Educational Equity Emancipation

Episode 127: From Segregated Streets to Global Connections: A Unique Perspective on Racism and Healing

• Dr. Almitra L. Berry

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In this thought-provoking episode, Dr. Almitra Berry welcomes JD, a unique storyteller with a background in Organizational Psychology. JD shares his journey from growing up in the segregated streets of St. Louis to becoming part of an international community of black expatriates. Through his personal experiences and insights, JD explores the roots of racism and envisions a more humane world. He discusses the development of white supremacy culture, the importance of reparations, and the steps needed for healing and change. This episode offers profound perspectives on identity, community, and the path towards a more equitable society.

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Unknown:

If you're a parent, teacher or school leader and you're sick and tired of the frustration, anger and unfair treatment of children at high risk in our public schools, then perhaps it's time for all of us to do something about it. In this podcast, Dr amitra Berry brings you tips, tools, strategies and tactics to build successful solutions while touching, moving and inspiring all of us to transform our schools so that every child thrives. Here's your host, Dr Bay,

Dr Almitra Berry:

hey, there equity warriors. Today, I welcome a unique storyteller to the show, someone whose journey from the segregated streets of St Louis to an international community of black expatriates offers some profound insights. My guest, JD has a background in Organizational Psychology. He explores the roots of racism and envisions a more humane world. He has a book race for what I have read. A portion of it. It is inspiring, and he works through sharing stories and reshaping societal perspectives. So I don't want you to miss anything from our conversation today. Make sure I'll have down in the notes how to get his book. JD, thanks for joining me.

Unknown:

Thank you for having me looking forward to it. I

Dr Almitra Berry:

am too, so I didn't read your bio. You know that I like to ask my guests to share something about you in your words, why we're having this conversation today, you and I know because we've had a conversation, but why our listeners, my listeners, should listen to what you have, and how has that maybe life experience influenced the work that you do?

Unknown:

So I'll start just by saying there's so many people tired of talking about race, and I think part of the problem is that the conversation doesn't lead results, which is something from my background, my parents purposely wanted to raise their children in and around black community. They wanted us to get an experience they never had as children themselves, and they wanted us to be not anti racist, but just not racist at a time when they the systems developing racist people, because the systems inherently are racist. And so for me, as I experienced going through life as a white man with black friends, I often experienced a lot of racism that was really not directed towards me, but towards my friends and slightly towards me. And it was very different when I wasn't with them, how I was treated, and I just wanted to understand why. And I've been on a sort of life journey. And, you know, I guess my parents put me on a as a purpose, journey to really understand the why racism exists and some of it, try to come up with some solutions for how we can work through it finally, and stop just having the conversation.

Dr Almitra Berry:

Awesome. So for my audio listeners cannot tell from his voice, because you cannot tell from his voice. JD, is not just a white man. He is a white Jewish who's grown up in the black community. And I say that because very often. JD, and you know this, right? You can listen to someone, and you kind of have a pretty good idea, if I closed my eyes and just listened to you. And I said this to actually to my husband after our first conversation, I said, if I did not see him, yeah, I would swear the brother was black,

Unknown:

yes, yeah. I used to bet money to my friends new girlfriends before they met me, that I was a white man, I won plenty of bets.

Dr Almitra Berry:

Oh, yeah, that's smart. Make Your Money Where you can, right? So you grew up in St Louis. It is, was one of the most segregated cities in America. Yes, still some issues. So I'm sure that had a huge impact on how you see the world, your your sense of community and even your sense of identity.

Unknown:

Tell us about that. So one of the things i i appreciate about what my parents decided to do was I got to learn about another culture when, inherently in our system of education, our system of media, we are just taught how great we are, and there's really no need to learn about anybody else, because America is so great, right? We pledge our allegiance to the flag without questioning it. We. We are told how great we are. We don't learn about any other cultures in our in our history courses, in our civics courses, in our English courses, and then learn world history. And that only teaches us how, how different conquerors and from a colonizer standpoint or a European standpoint, continued to win wars and and very

Dr Almitra Berry:

white western, very white, Western lens to pretty much everything that we're learning kindergarten to 12th grade, right?

Unknown:

And even in college, I went to a Jesuit university, and I took world history, and he said, Well, we don't really have to learn about these Eastern philosophies and Eastern cultures, because they didn't really change much. We're the ones that change, so we're as if change was the good thing, right? And so

Dr Almitra Berry:

change will colonize, yeah, exactly right. Okay, kill off entire populations of people. And

Unknown:

you know, he he also mentioned that, you know, they had to be right and God had to be on their side. This because, as I said, it was a Jesuit university, because they wouldn't have won the wars if God wasn't on their side. So while I'm learning that at the same age, I went on one particular day to my grandmother's first cousin's 90th birthday party, and it was in a very elegant space, and we're all drinking tea with our pink pink, you know, pinkies pointed in the air, and talking about the stock market and and who's doing what in schools and, you know What, jobs. And it was very pretentious and yet loving to the extent that that family and they cared about me, but I also felt like I had to behave a certain way. And 15 minutes away from there, my best friend's family, who I've known since I was four years old and been welcomed into their family, was having a family reunion, and I left my family gathering and went to their family reunion. And you know, I was called the N word about five times upon my arrival, and I was brought in, and, you know, told to make sure I go hug Ma, the grandmother and and, you know, but at the same time, I felt more relaxed at being who I was. Not everybody was in school, not, you know, there was dice games going on, there was basketball going on, there was other events. You know, people was eating barbecue, and I just felt much more welcomed as to who, how I showed up. While I definitely sound this way, I often dress differently and whatnot, and as long as I true to myself, I was welcome in that community, and I got I've experienced welcome this from black communities, as you said, the expatriates that went to Israel to other you know, as I go to other cities and meet black folks, I have a sense of welcoming and I wish other people understood the Aboriginal and indigenous cultures have a much more and welcoming culture than we often Do in our ways

Dr Almitra Berry:

interesting. So it sort of takes me to thinking about this whole issue with people identifying a certain way, right? We may present one way, but we may choose to a different way. If you choose to identify, how would you identify yourself and use whatever. I don't know adjectives you want to use.

Unknown:

I just say I'm a less melanated man. And I choose the term less melanated because I think it's important when you when you hear the term white, which became a term for legal purposes to discriminate. So one, you have that background. But two, it sounds like I was painted a color. You were painted color. We all kind of came out different colors. And actually there's an in skin pigmentation that's biological that I have less of, and that affects me on my in my life on this planet, it affects me differently, right? I go outside with my friends, and I better find a shady tree if I don't want to put on a ton of chemicals on my skin. And so I part of that makes me think about, Well, what happened 400 500 years ago, when this was happening, why did melanated folks end up in the cell in the north? But it also makes me feel like if I can't be out in the sun as long on the earth, touching the earth, breathing the what the earth is providing us, then it's really hard to feel like I'm superior to someone who can you. Yeah, I love it, right? And that whiteness, and when you talk about white supremacy, you have to make it white and not less something that's to us in order to feel like your supremacy. So you have to use a level of deception in there,

Dr Almitra Berry:

so as as a beautiful perspective coming from someone who presents as you do, knowing you at as I do. Now, I understand it, but for folks who don't have the don't have the advantage of the visual that are just listening on audio, it's it's enlightening, it's heartening, it's encouraging, right? Because we talk about allyship all the time, right, that people who are down with us, you know, down for the fight with us. And and advocates for equity, I always call them my equity warriors here on the show. But equity warrior does not mean that you have to be more melanated, that you can be a less melanated person and still be in the fight for equity. So you have a degree in organizational psychology, a lot of people won't know what that is.

Unknown:

So organizational psychology is talking about how groups develop a culture, right? How leaders impact that culture, how ideas of how to start a group and the intentional actions behind those ideas develop into that culture. And so while I took the course, because I've always been entrepreneurial, or helping entrepreneurs, and it seemed to fit from that standpoint. What I really got out of it was how I can impact and better explain how our culture of white supremacy was developed, how racism as a culture, what it truly means and the intent and help me better explain the intentions, psychology and emotional. You know, behaviors behind developing this culture and then justifying and maintaining it.

Dr Almitra Berry:

So you talk about so you even view groups of people as organizations. Am I correct?

Unknown:

I mean, an organization is a at the at the essence of it is a group of people, you know, and how, how it's structured, what the values are lead to, you know, in mission, and leads to goals, and that starts to structure. How do we get along? And then from there, you start to, you know, build, yeah.

Dr Almitra Berry:

So it doesn't have to be a business, right? It doesn't have to be a school. So there is, there is culture. And I talk a lot about culture, there's culture in groups of social, groups of people, yes, right? And they do all of those things that you just talked about. They develop their you know? They have a mission. And it may just be to have friends, to be in a friendship group, people who think think like them. I had not thought of organizational Psych. Yeah, that way previously. So thank you. And I think that's something that, you know, my audience is, you know, geared towards education and educators, that that's something for teachers and educators to think about as well, that, you know, we tend to we, we might call them clicks, right when you're talking about groups of kids in school. It's a quick, it's a, it's a, I hate to use the word gang, because it has such a negative connotation to to it. But just groups of kids, kinship groups, friendship groups, whatever that they are. They do have values. They do have a culture of their own, and so there's a lot to look at. The Psychology of those groups of kids. Why they are together? Why do they join together? What is their purpose of being together? So when you think about your childhood and the people you hung out with the group that you identified with your people. My piece, right? How was that? I mean, you said you always felt welcome in the black community, but at home, was it different?

Unknown:

In my immediate house, the beauty of it was I was able to have parents that were very welcoming to so I got to see both sides just welcome in other folks, right? My dad has a lot Harvard Law Degree. He speaks in very large terminology, you know, like Cornell West and Michael Eric Dyson and and he would ask me to read these things, and I was never really good at language. I was much better at slang and whatnot, and because I would tell him often, you know, can you keep words six letters or less and and yet, he had, he was. Welcoming to those that spoke in different dialect and and and yet still sought to meet them at an understanding. Okay, just because you don't speak in the language that I use doesn't mean that you're not intelligent or able to put concepts together and things of that nature. And that was very important, you know, he didn't, my father didn't try to be anybody different. And you know, when you hear black comedians making fun of white voices, that sounds exactly how father talks. And yet, the welcoming part, it's the approach often dictates a lot of how culture is built, right? And that, and that was important.

Dr Almitra Berry:

We speak really good African English, by the way. Do you turn it on and off? Is it your natural and you probably, maybe you don't even think about it. Is it your natural syntax? And are you able to turn it off and flip over to a sort of business school English? I call it school English? Yeah,

Unknown:

I think I can, I don't. I mean, I definitely don't speak exactly like I would use MF quite a bit more amongst my peers. But I don't know my my capacity for language is much more absolute than what the English language is, and that's frustrating for me. And what I mean by that is there's five words for every meaning, five meanings for every word, and it can lead to a lot of confusion, and also this sort of power to define dynamic in conversations where this means something different, and we can get off on tangents even in the English language amongst people, because we have an approach of such competition all the time. We're often competing in our conversations. What did you mean by that? And I meant this, and I didn't, and it's so ineffective at times. So that was a turn off to me, so I do my best to try and speak, you know, the same as much as I can.

Dr Almitra Berry:

You have an advantage there, you know, because of the way you present physically. Yes, you can do that. Do you have experiences with any of your friends, where you know your friends of color, black folks who aren't able to do that, that they can't. I know from my own experience, there are times when I don't turn a my African American English on or off. It just seems to be situational. It's the language that comes out, just as I speak Spanish situationally when I'm in that environment, and we don't necessarily think about it cognitively, except or consciously, except for when I have to, if I'm complaining to the manager in a store about service, yeah, right, if I'm I'm not that I'm applying for jobs anymore. Those days are gone if I were applying for job or interviewing for a job, right? So you don't have to, yeah, have turned on that interview? Voice, I turn on the telephone. Voice, if I'm making a phone call, sure kind of thing.

Unknown:

And I do that to an extent. And subconsciously I don't, I know I want that in my friends and and, you know, and women I've dated, and other things of that nature. So, yes, absolutely okay. You have to to, to be able to meet somebody where they're at, and especially in a system that's not very welcoming, you have to kind of naturally develop that, that interview voice,

Dr Almitra Berry:

yeah, talk about that system, because you you talk about racism system, our system in America, being inherently racist. How did you or let me just ask you, what's what are your thoughts around that? Let's see where we go. So

Unknown:

my thoughts are that this stems from a scarcity mentality, right? If you look at our economic system, it is the first thing they teach you in econ class is that there is a scarcity of resources on the planet, and therefore all in competition for controlling those resources and how much you can and right and so that is our approach competition. If you listened to either one of the DNC or RNC, the word competition is constantly used in our right. So race as a system, it's a competition, right? It sounds like a competition. And if you look Dr Claude Anderson just defines it as it started off as a race for of colonizers to control resources around the planet and colonize so the difference of black white became useful as that colonizing was happening, because that's an easy way to identify somebody. But the the idea. Idea of this scarcity comes from where less melanated folks occupied for so many years and still occupy mainly is Europe, and that area, being in the north, has less sun and therefore less natural resources. And in a scarcity mentality, it's easy to start to see each other as competition, because it's a zero sum game. If you drink water, that's less water for me. If you eat these natural resources, and our bodies are dependent on the earth to provide us all of our nutrients, that's less natural resources that I have. And then hence, you go to Africa, India and other places. There was a village to raise a child mentality. There was in indigenous cultures, there's an appreciation for the earth. If you don't have the same appreciation for the earth, because the Earth isn't providing you these things, you start to develop these systems and habits and culture. And have you ever been in need of something so much that you don't even recognize, like you have a thought of how you have to get it you don't even recognize it's being offered in different ways. So we come to conquer and people are willing to share and and they don't have the same desires to control resources, because the earth provides us these resources. There's not this desire of ownership and and control because he provides us. So there's a a a mentality that developed in an approach that was developed very differently, and that, I think it's purposely done that we don't learn about these other cultures in other ways, because we might easily break some of the habits of control and deception and manipulation that we have now. So

Dr Almitra Berry:

what do you say to white people, specifically to white folks who maybe still have that mentality deep down inside, and don't recognize where it's coming from.

Unknown:

I say, read my book and go through the seven steps. So I That's nice. I so in anti racism work, it's often set aside that, hey, white folks, you guys need to go correct yourselves and start the healing process. Black folks are tired of carrying that burden for you, and I got heavily involved in it, and that's one of the reasons why I wrote the book, was because one of the things that I noticed is because of being raised in a culture where we don't learn about other cultures because of the experiences I had, I often felt like a doctorate talking to a fifth grader. They just don't know and don't even see and still want to hold on to certain levels of importance, because you've been taught the whole time you're the superior beings, or you feel such a level of guilt that now you're responsible for changing it. And really the change needs to be us getting out of the way of guiding this ship and letting another culture come and learning from those practices, just being curious instead of trying to use and how do I manipulate and how do I win the race? And right? And winning is so important. I love sports, and I think winning important in that but once the game's over, like we're back to being humans on the planet again, and we can't turn that off in a society that thinks we're competing with everybody. If you walk outside and you feel like your neighbors is your competition, you want your gun on hand. You're trying to protect what you think is yours, all of these parts of white culture that we don't even understand, I wish we could just learn how to go back 400 years and kind of metaphorically give ourselves a hug and say we're worthy of being shared with. We do not have to take and try and dominate this thing, because there's no need for Jeff Bezos to control so much and the rest of us not be able to just live a full and enjoyable life. There's no need for us to grow so much corn and soy and not use those same lands to grow, you know, tomatoes and and and fruit and vegetables and enjoy the the health aspect of what the earth provides us. But we're stuck in this system of control, dominance and and you know the race, if you may, that we don't even understand racism or our culture of harm goes well beyond just discrimination and bigotry and things of that nature. And have to start to learn and understand the psychology behind that and see the value in a pre. Creating other cultures as well. Yeah.

Dr Almitra Berry:

So it sort of connects to cancel culture, right? So when people are whatever you want to call it, misbehaving, saying things they get canceled. What role do you think that that plays, if any and either accountable, I'm going to say white people to being, you know, my preference is that people are anti racist, because otherwise, maybe you're just tolerating racism, being active anti racist. If you're not racist, what does that mean? But we can have that conversation, but getting people to be accountable for their actions. Is it A, do you think it's, I don't know, a scare tactic? Is it you know fear that people are so afraid of being canceled that they just closed down, shut it up, shut in.

Unknown:

Yeah, and it comes from a privilege of having a system behind you that says we can cancel, we can ignore, we can we can not have to deal with stuff that we don't want to deal with, and it doesn't impact our lives the same way, right? But canceling, to me, is everything from guns to cancel somebody's life to shutting down conversations because there's a disagreement. You know, one of the things I loved about the way I grew up, yeah, we cussed each other out a lot. We often answered the phone. What's up with MF and A, B and A, this, that and the other, or a stupid this or whatever, when you express emotion, I think all white folks need to listen to Bernie Max. Don't be afraid of the word mother,

Dr Almitra Berry:

because you can, you are allowed to say that on the show. Okay? Just, just not every sins, right?

Unknown:

So it's funny because my mother listened to a conversation one time between myself and a close friend of mine who was a truck driver and, and he was just MF and MF and MF and, and she was like, What did he say? That didn't even make sense. And I heard him. He this was that MF was something that was put on the truck by that MF and that thing, right? So I followed along. So I had her listen to Bernie Mac the you know, and she cracked up. But the way he opens it up is, we're expressive. It's a it's a defense mechanism. We're going to just express it. I'ma blow this MF up, but we're not going to do it right. We're just expressing it. And if we can't get through some of the expressions of emotions aren't expressing emotions isn't supposed to be reason, logic and all of those things. It's just a feeling that you kind of got to get through. And if we can have greater conversations by not being so defensive about and to just embrace them and work through something instead of canceling it, we have a much greater success at our chance at succeeding in really making some significant change in healing.

Dr Almitra Berry:

So you think, do you think that some of you know, just canceling is a an issue of fear?

Unknown:

Yeah, and I think we have a lot of fears, you know, and I talk about it my my third step is where we start to change, but it's about letting go. And part of the part of the things we're facing in letting go is letting go of power, privilege and fears. And, you know, there's a lot of fears involved in that. I think one of the fakest fears is, is this idea that black folks are going to do harm to us if we repair, you know, if we give reparations, that they would do harm to us, as we've done to them. One, you're acknowledging that we're harmful, and you're saying we don't as wrong as it is. I'd rather be on this side of the harm, and therefore I'm okay with it. But two, there's, out of all of the proven or just all of the mass killings and destruction that have happened, from slavery to the bombings of the Black Wall Street and rosewood and things of that, all of these harmful things that have done on a mass scale, there's been no, if not No, extremely little, mass retaliation. And we have to be able to acknowledge that is a cultural difference that exists, and maybe even something we should be appreciative for. And if we can learn to appreciate other cultures. I think segregation is natural. You just talked about it. Kids get into clicks and things of that nature. We can move throughout the clicks if you weaponize segregation instead of just be curious about other cultures. Now you're it's the approach that really causes and I think that's what we. Need to learn to work through in order get through some of these fears. It's okay to be afraid. Doesn't mean you have to on the fear itself and use that to justify your behavior, because that's typically wrong.

Dr Almitra Berry:

Yeah, you're a big advocate of reparations for black vote, very

Unknown:

big advocate. How'd that happen? I think there's a healing aspect that is part of humanity that we're ignoring, and it's hurting us as white folks too, trying to maintain this positioning so much in our culture. But how did happen is I got to see the advantages that I have. I got to see the advantages that having opportunities and money behind it, and I also got to see how discrimination caused a greater wealth gap. I think that there's a lot to be said about what reparations can do for us all. It's about healing. It's about repairing the harm. And if I I approach it as an injury caused intentionally. If I was injured walking across the street by a car running me over, I would hope that you seeing this wouldn't just go, Well, I didn't do it. Knock on me to repair. So, yeah, right, yeah, you would hope that. So we

Dr Almitra Berry:

live in a system, right? That if that happened to you, you can sue, you're going to get paid. So there is some, there is some repair or reparation for the damage that was done built into our system, except for, except for, if you are descended from enslaved people in this country, and

Unknown:

I want to go further than that, but yes, absolutely, descendants of this enslaved people, but you, We need reparations for Jim Crow. We need reparations for for the discrimination that took place with FHA housing and VA loans and all of the things that gave a boost to white Americans. We need a reparations for appraisal gaps in the valuation of homes and things of that nature

Dr Almitra Berry:

that's happening today. It's still happening today. Yeah, we need reparations

Unknown:

for the war on drugs and the war all of these things. It's continuously happening. And that goes back to my injury piece. We're asking me, I just got run over by a car, busted up, leg back, head trauma, all of these things to get out of the way so that the rest of us can continue to use the street. And we're not going to help you. We're not calling so, so maybe somebody has called the ambulance, but then the ambulance goes, I didn't do it. Yeah, right. The doctors go, I didn't do it. Or how you gonna pay for this? How are you gonna pay for this? And if we saw the humanity in that ambulance, people feel good. The person that calls the phone calls on the phone feels good. You probably even won an update. I wonder how that person is doing. How are they healing? And their setbacks in the healing process, you can start working out feeling good. Okay, it's my knee is feeling much better. Let me go. Push it harder, bam. Tear something else, whatever it is, we need a whole understanding of what this process is, but the healing has so much greater benefit for our own humanity if we can experience what that's like, to share in resources instead of trying to control them to I mean, there's so many ways to to develop we we write our own checks in this country. So there's so many ways to create valuations the the the other part of the healing has to be that the system has to change so it just doesn't go back to this, or we're not just giving black folks money to only give back to a controlled system that only benefits these few white Folks anyway. Yeah, we have to change all of that, but there is for healing and for operating in a much different way that's much more enjoyable for all of us, right? I mean, the one thing I I don't like either party very much, but the one thing I'm I like is the idea of joy we have get there through some healing, and it's a much more enjoyable experience to really just love the planet than try to control and position yourself in a society. When

Dr Almitra Berry:

I think about reparations, you know, I joke that my husband and I solve all of this. Over drinks, one of the things I think about in the world of education, one of the greatest harms that continues to be done to black and brown bodies in this country is the MIS education and uneducation of children of color and other marginalized learners, but particularly black, brown and indigenous, indigenous Americans in our public school system. It cost us nothing, really nothing, to do things like have school leaders, educators, teachers who are actively anti racist, to have those same people culturally aware enough, culturally cognizant enough about the children that they're supposed to serve that they don't harm them with the behaviors and attitudes that we've been talking about right? One of the greatest and cheapest ways to to offer reparations would be to equally and equitably educate every single child. But there are we're talking about hundreds of years of not providing education to people of color, followed by Jim Crow, followed by, you know, continued segregation and even the resegregation of our public school system, misallocation of funding so that kids who have less who live in poorer, less wealthy communities that don't have the tax base, don't get the supports and the systems and the materials and computers and technology that are needed to fully educate them, and then we blame the parents for not setting them up and providing what they need or sending them to school ready to learn, when the parents are victims of the same system over and over and over, generation after generation.

Unknown:

I think if you tell one lie, you have to lead it has you have to cover it up with more lies, yeah, yeah. And that's true in our education system. And if we were to teach a level of truth, we'd really look bad as a culture. And I think that's one of our deepest fears, is, I think we're much more afraid of not because our less melanated skin makes us unable to compete, so to speak, or participate at the same level, but our cultural practices have been much more around positioning ourselves than just being the best version of ourselves, if we have to teach the truth about Black culture and truth about the history of how culture started to and why, you know, there's a village to raise a child and the difference between that type of culture and The culture that we developed, we would, we would lose that identity that you go back to. I'm not afraid of losing it. I think that that identity is harmful, and we need something much more healing. But if we're only still, if our goal is to see things as controlling, and all of that we this, this whole thing comes apart from the truth, and that's what we're holding on to. We have built such a system of lies that we can't even tell each other the truth about health and well being. And you know, we have to tell you that Fruit Loops are going to provide you riboflavin vitamin C, not that they're providing you also a lot of harm in that, in that.

Dr Almitra Berry:

Yeah, so your book is a journey. You have a journey of healing. You talked about one or two of the steps. Can you take us through briefly? Because I want you to get the whole thing away, right. We want, we want people to buy the book. Link to the book will be down in the notes. Folks. Tell us a little bit.

Unknown:

So the journey is my journey, what I've been through, and the seven steps. And the guide part is seven steps to healing. And Step one is somewhat of what we've been talking about, is don't take a step often I found when I got into anti racism spaces is they just learned about the world being racist in a way or right? Oh, you know, Mike Brown being killed. Oh, George Floyd being Oh, it's still happening. And you really just learned about something, then you really don't know enough about it, and you don't know about your culture, and you don't know about other cultures, and so seek some understanding is step one. Step two is acknowledging the harm. In any 12 step program you have to be able to acknowledge what you've been doing to yourself and what's the harm of our culture. It is anti black racism. Think about the intention. That have to go into slavery. It's, it's, I understand why they don't want to teach it. It is really hard to deal with. What is intention? What the mentality of to intentionally enslave a people? It is much more mental manipulation than it is just beating somebody to get them to do what you want. You can beat your kids all day long. Don't mean they're going to do what you want, right? So it is how it is that level of intentional harm that we have to untangle the other part of our culture, that we have to acknowledge the harm is going back to the food and the control. We actually manipulated the atom, the essence of life to make nuclear weapons. And then said, Well, maybe we shouldn't have been asking how things work. No. Indigenous cultures ask how things work all the time, so they can be one with it. We asked so we can try to control it. So this is a very harmful approach, so it's acknowledging all of these different harms. Is step two. Step three becomes, where do we start with the healing of it? And first thing is to let go. Right? If we can let go of all of our teachings, our harmful ways, and start to shred ourselves of trying to control and protect what's ours letting go exposes us to the ability to learn and appreciate other things that we haven't learned. So step four is appreciating the value of other cultures. And I say appreciate and value because step five is reparations, and appreciate and value our terms we use in our financial world, in our economic world. And so if we appreciate the value, then the cost that we that I've air quoted for those listening, the cost of reparations, leads to a value. We have a cost every time we leave the house. We pay for gas, we pay for electricity inside the house. We have a cost in everything that's associated with us, but we associate a value to those costs. If we can see the value of repairing the harm now where we we It doesn't just come with the cost, but it comes with a reason for wanting to do so. And so Step six is now, what do we do if we've repaired it? We have to build a different culture, and we need a new mind. When you leave a 12 step program, you are given somebody, you're told, Albert Einstein said it we cannot use the same to recreate something different. We need a new mind. We need an indigenous cultural perspective. We can participate. Our whiteness doesn't stop us from doing that. It just cultural practices that we have to shred in order to really be the best version of ourselves. And so Step six is developing that new mind so we can get to step seven, which is manifesting our humanity.

Dr Almitra Berry:

Awesome, awesome. I have one more question for you, and I think we talked about this and that has changed. You know, we're all of this is about change. Dr Angela Davis said, I'm changing the things I cannot accept. I have a feeling that I kind of know what one of those things is for you, but what is that one thing that you would share with listeners, that one thing that you cannot accept? And then how can listeners help support change in that area?

Unknown:

So one of the things that I cannot accept is the lack of truth in our in our ability to communicate, the the defensiveness that the the cancel culture, as you may, protects us from learning the truth and just shedding that, shedding the amount of manipulation. We call it sales and marketing now, right? It's every it's in every aspect. And just getting back to some truth, and that means starting with just learning that the earth provides us with the elements that our bodies need to live a healthy, fulfilled life, that creativity happens in ourselves. It happens in our ability to live. It is what life is about. And when you start to put in controls mechanisms around that creativity, not that there aren't certain contexts that need to happen, that we gain an understanding of truly how life works again, so that we can appreciate and let go of all of these harmful ways of trying to control and manipulate and compete so much and better enjoy each other.

Dr Almitra Berry:

Wonderful. Thank you. JD, I love talking to you, and I think we could go down several rabbit holes. That have nothing to do with the content of my podcast, but we can't do that right now. Equity warriors, I invite you to take some action in fostering inclusivity, understanding, getting over whatever it is that's holding you back, reflecting on the insights that JD shared today, engage in some meaningful conversations about race and equity and identity in your own circles. As always, I invite you to share today's episode, but do this this this time, text this episode to someone, spread some awareness, elevate the conversation, and then promote equity in your community, because together as a community, and something that JD has alluded to, certain groups are better with community. That have that sense that we have to do these things together to have some oneness and connection to the earth and harmony, right? Harmony, not harm a compassionate and equitable world is what we can build. And then join me again next episode. If you have a question, a topic you'd like to have covered, a special request, you know, you can text it to me, just like JD stories I want to hear yours as well. And then remember, don't worry about the things you cannot change. Change the things you can no longer accept and that's a wrap for today's episode of the 3e podcast. Now here's how you can make a real difference. First, smash that subscribe button. It's free. It's easy, just do it. Second, share the show with anyone you know who cares about education. And third, consider becoming a supporter of the show. Together, we're not just talking about change. We're making it happen. Make a donation today to be part of that mission and change, and I'll catch you next time you.

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Dr. Almitra L. Berry

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Christina "Pip" Pipkin

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