life. Hands down. Hands down. But you're. You're pretty. I mean, what is the reception on your book? You must be getting a lot of positive feedback.

Yes, a lot of positive feedback. And I love book clubs. I love people who really want to, you know, discuss the essence of the book. And I find so many people do. And I've had so many heartfelt and wonderful conversations.

Do you feel as if there's hope that people are starting to understand this idea of how we discuss race and racism without sounding like a racist?

Yes, I do think there's. I do feel there's hope. I feel people are trying, you know, many of those groups. We didn't just talk about my book. We talked about Isabel Wilkerson's book Cast and about what that meant for the country and how we can come together. You know, I ended up reading White Fragility because one of the book clubs talked about that. And then I actually went back to that book club and we talked about some other stuff and that. So, yeah, I think we're definitely moving forward.

Well, speaking of books, you were nice enough to write a blurb for my book, Indestructible. I was so privileged that you did that because I respect your work in news and also as an author. You're becoming a prolific author. But at the end of every episode, I want people again, as I said, to feel confident. And the way that I look at it is if you feel indestructible, that people can't bring you down. And even if you do come down, you can be built back together in some way, either by other people, by your followers, or by yourself if you show your values. Tell me, tell the listener. What would be in regard to race, communicating about race, thinking about it. What would be a way to help them think, for them to feel more confident when they discuss it or communicate it?

Well, the first thing I would say would probably be disappointing in that there really is no way to be completely confident when you're talking about the issue of race in this country, because it is too complicated. There's too much crooked history and there's no straight path. Too many influences that have caused it to blossom into something that is hard for us to control. So what I would say, the one concrete thing I would say is to not be concrete is to be one of my favorite folks. One of the things, I have a black belt in karate. I used to love Bruce Lee. Bruce Lee used to say, be water, my friend. And what he meant was, you need to make yourself available to roll over the rocks and the hard places and reconstitute on the other side and how you see what you just rolled over. So the confident way to approach race is with your vulnerability on your sleeve and your heart open and then work with that. There is no political way for a company. There's no one statement, there is no presentation you can make that is going to blanket the issue of race for you and make you successful in dealing with it. It is an ever changing river, and in many ways, we are just trying to ride on it safely and come into ports of comfort with regard to different parts of it. And the best we can do is to continue the battle to continue the struggle of working with it. I personally believe there is hope for a greater America when it comes to race. I believe I see it every day in my life. I see it in my relationships. I see it in the relationships between other African Americans and people of different cultures and different races. So I know it's possible. And I think that the greater part of America believes that otherwise we would have already descended into something horrible. So my thing is to understand that the greater part of this country is trying its best to work itself out with regard to that. And as a company, as an executive in a company, I would say I would keep my fingers on the pulse of that. I would be reading. I would be constantly dealing with issues of putting myself in a place where I had to constantly Deal with issues of diversity and inclusion and speaking from what I don't know instead of what I think I do know and accepting the lessons that you get. But basically, you've got to be flexible in your mindset. I think it's good to set a mission statement. I do believe that. I do believe a mission statement tells everybody that this is who we are and this is who we attempt. And I think that's important. A mission statement has to be flexible, too. This is who we want to be. And then it lets people know, okay, we want to get on the bandwagon with those folks. You know, if you remember a few years back, Cheerios did a commercial where they had an interracial couple and the little girl and everything blew out of proportion. I mean, the Cheerios folks said, well, this is where we want to go. And I think now that was like a major point. Now when you look at television, you see all these biracial families and commercials and things that shows you something, that movement shows you something. And Cheerios showed you something. They said, we're not going to not do this. We believe in everybody and we believe there are all kinds of people and all kinds of people get to eat our food, and we're going to show you who they are. And so I think that is an example for many companies to have a mission statement that says, you are about all people. And our goal is to be an inclusive, diverse company. And we work to understand the needs and desires of all the cult sense, all the cultures that our company, not just our company's culture, but all the cultures that our company represents. Because if you have blacks, white, Muslims, Jews, Hispanics, Asians, you know, Hindus, if you have all these people working for you, you can't just have a white American culture. You've got to have all represent all those people. And so that's what your mission statement should speak to. And then you be like water when it comes to you. Roll with the punches, come out on the other side, reconstitute yourself and try to be better for the next time.

Oh, Jeffrey. Be like water. You can apply that in so many areas.

BRUCE LEE.

But this. In this area. BRUCE LEE. But now when this topic comes up, I will never forget that. Thank you, Bruce Lee. Thank you, Jeffrey. But you're right. It's being like will help you navigate the rough waters. Watch this. Watch this metaphor. Keep going. Navigate the rough waters of complicated conversations about race, but also communicating them. Because I know that people just sometimes they have the best intention, but they just don't know the best thing to do. So showing that vulnerability, like you said, being flexible and not concrete in something.

And say I don't know what I'm supposed to do, help me out.

Oh, that's helpful.

You know, that's where the flexibility is to the vulnerability too. I want to do this, but I don't know. I'm not afraid of being. I'm not afraid of saying the wrong thing. I'm going to say the wrong thing. Help me out.

Jeffrey, thank you for helping me out and my listeners out because once again it's you offered so much information and helpful information to help people understand and navigate this complicated area. But you make it. I don't know. I don't know. I feel inspired after talking to you. Thank you for speaking with me and I'm also including a link to your book, the Emancipation of Evan Walls in the show notes. Jeffrey, it was wonderful speaking with you. Thank you.

Oh, Molly, it's always a pleasure.

My thanks to Jeffrey for sharing his insight about having the complicated conversations about race and racism once again on the podcast. You can find out more information about Jeffrey on his website, jeffreyblunt.com I've also included links to his novels Hating Heidi Foster, Almost Snow White and the Emancipation of Evan Walls in the show notes. That's all for now. Thanks for listening. We'll see you back here next week. Bye for.