“My response to racism is anger.” – Teach Different with Audre Lorde

Transcript

Steve (00:10)

Welcome to the Teach Different podcast yet again. It’s Wednesday, I’m here with Jarvis and Bully. We’re going to get right into the conversation, but, for everybody here who’s listening for the first time, this podcast is all about conversations and it’s all about taking topics, and we’ve got a real topic today, that we’ve never talked about together, fellas. We’ve got this method as a way to deal with topics. Doesn’t matter how controversial, it doesn’t matter how, you know, it sets people off one way or the other. It’s a structured framework for talking about something and we’re gonna use it. It’s the Teach Different Method. So enjoy it, experience it. We’ll talk about it a little bit at the end of the podcast, but most importantly, we’re gonna have a great conversation. And that’s what we do here at the Teach Different podcast. So away we go. Our topic is gonna be racism. All right. And that topic’s been around for a long time in this country as we all know, we’re gonna tackle the topic by talking about a quote first from a civil rights activist, a lady by the name of Audre Lorde. And she’s a real intellectual. We’ve got a few different quotes that we’ve done podcasts on with her. And one of her quotes that I love, that she’s famous for is, “your silence will not protect you.” We’ve done a couple podcasts on that actually. This one is little different. It’s shorter and it brings up this racism topic. So we’re going to start by talking about what she said and figuring out where she was coming from. And then we’re going to work the Teach Different Method on it. And then, you know, away we go. Cause we’re going to be talking about real stuff throughout. So here’s the quote, I’ll read it a couple of times. And then, you know, maybe Bully, you just weigh in first on this and then Jarvis, you chime in and we’ll talk about what the quote means first. Here it is. My response to racism is anger. My response to racism is anger. This is Audre Lorde. So let’s break it down. Bully, what’s she saying here? And you can talk about whether it speaks to you or not, but what’s she trying to say?

Bully (02:52)

This one is really kind of simple, it’s like racism makes her angry. She’s not a person that’s with racism. She don’t like racism. When she thinks of the word racism, she gets upset and makes her angry. That’s the only way I get out of it. And for me, I can say what makes racism, what makes me angry about racism, you know? The thing that makes me angry the most about racism is like, you already got the people, the Europeans or whatever, who took over America from the Indians already. They took the country anyway. Then they arrived in this state, country, when the Indians was clearly here first. Then you got people, immigrants that come here and they talk to hate black people. Then they come here and they work for nothing. This is the American dream for them. This is their dream. They sneak over here. They come over here. This is a chance to get their life together. And they grow a hate for black people too, because this is a tough behavior from the people before them. And one of the main snickers they have is like black people lazy, because we won’t work for no 6.99 an hour. We’re not going to slave ourselves. But people are ignorant and blind to the fact that our ancestors built this country for 400 years for free. And the main thing that makes me mad about racism, because it’s like, the privilege already was taught to their kids to hate black people. Now we got all the immigrants coming all the country and instantly they hate black people. And the craziest part about it all is, we never asked to be here. We never asked to be here. We didn’t have no choice. We was cool running around in a juggle with our wives and kids. We was good.

Steve (04:28)

I’m not laughing, man.

Bully (04:35)

You going to Africa this week, we was good there. Africa is beautiful. How could you hate us and be mad enough for something we didn’t ask for? That’s what made me mad about racism right there, because we never asked to be here, bro.

Steve (04:39)

Yeah. Yeah. You know, you brought that up with, and so you’re tired of getting the flack when you don’t choose it. You know, it’s one thing to get into some trouble and get some flack, but like when you’re put in a situation and this is how people are treating you, the anger is natural, right? Like it’s frustration probably as well. Jarvis, what are you thinking?

Jarvis (05:13)

Truth be told, it could go various ways, but how I look at it, how I look at this quote and how I look at it from my standpoint is that the only way I get angry with it is because to be honest, we all human beings. The only difference between all of us is only three things, your color, your mindset, and your heartbeat. That’s it. Everything else is pretty much the same and we all equal. We stronger together than we is apart. So it makes it angry on my behalf because like we so caught up in trying to see colors, shapes and figures when we all really the same, we could do better trying to help each other get to where we all got to go than trying to put one another down because of your skin, this complexion or because we feel that you’re not worthy. Like I don’t really like that. And me personally, I don’t look at racism. Like I always tell you or tell everybody else that I talk to, like I don’t see colors. I judge you all for your personality and your heart. The only difference between me and you is the thing that lies in between your ears. It’s your brain and your heart. That’s what I judge people off of. I don’t judge people off their color because that’s not, that’s just materialistic. It’s just like an animal. Lions, bears, like they all different, but they all animals. You know what I’m saying? So like, I don’t really look at the racism thing like that. I don’t really try to look at color. 

Steve (06:35)

Let me ask both of you this, the response, you know, when you feel it, okay. And you feel it, right? It’s almost like you can touch it. It doesn’t have to be spoken. It’s the way people look at you, the word choice at that moment where you know that there’s something behind it. Is it all here? Let me ask you this. Is it always anger? Give me another emotion. I don’t know if I’m getting into a counterclaim to this or not.

Bully (07:09)

Sometimes, sometimes like I be happy, I be flattered. I was at Old Park the other day, right? And I double parked my van and then I was running across the street and then there was an older white guy and then he saw me coming towards him and he got scared, he got timid and I just left. I’m like, probably got more money than you, man. I’m not finna rob you. So sometimes it be flat out. Like I don’t even get insulted no more of ignorance like when I get stereotype of people size. I’ve been really looking like you understand life that I have a car, I have four jobs, I have a business, I have an active career, like I got it going on. Like I’m I might be doing better than you so why you have to see a black man coming and you get scared. Maybe it flattered me some time like I’m finna rob you or something

Steve (07:58)

So that’s a different

Bully (07:59)

When 9 times out of 10, 9 times out of 10 is gonna be your drug addict son that rob you. Not me. Yeah.

Steve (08:05)

And that’s a different reaction, obviously. Like if you get angry, like every day, all day about something, you’re gonna be a basket case, right? So you gotta…

Bully (08:11)

You will be mad as hell. You will be mad. You will be an angry black man.

Steve (08:18)

If you can laugh it off, do it. You know, now, now let me, I’m going to portray another environment where it’s not just some random guy on the street that you sense it from and you’re kind of laughing it off. Cause you know, you never got to see this guy again, but sometimes you’ve got like a work environment or a place where you’ve got to deal with someone. Maybe even in a position of authority that you see this in. Okay, you see the way they’re looking at you. Give me another, and Jarvis, I see your mind is clocking right now. how do you approach a situation where, you know, if you express the anger, there’s a chance you could lose something.

Jarvis (08:56)

Yeah, cause like, and that was tough. Yeah, I mean, but that’s very much what they want you to do. And I ain’t gonna lie, I’m coming, I’m speaking from a person that loses his temper quite often and it’s not good. It’s not good at all because like Bully say, they already stereotype us and like they already, it be people that haven’t even been around us, that haven’t even probably communicated with us. You probably would love us if you just took the time out to really talk to us. But you’ve been programmed to just think that we all are the same and we all are like, I don’t like that. So when I get put in situations like a work, a workforce or a work situation, or if I’m even in school and I’m around people with other stereotypes or other races, when I feel that energy of them trying to make me feel like a Negro and I know the intent, instead of me giving you what you want, and that’s me acting like a nigger. Excuse my French to the podcast and all that but that’s what you want me to act like. You want me to act like the animal you think I am. No. I’m gonna outperform you in every field that you think you are great at. And guess what? Every day you look at me, I’m gonna give you a reason to really hate me because now I’m not acting the way you want me to. I’m being better than you by one, not even acknowledging you and two, keeping my blinders on and focus on what I got going on. I got a titanium brain. I got this force field that can’t not be touched. When we as black men develop that, that we are kings and we fully, fully developed that thought, we are very unstoppable, very unstoppable in spite of what they was taught, what we believe or what they think of us. When we think of ourselves highly and once we get to doing the information and finding out where we come from and who we truly are, King Master moves to all these people, we start to move and act like these people. start to move like the people that was before us. And people don’t like that. They want you to stay ignorant. They want you to stay dumb and they want you to split the script.

Steve (11:06)

Flip the script on them.

Jarvis (11:09)

You give it to people in a row. And I ain’t gonna lie, I’ve been learning, I’m 24, but I’ve been learning this. People like control, and however they control you, that’s the way they wanna control you. They hit that switch, you gone. But guess what? When they hit your switch, you done burnt down everything, you done worked so hard to build just off temporary emotions of what someone made you feel like. You know what? Life makes me feel like shit every day, but I’m not gonna give up. And I’m not gonna let you make me feel like shit either. And when you do make me feel like shit, I’m not gonna give up. You unstoppable.

Steve (11:45)

I like the flipping the script. Like you’re not responding to racism with anger. You’re responding to racism kind of like as a trigger to really prove something out. And they might end up hating you, but not because you got angry and maybe you got frustrated, physical, violent with them. It’s cause you’re successful. Like you’re flipping it with them. So I’m not going to say you’re disagreeing with Audre Lorde, but in a way it’s more complicated than just your response being anger. Cause if you get that anger all the time, it just kind of debilitates you. Right? So that’s what I’m hearing. Bully, you’re nodding your head.

Jarvis (12:33)

I say that because, yeah, I say that because like anger is a thing that a lot of people, when we are vibrating at our lowest frequency, and I’ve been doing a lot of studying about this, when you feel anger all the time, you’re vibrating at a very low place of state of mind right now, you’re in survival mode, you’re not understanding things to your full capability. And once I understood that is that, jail systems and a lot of things are built for young people like me to fail. To fail. So I’m playing the game not how you want me to play it, but I’m playing it competing. How? Because I’m understanding the traps that you’re setting for me and I’m not falling for them. We had plenty of, what about Martin Luther King? Malcolm X, what about all the great movement people like, I use Martin Luther King because he believed in, don’t even fight them. Don’t even acknowledge them. Show them who you are by being who you are every day, don’t matter what you go through and spite up. And they hated that man gut. And he never picked up a bloom and hit him. He never picked up his fist and hit him. He never threw a chair at him. And they hated that man gut. Why? Because he was showing the black community that if you act like a Negro, they will always perceive you as a Negro. But if you act as a king, then they will have to perceive you as a king and that’s something that they would hate to do.

Steve (14:07)

I hear you. And I’m kind of sitting with the counterclaim to Audre Lorde quite a bit here.

Bully (14:15)

I just wanted to follow up on what Jarvis said before we get to the counterclaim. It blow my mind his age. I can look at this two different ways. From 24 year old bully to now 40 year old bully. It’s two different perspectives. That’s when I came with our first said about the immigrants even talk to haters. I have been on the side of that at a young age where I’m working and I had people of different nationalities was my supervisor and I could felt the racism, I could felt the tension, and I could felt how they was treating me over maybe some people that wasn’t documented. And then their mentality was like, I’m lazy, how I’m acting what I’m doing. And they wish they had the opportunities to be hired, because they’re temps, they’re not really working with the company and whatever. And they used to bother me. And I lost a lot of jobs like that, because I felt like… It was racism in it and I used to let it get to me and I used to be mad because I felt like it wasn’t fair. So the younger buddy used to make me really angry. I was working downtown at a steakhouse called Double Equal Steakhouse. I was working hard, I was doing good. It was cool when I was in the dish room. But after I did my time, everybody else started in there. You work your way to the dish room, then you work your way to the kitchen. feel me? But it’s like, after I was doing so good so many times, I made my way to the kitchen on the line, on the cook or whatever. But he still used to like try to make me put me in the back and do dishes and stuff, but he never did it to the people of the same nationality of him. know, and I just think like that ain’t fair. He felt like I still should be watching dishes, even though I’m a cook now. You don’t ask none of them to do it. And then I really got into it with him and I quit. I quit so many jobs, especially working with factory settings where they feel like. The temps come in there work hard, they try and do what they do and we hiding on and we complaining about stuff. They watching how long I take break, they watching how long I take lunch and they watching me and they used to be bothering me and then they felt like, and I can see it, the way they act, felt like them guys wish they had the opportunity I had when I was looking at it like that’s for them. Me, I’m looking like this a bullshit ass job. Like I don’t even really want to be here but I’m just trying to make me some money and I had a right to feel like that. You don’t know what I’ve been through. You don’t know what my family been through. But like you said, the older, Bully now when I speak racism, I just smirk at it. Because I like, Jarvis, I just look at it like you ignorant. It don’t bother me no more. So if I see somebody, I see somebody ask you, I laugh like, like my cousin, we was going to the curse exchange. Was nobody in the curse exchange? Then he go in there. Everybody in and out, he going there, they got a call to check, they got to do this. You look up and at a curse change filled with 30 people just because one black man went to the counter and it was just crazy. And I watched it and I would just be laughing. Like when I went to take care of business, I could see people prepared. You ever went somewhere, I don’t know, you ever went somewhere and somebody prepared to tell you, no, like they thirsty to ask you the requirements. Like I could feel it, like when they see me coming, they be like, well, you got to have this, you got to have this, you got to I be like, I got it all. I be smiling inside And I be smiling inside because I know I got my driver’s license. I know I got my state ID. I know I got this. I know I got my… So I know I got it all. I got my bank account. I got credit cards. I know what they finna say and it really makes me happy. It makes me happy. When they come and they be like, well you know gotta have this. You gotta have this. this. I be like, I got it all. It just make me happy. So when I see it now, I smile at the ignorance in them and I look like I’m better than them because I look like they still ignorant. So it really makes me put a smile on my face.

Steve (17:55)

That’s gotta be liberating to get to that point. ‘Cause that’s a lot of people are not there Jarvis.

Bully (18:01)

Man, it used to bother me bad. He used to bother me bad. It kinda semi-turned me to a racist, you know? It can be effective.

Steve (18:08)

Stay in control, define yourself the way you want, you set the terms for winning, and nobody’s gonna throw you off your game. Iif they’re ignorant or wanna start something, you just don’t let it get in the way of the momentum. It’s so much easier to say than do, but it’s there, that’s the solution.

Bully (18:34)

I want to attack the counterclaim before I get up out of here, Steve. I want to hit a counterclaim before I get up out of here.

Steve (18:39)

Yeah, I mean, we’ve kind of been already addressing and I know you have to go. She’s saying my response to racism is anger. So I’m imagining. We did it. No, I like it and I see where she’s coming from. She’s a civil rights activist. She got tired of being treated a certain way and it didn’t work out for something. I’m trying to imagine her like in the 60s. It was different, right? It might have been worse.

Bully (18:43)

Yeah. We said, so we already did it.

Steve (19:08)

Might’ve been better in some ways, but I think we’re already living in it. And it’s really any questions you guys have to end with that kind of capture this, right? Like, you know, I’ve got a general one, something like what’s the best response to racism? You know, what’s the thing you’d put in a textbook? If you could teach the world, teach all the youngsters how to deal with it. What is the best response? It probably depends on the situation. I don’t know. I’m just trying to…

Bully (19:44)

I say take it as a compliment. You know what, that’s what I do. I look at that like you don’t even know me. You don’t know what’s to me or nothing, but I’m on your mind. I make emotion come out of you. You never seen me at D & L life and I bring some type of emotion out of you. I make you feel some type of way. My presence, my presence is valuable to you. You know what saying? So I just say like, man, look at that as a compliment.

Steve (20:04)

I like that. It’s almost like you’re in control. You’re talking about me. You care about me.

Bully (20:08)

Yeah, I’m controlling you. made you look crazy when I walked in here. I made you change your way when I came in here. You bothered about my presence.

Steve (20:14)

I love it. I love it. Bully thank you. I know you got to step out. It was good to see you. 

Bully (20:19)

Alright. All right, good to see y’all.