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.
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Kay:
Okay. So, next let’s just talk a little bit about what went down in the Civil Rights Movement. Now we talked about how we got here. We’ve talked a little bit about the history, but the Civil Rights Movement was a turning point for everyone in our country and there were some really specific conditions that kind of came forward that helped to catalyze this cataclysmic event.
Shi:
Well, I think it really bears kind of this underscoring here of why the Civil Rights Movement was able to take hold when it did. It’s not like there weren’t black people and coalitions and associations and movements happening before then trying to fight for equality and equity and justice, but the conditions did become right, and when you study social movements from a sociological perspective like I do with my students in my University teaching you really look at all of these different factors that it takes in order for a social movement to take hold. So, the conditions really did become finally right in the fifties and sixties, when the black people in our country had been working and struggling to advance the narrative for so long, finally, things came together. What are those things? Things like the Cold War.
Now you have to remember in the Cold War, the US was out there around the world espousing democracy and espousing equality and there were a lot of people in the world who were pointing back and going, “Errr, look at how well you treat black people in your country. You’re supposed to be the big democracy country.” So, this dissonance that was arising was a real political issue on the macro scale.
Kay:
So, then we look into the macro of the global opinion of the US and then bring it down into the micro. Let’s talk about every household having access to a television for one of the very first times in history, that level of mass media where things could be seen, brought the horrors of what was really going on with the fights for equality like people being hosed down by fire hoses and riot control methods that were being used on citizens that were…
Shi:
Peaceful protestors.
Kay:
Yeah, peaceful protestors were televised and shown that they were being treated like rioters and it was terrible and for the first time ever this micro experience for the white people of our country got really uncomfortable.
Shi:
And then we started to see change. We’ve got Brown versus the Board of Education in 1954. In 1965 finally, President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act. Of course, we had the charismatic leadership of Dr. Martin Luther King and so we get this kind of symbolic ending to the Jim Crow era and the ending of this overt racism was desegregated. We have laws recognizing the status of black people as equal. So, what happened is it felt like there was that moment to pat ourselves on the back and progress is always worth celebrating. But now we look at what has been leftover and it’s that much harder to scrub out residue because it’s baked into our systems that if we continue to just participate in, continue to perpetuate inequalities without our knowledge of us actively doing that.
Kay:
Now, remember 246 years of slavery in our land, right? 246 years of even being an independent country with almost 100 of those having slavery at the forefront, and then another 100 having this Jim Crow system in place. So, people’s social structures, people’s thought habits, people’s ways of going about the world were influenced heavily by their generations that came prior to them. And if we think about slavery only being only “200 years away from the Civil Rights Movement,” that’s only a few generations. That’s your great, great grandfather being a slave or a slave owner and so there are these really deep-rooted, both ancestral and social structures in place that perpetuated it, even though the laws changed.
Shi:
Right. So, you’ve got the end of racism, but the practice of racism was still very much ingrained in our dominant culture and in our system. So, when you fast forward to today, you see how this plays out. We’ve got black people disadvantaged at literally almost every turn and white people steadfast in their belief that they, as individuals, are not racist, and almost everyone is scared to talk about it for fear of being criticized. So, this is one of those hard moments and as a country, I believe as Americans, that our history has demonstrated we’re up for the challenge and that while it might be messy and slow and sloppy, that progress will continue to move forward. But it takes people raising their hands, saying I’m willing to be criticized. I want to understand, I want to be part of the solution and I want to do better, and that’s our hope when we speak up on topics like this.
Kay:
It’s one of the reasons that we raise our hands and come forward and maybe not always say things in a perfect way, but we try to do so with the solid heart of creating that level of harmony for all.
/****/
Shi:
Hey guys, going for a little PSA-style commercial this week because we want to share some of the resources and items that have helped us in understanding this important and complicated topic of systemic racism.
Kay:
Now, one of the books that both of us picked up immediately in our journey was “White Fragility” and we would suggest you read it too.
Shi:
“White Privilege” is another great book. We also went on a quest of interviews, many of which you can catch at kayandshi.com but we got involved with our local black cultural society and started establishing relationships that we continued in friendships to this day.
Kay:
We also want to encourage you that even if you’re not engaging right in the topic of racism with your studies to get out there and learn more from people of color. Listen to music that they create, watch movies created by people of color. Let them have a voice and a place in your life beyond just studying the issues at large.
Shi:
Now let’s get back to the show.
/****/
Shi:
In June of 2020, we got to participate in a really cool protest and awareness event where paddleboarders went out on Tahoe for an eight-minute and 46 seconds of silence out on the water, on their paddleboards. And if that number sounds familiar to you, it’s because that’s the amount of time that the officer kneeled on George Floyd’s neck ultimately killing him and this man’s tragic death did become a catalyst for the movement and so he certainly didn’t hopefully die in vain and there has been progress there, but how do we get to the point where a white officer being filmed and surrounded by other officers feels emboldened enough to put someone in a chokehold where they repeatedly say they can’t breathe for nearly nine minutes and ultimately kills them?
Kay:
Well, it’s a hard thing to witness but the reality of the situation is that there are more situations that happen like this to black people and people of color than anybody else and that’s not just us talking about it or you seeing it on the news or seeing that one horrible instance because it got filmed. There are many other of these instances that didn’t get filmed. Among those who had contact with the police between the years 2002 and 2011, black people were two and a half times more likely than whites to experience the threat or use of non-lethal force. So, we’re talking about the usage or the threat of force on their bodies, two and a half more times likely. So, when you think about that in practicality, what does it mean the difference between the black person who’s getting pulled over and the white person who’s getting pulled over? It means that the black person has double the chance.
Shi:
250% chance more, right? If we’re looking at that in terms of statistics like 2.5 is not 25%, that’s 250% more likely to experience the threat or use of force and this is from the Bureau of Justice Statistics. So, these are high-level stats being shared. But it’s not only evident in our justice system. When we look at unemployment from the US Department of Labor among black people the unemployment is about 4% higher than white people. And you might think, “Okay, 4%, that’s not too bad,” and we might say, “Okay, sure, that’s unusual.” But once they have a job, they’re good to go, right?
Kay:
No! The median income is still $30,000 more for white families than for black families. $30,000, it’s 42% more for white families than black families. Okay. So, well they don’t get as many jobs, and they don’t make as much but there are a lot of poor people out there, right?
Shi:
And disproportionately a lot of poor black people. Here’s another interesting statistic for you from the US Census Bureau. Research in our country shows that one out of every 12 white people is in poverty, but here’s the thing. One out of every five black people are in poverty, more than 20% of the black people in our country are in poverty and you might think, “Okay, well that does mean that out of those five, there are four that are doing okay, right? And some of them are even wealthy.” Well, let’s look at the median household wealth.
Kay:
Well, median household wealth is when we start to look at the full wealth portfolio of a family, which includes inheritances and generational wealth that comes in. Now look, white households in the US have 1000% more household wealth than black families in the US, 1000% more household wealth. Now, obviously, this comes from black people in America not having the same access to generational wealth that white people in America have had access to because of systemic racism, because of legal racism, and because of slavery.
Shi:
And that source is the US Federal Reserve Survey of Consumer Finances. So again, we’re talking high-level reporting from our own government. If we come back to our justice system, black people accounted for nearly 32% of arrest-related deaths despite being just 12% of the population. They’re also disproportionately represented in our jails. They get higher sentences. In fact, one of the studies in my Sociology 101 book that we use in class is the fact that if you are a white person with a jail time record, you still have a higher chance of being hired than a black person with no jail time record. So, when we talk about systemic racism, it’s numbers like these that clearly reflect that it’s real and it’s in play.
Kay:
So, you heard that in 2020, our journey really began in getting us to study and dive into advocating around the topic of racism.
Shi:
And it’s been important to us, which is why we started a series called Bold Conversations, Bridging the Racial Divide and this was a series that ran from the end of March 2020 through August of 2020, I think there’s a little over 20 episodes. We did a weekly interview with a black community leader or influencer and what we learned was helpful, shocking, sad, enlightening, and entertaining.
Kay:
Now we quested forth to have these conversations with full transparency, with love, and openness and to hopefully seek some education on behalf of white folks who might feel a little bit uncomfortable seeking education on this topic. Again, we wanted to serve as a bridge for our whole family, our human family, in where we could. So, we started our conversation with Nathan Dupree. He is a local pastor here in Reno and a dear friend of our,s and we asked Nathan some pretty white girl questions.
Shi:
Like, can we say black?
Kay:
Is it okay to say the word black?
Shi:
And what he shared with us is that first of all that no singular black person can speak on behalf of all black people and that in and of itself making that kind of assumption is just ignorant and one-dimensional. So, asking from his experience, he said from most of the people he knows from his family, the truth is they’ve never been to Africa. Being African Americans tries to tie them to a continent they have no cultural ties to at this point and so it’s more comfortable for them to be addressed as black Americans.
Kay:
So, that was the first naive question that we asked.
Shi:
We also asked, can we keep our music loud at a stoplight?
Kay:
Because we like listening to rap music.
Shi:
Black artists.
Kay:
Black artists and yeah. So, do we have to turn it down if we see a black person, because is it okay for us to engage in black culture? And what Nathan shared with us is that when other people outside of people of color engage with black culture in the way of celebration and not appropriation, that it actually draws us all closer together.
Shi:
Another bold conversation that really touched our hearts was when we got to speak with a police Lieutenant from Oakland who is a black American, and who obviously is also a police officer and asked him what his experience was like, and it was really interesting to hear his perspective. That interview actually aired two days after George Floyd’s death, so it was a very hot topic for the time, and we were glad to be able to be part of the national narrative while this was happening. But he shared that he faced racism through his police academy, that he faces it on the force, that he has to be this active ambassador and that carrying that burden sometimes can be heavier than a lot of folks realize.
Kay:
We also got to look into the activities that police forces who work in places with a higher proportion of people of color that they use in order to try and bridge the gap between the police officers and the community, and thought that was really incredible to hear about the innovative tactics that were coming out of the Oakland Police Department that they were using to help bridge that gap.
Shi:
Well, another one of our favorite bold conversations was with a fellow John Maxwell member Denise, who shared her experiences when she was alive and in New York during the time that Dr. King was alive and active. And she remembered tearfully the day that he died and the day that he was assassinated and the feeling and the energy and the real significant moment that, that was for so many. When the Civil Rights Movement came along and his leadership came along, the hope was so real and so fresh that the devastation at that event was visceral.
Kay:
Another incredible black woman that we got the honor of interviewing was Melinda Emerson and in that she shared with us that her name is Melinda because her parents did not want her to face racial discrimination on paper and we’ve learned since that this is the case for a lot of black people out there who have what might be traditionally considered white names that their parents wanted to give them a leg up in order to not have them look “black” on paper. That’s how deep the racism runs in our system. So, look, we’re proud to be Americans. We really are, and we strive to teach our kids and those around us the ideals and values of the United States, and not just to pledge allegiance, but to act in allegiance. But to us, that means “liberty and justice for all” is something that all of us should receive, and right now that is not the case for a lot of minorities and people of color in our country.
Shi:
Particularly our black brothers and sisters. And so, addressing this and being able to face it and understand that when we say racism got solved, or maybe we’re not saying that, but we believe that, and we are inactive in our quest to make systemic racism better. This is detrimental to advancing the self-evident truths that all of us espoused to hold dear in this country. To quote the declaration of independence, “We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Now, one word really jumps out. I mean, a lot of words jump out, but the one word that really jumps out here is unalienable, which means cannot be alienated from, and yet we alienate minorities from these rights through our institutions and our inherited ways of behaving every single day.
Kay:
I do think that it is important to note that the Declaration of Independence was created in a time when slavery was accepted in our country and so even these words that our country is founded on at one point only applied to half of the population and only since the Jim Crow era has it been illegal to have those unalienable rights be really for everyone. So, this is what systemic racism looks like. It’s so much more subtle than people yelling the N-word or violently lynching others in mobs. But it is perhaps more dangerous and can be far more detrimental in the long run, especially if we don’t make direct contact with it, if we don’t talk about it, if we allow for the cycle of oppression to continue through the generations by turning a blind eye to the fact that this exists.
Shi:
So, we hope that this compilation of just teachings and facts about systemic racism and about our quest to address racial inequality has been educational for you. And if you’re asking, what can we do? What can we do to make it better? Exactly what we’re doing right now is a good first step and it’s not the only step, and it’s not the most important step, but it’s a good first step. Talking about it, acknowledging it, getting uncomfortable about it, critically examining what it is, and taking action to support the America that really does stand for liberty and justice for all.
Kay:
We hope you enjoyed this week’s installment where we tackled social inequality and racial inequality here in the US. But next week, we’re asking the question what’s the business.
Shi:
And we’re going to share all about our myriad of businesses, some of the lessons we’ve learned from each, and if we could do it all over again, some of the mistakes we would avoid.
Kay:
Tune in, we can’t wait to have you there, family.
