S2E11 - Blue Bracelets, Pussyhats, and Other Good Intentions: Where We Go from Here

In this episode Chauncey Zalkin sits down with guest and advocate for Black women in the workplace, Jessica Pharm, to take an unflinching look at the complexities of race, gender, and trust for liberal America as we face Trump's second term.

Written, directed, and executive produced by Chauncey Zalkin. Intro/Outro sound engineered by Eric Aaron. Photography by Alonza Mitchell with Design Consulting by Paper + Screen.

Want to go deeper? Follow my Substack and don't forget to pledge subscription. (;

Want to see the episode? Subscribe to the Actual People YouTube Channel.

Follow us on Instagram for the latest updates and behind the scenes.

We want to hear from YOU so if you want to be a guest, have a pithy but kind retort, or for business inquiries, drop me a line.

Actual People, a Podcast
www.chaunceyzalkin.com

Chapters

• 0:00 Intro
• 8:31 The Interview

Transcript

 You're trying to speak for the collective of women and our experiences are diverse and so I don't need you to crochet a vagina for me like, what are we doing? 

 Welcome back to the podcast. It's been a little bit of a delay. I know.  I got norovirus and 10 days of my life just completely disappeared.  But before we start the interview, I have some exciting news and a big decision to make. 

I have been accepted Into the master's in mental health counseling program at Northwestern. university. 

I can't believe it.  I don't have a masters. And for years, I tried to think about what kind of masters I would get. I've wanted to get an MFA in writing. I looked at getting an MBA at one point. But I finally at the ripe age of 51 landed on what I want to do the rest of my life. In addition to writing and having this podcast, and I'm waiting on a second, much less expensive school. But right now, my truth today is that I would really like to go to Northwestern for a lot of reasons. One is because it's online so it's much more flexible with my schedule as a parent. Also, because there are two different occasions to spend time in situ in Chicago. So even though it's an online program, it is also a low residency program. There are some great research and publishing opportunities and that just really sparks my interest.  I also love the way admissions has handled prospective students. It feels very welcoming, and very thorough. And. that gives me a lot of confidence. Not all schools are like that. And that comes through a lot in my book, you know, you're dealing with people's mental health. 

So you want to know  that that program cares about the mental health and the experience of people who are entering this career  through their institution. So that's awesome. Um, but at the same time, It is. very expensive. So I am considering, and this for me it takes a lot of  humility and vulnerability, but I am considering starting a GoFundME because quite frankly, it is actually necessary that I switch careers, not only to move into this new era of my life, where I'm helping people and exploring my deep abiding interest in psychology and sociology and philosophy, but also because marketing is not a viable career and not a fulfilling career, both, neither financially or intellectually is it fulfilling or helping me so I have realized that that era has ended and that I am entering a new era and letting go of a lot of things that have happened in the past in order to face a new future for myself and for my family and my kids. 

 It's like I'm stepping into a new power for myself. Ready to shed the old. I like brand because I love storytelling. I love the visual world, but I never really liked selling or marketing. And it's not a very comfortable place for me to be so to me, this is a move towards a more integrated part of myself where I can have meaningful and human interactions with people which hopefully will bring meaning and depth. And positive change into the life of my clients so I'm very excited about this opportunity, but it's also overwhelming because there's lots of number crunching to do and a lot of thinking to do. I'm still a little bit in the information gathering  phase to see if it's all  viable for me. 

So that's my big news. 

Now about the interview today. The interview today is with a woman named Jessica Pharms who's bio on LinkedIn reads that she is “centering the black experience in the workplace,” and with 34,000 plus followers, she's definitely struck a chord with her audience of which I am an active, engaged member. I had been following her for quite some time. I love her honest unfiltered take on her experience. 

I recorded this episode right after we got the election results and I intended it to air on Inauguration Day but because I was sick, I couldn't. I edit my own episodes and I love doing it because I learned so much in the re-listening, and I understand the conversation in such a deeper way because I'm listening to it with a very close ear which is very different from when you're in situ in the moment having that conversation. So when we were in situ in the moment having that conversation. It was a very heated moment between black women and white women  in a general sense because black women had overwhelmingly voted for Kamala 

A lot of the black community felt very betrayed because a majority of white women voted for Trump which signaled to black women that having a white male felon sex offender in office was a better choice than having a black woman who would fight for our rights in office. It was like a bucket of water thrown in your face for a lot of people. So we're having this conversation right after this moment and she doesn't know me and I don't know her. 

So we are coming at this conversation, not just as two individuals, but as two people who inevitably represent  a group. So I felt that inside my core. That's what I was feeling when I entered into this interview. Nevermind the fact that we agree; I brought her on because I love her posts and I love how she cuts right through the bullshit and sheds a strong light on the hypocrisy and systemic racism inherent in the workplace dynamics and policies. I love her take no prisoners, does not suffer fools gladly approach. No fear, no compromise. 

But again, at this point in history, we are relying on generalities, thanks to algorithms and a confluence of other factors even though  we all have different experiences based on race, gender, our personal circumstances, socioeconomic factors, many different nuances of our experience come into play, and the overgeneralization has caused real problems and so I feel a sense of urgency that while honoring cultural and racial and gender identity and individuality, we need to connect more with what brings us together than what pulls us apart. Jessica is not an avatar of her race and gender and I am not an avatar of my race and gender, but we are actual individual people. 

This interview was much more of a dialogue than anything else. I do want to give you a warning while you're listening: There are definitely some polarizing comments in this interview.  About the radicalization of men in the culture, about conservatism, about white supremacy, but also about DEI programs, about white women and culpability, about questioning motivations and actions as performative, and most difficult for me about the #metoo movement, which I want to state for the record, I find to be one of the most impactful and most necessary movements along with Black Lives Matter to come along in the last 10 years. Nothing's without its flaws and complexities, but I do not want to take away from these efforts nor the efforts of DEI in bringing forth a more representative, diverse, and just world. This is just a conversation, but admittedly, it's a difficult one. But also necessary in order to get to the other side. Hopefully it will stimulate your thinking and contribute to our future as more and more conversations like this open up between individuals.  

At the end of the day, in spite of all the terrible things that we see laid out in our immediate future, we can't react to every single thing every single day, but instead as a lot of people are pointing out, stay the course, build coalitions, build our vision for the future, instead of just reacting to someone else's. Instead of just reacting. period. Anyway, here's the interview with Jessica Pharms. Take a listen.

 I have so much that I want to talk to you about, especially now. Right. I mean, 

yeah,  it's a lot, a lot, a lot going on, a lot, a lot to process.  

Yeah, I'm just going to jump right into it.  I really enjoy what you say I'm always like, yeah, I completely agree with everything she's saying.

 I want to know how you got to  start using LinkedIn as a place to talk about this stuff. 

When I first got into the workforce as a young person, I really subscribed to the ideas of professionalism which is rooted in white supremacy.

I really tried to assimilate as best I could in order for me to get ahead because that's the way I was taught.  but throughout the years, there were a lot of things that I was experiencing. In the workplace, oftentimes I was the only Black woman on my team and I came to realize that I am a Black woman 24/7. I don't go to work, just like with anyone else, I don't hang up my skin when I go to work. I am a mosaic. I'm a human being.  Over time I  just started saying, ‘hey, like this is the truth. This is how things are.’ And I started writing more and more about my experience in the workplace and talking about things like, we call them microaggressions, even though aggressions aren't really micro, but we talk about microaggressions in terms of how we wear our hair, how we show up.  I just started talking about how black professionals navigate in the workplace is very different than white people. Just everything, and at first  I got a lot of pushback where people are like, this isn't Facebook. Don’t talk about these things. We don't want to hear that here. And I was like, no, we need to hear that here. Like we need to bring this conversation to LinkedIn because this is impacting our ability to show up at work and to do our jobs. Companies and leaders need to know this. Eventually it was an evolution of just writing content and putting more and more of my experience in it and just being bold about talking about these issues.

How has it impacted your career? 

Initially people said, don't talk about things like politics because someone may see it and it may impact your ability to get a job and whatever and at first that, that sort of scared me a little bit, but I realized like, That's such an empty threat. That's just a threat so you can silence your voice. And I've never had that be an issue. By the way, me putting this content out is a form of networking. When I was doing a podcast and website, all of this is networking. I'm like my, in fact, my follower count has boomed. I think I'm over 30,000 people who follow me. I get anywhere between 15 to 20 requests a week. My DMs are always exploding to the point where  I can't respond to everybody. I just get DMs every single day. I've been able to find different opportunities. I've been brought on as guests on different podcasts. I've been interviewed for articles. It has never impacted my ability to network. If anything is actually helped because it's been a big part of my brand. And I will always tell people that if someone doesn't want to work with you because you're out here speaking your truth. That’s a reflection of them, not you. It also shows your boundaries. So if someone's going to hire you, they know they can't get away with certain things. 

Right

And I want you to know that. That's the right person for you then. You don't want to have the boss that's going to be like, Oh, I can get away with some things.

Even subconsciously, they're going to stay away from you. And so you're going to vet people that way, I think. 

Right, exactly. It's a great vetting tool. 

Like when I got my current job, I told my boss at the time, I say, you know, you go out on my website, go out on my podcast, go on LinkedIn. If this doesn't vibe with you, then we don't need to move forward with this. And it's been great. So I just tell people, keep doing it. Do you work in HR? I work in HR. my background is talent acquisition, HR.  learning and development. That's what I'm in now. So I,  I have a very robust knowledge in those fields and I've been very well, I mean, HR really makes sense for this. Cause it's human resources and how we deal with people.

And I know having worked in advertising for a long time, I don't work in advertising anymore, but  the HR function is usually to support the corporation and  legal ramifications to any sort of complaint. And I, myself, have been, um, I've experienced a lot of times where I'm being pushed out of a company because I'm, I'm, uh, outspoken and I'm female and I'm, they want me to shush and, um, and I've seen other happened to so many other women in, in, in advertising.

I mean, it happens in every single industry, obviously. And what happens to black women and black men are all probably different. What happens to white women is also different.  We have  polarized everybody so much.  Everybody has their own nuanced experience of the world. I'm curious what you think  DEI has helped or hurt  people in trying to be seen as full human beings. that are not like silenced or diminished. Yeah, so I know people think that because of my work that I'm like in the DEI space, I'm not. My background is very rooted in HR and everything that goes underneath that.

I'm not, I'm just curious what you think. No, no, no, I'm just, I'm just trying to give that disclaimer.  Me personally, I, my relationship with corporate DEI is complicated. I personally have said that I don't really believe in corporate DEI. Um, a lot of it just feels  performative to me.  A lot of corporations have DEI programs because they think they need to,  and these programs are not rooted in systemic change and therefore nothing really changes, you know?

When I see a company that has BRGs, which is business resource groups, and,  a woman's night or this, that, and the other, all those things to me are cute. But they don't move the needle on anything. They don't address systemic issues. And by the way, when we talk about DEI, we're not talking about just race.

People always get caught up in the racial aspect. DEI, when it's done right, it benefits women. It benefits people with disabilities. It benefits people over the age of 40. It benefits veterans, it benefits a lot of people. And because we're a mosaic, there's intersectionalities with all of that, that benefits people.

But we get so caught up in  quotas. How many women can we hire? How many black people can we hire? And it's like, okay,  are we looking at the E and EI? Are we looking at equity? What does equity look like in your organizations? That's going to be different. What does inclusion look like

at every level of the company.  Because many companies don't do that, it  becomes a waste. So my relationship with the EI is complicated for those reasons. 

  Like greenwashing. Anytime you make things too sterile and too academic  if it feels like you're throwing somebody a bone do you have any thoughts about what would be a good way to have a more progressive  work culture? Do you have thoughts about what would be a good way forward?

We have to see leaders really leading the charge on DEI. We need to see companies standing 10 toes down on their DEI .  Let's look at  How are we recruiting people? How are we hiring people? Where are we looking for people? Are we building external relationships with different organizations to pull in diverse pipelines of talent? And then once we get them in, are we looking at the equity piece? I'm going to need different services or different help than someone maybe like yourself and making sure that those resources and support is available.

And then do we feel included? What does inclusion look like? And talking to people, talking to people like me and you cause what you may need to be included may not be something that I need  not blanketing it with, Oh, here's a BRG for you to be in. , that doesn't make me included on this specific team or this work. Really making that company wide  that's the best way to really start making change.  Little things is what adds up. Don't back down when people are pushing back against your DEI program, really come with the numbers. I think that's a really great step to making DEI work for everybody. 

That's a really great answer. you brought up ageism. I've eked out those last jobs that make any sense for me. I don't want to be the CEO of a company. I don't want to be the CMO of a company because it's so ageist that  I had to start thinking  do I even want to be in that room?  I never liked corporate America  in the first place.

I never really enjoyed it. I worked in agencies, so we were always corporate America adjacent. We served corporate America, but we had a creative environment, which in a way was even more toxic, because it was  even more  hypocritical, where we had to be silenced a lot, but we were supposed to be literally a voice of expression. I find that  even if all these things exist, groups or accountability,   the conversations in the hallways and the things that bosses would whisper  like, don't talk about that.  I don't even know how to parse it all out. But  there were lots of, side conversations and side expressions and looks that kept everybody under control in a certain way. And what we were trying to do was communicate the voice of the consumer, but that often was relegated to racial stereotypes and trite cliches about whole swaths of the population.

And a lot of people, were complicit in this. I mean, it wasn't just the white men,  complicit in this oversimplification  of  human beings. And I found that to be a very uncomfortable place to be. So it's sort of like there's this unspoken code of the way you're allowed to speak about culture and people that doesn't really align with this idea of inclusion.

Like, real inclusion.  A real diversity of different kinds of voices and people being respected. It's still very much of white male patriarchal view of the world that is embedded so deeply in corporate America.

I would agree with that.  I'll also say   oftentimes when you are the only one in a room,  it can be very hard for your voice to be heard. So even if there was a black person in a room developing a marketing plan and something comes up,  is that person empowered to say something? 

No. 

Are they in a position where they can speak up without there being any sort of retaliation? I mean, I know for a fact, I've been in rooms where I was the sole person and something will come up and I have to think, okay psychological safety is important. Am I safe enough to speak up? Am I in a position where I can say something without worrying about whether or not I have a job? And sometimes a lot of people, and I get this all the time  people message me where they're like I'm not in a position to do what you do. I'm not in a position to speak up because of this, that, and the other. So yeah, sometimes, you know, these things get pushed out. These generalizations happen because people  don't necessarily feel empowered to do anything about it. 

Yeah, absolutely. And I feel like, because you need to make money at the end of the day. You need to,  you need to get a salary. We don't live in this Pollyanna ish world. It's a racist and sexist society. And now we're dealing with that being turned into  legal mandates I'd like to pivot and maybe talk about what you're thinking in these days following the election and how you feel about how everything panned out at the end here

When the election results came in,  I was  on the phone with people and I had been trauma dumped on.  A lot of people  are genuinely very scared about what this can mean for them  it is a privilege when people will talk about why don't worry about politics. I don't have to worry about who's in power, but there are a lot of us who are worried  I've actually taken a few days off just to kind of collect my thoughts.  The results are disappointing. They're not surprising.  I'm not surprised that she didn't win. I had a feeling that she wasn't going to, but her loss sends one hell of a message to not just us  in America, but to the world. And even  as a woman, as a black woman, seeing that, I mean, she was qualified she was not perfect. Like, you know, we'll need to be perfect. No, no one's perfect. She wasn't perfect, but in terms of qualifications, Kamala Harris was qualified in every sense of the word for the job, just qualifications.

And we collectively decided to rehire a convicted felon who still has charges pending against him, who is liable for sexual assault. I mean, most people forget this, but his first wife accused him of raping her, of raping her. All of this has been out  in the ether for a long time. And we decided to elect someone who other people who worked with him said, look, you, you don't want to bring him back on his man. It was a tyrant. He's not capable and we did that. So it sends a message to me. About what does my future look like in the United States, as someone who wants to start a family,  am I safe enough to do that here?  What are the next steps that I need to do in order to protect myself and my family?

Fortunately, I do live in a blue state, so that gives me some buffer for right now. But,  Again,  longterm, what do I need to do to shore up and protect myself? I know a lot of black women, especially are just kind of in this healing phase where we're just not really doing anything right now.

We're just kind of healing and then kind of regrouping internally to see what we need to do.  And going from there. So that's, that's all I got for right now  about the results of the election. I will say this though. Um,  um, just that  there's going to be a case of buyer's remorse. That's gonna happen pretty, like, maybe in the next 2 3 years after he's in, it's gonna be a case of buyer remorse.

Right now, those who voted for him are happy, you know, they, they think they won something. Um, but everybody, even those people who voted for MAGA, are going to eat shit.  But maybe that's necessary. One of the things that I said on LinkedIn is that for years we've been telling people don't eat shit. Shit's gross.

It's not good for you. But you have a lot of people who are like, I want to eat shit. I want to eat it. I want to eat it. And now you're going to eat it.  And hopefully once you're done eating it, you're not gonna like the taste of shit anymore. 

The optimistic side of me is like hitting rock bottom  like, okay, you wanted this, you wanted this, , you want to really see what happens because it really does impact everyone.  I almost had this    Burst of energy the next day of like, okay, maybe now we can cross through all these divisions and this false binary of people being on this side or that side, even though it seems  counterintuitive, because I felt like we need to actually  Make our own future and make our own connections to  move forward.

We have to stop looking for somebody to take care of us and be a leader because our leaders have so completely failed us that we're now like, boom, okay. Now it's either do or die and we have to stop pointing fingers. I mean, But then, then this thing happened, where I went on TikTok, because I'm starting to do TikTok a little bit to promote my podcast, and I saw this thing about these blue bracelets, and I was like, okay, I'm not a big bracelet wearing type of person, but I just saw one thing about it, and I was like, okay, these people are trying to signal to each other I did not vote for him, right?

Then I see a lot of Black women coming up and being very angry about the blue bracelets, that the blue bracelets is a white woman thing, Virtue signaling or performative, and I'm like, I'm just watching this whole, I'm like, okay, and there's a lot of anger towards white women. Then I go look at the polls and it looks like around 80 something percent of black women voted for Kamala and more like over half of white women.

I was like, oh, okay. Yeah.  I live in Raleigh, North Carolina, but  I'm from. Miami,  Miami was a complicated place,  I spent almost 20 years in New York City. I grew up in a very diverse, blue household  and this is a newish life for me to live in the South, and this still is a little tiny blue dot in a purpley reddish state  that went to Trump, but, if we keep being so angry at each other Then it's going to get worse.

And so I'm like, OK, I guess we're just back to that more division.  I don't represent the white woman in the swing state that voted for Trump.  I have had conversations with black people who did not vote for Kamala and have their reasons, which I don't agree with.     It's so dangerous that we're staying in this caricature place about people.  Not everyone of the same gender or skin color and think the same way.  All these things have been   false polarities.  I get it  but  if we don't find a way  to move forward and be progressive and come up with a new candidate in the next four years  and fight together against the real enemy, then  We're just, we're fucked forever. If we hate each other all the time, how is this going to change? That's how MAGA  formed in the first place. What can we do now to  not  perpetuate this hate cycle that Donald Trump has latched onto so successfully? 

Well, , I'm going to speak very generally here   because every individual black woman I can't speak for, but I will say that, by and large, black women don't hate white women. We just don't trust white women. And so when you constantly look at the exit numbers, and you look at  the numbers of white women who voted for him starting in 2016, those numbers have gone up.

Up, up, up, up, up. And  Black women are constantly being pulled into these social movements. We are constantly being asked to be these labor ,  being on the front lines for equality. We're doing our part.  Overdoing our part . We're pulling our weight.

And so when we see that over half of white women  Are putting race before gender and voting for this man to come in, which race before gender. But these women are  not going to be able to have abortions, you know, I mean, they don't care about that because white supremacy comes first. They're voting to keep their husbands and their sons in power so that they can stay in power.

That's the power of white supremacy. And so when I see that, it makes me go, okay, can I trust you? Okay. Because when we talk about abortion bans, when we talk about access to birth control and reproductive rights, yeah, of course, it impacts all women. But, black women,  And poor women take the brunt of that.  We take the brunt of that. And so when we are out here fighting for rights and we are saying, Hey, look, we need to come together as women to stop this from happening, just as women, let alone race. And when we see white women, by and large, still supporting the patriarchy that keeps them in a position of privilege  that makes us not trust white women. And so when you have white women who are saying, okay, I'm going to wear this bracelet to signify that I'm safe or that I've voted for Kamala, again, that goes back to what I've said. No one's asking for that. Like, I don't need you to wear a bracelet.

 I've been Black for a long time. And I know when I'm talking to a White person, whether or not they're safe. We all do.  And to be Black is to know White people. We have to know you because we have to, we have to go through White people for everything. For housing, for food, for jobs, everything. So we know how to navigate White spaces in a way that is safe.

That you don't have to understand. So I don't need you to wear a bracelet to indicate anything to me. What I needed you to have done  is to get out there and work on your women. To get them to understand. Yeah, but that's the thing. I don't feel like white women are my women.  I don't personally feel that way.

Individual white women, we're speaking collectively here. What we needed was for progressive white women to be, to be out there and in the face of other white people and saying, hey look, we need you to own this. And it didn't feel like that was happening. So the bracelet thing just comes off. 

Okay, I have a question about that because I did not volunteer at the polls. There are women, white women  who were out there canvassing, knocking on doors, they did all that stuff and now for them and they want to wear a blue bracelet that you know, I think it's just like Those people, some people, some white women did stuff.  really pushed hard for Kamala. They did. So, I just feel like they're not the villains here, you know? 

No one, no one is saying that they are the villains. No one is saying that we don't recognize that, but again, when over half of the white women voted for Trump, it still sends the same message.

 The bracelet thing , it's like when, , when the Me Too movement started popping off and you had white feminists who hijacked that movement  and moved it away from what it was supposed to be about   

Here's a little interjection in the middle of the interview. I did not have any idea that the #MeToo movement was actually started by a black woman named Tarana Burke in 2006 and was popularized a decade later when a celebrity, Alyssa Milano, used it to encourage women in Hollywood to out the powerful Hollywood men that abused them. Um, and then onward at spread. And I don't think one negates the other, but according to Wikipedia, Alyssa Milano learned it was started by Tarana Burke in 2006 and credits her.  

Um,   but like a lot of what causes the tension between white and black women, white women we're credited with a term and a lot of the issues that impact black women and girls fell to the wayside and were left in the margins. and this perpetuates the problem of racism as it intersects with feminism that has been around forever. And I've talked to countless white women who are totally unaware of the nuances of this. 

And I myself didn't know this fact  until this conversation  but that does not take away from the power of the me too movement. Or Tarana Burke. or Alyssa Milano 

there was one white woman who we're going to crochet   vaginas so we can signify and I'm like, well, have you talked to black women about what they're looking for. Have you talked to brown women, indigenous women, queer women? You're trying to speak for the collective of women and our experiences are diverse. And so I don't need you to crochet a vagina for me like, what are we doing? I need access to reproductive care.  

Well, I mean, look, during George Floyd something that I really did not like was all of a sudden, these white women who are like, Oh, I'm going to be "anti racist!" There was a woman in my neighborhood who  formed a group she's like let's unpack our racism. It was  very forced and artificial. I don't think that woman's doing anything now. I think it was just a little  thing for her to do but the Me Too movement affected lots of women were raped by Harvey Weinstein and victimized at work. 

 The Me Too movement was initially started by a Black woman named I forget, but she, she started it, she was a counselor and so she used this phrase to relate to other women cause she herself was a survivor of sexual assault. I forget her name. I think it's Tanya Burke or something like that. Okay. And so that's how it started. And it catch a flame. And I would say I did not know that. Yeah. And on one hand of it, I get it, like there was, there was a time that you had to catch these men. We had to hold people accountable for what was going on and that in and of itself was great. And that was, it was great. But then what happened was that you had white women, celebrities, white feminist, whatever, who caught on to the Me Too movement and start steering it away from this intentional purpose.

Had white feminists using this as a springboard for their own ideas. You even had a few who were calling out black women saying, we need you to align with us on this, but not talking to us about what it is that we need.

Black women are disproportionately killed by our partners.  We suffer abuse. We go through all of that. A lot of those things are not talked about in the media in that way. And so when we see that happening, we see ourselves being kind of swept under the rug, our needs and everything just being dismissed, that becomes a problem. And that goes back to the whole Trump thing. You know, the bracelets, the whole, you know, I remember Nancy Pelosi was wearing kente cloth when George Floyd got shot. When George Floyd lost his life and  Black Lives Matter thing exploded a lot of performative things  were happening and it wasn't what anyone was talking about. I remember they canceled Cops. They brought that back on. They got rid of Paw Patrol. They, you know, all these companies. They did not. Yes, they did. There was a lot of performative things that blew up. You had companies racing to show that they weren't racist. You had companies like Microsoft trying to give grants to black owned businesses All the things that they should have been doing before George Flloyd, but now they're doing it  and then ramping up their DEI programs. A lot of those people who were hired in those DEI programs have been laid off because again These companies have now shed  their program. It was all just performative. .We wanted to see systemic change. 

I didn't need to see Nancy Pelosi with kente cloths. I don't need to see feminist crochet pretend vaginas. We don't need to see bracelets. Things were happening  to us that weren't including us. 

In the Sisters of 77,  the  second wave feminist movement, black feminists were outshouted by the white feminists. We don't all have the exact same problems, but we all have a big problem right now. 

We all have a big problem, but as a black woman, my problem is gender, is race, is class  all these things that intersect with one another and it's a heavy burden.  You have a lot of black women right now who are just frustrated. They are exhausted. They're lashing out. I expect that to perhaps calm down in the next few weeks or what have you, but  as a black woman, black women have the right to be upset about the results of this election, the turnout, who voted for who, it is incredibly frustrating  and what is happening is just black women  are just like, I'm over it. I'm done. I'm looking inward. And I don't think I mean, yes, I do agree that we, as a community need to start kind of shoring up our own resources and our communities and looking inward for at least a time but if we are to fix this at some point there needs to be some bridging of community.  That was happening. It wasn't like it wasn't happening. 

We need to start seeing people as individuals  because it's a very lonely place,  the last eight years  where I feel like people just don't trust each other in general. Every individual doesn't trust any other individual. Everybody hates each other so much and  that has been this opportunity for fascism. 

Yeah, I think things have become so tribalized and politicized that people are just kind of sticking in their own groups of people that they trust.  I've been guilty of it myself. I've been very close to other black women because I feel safe there and that's probably where I'm going to be for some time,  the tribalism started well before Trump came in, but Trump has definitely. Definitely seized on it and made it worse. And it's only going to get worse because everything is so hyper politicized. You can't talk about anything without politics being pulled into it. I mean, I wrote a post about free student lunch. Why kids should get free food.  I don't think that is a Republican or Democratic issue, but we live in a time now where everything is so hyper politicized that you can't talk about it without people accusing you of being a liberal  

if you care about us surviving as the human race, that makes you liberal, or, it's just weird. It seems, the conservative idea seems really hateful. It's really hateful. 

It has veered into hate. It has veered into bigotry.  There was a time where you could have been a Republican and that would have been fine with me because I knew what Republicans stood for. And you could be conservative and say, hey, look, these are my beliefs and it didn't have to veer into this weird homophobic, racist, sexist, but that's no longer the case now. Where now you say to me that you are conservative or you voted for Trump, my mind goes towards all this other stuff because that's what I've seen.

Yeah, voting for Trump is a very clear indication that you are racist and 

all those things. Because you looked at this man with everything that he has going on, and that was not a deal breaker for you, and you voted for him.  It's sad that  we are at this point where, after he won, I was on a thread where people were like I'm living in California or  Washington state, I'm never leaving. You know, thank God it was a blue state, I'm never leaving and that that's tribalism, right? That's that's going to become increasingly more of a problem where people are like, I don't want to leave my spot Because i'm so scared of  going through a red state. I'm so scared of talking to people ...

that's dangerous. I think 

that's very dangerous. 

I'm having the opposite reaction. I want to find out why those people voted that way  I want to understand it. , I'm an individual, like, you're an individual,  you wouldn't know by looking at me anything about my life, or what, what makes me comfortable, where I feel uncomfortable, what interests me, what makes me feel safe,  I  never felt really  comfortable myself in super, super white environments. But navigating as an individual, and I'm sure other people feel this way, whatever their experience is,  has become really weird.  I don't have a tribe or a group other than my little kids and I but I just find my allies wherever I find them. And I find it to be a very isolating world right now where people are so  judgmental and make such assumptions about one another. I don't think we can go on like that. I still think that we have to bridge these gaps and see people as people because 

Yeah, I agree. I think one of the one of many reasons why Trump was able to come into power is that we live in a very individualized society here in America, where people are really kind of looking for  their interests or people who are like them and their interests and we don't have  the mindset that other cultures do, or we look at that village mindset, where it's collected collected. We don't have that here in America, which is really unfortunate because there are some of us who do, like, I believe in the collective mindset that if my neighbor is doing well, that I'm doing well, and my neighbor is not doing well, that I'm not doing well. It's fracturing across gender divides, racial divides, class.   I don't pretend to have all the answers.   What should be happening is people talking to one another without feeling like they're going to be attacked.

I don't have a problem talking to someone who voted for Trump because I do want to know, why did you  you have people voted for him because they're struggling right now and Trump is making promises on the economy.   They're making these claims that they can't necessarily back, but if you're struggling, that sounds good to you.

 What needs to happen now, we can't look to our leaders on the top 'cause they're, they're about division. Trump and his people are about division. They don't care.

It has to start from the ground up. We have to start letting people in. Right now it hurts, it's raw. And I know I've said some things about being inward and I'm probably gonna be that way for a while but we need to bring people in. We need to start bringing and start having conversations and building community.

Now that was actually happening.  In, the 60s and 70s, , you had people like Fred Hampton, Malcolm X, and a few others who have started to realize that we have more in common than we don't, and they were assassinated. But, it is important  to build that coalition again because that was happening and the powers that be don't want that if I go to rural white people and say, Hey, look, you have more in common with black people than you do with the upper class, you know, right?

Um, right. Have you ever heard Jelly Roll?  

I heard of him. I've never listened to his music or anything like that. 

Well,  I really am not a country music fan  but I was really moved by him because he really represented the world that he lives in where a lot of people were devastated by drugs , joblessness and unemployment. And I actually feel sorry for  working class  white men who I used to not feel sorry for because I  think  these people are so lost. I feel like I'm in a happier place if I can have some empathy and compassion for people that are easy to push aside. A lot of those white men are becoming incels now  they don't feel that they belong anywhere and so they're like, fuck you, everyone, I'm going to become a neo Nazi and I'm going to lean into being a racist where that doesn't jelly Roll is not  that.  It doesn't have to be   this horrible direction of these really disenfranchised young white men that women, black and white, are moving away from in droves and they are becoming more isolated and more dangerous and more aggressive and have nobody to check, check and balance them out. And I just feel like anything we can do to try. I'm just tired of the hate. My Uber driver last week, she was a potential Trump voter and she's putting herself through law school. She's in her 40s. She's very White Southern. She said, I just come from a family, a long line of Republicans, but she also told me she voted for Obama and that she wrote Obama a letter begging him to beg his wife to run for office and she would have definitely voted for Michelle. So these things are so layered that, you know, it's like so many surprises inside that box of like why people are doing what they do.

And I just, I think because you have such a strong voice that  you could reach a lot of people  that still  might not quite get it. Those MAGA people, they found a group. Like a party for them like, Ooh, like,  they lift each other up in their small mindedness.They're  so excited. 

Professor Scott Galloway talked about this. He talks about the plight of young men in this country.  He really breaks it down as to what is going on with the men. And a lot of it is not just race. It's class too. But he talks about how  growing up men were promised things and they were promised that if they do this or do that, they'll get a wife, get  someone who's subservient to them, they saw their grandmother doing that, but  we got  more girls growing up. Going to college, they're educated, they're going into careers. Women make their own money now. The disparity between black women going to school, compared to black men. Too. . Yeah. Those things don't exist anymore. And so they're like, well, what do we do?

they're increasingly becoming frustrated. They're not dating. They're not getting married. They're not moving up. And so they are turning into incels And it's not just America's actually global.  In South Korea women are not marrying, we're not having children.

 Women are recognizing their power and men either have to evolve with that, and there are some men who have evolved, they're recognizing like, Hey, I want to move on. I got to evolve. But you have a lot of men that are stuck in their ways. And they think that someone like Trump is going to help them. And you know, they won't. But when it comes to working white men.   They think that they are entitled to privileges because they're white men and  those privileges have not manifested for them because we offshore manufacturing jobs education is too expensive. But instead of blaming corporations in the government for this inequality, they're looking at people of color, they're looking at women, and they're blaming their own people. Yeah. Immigrants. Instead of looking at what's really happening. I think I mean the problem is very intricate and complex more than what I can really speak to but we have to bring those people along.

It's not enough to isolate white men, for example, and say, well, you voted for Trump. The hell would you stay over there? No, no, no, no. We have to bring them in because the longer they stay over there, the more radicalized they're going to be. And they're going to be a problem for everybody else. They have to be brought along.

This is what I'm saying to you too, but about black women and white women  I really love women and  wanna be pro women,

 I would love to see  white progressive women, really being on the front lines with other white women. I want to see white progressive men being on the front lines. , you have a lot of white people who will say to me, I'm an ally. Being an ally is someone who's willing to be uncomfortable, willing to call out things, willing to decenter themselves in other people's narratives. And looking to bring other white people along on this journey. 

all white women are not a monolith too. 

They're not a monolith.

I had a pedicure today and I sat next to a woman and I just got the  spidey sense that she was a Trumper. She was a conservative woman  and I did say one little thing. I was like, yeah, it's, a tough week, you know,  I'm feeling a bit sad , I'm a  Kamala person.

And she just went, oh, well I hope something like, talk about the weather. I don't know what she did. She did this whole magic thing where she started talking about something completely different. I was like.  Uh, I think they're, they are not open to those kinds of conversations.  I don't understand what their motivation is unless they're willing to have a conversation about why they did it,  you need to talk to the people that are not MAGA But the people who are like, Oh, I, he's, he's terrible, but he's going to be great for the economy.

People are going to realize very quickly that they were sold a bag of goods. But what we need to do is not be like, well, I told you so  that doesn't help anybody now. Right... it's like you voted for him. He promised this. You see that it didn't work out, right? Let's come back over here and rebuild so that we can get the things that we want. Right now they think they won. They think everything is good. Let them see it.

Yeah, there's, there's levels to it. There are people who are just cultish.  They're MAGA no matter what. You can't really break them in. There's nothing you can do for those people. 

My half sister raised by a different mother lives in California. Her boyfriend is Mexican. He was going to vote for Trump by the way, and his whole entire family. She's very open to me for some reason and she's 20 years younger. She wanted to know about her policy. Anyway she ended up voting for Kamala and having him vote for Kamala but  they came to visit me last year and he was Very solidly pro Trump, because of things you just said, he wanted my sister to be serving him his meals.  His mom did that, so he wanted her to do that, and he was having a hard time accepting that we were in a new society where that was not going to happen for him.  

That, in and of itself, the whole man woman dynamic could be it's own... We have a generation of men who are struggling with this new transition that's happening in society where they are talking to women who are better educated than they are women who are making the same, if not more money than they are women who don't really need them  and,  are not going to put up with the same things that our mothers and grandmothers put up with because we don't have to

it's not as appealing. It's not as appealing as it used to be. 

And women are not interested in being mothers or, or even being married.  I'm 38. I don't have any children.  I would rather be a single mom at this point and just raise a child by myself than to be married to a man who thinks that I'm also his mother. 

I'm divorced when my kids were 14 months old. I don't have to pick up a grown up man's dirty socks. I just pick up the little tiny little baby socks. I'd rather it just be the child socks. 

Yeah. I grew up in a family where women marry young. My father's mother, she was 13 when they married her off. Sadly,  She had 13 kids before she was 30.  She had what really amounted to a third grade education. Not that she wasn't smart. She just didn't go to school and that was a common theme in my family where women were married off or married young, or had kids young by men that weren't viable  just , being dependent on a man  whatever that may look like, my mother married my father when she was 22.  She essentially allowed him to manage the finances and he wasn't very good at it. And I saw that and I was like I'd rather just.  Do it myself. I'd rather just be independent, because you have freedom as a woman, and I think a lot of us saw that growing up, and we're like, nah, I'd rather not deal with that.

So, it's a beautiful thing, and I encourage women to keep going. Don't let people make you feel ashamed. 

I'm just in an era in my life where I think I really want women to protect and care for other women. I am sorry on behalf of white women, which I hate to be on behalf of them. I really want women to protect women.  Women in general have been pushed aside. We have a chance at  a new era for women. 

It's not going to happen overnight.  I think what you're going to see is people starting to have these conversations because this is going to impact everybody.  I had hoped that Roe v. Wade would have been enough to at least not bring him back . Weird right? just to say, Hey, look, maybe not him. We may not be at the point when we can say all the things that we want, but at least not bring him back, I swear, I thought that that piece of it would have been enough for some women to say, you know. You got women bleeding out. You got women who are dying because they can't get access to reproductive care.

I think a lot of it's a lack of education. 

It is. 

 I think this is all a failure of education in this country.  I do. I agree with you. Your average person in Europe is more educated 

more educated.  It's scary how many people are just not educated. It's stunning some of the things that people think. People think and still believe  it's by design, which is why we're cutting funding to schools.

We want the less educated. , it's all the markers of fascism. It's almost  science fiction. Anyway I really respect you and the way you put yourself out there and tell people how you feel about your own experience. It’s super important for people to communicate their actual lives and their actual experiences.I'm always  trying to  break down my own preconceptions about things  I really just want to connect. 

I think it's important to learn from other folks  because everyone's life experience is different and it makes you a better person, even if you may not agree or you may not understand,. Yeah. That's not really the point. It's about listening.  because we are a mosaic and we have to start doing that, but we need to start doing it on the ground level. We can't wait for  these leaders to do anything  and they're not going to, and they're very out of touch.  Living real lives, they don't really want us to build  these coalitions on the ground because that challenges their authority and capitalisms.

It does.  So we have to start rebuilding these bridges and healing from this because this was catastrophic and it will continue to be until  people realize it and start making a change. Yeah. I have one last thing. I want to know what your plans are for the future. For 2025, what are some things that you're thinking about doing? . I'm just trying to see  where am I gonna be? There's been some talk from people in my circle about do we even want to stay in the States over the next few years. I don't know what that looks like. Not everyone can move, not everyone can get away, so we want to be sensitive to that. Right now, it's all kind of  unclear, 

There's not a lot of clarity right now, , we're in the middle of the action sequence in this story.  I'll probably know more  later but right now I'm still processing a lot of things. So that makes sense.  You and me both.  It was really great to connect with you. Maybe we'll do a follow up in six months.

See where we're at too. Yeah Okay, thank you so much, I'll talk to you soon you too. 

  You've been listening to Actual People. This show is written, directed, and executive produced by me, your host, Chauncey Zalkin. Show sound designed by Eric Aaron. Click on the link below to subscribe so you don't miss a single episode. And don't forget to leave a review. I'll be sharing my favorites.  You can find our socials and all links to deeper dives into these topics at chaunceyzalkin.

com and on my sub stack at chaunceyzalkin. substack. com.  Actual People is available wherever you get your podcasts.