A Black Man and White Man Get Emotional: How Their Stories Converged?

Thank you for joining this episode of Healing Race. In this episode, I share with Andre my epiphany about one of the ways that his mistrust of white people has played into our own relationship and are working together on this Healing Race project. And I connect that epiphany with my grandfather's story and the way he experienced mistrust as a Jewish holocaust survivor. In his grandfather's story, I see a parallel to the caution that I bring to white relationships. And Todd and I had a particularly touching moment as we discussed the way his grandfather dealt with his mistrust at the end of his life. And so, let's get to that conversation. Enjoy. You know, one way that it really hit me, Andre, again, recently, where I put 2 and 2 together, and it's both a feeling of it's both a mind thing and a heart thing, was the last part of our last conversation. You know, this thing around, is there and we have differences of thought on this. Is there is there this universal psychological, you know, dynamic within a white person of the psychology of ownership or control over the black human being? And I don't, you know, like I said, I don't deny that that's that it that it exists. I don't I don't happen to know the prevalence of it or the intensity of it within a given individual, but I do believe that it's, at the very least, in my perspective, is minimal in some if at least minimal, if not just not part of their makeup. You know what I'm talking about but let me, can I just tie this to a specific experience? Mhmm. And what the what the impact was for me kind of reflecting on it was you sent me an email or a text as we were starting this project, and we were thinking about doing this together. And you wanted I can't remember exactly the question, but you wanted to essentially have, like, the t's crossed, the i's dotted with regard to just a sense of ownership over the project. Right? Mhmm. A sense of co ownership, a sense of and, you know, at the time, I was like, this is well, I always thought it was reasonable. I still do think it was reasonable. I think I got an extra perspective, and you can tell me if I'm wrong on this, but I think I got an extra perspective of where that came from. Because it also You're right about it. Yeah, it also was like a sense of urgency and haste like we're about to start it like we gotta get this figured out before. You know, and this sense of I'm a white person. Right? And you imagine white people having a sense of control over black people, and you not wanting to fall into that trap again and to not Which is why we needed contracts. Yeah. Because no. You're so let me affirm. You are 100% right about what you're saying. So let me just finish. Let me just finish, which is, like, when it hit me that when I put 2 and 2 together was, like, that set of emails and texts or whatever and this belief about white people and I'm a white person, I was just like and I don't mean this in any negative way. I think you know that, but I was just like, oh, I'm so just sad that Andre thought I would I would take advantage of it. Yep. I sure did. I was like, what if this becomes really big and he takes all the money? We need a contract. Never like, you know, and that's what I'm trying to say. I understand my god. They understand the caution. Like, I understand where that comes from. And but I also just there's this this part of me just being your friend, and I know you at the end, you're like, you're not gonna change my mind, and I don't want to. But there is this part of me that wants to plead with you that that, Andre, I would never do that. I would never think in that way. Like, I completely value you in this project to the extent where when you wouldn't when you would keep saying your project, I would say, you mean our project? And I noticed you would do that. I noticed you mean I noticed partners here. I noticed you would do the promo. I want you to own it. I want you to own it. Like, so You are 1 first of all, you are 100% right. That was the motivation behind the text message. Yes. And, yes, you are 100% right. Yeah. Yep. That was the exact motivation behind the text message. Yeah. Yep. You know, just to explain where I sat with it was, I have to be at a place where I cannot just understand but accept that how Andre feels and thinks about this has a justification in a reality. Mhmm. Even if I don't think the present reality of us 2, our relationship is that's but that it's a reality in your life, right, that you've experienced, and I need to be okay with him being in that place and in in indefinitely, to be honest, and still love him and, you know, and care about him and, you know, be authentic in myself to say it's just not my reality. I am trying to be as truthful as I can possibly know to be. We're not all knowing, including ourselves. Mhmm. And, you know, the thing the parallel experience that I think opened me up to being able to do that was my grandfather. Mhmm. You know, I had to live in this world with him being one of my best friends, you know, in the world Mhmm. With him, including my grandmother, but I had a lot of these, you know, these kinds of conversations because my I think it felt like my grandmother was more open in this way. You know, he was uncomfortable with people who were non-Jewish being in his home, and he went through the holocaust. Like, he, you know, he escaped it early on, but then got thrown in, he went to the Siberian mountains. So, he escaped into Russia. He got thrown right into jail and went to the Siberian mountains and was tortured there. So, he has this, and his family, for the most part, was wiped out. So that's his real-life experience. Now I'm gonna sit there and imagine being in that experience and not have a true understanding of an acceptance of his discomfort with having someone who's not Jewish in his home. How could I do that? You know? Even if I wanted with all of my heart for him to feel open because I knew the people who were non-Jewish in my life. I knew that they would be people he would love and trust and enjoy their company and you know? But I had to live in that that that kind of dual world of just completely understanding where he's coming from and accepting it and accepting so I and what I will say is he just had, like, in the latter days of his life, a complete transformation. He did. I mean, I mean, Andre, it was one of the most momentous experiences. So, you know, I can't say that it was all this one moment because it was overtime. You know, I, you know, I would always ask, you know, can I bring this friend over? Is it okay? You know, and over time as, you know, we dialogued about all sorts of things about life, the 2 of us, he's, you know, started to get comfortable, and I'd bring someone over, and he'd meet them, and he'd realize, oh, we can have fun or joke around or have a conversation. You know? There were there were those little moments. But then he had adult so, you know, he had heart condition. He had, he was on and off. You know? He'd have some sort of procedure. He'd have a have a heart attack, and then, you know, he'd be in hospital. He'd be okay, and then, you know, he'd come back. And so, the last time he went through that experience, he was in the hospital for a while. He came home, and I went to go visit him, and I could just tell this was, like, the last, this was the last time this was gonna happen. Yeah. He was, like, so tired. And the thing is that, you know, we hold our emotions in our body. Like, we didn't know. Like, the emotions that we have, like, they're hard to deal with, and so we just, like, tighten them up. We lock them, we lock them in a prison in our body. You know? And that physical tightening helps to make sure that it doesn't come out. You know? But inevitably, it does. And, you know, he was so physically weak, Andre, that, like, no emotion was gonna hide. There was just that he didn't have the physical capacity to keep it down. Mhmm. And I can't remember what question I asked him, but, you know, he was just, again, exhausted in bed from being, you know, having to go through dialysis and think about his kidneys and Mhmm. Just, you know, very exhausting and painful, I think. So, he was exhausted. He was in his bed, and he just I could tell this was it. You know? He just started crying. I mean and I and I've seen him cry before. You know, I was, I think, maybe one of the only ones to see him cry just because of the kinds of conversations we had. But, I mean, like, I've never seen. Like, I've seen him even cry pretty deeply, but, I mean, it was just uncontrollable. And he was talking about, you know I think you know he was, like, a person of deep faith, and he was just talking about how he was gonna miss this world, that God created. The flowers and I mean, he just started naming everything. You know? And he and it was just, like, an amazing moment. And I was just like, oh my god. Like, everything's gonna come out. So, we had dinner that night or the night after. It was our last dinner at his at their house, and he and I asked him a question. I thought, you know, God, if this is really kind of among the last conversations that I'm gonna have, I've asked my grandfather a lot of questions. Like, I always try to be complete with the people in my life, in terms of nothing left unsaid, unasked. And so, I asked myself. I said, is there anything that I have not yet asked my grandfather that, that I wanna ask him? And so, I asked him. I said, how did you do it? Like, how did you get through that whole time? And, like, what did you like, and he started telling me, like, how he escaped. I've heard that story, like, a yeah. I don't even do more than a dozen times. I said, no. I don't mean how you like, the logistics of how you did it. I mean, every day. Every day, how did you get together, to carry on another day, to do what you needed to do to survive? And he talked about, I just used to, like, imagine my family, my one-day family, that life that I was gonna have. And then he started going on this, like, just this this rant, and he started talking about, a little bit about his escape story, but he started doing it in a different way. So, he told me, so he escaped into Russia from Poland from the work the Nazi work camps, and, he was, like, disoriented. I mean, I think I might have told you that story. I'll tell you another time if I haven't, that exact escape. It's a pretty amazing story. But he found himself on a farm too, like, a farmhouse. He couldn't speak the language. He you know that person took him to the city, and they threw him in jail, and I charged him with, like, treason or whatever it was. And he told me about how and this this part of the story he had never told me before. He said, I was thrown in the in the jail, and there was this woman, and she was not Jewish. And she put a blanket on me. And I was cold, and I was tired, and I was sick. And she put a blanket on me, and I just slept for, like, longer than I've ever slept. And he was trying to say something. You know, he was trying to say, this was a non-Jewish person who showed love. And then he, you know, went fast forwarded, and he said, you know, when I when I got out of the Siberian work camp, and he had told me this part of the story before. He was essentially rescued by a guy who owned a bakery, among other things. I think he was just a businessman, and I think he probably got, like, he probably got you know, they made things in the Siberian camp, so he probably went to get things. And somehow, over the course of this guy coming over and over, somehow, he made a connection to my grandfather. And he lied, and he said, I need this guy because I have a bakery. My grandfather had never been in a bakery before. He lied so that he could save him, and he said he wasn't Jewish, and he kept saying that. And then and then he said so my grandfather my grandmother had had a stroke, and she had caretakers in the home who you know, home health aide folks, and none of them were Jewish. And so, one of them was there, and she was in the room, and he said, God loves everybody and was looking right at her. And, you know, it was my grandfather who had done his transformation. It was the end of his life, you know, better than never, right, but it was the time that he had to, you know, he had no physical barriers anymore, you know, he didn't have the strength to have them. And there's something in the whole collection of his experiences that he started to recognize that, yes, he was persecuted for being a Jew in a heinous way, as did his larger population, and it was non-Jews inflicting this. But there was a whole set of experiences of non-Jewish people being brave, showing kindness and love, in his past, all the way back into that past, all the way into the future, that all of a sudden I feel like compelled this change of heart, literally a change of heart. Oh. And I just wish that for all of us. You know? I just why wait? Certainly, do it better now than never. You know? But why wait till the deathbed to do that? To where my grandfather was. I am I like I was so happy it happened. I mean, you know, you can imagine having these conversations over decades with my grandfather, and getting to this place of just being blown away by his transformation, and like, what he looked like, you know, physically, even, what he looked like saying those things and being in that place. And there are all these stumbling blocks that we have, you know, different realities, trusting each other in our realities, caring enough to not be, so what? Who cares? There’re so many different pieces that block us from those moments, but, like, that's when we're at our best, I think. I can certainly say loving my grandfather and seeing him at many bests, which was his best. That was his absolute best. And I think even he would recognize it, given how he I mean, it was intentional, like, he was being intentional, he knew where he had come to. So, you know, all of that is to say, I mean, it's a long way to say, we just have to be understanding and kind to one another in that way. Like, I couldn't not understand what my even if my grandfather never got to that point, I couldn't not understand the things that that shaped his experience, and that if the best was working with non-Jewish people outside of the home, but not having them in his home, but being willing to be, you know, at least a good person to other people. If that was the best, then that was his best, even if I believed he could have a better best. I'm crying for a few reasons. Number 1 is the story is moving, and I've heard holocaust stories before, but I don't believe in our friendship. I never really heard as much of your grandfather's story as you just shared. But also, in the common humanity that I while I did not have your grandfather's experiences, our thinking I mean, I mean, his thinking and my thinking were not dissimilar. Yeah. When he didn’t, he did not trust people who weren't Jewish. And I've essentially told you I don't trust people who weren't black. No. Like, you're there are definitely some parallels into your you know from your grandfather's framework and my framework as well. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Which is why, yeah, which is why I made that connection to I I'm sure that that experience with him has paved and shaped the way that I think about and feel about engaging with this topic and having an understanding that we can't just push each other. We just have to be human to one another, and we can't push each other to face the ways that our past and our reality has shaped us and the ways in which it might block love, as you put it as you've put it before. But we just have to have real relationships and real conversations and let it go where it goes and just have a trust that in being human to one another and giving each other a space to be ourselves and to be authentically ourselves and to go on our own journey, but, like, we just have to understand and accept, and, and I really do, you know. I don't, you know while I can acknowledge and kind of understand and have an epiphany around why you wanted to have the conversation about, you know, well, how is this thing owned, and what are the what are the intellectual property rights, and all conversations we have to have. And, I mean, hopefully, I got across in my in my response to you that it's like a no brainer to me that this is ours. Like, this is we're doing this together. We're in together, equal partners. Like, that's it. Like, we are, you know, brothers in this, you know, journey. But now, I don't I it's not just that I accept and understand. Like, I don't I don't I really don't, like, take offense to that. Like, I think some people take offense to that. They think, oh, like, he thinks, like, I'm a person who takes a feminism, and no. You know? I get it. Like, you have a reason for having caution. And, yeah, I wanna work through it. And but just because I decide to say, no, Andre. I'm not that way, that all of a sudden there's some supposed to be some light switch. You know? Not at all. Not at all. You know me well. No. We get we have to experience that. I have to show you I have to show you, you know, that I am truly a different way. If I believe it in myself, like, I have to just be that person and let you see it. You know me well. Because my thought was Todd, does Todd think I'm some fool just because he said, well, don't you I'm gonna believe him, boy. So, yes, that was my thinking. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, man. This feels so full circle. From that first session to I mean, I don't know. I don't I don't know how you feel, but I'm comfortable that we've had our session. It just feels so full. And I and thank you for the offering of your grandfather's story. Like, whoo, Lord, that was powerful. Yeah. That was powerful. I know it because I She put a blanket on it. Yeah. Mhmm. Oh, yeah. That that moment. Because it's also Andre, it's just like the little thing. Right? Like, the big thing. I mean, the guy who saved him. I mean, that's huge. Like, I mean, he saved his life. I'm I don't exist without that guy. Right? I don't exist without a non-Jewish guy being in the world and doing that. Right? So that is, like, itself a powerful idea. But the thing about the blanket is, like, the everyday simple care. Right? That we could just, in everyday life, treat each other better, show that we care, show that we truly see each other as just equal human beings with an equal right to dignity and love. That yeah. I mean, I when he was telling that story, I just, like, lost it. I was just like, wow. Never told me this. You know? I don't even know. Did he have it in his mind before the so many different times that he's told me that story and just didn't tell me? Did he not have it and not remember it because his mind wouldn't let him go there because he had locked it up because of this caution, and it only took the ravaging of his body to open him up to real to remember. Like, wow. Like, there was this person, and she was not Jewish. Like, I don't I will never know the answer to that question. But And It's so powerful. Another way in which your grandfather and I are similar, although mine has not been a lifesaving story, there have been white people who Jewish people. I always got along really well with Jewish people, and I've spent part of my childhood around a lot of them. Yeah. But who've shown me great kindnesses? I mean, great kindnesses. Yeah. Great kindnesses. So, I say that to say I know that not all white people are bad or anything. Thank you for watching this episode of Healing Race and stay with us for a scene from our next video. If you wanna see more conversations like the one you just watched, please subscribe to our channel, share this video with friends and family, and like and comment on the video below. If you'd like to be a guest on one of our episodes and have an open, real conversation about the race, email us at guests at healingracehow.com. And if there are topics you think we should cover, we'd love to hear them. So please email your ideas to topics at healingracehow.com. As always, thanks for your support. We look forward to continuing the conversation with you. Now, here's a scene from our next Healing Race. You said there were 2 things that struck you emotionally. 1 was just the story itself and one was the fact that you and my grandfather's your approach and my grandfather's approach were not dissimilar, right, with regard to Self-protection, emotions physical and self and emotional self-protection. Yeah. What about what about hearing the parallels between my grandfather and I? What about that made you emotional? Why did hearing a similar approach from him spark emotion in you? To watch the rest of that episode, go ahead and click the video below me. To see a different compelling healing race episode, you can click the video below me. We look forward to seeing you in the next video.