Unsealed Conversations - Let's Talk About Race

okay hey everyone thanks for joining us just a reminder i think i said it before we are recording so if you don't want to

be on our website or be recorded just turn your mic off and turn your video off and you can ask your questions to

the chat box otherwise you can keep your video and mic on and join us and chime in whenever you would like today i

wanted to have a conversation about race and racism it's black history month um i'm a big believer that these

conversations should happen all year long but especially during black history month so i brought some guests onto and

i was hoping to get a few more hopefully uh some of the women that are assuming the mpd i invited them and they'll come

because i definitely want women's voices too and i see some women on here so hopefully they'll chime in as well but

some of the people i have here today willard ogin a tv producer sports tv producer for i don't know 30 years 40

years how old are you now josh copeland entrepreneur and a division one athlete

marcel blythe an executive in the insurance industry and a leader in the community thank you guys so much

for joining us and um um oops

i'm just going to mute people sorry i still still hear some feedback

the first question i wanted to ask you guys about or the first topic is i don't know if you guys all saw a video that happened in new jersey recently and it

was something that really hit me very hard it was a two boys that got in the fight it was a 16 year old versus a 14

year old and the 16 year old was white 15 year old 14 year old was black the 16 year old was on top of the 14

year old fighting and kids fight and the police came it was at a mall and broke up the fight the police came and took the white

child who was on top of the black child gently sat him aside and then both police officers went into the

smaller child who was black put a knee in his back cuffed him and took him to um

be arrested and took him to the police station the white child even said to the police do i get cuffed too do i am i getting

arrested they said no you're good and he was confused he didn't understand why

they were both in a fight and only one child was getting arrested and the child who was black who was arrested was not

resisting arrest was not fighting back and he was the child that was underneath like losing the fight

essentially he was the smaller child and when i saw this i just thought like it was very obvious because it was that

that racism was evolved because the situation was there was a white child and a black child and they were treated differently

but i was wondering how this plays out in the corporate world in the workplace when someone makes a mistake and yeah

they made a mistake are the repercussions the same for white employees as they are for black

employees if a child in school gets in trouble are the repercussions the same for white children as they are for black

children i just wonder how this mentality and this attitude plays out in our world

beyond just a fight in a mall and um so i brought some of you guys on here just to share your experiences and

share your thoughts and first i want to know what was your reaction when you saw that video if you saw it

i'll start with marcel yeah hey lauren uh what's up hey what's up everyone thanks for dialing in thanks

for uh thanks for having me join uh the conversation it sounds like it's gonna be just a broad conversation as well i

know i'm here with willard and joshua we're gonna share some stuff but uh sounds like it's gonna be a party

tonight so you know when i when i saw that video yeah matter of fact one of my uh

employees was on bobby jones we were just like dang again right it's exhausting

uh it really it really is exhausting it played out in a mall it could have played out in a corporate boardroom it

could have played out uh anywhere else and what got me was um

the bias you know it's this this sounds crazy it's like when

you're intentionally racist i could almost

i'm almost okay with it because you know who you are right you you know you know who you are

you know you're a crummy person you just like that's just who you're going to be but you just saw that cop those cops

just like they were so biased and they were ambivalent to it they didn't even realize they were doing anything wrong

and that's the problem it became such it was so normal for them to go straight

to the black kid to arrest um arrest him like you said the other kid was lit he

literally had his hands up to say aren't you gonna arrest me too and they were like no

so um and you know and so that play that plays out everywhere because what ends up

happening is it's me it's joshua it's willard it's not just us it's not just

us as individuals we end up speaking for the entire race right we end up representing the entire the the entire

race so in the board room we have to be extra on guard and extra cautious and extra

because we know if we get in trouble everybody gets in trouble and the bias

sets in right and then it's like see we told you they were all this

and so you know all those things just sort of read like are triggered whenever i see you know incidents like that

happen again and again and again and again and it really is unfortunate seeing that as a person of color it

seems like you can't make a misstep because your repercussions are not you're not given a second chance in our

society often is that something that weighs on your shoulder as someone who is trying to

ascend someone who has this like how were you able to have the level of success that you had did you feel like

there were like booby traps everywhere along the way um

you know oh i've got some employees that are on the line but i'll let them know every day

i still feel like it i i still feel like it and it's not just at

work right it's it's uh you know i live in a neighborhood with million dollar homes and i still feel

like i have to signal that i'm okay i still feel like when i go to the mall

i gotta go you know i'm good like i still i always feel like

something's gonna happen i always feel like the next thing is going to happen and like i said earl it's exhausting

it is it is it is exhausting because i you just want to you you right you just want to exist

you're like like like everyone else and i don't lauren you've known me right we we're pretty close you we don't i don't

i don't play the race card um so you don't hear me talk about white privilege and things like and things like that but

when i do talk about privilege it's not a matter of me getting

or you someone else a white person getting a job uh over me or some benefit that i don't get it's

them not having to think about their race it's them not having to think about

the color of their skin which makes me which makes it okay for them to think about other things because the brain can

only occupy a certain right a certain amount but if i've got to be thinking about my

race and everything else and the other person doesn't have to think they can think numbers they can think statistics

they can think all these other things some already right carrying more of a

load um than others and so that's that's to me how privileged in this whole

concept of bias plays out exactly what you saw and it's enough it happened in the mall

in the classroom i want to ask you one more question and then i'm going to get to uh josh and

willard and also lisa's here and lisa is one of the very very brave women

who is suing the metropolitan police department for racism um specifically

against black women in the force um but i wanted to ask you you mentioned you know you don't play quote unquote the

race card you said do you think if you were writing a lot on social media about

racism and you were really outspoken would that make it harder for you to be in these executive positions and is that

and if so is that problematic if it would be impossible it would be impossible it would it would it would be

impossible um because you'd come across as a troublemaker right you'd come across as

not you know telling the line um and not that and not that i'm like that

anyway you see stuff i post on social media about my kids but if i was just right if i was

if i was more of a of an activist um

in this traditional sense right out there and uh it absolutely would be a problem and i don't think anyone i and

here's the thing no one would come to me and tell me to stop doing it no it just would stop no no

they'd never they'd never say marcel you should stop doing that but they would say it

all of a sudden marzell will never get another promotion or never get another opportunity to be the face of a company

to be the um so how do you manage that how do you manage like hey i want to move it up up

in my career but i also wanna i wanna fight this i don't wanna

how do you balance that and how do you manage that and how do you find ways around that because i know you do because you are an advocate and you are

a leader in your community and you and you do fight for equality yeah you just make it you just you just

have to make a decision i was talking to some people today as a matter of fact at work about being your authentic self and

and and you just you just you just have to do it and um and be and be true and be true to yourself and be unapologetic

um beast my parents always taught me be super respectful um

regardless of who you're regardless of who you're talking to regardless of who you're dealing with be super respectful

have your points across um emotions getting

emotions are involved but um have um have your objective and subjective arguments ready

so that um you can um you know you can argue with the best of

them intellectually and not just you know emotion emotionally and that's how

and that's how i go uh go go about it with a lot of professionalism um

and not ever not everyone not everyone can do that um i'm extremely patient and even keel

and i'm able to disarm um the best uh or the or the worst of

people so that's helped me uh in my career and i've been very patient but

now i'm in a position where i don't have to necessarily be as patient i've gotten

myself to into a position where i actually can make a difference um and quite frankly i am but it took a

while as i was younger i had to bite my tongue a lot lauren um in new york

i had to bite my tongue lisa we were talking thank you for

coming lisa but we were talking actually initially we started the conversation about this video i saw in new jersey of

two boys fighting and there was a white child and a black child and they uh

kindly placed the white child on the bench and then the younger child who was getting beat up was a black child who

was younger and they covered did you see the video i did not see the video but as i tuned

in i just thought this i'm sure that i should have right and that as i said to you um

moms of black boys united mob united i don't know if you guys have heard of that non-profit but i'm a part of that

um and so this is what we do this is what we talk about marcel like exactly that right the images and the

assumptions that are always associated with our black boys and men right instead of you know always the bad

images and never the good so that's exactly what mob united does and united for social change does and in dc um we

have all across the country people that we have chapter leads in a lot of states but

i didn't see the video but i can imagine just because that's we've seen so many of them

just like that you're not as a police officer are you still on the force i am over time i still work for mpd yes

but i'm retired sworn and i work for mpd as a civilian now so i've been in law enforcement for 30 over 30 years so i'm

originally from philadelphia so i've seen a little bit of everything josh you have a young daughter who's not

even trying what i always think about when i see these situations with children unfortunately i think by 14 these kids

know that there's racism and especially in the society we have now it's very um out there but like i think about telling

me a six-year-old boy or a six-year-old girl who sees that video and explaining to them why this is happening how

painful that must be to have to tell a child that the race that the color of their skin is going to affect the way

people treat them do you ever think about that as a father yeah um yeah can you hear me

i'm sorry i'm in the car it's kind of raining but no no uh kudos thank you for having this conversation

i'm glad to be on this panel um and yeah i think about this all the time just with my daughter earlier um and

it's it's that that fear of having to explain something that there's no reason for

and and it's having to explain something that kind of doesn't make sense but it does because we've seen it throughout

history so this is not anything new this is not anything that my parents didn't have to tell us this is not anything

that my grandparents didn't tell my parents and their parents so it's nothing that that we haven't seen it's

just frustrating and it's exhausting because when people act like we're just talking

to talk you know what i mean that's when it's frustrating when is this oh here y'all go again no this here you go again

right like this this has been thing that's been passed down and that has been generational that we're still

arguing to this day and it's tough but my daughter's um is mixed i'm in interracial marriage and

so we have these conversations all the time and when we walk into places we get it from both sides right we get it from

both sides and and it's it's frustrating but i understand but it's one of those

things that that is if you don't have these type of conversations just open and honestly

um i don't know what the like what the solution is you know i used to work in high schools

and and i was part of an equity summit with all the local high schools i'm in southern southwest ohio and uh you know

there were some predominantly white high schools in suburbia and then there were some rural high schools and and urban

high schools part of this summit and they went around and they got all of the and it was superintendents principles

like the higher ups and they took all this data of the people who were suspended and the demographics

of the kids who were suspended and what they were suspended for and to almost in every school

that had a mixed race and black kids were suspended at a rate like twice as

fast as the their counterparts for the same things right and i was in the

school and the kid would get in a fight and the first thing they would do is call the cops now these kids are getting arrested now

they have a record so that's the first thing they're doing and and i would tell these kids all the time i said no matter

what you say or what you do people's perception of you is their reality of you so when you do certain

things that's how people automatically see and and it's biased it's stereotyping it's biased but you have to

understand and that's the tough conversation is allowing these kids to understand that we can't do certain

things right like like we just can't and and it's frustrating in the business world it's the same thing there are some

things that we just can't do that are are allowed and it's frustrating because

a kid they they see okay somebody in a different race is doing this but i literally can't if i get in the fight

the cops are being called if somebody's getting the fight they're taking to the principal's office and being suspended

you know so so it's frustrating and that's that's what played out in that video and and just it's hard because

it's like okay well when the kid does something wrong we usually see them do it wrong one child at a time right we

just steal right and so when you do one child oh well this kid did mess up but then six months later a white kid does

the same thing and they forget that oh wait they got oh wait right um richard zuckerman has a

customer and he has a question somewhere i'm sorry let me tell them

i don't know where that's coming from up i think it's better but um the question is and i'll give this one to willard especially because willard

you've seen the coverage and and the media and how they've they've played um how they have

changed in terms of race stories and even just women on air and men on air and met people of color on air if you

were to draw a graph over the last 60 years would you agree that the racial religious color has improved

albeit not as quickly as you'd like yes and no yes no

yes i think back where we started this as um

well you we said i think marcel said that you know is that you know we're not given a

second chance well i would be the first one up there to say we're not even given a first chance

our chance is we're going to put you there so you can fail

and as a black man who came up in the business when there were no blacks in

there you were set up to fail be sure to answer to your question

yes have they put black faces men and women in positions that you see them and that's

the key right there you see them but they still don't have power there

are not as many black faces in the board room there are not many black faces as

senior vice presidents or vice presidents or presidents in the in the corporate world

you have a lot of um i guess as the country became woke

uh every company was like we're putting money toward diversity and we're putting

you know people in these jobs well yes you put people in the jobs their middle management jobs but at the end of the

day it was still a bunch of it was lip service to a problem that has been going on for well over a hundred

years um i'm one of those is that you know if you're gonna talk to talk then walk it

too you know put a person in a job that can make a difference a decision

um it's really nice to say oh look at all the diversity that we have and we do it

but if you look at mainstream media it's the same

i mean the only difference is is that you have a face of color doing the same thing we're still not in

and having them straighten their hair and making them basically look white and we're still not in position of power

or making those decisions and then even as we start to get those jobs

it's still not a makeup of corporate america if there are 500

jobs available i guarantee out of their 500 there are less than 20 black faces that

have those jobs lisa mentioned

in the comments that she said all of this stuff has been happening but what's what's really changed is that now

there's footage to capture it and i think that's so powerful and i think it's really important and i'm coming

from a place i i was ignorant for a very long time growing up because i was white my

parents didn't have to have that conversation with me that some people are treated differently and i think that in their minds they were

trying to protect me from the bad things in the world and the first time i saw something of that nature was a my best

friend was um was accused of stealing something she didn't steal and when she got defensive

verbally defensive not physically defensive the cops arrested her stun gunned her

strip searched her she had nothing on her and she was 18 years old and i saw her the next day and

she had stunned guns on her and because i had such little knowledge of

what the world was really like i thought it was two crooked cops i didn't realize

our whole society was like this and these videos i think are important

because i think there's a lot of people that aren't hateful because i don't think i was hateful as a child um but unaware

and i think that awareness at least takes the segment of the population that's not hateful but just ignorant or unaware

or just in their own little bubble because i think maybe that's what i it was i don't think i was hateful i just didn't

understand and i was young and and we didn't have the videos to show us and i think that hopefully that creates more

allies and more people passionate and more people caring and and less tolerance and more accountability um

to add to that i think the one thing that of all the conversations that we have

about racism and diversity in america you know black history month and all of this is that

people need to sit down and have the tough conversation

and is that we can disagree we can beg to disagree on whatever

side of the coin you may be on but as a black man talking to a white man or a white woman

i have to take a pause to listen to them and hear their point of view but at the

same time for them to pump the brakes and hear my point of view are we ever going to get to the

point where this is going to be you know one big happy family that were you know

hugging trees and singing kumbaya not in our lifetime maybe not in our children's lifetime

maybe not in our grandchildren's lifetime will we get there yes i think we will

but until a group that we have here a diverse group can sit down and really

talk about you know the backgrounds that you have come from and what you know you have

heard what you believe and what you see we're never going to make a change

because it's really good to say well we've got all these people here we've made diversity

but we still haven't had the conversations i mean there is still the ugly side of america that donald

trump brought out that hasn't gone away that's not going to go away

but you know we only can win over america and the way people think as one person

at a time one soul one person at a time to try to change this and be able to

have the tough conversation and be able to say that just because i've been i was born black

doesn't make me inferior just because i was born black doesn't mean that i can't be the next president

just because i was born black doesn't make me not be able to be a ceo of a top 500

company so until we can have those conversations on both sides for people to understand

we're not going anywhere as a country we're not going anywhere as race relations until

we can have those conversations first yeah laura can i add i'm sorry

yeah and i love the fact that you know we're having this conversation i love that

where it said we need to have the tough conversations and i think starting that tough conversation at middle school

will allow it to because they see it right and a lot of times these kids see and they don't have the conversation no

nobody's talking to them about what they're actually viewing and why it is like that and so the earlier you have it

the easier it is as they get older to see differences and to see these have conversations like i said when i was in

the schools um you know there's this thing you know people talk about oh well you know

nobody here was born a slave nobody here was you know a slave owner no but it's

still there's still trauma that's passed down and there's still bias and systemic

racism that's passed down from the generations and so if you don't have these conversations and and i love how

you said we need to sit down and and hear somebody else's point of view right and and if if you're white and you grew

up a certain way that doesn't make you racist if you are viewing and that doesn't make you racist because you how

you were raised right like like you can't help if you were raised in suburban america and you never had to

think about race you can't help that right and so to have these conversations on both sides as a black man i need to

sit down and hear okay i understand that you maybe never had these conversations and i hear you there may be something

that you never thought about but this is something i think about on a daily basis so can you empathize with it and say oh

that's wrong and i think that's where the issue is and that's we continue to have is we're scared to have these

conversations because somebody doesn't want to be called racist if they just have a different upbringing and i think

that if we can have these conversations and say no necessarily you're not racist if you were raised a certain way and we

can have these open conversations but if you if you are downplaying my experience

as a black man in this country that's a different conversation you see what i'm saying that's all that's a completely

different conversation than if you say okay i i didn't ra i wasn't raised like that i don't have these fears going out

every day but i hear you and i want to work for a change that's a different conversation and say oh well you never

because i've never experienced and you haven't that's two separate things and i think you also brought up a really good

interesting and good point about people are scared to be called racist so they're scared to have the conversation and i'll tell you when i did a story

with tyrod taylor about what it's like to be a black quarterback in the nfl

because i called him a black quarterback back white people called me racist and then i also did a piece when george

floyd was murdered about my perspective of race and i made a comment you know

that this i've had black friends that i've had and i mentioned the word black basically to describe people because i'm

talking about race and again there were white people that called me racist not black people white people calling you

racist and what i realized they weaponized rape calling someone racism as a way to silence you from

talking about race if i'm if you're going to call me racist and i obviously that's not my intention to be racist

then i'm just going to get nervous and say okay i won't talk about this and then nothing changes and so i think that sometimes that fear

of being racist is something that um people who are actually racist or who don't want things to change use to

silence people from using the words white and black we can't use the words white and black we can't talk about race

you know like lauren if that's the case we have going on in this country right now

um i won't even say it's silent and it is basically the trumpers of the

gop party that are changing they're trying to eliminate what actually happened in this country

they don't want to talk about or teach the 1619 project

they want to eliminate that there was no such thing as racism there were no such things as slavery

that's not you know that needs to be taught in schools at an early age

so people understand it's not saying that everybody's racist i think if

everybody looks back especially as a black man or a woman if you go all the way back into your

history you're going to find out that probably some of your grandparents great-grandparents great-great-grandparents were slaves

that's what what happened i mean our first president george washington was a slave owner

but for things to change we cannot change what history has happened what has happened

in this country um because you know as you live in the

south they say where you're taking down you know our history of you know our robert lee lee statues and stuff or get

rid of the uh confederate flag well as a black man

i have a problem with that because that brings back all the things that

everyone that has been in the civil rights movement has been trying to change

was the confederate flag and robert e lee and everything that happened during the civil war part of history

yes but let's teach history as history and let's not

you know excuse my god whitewash it to make it look like none of this ever happened

because if we're going to get better as a nation we need to address

that and i don't think that a lot of things that people don't know i mean um

as blacks they were not encouraged to read or learn how to write um i had just

been finding out i think about three or four years ago i started doing research uh that there was um

the bible is that there was a version of the slave bible that left out things about

men being created equal and you have to to go through there and see

all the things that have happened so racism has been going on in all

different forms shape everywhere you turn to to keep certain people down and this has

been you know the problem that blacks have been facing for many many years and

today it has just changed his face or its approach to what's going on but it's

still really there and i don't know how we can tackle it because every time that

we think that we have our hands wrapped around and we're moving forward there's somebody that tries to take us back

three marcel as as a young man in uh as a

young child because of everything that that will or just mentioned in the history as a child

could you envision the success that you've been able to achieve

no no no it wasn't even um

you know i'm i was born in jamaica um so so so here's here's an irony in

this entire conversation today okay so i was more i was born in jamaica my parents um moved um you know migrated

from jamaica we moved to um new jersey um experienced a ton of racism

a ton of racism but it wasn't from white americans it

was some black america um right um they were like you're not black

or you're not i remember getting my social security card lauren and i was a little boy and um

the woman i i guess you could check african-america no you can check black white or whatever and we checked black

and my mother the woman looked at my mother and said you're not black

you're an other you're a jamaican and she all she wanted was for me to make sure i got my social security card and

didn't want to jeopardize anything i remember my mom just holding my hand and squeezing it so to this day on my social

security card is checked other and so it was just this weird dynamic that we had growing up you know

experiencing true racism right from other races but also experiencing it

from within the own race so this thing of race is powerful it is super powerful so growing up

um i never um i was uh i think you know the high school i went

to in paris in new jersey they made a movie about my graduating class have you seen the movie lean on me of course you

had it is my claim to fame it is about my graduating class right it is joe

clark bullhorn all that kind of stuff and so he sort of taught us that we could do

amazing things and be great and there are a bunch of us in that class that have done that have gone on to do

amazing things but i thought you know just getting my first like professional level job i

thought i was the claims that i thought i had made it and that wasn't it i didn't need to do anything else my 30

000 a year job i had made more money than my parents had ever made and

i won um but it wasn't until other people started to say you've got more you

you've got more but um i never never ever in a million years um would

have uh could have imagined uh of course now i sit back and i go geez and that's the that's part of the

problem i think lauren you were talking to me how does it manifest itself in the in the boardroom

um when you are the only of anything

you don't there's there's no momentum pulling the rest of the group forward and there's this constant starting over

the next person has to start over the next person has to start over and the next person has to start over there's

not this momentum shift right there's not this legacy this generational pull

like father's right it's it's when you're the only and it could be only female like right and what you

were doing right back in in cleveland being the only it's hard it's hard right and you have

to keep starting over and over and over but the fight is worth it because i will tell you there are people

at work that will come to me they will call me they will look up to me i don't even know who they are but they're like

i heard you say this thing or i saw you do this and you inspired me to go and do better and

to go and do more years right years

for years this happens uh has this has been happening so it's absolutely worth the fight but to answer your question

nope nope nope nope nope i could never have imagined it well pat yourself on the back for that

then a lot thank you i had a lot of help a lot of support

but i feel really really great about it lisa i was watching a documentary today that tiara sent me our mutual friend and

it was about um you and your colleagues uh that are suing the metropolitan police department for for racism and

gender discrimination and one of the things that the woman who was being interviewed said that says she said i

believe that as a black woman we are the most disrespected um

members of the population and and that hit me really hard for some reason was really powerful when she said

that as you listen to willard and josh and marcel talk about their perspectives is

there a different experience as a black woman is there kind of caveats to your experience as a woman of color

um i think that everything they said is true for the black woman and then some like we have some extras especially

being in law enforcement and i think you were referring to assistant chief chanel dickerson is that the the documentary watch today was it

the chief it was you think i don't remember who it was tierra yes yes

yes that was assistant chief chanel dickerson and that that is uh very true and something marcel said about

diversity theater you put it in the chat um i'll give you a little mpd diversity

theater since we're going to talk real talk right so we have in dc this program from the

metropolitan police department called uh police for tomorrow which is all about building bridges with the

community and finding ways to build the trust and all of these things well

i was a part of a cohort there where we had to go out to the community and find ways to make things better and try to

build the trust and find out ways to make it make it work but then i worked in internal affairs as

an agent and i saw what was going on behind the scenes so i began to feel like

there's an imbalance though because it was it was hypocrisy to say to the public oh we're doing this we're

building bridges we're doing we're doing these things to make things better and then behind the scenes you have implicit biases and you have discrimination and

you have racist amongst the members and even in internal affairs i witnessed

some things with some agents you know some white male agents that i had to deal with and that implicitly could

impact the community because if you have agents that are that have biases that are unaware of like marcel sometimes

they're not even aware right so i agree if the one that you know that they know who they are the trumpers or whomever

that's one thing but the ones who aren't even aware of what they're doing are even more dangerous

because in internal affairs we're investigating police misconduct use of force and shootings the police involved

shootings so if you have this racist agent hit the streets to investigate one of our black boys brown boys are

normally you know shot killed maimed or whatever they're not even aware of their biases are they really finding the facts are they covering up for for their about

for their voice you know i mean these are the things that that were running through my mind

you know as i um find myself i've been in law enforcement for 30 years like i said so it it really

is a diversity theater i felt you when you typed that when i read that marcel i thought yeah that is so true because we

say one thing and i'm not saying that we don't mean it when we say it because i think ideally we all want to get along

and get to that place where we're doing the right thing and we're moving they were kicking it forward right but real

practically speaking um i think someone said like look at this middle management stuff the program itself

put each cohort with a manager right and we were basically talking about urban areas dc

and we didn't have one black male command staff member that was paired up

with a mentee but we were talking about how to police black and brown boys how is that possible

not one of these white men could tell us or tell anyone in the room how to feel

about dealing with a black male and it was uh dr antoinette cavanaugh i don't know if you're familiar with her from chicago she was talking about the

adolescent brain and how you know you know adolescence you know 13 to 24 and

no offense gentlemen but they say it takes a little longer for you guys to get there brain wise 24 25 right so when

this same male keeps getting stopped over and over and over he's lipping off he's saying things to you and he's

talking to this white male who's been transplanted into dc from kansas who hasn't seen black people until they got

to dc right and he doesn't understand the dynamic of what's going on and i

actually had a white male official in the room say uh someone said well they're tired of being stereotyped and this white male

official turned around and said do they really feel that way of course they really feel like that but

you would never understand that because you've never been a black boy ever right only only people in the room were black

female command staff there was not one black male command staff in the room that could say hey dude

let me tell you what it is to be a black man or boy you know perspective so they're so going

back to diversity theater how do you have a police for tomorrow right and you don't even have any black men in the

room that can now help leave this cause and have this conversation at least part of it so

yes um everything they said is true and like i said and then some i mean just being a woman in law enforcement is a

whole other whole another thing josh i don't want to ask you a question yeah go ahead yeah i did no lisa thank

you for for standing up and doing all that you're doing um this is kind of a two-part question though because

like i said i i mean i was in the schools and i've seen that black and brown girls are

treated as adults at a younger age than their counterparts and what i mean by

that is you know they get added to their mouth off they automatically treat them as an adult and not allow them to

understand that no these are kids right so they have different things they have different traumas and then to go into

law enforcement when when you wanted to go into law enforcement because as you all know uh if a cop pulls up we're

automatically scared we have fear over protection right i don't feel like they're going to protect me i feel like

what did i do wrong i start going through my mind like oh my god what happened why they why they even behind

me you know of a cop down the street a block away and i see them i'm nervous so when you got into

law enforcement was there ever any pushback from our community saying that you're a sellout

or that you are you know what i mean like or that you're working for the other side like was there any of that

well not that that didn't happen until very recently i've been in law enforcement for 30 years so when i came

back into it in 91 right back in the day it was a little different you know it wasn't quite as

egregious as it is now but again going back to the fact of uh we don't know

what we don't know right so the only reason it probably wasn't as egregious is because we didn't have that footage

it probably always was going to be that bad right um so i think now i think it's more of

that now it's more of that now and actually to your point i just told

uh city councilman what's his name charles allen in a meeting we're talking about some things the city

going on the lawsuit the racist remarks and all the stuff that we're dealing with all of us 16 women

now the 21 complaint is total now by the way right we were talking about all of these things and um i think i just lost

my thought what was i going to tell you about that take me back sometimes i have a dory moment what did you just ask me i was

linking that to something if you got backlash from the from the black community for kind of

working for the police which some may feel like is the other side thank you thank you lauren that's exactly what i was going to say i just told him that my

whole 30 years it wasn't until the last 18 months to 24 years that i was embarrassed and humiliated and ashamed

of being in law enforcement so for the first 28 years i've been able to hold my own

right but these last you know when i got into police for tomorrow and doing this

this program i met valerie castillo philando castile's mother right so her and i work very closely hearing the

story of what happened to him meeting other mothers and then the aubry story in

georgia that we could go we could name them we could never tamir rice speaking of how they treated kids right tamir

rice was in like what 12 and they just rolled up and shot him right that wouldn't have happened if it was a white

guy a white kid i'm sorry it just wouldn't have so all of these things tend to chip away and i have two sons

so you know working for my working with moms and black boys is automatically because you know i want my sons to live

right and that's a very real conversation that our other counterparts don't understand they don't understand

that we have to have this conversation not only with our sons but with our daughters too like brianna teller right

i mean even though she she was completely innocent but the one in texas that was in the car to go sandra blanc

right she was so woman had a home eating ice cream the um not eating ice cream playing video games

with her son the ice cream was another man but the woman she was at home in texas and someone did like a safety

check and shot her oh okay that was after the guy right because there's two and do it so there's

been a few insects i lost track in texas but um yeah go ahead

lauren can i i want to ask lisa a question um because you've been in law enforcement

for 30 years and i knew something as i was growing up as a kid with police

in my neighborhood is that police used to walk the neighborhoods and the police

that were policing our neighborhood lived in the neighborhood and there were less

accidental shootings or young black kids being arrested because

the people that police the neighborhood were from the neighborhood do you think that maybe

some of these shootings uh might not happen if

we use if we start policing like they used to police absolutely i think that's i think that's

absolutely on point and i'll tell you why because back then when you had the officers work in a walk in a

neighborhood it was more of the the guardian mentality right rather than the warrior right we've heard the warrior

versus guardian for one thing the other thing is that fear factor is not there because literally i'm not being funny

when i say some of these folks that come into dc to police this area haven't seen black people before are very limited

right so they have the fear um and i think that um that

triggers like like you said maybe they're not innately racist but they're they're fear of what they don't know

right some of it's training some of it is just straight they're scared they're in the hood they grew up in the suburbs

they don't know what to do and um yeah i think that that would be and i think they should make that

part of an incentive some kind of way incentivize that right because if you put the people in the neighborhood

they're going to care more about it and they're going to they're going to really invest in it right and it would be better i think it would

be better because now you have people come into the city and they go back out to virginia or wherever they live around

here and they don't care what's happening in dc because it's not their kids it's getting shot in all of these things it's not their kids not their

family and then i think that that would that would make a big difference i want to read some of the comments that uh that

are in the chat bobby jones says anytime you're the first person of color to do anything the weight of being the first

is extremely heavy as the first you have to be on point and can't make common mistakes

gerald said uh people of color don't have a luxury to make mistakes we have to be mistakenless almost it gets tiring

um lisa we mentioned the part about the foot footage richard we saw diversity theory lee says well a white mom with

two black kids doesn't know anything about heritage and the children don't know why they have brown skin

and then michelle lewis said conversations need to start before middle school my daughter was in pre-k

where a child is making fun of her birth making fun of biracial children another

indication that this behavior is taught at home despicable children are bright and resilient they catch on quick

um so those were just some of the comments uh lisa black cop a woman stopped another one in buffalo

lost everything job pay retirement byron bound just reinstated her pension

[Music] and i think that's all the comments does

anyone have a question or comment that they want to make to any of our panelists

any questions anyone is anyone can ask a question or make a comment i missed anyone

oh richard do you have a question oh sorry i'm mute

thanks um i i've been listening uh with great interest at all the different stories um

that i've heard tonight um i think just a few comments because

i think it's it's always something where i'm hoping that um if anybody can contribute to uh the

conversation or give suggestions to some of the problems when it comes to

a racial situation or something where you're considered a secondary citizen

i think that as a jew um if you look at our history

and you look at what's happened to the jewish people and the fact there's only 12 million jews in the world

there's a lot more uh black and brown people in the world than jews in the world even though we have

many different colors as jews were white and black and brown as i hope everybody realizes

you end up in a situation where when you grow up as a minority

you're looked upon differently and unfairly at a very young age as you point out

and also i think as a jew you're also at a disadvantage where if you're in a

minority situation um people are going to look at you differently

asian have also had that type of experience where they may be imminori in a certain situation

and the only thing that i think you know i would say to um

the people that commented today about the unfairness um i think that

what what made asians and jews successful was a couple of things number one the family

unit stayed together we're also white a lot of us are white yeah i i but jews

jews can be of different colors there's there's jews of many different colors and um i i guess it's the identification

of white i look at more poverty versus non-poverty and i look at the fact that i believe that a lot of

the problems that are happening in america is the you know the huge difference between the

poverty and non-poverty and the lack of education the lack of a nuclear

family that stays together where the father and the mother can educate the kids together as a unit and teach them

values from a community that you know in a small community you grow up and you learn how

to apply yourself and then you can go ahead and with education that is an

incredibly powerful tool that gives you the confidence so that when you do go into the boardroom

and after they get over the fact that you are a different person because you're a

woman because you're a jew because you're a black because you're something different the ideas that

you're espousing in that board room the ideas and the confidence you have from the fact that you've come from a strong

family you've come from strong parental uh values and relationships it'll give

you the strength to battle what i think is our human condition we all have

obstacles to go over we don't all start from the same part of the starting line

some start at different parts and it's very unfair and certainly equality of opportunity is

a very critical thing that everybody should be on the same side of and i don't care if you're

you know democrat republican and the quality of opportunity is the most important thing that we should all stand

together but an equality of outcome is an impossibility

to guarantee for society it's just not going to happen so i hope that

the the stories that i've heard which i genuinely am learning from tonight i just hope that

you um get to teach your kids and the people around you will

count on your community to help you get ahead so that you can

survive and thrive in this society which is not always fair

can i answer the question of richard lauren um richard you talked about you know

family units and you know staying together and doing this well as a black male

by the time you're 20 over 50 percent our population is incarcerated

most of our young black men and black women are single parent homes

usually a mother that is working most of the children are brought up by grandparents or aunts and uncles

so how would you suggest that we how do we rectify that situation to put

make it i think i think the pro the answer that i that i think is the fact that the poor mother that had to raise

those kids because she either was never married and she gave birth to those children and those children because the

poor mother had to work and earn a living that the father image that wasn't in the family and wasn't in the home

constantly helped to destroy that young man who

then joined the group because the peer group and trying to join a gang ended up

making him get incarcerated because he was forced into a situation that was not

um stopped by a mother and father being able to say here the values of our home

are more important than the game i think the issue is is bigger than just at home i mean

marcel was sharing his story earlier um he i believe he came from a two-parent home

that's my point is that marcel i'm saying marcel maybe you could speak to this but i'm suggesting without knowing

marcel but it didn't make him immune to racism no but it did it did make him successful and maybe he said i don't

know why i'm successful but i'll bet you he was well educated and he came from a two-parent home my very my very best friend um came from

a single parent home and he's he's immensely successful though you know it's it's hard to this is a

whole other unsealed uh topic that we probably you could probably pen because what richard's saying some things that

are that are valid but some things um need need more company way more conversation than the few minutes um we

have here um the family unit yeah absolutely it could be of a benefit um

there are some incredible single moms making magic uh happen so i don't want

to lump them into this this this entire community of people um who are unable to to succeed because

of that i think michelle has a question uh up there oh yeah sorry michelle i didn't see the

hand asked and you michelle

there you go oh sorry um uh no um i'm out of breath sorry i was

trying to multitask get a workout in marcel said it best to me i won't i

won't expand the conversation anymore about the um uh two-parent home because i myself um i

um i i lost my father he died when i was eight and my twin brother and i um

you know we were ostracized by some families some of my own family because we didn't have a father but my twin and

i both went on to graduate from high school and college and my twin is a father to three

boys and he's still married to his wife so these statistics and you know all i mean

it's not it's not for everybody um but again i'll take the lead of marcel i won't go down that path but

i just wanted to speak up because um that's something near and dear to my heart just because of the exclusion that

we felt from our own family and i outpaced many of my cousins who had two parent

home so just wanted to make that point i also think that part of why i wanted to have this

conversation is you talked about the importance of education and how that would help and and doing what you need

to do at home and doing what you need to do to put yourself in positions to succeed and

part of the reason i wanted to have this conversation is when i saw that video of the black child being

treated differently than the white child i think it really exemplifies how it's harder for someone of a different race

to even take that path of higher education or to you know get into that ivy league school because if they made

the same mistake that a white child makes i got enough fight in school when i was in high school i went to an eye-opening

school i got in a fight in school i hit a girl i smacked her across the face and i got

um 20 minutes of after school detention i promise you

if a black child did the same thing in my school they would have been expelled or suspended or something else and that

could have and if that happened to me that could have affected my ability to get in that ivy league school

and i'm sure it has affected black children who were treated differently and got punished more getting in that ivy school

so the problem is that well yes there are factors that families and people can control there is so much when we talk

about racism that is out of an individual's control there is so much when we talk about gender bias that is

out of people's control i have i am from a great family i am educated it did not make me immune from two boys drugging me

and nearly killing me in a in a floor and leaving me in a floor naked i mean

the this is why we need to teach other people to be kind and to be compassionate because no matter what

happens at home there are external factors that prevent some people or make it a lot harder for some people to

ascend regardless of their family regardless of their education and yes some people um

we're not all going to start equally and some people will start further back and still make it but that doesn't mean that

it's okay to like make it harder for them or hold them back even more yes you

can still succeed with setbacks but doesn't mean we should not we should aim for just like letting the setbacks like

maintain um and still be there so i think that yes it would be better if everyone came from a two-parent home and

it would be better if everyone had the money to go to college it would be better if everybody had advanced degrees

but but it also needs to be um

it you also need to make it so that we're that everyone can do the same amount of work and have the same chance

to to pursue those things and and that's really i think when i saw that video of the white kid getting

treated leading in the blackhead that's what i thought of two kids maybe having the same ambitions and one kid not being

able to ascend because now he has a record and the white kid doesn't have a record so now maybe the white kid can get into the advanced program can get

into the honor roll or honor student thing at school but the black kid can't because he got arrested in the mall and the

white kid didn't and so that's really i think you know we know that kids have a better chance or people have a better

chance if they have come from a you know a more well-off family or more love in the household that's true for everybody

but i think what we're really talking about when it comes to racism is these external factors that allow people who

are doing the same thing for one person to continue to move up and the other person to be held back and that can't be

ignored and as someone who is jewish um and and maybe this is because of my age maybe my parents felt feel differently

i don't feel like i was ever held back because of my religion i do feel like i was held back because of my gender i do

feel like i had experienced violence because of my gender i do feel like i was not seen as credible because of my

gender are smart but i i just haven't seen a lot of anti-semitism personally

um maybe because i grew up in a jewish environment maybe i grew up in a jewish town i don't know

but i feel like my white skin really helped me kind of um bypass some of the racism that exists or

some of the the racism or religious hatred that exists because i blend in well people don't

know what people don't know what i am you know so i don't ever feel like i was um i don't feel like i've respect

parents racism but i do feel like i did experience gender discrimination in my life um and i think

i think yes there are internal factors that can um that can make people more likely to

succeed but that doesn't mean we should stop fighting for the external factors to be fair and um to give more

opportunities for everyone to move up especially when you have two kids doing the same thing and one kid is you know

getting expelled and the other kids getting uh oh don't worry about it um that's problematic because you can't

move up you can't get that education or you can't get into that honors class and then it just has a ripple effect and it

also takes a jab at your confidence wait the way people treat you affects the way you feel about yourself you know if i

wake up every morning and someone says you're stupid you're stupid and that's what i'm seeing on air that you know girls with brown hair are stupid i'm

gonna start to think i'm stupid i'm gonna start to think i'm not capable and so all these external factors all play a

role and just because there are internal factors that also play role doesn't mean you should ignore the external factors

or excuse them or not acknowledge them or um or see them as an excuse because i don't

think they're an excuse they're a problem lauren the only the only other thing that i would like to just say as far as

that goes is that let's all remember that we all live in a north american

bubble and god forbid we chose to live in other countries in the world

would any of those other countries in the world be equivalent to the bubble that we're

in the majority of the world is a very very cruel

place and i think that uh we have the ability to complain and

be in a forum like today or in a governmental forum where we get to express ourselves we don't have that

opportunity in other parts of the world so as my father used to say we're all

suffering from clean underwear in north america some are suffering from far worse but um

i played sports and and what i got a coach that i always used to say to to the better players no matter how good

you are you can always be better so no matter how even though we live in a great country um it could still be a lot

better and we should strive for that lisa i know you wanted to say something too

oh you see it just buffing over no i was i was looking at the comments something came to my mind when you talk about imaging two things that i wanted to say

i don't know if you guys saw the meme or uh we call it a meme or gif or whatever or what on going around the social media

which one of these is a convicted felon and it was a picture of snoop dogg cooking with martha stork you guys ever

seen that yeah oh no i haven't seen that but that's great yeah okay so that's a perfect example to

encapsulate what we're saying right now most people would say it was snoop right but it was really my story

so i thought that that's just a way to emblem kind of bring that home and then i was reading in the comments someone

was asking about the n word and yeah i just saw that chris uh

is it okay for white white people to say the n word when discussing it in an academic setting or saying the name uh

of a richard pryor album or the name of dick gray can i just share a true story as an

internal affairs agent for mpd in my in my duty i was a civilian first and only

first civilian at mpd as an agent i had a run-in with a white male agent

who referenced the n-word and a lot of what i've been up against has been as direct consequence of me

reporting him okay his comment was to another colleague that she had more excuses than

a black man going to jail and then he was saying it was someone else's joke and then he referenced the

n-word he said the real joke was you got more excuses than uh going to jail

now he didn't say the actual word but the fact that he had

the nerve to be that emboldened to say that in a workplace first of all

secondly to a black woman he wasn't talking to me but i was also in the room and i mean i might be light-skinned but

i'm still black okay so i just was like you can't say that word and then to double down on it and

reference the n-word that told me then that the system is completely broken because his behavior has gone on so long

and unchecked for so long that he thinks it's okay it's not okay

it's just not okay in any way no educational form i mean i told a little bit we shouldn't i just think nobody

should be saying the word i think it's derogatory especially in a work setting and internal affairs are supposed to be

above and beyond as the integrity police and the conduct and so it should not be

allowed for anyone in that environment especially double that's my opinion

yeah can i can i make a quick i know i don't know you gotta go um but no richard i want to say thank you for

sharing because i think that this is the importance of these conversations having different points of view and just having

and just sharing your experience and what you feel based off of your experience and how you view the world um

is so powerful so thank you for sharing and i think that this conversation it's so there's so many layers to it you

could probably have like a 17 part series one on these different top and we still wouldn't get to anything you know

really wouldn't dwittle down it um but no i kind of just wanted to say thank you all for for allowing me to come on

thank you lauren for putting it together uh thank you all for everybody i got a role but i just want to say thank you

richard like i said again it's it's it's conversations like this that can kind of hopefully change the perspective of

people because it's sad but a lot of times people are so shallow they're just surface level so

if you look black you're black if you look white you're white in certain areas until they get to know you and they

judge you based off of your physical appearance first and then so you have to peel back the onion so i think that

there's there's multi layers to this but i really truly appreciate the opportunity lauren thank you

you're on mute lauren hey lauren you're muted

sorry i'm going to wrap it up now with one last question willard lisa marcel anybody who wants to answer can answer

but where do we go from here what is next are you hopeful for the future

i thought started off and say i'm always hopeful

um i would like to see it in my lifetime

i believe that anything is possible because i was growing up i said i would not live long enough to ever see

a black president um wow uh that turned out to be false

so yes is there hope is there a change can it be done

yeah i think you know marcel said a lot of there's so many layers here i mean we've just scratched the surface

of this onion are probably 30 or 40 more layers that we need to get to

but people have to be receptive for us to move forward willard i just want you to know that

president zielenski of ukraine is jewish and i don't think he wants to be at this

point president or jewish at this point in time with uh mr putin around around

the corner so it's not always cracked up what it is to be and we haven't had a jewish president in the united states

either lauren i think there is yeah i think there is uh i i do this talk i believe

there is hope until there is no more hope and there is always hope

the adults have done a really nice job of messing up so much and i believe that

my daughters and and kids like the next generation

have the power and have the ability and desire to make it all better we just got to give them a shot it's just gotta the

adults have just got to stop messing things up because there's so much hope out there

lisa you got help absolutely always always hope that there's light

you know because each everyone right here has taken the time to come to the conversation so we are the light right

so if we just keep showing up in the room but we keep pushing pat pushing towards that each one teach one each one

reach one we can't do anything boho so yes marcel we're all going to have a chance

to be parents and we all thought our parents could have done a better job at some point in time when we were young

and then when we get to play the role of parents and grandparents and you look back it's it's often you have a little bit of

a different perspective don't forget everybody is a different person you know between 10 and 80. you all become a different

person in your life and you look at yourself differently we're a community of people as we grow up

yeah and hopefully we as we grow we grow together and we continue to um

learn and love and show compassion and listen and try to understand each other's

situations to see the world through different lens other than your own i know that time and time again when i've had these conversations i've had moments

of like i never thought about that because i never had to or because i didn't have those experiences so i

appreciate everyone coming on sharing their stories and having the conversation and sharing their

perspectives and i hope we continue to move in the right direction and we will continue to have

news conversations whether it's february june september or october because um

they're always important they're always valid and they just need to happen more often

good night everybody thank you for coming i'm going to unmute everyone so they can say good night everybody

thanks for coming thanks for being part of the unsealed can i you guys meet yourself to you

good night good night good night thank you