0:00

That oftentimes we compare ourselves

0:02

with the worst in ourselves and the

0:05

best in other people. And when we do that,

0:07

we will always look down on our journey.

0:10

We will always diminish how

0:12

much we've changed. Welcome

0:22

to the one you feed Throughout

0:24

time, great thinkers have recognized the

0:26

importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes

0:28

like garbage in, garbage out, or

0:31

you are what you think ring true.

0:34

And yet for many of us, our thoughts

0:36

don't strengthen or empower us. We

0:38

tend toward negativity, self pity,

0:41

jealousy, or fear. We see

0:43

what we don't have instead of what we do.

0:45

We think things that hold us back and dampen

0:48

our spirit. But it's not just about

0:50

thinking. Our actions matter. It

0:52

takes conscious, consistent, and creative

0:55

effort to make a life worth living. This

0:57

podcast is about how other people keep themselves

1:00

moving in the right direction, how they feed

1:03

their good wolf. Thanks

1:18

for joining us. Our guest on this episode is

1:20

Dante Stewart, a theologian, essayist,

1:23

and cultural crack. His work has appeared

1:25

on CNN, The New York Times, The Washington

1:27

Post, and more. Dante received his b

1:29

A and sociology from Clemson

1:32

University and is currently studying at the Chandler

1:34

School of Theology at Emery University

1:36

in Atlanta, Georgia. Today, Dante and Eric

1:38

discussed his book Shouting in the Fire

1:41

An American Epistle. Hey

1:43

Dante, welcome to the show. Hey, what's

1:45

up, man, It's good to be with you. We're gonna be talking

1:47

about your book Shouting in the Fire An

1:50

American Epistle, among other things.

1:52

But before we do that, let's start, like we

1:54

always do, with the parable. In the parable,

1:57

there is a grandparent talking with

1:59

a grand child and they say, in life,

2:01

there are two wolves inside of us that are always

2:04

in battle. One is a good wolf,

2:06

which represents things like kindness and bravery

2:08

and love, and the others a bad wolf,

2:11

which represents things like greed and hatred

2:13

and fear. And the grandchild stops

2:15

and thinks about it for a second, looks up with their grandparents,

2:17

says, well, which one wins? And the grandparents

2:20

says, the one you feed. So I'd like to

2:22

start off by asking you what does that parable

2:24

mean to you in your life and in the work

2:27

that you do. Yeah, wow, that is

2:29

actually a great, great parable.

2:31

And the immediate thing that

2:33

comes to mind is back in college

2:35

at Clumpson University, where a similar story

2:38

was told about investment.

2:40

About whatever investment that we make in

2:42

our bodies and in our minds and

2:44

the things that we're doing outside in the world

2:47

is eventually going to come out. And whichever

2:50

one gets fed the most is

2:52

the one who's going to endure the longest.

2:54

So we think about running. I just got finished

2:56

working out cycling. Actually I just got finished

2:59

cycling, And whenever I'm

3:01

cycling, it's always

3:03

like that. My ability to be strong long

3:06

is dependent on what I ate thirty minutes

3:08

ago, people what I ate an hour ago.

3:10

And so when I hear that parable, particularly around the

3:12

work that I'm doing across theology

3:15

and and black literature, and politics

3:18

and and gender and sexuality and

3:21

and many of these intersecting topics.

3:23

I want to feed the one that's

3:25

going to create the greatest community. I don't

3:27

want to feed the wolf that's going to destroy

3:30

everybody. I want to feed the wolf that's

3:32

going to create a community of care. So that's

3:34

kind of where my mind goes Awesome, that's a lovely

3:36

answer. So I want to start off. There's

3:39

a question that you pose early in the

3:41

book that I think sits at the heart of the work you're

3:43

doing. But I think a different version of it sits

3:45

in the heart of the work all of

3:47

us do it anyway in our life. Right, And

3:49

you say that, I wonder to myself, how do I be

3:51

black and Christian and American?

3:54

Right, and that, you know, trying to be all three of those

3:56

things and and then calling different things

3:58

out of you. And I think we could add mail to that, right,

4:01

male as a whole whole element.

4:03

You know, we might have listeners who are like, well, what's

4:06

it like to be black and atheist and female?

4:08

And we each have these different identities.

4:11

I think that may sort

4:14

of call to us in different ways.

4:16

And I'm just curious how you think about

4:19

being a whole person that balances

4:22

all those different identities, particularly

4:24

if they're calling for different things from you.

4:27

Yeah, yeah, incredible question. My

4:29

mind. Immediity goes to tone Uet

4:31

Bombarba's The Salt Eaters, which

4:34

was a fantastic, fantastic

4:36

novel, which is the story of a woman who

4:39

is very much engaged in the struggle

4:41

for liberation, but she finds herself in the psychiatric

4:43

ward at the beginning of the book, and she's in

4:46

this community of healers who

4:48

have disability to heal people, and

4:51

there at the beginning of the book, there

4:53

is the question that is asked, again and

4:55

again and again, are you sure

4:57

you want to be wail? Because healing

5:00

the wholeness ain't no trifling matter.

5:03

And one of the things that I love about this book,

5:05

and I have been just sitting with this

5:07

book and sitting really with Tony cab and Bar for a

5:09

long time now, is that,

5:12

you know, there's a difference between

5:15

doing creative and compelling

5:17

work and actually being a good

5:19

and healthy human being. You know, some

5:21

people are really good at what they do, and they

5:24

may do it very well, but oftentimes

5:26

in the process they destroy themselves

5:28

and others in the process because they don't know how

5:31

to integrate various aspects of

5:33

what it means to be a whole and healthy human being

5:35

in what they're doing. And for me, I've made

5:38

that mistake in the past, and I have to continually

5:40

be aware of my own limitations

5:43

as it relates to my work. Right now, I

5:45

think about my family, I think about being in ministry,

5:48

I think about being a writer and

5:50

a student, and then somebody who's trying to do

5:52

work in public. So many

5:54

of these roles are

5:58

calling me in various

6:00

different directions that it's very easy

6:03

to burn out, is very easy to allow

6:05

insecurity, to win out, is very

6:07

easy to work from

6:09

a place of imbalance. Is

6:11

very easy to be resentful

6:14

and even regretful in ways that I

6:16

failed, in ways that I missed and fumbled

6:19

the bag in the past. And I have to constantly

6:21

remind myself of why I do this work

6:23

that I do. I do it, as Baldwin

6:26

said in is Far Next time, I do

6:28

it because I love us, I love

6:30

myself. I want all of us uh

6:33

to be whole and healthy. And back to your

6:35

initial question of that what sits

6:38

at the heart of my book

6:40

is that question what does it mean to be Black, American

6:43

and Christian? And it is

6:45

really a nod to Ardrew Lord, the black lesbian

6:47

feminist poet, a mother who

6:50

she self described herself. As

6:52

she writes in Zombie, a new spelling

6:54

to my name around page one seventy

6:57

one seventy six, something like that, she says, I

6:59

remember what it is like to be young and black

7:01

and gay and lonely. And she goes

7:04

and separates those various

7:06

experiences not with a Comma, but

7:08

with the word and

7:11

and it's as if she's suggesting that

7:13

one needs to take into account what

7:15

these various particularities in my identity

7:18

mean and the ways in which they intersect

7:20

in the most beautiful and terrible ways possible.

7:23

Then she goes on and says that we had

7:25

to create various models. We had

7:27

to create communities of love and accountability

7:29

and responsibility and wholeness

7:32

because we had no models. We had

7:34

people who rejected us. And in those various

7:36

experience we had people who let us down

7:39

and filled us. And we have to find a way

7:41

to show up in the world as our full and

7:43

whole self instead of simply being

7:45

reminded of what other people did to us. And

7:48

so me, when I think about wholeness and healing

7:50

and shotting in the Fire and American Epistle, it

7:53

is that journey continually not

7:55

trying to be the hero, but trying to find ways

7:57

to be whole and healthy as a human person.

8:00

A beautiful answer. There's so many things you sit in there

8:02

I could touch on. It reminded me of

8:04

a line in your book A little

8:06

Bit where you say, as a writer, I came to the realization

8:09

that far more important than people liking my

8:11

work or even resonating with my work,

8:13

or even using my work to shake things up.

8:15

Was me liking myself and liking

8:18

the complexity of life and believing

8:20

that I had something worth giving that was saturated

8:23

in maturity and love. And I

8:25

love that last idea because any

8:27

of those identities we wanted, any of those

8:29

identities we take or that we inherit or

8:31

whatever, if we bring to them

8:34

that idea of maturity and love,

8:36

then that feels to me like a lot

8:38

of the battle. Oh yeah. And

8:41

I think inside of our work that

8:43

we do, of trying to offer you say, in your

8:45

platform, practical wisdom for a better life, or

8:48

in my space, me trying to create

8:50

a world of love and liberation,

8:52

where in some sense my kind of sprain

8:54

board is at the intersection of Jesus

8:56

and James ball Went Black, literagy and theology.

8:59

It's very easy to allow

9:02

that work or that platform

9:05

or whatever that is to mask

9:07

who we really are, you know. It's

9:10

it's easy to allow those

9:12

things to allow us to run

9:14

from ourselves. As I know in the book that whether

9:16

I was in the Orange Jersey or whether I was reading

9:18

theology, or whether I was preaching,

9:20

teaching, leading in these spaces. These spaces

9:23

allowed me opportunity to run from myself,

9:25

or run from other people, or run from where I became,

9:28

or in some sense made me the hero in the

9:30

process. And I think at the

9:32

heart of so much of the running is

9:34

insecurity and fear that

9:36

says that if people know me for who

9:39

I really am, if people hear the

9:41

whole story of what I actually have become,

9:44

then they will not accept me in my full

9:46

self, and they will reject me for who

9:48

I want to become. And so much

9:50

of our work, so much of this kind

9:52

of growing up that we need to do,

9:55

must be saturated in maturity

9:58

to realize that off the times

10:01

we compare ourselves with the

10:03

worst in ourselves and the best in other

10:05

people, and when we do that, we will

10:07

always look down on our journey.

10:09

We will always diminish how

10:12

much we've changed. And we would try and prove

10:15

to people that what they

10:17

are projecting on us, or what they

10:19

remember about us in the past, is

10:22

actually who we really were when the actuality

10:24

that is just one part of the journey,

10:27

and it made us who we are today,

10:29

and the fullness of that story is

10:32

everything that came before

10:34

and everything that happened in between.

10:37

Yeah, that's awesome, very well

10:39

said. I think it's time that we pivot a little

10:41

bit to your story, because I

10:43

think it's an important part of

10:45

the book, and I particularly

10:47

want to focus in on kind of where

10:49

you start. The book primarily is

10:52

really around the fact, and I'm gonna I'm gonna

10:54

set it up a little bit for listeners,

10:56

and you correct me if I get anything wrong. You

10:58

grew up in the rural sal Pentecostal

11:01

and then you went off to Clemson University to be a

11:03

football player, and while that was

11:05

happening, you began to get involved

11:07

with, for lack of a better word, the white church.

11:10

I'll let you kind of pick it up from there, kind of share

11:13

a little bit about what was pulling

11:15

you in that direction, and then we can sort of talk about

11:17

your movement away from that,

11:19

and then, um, I think that leads into a

11:22

lot of other areas we can go here. Yeah,

11:24

yeah, yeah. So at this moment this was in

11:27

I was rising leader in this predominant

11:30

white church, and by that time, in two thousand sixteen,

11:33

I had already graduated from Clemson. I

11:35

was very much invested in white

11:37

evangelicalism through college where

11:40

we come onto campus as young black athletes,

11:42

and the ones who have greatest access

11:44

to us when you're thinking about like wisdom

11:47

and spirituality and maturity

11:49

and vocation, those

11:51

who are shaping those ideas

11:53

and those ideals are

11:55

those who are white. When you think about

11:58

preaching and things, we should be involved.

12:00

And it wasn't during that moment thinking about

12:02

the injustice that was around us. Of

12:05

course, uh, those as my

12:07

teammates were concerned about those injustices,

12:09

particularly when I tell the story about Treyvon Martin,

12:12

and my team may stand in solidarity

12:14

with him, but me a line said, I had work to do. Uh.

12:17

So there were definitely moments

12:19

and movements, uh that that wanted

12:21

to take seriously the suffering that black people were

12:23

enduring and trying to liberate

12:26

us from the the kind of enduring

12:28

structures of white supremacy that we're

12:31

so pervasive in every aspect of our

12:33

society. But in

12:35

a very real way, that wasn't

12:37

an overwhelming thing. It was more so

12:39

like, you're here to play football, and

12:42

you're here to get an education and everything

12:44

else you know you need to. It's like that the idea

12:47

of the blinders. You need to leave all

12:49

the noise when in actuality we

12:51

never took into account, but we were

12:53

missing when we had such exum

12:55

and zero sum focus. And for

12:58

me, so much of what I was missing was

13:00

the wisdom and the love and the

13:03

art and the culture that came

13:05

from my black Pentecostal

13:07

real upbringing. When I was at Clemson,

13:10

so much of it was me seeing

13:12

whiteness is something to be desired and

13:14

bringing me protection and bringing me resources

13:16

and bringing me things that my parents

13:19

and people around where I came from said

13:21

was gonna make me successful. Now, over

13:23

time, I started to believe it, and I started to

13:25

get invested and get involved, and

13:28

it changed how our names saw and

13:31

showed up in the world. You know. Steady

13:33

suggests that the longer people

13:36

of color and black people are within these

13:38

white dominant spaces, the more

13:40

we individualize our racial identity

13:43

uh and the less we identify

13:45

with our people that we come from.

13:48

And so what tends to happen is

13:50

the longer we're in those spaces, the more

13:52

we're socialized out of where

13:55

we come from and socialized into an environment

13:58

that oftentimes want us to seem mel lay

14:00

in ways that that does not question

14:03

the dominant power structures, that does not question

14:05

the stories at work within these spaces.

14:07

So two thousand sixteen happened for London Castile

14:10

and Alton Sterling is murdered, and it shook

14:12

me up out of the ways

14:14

in which I had devalue where

14:16

I come from and distanced myself

14:19

from the people that I came from. And then Donald Trump

14:21

happened, and I'm reaching teaching leading, and

14:23

so many of these white members in

14:25

this church were not just apathetic

14:28

to our identities and our experiences,

14:30

but they actually was actively hostile.

14:33

And so that just wasn't for the members, that was also for

14:35

the leaders. And so then in that

14:37

moment, I had a decision I had to make.

14:40

Either I stay and assimilate

14:42

and be silent and it eats me up on the inside

14:44

and I felt myself and my wife and my friends

14:47

and very legitimate ways, or I

14:50

make the more courageous decision to

14:52

actually change and do something about

14:54

the reality that I knew was

14:56

harming all of us. There's so many things you

14:58

write in the book about this that I think are so powerful,

15:01

and I think what you're describing, we're

15:03

framing it in the context of black

15:05

and white, and that's an important part of

15:08

your story and all that.

15:10

And I think as a human experience,

15:13

there is a you grow up, you kind of move

15:15

away from what you were raised, you want

15:17

to learn something new, you're looking for something else,

15:19

You lose touch, you know, and there's this reckoning

15:21

that goes on inside of us right between

15:24

like how I was raised and who I

15:26

am now and what I believe now. And

15:28

I think that's that's so interesting. Of

15:30

course, yours was amplified by

15:32

the fact that you sort of suddenly realized,

15:35

like, oh, I'm in a space that's

15:37

hostile towards my

15:39

people, you know. And I'm curious to

15:41

the extent that you sort of knew

15:44

where you were and you really wanted

15:46

to be there and you were willing to overlook a lot

15:48

of things, or to the extent that you

15:50

were surprised and you went, Holy mackerel,

15:53

like some of this ugliness is coming out of

15:55

the cupboard. And it's probably a little bit of both, but

15:57

you say a little more about that. I definitely

15:59

think that that's very perceptive. Actually, so

16:01

much of my story is that tension of

16:04

I'm not making myself the hero. I actually wanted

16:06

to be there, and I write in a book that I

16:08

had become a weapon, and it was a

16:10

weapon that was always used

16:13

against us, the black US, or

16:15

any marginalized community, whether you're talking about

16:17

black women, you're talking about l g B t

16:19

Q. This idea of

16:23

being white, conservative,

16:26

evangelical male as like

16:28

fundamentally Christian, that this this

16:31

idea of listening to that voice as

16:33

the dominant voice for how I thought about the

16:35

world harm so many people.

16:38

And I desired it because it brought me

16:40

so much of what I was longing

16:42

for, and that was affirmation. And

16:45

me and my friend was talking to some time

16:47

ago one of my teammates and he was like, yo, bro,

16:50

Like we all live for this one thing when

16:52

we playing ball, and it's to hear from the

16:54

coach, great job, I

16:56

see you, You're doing great. We're

16:58

living literally in and day

17:00

out for that final affirmation at

17:03

the end of every day, at the end of each game,

17:05

at the end of each week, at the end of each year,

17:08

great job, yo, You're doing amazing,

17:10

etcetera, etcetera. Now, when

17:12

you speak to amplification, I think when

17:14

we start taking into account social

17:17

identities and affirmation,

17:20

especially within the context

17:22

of giving injustice around

17:24

experiences of race, class, gender,

17:27

sexuality, place ability,

17:29

etcetera, etcetera. This kind of affirmation

17:32

and assimilation is amplified, and

17:34

we long for these things because

17:37

you know, these people in some sense have

17:39

the ability to determine whether I

17:41

stay here and go beyond or whether I go back

17:43

home. And one of the things we

17:45

didn't want from where I grew up is to

17:48

go back home, because it was almost like a

17:50

metaphorical death sentence to go

17:52

back home. And so, like so many young

17:55

people that I was around, we

17:57

live for the affirmation. And so inside

18:00

of this white evangelical space, that affirmation

18:02

came, and it came again and again and

18:04

again. And I want people to understand. I don't

18:07

want people to be unaware that YO, to be young

18:09

and black and male and straight and

18:11

charismatic is to be marketable

18:14

in these white spaces, especially

18:16

if you don't say anything about you

18:19

know, oppression and justice, gender

18:22

sexuality, even how

18:24

we think about the world and culture and

18:26

cultural production. You know, we're very

18:28

marketable. And it's not until we

18:31

start to push back against these dominant

18:34

stories that we realize that these

18:36

spaces only one us insofar

18:38

as we make them feel good about

18:41

who they are or what they're doing. Case

18:43

in point, Colin Kaepernick, case in point,

18:46

many of the black women who stand up

18:48

against this injustice in the NBA.

18:50

I'm thinking about Maya Moore, uh. Case

18:52

in point. Uh, we see black

18:55

gay men, black gay women standing

18:57

up against the dominant forms in which even we black

18:59

men and up whole patriarchy. Uh.

19:02

And so when when you started thinking about this

19:04

silencing and this assimilation

19:06

and things like that, and just the ways in which

19:08

is amplified, especially for me,

19:10

in this space, I started to see

19:13

that I was actually full to desire

19:16

this space. I was shaped to desire

19:19

this space. It didn't naturally happen

19:21

this space called me to that

19:24

desire, called me to that assimilation.

19:26

And it wasn't until black women, particularly

19:28

my wife and others, started to force

19:31

me to see how that desire

19:34

for affirmation was destroying

19:36

us and them in the process. It

19:38

wasn't until then that I started to see

19:41

the person that I had become, and

19:43

that person was somebody who

19:45

was really, as I said in the book,

19:47

was anti black. And I have to own that. What

20:16

you say about wanting that affirmation from

20:19

coaches, from all of these people, I'm

20:21

a straight white male.

20:23

You know, as far as we talk about these imbalanced

20:26

power dynamics, right, I sit up near

20:28

the top, right, and that

20:30

desire for affirmation, still

20:33

in the past, has ruled parts of my life. I

20:36

can only imagine the pull of the

20:38

forces when

20:40

you add everything else into the dynamic

20:42

that I simply don't have to cope

20:44

with. Yeah, that's true. I think

20:46

you think about race, gender,

20:49

sexuality, ability, class,

20:52

geography, immigration status,

20:55

any of these kind of experiences

20:57

of modernization brings

21:00

both visibility and

21:02

invisibility. So when

21:04

you're marginalized inside of a space,

21:07

you're hyper visible, like you're

21:09

always conscious of being seen. You're

21:12

always conscious of people seeing

21:15

you and you being conscious of that being

21:17

seen. And so this is like one of

21:19

my one of my brothers, Darn them More. He

21:21

has this podcast, Being Seen, which

21:23

is sitting at the intersections of black male

21:26

gay life and queer life and trans

21:28

life. And one of the things he talks

21:30

about and weave so well in this podcast

21:33

is these various experiences of hyper

21:35

visibility. And when you're talking about hyper

21:37

visibility and being seen, you're oftentimes just

21:40

differently than those who believe

21:42

themselves to be the norm. And I

21:44

think when you're talking about these marginalizations and being

21:46

seen. You're always mindful

21:49

of how you show up in the world. You can't

21:51

be enraged like other people

21:53

can be raged. You can't be sorrowful

21:56

in ways that other people can be sorrowful. But

21:58

there's also a hyper visibility

22:00

as well. So it's the tension. It's the

22:02

paradox where you're conscious of being

22:05

seen and other people see you, but they don't

22:07

take your experience seriously enough

22:09

to actually change the conditions that you

22:11

have to live in. So I'm thinking about

22:14

the experience of college athletes right now

22:17

trying to fight for rights and trying to you

22:19

know, trying to create better contentions

22:22

or even Brian Flores, the coach

22:24

from the Miami Dolphins s Woo, calls the NFL

22:26

working like it's on a plantation. We're

22:29

not only hyper visible, but we're invisible

22:32

in this space. It's like, yo, you should be grateful for

22:34

being here, when the actuality,

22:36

we're not just grateful to exist. We

22:38

actually want to have an experience of being

22:41

free. And you can only be free

22:44

when your humanity and your

22:46

reality and your experiences are

22:48

not only seen and felt, but

22:50

actually taken into account inside

22:52

of environment where you feel seen,

22:55

inspired and protected, and so

22:57

so much of that invisibility, invisible

23:00

in these white institutions that my story

23:02

is woven into, is me trying

23:04

to figure out a way how to give voice

23:07

to so much of the pain, so much

23:09

of this struggle, so much of the rage,

23:12

so much of the violence that I

23:14

was experiencing, even though it may

23:16

not have been physical, it was psychological

23:18

and emotional violence. It was trauma

23:21

and being reminded of this trauma. And

23:23

so much of my book and so much of these experiences

23:26

are about giving voice to what

23:28

we experience and what we know to be true

23:30

and what we feel and are

23:32

embodied social sales, whether you're talking

23:35

about being inside of the classroom, whether you're

23:37

talking about being inside of a social

23:39

space, whether you're talking about being inside of the civic

23:41

organization. As theologian Katy Kennon

23:43

would say, there is no value

23:46

free space. We bring whoever

23:48

we are, and we need to take that seriously,

23:51

and we need to find ways of being together

23:54

where we are all seen

23:56

and inspired and protected in ways

23:58

that make us more human and not less,

24:01

and takes into account that we don't

24:03

all come here the same way that black

24:05

women see different than I see that me

24:07

as a young black male see different than white

24:10

people see that black trends. But

24:12

men and men see different than we, as

24:14

those who assist hit see And we need to

24:16

take into account that their experiences as

24:18

much is as important as mine.

24:20

And I need to take that into consideration

24:23

and take that seriously and how I show up in the

24:25

world. You just said something there about

24:27

there being no value free spaces

24:30

I want to present. Yeah, that was

24:32

another question I wanted to sort of get at. So you

24:34

were in the white evangelical church,

24:36

right, which we know that white evangelicals

24:39

are the large majority of people who

24:41

elected Donald Trump, right, So

24:44

it's easy for me as a white person to go,

24:46

well, dude, you were hanging with the wrong You're

24:49

hanging with the wrong white cars, right. So

24:52

seriously, though, my question is are

24:54

there spaces that

24:57

would have been less hostile

24:59

or felt less violent to you as a black

25:01

man, or is that the fact that they were

25:03

mostly white spaces by their very

25:06

nature are that way? Yeah? Yeah,

25:08

I think it's by the very nature of being white

25:10

space. Um, whether you're talking about

25:12

a conservative space or progressive space. Oftentimes,

25:16

you know, white people take for

25:18

granted that they actually are white. Oh

25:20

yeah, we don't think about it. Yeah. And

25:22

so one of the things James Baldwin talked

25:24

about when he made the statement about, you

25:26

know, working with the American

25:29

Communists, is that the American

25:31

communists forgot that they were actually

25:33

American, and so many

25:35

of these value systems of American

25:38

nous, of dominance, of control,

25:41

of politics of fear and

25:43

etcetera, etcetera, was even at

25:45

work in a separ proclaim radical organization.

25:48

And so I think it's by its very nature of being

25:50

inside of that white space that was hostile

25:53

to my reality. And I think we have to take

25:55

into account the social construction of

25:57

whiteness, that it is a value

25:59

system um that we have in area from

26:01

colonialism that makes

26:04

whiteness the dominating force

26:06

and how we name see an act within the world,

26:08

and that dominating force sees

26:11

itself as the norm. And

26:13

whenever you're inside of the space that sees

26:15

itself as the norm, it is only going to

26:17

take into reality your way of

26:19

seeing the world. It is only gonna take

26:21

that into account very limited

26:23

ways. Uh. And so I think

26:26

by very nature of me existing in those

26:28

spaces was really the culprit

26:30

of my experience and

26:32

the kind of struggles

26:35

that I face. And I want to be clear, this

26:37

runs rampant as well in black church spaces. So

26:40

I talk to people all the time about the Black church and

26:42

things like that. I say, you know, if we say, you know,

26:44

the Black church is always a space of liberation,

26:46

we could say that and say, yeah, that's

26:48

kind of true. But then also I tell

26:51

people, you have to take into account if I'm

26:53

a Black man in that space, then that may

26:55

be true with me more than if I'm

26:57

a Black woman in that space. But if I'm

26:59

black, g b t Q in that space, oftentimes

27:02

that space is not a space of liberation, but

27:04

oftentimes a space that uses

27:07

patriarchy and called patriarchy

27:09

God and really utilizes

27:12

the Bible as a weapon in the same way as

27:14

white people utilize the Bible as a weapon against

27:16

us. And so I think, as you're talking

27:18

about the human experience, we all

27:21

are shot through with that kind of reality,

27:24

and we can easily become the worst of

27:26

who we are. But there are spaces

27:28

where that might be true more than others.

27:31

So I want to live in that tension of

27:34

not triumphalizing one

27:36

space over the other, as if like this space

27:39

is going to be the space that finally saves

27:41

what we lost from other spaces.

27:44

But I will say that you know that

27:46

some spaces are actually better

27:48

than others, and we need to find out

27:50

how to shine light on those spaces

27:52

and support those spaces so that those

27:55

spaces are created again and

27:57

again and again inside of our society

27:59

and hopes that even in our differences,

28:02

as ardre Loot was saying, even in

28:04

our differences, that so

28:06

many silences can be broken,

28:09

that we can meet and greet one another and

28:11

our particular experiences as human

28:13

beings who cared deeply about the world we live

28:15

in and create together. Yeah, I think this is such

28:17

a thorny problem because

28:20

how do we find or create spaces

28:23

that feel equal. You know,

28:25

let's just say there's a predominantly white space

28:28

that really says, look, I really want to

28:30

become a space that's welcoming and

28:32

open to all. And so in the beginning,

28:34

I have a few black people who come right

28:37

in the beginning, it's not their space. It doesn't

28:39

feel right. Like you said, it's still not right.

28:42

But it takes time for people

28:45

to sort of you know, first

28:47

there's a few, then there's more, and more, or we could

28:49

reverse this and say it's a black space and a couple

28:51

of white people come into it. How communities

28:54

evolve in general is something I'm really

28:56

interested in, let alone.

28:59

I know how hard it is to create and involve any

29:01

community, let alone one that

29:04

solves some of these equality problems

29:06

in a fundamental way. Yeah, and I think this is

29:08

the ongoing challenge. You know why why

29:10

the work and the art is so important is

29:13

because you know, we have

29:15

inherited problems that have had

29:18

centuries to develop. I'm reminded

29:20

of talking to one of her students, Tea Butler,

29:22

the writer Uh. And the student came to her

29:25

and asked about the parable

29:27

of the source, and the students said,

29:29

you know, is it as bad as you make it seem

29:31

in the parables? And she said, you

29:33

know, I didn't create the problems.

29:36

All I let them do was get

29:38

about thirty years and let

29:40

the dangers of the past become

29:42

their disasters in the future. And

29:44

so the student noticeably shook as he

29:46

would be acts, Okay, where

29:48

are we doomed? Uh? And I tell

29:50

you Butler says, no, we're not doom

29:53

We're we're here right now in this moment, and

29:55

the student says, well, what is the answer? And

29:57

Octavia Butler says, there is no single

30:00

answer. There are thousands

30:02

of answers, you know, and you can

30:05

become one if you so choose to be.

30:07

And when I'll tell your Butler wrote that

30:09

in Essence magazine it was entitle

30:12

a few rules for predicting the future. She says,

30:14

we need to learn from the past,

30:16

we need to respect the law of consequences,

30:20

and we need to count on surprises.

30:22

So as I think about that, and I think about my work,

30:25

and I think about the work of trying to find

30:27

healing and wholeness and black stories, black life,

30:29

black art, and creativity, I

30:31

want to try and figure out how to continually

30:34

find in search for those answers and

30:36

continually, in small ways, become

30:38

that answer. Because I know that there is even

30:41

my book and so many of these books that I'm surrounded

30:43

about, or so many of these great thinkers

30:46

that I lean on, there is no one

30:48

single answer, but there are many

30:50

answers that we can find in their literature.

30:52

Where I'm thinking about James Baldwin or Tony

30:55

K. Bambara or Alice Walker

30:57

or Richard Wright or somebody in

30:59

in the in the just were like James Cone or

31:01

Katie Kennell. I'm Shawn Copeland that there are

31:03

so many answers in these very spiritual

31:06

teachers and leaders, and so many

31:08

answers in the everyday, ordinary

31:10

ways that we black people take whatever

31:12

we have and we turn it black. And I want

31:14

to find those answers. I want

31:16

to find those things that would

31:19

allow me to embody the best of

31:21

what we can become and hopefully,

31:23

over time, like a sculpture and

31:25

artists, that that over time,

31:28

every single hit would turn that

31:30

sculpture into something beautiful, so

31:32

that when people the years

31:34

and years and years from now will look

31:36

back on this sculpture, they will not only

31:39

here about the journey that got us

31:41

here, but they will also be able

31:43

to see the product that we have actually

31:45

created. And that's what I think is the

31:47

answer. It's doing whatever we can

31:50

in our art to give voice to these

31:52

stories, to give voice to these experiences,

31:54

but also to say that we are not just

31:57

simply what other people make us, but that

31:59

we are human and worthy of the deepest love and

32:01

the best any of us have to offer

32:03

in any given moment. Beautifully said,

32:05

I was listening to something this morning and they

32:08

were talking about an idea that's

32:10

not terribly unusual but seems to be

32:12

coming up for me recently, which is that

32:14

reading fiction makes you a more empathetic

32:16

human being because you have to see the world

32:19

through someone else's eyes or done

32:21

well. And I'm curious

32:23

to the extent that you think part of

32:25

an answer is for white

32:28

people to be reading black authors,

32:30

to be getting an understanding

32:33

of what that actually looks like,

32:35

and I specifically mean in some

32:37

cases fiction, given its

32:39

potential for creating

32:42

empathy. I'm curious if you have any thoughts on that. Yeah,

32:44

that's a hard one, you know, because because

32:46

we have been writing literature, whether

32:48

you're talking about poetry, you know, fiction,

32:51

essays, sermons, songs,

32:54

we've been doing art for centuries.

32:57

And even as we have done

32:59

art for century, there have been white people who

33:01

have learned and who have changed,

33:03

but the vast majority of white people have

33:05

stayed the same and wanted to maintain

33:08

the white supremacist power superstructure,

33:11

uh and the inside of our societies.

33:14

And you know, even when we're thinking about

33:16

the abolitionist movement of the

33:18

time of enslavement, that even

33:21

the abolitionist in this movement they

33:23

thought about charity rather than justice.

33:26

They were okay with, you know, fighting for

33:28

the calls of seeing black

33:30

people free from the bondages

33:32

of slavery, but they did not want to

33:34

see themselves free from

33:36

the bondage of white supremacy. So white

33:39

people were always reading our literature

33:41

and always taking whatever we created

33:43

in this world, sometimes exploiting

33:46

it. Even now where you're thinking

33:48

about like black creatives and black TikTok,

33:50

how so much of like millennials and gen z

33:52

we're creating so much and still white

33:55

young people are still benefiting from our

33:57

creativity and exploiting it, you know.

33:59

So this is always been like a constant

34:01

story. But I do think that literature

34:04

does hold promise for

34:06

a change. I do believe that

34:08

people can change and do change.

34:11

But for me, I don't think that

34:13

that is the framework that is most important

34:16

in my own life and in my own work. I

34:18

recently wrote a essay with CNN

34:21

on Black History Month. Whether essay

34:24

was entitled we Redefined Blackness

34:26

as a World and a Gift and then this essay.

34:29

One of the things that that really stood

34:31

out to me in my process of writing this essay

34:33

is I was thinking about Black History Month and

34:36

thinking about two thousand twenty, where so many of our

34:38

black books became best sellers, and

34:40

those books deserve to be best sellers because

34:42

some of them are great art, and many of them are great

34:44

art. But oftentimes I realized

34:46

that so much of the conversation about black life and

34:49

art in history is oftentimes

34:51

flattened because people failed to look at life

34:53

through our own eyes, like they failed to see

34:56

the ways that we move and dance and create

34:58

life, and they felt the felt to

35:00

see the ways in which like that we

35:02

are people, that we are human beyond

35:05

their gaze. And I wanted to argue

35:07

that your black history and Black

35:09

art and creativity is not about saving America

35:11

or saving white people, that it is about

35:14

us. That it is not just simply

35:16

asking the question, you know, how can I remember a

35:18

learn from black people? But it's all

35:20

of us asking how can we love black

35:22

people by seeing us and hearing us and

35:25

creating a world where we feel seen,

35:27

inspired and protected. That is

35:29

very much farther than simply

35:32

seeing us as your you know, reading us, talking

35:34

to us, being around us to teach you,

35:36

you know, because that simply centers you and what you

35:38

can learn, how you progress. What I want

35:40

to do, as Tony Morrison done and so

35:42

many black writers have done,

35:45

is take away that kind of gaze

35:47

and say, you know, it is about us.

35:49

It is about the world that we are living

35:51

in. It is not totally about us,

35:54

because you know, Baldwin would always

35:56

say you know that, and the devil finds work

35:58

that no person can leave of without the others,

36:01

or Martin Luther King talking about interdependence,

36:03

that no person can be free

36:05

without the freedom of another person. But

36:08

there is something to be said about the ways in which

36:10

people reduce us to simply what

36:12

we can educate them in and

36:14

and make them feel better or less racist,

36:17

and how that actually harms us and fails

36:19

us to see us as fully human in

36:21

and of ourselves. And so to think

36:23

about can black literature teach

36:25

white people or save white people. I

36:27

don't know in that sense, because history

36:30

doesn't give us uh any you

36:32

know, legitimate evidence

36:34

to believe that fully and

36:36

finally, like reading us being

36:38

around us will save people.

36:41

But I do believe that literature

36:43

our lives do hold the problemless uh

36:46

for all people, and mostly for us

36:48

to say that we don't have to prove who we

36:50

are, but that we are actually full

36:52

of love, full of truth, full of grace,

36:54

full of failure, full of imagination,

36:57

full of beauty that's worth studying

37:00

and documenting and talking about rather

37:02

than simply reducing list. At

37:29

the end there you refer to the white gaze.

37:31

Right. You referred to your

37:33

work not being about educating

37:36

white people, which I couldn't agree with. More.

37:39

You said wanting to be seen as fully human.

37:42

And this is where I

37:44

get challenged personally. I

37:47

feel like I do see black

37:49

people as fully human, and

37:52

I also know that if I ignore the

37:54

specifics of what

37:57

it is to be black for them, I

37:59

feel like I'm missing up and I'm I'm asking this

38:01

is a very genuine, earnest question

38:04

about how to relate just human

38:06

to human. But if

38:09

we're not careful, that human to human

38:11

relationship becomes about

38:13

what I've learned is propagating

38:15

white supremacy. Is to say, well, I just don't see

38:17

color. So I feel like I'm

38:19

trying to balance these two things. I'm

38:22

like, well, okay, I want to just see human to

38:24

human. You've got you've got children, I've got children, You've

38:26

got parents. You know you've got at a grandparent

38:28

who passed the dementia my partner's mom

38:30

has Alzheimer's, Like we're living the same thing.

38:32

They're human to human, you

38:35

know, And then there are these

38:37

factors of identity and wanting

38:39

to respect those and understand

38:41

those, but also not separate.

38:44

And so that's not even a question so

38:46

much as it's a you know, yeah, no,

38:49

no, I got you know, I got you, I got

38:51

you, And I think I think we have to talk about,

38:53

you know, the continuity and the discontinuity

38:55

in our human experience. You're right,

38:58

there are going to be aspects of our

39:00

human experience that intersect, you

39:02

know, in very real ways, but they're also going

39:04

to be aspects that intersect in very

39:06

different ways. So to think about

39:09

suffering, we're thinking about health care. Let's

39:11

take healthcare and into example, it's

39:14

very clear that black women die at

39:17

higher rates than white women. We

39:19

may both struggle from hemorrhaging,

39:22

we may both struggle from

39:25

emergency induction, we may

39:27

both struggle from

39:29

the pains associated with the body of pregnancy.

39:32

But when we go inside the hospitals,

39:35

when we go inside these structures,

39:37

those structures determine so

39:40

much in that experience and

39:42

how that experience is related to and

39:44

the outcome of those experiences,

39:46

and so I think we have to talk about that discontinuity

39:49

as well, that that many of us may experience

39:51

some of the quote unquote same things, but

39:53

when we're talking about a kind of ecosystem

39:56

that we're living in a structure of life

39:59

conditions, there's so much

40:01

discontinuity, you know, in

40:03

that if we're thinking about social pain

40:06

and injustice, that that oftentimes,

40:08

you know, white people experience pain

40:12

just like we experience pain, but white people

40:14

also live in a society that believes

40:17

their pain battle more than other people's pain.

40:19

And so you see, we're living inside

40:21

of a country that oftentimes it's more concerned

40:24

about poor white people and appealachia

40:26

then it's concerned about a system

40:30

that that has impoverished black

40:32

communities and black schools and

40:34

and black businesses. Where we're

40:36

both experiencing poverty in

40:38

in in very real ways, and there's

40:40

continuity. But oftentimes the society

40:43

says that your pain matters

40:45

more than someone else's pain. And

40:48

I think many ways for us to kind of think

40:50

about that. Many of the ways that we can think better

40:52

about that is in some

40:54

sense, you know, creating ways

40:56

to enter into struggles

40:59

with the under standing that our

41:01

struggles may be similar but their fundamental

41:03

differences, and in some sense I

41:05

should relate to someone as normal,

41:08

but that normality is always

41:10

rooted in the particularities of your identity.

41:13

You know, when I relate to black women inside

41:15

of this society, and I think about the

41:18

ways in which like I oftentimes

41:20

upheld patriarchy. When I started

41:22

to Rebill Hooks and Alice Walker and

41:25

Tony Morris and an Tony que Barbara,

41:27

you know, I had to be both

41:29

disciples out and socialized out

41:32

of the ways in which I've thought of myself as

41:34

a black man. You know, then I had to relate

41:36

to black women and black l g b t Q

41:38

as normal. Those experience of

41:40

love, those experiences of failure, those experiences

41:43

of dreaming and imagination and desire

41:46

and intimacy is as

41:48

normal as how I think about

41:50

my own self. And it wasn't enough

41:53

for me to read The Will to Change

41:56

or Be Real Cool, or In Search of

41:58

Our Mother's Gardens and of Likes,

42:00

or deep sightings and rescue missions, or reading

42:02

June Jordan's and and so much of

42:04

her work. It was enough for me to read

42:07

Black Feminists UH and Woman

42:09

in Theology but I had to fundamentally

42:12

alter how I thought about myself as

42:14

a black man to take into account

42:16

that the way y'all see me needs to be

42:18

taken seriously. And of course

42:20

I struggle and with oppression

42:23

the same way as you struggle, But there

42:25

is a discontinuity in our

42:27

struggles where I may be empowered

42:29

in one area that you are not. And

42:32

I need to show up and move move in the world

42:34

with that awareness and how I converse

42:37

and how I relate and even public

42:39

conversation, whose pain

42:42

whose struggles are oftentimes mute

42:44

and silence, and how can I bring

42:46

those struggles along with me when I showed

42:48

up in public. So it wasn't enough to just

42:51

simply read their book and try and change

42:53

how I thought about myself. I needed

42:55

to change how I move inside of the world

42:58

and who I brought along with me. So if

43:00

we're thinking about patriarchy and gender and

43:02

sexuality and then bringing

43:04

race and white supremacy and anti blackness

43:06

into that, you know, white people should

43:08

be doing the same. Relate to us as

43:11

if our reality and our art

43:13

and our culture is as important and as

43:15

normal as yours. And I'll never

43:17

forget Tony Morrison talking to was

43:19

being interviewed and the interviewer asked

43:22

about you know, like you know, white

43:24

white characters in her literature, and

43:26

she makes the statement that the interviewer didn't

43:28

understand just how profoundly racist that

43:31

question was. To ask Donni Morrison, like,

43:33

you know, when you're gonna write about why there are more

43:35

white people in your literature and when you're gonna

43:37

write about more white people? And then Tony

43:39

Morrison made the statement, you can't even

43:41

imagine that the way I

43:44

live is actually the mainstream

43:46

and you're outside of the mainstream.

43:49

So it is changing how we think of

43:51

ourselves and relate to ourselves as

43:53

we relate to other people, and thinking

43:56

about these norms and values

43:58

and ideas and reshaping

44:00

them so that you know, we found

44:03

better ways of being together. Yeah.

44:05

I am now again need about ten

44:07

or fifteen minutes to fully process

44:09

everything that you said there. I love

44:11

what you say about the places where

44:13

we sort of intersect and then also

44:16

diverge, you

44:18

know, and that being real. And

44:21

I think that what you were talking about

44:23

with relating to say, black women brings

44:25

up some of the dynamic, right, which is how

44:28

do I relate to a group that

44:30

I see as having been marginalized

44:32

in certain ways, and that I'm part

44:35

of the marginalizing group, you

44:37

know, in certain spaces.

44:39

And what's the proper relation,

44:41

you know, because you mentioned earlier about

44:44

the abolitionists, you know, wanted

44:46

charity not justice.

44:49

You know. So these are a lot

44:51

of really profound questions that we are

44:53

running out of time to be able to answer, and

44:55

as you said, they're they're incredibly complex. I want

44:57

to spend a little bit of time though, talking

45:00

about your work and

45:03

the relation it has to your life,

45:06

the role that creation plays for

45:09

you, going all the way back to where

45:11

we started talking about being whole humans.

45:13

You know, what is the role that creation

45:15

plays for you in being a whole human

45:18

if we think it in religious terms of like creation

45:21

as the created world, or

45:23

I mean you as an artist? Okay, cool, cool?

45:25

Yeah, And I think it does have relation to like

45:27

the created world as well. That so

45:30

much of you know, our work

45:32

as artists, as James Bob would say,

45:35

is in some sense taking the

45:37

intangible dreams that

45:39

reside inside of us and around

45:42

us and making them tangible

45:44

inside of the world. That he said, this is not the

45:46

statesman that is our strongest

45:49

arm in leading us away from the

45:51

old world into the new. But it is the writer

45:54

and I think because as we pay

45:56

attention to the created

45:58

world, we realized that these circumstances

46:01

have been created, and

46:03

if they have been created, then they

46:06

can be rethought and reimagined.

46:09

And so so much of my work

46:11

as an artist is looking at

46:13

the world that we have inherited, both

46:16

on a social political level, but

46:18

also looking at the black worlds that I

46:20

have inherited and figure out

46:22

how to lean and

46:25

dance and explore these black

46:27

worlds that I've inherited, so that this

46:29

world that we are living in, that we have inherited

46:32

a world marked by white supremacy,

46:34

anti blackness, homophobia, transphobia,

46:37

able ism, all the isms marked

46:39

by so many fault lines and

46:41

so much power struggles and

46:44

and ideas of control. That our

46:46

work as artists is to try

46:48

and find ways that we can

46:50

uncover the beauty and the sacredness

46:52

of our lives and uncovered the tension

46:55

and the complexity that we bring to life every

46:57

single day, and try and again

46:59

and again and again to show up on the page

47:02

telling people to pose and look again

47:04

at us and say that there is so much

47:07

more for us to see. There's

47:09

so much more for us to explore, There's

47:12

so much more for us to lean

47:14

into. Because when you think about healing

47:17

and wholeness, if you're just thinking about our own

47:19

kind of emotional healing and wholeness, Oftentimes

47:22

finding healing and wholeness

47:25

is about making sense of what

47:27

has happened in the past and

47:30

how that lingers in the present and

47:32

hopes that in the future we can show

47:35

up better than what we were. And

47:37

I think my job as an artist is to

47:39

lean inside of the stories of so much

47:41

of Black literature and Black religion

47:44

and figure out ways to make sense

47:46

of the past and figure out how we

47:48

can be better in the presence

47:50

so that we embody something better in the future.

47:53

What is that creative process like

47:56

for you personally? In

47:58

what ways do you feel that

48:00

you being an artist lifts

48:02

you up personally? I think

48:05

for me, so much of that

48:07

work is about finding

48:09

ways to speak to what I'm feeling,

48:12

you know. So much of my writing is

48:15

out of things that I read and

48:17

things that I'm wrestling with. You

48:20

know, so much of this work

48:22

is bound with so much insecurity in

48:24

reality, Like whatever we create

48:27

has the opportunity to make us most insecure

48:29

because oftentimes we're creating work

48:32

out of competition and felt need to

48:34

be relevant in the sense of, you know, the

48:36

algorithm. The algorithm, you know

48:38

will destroy us because we gotta always

48:41

create, create, create what's been

48:43

designed in this present moment,

48:46

and if we do that over and over, we're

48:48

going to gonna get burned out. And I feel

48:50

like that that this, like comparison,

48:53

is the thief of creativity, and

48:56

so much of my work is trying

48:58

to create away

49:01

from that, move away from

49:03

comparing myself to people and

49:06

right and what I want to write, Like like I

49:08

wrote this joint on Tony

49:10

Morrison hopefully that goes live this week

49:12

because I wanted to write it. That the

49:14

piece for CNN. I wrote it because I wanted

49:16

to write it. I'm working right now, want

49:18

to essay on some of soul and

49:21

black gospel because I want to write

49:23

these things. So for me, so much

49:25

of this work is doing the work

49:27

that I want to do. You know, it's easy

49:30

to try and beat somebody else as a writer, or

49:32

be somebody else as a podcast, or be somebody

49:34

else as a creative, but so much

49:36

of our life depends

49:38

on us being who we are and

49:41

trying to be the best that we can be in that

49:43

and for me, that makes me come most alive. It's

49:46

challenging, it's hard because

49:48

sometimes what you want is not

49:50

what others want from you. And

49:52

the moments you gotta give people what they

49:54

want you do as as a writer,

49:57

there are moments where you just gotta give people what they

49:59

want. I was reminded of this even with that Tony

50:01

Moore is an article. I had to be rioted of that

50:03

that yo, like like my boy Robert, Yeah,

50:05

to remind me give the people what they want when they ask

50:07

it for this article, you know, and sometimes

50:10

it's going to be like that that you've got to give people what they want.

50:12

But you also want to do what you want to do and

50:14

what makes you feel most alive. And I think

50:16

so much of creation and being an artist

50:19

is about interviewing people that make

50:21

us come alive or writing about things

50:23

that make us come alive. So yeah, I think

50:26

that's a beautiful place for us to

50:28

end. Dante. That's a that's a beautiful

50:30

sentiment to go out on. So thank

50:32

you so much for coming on. Your book

50:35

is called Shouting in the Fire and American Epistle

50:37

will have links in the show notes where people

50:39

can get access to that you are an

50:41

exceptional, exceptional writer. It's

50:44

really powerful book. So thank

50:46

you so much for spending some of your time with us. Thank

50:49

you, Eric, and thank you to the listeners of the One

50:51

You Feed You Make podcast and what

50:53

it is. You make so much of this what it is,

50:55

and I want to do this as I do at the end

50:57

of every interview, I want to thank you listeners

51:00

for engaging, for supporting,

51:02

for sharing. Keep doing that keeps going

51:04

up for Eric and others. So thank you. Thanks

51:06

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51:23

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