 racism. There's nothing easy about this topic. However, this year, with the heightened rhetorical pressures of a presidential campaign, we as concerned citizenry have become more aware of the implicit biases and systemic racism in our society. This July, as we were celebrating our nation's 240th birthday, in the space of 72 hours, two black men were shot dead by police officers. Alton Sterling, a 37-year-old father of five, and Philando Castile, a 32-year-old elementary school cafeteria supervisor. An unarmed Alton Sterling was fatally shot on July 3rd in Baton Rouge. Philando Castile was pulled over for a broken taillight in Minnesota. He was carrying a permitted handgun and was attempting to show his license to carry when he was fatally shot on July 6th. These deaths in close succession were a wake-up call. I think that many of us are concerned about these incidents from Trayvon Martin to Michael Brown to Tamir Rice, but seldom we find time to do more than stand at a vigil with a candle in our own silent memorial. I know personally I can no longer be silent. I'm ready to ask the tough questions and listen to the heartfelt answers. I will do my best not to get defensive. I will do my best to stop myself from explaining that I'm not like other white people. Because no matter how enlightened I may think I am on any number of issues, if I do not share my thoughts, compassion, and concern, I'm no better than the racist, sexist elements of our society. So today I start a new venture here at Davis Media Access. I will attempt to ask the tough questions, not the gotcha questions that we've come numb to, the heartbreaking questions that I hope will lead to increased understanding of difficult subjects. Because the more we know about each other, the better we understand our history, the more difficult it is to look at any societal problem as an outsider. As my guest today frequently says, if we continue to deny we have a problem, we will never have the will to solve it. Joining me in this journey and as my guest today, Sandy Holman is the founder and director of the Culture Co-op in United in Unity. Organizations created to assist those working with diversity and equity. Sandy has committed herself to advocacy for children and education. She particularly focuses on the importance of providing cultural relevant and responsive services and materials, as well as increasing cultural competency. Her 30 plus years of experience as an educator, counselor, diversity equity specialist, and author have given her a practitioner's insight. One that goes well beyond theoretical research into the challenges communities and organizations face each day. By practicing what she calls active research, where social theory is matched with practical application, Sandy's innovative approach to a variety of difficult issues has had a tremendous impact on many communities, including our own. Her books, We All Have a Heritage, Grandma Says Our Hair Has Flare and Grandpa Is Everything Black Bad, are expanding the way people view literature for children and being used in schools at all levels of education, including training programs for educators. Sandy is truly inspirational and committed in all of her endeavors. She continues to create quality multi-cultural literature, provide diversity and equity training for youth and adults, and promote literacy around the country. So with Sandy's help, let's get to the heart of the matter. Sandy, welcome. Thank you for having me today, Andrea. And we're here to talk about a difficult subject. We're going to start in the beginning, or at least the beginning of our country, with the historical policies and constructs that were set, some of them 400 years ago, and that lead us to where we are today with the racial tensions that we find becoming ubiquitous, unfortunately, on our feeds on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, whatever you're following, you're barraged with a video, a soundbite, of yet another wife, yet another mother watching as her African-American son, husband, brother, is shot down. Yeah, absolutely. And so it's not an easy subject. There's not easy solutions, but we have to delve into it. And so let's start from the top. Where would you start when you're educating a group of people on the beginning of our racist history as Americans? So first of all, I want to say that the information I'm going to be sharing is primarily from my life experience, research experts from around the country who've spent their life studying this and lay people who are living this. And I think that's really important to know. And when I say lay people, I mean people of every ethnic cultural background that you can think of. But we are truly as a country and really a world, but as a country, and we'll focus on that, facing a critical time, a critical mass. So what people need to understand is the issues that we're seeing play out in all our major institutions, be it economic, educational, the criminal justice system, healthcare, politics, media, and so forth. Education, again, just to name a few core ones, are things that have been a part of us since the beginning of our country and rather a continuum and not something new. For example, with the policing incidents that you were talking about earlier, the only reason why those are coming to the forefront of some people's minds and that I would say primarily white people is because the invent of technology and people recording these things on their video phones and such. So now you have this visual evidence to back up what people have been honestly saying for years in most of their lives as I think about my dad and his grandfather and his father before him. So if we're going to really even have a chance to change these dynamics, we have to be stewards of studying history and that is something that a lot of us have not done. I mean, we can all remember being young and not even wanted to go to a history class and actually most of the classes that teach history wouldn't talk about these matters anyway, but we really have to look at the foundations of how this country started. So first of all, it wasn't a country only when white settlers came over here and took over the country. It was already a country with indigenous peoples who had a history and a way of living and who actually were very helpful to us when we first came over here. But with white colonists coming over and selling in this country, a whole new dynamic started. So our country is primarily based on the institution of slavery. It was based on laws, actual laws, practices, constructs, historical ways of being that made it okay to enslave another human being. That to this day is still having devastating consequences. So in those laws and in those structures, we actually put that into the fabric of our country, how things were going to operate, how someone like you at that time would see someone like me. I had no rights and depending on the states that you were in, you know, a drop of blood made you black or a 16th of blood made you black or lighter skin made you white. I mean, it actually even varied amongst the states. But once you were identified as someone who was a slave, you got certain edicts attracted to you, put on you, meaning you had no rights. You were property of somebody else. You could not get educated. You were much more likely to be punished and even killed for doing what we may say wrong things, like at that time escaping was a wrong thing. You were more likely to essentially be treated worse than the animals that lived in the day. You were treated as an actual product. And what people often don't want to understand just laying down that that foundation, even right there, which is still manifesting in how we see blacks and people of color and people in vulnerable communities or people who are low income, it's still playing out. So it wasn't like something happened 400 years ago. Right. And then it was done. And why can't we get why can't they get past this? Why can't they get I never had a slave. Yes, I never had a slave. And you and you're exactly right. I will say to my white brothers and sisters who will say I didn't do slavery. I never had a slave. What you need to realize, though, is that even though you didn't do those things, you are benefiting from a racialized society that was set back then to give you entrenched and ongoing white affirmative action. So you know, even as we talk about things like affirmative action, white people in our country have an entrenched, ongoing and persistent affirmative action of privilege based on who they are that is steeped back in our beginnings. So in education from the beginning, you know, people talk about the education gap, which I think is disingenuous because it's more of an opportunity gap. In education, we set in structure who could get educated and that was not blacks or people of color or poor. Often beaten for learning to read. Yep. Often beaten are worse for learning to read. We could not, like you said, learn to read, which is foundational for growing your mind and understanding even what's happening to you in the criminal justice system in which, by the way, what we see currently in our policing right now really didn't get its formal starts until the early 1900s. So and I want to talk about that for a second. Use it as an example. So slave patrols in the south and what they called night watches in the north are the precursors to what we see as our police forces today. So back in South Carolina, which is considered one of the first police forces because they had some rules and structure to it and everything back in the 1700s or early 1800s. They had slave patrols, which were set up specifically to control slaves and to recapture slaves who had went away. And so all of those moors and values that were set in with the sole purpose of keeping slavery institutionalized and controlling a group of people who had dark skin, who were from Africa, who were black, started in the slave patrols of the south and what they called the night watches of the north. In England, the night watches were a vestige of England where you would literally be in a place and you didn't go out and patrol. You were there so that if something went on or something happened, people would come to you as the night watch person and say we need your help. Where it was different in the south where they literally went out and patrolled what they called almost like the beat because they were assigned geographical areas, which is why the beat is still used as a word today. So people need to understand the culture that we're seeing in the police departments for example. It's not like we just have one or two bad cops and it's not really the right discussion to have actually. It's more of a culture that was laid that cops are stepping into that was based on a historical practice of subjugating African and black people and then protecting the resources of that time and even still today to some degree of the rich and those who are in power and in leadership. How we structured those slave patrols is how we started our police forces in a lot of those night watches that we had in the north and other parts of the country. Eventually they became like what we did in the south which was patrolling people not looking for white people, not looking necessarily for white women, but looking specifically for black people and other people who were considered non-humans in our society. That culture is still here today and that culture into police departments to kind of give an example of a historical institution was based on violence, fear, murder and no accountability to your actions for subjugating people that we saw less than human. So it is no surprise that today that culture is still into it. I would say that police officers even well-intentioned police officers and I have police officers in my family. I don't think every single one of them is bad. However, all of them are in a risky situation because they're walking into a vulnerable culture that was steep historically in the institution of slavery and controlling people. In the north that was steeped in controlling immigrants and that included Europeans and all that too. Oh yeah, Italians. My family was in that. Absolutely. So we really saw police forces galvanize around immigrants actually in the north who later also wanted to control African Americans too, but when immigrants were when they were concerned about immigrants getting out of control, protesting, asking for their rights, they started these forces to subdue them and to keep them down. Originally that's what was going on more so in the north and that included like I said immigrants from Europe all over whoever the working class was at that time. But eventually those two concepts kind of merged and then when you think about us creating a police department or a force we call police departments to now back then which incorporated a high number of Ku Klux Klan. Most people don't realize our earlier forces had a huge members and numbers of the Ku Klux Klan. Again with the ideal of controlling a group of people, predominantly black people. So it's not shocking to see the relationship of today. Right. So I really would encourage all of us to go back and study this history which is readily available in all kinds of places to really start to look at the origins of this so that we can understand no it's not that African Americans are doing more crime we know this in fact it's just that you're more likely to go to jail or be persecuted or be profiled doing the same kind of crime as a white person would be doing because of the way our system has been set up historically. No it's not that we are dumber or we don't have the capacity to earn money but there's actually been structures set up economically that tell you even where you can live and one of the biggest predictors of your success and you're thriving in an equitable society is where you live and we are extremely a segregated society and we'll we can talk a little bit about why that is too because of things laws and practices like redlining which is and then the denial of African Americans after World War II to get money to buy houses when there was this big housing influx and whites being encouraged to move out and subsidized to move out to what we call the suburbs today and which is why you see you see well which is why and the government actually encouraged this and they actually punished housing people who didn't have in their covenants that they would would not allow blacks to move into these were actual laws and policies. They're still communities in Yolo County believe it or not many many places have done what they can and have gone and and rewritten these bylaws and founding articles but there are still there are still neighborhoods in the county we live in here in Davis California that have in their founding articles statements about no black people no African people no people of Negro descent because those were the words that were used at the time when they were writing these things. Yeah and what people don't understand is since we were set up as an oppressive system and by and large we still are structured as an oppressive system. We there are certain constructs that are acting on our lives and some of us understand a little bit of it but most of us don't even know it because we're not taught about this we don't talk about it so for example some of the traits of oppressive systems are things like a certain group controlling all the wealth conquer and divide with your minority right and I think we have a graphic that we could put up while Sandy's going through this to go through the oppressive systems because it is a lot to take in there it is it's on the screen so go back I didn't mean to interrupt you but let's go ahead so so again historically people need to understand that we were set up with oppressive structures based on white supremacy meaning that whites were better and knew more and a lot of other implications than anybody else and it's it's it's okay to acknowledge that truth was love that was something that was just the way it is yeah and was in many places of our country right so some of those constructs again are accumulating all the wealth and having control over all major institutions using fear violence and intimidation to keep groups suppressed creating divisions against groups that really should be working together to challenge the status quo so that they're in a spin cycle of not ever really being able to get out of their situation right using distracting distraction techniques and chaos things like you know pouring alcohol change into communities poor food quality health care so people are so focused on just their survival they can't even begin to think about and postulate what issues are impacting their life adversely which allows the status quo to blame them for their situation that's the really right egregious and sickening aspect of this and I think we see that even in modern day examples with these shootings that that take place and I mentioned two that happened in July there've been there've been unfortunately several others since then and I didn't even bring the number with me today because it's a little hard to keep up with number one because it's not always reported there's not a universal structure for how to report it there is universal structure for how to report if you have gonorrhea if you go to god if you go to a clinic a doctor anywhere in this country I don't care how far back in the sticks you are and they run a test for gonorrhea the cdc will know about it the center for disease control there is not a universal structure over our policing organizations there's not a universal reporting system for what happens when there's an officer involved shooting and how that is reported each individual jurisdiction is able to set its own reporting requirements and structures so on that note because you're bringing up a very critical point it's voluntary for police departments all over the country to share their data and information with the fbi and the other problem is is it's not really a good idea as far as accountability to have police policing themselves and doing their own interviews and reviews after incidents happen so because we don't report these things by and large I mean what police department wants to report that yeah we have a we we're seeing a a trend here where we're profiling people are we seem to be disproportionately targeting black and brown people most people don't want to call that out about themselves some have been courageous to do that but most of them don't so because we don't require reporting and because there's not an outside accountability force to make sure that report reporting is accurate then we we struggle to see the real picture it's bad enough what we're witnessing with our own eyes as far as what's happening out in our communities but it's much more complicated than that so those are some of the basic things that we'll talk about in solutions but I wanted to give you an example using using the criminal justice system as an example historically of of how this stuff is a continuum of practice policy steeped in oppressive system systematic targeting and white supremacy that has continued on to the day now police forces are perceived as something that helps keep under desirable by a lot of the populations under control and they don't even question why that is right which explains why a lot of white people feel like their police is a good thing and they're to protect them and why often African-Americans or Latinos have a totally different experience so allowing our communities to be segregated again which is steeped in historical practice and by and large we are the most segregated that we've ever been in fact people associate when you say suburbia with white people in our city with black people or brown people right and it makes it easier when you have people put in different places to act out on your oppressive practices because they're all concentrated in one area so for example blacks and browns are more likely to be policed for those minor infractions like a broken tail light or are having people in their community driving around at a heart looking for people who are black and brown who are out of those urban places and have moved into suburban spaces oh my god drive a nice car our driver nice car and so it's very concerning because for those and there are some of those unfortunately who are vested in keeping the status quo and impressive structures and systemic isms in place it makes it really easy to subjugate and oppress groups of people I you know if you live in an urban area you're more likely to live near a toxic dump site you're more likely to live near a liquor store you're more likely not to be able to access good quality food your stores the food quality is going to be poor and the cost of it's going to be higher you're more likely not to have adequate health care to take care of yourself and you're going to be tend to go only when it's an emergency or education for your children and education is deplorable and these are social determinants of health and a person's ability to just survive and thrive because when we think about equity all equity is is a just and inclusive society where everyone has the right to survive I like to say survive and thrive other people would just say to succeed and be successful in their life so all of those communities historically are structured with a compounded institutional impact all those institutions impacting them negatively to keep people from succeeding and then we blame them for it and say if you would work harder which I always thought was funny because the labor and wealth of this country is built on the backs in the institution of slavery and I don't know any harder work that you could come up with and then other groups of people too as they came into the country but the wealth of this country and the world people need to understand this is built on the back of slaves and the Rockefellers and all those folks all those old monies are tied back into these systems of operation no you're you're right on and we're we're quickly coming up to the end of our first episode here but I want to end with a quote if I may and and there are people who may watch this who may find it hard to believe that I'm quoting this person the quote is a great nation does not hide its history it faces its flaws and corrects them this museum tells the truth that a country founded on the promise of liberty held millions in chains that was George W. Bush at the opening of the National Museum of African American History and Culture just September 24th of this year 2016 and I was impressed that at least his speech writers wrote a nice quote and I think he really did believe it Laura serves on the board and this shows that this can be a bipartisan issue it does not have to be a partisan issue we the more people we include in our society the stronger our society will be so I will say goodbye for now this is the heart of the matter and tune in for the next episode