4. Dean Helen Easterling Williams, EdD on Why Black Lives are Essential

Speakers

Greg McKeown, Dean Helen Easterling Williams, EdD 

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Transcript

Greg McKeown

Well this is an absolute pleasure to be with you, Dr. Helen Williams. Welcome to the show.

Dean Helen Easterling Williams, EdD 

Oh, thank you. Thank you for having me Greg, it’s a pleasure to be with you.

Greg McKeown

So let’s just do some backup here. Dr. Williams, you are the Dean of the Graduate School of Psychology and Education at Pepperdine University.

Dean Helen Easterling Williams, EdD 

Yes, that I am, now for the past six years.

Greg McKeown

And, if I understand right, the first African American woman to hold a dean position at the grad level at Pepperdine.

Dean Helen Easterling Williams, EdD 

That is true. The first African American woman to…the first African American leader, central administration at Pepperdine, yes.

Greg McKeown

I think this, and many other things, uniquely qualify you to give insight into what is going on psychologically, in the world, in these communities, in the black community. I am thoroughly looking forward to this conversation; to engage in it, to learn from it. Let me just share one vignette, one experience I had that I think sets us up well for this conversation. One of my classmates at business school taught me something, and he explained that if he didn’t have a conversation with someone about him being black and them being white, it wasn’t that they couldn’t have a relationship, but there was a portion of who he was that just couldn’t be available, that the relationship would tend to be at a certain sort of surface level.

Dean Helen Easterling Williams, EdD

Yes.

Greg McKeown

And that was news to me when he taught me this. This is years ago, but it was news because really I’d grown up with the idea that what you wanted to be was colorblind. You just…it doesn’t matter. But he was saying, “Yeah but it does matter, just in a different way. And we’ve got to talk about it”. So first of all, you know, let’s say it this way: you’re black, I’m white, let’s talk about it.

Dean Helen Easterling Williams, EdD

Yes, I like the way you say that. Your friend was absolutely correct. You know, we try to coexist in this environment called America, and truly the rest of the world, and find the best possible way of communicating with each other, relating to each other so that we don’t upset the applecart, if you will. And that often means that the person of color, in this instance the African American, is inclined to, and in some ways required to, put a portion of who they are aside and live this schizophrenic kind of life so that we are accepted, so that we are valued and appreciated. But truly we cannot be fully accepted, fully valued, fully appreciated, until we can bring all of ourselves to the table. So we sit and we talk about anything and everything, but we don’t talk about our blackness and your whiteness. We don’t broach that, and we do everything couched in the colonialized way, couched in your whiteness. We are appropriated, if you will, we are compromised, and so we often say we leave part of ourselves at home. We go to work every day, but we leave a certain portion of ourselves at home. It is a joy when you have a friend who is ready for all of you.

Greg McKeown

Yeah, that’s a beautiful statement, “a  friend who is ready for all of you”. What percentage, do you feel, is traditionally left at home?

Dean Helen Easterling Williams, EdD

What percentage? If I had to put a number on it I couldn’t. Because if, in my mind, if you leave part of yourself at home you are not you, you know? So if we have to put a number on it, I could say half of myself.

Greg McKeown

Wow.

Dean Helen Easterling Williams, EdD

But I would say it’s even more of that because I am identified, judged, communicated with based on the color of my skin, yet that subject isn’t broached.

Greg McKeown

It’s this immense part of every social interaction…

Dean Helen Easterling Williams, EdD

Immense.

Greg McKeown

…But it’s not only not talked about, we can’t even talk about it not being talked about.

Dean Helen Easterling Williams, EdD

Yes, yes, yes in too many situations, in too many. It takes a long time to get to know someone, to be able to discuss it, and to discuss it in its fullness. Some people who have experiences already can readily get to that point, like you and I are talking about this now. Sight unseen, we’re talking about this now. It’s a rare occasion that you can just jump into the deep water and just enjoy a conversation, because some people will feel threatened. They won’t know what to do with this information. If this information that I received from this other person runs counter to what I have been taught all my life, what do I do with this information? And so it creates a situation where the person just doesn’t want to address it, either knowingly or unknowingly.

Greg McKeown

When I learned this information, the next person I worked with, who was African American, it was like right after being told about this, and I went there, but I’m telling you it was a pretty scary moment for me to go there. I thought surely this will be offensive, you know. Surely I’m going to be saying the wrong thing, doing the wrong thing. But he responded, well, in a not dissimilar way to the way you just did. He’s like, “Wow, well that’s good…great!”. And I suppose in that moment I realized, and again in this, it’s not like it’s not obvious for him, it’s not like not obvious for you. By me saying it, it’s just, “Well, great. I’m already dealing with this reality every day”.

Dean Helen Easterling Williams, EdD

Every day.

Greg McKeown

Hmm.

Dean Helen Easterling Williams, EdD

You know someone said to me recently, and I think it’s in Dr. Kendi’s latest article about How To Be an Anti Racist. I think it’s in there where it’s spoken of that America experienced one of its worst moments on 9/11. It was a moment when we all came together, we were all impacted in the same way. And it was a terrible experience and we all know it was terrible, and every year on September the 11th we all feel that in some way. Well, the African American experiences 9/11 every day. Every day. And so when you approach your next colleague and openly begin the conversation, regardless as to how scary it was for you, it was I’m sure a delight. “Wow, I get to talk about me in my fullness, who I am. I get to bring all of me to the table”. It must have been a great moment for both of you. Please feel free to go deep with this conversation.

Greg McKeown

Just to broach the subject, you’re saying is refreshing, different, and all this that you’ve been holding back, constantly keeping, you know, in a bottle somewhere…

Dean Helen Easterling Williams, EdD

Yes.

Greg McKeown

…gets to just be, rather than constantly forced into a corner.

Dean Helen Easterling Williams, EdD

Right, because we are acculturated to be according to someone else’s standard, someone else’s definition. And it’s impossible to be according to someone else’s definition. It’s, in my mind, a form of schizophrenia, a forced social schizophrenia. People can’t wait to get home to pick up their full selves, okay? “Phew! I’m home. I can be me now. All of me”.

Greg McKeown

I mean, you’re describing walking on eggshells all the time.

Dean Helen Easterling Williams, EdD

All the time.

Greg McKeown

That you’re a fragmented version of yourself where you’re, “I can’t say this. I can’t do that. I can’t say it that way “. It’s like speaking a different language, being in a different country every day in the workplace. That’s what you’re saying.

Dean Helen Easterling Williams, EdD

Sure, sure. And not just in the workplace. All the time, everywhere we go, yes.

Greg McKeown

Wow.

Dean Helen Easterling Williams, EdD

Yeah, you know in the Bible it says, “How do we sing a song, the Zion song, in a strange land?

Greg McKeown

Hmm.

Dean Helen Easterling Williams, EdD

Well if we don’t sing the song we’ll go batty, we’ll just lose it. You have to be able to sing Zion’s song, because we live in a strange land.

Greg McKeown

You said something a moment ago that I want to double click on. You said that, “Every day is like 9/11”. I’ve never heard that description, and I would not have imagined that intensity of feeling.

Dean Helen Easterling Williams, EdD

It’s every day. Well, it’s every day, and it’s to have this skin. And so it’s every single day. With every encounter you are being measured, and measured according to someone else’s standard.

Greg McKeown

Hmmm.

Dean Helen Easterling Williams, EdD

And we won’t even begin to talk about whether one standard is better than the other, because it isn’t. It’s just different. It’s just different. But to be required to conform to a particular standard, and standard is a terrible word because it implies measurement, a way of doing things, a way of speaking, a way…Okay, so we’re speaking here, and we’re speaking the Queen’s English, right? We’re attempting to. And when an African American goes home, or even in the workplace when they see someone of color, there is a different kind of language that is spoken, verbally and non verbally. Because there’s a different communication style in different communities. And so the African American has to be really adept at adjusting from one communication style to the other at the drop of a hat.

Greg McKeown

It’s bilingual, bicultural.

Dean Helen Easterling Williams, EdD

It truly is. It’s multilingual and multicultural because there are a number of other different cultures in our society, and we all communicate differently. And so if you’re going to climb the corporate ladder, if you’re going to excel in whatever area you are working in, you have got to be able to manage this particular area. Again, I’m trying to find another word for standard. This particular circumstance, you’ve got to be able to master that. You have to be able to master that other environment while you master your own at the same time.

Greg McKeown

You’re describing, I think, an additional layer on top of every other layer. So yes, you have to be competent at your job. Yes, you have to learn hierarchical systems in order to be able to figure out what your file leader wants and what the, you know, their leader’s trying to achieve, what the organizational goals are. There’s all of that to learn. But you’re saying in addition to that there is another layer that you believe, imagine, experience, is invisible for someone who’s white because it’s normal for them. But you have to learn it and dance within that additional, you know, non natural cultural expectations.

Dean Helen Easterling Williams, EdD

Right, exactly. And we’re all human. But the African American, the person of color, is expected in America to be able to master all of them. Otherwise it would often be said, “I don’t know, but I don’t think John is…”, or shall I use, “I don’t think Jerome is a good fit for our organization”. We have to spend, in this moment, a lot of time and energy to decolonize our educational system, our medical system, our legal system. We have to decolonize every aspect of our society in order for this layer that we’re speaking of to be lifted. In order for every man and every woman to walk side by side and be considered equal, understood to be equal, we’ve got to decolonize all of this.

Greg McKeown

When I travel…you know I travel a lot, I fly around the world a lot…and within the US especially there are some places, and I won’t name the places…not trying to knock on any particular place…but there are some places when I get off the plane, and just the moment I walk into the airport, I can feel a change that’s happened. It’s not that anybody that I see is being rude to anybody else, it’s not on the surface in that way.

Dean Helen Easterling Williams, EdD

Mm hmm.

Greg McKeown

But I mean, let me name some specifics: everybody in the airport that’s a worker is African American. Most of the people traveling are white. Okay, that’s one distinction.

Dean Helen Easterling Williams, EdD

Yeah.

Greg McKeown

But I had this other moment. When I was going to the bathroom, as I came out there was a man talking to the worker in the bathroom. So again, the workers African American, the man that’s talking to him is white. The man speaking, in one level, was clearly being polite. He was stopping, he was taking the time to talk to him. But something of that interaction felt really off to me. And I think what I felt, and I could just be wrong, but was this condescension. And I felt that even in that interaction which was, as I say, on the surface kind, almost more revealing of the assumed natural order of things, how things should be.

Dean Helen Easterling Williams, EdD

Yeah.

Greg McKeown

When I share this am I way off? Does this feel familiar to you? Talk to me about it.

Dean Helen Easterling Williams, EdD

It’s familiar, it’s familiar. It’s quite common. Some would call it a white patriarchal way of managing, but it is often meant to be a good thing. It’s meant to be a good thing that the white person, in many cases, is really trying to move to the next level of interaction with this African American, this black individual. They realize that something has to change, and they are open to making this change. They feel safe doing it with someone that they are clear is not of the same socioeconomic level.

Greg McKeown

Hmm.

Dean Helen Easterling Williams, EdD

Because that allows them the liberty of making this gesture, this positive gesture, but maintaining what they see as their superiority. Because if it goes wrong, you know, if it doesn’t feel right, if it doesn’t work out the way they want it to, then they have that to fall back on.  It can often be seen as a very condescending kind of interaction if in fact there’s risk involved. There’s risk involved when you’ve grown up in a society that for hundreds of years have existed with certain norms,  recognizing those norms need to be changed and to actually begin the process of changing them. It’s very risky, because you have no idea what you’re going to end up with. And that’s why we say, in education, when you are the professor of color in the classroom and you introduce discussions around race, color, and gender, you have the power as the person of color teaching, the leader, you’ve got that leadership role, you have the power to deconstruct the realities of the white people in the room. But just like you want white people to respect and honor your humanity, you must do the same. So while you deconstruct their reality, you must do something to help them to rebuild. You can’t leave them wounded, you know, going out into the world with nothing to hold on to you. You see what I’m saying? You’ve got to have enough compassion, maybe compassion that hasn’t been shown to you. You’ve got to have enough compassion to help that person heal once you have deconstructed their reality.

Greg McKeown

It’s such a valid point in any interaction with other people. I know Anna and I once went through a class together, and one of the psychological terms that was introduced was just the idea of monitoring an interaction with someone else. Looking for whether you are being one up or one down, and trying to come back again and again to the center. So don’t try to be above them, but you won’t be below them. And I think that what’s interesting is that as you try to live that, as we tried to live it with you know, in our own marriage, when we tried to live it with our children, when we tried to live it just with people in general, if you had previously had a relationship that tilted to being one up or one down and you went now to center, to equal, it disturbs the relationship. It’s uncomfortable for people involved because they used to it being a certain way.

Dean Helen Easterling Williams, EdD

Yes, yes.

Greg McKeown

And that’s what I hear you describing is, well, if you’re going to try to deconstruct the existing, it’s going to be disturbing. You’re not trying to be disturbing, but it’s going to change everything in the rest of the interaction. And you’re saying, so be compassionate because even if what you’re doing doesn’t sound scary, doesn’t sound unreasonable, look we’re talking about equality, we’re talking about just not being one up or one down together. It does disrupt a lot of the expectations involved. Does that sound right?

Dean Helen Easterling Williams, EdD

It’s absolutely right. And you see, the old adage, “An eye for an eye, a tooth for tooth”?

Greg McKeown

Yeah.

Dean Helen Easterling Williams, EdD

You may have the power and you can deconstruct someone’s reality, but that doesn’t give you the right, you don’t have the power to leave them wounded. You must take on the Good Samaritan role and help them heal. You must do that, you cannot do “eye for eye”. And that, even that, is an affront to the African American who has been subjugated, demonized, demoralized for 400 years, who’s ancestors have been slaughtered and hanged and maimed, psychologically maimed, even to have the responsibility of helping someone else, helping the oppressor to heal. Even that is an affront.

Greg McKeown

I mean I get what you just said because it’s violating to go, “Okay, well, I’ll lift you up when I feel like. Maybe it wasn’t you of course, but people for a long time…

Dean Helen Easterling Williams, EdD

Mm hmm.

Greg McKeown

…Have left me hurting.” Now I introduce a little idea that now you feel damaged, and I’ve got to come over there. And that’s what I think I heard you say when you said 9/11, and I’m putting words in your mouth, please correct me if I’m hearing it wrong, but I think what you’re saying is every day you have to play the role, not rather than just be yourself. Every day you’re experiencing that the 9/11 of it is slavery. The 9/11 of it is the oppression. You’re not playing slavery, but you’re still playing in the same system that at one time tolerated that and was built on that, and so you’re still playing within that, you know, tempered down version of the experience from back then. Am I getting this approximately right?

Dean Helen Easterling Williams, EdD

You’re absolutely right, but it was a system that created that. The system created the racism, and it upholds it even today. It’s now even more. Before it was a very direct personal experience, now it is more of a psychological experience that cause the ramifications to bleed into the next generation and the next generation. And that’s why the Black Lives Matters movement is so important. You can call it what you will, it is the civil rights movement of the 60s. It’s the Jim Crow, you know, it’s the same revolution that has been occurring in our nation time and time and time again. We live today with the psychological ramifications of what happened 400 years ago, because the systems remain in place that support what happened 400 years ago.

Greg McKeown

I mean, it makes so much sense to me as a systems thinker from a, you know, just from a professional point of view that what you’re saying would be the case. Systems are immensely powerful because they’re invisible, they’re the norms, but it’s all invisible, right? Fish discover water last. It’s all there in, you know, in the air. It has it’s impact, not because necessarily it’s hard to dismantle it. It’s greatest power, I think in general systems, is that we don’t even see it. So you can’t change it, you’re not even aware of it. You’re saying you do live with a much greater awareness of it.

Dean Helen Easterling Williams, EdD

Yes.

Greg McKeown

Then the average Black person is going to feel that and see it more clearly than the average white person.

Dean Helen Easterling Williams, EdD

Right. And when we see it there is an, “Aha!” moment, because that’s where you know the line is. When you see it, you know, “So there’s the line, I can’t cross over that line”, or, “I’m going to have to figure out some other strategy to get across that line”. And that strategy typically is to become more like the white person, so that you can become more acceptable in their eyes. And then that line moves. It’s a clear thing, another tragedy, that is another moment when a Black person has that experience, they are traumatized yet again. And they realize that oftentimes it is the system, and they realize that the system is in place to keep them in place. I recall when I entered an institution, and I was leading, every time I turned around I was meeting someone that was new in my division. And I wondered how can this be, because I’m the one that’s responsible here. So how is it that we keep bringing new people into this division and I don’t know anything about it?

Greg McKeown

Hmm.

Dean Helen Easterling Williams, EdD

I realized that the system was set up so that if there was a vacancy someone could recommend their friend, or their cousin, or their sister or someone, and they would fill that vacancy. And then I would be told, “Oh, here’s Jim. Jim is new”. And I’m thinking if something happens I’m responsible, the leader, you know. You take responsibility for the good and the bad, mostly the bad. So I checked the hiring process, I dismantled it, and we rebuilt it together. And the first thing that happened was people went to the HR and said, “She’s taking away our power. She wants to get rid of all the white women and hire Black men”. And I had to stand before the HR powers to be and explain my plan, even though my position was higher ranking than any of them. There was nothing that says, “She’s the leader, we do as she says”. I had to explain to those who…oh, my. I had to explain to others who on the pendulum of power and authority within the organization did not come close to my position, and get their approval to move forward. And it ended up that they said, “Oh, we like this! Can we use this as a template? Can we borrow your system and build around it for our unit?”. Because it put equity in the hiring process; that’s one of the very first systems that has to be corrected. You can’t see it, but you know it when you hit that particular point, you know what has happened. And so that’s where you know you have to overcome that point, but it’s also a point where you know you have to begin to reconstruct that system. Reconstruct rather than deconstruct.

Greg McKeown

In telling that story there was a moment you said, “Oh, my”. There was a lot in that “Oh my”.

Dean Helen Easterling Williams, EdD

Yes, because I felt it all over again. I experienced that moment all over, the humiliation of being the leader and having to report to others. And they go back to someone else, and then finally it comes to me from the leader that’s on the same level that I’m on. I could not sit down and have that conversation with my colleague, I had that conversation with people that reported to my colleague. And then it came, I felt it all over again, right, “Oh, my”, because I couldn’t say what I wanted to say. I couldn’t engage in righteous indignation in that moment because it would have been counterproductive.

Greg McKeown

Because the system would have pushed back so hard.

Dean Helen Easterling Williams, EdD

Exactly.

Greg McKeown

So you had to…submit?

Dean Helen Easterling Williams, EdD

Yes.

Greg McKeown

Build it slowly, just to get it to parity.

Dean Helen Easterling Williams, EdD

Yes.

Greg McKeown

You’re going to feel tired.

Dean Helen Easterling Williams, EdD

You go home exhausted every day because you’re, you understand Greg, you’re doing more work than can be seen.

Greg McKeown

Mhmm, yes, because you’re doing two jobs.

Dean Helen Easterling Williams, EdD

You’re doing the job you’re paid to do, you’re doing your work. And by your work I mean your inner work, because you’ve got to maintain your presence, you’ve got to maintain your persona, you’ve got to maintain all that is about you so that you can be productive, so that this system can eventually be fixed, reconstructed, so that countless others can win, can get beyond that point of revelation where they understand they can’t go any further. If you are going to be a benefit to society as a whole, you have got to swallow all of that until you see it work. And then you have to make sure you put systems, you put processes and procedures in place so that once you walk away it is not dismantled. It’s tiring, yes. It’s exhausting.

Greg McKeown

I mean, again, back to systems thinking for a second. In every relationship there is three: there’s me, there’s you, and then there’s the system. And if we don’t understand that there is the system, then we could end up with a very strange relationship. We could have a broken relationship, thinking it’s just each other, pointing fingers at each other not recognizing that there is this, well to use John Adams’ term for the economy, the “invisible hand”. There’s this invisible hand of this system affecting everything else.

Dean Helen Easterling Williams, EdD

Yes.

Greg McKeown

And you’re saying that you’re confronted with it all through your life, all through your career, every day still. And every time you come up to it, “Oh there’s that system again. Okay, I’m going to have to take a pause, fix that, layer by layer put that system in it’s, you know, how it should be to be able to support this interaction equally and effectively for the next person who passes this way”.

Dean Helen Easterling Williams, EdD

Yes, and you have to be willing to fight for it because invariably someone will see what you’re doing, recognize that it means change, and it may mean a redistribution of power, and there will be pushback. Power concedes nothing without a struggle…I think that’s Frederick Douglass, huh?

Greg McKeown

Where there’s so much alignment it’s just recognizing how systems don’t give up easily. Systems want to maintain their current shape, you know, that they want to spring back to the existing forces that put them into existence as they are. And I would say from a personal point of view that my biggest mistakes as a leader have been where I have announced something rather than worked it out together. And then you sort of announce it together because there’s some energy behind it and there’s a feeling of alignment behind it. It takes longer, or at least it feels like it takes longer because you can’t just do the announcement. The execution is faster.

Dean Helen Easterling Williams, EdD

It’s basic strategic planning.

Greg McKeown

Mm hmm.

Dean Helen Easterling Williams, EdD

Basic strategic planning. You get as many different people involved at the table and let them all give input, create this new document, this new way of proceeding, have everyone agree on it, have everyone sign it, sign on the dotted line, and then spread it out, because you bring people that others trust to the table and it works.

Greg McKeown

Mm hmm. I love that. Let me just look at this system now with you from a different perspective. I want you to go back to the beginning, and I don’t even mean when you were born, I mean go back further, and just tell me a little bit about your grandparents.

Dean Helen Easterling Williams, EdD

Okay, I need to send you a letter I wrote to my G.S.E.P., my Graduate School of Education and Psychology family. My grandparents were sharecroppers in South Carolina. I was born into a family of nine, I think it was nine of us. We had a four room home that set up on cinder blocks in the deep woods of South Carolina. We lived on someone else’s property, and every morning we would get up and walk before dawn to the big road, the big dirt road, someone would come along in a pickup truck and we would get on the back of it and ride to a field. And we’d work all day, and then we would go home. I remember one day, and this is in the letter that I will send, I remember one day I was picking cotton with my grandmother and others, and I love to sing, always did. So I was singing. I was good seven years old, and I was singing. And the man that drove the truck was now sitting in the back of the truck in a rocking chair, his legs crossed with a gun in his arm, holding it in his lap, right? But I’m just seven years old, singing away, you know? And the man said, “Who is that gal?” Not that little girl. That gal, with a deep Southern accent. “Who is that gal?” And nobody said anything, and he said, “Make her hush”, and my grandmother leaned over to me and said, “Baby girl, hush. You gon’ get us all in trouble”. And I didn’t understand it, but I knew to follow directions. You never cross grandma, right? I knew to follow directions, plus the man had a gun, so you know…We were living, we, my nucleus family, father, mother, couple sisters, living in Baltimore at the time, but we would go back to South Carolina every summer to help the family pick cotton, crop tobacco, dig potatoes, the whole nine yards. So September came, we went back to Baltimore and my teacher said, “Write on this piece of paper what you did all summer”. Everybody in the class had to write this assignment, it was her way of judging our progress during the summer, or the lack thereof, right?

Greg McKeown

Mhmm.

Dean Helen Easterling Williams, EdD

And I was excited because school, to me, was next to heaven. I’m still in school, right? I sit here now. So anyway, I get my paper, pencil, I write my story about the cotton field, and I turned it in so excited because if anybody could make sense of it, my teacher could, because my teacher was next to God in my mind. So the next day she handed out our papers, I’m so excited. She stood at my desk. I’m the last one to receive their papers. She stood at my desk, she leaned down over me and stared in my eyes and said, “This did not happen.”

Greg McKeown

Wow.

Dean Helen Easterling Williams, EdD

“Don’t you ever say this again, do you hear me?”

Greg McKeown

Wow.

Dean Helen Easterling Williams, EdD

Once again, I knew to be quiet. I knew not to say anything, but I was crushed because this did happen. This was my truth. When I got home my mother always said, “Helen, what did you learn in school today?”. And I gave her my paper and I told her my story with tears streaming down my face, and she held me really close and she said, “Helen, that is your truth. It did happen. That is your truth. You hold on to it, don’t let anybody take that away from you”. And so that takes me all the way back to the beginning of our conversation. We as African Americans have all these truths that we are not allowed to speak of. We are not allowed to live out our truth. We have to take someone else’s truth and make it our own. Ah, Jesus.

My grandparents were the greatest, they lived through that experience. And that was minor compared to what they experienced, you know, and yet they were men and women of honor. My grandfather was a Methodist preacher, and every Sunday he had a circuit, he went to several different churches and he would preach. When we came back to the south during the summers we were – we my sisters and I – were his choir from up north. And so we would sing for him, we would practice, get our songs ready, so that we could go with granddaddy and sing for him as he preached. And so, I don’t know if you know, I am an ordained Elder in the A.M.E. church, and I think that’s that’s where I got my, you know, that nurtured my calling, even then.

Greg McKeown

Where you saw his powerful person, character, leadership, and felt something inside of you, yes. This.

Dean Helen Easterling Williams, EdD

Yes, absolutely. To see him get up and work his fingers to the bone on someone else’s property, and be called boy, even though he may have been older than that person who owned the property, to be emaciated at every turn. And yet be a man of honor, yet to love the Lord with all his heart and try to bring others to Christ. Ah, my granddaddy and my grandmother who stood beside him. Imagine, I mean, okay, beautiful Black woman. Her skin was soft and beautiful. Big smiling eyes, long beautiful black hair. I thought my grandmother was made of gold, and she baked the best biscuits. She can turn berries and blackberries into a meal, you know, my grandmother. To imagine the pain and the suffering that they endured… That’s why I work so hard. That’s why I burn the midnight oil. That’s why I stand and bear the strain of this double consciousness, because they worked and they bled for me to be here. And I will not let them down. The next generation will have it easier, I will not let them down…I get too carried away.

Greg McKeown

No, no, I loved everything you just shared. First of all, just the anger of injustice. Even before you told that story, the word that kept coming to mind for me as you were describing this system and this dance, and how careful you have to be and playing this game and all of that, the word was suffocating. You know, and of course that has these extra layers right now, of course, right? “I can’t breathe”, and all that gives language to something, but then you tell that story of “This did not happen to you”. And I think in all dysfunction, in all damage that people experience, either the first or the last defense is not being able to speak the truth about it.

Dean Helen Easterling Williams, EdD

Right, yes.

Greg McKeown

And I think a lot of people listening to this can relate to that feeling in a variety of different experiences. I grew up in a home…my grandmother, who I never met, was an alcoholic. We never talked about that. And if I’m totally honest, even saying it now, right now here with you, knowing that other people will listen to this, I wonder what will happen. And it’s not like anything necessarily will happen, but I feel the fear of having broached that subject.

Dean Helen Easterling Williams, EdD

Yes.

Greg McKeown

Saying what’s not allowed to be said. The impact of that upon my mother and upon all of us was immense, but we could not talk about it. And I relate to this in this small way, but I relate to that sensation, that violation. “I cannot talk about this and not allow to talk about my actual experience”. That’s what I’m having to hold in. That’s what’s suffocating. That’s what I hear in your story.

Dean Helen Easterling Williams, EdD

It’s so true. You nailed it. It is suffocating, and at some point,  I would tend to believe that at some point everyone, and as I say this I’m thinking multiple times, maybe daily, we make a choice. We have to choose if we’re going to say it, if we’re going to live it, if we’re going to speak it, or if we’re just going to swallow it. Swallowing it creates…it emaciated us all over again, it traumatizes us all over again. Making the choice to speak it and speak it in love; that is one of the greatest gifts that the African American community brings to our nation. It is the ability to love thy neighbor as thyself, to love the oppressor, to look beyond their own hurt, their own pain, forgive, and love. It is what has kept us alive, kept us going. Oh, yes, we have fought back many times in violence and it hasn’t gained what love has gained.

Greg McKeown

I just was listening to a talk over the weekend, which was President Nelson, in a speech at the N.A.A.C.P. National Meeting in Detroit said, “We don’t have to look like each other, but we can love each other.”  And you’re absolutely right that what even makes this possible, this literal conversation that you and I are having today, is because lots of people involved over generations chose love so that it even could happen.

Dean Helen Easterling Williams, EdD

Yeah.

Greg McKeown

That this has come by way of sacrifice.

Dean Helen Easterling Williams, EdD

Yes. You never allow… Oh who said this, these quotes are running through my head…You never allow your hater to bring you down to his or her level. Always reach up. Always reach up, and love is up.

Greg McKeown

Mhmm. Love is up.

Dean Helen Easterling Williams, EdD

We have identified the ouch, we’ve identified the strategic planning. Those are two in our conversation right here today.

Greg McKeown

And I think even right to the beginning, when I think about the whole conversation we’re having, to be able to start a conversation simply by saying, acknowledging it, not thinking that that’s being insensitive, saying, “You’re Black, I’m white, let’s talk about it”, I think is it’s own thing, because you start to say this thing that we could not talk about before, as someone who’s white you don’t want to talk about it because you think it’s insensitive and insulting and you’re not supposed to see. On the other side, you feel like maybe you can’t talk about it because, well, that’s the system and I suppose similar things, of feeling, “I have to play this game and I’m not keeping myself at home, and I’m trying to play by these rules that we’ve been talking about”. For both reasons the conversation doesn’t happen, but I think, I hope, that people listening to this will feel encouraged that they can start a conversation just exactly as directly as this, and are more likely than not to have a really positive interaction as a result.

Dean Helen Easterling Williams, EdD

You know when we say…well, we have the ouch we have the strategic plan, and we have let’s talk…why don’t we change that to can we talk?

Greg McKeown

I like that.

Dean Helen Easterling Williams, EdD

We need to ask permission because we don’t know where the other person stands in that moment, you know?

Greg McKeown

You say, “Okay, I need to choose to have this conversation when we have it”.

Dean Helen Easterling Williams, EdD

Yes, yes, yes.

Greg McKeown

It’s a really important distinction.

Dean Helen Easterling Williams, EdD

The willingness to be open – open to, you know, whatever the conversation brings, and to make the changes that the conversation reveals.

Greg McKeown

So brilliantly said. I want to take one one more angle about this, that the system that we’ve been talking about, this theme, and there’s something really meaningful going on here. As we learn, even in the midst of all of this, what is chaotic on the surface right now, underneath all of that, I think good things are coming. I think that we will discover more of who we are individually, we will discover more of who we are in community, that even as these things look like they’re all just breaking into pieces, being dismantled, as you’ve been saying. I think that, I can’t remember who said it but, “Come my friends is not too late to build a newer world”. That really genuinely good things are coming, that as we break down these barriers between us and between the past, I just say in a general sense special things are coming. That’s how I feel, I hope, even in the midst of what seems quite hopeless sometimes.

Dean Helen Easterling Williams, EdD

Yes, yes, yes. I love talking with you! The Bible is all about redemption. It’s all about restoration. The Freedmen’s Bureau, it’s about redemption and restoration. Jeremiah I: “God is speaking to Jeremiah and he tells him before you were born, before you were formed in your mother’s womb, I knew you. Before you came forth, I ordained you and sanctified you to be a prophet to the nations”. It goes on to say that Jeremiah’s job as a prophet to the nations is to pull down, to destroy, to cast down and then it says to build up. We’ve got to dismantle the broken, we’ve got to dismantle that which is wrong. We have to destroy the work of the enemy, and then rebuild his kingdom. What Satan means for bad, God will turn into around for our good. I think you’re onto something. This looks bad now, but out of the ashes comes…

Greg McKeown

It’s so beautiful what you’re saying, amen to everything you’re saying. I want to leave you with a quote here that I think speaks so aligned with what you just said about redemption  and reimagination, and recreation, and that endless process until we become what we’re supposed to be. It’s from Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Listen to this, it’s so beautiful. He said, “During the darkest days of apartheid, I used to say to P.W. Botha, the President of South Africa at the time, that we had already won. And I invited him to join winning side. All the objective facts were against us: the pass laws, the imprisonments, the tear gassing, the massacres, the murder of political activists. But my confidence was not in the present circumstances, but in the laws of God’s universe. That is what had upheld the morale of our people, to know that in the end, good will prevail. It was these higher laws that convinced me that our peaceful struggle would topple the immoral laws of apartheid”.

Dean Helen Easterling Williams, EdD

Thank you, thank you for that.

Greg McKeown

Thank you for this conversation, thank you for what you represent, thank you for teaching me, thank you for helping this conversation go forward. For all those that are listening to this, give us the final word.

Dean Helen Easterling Williams, EdD

You bring up Desmond Tutu. Desmond says, “I am not interested in picking up crumbs of compassion thrown from the table of someone who considers himself my master. I want the full menu of rights”.

Greg McKeown

Thank you so much. Dr. Williams, thank you for being with me. Thank you for spending the time. Thank you for this essential conversation.

Dean Helen Easterling Williams, EdD

Greg, it was my pleasure.