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My guests on RaceConvo are Wanda Whitaker, Peter Rubin and Gaylon Logan from Village Connect. In episode called Race, Reconciliation and Transformation.

Kairo Jamal Evans joins me for Conversation on Race to talk about his experience as a 25-year-old Black Trans Man. Listen in to hear about his transition.

On this Episode of Everyday Conversations on Race, I’m joined by my very close friend and colleague, Dr. Joel Brown. Joel is an international known organizational and leadership development consultant. He is a spoken word poet, and a thought leader in Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging. The president and founder of Pneumos, Joel is known as the cultivator.

Key Topics:

• Messages he received as a young Black man growing up in Milwaukee
• Avoid the police who would shoot first and ask questions later
• How to talk to the police if he ever go stopped so he wouldn’t be shot or put in jail
• Be grateful that to go to a school with white kids
• Because of racism, he would have to work twice as hard as white people
• These warnings and lessons have stayed with him all of these years
• What it was like to have to have relatives in law enforcement and the difficulties they had to endure
• How Joel learned about the racism and toxic masculinity of “blue culture” from his relatives in law enforcement
• The many times and different cities he has been stopped by police just living or driving while black
• The real problem with the phrase “all lives matter”
• The fact that Black people are traumatized, hurting and exhausted but he is encouraged by the fact that so many white and other non-Black people of color are outraged, marching and speaking out
• Why he thinks that the phrase “Defund the Police” should be changed to “Reallocate funds” and that it would be more effective in getting the same results
• And what's up with Antifa

Contact info for Joel Brown:

Joel@Pneumos.com

www.souletry.com

www.Pneumos.com

Twitter: JoelBrown7

IG: JoelABrown

In this Everyday Conversation on Race, I'm joined by white ex-police officer Charles Hayes, author of the book "Blue Bias," and Elmer Dixon founder and former leader of the Seattle Black Panthers.  They share their personal histories, their work around race and their perspectives on fighting against racism in the wake of the murder of George Floyd and ensuing world-wide protests.

In 1968, Elmer Dixon and his brother Aaron came to Oakland to hear Bobby Seale the chairman of the Black Panther Party speak. Right after, they decided to form a chapter of the Black Panther Party in Seattle. It was the first chapter outside of California, and lasted until 1982, making it the longest running Black Panther chapter. The medical clinic they started is still operating.

Today, Elmer still works to eliminate racism, injustice and inequities in the US, as president of the Executive Diversity Services an organizational development consulting firm.

Charles Hayes grew up in Oklahoma and Texas in the 1940s and 1950s. He  joined the Marines at 17,  and four years later became a police officer in Dallas. He says that that the area and the department were racist to the core.

Charles burnt out after several years due to constant calls to break up situations of domestic violence. He didn't  have the maturity to understand the deeper issues affecting people in these situations.

After leaving the police department he began learning about life and reading in order to educate himself. His life changed when he read a  "Letter from a Birmingham Jail," by Martin Luther King. That's when he decided to work on unraveling the racist education he got.

As a consultant, Elmer had the opportunity to work with police. After leading successful programs for police in Chicago, he went on work with police in Washington,  Ireland and other cities. As a member of the Black Panther Party, which was named the Number One threat to US Security by the FBI, working with the police was a major shift in perspective for him.

Key topics in this episode:

• The origin, and manifestations of  police bias

• The role of neuroscience, external stimuli and stressors in the development of unconscious bias amongst cops

• How the police department attracts people with authoritarian personality

• Deaths of unarmed Black and Brown people at the hands of police

• The murders of George Floyd. Tamir Rice, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, along with the confluence of people sheltering in place, not working, struggling financially has put us at a tipping point in this country and the world

• How some Black police officers internalize bias and brutalize people in the Black community

• Solutions to end racist police practices

• Lessons learned from the Black Panther Party for today's fight against racism, police brutality and injustice

• Why a coherent vision and plan is necessary to sustain momentum and create systemic change, and what that might look like.

Contact info for guests

Email Charles Hayes    Autpress@Alaska.net   

Email Elmer Dixon EDixon@ExecutiveDiversity.com

What will it take to make the United States a more fully-functioning democracy, and how can we, as citizens, bring about that change?

By host and producer John Biewen, with series collaborator Chenjerai Kumanyika. Interviews with Michael Waldman, Jennifer Cohn, and Sanford Levinson.

The series editor is Loretta Williams. Music by Algiers, John Erik Kaada, Eric Neveux, and Lucas Biewen. Music consulting and production help from Joe Augustine of Narrative Music. 

The term "Karen" to describe certain white women who exhibit extreme privileged entitled behavior  began on social media and is quickly becoming part of today's lexicon. As my guests in this episode of "Everyday Conversations on Race" explain, the archetype of a "Karen" would be a  white woman who goes to Starbucks, usually dressed a certain way and expects to be treated like the only customer. When the barista spells her name wrong, she demands to see the manager and must have a new cup.

However, a group of white women complain that the term is "racist towards white women, ageist and classist. They are demanding the end of this term.

In this Conversation on Race, I’m joined by two women named Karen, who share their perspective on calling certain white women “Karens” for their white privilege behavior.

Karen Fleshman is a white woman, who  founded the organization “Racy Conversations,” an anti-racist group. She has written about the term and why she agrees with it. In this conversation on race, this Karen shares her background and how she came to be an active, outspoken anti-racist.

Commissioner Karen Clopton is an African-American woman who grew up in South Central Los Angeles. It was segregated by race but had a mix of professionals and working-class people. She is a member of the SF Civil Rights Commission. She shares her experience as a young Black  woman in a family that taught her early on about what it meant to be Black growing up in the USA.

Key Topics:

• Is it racist against white people, sexist against white women or ageist against white women to use the descriptor “Karen” to describe entitled behavior by certain white women.
• How to talk about racism to white people
• Why not talking about race and racism to children is racist
• The way racism has been institutionalized since the founding of the US
• How white people by default are beneficiaries of racism and have privilege as a result
• Why white supremacists think they are shielded from COVID
• Bringing the controversy to light of the “Karen” phenomena
• What the term “Karen” means when it refers to actions of some white women
• Why the two Karens don’t take offense at the term and why they think it’s justified
• What “peak Karen” looks like
• If you would like to see a "Karen" in action, look for the video of Amy Cooper, a white woman walking her unleashed dog in Central Park in an area that clearly stated dogs must be leashed because it was a habitat for birds. When an African-American man who was there to study birds asked her to leash her dog, she threatened him and called the police saying she was afraid for her life of an African-American man harassing  her.

Guest Bios:

An award-winning trailblazer, Karen Valentia Clopton brings deep knowledge, demonstrated operational expertise, and non-partisan insight into the political and regulatory arenas. She has served in top leadership, board, and executive roles in both governmental and non-governmental organizations across many regulated industries. General Counsel and Vice President of Access and Inclusion for Incendio International, Inc. and a nationally recognized civil rights advocate, she also serves as a San Francisco Human Rights Commissioner.

Karen Fleshman is the founder of Racy Conversations and is a racial equity trainer and government accountability activist striving to build and support a community of people committed to love, learning, accountability, and action on race in America. She is the author of the book  White Women, We Need to Talk: Doing Our Part to End Racism

How well do the news media serve us as citizens, and what role does the notion of “objective,” or “neutral,” journalism play in the failings of American democracy?

Story reported by Lewis Raven Wallace, with host/producer John Biewen and collaborator Chenjerai Kumanyika. Interviews with David Mindich, Nikole Hannah-Jones, and Kevin Young.

The series editor is Loretta Williams. *The View from Somewhere *editor: Ramona Martinez. Music by Algiers, John Erik Kaada, Eric Neveux, and Lucas Biewen. Music consulting and production help from Joe Augustine of Narrative Music.