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Started From The Bottom with Justin Richmond · Revisionist History

• 0:15
  Speaker 1: Pushkin. I'm Malcolm Gladwell and today on Revisionist History, I
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: have a special treat I'm going to play for you
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: an interview I did with an old friend in Pushkin
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: co conspirator Justin Richmond, who you may know from our
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: music show Broken Record, which Justin has made happen since
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: the beginning. But now Justin has his own gig. He's
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: the creator and host of a new podcast called Started
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: from the Bottom. It's a show about origin stories, particularly
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: the origin stories of men and women of color, how
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: they climbed their way up the ladder, the obstacles they
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: overcame along the way. And for this episode that I'm
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: about to play for you, I turned the tables on
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: Justin and I interviewed him. We did it in front
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: of a group of students and faculty at Medgar Evers
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: College on the side of the old Evie Field in Brooklyn,
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: New York. As someone of West Indian heritage, let me
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: just say how gratified I was at the heavy West
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: Indian turnout for this, And in good West Indian fashion,
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: they asked some pretty good questions at the end too.
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: So here we go my conversation with my good friend
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: Justin Richmond.
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: Hello, Hello, who is this song? Check? Check ye a
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: single race, So welcome. This is the first time I've
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: ever done anything like this, and it is certainly the
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: first live taping of started from the bottom. So thank
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: you so much for coming, Malcolm, thank you so much
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: for doing this.
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: Not at all, it's my pleasure, Justin. I've long dreamed
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: of being on a stage with you.
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: I can't imagine that's true, but it's very nice of
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: you to say no.
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: I think I hope this is the start of many
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: of these Justin, But I think premise of today's is
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: that I'm interviewing you, right, That's not our plan.
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Look, we.
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: Want to get the Justin. We want to get the
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: Justin Richmond.
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: Origin stories, a little introduction in me, I guess, yeah, yeah.
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: The which you know. I love these things because I've
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: often I'm a firm believer that if you want to
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: get to know somebody, even if they've done a lifetime
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: of interesting things, if you just do the first twenty years,
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: you get most of what you need. Right that it's
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: a surprising how much you can glean from. So let's start.
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: Let's do the Justin Richmond analysis and I wanted to
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: start with a thing we have in common. Now you
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: might look at us and say, what on earth do
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: they have in common? But we do have one very
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: significant fact in common, which is we're both the product
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: of biracial marriages. Yeah, and I wanted to start with that.
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: First of all, you're more obviously biracial, and me, I
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: don't know how that happened. You, I'm a little more
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: subtle yours.
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: Your dad would say it's his jeans.
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: So you're tell me about your parents. Let's start with
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: those two. How did they meet?
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: Justin to start with that, they met at Compton Community College.
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: So he grew up in Compton and and my mom
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: was there for I don't even know why she was there,
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: but she was there. She was friends with someone there
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: and so she was there. They met.
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: Where does your mom grow up?
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: My mom grew up in a city called Almonte, which
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: is by Pasadena. My mom grew up on the racetrack.
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: Her dad was a racehorse trainer, so she grew up
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: on the racetrack. And Yeah, they're very different people even
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: to this day. And it might be because they've never
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: seen them together, but my kids still cannot wrap their
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: heads around that my parents, like you know that there's
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: any relationship between them or ever was you know, they
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: were never together, they were never married, but yeah, like
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: they liked they just liked each other, you know.
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: So how long were they together.
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: Off and on? About five years? Four years?
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: So you have very few memories of the two of
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: them as in a couple.
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: Very few early on, Like I remember being over at
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: his house because I have two half brothers, so early
• 4:27
  Speaker 2: on I remember being over there with them, going to
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: Disneyland on occasion. Well, yeah, the memories are very sporadic
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: early on.
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: You know of them, and you're raised by your mom,
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: raised a bit by both, but primarily by my mom. Yeah,
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: and where you grow in Long Beach or yes.
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: In Long Beach. And then at five, my mom moved
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: to the city of Orange, which is in Orange County,
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: which is about twenty minutes south of Long Beach.
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, what is Orange?
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: Like Orange and far as places in Orange County, go
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: is pretty diverse. There's a large Latino community there, but
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: aside from the Latino population, it's overwhelmingly white. And that
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: was it. That was a change from me even having
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: white parents, like even having like my mom being white
• 5:16
  Speaker 2: and having that whole side of my family be white.
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: I never thought of it that way until I showed up.
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: You know, she moved there right before I started, a
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: month before I started kindergarten. And I remember my first
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: day of kindergarten. I rolled up and I had this
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: is ninety four, so I had a Power Range of
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: shirt on. I thought I was real cool, Power Rangers
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: lunch box. I really thought I was nervous, but I
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: thought I was fresh. I thought it was good, right,
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: And I'll never forget this kid who was in line
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: in front of me, like, look back at me, and
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: this is the first time. Like again, I'm like, I'm
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: not really realizing the differences between us yet. But he
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: turns dound and looks at me and goes, are you poor?
• 5:52
  Speaker 2: Are you poor? Yeah? Yeah yeah? And I was like
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: like you what do you mean? And he's like, you
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: look poor? Are you poor? And I was like what,
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: you know, I was just deflated. I didn't know exactly
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: what to think about it at the moment. I was.
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: I was just deflated just because you know, your five
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: year old you go into kindergarten. Ryna. We had just moved,
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: and I thought it looked good, but apparently I looked poor.
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: I remember his name?
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: Should you tell your mom?
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: Yes, I did that. I remember that. I remember, I
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: remember going home and talking to my mom and uh yeah.
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: I mean that's when I think her hope was that
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: it would take a little bit long for those dynamic,
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: for that dynamic to set in, right. But that's when
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: we had, you know, when she started talking to me
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: about the fact that I am now at this overwhelmingly
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: white place and many of the people I'm going to
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: be around are likely growing up, if not out and
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: now racist, racist things being said in their household, They're
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: going to be parroting those things back.
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: At that. So if I asked you in say, in
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: middle school, to how you would describe yourself racially, what
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: would you have said?
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: Black? I knew I was black, you just because because
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: of my experience, Because of that experience going to the
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: so you know, off, I would say, off and on.
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: Between kindergarten and ninth grade, I was going to overwhelmingly
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: white schools, and you know, these are places where I
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: would get called nigger. You know. So when you're getting
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: called nigger, you know what you are, you know. And
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: then I go talk to my dad about it. He goes, well,
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: you are niggas, so but you know that was like
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: his way of trying to be like, yeah, you are niggas,
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: so yeah. You know. So I definitely knew what I was.
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: I knew I was black. And where it got well,
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: I see where it got difficult was when probably in
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: junior high, when it was teachers who I think sort
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: of interacting with me differently because of my color, you know,
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: like I had. I got in a lot of trouble
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: because I grew locks, and I remember they wanted to
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: kick me out of school. There was a there was
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: a neo Nazi kid named.
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: Your name, and all these people like on the bulletin board,
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: where are you man?
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: Right? And every day with him go you know, it
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: was go back to Africa. I mean it got to
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: the point police got involved, you know, and he never
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: got kicked out of school somehow. But but I would
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: say the point in junior high is when teachers I
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: started getting just weird comments from teachers and weird nothing
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: I did was ever good enough. There's always a perception
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: that I was lazy. And that's when I think because
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: I was. I was always a smart kid and because
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: my dad played football, because I was so tall, I
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: was always tall. The perception was always that I was
• 8:38
  Speaker 2: going to go and be an athlete. But from early age,
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: I realized I wanted to cut against that. Like I
• 8:44
  Speaker 2: didn't want okay, cool, Yeah I can I can play ball,
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: I can do that. But what I realized I really
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: wanted was to show people, Like early on, I kind
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: of got this need to prove people wrong in me,
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: and so I felt like I always wanted to be.
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: I always wanted to be the smartest person in the
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: room at that point as a young kid, and I
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: didn't always have the confidence that I was, but I deep,
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: deep down somewhere I wanted to be. And by the
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: time I got to to junior high and the teachers
• 9:12
  Speaker 2: were sort of I have these these odd interactions. I
• 9:15
  Speaker 2: think that's when I started to That's when my my
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: interest in education started to wane and my I would say,
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: my pride and myself started to win.
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: How many black teachers did you have in your public
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: school experience?
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: Zero? Zero?
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: They got something to do with it.
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: I think that's a big thing, has a big part
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: to do with it. Absolutely, yeah, absolutely, you got it.
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: And that's the premise of my show, if you're not around,
• 9:42
  Speaker 2: if you're not around people who look like you, who
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: are successful, you know. And my dad, God bless him,
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: you know. He was an NFL so to degree was
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: a success. But my dad and I love him. But
• 9:52
  Speaker 2: you know, he also like has a very small way
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: of thinking, you know, and so I never really felt
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: like I had someone.
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: What do you mean by a small way of thinking?
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: For him, it was always like, yeah, just go be
• 10:08
  Speaker 2: a cop, you know, Like that's sure money. Like you
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: can go be a cop. You can get one hundred
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: grand a year. With over time, you can make like
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: one twenty Like what are you doing with this college thing?
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: What are you doing with school? You know, like they didn't.
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: He couldn't get that I wanted to be that. I
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: wanted to be an educated brother. You know, he couldn't
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: get it. I say, a lot and a lot of
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: my family didn't. It's difficult to talk about because I like,
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: in so many ways they were successful, you know, But
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: at the same time, I knew there was a level
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: of life that I wanted to achieve that no one
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: in my family had achieved. You know. My dad wanted
• 10:43
  Speaker 2: me to go be a cop. Because he's like, that's
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: guaranteed income, you can and you can do it. But
• 10:48
  Speaker 2: I just had other aspirations. So it was it was
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: a weird thing between growing up in a white world
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: that didn't necessarily believe in me and growing up in,
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: you know, my black family in a black world that
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: kind of had a way of thinking that wasn't They
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: didn't understand what I was trying to do.
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, your dad's not He's not one hundred percent
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: wrong being a police officer. And I'm not saying you
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: should have done it. I'm just saying from his position,
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: being an LAPD officer is assuming that's what he's talking about. Yeah,
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: that is a good job.
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: It's a great job. I mean in terms of, like
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: if you look at just like income and like what
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: you could provide for your family, Like, it's a great job.
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: But it's the means of there's all an entire generation
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: of largely black men who grew up in LA for
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: whom the LAPD was the stepping stone. I mean, you
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: got a job in the LPD and then your kids
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: got to go to college. I mean that was like
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: he's reflecting something that was real, right.
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: No, it was a real thing, and I don't. At
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: the time, I was very I was always upset when
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: you bring it up. You know, now I understand why
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: he did. But you know, when you have a dream
• 11:56
  Speaker 2: and something you want to accomplish, hearing things like that
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: don't instill confidence in you. Because I always have to
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: hear these quies like well, what a school doesn't work out?
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: It's like, well, what do you mean? What was like?
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: You know what? Like by the time I get to
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: college and I'm meeting people, I'm like, I can very
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: much tell that this isn't their experience that they had,
• 12:13
  Speaker 2: Like what a school doesn't work out? It was just expected?
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: You know?
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: Is it your dad? Does he not think you're smart
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: enough for college? Or does he think the obstacles facing
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: a young black man are too high? What's his what's
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: his theory?
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: I don't know. My dad thinks he's the smartest man
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: in the world, so and I think based he also
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: thinks he has the greatest gene pool in the world,
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: so I think so, I think based on that he
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: knew I was very smart. That was his belief at least.
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: But with my dad, I think it very much had
• 12:42
  Speaker 2: to do again with like his perception of what was
• 12:45
  Speaker 2: possible in the world. You know, he grew up in
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: a place called Eudream of Village and Compton, which was
• 12:49
  Speaker 2: a housing project that closed down because the soil was toxic.
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: Like they didn't know what at the time, but the
• 12:56
  Speaker 2: soil was toxic. So people were getting sick and cancer
• 12:58
  Speaker 2: and dying, babies being born deformed. And I think it
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: was also a sense of maybe his dreams were limited
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: to or his not his His dreams were big, but
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: I would say his dreams were at some point, I say,
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: his dreams are crushed as well. You know, my dad
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: did get kicked out of the NFL. The story as
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: it's been told to me, So my dad got drafted
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: by the Colts in eighty four, I want to say
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: eighty five, and the team captain, a white dude, called
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: my grandmother a nigger, and so my dad whooped his ass.
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: They had it. He got reprimanded, that had a team dinner.
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: It happened again, my dad whooped his ass and he
• 13:34
  Speaker 2: was kicked off the team. And I think when that is,
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: when that's what happens to your dream, I think you
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: start to worry in some way.
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: Was it his dream?
• 13:44
  Speaker 2: Absolutely yeah. Yeah. Does he still have regrets today, I'm
• 13:50
  Speaker 2: sure he does. I don't think he regrets that, Like,
• 13:53
  Speaker 2: I don't think he regrets whooping the team captain's ass
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: or anything. But yeah, I think he wishes it turned
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: out different. Absolutely, you know, yeah, does.
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: He understand what you're doing now?
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, you know the first the first time he
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: really got it. Well, he got it when I went.
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: When I got into Berkeley, he was kind of he
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: was shocked. I was shocked. My whole family was shocked.
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: I couldn't believe it too, so much so that I
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: remember I drove up. I drove up, I wrote the counselor.
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: I was like, listen, like, I got some I gotta
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: I gotta talk to you. I didn't want to do
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: it over email, didn't want to do it over phone.
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: Like I needed to look this lady in the eyes.
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: So I was like, hey, can I meet you? And
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: she's like, yes, sure, sure to come down this date
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: this time drove up to Berkeley and yes I was.
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: I was like, look, I got this deferred a mission.
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: This is real. Yeah, this is real, justin, justin.
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: You're living in Orange County at the time.
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: I'm living in La in La. You drove six hours yeah,
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: to Berkeley, yeah, six seven eight.
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: To ask official of Berkeley whether your acceptance that it
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: was real.
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: I came that far. I wasn't gonna lie. And then
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: also like try to figure out how to run a
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: place up there and pay a mission just to not
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: so I drove up there, and you know, so, I'm
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: is this real? And she goes, yes, this is real?
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: So I go, so I could start January fifteen, Yes,
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: you can as a philosophy major. Yes, okay, and I
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: can switch my major if I want once I get in, yes, right,
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: you know. And then and then and I'm kind of
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: trying to work up to also like so, and I asked,
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: I said, listen, I'm gonna be honest with you, Okay,
• 15:33
  Speaker 2: Like I don't have a high school diploma, I don't
• 15:36
  Speaker 2: have a GED, I don't have an equivalency, so you
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: should like so based on that now you said already
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: said this was real, but based on now, with this
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: new information, based on that, is this really? Is? Can
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: I really come here?
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: We skipped a step. The step we skipped was you
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: didn't graduate from high school?
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: Na I left at fourteen?
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: At fourteen?
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I left at fourteen.
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: I also didn't graduate from high school, but that's because
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: my mom called the principal and said, Malcolm won't be
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: coming in. He's more productive at home. That was it.
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: So everyone was like, okay, fine, like that's you know,
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: that's a very that's the world I grew up, and
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: it was forgiving, understanding, do what you want kind of world. Wait,
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: you left high school at fourteen to do what?
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah? Nothing good? Yeah, nothing good. I would say I
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: was pretty beat down by that point, you know, like
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: confidence wise, I didn't know what I was doing. So yeah,
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: I left and I was I was just doing my
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: own thing.
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: What's your mom doing when you're doing this?
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: So here's what happened. Was so like basically my freshman
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: year high school, I was so rock binding with my confidence,
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: Like I had basically like a zero point something GPA,
• 16:48
  Speaker 2: like I had like no GPAs. It was literally zero
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: point something. And the only the highest grade I got
• 16:54
  Speaker 2: was I thought it was a C, but it turns
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: out it was a D. I got a D in journalism. Yeah,
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: and the teacher pulled me aside. He's like, justin, you're
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: too smart to fail. You deserve an F I'm not
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: gonna give you a F. I'm gonna give you a D.
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: I was like, oh, thank you, mister Muller. But it
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: was like a zero point something. So they said you're
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: gonna have to go to continuation school, which was just
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: like a school, like, you know, for for fuck ups.
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: And my mom was like, you're not a fuck up,
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: so you're not gonna You're not gonna go there. I go, okay.
• 17:19
  Speaker 2: She's like, I almost have you stay home, and uh,
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: this it sounds crazy, but I got to give her
• 17:25
  Speaker 2: credit because it didn't work for a bit, but then
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: it really worked. She's like, I'm just going to stay home.
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: You're gonna read the paper every day while am at work.
• 17:32
  Speaker 2: I'm gonna come home. You're gonna have a little report
• 17:35
  Speaker 2: on a couple of items you read. And of course,
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: you know, for the longest, like I just took advantage.
• 17:43
  Speaker 2: I didn't do it, you know, like I just didn't.
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: She didn't want me being with fuck ups because she did.
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: She already could see I think that my confidence was
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: shot and that was just gonna be worse, so she
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: pulled me out. I took advantage of it. I didn't
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: do much until I was like almost sixteen. Common story,
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: I feel like for a lot of people. I got
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: a copy of the autobiography of Malcolm X and it
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: really reignited my ambition. So then at that point, I'm
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: roll in community college because I didn't really want to
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: deal with like trying to start over from my freshman
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: year of high school. So I rolled in community college
• 18:23
  Speaker 2: and just did that for about four or five years,
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: and so I could transfer. I transfer. So I started
• 18:27
  Speaker 2: that at like just before I turned sixteen, and I
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: transferred to Berkeley at twenty one.
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: Let me see, we'll get back to Berkeley and how
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: things turned around for Justin in a moment. Back to
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: my conversation with Justin Richmond at the Edison O. Jackson
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: Auditorium at Medgar Evers College. Justin was finding his place
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: at Berkeley. So you have a kind of loss of
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: confidence and do you get it back in Burke at Berkeley.
• 19:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, one hundred percent. Gabrielle Williams right here. I met
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: Gabrielle at Berkeley. She was doing her PhD. We met
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: at the Black Student Lounge or it was the the
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: that was like her her student job thing, and she
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: was listening to music and I heard, so we connected
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: and there was a professor there by the name of
• 19:29
  Speaker 2: Ricky Vincent. He was like the pre eminent funk music
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: scholar and was writing a book on the Black Panthers,
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: and I had a strong interest in the Panthers. So
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: like between like Gabrielle and Ricky Vincent and all these
• 19:43
  Speaker 2: other black folk that looked like me that I could
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: relate to. And for Gabrielle coming from from La southern California,
• 19:49
  Speaker 2: like there was just a lot in common. It definitely
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: a hundred percent helped me. But but she also helped
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: me through a lot because there's many times I've called Gabrielle,
• 19:59
  Speaker 2: including when I took this job at Pushkin, like I
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: really do this, this is a smart move and shout
• 20:05
  Speaker 2: out to talk. You know, when I got into grad school, Man,
• 20:07
  Speaker 2: should I really take out these loans, Gabrielle, I don't know.
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: It's a lot of money, Like I don't want to
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: be in debt, and Gabria was like, justin, just come on,
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: is what you're supposed to do. You're going to school,
• 20:15
  Speaker 2: you got to pay you unless you can afford it,
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: take the loan out and go. So yeah, I definitely
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: got a ton of confidence right there, not that I'm
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: you know, and then slowly along the way ebbed and
• 20:25
  Speaker 2: flow like as new situations arose, and I sort of
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: fell into journalism because I couldn't really, I couldn't get
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: a job after college, and I knew I kind of
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: went in wanting to be a professor by the time
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: I got to Brookley's like, I kind of want to
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: do my bachelor's, get a PhD, then teach. But then
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: I sort of fell out of love with with higher
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: education just because of the bureaucracy element. Sorry, wonderful to
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: have us here. But I would talk to Gabrielle, I
• 20:55
  Speaker 2: would talk to my guy Ricky Vincent and sort of
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: be like, well, what is it that I like to
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: do well? I like the idea of writing and connecting
• 21:02
  Speaker 2: with people, communicating people. I like the idea of researching.
• 21:05
  Speaker 2: And so that's when like the idea struck to do journalism.
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: I started get involved with RAO around town KPFA, which
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: was the PACIFICA station in Berkeley, the campus station. I
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: took a journalism class, so I kind of and it
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: just snowball from there where I fell into journalism. But
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: by the time I like I get a job. I'm
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: twenty five, I'm at NPR and my girlfriend got pregnant,
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: who's now my beautiful wife, Danielle. We have two beautiful kids,
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: Crin and Ella. And I was making like thirty thousand
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: dollars a year in PR, paying back loans and bout
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: to have a kid. My confidence, I say, at that
• 21:39
  Speaker 2: point sinks back to all time low. And I have
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: a friend named Drew who took me to Cuba. It
• 21:49
  Speaker 2: was just like, I sense you're kind of going through it.
• 21:51
  Speaker 2: Let me, let me take you to Cuba. This is
• 21:52
  Speaker 2: when Cuba opened up. I was like, I can't really forties,
• 21:54
  Speaker 2: like I'm gonna pay for it. You sent me back whenever.
• 21:56
  Speaker 2: So me and Drew went down And this is the
• 21:59
  Speaker 2: most random incident in my life. This is the most
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: random thing that ever happened in my life. Is We're
• 22:02
  Speaker 2: in Cuba and Havana. I've driven to Mexico twice, but
• 22:06
  Speaker 2: other than that, I've never left the country. And uh,
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: I run into Quincy Jones in Havana and Quincy Jones like,
• 22:16
  Speaker 2: I'm like, damn, that's Quincy Jones. I want to I go, hey, Quincy,
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: can can I get a picture? And he goes yeah,
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: and he doesn't get up. So I was like, okay,
• 22:23
  Speaker 2: I'm gonna sit down and take a picture of Quincy.
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: And he started asking me, what's your sign? I go Leah,
• 22:29
  Speaker 2: I go leo. He goes on leo rising cool. I
• 22:32
  Speaker 2: don't know what that means. He just starts talking to
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: me and we have like a three hour conversation. We
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: have dinner.
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: He never told me because you and I met Quincy
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: like five years ago.
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that was a full circle moment for me because
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: we ended up going to Quincy's house. But I had
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: like a three hour dinner with Quincy Jones in Havana.
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: At my lowest point, I'm making like no money, I'm broke.
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: My wife was looking at me crazy because it's like,
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: why are you in Cuba running around like she didn't
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: know if I was maybe not gonna come back or what.
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: But I met Quincy and from that he was like, oh,
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: you're you're a cool brother. Man gave me his gave
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: me his card, and normally I wouldn't have, but I
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: felt I was like, okay, this man discovered Oprah Winfrey,
• 23:12
  Speaker 2: Will Smith, Ray Charles, So I was like, you know
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: what am I going to do, not reach out, not
• 23:17
  Speaker 2: reach so I could use all the help I could get.
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: So I reached out to Quincy and it was like, look,
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: look Quincy. Like I realized I didn't want to reach
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: out with nothing. So me and my friend Sinari Glinton,
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: one of the few black men at MPR that sort
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: of took interesting me right away, sort of noticed when
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: I was there that I needed I needed his his guidance.
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: We decided I shouldn't just go to him with nothing
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: to offer. So I was like, look, I'm a journalist,
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: I working on a PR, working audio everyone. You know,
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: it's twenty sixteen. Podcasting is sort of new, but people
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: are starting to have them. You've done everything from you know,
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: everything across media that you could possibly do except for podcasting,
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: Like we can make you a podcast. And it was
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: like great, So you know, it wasn't that easy, but
• 23:59
  Speaker 2: it was a couple of meetings, finally got into a
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: great got to sign some paperwork. I still have it framed.
• 24:04
  Speaker 2: It's like me and Quincy Jones signature, which is the
• 24:05
  Speaker 2: craziest thing in the world to me. But what happened
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: was I couldn't I couldn't I couldn't sell the thing
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: I realized I didn't know the first thing about business.
• 24:13
  Speaker 2: I've been flying blind my whole life, just trying to
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: figure things out and taking out loans. I don't know
• 24:17
  Speaker 2: what I'm doing. And that's one thing I did for
• 24:20
  Speaker 2: this show. Occurred to me. It's like, if I could
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: just talk to if I could talk to someone else,
• 24:26
  Speaker 2: some other black man who has like money, Magic Johnson
• 24:30
  Speaker 2: Byron Allen, who at that times about the Weather Channel.
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: I was like, I bet they could tell me what
• 24:35
  Speaker 2: to do because I was in these rooms just like
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: realizing like I don't understand this jargon, I don't understand
• 24:40
  Speaker 2: the speak, and I'm failing, you know. And so it
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: really occurred to me at that moment, how important having
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: people who look like you, who you can point to
• 24:53
  Speaker 2: in your life, you can point to a successful at
• 24:55
  Speaker 2: this particular thing. How that can really be. It's not
• 24:59
  Speaker 2: the only way to figure things out, but it's, man,
• 25:01
  Speaker 2: it makes things so much easier. You know.
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: Let's go back a moment and say, what's the version
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: of your life where you wouldn't have suffered that kind
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: of crisis of confidence.
• 25:16
  Speaker 2: I can't imagine.
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: Give me a version, Give me a version where it's
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: where it's easy in the United States.
• 25:28
  Speaker 2: I don't know. I don't think. I don't think you
• 25:29
  Speaker 2: can have it easy being born black in the United States.
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: I don't think it's I don't think it's possible. I
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: would say best case scenario is, you know, like a
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: Carlton type or something from Fresh Prince or something. You know,
• 25:41
  Speaker 2: we're like, Okay, you succept but like, are you really
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: how successful are if you're not acknowledging the whole part
• 25:46
  Speaker 2: of yourself. So it's hard for me to answer, but
• 25:48
  Speaker 2: I guess in a scenario where there is no And
• 25:52
  Speaker 2: this is interesting because I'm also thinking about this from
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: my kids now, like they're getting a much different life
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: than I had, access to different kinds of people and
• 26:01
  Speaker 2: education and two parents who are supportive of each other
• 26:05
  Speaker 2: and supportive of them together. Uh so I think. But but
• 26:09
  Speaker 2: I mean, I guess, like for me, it's hard for
• 26:11
  Speaker 2: it really is hard for me to imagine. But but
• 26:13
  Speaker 2: maybe I guess the best case. You know, It's funny
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: I used to I used to dream that I was
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: like a as a kid, that like like I was
• 26:19
  Speaker 2: like a Huxtable, you know, which is maybe a little
• 26:21
  Speaker 2: controversial now but like, maybe that would have been a
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: best case scenario. You know, Dad was a doctor, Mom
• 26:26
  Speaker 2: was you know whatever, in a Brownstone, and.
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: Give me the worst case scenario so you don't get
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: into Berkeley. What happens is that the key moment.
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: Not probably getting probably getting the Malcolm X autobiography, because
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: that was I was in a pretty bad spot there.
• 26:44
  Speaker 2: But I'll say before I came to Pushkin, I almost
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: gave up again, like when you don't have examples of
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: success around you and you don't have people who can
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: teach you about money and how to not even like
• 27:00
  Speaker 2: in a gross like uber capitalist way, but just like
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: how to accumulate it so that you can't have the
• 27:05
  Speaker 2: things you want and need in life. Like I didn't
• 27:07
  Speaker 2: have that. So I almost journalism, even though you know
• 27:11
  Speaker 2: I love it and I wanted to be in it,
• 27:12
  Speaker 2: almost left it. I had a job offer with ADP,
• 27:15
  Speaker 2: the UH Payroad Processing, to do outdoor sales with ADP,
• 27:20
  Speaker 2: because I was like, well, I'll just go do sales,
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: you know, like I'll just I'll make some money doing sales.
• 27:25
  Speaker 2: And I almost took that offer, you know, And that
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: was maybe six months before before I got an email
• 27:32
  Speaker 2: from from you from me, LaBelle and from you to
• 27:35
  Speaker 2: come up for Pushkin, which which I would say changed
• 27:38
  Speaker 2: again my trajectory thanks to you, Jacob Weisberg, you know
• 27:41
  Speaker 2: me and LaBelle. Yeah, man, because because it was also
• 27:46
  Speaker 2: bleaked in a little bit, you know, it was also
• 27:48
  Speaker 2: it was tough.
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: Then, man, we'll take a quick break and get back
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: to Justin's story. We're back with Justin Richmond in making
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: sense of people's life stories and trying to figure out
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: what's the difference between in America between a black life
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: story and a white life story. One of the things,
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: and it's very, very difficult to convince persuade white people
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: of this fact is it's how many strikes you get,
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: or how many chances you get. If you are a
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: upper middle class, well educated white person, you get like
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: ten chances. You can screw up nine times, and the
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: system will catch you every time and start you over again.
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: And if you're in the same position as a young
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: black person, you maybe get two. And I remember this
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: is a weird example of this, but there's an incredibly
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: interesting book that was written about a suburb of Buffalo,
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: a wealthy suburb of Buffalo. I think it's Williamsville. Not
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: Sure Amherst. The book I think is called the Safest
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: City in America. It was about how there's no juvenile
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: delinquency and Williamsville. And the reason is not that there's
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: no misbehavior among juveniles. It's that they just call us
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: something different. Right, it's high jinks, it's sewing, no wild oats,
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: it's it's oh so and so it just has to
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: learn to be. It's everything is getting. Everyone gets so
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: many different chances that no one ever looks never comes
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: to the definition of juvenile delinquency. And like that that thing,
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: this question of how many chances you get? Is it
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: sounds listening to your story that you are very close
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: to running out of chances.
• 29:48
  Speaker 2: It's even like more than that. It's just it's like
• 29:50
  Speaker 2: I didn't even know that I had chances, you know,
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: and maybe I didn't. I never knew I had chances.
• 29:54
  Speaker 2: You know. There's a point where, you know, I guess
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: in your example, the difference would be in those instances
• 30:00
  Speaker 2: those kids in Buffalo, they're thought to be behaving badly,
• 30:04
  Speaker 2: whereas when you're a black kid misbehaving, you're bad. You
• 30:08
  Speaker 2: know you yourself.
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: Oh, it's absolutely define differently, you're.
• 30:11
  Speaker 2: A terrible person. You can't you can't succeed, you can't
• 30:15
  Speaker 2: do None of this is for you, you know. Yeah,
• 30:19
  Speaker 2: and so that's where I was at, which is a
• 30:21
  Speaker 2: pretty bleak place.
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, my speaking of father, So my father who
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: passed away a couple years ago, but actually today, weirdly
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: is his birthday. My mom always says to my dad
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: that that his motto was nothing bad will ever happen,
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: which I've thought about a lot. Partly that's the function
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: of his personality. Had this kind of unstoppable, unthoughtful personality.
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: But he was also a came from a stable English family.
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: He was well educated, he was very intelligent. The system
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: always worked for my dad. He was a nice person,
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: he was depending on he was charming, he was people
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: liked him. So it made sense that his theory of
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: life was nothing bad will ever happen. My mother would
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: have made you know, she's a mom. She would imagine
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: all kinds of horrible and he would just he would
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: look at her, uncomprehending me. It was like, no, no, no, no,
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: nothing ever bad's gonna happen, right, And it was essentially
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: true of like that message, I was just thinking as
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: you were talking about your dad, the difference in messages
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: sent to the two of us at a young age.
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: I have this dad who just thinks it doesn't even
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: occur to him that there's ever going to be any
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: you know, detour of it's a runway.
• 31:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, man, Yeah, something about opportunity and something about the
• 31:42
  Speaker 2: way in which society asks you or demands that you
• 31:46
  Speaker 2: think about yourself. You know, it's like sometimes you don't
• 31:48
  Speaker 2: get an option and how you want to think about yourself.
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: I feel like the one thing that I don't maybe
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: it's fine this way, but the transition is still really
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: the way that your life kind of turns around. I
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: don't eve turns around. It's not like people were living
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: a life of crime, but you know what I mean, Like.
• 32:10
  Speaker 2: It's not hamminated myself.
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: Something happens. It's really kind of interesting and mysterious to you.
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: In your twenties, it was a bride.
• 32:22
  Speaker 2: It was like, yeah, between it was just building up
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: my confidence. I guess between fifteen and now, I'm still trying,
• 32:32
  Speaker 2: you know, like from that time I did drop out
• 32:35
  Speaker 2: of high school to like just getting through college, Like
• 32:37
  Speaker 2: what motivated me was a sense of failure I was like, man,
• 32:40
  Speaker 2: if I don't get a high school, if I don't
• 32:41
  Speaker 2: get a college diploma, like what I have an eighth
• 32:44
  Speaker 2: grade certificate? Like what is that going to do for me?
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: You know? So that was kind of like this real
• 32:48
  Speaker 2: like it wasn't like a carrot type of motivation, was
• 32:51
  Speaker 2: like you know, and and then I was like, well
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: then I couldn't get a job. And then I went
• 32:57
  Speaker 2: started interning and I got into grad school, and then
• 33:01
  Speaker 2: that gave me another Okay, now it's grads. When I
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: got to figure out grad school is a big scary
• 33:05
  Speaker 2: thing and do that, and then I get out of there.
• 33:07
  Speaker 2: I get right into this job at MPR and within
• 33:09
  Speaker 2: them two months, like my girlfriend's pregnant, you know, and
• 33:11
  Speaker 2: it's like now it's like, well, I got to figure
• 33:13
  Speaker 2: out how to provide. So like my whole I feel
• 33:15
  Speaker 2: like every step of my life up until recently has
• 33:18
  Speaker 2: been about how do I just how do I not
• 33:21
  Speaker 2: how do I not fail? And that's sort of been
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: my motivation to succeed. And I'm trying to figure out
• 33:25
  Speaker 2: a way now to be motivated now that that like
• 33:28
  Speaker 2: that's why I'm on this journey. They just trying to
• 33:30
  Speaker 2: talk to successful people. I've been lucky enough to be.
• 33:33
  Speaker 2: You know, first time we met in Santa Monica, I
• 33:37
  Speaker 2: was like, day, I can't believe I'm gon go meet
• 33:39
  Speaker 2: Malcolm glad Well. That's crazy. And you know, we had
• 33:42
  Speaker 2: a very lovely conversation. I just remember, like, I can't
• 33:44
  Speaker 2: get out of here without asking like, like, how did
• 33:46
  Speaker 2: you get comfortable having money? And I asked you that,
• 33:49
  Speaker 2: what did I say? You're like, I just wanted to
• 33:51
  Speaker 2: be able to do my own thing. I wanted to
• 33:52
  Speaker 2: have my freedom. I wanted to be able to I
• 33:54
  Speaker 2: never wanted people to sign things to me or to
• 33:56
  Speaker 2: be told what to do, and so and I was like, damn,
• 33:59
  Speaker 2: that's a great answer, you know. And but that's why
• 34:01
  Speaker 2: that's largely why I'm still, you know, I'm still trying
• 34:03
  Speaker 2: to figure out this this this world, in this life
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: and navigating different things. So that's why I'm that's why
• 34:09
  Speaker 2: I'm doing this and talking to people like Charlemagne the
• 34:12
  Speaker 2: God and people like Susie Orman and just different people who,
• 34:16
  Speaker 2: you know, against the odds, against all odds, like figured
• 34:19
  Speaker 2: this thing out, you know. And my hope is that
• 34:22
  Speaker 2: people listening to it it inspires them, not only to
• 34:26
  Speaker 2: take big swings, but also to seek out real world,
• 34:31
  Speaker 2: real life mentorship, you know, like, obviously I want this
• 34:34
  Speaker 2: to be a platform of mentorship for people. So hopefully
• 34:37
  Speaker 2: you walk away having learned a lot and feeling boosted.
• 34:40
  Speaker 2: But also like I think, you know, you need to
• 34:42
  Speaker 2: have real life mentors, and I've been lucky enough to
• 34:44
  Speaker 2: have so many, Gabrielle, you, Jacob, all kinds of different people.
• 34:49
  Speaker 2: I'm hoping that I try to figure this out, people
• 34:50
  Speaker 2: will figure it out alone, alone with me.
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's toughly well, thank you. Justin we'll let's do
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: some audience questions funny and if.
• 35:00
  Speaker 2: There are any questions, they could be for me or Malcolm.
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: It comes on.
• 35:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you.
• 35:07
  Speaker 3: My name is Kevin Nesbit, an educator, one of the
• 35:10
  Speaker 3: administrators that create the blockages you talked about now. But
• 35:14
  Speaker 3: thank you so much for the way you presented this
• 35:17
  Speaker 3: good eurodureaucracy, a good VP, as I call myself. I've
• 35:21
  Speaker 3: had many friends that come from biracial families, and I
• 35:25
  Speaker 3: think as someone that does not come from a biracial family,
• 35:27
  Speaker 3: there's always this belief that there's some sort of protection
• 35:30
  Speaker 3: that you might receive from your whiteness if you choose
• 35:33
  Speaker 3: to adopt it or if you choose to embrace it.
• 35:36
  Speaker 3: And because I appreciate the way that you said you
• 35:38
  Speaker 3: understood immediately you were a black man and that you
• 35:40
  Speaker 3: had no choice, because even if you wanted to imagine something,
• 35:43
  Speaker 3: other society told you, know, you're a black man, right,
• 35:45
  Speaker 3: And you gave many examples for that. But I have
• 35:47
  Speaker 3: other friends that, throughout their journey, they've been able to say, well,
• 35:51
  Speaker 3: it's it's not that it's a choice, but it's a
• 35:53
  Speaker 3: little messier than that for them because they're both black,
• 35:56
  Speaker 3: they're both white, and they grapple.
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: With what that means.
• 35:58
  Speaker 3: Did you have any moments where you felt that having
• 36:01
  Speaker 3: a parent that was white actually enabled some moments of
• 36:04
  Speaker 3: protection or other as Malcolm described it, maybe one more choice, right,
• 36:09
  Speaker 3: one more set of options. That's my question.
• 36:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, hard for I guess. I don't want to speak
• 36:13
  Speaker 2: for other people, but my belief is when I talk
• 36:16
  Speaker 2: to when I hear these stories, it's just that there's
• 36:19
  Speaker 2: a bit of them deluding themselves. Perhaps you know, I don't,
• 36:23
  Speaker 2: but hard to say. I don't want to speak for
• 36:25
  Speaker 2: anyone else, but I didn't feel that maybe if i'd
• 36:28
  Speaker 2: had a different mom, maybe it would have been different,
• 36:30
  Speaker 2: but I was never allowed to think that anything different,
• 36:33
  Speaker 2: you know, thank you.
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, there's a this is my grand theory of
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: biracial marriages. There's a big difference between black father, white mother,
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: and white.
• 36:45
  Speaker 2: Father, black mother, which would be here.
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we're actually very different kinds the Historically, what a
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: biracial marriage was was a white man and a black woman.
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: That was the acceptable form for society. Goes back hundreds
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: and hundreds of years. That's what it was. It was
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: never the reverse, and only really recently have you seen
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: black men marry white women. And I think the road
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: is a lot harder both for the for the marriage
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: and the children. It's a lot harder when your father's
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: black and your mom is white.
• 37:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 37:16
  Speaker 3: I decided it looks like on the cases I'm thinking
• 37:18
  Speaker 3: about my friendships with it was largely what you described
• 37:21
  Speaker 3: with the traditional and maybe the household of the fathers,
• 37:25
  Speaker 3: whether it's separated or not, later on, there was some
• 37:27
  Speaker 3: sort of protection that dad would You'd have another outcome, right,
• 37:30
  Speaker 3: you have another choice. So I just wanted to hear
• 37:32
  Speaker 3: a bit about that.
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: I think society views a black man white woman as
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: as being subversive and in a way that they don't
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: view the reverses being subversive.
• 37:43
  Speaker 2: Thank you, that's true.
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: Hello.
• 37:47
  Speaker 4: Firstly, thank you Malcolm and Justin you guys are It's
• 37:51
  Speaker 4: just been a joy to have you here. And I've
• 37:53
  Speaker 4: just enjoyed this whole conversation. I just wanted from you,
• 37:58
  Speaker 4: just in like a SoundBite or maybe just like a
• 38:02
  Speaker 4: quick statement, like words of advice from one biracial man
• 38:07
  Speaker 4: to another biracial man and just how to like navigate
• 38:11
  Speaker 4: the professional world and how to just keep your bearings
• 38:14
  Speaker 4: and keep yourself grounded.
• 38:17
  Speaker 2: Man, I'm not listen to my show because I think
• 38:20
  Speaker 2: there's people far greater than me that are going to
• 38:21
  Speaker 2: be given advice. But I would say to this point,
• 38:27
  Speaker 2: in the instances where I haven't code switched, I've always
• 38:32
  Speaker 2: been much more successful. You know. I don't know if
• 38:35
  Speaker 2: that's because I've been lucky, but also some of it
• 38:38
  Speaker 2: comes down to my like I also think you shouldn't capitulate.
• 38:42
  Speaker 2: So also like if someone doesn't want you, like I
• 38:45
  Speaker 2: do have imposter syndrome yet and still it's like I
• 38:48
  Speaker 2: do somewhere in me have this belief that like I
• 38:51
  Speaker 2: can't help but be myself, you know, And I think
• 38:54
  Speaker 2: as long as you just are true to yourself, whatever
• 38:58
  Speaker 2: that is, however you view yourself, identify yourself, behave like yourself,
• 39:03
  Speaker 2: like I think that's all you can do. And I
• 39:04
  Speaker 2: think in those instances, like just knowing that you bring
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: a lot to the table being you, then you do
• 39:09
  Speaker 2: you being someone else. And if you don't, you'll find out, right, like,
• 39:14
  Speaker 2: sometimes it doesn't pay to be me certain situations and
• 39:18
  Speaker 2: I've you know, I've found out. But okay, then find
• 39:20
  Speaker 2: that one's not for me. Let me go to the
• 39:21
  Speaker 2: next situation where it is good for me to be there.
• 39:23
  Speaker 2: You know, I was at MPR before I was at
• 39:26
  Speaker 2: Pushkame with Malcolm, and that was a place that I
• 39:29
  Speaker 2: was authentic to myself. But it didn't feel like that
• 39:32
  Speaker 2: was It wasn't appreciated. And you know, so I got
• 39:36
  Speaker 2: out to go where you're appreciated, and go where you're appreciated. Yeah, yeah,
• 39:41
  Speaker 2: thank you, Yeah, more question.
• 39:44
  Speaker 5: Oh well, gentlemen, thank you so much. So you both
• 39:49
  Speaker 5: made a biracial and I wanted to ask mister godwell,
• 39:55
  Speaker 5: justin identifies as black and yourself, I.
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: Don't think about it. I think that's the difference between
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: having I have a West Indian mom justin as an
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: African American father. If you're a West Indian, you don't
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: think about race in the same way. It's not this
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: omnipresent thing in your life. So I was I just
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: think of myself as I don't know when I grew up.
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: It was never forced. I mean it's never I was
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: never forced to answer that question. My mom thought of
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: herself as a Jamaican, not as a white person or
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: a black personer. So I don't have a I don't
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: have a a kind of easy answer that you had
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: a couple layers because Jamaican and then growing up in Canada,
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: which I feel like this is probably very different then yes, Canada. Again,
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: I never I never got the the the racial experience
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: of as all of you and everyone in this room knows,
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: the racial experience of living in this country is just
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: profoundly different from the racial experience almost anywhere else.
• 41:05
  Speaker 5: Would life have been different if you were a darker complexion?
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: Probably probably, I guess, although well, black people always know
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: that I'm biracial. White people don't necessarily know, so it
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: would have made my uh. I have to tell my
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: favorite story ever along the grounds is as running down.
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: I went for a run one day in LA and
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: running down Ocean Boulevard and this black guy in a
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: gorgeous open portion n at eleven, like one of those
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: tricked out ones, like one of these incredibly handsome black ones,
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: looks at me, sees me running, stands up, so he's like,
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: you know, he's through the roof of his car, raises
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: his handling and says, I love what you do, bro.
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: So like I get a lot of love.
• 41:59
  Speaker 2: And that.
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: So if I was darker, when I get more love
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: from that, I mean maybe, but I can't see how
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: it got even more than I already get.
• 42:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you very much. Okay, all right, thank you
• 42:10
  Speaker 2: so much, guys, and thank you to MegaR Evers College.
• 42:21
  Speaker 2: You know, higher education is wonderful.
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: This was the perfect way to launch Justin's new show,
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: started from the bottom, and I urge all of you
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: to subscribe to it right now and never forget. If
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: you're a Pushkin Plus subscriber, you hear all story. No ads,
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: believe me, it's worth it. Thanks to everyone at Mega
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: Evers College for hosting Justin and me, especially Alexis McLean
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: and Peter Holloman. Special thanks also to Keishaw Williams, our
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: associate editor, who is also a Medgar Evers alum and
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: had the wonderful idea of bringing us there. Division's history
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: is produced by lem And Gestu, Amy gains Kiara Powell,
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: and Jacob Smith. Today's episode was produced by Kishelle Williams,
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: David Jaw and Amy Gaines. Our showrunner is Peter Clowney.
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: Original scoring by Luis Guerra, mastering by Ben Tolliday and
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: engineering by Nina Lawrence. Special thanks to Julia Barton. I'm
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: Malcolm Glawell.