Let's Talk: Conversations on Race

Season 3 begins with a tribute to Dr. Martin Luther King's Jr,   How extraordinary it was that King insisted that the movement he lead be nonviolent.  He witnessed gross injustice, but he never encouraged retaliation.  His March on Washington was the linchpin which finally moved JFK off the fence and motivated him to write the Civil Rights Act.  Where would we be if King hadn't lead this historic movement?

In this final episode of Season 2, I interview my husband, Dr. Marvin Doyley.  He talks about the benefit of growing up in Jamaica, where he never even thought about race.  This provided a strong foundation which helped him to navigate the racism he experienced in England and later, in America. 

I have been a vigorous defender of Black History Month, but I've changed my mind.  

We've seen racial protests, demonstrations, boycotts and riots for the last 100 years.   What have they accomplished - and is there an end in sight?  My son, Ben, joins me at the end for the last word.

In this episode, I interview Dr. Christopher House.  Dr. House resigned from the faculty of Liberty University, after former president Jerry Falwell Jr published a racist tweet.  He tells us what went down at Liberty, and then we delve into the good, the bad and the ugly of the church's involvement in slavery, the Civil Rights Movement and the current movement for racial justice. 

How can parents talk to their children about racism?  This week I speak with author April Randolph discussing how to teach our black children about the realities of racism, without instilling fear or anger, and how we can talk to our white children about being compassionate, aware anti-racists.

We are fortunate to live in a country with so many freedoms.  Nevertheless, racial bias runs deep.   In this week's episode, we look at where we are and how we got here -- and why we're still plagued with it.

Grassroots organizations are demanding that certain statues be removed; this is actually happening all over the Western world.  But while some applaud this, others fear the erasure of our history.  How do we determine which statues stay and which statues go?

In this final episode of season one, we invited Criminal Defense Attorney, John Bradley, back to finish discussing racial bias in the criminal justice system and what defunding police might look like.

In our last episode, we talked about the importance of having black friends.  The truth is, this is can be difficult.  There may be very few black people in your community, or it just may feel awkward.  But if we don't have black friends, it can be very easy to allow other people and the media to shape our view of black people, and racism will just be passed down from one generation to the next.

In this episode, Community Organizer Aisha Bussey joins me in discussing next steps following the murder of George Floyd.  As protests fade out and the nation goes back to semi-normal after COVID, what are some practical things we can do to bring lasting change?

The murder of George Floyd by a police officer sparked protests all over the world.  Some of the protests turned violent.  Though there is no excuse for rioting, these riots are symptomatic of deeper problems within the criminal justice system.  Let's not get distracted by the symptom, but rather go deep and find the cause.

In Central Park, a man asked a woman to leash her dog.  Rather than just saying, "Sure!" she called 911 and told dispatch that a black man was trying to hurt her.  She weaponized his color.  This was disturbing, but perhaps more disturbing was the fact many were more distraught over her treatment of her dog,  than of her treatment of the man.  

On February 23, 2020, Ahmaud Arbery was killed by two men who thought he looked suspicious.  These two men were only arrested when a video emerged - over two months later.  Ahmaud was black; the two men are white.  In this episode, I interview attorney, John Bradley, who talks about the case from a legal point of view and then we discuss racial bias in the criminal justice system in general. 

This is a  shorter version of a talk I gave at Rochester's Institute of Technology in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  In it, I discuss why we in America are encouraged to remember some events, like 9-11, but we're encouraged to stop talking about other things, like slavery, Jim Crow and current racial issues.  It's crucial for us as a people to remember all of our past, not so that we can become bitter, but so that we can better understand others -- and prevent history from repeating itself.

In this episode, we'll try to understand why more and more black athletes and celebrities are using their positions of influence to underscore racial injustice.