Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Episode 379: Alison Mariella Desir
1.2k Plays1 year ago
Alison Mariella Desir (@alisonmdesir) is an activist, marathoner, and author of Running While Black: Finding Freedom in a Sport That Wasn't Built for Us.
Substack: Rage Against the Algorithm
Show notes: brendanomeara.com
Support: Patreon.com/cnfpod
Sponsor: Liquid IV, promo code cnf
Suds: Athletic Brewing.com, promo code BRENDANO20
Recommended
Transcript
Sponsorship and Discounts
00:00:01
Speaker
ACNFers, this episode is affiliately sponsored by Liquid IV and I just gotta say this is a delicious way to rehydrate and fuel those endurance activities. Or if you just want to zhuzh up your water, why not? It's some tasty stuff. Been a big fan of the lemon lime. Non-GMO. Free from gluten, dairy, and soy so you know you're really vegan to exit.
00:00:23
Speaker
Get 20% off when you go to liquidiv.com and use the code CNF at checkout. That's 20% off anything you order when you shop better hydration today using promo code CNF at liquidiv.com.
Introduction of Guest: Allison Mariela Dazer
00:00:40
Speaker
And because it's affiliate,
00:00:42
Speaker
Brendan only gets paid if you buy stuff. So, if you're gonna buy this stuff, think about using this promo code. I like the sound of that. And, you know, Black Square really has nothing to do with how I show up in the world or how I'm treated when I go to a job or what education my son is getting, right? Like that, a Black Square is immaterial. I want work that actually will impact the way that I live and can feel safe in this world.
00:01:15
Speaker
Hey there, CNFers, it's CNF Pod, the creative nonfiction podcast, the show where I speak to badass people about telling true stories. I'm Brendan O'Meara.
00:01:25
Speaker
Yay! Been real excited to share this one. This one's been in the can for a while. We've got Allison Mariela Dazer. She's here to talk about her book running while black, finding freedom in a sport that wasn't built for us. It's published by Portfolio. I shared a ways back in my rage against the algorithm newsletter that Allison's book isn't just a great read, it's an important book. At times, it's an uncomfortable book.
00:01:54
Speaker
But as one of my favorite Peloton instructors says, with challenge comes change, and man, do we need to affect change. And Allison's something of a spearhead in that.
00:02:07
Speaker
Some would argue everything's fine. I'd argue that, um, no, everything's not fine, and it's way more complicated than just work harder. I have people in my family who believe it's as simple as that. Okay, as an aside, I hate doing this, but it's an aside, and I'm going to that side. I have a niece who, a few years ago, showed me her parents' new Peloton bicycle. I don't have one, though we subscribe to the app and use our own more affordable bicycle.
00:02:37
Speaker
I looked at my wife in front of this Peloton bicycle a few years ago, and I said, we need to get you one of these. And my niece raised her eyebrows and said, better work harder. And I was taken aback. And sure, yes, maybe we don't make as much money as they do, but it doesn't mean we're destitute. Hell, I have a podcast. We have enough. And the implication that we or I don't work hard coming from a 12-year-old was especially insulting.
00:03:07
Speaker
Well, okay, all right, sorry, that was uncalled for. But the whole that if you just work hard, you'll get where you want to go, and it's as simple as that is pretty bogus. I think we can all agree. Actually, we can all agree, but that's where I stand on that. Sure, you want to control the controllables, and working hard, however you define it, is one way to give yourself the best chance at whatever you define success.
00:03:31
Speaker
or however you define success, but you expose your ignorance of privilege if you think merely hard work is the only ticket to moving up the social ladder. Fuck me. Make sure you're heading over to brendanomare.com for show notes and to sign up for the Rage Against the Algorithm newsletter. Just click the lightning bolt on my website at brendanomare.com. Or visit rageagainstthealgorithm.substack.com. Depending on how proficient you are at typing, you might just want to go to brendanomare.com.
00:04:00
Speaker
First of the month, no spam, so far as I can tell, you can't beat it. If you dig the show, consider sharing it with your networks so we can grow the pie and get this CNFing thing into the brains of other CNFers who need the juice. And boy don't I know that I need the juice daily.
00:04:18
Speaker
It's been a slog lately. You can also leave a kind review on Apple Podcasts, so the wayward CNFer might say, shit, I'll give that a shot. Also, patreon.com slash CNFpod, starting to retool the tears so it's more some one-to-one coaching things. I might try to do some live streaming type thing. I doubt anyone will come. The happy hour, the last happy hour I did for newsletter subscribers, zero people showed up, so I kind of stopped doing it.
00:04:47
Speaker
Yeah, take that. Shout out to Athletic Brewing, the best damn non-alcoholic beer out there. It's not a paid plug. I'm a brand ambassador and I want to celebrate this amazing product because I drink way too much regular alcohol. If you head to athleticbrewing.com and use the promo code BRENDANO20 at checkout, you get a nice little discount on your first order. I don't get any money and they are not an official sponsor of the podcast. I just get points towards t-shirts and the occasional six pack.
00:05:17
Speaker
Give it a shot.
Allison's Activism and Achievements
00:05:21
Speaker
Okay, a little more about Allison. Her accomplishments and roles are too long to list in full, but here's a snippet from her website, alisonmdazer.com.
00:05:34
Speaker
She's multi-talented, a founder, a doer, an activist, a connector, and an unapologetically straightforward communicator with a passion for community health. Allison came to running organically, following a period of depression when a black friend and role model trained for and completed a marathon.
00:05:53
Speaker
Allison is the founder of Harlem Run, an NYC-based running movement, and Run for All Women, which has raised more than $150,000 for Planned Parenthood and $270,000 for Black Voters Matter. She is co-founder and former chair of the Running Industry Diversity Coalition, a nonprofit that unites the running industry to provide resources
00:06:19
Speaker
measure progress, and hold the industry accountable to equitable employment, leadership, and ownership positions, and improve inclusion, visibility, and access for black, indigenous, and people of color. She's a pretty special woman, and I hope you'll join me in welcoming Allison to the pod. Riff.
00:06:52
Speaker
with these conversations, just kind of the act of writing, the practice of writing, and sometimes the act of not writing, maybe when we're procrastinating. For instance, this morning I was doing some dishes and cleaning the kitchen before my day was starting. I'm like, you know, if I save these dirty dishes for later, it might mean I don't have to do the things that I'm supposed to be doing later. I'm like, this isn't good, I don't want to be this productive yet, I could use this to make sure I'm not being productive later.
00:07:20
Speaker
I know what a weird line of thought, but I understand exactly what you're saying. Yeah. For you, perhaps, whether it's for your writing or anything else you might be involved with, how does your procrastination manifest and how do you maybe learn to dance with it?
00:07:38
Speaker
Well, my favorite thing to do is to write lists. And on those lists, I put mundane tasks so that I can at least get some wins. So, for example, on my list for today, I have read text messages. I have drink water. I have things that I know that I have to do, but
00:07:59
Speaker
What I think about is it actually gets me going, right? Like if I have this list and it's all really insurmountable tasks, like difficult things to do, then I'll just never start the list. But if I can start checking off the mundane things, then I sort of, it's like a snowball effect. I'm doing things, I'm getting something done, and it'll allow me to get to the larger, more complicated tasks eventually. I typically still save those for the very end.
00:08:25
Speaker
Oh, and the best is like when you do something and then you're like, oh, I didn't put that on my to-do list. So you put it on your to-do list anyway. Yeah, of course. And then you cross it out and you get the satisfaction. That is a key part of procrastination. And a lot of people have different practices about how they make sure that they're getting the work done. And all the more important when there's
00:08:51
Speaker
a looming deadline, or even a deadline that seems far off, but it's actually not that far off, and you technically could put off some work for another day, but then you're like, you know what? I gotta get some stuff done. And having that kind of practice is what kind of at least gets you to the page in that blinking cursor. So for you, what are maybe some idiosyncratic ways that you psych yourself up in your practice to get the work done?
00:09:15
Speaker
There's typically there's a hard deadline for my day because I have to pick my son up from school. Right. So when I'm procrastinating, I know that, well, the latest I can pick my son up from school is six p.m. But if I pick him up at six p.m., he's the only kid in class and I feel badly because I mean, he loves it. He gets to play by himself with all of the toys and nobody's trying to take the toys from him.
00:09:38
Speaker
But I feel bad that he's the last kid left in class. So that means I want to get there by 5.30 when there's still a couple of kids. And so even if I've procrastinated all day, around 3 PM, it starts to hit me like, oh my gosh, my life is about to be chaos again, right? Because when my son gets home, it's chaos. So that's usually when the fire gets in me if I've waited all day long. Another thing that I do, which is procrastination, but it's also part of the process, is I'll go for a run.
00:10:06
Speaker
course, anybody who's a writer who's listening knows this, that that's when I often get some of my best ideas. And it's scientifically proven, in fact, you know, just allows you to process information differently. And the idea of moving when you're feeling stuck is a beautiful way of, you know, doing something about it, right? Like you're feeling stuck on the page, you're feeling stuck with an idea,
00:10:30
Speaker
will get up and get your body moving and that can help you move through whatever it is. So I often come back from a run and either I've, as I'm running consciously or not, I'm playing around with word order or trying to work through something that wasn't making sense and I get back and I feel like something flows out of me, right? It may not be the best written stuff, but I get through that stuck moment.
00:10:56
Speaker
Yeah, it makes a lot of sense and I love the idea of either going for a long walk or even a run in that sort of meditative repetition, physical movement does have a way of massaging some things out of your head and sometimes
00:11:12
Speaker
Just random things pop in your head like oh that could be a like a good like epigraph quote like I never really connected those dots or like a good turner phrase comes in every year do you typically like will you actually physically write something down or do you like talking to a voice memo to kind of like make sure you trap those things.
00:11:33
Speaker
Yeah, so if I'm on a run, I will talk into a voice note that also, you know, as you were talking, I was realizing that it's not just in running. So the thing about writing is that, yes, some of it, you know, you have to physically sit there and write with a pen and pencil or write on your computer.
00:11:50
Speaker
But
The Role of Movement in Creativity
00:11:51
Speaker
it's always going on in your mind, right? Like I'm always writing things in my mind. So it means that oftentimes I'm doing even I'm doing the dishes or I'm driving, right? Like you're doing something completely unrelated and you see something that like sparks a thought. I wish I could actually see my brain on a brain as I'm doing
00:12:11
Speaker
ordinary mundane things and see like, I'm washing dishes, I see bubbles. Bubbles makes me think of this, which makes me think of this, which solves this big question that I had in a book, right? So that's one of the beautiful things about writing. I think when you are a writer, you're always grappling with something in your head. And I forgot the question itself, but
00:12:33
Speaker
Yeah, I think it was just I kind of answered it was just like, you know speaking to it as Wonderfully as you did but also like recording it as like a voice memo or like something I run with a pencil and like a write-on rain notebook So even if it gets wet from sweat, it'll still work and uh, and so yeah I'm a kind of an analog guy when I can be and yeah, so I like to just have a notebook and pencil and
00:12:57
Speaker
Yeah, well, I do have that next to my bed because sometimes I'll wake up with a dream that maybe isn't even connected to something I'm working on, but that I want to write down something really struck me. So I keep that by the side of my bed.
00:13:13
Speaker
Yeah, because even the act of writing, like the writer's mind is like really always at work, like you were saying, be it doing dishes or vacuuming it or any other, you know, menial chore that we have to do on a day to day. But it is very much like a dreamscape, because if you don't capture it, like it will go away and it makes it, it's kind of, it's like you always got to capture it. You're like, oh yeah, I'll remember, I'll write it down later. And you always forget it and it's the worst. Exactly.
00:13:42
Speaker
Yeah, I know. And there's nothing worse. You sit there and you just strain trying to pull out of your brain something that's no longer there. As a reader, who are some influential voices that help inform the writer that you've become?
00:14:00
Speaker
You know, I think for me, I'm a lover of history. And so there's a lot of, I read a lot of books on history. But for this book in particular, for Running While Black, I'm thinking about there's, she's a lawyer and a professor, her name is Elise Brody. And she does a lot of writing on
00:14:21
Speaker
physical space and segregation or racialized space. Also, Elijah Anderson is a sociologist that writes on racialized space. And reading the two of them, the way that they're able to breathe life into something that's rather dry is something that I wanted to do in my book, right? So talking about the ways that, the way that they're able to look at space and describe
00:14:48
Speaker
the racialized context, the feelings of people in that space really struck me out. And I wanted to make sure when people were reading my book that they could understand that because I know that for most white people, I'd say they see space as just space, right? Like the outdoors is just the outdoors.
00:15:05
Speaker
This part of town is just this part of town, right? But Elise Brody, Elijah Anderson fill in all of the historical and present context to help you understand a space is never just a space. It exists within this context.
00:15:21
Speaker
sending meanings to people about who belongs, about what activities are allowed in these spaces. I think even just, I mean, that's sociology in general. Now I'm sort of going on a tangent, but I remember my mom is a sociologist and I remember sitting in one of her classes as a kid and talking about something as simple as, look at how people line up for the bus, right? We never talk about how many feet you're supposed to keep between people, but when people are lined up for a bus, they're all lined up with the same amount of space between them.
00:15:50
Speaker
Like, isn't that fascinating that we sort of just receive? We can't probably pinpoint where exactly we first received that message, but this message of how you occupy space, how close is too close. And if somebody is right behind you,
00:16:05
Speaker
you know, touching you, you'll say, yo, like, move back, you're too close, right? But sociology looks at that, like, seeks to understand how we get these messages, how we make sense of the world, how we show up in the world. And that really was something that I wanted to be part of my work.
00:16:21
Speaker
And speaking of history, I love there's countless wonderful vignettes that you recount in your book. And there's your father telling you about how Napoleon sold the...
00:16:36
Speaker
Yeah, for the Louisiana Purchase, you know, land co-opted from, you know, native peoples to fund his wars, but like that he fundamentally forgot to, or most textbooks don't mention the Haitian victory and the overthrow of the French colonists there. And you remember thinking, like, how is this possible that I know more than a textbook?
00:16:58
Speaker
I think that's really prescient now with so much of the book banning and so much that we're seeing especially in southern conservative states that it's like you know if we don't have those in the textbooks it's like oh my god like we're gonna there is such erasure going on.
00:17:14
Speaker
Exactly. And what I always say is that if this history weren't important and significant, then people wouldn't be fighting so hard to erase it, right? So that helps you understand just how important it is to know these stories. And it's really frightening because I have a three-year-old, and at least I'm in a position to, I'm curious and I love history, so I'll always be a part of my son's education. But knowing that,
00:17:43
Speaker
he'll be in school and that he won't be learning what actually happened.
Importance of Accurate Historical Accounts
00:17:48
Speaker
Right. History is ultimately told by those in power. So I'll have to be critical every step of the way, ensuring that he knows not just what they tell him in school, but actually the full story and understanding different perspectives and recognizing that who's a hero and who's a villain is really a matter of who's telling the story. Right. Who is who whose perspective is being presented.
00:18:13
Speaker
Yeah, to that point, I just go back to when I was in elementary school in the 80s and, you know, around, I don't know, Thanksgiving or like Columbus Day, you know, all this, especially Thanksgiving, you know, kids are dressed like as.
00:18:29
Speaker
you know pilgrims and then you know and now what we would definitely deem is insensitive native attire and it's just like well that would be patently inappropriate now but it was just like something that was like totally accepted at that time and it's like you know if you scrub scrub the books and scrub the history you you start to get that very sanitized
00:18:52
Speaker
childlike version of things that are very much, you know, should not be sanitized. Right. I mean, who is the story serving, right? This idea that I remember learning that the Pilgrims and Native Americans like had a feast together, right? Yeah.
00:19:08
Speaker
And that serves to make the pilgrims and white colonizers seem like what they did was innocuous. That it was just, oh, they came to visit and the people welcomed them and then gave them their land. And it's like, no, there was a genocide, right? Like the land
00:19:24
Speaker
We stole the land, well not we, I can't say that from me personally, right? But that the history of this country is stealing land and resources from people and making it their own. So the story, we have to remember also that the stories that are told serve a particular narrative and people. It's not without consequence that we tell the story the way that we do.
00:19:46
Speaker
I love at the start of the book how you have this concurrent timeline that runs side by side. And for you, how important was that to lay out this map, essentially, right at the start?
00:20:01
Speaker
The story of the timeline actually came to me because I was thinking, as I was writing this book, I was thinking about the running boom story. And the story of the running boom is that in 1963, Bill Bowerman puts a call out in Eugene, Oregon, for folks to join him for the run at Hayward Fields.
00:20:17
Speaker
you know, 2,000 men, women, and children come. And I remember thinking about that story and the sort of fantasy around that story and romanticism around that story, and then seeing images and recognizing that all of those people were white people who joined him. And so I started to think to myself, well, what was the country like in 1963 for Black people, right? Like if no Black people were showing up,
00:20:37
Speaker
what were Black people doing? And that was the start of me thinking, wow, this timeline is really powerful. Because in 1963, Black people could not vote. Black and white people could not get married. Segregation was the law of the land, right? So thinking about that duality of white people being called to the outdoors to move freely when Black people's rights were, we didn't even have the rights
00:21:04
Speaker
that white people had, right? We were still being constrained and controlled at this time when white people were being called outdoors. Maybe you start wondering, okay, what other significant moments can I find? So because I'm a history buff, 1896 has been in my memory as the first modern Olympic games and also the year of the Plessy versus Ferguson ruling
00:21:28
Speaker
which institutionalized racism, which said that separate is equal. So I thought about, wow, the modern Olympics, which we look at as evidence of how smart and powerful and
00:21:46
Speaker
and modern we are, right? It's a symbol of all the things that we love about our country at the same time that we're saying that Black people are not deserving or that separate is equal, which we later, of course, we know that separate is not equal, right? So I started to think about this and I said, okay, I have to put this in the book and I want it to be the first thing that people read because it's confrontational, right?
00:22:09
Speaker
In many cases, it's history that people don't know, and certainly they've never seen it side by side. So I want people to feel immediately that they're sort of like hit in the face with this. And then as they read the book, they'll return to it in particular moments when I'm citing history or when something comes to mind, they'll have this resource to return to, and it'll be even more enlightening as the book goes on.
00:22:32
Speaker
In 1963 also, that is a neat number in a sense that it's essentially a hundred years, give or take, to the day of the Emancipation Proclamation, roughly. And it's just like here a hundred years later and then you get to have a re-interrogation of the progress or the lack thereof at that point in time too.
00:22:52
Speaker
And we're just after Juneteenth, which is the celebration of freedom in Texas when two years after the Emancipation Proclamation, enslaved people in Texas find out about that proclamation and find out about their freedom. So recognizing also that freedom in this country has always been conditional for Black people. And even to this day, our sense of freedom and
00:23:20
Speaker
ability to move in the outdoors and do mundane things without being murdered or questioned remains conditional. Getting to your point about Elise Brody and how you said she can bring life into dry subjects, and that was kind of a central ethos to you as you were writing this book.
00:23:40
Speaker
was, you know, the early parts of the book are very personally driven from you and kind of like your journey to running. And I would say the second half is you moving into more activism role, talking about much more difficult subjects and like pill going down the throat, like sideways and you're like, oh, this is tough, it's tough stuff.
00:24:06
Speaker
So was that something for you just structurally, like here's, you know, I'm going to be your vector to tell the story. Like, let's learn a little bit about me before we start pivoting over to this side of the story. I wanted to make sure that people in reading this book that they felt a connection to me to understand who I was and why ultimately I'm the person telling this book, but also so that as I was telling these really difficult truths, they were already invested in me. So they would come
00:24:35
Speaker
They would see it through my eyes and come to it with more empathy, right?
Connecting with Readers through Empathy
00:24:39
Speaker
Because I think a lot of times, I mean, particularly right now in this country, there's a lot of division and it's in many cases, it's because we're not seeing each other as human beings. We're not seeing each other as people who want to feel a sense of belonging, who want their basic needs met,
00:24:55
Speaker
who want to feel a sense of safety, right, we're seeing each other as potentially taking something from one another, right, that we're, it's a zero-sum game and we're against each other. So in starting this book, telling my story, sort of getting people on my side and to understand who I am, it would then allow people, when it gets to these really
00:25:17
Speaker
controversial or uncomfortable things to be disarmed and be more willing to understand and see things from my perspective, perhaps in a new way that they otherwise never would have considered.
00:25:31
Speaker
Yeah, you write early in the book that, let's see, from a very early age, people had told me I was going to be, quote, somebody. And since I was not, failure became another layer to a deepening depression. And drinking offered the easiest means of avoiding my life. And I definitely attest to that, sometimes the drinking part, to just try to numb yourself to things.
00:25:54
Speaker
I don't know, just kind of like take us to that moment, you know, where, you know, where you were at that moment and how you began to pull yourself out of it. You know, and if I'm honest, right, like even sometimes now drinking still seems like it would offer the easiest solution. I know better now. So I don't actually act on that impulse. But when you're when you're feeling badly about yourself,
00:26:16
Speaker
The easiest thing to do is escape from that feeling and to try not to think about it. So that's what alcohol and sleeping pills and other risky behavior was really offering for me, right? It's not that I was looking to hurt myself. I was looking to not feel what I was feeling or not feel it as deeply and not have to be in that place, right?
00:26:41
Speaker
which is why running and movement offered me a way out. And it's something that I mentioned at the beginning, that this idea of when you're feeling stuck, whether it's emotionally stuck or intellectually stuck, movement can help you get out of that. I now know that. I now know that running is a positive coping mechanism. At the time, drinking and sleeping and all of that was what
00:27:04
Speaker
It didn't get me through, but it got me away from those feelings at least temporarily, you know? And I'm really lucky that I survived that. There's people I'm sure who have drank less, taken less pills, and who are no longer here, right? It really was me gambling with my life because I didn't value my life, because I couldn't see that there's a possibility that tomorrow could be better.
00:27:31
Speaker
And I'm thankful that there must have been some kind of, I'm not a spiritual, religious person, but there was certainly someone looking out for me and allowing me the opportunity to get through that. And what did running offer you in that moment to help you out of that and cope a bit better?
00:27:55
Speaker
Well, I was promised that if I just trained for 16 weeks, I would run a marathon. And when you were existing in a space as I was, where I had nothing to look forward to, I had no job, my father was sick, the person I was dating wasn't a good person for me, right? All of those things felt completely out of my control. And I was offered this
00:28:16
Speaker
guarantee that if I just followed this plan, I would do something that less than 1% of the global population does. That was so significant because I could latch onto that. And I've always been really good at school. I've always been really good at studying and following plans. So that was like a lifeline for me. And sometimes I think about, well, what would have happened if I got really injured during my training program or if somehow I wasn't able to complete the marathon?
00:28:46
Speaker
In that state of mind, my world would have crumbled, right? Because I was so attached to this. I now have different coping mechanisms. And if I get injured, it's not the end of the world. But in that state of mind, I really was just clinging to running, offering me the possibility of something better, the possibility of tomorrow being better than the day before, which I up until that point was lacking.
00:29:10
Speaker
I love it at one point in the book as well, where you kind of ruminate over how some people, when they're from a very young age, they know they want to be like a doctor or a lawyer or a writer, fill in the blank. And you're like, I never had that. But then when you kind of look through your past performances, there's a moment where you dressed up as, I believe you pronounce it, Oda Benga. Oda Benga, uh-huh.
00:29:37
Speaker
and what he stood for. Maybe you can talk a little bit about him and how influential he was and how that ended up being, in essence, like a stealth symbol for where your adult life would take you.
00:29:52
Speaker
Yeah, so Oda Benga was a pygmy. So pygmy is somebody who's, you know, smaller stature and from Africa, he was brought from Africa to New York to be in the World's Fair. And it's still unbelievable when I say that, that
00:30:11
Speaker
you know, people in this country in the 20th century thought that it was OK to put a man in the World's Fair in a cage as a spectacle. Right. And the idea, the time, the thinking of the time, the science of the time was that people like Oda Benga did not have the intellectual or emotional capacity to even want any different. So him being in a cage was sort of natural. And if he were given the opportunity to read or do anything else,
00:30:41
Speaker
it would be devastating for him because he didn't even have the capacity. So he was in the zoo and in the World's Fair traveled around as a way of showcasing evolution of where we came from, that white folks
00:30:55
Speaker
were beyond this stage of primitiveness that Oda Benga symbolized. And he ultimately ended up killing himself after the trauma that he experienced. And for me, learning about his story
00:31:13
Speaker
at a young age was even more shocking than it is for me now because when you're younger, you don't really have an understanding of just how terrible people can be. And I felt a connection to him because somebody who looked like me, a Black person, was put in the cage and was being paraded around for white people's enjoyment.
00:31:35
Speaker
And I was in private school at the time and I felt like I was having to perform as one of the only Black people. I felt like I was having to perform for white people. Of course, you know, this is not, I was not under the, experiencing the trauma or anything to the extent that Orabenga was, but I saw that similarity between just being misunderstood, being watched, being thought of in a way that
00:32:01
Speaker
wasn't true to who he really was and who I am and so I connected with that story and I dressed up as him for this moment and I really thought that for me it was a pivotal moment in my life and I thought that oh maybe all my classmates will see this too and will understand how I'm feeling and of course that never happened but back to your point about me never knowing what I wanted to be when I grew up I realized that was sort of the moment where I started realizing that using my voice and
00:32:31
Speaker
saying the thing that needs to be said and drawing from history to inform the present that some of that was going to be part of my life. Right. Again, I didn't really know what that meant because I had only been presented with the idea of lawyer, doctor, engineer as possible, you know, professions. But I just got this sense that whatever I was going to end up doing would bring all of these pieces together and would allow me to use my voice and my platform for some greater good.
00:32:58
Speaker
Yeah, and when you start Harlem Runners and I love how you realize that in that moment you're looking to make it make a safe space and you're rooted in the present but then it dawned on you like the that it was really connecting you also to a past of of black endurance runners and
00:33:22
Speaker
I love that moment of realization where you're like, oh my God, there have been black endurance runners going back decades, and now I'm connected to that in some way, and now I have a chance to further celebrate that.
00:33:37
Speaker
Yeah, and this is one of the very cruel things that comes from sanitizing your history and erasing critical moments in history is that Black people and people whose history are erased feel completely disconnected like we have no past as though we've never done anything significant and as if our lives don't matter, right? So if you remove people like Martin Luther King Jr. from the curriculum, if you remove
00:34:04
Speaker
stories about slave rebellion. If you remove stories like Ted Corbett and the New York Pioneer Club, then you start to feel like, whoa, I don't belong in these spaces, right? Like running's not for me. And you often hear, running is white people shit, right? Like you often hear these phrases because we've been completely disconnected and estranged from our past, which is actually really rich with
00:34:25
Speaker
people who are game changers, people who are talented, people who are, you know, kings and queens. Right. So that's there are many reasons why erasure is is is harmful. And that's one of them that we don't we start thinking that we are the first to do something when really it's part of who we are. So that was a really powerful moment and sort of like in a moment where I was like, of course I'm not the only one. Right. Like, of course we've been here because black people do all things and
00:34:54
Speaker
We're actually responsible for building up so much in this country. Of course, we were part of long distance running too.
Challenging Stereotypes in Sports
00:35:01
Speaker
Yeah, and you write about it so well how so often black athletes, men and women, are ushered towards track and field and specifically sprinting. That's the sandbox you get. And it's just so cruel and unfair. And then it's great to hear you articulate the Ted Corbits of the world and how it does go back. And then everything that you're building is empowering people to be like, oh, this is an option for me. Should I choose to accept it?
00:35:32
Speaker
Exactly. The idea that we're only suited for sprinting and jumping comes from very racist ideology about our closer connection to primates and to people and to the jungle. So this idea that we should be confined to do that is what's problematic. Not that we shouldn't do sprinting and jumping because of it, but we should know that, yes, we can sprint and jump. We can do long distance. We can cycle. We can fish.
00:36:01
Speaker
We can do all things, and we have done all things in history, right? So that's the important distinction, just to open up the possibilities and show Black folks that we belong in all spaces.
00:36:14
Speaker
Yeah, and I think you articulate the notion of white supremacy so well in a way that I had never quite been able to, let's say, connect certain dots, if you will. When we think of white supremacists, we think of Nazis and these hyper-racist, and so when you lump
00:36:37
Speaker
maybe well-meaning white people and be like, well, you're part of the white supremacy. There's there's a lot of bristling to be had. Like, no, I'm not. You know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But you cite an artist who says white supremacy is not the shark, which would be like the Nazi. It's the water. And I was like, holy shit. Like, that is that is the hammer that like made me see something that I hadn't really seen before.
00:36:59
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's important. And again, when I talk, sometimes it seems like I'm a conspiracy theorist, but I'm not. But the idea is that it's intentional that we think of white supremacists as the KKK, as people who are overtly racist, right? Because that lets everybody else get away with it in secret, right? But it's a simple white supremacy is really the idea that white people are above all other people.
00:37:24
Speaker
What that translates into is that whiteness is seen as the default. It's centered in every scenario. Things as simple as for a long time when I was a kid, I would have to wear stockings, right? My mom made me wear stockings with dresses and I would go to get stockings and nude, the color nude was white or was what would appear nude on white skin. So that signals to me that nude is whiteness, right? Therefore, if I needed something, I needed something that was
00:37:53
Speaker
for black people, right? If you think about what our beauty standards are, our beauty standards are based on white European standards of beauty, right? Blonde hair, blue eyes, right? So that signals to everybody else, well, if you're not this, then you are not normal, right? Like you're different, you're other. And that's the way that white supremacy shows up. It shows up in, I went to Columbia University, which is,
00:38:19
Speaker
one of the best institutions in the world, supposedly. And our curriculum mostly focuses on white European men and their philosophies, right? We spend so much time on, oh my gosh, now I can't even remember any of their names, which is so funny and so fitting. But we spend so much time focusing on the philosophers and the thinkers and the Renaissance and without looking at other parts of the
00:38:46
Speaker
the world. And what that sends a message is that, wow, this history is more important. These people are more central to the world being the way that it is. And that's just untrue. Right. But that is that's white supremacy. That is centering whiteness, putting whiteness, the story of white people above all other people.
00:39:05
Speaker
Yeah, and and to that point too you write about having to root out the white supremacy in yourself and you know you write that I bought into stereotypes about african-americans and accepted the party line of hard work as the ticket to the American dream and you know that gets the idea of how just how insidious it is that it steeps into You know your bloodstream
00:39:26
Speaker
Totally. I mean, I think of two things. I'll address that comment specifically. But you know, when you think about in this country, there is a direct correlation between socioeconomic status and race because of the history of institutionalized racism and segregation and and all of that. So what that means is that there's disproportionately black people
00:39:47
Speaker
have less access to wealth, own less homes, are in the prison system. So all of that information starts to make you think, wow, Black people are poor, lazy, more violent, right? But that's not true. It's just that Black people have disproportionately have not been given
00:40:07
Speaker
the access, the opportunities are criminalized at higher rates. So what you're seeing is not, what you're seeing is the result of racist practices, not just the natural order of things. Another example is the way that I hated my hair for most of my life. I thought I was really ugly. And that was because I was looking at magazines and television and social media and receiving all these images or receiving all these messages about
00:40:35
Speaker
who was beautiful and what was beautiful and it didn't align with who I was, right? So I had to spend time undoing that, recognizing that no, it's not a matter of comparing myself to these standards. I have to recognize that there's beauty and everything else outside of those standards, right? That there's not something wrong with me. There's something wrong with this idea that you have to look a certain way or talk a certain way to be received well.
00:41:06
Speaker
Yeah, it's it gets to the point of you know some of the you know queer people I've had on the show too, and they talk about and write about internalized homophobia and And that those things that are built in that just it's this oh my god like talk about a toxic cycle that just Just it makes you start feeling worse and worse about yourself, and then just puts your own You put your it just puts yourself at at harm like in self harm in a lot of ways
00:41:32
Speaker
And I saw this headline recently where it was, I think it's Demi Lovato. Demi Lovato changed their pronouns to they them. And they were talking about in an article how stressful and honestly traumatizing it was for them to be in situations where people
00:41:48
Speaker
were always stumbling around the pronouns, always made them feel uncomfortable around the pronouns. And so I think the ultimate outcome of the article was talking about how they were considering changing their pronouns back to she, her. And so conservatives took that article
00:42:04
Speaker
and changed the title to be that using they them pronouns was too difficult for Demi Lovato or was causing Demi Lovato pain. What was causing Demi Lovato pain was people's inability to recognize them as they them. It was not them being non-binary. It was not them using the pronouns. It was the reaction of people. It was the transphobia, the homophobia, all of that that was the problem.
00:42:32
Speaker
But you see how that is how our own identities are turned against us, right? The goal of the article was to say that using they then pronouns itself is harmful. But what in fact is harmful is a society that will not accept people and allow them to show up as their authentic selves.
00:42:52
Speaker
To kind of paraphrase some of that that you said from Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, how you just keep pulling on these threads, pulling these threads.
Historical Erasure and Its Effects
00:43:00
Speaker
I saw something that the brilliant Ibram X. Kendi wrote the other day, talking about pulling a thread and going all the way back to the middle of the Civil War, the Civil War, and the freedom, the quote, freedom of enslaved people.
00:43:15
Speaker
And it's how the building blocks were right there. And they were saying, you can't say we're free and not give us land. We give land and they took that land back. And then there's the domino effect of not being able to secure generational wealth.
00:43:37
Speaker
on and on and on and on, and here we are 150-some odd years later, and it's like, that's why progress is so damn slow. It's like, because those white supremacists and the white supremacy of the day, carrying through to today, has really, that's the water, and you have to borrow that term again.
00:43:58
Speaker
Right. I mean, and that again is why I'm like really pushing this point of why they don't want us to know our history. Because if you know those facts, then you see the connection, right? You see how the history of slavery, then yes, people, you know, gaining freedom, but not having access to land and all those previous generations of no wealth. But you have other white people who have white people in institutions like Harvard, for example, who have benefited from
00:44:24
Speaker
from slavery, right? So the playing field was never even. And in fact, what it does is it just becomes, it just gets the playing field for black folks, it continues to flatline where the accumulation of wealth continues to build for white folks, right?
00:44:44
Speaker
This is why, if you don't know your history, then you can't connect those dots. You can't see how the wealth gap today is directly connected to all of these historical practices of racism. You might think, oh, it's because Black people are lazy or not as smart or whatever else. And that is all of the reason behind getting rid of history and banning certain books that allow people to have this more complex understanding of why the world is the way that it is.
00:45:12
Speaker
Yeah. And there are some people I know, like family members, who just don't want to hear that and be like, you know, I worked hard for everything I have and someone else, they should just be able to work hard and reap the benefits of that. It doesn't work like that. You're not even recognizing your privilege and the base you were born on.
00:45:32
Speaker
And the things that, and this is where, like I always, in those moments, I always want to say, nobody is discounting that you worked hard. You absolutely worked hard, but, and you absolutely had obstacles, but none of those obstacles had to do with the color of your skin.
00:45:47
Speaker
And that is what we're saying here. It's not a who worked harder, who deserves what. I believe that we're all deserving of safe places to live and access to food and water and the ability to get a free education. I believe we all deserve that.
00:46:04
Speaker
The issue is that there are all of these structures that get in the way of that. And so for your family members, maybe they had to, they absolutely had to struggle, but the struggle that they had was never associated with their gender, was never associated with their race, was never associated with their religion, right? Like we have to understand that there are still privileges within the struggles that we each have.
00:46:28
Speaker
I know that for myself. Yes, I was born a Black woman in a white supremacist country, but I was born in middle class. I had parents who spoke the language. I went to really great schools. All of that has given me an immense amount of privilege that other people don't have.
00:46:46
Speaker
Yeah, that cartoon that you include in the book is like just the perfect distillation of what it is. Yeah, it's like same distance, but look at all these all these obstacles. And then, you know, the cisgendered white guy just the very definition of privilege is that they don't even have to think about it. It's just a non
00:47:05
Speaker
Exactly, exactly. And you know, the thing that I also say is that these conversations are these, you know, my book, none of this is meant to make people feel guilty or to feel shameful. But it is meant to have you see the world differently, see your experience differently, and hopefully understanding and get curious about other people's experiences and then do something to
00:47:25
Speaker
to make it equal, right? For myself, I'm always thinking about disability justice and what are the ways that in living my life, I'm benefiting from being able-bodied, right? The things that I can do, not even think about that other people don't have access to. And that doesn't make me feel bad. That makes me want to fight for equity. That makes me want to make sure that
00:47:50
Speaker
people with disabilities can have access to and experience the things that I take for granted. I love the exchange you have where there was several white running store owners and they were totally in. We want to be more inclusive, increase equity, increase diversity.
00:48:12
Speaker
But it but it was it was such a great exchange and it's so illustrative of it's Everyone has that honeymoon period that is what we want to do and then when it starts to get real you started to experience immense Pushback from the language involved and everyone was getting a little gun-shy. Yes. Yes, and you know that that continues to happen and
00:48:34
Speaker
Now it's something that I can laugh about and not, not, I don't want to say not take personally because, you know, it is personal. The feelings are personal, but yeah, you know, it's one thing to, to make statements and to make DEI commitments, which we've seen lots of companies and people do. It's another thing to then operationalize that and to put that into practice. And that's where people get uncomfortable because you have to do something in a way that you've never done before, right? If you continue operating the way that you have, you're going to continue to get the same results.
00:49:03
Speaker
So you have to be disruptive, which means you're going to make people uncomfortable. You're going to make people do things that they weren't planning to do. It's going to require budgets being used differently and different people being centered. And all of that is uncomfortable. So what we often see is that people have really good intentions, and then the work and the impact is what's lacking.
00:49:29
Speaker
I love a good DEI statement as much as anybody else, but what I would prefer is no DEI statement and actual tangible results that lead to more diversity, equity, and inclusion.
00:49:43
Speaker
Yeah, it gets to the point of where you, if you're centering those statements on white people's feelings, then the ball doesn't really move because they're worried about alienating their primarily white customer base where, yeah, maybe you are gonna lose a few. But that's the two steps forward and you're one step back, but net gain if we just, and then before you know it, I mean it might take a little while,
00:50:12
Speaker
people will renormalize and be like, oh, okay, you know, here we are now. Here's a new baseline. Exactly. Exactly. And I think that's just, you know, thankfully, that's the age that we're in where people are holding companies, institutions accountable. Of course, a whole other conversation around like capitalism and whether capitalism can save us to begin with. But this idea that we are no longer
00:50:38
Speaker
allowing companies to just fly below the radar, right? We see that with the North Face, the North Face, and I'm actually a part of this event series with Patagonia, this person who is gay, drag queen, does work in the outdoors, and the North Face is supporting this tour and
00:50:58
Speaker
the North Face got all of this backlash, but leaned in and said, well, we're going to continue to support this work. But we see Target, for example, recoil and decide that they're not going to sell Pride products, right? So it is a moment where we're expecting
00:51:13
Speaker
companies to have values, to be vocal about them. And yes, you will absolutely lose some customers, but you will gain others. And I just think that's, I can't, anything that I use in my life, I want to make sure that they are ultimately in line, aligned with my beliefs. And that means work from these companies and organizations and institutions.
00:51:38
Speaker
It struck me too that the book, in so many ways, running is sort of the central vehicle or the movement behind it. Running is kind of like this, it really ends up being kind of, or a marathon running in particular, let's call it endurance running. It's kind of like an allegory for the racial justice. The hardest miles in a marathon are not, you know the whole joke, you divide into two halves. It's like the first 20 miles in the final six.
00:52:05
Speaker
I feel like a lot of people in that exchange you had with those running shoe owners and operators, that was like the first 20 miles. And when the language got real, that's the final six. And that's where you need to show the most grit. And I feel like your book sort of is a meta commentary on that, so to speak.
00:52:26
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. I ask, will the running industry have the endurance to keep doing the work? And I do think that because we are endurance athletes, we are well suited for it. We understand exactly that, the two halves of the marathon. We also understand that the work that we're doing doesn't always immediately pay off, that there's struggle involved. All of that we understand, and we need to translate that experience into an intellectual one.
00:52:55
Speaker
of pushing ourselves beyond our boundaries intellectually, of pushing ourselves to have conversations and to be in spaces that may cause discomfort but ultimately allow us to reach our goal, which is racial equity.
00:53:10
Speaker
So I do think that we are people who are primed to understand the work ahead of us. It's really a matter of will people do it? Will people recognize just how essential this is, not just from a moral imperative and that it's good, but that as demographic shift in this country, that this country is going to look very different in 20 years racially and ethnically.
00:53:32
Speaker
and that it's in all of our best interests to acknowledge that and create policy and opportunity that reflects the National Demographics of this country. And as you've gone around the country and been on this blitz of a book tour, going all the running hubs and having these conversations, what has the experience been like, be it what has made you optimistic and also maybe what still frustrates you as you tour?
00:54:01
Speaker
You know, I think what makes me optimistic is that
00:54:06
Speaker
people all over the country are providing space for these conversations, right? In most cases, I'm not reaching out to people to ask to be, actually in all cases, right? I'm not reaching out and asking for people to host me. People are reaching out to me, which means that people are interested in having these conversations and making a commitment to understand my book and the larger context. But again, I think that, you know, what happens when,
00:54:33
Speaker
what happens when resources are tight or what happens when there are other more immediate concerns that
00:54:41
Speaker
take away people's focus on racial equity, right? Oftentimes this work is seen just at these key moments, like somebody will be murdered like Ahmaud Arbery, or the government will pass some ridiculous racist law, or right through these inflection points where news media centers on this story and people are highly emotional and highly engaged. And then we sort of go back to our daily life and for white folks,
00:55:09
Speaker
the experience of racism and institutional racism is not part of their daily life, so it's easy for them to forget. So what happens, and we're three years out from 2020, and we've definitely seen a decline in people's interests and budgets and attention to this work. So how do we make sure, again, that the endurance is there? How do we make sure that it's not just when people are in a good mood or feeling like this matters, they do something, that we're actually changing
00:55:36
Speaker
like the policies and the structure so that when these well-meaning people, if they lose their job or they disappear, well, we've actually changed the way that policies are so that it's just, it will forever proceed more equitably, right? We want to make sure that this is, you know, we're, we're not just like putting a topping on a cake. We're baking this into the cake.
00:56:00
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Like all the black squares on Instagram are not going to change that recipe. Exactly.
Beyond Symbolic Gestures for Racial Justice
00:56:07
Speaker
Exactly. And, you know, black square really has nothing to do with how I show up in the world or how I'm treated when I go to a job or what education my son is getting. Right. Like that a black square is immaterial. I want I want work that actually will impact the way that I live and can feel safe in this world.
00:56:26
Speaker
And yeah, there's a moment too, I think it's kind of towards the end of the book, where you write about equity and inclusion as essential to the end goal of racial justice. You know, talk about the cake metaphor, like those are key ingredients. And you write that Elijah Anderson calls canopy spaces or diverse islands of civility, which you think of as inclusive spaces.
00:56:48
Speaker
And diversity alone cannot accomplish that goal. So I would just love to hear you expand on just the – I guess those three little legs of the stool, the equity, inclusion, and diversity, and how that formulates and how that informs what ultimately will be the finish line of true racial justice.
00:57:07
Speaker
There's actually another image that I'll start with that people might be familiar with. There's often this image of like three people who are watching a baseball game. The first image is this tall guy can actually see over the fence. This other guy, the shorter guy is like right at fence level and then a really small person can't see anything, right? And because the fence is there.
00:57:31
Speaker
then there's typically another image where the tall guy is standing, still can see over the fence, and the other two people have stools that allow them to see over the fence. And typically, that's said to be equity. But really, what you want is just to remove the fence. If you remove the fence, then everybody has visibility of what's on the other side. So that's one way of looking at equity. Equity means
00:57:59
Speaker
that you're removing the barriers so that everybody has access to whatever the thing is. When you're talking about diversity, equity, inclusion, diversity simply means different people, right? So you have a whole lot of different people in a place, which is really what we have in the United States. But diversity alone is not the solution because
00:58:20
Speaker
Actually, I heard somebody explain this to me as ice cream, ice cream flavors, right? The issue isn't that you can have all different ice cream flavors, but if vanilla ice cream is always portrayed as being the best, most tasty ice cream, that's what the problem is, right? And that's what happens when you only have diversity. You have all these different people, but whiteness is centered.
00:58:43
Speaker
When you think about inclusion, inclusion is the idea that people feel a sense of belonging, people feel included, people feel like they matter, right? And the last piece, equity, is it's because, and equity is obviously very tied to inclusion, it's because people have what they need
00:59:01
Speaker
to feel included. That doesn't mean that people have the same thing because we don't all need the same thing, right? What I need to be able to do, so what I need to be able to go running is a babysitter. What you need to go running may be time off from work. So if you were given a babysitter, you would say, but that doesn't solve my problem, right? So equity is that we're each given
00:59:29
Speaker
what we need in order to achieve whatever the goal is. So that's how the three come together. That's why the three are important. Some people also throw justice in there. But ultimately, you want to make sure that all three sides are addressed so that people can show up as their best selves and people can live full, healthy, meaningful lives.
00:59:51
Speaker
Yeah, and it's the proverbial rising tide floats all boats. It's not a zero-sum game, but if so long as that is the playing field that we're on, then it's not like, yeah, you lose, I win, or vice versa.
01:00:04
Speaker
Well, it's only a zero sum game if you believe that we're in scarcity. If you believe that there's not enough to go around, therefore we need to hoard resources, which is what we're doing, right? That's how that's, you know, when you look at the housing crisis, it's not because there's a lack of houses.
01:00:21
Speaker
There are actually enough houses for plenty of people. It's the idea that housing is too expensive. We're not allowing people access to that because we think of it as a limited resource. So as long as you're looking at things from a scarcity mindset,
01:00:37
Speaker
the status quo will persist. But if you recognize, if you look at it more from abundance, how can we make sure that everybody has access to these things? Recognizing that once we're in community with each other, that we'll look out for each other. And this is not like pie in the sky, right? This is just leaning into the better parts of our humanity and not into this scarcity, zero-sum doggy dog.
Media Recommendations: Black Mirror
01:01:02
Speaker
I love it. Well, Alison, I love to bring these conversations down for a landing by asking you, the guest, for a recommendation of some kind for the listeners. And that's going to just be pretty much anything you're excited about, be it a TV show, a book, or a new kind of pen that you've experimented with. So I'd just extend that to you as we bring our conversation down for a landing.
01:01:20
Speaker
Interesting. Well, I actually I want to recommend that folks watch Black Mirror. A new season is out. I would say this is probably not the best season. I think this is season five, maybe there's season one was amazing. But what I really like about Black Mirror is that it's sort of satirical and it's a commentary on how we are living. And it just really allows you to think about
01:01:47
Speaker
You know, is the way that society is operating, is that the best we can do, right? So brace yourself though, because it's a little dark, but Black Mirror, I love it. I'm binging this last season and absolutely worth watching, but with somebody so that you can share ideas and, you know, dig in afterwards.
01:02:11
Speaker
Well, fantastic. Amazing. So great to have a conversation with you, Alison, about just the wonderful work you're doing in your incredible book. And so I just want to thank you for carving out the time and thanks so much for the work. I appreciate you. Thank you.
01:02:28
Speaker
All right. Thanks to Alison for those insights and her generosity. It's a great talk. Hey, don't forget to sign up for the Rage Against the Algorithm sub stack at Brendan to Merit.com. Hey, click the lightning bolt or go to rage against the algorithm.substack.com. That newsletter and the podcast subscribers, that's really all I care about. Why it's elective permission based.
01:02:51
Speaker
If you want to really level up your sport, you can go to patreon.com slash CNF pod. I just finished a series of coaching calls where I spoke with members about what they're working on and sending them transcripts and audio recordings of our chats so they can have it for future reference. Um, pretty good value. I think. So I think we're looking into doing some more of that stuff down the line. I'm going to retool the tears a little bit.
01:03:18
Speaker
Nothing resembling a parting shot this week. So I just wanna, I just don't have it in me this week. I hope you're okay with that. I bet you are. So if you can't do interviews, see ya.