EPISODE #3.1:

Women Fighting Racism with Tawana Bain 

Or listen to this episode on Apple Podcasts.

Tawana Bain, extraordinary entrepreneur and founder of the famous Derby Diversity Summit, offers advice for all podcast listeners who want to join the ongoing battle against racism in our companies, our communities, and our lives. 

And the timing is perfect for her insights. 

Since we began sheltering in place due to the pandemic, we have witnessed police killing a black man on a street in Minneapolis and a black woman in her apartment in Louisville Kentucky. We are all familiar with the world-wide uprisings and demonstrations that resulted from these acts. 

At the same time speakers eulogizing civil rights activist John Lewis reminded us of his courage, heroism and sacrifices as a warrior against racism. 

So, where do we stand now in eradicating racism in our country? Some have said we have made much progress since the historic march on Washington in 1963.

“Wrong,” according to my guest, Tawana Bain.

 “They have pulled the wool over white America’s eyes while black America looked like we had a mental illness. We looked like we were always making things about race.” 

Then the world witnessed the police brutality and incidents such as the dog walker in Central Park who threatened to call the cops because an African American birder asked her to put her dog on a leash.  

Tawana claims that now, for the first time in America, white women as well as black women are fed up. And, she says, the women will do something about it!

She offers insights and advice about what each of us can do to actively fight racism at work, at home and in our communities. 

Here is a snapshot of a few topics we cover in this podcast…..

• How white Americans have been duped into believing that the country was making great progress in eradicating racism 
• How black and white women working together can and are changing the trajectory of racism in the workplace and in the government
• Four areas we must address as we move forward to combat racism 
• Steps each of us can take to more effectively fight the racism that lurks in our workplaces and communities. 

Here are some links to free events and websites related to this episode: 
Join The War
Virtual PIVOTChamp Challenge
Digital Dialogue Series
Global Economic Diversity Development Initiative (GEDDI)

More about Tawana Bain

As CEO of NAC Tawana manages business development, market research initiatives and strategic direction of the firm. Tawana is a leading marketing strategist and visionary with a niche in streamlining outsourced services. In addition to NAC, Bain is Co-Founder of the U.S Economic Development Institute (U.S.EDI) – the go to organization for Economic Impact Data and trends in Supplier Diversity, serving both public and private sectors across the country. Bain’s’ clients include Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Humana, Volkswagen, Toyota, Stantec, CH2MHill, AECOM and a plethora of other corporations headquartered across the continental U.S. and Canada. Bain has been featured in Savoy, WE CEO and MBN USA Magazine for her work and success as an African American Women owned business owner and leader.

Tawana’s leadership skills have led her enterprise to receive National Recognition and Minority Supplier of the Year for Supplier Excellence by NMSDC, Regional Supplier of the Year by TSMSDC and the Diversity Excellence Award by One Southern Indiana Chamber of Commerce.

Tawana has over 15 years of experience in Business Process Outsourcing (BPO), Marketing Strategy and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). She is a graduate of Brockport State and holds a BA degree in French Communications with a minor concentration in Computer Science. She attended L ’Institute De Touraine in Tours, France, and accomplished proficiency in oral and written French Communications. She is the proud mother of two handsome and talented sons. 

EPISODE #3.1 TRANSCRIPT

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Welcome to the Conscious Culture Café, the podcast that explores how you can lean into your purpose, live your values, and enhance your social impact through your work. I’m your host, Kathy Miller Perkins.

I caught up with our guest today when she asked me to serve on a panel for a discussion entitled, Equipping White Women to Speak Up Against Racism. We started a conversation that I quickly realized I had to make into a podcast, so I can bring it to you, our listeners.

My guest today is one busy person. Tawana Bain is the CEO of New Age Communications, better known as NAC, which is a company that streamlines outsourcing services. She’s also co-founded the U.S. Economic Development Institute, which she describes as the go-to organization for economic impact data and trends in supplier diversity.

She’s been featured in many magazines and business publications for her work as a successful African American women-owned business leader, and that she is. She owns a restaurant, clothing stores, and recently she founded the Derby Diversity and Business Summit, which attracts minority business leaders from around the world for several days of panel discussions and networking. And this is going on against the exciting backdrop of the Kentucky Derby.

However, this year, the Summit was postponed due to COVID-19, but she didn’t sit still. She is taking advantage of the lag time to host the digital dialogue series to assist people with establishing new connections and resources while the world is transforming.

So here we go. Welcome, Tawana. Let’s start by talking about why you developed a panel discussion to equip white women to speak up against racism. Why white women?

Tawana Bain:

What I do know is that for the first time in America, white women are fed up. And by them being fed up, it’s going to force action by these men. We’re talking about going after a very long-standing system of which many white men are not willing to give up. And they’ve allowed us to believe that we were making progress while they continued to run the major corporations, to run our Congress, and to run our police departments that are policing and killing black bodies.

See, black women have been fed up a long time ago. But unfortunately, the media spun it and we became the angry black woman.

So there was, “Oh, she’s another angry black woman.” The difference is that the media is controlled by the men that these angry white women have to sleep with that night. But our white women are really running the home. That white man does not want to have to hear his wife pissed off.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

True.

Tawana Bain:

He does not, because the demands are going to come, like hold on a minute. And so now, the individuals behind the men who really orchestrated and made sure that the house stays neat and that he can focus on work are fed the hell up.

The media stations, the men in power, there is the angry wife that you’ve got to walk home to. No, I’m not cooking dinner. I’m not cooking for the rest of the week. Fend for yourselves. Have you fixed it yet? I’m still watching the same narrative across the news, and that wasn’t what I saw. That’s not what I saw on social media, babe.

You need to change that. Now listen, you got angry black women, you got angry white women because the men haven’t fixed it. Well now you got two groups of women that are pissed off. They’re going to be like, come on, man. Like we’re all struggling. Black women, we’re all upset.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Yes, exactly. So in your opinion, it sounds like, it’s really going to be the women who are going to push the change.

Tawana Bain:

Oh yeah. We always have and we always do.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

So women, both black and white will be critical to pushing for the race-related transformations that we’re already seeing, right?

Let’s talk more about the need for transformation. A few weeks ago, you wrote an article where you outlined what you think must happen for us to find a way forward. And as an aside to the listeners, you’ll read this short article at the end of the podcast so that everyone can hear all of it. However, for now, I want to mention that you described four quadrants that are critical for moving forward, criminal justice, media, political justice, and economic justice. Can you say more about this?

Tawana Bain:

So, I started with criminal justice, but the reality is there’s those four quadrants. It is how African Americans, black people are portrayed because if you’re not telling the correct story, then people are left to assume that what they’ve been told is true. It is important that people understand that the FBI produced a report and findings that they believe that the white supremacists have infiltrated the police department. That work was never completed because of the strongholds that are in places of power. We have to tell that story.

The other piece is the economic piece. We must demand equity in the top corporations running our country, where there is representation of black people. Well, how can you have all of these major corporations and have one black CEO? And I believe that there’s still one, I hope that there’s still one, but that’s it. How does that happen?

Kathy Miller Perkins:

That’s incredible.

Tawana Bain:

We have to undo banking laws and how things are structured in order to make it fair for black people to gain access to capital, loans, just a plethora of things that we talked about media, economic, criminal, and political, Congress. Everybody can say, we can’t be racist. We had a black president. The president does not make the laws, people. You have to understand that.

We need as a people to understand that the real power rests in Congress, and we plan to do something about that so that we can give more black people voices that can do things for black people that they know is healthy for them. It’s good for them. So no, nothing has ever changed.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

And that to me is the most devastating part of this whole thing.

Tawana Bain:

They’ve pulled the wool over white America’s eyes while black America looked like we had a mental illness. We looked like we were always making things about race.

I’ll tell you last week, Kathy, so, with this whole pandemic, and that’s the bittersweet beauty of COVID is because COVID forced the world to stop, it forced us to see things that normally would have been in our rear view mirror, on the treadmill of life. Because of the restaurant closures, there was a group created called Louisville Take Out. The irony about Louisville Take Out that made me stop and realize that, okay, I thought it was bad, but I didn’t realize it’s petty bad.

There’s one thing like severe major things like killing somebody. That’s awful, that’s terrible. But when you get to the petty bad where you can go in the group and say, do you know of any Italian restaurants? Do you know of any Asian restaurants? Do you know of any Latin restaurants or Hispanic restaurants? Do you know of any Greek restaurants? Never a battle of race. Honey, when they say, it didn’t matter if you were a white person or black person, do you know of any black restaurants? All hell broke loose.

Listen, and this Louisville take out group, they had to mute comments. Posts had to be deleted. The only time that happened is when you used the word black. There is an unhealthy, toxic boiling over between blacks and whites, even though all races and colors matter, but there’s nothing like the tension between these two races.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Speaking of tensions, let’s talk about a tragedy that happened here in our hometown Louisville, Kentucky. Breonna Taylor – she was killed by police when they executed a no-knock warrant in her apartment in March. And her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, called 911 to explain the situation to a dispatcher who hung up. He was calling out for help. However, he was arrested less than 20 minutes later after Taylor had been shot eight times by the officers.

His arrest was allegedly shooting at and assaulting a police officer. Walker said that he thought the police were intruders. The charges against Walker weren’t dropped until May of this year. Yet the investigation into the police has continued on throughout the summer.

Tawana Bain:

If you can arrest Kenneth without doing an investigation the same night that it all transpired, why can’t you arrest this cop months later? It makes no sense. It’s not equitable. Someone said to me when I read them that article, well, I don’t think that it’s just racist cops. I think it’s power-hungry cops. I said, let me ask you this question. If it’s just about being power-hungry, why aren’t they doing this in white neighborhoods?

Kathy Miller Perkins:

And the answer was?

Tawana Bain:

Good point.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

That is a good point. Well, sure, it’s about power, but I mean, that’s so integrated into the racial issues. It’s all about race and power, it seems to me.

Tawana Bain:

Exactly. Exactly.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

What happens now, Tawana? What can make a difference here in Louisville?

Tawana Bain:

What happens now is you have a lot of people that are trying to throw money to look like the good Samaritans. I don’t want you to throw your money. I want you to change the systems. I want you to start calling the races out by name. You have to start calling people out by name.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

What else can I do?

Tawana Bain:

This is the other thing is you’ve got to be willing to be uncomfortable. Amy Cooper showed America that black people are not mentally crazy when it comes down to trying to bring up race.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Yeah. Right.

Tawana Bain:

Because she showed what we’ve been trying to articulate, and it never truly made sense. Because it’s -but you are African American, so I don’t understand why that’s a problem. But when you see it in the context of how she used African American, it changed the game.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Yes. Agree. Say, for the listeners who aren’t familiar with that – can you describe what she did?

Tawana Bain:

Sure. So Amy Cooper had her dog unleashed in Central Park, in New York in an area that your dog is required to be on a leash at all times because that’s where birders go to watch and do birding. A black man who was birding saw her dog off the leash and walked up and asked Amy to put her dog on the leash. Because when your dog tears up and rips through the ground, birds will not come back to nest and it destroys a birding area.

She was upset that a black man asked her to follow the rules because her assumption is that she’s white and she doesn’t have to.

And she then proceeds to say, “If you don’t stop, I’ll call the cops.” And so what he did was he said, “Okay, well, if you’re going to do what you want to do, I’m going to do what I want to do.” And because he’s experienced so many dog owners doing this, he knows that dog owners don’t like for strangers to feed their dogs. So he carries dog treats in his pocket. And that is how he typically gets them to either leave the area or put their dog on a leash. So when he went to give the dog treats, she flips out and says, “Stay away from my dog,” which he never really approached. He just took the dog treats out. And of course dogs get excited.

And so then he realized when he saw how angry she became over the dog treat, I better start recording this, to really protect himself. Because as a black man, you know being alone with a white woman that gets hysterical is not going to end well if you don’t have proof. So as he raised the camera, her response back to him is, “If you don’t stop recording me, I am going to call the cops and tell them that an African American man is threatening my life in this park and recording me.” I don’t know if she said threaten before record, but at any rate…

So he said, “Fine, do whatever you’re going to do. Call the police.” Because in his stance, he was in the right, you’re breaking the law. He said, “I’m not going to allow you to threaten the color of my skin with the police against me.” So then she proceeded and actually followed through and called the police. And then the beginning was kind of calm, and her voice began to escalate and she became frantic yelling, “There’s an African American man threatening my life and my dog’s life in the park. Please get here quickly.”

And so what that showed America, not just black America, but also white America is so, oh, you do realize that the color of my skin and the officers – there is a strained relationship with police. You do understand that if you cry wolf and they come running, that I am most likely to be the one that has the consequence. So you do understand this. This is a thing. Oh, so we haven’t been making this up.

Tawana Bain:

My biggest thanks to Amy Cooper is for unveiling what black people have been told is not really happening all these years.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Well, so Tawana, hasn’t that unveiling happened before? I mean, what is it that it … It feels like this is a repeat of things that have happened before. What’s so different about this one?

Tawana Bain:

I think there’s a couple things that are going on. Again, the world has slowed down.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Okay. Absolutely.

Tawana Bain:

We have information and access to information in narratives that allow us to form our own opinions, as opposed to only media outlets that have already formed the opinions when they’re providing us with the information.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

So you’re talking about social media?

Tawana Bain:

Social media has allowed us to see things in real life happen, unedited.

You can’t make me believe what I just heard and saw, because I saw it in the full scope of what transpired for myself.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Yes.

Tawana Bain:

I believe the other thing that has changed is that the new generation, as much hell as they can sometimes give us, the millennial generation, I admire.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Yeah, so do I.

Tawana Bain:

Because they have grown up with so much access beyond America to seeing people live their real lives through Snapchat feeds and Facebook live streaming and reality TV that they’re not buying the BS that previous generations were sold on how bad other races are or how different other races are.

And so they have said to the Gen Xers ,myself, and to the Baby Boomers, and to the silent generation, no, we’re not doing this. You guys need to clean up your act. It’s almost like the wife that finally looks at the husband and says, “You know what? You’re a drunk. You need to stop drinking.”

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Yeah, great analogy.

Tawana Bain:

And I’m done with you. And I am done with pretending that you don’t have a problem. They saw what happened to George Floyd, and they were outraged because they had already seen what happened to Colin Kaepernick, when Colin Kaepernick as a black man took a knee in peace.

And so they said, if we can’t do it peacefully, then how can we do it? He took a knee, but it was the white man’s knee that killed a black man that it actually took for America to wake up when that younger generation said, America, you’re drunk, you’re sick. You have a problem. And you’re going to go to AA and we’re going to protest across every state in this country until somebody makes you get help.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Are white millennials doing the same?

Tawana Bain:

The beauty about white millennials is– it’s interesting because you don’t want to tell somebody not to see color. They see color. But although they see color, they see their similarities. Other generations see color and see their differences. So they’re fighting and they’re standing in front of their black brothers and sisters because they are watching the injustice that’s happening to them day in and day out.

For some reason, we’re so siloed in our generation and our bubbles with our only white friends or our only black friends that we don’t have the same scope and the same perception, because we’re limited to who and what we surround ourselves with, from our dinner parties, to what the news stations that we listen to, to where we eat, to where we socialize.

Millennials hang out and they intersect and they blend and they’re comfortable in their own skin around this race or that race, or this gender or that gender, or how this group identifies versus how they don’t, right? In our generation, you still have gay men that are on the down low, right? Refusing to come out.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Yeah, exactly.

Tawana Bain:

Right. It’s very difficult to look at it. I love it when they’re like, “Yeah, I’m gay. My parents disowned me, but I don’t have time for that.” They do not have time for our mental drunkenness. They don’t have time. It’s like, you guys are so busy judging us, but you guys are the ones that are sick. We watch how you treat each other.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Is this a developmental stage that we go through or do you think they’re going to keep doing it? I hope they keep doing it.

Tawana Bain:

I don’t know whether they’re going to keep it up or not.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

I’ll tell you what scares me the most, Tawana, is that yes, we have taken a time out. And I think as awful as the COVID-19 is, it has made us take a time out. But will we remember? Will we learn? I mean, that’s what scares me that once this has passed that all of a sudden we’ll have memory loss or amnesia about what we learned during this time. I don’t know. I don’t want to be skeptical, but I worry about that.

Tawana Bain:

That’s a really good question. I had not thought that far ahead, but it’s kind of like we can forget about somebody that we met a long time ago that didn’t have a big impression on our life, right? We can forget that we put $20 in one of our coat pockets and we come across it we’re like, “Oh my God, I completely forgot that I put that $20 bill in my pocket.” But some things that I’ve found that you can’t forget is when you have heart attack.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Yeah.

Tawana Bain:

When you have a stroke. America had a stroke, a heart attack and fell on its face all within a week’s time.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

That’s true.

Tawana Bain:

My goal and my belief is we’re going to come out of this with some healing. I really believe that. But regardless of the fact that we’re going to come out of this with some healing and things are going to shift because they’ll never go back to normal, I don’t believe that we’ll forget about the heart attack, the stroke and falling on our face.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Good. That’s a good way to put it. And I absolutely hope that’s the truth, because I can’t imagine going back.

Tawana Bain:

When you have a stroke of any sort of magnitude, it takes a while for you to rehabilitate. Sometimes things don’t work the same.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

That’s true.

Tawana Bain:

They won’t work the same.

I can’t imagine us forgetting this massive stroke. I just can’t.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

So how will the healing take place do you think? What is it that can start the healing process here in Louisville or nationwide? I mean, we’ve got our problems here.

Tawana Bain:

The process begins with admittance, with acknowledgement.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Yeah.

Tawana Bain:

I’ve been moved even by the people that apologize for not hearing Colin Kaepernick and being upset at how he handled it because sports was no place to do that. When they finally realized, well, where the hell … where could he have done it? They’ve been doing it. I see now that you’ve been trying to tell us and we didn’t listen. So it’s going to come with acknowledgement and acceptance and talking about it. And what I’m seeing now is nobody is embarrassed to talk about it. It’s happening.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

That’s right.

Tawana Bain:

It’s happening. People didn’t want to touch this topic. Oh, I don’t want to rock this boat. I don’t want to rock that boat. So it’s going to start here. It’s going to start with the dialogue. We have to equip white women with how to stand up. And don’t get me wrong. I understand where black people, my fellow blacks are coming from. Like, they need to do the work. Yes, they do need to do the work, but we can also still help them along the way, because it’s no different than you know you’re overweight. You’ve gained a lot of weight. It’s time to go work out in the gym. You really want to lose that weight. You want to be healthy. You want to get there and you walk in this gym and there’s all these damn contraptions. Am I doing it right? Am I going to hurt myself?

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Yes. Yes.

Tawana Bain:

What am I doing? And that’s where white women are. I’m getting ready to walk into a territory where I know that there’s racism because I’ve heard things. I’ve turned my head because it made me cringe. I was uncomfortable. I didn’t know which exercise unit to utilize first. I was afraid of hurting myself, my stability, my financial, my peace and quiet with my neighbor, my blah, blah, blah. I’m getting ready to shed this extra weight. I don’t know where to start. Tawana, where do I start? And if I say this, am I going to make matters worse?

I had a call with some friends and she said, “I did not realize that I was doing my children a disservice by raising them and telling them that you don’t see color. Because I thought I was doing the right thing when the reality is I should have forced them to see color. And by seeing color, help them understand what some of them go through. But unfortunately, because I grew up in the whitest of white ways, I couldn’t even speak to that.” So where does someone like her go?

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Yes, exactly. This is a question that I’ve been worried with myself. How do I respect differences and honor similarities at the same time? That’s difficult. I mean, I think that’s what we have to do. I mean, this business of not seeing color isn’t going to cut it. I agree with that, because that’s disrespectful for different cultures.

Tawana Bain:

Yup.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

So you mentioned a few minutes ago the importance of seeing similarities and that’s always been where I have lived. And yet I’m realizing now that what that’s done is it’s prevented me from honoring the differences, too. And that’s really hard and really important to do.

Tawana Bain:

Awesome. Well, the weird thing is I’ve been having this conversation with various women for years, and it’s not just myself, African American women whom have formed sisterhoods with white women have been having this conversation. I’ve ran into several instances where it went South and I didn’t care. I was still like this is what it is, but now I understand your limited scope of what I’m truly grappling with.

So I walked away with kind of note-to-self moments, but the reality is we have to be willing to have the conversation. We have to be willing to help embolden and build a white woman’s confidence so that when she does see it happening, she knows how to say that racist name.

When racists begin to understand that even people with their skin color are going to hold their feet to the fire, we will weed them out. We will run them off. People will be forced out.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Yes.

Tawana Bain:

That’s not American. We need to let them know. Well, you think this is American. That is un-American.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Absolutely.

Tawana Bain:

We’re letting them hide behind being American by being racist. No, that’s un-American. And the same way you’re the first, they are the first to say, go back to your country. We need you to get out of our country because what you’re doing is un-American.

Any women, Kathy, that are in your situation, that’s like, “I need to do more. I want to do more. Where do I start? Here are some of the things that make me nervous, here are some of the things that I want to do, but I’m not really sure, yada, yada, yada.” I mean, we want women like you to recognize that there are people out there willing to help navigate them through this.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Tawana, thank you so much for engaging in this conversation. It’s clear that our community and country really have challenges, but I agree with your point that we must stay in dialogue, and I thank you for that dialogue today. I would like to end this podcast by playing you, reading the article that you wrote recently on this topic. I found it to be so informative and moving. Here goes.

Tawana Bain:

I was asked my opinion, what is our way forward? There are four areas in which we must focus our efforts if we truly want a way forward, criminal justice, media justice, political justice, and economic justice. Today, I’d like to focus on criminal justice. But first, before we can move forward with criminal justice, I’d like to share my purview that contributed to how we’ve arrived here. First, we have to accept an ugly truth that no one is willing to talk about. There are men in blue that have infiltrated our police departments, racists giving our good brothers and sisters wearing the badge a bad name.

Our black men, unfortunately, have suffered at the hands of these supremacists hiding out in police departments across the country and terrorizing them daily for years. Many are seeing the looting and violence and are yelling at them, “This is not the way.”

I too yelled at the young black man as the crowbar in his hands was raised, ready to land on my restaurant window, adjacent to one of the windows that had been shattered before I arrived some time earlier. I yelled, “Stop. It is not me. This is black-owned. I do not deserve this. I am not the one killing us.”

His hand stopped midair. One of the young women with him had tears in her eyes as did I. They apologized. We all stood there for a moment, frozen. I do not condone their behavior, but as a black woman with black sons whom I’ve seen cry out in pain for the injustices, I recognized their anguish. In that moment, every story that my sons, their friends, my friends and other family members have shared flashed through my mind.

No, the violence is not acceptable. However, in order to move forward, we must first educate our community that many of the villains we are seeing loot and create violence, were once upon a time victims themselves of the dirty cops that have infiltrated our police departments.

They have experienced firsthand cashing their paychecks at the corner stores in their neighborhoods only to be stopped and frisked and asked by the dirty cop what drugs they sold to obtain it. They watched as the dirty cops took their hard-earned pay and place it in their pockets telling these young black men, “Prove it.” They have watched their doors or neighbor’s doors kicked in by dirty cops who were supposed to protect and serve for years. Their homes ransacked in front of their children and wives with no one to call and tell for years.

After all, it was the police that just tore through their home and exited empty handed because of very similar to Breonna Taylor’s home, there was no drug activity taking place. Their doors remained boarded up to the likes of the businesses we are seeing across the nation until they could afford to fix them. They were victims before they were villains. We are seeing them tear up the moral contract with America because America tore it up on them a long time ago.

They sit amongst themselves asking, “Why are we obeying the laws when the laws are broken against us every day?” Simply because of the color of their skin and because who broke the law against them, there was no one to show up and provide justice. When they take to violence after the peaceful protesters wrap up for the day, they are begging for justice in exchange for peace. They have watched as these dirty cops patrolled their neighborhoods for years, throwing them up against walls and exerting their position of power for years.

They have watched as unarmed black men are shot because they are perceived threats for years. While white domestic terrorists conduct a mass shooting and walk out to be detained and placed in a cell, still alive and able to breathe for years. We have many wonderful decent cops, but until we are willing to admit that racist cops are hiding behind the badge and destroying the good name of our police departments across the country, we will continue this vicious cycle for years.

We must not only say the name of the black lives taken unlawfully. We must speak up and begin to call the racist cops by name. We need white America who see the racist gestures and hear the racist comments spoken when no black and brown people are in the room to call them out by name. We need to remove them from our police department as swiftly as we are removing the criminals from looting. Please give them justice so we can all have peace. #SayTheRacistNames.

Kathy Miller Perkins:

Thanks for listening to the Conscious Culture Café. If you liked what you heard, connect with us at millerconsultants.com. You can access the show notes and receive our free materials. See you next episode.