Racism: Breaking The Silence Transcript

Alicya: Welcome to The Taming Crazy podcast. I’m Alicya, and I’m joined by the lovely Sue tonight. Hello Sue.

Sue:      Hello, Alicya. How are you doing? 

Alicya: I’m doing pretty good.

Sue:      Good.

Alicya: So, we’re missing Deb tonight she couldn’t join us, unfortunately.

Sue:      Aww.

Alicya: Yes. So tonight, we’re talking about a topic that is uncomfortable for us… and that’s racism. We’ve been wanting to talk about racism on this podcast for a few weeks now, but we’ve struggled with not knowing where to start, or what to say.
From the moment we watched in horror as George Floyd was murdered by the police officers and hearing the names of many more black, indigenous, and people of colour dying at the hands of law enforcement or being gunned down in the street, we’ve started to pay attention. That’s a very difficult thing to say out loud because we should have been paying attention all along.
The Black Lives Matter protests for justice have occurred every day since George Floyd’s death. They’ve grown bigger, they’ve grown louder and have spread all over the world. The Black Lives Matter movement is not new. We’ve seen it many times before but in all honesty, I don’t think we’ve been listening or taken the time to really understand what it all meant.
We are three white women and for us, the subject of racism is uncomfortable. But what I’ve realized, especially this week, is that we must be willing to talk about uncomfortable things. We must be willing to echo the voices of black people, of indigenous people, and all people of colour or nothing will ever change. How do you feel about that Sue?

Sue:      Yes. I agree wholeheartedly. I have been struggling with this. I’ve been struggling with knowing what to say. I’ve been struggling with feeling guilty because of those things as well and a lot of it comes down to wanting to say the right things and being fearful of getting it wrong. I very strongly agree with you. You know we can’t just sit with our discomfort and say I’m just going to make myself comfortable again and not talk about it. We need to talk about it and I’m really pleased we are doing this, but I’m terrified actually. I’ve never been this concerned about a podcast episode before.

Alicya: I’ve been thinking about how we can talk about racism tonight because there are a lot of people talking about this subject who have experienced racism.  They have witnessed it and have lived their entire lives with it so what can we say that will make a difference and I think the only way we can talk about  a subject we can truly understand is by educating ourselves. This week in particular, you and I have really delved into this subject of racism and I think it’s safe to say that we’ve discovered more than I ever thought possible. My eyes have been opened.

Sue:      Yes, and you know this is very much coming from a place of wanting to do better and to be very honest you know we are listening. We are reading. We are trying to ask questions of ourselves and say “how do we do better? How do we become allies in the true sense of the word?” and one of the things is really coming to me… it’s not enough to say I’m not racist. And one of the things I’ve been looking into is how to become an anti racist. How do we acknowledge everything as it is happening you know and stand up and do something about it.

Alicya: I like you I’ve always thought I’m not a racist and isn’t that enough but it’s not obviously. And the first thing I want to say to the black community, the indigenous community, and to all people of color is that I’m sorry. Because being a white middle-class woman, I’ve never been treated poorly because of the color of my skin. As a white immigrant to Canada I’ve never been told to go back to where I’ve come from and like you Sue, as a mother of two sons I’ve never had to prepare them for the inevitable racist attacks or tell them that if they get stopped by the police not to make any sudden movements and keep your hands in sight at all times. I’ve never had to do that I’ve never understood that that’s what white privilege is. When I first heard the term white privilege, I didn’t understand what that meant but I certainly do now.

Sue:      Yes. And it’s interesting actually what you’re saying about the mom of boys. I was having a conversation with my oldest the other day and he was talking about his friendship group. Both of my boys have very diverse friendship groups. Way more diverse than mine ever was at their age and to be honest probably now. It has got a lot more diverse lately and one of the things as we were discussing how as a white mother, I’ve never had to have those conversations. I also had the conversation about how would he stand up for his friends? How would he support his friends because there is a possibility that he’s going to witness this first hand at some time than I will and I want him to think and be aware of and consider ways that he can be an ally. And a true ally to his friends and to all black, indigenous and people of color. It feels as if the time has come to be very practical. It’s not enough just to say it. It’s very much a time for action.

Alicya: Yes absolutely. And I think if this past 2 weeks has taught me anything it’s that my whiteness has afforded me the luxury of being silent. I’ve been at gatherings where people have said something, and I found it very distasteful and I’ve walked away. I was uncomfortable so I walked away. That’s privilege. I felt like I was doing the right thing.
A prominent businessman in Calgary this week was recently called out for his racist comments on Twitter and I muted him several years ago because I didn’t agree with what he was saying and I thought I was doing the right thing. I didn’t like what he was saying so I muted him and because I don’t consider myself a racist, I thought I was doing the right thing. But I think a lot of us feel the same way you know there are things that are said, things that we witness that we don’t like but we often stay silent. We’re uncomfortable but our silence is a big part of the problem. 

Sue:      Yes, and like you say, that does come from a position of privilege that I never acknowledged before.

Alicya: But Sue did you ever understand what it meant because I sure didn’t?

Sue:      No. You know you would see things, you would hear things and you’d be like well I don’t… it doesn’t affect me and I can walk away and like I say I’ve done a huge amount of reflection on this as well.
When I was a teenager I was stopped in the middle of the street by a police officer and he went through patting me down and searching my bag because I fitted a vague description of someone who had stolen the purse and I remember how awful that left me feeling. But what I realize now is the privileged position I was in. Yes, that happened, yes it was awful, but it was over and done with very quickly. There were no long-term effects. My life was never at risk from that and I can’t imagine how having the fear I had at that moment I can’t imagine carrying that with you day by day, year by year and having to explain to my children that’s the way we feel. That’s privilege and I didn’t know that before.

Alicya: No and I don’t think we’re the only ones, so I think that’s part of the problem. You know black people, indigenous people, and all people of colour have been demanding to be heard. We have to listen, and we have to stop sitting in our comfortable world. We have to take a long hard look at ourselves and support the change. Demand the change and be part of the change. We have to stop watching from the sidelines and I think we all have to be part of this because I think that’s the only way forward.

Sue:      Yes. I agree.

Alicya: You know when you talked about feeling guilty before I think we’re all guilty of not educating ourselves in racism because we can tell ourselves that this doesn’t affect us. I’m not a racist so I must be good and to be honest I’ve done that in the past because I didn’t feel it was my place to contribute you know. It wasn’t my fight. Now I’m realizing that’s totally wrong and I’m not ashamed to admit that because as we’ve said many times before on this podcast we are learning every day and when you’re open to learning you’re open to changing. So, I think we have to remind ourselves that silence is a luxury we can no longer afford. And I don’t know how you feel about what’s going on. Obviously, it’s been horrifying to watch the videos that we keep seeing on the news, but I think we need to be horrified. I think we need to be shocked and we need to see this to really open our eyes to what is happening. It’s easy to sit in our homes and be comfortable and turn off the news because we really don’t like what we’re seeing. But we need to consider that what if that was our son or a brother or father you know? Imagine watching your son, your brother or father being brutally murdered. And as women and as mothers we can no longer afford to sit in that silence. I’m horrified and I just feel it on such a visceral level right now that you can probably hear it in my voice but there are no words that I can actually say that describes how I feel about this.

Sue:      Yes. You know as I’m saying things I’m thinking does that sound really trite? Does it sound really cheesy because I don’t want it to come across as that. I’m very much trying to come from a place of authenticity and I hundred percent agree with you. Watching the George Floyd video actually took me sometime to do in its entirety because I found it so upsetting and somebody must have  made a comment about it on Twitter, well many, many comments about  that is precisely why you have to watch it because it is horrific and it does make you feel really uncomfortable and that is the only way that change is going to come about.

Alicya: Absolutely. I think you have to be horrified because if we don’t have these strong emotions we’re just going to turn it of and carry on with our lives because you know really how does this affect us? But more and more of these videos are now coming out. It isn’t a one-off anymore. These things are happening, and they show up on our television and we go” oh that’s terrible” and we move on. But when you look at the magnitude of it, you realize that this is going on. Every single day something is happening like this and we didn’t know. We just didn’t know, and I think we’re often really afraid to say the wrong thing, so we don’t say anything at all. It’s a difficult climate to kind of navigate through right now because we’re all so afraid of saying the wrong thing because you’re going to be called out but I think we have to be willing to be called out if we say the wrong thing because we are all learning this.

Sue:      Yes.

Alicya: I think we have to remember that no one is born a racist you know. They’re taught and our generation went through a school system that was created primarily to teach white history. Many of us grew up in areas and communities that were predominantly white. Although I’m not trying to excuse my white… my you know… ignorance. I do understand how we’ve been blind to it but I think this is the time now where we know better and we have to do better and I think those words are more significant now than they’ve ever been.

Sue:      Yeah I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to read enough you know. There’s so much amazing information about that and you know there is so many black, indigenous, and people of colour that are working really hard to help us understand what they’ve gone through and they acknowledge that they know way better than we do. That you know we don’t have the right to say well this doesn’t matter, that doesn’t matter. That’s not for us to say. We don’t have that right you know. I’m so grateful that despite the pain and the anger and all the other emotions they must be feeling, they still are able to put it into words that make it easy for us but at the same time we have to work to improve things to make changes. A lot of this is on u. They can only do so much to educate us.

Alicya: Well I think that’s the thing. We shouldn’t be looking to people of colour to educate us and there are a lot of people who are talking about racism who are way more eloquent than I could ever be. But I think, you know, I’m not going to walk away from the conversation and I’m going to do my best to listen because I’ve got a lot to learn, I really do.
So I do want to say that I’m sorry for not speaking up before and I’m sorry for not understanding and I think most of all I’m sorry for my silence. You know I’m hoping that we all find it in ourselves to stand up and say enough is enough. You know we do want change and I’m hopeful that this time in history will go down as the time when real change began. Because change is happening because has to. It has to change now because we can’t go back to how it was.
The other day I watched the documentary 13th on Netflix and I learned more in that documentary than I’ve learned in a lifetime. It was shocking that I didn’t know what was happening and I told my husband. My husband watched it and I watched it again with him. I could not believe what was going on and the injustice that happens because of the colour of your skin is absolutely heartbreaking. I’m learning now… I’m delving into all about the residential schools that happened in Canada which have traumatized our indigenous people. I think a lot of times living in Canada we think we don’t have as big of a racism problem as the U.S., but we do.

Sue:      Oh God yes.

Alicya: I saw a video from 2016 actually, from Michael Che. He’s from SNL and he was saying all we are asking is to matter. We’re not asking for more. We’re not asking for the world. We’re just asking that our lives matter and that’s the lowest thing we can ask for.
We’ve talked about equality before, but we’ve never talked about racial equality perhaps because we don’t live it. We need to examine our privilege. You know I actually had to look up what white privilege was because it seems like it’s almost like a slight… or what’s the word I’m looking for? I’m not sure what it is but it didn’t seem like a very nice thing anyway. So, I looked it up and all it is,’ is an advantage or a set of advantages that others do not have’. And white privilege is difficult to talk about because we don’t want to believe that what we have, or how we go through life, is easier and that we have an advantage. Especially when we may be struggling. Privilege doesn’t mean life will be easier in all areas. It just means that whatever happens, we’re never at a disadvantage because of the color of skin. And that is all that white privilege is and I think it’s important not to feel shame for this privilege, but we need to use it to have these conversations Sue like you and I are having. 

Sue:      Absolutely.

Alicya: These conversations can help dismantle the privilege in our own small way. We can vote for candidates that support equality and we can speak up when we witness racism in the workplace or in social gatherings and we can call out people who make racist jokes instead of walking away. We walk away because we don’t want to feel like somebody’s saying ‘oh you can’t take a joke.’ You know I think that is the issue. I think we’re scared sometimes to speak out because we’ll be that one.

Sue:      Yes and I think you know over the past few weeks I have being more vocal with some people then I would previously and there is almost that kind of ‘stop talking, this doesn’t bother you’. Well yes it does bother me, and you know sort of one of the things I’ve been looking at is a guide to allyship and you know it has the do’s and don’ts. So, you know lots of the things that we’ve been talking about is: 

• Be open to listening.
• Be aware of your complicit biases.
• Do your research to learn more about the history and the struggle in which you are participating.
• Do the inner work to figure out a way and how you participate in oppressive systems.
• Do the outer work and figure out how to change the oppressive systems.
• Amplify the voices of those without your privilege both online and when physically present.
• Listen and accept criticism with grace even when it’s uncomfortable.

And then the don’ts: 

• Do not expect to be taught or shown. Take it upon yourself to use the tools to learn and answer your questions.
• Don’t participate for a gold medal in the oppression Olympics. You do not need to compare how your struggle is just as bad.
• Don’t behave as though you know best.
• Don’t take credit for the labour of those who are marginalized who did the work before you stepped into the picture.
• And don’t assume that every member of an under-invested group feels oppressed.

That to me is like I can work with that. You know with things like that I can figure out what I need to do for me to feel more comfortable about raising my voice and you know I’m definitely more comfortable about doing it online then I am in person.

Alicya: But do you think that’s changing Sue?

Sue:      I think doing this podcast might help with that because you know it’s stripping another layer of that sort of social media mask away. You know what you see on social media it’s very easy just to like things and share them and not necessarily put a lot of thought into it. By doing this… you know I’m hoping as well that I’m making myself accountable.

Alicya: And I think the more of us that do that, the easier it will become because you know I think we if we all step up and step out of that silence and I am so guilty of that because I didn’t want to make waves. I didn’t want to be that one. I remember getting into a heated discussion with someone about immigration and they asked why I care so much. I said well because I’m an immigrant and they said well we’re not talking about you. I know what they were trying to say, and I couldn’t find the words to really make my point known at that time. You know this was years ago and I didn’t feel confident enough but I’m not afraid to say something anymore. I guess that’s what it is, we can’t be fearful for what we say. I do think we need to be, like you say, allies and if we see something then we do have to say something.

Sue:      Yes. Another thing I’ve been looking at as well is microaggression. Which was again something pretty new to me you know. They’re the little things we with white privilege don’t pay much attention to but they are, you know they can be very heavily loaded. S,o one of the things I was reading is you know black men often talked about their experiences of being followed in stores. You know people checking out where they’re going, what they’re doing. Also, they get into an elevator and people kind of move or they just hold their purses a little bit tighter and I was thinking I’ve probably done that. You know to us we think they are tiny little things. They’re so small we don’t even notice we’re doing them and yet they’re really big. Like when you have those things over and over again, they’re massive.

Alicya: And I think what we don’t do is put ourselves in their shoes. If you watch that documentary, 13th on Netflix, it explains how we have been fed this constant you know, ‘we need to be afraid of people of other races. We need to be afraid of them and this is why. And this is why we need to put more money into law enforcement. And this is why we need to build bigger prisons. And this is why we need to stop every black man in the street because he must be up to no good.’ That documentary really explains why we’ve been fed that our entire lives really and it’s absolutely shocking. So, shocking I’m going to watch it again because I really need to absorb it all. It explains why we’ve been brought up in this white privileged world to look at everybody else as inferior to us and I hate to say that Sue because I never thought that. But we talked last week about growing up with nursery rhymes that had racism in them. We didn’t know what they meant but we were taught them.

Sue:      No, not a clue what was going on. The nursery rhyme thing it was just ‘well it’s fine because we were taught it. Well why was it fine when you were taught it? It’s not fine for me to have learnt them and I’m certainly not going to pass them on to my children.’ And even you know sort of there is still some things I see that shocked me and on the way that the words are used because growing up I was told there was some words you never ever use. I’m like yeah no I’m not going to use that word because I’ve known not to use derogatory terms. I suppose that’s one thing about growing up. Being careful about what you say. You know I don’t use a lot of the words that I see bandied about in conversations. The words I’ve never used and I’m really grateful for that small mercy that they’re not part of my vocabulary. 

Alicya: Yes. I think what happened to George Floyd started a massive movement and these protests have to go on every single day until change it happening. There’s a lot of talk about change. There’s a lot of discussions and conversations at all levels of government but until there is change. Until there’s a dismantling of systemic racism that we all have in every single country. We need to see the change.
Today I was waiting on social media that the band Lady Antebellum changed their name to Lady A today because they didn’t realize what Antebellum meant.

Sue:      Yes, it’s interesting you say that because I was reading an article last night about this. I don’t know if it’s a trend, it’s probably been around for years, of having these big sorts of weddings on plantations. So, there are few of the brides who were saying well you know they felt a little bit uncomfortable knowing that that was where the slaves lived and worked but they went ahead with it anyway. The word Antebellum came up there as well and I’d never kind of made that connection.

Alicya: Yeah and they didn’t either.

Sue:      No. I’m sure. When I saw that today I was like wow.

Alicya: Yes, it’s just a matter of when they know better they do better and I think that’s all the black, indigenous and people of colour have been asking for all these years. Is to open our eyes and help us because we haven’t. We thought we were you know I think we all thought ‘well I’m not a racist so that’s good enough’ but obviously it’s not. The information is overwhelming, and I cannot believe that I’m this age and I didn’t know any of it. Like that is shameful to me. I am ashamed of that. I learned today that when they abolished slavery, the British slave owners had to be compensated. This was I think 1883, because they were losing their assets. So they were compensated by the British government and because it was so much money that the British government couldn’t pay they had to take out a massive loan to pay these slave owners and they just finished paying off this loan in 2015.

Sue:      Just unbelievable.

Alicya: How do we not know these things?

Sue:      Well when you think about history lessons. I remember learning about the Romans, the Vikings and the Egyptians. We did learn about the Industrial Revolution. We learned about the world wars. We learnt about Henry the eighth’s and various Kings and because I was in Lancashire, we learned about the War of the Roses. Did we ever learn anything about slavery or slave owners, colonialism? No, no we didn’t. There’s a lot of British history that is really very unpleasant and I guess the easiest way is to not teach it. Which is appalling and I really hope there are changes to the curriculums so that kids are learning about this, so they understand. Because this is historical issue, this is a health issue, it’s an economic issue, it affects every single aspect of life and we need to do better. We need to do better now for the next generation. Like we need to be teaching them better so that they know better and they do better because we can’t go through this again We can’t have so much… so many people who are being told that they essentially don’t matter.

Alicya: If you don’t teach it how would we ever know what happened? And you know things are happening everyday. There are changes every single day so who knows what’s going to happen tomorrow, but I think we’re at least going in the right direction.

Sue:      Yes, and it’s still going to be hard and it’s still going to be a lot to take onboard and to learn but yeah we’ve got to do it.

Alicya: We might have to have another discussion about this.

Sue:      Yes. You know, as I said right at the beginning, I had a lot of concerns about doing this podcast you know. Sort of again thinking about it that’s white privilege you know. I was able to feel concerned about it and worried about it. It’s very difficult to talk about but I’m very very glad that we have spoken about it.

Alicya: You know I think we’ve learnt a lot. I think we have an awful lot more to learn so we’ll continue to learn like we have done from the very beginning. You know we’re already witnessing change. We’re hearing the discussions. Seeing people called out on social media. So, I’m hopeful. I’m hopeful that this will continue because there’s nothing like the present time to make changes and they need to be done. Change needs to happen. So, let’s continue to be the change. To demand change. Stay safe and until next time bye for now.

Sue:      Bye.