[percussive music]
- Murv Seymour: Dr. Gee, thank you for joining us.
- Dr. Alex Gee: It's really good to be able to sit down
and talk with you again. - Always a pleasure.
So, let's talk a little bit about...
We know that Nehemiah has its arms
in all kinds of different things.
Let's talk a little bit about Justified Anger.
- All right, let's go. - How did it start?
- I was minding my own business,
driving to a prayer gathering right in this space.
Pulled up right outside the front doors
and two police cars pulled me over.
Said that they were looking for a red car, mine's black,
and they're looking for a car
that was going the wrong way down Fisher Street.
I grew up on Fisher Street.
And I'd just left there, visiting my mom.
I said, "Fisher Street's a two-way street.
"What do you mean, the wrong way?
And my car's obviously not red."
That experience...
And let me just add, my associate pastor, who's white,
was in the parking lot when I pulled up.
I hired him.
I sign his payroll check.
He got out of his car to come and make sure
that nothing weird was going on.
Not once did they say, "Get back in the car.
Who are you; show me ID."
But they asked him to corroborate my story
'cause they wanted to know what I was doing here.
And I'm the longest-serving pastor in this community.
- So you were profiled, basically?
- I was profiled, in my own church parking lot.
- Murv: Wow.
- And if they wanted to know what I was doing here,
why didn't they want to know
what my white associate pastor was doing here?
He was sitting in the parking lot first.
It was an evening, it was dark.
He was the first car.
I pulled up, was the second car.
And then two police cars pulled up behind me.
Even when he got out of his car, they never said,
"Sir, who are you?
"What are you doing here?
Show us ID."
I looked in my rearview mirror and saw him
standing back here, talking to the police officers
while they asked him to corroborate my story.
Is he who he said he is?
I had to drop the name of three police officers
who were part of this congregation at the time.
I had to name drop to have them let me go.
Between that and the event at Rotary, where I talked
about the bleak realities of mass incarceration,
a woman thanked me for not being an angry Black man.
- How'd you take that?
- I said, "Well, why would you think I'm not angry, ma'am?
I'm very angry."
"Oh, I know, I know, but you're not angry like some F-ing..."
And then she named another Black influencer,
you know, pitting us against each other.
I said, "I'm angry just like him."
After that, I found one of my friends, Phil Haslanger,
who used to write for "Cap Times," and he was a pastor.
I said, "I need to tell my story.
This crap goes on all the time, and people wouldn't believe it."
'Cause I didn't believe it until it happened to me.
So I penned my response, you know,
and "Cap Times" published it.
And it went viral.
I wrote it, I think it published December 18.
And by the 31, and it was the 11th most read story
of the year.
- So let's talk about the "Cap Times"
essay that you put together.
The headline was, "Alex Gee Says
"Madison is Failing Its African-American Community."
You feel that was an accurate way to describe it?
- Oh, it's extremely accurate.
I knew that my response would ruffle feathers.
Because who wants to listen to a middle class,
Black male with an advanced degree,
living in Fitchburg, talking about racial disparities?
And I knew that, so I sat on some of these truths
for a long time.
But after being pulled over by the police the second time,
after being profiled the second time and pulled over,
and that comment at Rotary, I said...
Remember at the end of "New Jack City"
when Wesley Snipes said, you know, Nino Brown said,
"If I go down, everybody's going down."
I just said, "If I go down, everybody's going down.
I'm gonna tell it; I'm gonna tell it."
And I just started talking about the experiences.
And the accuracy really comes in the fact that
we have been voicing these issues for a long time.
We've been talking about the two-tier system,
the parallel realities.
And people are like, "No, no, no.
"Oprah, Michael Jackson, Michael Jordan.
"We don't see color.
"Alex, this is Madison.
"No, come on, just calm down.
You're high-strung."
And I just said, "No, I'm gonna talk about these experiences."
And when we bring them up, if action does take place,
it's someone, typically white, going into space,
some spaces and creating solutions
and then asking us to rubber stamp them.
I said, "In order to really address these issues,
"we have to address them.
"We have to tell the stories.
"And we have to invite others, when we're ready,
"to be a part of that solution.
But we need to design them ourselves."
And I wanted the letter to kick off the reality
that not only are we experiencing the disparities,
we are invited to the tables very late to address them.
And we needed to change that.
So that's really what I meant when I said
that Madison was not treating its Black residents well.
It's because our experiences weren't being respected.
- And correct me if I'm wrong.
The name, Justified Anger,
that was something that you did not come up with.
- Oh, no, no, no, no.
No, no, "Cap Times" came up with that.
Now, I like it.
I think it's catchy.
But no, no, I didn't make that up.
And so when they came out to shoot the photo for the story,
they said, "Well, can you hold your hands like this?"
So, I mean, I wasn't thinking about it.
It was cold outside, and so I kind of folded my arms.
When the article came out, a lot of 'em, you know,
our Black friends said, "Ooh, Alex, you gonna get it.
"They made you look angry.
"They made you look defiant.
"You gonna get it.
"They gonna peg you as an angry Black man."
I said, "Well, I am angry,
"but that doesn't mean that I'm destructive.
"And the only thing that I'm dangerous to is the status quo.
"And so I'm not gonna hurt anybody,
"but I'm gonna spill the beans
and I'm gonna challenge the status quo."
- When we say Justified Anger, what does that mean to you?
- It means that even though anger is often a feared emotion,
the justification of it, it makes sense.
Because if I'm experiencing these issues
with what I've done in the community and who I am,
perhaps other people have been telling the truth also.
And if this indeed does happen because of race,
then you have every right to be angry.
That anger is called for.
And it gave me space to own that.
Now, I would have to tell you,
I sat down with a lot of white influencers
after that took place and they said,
"Alex, can't we call it justified something else?
"Can't we call it justified attitude or justified action?
"It's just that anger just sounds so...
threatening."
It is a threat.
I'm threatened every day.
My existence and the existence of those who look like me
is threatened every day.
Let's call it what it is.
And I refused, I absolutely refused to change it
even if they insinuated that my funding
would be jeopardized.
I wasn't to be bought.
And our pain wasn't to be bought.
And so here it is, 10, 11 years later,
and we're still known for that.
- Yeah, and you talked about some of the funders
wanting you to change the language on that.
Is it something you considered ever?
And do you ever worry about coming off sounding too angry?
- I am angry.
- But do you ever worry about sounding too angry?
- No.
No, no; in fact, what I told one of the funders is,
when white men start becoming more angry,
perhaps then I can become less angry.
So help me carry this anger.
But you're not gonna challenge me and my anger
and you're not going to look at your own
lack of courageousness.
You know, there's a poem that I quoted
in the anniversary article of Justified Anger
from Augustine of Hippo,
a fourth-century theologian and philosopher.
And he said, "Hope has two beautiful daughters.
"One is anger and one is courage:
"anger at the way things are
and courage for the way things can be."
And so anger is a part of hope.
You can't get to hope without anger.
Because anger is a catalytic emotion
that can cause you to start doing something.
My anger caused me to organize people,
train non-Black allies, train Black emerging leaders,
speaking my mind, advocating for my community.
Anger prompted those issues.
And so people can try to get upset
at the vernacular of the word,
but let's take a look at the body of work.
Does it justify fear?
Does it justify worrying about what my intentions are?
And have I not contributed more to the community
as an angry Black person than some of the colleagues
who are white and calm and very placid
in terms of how things were?
How's that working for them?
And so, no, I never ever worry about sounding too angry.
- Let's talk about the coursework,
Justified Anger coursework.
How does the program work?
- My undergraduate work was in Afro-American History
from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
So I've always thought, if people understood
how we got to where we are in terms of race relations,
if they understood the history of systemic racism.
Let's just take the name of it out.
Let's just talk about the way the country was built.
Let's look at our history
at a non-political academic perspective.
I felt that people, non-Black people, would say,
"Wow, I didn't know that.
"Really?
"Hmm, I understand things a lot differently now.
"Now I know how strategic we must be in dismantling this
if people were very strategic in mantling this."
And we thought we'd get maybe 100 people the first class.
I think we got 150 with a waiting list.
And then the next time, I think we did 250
with a 100-people waiting list.
So eventually, we took it up to 300 people.
And then during the pandemic when we put the course online,
that first cohort was 1,700 people.
We've taken nearly 5,000 people through this nine-week,
two-hours-a-week course that teaches history
from Western African civilization,
pre-Transatlantic slave trade through the 1950s and 1960s.
And it's just packed out.
And it has been a very, very powerful tool
for helping people to understand
how we arrived at this place of a racialized America.
- Do you feel like...
You know, you mentioned the 5,000 number,
which is what you've seen in the 10 years now.
Do you feel like that number is higher or lower
than what you would've thought?
- Oh, it's much, much, much, much higher.
Because even though I wrote "Justified Anger" in 2013,
I don't think we launched the class until maybe 2017.
And so it took us a couple of years to design it,
to work with faculty on campus.
But it's much higher.
First of all, I didn't know
that we'd be doing it every year.
Just thought, let's just try.
Because hundreds of people were emailing me
after I wrote the article asking, "What can I do?"
So I thought, let's create a bar.
And if people adhere to this bar,
if they come through this nine-week course,
then I can have a crew of people,
core of people that I could at least say,
"All right, let's take the next steps
in addressing this issue."
But I couldn't just tell the hundreds of people
who have said, "Tell me what to do."
It's just too much to manage.
But if people went through the course,
they show that they're really interested
in educating themselves about the issue,
it's easier to move those people along
because they've dedicated some commitment.
So I didn't know they were gonna do it again and again
and again and again.
Now, because it's going online,
people have taken it from coast to coast.
People stop me in restaurants and say,
"You don't know me, but I've taken your course.
This is what's going on."
People have completed the course.
Like Justice Jill Karofsky has opened doors
so that we've created opportunities for fellow judges
to take a portion of the class.
We've offered it to corporations,
whether it's Summit Credit Union
or American Family Insurance or other major corporations.
The University of Wisconsin has actually sent faculty.
Elected officials have taken it, CEOs of nonprofits.
I don't think that I imagined how eclectic
the group would be, that it would continue for so long,
and that we would actually talk about 5,000 graduates
with about an 84% completion rate.
So the numbers of people who started
is actually higher than 5,000.
But the 5,000 is the number of those who completed it.
- What's the demographic of the person who goes?
Like what's their race, gender,
and what kind of work are they involved in?
- It was designed for white allies,
for people who wanted to be white allies primarily.
We saw other groups coming as well.
But it was really designed for the larger population,
for the dominant population here in Madison.
- When you say ally, what do you mean by ally?
- Well, actually, we referred to folks
who were interested in helping as would-be allies.
Because we found that the term ally
was thrown around too easily.
Because anyone who felt sympathetic about these issues
called themselves an ally.
But it didn't convict them enough to vote
in a way that would help the issues,
donate in a way that would help the issues,
show up and affiliate themselves with these organizations.
But we needed more than just sympathy.
We needed people to really align.
Allies put themselves in harm's way.
They don't wait for me to address an issue
or their Black friends.
They'll say, "Excuse me,
that's offensive, what you just said."
Or in their own places and spheres of work,
"I thought we said we were gonna wait for a diverse pool.
"I thought that we were...
Why is this committee so monolithic?"
They would ask their own questions.
And so that's what allies do.
And so we created this training for people
who wanted to become allies.
We didn't just assume people were allies
because they felt sorry about the issues.
The demographic early on, it's probably white Madisonians
who were in their 60s or close to retirement age.
Many of them had an advanced degree.
And so they were really considered to be educated people
who knew nothing to very little of real U.S. history.
Never heard of the Harlem Renaissance.
Did not know about Reconstruction.
They did not understand a lot of these things
that were just everyday knowledge, you know,
in certain groups of people.
And so, it caused them to question,
"Who messed with my educational process
"that I can have an advanced degree,
"an intelligent individual,
"and there's a whole segment of American history,
"not Black history,
of American history that we never heard about?"
I used a quote by James Baldwin
that he wrote for "The New Yorker" in 1964, I think.
And I'll paraphrase it.
And he said, "To the extent that white America
"doesn't understand the history of Black people in America,
they do not understand themselves."
And I found that to play out incredibly true.
Many people signed up for the class thinking,
"We wanna learn what happened
to our Black brothers and sisters."
After the third or fourth session,
they said, "Wait, wait."
'Cause they could go home and Google it and say,
"This is real, this really did happen.
"The Harlem Renaissance is really a thing.
How could I have not been told anything about it?"
So then it caused them to question
their own educational experience and processes.
When that happened, gloves off.
They were ready to say, "Okay, we're gonna dive in.
"Because we understand that you weren't told
"about your history.
"But we didn't know that we weren't told about ours.
"And why was that?
"And how did that make us party to the systemic racism
that would happen in this country?"
It's a very powerful moment when that takes place.
And that takes place with every cohort
around the fourth lecture.
- I remember reading that you put this together
to better race relations here in Madison.
Why not put something together to better race relations
throughout the entire state of Wisconsin?
- You know, you have to understand your market
and your reach.
And sometimes, I think we've missed an opportunity
to do good by trying to do too much.
And I have credibility here.
I've invested here.
I've been raised here.
And I knew that I could pull off things
and I could gather people.
And I had a reputation here.
But I also felt that if this became established enough,
we could then spread it throughout the state.
But I've learned to really start locally
and begin to move out.
So I just wanted to be cautious and to think this through.
I love now that it is statewide
and that people are taking it from all over the country.
But the idea was, let's just make sure that we take care
of the would-be allies in Madison
who need some type of threshold to cross
to say, "Now I wanna be taken seriously.
"I wanna be invested in
because I want to be part of the change."
And we could do that locally.
I couldn't do that statewide at that time.
- And I understand also a big part of
the effort in Justified Anger is not just
to educate about Black history,
it's also about letting white residents
learn about themselves.
- Oh, oh, definitely.
Because learning about Black history won't change anything.
Learning about themselves will change everything.
- Murv: What do they learn?
- They learn...
They learn what's really meant by the term white privilege,
that that's not just a moniker.
That's not just throwing off on people.
They learn that they're not really white.
They're German, they're Italian, they're British,
they're French, they're Scandinavian.
And then they have to ask,
"Well, why don't we celebrate that?"
And we tell them, "Your grandmothers did.
Your great-grandfather celebrated it."
If you tell me the ethnic background,
I can almost tell you how they may have celebrated.
Tell me what they ate,
and I can tell you how they celebrated it.
So then they have to ask themselves,
"Well then, why did we stop being German?
Why did we stop being Irish?"
Because you were given the option not only to be white,
which was to be American, but to not be Black.
So that no matter what they, the country, put on you,
as a white person, you could always say,
"At least I'm not Black."
You could vote, you could go into theaters, you could marry.
You had all these rights that Black people didn't.
All you had to do was to wear the team jersey of whiteness
and kind of throw away your own
little separate cultural identity that might separate us.
Meanwhile, Black people were holding onto their Blackness.
You remember the scene in "Roots"
where they were trying to tell Kunta Kinte
that his name was Toby.
And he wouldn't say it because all he had was his name,
his Blackness, his culture, his family, his God.
And they kept saying, "What's your name?"
And they could not get him to say Toby.
We were holding to our heritage.
And white America was selling theirs for the American dream,
for American capitalism, to be accepted.
And so then that completely polarized the country
between Black and white, or white and other.
And when people learned that, they realized
that once you dichotomize people that way,
once you polarize 'em that way,
you can put them at odds around anything.
Separate them in how they live
and then they never come together
so that we never work together.
We don't create solutions together.
Without even realizing it, we've been made
to be the enemies of each other and fearful of each other.
And when they realized that that was strategically designed,
they were pissed.
Our participants were pissed.
Because they just didn't know.
They had been thinking: "Why can't you just be...
"Why can't you just be American, Murv?
Alex, why can't you just be American?"
We've been trying to be American for 500 years,
but we couldn't.
And it wasn't because we didn't work as hard as you all
or think as hard as you all or run as fast as you all.
There were other reasons that kept us from being American.
And I think by now, we know what those reasons were.
And that reality causes those who are watching closely
to think, "If I don't do something,
I'm part of the problem."
And that's what the course taught.
Either you become a part of the solution
or you are the problem.
And Murv, if I may say this,
I think that this is very important.
We presented to the Wisconsin Partnership Program the idea,
we gave their data back to them.
And departments of public health have found
that racism has become a social determinant of health.
That if people of color,
and I'll speak specifically about my background.
As a Black person
who's working predominantly in white spaces,
dealing with microaggressions from, "Can I touch your hair,"
to, "Only talk to me about Black news and not regular news,"
to, "Why do you crease your jeans,"
so whatever the case may be,
not all of these are mean and nasty things,
but they're things that keep reminding me
I'm not seen as just an employee or partner,
I'm seen as Black first.
We have found that illnesses develop in us more quickly.
Because of the stress of those microaggressions,
we find that we are more prone to diabetes, hypertension,
even dementia, et cetera.
We wrote a proposal to the Wisconsin Partnership Program
saying that we can reduce those microaggressions.
If we are allowed to train white people
in understanding the roots of these microaggressions
so that they create a different environment
at their doctor's offices, their law offices,
their classrooms, wherever they are,
if they create better space for people of color,
they will reduce the stress that shortens their lives.
Conversely, I said, "We need to bring emerging Black leaders
to the table."
So we need to take Black employees
who are nominated by their employers,
to invest them in this seven-month process
where we have Black speakers and presenters,
and we talk about what does it mean
to bring all of you to the table,
giving them Black space to process what it means
to still be the first and the only.
You and I know about that well,
being the first and the only at this point in 2024.
We bring Dr. Christy Clark-Pujara
to talk to them a little bit about Black history
and understanding themselves
and the resilience of our communities.
So between investing in Black leadership
and training would-be white allies,
we could reduce the microaggressions
that Black people were experiencing
and help Black people and white people
and everyone else to work together on solutions
by having a better understanding of the way things work.
That by doing that, we could reduce the health risks
of Black people in our community.
We received a million-dollar grant to do that work.
And so I just wanna make sure that I put that on it as well,
that it's not just, oh, let's just talk about history
and have a kumbaya moment.
No, there's a lot of strategy.
We captured data on this in order to prove
that if we're going to create space for Black wellness,
it begins with non-Black allies understanding how we got here.
And it's training Black emerging leaders
in understanding how they run with the ball from here.
And that by doing both of those together,
we begin to create the capacity
to change the environment in Madison
that will make it perhaps more attractive
to other Black people
because this environment will no longer be detrimental
to our health.
- What's corporate America's role in all this?
- As we move ahead, you know,
I'm working on the Center for Black Excellence and Culture,
a place where Black people can come
and celebrate our resistance, our stories,
and tell our stories, and have this fine arts space,
this cultural space.
The corporate community has responded tremendously.
Because they realize, and I've asked them,
"What do you do with an employee who's been hired,
"and she happens to be Black,
"and she's the candidate head and shoulders above the rest.
"And at the end of the interview, she says,
"'I want this job, but can someone drive me
"around your city
"and just show me a few examples of Black innovation?'
Where would you take her?"
And this was on Zoom to the Chamber of Commerce board.
No one said anything, not a single response.
And I've asked that with other CEOs.
And what they've said to me later was,
"Alex, if you asked me that question about a Latina woman,
"a Latinx woman, I would know.
"If you asked me that about an Asian man, I would know.
"A white woman, I would know.
"I don't know what I would say.
I've never thought about that."
And then I said,
your competition is not Epic, Exact Sciences,
SSM, UW, the bank down the street.
That's not your competition.
Your competition is civic life in Madison for Black people
at 5 o'clock when they go home from work,
and they want to be around other Black people
like they were in DC, Atlanta, Raleigh,
Dallas, Chicago, Milwaukee.
We don't have that here.
We're having health implications,
one of the reasons why we're not keeping people here.
'Cause they've come from places where that was just a given.
You can't ask Black people to be the first
and the only in their jobs
that have no place to go to be reinforced
by people who share their culture.
And the business community got it.
And that's why we've been so successful
in our fundraising campaigns.
'Cause people understand that's a piece of the puzzle
that we've never considered.
- So we know people of color move here,
sometimes have a tough time adjusting.
And we know that people grow up here
and they have a tough time adjusting.
And I read that you prefer to see Black people
stay here in Madison.
- Sure do. - Why is that?
- I wanna see Black people stay here
because Madison has promising opportunities.
And I want our people...
I want Black people to take advantage of that.
It's a beautiful community.
It's a world-class university.
So many things to do.
But it's not catering to us culturally.
So it never feels like home.
The example I use is, if I went to my grandmother's house
with all of my cousins, and everyone else's picture
was up on her fireplace or her mantle but mine.
Everyone else's homework and drawings but mine.
At some point, I would say,
"Grandma, is there something you wanna tell me?"
Or "Mom and Dad, is there something
y'all aren't telling me?"
Madison feels like that.
That a lot of people see their artwork,
they see themselves,
they see their pictures and their faces.
But the Black community, we really don't.
And when we are talked about, it's the Bucks,
it's the Packers, or it's the prisons, or it's reports.
But it's not the Black resilient brilliance.
It's not a historical perspective.
It's always pejorative, and that's not who we are.
And we've done more for this state than just that.
And so I want...
Not only do I want that narrative changed,
I want us to be the one to change it.
And I want space where that's changed,
to have space where we tell our stories
and space where we train our leaders.
I wanna make this place attractive
to Black people from all over
so there's actually a place where we can sigh
and have a reprieve from being the first and the only.
'Cause it's okay to be the first and the only.
But historically, when you were the first and the only,
you still went back to a community,
you still went back to a center, you still went back to a church,
you still went back someplace where you could say,
"My people, I'm not crazy.
"I could be reinforced.
I can go out and do it another day."
When you don't have that, your days are limited.
- Are you ever worried about your safety
with the work that you do?
- It's not my first reaction.
But people often, close friends will pull me to the side
and they'll just say, "You know,
you just need to be a little bit more cautious."
Not in what I say, but just whether or not I travel alone,
posting if I'm out of town or not,
making sure my house has a good security system.
People have brought up things to me
in the line of my work saying I just need to be aware,
that it could be...
That what I'm doing could feel threatening to some.
But it's not my first thought.
- So it's been 10 years since you wrote that first essay.
And the "Cap Times" came back and wanted you
to write a another one.
You just did that recently here. - I did.
- And I saw that it started off with you saying,
"Yes, I am still angry.
And yes, it is still justified."
- Yes. - What are we saying there?
- Well, because I know people are wondering,
"Have things gotten better?
"You know, are you still angry?
"You know, has your work made you less angry?
"Has your work fixed things
so that you have less to be angry about?"
So I just started out by answering the question
that I knew people had.
Yes, I'm still angry and it's still justified.
But let's talk about what I've been up to.
But there's so much work
and so much that still needs to be done
that I can't afford to let up off the anger gas.
Because it still motivates me to make things better.
- Part of that essay, you said that
you just wanna thrive in your hometown.
When you look at all the great work you're doing,
all the different arms that your organization
is involved with, do you not feel like you're thriving?
- You know, it's impossible to really thrive alone
if you think about community as an ecosystem.
You can't just have a good flower
but the soil is crappy and it's dry
and there's no irrigation and there's no weeding
and no fertilizing and no sun.
By definition, if I'm doing well but my people aren't,
it's not thriving.
I'm just finding ways to succeed in spite of it all.
Thriving has to do with the infrastructure.
It has to do with the ecosystem.
I want to create something so that thriving is normalized
and it's not just an occasional person or two doing well.
So no, I'm doing well, but I'm not thriving.
Because I need more people to be thriving
and to see this as a great destination.
We are moving to that place,
but without space to tell our stories and be ourselves
and be reinforced and create a new narrative
and hold others accountable, we're not thriving yet.
But we are getting awfully close to thriving here.
- Yeah. - It's gonna happen.
- And you also said that 10 years is not enough time
to fix all of our problems in the Black community,
but it's enough time to move the needle.
How much has the needle moved since you began this effort?
- I mean, I see instances of growth.
But again, using the the ecosystem analogy,
you know, you can plant a garden,
but you can't make the sun come out.
You can't make it.
You can water, but you can't make it rain.
The issue with the Black community
is not the Black community.
The issue with the Black community is systemic racism.
It's these structures that are in place
and people that are leading them and benefiting from them.
That's gotta be changed.
That's gotta be acknowledged.
That's gotta be held accountable
if we're gonna really see true thriving.
So when people ask me, "Aren't things better?"
I wanna ask them, "Well, how have you changed?
"How have your friendships changed?
"How has your office changed?
"Your board changed?
Your leaders changed?"
That's the true indication of this.
I'm not fixing Black people
so that white people can feel more comfortable.
By addressing the issues of Black people,
I'm helping this community to become really what it can be,
who it really can be,
and a place where everyone can thrive.
And so the white community doesn't need
to be watching me work
and trying to decide if I'm fixing it,
or watching the Black community to see if things are better.
The Black community has not created these systems,
these systems that hinder Black thriving.
We need something to happen in the broader system
in order to stop impeding Black success and Black thriving.
And so whenever that happens, whenever people get that memo,
whenever people get that inclination,
that unction to do something different,
that will then exacerbate the outcomes.
That will then exponentiate those outcomes.
But that's something that we can't do.
But until then, I'll train would-be white allies
to understand the benefit
of work that they do in their communities
to help them dismantle these impediments
to Black wellness and Black health.
When that begins to happen on a large scale,
we will see huge change.
So the white community is not waiting for us.
We're waiting for the white community.
- Then what's your call to action for this community
for Blacks and whites?
And is it the same call to action for everyone?
- It's a different call.
I think to the white community,
the call is educate, donate, affiliate.
Understand the issues, support the issues,
and affiliate with people in organizations
that are different than you.
Become connected.
Don't just say, "Oh, yeah, I give to,"
but you don't know anyone.
That that enriches lives and experiences.
To the Black community,
I would say, we've gotta prepare ourselves.
We've gotta build this space.
We've gotta train our own and equip our own
and develop our own and celebrate our own,
that those are things that we've got to do.
So we have this,
each of those groups and all groups have work.
And for our allies who are non-Black
and are not white, we need their partnership as well.
In fact, in our history class,
when we break up into small groups to discuss the lectures,
we help to group people based on those ethnic identities.
Also, because we want them to know
that we need all hands on deck.
And so I would say to the Black community,
"Let's build, let's develop, let's grow."
Because we are creating opportunity
and we wanna be ready as those doors open.
- And also in your second essay,
you said, "White influencers must own injustices
facing Black Madison."
Who is that demand aimed toward?
- White influencers.
That's funny; I know you're looking at me saying,
"I just asked you that question."
It's interesting.
When white influencers say Black leaders,
they have five to six people come to mind.
When I say white influencers to white influencers,
they say they don't know who that is.
Like yeah, you do.
You just don't call 'em white influencers.
The chancellor, the mayor, the governor,
the county executive, the head of Exact Sciences,
the head of Epic, the head of SSM,
you all know who they are.
They're just not called white influencers.
They're just called leaders.
Influencers.
They give us names
so they can pick who the four or five are.
So, they know who they are.
The people who wield authority, who run organizations,
who pick political leaders, who support them,
they know who they are.
We need them to use that power and influence
to help their peers practice fairness
in every sphere of business, education,
and civic life in this community.
Whatever attributes they offer to Black people,
whatever those indicators are to make them think
that that Black person is a Black leader,
they need to just attribute those same things to themselves
and figure out who their leaders are.
And they need to motivate those people to do better.
- What's your gauge on whether or not
you're moving the needle?
[Dr. Gee laughs]
- Whoo, building the Center for Black Excellence and Culture
and breaking ground in summer of 2024.
That's one of them.
I think the 5,000 graduates,
the people who finished our course, that gives me hope.
You know, Mr. Seymour, some of our alumni,
they create their own action plans.
'Cause that's not my work.
I can't tell white people what to do to be effective.
They're smart enough to do that.
But we have a group that have created a program
called Court Observers.
They sit in on court cases
just to monitor how people are challenged.
They sit in on court cases
just to monitor how people are treated.
They have documentation from 11,000 court case observations.
This is not paperwork they've read.
These are notes they've taken.
They have sat in on 11,000 court cases,
half of which are Black people.
We have that data.
They took this upon themselves.
That gives me hope, that just by sitting in the courtroom
providing a level of accountability.
It doesn't change everything, but that moves the needle.
Because then that helps us to think,
Well, what if we sit in on expulsion hearings
and foster care hearings and Medicare hearings?
These are not Black people.
These are white people
using just their time and energy to observe.
And what they're noting, what they're capturing
is blowing them away.
'Cause they're thinking, "I never would've believed
"that these differences were happening.
I would not have believed it had I not documented it myself."
They sit in on the courts and watch a DA
ask for one thing for a Black defendant,
and then in the same day before the same judge
recommend a whole different outcome
from someone of another ethnic group.
To the point that the judge had to say,
"Wait, you just recommended for the same crime
this for the Black defendant
"but this for the white defendant."
And our court observers captured that.
That gives me hope.
They're going to report out on that information.
They're gonna talk about it.
But people educating themselves, donating,
and then affiliating themselves to organizations
and causes that bring about change,
that's how we move the needle.
It's not a huge needle,
but that's moving in the right direction.
11,000 cases, 5,000 people,
80 participants in our emerging Black leadership program,
that helps you to move the needle.
Now it'll be a few years until we see the impact from that.
But those steps, that action gives me a lot of hope.
- Now, I know you're a man of words, you're an educator.
But I noticed that your first essay ends
with the word, "forward."
And then your second essay ends with the words,
"I remain committed and angry and courageous."
That has to be some symbolism to...
[Dr. Gee laughs]
- Oh, that's a good observation.
With the first essay, I ended with the word "forward"
because that's our state motto.
So I wanted to underscore the fact,
I'm a Wisconsinite to my core.
Let's live into this motto.
Because we're walking backwards when it comes to race relations.
So that was a subtle jab to my fellow Wisconsinites.
Let's live into our state's identity.
With the second, I wanted to sound a little bit more
seasoned because even though I wanna continue
to push the systems to continually change,
I've raised $25 million in this community in 24 months
in order to create space to help Black people
feel more at home and to help the non-Black community
to come into state-of-the-art space that will talk about
our contributions to the state of Wisconsin.
So really, I couldn't just say,
"Nothing's changed, nothing's changed."
But I couldn't say everything's changed
because the community is helping me to build this space.
I wanted to find a middle ground.
So I wanted to let people know that
even with building this space,
I'm angry because that's an outward expression
of pain and fear.
Those things are still very real.
You know, I drove home from La Crosse recently.
I'm still very cautious when I'm in rural areas
between major cities.
And so that brings a sense of anger.
But referring back to Augustine's quote,
I've gotta be able to hold anger and courage
in an appropriate tension if I'm going to arrive at hope.
And so by saying I remain courageous and angry
and saying that I'm still focusing on hope,
but just arriving and having one major success
doesn't mean that we've all arrived.
Until we all arrive, I've got to be angry
for the brothers and sisters
who have not arrived at the table.
I've got to be.
Otherwise, I'll forget about them.
So there was some symbolism to what I said in the second
because I wanted them to know that
you're not gonna get me to stop being angry anytime soon.
But you're not gonna stop me from being courageous either.
Because I will have hope.
Because I have nothing else to offer the community
if I don't have that.
- Dr. Gee, thank you for your time, sir.
- Mr. Seymour, it's good to talk with you again.