Kay:
Hey family. This week, we are covering one topic that is near and dear to our hearts. So, let’s get into it. Let’s talk about race.
Shi:
♫ Let’s talk about race, baby. ♫
Kay & Shi:
♫ Let’s talk about you and me. ♫
Shi:
Let’s talk about living together in harmony, and that is the vision for the future. It certainly was the vision that Dr. King painted in Washington DC all those years ago, and a vision that still has a long way to go before it comes into fruition. But we do want to talk about racial inequality on this episode of the Kay & Shi Show and have it be the theme because it’s been of particular importance to us, and it’s been a mission and a quest of ours to learn more, become more educated and to become allies and advocates.
Kay:
Now in 2020, when Ahmaud Arbery was murdered it definitely put a stark reality in front of both Shila and I, that moved us into action prior to the death of George Floyd, which then sparked the real rise of the Black Lives Matter movement. But that felt like a modern-day lynching that we witnessed through the media was so difficult to bear that we had to find a way to better educate both ourselves and the people around us in regard to race.
Shi:
So, racism looks a lot different than it has in the past. It’s gone from the overt expression of the N-word wielding people, and those lynchings flat out and become much more subtle and much more covert and that makes it a lot harder to address. But the good news about addressing systemic inequalities and issues that impact those that are minorities by race and by ethnicity also helps other marginalized groups and ethnic minorities, those in the LGBTQIA community, disabilities and so much more. So, this helps us really address one pinpoint of the issue, but in doing so, it helps others.
Kay:
Now, if you’re part of our family that means that the only qualification you have to be here is that you are human.
Shi:
Yay!
Kay:
Yay! We all get to be human.
Shi:
Actually, dogs are welcome, too.
Kay:
Dogs are totally welcome.
Shi:
Birds also, whales.
Kay:
Oh, man. But if you are a white person and you are also part of our family, welcome. If this topic right now is making you feel uncomfortable, we just want to ask you to stick with us for a quick minute here because we’re going to talk a little bit about the history of how we got to where we are. We’re going to talk a little bit about what we can do to make it better and if you are a person of color, what we would like to say is that we do not think a couple of white girls can come along and solve racism. But what we do think is that having conversations and talking about it from both sides of the fence is really important and that we want to ensure that all voices are heard in regard to this, and hopefully be a bridge for those who might feel uncomfortable exploring the topic of racism outside a podcast like this.
Shi:
Now we’ve done a lot of exploration on this topic, and we’re going to share more throughout this week and this episode of the Kay & Shi Show, but we want to start this first segment off just looking at the history of how we see such stark inequality, particularly between black Americans and white Americans. Now there is racial and ethnic inequality around the world on a lot of different levels, but here in the US this certainly has a spotlight shown on it right now and it can be easy to understand why it is when we look at the history from where we’ve come from.
Kay:
So, let’s do just a little bit of math together right now. We had 157 years of being a land that had slavery present in it before we became a country and then we spent 89 years as a country before slavery was abolished in the Civil War, which means we had 246 years of slavery that happened right here on our ground.
Shi:
What’s pretty crazy is that in the year 2022, and this is being recorded, we will be celebrating our 246th birthday as a country which means just this year in the 21st century, our country is now as old as how many years of slavery were present in this land. That is some pretty deeply ingrained culture and trauma and expression that is right at the very basis, even since before we were born.
Kay:
So if you throw another 100 years of legalized discrimination and prejudice through the Jim Crow laws on top of that, and then an epic Civil Rights Movement that fought for equity and equality, and then you just fast forward a quick 50 years, and here we are 52 years later. Here we are, right? After hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years of racism in the most extreme senses being present within our country. We’ve had such a small amount of time where we’ve been able to attempt to correct things. So, it is only natural that it would still exist in some ways today.
Shi:
Right. It’s so crazy because we think about that, 246 years of slavery and then another hundred years before Jim Crow comes down and then another almost 50 years before we have the Civil Rights Movement. So, add all of that together and all of the 400 years that black people have been in our country, just 50 of them they’ve had legal recognition as equals. That’s pretty darn recent history.
Kay:
It is really recent history and if you were taught in a public school like we were many of us were taught that the Civil Rights Movement came along in the sixties and kind of like–bloop!–racism no longer exists and…
Shi:
We did it.
Kay:
Yeah, we did it. Yay. We cured racism in our country. But the reality is that this has been a long and complicated journey that includes millions of untold stories, moments of heartbreak and struggle, and an ongoing effort to change the systemic issues that perpetuate these old ways of thinking, systemic issues that are still in our narrative today.
Shi:
Look, this doesn’t mean white people owe apologies to black people and it doesn’t mean that black people don’t bear responsibility for the actions they take today. So, if you’re starting to feel those hackles come up, that’s not what we’re talking about. But what it does mean is that there are institutional structures and practices in play that covertly support the old ways of thinking and we are all participating in them every day, and before we bring awareness to it and stand up for it, it will just continue to perpetuate. So, that’s why we feel so strongly about this subject, and we look forward to tackling it further later on in the show.
