Selected to further our diversity, equity, and inclusion work, the following podcast episodes from Into America with Trymaine Lee are offered to help us reflect on and engage in conversation about how we understand ourselves and others.
Notes:
- The podcast episodes will play from this page.
- The hyperlinked title will take you to the episode’s webpage.
- Additional links are provided with episode notes and further listening and reading.
You are invited (and encouraged!) to add your sentence, phrase, and word in the comment section below as you watch and reflect. (Please be sure to include the title of the talk in your comment.) We will be excited to continue the conversation together in the fall using the Connect-Extend-Challenge protocol.
Black Toys R Us | Into America with Trymaine Lee
— Episode Notes and Transcript
Critical Conditions | Into America
— Episode Notes and Transcript
Food for the Soul | Into America with Trymain Lee
— Episode Notes and Transcript
“The Dead Are Rising” | Into America with Trymaine Lee
— Episode Notes and Transcript
Without Water in Jackson | Into America
— Episode Notes and Transcript
Curating Black History | AntiRacism Daily Podcast with Nicole Cardoza
— Episode Notes and Transcript
Reclaiming Our Voice | AntiRacism Daily Podcast with Nicole Cardoza
— Episode Notes and Transcript
Understanding Cognitive Bias | The Mind Online with Monita Bell
— Episode Notes and Transcript
Building an Anti-Racist Workplace | Work Life with Adam Grant
— Episode Transcript
.
“Black Toys R Us”
Sentence: And he said, basically, that when children don’t see themselves, they develop a sense of inferiority which then also leads to their lack of achievement in education and everything else in their life.
Phrase: seeing someone who’s like you
Word: representation
“Critical Conditions”
Sentence: We know that life expectancy for those that live on the South Side is 30 years less than those that live on the North Side of Chicago.
Phrase: deserve optimal healthcare
Word: inhumane
“Food for the Soul”
Sentence: We’re finding ways to survive despite this, but what I really want is for us to have a blend of both thriving despite not having certain things, but also having access to the systemic power that will enable us to truly be a food powerhouse as a people.
Phrase: deserve healthy foods; deserve not to be hungry
Word: food deserts
Black Toys R Us
Sentence- And just seeing someone who’s like you just makes you inspired to really believe, “I can do it.”
Phrase -represent Black people
Word- Underrepresented
Food For The Soul
Sentence-Sitting at the table together does not mean just physically. We gotta start sittin’ at the table talking and doing more what we’re doing now, communicating. We gotta start puttin’ this love back in us, regardless of what table we’re sitting at.
Phrase- connection to family
Word- food deserts
Critical Conditions
Sentence-So whether it’s a Whole Foods, right, whether it’s new housing, you see clear investment in the basic quality of life institutions of the people that live there. When you want to remove a population, you see elimination of those institutions.
Phrase-It really feels like disinvesting in Black people is always on the table. We call it institutionalized lovelessness.
Word- community
The Dead Are Arising
Sentence-He represented a sense of Black independence, Black self-sufficiency, and Black pride that had never before been captured so unflinchingly at a time when being too Black and too proud could be a death sentence. (Lee, about Malcolm X)
Phrase- unbendable will (Lee, about Les Payne)
Word- outspoken (T. Payne)
Without Water in Jackson
Sentence- You know, no leadership can manage how it supports its community without the funding and the resources that it needs. And so what we see are actually communities going through cycles of humiliation. Poor performing schools, failing infrastructure, high crime, high poverty, all of these things. And so I think that we need to be able to turn the page to a different model, a model that reflects the inherent dignity in every person.
Phrase-disinvestment in our Black and brown communities
Word- neglect
Curating Black History
Sentence- And I can tell you how much of a missed opportunity there is for black and Brown kids to hear their history told forthrightly that actually would curb a lot of the, the stated dysfunction that is said to be attributed to them because they aren’t able to keep their attention in history class. Well, they’re not able to keep their history or their attention to history class because they don’t hear, or 95% of what they’ve heard, is from 1) a white perspective, and then 2) it’s about everyone who doesn’t look like them and their, their community or their stories marginalized.
The thing I took away from that conversation most is our role in preserving the narrative of our history for the generations to come.
Phrase-indebted to the future generations
Word- Afrofuturism… And I want more people to read, more people to dive into black speculative fiction, black sci-fi, because our future is already being spoken about, already being written about from the perspective of the marginalized, the oppressed, and if a future can come from their vantage points that is more democratic and more equitable. It behooves us all to listen even further and lean in. And so my hope is just in that future is just that…future. And it looks more Afro futuristic every single day.
Reclaiming Our Voice
Sentence- Folk music is inspired by so many cultures from all around the world.
It’s intended to tell a story. Folk music is all about education and learning.
It’s an incredible opportunity to decolonize our minds, or to change our perspectives, or to welcome in new thoughts…by embracing the music of cultures and of people that we’re learning to understand or are different from us.
Phrase- existing within multiple identities, intersectional identities, songs of the now
Word- representation
Understanding Cognitive Bias
Sentence- The possibility of loss looms larger than the possibility of gain. This is actually a real stabilizing force in society because it means that we tend to be happier with what we have than we are with the prospect of getting other things.
In some sense, I think that what we should be teaching people, and not just students but everyone around us—I mean, our entire society could learn this—is that what we need is a serious discussion about who to trust. And we have to get clearer criteria about who we think we should trust and who we shouldn’t.
We have to reduce the level of hubris in our society. None of us know everything, and, in fact, all of us know shockingly little about things.
Phrase- waves of reaction, determine the gaps
Word- polarization, simplifying
Building An Anti-Racist Workplace
(How To Build An Inclusive Workplace)
Sentence- It’s exhausting to have to carry a flag that says, “This is who I am. I’m not a scary monster. “
Unless you can tell people what’s in it for them, getting people to change in a substantive and sustainable way is really difficult.
I think a culture is defined by the worst behavior tolerated. You have to treat even the minuscule transgressions as if they’re significant.
Phrase- (privilege) the absence of inconvenience, in-group favoritism
Word- defensiveness, absolutism, self-interest
“The Dead are Rising”
Sentence: There had been books that had been written about Malcolm, but they tend not to express the humanity in the man.
Phrase: people had thought of him as bein’ anti-white when, really, the society was anti-Black
Word: unflinchingly
“Without Water in Jackson”
Sentence: I think we wouldn’t be doing this conversation justice, and we’d be less than honest if we didn’t say that race plays a major factor.
Phrase: the intended consequences of what happens when you don’t invest in our communities of color and our Black communitites
Word: disinvestment
“Curating Black History”
Sentence: Unfortunately, the US history we are taught in schools, and that is celebrated in today’s culture, doesn’t accurately portray the struggle and burdens that many communities of color, particularly black people, experienced in its making.
Phrase: not satisfied with just having the first black president, but still being able to be killed in the streets, those two things were dichotomous
Word: miseducation
Another part that stuck with me:
Carter G. Woodson, the father of Black history month, but the originator of Negro history week essentially said in his texts… that as much as black people don’t know about black history, neither do white people. And having both groups not know the immense contributions of African Americans…it constantly robbed both groups of the actual identity and really the self-esteem they both ought to have about the contributions one particular group has made.
“Reclaiming our Voice”
Sentence: Things have been done the same way for so long…it’s time that we reevaluate a lot of things.
Phrase: difference of intent and impact
Word: inclusive
Sentence: “So, if we could instill if we could develop a culture in which it’s okay to challenge and to check because we all really wanna get it right. I think that that could … I actually think that’s necessary in order to walk that line that you’re talking about, about figuring out what’s true and what’s not, especially in digital media.”
“But what we find is, not just with that question, but with lots of similar questions and similar facts, as long as the information’s close enough to being correct, our mind seems to just skim over it, and assume that it’s the correct information.”
Phrase: possibility of loss looms larger than the possibility of gain, think broadly about what types of misinformation
Word: simplifying, misinformation
“Understanding Cognitive Bias”
“Building An Anti-Racist Workplace”
Sentence: But white privilege, and indeed all privilege, is actually more about the absence of inconvenience, the absence of an impediment or challenge. And as such, when you have it, you really don’t notice it. But when it’s absent, it affects everything you do.
Phrase: culture is defined by the worst behavior tolerated
Word: wince moments, ally