SoS #56 | David Sterling Brown: Shakespeare's White Others

Thomas Dabbs speaks with David Sterling Brown of Trinity College, Connecticut, about his recent book, entitled 'Shakespeare’s White Others', and also about other work that David has done in the field of critical race studies.
[LINKS]
David Sterling Brown (Website): https://www.davidsterlingbrown.com
David Sterling Brown VR Gallery: https://hubs.mozilla.com/p963Ga4/david-sterling-gallery-vrv
The Republic of Yarnia: https://www.republicofyarnia.com
[SEGMENTS]
00:00:00 - Intro
00:01:55 - ‘Shakespeare’s White Others’
00:30:07 - Personal elements in David’s writing
00:31:25 - Trinity College and teaching
00:42:32 - White Others VR Art Gallery
00:51:44 - Hood Pedagogy
00:56:48 - Claudia Rankine: The Racial Imaginary Inst. (TRII)
01:07:45 - Promotion and mini-book tour
01:15:16 - Upcoming panel: In Plain Sight
01:18:07 - Stopped by the police, generational racism
01:32:45 - Rest and mental health
01:39:11 - Southern grandmothers: race relations 
01:45:18 - Closing remarks

Transcript

This is Speaking of Shakespeare conversations about things Shakespearean I'm Thomas Dabbs broadcasting from Aoyama Gakuin University in central Tokyo if you are joining us on YouTube you should know that this program is also available on your favorite podcast platform this talk is with David Sterling Brown of Trinity College Connecticut we will talk about his recent book entitled Shakespeare's White Others and also about his recent and abundant contributions to the field of critical race studies this talk is funded by the Aoyama Gakuin information Media Center this series has been maintained with support from the Aoyama Gakuin Institute of the humanities and from the Japan Society for the promotion of science David welcome back to our program it's so good to see you again  thank you I'm delighted to be back I'm going to check my  volume here and make sure that we're right listen when uh a guy gets to be my age and I run across a younger scholar like you I'm tempted to give advice even though it is not asked for unsolicited advice and in your case I can give you none because it's been it's been 10 what two years since we almost exactly two years since we talked before I've never met you in person I've been I've had the pleasure of meeting you on Zoom this is our second meeting and in the two years you were doing great when I talked to you last time but you have done wonderful stuff in the past two years and you you're just on this wonderful TR trajectory and just it's a joyful thing for me to see a scholar succeed in the way that you have I'm GNA hand this to you and let you uh tell us about that but you have a book that's just out entitled Shakespeare's white other others and I want to start with that I think then we can get into your life and your uh what's happened over the past couple of years but let's focus on Shakespeare's white others I've just finished it and it's a very interesting theoretical uh position to take because you're working within a history now of black it's what we could call Black scholarship in Shakespeare where you are talking about one is talking about blackness in Shakespeare but you're focused on whiteness in Shakespeare and so lead us into that and we'll have it up uh there and yet thank you for showing us lead us into the uh types of uh work that you did before the book uh I know you were at Tri TR I and you were working on this you've been working on this for some years but just lead us into the theoretical position that you're taking here in this book gosh yeah well I got to back up because but immediately when you said lead us into it I was I went all the way back to like graduate school and um my book it's not a dissertation revision which for me was an interesting process to have to confront when I realized that my dissertation was not actually gonna be a good book um and yeah David Bevington actually told me that and bless his soul because he was right um and Miller rigio and um and then my entire committee really kind of felt that way too but then after that I wrote something that I thought was going to be my first book and that was called black domestic matters and I had the pages as Arthur little would say I had pages but I didn't have a book and so once again still didn't have a book and that was 2019 and I was pretty devastated then um realizing that I had spent all this time since graduate school trying to come up with something else and it just wasn't going to fly and so between 2015 and 2019 I just kind of took a step back though and looked at my CV and I was like but I've done all this stuff like I've been reading all this stuff and so there's got to be something here that I can do to create a book um and that's where this came in you know chatting with people sending out my work um to folks like um especially the black domestic matters uh I sent my introduction I think to like Kim Hall and Ayanna Thompson and and of course Arthur looked at the whole thing and um got some really good feedback that made me see how that Vision wasn't aligned with the vision that I had for my career in terms of wanting to make a significant impact and so when I came up with this Shakespeare's white others concept it was really inspired by both the plenary um panel that Arthur little did on um I think there it was on whiteness was it on whiteness he did something on white he's done a lot of things um all right I'm sorry not plinary panel it was his book but he did mention the book in 2017 on um a plinary panel and he's got his book which is um white people in Shakespeare and that really shifted and inspired and influenced my thinking to be quite honest working on that I did a piece in his book called um on Anthony and Cleopatra and once I did that I just couldn't go back to anything that I had been working on before and so what I saw in the plays and in the work that I'm doing is that there are these divisions between ideal and less than ideal whiteness that reveal themselves in a lot of well actually all of the work and even outside of the work which is really cool I'm I'm very into soap operat and I see this play out in The Young and the wrestless and the Bold and the Beautiful as well we could talk about that sheer and um you know I just sat back with that and as I started going through the plays and my favorite play of course Titus andronicus which I think I might have mentioned before and I was like there's something more nuanced here than just than just this division between the Romans and the Goths and Aaron I mean Aaron is a pretty central figure in Titus but he's he's one character out of many and so that led me in that chapter which I opened the book with um to ask this question what is Titus without Aaron um and then when you look at other plays whether it's aell or of course we can look at a play like MC Beth Or Romeo and Juliet there is no sort of Aaron like or Cleopatra like figure in those plays um it becomes a little easier to see the work in terms of less than ideal and ideal whiteness yeah I thought started thinking about uh the Garden of Eden uh when you were talking about Aaron and of course step greenblat has a book on Adam and Eve but the whole notion of Innocence you cannot know good unless you know evil right so you cannot see whiteness unless you have Blackness I guess is one of the points but then the spectrums of whiteness that come out and I I really was interested in the Goths because from a straight historical P standpoint the gos would be a little more Northern than the Romans but of course we're in London so the go gos are a little more barbaric and you know a little unwashed and more than a little unwashed and we have that perspective from Aaron I think it's just brilliant stuff that you saw that that we see that through Aaron right yeah um and these Jer positions that happen between both um because there's a sort of split that you can make here in terms of thinking about whiteness and otherness but then when you really sort of take the time to Nuance that what Shakespeare's done is set up something where we've got blackness we've got whiteness but then you can split whiteness up into ideal and less than ideal whiteness so even if you take Aaron out of it there are still these moments that require and necessitate this comparison to blackness in some way even in the absence of a somatically black character which I think it's pretty cool yeah it is cool and of course you feature too MC Beth Richard II and um others Iago of course that that's my favorite CH yeah that well I'm teaching aell right now and I was thinking of course while reading your book and there's Iago again just endlessly interesting and uh so these are these are examples of people who have seemed to uh been uh what I somehow uh have fallen away from the ideal uh whiteness but you're also talking about a construct of whiteness that's been built uh within the language of the play and uh and I'm interested in you explaining uh the web de boy quotation about sitting with Shakespeare right and have and Shakespeare's untroubled by that I forget to precise it it bothers him not I sit with Shakespeare and he wines not he wines not that's right yeah yeah um that's one of my favorite lines from do boys The Souls of Black Folk and which is very influential for my thinking in book um as far as my connection with sociology is concerned but I um I love that lie because dubo takes the time to sort of elevate himself um for his audience I mean I think he knows he's great obviously but for his audience he takes the time to elevate himself and sort of align himself with the greats um like Shakespeare but then also acknowledging the distinction but also the disruptions the Discord between black and white and showing us that in that moment when he says that line which is a beautiful line of blank verse it doesn't matter doesn't matter to him doesn't matter to Shakespeare and as I think about everything that's going on in the world right now um just a lot of tragic stuff that and and sort of inhumane stuff that's happening um if people could sort of embrace that mindset which I try to do in my work um I think it would make for both better thinking both better operating as human beings um and just better living in general um so I really like love that line um and it's actually been I think since like 2012 since I was in graduate school it's the um only quotation that I have at the bottom of my signature so we're going on 13 years here with um just that I sit with Shakespeare and he wins is not because even for me as a black scholar um I I'd like to think of that as something that can sort of frame my positionality in this Shakespeare world that we live in and so if I were to amend dub Bo's line of verse in my own sort of um I don't know ideal thinking I would say that I sit with shakespeareans and they went not is what I would hope for my my world um well just to bring this up to date because younger people may not remember uh the Jim Crow period and uh of course they don't remember the Jim Crow period if you date it to end you know in the mid-60s but it didn't end in the mid-60s but uh there was a time where uh and particularly when web the boy is is writing where if you stay in the black world if you stay in the py versus Ferguson uh separate but equal you know the great lie but uh the separate but equal world if you stay in your world and you do what you um want to do there everything's fine you cross over into the white world and you immediately see wincing uh you immediately and and more than that of course of course you know horrible violence and whatnot but right off the bat wincing that you might not be quite as apparent today uh so I just wanted to sort of bring that up you know yes no and I remember we talked about that last time a little bit because mother came up in GNE South Carolina and just you know the um world that she grew up and and and lived in and it's definitely a different world now um as far as the wenting is concerned I I'd say there's less of it but it's still manifest unfortunately um and sometimes in different ways but again I try to be optimistic and and think that the little bit that I do the little bit that you do and the little bit that lots of people do in this world will hopefully amount to something that will continue to change minds and make things better yeah so in Shakespeare's white others there is your your perspective uh from your experience reading Shakespeare I talked with Ian Smith about this he does a lot with hermeneutics and and how there has been a kind of U uh not the word is well just eras eraser had to exist before you erase it but imagine something that it's just not there and that's the the black hermeneutic in hermeneutical interpretation and so forth and uh the point that we all bring our own experience we all sit with Shakespeare and yet we have a whole element of readership and critical uh reasoning that has been um pushed either uh not recognized not seen not even part of the whole uh picture or pushed back on a good bit and so you're you're coming up forward and saying okay let's look at this let's in a sense you're kind of looking in the mirror right and and you know you're you're going and you're getting over into my world into how uh white folks in the South where I grew up would distinguish between each other we're not we're not those kinds of people and we're not talking about black people we're talking about white people and at what point do you get to be those kinds of people some of them of course very very poor very uh under underprivileged that's right you know and some had money right but money didn't make you I guess white or whatever or white enough white enough you know it you may not have had to write father or grandfather yes uh and I remember my grandmother said those people are just no good you know I I had you know and I'm thinking no I like this guy he's a friend of mine and she not from not from the right family yeah not from the right ilk and I think that I love that example because it's one that exists outside of this book outside of Shakespeare and historically takes us back um and I mean that still happens today but that's exactly right like there are these and I saw it when I was growing up too which is so interesting um there are these divisions that happen and so I might have mentioned on our last call that I got the um privilege of getting a scholarship to go to a predominantly white private school but even in that environment when I look back on it and I think about who were my friends so who was friends with the black kid from South Norwalk right like all these and it's really interesting when I consider this uh concept of Ideal and ideal and ideal and less than ideal whiteness rather um to your point about what you were saying from the south yeah uh and oh by the way I wasn't from any kind of uh well-to-do uh wealthy family or anything it's just that there were people who had who felt that they had I guess better manners you know something if you write if you got right down to it uh and you know reasonably well educated or whatnot but uh this this goes into Shakespeare and you see it and you see it in English class Society in the 16th century and well beyond and you remark on that let's move to Let's let's get a couple of more examples we can't do the whole book but let's go let's go to a or something yeah why not I want to do white hand too but uh but again and but let's talk uh let's talk Yago aalo that kind of stuff and let us know to expect so Iago so that's my favorite chapter in the book as I said and I again love that book you know so or that play um so much has been said about a fell and I think one working with Keith Hamilton cob and the entitled a fell project just kind of made me sit with the play for a very long time and as I looked at it again I was trying to think about how can we reframe people's thinking about this play which yes it's toxic and it's all those things but a lot of a lot of what we see in the world is um as far as entertainment is concerned and so I was really interested in trying to manifest in a book chapter the work that I was doing with um Keith and the Untitled fellow Ensemble Keith Hamilton Cobb Keith Hamilton actor yes um which was to get people so I guess I'll back up and say so a point that I made as the dram tur for the Untitled AOW project um at one point was that I feel as though given all the misogyny and the racism in that play that is required for actors to reproduce on a stage and internalize um I just can't see how a fellow is not a play that is just as hard for white actors to perform as it is for the black actor who plays ath so that's kind of how I entered into this because if you're really taking the time to sit with um owning the racism whether that's being the victim of it or being the perpetrator that has to be hard and if it's not hard then and you're not really either sitting with it enough or there's a reason that it's that easy for you and so yeah and so just to make it plain and so when I got into this chapter I really wanted to sort of tease out the elements of iago's character that sort of would make somebody not want to say the things that people usually say about him which is you know he's an evil genius or um he just these sort of comp M statements that don't get at the heart of who he is as a character and what he does in terms of damaging this domestic relationship both in terms of desmona and AEL but then domestic relationship between aelo and the State of Venice as well yeah yeah yeah he seems genius to uh perhaps because he thinks the unthinkable right yeah all so kudos to the reader who might who might mistake that for genius because uh most I still think that most of us are good you know we have to be turned into bad somehow and uh and so most people can't uh just say listen they're just people like that out there you know when I teach younger people most of whom are uh you know from good homes or what not that or in in a safe Society they can't see that there's that kind of evil out there there that and they they can be mistaken for genius but I was teaching just at the beginning there is no holding back in theago from the beginning of that play to uh to get into the minds of the white Senator uh the uh the animal IM imagery the uh standard what you what must have been just a solid locker room racist language uh when let's say one of them was not around right uh the kind of language that I would have heard uh in the locker room you see and uh and and there you are it's not genius it's evil but it looks like genius because we are so vulnerable to that kind of thing all of us yeah we definitely can be and when we attach that genius to the evil it kind of minimizes how dangerous you know that descriptor of evil really is because it's still evil even if it's Evil Genius right it's still still evil but um to add genius to it I think is sort of complimentary in a way that creates this Paradox that makes it because I've I've had actually some students I'll be like who's your favorite character in the play they'll be when they say Yago I'm just like please explain oh yeah oh yeah I think that's why bran chose to play him right you know uh and that production with Lawrence Fishburn uh because you know what what a challenge for an actor who's done all these other roles to to just do Iago right uh well all right let's move on let's do white hands and you uh put together Cleopatra uh and it made me think of some things but I will talk about that uh tell us about the white hand first yeah so I mean the white hand is a Trope that goes back to so much in literature including medieval literature but I um was very interested in that and I have to thank again Arthur little for the opportunity to contribute to white people in Shakespeare because that's um that chapter in that book it sort of was the foundation of this chapter in my book and I was really interested in the way that Shakespeare presents Cleopatra as his Cleopatra as black I was really interested in the the moment in the middle of the play where Cleopatra's hand um is touched or kissed by a servant from Rome and um Anthony just gets incensed in that moment and he berates the servant figure um for touching the White Hand of a lady and when you close read the language in that play and you put it in the context of this moment and just look at for example when is the term lady used in the play um it's only used in reference to um one of Anthony's wives for instance and I think that's before it said in reference to Cleopatra so already we get a definition of what a lady is um so a lady is white um a lady is Roman and there's like this conversion that happens in that moment in the play when um thius I believe that's the name of the servant um he touches the the hand of Cleopatra who has up until this point been referred to and thought of as black and so I was just really interested in thinking through again what's happening there in that play with respect to the identity of Cleopatra and how her shifting um or at least Anthony shifting of her from sort of black to white is a matter of convenience for him in that moment to make a particular point about protecting um whitness and white femininity in particular and um I mean the the chapter itself centers on um Anthony when we think about him as being this sort of less than ideal white figure but again in order for that to happen right there are these connections and associations that have to occur between him and Egypt or him and Cleopatra which again then sort of devalues his whiteness so to speak as many of the characters in um Rome comment on so yeah yeah devalues as white there's a value to whiteness and uh I think that you know I want to kind of intervene a bit on this in the sense that uh if you are let's say the white reader right identify there there's not in in my reading of this is not a critique there's not there's not a voice coming back at you saying you're a bad person they're saying maybe you haven't seen it quite this way let's just take it from this position and look at it this way and in in doing so let's see if uh rather than create differences let's see if we can resolve differences yes there are differences but then there's a uh there's the idea if we begin to understand these divisions in in in ourselves right and I think that's probably a prominent theme in your work so far is that to understand the other there is the need to understand the self right absolutely I mean Tony Morrison says that in the of others yeah and yeah that comes out of out of that and you point to the fact that there uh there it it is uh I think let's just use the word sinful to try to compare white experience with black experience particularly from where I'm from but the the fact is as you said uh before everybody loses and when I look at the history of depression in the South that's in the novels it's in the novels of of uh Walker Percy who's about his white or right he's funny he's good but his own father committed suicide with a shotgun his own and grandfather and it's throughout his novels it's throughout Southern literature it's throughout Southern life and at one point you want wonder where does this where does this malaise that leads where does it come from could be something completely biological and unrelated but I being a Shakespeare teacher in Japan you know my expertise in this goes only that far I think that there there is a type of mental illness and of course mental and physical is hard to separate there's a kind of mental illness that's part of the history of racism that you cannot hold on to these uh this kinds of false consciousness and this kind of Cruelty right because most people aren't that cruel and it gets you on some level you know it's I mean when as you were talking I mean the first word that entered my mind was trauma um just trauma that gets either transferred or um because there's a book I site in Shakespeare's white others which definitely deals with mental health as well but um uh the body keeps score and it's all about how our bodies remember and um retain and these sort of experiences whether it's emotional experiences or psychological or physical I because even physical harm done to the body I mean you get the scars that literally will be reminders of that um that trauma if it's not dealt with appropriately and accordingly it doesn't actually go anywhere and it manifests in the world and in our actions in various ways yeah um well I could talk with you about this for this next several days you have to break to maybe to get something to eat and sleep but I could talk forever on about this but I think we've kind of uh we've kind of shown what the book is about we want to encourage people to to get it and and consider it uh read through it and uh it's a it's a joy to read and I love how you uh embrace the community of Scholars that you have been working with uh and and well their Scholars who get out and sort of want to make it all look like uh they they just uh popped in you know and in their what Chariot or whatnot and they to save the world but you you show us part of the reading the experience of reading your book is you get the the sense of now the history of black black scholarship on Shakespeare uh and and your gratitude to uh to the people who who mentored you and we're talking in about mentorship now in in a sense that you have you have found yourself a home at uh Trinity College and this is the second this you are the guy who returned you know if you remember the old old program called Welcome Back Cotter uh the guy who returns to his neighborhood after college but after college you uh went off and explored the world world a bit and you're back at Trinity College and uh let's uh talk about uh let's see yeah yes your own Professor successor you are you this is like succession you know you are the next one you are the yes Dynasty going on here yeah you you have the crown now yeah too bad oh if I had known you were gonna say that I would have had my crown ready you have one um but yeah and you know actually as I move into that and thinking about Trinity which is just my beloved Al mat that I can't seem to get away from um I want to mention one thing about the book that I don't think I said because it's very relevant to this which is the book is also very personal um there are a lot of personal elements in it both as it pertains to my mother my father and my sister but I conclude the book with a letter that I wrote in 2002 to the mayor police chief and police commissioner of my town in noral Connecticut when I was being racially profiled um on my own Street and the reason I mentioned that in relationship to Trinity is because those in started happening only a few days after I got my acceptance letter to Trinity as an undergrad and so this sort of bright spot in December because I applied early decision to Trinity um this bright spot of both getting into the only college that I ever applied to um but also it was Christmas time so it was like a very h i I honestly considered um my acceptance to Trinity as like The Ultimate Christmas GI to be quite yeah um in 2002 and then these um or actually that was 2001 rather um but then these moments started happening where I was almost scared that I wasn't actually gonna get to live out that dream and so I wanted to mention that because I used that letter as the impetus for writing the book I knew that I wanted to honor that voice of that 18-year-old self and figuring out how to get there through Shakespeare was the goal um and so Trinity has been like a Saving Grace for me um as you said I am my undergraduate Shakespeare Professor successor and it's I started um last year so I'm in my second year at Trinity um on on the um I was gonna say on the tenure track but that's not true because I got tenure so yeah you there yes um so I earned tenure this past break and so yeah I'm in my first semester as an associate professor at Trinity and it's just been really amazing yeah uh well what a beautiful place just you can see it online that the beautiful pictures there is what it looks like and you are are there with people who uh have helped Foster you both as an undergraduate but you apparently uh it didn't make any enemies there because you have friends uh when you were you know when they want you back that's that means something right that yeah yeah yeah and Ian this is I've had a sort of revolving door relationship with Trinity which has been interesting because you know I recruited there as and that wasn't a trinity thing but I just happened to be the Connecticut recruitment director for Teach for America which had me at Trinity for two years from 2007 to 09 um and then I had a pre-doctoral fellowship at Trinity in 2013 to 14 so I was on the for a year and I didn't want to leave then and so I was a little I was sad to be quite honest um but everything I believe happens in its time when it's supposed to and so this opportunity to be here and be feel um just so supported by um my colleagues by my students um Trinity is special in that regard because I have literally been through almost everything that these students are going through I know the world changes and so as things evolve um there will be some differences but I try to present myself in such a way that allows every student I come into contact with to see themsel in me somehow some way yeah well I've talked with uh people who are about teaching on this series and it's a little bit different than when I went to college when you went to a particularly place like uh Trinity or went to you know fine College you you tended to to get over over on the side of of town where the grass was cut uh everything you know the the garbage truck showed up and picked up everything if somebody uh that we laughed at our College somebody spray painted uh from it was a football rivalry and they SP spray painted our uh academic building uh one of the academic buildings it was cleaned up within a day that kind of thing you know uh but the um uh the the thing is now is that you run into many more undergraduates who are in these kinds of schools who the family fabric has not held up and this is across races and so forth they they are and and they are dealing with these astonishingly rapid changes in in the way the techn technological world has influenced their lives the uh social uh networking all all of the above and below the pandemic and the pandemic man that was just you know I when we went back to face-to-face teaching I was thinking my goodness I had students who just broke out talking in the middle of class to each other and not paying any attention to me and I said let's just let that let that horse run yeah they haven't seen each other in over two years and and so you know we can talk about anything you want to you want to talk about K-pop instead of U you know much ad do about nothing let's go K-pop I I'll figure a way to tie tie together but uh that was good that was therapeutic but it was very trauma traumatic uh period for for all of us of course uh but these kids so they don't come in even in a place like Trinity not uh you're you're not dealing with the student body that uh that what is it the leave it the beaver kid you know Wally Cleaver coming in you know from his perfectly well adjusted uh White suburb or whatnot there's much more variety in there much more you have to mediate as a teacher yeah no it's um especially last year because I came back so I came into Trinity off a fellowship year which my pandemic experience was pretty interesting because I was on leave when I was on a fellowship when the pandemic started and so I never had to deal with the transitions to um online teaching um I only had really uh I think two semesters of that after everybody had gotten adjusted to zoom teaching so my experience was pretty unique but when I got into the classroom last fall and just started seeing things it all all the students were in different places because depending if they were a you know college or High School freshman right when this pandemic started versus a High School junior or if they were a college freshman when this started their sort of sense of how to operate in this environment or even just in an educational space was drastically different from each other which meant differentiating my teaching style for all of them required a lot more work because I don't believe that there's one siiz fits-all model to teaching which I and I stand by that but man was that harder last year um because you know even in a class where I only had I think 18 students which isn't a lot compared to what I used to have at other schools um to see how you know my first year students just really were um sort of behind the curve in the sense that what I knew and understood of what was expected of me as a college freshman no clue they had no clue um I remember actually this one moment in um my intro to literature course and my students said because they had essays due every Tuesday and the student said so what do you want us to say I was like I said I don't understand the question and they were like well in high school you know our teachers would just tell us what they want us to say and I'm like and so I said to the rest I was like is this true for all and they were like nodding and I said oh God I was like okay so that's where we're starting I was like please don't do that in this class um you know and so really getting accl I would call it getting acclimated to acclimated post P or not even post-pandemic teaching but I guess just being face tace teaching like getting acclimated to the resuming face-to-face teaching was definitely challenging and I was I would say I was pretty exhausted by the end of my first semester and it had everything to do with just how hard everyone's lives have been yeah yeah I've gotten more notes of course that just like any uh uh college or uh um university we have now the uh a set place where students who have emotional problems can go and uh work it out and their teachers are notified privately that uh that they may have suffer from depression or some some other thing maybe have poor eyesight something like that a disability but there's been more of that in the terms of the end depression department now I wouldn't say it's skyrocketed but I would say if you had two students you're notified about two students now it might be four uh so there's a definite increase who who feel functionally functionally unable maybe to come to class some days yes yep get out of bed that I've seen that as well and so you know I try to be sensitive to that um and um also trying to help the students along in terms of getting them to recognize that um while we can sort of I don't even want to use the word accommodate but I'll use accommodate for lack of better accommodate their challenges um we can't coddle them because at a certain point hopefully within the four years that's expected of them to graduate you know they're gonna have to enter the real worker day world and right this type of negotiation of what is expected of me is not gonna work in that space no it won't uh well that's it that's the that's that's where you are now but it's a good place it's a good place to be I I will say probably in your experience and my experience we tend to focus on what well it's biblical you focus on the sheep right the the Sheep who you know the people who do everything and get do their homework and so forth okay we don't see it and uh instead we see that one kid who's you know wondering how to reach that one kid and sometimes it's more than one and so forth and I guess that's the way it should be we should be thinking of ways to to to reach out and bring everybody into the fold even though it probably will never succeed there's probably always GNA be one yeah and you know it doesn't hurt to try um I actually recently at Trinity speaking of of where I am now I so 2002 I started so 21 year history with this college and Trinity has always had a counseling and wellness uh Center on campus and as a student I never stepped foot in it um and yeah just an aversion to um I guess mental health back then and so recently I decided my class was doing a field trip and so we went to the Center um and had the director who's a trinity Alum she showed us around she gave us a tour and answered questions and I thought as somebody who is very interested in sort of promoting wellness and mental health I thought necessary for me to do something for my students that wasn't done for me as a trinity student but also because I see so much need as you're talking about among our students today um it was very important for me that they know that I really do support their going to the center if they need to and so what better way to do that than take them there yeah not who needs to go maybe they need a they have a friend who needs to go and now that they know they could walk their friend down there as the Director said of course of course uh my mother was a psychiatric social worker and so we were in a family that was a little bit uh different in the sense that we were open to that but I want to come back to that that's down on my list of things to uh to talk about in terms of your personal life but I really really want to get to and anyone who's listening by podcast we're going to put up some uh or yes some um art VR Art Gallery uh exhibition related writings or writeups I'm sorry writeups from Trinity and the folder and uh Cambridge University press by you uh David Sterling Brown and you're doing a book book reading and VR exhibition demo at Trinity uh now by the time we won't get this up in time but this would this by the time this is up this would have been uh during your homecoming but I'm assuming that there might be another opportunity let's talk a little bit about the VR art gallery and where people if uh they can't see what we're showing here on YouTube uh where they might be able to find it online uh other than this this program you come right here and see it but it's part of it but the the whole thing yeah yeah so my work with the racial imaginary Institute was and I'm still a part of that um The Institute actually as a curatorial team member but it was really inspiring to just kind of step away from um the books so to speak and immerse myself in this world that involves thinking about art or engaging with um just everyday people about issues that matter um you know in the grand scheme of things and so I initially wanted to do like an art exhibition but of course because pandemic um was making in-person stuff challenging I had to think outside of the box and so I ended up doing some research and I discovered that there are people who create virtual reality art exhibition or virtual reality anything really um like someone the the person I worked with for instance she could literally take your office right now and turn that into a virtual reality space that would look exactly like it does and and then we could meet in your office virtually um oh wow yeah very cool very cool I'm I'm gonna have to move the bottle of whiskey I have back here I'm joking I really don't have one it's a good joke I couldn't let that go by but yeah so I started thinking about this in uh 2021 and started working on it I think uh in maybe fall that year when I reached out to this this woman and um Franchesca Ali and then I came up with a concept for it and what I really wanted to do was help people especially the general public both see how they could um apply the concepts in Shakespeare's white others to Art because as you know we've talked about you just applied it which I think is that just made my day actually you applied it to like the relationship that you saw in the South and here I am thinking about the relationships that I see happening on The Bold and the Beautiful The Young and the Restless like we don't need Shakespeare to apply these Concepts that's right that's right yeah um you know the art gallery is this space where you can enter at any time um it holds up to 50 people and um so you get an avatar and um you can go inside the gallery space and check out the art which there are 30 9 pieces from the folder Shakespeare Library so shout out to the folder for um letting me use art from the um collection that they have but the space is I guess let me describe the space so it's a building um you know like it is it is a gallery it's a building it has five rooms and so the first room is the welcome room there's an acknowledgements wall um there's also a key Concepts wall so there I'm just giving visitors General overview of the concepts from the book um that they will then take into the gallery's um art rooms there's also a stage in it um so in this space I can actually I can hold class in this space I can hold talks in this space you and I could actually be doing this interview in that space and I could see you in the space too so you have the ability to throw up um just like you see here in Zoom uh you can throw up your screen so that I can see you and you can see me in real time or you could be again your avatar but then the really cool thing which I only got to experience this so I'm like behind in my own art gallery world the first time two weeks ago I went into the gallery with VR goggles because you can do that as well and it was mindblowing um the ceilings are like I don't know they're like 25 feet high um and everything looks real um so the rooms let's see the second room third room and fourth room they're dedicated to the art um so the first room as far as the art is concerned is the white other so again taking the concept from the book having people look at the art and see if they can identify in the art the white other figure think about it's operating the next room is the white other and the intra racial color line so then again adding that second concept from the book and complicating it a little bit with newer uh artwork and then the third room as as far as the art is concerned is Hamlet um it's called yeah so it's called code black um and we're really in that space thinking about how to map onto the artwork and actually on the cover of the book is Hamlet and Gertrude um and so mapping on to the artwork the concepts from the book so people can then think about how they work in a particular play well this is just fabulous that you can do this now I've recently spoken with Steve Whit at carneg melan and they're doing Shakespeare and VR so I think you probably run across uh Ste Stephen I'm sorry Steph Whit uh yeah he uh he recently came to Tokyo oh did he yeah and did a little talk here at our University so I was like I was actually thinking earlier I was like are you coming to any conferences I was like I've never met you in person I know I don't think I'll make a so poorly time for our schedule the Shakespeare Association but um maybe one of them we'll we'll figure it out but funny that you mentioned Stephen Whit um because so he has his uh I believe Shakespeare and virtual reality book with David mckennis and in the final room in the gallery um it's called the pedagogy and research resource room uh and so I have a bookshelf there and so their book is actually on the wall oh good good good because David also has been on the program and he's one of my favorite people along along with you and and also Stephen and I just like the uh the just the work that you you all this a I get I get a sense of a new generation coming in and it's a it's a it's a damn good generation there's no you know might oh well they're just not as good you know the kids today right I don't feel that way at all I don't feel that way even with the vast majority of my students uh even though they have had to suffer a pandemic and so forth I think the future could very possibly be very very good in our field and across the board and so forth I think so and I think that you know I I think our students as we think about the future they're certainly the defining feature of that um and I should mention too one thing about the last room in the gallery in addition to the Bookshelf um there are five um video art analyses that my Trinity students did and so they're looking at art from the gallery and thinking about how just not only the concepts from the book are applicable but um how that art is functioning within the overall Gallery space yeah yeah um I want to include a couple of women in here too Heidi Craig who's part of our series at University of Toronto who does uh historical cultural research sort of material research a very brilliant scholar and um and Lucy Monroe at Kings College who has done some fine work work and so forth I'm think I'm trying to think of people maybe roughly in the same age group who will be very soon very soon it'll be you you know you will be the senior and by very soon uh you get to a certain age and you go to sleep at night and a year goes by you know so this is the future coming on I remember seeing uh old and in fact I still think I have the magazine where they were talking about the next generation of Hollywood uh movers and shakers and and Tarantino had just done Reservoir Dogs and Lawrence Fishburn a young Lawrence Fishburn was in there in a group of and they were quite right uh in in their choices uh even uh pre pre- Pulp Fiction so uh that's where I think things are going now you have related Elanor with Compton you you compl those two ideas so in a u book number two here Hood pedagogy uh and that's uh cup also so that's that's in the works yes all right H pedagogy we don't have a title page yet but we'll maybe throw it h o o d pedagogy very interested in hearing about that just and that's so funny that we're talking about that because I just chatted with my editor about it today um So Hood pedagogy uh and the full title is Hood pedagogy teaching Shakespeare from within um I'm very interested obviously in pedagogy you know as I mentioned both I think my work tends to split between pedagogy and um also what some people think of as research so I think it's all research and and um to me it's just one sort of synergistic thing but Hood pedagogy is really about um how in order to be students student centered rather um I believe we actually need to be faculty centered and what I mean by that is I'm no good to my students if I'm no good right and so when I think about what it means to teach Shakespeare from within I'm bringing into that both the history of my own self um but also in terms of hood I'm thinking about just Hood as in that sort of um short abbreviation for neighborhood so how the place and we actually we did talk about this a little bit when um when I was with you before my love for Titus right it comes from Love For Love For What Again Titus andronicus shakes Titus love for Titus okay Titus andronicus it it comes from the sort of familiarity that that play gives me in terms of how it reminds me of just where I grew up like it's familiar there was a viol there was all kinds of things that I don't that don't scare me so to speak and so what I realized though perhaps after having that conversation with you to be quite honest is that those experiences and that the sort of nurturing of my environment shaped me and if every pedagogue took a second to think about how what they do is shaped by where they come from I think it would maybe help people see how unique they teaching either is or really could be um or and I don't want to give too much of the book away or the sort of gaps in there they teaching yeah uh you know because hood is also not just this sort of feel-good term in terms of where we come from I'm also thinking about the sort of iconic hood of the KKK hood for instance in white supremacy and how that impacts people in the classroom in educational spaces in higher education and of course in the world and so there's a double meaning there as I think about Hood pedagogy um and I'm excited to get that short book out into the world once I get it completely out of my head well you you let the genie out of the bottle a bit here now with me because it's just blowing up uh I I did not make the association uh with the clan but that what a what a brilliant symmetrical way to bring around one term and how that term can be encoded you know en encrusted with meaning it could even wrongfully used be one of those dog whistle words not even not even a very loud dog whistle I mean like a lower pitch uh and there it runs right across over to uh uh the the worst kind of uh hate the worst kind of hatred uh organized hatred and so um uh I think you really have you've gotten a hold of something there those that's a that's something that uh sticks uh has that bonding agent that sticks yeah and uh so well done and out of Cambridge too that's G to be I can't wait uh yeah and and that's inspired by Mickey Kendall's work um you know Hood feminism which I have an article it's an article where I do kind of touch on this duel meaning of hood in that piece but it'll be really teased out in the book yeah oh well done um all right so you are I think we'll have this up in time for the Trinity event with claudo Rankin uh that will be in November mid November you are now a full-time curatorial team member of uh Claudia Rankin's racial imaginary Institute and as a result of the uh ACLS melon Scholars uh the fellowship that you won and we talked about a couple of years ago and the society Fellowship yes we discussed so um I'm I'm reading my notes here sorry guys uh but anyhow there's there's so much there David uh and the um the the thing that I wanted to focus on here is uh I just uh finished a talk with uh uh Jean Kristoff Mayer of the Paul valer meler 3 University in uh southern France and he's part of a an Institute that does what we traditionally have called crosscultural uh research cross disciplinary research and he prefers the term transdisciplinary uh research where you I think it's suggesting a more fluid movement between what we consider Specialties you and Shakespeare you and race studies can move into uh art in the VR and then uh this racial imaginary Institute this is not specifically any particular writer but it's a lot of things and works across there so explain a little bit of something about that you have it uh listed here yeah so you ask me to explain the racial imagin oh well we did it last time I one well let's do it again you know in case didn't let's let's start with try and and move out and and talk about what's uh let's move it up from two years ago to now how about that oh sure so it's an interdisciplinary um Think Tank um and it includes a bunch of different folks like um Monica Yun who's a poet um as well as uh Claudia Rankin's husband um John who is a filmmaker and um Emily skillings who's also a poet and teacher um there is a lawyer um a psycho analyst um on the uh curatorial team as well um and a bunch of different folks from different backgrounds and the goal of the racial imaginary Institute is pretty simple um it's getting people to think about race I think the sort of um uh I always forget what that word is that I'm trying to come up with but our um sort of collective mission is that no sphere of life is left untouched by race and when I read that you know two two and a half or actually guess it was three years ago 2020 um I really got inspired because I think that's so true and if we're really committed to this idea of no sphere of life being Untouched by race then that means that we have a responsibility to think about in any sphere of Life how is race operating how is racism operating how is it functioning um and what can we do to contribute to the sort of betterment of situations and so um The Institute puts together programs like last year we had a symposium um it was a three-day Symposium in New York City where we focused on this overarching theme of the fragility of we and there were speakers who came in it was just a really great opportunity to get anyone who was interested these events are free um so anyone who was interested in being a part of the conversation getting them into the conversation and creating space for that yeah well my uh it is just wonderful wonderful work my my mind I'm trying to to hold things in here because so much is getting triggered by the idea uh of well let me start with uh Ian Ian Smith's comment that you know he had spoken to a person in Shakespeare who wanted to insist that aell was not about race you know it's kind of like that's where we're gonna start you know we can't start the negotiation of debate here you know what a is not about it's not about gender either then how about that right it's it's it's not a play uh we got to pick another St starting point here uh and but and I had a friend years ago I remember a story from years ago guy was from Mississippi uh he married a Mexican national that he went to graduate school at a Southwest a major Southwest University I won't mention because it I don't want to reflect this it's actually a very fine school and he was in sociology and one of the students there wanted to interview him about being from Mississippi and being white from Mississippi and uh was just curious about why people were so racist Miss Mississippi it's really Bas the basis of that and he got around he said well you know there a lot of things there's the um the the constant propagation of stereotypes just it's endless you know these people are that these people are that da d da da and he said you know it's a bit like uh here in the in the southwest where the way people view uh Mexicans uh and you know that that kind of thing where uh you you you place a lot on there now they just had a party the night before and they hadn't cleaned up and this guy had shown up early in the morning and the place his living room was a little bit of a mess and the person interviewing him said well you know about those those people you know if you let too many into your neighborhood started going on about uh people of Latin background let's say you know either American citizens or and he he said you know you're you're right I'm I'm married a Mexican and look at my living room it's just a mess here I just ask the guy to leave but I I have been all over the world and I have never been to a place that didn't have this you know on some level on some degree and and and with many many great people but wherever you go in the world you see it it's might maybe another group it's may be another level of it but it's always there it's everywhere and I think that's what try is bringing forward you know and I think I mean that's another way to sort of think about what I'm doing in the book too this what you just said another level of it like there's levels to whiteness for instance and that's what I'm thinking about in the book but um the othering like it always seems to have to happen um for whatever reason and nothing ever really good seems to come out of it nothing good there's never anything I know all about the Southwest because of my time you know on the faculty of the University of Arizona saw it there too so you're absolutely right it just um as I talked to Arthur a little a lot and as he explains like it just looks different he's like because when I moved to University of Arizona in Tucson I honestly thought like oh my gosh um because it's different and I just didn't understand the Dynamics of it I wasn't seeing how the racism or the um Prejudice was playing out as clearly as I'm able to where I grew up and once I was there long enough it's I was I was sadly um mistaken would say yeah yeah um when I was in graduate school in California in the uh in the in pomon in the Claremont colleges there and I was with the Yugoslavian poet a Fullbright scholar who he and I like to go out we were young we like to go out and have a drink or two and talk about poetry but we managed to uh he managed to get together enough money to buy a car back then that was already 10 years old you know was it was a mess of a car but it ran and you need a car in Southern Cali yeah this uh that's a big problem if you don't have one so we were out and uh were talking and so forth and got hungry and it was late at night maybe 12 and we drove down to a restaurant uh just about less than a mile away from the school and pulled in and I said you know I I don't have any money you know graded he said I don't have any either I said well uh Hy I I don't think we're going to be to get breakfast here they don't serve free breakfast so we have to go back and scare up whatever we can you know in the dorm room and uh and I pulled and it was it just suddenly was Christmas time behind me I mean the whole rack was going and I pulled over and I'm thinking I I I can pass you know the alcohol test here but golly gee this seems pretty dramatic and then another unit came in sideways just I mean pulling in sideways and I looked and the guy had a shotgun he was behind the door and he chambered around and had it at the back of my head and I had my hands up going going back to the White Hand there's a there's a crossover there you know at at that moment in your life you don't want anything in there that would trigger this guy right right what happened was the night before uh a a group of people uh had robbed that restaurant in the same making model of car and color and they were staking out the restaurant and we pull up in that car and then pull out and I go this this is how quickly something can go wrong and if you don't and and you know there's me you know white guy and so forth if I do something wrong at that moment who knows what happens but you know it's um uh it's a it's an experience that if you have you say okay kind of I get it now you know but uh people people need to see that you know wherever you are I'm I'm in there talking about mowing the lawn in uh the The Claremont colleges they have it's beautiful there but you get off in many American universities you get right off campus you know and you're in the world so uh I think that that that that's just how wonderful the work is there but uh let's see book number one promo and mini tour all right so you developed unique uh strategies for promoting your book I hope I'm part of that hope we I hope we get a lot of people I'm going to try to send out as to as many people as I can love to uh so let's highlight uh and uh yeah the resource for uh for shakespear's white other we don't do enough of this David and it bothers me a little bit because I have uh I have people like you like Stephen I I would say more of the I was younger some you guys maybe do not don't feel as young uh as you actually are you um you guys and well all people and guys I'm using it in a non what um genderless way genderless way uh do better at it than people let's say closer to my age uh because you are more connected and so uh let's uh let's talk about Promotional and mini book tour yeah now I've just been so one I just have to say like working with Cambridge has been so great um because like Ian Smith's book actually my book was awarded the um academic impact designation so they're doing marketing a bit different that's why the cover doesn't look like a standard academic book it's very much um not won't say wild but it's eccentric like me um and so one thing that I came up with um because I'm really interested in my community and like I still live in Norwalk I still live in South Norwalk Connecticut I'm very interested in my community having access or interest in what I do uh and especially my parents and so I um let's see where do I start I don't know one thing that I did um I created some like certificates and my sister and I we just went down to New York City into um Union Square and we were yeah and so these are what they look like um and they've got they got QR codes and everything um and uh we were just went down to the city and went to Union Square and I started talking to people in on the street random strangers and asking them if they like to read and I'd hand these out um and then when we got tired of standing we went and sat at a restaurant and my sister was like go go to that person I'd get up from the table because we were sitting outside um and just engage people in because I don't think that I mean I know within the field there's been a a lot done to change engagement um with Shakespeare and race but I still get students who come into my classro and have no idea that we can talk about Shakespeare and raisin so that tells me that there's more work that needs to be done on a more General scale and so um and even some of the people that I talked to on the street were like Shakespeare and raised and I'm like yes U and so you know that um Cambridge made these like really nice posters for me um about the book and so I I gotta go back I am going back but I'm posted a couple of those up on like in the street in New York again um and are those printable is there any place where it's on like in a PDF or printable uh yeah yeah it is all right well we'll communicate on that I I'll I'll uh throw that out around Tokyo a bit at least at least English speaking or you know my uh my people here in the Shakespeare Society oh thank you meeting coming up and um also just really interested in doing local stuff so um my dad's a school bus driver my sister is an elementary school teacher and so they've handed out certificates to people that they work with um and because my D like I have um one of my dad's co-workers Lauren she used to drive me to school when I was in elementary and so for her to see me now um as you know Shakespeare Professor somebody who's written a book like she wants this book she wants to sign it she wants people to know about it because again and I that's why in my acknowledgements I think the teachers that educated me but I also think the school bus drivers that got me to school safely because if they didn't I wouldn't be here neither would this book and so that to me is just as important as say somebody like um I don't know the professors that I had at Trinity um every person who has been a part of my path has some significant influence even if there are people who don't think that influence is significant I do um I'm also GNA join um a Book Festival coming up in Hartford uh Connecticut um so home of Trinity but there's um a Book Festival happening where they tend to get a lot of traffic uh again my book is sort of situated between academic and trade so I think that's one of the reasons why doing these sort of non-traditional things makes a bit of sense um because my hope is that the book is something well again actually I shouldn't even say it's a hope because my parents my dad has read the book and so I wrote a book that I wanted my parents to be able to read right and because that is the truth um I'm pretty certain that most people who pick up the book would be able to take something from it um I'm also G to do a little event at the library here in my hometown um and so just really trying to do like local stuff um I have also embraced pink and orange because those are my book Colors um so I have although I think I'm have to retire them because they don't really work that well for the fall um but um yeah though I've got my nails pink and orange um and I love the color combination um well pumpkins pumpkins are orange that's true but see I didn't you because you know what happened with the pink people thought it was Barbie and I'm like no it is my book and so orange is gonna be Halloween and then we might get mixed marketing there so I have to think about this unless it's um yeah I'll have to think about this but I yeah orange I did think yes but then I realized Halloween is coming um and I certainly don't want to step on Christmas's toes in any kind of way so I will let pink red and green and white do their thing and December um but yeah no just been really having fun with um anything you know when my sister went to the city with me she had on a beautiful orange dress um and my family has sort of embraced these colors so it's been kind of a unifying thing um but doing promo differently um for me has meant just I guess being out amongst people um just regular everyday people and and not so thinking about um the academic world as much which is a world that I care about but of course those are the people who are going to know about the book um whereas I'm trying to reach audiences um that maybe won't hear about it unless they hear about it from me right uh no that's that's what you have to do and I I like it how you get out there in the physical world you know and not not rely entirely on the um the internet or you know whatever social social networking which is also very useful too uh the people who contact me uh in this series very often are people who are not not academic who and who follow uh so you're you're right it isn't just people within the academy or in our uh group in our specialty and I just think that's wonderful stuff that you're doing I wanted to mention here I want to go back to your life a bit you mentioned your father and uh we talked a little bit about GNE but I wanted to make sure that we got out you're going to be uh organ you have organized uh with uh Arthur little DNA Callahan and Katherine Gillan a panel for the Shakespeare Association of the of America meeting 2024 in Portland in April of 2024 uh in plain sight is the title in PL sight whiteness in Shakespeare studies uh I wanted to probably doesn't remember me but we were both at a Marlo conference at the University of Cambridge in another Century uh in the mid mid 90s I just had a book come out and she was still early in her career and so forth but uh uh and also uh mentioned to denner that Dave uh David mcginness has praised her beyond the heavens as a teacher and a mentor right and uh and of course uh I think you there's some mentorship in here with Arthur little and these people I I do want to just make mention how important this mentorship is to people in our profession uh both being one and both receiving uh uh the help of others it's uh it's so helpful uh when you can get good feedback and and support uh because it can get lonely out there it can get lonely and I would actually say you know good mentorship like and great mentorship in I'm lucky that I have been able to um have great mentors but it's the key to survival in this profession and maybe the world but certainly in this profession yeah certainly is so there's the SAA panel I uh have been asked to participate in the digital uh panel that Don Rodriguez is doing so uh but as a I had to put in four choices so I put my name in to that panel so I remember it and uh I'm I don't think I'll be able to make it to Portland uh but uh how long would that take you to get to Portland from it's not that far I was nine hours nine or 10 hours okay that's a jumper flight for us but it's the timing of it we start a semester and have orientations and so forth and I'm on committees where uh they they want my uh they want my body uh on campus and um I I'm I'm I haven't given up on it yet but I'm gonna um I'm not would be nice to meet you in person in real life one day yes it surely would it surely would be so so nice uh but let's go into your background you know some of our speakers are uh really you know don't like to talk about their background as much for various reasons and good reasons but you have so much of your life in your book toward uh the end of Shakespeare's white others you know and I uh we we talked about this before I wanted to be also very specific about that specific uh uh circumstance when you're 17 18 years old you know you know people went to war they they went to war at that age yeah uh and fought with troops and were shot at I mean so they're considered old enough to get shot at and killed and so there you are a young man who's just been uh accepted into an elite College I feel and you're high on life and right there at that time here come these cops to start uh messing with you you know it's all that I can tell so could you go into a little bit more specific detail like you're 17-year-old David Sterling Brown and you're driving is that right you're driving a car yeah driv you're being and you're being pulled over near where you live yeah for an infraction that is not really an infraction infraction yeah um so and I guess the um real sort of key point in that story is um so my dad had just bought me my first car um and it was you know it wasn't it wasn't like a Mercedes or anything like that but it was a brand new car U it was a Hyundai Sonata and it was pearl white and so yeah it's it was a new car and I was a young guy and at the time um you know I my hair was um back when I had hair my hair was longer and so I would often wear it in braids so cornrow and I'd sometimes wear a dag so very much fitting in um I guess optically in my environment and in I think 1998 my street so we're talking about a few years before these incidents were even happening my street was turned from a two-way street into a one-way entry which means you can only enter in One Direction but you can exit out of either see you're shaking your head because you seem to get it without needing to like look at a diagram and all that stff I can see and so you know um I got pulled over um four times in I think it was within six months by three different police officers um for this infraction and the last one really scared me because the off well none of the officers were kind when they stopped me and that was I mean I had the talk um and if people don't know what the talk is um it's a talk that parents black parents have to have with their children about how to engage with police officers so it's yes sir like upping up all the politeness that you can um and I was well aware of things like you know Rodney King and other moments of racial violence that had happened and I did not want that to yeah don't don't reach quickly for the glove can don't answer questions but you know what was really fascinating to me was just the way that the police officers were invalidating different aspects of my existence all of them were white they were all white um not I think one of them might have been well actually I guess technically yes um yes um one of them might have been biracial but um they were invalidating my existence in different ways like one of the last cops she asked for the um license and registration which I had and I gave her um but she also asked me whose car it was now my dad bought me this car my name was on the bill of sale for logistical and practical reasons my name was not on the um I think it was the registration because then I'd have that does stuff with insurance and all that so trying to think smart economically and uh when she looked at the registration and saw you know my dad's name she then tells me it's not my car and so I was like so confused by that because I'm like well I went with my dad I sign the paperwork like it's my car but again because of the talk you don't get into um you don't get into debates with police officers so she tells me it's not my car it's not my car and that's what I had to walk away from that situation thinking um or believing because she's the law right and not only that but she gave me a ticket that I then had to take time out of my high school um morning to go to court and fight um and so because once a police officer writes a ticket they can't just take it back no can't um and so I learned a lot at that young age about just both engaging with police officers but also how the law works or doesn't work or who it works for because I mean as I mentioned in this talk I've went to school with um really rich white kids who did actually did like I had a friend in high school underage drinking backed his truck into a police car and because there was a party happening and did not I'm sure end up with the trauma that I dealt with for many years because it took me about s 17 years to be quite honest to finally get over that I used to have so much anxiety being around police and anybody who's been around me and has been around me in the presence of police will know that I tended to want to just not be present in those moments um and so it wasn't until 2017 that I actually really started um dealing with that and part of that was therapy part of it was honestly having to manage my anxiety with medication it was really bad like um to the point of not panic attacks but definitely um unable to stay present with my own thoughts and feelings because I would get so distracted and Afraid by the presence of a badge yeah because this unlocks something this unlocks the gate and then it's that that those those cops become every cop and it's um it's almost Hamlet his mother becomes every woman you know but that is such and you can't it's perfectly human it is uh I think all of us have experienced something uh in in that in that Arena but the terror of being so close to home I think that's one of right ter so close to home you're not in a conflict Zone across the world uh you're you're not in another place where you go okay I'm glad to get out of here and go home I can't you are home here you are home you might as well be standing in your front yard all right yeah here's the difference I talked about that uh Pomona California and the cop story once they saw us you know guy said I got a foreigner over here in the passenger side from Yugoslavia and he said I got another Foreigner he's from South Carolina I had a South Carolina driver's license it's a joke and the both of the cops just they were so relaxed that they were not getting into a gunfight right they were apologetic they were nice to us and they said and they talk to us right okay we made a mistake we're sorry we're not terrible guys but we're trying to keep this area safe so I leave with a completely different impression of the police than that than you do right oh yeah I mean for years I would not exit my street in the way that was legally correct because I didn't I just didn't want to put myself in a position of perhaps having that happen again and so for years I um I guess inconvenienced myself because sometimes it would have been easier to go left but I always went right because I just couldn't deal with the possibility there is a possibility all right and that's something that is not felt in uh so much of the world that just a routine just going down to the store to get some milk uh something you forgot when you're shopping or what whatnot just a routine visit a drive down the street could turn into something and then after that follow following that you know you have the whole history of um with just you know there's a Canon of stories very unhappy with trayon Martin and and uh atalia uh but the uh the thing is that uh to to live with that kind of fear now the the thing is you were in you were in a neighborhood that was not safe but you uh felt reasonably safe in your section of your neighborhood is that right that oh yeah always I mean because I grew up here so I I didn't know anything different you know so for me it was um and we're talking about 2001 2002 I would say in the late 80s early 90s as I mentioned in the book that was when there was more sort of gang violence because of the crack epidemic and all that happening by 200 yeah by the turn of the Cent turn of the century wow but yes turn of the century um things were I think more stable yeah uh I don't know again I'm Shakespeare teacher and I'm not a sociologist but there the the the efforts there have been say in my hometown to preserve old buildings right and statues are another thing you know the uh uh but but some old buildings to make your hometown nice and charming and so forth and seg and not segregated right uh integrated and in a happy place that that's so hard to do yet what seems to never go away is that guy right that that it could be one or two out of 10 it could be one or two out of a 100 but what never goes away is that guy who's born with racial hatred that you recognized In Those Old Men when I was a child right that they were carrying and you go where I I I just don't see how this doesn't die right because I wasn't like those guys you know I I didn't I saw it my friends you know we were we weren't perfect in probably that regard but there was another step along the way it's the same guy it's the same angry white guy uh and I don't understand it it's learned behavior and I think it's taught and I think we see this in Shakespeare's plays um like you know in that scene in act four or no not act four scene two but um act three scene two with the fly scene in Titus andronicus right um they're having this moment where they're stabbing this fly and this black fly the ill-favored fly and they um Titus and his brother are sort of seeing it as a representation of Aaron there are children in that scene they're not really participants in that moment but they're observing so what are they learn and so we learn things in the subtlest ways and these things get transferred because there are vehicles to keep the hatred and the racism and the sexism and all the isms moving forward yeah yeah I you see I I have to believe that there has been uh progress uh that continues to move in the right direction but the the thing is that it it you know when you move like I have when you're expatriated and so forth and you see people you have children and so forth uh everything can be wiped out in one generation and that is the that is the bad well I'm sorry that's an absolute I hate absolutes you can wipe out a lot in one generation and you can wipe out a lot of bad and you can wipe out also a lot of good you you can just whatever reboot and you're back in it you know uh something even worse uh than um Jim Crow or or whatnot uh so uh just generationally it just and it's and like it's so hard it's such a burden on the oppressing class to to keep that is you wonder why would you spend that much time that those resources those you know physical physical and emotional that your whole body involved every day of your life in oppressing people you know just unbelievable uh um like a sadistic commitment to just because it's a lot of effort that that takes it's a lot of effort and that's why I say when it comes to you know these types of um disparities in our society whether it's with race or gender or sexuality or whatever nobody wins because even the oppressor is affected even it's so it's so hard and um I I can't help but think that at some point maybe the the point of ignition is self-loathing and and the self-loathing may come from the racism you know I actually right yeah say that um pieces for Los Angel was it no Los Angeles review books might be um but I say that it's a form of self-hatred it really is yeah uh nothing different the and it's in a loop right because the hatred can come from uh the the uh the racism feeds the hatred hatred feeds the self-hatred you know it's just you could almost draw kind of loop well you are you are very big I didn't know this but you were not in a good spot when I spoke to you uh two years ago you were you were having some personal struggles and uh and not not just your career was it looked to me like your career was going just fine but uh rest and mental health okay so I I'm big on both of those things I am laughing because I was totally neglecting myself back then and I refused to do it now but yeah you know when I so when I finished talking to you last time shortly after that I had to get a blood transfusion and I did not realize how bad my health was because I think I was too distracted by everything that I was doing and so I learned a hard lesson then not to um just overcommit and overwork myself so that was definitely um yeah that was that was an interesting time I have colleagues now I think who uh contact uh some not me but other people about things because they want to send out an email on Sunday and some years ago I said well you know we we can talk about what our our religious backgrounds are or whatnot but basically uh I teach the Bible is one of our uh classes uh and it's a actually it's Ed hirs this a Cultural Literacy it's western western I teach it more or less is Western thought like you need to know these stories in order to communicate with me but anyhow um this whole business is resting one day of week and and the punishment is death I mean it was that severe because you know how people are they'll get out there and start working and you're going to rest because God rested on the seventh well I don't know you people have different seventh days but you have to have the day of rest and that day happens to be my Sunday and and I have made it very clear to students and colleagues I you can send it send emails anytime you want you're not getting anything back from me on Sunday I'm I'm I'm off the grid and you you just because I remember working I summer job at a plant uh we did frozen meals it was a chicken plant we slaughtered 90 tons of chicken a day in that place but i' say we I was not really the I was just a lowly worker but I worked 28 days straight uh because I was trying to make money and it at one point I thought you know I'm kind of coming I'm coming uh unglued from a certain kind of reality that I right so that's where you were you were you were on that 28 day streight every day and you're in the life of the mind you see which it makes it see I could clock out but yeah so you you got to have boundaries and be committed to them because um when I was working for Teach for America after I graduated from Trinity there were times when I'd have to work 65 to 80 hours a week and that was a lot then but I managed it but also I was like 23 and one and not that I'm like I'm not saying you know being almost 40 is like oh but um your body changes and what you can handle at 23 is not the same as what you can handle at 38 or 39 and so I really had to take stock of that but also recognizing how um just the challenges like my grandmother um she became ill uh during the pandemic when it started and um her health thank God she's still with us but her health you know certainly declined and so having to prioritize my family um she's now like our relationship has changed I talk to her basically every day um and that that means I need time to be able to do that and that's more important to me than answering some email and so um this may be a a sort of announcement for people but there are people who are probably waiting to hear from me right now in terms of emails but I just had to figure out what matters because I also felt like when the P I don't know I'm curious to hear your thoughts on this but when the pandemic started and everybody it almost seemed like people because we weren't able to connect in other ways um like the work just kept happening even through the summer and then once you know we sort of moved back into inperson um that mentality kind of continued even though we sort of went back to where we were before as far as in person is concerned but those two things for me can't really coexist right because if I'm home every single day of the week because the government says we can't go outside then I really don't have anything else to do but once life resumed in you know the ways that it is now I don't see what's been happening as sustainable so like I have a clause in my syllabus and I tell my students after I think it's I don't know six or 7 P.M on Friday if they send me an email after that great I will get back to you on Monday um and because no one else's crisis is my crisis that's how I I have to operate in that way I think that's great advice it really is great advice and I think that uh I I was just seeing complete parallels with what you were saying about the uh pandemic uh in uh in my case uh too close to the refrigerator uh a lot of good things happen around the refrigerator a lot of bad things and U there there's food there might be a cold beer in there there might uh be something I use enjoy when I can go to work and then be away from work but when you're at home the whole time it all starts running together yes and so I had to be strongly commit you know like make these almost religious commitments that you know don't open that door until a certain time you knowuh and uh and in fact I just during that period I just completely quit drinking uh and well no it wasn't because I was a strong man or anything it's like it's it's going to be either that or something bad uh and now that I'm out and around and you I realize that those separations of Duties and so forth that's all part of a balanced sort mental health a life that's that's mentally healthy I did kind of want to talk about the the grandmother the southern grandmother because we are in racial history we have the Great Migration uh that uh happened you know from reconstruction on out to uh of uh um uh black people moving North there were better jobs you're better positioned uh you were in a less racially hostile area uh immediately hostile there were still plenty of people who didn't want you maybe on their side of town or whatnot uh but uh there has been also a uh a movement back to the south in in recent years or at least more the Metropolitan South and I recently saw a podcast a few years ago now I think immani Perry at Princeton uh and she was from um uh Alabama but she talked about this uh this the two qualities of racial relations in the South kind of more now intimacy was one word and Armistice was another word she used those key words intimacy and Armistice and it hit me because uh one of the good things about social networking you see we could not be in touch with the people we went to high school with and I went to an integrated High School 3,000 people was majority black um and there was people that I was in sports with and band with and class with and so forth and you lose track of each other and you you know 30 years later uh you find you really really want to know what happened to uh and they want to know what happened to you and there's this closeness that you go I don't have with I wonder why we feel so close we didn't have the advantage of being able to go to each other's house uh we didn't have uh the advantage of really being friends who hung out who went to places together yet these this intimacy developed uh and then when things break down I have seen and heard from a few of my friends who have said things God bless them they just don't know you know they don't know how that might be hurtful to the person they're talking to and that's the Armistice you know where you know um Ricky might say listen that's you you're in another world and we're not going to go there let's let's continue talking about I don't know football or something and uh uh where where we have a huge amount of overlap in the team we like and so forth but uh I would like to see more of the uh more of those positive things uh more uh the ability to walk away you know walk away from those cops uh they uh you know they may represent a much larger institution but there got to be some good cops out there somewhere uh and they have to be and and I still believe that we are on the good side of things if we if we if we stay together and don't beat up on each other my goodness we be we beat up on ourselves enough you know yeah do and I mean I think one of the things for me too with the pandemic like I um when it started and I just at one point I had to retreat because there was just we're being inundated with so much stuff and it became hard to even just sleep at night because oh it's horrible worry about is the pandemic there's the um protest in the street there's people dying like every day it was a lot and so um I think you know kindness actually that's that's on my mug that I got from this Kinder than

necessary it's so um impactful and you know there's it's so much easier I think to to be kind than not be and yeah almost hyper sensitive to negativity lately because I have I literally shrunk my world and just spent so much time either especially on Twitter like people say Twitter or whatever they call it now but people say Twitter is like a just a mess but I actually curated a I don't know like a Twitter world that is kind of a happy place for me to be quite honest that's interesting that's interesting and I've uh I've heard a lot about this uh my way of managing Twitter is to stay off of it because I'm I'm certain after after a glass or two of one of those one I'm gonna say something and the joke will not be gotten or intentionally but you can create and I've heard of people doing this you can create a better world on on your and and that's transferable into your life yes it is like there's Positive Vibes um and positive messages a lot I follow a lot of mental health practitioners who say things that make people think I'm also now more sensitive to um I don't know tweets that might be like backhanded jokes or compliments and so I'm less likely to maybe like or retweet it because I don't want to be part of spreading you know that kind of I don't know I don't want to call it negativity but it's just if it's not adding joy to somebody's day then what good is it what good is it uh that's what good what good is it well I do remember even feeling guilty for feeling somewhat traumatized you know say here I am I'm not sick I have a good job I'm I'm still getting paid and um and there are people out there who are dying you know we we know people who did and uh so what is what is my right to to talk about my trauma and I think recently we have all started talking about this you know why we can go out after work or something you can sit down and and say you know looking back uh it it got us too you know yeah to a you know not to the same degree and still walking around uh but uh that's it and you are in what we are hoping is post pandemic and hope we never see one again but you know uh well uh what I'm going to do is a is ask you if we if you wouldn't mind staying a little bit after we we talk to debrief a little bit and uh if you have anything else you want to uh put out there uh I would be delighted to hear um nothing I can think of I mean I was like I'm like looking at my the the the agenda here and I think we covered everything we got it and and a good conversation too this is what I'd hoped more of really in this series you know thank you for having me back I really appreciate it I'm delighted I'm delighted I'm delighted you came on to begin with uh David because I I was thinking you know I wonder what that guy I saw a talk that you gave for Trinity I think it was part of the program you mentioned and I said uh I I like that guy you know I like that guy it was just this good strong positive voice and I just contacted you and I'm who is this guy some fella you know in Japan what is who is this fell and you agreed to come on and uh and so that was that was the beginning of a wonderful friendship and it's going to last as I hope for years to come yes I'll see you again in two years well you know if we can keep this up I I I'll be happy to do it as long as I'm alive and cognizant you know you know uh read books and process things does your does your audience know how this works and how you are able to keep this alive I do I tell him at the beginning of every program Miss Grant the grant will run out at some point so I'll have to figure out how to um have to go out and uh beg and borrow maybe a little bit and maybe cut back a little bit on uh the number of talks we put out uh and Maybe not maybe uh it'll rain again so U we'll we'll see uh David thank you so so much for joining us again today you're always welcome you are a friend of the program and uh and you know you can come on if you just wanted to do something for five to 10 minutes uh I'd be very happy to put up out there and send it to good to know you know uh and that goes for anybody uh here I wish I could talk with everybody I really really do we we don't have enough money to do that and I don't have enough time to do it I have to read full books to pay respect pay respect to these people who have worked so hard including you thank you so much again and thank you so much and thanks to everybody who Tunes in and listens Okie doie bye bye