The Talk: What white people need to know (as told to Laurie Fosner by Gwendolyn Stringer)

 

This is an edited transcript of a talk Gwendolyn gave to her fellow employees as part of our ongoing conversation about race and how we are affected by it. She begins by answering a question: Why she chose to share her experiences as a black woman and how it feels to do this.

It’s a very sensitive matter for me. It’s a difficult conversation, and as I describe the joy that I feel in having this conversation, I have to pull from a compartment that I have. I have compartmentalized my feelings on what’s going on in this world, in my life, in the race relationships. I have to have a place to put the hurt, the fear, the frustration, the discontent, the hopelessness, the anger. I have to store it somewhere because if I don’t, I can’t function because those feelings are too heavy. And so, I do that daily, I do that by my Christian faith.

So, I’m going to pull some of those things out to talk about them. What will happen is that my countenance will change; my voice changes, my smile goes away, the decibels increase, my facial expressions exaggerate because now I’m looking at something that’s not an easy thing to talk about—it’s a painful thing.

What motivates my voice today, is that I want the best for my three sons, who deserve to be seen for their character, not their skin color. For most people, most parents, the most difficult thing they have to explain to their children is that Santa Claus is not real, but not me, as parent. I don’t want another black mother to have to have “the talk” with her sons or daughters. And if you’re not familiar with the talk, let me just tell you what the talk was for me and my sons. 

There are three of them and they are black boys and they are quite large. And I would have to explain to them that when you walk down the street together even though you are three brothers you will be seen as a gang. I have to tell them when you walk into a store there is a way you carry yourself. Always greet the store owner to disarm them. You want them to know you’re friendly. Don’t put your hands in your pockets. Keep your hands in plain sight. Keep your receipt when you buy something—always get a receipt—even if it’s a stick of gum. And never, ever, steal, because that’s what they expect of you. That’s part of the talk I have to have.

But finally, the most difficult talk that my ex-husband and I had to have with my kids—I still have that talk today—is the conversation on how to interact with the police when you’re pulled over while driving. And the chances are—you are three black men—you will be pulled over. In the black community we call that, the crime, is “driving while black.” It’s not funny because it happens so often. You can be pulled over and lose your life because of the attitudes. There are good cops, don’t get me wrong, but there is so much fear, so much criminalization of black people that the first instinct is to kill.

So that conversation with the police, when you get pulled over, you need to put your hands on the steering wheel and let them be in sight of the police officer at all times and speak politely when reaching for your registration. Speak calmly and tell them exactly what you’re doing. Comply with the officer. If there’s a problem, get the officer’s badge number and you can report them later, but your goal is to get home safely. And even with these steps-- there is no guarantee that you will get home safely.  

That’s the conversation that I’ve had to have with my three sons.

So, what does Black Lives Matter mean to me? I am getting emotional; I didn’t expect to get emotional. When I talk about this I am not speaking for all black people—we are not monolithic. This might be a movement for some—some of you have just become aware of it and are just now becoming involved and it’s a movement and I’m just so happy to see people of all colors and mostly white people who are out protesting for black lives, but for me it’s my life. So, when you get tired of protesting and this fad is over, it’s still my life. This is not the first time Black Lives Matter has happened. We’ve had protests before; they go away, and they come back. So, I’m hoping that as we are united, we use this time to make a change because it’s exhausting. At some point you’ve got to get tired, but I can’t get tired, because this is my life. To some it’s a movement, to me this is my life.

In terms of how this affects my identity at work, as a black woman I am mentally and emotionally fatigued. But if you ask me how I’m doing I’m going to say “fine.” Because we are conditioned as black people by our parents, who are strong people, that if you want to survive you put your chin up, you make a way out of no way, and you keep pushing through all of the difficulties because you don’t have time to stop and complain.

I’ve had a long career, and I have encountered unconscious bias, (maybe conscious), microaggression, and discrimination. You know, people hire who they feel comfortable with, so you try to be like them, but right now I don’t have time for that. I don’t want to try to be like anybody. I don’t want to try to fit a mold you think I should be in.

In the end, we must educate ourselves and take responsibility for our part in this. So, if you are wondering what you can do, try to remember these two things:

If we know better, we can do better

If you see something, say something

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More background about Gwendolyn’s life and the struggle to make black lives matter

Gwendolyn’s great-grandparents on both sides were born into slavery. Back then black lives didn’t matter. And it wasn’t that long ago. There are only three generations between her enslaved grandparents and herself. Her family has been fighting for their lives to matter since the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation.

While the 13^th Amendment outlawed slavery, there was an exception made for black people who were deemed criminals. So, right out of slavery, the goal was to criminalize black people, so they could once again provide the labor the white farmers needed. It was called “peonage” or “debt bondage.” White farmers who lost the slave labor that had kept them profitable used this by drumming up charges like loitering to jail black people, and then in order to pay off their debt to society, they were conscripted once again into a form of slavery.

They also created the sharecropper. While black farmers were supposed to be paid under this system, they almost never were. It was a situation where they were freed, but where were they going to go? The lack of opportunity for freed slaves kept far too many exactly where they were before slavery had ostensibly ended.

When we talk about systemic racism in the police department, this is where it started: criminalizing black people so we can continue to use them for slave labor. The first police were former slave patrols tasked with tracking down and returning black people to slavery. Those patrols eventually evolved into the current police force. So that’s where the mentality of seeking out black people to target as criminals began. And there are still remnants of this mentality in police forces across the country.

When the 13^th Amendment was ratified in 1865, black people were still not considered citizens of the United States. It was not until 1868, when the 14^th Amendment was passed that black people gained citizenship. But it would not be until in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, that black men and women finally won the right to vote without consequences.

Gwendolyn’s family has a saying “Education is liberation.” But even that doesn’t stop discrimination. Today you can get away with killing a black person simply by saying “I felt threatened.”

Even after the horrifying videos of the beating of Rodney King, and the murder of George Floyd, our system of justice still failed to hold police accountable for the death of Breonna Taylor. And yet our current Attorney General insists there is no systemic racism in America.

While some white people still refuse to say, “Black Lives Matter” insisting that “All lives matter,” The reality is that “All lives matter” will not be true until Black Lives Matter.

Breonna Taylor - Say Her Name

If you can say, with a straight face, there is no institutionalized racism in America, you need to play more poker.

The verdict is in and there is no justice. The ironies are almost too numerous to list, but here are some of them.

• The original incident report filed by police at the time of Breonna Taylor’s death listed injuries as “none.”
• The no-knock warrant that was used by police to force their way into her apartment was for a man who was already in custody
• Charges for reckless endangerment were brought for the shooting into other apartments during the incident but not for the shooting that resulted in Breonna Taylor’s death
• Prior to demonstrations, there was no investigation into her death
• A civil suit resulting in a $12 million payment to the estate of Breonna Taylor confirmed the injustice of her death, yet no criminal charges were brought for it

As I write, protests are again underway in Louisville.  But instead of focusing on the lack of justice for Breonna Taylor and the institutionalized racism this entire scenario represents, the media is once again focused on the protests themselves.

Just as we saw in Portland and Kenosha, protestors are being visited by a variety of self-proclaimed militia all professing to be there to protect people. But from what? So far none of the BLM protests have resulted in violence to others, except for those invaded by armed white supremacists.

What we have in Louisville, Kentucky right now, the home state of Mitch McConnell, is a set-up. Trump, Barr, McConnell and the Kentucky District Attorney (who coincidentally recently spoke at the Republican National Convention and is now being names as a potential candidate for the Supreme Court) are planning to use this to create a diversion and pump up their base with what they hope will be a riot they can televise to prove we are not safe in the face of black protesters. Rather than acknowledge an obvious injustice they choose to create chaos.

On CNN today, a reporter said protesters in Louisville want the media to go home. They’re tired of having their calls for justice usurped by untrue accusations of violence. They are sick of self-important armed white guys showing up as if they are saving someone or something. The protesters just want to be heard. But instead of spreading their message, the media are playing directly into the hands of the Republican spin machine.

MSNBC reported today that the prosecutors drafting the indictment in Breonna Taylor’s case focused solely on the bullets that entered neighboring apartments and ignored those that killed Breonna Taylor. Some say they did so to ensure the lowest possible sentence should the accused be found guilty. But others point out that as soon as they entered the apartment, Breonna Taylor’s boyfriend started shooting and the police merely returned the fire in self-defense. So why didn’t the prosecutor charge the shooters with her death and let them make that defense? Why did the police hide the fact that they killed her in the first place? How can a dead woman be consistent with “no harm” on an incident report?

You’d think a dead body would raise some questions, but no. Not a dead black body. Those still don’t matter.

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How many people in official positions sworn to protect the people of Kentucky agreed to stay silent in order to keep Breonna’s tragic death quiet in the first place? How many supported the men who murdered her, as if the police who bungled this in every way are somehow the real victims? Who decided not to charge her murderers for killing her, but instead for “reckless endangerment” of her neighbors—who were not shot and are not dead?

A trial for murder was in order. I won’t argue that being shot at by Breonna Taylor’s boyfriend could be considered self-defense--but that’s their defense--not a reason to forgo charging them in the first place.

Does anybody believe if Breonna Taylor were white, they’d have done any of this? On the contrary, they’d have brought flowers to her mother and told her how terribly sorry they were for the horrible mistake they made in entering her daughter’s home by force in search of a man who was already in custody. If she were Irish, they’d probably all have taken up a collection and brought food over to the mother for the next year.

This wasn’t just unjust, it’s inhumane. They treated her like a dog. They dumped her body at the morgue and pretended it never happened.

This is what we mean by institutionalized racism. From the cops who killed her to the drafting of the indictment, dozens of people were complicit in this process. That’s what institutionalized racism is. It’s what you have when the institutions we rely on to protect and defend the people condone it.

Like I said, if you can say, with a straight face, we don’t have institutionalized racism in American, you need to play more poker.

How reporters working together could break through Trump’s wall of deceit

 

It must be difficult for reporters to listen to Trump’s lies without correcting him. I assume the media don’t push back because they fear losing access to him, but the silence after Trump’s televised lies is not just painful to watch, it’s one of the main reasons Trump's followers continue to believe him.

Every time Trump lies during a press conference and it goes unchallenged it reinforces the lie for the public. This enables Trump’s malignant behavior in the same way his sycophantic cabinet members enable him when they treat him like a monarch; praising qualities he doesn’t possess, professing their gratitude for the privilege of serving him, behaving as if he is some kind of minor deity.

If the President says something false, he needs to be corrected at the time. If he makes a vague statement, he should be asked to clarify. If he responds with “You know what I’m talking about,” he should be told, “No, no I don’t. And nobody else does either; so please explain.”

In a town hall the other day, Trump was asked about downplaying the virus. He responded by saying he actually “up-played it” if you look at his actions. Why didn’t somebody say, “Can you please give us examples?” If they had, he’d have mentioned the ban on travel from China (because he always does). And that’s when somebody needs to say “You mean the ban that exempted thousands of residents of Hong Kong and Macao, failing to prevent 8,000 residents of those territories from entering the U.S. within the first three months after the ban was imposed? Is that the ban you are talking about?”  Or, “What about all the people who came in from Europe and infected large parts of the U.S. with a different strain of Covid-19? Why didn’t you bother to protect them?”

These details need airing for two reasons. First, we need context. Second, we need specifics. Trump’s ability to manipulate reality for himself and his followers depends on keeping context and specifics out of the discussion. If we force them back in, he’ll do one of three things (as he always does): make something up, implode, or have meltdown.

This is what we want. We want to expose him for what he is, a fraud incapable of leading this country.

We also need to expose the truth, which is more than stand-alone sentences or decrees. The truth can be complicated. Without context and specifics, it is not possible to know the truth. With it, we can connect the dots between everything we’re seeing and hearing and attempt to make sense of it all.

Trump has claimed that he built “the wall.” What he doesn’t say is that U.S. taxpayers are paying $30 million/mile for it. Every time he claims that he’s delivered on that promise, somebody should say, “But wasn’t the promise that Mexico would pay for it?” Or, “I’ve heard the money is coming from the military budget; if so, how can you claim you have beefed up the military?” Or “How are you going to resolve the fact that the land you want to build on is private land, and the government isn’t allowed to build on private land? Whose land will you be confiscating in the name of eminent domain?”

Trump says he wants to protect medical coverage for pre-existing conditions but never mentions the legal battle his administration has been fighting since they took office to remove that coverage. His actions are so often in direct opposition to his statements and promises, nothing he says can be taken at face value. Yet his followers refuse to challenge him.

This election is not going to be an easy victory for Biden. We have everything working against us when the Attorney General, an entire news agency (Fox), and most of the Republican members of Congress are all willing to lie or cover for Trump. But if we start demanding context and details from him, he will falter.

Reporters, working together, could break through the president’s wall of deceit.

Trump lives for the media spotlight. He won’t stop the press conferences because they feed his insatiable need for attention. If reporters force context and details into the dialogue during live conferences, he’ll have no choice but to respond to the requests or show his inability to do so. If he ignores one reporter and moves on to another, the next person he picks should repeat the unanswered question. This would provide much needed information to the public, while also chipping away at Trump’s façade. It’s what reporters do with other high-level officials. They must stop being afraid to do it with Trump.

If we want to reach the people who have succumbed to the Trump cult of celebrity, we need to show him as the bumbling and irrational fool he is. It’s the only way his base of Fox News watchers will ever see the real Donald Trump.

It's not Trump Vs. Biden; It's Trump Vs. Democracy

 

Mary Trump’s book, Too Much and Never Enough, describes Donald Trump as a wounded soul who never develops the capacity for intimacy, empathy, compassion, or understanding. He’s not a fully developed human being; he is stunted emotionally and psychologically. But the most fascinating dynamic revealed in the book is the one controlling the monumental effort that has gone into fooling the world into believing the book’s subject, Donald J. Trump, is some sort of genius.

It’s not a new thing to take the weakest, least capable family members and keep them hidden or send them away. The rich and famous have done that for centuries. What’s new is rather than send Donald away, his family chose to prop him up. As Mary Trump, Donald Trump’s niece, makes clear in various ways throughout her book, the Trump family dynamic was such that their survival as a business (which is what this family is and was from the moment Fred Trump and his wife created their dynasty) required a front man to make it successful, and Donald fit that bill.

Donald’s incessant need for attention has always made it impossible to ignore him, so people enabled him instead. For the family, there was no upside to confronting Donald with the truth, so nobody did. They’d experienced the tantrums and cruelty Donald was capable of when he was still a child. They knew his propensity for holding grudges and punishing those he perceived as having slighted him. Donald always won. He had to. His ego required it and his ego is the single thing Donald Trump is trained to defend, at all costs.

By the time he became President, he’d been protected from his own ignorance, incompetence and failures for over 70 years. The Trump family never imagined that the more rich and powerful Donald Trump appeared, the more people outside the Trump family would be willing to suspend their own disbelief and go along with the façade. 

It never occurred to his family that the rest of the world would not only accept their damaged offspring as capable but would deify him as the new leader of the Christian right. The Trump family pretended Donald Trump was everything he said he was because their business depended on it. They had no idea where their conspiracy to defraud the public would take them.

Donald Trump does not run a successful family business, contrary to popular belief. His father, Fred Trump did that. Fred’s eldest son, Fred Jr. (Freddie) wasn’t cutthroat enough for his father, and his innate sense of humanity made him uncomfortable with his father’s “kill or be killed” mentality. Freddie’s failure became Donald’s opportunity. It didn’t matter that Donald was an undisciplined underachiever; what mattered was he had confidence, and with confidence you can convince people of anything.

Donald is no scholar; he barely reads. He doesn’t remember anything that doesn’t facilitate the only feelings he is capable of: superiority, self-importance, entitlement, lust for power. He says, does and thinks whatever his mind tells him will make him appear smarter, more interesting and more powerful than he is. The compulsive need to feed his ego is constant and can never be sated. Donald Trump is not well; he is broken. Everyone who works closely with him can see it, but nobody seems to know what to do about it.

For years the media has been saying Trump just needs to “be more presidential” or “stop saying the quiet part out loud." They assume he can grow, learn, change. He can’t. He is a shell of a man whose entire existence is based on lies. Donald Trump is not really the President; he just plays one on TV.

Don McGahan chose the judges Trump appointed to the Supreme Court and formed the team that filled all the judicial vacancies. Putin guides Trump’s international diplomacy and, Mitch McConnell blocks any legislation that his cronies might not like. Donald Trump has somehow become the de facto leader of the Christian right.

But Trump is not their Chosen One; he’s their Golden Calf.

We must stop comparing Trump to normal people. Normal people with dementia may sound like Trump sounds, but Trump does not have dementia, he is simply making everything up as he goes along. He hears things; he repeats them; he embellishes; he fabricates. He spews nonsense because that’s what’s in his head.

Trumps has no policy; there is no big plan; there is no consistency. There is only a steady move toward chaos that will allow Trump to claim more and more power until he can justify taking all the control from the rioting, undeserving American public, leaving our once great democracy in tatters.

If you’ve assumed Trump’s willingness to appoint right-wing judges makes up for all his other failings, you are mistaken. Trump has systematically dismantled our environmental protections and regulations designed to protect consumers, depleted our federal government infrastructure and is doing his best to destroy the postal service while encouraging his own supporters to commit election fraud.

Whatever you like about what Trump has done, it cannot outweigh the failure to protect the American people from Covid-19, or the damage he’s doing to our system of government. And whatever you dislike about Joe Biden, he will never leave the American people at the mercy of chance when it comes to protecting us from danger. The choice is clear.

This election isn’t about Trump vs. Biden; it’s Trump vs. Democracy. If Trump wins, we lose. It’s that simple.

--Laurie Fosner