Brian:
I don't want to compare racism to my issues being gay. I can walk around, and people won’t necessarily know. They won’t know that I am Jewish either unless I'm wearing a yarmulke.
Cecilia:
You're right! A black person can walk into a room and they’re black before they open their mouth, before anything. Somebody has already made a judgment about them based on their skin color versus you can be gay, you can be Jewish, you could be whatever but you're still a white male.
Brian:
That's why I wanted to do this. I can't just do nothing. I don't think I can wake up and say I'm not part of the problem and go about my life.
All right, do you have anything that you would want white people to know that you don't think we have talked about?
Cecilia:
I think that is the real question. You all know it all, don't you?
I think that's the first step toward progress. White people need to know they don't know it all.
Brian:
And they need to talk to black people who are impacted by this and not think because they're sitting in a Starbucks talking to each other and watched Fox News or even Rachel Maddow that they learned the truth.
Cecilia:
How do you change people's hearts?
Brian:
As you said earlier, you're not going to change senior citizens, you might change their behavior and that might change their heart to a degree.
I think we must start with our children.
The greatest change in our lives as children was with my older sister, Marcia. As she went to public school, she had a more diverse group of friends, as she still does today, and she would not tolerate racist comments in the house and that changed our family.
This shows you start out with the need to create a generation that has loving hearts where everyone is equal. How do we get there?
Cecilia:
I think what's happening in some circles is that people are beginning to talk.
It's sort of like if you take a criminal that's killed somebody and the surviving family members want to talk to the person that killed their loved one, really trying desperately to see the other side.
For example, I watched an episode of Family Feud yesterday. It was the celebrity edition. They had the former cast and the new cast from Queer Eye for The Straight Guy.
There was a black guy in a wheelchair on one team. The host, Steve Harvey, asked him how he came to be in a wheelchair. He stated that he went back and found the guy that shot him, thus paralyzing him and causing him to forever be in a wheelchair. He says they talked, and he thanked him; to this day, they have a very nice relationship.
I thought, oh my God, you're in a wheelchair for the rest of your life. You're paralyzed from the waist down. What do you mean you thanked him?
But it's just a matter of getting into somebody else's shoes and trying to understand why they feel the way they feel. Why do you feel the way you feel?
Let's see if we can impact each other's views. Let's see if we can open our hearts enough to be able to listen to somebody else. Even if they're the most extreme person.
Can you be civil enough to just hear somebody else out? That's where we must start. Hopefully, that will lead to some true, maybe not relationships, but just the ability for us all to see each other as human beings.
Brian:
Maybe we'll do another happy hour and I invite three people and you should bring three people.
I mean you said that you loved me anyway, and you could be the token black in my life. But I love you too much for that. That doesn't work. We know that. I love you enough to be your token gay, Jewish, queer, white guy.
Cecilia:
But it's almost like you're asking ME to bring black people into your life. I know you mean well and the intent is to start a dialogue.
Brian:
We said to talk to each other and I'm trying to figure out how do I do that productively?
It is tough right now where I live. I mean if I'm in Savannah it'll be much easier.
Cecilia:
It's almost like you're putting the burden on me to bring black people to you to get you started. It is not the same. It must be your effort to put yourself out there. You have to make the effort to approach people of color that are in your circles.
Brian:
I got it.
Cecilia:
Because I have my own white friends. I know you do not only have white, gay friends. I'm not your only black friend, am I? Are you my only white Jewish friend? Jewish, maybe, but not my only white, gay friend.
My daughter even has a white, gay friend. It's a girl and not sure if she is Jewish.
Cecilia:
I think one of the dynamics you might want to add and I think a lot of black people kind of fall into this trap is that you are raised, you go to the right schools, you get the right education. You get the right job. You’ve got all these degrees. You feel like you've made it. You feel like you're on equal footing with your counterparts and then it takes an incident like this to make you clearly see that, no, little has changed.
And in a way, as a black person, you can be kind of lulled into this sense of yeah, we're moving along.
Yet there are still a lot of disadvantaged folks that don't have it as good as you. And I think I wrote down as I read some of your questions, part of the problem is systemic in the way that in these companies, in these jobs, through no fault of your own, people tend to hire in their own image.
I can't, I don't want to say, I don't want to think that it's intentional but to some degree, it's just the way we're made. If you run the company or if you own the company, you're going to hire people that look like you and it's happened over and over and over and over and that's why we're talking about getting more people in that are brown and black into positions of power or positions where we can influence policies and procedures.
Brian:
Do you think your life has been harder because you're a woman and black; harder than if you were a male and black?
Cecilia:
I think that the right answer to that is no; it hasn't been harder. I think it's harder for black males.
Brian:
How do you think racism affects Craig as an attorney?
Cecilia:
Oh sure, he worked at the state attorney's office for several years. The state attorney, I think serves either a two-year or four-year term. Each time a new one takes office; they bring their own team and political aspirations with them. They don't have to keep the same attorneys on staff. Likewise, as management positions become available, the new State Attorney can appoint who they want to those positions. After he realized he was not advancing as he felt he should, he began to look at other alternatives.
Then as he went out on his own, as a black attorney, you kind of gets it from both sides. White people are reluctant to give you their business and black people feel you're not as good as a Jewish attorney and sometimes they'll go and take their business there. They spend their money and then they want to come to him after they are out of money or they feel they are being unjustly serviced. So, it's kind of weird.