Brian:
My brother asked me to read Obama's speech from Dallas and I reviewed his speech from yesterday. It's all very thoughtful. I can only imagine what would be happening now if he were president. He would be working to unite the country. It fears me that Biden will be no more uniting than our current president.
Cecilia:
I don't know, I was reading something about Biden and where he is good is, he can empathize, and he can sympathize with regards to death. He's experienced a lot of tragedy in his own personal life that lends itself to being empathetic about losing a life, somebody that you truly care about, somebody that's senselessly gone before their time.
And yes, Barack Obama, if you ever read anything about him, this is the kind of impact he wanted to have all his life. I mean this man could have gone and done so many different things, but he really has a heart for changing things, making things better. I think his experience being president made him realize he couldn't impact change to the magnitude he wanted. There's a lot of stuff that's involved in making real change happen, which I think is where we all are.
Brian:
So, do you think the combination of Obama being president and then the other side of that generating Trump, the two things together were the catalyst for today?
Cecilia:
I think when Obama got elected was the beginning. I was so happy to see the diversity that was represented in what seemed to be his base, young, as well as black and white and brown. It amazed me, quite frankly, but it was young people for the most part.
However, I do think you're right in that this groundswell was also happening.
Brian:
Yeah, I have been reading Michelle Obama's book and she talks about going to Princeton. Have you read her book?
Cecilia:
I'm reading it now and I'm maybe 3/4 of the way through.
Brian:
So, you're further along than I am. She talks about that. Basically, the way I understood it was that it was sort of like the black student body congregated in one area at Princeton where they felt comfortable among themselves. There was a sense that many others at Princeton thought blacks were there because of a quota. Today you can see, of course, the hypocrisy, with so much being revealed, like white people essentially bribing somebody in the admissions office to get their kids in any way that they could.
Cecilia:
So, that was interesting, wasn't it? She was talking about how they are talking about all the time when they look at you at a place like an ivy league school such as Princeton and Yale. The assumption is that all of you must have gotten in there on the quotas.
I never thought about it the way she said it. There are quotas held for others as well because a certain amount of space is left open for the “Winston’s” whose family, for example, have a building on campus named for them. Then you see the controversy today where they were caught cheating on standardized tests, pretending to be athletes and other covert operations we have yet to uncover that white people have engaged in to get into the same institutions.
Well, think about it. This has been going on since the beginning of time and nobody even thinks twice about it. The other thing she was told when she was trying to prepare to go to Princeton, remember that lady that told her she'd never get in; she was told that she was not Princeton material.
But that's the kind of thing that fuels some people. It's just like oh, yeah, what do you mean I can't; you just watch me. It can also be the very thing that blows out the flame for others. Being told over and over that you cannot do something can be demotivating.
Brian:
Racism is pervasive everywhere you go. How does it impact your life today?
Cecilia:
Everywhere. Where you live, where you work, where you go to school. Where you shop.
It's kind of everywhere. Who was the boy that got killed walking through the neighborhood? Trayvon Martin, the Zimmerman case!
Just walking along and the way you look makes you a threat to the community.
How about Armaud Arbery?
From the beginning, the videotape shows him jogging around a curve in the road. I am thinking, how do you just happen to be videotaping a guy jogging that you think has done something wrong?
How did the guy videotaping know that the truck was around the curve waiting? I think Arbery even tried to run past the truck and they blocked him or something?
Brian:
He knew what was going to happen and he did not do anything?
Cecilia:
I don't know that he knew that the guy was going to get shot.
Brian:
But he probably knew they had shotguns and they were going to confront him when you see him standing on the truck with a gun in his hand. He should have done something; honk the horn and at least let them know someone's watching.
Cecilia:
What possessed them to have guns, right?
There's two of them; a father and a son and you think the kid was going to have a gun. Why would you think you need guns? The big black boy is going to kill both men. All three were in it together all along.
Brian:
Well, they were out on their own mission.
Is there anything that you think white people don't understand or should know?
Cecilia:
Sometimes it feels like white people don't understand anything. I don't get it. Why can't you see this? When in a nation where white people outnumber black people by a large percentage, why would you not think it is unjust that there are more black people, black men locked up in prison.
Brian:
Or why is it that black people are disproportionately dealing with this virus?
Cecilia:
Right.
Brian:
You can trace the economic impact as they are in more visible jobs that are service-oriented with contact with more people.
Brian:
White people were being bred to believe that they were superior and saw black people as human property and those poor black people were forced to agree with them and forbidden to stand up for themselves.
Cecilia:
I don't know so much that they were being trained. The word trained kind of implies a choice, where they had no choice. There was a desire to fight back. There was always that desire, especially as you watched black men being whipped and beaten.
This created this whole element of having to sneak away and try to educate yourselves and uplift yourselves. This was a dark, dark, dark, dark time, and how easy it was for black people to be depressed and downtrodden.
And all you need to do is go to some of these plantations that are still out there as museums and just go through some of those little houses and shanties that they allowed slaves to live in and think, wow.