Shake the Dust

Jonathan reads his essay, “Poverty and Shame: Learning Solidarity with My Younger Self,” that we published today  at KTFPress.com.

Shake the Dust is a podcast of KTF Press. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and Twitter. Subscribe to get our newsletter and bonus episodes at KTFPress.com. Transcripts of every episode are available at KTFPress.com/s/transcripts.

Hosts

Jonathan Walton – follow him on Facebook and Instagram.

Our theme song is “Citizens” by Jon Guerra – listen to the whole song on Spotify.

Our podcast art is by Robyn Burgess– follow her and see her other work on Instagram.

Production, editing, and transcript by Sy Hoekstra.

Questions about anything you heard on the show? Write to [email protected] and we may answer your question on a future episode.

Transcript

[An acoustic guitar softly plays six notes, the first three ascending and the last three descending — F#, B, F#, E, D#, B — with a keyboard pad playing the note B in the background. Both fade out as Jonathan Walton says “This is a KTF Press podcast.” After a brief pause, the intro piano music from “Citizens” by Jon Guerra plays briefly and then fades out.]

Jonathan Walton: Welcome to this extra episode of Shake the Dust. I’m Jonathan Walton here to read the piece I just wrote that we just published at KTFPress.com. It’s called Poverty and Shame: Learning Solidarity with My Younger Self. Here we go.

My oldest daughter, Maia, has asked me several times, “Baba, why don’t you talk about your childhood?” I usually laugh it off and tell her one of the many stories about rural Virginia that I’ve canned over the years about killing snakes with a shovel or picking strawberries in a field with my mother and siblings so we could rent video games or buy groceries.

I can’t tell her about the racism, the infidelity, or the anger. I don’t want to talk about all the unknown numbers that called our house to collect money. I don’t want to explain that her fridge is always full because I remember when mine was empty, and I’m going to make sure she never feels that sense of lack. Learning that other kids had candy in their pantries and received gifts on days other than Christmas crumpled something inside of me when I was nine years old. I just don’t know if I can handle Maia seeing the part of her Baba which is still that child.

I don’t even know if she would be able to understand him. Her favorite sandwich includes a multi-grain baguette, smoked salmon, cucumber and fresh dill from a local artisanal place that calls itself a “workshop.” I don’t know how to explain to her what happens when you put a slice of American pasteurized process cheese food between two pieces of Merita bread in a microwave. It is salty and, for a short while, filling. I had that sandwich daily in my lunch box for years with air-popped popcorn. She’s got Pirate’s Booty in a reusable silicone lunch bag along with the rest of her carefully selected meal. She has never seen moldy bread in our house, let alone cut off the mold to eat the remainder.

I’ve hidden the traumatic parts of my childhood from her. I’ve been afraid and ashamed, so I’ve shared shallowly. The depths are there. I just prefer to keep them hidden.

But in therapy, I learned that emotional suppression prevents our feelings of joy and excitement just as much as those of pain and anguish. I can be shut off or I can be open. I cannot elect to feel only good feelings. I am either engaging with the wide spectrum of my emotions or compressing them to a narrow stoicism that stops me from truly connecting with my daughter because I am not connecting with myself. I became a performer for Maia, telling funny stories about country life, instead of giving her the tools to engage all of her identity and heritage.

I am trying to become less ashamed now, though I still have trouble journeying to the depths. I am not yet skilled enough at standing in solidarity with my younger, less financially fortunate self.

But I know it’s possible. Because my Momma never hid who we were from me or from herself, and that was a beautiful gift. She taught me how to enjoy yeast rolls with turkey gravy, even when that was our whole dinner for a week straight. She taught me how to make a fire and feel perfectly content with the world sitting next to it. She taught me how to talk with God while pacing and groaning when things were hard, knowing that God is pacing with me. If Momma wasn’t ashamed of where she came from or the life we had, who am I to shy away?

I have always seen the difficulties and complexities of my background. Now I am trying to focus on its wealth. I had community in abundance, surrounded by people who loved me. I had fresh air. I had trees and wildlife that I could identify on my beautiful, quarter-mile dirt road walks to the bus stop. I met the Jesus that got us through slavery, sharecropping, Jim Crow, and segregation. I must learn how to pass these generational riches to Maia because, though I can’t deposit them in a trust for her, they will outlast all the things in every vault in the world. God showed Momma how to do it, and he’s going to show me too.

[The song “Citizens” by Jon Guerra fades in. Lyrics: “And that you’re building a city/ Where we arrive as immigrants/ And you call us citizens/ And you welcome us as children home/ Where we arrive as immigrants/ And you call us citizens/ And you welcome us as children home.” The song fades out.]

It’s our season finale! We’re answering listener questions and talking about the history of Whiteness, pastors being experts on everything regardless of qualification, why that episode with Dr. Maxine Davis was the best, and a lot more. We’re also talking a bit about the future of KTF and this show, so don’t miss this one!

Can’t get enough of us? Go to KTFPress.com and subscribe to get our bonus episodes between seasons!

Shake the Dust is a podcast of KTF Press. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and Twitter. Subscribe to get our newsletter and bonus episodes at KTFPress.com. Transcripts of every episode are available at KTFPress.com/s/transcripts.

Hosts

Jonathan Walton – follow him on Facebook and Instagram.

Sy Hoekstra – follow him on Mastodon.

Our theme song is “Citizens” by Jon Guerra – listen to the whole song on Spotify.

Our podcast art is by Robyn Burgess – follow her and see her other work on Instagram.

Production and editing by Sy Hoekstra.

Transcript by Joyce Ambale and Sy Hoekstra.

Questions about anything you heard on the show? Write to [email protected] and we may answer your question on a future episode.

Transcript

[An acoustic guitar softly plays six notes, the first three ascending and the last three descending — F#, B, F#, E, D#, B — with a keyboard pad playing the note B in the background. Both fade out as Jonathan Walton says “This is a KTF Press podcast.”]

Jonathan Walton: Grace makes no sense. That you would extend forgiveness to someone who is not asking for it, and then that you would reconcile with someone when they do ask for it, and pursue a relationship that is mended rather than one that is contentious and guarded. It would not surprise me at all, if Judas had come back and asked for forgiveness, that Jesus would have welcomed him back in as a disciple.

[The song “Citizens” by Jon Guerra fades in. Lyrics: “I need to know there is justice/ That it will roll in abundance/ And that you’re building a city/ Where we arrive as immigrants/ And you call us citizens/ And you welcome us as children home.” The song fades out.]

Sy Hoekstra: Welcome to Shake the Dust, leaving colonized faith for the kingdom of God. I'm Sy Hoekstra.

Jonathan Walton: I'm Jonathan Walton, and this is our season finale.

Sy Hoekstra: Woot!

Jonathan Walton: [chuckling] We're going to be answering some listener questions and reflecting on some of the things we've learned this season. We'll also be telling you more about the podcast and KTF going forward, which is all really exciting. So stay tuned, this is going to be a great show.

Sy Hoekstra: And remember, if you like what we do, go to KTFPress.com. Become a paid subscriber. That gets you the weekly newsletter with curated media from us to help you in your discipleship and your political education. That gets you the bonus episodes of this podcast, there will be at least one of those per month in between seasons three and four. It gets you the full archive of all the bonus episodes going back. You can get a nice little feed that you can put on your podcast player that has all of our regular and bonus episodes there so you don't have to go anywhere else for them. It gets you the full archive of our newsletters, everything else is on the website, supports everything we do. We could not do what we do without our subscribers, we appreciate them so much. So if you can go to KTFPress.com,  become a paid subscriber.

Okay, Jonathan, we're going to dive right into this. We're going to start with what I think both of us would probably consider a bit of a softball, but it's a good warm-up question. We talked about this in our newsletter a little bit after this episode. We had an episode with Scott Hall where we talked about, it was called “White People Helping White People Leave Whiteness.” And we had a listener write in with a very simple but honest question. We very much appreciate honest questions, and we think they're important to answer even if it's like kind of going back to basics for us. We think it's helpful for everyone to go back to basics whenever they can.

And so here's the question Jonathan, why are we asking White people to leave Whiteness, when as the question asker correctly assumed, we would not ask Black people to leave Blackness or other people to leave their identities? Why do we do that?

Jonathan Walton: Okay, so this is one of those softball questions where it's really hard to answer because I have like 19 bats, because I'm not at the…

Sy Hoekstra: [laughs].

Jonathan Walton: … at the same door, right? And so I actually sent this question to Scott Hall. I sent this question to other, to just other White people trying to help people leave Whiteness. And so I'm not going to answer like they would, I'm going to answer like I would.

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah.

Jonathan Walton: Because I do think the answer from a Black person or someone non-White is going to be different than the answer from somebody who is White. At least the first one, the “let me stay in my world and not into your world yet” answer. So I think this falls into one of the boxes of this false equivocation, where Blackness and Whiteness are the same, and they are not [laughs]. And so this also hangs out in the same space as the reverse racism conversation, and reverse racism does not exist, it is not a thing.

Sy Hoekstra: And reverse racism, just for people who don't know what you're talking about, when White people say, “Oh, you're being racist against me as a White person.”

Jonathan Walton: Yes. Yes, yes, yes. And so I think we love in our dominant culture to say, to draw binaries and say things are the same when they're actually not. And so, Blackness is downstream of Whiteness. Blackness did not begin before Whiteness, Blackness did not pick up a box and say, “We're going to do this.” There were ethnic identities, cultures and formations of how people are to relate with themselves, the world, and one another, and God before Whiteness. Whiteness was also not a thing. It was made up just like Blackness is made up. The problem is, Blackness is a response to Whiteness. And so when, quote unquote, “racially assigned White people” downstream of 500 years colonization in the formation of ethnic identity and all that decide to leave Whiteness, they are not leaving an identity, they're leaving a power hierarchy.

And so if you leave that power hierarchy and say, “I'm no longer going to participate in this way of ordering the world,” Blackness may still exist. Asian Americanness may still exist. Why? Because we have to relate with the quote unquote, “power structures” that exist in the world. So in the same way that White people might be able to leave Whiteness, and give up the hierarchical structures, because no one is going to do that at all times everywhere, Blackness and other social identities downstream of a colonized identity would still have to be engaged with and exist, which feels to me like a difficult sucky place, but I don't know how that couldn't be true. And I'd be glad to talk more about it with people who have thought more about it than me. But the reason I can't or don't feel like I can leave Blackness, is because White people won't leave Whiteness.

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah. So it's really important to think about it in terms of history, and I think to just kind of expand on something you said about how Whiteness didn't always exist. We mean that quite literally. You go back eight, nine hundred years, there is nobody in the world talking about a race of people called White. There is no concept of all the people from all the different ethnicities and languages and kingdoms and cultures of northern and western Europe existing as one big group called a race, and that race is White people. Nobody has that concept. Nobody has a concept of Black people. Obviously, people look at each other and see that they're different, they have different colors of skin, but that didn't put them in groups called races.

And the only reason that we made up groups called races was like Jonathan said, to create a hierarchy. That's why Whiteness was created. Whiteness was created to make a group of people who's at the top of the hierarchy, and put everyone else below them. And at the very bottom, you put this group of people called Black. And it was specifically to create colonial power, to create power an economic and financial security for the people at the top, for the White people, and to do that by being able to subjugate everyone else who is lesser than you, and therefore you can exploit them for all of that security that I was just talking about. So the reason you have to leave Whiteness and nobody else has to leave, is because the Whiteness is the bad thing [laughs]. Which is different than saying, White people are bad.

And it is very difficult for a lot of White people to hear that because we so identify with the… like we just, we think of race in abstract terms, and we just identify with that abstract thing called a race. And we just think it's bad to insult a Black person because of their race in general, and not because we put their race at the bottom of a hierarchy.

Jonathan Walton: Yeah, and I also think there's a few hurdles here. I think there's a very, very, very, very, very, very strong pull from anyone on the upside of a power structure to try to equivocate their position with the people downstream. So we see this happen with men, we see this happen with non-queer people. There would be no men's rights movement in the West right now if there was not a women's rights movement. There would not be people talking about straight rights if there was not an LGBTQIA plus movement. There's a separation that's happening that I would implore White folks and folks upstream of power structures and White adjacent like passing, to say, “Oh, the work that I have to do to leave this power structure, this power dynamic, is actually me leaving this power structure.

I may have emotional reactions about it and all of those things, but I am not leaving an identity that I have been given and gifted by God. I'm leaving a power structure that puts my social identity above other people.” And that I think is, like God does not desire to destroy White people, but Whiteness as Connie Anderson, a person on my multi-ethnic team would say, is of hell.

Sy Hoekstra: I wouldn't say that Whiteness is an identity from God though.

Jonathan Walton: Right, no. I would not say that either. That's not what I meant. What I mean to say, and I've tried to say this many times in different environments, and it's always kind of caught in a weird way, is because we have to reaffirm that White people are made in the image of God, and that Whiteness is of the devil.

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah.

[laughter]

Jonathan Walton: And I feel like I see some people short circuiting when we say that, because we don't know how to separate Whiteness from White people. Just like we don't know how to separate Blackness from Black people. Like they have been fused together so that I am my racial assignment. When, in reality when God formed us in the womb, I love Psalm 139. When God knit us together, he did not say, “This is a White person.” But the person that is being knit in the womb, when they come out in the world, they're White, and God says, “I made that person, and I made that person good,” right? And so God made White people good, but he did not make Whiteness, and had nothing to do with it.

And so similarly, God did not make Blackness. Blackness is a response to Whiteness, and the power structures are engaged as we try to seek and find our own identity in a power structure where we can find some sort of social empowerment.

Sy Hoekstra: But because of the historical context that we're talking about, the response to Blackness has to be completely opposite because Blackness was put by society at the bottom of a hierarchy, we have to say, “No, putting them at the bottom is wrong,” so you have to say things like, “Black is beautiful.” You have to have Black pride, when you don't have to have White pride.

[laughter]

Sy Hoekstra: Right?

Jonathan Walton: Right. Exactly.

Sy Hoekstra: People feel like a weird tension about that, right? Like White people feel a weird tension about that. They're like, “Why can't I have pride in my… but wait a minute, the Proud Boys, they're not good,” [laughs]. And that's why, you have to understand that the history and the real world origins of these ideas. They're not just abstract notions that came out of nowhere.

Jonathan Walton: Yeah. And if I can… I feel like we keep trying to try to say this succinctly, it's like, if I assert my Blackness, I am asserting that I have value. If you assert your Whiteness…

Sy Hoekstra: I'm asserting dominance.

Jonathan Walton: Exactly. Yes. Like that's [laughs] literally what I was about to say.

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right. Well, we talked for a long time about a softball. So let's get to…

Jonathan Walton: It’s true. Harder questions [laughs]?

Sy Hoekstra: I don't know about harder, just not something that you and I kind of have logged away in our structure of how we think.

Jonathan Walton: Yeah, yeah, go for it.

Sy Hoekstra: So a listener wrote in about the episode that we had two weeks ago, talking about pastors and why they're unprepared. And we talked about how pastors are expected to be kind of content experts on everything, and just kind of the source of all knowledge for people. And you mentioned a time that you heard Tim Keller give a talk on kind of scripture and its relationship to climate change. And the first thing that he said at the talk was, “I've never thought about this before, I was asked to think about this.” And you said, “Why am I listening to this man talking about climate change and scripture?”

Jonathan Walton: Yes, I did [laughs].

Sy Hoekstra: But I think Candice, the listener, brought up a good nuancing point about this that I just wanted to play. So here we go.

Candice: Hey, Jonathan and Sy. This is Candice. I guess the comment or the thought I had was about how pastors can't be content experts. And while I agree that you shouldn't as a pastor feel the need to be a content expert in everything and other platforms shouldn't invite pastors just because of their authoritative position, I guess, to just comment on issues that they aren't grounded and familiar with. But at the same time, I feel strongly that pastors should have a sense of their social and ethics, and like they should have a way of thinking and responding to political questions and issues of our day. I just feel, especially with something like climate change, we all participate in this.

And so it just feels important that we would all sort of have some kind of response to questions about it or positions on it. And I would like to know, like leaders in the church and how they are thinking about it. So I guess I'm just trying to say it's okay to I think, in my mind, I'm comfortable inviting or welcoming someone to think about an issue and respond to it, even if they're not an expert in it. So, hope you guys are well and talk to you later.

Sy Hoekstra: Thank you so much, Candice. Candice, by the way, has written in with a couple of items before that have ended up in our newsletter and gave us the original idea to have Mako on in season two to talk about abortion, which is, to this day, still our most listened-to episode. So we very much appreciate Candice [laughs], and her subscription and engagement with what we do. I don't want to speak for you. I totally agree with what she said and just thought it was an important nuancing point to bring up. I definitely think that pastors should be teaching people how to think through things that they're grappling with faithfully, and can even say their personal opinions on individual political and policy issues.

I don't think pastors need to be as scared of that as they are if they're creating an environment where people can disagree well on those sorts of things in their church. I just think people have to be comfortable, pastors have to be comfortable saying, “Here's how I think through this issue with the complete humility of being a total non-expert on the subject.” Like you have to be a self-identified non-expert [laughs], and actively tell people, “I'm not the person to ask about this,” when you're not the person to ask about this. You just need to be the complete opposite of the pastors who are going to give you the quote unquote, “biblical” answer to every policy question out there that exists, which is what a lot of people try to do.

And I think it's important to bring up because it's like this is related to what we try and do here with Shake the Dust and with KTF Press. We are not subject matter experts on everything that we talk about, which is why a lot of times we bring on people who are. Or we are very clear when we're not. We're never going to tell you we have the definitive theological answer to anything, really. Both because doing that is usually something that you do if you're trying to amass some sort of control over how people think or who is in or out of some group, which is the way of the colonized faith we're trying to avoid. But also just I think, we think, or I think… I won’t speak for you, that Jesus and scripture are much more about telling us what kind of people we are supposed to be becoming, rather than giving us really specific answers to really contextual questions. [Jonathan inhales] So that's my rant. Jonathan, go for it [laughs].

Jonathan Walton: No, no, I mean, so I also agree with everything Candice said, and I wish that I could go back and nuance that response because...

Sy Hoekstra: Well, that's what we’re doing.

Jonathan Walton: [laughs] Yeah. No, in the moment for everybody who doesn't get to listen to this and only hears that. But Tim Keller in that moment, was not disqualifying himself from sharing, but what he was naming like the limit of his expertise, which I don't think he expounded upon in the talk as well as he could have. Because here's a pastoral question, I think. A pastoral question is, how should I be thinking about engaging with people in this situation in a way that is in line with the way of Christ? To the best of your ability, please answer that question. Right? The question is not, what do you believe might be the case about the 55 million pieces of plastic that were not recycled last year?

Because that's outside of the set of… it's like so far downstream of the value system that we hold as followers of Jesus, that if we're not in the weeds about it, we can give an answer that's really unhelpful for the environment, and really unhelpful for folks on how we should order and steward our lives. And so something that I've been working on ever since I came on staff with InterVarsity and was leading justice movements and things like that, was that issue of like, yes, I am engaged in fighting sex trafficking and labor exploitation. Yes, I'm pursuing the fight against climate change and against racial injustice, and I want to do those things. And I am not an expert on mass incarceration and the school-to-prison pipeline. I am not an expert on the three garbage patches spinning out in the Pacific. I'm not an expert on educational inequity.

But I do think and I'm going to… I think this is where Candice would go if we were to chop it up. It's like, I should, as a follower of Jesus leading other followers of Jesus, have a cohesive framework for how I'm thinking through these things, and taking personal, relational, systemic responsibility for the impact and the intentions that I have in the world when it comes to these big quote unquote “issues” that are actually like microcosm in my life. So that I can tell other people how I do that, so I can be held accountable, so I can learn, so I can continue to grow blah, blah, blah, because we're all engaged in it. Like she said, we all contribute to a problem like climate change. So I need to have a cohesive response. And if I don't, I need to figure that out, not just as a pastor, but as a participant in a society that is using and disposing of resources at a rapid rate.

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah, and I think this kind of way of thinking, or just the ability to acknowledge your own limits, I think helps a lot in theological discernment and discernment about the kinds of communities that you should be a part of, and all this kind of stuff. Because it took me a while to get there, but it was really helpful to me when I was finally able to sort of concede to myself like, I'm no expert on Ancient Greek, or biblical history or whatever. I'm just listening to these other people who are, and they're arguing back and forth and they both know way more than I ever will and they totally disagree with each other [laughs]. So like, what am I supposed to do as the person who's trying to figure…

And then, so I have to have frameworks for looking at things like if you're going back and forth on say, women in leadership [laughs] in a church, right? I had to get to the point where I could say, you know what, Jesus tells me to look at the fruit of teachings and to test everything that's good. And I just, I don't see the bad fruit of women teaching me stuff, and the good fruit of only men teaching me things. It’s quite the opposite, in fact [laughs]. Like they're just, you have to have ways to think through stuff that you're not an expert in, and then move forward in the world. And I hope that we're doing that as best we can here for all of you listeners and readers. Do you have any other thoughts on that one, or should I move on?

Jonathan Walton: Nope. Thanks again Candice.

Sy Hoekstra: Yes, thank you so much Candice. That was great. Okay, Jonathan. So I was having a conversation with a listener recently. Basically, the topic of the conversation was why the episode with Dr. Maxine Davis, that we did on intimate partner violence was so good [laughs]. What happened there to make that one so excellent? And I have some thoughts [laughs] that I wanted to share because the more I talked through it with them, the more I thought there were things that I kind of wish I would have said on the show itself, and I want to hear your response. So the conversation got me thinking about something I heard Bryan Stevenson say a few years ago. Bryan Stevenson, for people who don't know, is a Capital defense attorney, but he also has this organization called the Equal Justice Initiative that we've brought up before in the newsletter in other places, that does all kinds of really, really great racial justice work.

He's a phenomenal speaker, if you've never heard him, you should go. I had the incredible privilege of having him as a professor in law school. And he doesn't talk about this a ton in public, but he's a Christian. And I heard him speak at a seminary around here one time, and he said at one point that he felt like God was telling him that the idea of mercy is on trial in America, and he was supposed to be part of the defense. Excuse by the way how I sound, I'm sick again. This daughter who's in daycare… It is what it is. So I think Dr. Davis's work kind of reflects a similar idea, meaning the stuff that she said, about why it is someone who commits acts of domestic violence, usually men, but not always, why do they do what they do, and how does it change?

Those are her questions, instead of asking, how do we just get the woman to leave and punish the man as much as possible? And she basically gets criticized for having effectively too much sympathy for perpetrators [laughs], but she connects our instinct to punish perpetrators to our larger psychological needs. She did this in the episode, like a larger psychological need to separate ourselves from bad people, and to put ourselves in a group of people who are justifiably not being punished because we are the good people, right? I'm not being punished, I didn't do what that person did, I'm good, they're bad. But so she said, there's the point in the episode where she said, effectively, “I have abused partners before,” and everybody needs to get used to saying that.

We need to be used to saying that we are all… we have this tendency, a lot of people have done it, even if you're not committing physical violence against your partner, like people act abusively, act in demeaning and dehumanizing ways. And we need to be ready to admit that so that we can move forward in a better healthier way on all the policy and everything else that we do in court and all that. So basically, I think her perspective on this issue is the gospel, period [laughs]. What I mean by that is, I think there are a whole lot of people out there who are committed to a general abstract idea that everyone has dignity and should be treated equally and given a fair shot, right up until the point where they are no longer committed to that idea.

[laughter]

And I think what Dr. Davis in her work, like what she's exposing is one of the places in which we do not extend those ideas as far as they should actually go, where we stop believing in the fundamental humanity of people, because they've done something bad. But what she's saying is effectively, like when she says, “I'm a perpetrator of abuse too,” basically what she's saying is to get to peace, the road to peace is confession, right? It's like, is admitting that you're a sinner and saying we all need to move forward from that understanding. And we can't achieve real shalom, real God's peace without doing that. I just want to hear your thoughts to all that, because this was just part of, I don't know.

At the end of that episode, Jonathan and I both, I can’t remember exactly what we said, we were just both like, “Oh man!” And Dr. Davis goes [laughs], “What? What did I do?” She thought she’d done something wrong, and we were both like, “No, that was so good!” [laughs]. So I just wanted to think about more of why we were so excited about that conversation that was on a pretty difficult subject, and let me hear your thoughts.

Jonathan Walton: Yeah. So I mean, I think I've said this before I wrote an essay one time, like Jesus washed Judas’ feet. Jesus did not pull out his little hidden sword too, like Peter did, and go at all the Romans. He didn't do that. And I think we enter into our humanity when we confess, and I think we do something divinely inspired when we forgive, because Jesus did that. And this is the practice of our workings of Romans 3:23 when it's like, “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” And then the hymn says we're all equal at the foot of the cross. And if we believe that, then this is that outworking. That when someone is violent towards me, I forgive and when I am violent towards someone else, I humbly ask for forgiveness.

Grace makes no sense that you would extend forgiveness to someone who is not asking for it, and then that you would reconcile with someone when they do ask for it, and pursue a relationship that is mended, rather than one that is contentious and guarded. It would not surprise me at all, if Judas had come back and asked for forgiveness, that Jesus would have welcomed him back in as a disciple. There's no doubt in my mind he would have done that.

Sy Hoekstra: I can't say I've ever thought about that before, but yeah.

Jonathan Walton: Right? Like Peter sold Jesus out and said, “I don’t know you,” and Jesus was like, “Hey, you're still going to be the rock on which I'm going to build my church.” Paul, before that, Saul, Jesus literally said, “Why do you persecute me [laughs]?” Like, there's something I think, just incredibly human about confession, and then entering into a divine work when we extend forgiveness to people who have harmed us or harmed our people, or have impacted us in ways that are violating God's intentions for humanity and for us in this world.

Sy Hoekstra: And I think we should be clear since we were talking about domestic violence just a second ago. When we say forgiveness, we do not

Jonathan Walton: Oh.

Sy Hoekstra: we do not mean go back to a perpetrator

Jonathan Walton: perpetrator.

Sy Hoekstra: and do nothing about maintaining your own safety or any of that stuff. You can forgive someone from an undisclosed location.

Jonathan Walton: Yes, yes. And for all the Black folks that are listening, I'm not saying Black folks need to forgive all White people for all these things, and like there's no accountability and no system structures, and there's just a hug in a courtroom and everybody walks away. That’s not what I’m talking about. I'm talking about [laughs] the extension of God's grace as it has been extended to us as a holy act. To relieve the desire and goal of revenge and retribution. That's what I'm talking about. It is not cheap and it includes repentance, where we actually turn towards something different, where reconciliation becomes possible.

Sy Hoekstra: Meaning turn toward a whole different system, like a whole different way of operating.

Jonathan Walton: Yeah, an entirely different way of operating in the world.

Sy Hoekstra: Such that real peace can actually happen. Meaning the end goal is still create peace, and do not let people behave in ways that harm other people.

Jonathan Walton: Right.

Sy Hoekstra: But I just think it's important to say this too. This is such a concrete example of why we talk about centering and elevating marginalized voices. Because like, I don't know how many White people know this. That like Dr. Davis said on the episode, the White feminist response to the Domestic Violence Crisis was prison. Lock a bunch of people up, get more police involvement, make police involvement more friendly to… And like she said from the beginning, Black women have said, “No, that's not going to work.” That's not the way we need to go with this, we have to do something else. We have to do things that actually create change in our communities because those systems of criminal punishment and everything else are completely destroying our communities as a whole.

They hurt us too, they don't just hurt the perpetrators. And our interaction with the police are not good, and that all that stuff. And then because kind of the White feminist response was to go hard on the criminal justice system, that's just kind of expanding the people who we judge.

Jonathan Walton: Yeah.

Sy Hoekstra: It’s expanding the type of people to whom we deny the gospel for via the criminal justice system. Focusing on the perspectives of the people for whom the existing systems don't work is what's going to get you closer to the gospel every time. Specifically because the systems don't work for those people, you are going to end up at something that treats people who are not treated like humans, like humans, with dignity and respect, and all that kind of thing. I guess just what I'm saying is if the existing earthly systems are working for you, then you are just way less likely to look for something else.

Jonathan Walton: [laughs] It’s true.

Sy Hoekstra: It's kind of like what we said before. I think it was last episode about how like… yeah, it was last episode. If something doesn't affect you, you don't think about it that much, right? It's the same thing. If something works for you, you're not going to think about changing it that much. So the kingdom of God, like coming in and transforming the world becomes less interesting to you in the area of criminal justice, because the criminal justice system, you've shaped it to work for you to a certain degree. There are a ton of nuances to this. There are lots of ways that the police treat domestic violence victims horribly. I'm speaking in broad terms right now.

So anyways, it used to confuse me a lot is what I'm saying when I was when I was a kid. And I would look at things like Jesus talking about it being harder for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven, or talking about the poor being blessed, and like, why he spent so much time with the marginalized, why the marginalized, were so attracted to him. And it just makes more sense to me now [laughs]. That's all I'm saying. The gospel makes more sense when you look at it from marginalized perspectives.

Jonathan Walton: Yes, amen. And just a kind of a bigger picture thing, that's what I hope to have happen when people listen to and engage in conversations like this is that it should push us further towards love. It should push us further towards kindness. It should push us further towards a Christ-like inclusivity. And I think we have to push back against the quote unquote, “slippery slope” arguments of evangelicalism and Catholicism and institutionalized colonized faith. You have to push back against like, “we have to protect orthodoxy” and like all these things, because none of those things were around when Jesus was gathering people.

And if they were around, he actually pushed back against them—i.e., the religious structures that were allowing political structures and social powers of the day—to say, “You're leaving people out. Like you're leaving people out of this kingdom that I've created and called for, and I'm going to die and rise for and come back to bring in full.”

Sy Hoekstra: And you're putting unnecessary burdens on people…

Jonathan Walton: Yeah [laughs].

Sy Hoekstra: …and focusing on legal minutia, and not matters of justice [laughs]. And how well does that fit [laughs] into what we're talking about?

Jonathan Walton: Yeah. I mean, I was going to say like, oh, Matthew 18, Matthew 19. Actually, just the entire Gospel of Matthew, just the whole...

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah yeah [laughs].

Jonathan Walton: My hope is that anyone listening to this podcast and our work and things like that would actually see and engage with God as more loving, more kind, more just more beautiful, and has this Christ-like inclusivity that we are so bent against the majority of the time.

Sy Hoekstra: Let's switch gears a little bit to something lighter before we end. We were both talking to a subscriber recently who thought it would be interesting if we talked about how it was that you and I went about finding our current churches. Do you want to talk about that? Do you want to talk about New Life?

Jonathan Walton: Yeah. So, I think I'll preface this question with like, we all at different ages and stages of life need different things when it comes to our spiritual life. And so the church that was right for me when I was 18, is not the same church for me, or may not be the same church when I’m 38, 37, with two kids and stuff like that. So I'll just caveat that. One of the core things in New Life Fellowship in Queens, Elmhurst, Queens was the church, the kind of quote unquote, “mother church,” and then the church plant that I'm a part of now in Hempstead Long Island in Nassau County was to grow, connect and serve. And I think a healthy church is you're able to do all three of those things.

Where you’re able to be poured into, you're able to serve other people and you're able to grow in love for God, your neighbor, his word, and every people and persons of like all races ethnicities and backgrounds, right? And so often I think there are churches where there are, you're really just going in to serve, the majority of the people there are just running, running, running and moving. They're not really connecting with each other as best they possibly could, or there are churches that are just about connecting. And like, there's not really a lot of service to one another or the community happening. But I think my hope would be that all three of those things are happening, and the church that we left was just not oriented towards the community.

And we left because Hurricane Sandy happened and there just wasn't a cohesive response to even people in the congregation. And that was I think for me, at my level of maturity and engagement, I was just like, “I am done.” And at the same time, there were some very real needs for me and Priscilla in our marriage. And so that's how we ended up at New Life because there was a strong multi-ethnic focus, there was a strong understanding of justice and equity at the church. And so…

Sy Hoekstra: And emotional health in relationships.

Jonathan Walton: Yes, and emotional health in relationships, because that's initially the door that we went through. And I will say that the kind of crux question that really helped me was, would I invite my children into this church? And would I invite people I really care about to this place? And if the answer is no, then why am I there? And I think that was the kind of like, I need a better phrase than the straw that broke the camel's back, because a camel’s back shouldn't be broken. But like something…

Sy Hoekstra: [laughs].

Jonathan Walton: Yeah, that was the thing that pushed us over the edge to say, “Okay, we're leaving.”

Sy Hoekstra: So hang on. Hang on. A camel's back can't be broken, but you can be hurled over a ledge.

Jonathan Walton: Oh, yeah. Push me, yeah that’s true. I was trying to think of a phrase that wasn't violent [laughs]. Because they were all like lynchpin, straw that broke the camel's back, push me over the edge. Like that was the situation that helped me make a choice.

Sy Hoekstra: [laughs].

Jonathan Walton: It was the intense thing that finally… it was the last straw! The last straw. But what’s wrong with the last straw? Anyway, it's just the last straw. Nothing’s wrong with that straw; it just got picked last. Anyway.

[laughter]

Jonathan Walton: All that to say I think that at this age and stage of life, I do think the evangelistic and witness question is the most important. Like is this a community that I can invite anybody to and feel like they will get a slice of what the kingdom of God looks like, in a way that is true and kind to them wherever they are? This is race, background, sexual orientation. Like all the -isms, if they sit in a Bible study with us, if they sit in a Sunday service with us, they go and have food with us, will they get a picture of Jesus? And the answer is yes. And if I think that the answer, if sitting in a congregation where the answer is not that, we then needed to decide if we're going to work towards that, or leave.

And I think that in today's way of orienting ourselves around faith in the world, I think we need to free more people to leave, than to push back against systems and structures that are inherently oriented against the thing that we're actually hoping for.

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah, people do need to be more comfortable with leaving because what you just said was, it feels like such a high bar, which is sad. But there are so many churches that absolutely do not clear that bar. And there are so many people who feel that really acutely, I would not bring people… Like I'm here kind of because I feel like I have to, there's something that I'm getting out of it, but I wouldn't actually bring anybody else here, you know [laughs].

Jonathan Walton: Right.

Sy Hoekstra: That is so common. And people feel like there's nothing better out there, and in some places there might not be, but you can be free and faithful at the same time. You can be happy in a community and still… Because I think a lot of people are concerned about faithfulness. They're concerned about, I have to be here because this is the one that has the correct beliefs or the whatever. This is the one that's truly faithful. These are the real people. But you can look and say if there's something going on here that causes me to not want to bring anybody else here because they will not find Jesus, then that's not the faithful people [laughs].

Jonathan Walton: Right.

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah, mine was my wife and I left a church that we'd been at for a long time after the pandemic. Our pastor left. It consolidated with another church, and it was just a kind of natural off ramp. The place we’re at now is actually… I didn't say this on the episode. It's the church that Pastor José Humphreys founded. He's not there anymore, but... We were looking for a place that was able to basically take marginalized perspectives seriously and disagree well. They have people who are in leadership there who have opposing views on I think what people would consider lightning rod subjects. And that's okay, at this church [laughs], which is, again, sadly, kind of rare. But it's a small church that has a bunch of pastors even though it's small, because all the pastors are bi-vocational, meaning what we talked about last time.

They are not just pastors, they have full time jobs, and they are pastors in their spare time effectively. And so they have kind of real world experience [laughs], which is not to say, I'm not dismissing any pastor who's only existed in the Christian world, but there's something very beneficial to having been outside that world in a real way.

Jonathan Walton: Right.

Sy Hoekstra: They're very honest and straightforward about what their capabilities are, they're not trying to sell themselves really hard to people. And they're not inviting people into church programming. They're really inviting people into what Pastor José talked about on this show, a group of people basically serving their neighborhood as best they can, as opposed to trying to be a flagship place that sucks people into it. There are some hard things about being in a small church with a small kid and some other issues like that, but they're totally fine with admitting those things and talking about them, and I really appreciate that. So I just appreciate the non-performative authenticity. The real like, “Hey, we don't have the capacity for that. If someone can do it, then go for it, but we can't.”

Jonathan Walton: Yeah. Exactly.

Sy Hoekstra: I think I talked about this on the show one time, but the first time I met with one of the pastors, she told me that Pastor José had specifically asked her if there was any way that they could accommodate me, basically. If there's anything they could do to make things more accessible for me. And I kind of froze, and she went, “Yeah, I know, and I don't want to put that on you or whatever.” And I was like, “No, no, I'm freezing because no pastor has ever asked me that question before. Literally not once. So I don't know how to respond, and I need a minute to think about this.” And more stuff that has happened, like that Pastor Wendy one time had an activity at a church meeting that she didn't realize or didn't think about ahead of time was inaccessible.

And she texted me later to apologize and be like, “I'm going to try and do better next time.” And I was like, wow [laughs], again, it's one of those things that makes you realize how low your bars are as a disabled person. So yeah, that's it for me. Any other thoughts on that, Jonathan?

Jonathan Walton: I think the only thing that I would say is that none of these things are easy or simple. When we're talking about who we're going to be in relationship with and all those things. And I would also say that, it's okay to leave a community and try to pursue and create something new. And I think we have to resist the temptation of comparing it to what we came to or where we came from, and what we're used to. So for example, my first few years out of college, I was constantly trying to recreate what happened when I was in college. I was trying to find a group of people, gather around scripture and redo these things that… we fought sex trafficking and slavery, we helped feed the homeless or unhoused people. We built a maternity ward in a hospital, we sent a group to Uganda. Those things we were able to do because we were in college, we all lived in a community called dorms.

Sy Hoekstra: [laughs].

Jonathan Walton: We all had resources provided for us. There were entire systems and structures set up for us to literally argue about what it would look like to do an event with world leaders, multiple times a year.

Sy Hoekstra: Yep.

Jonathan Walton: That context does not exist for the majority of the world [laughs]. So I had to resist the temptation to compare that. So you might be listening to this and you're not in New York City, or in a place that's really racially or ethnically diverse at all. Or you're sitting in a congregation that if they knew you're listening to this podcast, would ask questions about your faithfulness to Jesus. And like, that’s real. And so I think what I would want to invite us into is that place where the disciples were when Jesus first showed up, and he said, “Come and follow me.”

He didn't have a, probably didn't have a regular location where Jesus's small group met. He probably didn't have a spreadsheet where people were figuring out who's going to bring food and all that stuff. He probably didn't have the email address and the QR code set up for you to get the right stuff. But they came because they wanted to know more about Jesus, and they didn't judge people who came later than them. They probably did, but Jesus didn’t judge them for coming later.

[laughter]

He didn’t. I think we have to move away from I will have the cookie cutter thing that I'm ordering on the spiritual menu for me to grow in this age and stage of life. And to say I'm going to pursue this value of community and following Jesus, because that is what he calls us to. And I know it's going to be messy, and I know it's going to be hard, but I’m going to lean into Jesus and lean into the complexity and do the best that I can, because I can't fall out of the kingdom. Like I'm not going to get kicked out because I'm not at church or didn't get communion at this time. I can't get kicked out of a relationship with Jesus. He wants me. So would you pursue community as how it looks in the messiness and all those things, not comparing it to what you had before in this next season of life?

Because it is turbulent for many people for many different reasons. But Jesus is with us, and he will send people. I think we just have to keep walking towards him in that way.

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah. And I think implicit in what you said is, there are a lot of people out there who, for whatever reason, don't feel like they can go to church right now, don't feel like they can participate in X, Y and Z things because they have too much baggage with it, or there’s stuff they need to work through or whatever. And part of what you just said was, that's okay [laughs].

Jonathan Walton: Yeah.

Sy Hoekstra: That doesn't disqualify you. That doesn't mean it'll never happen again in the future. It's not like, we do not judge people for that. We think community is incredibly important and we think finding a place where you can go and have that community is incredibly important. But the question of timing is never one that humans seem to have a good grasp on [laughs].

Jonathan Walton: Yeah, and you know what, even more than that, Sy [laughs]. Even more than that, Jesus came to show people lots of things. But one of the things I think he came to show people was that you might not be at the temple, but that does not mean you're not part of the church. Like going to the man sitting by the pool. Going to… the story in Scripture where there’s a man sitting by the pool trying to get into the water so that he can be quote unquote, “healed,” when the spring essentially moves. And he sits there for decades, and Jesus comes to him. I think there's a holy noticing that happens when Jesus shows up, that his kingdom is actually for all these people on the outside.

The woman at the well, she's not allowed to worship, quote unquote, where the “true Jews” worship. Right? God is saying, you might be in your room, you might be getting lunch with the same two people at a coffee shop. That can be where Jesus comes. It literally does not have to be at a Sunday morning gathering sitting in rows and straight lines with other groups of people oriented towards one person teaching. It doesn't have to be like that. And I think we have to be okay with that complexity. I'm not saying don't go to church, for the pastor's that are listening.

Sy Hoekstra: [laughs].

Jonathan Walton: Don't go to church, don't give, don’t get involved. That's not what I'm saying either [laughs], right? Because there may be people who are at that age and stage of life and spiritual development where they can do that. But I think we have to make space for all kinds. I think we have to push beyond what we see on Sunday morning as the end all be all, because what is happening on Sunday morning in so many places is not of God, and that's really sad. But that doesn't mean God is not moving and calling people to himself on Sundays and any other days of the week.

Sy Hoekstra: The other thing I just keep thinking of is just the parable of the 99 sheep, right? Like effectively when you're saying we need to be comfortable with Sunday morning not being the be all and end all. What we need to be comfortable with is what God says the kingdom of God is like in that parable, which is the shepherd going after the one sheep that is missing even while all the other sheep have come home and are safely in the pen. That is who God has fundamentally told us he is and so we need to believe that.

Jonathan Walton: Right [laughs].

Sy Hoekstra: I think that's a good place to end Jonathan. Tell people what they can expect from KTF Press going forward.

Jonathan Walton: Yeah. Again, like we said at the beginning, please, please, please subscribe, like, follow share with lots of folks because the monthly bonus episodes are coming out between now and when season four starts for our paid subscribers. So go to KTFPress.com to get on our newsletter, to sign up and subscribe and support everything that we do. Those episodes are always, always really great. You'll also be seeing a bit more regular writing from us, that isn't just our newsletter. So that's at least one article per month if not more, because there's a lot of stuff happening in the world. I don't know if y'all noticed that. So hopefully, we'll be writing more. And these are personal essays, political and social commentary that we occasionally write, and sometimes a poem by me because I like that too.

You're also going to be seeing new and different social media content from us. So please do follow KTF Press on Instagram, Facebook, threads, and Twitter. For all those of you who are looking for that, just do @ktfpress, and our beautiful cool new logo designed by Robyn Burgess will come up. Next year on the show, we will be getting back to our roots since it's going to be an election season in the US and Lord have mercy Jesus, you better believe we'll be all over that.

Sy Hoekstra: [laughs].

Jonathan Walton: So thank you all so much.

Sy Hoekstra: Thank you so much for listening, thank you subscribers. We've said it a million times, but I can't stop saying it, we would not exist without you. We so appreciate the subscribers that we have. Our theme song is “Citizens” by John Guerra. Our podcast art is by Robyn Burgess. For all of you who are subscribers, we'll see you in a month. For everybody else we will see you for season four.

[The song “Citizens” by Jon Guerra fades in. Lyrics: “I need to know there is justice/That it will roll in abundance/ And that you’re building a city/ Where we arrive as immigrants/ And you call us citizens/ And you welcome us as children home.” The song fades out.]

Sy Hoekstra: And I'm not sure that I would call Whiteness an identity given to us by God. I would just call it….

Jonathan Walton: Oh, no I didn't…

[crashing sounds]

[laughter]

Jonathan Walton: I did not say Whiteness was an identity given by God.

Sy Hoekstra: What did you just do?

Jonathan Walton: I moved my hands because I was like, no, I did not mean to say Whiteness was an identity given by God!

Sy Hoekstra: [laughs].

Jonathan Walton: That's not what I meant. Because no… That could not be a blooper.

Sy Hoekstra: No, that is a blooper. That's like when you fell on that bonus episode that one time.

Jonathan Walton: Oh, yes. And ripped my entire desktop off the table.

[laughter]

Sy Hoekstra: That's our best blooper ever. Listen, if there's any reason to go become a subscriber, it's just to hear Jonathan beef it hard [laughs].

Jonathan Walton: Fall in real time. Like in real time.

Remember, send in your questions to [email protected] about anything you’ve heard on the show for our season finale!

Today, we’re talking about the trend of pastors who are not prepared for their job, inspired by a recent somewhat viral article by a minister on why he quit his church. Polling says almost half of pastors are thinking about following his lead. We’re breaking down how the idols and theology of colonized faith set many pastors up to fail, and what we can do about it.

Mentioned in the episode:

-        The article that inspired the conversation: https://www.restorativefaith.org/post/departure-why-i-left-the-church

-        The Start Up podcast’s series on church planting – Here’s the first episode: https://gimletmedia.com/shows/startup/llhekv

Shake the Dust is a podcast of KTF Press. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and Twitter. Subscribe to get our newsletter and bonus episodes at KTFPress.com. Transcripts of every episode are available at KTFPress.com/s/transcripts.

Hosts

Jonathan Walton – follow him on Facebook and Instagram.

Sy Hoekstra – follow him on Mastodon.

Our theme song is “Citizens” by Jon Guerra – listen to the whole song on Spotify.

Our podcast art is by Robyn Burgess – follow her and see her other work on Instagram.

Production and editing by Sy Hoekstra.

Transcript by Joyce Ambale and Sy Hoekstra.

Transcript

[An acoustic guitar softly plays six notes, the first three ascending and the last three descending — F#, B, F#, E, D#, B — with a keyboard pad playing the note B in the background. Both fade out as Jonathan Walton says “This is a KTF Press podcast.”]

Jonathan Walton: I think it's a radical thing that Jesus does when he says, “Come and follow me.” And someone says, “I just bought this field, and I’ve got to go look at it.” And he's like, “Okay.” He doesn't try to woo them, he doesn't try to win them back. He says, “Okay.” There’s something in us that must be secure enough to let people be.

[The song “Citizens” by Jon Guerra fades in. Lyrics: “I need to know there is justice/That it will roll in abundance/ And that you’re building a city/ Where we arrive as immigrants/ And you call us citizens/ And you welcome us as children home.” The song fades out.]

Jonathan Walton: Welcome to Shake the Dust, leaving colonized faith for the kingdom of God. I'm Jonathan Walton.

Sy Hoekstra: And I'm Sy Hoekstra, thank you so much for joining us. Today, it's just Jonathan and I today. Jonathan, it's been a while. Actually, I looked at this, it's been a year since you and I did an episode just you and I.

Jonathan Walton: That's a long time.

Sy Hoekstra: It's a long time, but I like this format and I hope listeners do too. Because this is how we do the bonus episodes, which are coming back by the way, at the end of the season. Okay, today we're going to be talking about unprepared pastors. Pastors who are unprepared to pastor you.

Jonathan Walton: [laughs].

Sy Hoekstra: And we'll get there in a second, but the reason we're talking about this is because it intersects with a ton of the topics that we talk about with colonized faith. A lot of idols, money and power and security and the repression of emotions in favor of conformity. All these things are kind of wrapped up into this topic that sort of went a little bit Christian viral recently because of an article from a pastor in Illinois explaining why he was quitting the pastorate, and why so many other pastors are quitting according to, or wanting to quit, according to polling. So we'll get into that in a second. We have a couple of announcements. They're a little bit different than the regular announcements, so listen up [laughs]!

Quick reminder, send in questions to us. We're going to do our season finale mailbag is our next episode in two weeks. So send in your questions about anything you've heard this season or previous seasons. Anything you've read on the newsletter, send your questions in via email, or you can send us a voicemail as an attachment to your email as well, to [email protected]. Really, I give you that as like just having one specific way to ask us questions. But any way you have to get in contact with us, social media or even personal email, whatever, doesn't matter. Ask those questions anyways you can, but [email protected].

I am going to be at the Evolving Faith Conference, me and Gabrielle, my wife, who has been in a couple of these episodes, Tamice Spencer-Helms, the author of our most recent book. Come and say hi, if you're going to be there in Minneapolis in a couple of weeks. We have a booth where we will be selling our books, we'll have some free swag, we'll have a deep discount on our [laughs] Substack subscription. So come check us out there and say hi, we would love to meet you in person. And we're changing some things up on our website and our social media. Go check them out, continue to look at them as the weeks go by. We're going to have some new content and just everything has a new look.

We have a new logo, new art for this podcast, all kinds of things. Robyn Burgess helped us out with that and will continue to help us out with that. And we're really appreciative of that. She's doing some great work. So yeah, go check out the website.

Jonathan Walton: And while you're on the website, please consider becoming a paid subscriber to KTF. That's the best way to support what we do, centering and elevating marginalized voices to help people leave colonized faith for the kingdom of God. That gets you the newsletter we send every week with media to help you in your discipleship and political education. And it gets you the bonus episodes of this show, which we will do once again after this season is over.

Sy Hoekstra: Okay, so let's jump into it. There's this pastor in Illinois, I'm going to summarize what he wrote in his article, just for the people who didn't read it. We'll put the link in the show notes. By the way, we're going to be largely disagreeing with what this man said in a lot of ways and we don't mean to demean him or any other pastor that is feeling these things, we just think it's really important to talk about it. Especially because there are just so many people who are looking at the world around them and what's coming from the fronts of their churches and kind of struggling to figure out how Jesus fits into all of it and trying to figure out the disconnect. So anyways, here's my brief summary of what the pastor said in his article.

He basically said there are kind of five main reasons in Barna polling, that pastors are considering quitting their jobs, at least in the US. And it's about half of pastors who are considering quitting their jobs. It was even higher than that at the height of the pandemic, but the two that he said he really resonates with are the top two reasons, the stress of the job and how isolating the job is. And then the next three reasons are divisions over politics in the church, unhappiness about the effect that the job is having on the family of the pastor, and then just not being optimistic about the future of the congregation that the pastor is overseeing. So he basically said, “Look, the experience of being a pastor is not what you think it's going to be. You might have understood how difficult it can be, but feeling it is kind of different.”

And he kind of said there's this mental and emotional reality of just being enmeshed in so many people's lives and having to deal with all the difficulty of in his case, a few hundred people's lives just really gets you down. And he said, basically, all those people are also kind of your bosses. Meaning if you do a job they don't like, if you do your job in a way they don't like, they're going to make your life really hard. He actually had some people kind of campaigning for his removal in his congregation, and he basically said, “Well, if this is what I'm going to get out of all the work I'm putting into this, then is it really worth it?” And then he said you have to do at least three years of graduate studies, and you have to do a bunch of internships and you have loans to repay.

And if you're in his denomination you're making about $55,000 when you come out of all that training, and that's not enough to live off of let alone pay your student loans. Then he says you have a huge range of responsibilities that in any other organization would not be one person doing all these things. Like being the public speaker, being the keeper of the orthodoxy, being the CEO, the HR director, a counselor for a ton of people, and then just like a pillar of virtue, moral blamelessness within your community [laughs]. And then he said, most Christians kind of want to be reassured that they are, they are going to church to be reassured that they are doing and believing the right things, and not really going to be challenged to grow.

And he's just someone who, he said he's just kind of fundamentally in his faith, growth oriented and actually welcomes change and difference, and his congregation wasn't into that and so he constantly ran up against that wall.

So I said that in as neutral a way as I could…

[laughter]

…because now we're going to bring in our opinions [laughs]. Jonathan, you and I had pretty different reactions to this. So just talk about what your kind of initial thoughts were when you looked at this?

Jonathan Walton: Yeah. So when I first read this message, and just to like locate this person.

Sy Hoekstra: [laughs].

Jonathan Walton: So this is a White male, suburbs of Chicago, congregation about 300 people, educated, well connected, stable in his position.

Sy Hoekstra: The congregation is larger than 300, but he was like personally involved in probably 300 people's lives.

Jonathan Walton: Oh right. Yes yes. Yes, he named that as a very specific burden…

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah.

Jonathan Walton: …of being involved in the birth, deaths, funerals, weddings, just the most intimate parts of people's lives…

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah.

Jonathan Walton: …with 300 people, that was too much. And so… [deep sigh]

Sy Hoekstra: [laughs].

Jonathan Walton: I don't want to dismiss this person's feelings, the suffering and the hardship that he's going through. At the same time, when I was growing up, I didn't know any professional Christians. Like no one received a salary for being a pastor, and all of the things that he was frustrated by, confused about, seeming to blame the congregation for the predicament that he found himself in, all of those things to me seem like this is just the expectations of a pastor. Someone who is supposed to be a reasonably good presenter and preacher of the word, is supposed to be someone who's able to articulate their faith in word and deed and power. It seemed to be to me that there must have been a problem in how he was set up and put in this position and what his expectations were, but none of that was named in the owning of his own expectations.

Particularly for me is I come from a background where every single pastor or leader in a church was bi-vocational.

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah.

Jonathan Walton: So my pastor growing up was my bus driver to elementary school [laughs]. I saw him six days out of the week.

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah.

Jonathan Walton: Some days all seven, because we would go to church meeting on Saturday morning [laughs] and I’d see him preach on Sunday morning, and then he would pick my behind up on that dirt road every day.

[laughter]

Jonathan Walton: So I think there are two things that bothered me the most, and they were that he seemed exceptionally unaware of the impact of what he was going to say, and radically dismissive of the privileges that he holds. Particularly the reality that, someone actually commented that his salary is above the median salary of his congregation. And so to be aware of the reality, the things that you are complaining about, other people would actually love to be involved in. Like to have a salary, to have resources, to be intimately involved in people's lives, there are pastors and lay leaders all over the world that would actually say yes and amen to everything that was on his plate.

Sy Hoekstra: Can you tell me what the—you said he was unaware of the impact of what he was going to say. What's the impact that you're thinking of?

Jonathan Walton: Yeah. So the impact that I'm thinking of is that like when we communicate publicly about our faith, I think we have to consider the most vulnerable and marginalized person as the priority reader. And so I may think to myself, “You know what, I don't care who reads this,” but I don't think that is me loving my neighbor. So I have a responsibility as a follower of Jesus, as somebody of leadership and influence to shepherd the folks that are downstream of me. I do understand how someone in his position, a White male at a suburban church and a Presbyterian, I totally understand it logically.

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah.

Jonathan Walton: But what I don't understand is as a person called by God to serve and love the flock that he has been given, to say those things about his pastorship, disregarding how that's going to impact the most marginalized in his congregation and those who might see it, boggles my mind. I don't understand how he arrived at a point where you could feel those things, yes. But then to me what feels like accusing the congregation and the elders and the leaders for not taking care of him, that doesn't make any sense to me.

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah. So here's, I think this is where we differ, not because I think you're wrong. It's just not my reaction because I did grow up with professional Christians.

[laughter]

Sy Hoekstra: Nothing but professional Christians, in fact.

Jonathan Walton: Right.

Sy Hoekstra: Oh that's not true, there were lots of volunteers at the church, but you know what I mean. And I think I'm just used to pastors in positions like his who really feel like a deer in headlights when difficulties come their way [laughs]. That's like standard to me. I mean, there are some places where some congregants come against a pastor and try and get rid of them, and the pastor gets really combative or whatever. But those weren't the churches I grew up in. So because of that, my reaction was, yeah, it seems like this guy is giving a pretty good summary of the challenges of being a pastor. And he has figured out that because of those challenges, this job isn't for him and so he's leaving, and that's a good thing.

[laughter]

I totally understand and agree with your critique, it’s just that was my initial reaction. I was like, “Yeah. Good, right. This job is not for you, you should do something else.” [laughs] And the specific way that I think he seemed kind of like unprepared or confused about where his kind of… he talked about his congregation being his bosses. He kind of contrasted, like you said some people would think that the pastor's boss is like the board of the church, or whoever can literally fire you, but you have all these people you have to keep happy. So they're kind of your bosses. And at no point did he talk about, God is my boss [laughs].

Jonathan Walton: Right.

Sy Hoekstra: Like I'm at all concerned in this role as a pastor with whether I'm being faithful to God, and that would be kind of like my measurement of success, or my measurement of what makes this a job well done.

So it just came off, I guess this is similar to the privilege, but it kind of just came off as like just I really hadn't counted the cost [laughs] of what it takes to follow Jesus. And to me, it really did start… you're someone who is trying to lead people in following a man who was crucified for doing what he did, and so were a bunch of his followers. And there was a ton of suffering and marginalization. And it's just, it's always so interesting to me that White people in America constantly talk about being persecuted. But when it comes to something difficult actually happening to you, you're like, “I’m out,” and you just walk away. You're trying to lead people to follow Jesus and there's all this stuff that happened to Jesus and all of Jesus’ followers.

And I think that a lot of us White people kind of look at that and go, “That can never and should never happen to me.” That the consequences of following Jesus, that shouldn't happen to me. And like me personally, Sy Hoekstra, nothing remotely that difficult has ever happened to me [laughs] because of me being a Christian. So you can take whatever I'm saying with as many grains of salt as you'd like. But I don't know, that just seems kind of fundamentally contradictory to me if you're trying to lead people in the way of Jesus.

Jonathan Walton: Yeah. And I think that engagement with God and intimacy with the Father, and prayer and discernment and all of those things, was completely absent from the piece.

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah, there wasn't a lot about... [laughs]. There was I don't think anything about that.

Jonathan Walton: Right. So when you're talking about counting the cost, examining the role of suffering in our faith, and then putting our suffering in perspective with those who are downstream and upstream of us in our faith, and all of that stuff like that, it just wasn't there.

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah.

Jonathan Walton: And so that to me, I think that distance gets into the bigger picture of what I think we're going to talk about next, is just like, what happens when our faith moves from being a community rooted in following, like you said, this Jesus with dirty feet,

Sy Hoekstra: [laughs].

Jonathan Walton: to like a CEO of a spiritual superstore?  

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah. So let's get into that. Let's get into some of the pitfalls, how we end up in this place. What are some of the pitfalls that churches and congregations and structures are creating for pastors to kind of end up in this situation?

Jonathan Walton: Yeah, I think one of the things that became super clear to me in looking at Jerry Falwell, and writing and thinking about, in our anthology, we're reflecting on Trumpism, and all of that.

Sy Hoekstra: When you say looking at Jerry Falwell, you did a master's thesis about Jerry Falwell [laughs].

Jonathan Walton: Yeah. And so the very clear contrast between what he was starting in the 50s and 60s, versus what we talked about a few episodes ago with Dr. Gustine and Reverend José Humphreys, is that we can either set ourselves up as the center of the community, or we can set ourselves up as part of the ecosystem of what God is doing in the community. And the idea that… what Jerry Falwell did was he got a church, he put a thing on a map in the middle, and then drew a circle and said, “Every single person needs to come to my church, and they need to be part of my congregation. And my success will be measured by my growth, and our giving and my exposure.”

And so if he went to someone's house and said, “Would you like to come to church?” They say, “We're already part of a church,” he goes, “Would you like to come to my church?” Right? And so the idea that we are going to be bigger, better, faster, stronger, for the sake of being the most dominant and engaged with community is something I think that is fundamentally against what Jesus set up. And the reason for that is like in John chapter three, when John's disciples come back to him and say, “There's this man named Jesus, he's preaching, and he's baptizing and we need to make sure that he's right.” And John sits, he knows his place. John the Baptist knows his place.

He says, “I'm just a voice crying out in the wilderness, I'm supposed to prepare the way.” He doesn't then say, “Well, you know what, let me kowtow to all the people in front of me that want me to be big and great and good, and go do more.” He doesn't set himself up that way, because we are not in a spiritual foot race, where we are competing against each other trying to lead the most people to Jesus. All of us have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, and are pursuing him together alongside one another in this beautiful, in Jesus name beloved community.

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah, amen to that. And I think what we're talking about here is effectively a capitalist slash business mindset of a church. Right? That's kind of what you were just describing with Jerry Falwell, was the focus on growth and expansion as a measure of success. It really shifts focus away from obedience as the measure of success [laughs].

Jonathan Walton: Right. And specifically, numbers growth and money growth and influence growth.

Sy Hoekstra: Yes.

Jonathan Walton: And if anybody wants another resource around this, Sy, we could put this in the show notes. There's a podcast called Startup, and they actually follow a church plant. So they get into this new world of church accelerators, and grants and pastors coming and pitching their churches to people with money. If we can imagine this is very far away from Paul and Timothy going to visit Priscilla and Aquila. Very far away from the apostles going to visit Lydia and Phoebe. They're not going to get investors [laughs], right? We have moved very far away from Acts and stepped into something blessed by the economic structures that we find ourselves in. And I would just, yeah. Can we get away from that?

Sy Hoekstra: So there's like church planter Shark Tank?

Jonathan Walton: Yes, absolutely [Sy laughs]. So there's a pastor like he talked about his nervousness. He talks about, how am I going to please these people so that I receive these resources? It's not surprising, and it is profoundly disappointing, the choices that they make, the compromises that they make to get money. And I've talked to many pastors about that reality of I need to make sure that I'm getting enough money from these people. And that I think, is something I just, I cannot imagine and there isn't scriptural evidence of Jesus ever doing.

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah. Which is not by the way to dismiss the realities that pastors gotta eat [laughs].

Jonathan Walton: Yes, absolutely. I am also, I'm not a pastor, but I'm on staff with Intervarsity and understand the fundraising, the ministry partner development, like all those things. And I think it is incumbent upon every Christian leader to be willing to take up the cross and follow Jesus. Like, if there is someone who wants me to say, “You know what, maybe White supremacy isn't so bad, let's stick to the gospel,” just for that check, then I think we know who the idol is in the room [laughs]. So I actually have to believe that Matthew five, six and seven are true, to do my job effectively, and to follow Jesus effectively. And since I'm a professional Christian on staff with Intervarsity they happen to be the same thing in this stage of life.

Sy Hoekstra: When you say Matthew five, six, and seven, you basically mean the Sermon on the Mount.

Jonathan Walton: I do mean the Sermon on the Mount and his promise to provide for us.

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah. So some of the downstream problems you're facing here, that this pastor and a lot of pastors are facing, [downstream]of everything we just said, is if you're trying to grow, then what are you going to say about politics? You're going to say as little as possible about politics, and you're going to say things that don't rock the boat with your congregation. And if there are political divisions in your congregation, that's going to cause a ton of anxiety, because that's not like an opportunity for community or growth or to teach people things that are good and true, that is a threat to your funding. Right?

Jonathan Walton: Right.

Sy Hoekstra: Because you don't know if people are going to leave, you don't want to take sides because people probably will leave if you do. But at the same time now there are so many people who want you to take one side or the other, that they might also leave if you don't say anything. And so it's just nothing but stress. Whereas if you have set up your funding in some way where the people who are funding you, or like you said Jonathan, looking for you to take up the cross, you're going to be able to help people work through those things and speak truth. You have to be pretty emotionally healthy in order to do that. And another thing that we do is make people kind of push down all their questions and feelings [laughs] in favor of conformity for the same reasons, because conformity also creates growth and consistent loyal members and that sort of thing.

Jonathan Walton: Yes, it does.

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah, right.

Jonathan Walton: [laughs].

Sy Hoekstra: But these are all kind of these pitfalls that we have to deal with. Also, when you're worried about church divisions like that, it becomes really easy to blame your congregation for problems. They are the most immediate people in front of you. So if there's somebody there trying to get rid of you… this pastor is asking, “I'm putting a lot of work into this and if I'm just going to get these people harassing me back, then what's the point of all this?” And again, that's hard. If you're trying to serve people and they're actively rejecting you, that’s very difficult. But also the focus on blaming them instead of just trying to continue to be faithful, that's the line that we're talking about. That’s the difference that I think we're dealing with here.

Jonathan Walton: Yeah. And to press into that a little bit more, I think when we are set up, like if we just juxtapose, play side by side, life, liberty and the pursuit of property slash happiness, depending on how far you want to go back in the historical stuff. Life, liberty, pursuit of happiness slash property, and then a fake spiritual meritocracy that we find ourselves in. This dude was set up by his seminary, by his family, by our society to think that if I do all of these right things people will follow me, I’ll have a large platform, I'll be a successful pastor and I will retire with all the experiences and wealth that I need to go to Jesus empty handed. But on this side of heaven, I did really well. And I think that is a lie.

There's nothing gospel-centered about doing exactly what we're supposed to do and receiving the just and right treatment for it. As Sy said earlier, Jesus was blameless and they killed him [laughs]. The apostles loved their neighbors, fed the marginalized and sat with the vulnerable, and they crucified them. They quartered them, they destroyed them, they threw them into dens of lions. This is what happened to those people. So to have a faith, and then faith leaders that believe the fruits of their work will be financial success and job security is antithetical to the entire New Testament. Yeah, but that's a hard reality, because our structures are set up to support what he's talking about.

Sy Hoekstra: And not just our church structures, but our whole societal structures.

Jonathan Walton: Yeah.

Sy Hoekstra: Here's another pitfall that creates these problems, privilege.

[laughter]

Sy Hoekstra: Just in general, privilege makes things hard. And I said that as a bit of a joke, but this is, it's real. It's not just because when you're someone who has privilege in society, suffering in general is just harder for you, because you haven't done as much suffering. But a White male pastor in a suburban church has not had to think as deeply or as personally about the issues dividing the US because they aren't things that have affected him personally. You know what I mean? You just think about it is a reality. It would be nice if this wasn't the reality, but you think about things more when they affect you, right?

[laughter]

Jonathan Walton: Right. Just a true thing.

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah, it's just a true thing. This guy is not going to have thought about police brutality as much as you, Jonathan, right? This guy is not going to have thought as much about ableism as I have. It just is what it is. So then when those things kind of flare up in society and your church wants to talk about them, you have less to say because you haven't thought as much, and you end up saying ignorant things, or nothing at all.

Jonathan Walton: Right. And I think Sy, that is where something that you've been a gift to me is that, the freedom to ask the questions and to not know, right? So, this pastor, many pastors, and we throw in the Christian industrial complex into this box, is that we're supposed to have every single spiritual goody that a person would need. And we're going to provide that at exceptional levels. And if I don't have it, I'm just going to go figure it out. I've used the example before, but like Tim Keller, when he was invited to speak about climate change, I had this message on CD, I bought it when I was at Columbia.

Sy Hoekstra: On a compact disc.

Jonathan Walton: Oh, yes, that's a compact disc friends for our young listeners out there.

Sy Hoekstra: [laughs]

Jonathan Walton: You put it inside of a player, it spins and it's red and it plays music.

Sy Hoekstra: [laughs]

Jonathan Walton: Similar to a record [laughs]. So all of that to say, he literally said in the beginning of the message, “I got invited to do this. And I just started thinking.” And I was like, yeah, pastors who are asked to talk about intimate partner violence, pastors who are asked to talk about climate change, pastors that are set up to talk about insurance fraud and the unjust healthcare system that we have, that should not be a question necessarily they're asked. Unless like Sy was saying, they've got some personal experience, they have some education, they have a background. Like we can actually lean on one another in the body of Christ to pursue his kingdom together, as opposed to assuming that the person in the pulpit is an expert in all things human.

Sy Hoekstra: We basically see them as like a superhuman.

Jonathan Walton: Right.

Sy Hoekstra: Like, you have to know, you have to be an expert in everything. And this also gets to our view of scripture [laughs], because it's kind of based on the fact that you're an expert in the Bible, and the Bible is supposed to teach us everything, like about every subject. And that kind of this is a comprehensive, you don't need anything other than this basically, to navigate the world. And in some ways that could be true if you're in a real desperate situation, but also if you want to learn about climate change there are lots of people who have studied it very extensively.

[laughter]

Sy Hoekstra: And you don't, you know what I mean? Again, not to… Tim Keller said a lot of great things over the course of his life, but you don't need to ask Tim Keller about climate change [laughs].

Jonathan Walton: Right. And I think something… Okay. This is not in our notes, but I have a thought. The things that most stress this man out about being a pastor are the things that pastors are most expected to do.

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah.

Jonathan Walton: And that is to be present with people who are suffering, and to be available to those who need the ministry of presence. Someone to pray with them, to sit with them, to be with them. And that I think, is one of the most powerless feelings, is when we can't actually help someone overcome the problem that they have. We can't actually help someone be healed, or have their marriage come back together or liberate them from addiction or raise them from the dead. We can't… that's not there, but we can be with them. And I think if he had not embraced and we had not embraced this reality of a pastor being Jesus, as opposed to a pastor that would pursue Jesus, then I think it'd be a fundamentally different experience for him and his congregation, where the chief reality and the chief pursuit is a ministry of presence as opposed to being a subject matter expert and a spiritual superhero for all people.

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah, being Jesus is a really good way to put it actually, because that is kind of what we expect from a lot of pastors, which is…

Jonathan Walton: Omnipresent, omniscient, right?

[laughter]

Sy Hoekstra: Right. That is kind of what you're describing, yeah. But I think it's also just the fact that… and again, this is very tied up in like conformity and right behavior and right thought, which is something that we police a ton in colonized faith. You have to be perfect as a pastor, because you are the person up there trying to demonstrate for the community what it is to be a Christian and what it is to be a Christian in a lot of people's view is to behave correctly, and to be morally blameless. I mean, he said that.

Jonathan Walton: He did say that.

Sy Hoekstra: He said, “I was supposed to be blameless and a pillar of virtue,” and you should be preaching against that idea.

Jonathan Walton: Right.

Sy Hoekstra: Anyways. So yeah, saying that the pastor needs to be Jesus instead of help you follow Jesus, I think is… or have to be present with Jesus is a good way to put it.

Jonathan Walton: Yeah, and to ground what we were... Where it says that, Paul describes himself in Romans seven, “I don't do what I want to do, I want to do what I don't do. Somebody deliver me from this body of death.” He's confessing his limitations. He's confessing that he cannot transform himself. The image from Romans seven is that when you murdered someone, you would have the body strapped to you and have to carry it around.

Sy Hoekstra: As a punishment.

Jonathan Walton: I'm sorry, yes, as a punishment. And so what Paul said is, “Someone deliver me from this body of death.” He is saying, I am preaching and broken. I am standing before you as the chief of sinners, yet somehow God has entrusted me to testify to this blameless, wonderful God slash man named Jesus. And so like if we were able to do that, I think it would be transformative for congregants. One, to be able to liberate pastors from what…[laughs] We've talked about this a lot. When Michelle Higgins said, “Liberate White people from the burden of supremacy,” colonized faith leads us to think that we have to somehow sit atop a race-based, class-based, gender-based environmental hierarchy, and we need to pursue that ideal, when in reality we're all racing to get to the foot of the cross. To be on our knees, confess that we are limited and we are not God, and we need him and one another to actually live this life, to have abundance that he has promised us in him.

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah. So the next thing in our little outline here was the ways that we can do things differently. And I think you just started us on that point by taking us straight to Jesus, that's good.

[laughter]

Sy Hoekstra: The interesting thing about Paul is nobody had any real questions about what his sins were. because he was actively kind of terrorizing the church for a long time. People have described him as like a literal terrorist.

Jonathan Walton: Yes [laughs].

Sy Hoekstra: He was going around killing people, that's what he was doing. Or overseeing them being killed. And when we have a lot of, a lot of pastors today, what I'm about to say is a little bit subtle, or a little bit, you have to be careful with it. But a lot of times when you see a pastor give a confession today, it's a confession of a sin that isn’t all that serious [laughs], or it's a confession of a sin that they struggled with in the past, and now everything's fine, they don't do it anymore. And it's like, a lot of times it's still sort of hedged. It's still designed to make you feel okay with the fact that now this is like a blameless, pretty blameless person, you know? They're doing all right. And what I'm suggesting is hard, but you do need pastors who can say that they are actually sinners and mean it. Like they actually have real problems.

Jonathan Walton: Yeah, I think setting up… And I think this trickles down to Christians in general. We can only talk about a sin that we've overcome and are totally fine from. We can only communicate a struggle, so long as we communicate how hard we're fighting against it and all of the tools that are coming along with it, when in reality it's like for me I struggle every day with the amount of money that I spend and look at the gospel. That's an active struggle that I'm wrestling with. I don't know how to reconcile mortgages and retirement, and caring for my family, and paying for things with the generosity that I see in scripture. And that is something that I feel could disqualify me as a person following Jesus.

But I am not disqualified to point other people to Jesus, because I have not figured it all out because I'm not perfect in some way. I'm qualified to tell people about Jesus, because I've decided to follow Jesus. I just need to tell people why I decided to do that, which is what the disciples were doing. Like Simon the Zealot was an angry, murderous person, and Matthew stole lots of money from people [laughs]. I cannot imagine them sitting with Jesus, and I think the only reason they felt they could be there is because Jesus was willing to be with them.

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah.

Jonathan Walton: And followers of Jesus, if we were able to realize that Jesus wants to sit with us and lead people to that, then I think pastors could actually be present with us, as opposed to being people who we think are supposed to be, we expect them to liberate us. And that's just not their responsibility.

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah. I think you, in addition to all that, totally agree, you have to just stop expecting people to be more than human, which is the opposite of the problem that we said earlier. But there are specific ways that you do that, and I think one of them is making sure that you are never kind of broadcasting the lie to your congregation that being a Christian makes you a better person, or a more moral person than others. It will transform you as an individual, but the idea that any given Christian is just better than everybody else, that is implicit in so many messages you hear in church. And that's constantly talking… especially evangelicals I feel like, are constantly talking about how much your life will be better than other people's.

How you can't even think of how you could be a good or happy person without Jesus, which is wild. Everybody around the world [laughs] has found ways to feel happy and fulfilled and be kind to each other regardless of whether they knew Jesus or not. That's not like a… I don't know. That doesn't lower the status of Christianity.

Jonathan Walton: [laughs] right.

Sy Hoekstra: It's just kind of like an observed fact about the world.

[laughter]

Actually, you know what? You and I Jonathan, one time… I will be very vague on details here.

Jonathan Walton: Okay.

Sy Hoekstra: We were at a funeral where the pastor was speaking to a crowd that was definitely not just Christians, and actively saying to this crowd, “I don't know how you can grieve and move on with your life when someone dies if you don't believe in heaven. I don't know how you can go on, and that's why you need Jesus.”

Jonathan Walton: Yeah.

Sy Hoekstra: And he got some amens [laughs]. It was the only place in the whole eulogy where he got some amens. And I was just like, man, that is a wild thing to say to people while they are grieving because, A, it's untrue. Again, every culture that's ever existed has figured out a way to grieve and move on. And to say that to people at a funeral is just, we are so stuck in this kind of Christian supremacy. Everything's going to be better if you're us.

Jonathan Walton: Yes, Christian supremacy and like, if we are to maintain Christian supremacy then you're actually in competition with other people.

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah.

Jonathan Walton: And I think someone… like I got a phone call once from a very concerned dad, about his daughter participating in one of our programs. And he said, “I'm just concerned because I want to make sure you are a soul winner for the Lord.” And I said, “Yes, I do desire for people to follow Jesus, and I think it's problematic when we are trying to win.” Like I am not in competition with other people. I'm not in competition with other faith leaders. I'm not trying to tear someone down. And this goes back to, there's a passage in Acts where many followers are saying, “Are you for Paul, are you for Apollo, are you for Peter?” And the competition, the competitive nature and the attraction of like, my leader is better. My spiritual person is better. My spiritual bag of goods is better than your spiritual bag so come and take mine, so our group can get bigger.

That is just, it's just not a thing in the kingdom of God. And I think it's a radical thing that Jesus does when he says, “Come and follow me,” and someone says, “I just bought this field, and I got to go look at it.” And he's like, “Okay.” He doesn't try to woo them, he doesn't try to win them back. He says, “Okay.” There's something in us that must be secure enough to let people be. And I think pastors, particularly for we who are like, we're set up to be the end all be all, and we got to get them there and we got to make sure they stay there and sit in the pews, and give money and come to small group and come to men's group and come to Bible study and come to… list out the spiritual infrastructures that we have. We could allow people to walk with God as though he is pursuing them. As though he is creating spaces to meet with them.

So yeah, everything you said Sy. We can walk out of that supremacy into humanity and point to Jesus in ways that are transformative and helpful. And what you said off-mic about Dr. Lamar Hardwick, and the invitation to being human, if you could repeat that.

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah, I think all of this is tied up with the fear of being human, which is what we talked about, or one of the things we talked about with Dr. Hardwick when he was on the show a couple years ago, that we keep coming back to. Just the fear that we have of our vulnerabilities and our weaknesses, and instead of embracing those things as a part of being who we are. That plays into this because it's wrapped up in this need to be superhuman, right, and this need to be a perfect pillar of virtue. And if we can let go of those things, then that pressure to be perfect will disappear. So you don't have to be superhuman. You don't have to be better than people who are non-Christians. You don't have to do better than your congregation.

You don't have to be any of that as a pastor. You just have to be faithful to the best of your ability, and people are going to accept that about you or they're not. If they don't, then you might have to find a new job [laughs], but you will have been faithful.

Jonathan Walton: Right, you will have been faithful. And this is not part of our podcast, but please pray for Dr. Hardwick. He is still suffering with cancer, has recently transitioned from pastoring full time to focus on treatment and living. And I think as you were saying Sy, like he has exemplified for me what it looks like to be human in front of your congregation.

Sy Hoekstra: Oh, absolutely. We talked about this in the newsletter recently one time, because there was this clip [laughs] that he sent around of, he had to have… man, I can't remember what the procedure is called. But basically because of the colorectal cancer he's had, he now has to have a colostomy bag for the rest of his life. And he was just openly talking to his congregation about this and being like, “Listen, I know it's going to make funny sounds. You can laugh. It's okay. His name is Oscar.”

[laughter].

Jonathan Walton: Right.

Sy Hoekstra: Just kind of like someone who is utterly unashamed of who they are and what's going on in their life. He's a really good example of that and please do pray for him.

Okay, so here's another one that I think is a good tip for congregants to help out your pastor.

Jonathan Walton: Yes. Yes.

Sy Hoekstra: Be friends with your pastor [laughs]. Just like regular friends, not like—meaning don't always go to them for spiritual help. Don't always go to them for prayer or for comfort when things are hard, just hang out with them sometimes. And this is, the first person who told me to do this was my dad a long time ago, who's like done this a couple times with pastors. They've come to him and said, “Hey, would you be in like X, Y, and Z committee?” Or, “Would you volunteer in this way?” And he did those things eventually. But when he was first at a church, he would say, “No, do you want to hang out though?” [laughs]. And like that was… it's extremely… he’s had like at least one pastor, maybe more note that to him as something that's really helpful. Because the job is so lonely and isolating, and people are always just coming to you for stuff.

They're taking and consuming from you and you need ways to be replenished. And pastors have to find those ways on their own sometimes, but we can help. The other one that I… well, I have two more that I think are a big deal. Learn some emotional health, please.

Jonathan Walton: [laughs and claps a few times] No, I think you need to read what you wrote. You said “learn you some emotional health.” That’s a great phrase [laughs].

Sy Hoekstra: Yes. In our outline that we're both looking at I wrote “learn you some emotional health and some healthy conflict resolution skills” [laughs]. It's hard work and it's not something that any seminary is going to ask you to do [laughs] unfortunately. But it is so necessary to be able to identify the stressors when they start and not when they just explode all over you and the people around you [laughs].

Jonathan Walton: Yeah.

Sy Hoekstra: Jonathan, this is your bag. What do you have to say about this?

Jonathan Walton: No worries. I just want to say [laughs] I'm like leaning on the mic, right? I think every follower of Jesus needs to take serious responsibility over their own spiritual growth, and emotional growth, and health and well being. My mama would say that every tub has to stand on its own bottom.

Sy Hoekstra: [laughs].

Jonathan Walton: And the reality is like, there is no one that can attune your heart to God more than you. We have to actually be discipled by people, that's absolutely true. And no one can turn our hearts to God but us. And so before we meet with our pastors, pray, discern, sit with the Spirit. Go to scriptures, go to communion, ask what God is doing so that when we show up to these conversations, we're actually full to have conversations, not on empty just waiting to be filled by the spiritual gas station sitting in front of us. Just because pastors and leaders and the spiritual infrastructure that we have has turned us into things that produce money and funding and numbers, does not mean we then need to turn every spiritual leader into the store that they claim to be and say, we just need to fill ourselves up.

We can actually break that terrible economy of spiritual goods that get passed back and forth, where we just reduce each other to what we need each other for, that's very utilitarian, which, if you want to look at Jesus again, his disciples were not the most useful.

Sy Hoekstra: [laughs].

Jonathan Walton: Let's be clear about these men [laughs]. And so we can take responsibility for our own spiritual emotional health, awareness, growth, and intelligence. I think that would be just a gift to each other as a body of believers, and definitely to pastors, as they try to do a very hard job of being present to us in ways that are transformative and helpful.

Sy Hoekstra: Jonathan, spiritual gas station is a very good metaphor.

Jonathan Walton: [laughs].

Sy Hoekstra: Everybody, that's why you go and get a creative writing degree in college [laughs].

Jonathan Walton: This is to say… yes, that's true. This is where it comes into play.

[laughter]

Sy Hoekstra: Here's my last one. And this is not going to surprise you, if you listen to this show. Center and elevate marginalized voices [laughs] as a pastor, because it's actually going to help you. As we said before, privilege makes suffering harder to handle, and it gives you less perspective. And doing the opposite of that, listening to people, meaning, this could be like in your media consumption, or in your friendships or whatever. But I'm also saying in your church, it will just help you because you're going to have people who have dealt with more day to day difficulties than you have. And I think, by the way, I think this is a little bit counterintuitive for some White people, because White people are so used to being told that we're the logical, detached ones, and everybody else is so emotional, and can't deal with… Like the thing that we think about all the time is like when racial tensions flare up, right?

Jonathan Walton: Right.

Sy Hoekstra: So it's like, okay, something happens about police brutality or something and we're very dispassionate and removed from it because it doesn't affect us. And Black people are very emotional and upset about it, because it affects them very directly and very deeply. And I think a lot of White people, like those are some of their primary interactions with people of other races. And you just come away from that thinking, we are more logical and whatever.

Jonathan Walton: Right.

Sy Hoekstra: And suffering must be harder for them. And when it comes to the everyday stuff, if you're actually integrated in communities of where you really do have regular ongoing interactions with friends or family members who from marginalized communities, you will find that it is quite the opposite [laughs]. You are much less skilled at dealing with suffering and emotional stress and difficulty than your marginalized peers.

One more side note on this by the way, the pastor who wrote this article is from the PCUSA, and has fairly progressive theology, and I assume therefore, also politics, but I don't know about his politics. So another note for White people, you can't progressive theology or progressive politics your way out of being White

[laughter]

You have to dig down deep and deal with, as we talk about, colonized faith, or you're going to end up… there would be no difference in how I would talk about… well, not no difference. There would be very little relevant difference in how I talk about this person's complaints as a mainline White Protestant versus a conservative Evangelical.

Jonathan Walton: The differences would be subtle, not substantive.

Sy Hoekstra: Right. Exactly.

Jonathan Walton: Yeah.

Sy Hoekstra: Again, “subtle not substantive.” That's why you're a professional writer.

[laughter]

Sy Hoekstra: Anything else before we wrap up, Jonathan?

Jonathan Walton: No, just Jesus is the way, the truth and the life. I had a conversation on the basketball court on Wednesday with a kid and he said he'd been kind of living his life and he said he had an encounter with the Holy Spirit. He said he doesn't know, he can't interpret it all. He's even uncomfortable with religion and institutions and all those things. He said, “But I cannot deny the love and acceptance that I felt.” He said, “I just can't deny that.” And so now he's going to start coming to our church. And he came to play basketball with us because his boss knew someone and told him to come and I just think that like, for all of our preaching and podcasting and writing and emailing and newsletters and books and products.

But I think we would do well to remember that Jesus is still meeting people as they lay down to go to sleep, as they drive, as they pump gas, as they sit in church pews or sit outside clinics or at hospitals, he is still pursuing and lavishing us with his presence. So we can liberate or be liberated from that burden, because Jesus is still, he's still moving.

Sy Hoekstra: Amen. That's a great place to end us, I think. Everybody, thanks for joining us so much today. Please remember to go to ktfpress.com. Check out the new look of the website and the social media. Consider becoming a subscriber. Get yourself our weekly newsletter. Get the bonus episodes of this show. If you like this episode, a lot of our bonus episodes are kind of like this, just me and Jonathan talking. Remember to send us your questions for our mailbag episode. Or send your text questions or your voicemails to [email protected]. Our theme song as always is “Citizens” by Jon Guerra. Our new podcast art is by Robyn Burgess and we will see you all for the season finale in two weeks

[The song “Citizens” by Jon Guerra fades in. Lyrics: “I need to know there is justice/That it will roll in abundance/ And that you’re building a city/ Where we arrive as immigrants/ And you call us citizens/ And you welcome us as children home.” The song fades out.]

Sy Hoekstra: A lot of our bonus episodes are kind of like this, just me and Jonathan talking. [faint sound of honking in the background] Ugh, firetrucks. Hang on, sorry.

Jonathan Walton: I thought you were going to say another F word. Aw, [holds the “f” sound for a second] firetrucks.

[laughter]

Today we’re talking about how the just and practical love of God compels us to build wealth and power in Black communities. We’re seeing how two people are doing that through their work—Tamice Spencer-Helms with college students at Sub:Culture, and Diamond Walton with financial coaching at Elpida Social Capital. We discuss how to meet needs without being paternalistic, the importance and urgency of building systems where Black people can thrive, reparations, and a whole lot more. These two people are really worth listening to (and supporting if you want to click on the links above).

And please send in your questions about anything you have heard on the show this season or read by KTF Press. Send questions via text or voicemail to [email protected]. In two episodes, we will be doing a mailbag show where we answer listener questions.

Shake the Dust is a podcast of KTF Press. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Subscribe to get our newsletter and bonus episodes at KTFPress.com. Transcripts of every episode are available at KTFPress.com/s/transcripts.

Hosts

Jonathan Walton – follow him on Facebook and Instagram.

Sy Hoekstra – follow him on Mastodon.

Our theme song is “Citizens” by Jon Guerra – listen to the whole song on Spotify.

Our podcast art is by Jacqueline Tam – follow her and see her other work on Instagram.

Production and editing by Sy Hoekstra.

Transcript by Joyce Ambale and Sy Hoekstra.

Transcript

[An acoustic guitar softly plays six notes, the first three ascending and the last three descending — F#, B, F#, E, D#, B — with a keyboard pad playing the note B in the background. Both fade out as Jonathan Walton says “This is a KTF Press podcast.”]

Tamice Spencer-Helms: There was a Desmond Tutu quote where he talked about that the good news to a hungry person is bread. Like Jesus doesn't ask… if a person says, “I'm hungry,” Jesus doesn't ask, “Is that political or social?” He says, “I feed you.” That kind of haunted me because I kept offering very theoretical sustenance to students who were asking for actual tangible sustenance. So it just started to feel like I can't say that I'm actually doing kingdom work unless there is a tangible demonstration of the love of God. I can't keep talking about God, the love of God in theory.

[The song “Citizens” by Jon Guerra fades in. Lyrics: “I need to know there is justice/That it will roll in abundance/ And that you’re building a city/ Where we arrive as immigrants/ And you call us citizens/ And you welcome us as children home.” The song fades out.]

Sy Hoekstra: Welcome to Shake the Dust, leaving colonized faith for the kingdom of God. I'm Sy Hoekstra.

Jonathan Walton: And I'm Jonathan Walton.

Sy Hoekstra: We have a great show for you today. We are talking with two guests about the ways that their work helps Black people—college students and adults—to succeed financially with the aim of reducing the wealth gap and increasing Black power in the world. We're going to talk about the ways their faith intersects with that work and a whole lot of other things. Jonathan will introduce them in a second. I just wanted to say, I want to say a few things. One is, obviously I'm still sick like I was last week. But guess what, when we did this interview, I wasn't sick, so [laughs] you don't have to listen to me talk all nasally like this again. Another thing, we are coming up on a mailbag episode. We're going to be doing that in two episodes from now. So in four weeks, we'll be doing a mailbag episode.

Please send us your questions. Send us them via email to [email protected]. You can send in texts questions or voicemails, ask us about anything that you've heard on the show all season. Ask us about things you've heard on the show in previous seasons. Ask us about anything you've read in our newsletters. Ask us anything. AUA. And remember, if you like what we do at KTF Press centering and elevating marginalized voices to help the church leave colonized faith for the kingdom of God, the best way to support us is to go to Ktfpress.com and become a paid subscriber. That supports us. That gets you the bonus episodes of this show, our newsletter every week, the full archives of both of those things, and it supports everything we do here at KTF Press. So please do that. Also, send in your questions, again, [email protected]. Okay. Jonathan, let the people know who our guests are today.

Jonathan Walton: One of our guests you already know. Tamice Spencer-Helms is the author of Faith Unleavened: The Wilderness between Trayvon Martin and George Floyd, that we published earlier this year. She's a theologian, author and speaker living in Richmond, Virginia. She's the founder and CEO of Sub:Culture Incorporated, a nonprofit that provides holistic support and crisis relief for Black college students. She holds a bachelor's degree in religious studies and copywriting from Virginia Commonwealth University, a master's degree in Contextual Leadership from Wheaton College and a master's degree in theology from Fuller Seminary. Our other guest is Diamond Walton, who is in addition to everything else I'm about to say, my sister-in-law. As a grant maker, public health professional and social entrepreneur, Diamond has spent her career pursuing community-led solutions to social problems.

She received her master's in public health degree from Emory University. She has nearly a decade of experience in the field of public health working at local, state, and international levels. Her work has involved coalition building, strategic planning, community needs assessments, program development and evaluation. Now as a grant maker, she has continued partnering with community members to mobilize financial, social, and human capital to promote equitable access to resources. She also runs Elpida Social Capital, a financial coaching and consulting firm that partners with clients to engage with money and their communities in socially and environmentally responsible ways with the goal of reducing the racial wealth gap.

[The intro piano music from “Citizens” by Jon Guerra plays briefly and then fades out.]

Sy Hoekstra: Tamice Spencer-Helms, welcome back. Diamond Walton, welcome to the show for the first time. Thank you both so much for being here. We really appreciate it.

Tamice Spencer-Helms: Thanks for having us.

Diamond Walton: Yes, thank you. Glad to be here.

Sy Hoekstra: So let's just get started talking about your work, what it is and how you got into it. Tamice, could you start with Sub:Culture for us?

Tamice Spencer-Helms: Sure, yeah. I started Sub:Culture in 2018. I had been doing campus ministry since 2007, and I decided that what I was offering students by way of good news and things like that wasn't really tangible. And what was starting to happen was happen was my students were having to leave school because of unexpected emergencies, and they weren't able to rise to the challenge of those emergencies. And so what I thought about doing was, what if I could create something that came alongside those ministries at the time, to kind of reinforce the wheel rather than reinvent it by offering financial crisis relief and things like that. In the five years we've been going though, we've kind of expanded a little bit more to think about how do we create a holistic web of support around the Black students so that they can get to and through college.

Sy Hoekstra: And I've heard you say before, it was kind of frustrating to you that in the ministry context, you could only ever raise money for people to go to a retreat [laughs].

Tamice Spencer-Helms: Sure. Yeah.

Sy Hoekstra: …and not to like pay for an actual financial need that they had.

Tamice Spencer-Helms: Indeed.

Sy Hoekstra: Not that people don't have spiritual needs, but yeah, I just appreciate that thought very much. Diamond, what's going on at Elpida Social Capital?

Diamond Walton: Yeah. So I went on a very windy road to get to Elpida [laughs].

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah.

Diamond Walton: So I spent, most of my career I was a public health professional, public health educator. So I worked in communities to kind of help address community health needs. And over the course of that time, I realized there are a lot of health disparities, especially for Black folks and we’re living sicker and dying quicker, what is happening? And I kind of got tired of reading the statistics of especially around Black women dying in childbirth and the rates of sickness and death among Black infants as well. And I was thinking, we're investing a lot of money in our public health infrastructure to research these disparities and bring up this data. Why don't we invest more money in Black communities themselves so that they can start investing in ways that they know will improve their health outcomes around various social determinants of health.

So I was like, “Well, maybe I could do something.” So I'm working full-time as a public health professional. And then I started Elpida in 2019, which is the financial coaching and consulting company. Initially, I was doing one-on-one financial coaching with BIPOC folks. But then in 2021, 2020, I launched the Black Student Debt Freedom Fund, where I raised $25,000 to help pay down Black student loan debt and offered free financial coaching for folks. And through that experience, I realized that… because before I did that, I was like, I'm giving folks financial coaching, they can’t… it's great if you have a budget, but if you don't have any money to budget, it's not very helpful or productive.

Jonathan Walton: [laughs].

Tamice Spencer-Helms: Indeed.

Diamond Walton: So like, what can we do to support folks to have the resources they need to create the lives that they want for themselves and for their communities?

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah. And so the idea here with us was the two of you are sort of working on similar issues, just with people at different stages in life, right? And so we just thought you have some thoughts behind what you're doing that I think are pretty similar, and we'll get into those in a minute. But thank you very much to both of you for coming on, like I said before, and at any point, by the way, I didn't say this when we started, but feel totally free to talk to each other.

[Laughter]

Tamice Spencer-Helms: Okay. I was wondering if I could do that.

Jonathan Walton: Yup, yup.

Sy Hoekstra: You absolutely can.

Tamice Spencer-Helms: I was like, “Sis can I email you after this?”

[laughter]

Diamond Walton: Yeah, sure, no problem.

Tamice Spencer-Helms: Because students need financial coaching as well. Actually, it might be better if they started earlier. So I've got all kinds of ideas.

Diamond Walton: [laughs] Okay.

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah. I figured that's what was happening in your brain.

Tamice Spencer-Helms: [laughs].

Jonathan Walton: Yeah. This is just a public networking event that other people can watch.

[laughter]

Diamond Walton: Oh, okay. Oh, I see what you're doing here. I get it. I get it.

Jonathan Walton: But yeah, can you give us a snapshot or a story? And you've intimated a little bit about it, but like what were you seeing before you started doing this, and then what solidified your understanding of why this is important, the work that both of you are doing?

Tamice Spencer-Helms: So I think for me, it was really thinking about the four basic things that a person needs to be successful in college. A sense of belonging, they need their basic needs met, they need mental health things in place, and then they need academic success. They need a pathway for success, or preparedness. And so when I was looking at what my students faced, I did a couple of years at Emory, and so I was working with a multi-ethnic group of students and consistently watched that the students who were not minoritized had people and places to go to when something happened for them. It wasn't hard for them to have at least three of the four taken care of. For my students it was half. So they may have had a sense of belonging, but they weren't prepared for school and they didn't have their basic needs met.

And it was just something that was kind of, what can Sub:Culture do to assess when a student comes to us in crisis? How can we assess what's missing, where are the gaps in that web of support, and then what can we create? So we do everything from food insecurity initiatives to that financial, that crisis relief. But now we have a fellows program and we also have two and through college programs. So we do college prep and we'll pay for a student's application if they go to all of the preparedness clinics that we offer. So we do a writing clinic for them, and then we'll pay for up to three of their college application fees just to try to make sure that they're prepared as they're in that process in their senior year of high school.

Jonathan Walton: And you Diamond.

Diamond Walton: Yeah. I think it was right around the time I was pregnant with my second kid. I was toward the end of my time in the public health space, and I was just hearing more and more, again, I mentioned this earlier about the disproportionate poor health outcomes for Black women and their children. And I think maybe it was the hormones and the fact that I, like I've been in this space for so many years and that there haven't been significant improvements. And one thing that really struck me is that folks were seeing this disparity, but had no idea why it was happening. And though in reflecting and kind of reviewing these cases, seeing that a lot of this was preventable. And in that I was thinking something else has to be done.

If the professionals that are tasked with, and the experts that know the most about health and healthcare and community health can't find ways to save our lives, then what are ways that we can help save each other's lives. So financial coaching doesn't seem like that would be the answer, but I thought that at least giving someone an opportunity to have a bit more agency over the resource that they have. And then in addition to that, I do some consulting with folks with some wealth to think through how they're investing their money and how they are thinking through how they engage with their finances and the resources they have access to that are no longer contributing to the extraction and exploitation of communities of color.

I think working on both ends of that has really helped one, communities that don't have a lot of conversations about money feel less scared about it, less shame around it, and feel a little more agency and self-sufficiency around that. And then folks that do have wealth again, to feel less shame about it, and also to actually start having conversations more explicitly about race and the intersection of racism and the wealth they have. And so I think all of that together just allowed me to think through what are ways that aren't directly related to healthcare that can improve people's health outcomes and their wellbeing and their sense of wellness.

Jonathan Walton: Both of you at least in part think about your work in terms of reparations. And so why is that and how does helping individual Black folks like this fit into the conversation about reparations?

Diamond Walton: So a few, like a year or so ago, I had a call with a woman who's deep in the reparations movement. I was telling her about the work I'm doing with Elpida and she's like, “That's not reparations work.” And my feelings got hurt. Yeah, my little heart was broken [laughter]. She was like, “Financial coaching is very individualistic and it's also kind of like neoliberal,” and it's kind of connected to a very individualistic one by one way of kind of… the idea around financial literacy in particular can be a bit kind of demeaning and also doesn't, it's not super… it's not always a helpful conversation to have when you're talking to folks who… Many people don't have financial literacy, whether you have money or you don't have money, but I think it's often used in terms of people who do not have a lot of resources just indicating their level of intelligence and something negative in that area.

So anyway, at the end of that conversation, I was just reflecting a lot about on what I'm doing and how does it actually contribute to reparations repair. And what I came to is that though it's not directly connected to maybe the federal government, kind of offering reparations for the historical harms that they've caused to Black people in particular, or state government or anything like a larger entity, I do think that as folks are, as we are winning reparations as communities of color and Black folks in particular are coming into possession of resources, we still will need the capacity to know what to do with those resources. Because they will then go back into very similar capitalist systems outside and be extracted from our communities again. And so my hope is being able to offer some kind of support and community for folks who are wanting to be free of the fear of engaging with money, the fear of math.

I think a lot of folks have that fear, to feel like they're prepared to really manage the resources that they may be awarded or that they have now in a way that is aligned with their values and it doesn't just get them trapped in the same kind of system of exploitation and extraction they were before. And then I also think that as I'm thinking about what to do next with a Black Student Debt Freedom Fund, there are opportunities to expand that to all types of debt eradication and asset transfers. And so that's really what I'm thinking about next, is how to expand the work of the Black Student Debt Freedom Fund to anonymously pay off massive amounts of Black debt and to transfer assets at scale to Black folks so that we can then increase their net worth and thus close the racial wealth gap. And so I'm trying to think through what that looks like in a practical sense. But yeah, that's what I'm working on now.

Tamice Spencer-Helms: Wow, that is fantastic [laughs]. So, for me, I think it's not as… that's a beautiful idea, and again, I will be emailing you [laughs]. But as for us, we're just thinking a student is in school, so they've already taken a step towards their matriculation, they've already taken a step towards who they're going to be as an adult. And so we think of this not as charity, but as reparations, because unfortunately you got to go to school, typically, you have to go to school in order to get a degree, in order to get a job so that you can be on the path to generating wealth and closing the gap, right? And setting your family up. And so I think for me, I have been talking about Sub:Culture in terms of reparations, because you are actually investing in future leadership, you're investing in the education of Black students.

And what I experienced before when I was doing ministry was that the narrative was always very a cause. That these students are a cause or we've got to help these poor Black students get through. And it's like, no, they just need a web of support that they don't have, and it is only right to surround these students with that. And so that's how we're moving forward in terms of our language around fundraising and donor development, because we really don't want it to seem like these students need the help of the donors. What's happening is we want to kind of shift and bring in more equity around students who are in school. And so that's the way that we're communicating out what Sub:Culture is doing, and hopefully people will respond [laughs], respond to that because it is not charity, it is reparations in my opinion.

Diamond Walton: And I appreciate that framing because I too, as I'm thinking through, especially when I set up the Black Student Debt Freedom Fund, it was all anonymous. So nobody could see, it's not like you're like plastering some brown face on a website saying, “Help this poor Black person.” And that's my hope and intent moving forward, is that this is a gift exchange. And so just like you were giving a gift to someone in your family, and you're thinking about kind of your will and your trust and how you're going to transfer something of value to someone you care about because it would be helpful to them and it's something that they requested. So it's not like you're just giving people something they didn't ask for. You're not giving someone something of value, and you're not giving something to someone out of pity, but you're giving it lot of love and you're giving it to them as a gift with no expectation of something in return.

And so my hope is in terms of the reparative aspect of this type of work and the culture that I'm trying to build in this financial exchange, this resource exchange, which can be super transactional, is really in gender a feeling of love for Black people that you may never meet, but and a way of contributing that is gift giving. Is free of expectation, is free of asking anything in return and is actually something of value that someone would appreciate. So yeah, I completely agree. I think it's so important to reframe how we are supporting Black folks and not seeing folks as charity cases, but also recognizing that people need things [laughter] and so like, let’s be more generous.

Tamice Spencer-Helms: Right. Exactly. It's so funny because I think of kind of our main things that we're trying to see produced in Black students. Obviously, it's academic success, but it's also like social flourishing, right? And holistic wellbeing. It's not just that we want you to drop your $50 a month so that you can feel good about helping a poor Black student. It’s like no, we want them, even in our curriculum, like in our fellows program, financial literacy is a part of that, mindfulness is a part of that. We want to create the opportunity for students to have access to things that a lot of their counterparts already have access to. And we're saying we want to start early. Like how do we do SEL early? How do we do some of these things while they're in college so that by the time they graduate, they're dynamic, they're grounded, they're socially conscious, they're compassionate leaders.

And so I'm really excited about it. I feel like this way of framing it really has made me actually more excited to get out there and let people know about Sub:Culture because it's not, we're not tokenizing the students. We're saying no, we'd like for you to invest in the education of students who have been disproportionately left out of a lot of things.

Sy Hoekstra: I have come up with a random, well [laughter], it fits into one of my other questions, but this is not something that I sent you ahead of time. So have you all heard about this lawsuit against this VC fund for Black women?

Tamice Spencer-Helms: No.

Diamond Walton: Yeah. The Fearless Fund.

Sy Hoekstra: The Fearless Fund, yes. So the guy, Tamice, who financially backed the overthrow of affirmative action and a bunch of other conservative activists Supreme Court cases…

Jonathan Walton: [clicks tongue disapprovingly]

Diamond Walton: Jonathan…

Sy Hoekstra: …has sued this venture capital fund that focuses on Black women-owned businesses…

Tamice Spencer-Helms: Oh my gosh…

Sy Hoekstra: ……to say this is racial discrimination, because in his view, this is against colorblindness and therefore it's racism.

Tamice Spencer-Helms: [sighs]

Sy Hoekstra: So I want… Yeah, I'm sorry. I'm like delivering depressing news.

[laughter]

Jonathan Walton: No, I'm just like… whaa? My eyes are just like, “what the…” aaah.

Tamice Spencer-Helms: It's really just… It’s, it’s…

Sy Hoekstra: He's also the guy, he didn't succeed in this, but he tried to take down the Indian Child Welfare Act.

Jonathan Walton: Yes, same person.

Diamond Walton: Wow…

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah, same guy. Edward Blum. So my question was going to be about the types of reactions that you get to what you do because you both do fairly unique work. And those reactions, I assume are pretty different inside and outside of Black spaces. And now there's this big, powerful, angry reaction against similar kind of work to what you all are doing—like work that's intentionally trying to erase a gap that exists—and calling it racist. So I wanted to know what kinds of reactions you all, you both get inside and outside Black spaces and kind of how you respond.

Diamond Walton: Oh, gosh. Well, I think I might be self-selecting the people I talk to because they're all very excited [laughter]about it, whether they're Black or they're White or non-Black. Yeah, I do think that they're… I don't want to completely dismiss the fact that folks feel afraid of like they're losing something or that they are being excluded, because I think that's real. What I’m hoping to do, it does make me a little nervous because I'm like, would someone sue me for doing what I'm trying to do? Who knows? Who knows? So I'm trying to seek legal counsel, just make sure that my P's and Q's are altogether. But what I found is that, and this is what surprised me about the Black Student Debt Freedom Fund, is like, I literally just said, I'm trying to pay off Black folks debt, who wants to do it?

And people were just giving me money to do that. And when I was asking them, or in the notes in their emails when they were just letting me know, we're trying to figure out how to pay off the folks debt, they were just like, “You know, I had debt…” And these are non-Black folks, “I had loan debt and it is a pain, and so I want to help folks out.” Or, “I never had debt, and it is ridiculous that so many people are burdened by debt in this way.” And I think there is a good critical mass of people, Black and non-Black who can clearly see that especially the racial wealth gap is extraordinary. It is astronomical, and it is, the amount of debt that communities of color are carrying, it's truly untenable.

There's no real way to get out underneath it unless there's like massive nationwide erasure of some of that debt. And also for us all to contribute because it's very clearly a problem. And for those who don't see it as a problem, the way that I've structured the work that I'm doing is it's you opt in. And so if you don't want to give to Black folks paying off their debt, to help pay off their debt, then you don't have to, and you're not being forced to, and it's not your tax dollars. It's just it's my company and if you want to help out, then you can help out. And if you choose not to, then that's your right. And so, I don't know. I mean, I think this is going to be an evolving conversation [laughs], we just have to make sure we're prepared for that type of reaction, but that's been my experience.

Tamice Spencer-Helms: Yeah. I think my experience is similar, we haven't really, my funding model due to some situations I'm hoping we're going to talk about, but…

Sy Hoekstra: We will.

Tamice Spencer-Helms: …has changed significantly. And so we are kind of trying to figure out where's the best base of donor support. Typically Black churches have been really excited about what we're doing and offer more practical help, like do you need a building or can we help with helping to stock the pantry? And it's great, we love that help. There's a pantry here at Virginia Union that we built. We remodeled a space at Virginia Union, built an entire pantry, bought the refrigerator, the freezer, all of those things, and partnered with some Black churches in the area that are now continually stocking that pantry.

So most of my interactions in that particular environment have been around practicalities, not been so much financial. So it just kind of, it's an amazing thing, but also you need capital [laughs] to run a business. So hoping to expand [laughs].

Jonathan Walton: So we've talked about this a little bit, but could you explain more of like the why and where your faith intersects with the work that you do? This is Shake the Dust, we're trying to leave colonized faith, right? And so how does this intersect with your faith, and particularly what the kingdom of God looks like coming practically to people?

Tamice Spencer-Helms: Well, I mean, for me there was a Desmond Tutu quote that haunted me for a little while in 2017, where he talked about that the good news to a hungry person is bread. Like Jesus doesn't ask… if a person says, “I'm hungry,” Jesus doesn't ask, “Is that political or social?” He says, “I feed you,” because the good news to a hungry person is bread. And for a whole year, that kind of haunted me because I kept offering very theoretical sustenance to students who were asking for actual tangible sustenance. And so to me, it started to feel a little bit disingenuous after a while, to say that we were… to report out to donors and things that I was helping students along, because I was just giving them theology and Bible study.

I wasn't helping them actually succeed in college, which is what they came there to do. They did not come to college for Bible study. They came to college [laughs] to graduate and have a career. And they could do both. I mean, they could have Bible study, but also can we help them? So it just started to feel like, I can't say that I'm actually doing kingdom work unless there is a tangible demonstration of the love of God. I can't keep talking about the love of God in theory. And so it just kind of by the time 2018 came, I'm just like, I'm just going to start my own thing. So to me it felt like that was a step towards really maturing in my faith and really taking my discipleship seriously. If I say that I care about, and that I'm called to Black students, for me, this is what I think that looks like.

So, yeah, I mean, I think part of it is coming out from under predominantly White organizations and starting my own. And I think that, again, some of the demographic dynamics there with the practicality, I think play into that a little bit too.

Diamond Walton: That's so cool. I love Desmond Tutu.

Tamice Spencer-Helms: Yeah, me too [laughs].

Diamond Walton: I don't know why, but I've been reading through 1Corinthians backwards for like no real reason. I've just been reading it backwards [Sy laughs]. And so I recently was in 1Corinthians 8, and I got stuck on where Paul says, knowledge puffs up and love builds up. And I think I had been really self-righteous for a long time, I was just like, “Well, I know better and I wish people just figured it out and I don't understand why people are engaging in ways that are super unhelpful for the Black community.” I was really not super loving, honestly, to many of my brothers and sisters who are not of color, because I felt like they should just get it more quickly. And I still think that there is a lot of learning that folks need to do on their own, and I don't think that I'm responsible for all of that.

But I also think at the same time that I have a desire to be more of a builder, because that just is not what I have seen in social justice spaces or more progressive circles. It's very much oppositional. Like there is some enemy and we're always just like combating something. So I just have a desire to build the capacity and to build. Because it's more challenging. It is more challenging to create something new, to not only be free enough to imagine something new, but to build it and to do that with other people. And so that's what I'm trying [laughs] to figure out how to do. I'm like, how do we massively just transfer a bunch of wealth and assets to Black folks anonymously through some kind of technological platform? [laughs] No one’s done that before, and maybe I'll get some people on board to help me do it.

So I've just been trying to lean into being a builder and to not be so quick to be so critical and fall into that trap of like, because you waste a lot of time that way. You just spend, for me, I'm talking about myself. I just, I spend so much time just so mad at people and so frustrated, and I'm just like, “People are dying. Literally.”

Tamice Spencer-Helms: Yes, indeed.

Diamond Walton: We’ve got to do something.

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah.

Diamond Walton: We need to be a bit more active and creative, and imaginative.

Jonathan Walton: Yeah. It's interesting to me that both of you were talking about creating things and how Christ’s incarnation, the Holy Spirit coming was all a proactive process, not a reactive process. Like I'm going to engage in creation in the beginning. I'm going to engage in renewal, like with incarnation. I'm going to engage in witness and expansion through the Spirit coming. So it's interesting that that is both of your frame. … So now [enthusiastically] I want to create stuff! Okay, let’s do it!

[laughter]

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah. Right.

Jonathan Walton: Let’s do that.

Sy Hoekstra: It’s a good frame and then it's also a good counterpoint, I think, to not just how people sometimes are in progressive spaces, but how a lot of people are in the church, right? We're just going to define ourselves by all the stuff that we hate and everything is about protecting ourselves from the outside world instead of creating. So I appreciate that.

Jonathan Walton: Yeah. I think… sorry. Yeah, one more thing. You could probably edit this out, but Rich Villodas, he said it's a curious concept to despise the people you are trying to convert.

[laughter]

Tamice Spencer-Helms: Yes. It's very counterintuitive [laughs].

Jonathan Walton: Right.

Tamice Spencer-Helms: This is not a podcast about that, but I could go.

[laughter]

Jonathan Walton: I'll bring us out the rabbit hole.

Tamice Spencer-Helms: Yeah. Hoo, Don't do it, Jonathan. Don't do it [laughter].

Sy Hoekstra: You could go on about it, and in some ways you went on about it for a whole book that people can go read.

[laughter]

Tamice Spencer-Helms: I did. Absolutely.

Sy Hoekstra: Let's get into what you were talking about earlier, Tamice. The conversation about justice and reparations can be kind of theoretical for some people, and then when it gets down to helping actual real Black people it can get a little bit dicey. Can you talk about what happened at Sub:Culture when you started talking about Pride?

Tamice Spencer-Helms: Yeah. So there was a student who reached out to us who was homeless who had been kicked out, couldn't go back home after school. And just put in my mind like, hey, I don't know if Sub:Culture is being as vocal as we could about the fact that we want to help all Black students. So I think it was 2020, I think. We posted a post on our Instagram about Black trans realities. About the plight of what it means to be Black trans, especially in college, and that we were going to help in any way that we could. And then we received a ton of emails and phone calls from our donors who were saying that we had swerved from our mission to follow Jesus and to glorify Jesus, that they did not want to give money to something that was kind of poisoning the psyche of the students, and we lost about $36,000 in a year.

So we are still trying to recover from that. On the one hand, it was very difficult and devastating. And honestly, I think there was a level of trauma for it in all honesty, trauma for me in that. But then thinking about it in hindsight, it feels really good to be clear about who we are. So that if people jump on and become partners with us, they know what we stand for and who we stand for, and we really do stand for all Black students. That includes Black trans students. And I wrote an article about it recently because as I think about it, I can't imagine that you would stop helping students graduate because we want to help Black trans students. I don't know how that made sense in people's minds. But so I wrote an article about it to say, this is what I meant when I said faith-based [laughs].

And this is what I think it means to have a faith-based organization, is that we help those on the margins. We help the least of these, and there's hardly a more marginalized group than Black trans folk. Especially Black trans women. And so I think that it's important to vocalize that. I think it's important to advocate for that because that's what I believe Jesus called us to do, to advocate for the least of these and those who are on the margins. So that's what we will do. It has hurt us. Like I said, we had a conversation with our finance people last year that were like, if you don't fix this, you're gone in July. But it's not July and we're still here.

[laughter]

Jonathan Walton: Amen.

Diamond Walton: Okay, Praise God.

Tamice Spencer-Helms: We're still here, but we really are trying to find… it's interesting Diamond because we, in the conversations with our financial controller, they were like, “You actually just need a venture capital. You need an angel investor at this point. Because it really is like a startup all over again, and you need someone to help you start this up.” And unfortunately, because of our being vocal about it, people that have large, or churches and things that had large capacities to give don't want to align with that. So it's been really hard to find space and folks who will invest. But I believe, because I think I'm doing good work, and I'm just going to keep doing the work and trust that it'll come.

Sy Hoekstra: That student, Tamice, so you're saying they were kicked out of their house by their parents for coming out as trans? Is that what happened?

Tamice Spencer-Helms: Indeed.

Sy Hoekstra: I just, I agree with you and I want to emphasize the point of how wild it is to say. Someone is homeless and I'm not going to help them because they're trans.

Tamice Spencer-Helms: That’s what it boils down to.

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah. And looking at the ministry of Jesus and coming to the conclusion that that's okay, is wild.

Tamice Spencer-Helms: It's painful, to be honest. It actually hurts. Physically hurts.

Jonathan Walton: Mm-hm.

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah, I bet. That makes perfect sense. I mean, it's, yeah, I'm just, I'm sorry. And I don't know, just the tenacity and the courage of yours that it takes to just keep going and saying, “We're just going to keep doing what's right, period.” We were just talking about this, Jonathan, on the last episode we put out about the prophetic nature of just doing what's right [laughs]. Diamond, actually, Jonathan, maybe you want to ask the same question of Diamond, because I don't know the story as well as you do, so go ahead.

Jonathan Walton: Yeah. So I'm wondering like in the spaces that you've been in around health outcomes and now in finance, what professional sacrifices have you had to make to stay on mission and prioritizing the work that you want to do? And then how do you engage in that tension? Because I feel like it can happen regularly.

Diamond Walton: I don't know if I've had to make many sacrifices. I've just had to kind of expand my thinking, because originally I had very, it was just like siloed. Like you have this profession, you do this thing and you're retired. And so I got an MPH, I was going to be a public health professional, and I realized that there were so many intersecting issues with public health. And you get a bit of that when you start having discussions about social determinants of health, but these disciplines weren't really having conversations with each other. So when I would bring up things like, maybe we should invest more in communities of color, or maybe we should just figure… the common denominator is that a lot of these folks with poor outcomes are Black and poor. We're not going to change the fact that they're Black, but can we change the fact that they're poor?

[laughter]

Diamond Walton: Maybe that would improve their health outcomes. And people are like, “No, let's run another study.” So I'm just like, “What?” Okay, so maybe this isn't the discipline for me, this isn't the sector for me, but I still appreciate and use a lot of the frameworks. So I started to make a transition into finance via impact investing, and it's a very insular space. And so not having a finance background, being a woman, being a woman of color, I think folks were just, I could make some inroads with talking about racism and how impact investing is actually impacting and addressing racism. And I think that was interesting to some folks because they had not had that conversation before, so I was kind of like allowed in, in that context.

But I think I've realized that I, again, in terms of being able to see some connections across disciplines and creating a different path that no one has seen before is what I have to do. Because it just, clearly what we're doing is not working. And so to try something new, you may have to just build it. So that's what I'm trying to do, but that requires a lot of sacrifice. I work full-time, I get up early to work on a company, I'm volunteering, I have a lot of unpaid jobs. I'm a PTA president, I'm a parent. I've like, may join a board. So there are other things that I'm trying to manage and juggle at the same time that I'm trying to build something. And that too wouldn't be the case if I came from a lot of resources because I could just drop some money and do that full time.

So I think it's just really being fortunate to have your brother as my husband, who is very supportive and watching our kids while I get up early to work on this. Having folks like you, Jonathan, and other folks who are encouraging and are like, “Keep going and trying and maybe I'll give you some money to help you [laughs] a little bit.” And really leaning into those relationships and not so much... And also just seeing… and I also just feel for folks who maybe don't see how there could be something, something different could happen in their sector. Whether that's public health, impact investing, finance, whatever it is, because they're so talented. There's some brilliant people in these spaces, but I think that they just sometimes don't have that imagination. So I've just been trying to spend some more time with folks who have a bit more imagination to help move some things forward.

Tamice Spencer-Helms: I mean, I was just thinking Diamond though, that's really the reality of having five and six jobs to make ends meet to make your dream happen. And I think one of the things Sy, you were talking about with the… and you were too Jonathan about how it's really popular these days to be very oppositional and vitriolic and kind of define ourselves by what we're against. But those are also very lucrative roads to take.

Diamond Walton: Oh yeah.

Tamice Spencer-Helms: So it makes it really hard to say, “Actually, I still believe the Sermon on the Mount, and that means I have to live and move and have my being in society a certain way.” But it's also exhausting to be a person of color who has vision for something and in order to make that happen, you've got five jobs. And I see that consistently. Everyone I know, every person of color I know that has started an LLC, a business, a 501(c)(3), they are working at least 65 hours a week just to work for their company for free. And that's something that's really, it would be lovely to just be able to run Sub:Culture as my job [laughs]. But it's been going five years, so there are students coming to us.

There are things that have to happen, so you have to go to work and go to work again when you're not at work. And it's just something that I don't think people really, really get how hard it's to wake up every morning and decide to do that again. So it's real. It's truly real.

Sy Hoekstra: How do you keep doing that Tamice?

Tamice Spencer-Helms: Well, speaking of the book, my grandmother, when she… I think it's in my blood. My grandmother at her funeral, they told this story about how she had the opportunity, she started the first all boys school in Baltimore to raise retention and test scores. And she did, of course. And the mayor came to take a picture and do a photo op and asked, “How can we help?” And she said, “I need washing machines. I need you to put washing machines in the school because these kids don't have any place to wash their clothes.” And I think I came by that honestly. It just, I can't just sit still if I know there's a need and if I know I have the skills and the capability and a little bit of the social capital to make it happen.

And that's how I feel. I mean, I didn't start out having gone to business school. I started out with students in my living room telling me that they had to go home. Or walking students home from the dorm because they got evicted because their room and board rates went up. And it was just kind of like, I can't not do something. And now I think five years in, I'm like, this is me. This was born of me. I can't imagine not doing Sub:Culture and I'm hoping to be able to do it full-time someday. Or at least paid a salary to do it full-time [laughter].

Jonathan Walton: There you go.

Tamice Spencer-Helms: I am doing it full-time, but you know what I mean [laughs].

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah.

Jonathan Walton: Right.

Tamice Spencer-Helms: So I mean, I just, I don't think I could not Sy. I don't think I could… I love Black students.

Jonathan Walton: Unapologetic. Yeah. Amen.

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah. Same question Diamond, just to wrap us up. How do you keep going?

Diamond Walton: I keep going because I am thinking about… I work in philanthropy and I'm like, I see that there are so many resources [laughs]. So there's enough. We have enough resources. So that's what I'm spending my energy on, is figuring out how to get more resources to folks who have been asking for things. They know what they need, they just don't have the resources to make it happen. And so that's my core objective is I know we have the resources, let's get them to the folks that need them.

Sy Hoekstra: Where can people go for both of you to find you or your work online or to help support? Tamice?

Tamice Spencer-Helms: You can go to www.subcultureinc.org. That's our website and you can find all that we're doing over there.

Sy Hoekstra: And you can click the donate button.

Tamice Spencer-Helms: [laughs] Yes, you can.

[laughter]

Sy Hoekstra: Diamond?

Diamond Walton: You can go to www.elpidasocialcapital.com. Elpida is spelled E-L-P-I-D-A, socialcapital.com. We are a for-profit company. We offer financial coaching and consulting, so you can click the Learn More or Contact Me link on the website.

Sy Hoekstra: And is the Student Debt Freedom Fund still going or is that…?

Diamond Walton: Yeah, so it sunset in 2022.

Sy Hoekstra: Okay.

Diamond Walton: And there is something that's coming down the pipeline. So there’s something in the works. Yeah.

Sy Hoekstra: Awesome. Well, stay tuned to Elpida Social, yeah.

Tamice Spencer-Helms: Yeah. This is awesome.

Sy Hoekstra: This has been so great. Thank you to both of you so much for being here. We really appreciate it.

Tamice Spencer-Helms: Of course.

Jonathan Walton: Thank y’all.

Diamond Walton: Yes, thank you. This has been wonderful.

[The intro piano music from “Citizens” by Jon Guerra plays briefly and then fades out.]

Sy Hoekstra: Thank you so much for listening. Please remember to go to ktfpress.com and consider becoming a subscriber. Get the bonus episodes of this show, get our weekly newsletter and support everything we do at KTF Press, centering and elevating marginalized voices. Also, please remember to send in your questions. Send them in early and often [laughs] to Shake the Dust at ktfpress.com. You can send us an email. You can send us a voicemail, questions about anything you've heard on this show or read in our newsletter or anything really that you want Jonathan and I to talk about. Send those to Shake the Dust at ktfpress.com and we will answer them in two episodes from now. Our theme song is “Citizens” by Jon Guerra. Our podcast art is by Jacqueline Tam, and we will see you all in two weeks.

[The song “Citizens” by Jon Guerra fades in. Lyrics: “And that you’re building a city/ Where we arrive as immigrants/ And you call us citizens/ And you welcome us as children home/ Where we arrive as immigrants/ And you call us citizens/ And you welcome us as children home.” The song fades out.]

Jonathan Walton: We've talked a lot about… [sound of a phone vibrating] Hold on one second. Sorry.

Sy Hoekstra: [laughs].

Jonathan Walton: I just need to make sure, I just need to make sure this is not Maia. [gets further from the mic] Hello?

Sy Hoekstra: Oh.

Jonathan Walton: Yes ma'am. [gets close to mic again and there’s a sound of his phone being put down] Sorry. Nope, not her [laughter]. Sorry, we had this whole conversation about her speaking up for herself today. And like if you don't like something, you say, “I don't like this,” and you say, “Is there something else I could do?” And then if they say you can't do that, then you say, “I need to call my father.” And so I was just making sure that that didn't happen within the first hour [laughter] that she was there. This empowered girl like, “Hey, I ain’t doing that.”

Sy Hoekstra: “My dad said…”

Diamond Walton: “I am not coloring that coloring page.” Yeah.

[laughter]

Jonathan Walton: Right.

Our guest today is Dani Espiritu, a native Hawaiian educator, minister, and activist (as well as one of the authors from our anthology). We talk about the wildfires in Maui, her activism around the Oʻahu water crisis, Hawaiʻi’s complicated history with Christianity, and theology about our relationships with land and cultural stories. Dani is a deep, compassionate thinker and a sharp, dedicated advocate. You don’t want to miss this one!

Links mentioned in the episode:

* The Intervarsity Hawaiʻi site on the Maui fires with links to learn, advocate, and donate: https://www.intervarsityhawaii.org/donate-to-maui-families.html

* Intervarsity’s Hawaiʻi Justice programs on IG: https://www.instagram.com/ivhawaii_justice/

* The organization Dani works with on indigenous food systems, Hoʻōla Hou iā Kalauao: https://hoolahouiakalauao.wordpress.com/

* That org’s IG: https://www.instagram.com/hoolahou.ia.kalauao/

* The Oʻahu Water Protectors: https://oahuwaterprotectors.org/

Shake the Dust is a podcast of KTF Press. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Subscribe to get our newsletter and bonus episodes at KTFPress.com. Transcripts of every episode are available at KTFPress.com/s/transcripts.

Hosts

Jonathan Walton – follow him on Facebook and Instagram.

Sy Hoekstra – follow him on Mastodon.

Our theme song is “Citizens” by Jon Guerra – listen to the whole song on Spotify.

Our podcast art is by Jacqueline Tam – follow her and see her other work on Instagram.

Production and editing by Sy Hoekstra.

Transcript by Joyce Ambale and Sy Hoekstra, with special thanks to Dani Espiritu for helping us out filling in and proofreading Hawaiian words.

Questions about anything you heard on the show? Write to [email protected] and we may answer your question on a future episode.

Transcript

[An acoustic guitar softly plays six notes, the first three ascending and the last three descending — F#, B, F#, E, D#, B — with a keyboard pad playing the note B in the background. Both fade out as Jonathan Walton says “This is a KTF Press podcast.”]

Dani Espiritu: God determined our times and our lands and then specifically placed us there. And I think that comes out, right, It's in direct response to Babel. And this desire for this mono-culture, this mono-linguistic society that vies with the Lord in terms of control. And so instead we are placed in these specific locations and develop this intimacy with God, and this intimacy with creation in those places. And none of us has the entire picture. Each of us has these different pieces and then together we get to see more of the tapestry of who the Creator is.

[The song “Citizens” by Jon Guerra fades in. Lyrics: “I need to know there is justice/That it will roll in abundance/ And that you’re building a city/ Where we arrive as immigrants/ And you call us citizens/ And you welcome us as children home.” The song fades out.]

Jonathan Walton: Welcome to Shake the Dust, leaving colonized faith for the kingdom of God. I am Jonathan Walton.

Sy Hoekstra: And I'm Sy Hoekstra. We have a really great conversation for you today. It's going to be on indigenous sort of everything [laughs]. We'll get to the specifics in a minute, but we're going to be talking about education and culture and theology and things that are going on with activism, through specifically the lens of our guest’s life, and work on the island of Oʻahu. Before we get into that really quickly as always, please remember the best way to support this show. And the centering and elevating marginalized voices that we do in our attempt to get ourselves out of colonized faith, is to go to KTFPress.com and become a subscriber on our Substack. That gets you the bonus episodes of this show and the newsletter that we do every week, where we bring you highlights for media to help you in your discipleship and your political education, and that supports all the work that we do at KTF Press, the books and everything else.

You can hear that I'm sick, I'm sure, and I apologize for that. That's just an unavoidable truth about the state of my respiratory system right now [laughter]. Thank you for everybody's grace listening. Jonathan, could you… you know what, I should say before I go to you Jonathan, you can always get a free month on our subscription to ktfpress.com by going to ktfpress.com/freemonth. Start that subscription out with a free month. Okay, Jonathan, tell everybody who we have with us today.

Jonathan Walton: Absolutely. Today we have with us soon to be Dr. Dani Espiritu. She is Kanaka Maoli (a Native Hawaiian) and educator raised in Kāneʻohe, Oʻahu and currently living in Waimalu, ʻEwa, Oʻahu. Her ancestors come from Maui, Hawaiʻi Island, as well as China, Samoa, Puerto Rico, Korea, the Philippines, Spain and other parts of Europe. Dani is on staff with InterVarsity’s Hawaiʻi Justice Programs where she develops programs and resources that focus on the intersection of justice, ʻāina (meaning the land, that which feeds), Hawaiian culture, and faith in Jesus. She also works with Hoʻōla Hou iā Kalauao, a community organization that seeks to restore life and abundance in Kalauao, a land division in ʻEwa, Oʻahu where they focus on education, advocacy and the restoration of loʻi kalo which is an irrigated taro field.

In addition, Dani is a doctoral candidate at the University of Hawaiʻi at Manoa, College of Education, where her work focuses on indigenous food systems, ʻOiwi (or native identity), and resurgence. And she organizes with the Shut Down Red Hill Coalition and the Oʻahu Water Protectors. Dani, thank you so much for spending the time with us to be with the audience so that we can sit at your feet to learn and listen. We are deeply, deeply appreciative.

Dani Espiritu: Mahalo, Jonathan and Sy. Thanks so much for having me. It's an honor.

Sy Hoekstra: So we came up with the questions and the topics for everything for this episode before the wildfires started in Maui. So we just wanted to give you the opportunity to say anything that you think our listeners should know about what's happening there and kind of just give you some space to talk about that topic before we jump into everything else that we had planned, if you wouldn't mind.

Dani Espiritu: Yeah, thank you so much. Mahalo nui to you folks for the opportunity to be here and to share. And also thanks so much for the pule, the prayers and support that folks I think internationally have been offering. I think it's important to put the fires that are happening currently on Maui in the context of what has happened historically as well as politically, in Lahaina, more specifically. Lahaina is the main area there. There were also fires in other parts of the island, but in Lahaina, Lahaina in the 1800s was known as the Venice of the Pacific. And so it was filled with water that had since been diverted for things like sugar, and then subsequently continued to be diverted, for things like resorts, hotels, gentlemen, what they call gentleman estates, and things like that.

That creates a huge part of the catalyst for the landscape being extracted in the way that it is that set up for the potential for the fires. And so that's, I think, one piece that is ongoing. In the midst of everything, Maui was continuing to see upwards of 2000 tourists a day, in the midst of people having lost their homes over about 1000 people who are still… The searches are continuing to happen, many of us have family members and have close friends who've lost all of their belongings, and some people have had to escape the fires. And at the same time, while that is happening we have tourists that are swimming in the same waters that like, our family members and bodies of loved ones were retrieved from less than a week previously.

So those are some of the… to kind of put it within the context of this heavy tourist industry that's been pushed. We also have families who've lost everything that are getting calls from people who want to buy their land, while they're still grieving…

Sy Hoekstra: Gosh…

Dani Espiritu: … while they're still grieving loved ones. And companies that are using this as a way to kind of leverage the tragedy and use it as a way to do large land and water grabs. And so, most recently within the last week, the Deputy Commissioner for what we call CWRM [pronounced: C-worm], the Commission on Water Resource Management, was removed from his position and he has a long history of advocacy for Hawaiian farmers, particularly in Maui. And there are a series of articles that accused him of withholding water for the fighting of fires and later on that information came out to be false—that the water that was in question wasn't even connected to fire hydrants that could have gone to protect homes.

But yet he was removed and the state now under this emergency proclamation of affordable housing is getting ready to rebuild. Rebuild Lahaina is kind of like the code phrase, while the Lahaina community itself is saying to wait and allow folks to grieve. And that emergency proclamation that was made by the governor of Hawaiʻi sidesteps cultural protections, sidesteps environmental protections and sidesteps historical preservation protections by law. It also sidesteps Sunshine Law which is like a protection created in the government that allows backdoor deals not to happen. And so all of that kind of is happening amidst this incredible tragedy that I think a lot of folks are not aware of.

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah, that is not the story that a lot of us are hearing from the media. And it's hard to say we appreciate you bringing the perspective when the perspective is a lot of corruption and tragedy. But it is typical. I mean, my wife's family is from Haiti and the exact same thing happened after the earthquake in 2010. A bunch of foreign mining companies came in and said, now's the time to grab land. And it is what happens, and it's horrible. And I would want to know, actually, where our audience can go to either find ways to support through prayer or through giving money to the right places. Where would you send them?

Dani Espiritu: Yeah, I would say the Intervarsity Hawaiʻi website, we've put together a page specifically focused on Maui that has a number of links tied to general resources, background information for folks who want to sign petitions and advocacy things, they're there. And then what we've done is also compile the pictures, brief stories, and donation information from our own family. So it's everybody connected with the Intervarsity Hawaiʻi family, essentially, they're listed there and then we also linked to the donation sites of other organizations who are hosting over 800 Lahaina families who have been displaced or lost loved ones and other things like that as well are on there.

Sy Hoekstra: Okay, great. So we will put the link to that in the show notes for this episode. So you can just check your player if you want to go there and help out. Thank you for giving us that context and that update and those things to do in response. Let's maybe get into you a little bit more so people have a little bit more of your context as we continue to talk about these similar types of issues throughout everything we're going to talk about today. Can you just give us a sense of what you are doing right now, as Jonathan mentioned, you're a PhD candidate. Can you explain to us what you're studying and what you're doing your thesis on?

Dani Espiritu: Yeah. So I'm a candidate at the College of Education at University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa in the curriculum studies department. And so my research looks specifically at the restoration of loʻi kalo, or one of the main indigenous food systems for us here in Hawaiʻi, and ways that restoring loʻi and really restoring the pilina, or the relationship between us as Kanaka, as people, and ʻāina, or land or that which feeds us—how us restoring those relationships really helps with health, it helps with identity, it helps us to remember who we are and how we're built. And really, it leads to resurgence for the community, both culturally, as well as in terms of like we're talking about on this show in terms of justice, and wholeness.

And so a good chunk of it will focus on my own journey and restoring that relationship, as well as work that I'm doing with an organization called Hoʻōla Hou iā Kalauao, which Jonathan mentioned, as well. So we're a community org in Kalauao ʻEwa, Oʻahu where we're restoring loʻi kalo. So it's an area where traditionally, it was all spring fed loʻi kalo. Today, it's a complete urban area. And that's the last agricultural space in several land divisions in either direction. And so really what we're doing is holding space amidst urbanization where families, not just Hawaiian families, but families can reconnect with ʻāina, yeah with land, can reconnect with one another, can grow food. And I think in particular in Hawaiʻi, in Hawaiian context kalo, or taro, is an indigenous food.

Yeah that food literally kept our people alive from the beginning of time. And it also is a part of our own genealogies. It links us back to kalo, it links us back to that ancestral food or that ancestral plant. And so the transformation that happens as Kanaka are allowed to do that, and we'd learn and relearn how to do that together in a cultural context. And so a lot of it will focus on that, as well as just how do we reconnect in the 21st century, and the importance of remembering the names of our winds and rains and peaks and valleys and the wisdom in those names and in the messages and lessons of our kupuna, our ancestors.

Jonathan Walton: In your work like restoring, like the identity and abundance through land and stewardship, what did that look like for you as a little girl? Was there a conversation or an interaction, or prayer meeting that sparked that desire to go back and connect? Because I think for a lot of us as we decide to leave colonize faith or want to “decolonize”, there's a process that happens. And so it's rare that we're able to walk in that process, and I feel like you're walking in that process every day. So if you could just explain a little bit about that, I think that'd be a gift to our listeners.

Dani Espiritu: Yeah. I think a huge part of my understanding of it actually came as an adult. And so I feel like I was raised in a pretty American household. I grew up speaking English, I grew up… the push in Hawaiʻi to assimilate to the American culture came really hard, where the folks who were responsible for the overthrow created this pamphlet that told their story of the history. That pamphlet became the textbook in Hawaiʻi for about 40 years. So that was what informed… and coupled with that, Hawaiian language was outlawed. And so that informed the education of my grandparents and my parents. And so just some historical and I guess, political context in that. And so, I think me and those in my generation in my family were raised very American.

And it wasn't until learning more about the overthrow, and more of the history and getting activated in that way in high school and then in college, and realizing the disconnect and the harm that that has caused our family in particular, and then Hawaiians more collectively. It was after that, and coming back home, I was in school in Oregon and I came back home really wanting to reconnect. And that was when I started getting more involved in restoring loʻi and connecting with ʻāina and things like that. I learned Hawaiian and whatnot, but I think seeing the seeds of the importance of connection with ʻāina. My mom and my mom's family were fishermen, fisher people, and grew up gathering. And so that was something that I grew up in, but didn't necessarily realize that it was a particularly Hawaiian thing and didn't really realize the importance, I think, politically and in terms of our community until later on as an adult.

And then during the pandemic, getting to sit with my kupuna, my grandparents and hear about, or in our community that we live in now, in an area where we can't even touch the ocean anymore, because of toxic dumping and illegal dumping from the US military, we live on the shores of Puʻuloa, also known as Pearl Harbor. And in my entire lifetime, I've never been able to touch the water because it's contaminated. But then hearing from them the stories of where they would go and gather, the stories of where they would fish and the streams that they would swim in and gather from, I think there's been a more of an appreciation of that. So realizing that it's incredibly complex, like my family didn't grow up speaking Hawaiian, didn't grow up necessarily continuing certain Hawaiian practices, but at the same time we did.

And so what are the seeds within that in our own family and how do we elevate the oral history elevate what we say ʻike kupuna,  like the ancestral wisdom that's embedded in our own family practices that aren't necessarily elevated at the university, or aren't necessarily always elevated in certain sorts of situations. But that are incredibly important in terms of our people and our health. I don't know, did that answer your question?

Jonathan Walton: Absolutely. I think it makes the connection between like all of us to leave, whatever their ethnic background or racial assignment that we find ourselves in, to leave colonized faith, you have to do that simple, important work, of piecing together that tapestry of who were we before we were labeled? What did we do before we were forced to work explicitly or implicitly, because of the systems that came down? And that that Reconnective work, particularly in academic settings can feel belittled. But it's the most important thing, what are we eating? What are we drinking? How are we spending our time? How are we waking up? Those actions are the foundations of resistance. And so thanks for showing us what the seeds look like in your life. You definitely answered the question.

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah.

Dani Espiritu: Mahalo. And I think like, I'm super grateful, even at UH and in the academy in general, I feel like I'm several academic generations, I guess…

Jonathan Walton: Right.

Dani Espiritu: …back from those who really were the only ones, and were portrayed as incredibly violent in the university. And these voices that needed to carve out space, especially Hawaiian women who were portrayed a certain way. And I think because of that, those of us who are in grad school now have the ability, like there is always more work to do in the fighting. Like I think a lot about Nehemiah and the building and the fighting. There's an incredible amount of work to do in the defense and the fighting, but I think we can also build, and that's an incredible privilege because of those who've gone before us. And so I'm also very conscious of that, that the reason I can focus on this and food and family and all of that is because of those who've kind of paved the way in a lot of senses.

Sy Hoekstra: In case any of you were wondering about what Dani was just talking about with mentioning the overthrow, and a couple of other things there about Hawaiian history, we're going to get to those in a second. I promise. We're not going to leave that hanging there because I know there are way too many people who do not know about that history. But what I wanted to get in to with you for a second first, is you were actually one of the authors in the anthology that we published a few years ago, and you wrote a beautiful and tragic and just incredible piece for us. And one of the themes that you talked about in that essay, you talked about the idea of following the footsteps of our cultures back to God as a particular idea of how just Native Hawaiians view the idea of culture. Can you talk to us about what you meant by that?

Dani Espiritu: Yeah. So I think a lot of it has to do with language. So when we in Hawaiʻi talk about genealogy, the word is moʻokuʻauhau. Yeah, moʻo means succession. So a succession of people going back, our word for culture is moʻomeheu. Again, moʻo that same succession and meheu means footprints. The succession of footprints that have shaped and formed what we eat, what we say, the way that we view and see things and that's intimately tied with our connection with creation, or ʻāina, that which feeds and has fed us and all of the other pieces of creation in addition to humans, and it's a familial one, that is viewed generationally.

And then when I think about even biblically if we look at Romans chapter one, it talks about how the pieces of the Creator are evidenced in creation. The eternal and divine power of the Creator, is seen in creation. And for me, knowing folks who are subsistence fishermen, or who gather food or who are farmers, there is a level of faith that they live by that I don't know that I will ever have in my lifetime. There's a level of dependence and understanding and connectedness with the rest of creation, just simply because if you don't understand what is happening you will not eat. And there is a generational wisdom that's tied to that for folks who have learned how to subsist in a particular place for thousands of years. And I think those folks have an insight into the fingerprints or the footprints of the Creator in that specific area in ways that only they will know.

So there's pieces like that in Acts 17, where it talks about how God determined our times and our lands and then specifically placed us there. And so there's this ancestral wisdom that ties us to specific places on the earth. And I think that comes out, it's in direct response to Babel. And this desire for this mono-culture, this mono-linguistic society, that vies with the Lord in terms of control. And so instead we are placed in these specific locations and develop this intimacy with God, and this intimacy with creation in those places, and none of us has the entire picture. Each of us has these different pieces, and then together, we get to see more of the tapestry of who the Creator is, and it was created, like it was meant to be that way.

And so I think when I think about culture, and returning to certain cultures, you know cultures are birthed out of generational intimacy with land, out of survival out of our people's histories, and our people stories, in the places that we live, and out of our people's relationships with the Creator. And the ways that the wisdom of that relationship helped us to survive and helped us to thrive in those places. And so I think that, yeah, if I just focus on my relationship with God, and I just focus on my relationship with other people, I can live a good life, but I think it wouldn't be the fullness of what is meant for us. Like there's something about relationship with creation and remembering in a lot of ways that ancestral wisdom and intimacy that we have been given and meant to, I think, cultivate.

Sy Hoekstra: Yes, amen to all that. And then you went on a little bit further in the essay and said part of the reason that you reject a story, or a narrative like make America great again, specifically, because there's so many reasons to reject it, but you were saying specifically because it doesn't tell the truth about the story of our cultures, of American culture, of the history of White people, everybody else here. And I just thought that that was interesting. That it was like, to me, it is something that does not fit my culture but fits my personality to say like, we just want to reject, this is an objection to this narrative is that it's not accurately telling the history of our culture in and of itself. Like I said, there's many other reasons to do it, but that just false story or that, like not watching the footsteps of who came up before you and what they did, I think is a really powerful idea in a way that I'm a little bit struggling to articulate at the moment [laughs]. But there it is.

Dani Espiritu: No, you're good. I mean, I think, like when I think about make America great again, as this political platform, really, it was based on tapping into the nostalgia of White supremacy without calling it that. It’s upholding that same controlling, mono-cultural culture that America was built on that is embedded with things like manifest destiny and eugenics, and that were used to justify the stealing of lands and oppression of peoples. But painting it as this nostalgic America of the past that that must be resurrected.

Jonathan Walton: One of the themes of your essay was all of the emotional work that you did to get to the point where you could pray for forgiveness and blessing over America, even as it hurts you and your people over and over again. In doing that, you're following the lead of the last queen of Hawaiʻi Queen Liliʻuokalani. And I've been to her home, I’ve been to that that place, the room where she was under house arrest, sat in the bathroom, listened to the audio, read the prayers that she wrote. And it boggles my mind how she sat there praising God writing prayers, pleading with her people to be nonviolent. I think of MLK in that way with my people. How does her example resonate with you today, particularly as you think about the disaster capitalism that we're just talking about with taking advantage of the fires, what's happened with the diversion of water that you were talking about in the beginning? How does her example resonate with you? How does it impact you when you lead, and do you see or hear calls to violence?

Sy Hoekstra: And I would just add, if you wouldn't mind giving a brief bit of context for what we're talking about when we say when the Queen was under house arrest and the overthrow and all that. Just so everyone's up to speed.

Dani Espiritu: Yeah, yeah. So I guess a little bit of context in terms of the overthrow. In January 1893, Liliʻuokalani who is the last reigning monarch of Hawaiʻi was overthrown with the help of the United States Marines. In the 1870s and 1880s Hawaiʻi had become this hub, this booming hub for sugar exports. And so they had a lot of trade agreements with the United States and they had treaties with US, one of which was the Reciprocity Treaty, which essentially allowed Hawaiʻi to ship sugar and goods to the United States tax free and vice versa. When it came time to renew that treaty in the 1880s, the United States wanted full access of Puʻuloa or Pearl Harbor. And the king at the time who was Liliʻuokalani’s brother, Kalakaua said no, Pearl Harbor, Puʻuloa was the breadbasket of almost the entire south side of Oʻahu.

Yeah, there were over 100 fish ponds in Puʻuloa, none of which are functioning today. And also to allow a foreign military to have access would not be wise. And so he said, no. The response of the business community, the White business community in Hawaiʻi, who were the descendants of the missionaries, who had come from the East Coast of the United States was to hold Kalakaua, the king, at gunpoint and force him to sign a new treaty… Not treaty, sorry, a new constitution, the Constitution of 1887, commonly known as the Bayonet Constitution, which essentially stripped his power as a monarch and stripped political power away from the Hawaiian people. So it created property requirements for anyone who wanted to vote and at that time, the majority of Kanaka, the majority of Native Hawaiians did not own property.

And so with one fell swoop, it took power away from the monarch or the king and it also took power away from the Hawaiian people. Fast forward to 1893, the people are pleading with the Queen to draft a new constitution because essentially, they have no power within their own government. And she has no power within the government. And there's an incredible amount of affection and trust, which is different, I think, than a lot of other monarchies, but there's an incredible amount of affection and trust between the Hawaiian people and the Hawaiian monarch. So she drafts a new constitution, and less than a week later, she's overthrown. And so I share that context because it's directly tied to the overthrow, which is directly tied to the descendants of the American missionaries who come to Hawaiʻi.

So it's literally, the children and grandchildren of the missionaries who came from the east coast of the US to share about Jesus and to share about Christianity who got involved in sugar, and got involved in business and became very wealthy land owners, and then left the church and ended up overthrowing the Queen as a way to ensure the perpetuation of their own political power. I mean, I think across the board, the Hawaiian community and those who are involved in activism and politically and just Hawaiian people in general, I think across the board, people have an incredible amount of respect and reverence for the Queen. She's become a symbol of ʻOiwi, or like native innovation and strength and humility and a love and a care for her people that is respected across the board, whether folks are Christian or not, or whether folks are involved in more of the Hawaiian political movements or not, I think the across the board, she's definitely become kind of an example for a lot of folks.

And I think across the board also, I think especially for folks who are involved more politically, there is a push for nonviolent direct action. And so I don't know any major groups who are advocating for violence. I think in general, folks, maybe fall in different places in terms of what they think about Christianity, and some of the other things that the Queen was sharing about. And part of that is that by the end of the 1800s, Hawaiʻi was considered a Christian nation. There was an incredible revival that had happened where I think people saw being Hawaiian and Christian as influencing each other. And that is not necessarily the case anymore. Part of that is directly tied to the overthrow and the fallout of the overthrow, where following the overthrow Hawaiians who chose not to back America were excommunicated from their churches.

And so you have a huge juxtaposition of identity, where to be Hawaiian was seen as completely contradictory to being Christian, so that for those of us today, we kind of have grown up in that. But that is a reality that our kupuna didn't necessarily face in quite the same way. And that is the direct result of the descendants of the missionaries wanting to control the idea of what it meant to be civilized. It wasn't enough that you were a Christian and educated because Hawaiians were all of those things. They had to recreate what it meant to be civilized. The folks that were pushing for annexation recast what it meant to be Christian, where in order to be Christian, you had to support being a part of America and being a part of the United States. And that led to a huge fallout in Christianity from a lot of folks in the Hawaiian community.

So for those of us who are Kanaka and who would say that we believe in God we believe in Jesus and the revolutionary that he was, and the ways that he stood for justice, I think, to look at Liliʻu and to look at her example, both in terms of strength, in terms of humility, in terms of compassion is an incredible example. Yeah, to be able to pray for and forgive those who were holding her under house arrest, those who had overthrown her and to bless them, while also taking trips to United States to advocate for the return of sovereignty to the Hawaiian Kingdom, she did both. There was the action and advocacy and ways that she responded in that way, there was direct, caring for the needs of people. Liliʻuokalani Trust still exists as a way to care for children and orphans. Because that was an incredible need in the Hawaiian Kingdom at the time that it was created, and giving her own personal funds for the actual caring of community, there is a lot of that. And then there is a lot in her writings that she shares about her heart posture, and the ways that that she lives this life of grace, beyond what I think I can’t even imagine being in a position like that.

Jonathan Walton: In the Black community, there exists a strong resistance to Christianity as a quote unquote “White man's religion”. And I think you extrapolated on that a little bit. We're already where you talked about this downstream, y’all’s generation having to deal with the conflation of Hawaiian identity which would conflict with a Christian identity or not. I didn't know that Hawaiians who refuse to back annexation to the United States were excommunicated.

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah, me neither.

Jonathan Walton: So these new developments that create these fissures. And I think within the Black community there are similar sentiments, particularly in these flashpoint moments.

Dani Espiritu: And I think too the version of, I'll just say, White American Christianity that has come, in many ways also casts certain things that are tied to Hawaiian culture as paganistic, as evil, things like Hula, certain other practices.

Jonathan Walton: Oh, absolutely.

Dani Espiritu: And so I think for many today, similar to what you shared in terms of the Black community, I think for many today it's seeing Christianity as the White man's religion, or as the tool for colonization that was coming in, especially because of the complicity and direct role of the church. Not just members of the church, but the church itself in the overthrow.

Jonathan Walton: Right. It's almost like the merchant, the military and the missionary being the three chords of a whip.

Dani Espiritu: Right.

Jonathan Walton: They all come at one time…

Dani Espiritu: Absolutely.

Jonathan Walton: …and it's devastating. So part of the work of decolonization that you've already talked about is untangling those things, and then… like untangling them as individual then uncoupling them from following Jesus. Because the work of colonization is a complete in all-encompassing work. That's what makes it so destructive. So yeah, I just appreciate the steps and the leaders and the things you're laying out.

Sy Hoekstra: Tell me if this is a [laughs] worthwhile thing to say, or if it's just too obvious . And I'm just being a White guy. I keep coming back… to some extent this is true of anytime anyone forgives or tolerates or doesn't meet harm with the return of harm or violence. But when I think of what you're talking about, for what you do in your position, Dani, what the queen did in her time, I just keep thinking we don't deserve you. Like we don't deserve it, we don't deserve any of it. We certainly don't deserve your land. And I don't know, I want people to feel that and be willing to just feel that. And when I say people, I mean my people [laughs]. Jonathan's not involved in this we right now. Yeah, I don't know, I just I want people to be able to feel that and, not be comfortable with it, but just be comfortable with acknowledging that it's there. And then going and doing the stuff that Dani is asking you to do. Like going and donating and getting involved in the advocacy and reading about it and learning and all those kinds of things. I don't know if that’s a helpful thing to say or not, but those are the thoughts that were swirling around in my head.

Jonathan Walton: I think for anyone who is sitting in Sy’s position, and I would say if we're on the front, the top side of a power dynamic, it is incumbent upon me as a man to enter into the pain and struggles of what it looks like for those who suffer downstream of patriarchy. Like it is my responsibility as a follower of Jesus to enter into what it looks like to sit in the shoes of someone who is not educated because I have an Ivy League education. It is my responsibility to enter into the structure that makes it possible for me to have a mortgage and have a home, while others suffer on the other side of that. I think what the glaring gap in our discipleship is the ability and willingness to sit in the tension where we can't fix it, but we need Jesus to make it possible for us to have the ability to fix it, or just be present in the unfixed-ness of it.

Because the incarnation is that. Like the incarnation is that Jesus came with all power and privilege, giving that up to be among us, and not fix everything, but just be present, and fix what he could. And then ultimately fix everything by laying down his life and offering us eternity. So I think there's something holy about being in power, and sitting with those who have suffered under power that we represent sitting before them and benefit from. That is a lot, I think a lot like Jesus, sitting with Lazarus when he died, and weeping even though he knew he was going to raise him from the dead. And that Lazarus was going to die again, because Lazarus did die again. This is a discipleship message for all of us who inhabit a power structure. In this context, I think the gospel is a beautiful gift to White people to be liberated from the burden of supremacy as Michel Higgins would say.

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah, I appreciate that. I think, Dani, if we could just turn to another aspect of your work. You work with the Oʻahu Water Protectors, and we've written a couple times in our newsletter about the water crisis there. Could you just explain a little bit about what's going on there, and then what the work is that you're doing to try and do something about it?

Dani Espiritu: Yeah. So I mean, dating back to before the overthrow to why Hawaiʻi was supposedly annexed, it all ties to our location, and the desire from the US military for a central place for fueling, for heading up the naval fleet. And so the head of the Indo-Pacific Command, so all of the US bases in Indonesia and throughout Oceania, throughout the Pacific is here on Oʻahu. About a quarter of our island is restricted military on this island. So in the 1940s, there was a secret wartime build of an underground storage facility at Kapūkakī, which is a ridge that sits between two districts. So it's between the Kona district which is kind of where of Honolulu is, and between the ʻEwa district, which is where my ʻohana lives, which is more toward Puʻuloa.

And what they did was they built an underground storage facility to fuel essentially the naval fleet. It was underground because they were worried about attack. The public wasn't informed of it. And there are 20 tanks that are each 250 feet tall, that have a carrying capacity of over a million gallons. It’s in a mountain, so you can't see it from the outside. Currently, there's still over 100 million gallons of fuel in those tanks. And they began leaking in the 1940s, less than 10 years from after they were built. And so there have been over 100,000 gallons that have been documented to have leaked and we all know that it's probably much, much more than that. Just because that's the amount that has been admitted to by the Navy. The way that our islands get our water is through what we call the aquifer.

And so the rain that falls in about 20 years will hit the aquifer. So it's kind of like a huge Brita filter in our mountains, where it'll filter through soil and it'll filter through layers of volcanic rock. Then hit the aquifer and what the Board of Water Supply does is it pumps that water out and it goes to people's homes. Culturally, there's no cultural practice that's not tied to ʻāina, and everything from the aquifer will eventually come out. So for example, in certain areas, the aquifer will pressurize and the water will come out in springs. A lot of times springs are the start of streams in our mountains. And so whatever happens in the aquifer not just affects drinking water, but it affects everything on our island that'll pressurize it'll come out of springs. It'll enter streams, streams enter into the ocean and all of that is tied to basically every cultural practice that we have. So the poisoning of the aquifer, which has already happened is an incredible one, because really we're talking about the feeding of individual people, like people had jet fuel in November and December of 2021 coming out of their faucet, because the Red Hill shaft, which is a part of the military's joint base Pearl Harbor water line, was literally pumping water from the aquifer that was downstream of the fuel facility and the fuel facility had leaked, and people had not been notified. So a lot of folks that were on that joint base Pearl Harbor or Navy water line had fuel coming out of their faucet, and were drinking and bathing and using water from their homes.

There is no distinction, or there's no separation within the aquifer, so all of that fuel and whatever chemical additives have been added to the fuel in the facility are just moving around in our aquifer, currently. And so defueling is supposed to start in October of this year, and it's supposed to wrap up sometime the start of next year.

Sy Hoekstra: When you say defueling, do you mean emptying the tanks that are in the mountains?

Dani Espiritu: Yes. So they're going to be removing the fuel from the tanks. One of the issues is that the facility has been left in such disrepair that like, in terms of praying we need to pray that nothing will happen. Like, yes, we want to defuel as quickly as possible, but also, the facility was constructed in the 1940s. So even to get that to happen, a huge number of repairs have had to happen and the amount of transparency for folks who, communities have been affected by the US military, there's not a lot of transparency. Yeah, a lot of prayer going into that in terms of our advocacy, it's just keeping folks up to date about what's happening, and really continuing to hold the Navy and the military and also the state offices accountable.

The Department of Health for the state of Hawaiʻi refused to hold the Navy accountable. And it took the Sierra Club of Hawaiʻi suing the state for them to begin to do any sort of restrictions to the US Navy. And so before that the facility was just getting passed and passed and passed and passed with no check ins, no need for repairs. There was a huge leak in 2014 where over 20 gallons spilled from a single tank because somebody forgot to flip on a switch, and it just hemorrhage from the tank. Things like that have happened and it wasn't until the public and community organizations started to raise concerns that the state started to do anything. Part of the reason goes back to money and that the state gets a lot of money from the US military to allow them to be here.

Sy Hoekstra: If they defuel the tanks I'm guessing that does nothing to what's already in the aquifer. Is there any plan for that?

Dani Espiritu: Yeah, so the three stages are defueling, are decommissioning, which is supposed to be making the tanks unusable. One of the things that we've been facing is that the Navy has kind of started to redefine what decommissioning means, which includes repurposing, and makes it so that should war happen, should a new administration come in that wants to refill the tanks that that's possible. So that's something that we're continuing to fight against. The last piece, which you asked about is remediation. And remediation is supposed to be clean up. It's supposed to be actually figuring out and getting together the brilliance of indigenous and Western scientists and figuring out what does that look like in this situation. What the Navy has defined it as in a lot of the meetings that we've been in is what they call natural attenuation, which basically means leave it there and it'll eventually disperse.

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah, I was going to say that sounds like a euphemism for do nothing.

Dani Espiritu: [laughs] Yeah. And then so it's like natural attenuation, and then monitoring, which has nothing to do with cleanup. It's basically just drill wells and see where it's spreading. And so those are all areas that folks are continuing to need to speak up about.

Jonathan Walton: Oh my gosh, somebody got paid thousands of dollars to come up with those two words.

Dani Espiritu: Right.

Sy Hoekstra: Natural attenuation?

Dani Espiritu: And a pretty PowerPoint.

Jonathan Walton: Oh my gosh. So one of the things that I think is powerful about Jesus is he offers a counter vision of how to be in the world. And so in your mind, what would justice look like for Hawaiʻi? If you were to give a few tangible things of what that would look like for reparations, restitution, that citizens, the church, the US could do and be fighting for, what would some of those things be?

Dani Espiritu: I think part of it is the structural shifts, and so a huge part of kind of, even to what we were talking about in terms of Red Hill and what's happening in Maui. Our economy is so dependent on the military and so dependent on tourism, that we need huge structural shifts, and the empowerment of community. And then I think indigenous-led initiatives to be able to begin to shift that. And so I think in terms of advocacy, it's supporting those. I think another part of it is the cultural shift. I think because of the way that the tourist industry has grown from the late 1800s, early 1900s to now, in particular in Hawaiʻi there's an infatuation with the exotic experience of Hawaiʻi. And I think there's a cultural shift that needs to happen, like we've talked about with Maui, the fact that people can be swimming in the waters that our relatives have died in less than a week before.

Or thousands of people continue to go to Maui as people are still living in shelters, and not able to return back to their homes. I think there's a cultural shift that needs to happen in terms of what it means to travel, what it means to travel to Hawaiʻi, and the image of Hawaiʻi. And then I think there's also the meeting of real needs. The lies that were told in the 1800s and early 1900s and that continue to be told today have real impacts. So to this day, Hawaiians have, still like all the statistics in Hawaiʻi, like highest rates of incarceration, some of the highest rates of drug use, some of the highest rates of health effects like diabetes, heart disease, all of those things, some of the highest dropout rates. There are ways that we can also meet real needs in the community and support organizations and community members who are trying to do some of the building.

And so kind of to go back to Nehemiah, it's something that I've been sitting in a lot, it's like there's need for building and there's need for fighting. Part of that building is cultural, part of it is empowering communities and leaders in the communities who really have the best interests of their people, of our people at heart. And I think part of it is also some of the bigger structural shifts, in terms of economy, in terms of cultural perceptions of Hawaiʻi. And I think some of those shifts will require investment in people. Investment in people who are on the ground trying to do the work.

Sy Hoekstra: Speaking of investment in people who are on the ground trying to do the work, we already mentioned the link to the IV page that we'll have in the show notes. Is there anywhere else that people can go to follow you or work that you're doing or involved in anywhere online, social media, anywhere else?

Dani Espiritu: Yeah, on the InterVarsity side a lot of our donation links are on that page, but you can also follow ivHawaii_justice, and that's the IV Hawaiʻi justice page, where we try to promote things like that that I was talking about. And then if you message that you'll get me [laughs] I run the back side of that. And then for folks who are interested in more of the ʻāina work, it's long so hopefully there's a clickable link, but Hoʻōla Hou iā Kalauao we have both a website and an IG handle. Same thing I run the back side of those. So if folks are interested in supporting either of those, and then also to stay abreast of Red Hill things. I think Sierra Club Hawaiʻi and Oʻahu Water Protectors are two good places to follow.

Sy Hoekstra: Awesome. Was that first one, that ivHawaii_justice, Was that an Instagram handle?

Dani Espiritu: Yes.

Sy Hoekstra: Okay, great. Cool. So we will have links to all those things in the show notes. Dani, I may be emailing you for some of those links later [laughs].

Dani Espiritu: For sure.

Sy Hoekstra: Thank you so much for being here. I mean, this has been an incredible conversation on so many different levels. My thanks feels a little bit inadequate, but thank you for being here.

Dani Espiritu: Yeah, thank you both so much. I appreciate you reaching out, and again, just the opportunity to chat and share and talk story.

Jonathan Walton: Yes, ma’am.

Sy Hoekstra: For all the listeners, a reminder like I said up top, please if you support what we do go to ktfpress.com, consider becoming a paid subscriber there. It feels a little bit silly to say in the [laughs] wake of everything else we were just promoting, but it is what it is. Right, I said it. But please go check out Dani's stuff. I may just cut that out [laughs].

Dani Espiritu: Don't cut it out.

Jonathan Walton: Don't cut it out.

Dani Espiritu: We all need help.

[laughter]

Jonathan Walton: Yes, it is all important and God's economy certainly has enough resources for all of it.

Sy Hoekstra: Thank you all so much for listening. Our theme song as always is “Citizens” by Jon Guerra. Our podcast art is by Jacqueline Tam, and we will see you all in two weeks.

[The song “Citizens” by Jon Guerra fades in. Lyrics: “And that you’re building a city/ Where we arrive as immigrants/ And you call us citizens/ And you welcome us as children home/ Where we arrive as immigrants/ And you call us citizens/ And you welcome us as children home.” The song fades out.]

Sy Hoekstra: Do you have like other stuff open right now?

Jonathan Walton: Do I? That is always the question. Yes?

Sy Hoekstra: Are there things you can close or no?

Jonathan Walton: Listen, everything can be opened. That's fine. This is the most important thing right now. And history can always be found. Unless you're my daughter and you deleted 1000 messages from my inbox.

Sy Hoekstra: Oh no.

Dani Espiritu: [laughs] That’s not good…

Jonathan Walton: Oh, yeah. I woke up Thursday, and I opened my Outlook and it says zero.

[laughter]

Dani Espiritu: No…

Jonathan Walton: I was like, “how did that occur?” And I said, “Everest, did you delete my email?” She goes, “No baba.” [laughter] Like she would know how to use Outlook.

Content warning for discussion of intimate partner violence and emotional abuse. Today, Jonathan and Sy talk to Rutgers University social work Professor Dr. Maxine Davis. They discuss intimate partner violence and abuse: the role religion and churches can play in IPV/A situations, how abolition and centering Black and brown survivors can lead us to peaceful living, how white feminism dominates the IPV/Aconversation, and a lot more. Dr. Davis’ compassion, honesty, and love for both survivors and perpetrators of IPV/A can teach us a lot, not just about this issue, but what it means to view all people through the lens of the gospel.

Dr. Davis’ website: www.drmaxinedavis.com

Her account on the app formerly known as Twitter: http://twitter.com/drmaxinedavis

Her YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCY80NRF7nIFyeAnwLr93DzQ

Shake the Dust is a podcast of KTF Press. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and the app formerly known as Twitter. Subscribe to get our newsletter and bonus episodes at KTFPress.com. Transcripts of every episode are available at KTFPress.com/s/transcripts.

Hosts

Jonathan Walton – follow him on Facebook and Instagram.

Sy Hoekstra – still not sure where he’s going after leaving the app formerly known as Twitter.

Our theme song is “Citizens” by Jon Guerra – listen to the whole song on Spotify.

Our podcast art is by Jacqueline Tam – follow her and see her other work on Instagram.

Production and editing by Sy Hoekstra.

Transcript by Joyce Ambale and Sy Hoekstra.

Questions about anything you heard on the show? Write to [email protected] and we may answer your question on a future episode.

Transcript

[An acoustic guitar softly plays six notes, the first three ascending and the last three descending — F#, B, F#, E, D#, B — with a keyboard pad playing the note B in the background. Both fade out as Jonathan Walton says “This is a KTF Press podcast.”]

Sy Hoekstra: I have a question for you. Do you want to attend the Evolving Faith Conference from anywhere in the world for free? Evolving Faith is an online faith community with all kinds of events and book clubs and things that they do, gatherings all year round. And as they say, it, “exists to cultivate love and hope in the wilderness, pointing fellow wanderers and misfits to God as we embody resurrection for the sake of the world.” They have a conference they've been doing for the past few years. It's in Minneapolis, but you can attend online. You can hear speakers like former Shake the Dust guests, Dr. Amy Kenny and Danté Stewart, or writers from our anthology like Brandy Miller or Dr. Randy Woodley—their first name's rhyme; I just realized that. The conference is live on October 13th and 14th, but you can watch it anytime you want if you get the digital pass between then and January 1st, 2024. And that ticket also gets you access to some other online events that are just for ticket holders.

And you can get that whole $129 value for free. How? Between today and Labor Day, that's September 4th, become an annual subscriber to KTF Press or upgrade your existing annual or monthly or no membership to a founding member level membership. You get a free book if you do that one by the way, the founding member one. And then you will be part of a drawing for one of three free tickets to Evolving Faith. That subscription, as you know, gets you the bonus episodes to this show. It gets you our weekly newsletter for free, and it supports everything we do at KTF Press. And it could get you an 129-dollar digital ticket to the Evolving Faith Conference for free. So go to KTFPress.com and sign up as a paid subscriber today, or anytime between today and September 4th and enter that drawing.

All right, let's get into today's episode, and that episode officially starts now.

Maxine Davis: I'm both a survivor of intimate partner violence, and I have acted abusively in intimate relationships. I think that my ability to say that out loud sometimes is still uncomfortable for myself, but allows people to think, “Well… well dang! …

Jonathan Walton: Right right.

Maxine Davis: … If she's capable, what have I done?” And it's not, again, it's not to shame or villainize people in any way. It is about being honest with yourself.

[The song “Citizens” by Jon Guerra fades in. Lyrics: “I need to know there is justice/That it will roll in abundance/ And that you’re building a city/ Where we arrive as immigrants/ And you call us citizens/ And you welcome us as children home.” The song fades out.]

Sy Hoekstra: Welcome to Shake the Dust, leaving colonized faith for the kingdom of God. I'm Sy Hoekstra.

Jonathan Walton: And I'm Jonathan Walton.

Sy Hoekstra: We are so excited for you all to be here today. We're having a pretty serious conversation, content warnings will be in the show notes, and we're going to be talking about intimate partner violence and abuse. We're excited for it because it’s a very important conversation. And we're talking about it as we try to talk about everything, keeping marginalized perspectives at the top of mind. We're also going to be talking about how church communities are involved, for good and for bad in intimate partner violence and abuse situations. Very quickly, before we get to that, if you like what we do here on Shake the Dust or all of our work at KTF Press, the best way to support us is to go to KTFPress.com and consider becoming a subscriber. Get the whole archive of our bonus episodes of this show, get our newsletter, where Jonathan and I send you media highlights to help you in your discipleship and political education. Get the whole archive of that as well and support everything that we do at KTF Press. And you can always go to ktfpress.com/freemonth if you want to start off that subscription with a free month. All right Jonathan. Can you please tell everyone the incredible guests that we have today?

Jonathan Walton: Absolutely. Today, we have Dr. Maxine Davis, who is a second generation activist who's passionate about discovering how to end violence perpetration in romantic and intimate relationships. She studies people who act abusively and interventions that are designed to help them change. Dr. Davis earned a MSW and MBA at Dominican University and completed her PhD in Social Work at Washington University in St. Louis. Most of her research uses a community-engaged approach centering the voices of historically excluded racial groups as equal partners. She has presented her research to several prestigious national conferences throughout the United States, and to local non-governmental organizations internationally. Her independent and collaborative work on the experiences of racially minoritized populations has been published in several noteworthy academic journals. The driving force behind her passion is fueled by a spirit of hope that with proper support and resources, people who have acted abusively can become committed to peaceful living. She's qualified and I'm grateful she's here [laughter]. Dr. Davis, thank you so much for being on the show today. We appreciate you.

Maxine Davis: Thank you. It's a pleasure. Exciting opportunity to get to talk about something that people really don't like talking about that often. It's always a interesting introduction at soirees and cocktail parties. “What do you do?” “I study violence.”

[laughter]

Jonathan Walton: Right, right. And not the big violence, this violence, right?

Maxine Davis: Right, interpersonal violence, and actually, how much more interpersonal can you get, than for the most part, the person that you're sharing a bed with a lot of times. It's a topic that people are often uncomfortable talking about, because they either have experienced it or have acted abusively in ways that they aren't willing to recognize to themselves first. So that's what I find makes people the most uncomfortable, is that this hits very close to home, whether they witnessed it during childhood and are on a journey to try to prevent it in their own romantic relationships in adulthood, or whether they're currently facing a situation that is embarrassing a lot of times to talk about.

Jonathan Walton: And so, can we start super basic. What is intimate partner violence and abuse or IPV/A, we'll call it during our conversation a lot of the times. And why use that term instead of domestic violence? And are there any misconceptions about IPVA that we should just throw out the window right now?

Maxine Davis: Those are great questions. So when I talk about the topic in community and scholarly spaces, I often interchange the terms “intimate partner violence and abuse” with “domestic violence,” just so that people are all on the same page in knowing what I'm talking about. Historically, language has been something that has been used as a tool of power, and it's something that is also… can be very empowering to take back control of. So domestic violence and the colloquial language that has surrounded it evolved from what was originally called in the scholarly literature, wife beating. Well we realize and know that not all intimate relationships involve a spousal relationship. And the gendered aspect and the heteronormative aspect that this can't happen to men, and that this only happens to women who are wives.

This evolution of language has been something that I've really been passionate about reclaiming. And so a lot of times what you'll hear is domestic violence, because that's what the public is used to calling it. And one of the reasons why domestic violence as a term is problematic is that it takes the ownership away from the community in terms of why this social problem exists. And it contextualizes it only to the intimate space of the home, or that which is domestic and closed and centered. And that's not really the case, this is a community and public health issue. So it really needs to be talked about in a more intentional way, and in a way that is specific to what type of violence and abuse we're discussing. So when I say domestic violence, when I say intimate partner violence, I'm not talking about abuse towards children that would involve the child welfare system or something like that.

I'm talking about that which happens between folks who are romantically and intimately engaged. Recently, in the last four or five years, added purposefully violence and abuse, because oftentimes, people consider the definition of violence to only be physical. Whereas we know from… and this gets into the other part of your question, what is intimate partner violence and abuse. It's a pattern of behavior that is degrading and demeaning and centered around maltreatment of an intimate partner. That can take form in many different types of ways. It's not just physical violence, it's not just hitting, slapping, pushing. Psychological violence, and as we'll talk about later, a particular unique type of abuse that I study is religious related IPV can be detrimental to people's physical and mental health.

And that's not something that is often discussed is the repercussions of psychological abuse, economic abuse, spiritual abuse, and manipulation in a way that takes control of a person's mind and behaviors. Violence in my definition, is forcing your will upon someone else. This is a decolonial space which I'm excited to be a part of, and have this this platform. So sometimes violence is not always bad. Violence can be a tool of resistance to engage in liberation, but in the context of intimate relationships it is, this is a place where you should feel the utmost freedom. And so forcing your will upon your intimate partner is what I define as violence or abuse.

Sy Hoekstra: You mentioned the religious aspect of your work. So within the area of IPV research, you have a couple of specific areas of focus. Can you tell us what those areas are and why you chose them?

Maxine Davis: Absolutely. So I intentionally focus on figuring out and discovering and evaluating programs that work mostly for Black and Latino men, as part of work that prioritizes particularly Black and Latino families. This passion that I have emerged from witnessing and experiencing the lived survival experiences of most often Black women. And this was Black women that I saw in faith communities, in Black churches. That inspired the passion that I have to figure out the question of not just, “Why does she stay?” but the question I had growing up was, “Why does he do that and what does it take to change?” Because when people do separate or divorce or disengage from one another, and in their intimate relationships, they oftentimes get a different partner. And it's not that the cycle of abuse ends, but it just transfers from one person to the next, because we're relational human beings. I think one of the things that I've been kindly criticized for is my compassion and empathy that I have for people who act abusively. I think that vilifying people dehumanizes them. And if we do that, there's really no road to accountability and change.

Jonathan Walton: You should say that again for people who missed it [laughter]. You know, they were like side swiped by that. Go ahead. Sorry.

[laughter]

Sy Hoekstra: That question I was going to say, is deceptively simple, but it's so powerful. “Why does he do that?” That question. I used to be a defense attorney in the child welfare system, actually so—what you've already mentioned—So I had a client, when you're a defense attorney in the child welfare system, you have clients who are both perpetrators and survivors of intimate partner violence. And it was just amazing to me how many people were unwilling to ask, “Why does he do that?” Because you think that would be the obvious question, why does he do that, so that we can then figure out how to stop it. But so often the instinct is just punish. Just hurt the person who hurt somebody else, and doesn't matter how much we're ruining their lives or the lives of their families or their communities. And so I really, really appreciate that question.

Maxine Davis: Yes, and it's been one that has driven a quest for figuring out what it will require for change, but also one that, again, allows for that holistic and humanistic perspective.

Sy Hoekstra: Yes.

Maxine Davis: And allows for investigation into what we know from the research is that most people who've acted abusively are survivors of trauma themselves. So part of the answer to this question of “why does he do that,” it's multifaceted. And I say he, but this could be any gender and across genders. One of the things that again I'm… I'm criticized for a lot of stuff, because I just say how it is. And I'm really, yeah, I'm feminist, but I'm also humanist. And I love Black men, unapologetically.

Jonathan Walton: Amen.

Maxine Davis: So I do recognize the abuse that's perpetrated by female identified folks in relationships. And if you don't do that, you also miss an entire group of women in same gender loving relationships as well, because this feminist idea that only men are violent doesn't allow us to address intimate partner violence across relational contexts. And if we just have this very narrow idea of what domestic violence is, we really are missing the most marginalized perspectives and experiences. So I think that it's important to name and recognize that women act abusively too. The reason why I think you get this gendered language comes down to injury. And when we look at the data, I hate to dichotomize gender, but that's how the data has been historically collected, by men and women. If you look at the national data, women are just as abusive as men. However, when you look at the injury and homicide rate, women are disproportionately injured physically, and disproportionately killed in terms of the severity of physical violence. That's why you get a lot of this gendered language because of the physical impact and homicide. Black women particularly. Again, another reason of why I focus on Black communities is because, and again, I'm a Black woman. We are disproportionately victimized and there are many reasons for that. But when you look at the experiences, one in three women are surviving domestic violence or intimate partner violence. But when you look in Black communities, that rate goes up to 45 percent of Black women who've experienced this. And that's on the low end, because it's underreported.

When you look at the homicide rates within the context of intimate partner violence, Black folks represent 14 percent of the population, but 30 percent plus of women who are killed in intimate relationships are Black. So this is a disproportionate rate that requires attention and specific culturally relevant intervention. And there are many reasons, I think folks can check out the work of Hilary Potter, who's a sociologist, who has studied Black women and intimate partner violence long before I have. Her book is entitled Battle Cries. Black women are always fighting, and fighting for survival, not fighting for the fun of the game. But this also is not exempt from the home. So as much as we are engaged in battles on the street, we're often engaged in those in the home as well.

It's a very complex situation, because what White feminists have endorsed criminalization of domestic violence or criminalization of intimate partner abuse and engagement of police as a solution, Black women from since the 70s have said, “Nope, that's not going to work for us. That one right there, that isn't that… can you please not do that?” [laughs]. But yet, and still we have disproportionate arrest rates and disproportionate conviction rates for many reasons.

Jonathan Walton: As you're talking, I'm thinking about the pushback that you get. And I'm wondering if you could talk more about where you think that resistance comes from. So you said that resistance to compassion, I use that word compassion because in the space that I was in for a long time fighting labor and sex trafficking, the pushback from you would be like, “Well, what do you mean you're going to actively reach out to a pimp or a trafficker?” Or someone who's exploiting someone else? What do you what do you mean, we're going to talk about that? And maybe group ourselves into that group, because we could, like you were saying, enforce, impose our will on someone else through our purchasing, through our exploitation, through the systems that were a part of.

So I wonder for you where you think the resistance to that compassion comes from? And then I also wonder where you experience resistance to you, or if you experience resistance when you say, “I'm going to focus on Black and brown communities?”

Maxine Davis: Because I often say that I'm unapologetic about who I partner with and what communities I study and engage with, I haven't gotten pushback about why I center Black and brown voices. But I think that is partially because I'm so intentional about being unapologetic about it, so it kind of sets the stage of, “Don't ask me. Don't try it” [laughter].

Jonathan Walton: This is not up for debate.

Maxine Davis: Yeah, this is not up for debate and this is not up for any type of discussion in terms of why this is important. And I think I have the privilege of saying that because so many of my predecessors have done a lot of work to highlight the importance of health disparities. And that's a historically fairly recent investment that people have been willing to make in terms of shifting their perspective on why that's important. However, the point of why compassion is something that people have a difficulty embracing, I think it's because people like to otherize, and as I mentioned, people like to punish as a tangible and easy way to distance themselves. And I think psychologically when folks are able to distance themselves from a unfavorable behavior, it allows them to think of themselves as not being able to be a perpetrator of violence.

I think this is the biggest challenge that we have in our society, is refusing to see ourselves in unfavorable lights. And so I did a TEDx-style talk for the biggest social work and research conference recently, in which I share, I'm both a survivor of intimate partner violence, and I have acted abusively in intimate relationships. I think that my ability to say that out loud sometimes is still uncomfortable for myself, but allows people to think, “Well… well dang!

Jonathan Walton: Right right.

Maxine Davis: If she's capable, what have I done?” And it's not, again, it's not to shame or villainize people in any way. It is about being honest with yourself. And one of the questions that I asked in that talk is, what is the worst thing that you've done to an intimate partner, and share that with somebody.

If you can't share that with somebody, then I think it does a disservice to creating a peaceful environment in whatever intimate relationships that you have. This phenomenon of intimate partner violence and abuse, people really like bento box style social problems [laughter]. When I say that people like very neat, this is a victim, this is a perpetrator. This is a survivor, this is an abuser. This is a batterer. And you'll notice I avoid those terms and I use language like, “people who have acted abusively” or “people who have caused harm in an intimate relationship.” Because these very neat, discreet boxes don't really exist in relationships. And I'd say that from a data perspective, when you look at the types of violence and abuse that happens, people like to think of a very specific type of domestic violence that's called coercive control.

That's one that is also referred to as intimate terrorism. You think of what you see in the movies as one person being dominating and controlling over another to the point of fear, and one partner is in control and has power over everything. And yes, these do exist and these are the most dangerous types of constructions of intimate partner abuse, but there's other types. The most common form is one in which people fail to have healthy, interactive ways of dealing with conflict and they resort to, for the most part, what they saw as children or what they see in society as being socially acceptable of how to deal with conflict and relationship and you get this mutual engagement of abusive behavior. So take the physical violence out of it, and imagine people calling each other names back and forth in a heated quote unquote “argument”. That is domestic violence. That is intimate partner violence and abuse.

However, we have tricked ourselves socially into thinking that that is just a toxic relationship. And that's the language people are using now. And I think there's a very different… when we look at the data in that view, over 90 percent of relationships have involved intimate partner violence and abuse in some way. And that staggering report is something that we really have to be honest with about how often this is happening. And yeah, there are different niche types of abuses that people in marginalized communities experience, for example, people with disabilities have an extremely higher rate of being victimized in a way that really furthers the health detriments because people are… folks use the most vulnerable parts of their intimate partner unfortunately against them.

And this is also part of why I got into studying religious abuse because of what I witnessed in terms of Black women, particularly Black women's experience of going to churches and their reliance upon faith as a form of strength—that being attacked because that is something so special and important.

Sy Hoekstra: So I want to get deeper into that for sure. I also just want to say you're doing my heart a lot of good right now [laughter]. All this stuff about not being judgmental and bento box kind of thinking. Which is another way of saying just sort of the way the criminal justice system thinks.

Maxine Davis: Yes.

Sy Hoekstra:  There's defendant and there's victim, that's it. There's nobody else. The victims are never perpetrators themselves, and the perpetrators are never victims, and it’s just clean cut. I just, I don't know. I cannot express how much I appreciate the depth of compassion and honesty you're willing to go to. The ability for you to say, and thank you for sharing this here, “I have both received and given intimate partner violence.” I think that is a radical and also radically important thing for all of us to be able to think about openly and honestly. And I just, man, I appreciate it so much.

But on the track of religion in particular, can you just explain to us a little bit about how you theorize thinking about Black women in church and how that relationship is a crucial factor in intimate partner violence situations, and why do you think about it that

way?

Maxine Davis: Absolutely. This didn't come out of some brilliant idea that I just came up with. This comes out of the lived experiences of Black women for many years. It comes from growing up in a house with a mother, Maxine Johnson is phenomenal. And I'm a junior, yes [laughs]. A junior at a time when my mom named me after her at a time when people like, “You can't do that.” And she's like, “Yes, I can.” [laughter]. Before it was like the in thing. But my mom openly discusses her experience of survivorship, and she's one of my primary and first community partners. She's also a huge community activist. So my mom is a woman who's been on CNN discussing her community activism in ways that epitomize what it's like to be a strong Black woman.

And at the same time, she for many years was surviving intimate terrorism, specifically. That particular type of abuse. And she went to churches for help and was met with varied responses, and I saw this across my childhood. But she went to churches, as many Black women do. Actually, as many people do in Black and Latino communities. And one of the problems she faced was what we now see is an all too often response of not recognizing what was being presented as domestic violence or abuse and encouragement for her to engage in spiritual intervention like prayer, or to be a better quote unquote “model wife”. And I get my mouth for my mama [laughs]. So she was not quiet about it. She went to a different church, went to a different pastor, went to different ministers. Like, “This is happening, somebody come get this boy.”

And boy, in the sense of my stepdad is a boy at heart just like I’m a girl at heart with, he has unresolved trauma that he never dealt with. So I don't say that in a demeaning way, I say that in a loving way. But this is something that too often happens, is that faith leaders are not equipped to respond in an appropriate way that recognizes what they encounter as domestic violence to the point of involving social service intervention and qualified support services. It's often dismissed or, again, only referred to be dealt with spiritual intervention. And I'm a Christian, and prayer works, period. So I say spiritual intervention purposefully, instead of saying, “Oh, just pray about it,” which is what a lot of times the literature discusses. But that's a side note [laughs].

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah.

Maxine Davis: That's a side note. Yeah, my mom prayed for my stepdad, but he also needed particularly men of faith to intervene. And that is not what he was met with in terms of sources of support. So as an abolitionist, I think that the engagement of police, especially when you're talking about non-criminalized forms of abuse, which are, again, as I mentioned, just as detrimental and survivors describe this often, what you'll often hear is, the physical scars heal, the mental scars and emotional scars are longer lasting. So it's not necessarily that police needed to be called or engaged. And police were called and engaged when it got physical and my mom endured injury. But there could have been other community-led interventions through faith communities that could have addressed the issue in an accountable and compassionate way.

But this again, this failure, I think, and now we know at least from the research that I've done, qualitative research that I've done. Part of the reason why my mom was met with this response is because the pastor's that she was going to were probably acting abusively in their own relationships. So how are you going to check somebody on something that you're doing yourself?

Jonathan Walton: Right. Lord have mercy. So this may not be intuitive for everybody. What is the link between racism and intimate partner violence? How can you draw those clear straight lines for people who might be lost as we're having this conversation?

Maxine Davis: Thank you for that. We actually recently published a study in a clinical journal that used national data to make exactly this link. And the link between experiencing racism, if you think about experiencing racism as trauma, that has a detrimental effect on your mental health. And people who have poor mental health like depression, anxiety, PTSD, have a higher likelihood of perpetrating intimate partner violence. And we looked at this in a sample particularly of Black folks. And what we found is that as racism, experiences of racism went up, poor mental health went up and racism had a direct impact on higher instances of intimate partner violence perpetration. If you think about the impact of any other form of trauma, you look at folks who have served veteran populations, they have a higher rate of acting abusively and perpetrating violence because of the trauma they have endured, and the impact that has on their ability to appraise situations and engage in deescalating manifestations of how to resolve conflict.

Part of that is related to emotion regulation. So you see a higher incidence of people jumping from basically zero to ten, and that inability to regulate their own emotion is a direct result of unresolved trauma. So some of the work that I do is also with a group in the Boston VA, and where they have rolled out this program called Strength at Home, that's a trauma-informed intervention for people affected abusively, and is one of the few that I stand behind as having evidentiary support to work. But it was developed for veteran populations and now being tested in civilian populations. I'm part of the team that's working on it to make sure that it meets the unique needs of Black and brown folks in terms of recognizing racism as trauma.

When I looked at it, it was developed by a group of dope White folks, good intentioned White folks, Casey Taft is amazing. But I was like, “Casey, I read your book, and it ain't talking about racism as trauma. We got to get this together.” And as an Early Career Scholar, saying that to somebody who's established, a lot of people … You know, Casey Taft is a person [laughter]. I mean, I think that that having some of that just realness to be able to talk to people and not be intimidated by oh, this is the status quo, or this is not even status quo, this is what has been done for many years. I can't question it or something like that. No, that's what rigorous scientists do is… and that's the activist lens that I bring, is question what has always been done and question the status quo and question authority.

I mean, it sometimes gets me in a little bit of trouble, but that's, the beauty of academia is that I get to study what I'm passionate about. It would be unscientific of me to notice something having a gap and not ask or inquire about how this can be better and point out why it's problematic to miss identifying racism as trauma and to talk about what it means to live that in a reoccurring basis, because the clinical tools that are used to describe and define PTSD are based on trauma as a one-time discrete experience that is no longer happening or that you've survived. And racism for Black folks, and particularly, the national data describes that we experience the most racism in a US context on an ongoing basis, has detrimental impacts, and is reoccurring. So it's not just a thing that one survives one time and then has to process, but it's occurring on a daily basis across many different contexts.

Sy Hoekstra: I feel like there's a sort of parallel there where you're kind of breaking down boundaries again, of like, this is not so neat and tidy and we need to talk about just broader, more complicated things.

Maxine Davis: And so the interventions again, that White feminists in the first wave feminist movement of the 70s introduced as—okay, what do we do? This problem is happening, domestic violence, what do we do? Engage the criminal carceral system—is one that was built as a response to the needs of White women. Similarly, the partner abuse intervention programs that were designed and developed as the treatment groups that people, mostly men were put into after being convicted of domestic violence, were designed for the experiences of White men. They were never designed for the experiences of Black and brown men. And so the way that I arrived at, okay, we have to do these groups differently and we have to think about different interventions, different partner abuse intervention programs is because I used to be a group facilitator in those groups that men were court mandated to attend.

And from jump, from day one, I was like, “This is it? This the best we got? This isn’t going to work.” [laughs] Because when, again, most of these groups that I served in Chicago were mostly of Black men. When they did begin to talk about their experiences of surviving violence, their community violence or childhood experiences, or ongoing relational violence, they were discouraged from talking about that experience of survivorship. It was considered a way that they used to deflect, but in all actuality, it was part of a therapeutic, what they thought was a therapeutic experience. But in all actuality, those groups are not and were never designed to be therapeutic environments, which is a problem and why I endorse Casey's program Strength at Home, because it is more of a, it's a psycho-educational program, but it's also built up on principles of having a therapeutic alliance and seeing this type of work as therapeutic, which is necessary for change.

Sy Hoekstra: You're talking about batterers intervention programs, right? That's what they're usually called.

Maxine Davis: Yes.

Sy Hoekstra: Yes. Okay. So just in case anyone's heard of them, or has heard of someone having to go to them. Again, when I was a public defender, those programs were kind of the bane of my existence, and all of my clients that were men and perpetrators were Black and brown, as well. And so it was like, this is just, it's accomplishing nothing, but they keep getting required to do it.

Maxine Davis: And we published a metaanalysis, which is a compilation of all of the studies that have ever been done about batterers intervention programs and data comparison to no treatment. And we, again, found additional evidence that these programs don't work. And when I say what works, I mean, when you look at rearrest rate as a definition of success, yeah, they're rearrested at a lower rate if they go through these programs. But when you enter victim and survivor report in the question of, did the abuse stop? No. The answer to the question is, no, the abuse didn't stop. So what do people do? People do non-criminalized forms of abuse.

Sy Hoekstra: And I want to highlight, you just said you compared batterers intervention programs to no treatment whatsoever. So like, you're talking about something that is ineffective, even when compared with doing literally nothing.

Maxine Davis: Yeah. And we've known this for 30 years, actually. But again, this is something that people are resistant to challenging because like, “Okay, well, what else are we going to do?” Design an alternative, design a completely different way of engaging when someone cries out for help for intimate partner violence and abuse, and avoid this conveyor belt-style one-size-fits-all model, which is what we currently have in progress. So it doesn't matter if somebody is two times less likely to get rearrested. If the abuse continues, the health impacts for survivors is untouched.

Sy Hoekstra: So let's get practical about those non-carceral alternatives to prison, because I think a lot of times when people hear you say that you're an abolitionist, or hear other people talking about reducing the power of the police. Situations like this interpersonal terrorism that you've been talking about, or just other kinds of explicit physical violence, are the sort of things that are real hang-ups for people is, how are we going to actually deal with this without prison? A lot of people don't have a framework or an imagination for that. So can you talk to us about programs that work and why and how they work?

Maxine Davis: Yeah, absolutely. So I'm in the process of evaluating a program and have done different types of evaluative work with a group that serves mostly undocumented Latino men in Chicago, of all different types of Hispanic backgrounds, but mostly Mexican. And it's called The Men's Group. It's based out of, originally is based out of a Catholic parish. And the program came into existence because women were going to the priests describing instances of violence, and were saying, I don't… and then this is a common report, is that, “I don't want to not be with my husband or partner. I just want the abuse to stop.” And so if we actually listen to what survivors want instead of imposing punishment and criminalization as an immediate response, that gives us a window into intervention that could be useful and helpful and gives us creative solutions for what could work to stop violence and abuse.

So that's one area that I tend to lean to in terms of, okay, what are we going to do about this, is to ask survivors who are experiencing or who have experienced what would be ideal in terms of how to intervene here. There's three things I want to hit on, so that's one. The second is purposeful investment instead of into police response, into social service that gives survivors for example, housing and access to financial support that would allow for the safety that they are seeking. And the independent decision making an empowering decision-making capabilities to guide their lives. I also am a proponent of the arts, so I think that the use of music as intervention is really powerful. And one of the things that I'm working on now is, and that a study that we did that is in getting ready to be submitted for publication is a playlist of hip hop songs that condemn domestic violence and endorse healthy relationships.

When we talk about hip hop, we often talk about… well, folks often talk about its use of denigration of women and an endorsement of violence. But actually hip hop is and has for a long time been a conscious source of violence resistance, and this is not different in terms of its discussion of the problematic use of violence in relationships. So these sorts of resources that could be developed, if they were invested into could be a way of providing alternative solutions and engagement in conversations that occur earlier than later. I focused specifically on violence in adulthood and… children is not my ministry. I know where my gifts and talents are [laughter] and working with children is not my ministry. But I do endorse and support these early intervention programs that talk about healthy relationships on the front end.

But God has just given me a passion to develop and evaluate interventions for abuse that happen in adulthood. And when we look at the data, we know that the most severe and the most, I think most critical age range to intervene in is 18 to 29. That's where you see really high rates of fatality, high rates of injury. And so I'm constantly asking myself, “Okay, for 18 to 29 year olds, what speaks to us?” I'm 37, but I can still say us [laughs]. And for me that would be music, and that will be my faith community. So investing in additional training of faith leaders to be interventionist, and to know when couples treatment is appropriate, and when it's not for domestic violence. And to also have intentional songs curated or circulated around these topics, is I think, worthy and noteworthy point of intervention.

We also got to make sure that we're actually measuring what's happening. And so I recently developed a scale that measures religious abuse in the context of intimate partner violence, asking questions like, how often and to what degree has your partner used scripture to justify abuse towards you? Or, how often or to what degree has your partner said that you had to forgive them on the basis of religious ideas? And these type of questions are something that if we can't measure a problem, then we can't even evaluate if it's being changed or not. So I think measurement is a key area to invest in as well.

Jonathan Walton: You talked about the bento boxing that the legal system likes to do, and faith communities like to do the exact same thing. What’s the conference? What's the book study? We can do this in six weeks, no training, no discipleship. Deliverance happened, we're good. And so, what can faith communities do better when it comes to creating peace in intimate relationships? Jesus said, “blessed are the peacemakers.” And so the peacemaking, what are some ways that you have seen or suggestions you have that we can be peacemakers in intimate relationships? And I say that as a faith leader who's had to do that, and as a husband who wants to keep peace in my house. You know what I mean? So getting called in to intervene and being someone who does not want to continue perpetuating violence against, imposing my will on my partner?

Maxine Davis: Yeah, it's a good question. Honestly, I don't know. I'm figuring it out for myself. I'm figuring it out. I think formal training has its place. So yeah, knowing the dynamics and the cycle that tends to happen within domestic violence of there being an abusive incident, then there being like this honeymoon phase, where their person is flowered with… showered rather with flowers, “Oh I’m so sorry, this will never happen again.” But then this tension building, and then boom, something else happens, and it's this perpetuating cycle. I think on a basic level, knowing that violence is not just physical is a first step. And talking about all the manifestations of how that occurs, is a first step in understanding the complexity of abuse, and of maltreatment of an intimate partner.

But I hesitate to have a one size fits all sort of recommendation list. I think this differs from community to community. One thing that I've seen that is helpful is this ability for faith leaders to be vulnerable, and talk about their own experiences. And this is something that I'm figuring out myself, how much do I disclose? And when I was married… I'm recently divorced, I was married for 15 years. But what led to that is realizing, “Wait a minute, this is not what I want my children to see.” And that's the experience a lot of people have. But I'm figuring out how much do I disclose, and how much do I keep for myself and the sacred space of what was my relationship? It's a mixed bag. I don't know, and I'm figuring it out.

Jonathan Walton: I recognize within the question, even me caveating the creation of bento boxes, it's hard not to create one in your answer.

Maxine Davis: Yeah [laughter].

Jonathan Walton: But your invitation to the messiness of it, is exceptionally helpful.

Maxine Davis: Yeah, it is. It is very messy. And I think advocates for a long time discouraged couples counseling, when there was any type of intimate partner violence and abuse. But again, we did a study on that and found that actually, couples treatment when there's domestic violence involved, as long as it's not this terrorism type. And I realized I only provided two examples, but violent resistance is another type, and that's when somebody's fighting back. You see that more in Black women than in White women. But those are three different types of domestic violence that you'll see, intimate terrorism, what we call common couples violence, which is “fighting”. And then violent resistance, which is somebody, this is what you see of like a woman stabbing her husband and you’re like, “What the hell happened?” I'm sorry, the language. But like, “What the heck happened with that?”

And it's like, “Well, she's been controlled and abused for 10 years, she fought back.” But then she gets arrested and convicted. So these are just three different types that occur. But I think knowing though at least those three different types and knowing that if it's a fighting or common couples violence, that actually couples treatment by someone who is trained and has some domestic violence training could be beneficial. And this is something that the domestic violence folks who are going to listen to this episode are going to be like, “Oh no, she didn't recommend ...” Yes I did [laughter]. Because the data says that we should [laughs]. I mean, this is written into policy. Sy knows this is written into policy that in many states, couples counseling is prohibited as a treatment plan when there's domestic violence perpetration. And yes, it should be avoided when someone is engaging in intimate terrorism. But it could be very helpful, and the studies show that it could be very helpful to reduce intimate partner violence. And that's one of the options that exists, especially in the context of people who have the request of, “I don't want to leave my partner, I just want the abuse to stop.” Okay, so yeah, individual counseling I do engage, that's helpful. But this couples treatment could be an option that I think probably faith leaders are engaging in anyway. But just not with the formal domestic violence training that they need in order to have a fuller perspective of what could be going on.

Jonathan Walton: Right. We are engaging every day without the training, without the resources, without the support, and often perpetuating the nonsense we've been given and then distributing that.

Maxine Davis: Yes. When we interviewed Black clergy leaders, that's what they asked for, actually. And there's been this misconception that Black church communities don't want to engage and partner with social services and that's a fallacy.

Sy Hoekstra: This conversation has been so great. I so appreciate the expertise and the vulnerability that you brought to it. Just the amount you've been willing to share is a gift to us and all of our listeners. Where can the listeners hear more from you? Where can they find you or your work?

Maxine Davis: Sure. I upload free copies of all of the studies that we publish on my website at www.drmaxinedavis.com. It's under reconstruction. I lost everything a couple of months ago, so be patient there. But the PDFs of all the studies are available there. Listeners can also follow me on Twitter, where I've had a very lively and engaging conversation. I also have a YouTube channel, Dr. Maxine Davis, where you can see some of the talks that I discussed. Short 10-minute ones, or longer 30-minute discussion of the related topics, and there'll be more to come on those platforms.

Jonathan Walton: Very excited about clicking on all of those.

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah. Everyone go check it out. We will have links in the show notes. Dr. Davis, thank you so much for being here today.

Maxine Davis: Thank you.

Jonathan Walton: Thank you, ma'am.

Sy Hoekstra: Everyone before we go, thanks for listening. Just a quick reminder ktfpress.com Consider becoming a subscriber, it's the best way to support what we do, and gets you access to our bonus episodes and our newsletters and supports everything that we do. We so appreciate you listening today. Our theme song as always is “Citizens” by Jon Guerra. Our podcast art is by Jacqueline Tam and we will see you all in two weeks.

[The song “Citizens” by Jon Guerra fades in. Lyrics: “And that you’re building a city/ Where we arrive as immigrants/ And you call us citizens/ And you welcome us as children home/ Where we arrive as immigrants/ And you call us citizens/ And you welcome us as children home.” The song fades out.]

Jonathan Walton: [exhales] I mean, there was a lot there.

Sy Hoekstra: I think, Jonathan, I think since she just answered a lot of your next question, it might be interesting to just ask if there’s anything more on that subject, but

Jonathan Walton: It is, and so I’m gonna ask it, and then ask a tangent

Sy Hoekstra: Okay.

Jonathan Walton: And I’ll see where that rabbit hole go.

Maxine Davis: And I’m the daughter of a minister, so I can talk [laughter].

Jonathan Walton: You can feel free.

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah.

Jonathan and Sy talk to Scott Hall from the White People Work podcast. They discuss how events from Scott’s life led him to training other White people on racial justice work, how to avoid being a performative ally, the tie between discipleship and being a helpful White person, and a lot more! Scott’s show is a great resource for White folks, and this is a conversation truly worth your time!

Shake the Dust is a podcast of KTF Press. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and the app formerly known as Twitter. Subscribe to get our newsletter and bonus episodes at KTFPress.com. Transcripts of every episode are available at KTFPress.com/s/transcripts.

Hosts

Jonathan Walton – follow him on Facebook and Instagram.

Sy Hoekstra – He was only on the app formerly known as Twitter, but he’s done with that now, so…stay tuned?

Our theme song is “Citizens” by Jon Guerra – listen to the whole song on Spotify.

Our podcast art is by Jacqueline Tam – follow her and see her other work on Instagram.

Production and editing by Sy Hoekstra.

Transcript by Joyce Ambale and Sy Hoekstra.

Questions about anything you heard on the show? Write to [email protected] and we may answer your question on a future episode.

Transcript

[An acoustic guitar softly plays six notes, the first three ascending and the last three descending — F#, B, F#, E, D#, B — with a keyboard pad playing the note B in the background. Both fade out as Jonathan Walton says “This is a KTF Press podcast.”]

Sy Hoekstra: I have a question for you. Do you want to attend the Evolving Faith Conference from anywhere in the world for free? Evolving Faith is an online faith community with all kinds of events and book clubs and things that they do, gatherings all year round. And as they say, it, “exists to cultivate love and hope in the wilderness, pointing fellow wanderers and misfits to God as we embody resurrection for the sake of the world.” They have a conference they've been doing for the past few years. It's in Minneapolis, but you can attend online. You can hear speakers like former Shake the Dust guests, Dr. Amy Kenny and Danté Stewart, or writers from our anthology like Brandy Miller or Dr. Randy Woodley—their first name's rhyme; I just realized that. The conference is live on October 13th and 14th, but you can watch it anytime you want if you get the digital pass between then and January 1st, 2024. And that ticket also gets you access to some other online events that are just for ticket holders.

And you can get that whole $129 value for free. How? Between today and Labor Day, that's September 4th, become an annual subscriber to KTF Press or upgrade your existing annual or monthly or no membership to a founding member level membership. You get a free book if you do that one by the way, the founding member one. And then you will be part of a drawing for one of three free tickets to Evolving Faith. That subscription, as you know, gets you the bonus episodes to this show. It gets you our weekly newsletter for free, and it supports everything we do at KTF Press. And it could get you an 129-dollar digital ticket to the Evolving Faith Conference for free. So go to KTFPress.com and sign up as a paid subscriber today, or anytime between today and September 4th and enter that drawing.

All right, let's get into today's episode with Scott Hall, and that episode officially starts now.

Scott Hall: We have an invitation to submit ourselves to our creator or not. And I don't think you get out of that. It's a basic Christian principle and we White folks, we need to submit. We need to submit to the Lordship of Jesus. That is old school, but some things never grow old.

[The song “Citizens” by Jon Guerra fades in. Lyrics: “I need to know there is justice/That it will roll in abundance/ And that you’re building a city/ Where we arrive as immigrants/ And you call us citizens/ And you welcome us as children home.” The song fades out.]

Sy Hoekstra: Welcome to Shake the Dust, leaving colonized faith for the kingdom of God. I'm Sy Hoekstra.

Jonathan Walton: And I'm Jonathan Walton.

Sy Hoekstra: And we are here today to talk about White people.

[laughter]

Sy Hoekstra: We're going to talk about kind of White people's responsibilities and roles in racial justice in the church and in society at large. We have a fantastic guest with us today to talk about that. Before we get to him though, really quickly, I just want to remind everybody that if you appreciate this show and what we do and you want to support us, please go to KTFPress.com. It's a Substack page. You can sign up there to become a paid subscriber. It gets you the bonus episodes of this show, our weekly newsletter with recommendations from Jonathan and I about highlights about media that has to do with discipleship and political education and theology. And you also support everything else that we do at KTF Press, the articles that we write, the books we've put out. And we really, really appreciate the support. We could not exist without our subscribers and we would love it if you would go and check that out@KTFPress.com. Again, KTFPress.com. Okay, I've given the pitch Jonathan. Let's get into the meat of it. Who do we have with us today?

Jonathan Walton: Today we have with us Scott Hall, who was raised in Oakland, California. He was a White kid growing up on a wealthy side of town who always was aware of racial injustice. He didn't know what to do about that until the LA riots of 1992 when he was in an African American studies class at UCLA. He changed his major to African American Studies and launched himself on a journey of learning from peers and leaders of color for the next 25 years. With a master's degree in intercultural studies, today Scott works as a justice learning director, a chaplain for youth who are incarcerated, and as a periodic D.E.I consultant for White Americans who want to learn how to do no harm and work toward racial equity. He hosts a podcast called White People Work that's designed to help White folks come to a better understanding of themselves and grow in taking responsibility for their presence in the world. Scott, thank you so much for being here.

Scott Hall: Thank you, Jonathan. You made me sound really great. I hope I live up to the hype [laughter].

Jonathan Walton: For me, I think you just got to talk about how you got into this work, because most people don't opt in. And so most people's reactions to the things that happen around the acquittal of officers and Rodney King in LA in 1991, ‘92, putting yourself in that space. You switched your major to African American studies. You went towards the fire, not away from the fire. Why did you do that, and how did that set you on the journey you're on right now?

Scott Hall: Yeah, that's a great question Jonathan. And it's funny that you say fire, because literal fire is actually a part of the story which I will tell… But here's the thing I'm going to say, just a disclaimer before I share all of this. So much of life happens you just take the one next step that's right in front of you. It was sort of the perfect storm of all these elements of my life. So I came to college. As you mentioned, I grew up in Oakland. I was always aware of racial disparity, economic disparities by race. I came into college, I was into Spike Lee movies. I had read the autobiography of Malcolm X in high school, but I was this pre-med student in college. But I had all these electives and I took a Black history class and as I was taking that class, this racial uprising in Los Angeles happened.

My mentor immediately put me in the back of his car, and we drove into the middle of Koreatown. And within 10 minutes, my roommate and I were helping a Latino family take their kids and their valuables out of their apartment that was on fire. I came back to class the next day and my professor scrapped her whole curriculum and said, “We are going to study the history of racial uprisings in the United States,” mostly from the 1960s, but actually going all the way back out of the United States to the Haitian Revolution.

Sy Hoekstra: Alright.

Scott Hall: And we're going to study this and why it's happening now in Los Angeles. And for me Jonathan, it was that perfect storm. For the first time in my life, I felt like the Christian faith, I was learning about Jesus's care for issues of injustice.

That integrated with my upbringing, where I saw these economic disparities by race that were never being talked about in my church and my academic career. They all converged, and suddenly I felt like all the disparate parts of my life were one. I was like, “I have never felt like this, there's something special happening.” And I had a really deep sense of divine invitation to change my major.

Jonathan Walton: Amen, and you said yes.

Scott Hall: And I said yes. My dad said no, but that's a different story.

[laughter]

Sy Hoekstra: Listen, having a kid who's a doctor, it's a hard thing for a lot of people to let go.

Scott Hall: All right.

[laughter]

Sy Hoekstra: This question is a little bit funny, but it's kind of important to me. On your podcast, you give a lot of examples of what not to do as a White person who's involved in racial justice or conversations with people who are not White. I would say the majority of those examples are you [laughter]. I would say most of them. Definitely more than 50 percent of them, I would say are ways that Scott Hall has screwed up. And we both think that that's intentional, and I was wondering if you could talk about why it is that you pick those things to talk about.

Scott Hall: Sy, I'm so offended by that. What are you talking about?

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah.

Jonathan Walton: [laughs].

Scott Hall: Yeah. I mean, look, I am often my own worst enemy. Actually, this one is actually pretty easy for me to answer Sy. I think my biggest beef is with self-righteous people. And I don't say that self-righteously. It's probably because I have a negative personality trait that makes me want to try to get self-righteous. My mom would call me on it my whole upbringing. When I'm feeling real good about myself, I like to get my little high horse and lord it over people. So I know how nasty it feels to be self-righteous, so I think it makes me sensitive about that. And I feel like in particular, when White folks are talking to other White folks about racial stuff, oh my gosh. There's so much posturing and self-righteousness about one-upping each other that just, it's not about racial equity or justice, it's about showing off and it’s gross and self-referential.

And so I just feel like there's this tendency that I want to break up and push against. But also I think there's just a stigma in the United States of White folks being shamed for making racial mistakes. And the thing is, from my friends of color, they already see twice as many racial mistakes, cross-cultural mistakes as I'm already making. So the idea that I'm going to perfectly navigate, that's already an illusion. So for me to be able to just put it out there, I think breaks that lie that we as White people can perfectly navigate cross-cultural relationships and never have any foibles and blunders and deeply offensive things that we do. I want to take that stigma away because I think so many of the places of unawareness for us as White people, they're not even related to our own independent personal choice, but they're a result of external conditioning put upon us.

So it feels really important to just dispel some of the guilt and shame that gets loaded onto White folks and let us know, of course, we're going to make mistakes. We've been conditioned to make those mistakes and see ourselves as superior to non-White people. So we are getting out from underneath that conditioning. So of course, we're going to make mistakes.

Sy Hoekstra: I think a reason that's important to me is you talk in your show about the notion of distrust and how a lot of White people assume that kind of the default in cross-cultural communication should be trust. That everyone should trust each other and give each other the benefit of the doubt. And you really take that assumption apart in a way that I thought was really smart. But I think you talk about how it really does not make sense for a Black person or for anybody who's not White to come into a conversation with a White person just being totally open, fully trusting them, ignoring all their previous experience. It's actually kind of healthy to come into the conversation and say, “I need you to show me that I can trust you.”

I think the fact that you repeatedly tell stories about yourself that are frankly fairly embarrassing [laughter], is actually a point of trust. I think it's something that helps that process, that makes that kind of communication smoother and makes real depth more likely because it's avoiding… implicitly you are just avoiding the performative nonsense that you were just talking about. You have a whole episode on why White progressives are sometimes the worst, which I kind of love, and this is a big part of that problem in particular, is performativeness. And I just want a list of, I just want like an HR policy that just tells me a bunch of do’s and don'ts so that I never screw up and I can be deemed to not have a racist bone in my body.

[laughter]

And I appreciate that you explicitly fight against that, even in the examples that you choose. I just thought that was an important thing to highlight.

Scott Hall: Yeah. Sy, you're exactly right. I mean, that trust thing, I think anytime someone's in the majority culture in the United States, historically at least White folks, I think the majority culture assumes that everything's equal and is the same for everyone. Well, if that's true, then you can have a starting point of trust. But if there are disparities of power, well then, the starting point isn't going to be trust because the system that's working for the majority might not be working for some folks. So Yeah, I think it's Coates that says there are no racists in America. And what I think he means, or even how he interprets what he means by that is, well, yeah. If you're self-referential, it's like, no, none of us are racist. And I just feel like it's really important to dispel that myth that we can completely be free from racism as White people. It's a different way of approaching it and I want to just dispel that lie by being transparent about mistakes.

Sy Hoekstra: One other quick thing I want to highlight is that you tell those stories in the context of, you said this, but I just want to highlight it. It's you talking to other White people. So it's not you like, “Hey, Jonathan, let me unload a bunch of times on you that I was racist.” Because well, Jonathan doesn't want to hear that necessarily [laughs]. That's not something that people…

Jonathan Walton: [laughs] Right.

Sy Hoekstra: … just need to have unloaded on them, and it's stressful and not fun at all. But you're talking about it in a place where it's useful. In a place where it's specifically like, “Hey, we are all here to learn and let's talk about the ways that we screw up as White people so that we can grow and be helpful to the world around us.”

Scott Hall: Thank you.

Jonathan Walton: In that vein, it's like you spend a lot of time talking to other White people and trying to dispel those myths and stuff like that. And so I wondered, what did the conversations look like between you and your wife when you're like, “We're going to live in these predominantly neighborhoods of color.” Why did you make some of those decisions? And then what did the conversations look like with your family and the White folks around you?

Scott Hall: Okay, Jonathan. Here's the thing. People say this as a cliché. I did marry up to one of the best human beings I've ever met. So my wife's name is Jenny, she is White. But Jenny grew up in a low-income community of color near the Mexican border in southeast San Diego in a Navy family. So she in her deepest bones, feels really comfortable in a community like that. And so she was an easy sell. My other friends, it's the funniest thing Jonathan. It's like this weird conversation stopper when folks don't know what to say and something just feels weird and people don't know what, and it just is kind of this grinding halt of real awkwardness. But both my wife and I felt pulled to put ourselves into a cross-cultural community.

I was working at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. The local neighborhood of that college is dominantly African American and Central American. So it made sense to live close to the school. We were on the market to buy a house. And if you'll let me Jonathan, I'll tell a little God story. We were in the market to buy a new house, and we were shown this one house in the middle of the day. My wife Jenny, smarter than me, she said, “Well, go back at dusk and see how it feels.” And I went back at dusk and she had to do something else. And I pull over and I see this African American man walking from his car to his house, and I stop him. Later, he became a lifelong friend. His name is Cliff.

And his perspective later, he told me, as I approached him he said, “Who is this White boy and how lost is he” [laughter]? And then he said the Holy Spirit convicted him and said, “My anointing is on this man as my servant.” And he just turned it on a dime and he welcomed me. He said, “Hello brother, how can I help you?” And he told me about the neighborhood, and I drove home to Jenny. She said, “Scott, we have to do this. It was a sign, we are moving in.” And we put an offer the next day and we were there within a couple of months, and Cliff became a lifelong best friend. So when you go earlier of like, “Oh, wow Scott, you made these choices.” It's again, no, it was just me trying to be faithful one step at a time.

Sy Hoekstra: And a lot of other people—we were talking about this before we started recording—is so many other people, so many things that were external to you, like you were just talking about with the other question happened along that journey. That I find a lot of resonance with, is like I'm very thankful for a lot of things that a lot of other people did, as I've mentioned before, like Jonathan, to put me on any kind of journey like this because it was just so not my doing. And like it's something for which I'm just so grateful all the time.

Jonathan Walton: Amen.

Scott Hall: I love that Sy.

Sy Hoekstra: We have talked a little bit before on this show about the mistakes and the assumptions that White Christians make when engaging in conversations about race, kind of reveals the things that we don't actually believe about what we say we believe. That we don't actually believe about the gospel that we claim to put our faith in. And conversely, we've talked about how engaging thoughtfully and authentically in racial justice work can really help White people in discipleship. How have you seen those dynamics playing out in your life or in the lives of the White people that you work with?

Scott Hall: It's interesting. Just to go back for a second, this is answering your question, to the last thing I said, all we can do is take that next faithful step in front of us. And I think Sy, we're not all supposed to become some portrait of a poster child of opposing racism. We're just supposed to become who God intended us to be in the world. That's all we can do. And what I find is the deeper I go with principles for helping White folks get a handle on opposing racism, the further I go, the deeper I go, the more simple the principles are built upon. Where I keep finding myself landing on oh, what we're really just talking about is humility. Being a learner, putting others before yourself. I think when people make the journey of White people being… and you know, there's kind of this term that has had this weird evolution of woke people.

Whatever that means to different partisan demographics today, it's lifted up as this super special charism to use Christian language on it. I just don't think that's what it's about. I think the invitation for White folks cross-culturally is honestly just to live out the most basic principles of what it means to be a follower of Jesus. It's just that when it comes to being White in the United States, there's this way we've been conditioned to not be aware of a certain set of how humility could be applied. A certain way that putting others before ourselves could be applied. So I actually think the principles are basic Christian principles, but just pushed into parts of our lives that we as White people have been trained to not be aware of.

Sy Hoekstra: You put it more gently than I did. I was like, “We don't believe any of that stuff.”

[laughter]

Jonathan Walton: Well, okay. If I could lean in like one part. Because when you say trained, and if we put it in spiritual language, it’s like discipled to.

Scott Hall: Okay.

Jonathan Walton: So everything that you're saying, particularly like for me, I love Philippians 2, where it's like, “Do nothing out of vain conceit. Put others before yourselves. Whatever you've seen in me, do these things.” When you go to chapter four. But it's one of those things where it's like, if you have been discipled to the opposite degree. Because if we say yeah, humility, but then you define humility as not an embodied thing, but you define humility as a concept to understand, not to live out. Like what do you mean? I understand humility, but I got to get this money. Or I understand you don't put others before yourselves, but we're literally going to move our entire family and all our stuff and all our resources to make sure that we're taken care of for generations. You know what I mean? It's conceptual, it's not an embodied thing.

Scott Hall: I mean, yeah. John you're taking it beyond my pay grade, but I think you're talking about the difference between orthodoxy and orthopraxy…

Jonathan Walton: Yes.

Scott Hall: …to be kind of nerdy about it. And it's like, and where's that distinction in Jesus? And if those who follow Jesus are supposed to have a Christocentric theology, shouldn't Jesus be the lens through which we view every… I mean, Jonathan, the Good Samaritan could be called an iconic American Christian parable.

Jonathan Walton: Right.

Scott Hall: That's a parable about race. And yet that is not how I was ever taught about it. So I think what you're getting at is a way that my Whiteness was strained out of any gospel presentation. When there's a cross-cultural dynamic in a parable like the Good Samaritan, that's absolutely a core part of what Jesus is even getting at when he teaches that parable.

Jonathan Walton: [slowly] Okay. … So… because we could… preach and go on tangent for like…

Scott Hall: I'm getting you started. I see it on your face Jonathan.

[laughter]

Jonathan Walton: Okay. So to wrap that up or bring that back, you have these conversations with White leaders. You deliver the critiques, but then how do you get them to do things or call them to do things beyond protecting the institution that is just performative? How do you get them to act or how do you invite them to act from a place of honesty and sincerity, as opposed to just making sure they're seen as like, “Well, we’re one of the good ones?”

Scott Hall: Oh, Jonathan. Let me just say, I can definitively say I'm not very good at what you're talking about, because you're talking about White leaders and having a conversation that when it comes to the critical point where there's skin in the game for them… I had an experience as a consultant. I was brought in for a one-year consultation. The senior most African American married couple in a predominantly White, meaning 85 percent White Christian missions organization. The senior most African American couple on staff hired me after George Floyd was murdered, to help the organization grow in racial awareness and racial equity. That consultation was going really well. We were talking about Acts 6 and how race comes up in that. Conversations like this Good Samaritan conversation.

Everything was great. The White president of the organization, he and I were having two phone calls a week building trust, and we got to the end of this Acts 6 scripture study and I just said honestly what's in the text, and everyone was agreed upon was in the text. So the dominant culture leaders needed to respond to this situation and make structural changes of who was in positions of leadership. That's just what happened in Acts 6 in the early Church. And everyone was agreed and convicted. And I said, so I think that the 16 White senior leaders should go through a six-week training with me to become aware of White culture and grow in their own cultural awareness.

And within two hours, the senior most African American staff sent me an email that that White president had sent them that was trying to get me fired and was pitching an African American woman on YouTube whose teaching was all based on attacking critical race theory. And I think in my opinion, training that was all designed to help White people feel really comfortable saying, “I think we should hire her instead of this guy, Scott.” So Jonathan, my track record is not good.

Jonathan Walton: I think I have to go back and rephrase my question.

Sy Hoekstra: [laughs]

Scott Hall: Okay.

Jonathan Walton: I wanted to not know how it's successful, but more how you go about doing it and you just described how you do it?

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah, you did kind of answer the question [laughs].

Scott Hall: I did. I build trust, I'm honest. As I was talking about earlier, I share stories of my own failure. And here's what I do find Jonathan, is there's a percentage of the room that's all the way on board with me. And those folk really want to have an honest conversation, like we need to do something here. But very often those are not those with the most power or skin in the game to make systemic organizational changes.

Jonathan Walton: Right. And just to put like a, so I can have this succinct as you were saying. It's like senior most Black couple invites you to come, senior most White leader says, “Don't do this. Let's fire him and hire Candace Owens.” [Sy laughs] Is that what you're saying?

Scott Hall: Pretty much, pretty much, yeah.

Jonathan Walton: Did he ask those Black folks to pay for that consultant?

Scott Hall: He didn't ask. He requested that they change their opinion of who they should hire [Jonathan laughs], even though they had been empowered to make the decision.

Sy Hoekstra: Ah.

Jonathan Walton: Yep.

Sy Hoekstra: I would like to submit an opinion change request.

[laughter]

Scott Hall: Yup.

Sy Hoekstra: Gosh.

Scott Hall: And to their credit, they called him out on it right away. And that was three months into the consulting and they stuck with me for nine more months, but it wasn't pretty.

Jonathan Walton: Is the president still a part of the organization [Sy laughs]?

Scott Hall: Yeah. And I better not share too much or it's going to become a libel suit.

[laughter]

Jonathan Walton: Are the Black leaders still there?

Scott Hall: Yeah, they are. They are.

Jonathan Walton: Fascinating.

Scott Hall: They are. I mean, that leads us into a different conversation Jonathan, about Black folks surviving in predominantly White institutions.

Jonathan Walton: Hey man. We could talk about that in a different podcasts, but yes.

Sy Hoekstra: Jonathan, when we were thinking through questions for this, you talked about the idea of institutional enmeshment, like White leaders.

Jonathan Walton: I did, yes.

Sy Hoekstra: Can you just explain what you meant? Because I think it's just a good thing for people to think about the kind of emotional side of this for White people.

Jonathan Walton: Absolutely. And Scott probably has some comments about this, but one of the things that in emotionally healthy spirituality or family theory systems theory or things like this enmeshment attachment kind of language. And so I can form a healthy bond with someone because it's usually used relationally. But when you form enmeshment, enmeshed is when my identity and your identity become fused, where you're not allowed to have your own thoughts and your own feelings and your own identity. And so to be able to incarnate as Jesus did, there's this transformational thing that happens where I enter into your world, but I stay my own person, which is like differentiation. So again, usually it's about relationships, but what if we made that about institutions?

So I am World Vision, I am InterVarsity, I am IJM, I am the Catholic church, I am the Republican party. I am the Washington football team. We start to say “we” when we start to use institutions. And so I wonder what steps we can take as leaders to identify institutional enmeshment, even if people don't say, I want to leave it. But the master is embedded in the plantation. He has to be willing to leave the institution of slavery and then shut down the plantation. But people, particularly let's say folks who feel “politically homeless” right now, where they're like, “I'm not a Democrat…” I don't even think they realize they were enmeshed with an institution, and now need to deal with the reality of that separatedness. When they actually needed to have that process happen in the first place, to be able to critique where they came from, honestly.

Sy Hoekstra: Right. So the practical thing that happens is Scott comes along and says,” Your institution might be systematically racist.” And then the White leaders say,” Scott called me a racist,” and he did not [laughs].

Jonathan Walton: Yes. Right. Yeah. But if you feel some sort of way about that, you probably are…

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah. Well, that's a separate question.

[laughter]

Sy Hoekstra: The emotional health point, yeah.

Jonathan Walton: The emotional health point is we need to be able to differentiate ourselves from others, and our false selves is a whole other thing in these institutions for sure.

Scott Hall: Yeah. I mean, Jonathan, in some ways I feel like you're answering, you’re going back to Philippians 2 and that call to kind of count others above yourself. And how there's this, “Oh yeah, I'm going to apply that to all these kind of interpersonal elements of my life, but when it comes to living out the American dream and being incredibly selfish, I'm going to skip that part.” And I think you just described, well, actually it's because Jesus is calling us to something that is going to pull us out of a different operational life system. That's just called Christian discipleship. And in the New Testament context it was a Roman one. And so I think it's a great insight Jonathan. The one other thing I'll add on that I do find really helpful for White folks. And I'm channeling an insight I got from a colleague named Larry Thiel.

I think there's a way that White folks, because of the individualism that we operate with, and if you compare that or contrast that to a more collectivist identity that a lot of communities of color and individuals from a community of color operate with, we can just have misses. It's not even, no mal intent, like a genuine miss that let's say Jonathan, a Black man says,” Man, I hate White people,” and you don't mean Sy. You mean a collective thing. And Sy goes, “Jonathan, how dare you? That's so rude. I've been a great loyal friend to you.” And Jonathan goes, “What? What are you talking about Sy? I love you man. You're a brother to me.” And Sy goes, “You just said you hated me.” And Jonathan goes, “Whoa, no. I said I hated your people.” And that there can be this distinction that says, there's a collective thing. But you as an individual, I have a completely different read on you, the individual, Sy. And that’s a fight that Jonathan and Sy don't even need to have…

There's enough fights out there that need to be had, or I should say complex conversations to wade into. But I think sometimes we just miss each other because White people take things so personally so quickly that it's like, I'm talking about a system that you're a part of. You may or may not as an individual White person subscribe to that system.

Jonathan Walton: And that's the lack of double consciousness.

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah.

Jonathan Walton: Black folks, women, any ethnic minority or a marginalized group usually just goes back and forth. I don't know if anybody's written a book about that. I'm sure it's been done.

Sy Hoekstra: About double consciousness?

Jonathan Walton: No, about…

Sy Hoekstra: I was going to say I think Du Bois has that one covered [laughs].

Jonathan Walton: No, no, I know. But I was thinking about the White equivalent to be able to explain that in a way that's accessible and liberating as opposed to oppressive and costly. So when Du Bois wrote that, I feel like a whole bunch of lights went on. Booker T. Washington might have got upset, but like a whole lot of things opened up for people. But what is the equivalent for a White person reading that and feeling like this is an invitation to freedom? Because that's the thing. Someone said sin is like a cage that's really, really pretty that you just sitting there, but you don't even know you bound up. You know what I mean? And so it's like there's no way to substitute the cross of Christ to get resurrection. You can't take it out. And so I think a question that's forming for me is, why do you continue to do what you do if you are not American Dream successful, or even Christian industrial complex successful with the work you do with White people?

Sy Hoekstra: And when so many White people are not listening to you, or telling you that they're not ready to do what you're asking them to do.

Scott Hall: Yeah. Okay. My answer, I do have an answer. It might sound like I'm being fake because it's who I'm supposed to be in the world in the deepest sense. When I encountered Jesus and felt that invitation to surrender my life to Jesus, I felt invited into this different expression of who I was supposed to be that was learning about what it means that I'm made in the image of God. And the more I lean into that, the more it feels like I know I'm supposed to be a person pushing against racial injustice and inequity in the world. And I think to some extent, I actually believe White folks that want to follow Jesus at some level, I think we're all called to that. So yeah, there's a lot of folks not listening to me. And honestly, I feel like if zero were listening to me, would I be able to sustain what I'm doing? Man, I don't know.

Probably not. But would I feel like I'm freed to go pursue something else? No, I wouldn't. I feel like I know who I'm called to be in the world. And then to be a little less spiritual about it, I think there's a right side of history and a wrong side of history. And it's always easier in hindsight, but the present we're living in is going to be judged by those that come after us, and I feel like I want to be on the right side of history for better or for worse. And if I can even at a one percent degree be counted among those that pushed for the kind of revolutionary change that makes the world what it's more supposed to be, closer to what the kingdom of God is, then I'll count myself honored to be anywhere on that list. And I know that's sort of a, “wow.” But I'm like, I'm 51 years old and I'm trying to not waste my life and I'm trying to be who I'm supposed to be in the world, just like all of us are called to.

Jonathan Walton: The redefinition of success as obedience in justice work is I think the most consequential turn that an activist can make.

Scott Hall: There you go. So well put.

Jonathan Walton: Where it’s like I am not doing this because we will be free, or they will be free, or the decision will be overturned, or any of that stuff. I'm doing this so you know it ain’t right. because I was told to be a voice in the wilderness to prepare the way for the Lord.

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah, that's prophecy. That is prophetic.

Jonathan Walton: Right. Yeah.

Sy Hoekstra: That’s I'm just going to do this because I received the word of the Lord as they all said [laughs]. And I'm going to go do it.

Jonathan Walton: Amen.

Sy Hoekstra: It’s funny, those things you said, I understand your hesitance or your caveat, everything you just said, Scott, because it can sound grandiose.

Scott Hall: It’s like, “Ah, he's being fake man. Who really lives like that?”

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah. Or it can sound performative too, coming from a lot of people. So I again [laughs], I appreciate that you're making it clear that being all those things and doing all those things does not involve being perfect in any way. In fact, it actually actively involves not being perfect [laughs].

Scott Hall: Well, and Sy, if you'll let me as I was just listening to you and Jonathan, I think the word that comes to mind for me is just the prophetic nature of submission. I have 16-year old twin children, and so they're a part of a totally different generation then in a lot of ways is turning so many constructs on their heads and in many good ways. And even pushing I think the church to have to better understand itself and in line with all of what you all are about really extracting itself from patriotic, nationalistic, civic religion of the United States of America. But one of the places that I just feel like is so basic elemental Christian principle that cannot be avoided, is that we, as human beings in our limitation, we have an invitation to submit ourselves to our creator or not, and I don't think you get out of that.

And I think to go back to half hour ago, some time ago in our conversation, it's a basic Christian principle and we White folks, we need to submit. We need to submit to the lordship of Jesus. That is old school but some things never grow old.

Sy Hoekstra: Amen. Scott, the show is White People Work. That's the podcast. I said in the newsletter, I don't think it's a place I would point an absolute newbie [laughs] to the race conversation.

Jonathan Walton: [laughs] Definitely not.

Sy Hoekstra: It's not necessarily a one-o-one level class, but it's definitely an incredible resource for people who are genuinely interested in learning. Or even people who are just kind of interested in learning [laughs], who maybe still do need some persuasion. But it's just such a great resource and it's free. You can support it on Patreon, but it's free. And is there anything else that you want to plug or places that people can follow you or anything like that?

Scott Hall: Really just one other detail. So yes, you can like, follow, subscribe to White People Work. It's streaming on all podcast platforms. There's also a website that supports the podcast that's just Whitepeoplework.org, just spelled out as one long word, Whitepeoplework.o-r-g. You can subscribe there and get some free resources. So yeah, it would be wonderful to have you come check that out. I'm really grateful for the opportunity to be here. And thanks Sy for your affirmation and encouragement of me and what I'm doing.

Sy Hoekstra: Of course. Thank you so much, Scott. We really, really appreciate you being here.

Scott Hall: I feel honored. And just the level of conversation and the quality of what the two of you are bringing to the world, I feel really honored to get to be included.

Sy Hoekstra: That's very kind. We really appreciate that.

Jonathan Walton: Thank you, sir.

Sy Hoekstra: Just a reminder to everyone to go to KTFPress.com and check out being a subscriber there. Go to both websites, Whitepeoplework.org, KTFPress.com. Go subscribe to both. You'll get the bonus episodes of this show, you get our newsletter with our highlights about political education and discipleship. And you support everything that we do at KTF Press. We'd really appreciate it if you would go and check that out and become a paid subscriber. Our theme song as Always is “Citizens” by Jon Guerra, and our podcast Art is by Jacqueline Tam. We will see you all in a couple of weeks.

[The song “Citizens” by Jon Guerra fades in. Lyrics: “And that you’re building a city/ Where we arrive as immigrants/ And you call us citizens/ And you welcome us as children home/ Where we arrive as immigrants/ And you call us citizens/ And you welcome us as children home.” The song fades out.]

Scott Hall: Thanks, Sy for your affirmation and encouragement of me and what I'm doing.

Sy Hoekstra: Of course. And if you need a DEI consultant who will tell you the truth and doesn't care if he fails [laughs], give Scott Hall a call.

Jonathan Walton: [like a commercial tag line] Call Scott Hall.

[laughter]

Scott Hall: I have a suspect relationship with the title “consultant” these days, so we'll see.

[laughter]

Jonathan, Sy, and returning guest co-host Gabrielle Apollon speak with Jennifer Reynoso Ng, a doula who worked with Gabrielle and Sy. They discuss Black maternity; racism in medicine and birth work; the logistical, emotional, and spiritual support doulas provide; what doulas and partners can do to advocate for pregnant BIPOC; and a lot more. This New York Times article on Black women’s experiences during birth was the inspiration for this conversation, so give it a read alongside the episode!

Shake the Dust is a podcast of KTF Press. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Subscribe to get our newsletter and bonus episodes at KTFPress.com. Transcripts of every episode are available at KTFPress.com/s/transcripts.

Hosts

Jonathan Walton – follow him on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

Sy Hoekstra – follow him on Twitter.

Gabrielle Apollon – follow her on Twitter.

Our theme song is “Citizens” by Jon Guerra – listen to the whole song on Spotify.

Our podcast art is by Jacqueline Tam – follow her and see her other work on Instagram.

Production and editing by Sy Hoekstra.

Transcript by Joyce Ambale and Sy Hoekstra.

Questions about anything you heard on the show? Write to [email protected] and we may answer your question on a future episode.

Transcript

[An acoustic guitar softly plays six notes, the first three ascending and the last three descending — F#, B, F#, E, D#, B — with a keyboard pad playing the note B in the background. Both fade out as Jonathan Walton says “This is a KTF Press podcast.”]

Jennifer Reynoso Ng: Nehemiah has to do this task, right? He has to approach the king. He's scared. So he feels the fear, but he does it anyway. And I think that has stuck with me in the last few years, a lot. There's a lot of fear surrounding births, a lot of fear surrounding the unknown, but it's okay to feel the fear and you can do it anyway.

[The song “Citizens” by Jon Guerra fades in. Lyrics: “I need to know there is justice/That it will roll in abundance/ And that you’re building a city/ Where we arrive as immigrants/ And you call us citizens/ And you welcome us as children home.” The song fades out.]

Jonathan Walton: Welcome to Shake the Dust: Leaving Colonized Faith for the Kingdom of God. I am Jonathan Walton.

Sy Hoekstra: I'm Sy Hoekstra.

Gabrielle Apollon: And I'm Gabrielle Apollon.

Sy Hoekstra: Whaaaat? There's a third person? Yes, there's a third person. We have a guest host today. It's Gabrielle Apollon. She has been on the show before once on a regular episode, once on a bonus episode. I will briefly introduce her and then we'll get into the episode. She is a human rights attorney working at NYU Law mostly on issues of migration of people from her family's home country of Haiti. She used to be an immigration attorney before that. She is among many other things and all that, my wife [laughs]. And part of the reason that she's on the show today, aside from the fact that this whole episode was her idea, is that Gabrielle and I used to be clients of our guest, and we will get to her in a minute. We are going to be talking today about Black women and maternal health and giving birth. Gabrielle, thank you for coming up with this idea for this episode, and for being here today.

Gabrielle Apollon: You're welcome.

[laughter]

Sy Hoekstra: But Jonathan, before Gabrielle introduces our guest, could you do the honors, please?

Jonathan Walton: Absolutely. Please remember friends, you can support this show by going to KTFPress.com and becoming a paid subscriber. That gets you the bonus episodes of this show and our weekly newsletter where we curate media to help you in your discipleship and political education. It also gets you full access to the archives of our podcast, newsletters and articles, and it supports everything we do here at KTF Press. And remember, if you just want to try it out, you can get that subscription with a free month at the beginning by going to KTFPress.com/freemonth. All right, Gabrielle, who do we have on the show today?

Gabrielle Apollon: Okay. We have Jennifer Reynoso Ng. She's a birth and postpartum doula who provides emotional, physical, spiritual, and educational support to her clients. And as Sy mentioned we were lucky enough to be her clients. She was drawn to doula work because of her desire to support families, particularly those our system leaves behind, give them the knowledge to make informed choices about their birth experience, and ensure that they have access to the quality care that they deserve. Jenn, thanks so much for being here. And before I jump in with my first question, I also want to thank you all for making the space for this episode. I think one of the reasons I really wanted to have this conversation, not only because I just had a baby a few months ago and experienced this all too viscerally, but this is an issue that affects Black women so significantly and so seriously.

And I've gone to church my entire life, and I have never ever heard this issue talked about in that space, which I think says a lot. Meanwhile, my friends and I have been talking about this like so much, and I know with you Jenn and with a lot of other Black women, and so wanted to open this space up and talk about this issue, and we're so thankful you're here, Jennifer. So let's start with the basics. For people who don't know, what role does a doula play in the birthing and postpartum process?

Jennifer Reynoso Ng: Hi, thanks for having me. So for people who don't know, a doula is a non-medically trained community worker who provides physical, emotional, informational, and sometimes spiritual support to a birthing person and their family throughout their pregnancy and postpartum period. This can look a lot of different ways. There's doulas who specialize in the birth period while others focus on postpartum. There are some who do both. There are also some doulas who are full spectrum, meaning that they support clients throughout the entire spectrum of reproduction. So that can include fertility, abortion, and/or loss, in addition to pregnancy, birth, and postpartum. For me, I mostly support clients through birth and postpartum.

What that can look like is when I start to work with clients, usually in their second trimester, though sometimes first, if they reach out really early [laughs]. We usually have scheduled meetings throughout our time where we can go over the client's preferences and what their vision for their birth is. We talk about how I can support them through it and practice some comfort measures for labor or ways to cope with the contractions. In our second meeting, we review all this and also start talking about how to plan for the postpartum period. What to expect, who will be there for support, where are the gaps that they can fill in. So that's all prenatally. Once a client is in labor, I provide phone support throughout the early stages of their labor, giving support and advice for different positions to try, advice on when to start heading to the hospital, when to join them.

And then I provide in-person support once they're in the active portion of their labor, and I stay with them throughout their whole labor, however long that might be until they give birth. Also provide a few hours of support postpartum just to make sure that they're transitioning well. And that postpartum period is also really critical too, in terms of the health of the mom and baby. So looking at, making sure that everything is transitioning well.

Sy Hoekstra: And if I remember right kind of helping Gabrielle process the birth experience and talk through it and all that was another, I think, important thing you did postpartum that helped us a lot.

Jennifer Reynoso Ng: Absolutely. Yeah. So in addition to staying like a few hours after the baby is born wherever that is, if it's the hospital or at home, I also provide a postpartum visit at the client's home, usually anywhere between three and ten days after the birth to do exactly that. Just to check in on them, process the birth, answer any questions, and so on.

Gabrielle Apollon: Well, Sy, I don't know what you were going to say, but I think not recognizing ahead of time how much it would feel like such a whirlwind and not having the space to process as it's happening, that space really was incredibly valuable to be like, “Wait, what just happened?”[laughter] and making space for that.

Jennifer Reynoso Ng: Yeah. Right. Because you're in it and it's just hard to know. One, it's hard to remember everything, right? Because one, it can happen so fast and you're on low sleep and all these things are happening. So yeah, a lot of that conversation is like, okay, this is a timeline of what happened [laughs]. And usually people are surprised. They're like, “What?...

Gabrielle Apollon: Yes.

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah.

Jennifer Reynoso Ng: …I thought that was like two minutes and it was really two hours.” Whatever it is.

Sy Hoekstra: I actually remember that specifically being helpful. You like writing down a timeline. You were taking notes during the whole birth, and then just like seeing those notes and being like, oh, interesting. That's when that happened. [laughter]. Because nobody was asleep and, Gabrielle wasn't, But a lot of people are on a lot of drugs [laughter] at the time too, so it's helpful.

Jennifer Reynoso Ng: Yeah.

Jonathan Walton: So now that we know what a doula is, we would love to know one, why did you decide to become a doula? And like, as you were talking about all these things, how does your faith and spiritual practices influence the work that you do as a doula?

Jennifer Reynoso Ng: Yeah, that's a really good question. So I knew nothing about birth and pregnancy and postpartum until I got pregnant [laughs]. Absolutely nothing.

Gabrielle Apollon: Same [laughter].

Jennifer Reynoso Ng: Yeah, and I think that's the case for most people. So there was a huge learning curve in the beginning for me. I did have some friends who had babies, and they recommended taking a childbirth ed class, so I did that. And with that I felt, okay, I have more knowledge, I feel more empowered, I kind of have a sense of what's to expect. And so with that, me and my husband Evan, we felt good with okay, we know kind of what to expect, we're prepared, all that stuff. Fast forward kind of to the later periods of my pregnancy, I just had a few run-ins with some of the providers that I had that didn't sit well with me. They made me feel like I was making the wrong choices and things like that. And I was like, “Where is all this coming from?” Because up until that point, everything was fine.

And so it wasn't until those later weeks that I was like, you know what, maybe we should get a doula [laughs]. We had learned about them in our class, but I didn't necessarily think much of it. Also, a lot of the doulas that I saw in the class were mostly White, and I was like, “I don't know what this thing is that White people are doing.” [laughter] I was like, “That's not for me, I guess. I don't know.” But anyway, fast forward, I did get connected to a few doulas of color, they exist. And yeah, I decided to have one for my birth, and I think that really made a huge difference in our support. My birth wasn't necessarily traumatic or anything, but it was long and there was a lot that happened. So just what I described earlier, being able to have that other perspective in the room to kind of check in with, to guide us when we had to make decisions, and also just to give my partner a break, it just made the experience a lot smoother.

And I remember specifically after the birth, it’s common after the birth to kind of get chills and kind of shake a lot just because of the different hormone changes that are happening in your body. And I remember feeling like, “What is happening to me?” And I distinctly remember my doula placing her hand on me and being like, “This is okay, this is normal.” And just that reassurance is so… it just made me feel back in my body, like, okay, like I am present. This is okay. So, yeah, just, it's hard to put a value on that kind of support. So it was just really yeah, helpful to have. Anyway, so that experience and also knowing that we were pretty privileged to be able to pay for a doula last minute and have them at our birth.

When I was a couple months postpartum, I couldn't stop learning about everything birth.

And so I took my first training at that point with Ancient Song because they did have an emphasis on equity and working with marginalized communities, and that's something that I wanted to incorporate it in my work if I was to become a doula. So yeah, that's where I started.

Gabrielle Apollon: The whole thing about just actually having no idea of what is going to happen because you've never done this before, and having someone in the room who has not only done it before sometimes, but also has been to so many other births was like deeply reassuring.

[laughter]

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah. One thing that happened with us is we were really early on and Gabrielle was hooked up to all of the monitoring machines. We were supposed to have wireless monitoring at our hospital, but the hospital was so full that night that we had to be hooked up to machines. And Gabrielle was just like, “I need to go to the bathroom.” And I was like, “Well, how do we do that? Because you're hooked up to all these machines. I guess we gotta call the nurse.” And before I could do anything, Jenn is just like, “Okay,” and just unplugs her from all the machines and was like, “Let's go.” I was like, “We can do that?”

[laughter]

Sy Hoekstra: But yes, you can totally do that. Of course you can. Now I know that’s no problem at all. But just like Gabrielle said, having somebody there who has been through this and knows what they're doing and knows all the boundaries and whatever is incredibly helpful.

Jennifer Reynoso Ng: Yeah. So in regards to my faith, my faith impacts my work deeply because it's a big part of who I am. There's so much unknown and so much to know in this work that I find myself relying heavily on my relationship with God and discernment to prepare myself before I meet with someone, whether that's a prenatal meeting or postpartum or at the birth. Or as I think about what questions I need to ask them, or even what to say in the moment. This work is a gift of service. Actually, the word doula means a woman who serves in Greek. Actually, some people say slave, and so that's why I have some trouble saying the word doula sometimes. But anyway, to make sure that I'm not serving from an empty place, I have to be filling myself up regularly.

Gabrielle Apollon: And I think that, for me as someone of faith too, having a doula who I knew was praying for me and who, even these, you gave me these like little cards with scriptures on them, but women of color, and I don't know why, but those, I just like clung to at various… I mean, I do know why, but you know what I mean? Just seeing that and having that type of encouragement too, really did mean a lot. And I know we'll talk about this further and later on, but I really struggled with a lot of fear and anxiety about childbirth. And by fear, I mean like terror [laughs]. And I don't know, I think that that part was critical for me to know that one, and in large part because of what we're talking about today, right? The role of racism and the treatment of Black women in these spaces.

And so one, to be able to delve into that with you, but two, to also be like, yeah, this isn't only up to us and I really need Jesus to come through because I, just wrestling with all those things. So, yeah.

Sy Hoekstra: Could you, Jenn, give us kind of an overview, speaking of what Gabrielle just said, of some of the issues that we see when we're looking at disparities for Black women and birthing people in the healthcare system, and then maybe an idea of some of what you actually see, because you are serving obviously clients of all races at the same hospitals in New York City. So can you give us an idea of kind of the differences that you see between your White and BIPOC clients?

Jennifer Reynoso Ng: Yeah. So I think most people you read the headlines and you see, and you know that Black mothers tend to have the worst outcomes in regards to pregnancy out of all groups, even when you take into account income. There's a New York Times article that came out earlier this year that really went in depth into that. To me, that suggests that the problems are pervasive and structural in the system of healthcare. It's not necessarily just one part, but it's also a reflection of our larger society as well. For example, I've heard countless stories of women receiving microaggressions when they're getting cared for, adding to an already stressful period as Gabrielle mentioned. Now you have people questioning your competence, your identity and that's not something that people need to be dealing with when they are about to bring a new life into this world.

Gabrielle Apollon: I mean, I think I appreciate you bringing up that article because I think some of the things that shock me are the realities that Black women are three to four times more likely to die from complications surrounding pregnancy and childbirth than White women, and as you mentioned, even if you control for income or education. So I think in that article there was a recent study in California and they followed, I think it was like a decade of births, and they still found that the richest Black mothers and babies were twice as likely to die from childbirth as the richest White mothers and babies. Which is staggering to me for all sorts of reasons. We've seen in the news, we've heard about Beyoncé, Serena Williams, literally the most famous Black women kind of on earth [laughs] or at least in America, having these issues and being, having to fight for their concerns to be heard.

And so I think, again, we'll go into this, but just the realities, if you're bringing all of that information into your own experience of trying to get ready to have a baby, yeah, they're terrifying.

Jonathan Walton: Yeah. Also too, we just had an Olympian pass away from, Tori Bowie, like shedding another lens. It's like, it's not about if you're athletic, it's not about if you're wealthy, we actually need to address racism. I think it's really helpful that more articles are coming out because to debunk the automatic myth that we would already would automatically like come up. It's like, it must have been this, it must have been this, it must have been that. Like, no, like it's actually about White supremacy and anti-Blackness.

Sy Hoekstra: Since that New York Times article was kind of the spark for Gabrielle's inspiration for this episode, I will put that in the show notes if anyone wants to read it. It is sad, but very good.

Gabrielle Apollon: I think the last thing I'll say about the article, but one of the reasons why it did spark this is because I think sometimes we do hear about Black maternal health outcomes. And so we're talking about unfortunately deaths of the mother or the baby or c-section rates. But it's not often captured what you were mentioning earlier, Jenn, like the microaggressions that, not even micro a lot of times, but just the aggressions that occur to women, Black women and women of color when they're experiencing labor or delivery that aren't captured anywhere. So I'm just going to give an example because, and it was helpful for me, Jenn, and feel free to share if you have additional thoughts, but it was helpful for me when you were like, “I've never seen anybody do this before.”

And I'll share what happened. So during my birth, I had no idea how long I was pushing for. But as I was starting to push, oftentimes you have people hold your legs so that you can focus on pushing. And one of the nurses who, to be fair, I don't know…. I think I'm not the only one who sometimes you just kind of have a Spidey-sense when it comes to racism. Somebody walked in the door and I was like, “I don't know why, but I don't love that person and I would love for her to leave.” But I'm literally giving birth. So I'm like, “alright, I guess I have other things I should focus on.” So I just let it be until I'm pushing or I'm about to push. And she moves Sy out of the way, she says he needs to go to the other side. And so then that leg is like, no one's there to hold it.

So I think I asked her, I said, “Can somebody hold my legs or something?” She was standing right there and she said, “I don't hold legs.” And so at that point I had to hold my own leg. And I was like, I mean, I've never done this before, but this seems weird. So, but the kind of aggression and the animosity with which she said it, I was like, “Yep, my Spidey-sense was right. I don't know why, but this just doesn't feel right.” So after the fact I talked about this with Jenn and Jenn was like, “Yeah, I've never seen that before.” I don't know if you have additional thoughts, but that was just one experience where I was like, yeah. Ah [laughs].

Jennifer Reynoso Ng: Yeah, I had said that I'd never seen that before. Because usually it is kind of part of the process. Particularly in a hospital, you don't necessarily need somebody to hold your legs, but in a hospital setting when you're on your back, like that is what they do. And for the most part, nurses just do that. That's just part of their job. Usually I'm on one side, nurse is on the other, the partners by the head if there's a partner, right? That's just kind of the deal that happens in hospitals. And so like Gabrielle said, it was just her unwillingness and then just the animosity in which she said it was very, very strange. Luckily, she, I think left or was just like doing some charts, but yeah, that was really unfortunate and I'm sorry that that happened to you.

Gabrielle Apollon: Thank you. I guess a question, and I think this was a question that Jonathan mentioned before. Are there any other differences that you sometimes see in the treatment of your White and or Black clients? Because I think for us sometimes we're like, “is this in my head?”

Jennifer Reynoso Ng: Yeah, absolutely.

Gabrielle Apollon: A lot of times you're wondering, but I know you've been there in the same facilities seeing different clients be treated. So just curious about that.

Jennifer Reynoso Ng: I think the thing that comes to mind the most for me is that when someone questions something or has a problem or makes requests, if they're a person of color that is automatically seen as a more aggressive statement or it's met with a lot more resistance as opposed to my White clients. For example, I remember this particular hospital, I remember the first time I was at a birth with a White client, and she made all these requests, all the nurses were super happy to serve her all these things. And it was like, there were no problems. I was like, “Wow, this is an experience.” Because I think I was there I think not even two weeks ago at the same hospital with a Black client and it was night and day. She had to repeatedly ask for what she needed, she wasn't listened to.

And so when that happened, I was like, “Yeah, you can't deny this.” And it's not in your head [laughs]. It's not in your head, we see it.

Jonathan Walton: In those moments, what does advocacy look like with all of that in mind? What does it look to advocate for your clients?

Jennifer Reynoso Ng: For me, advocacy and my clients, it starts before we get into the room because we have to prepare for that. One, it's like knowing that this is a reality and what you might face. So that starts with clients taking their childbirth education classes and us talking about it in our prenatal meetings and practicing things to say if these situations arise. In the hospital, I tell clients that they are to speak for themselves. I don't necessarily speak for on their behalf unless like it's absolutely needed and, or after repeated requests are not listened to, but making sure that they have the time to one, decide what it is that they want, and then communicate those desires to their doctor. Say for example, the doctor comes in and they want to break the client's water, which is a very common intervention that is offered and let’s say you want to wait. So asking for more time.

If the doctor's resistant, I usually tell clients, Hey, can they have a moment to think about it, just so you have time to discuss it with your partner without the doctor present. Because that also, there's a power dynamic there. You can't openly discuss your concerns and feelings when you know this person is just sitting there waiting on you to make a decision that you know that they want you to make. And so asking for that space I think is important, so then you can then go back and ask and make that request for more time if you need it.

Sy Hoekstra: Regroup and do it more maybe forcefully.

Jennifer Reynoso Ng: Yes.

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah.

Gabrielle Apollon: And it's just helpful to know that that's an option. Because everything feels so urgent in hospital settings that you're like, “Okay, I must do this now.” And then someone's like, “Hold on, you might be here for like legitimately 28 hours,” AKA my birth [laughter].

Jennifer Reynoso Ng: Yeah, that a, yeah.

Gabrielle Apollon: Yeah, Go ahead.

[laughter]

Jennifer Reynoso Ng: No, no, I was going to say that's a good point because yeah, the urgency piece. And I think that's why people just kind of be like, “Yeah, yeah.” Because of course nobody wants to put themselves in harm or their baby in harm's way. But they throw that at you like that's something that you want to do, and it's a fear tactic, but…

Sy Hoekstra: Like not listening to them is equivalent to putting your baby in harm's way. So if you're questioning them or anything, then you're going to get hit with that thought from them. And then that thought just comes, it's like racism makes the pathway for that thought a lot smoother, right?

Jennifer Reynoso Ng: Yeah.

Sy Hoekstra: It's like you don't care. You're less caring or less, I don't know, maternal or less thoughtful or whatever because you're one of our Black patients.

Gabrielle Apollon: I was going to say, I think one of the things… we keep talking about this article, so everyone should read it, but one of the things that it mentioned was because you're constantly thinking you have to think about the racism, you have to think about your child's health, you have to think about all these things, even when you do want to advocate or you do want to ask more questions, you are thinking about how you're going to be perceived, like Jenn, you were mentioning. So you're thinking, okay, is this going to make me seem, and I felt like this practically every time I had to encounter somebody who was not my OB because I did pick an OB who was a Black woman who I really like thanks to Jenn's recommendations.

But there are lots of other people that you have to navigate and interface with. But I'm thinking, okay, is this one question too much? Is this going to make them dislike me? Is this going to make them, like, is this going to perpetuate stereotypes that will make me have worse care? And those are all questions that you're like, oh my gosh, this is overwhelming.

Sy Hoekstra: Along those lines, Gabrielle, one of the things then that I think that Jenn did that was super helpful was like, this isn't, maybe not directly advocating, but like all the stuff that she did to make you comfortable. Like puts you in a position where it makes it easier for you to, like when some of your needs are already taken care of, or like when you have people there who are going to back you up or whatever. For instance, the moment we got into the room, Jenn just went to work. Like opening all the cupboards, figuring out where the hot packs are, you know what I mean? Doing a bunch of things to get us in a position to just focus on you and what you need and not have to rummage around or ask more questions of the nurses and doctors.

 Just taking a bunch of that burden off of you, I think is another way that then allows you to do the advocacy that she has already prepared you to do. Would you say that that makes sense?

Gabrielle Apollon: Totally.

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah.

Jennifer Reynoso Ng: Yeah. A big part of what I tell people is, yes, you can have a doula at your birth, but if you don't trust your doctor, there's only so much that we can do as doulas. And so that is really the number one priority, finding a provider that you feel comfortable with, that you feel heard and seen with. I can tell…So I had a client once who, I had that conversation with her. We were discussing her doctor, and she was like, “I don't love her.” And I was like, “Well, you don't have to stay with her. You can always change.” But this particular client had a particular condition where she was seeing other specialists, and because of her insurance, it was just too hard to change doctors. And I get that. And so I said, okay, that's fine. We will just, we'll do the best that we can.

And sure enough, the feelings that this client had about this doctor played out in labor, where she was progressing beautifully, her contractions were coming, she was completely without any interventions, and we get to the hospital. She was doing fine and things were progressing and the doctor asked to break her water. And we were like, “Oh, we're progressing and things are fine. We'll just wait. Let's just wait.” And she did give us more time, but then she came back again in an hour or two and was more insistent about wanting to break her water. And we were like, “There's nothing wrong.” But even having to have that interaction with her doctor completely stopped her labor. Like her labor just stopped because she was put under unnecessary stress.

When your body is in stress or fight or flight mode, that will stop your labor because your labor, in order to give birth, you need to feel calm, you need to feel safe, you need to feel secure. And that is the opposite of how this person made her feel. And so that was just one of like a really unfortunate example of how much these small interactions and things can really impact a person's labor.

Gabrielle Apollon: Yeah. I mean, I'm very grateful for the recommendation you gave me. And even to be fair, from the beginning I was like, “I'm going to find myself a Black woman, an OB,” and I had found one, and I actually asked the question, this was prior to your recommendation. I had asked the question how do you deal with the reality of Black maternal health outcomes? And she was kind of like, “Well…” didn't really respond openly, it felt like, or at least validated my concern. And I was like, this is interesting because you're a Black woman, and I don't know why that was such a weird interaction. And I was like, I'm not trying to have somebody who hasn't thought through this stuff, because that's constantly on my mind.

So I'm sure…I've heard good things, I'm sure she was totally fine, but that didn't sit right with me. And when I went to see the person that you recommended, she was just like, spot on ready, had done all this work, and I was like, okay, this makes me feel better. Because that doctor is also the one that's going to have to advocate for you when the other doctors are on call, have questions, when the nurses, et cetera. So I think that it really matters how are people actually equipped to deal with this particular issue? That being said, because it's in the news a lot more these days, people also… I was concerned when I was thinking about the other people that were going to provide me support. I was like, all right, how do I know if they're just going to be like, “Oh yeah, this is an issue,” but like, not actually have really grappled with it or whatnot.

And so I think I asked you this question or a combination or a version of this question. But my question for you is how can a Black woman determine that a doula is aware of and knows how to advocate for their Black clients as opposed to just providing lip service and saying, “Oh yeah, we know this is an issue?”

Jennifer Reynoso Ng: By asking them like you did and like you did with that doctor. And I think, that it's a really good point that just because a person is a person of color doesn't necessarily mean that they have thought through this for themselves and are aware of it. And that there's a variety of reasons for that. And going back to what you said earlier when you shared your experience in the hospital about having a Spidey-sense. When you interview a doula or you're interviewing your doctor or anybody, you can ask them outright and see how they respond. Does it make them uncomfortable or are they comfortable talking about it? Have they thought it through? That'll give you a good sense of whether this doula is the right fit for you and will also give your doula a good idea if they're the right one for you too.

I think you can get a lot from those initial interviews when you speak to a doula, and again, just kind of, you're kind of looking to just connect and look for someone who you can trust, so relying on your intuition, your Spidey-sense if you will. Other questions you can ask about, you can ask about where they trained or why they took the training they took or why they got into this work. Those are great questions to ask when you're interviewing someone.

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah. It sounds a little bit like just being unafraid to ask those questions. Like just be straightforward with what you need and see what the response is. I think that's good advice.

I want to talk about how partners can be helpful. And I should be clear that when I say partners, I don't just mean husbands because A, you could have a queer couple, but B, you could also just have anybody with you at the hospital. It could be your cousin or sibling or mom or whoever. How can partners be helpful as advocates? And a question for me in particular, White partners, how can we be helpful as advocates when we are trying to help out birthing people of color? And I'll just say briefly, I think this question's important because not everybody has access to a doula or not everybody has, someone like that they can bring in. So what's your advice for us?

Jennifer Reynoso Ng: Yeah, I think partners are key because you know your partner best. Be clear on what your partner's needs and desires are, and don't hesitate to communicate that to your doula or your providers or whoever is on the birth team, whoever you select to be on your team. And that goes with if a person is birthing either by themselves, thinking through who is a friend or a family member that you can kind of bring along with you on this journey if hiring a doula is not feasible. The good thing is that in New York City now, they are paying more attention to this and there are quite a few programs that are providing access to doula care for certain people who live in certain neighborhoods. That's an option too. So different community organizations like Healthy Start in Brooklyn, the Bronx Health Link.

And now there's a whole citywide doula initiative that has partnered with a bunch of doula agencies across the city to be able to provide free or low cost doula services to clients of color in particular neighborhoods. So yeah, tapping into those community resources. I would also say educating yourself on the process as much as you can. And remembering that also you're going through your own process with this life change. So being mindful of that and getting the support for yourself too, whether it's another family member or a friend. Making sure that you are at your best so that you can support your partner too.

Sy Hoekstra: The education thing is key, like getting a good comprehensive probably multi-part birthing class. Boy, I learned a lot [laughter]. And there are lots of birthing classes that get offered to you that are just like two and a half hours at a hospital. No, not enough [laughter]. There's so much stuff to learn about just the labor and delivery process. Forget the actually taking care of the baby process [laughs].

Jennifer Reynoso Ng: Yeah. And the thing about the hospital classes is that they just teach you how to be a good patient at the hospital. It's not comprehensive as you said. So there's lots of really great community organizations that offer that more comprehensive education.

Gabrielle Apollon: And I will say, especially in the, but those comprehensive classes, there's so much information that gets thrown at you that I was like, okay, thank goodness I'm not the only one that has to try to remember everything. Sy thankfully has a better memory than me and there were things he'd be like, “Ah, yes, they said this in the birth class.” And I was like, “Phhew, glad you remember that because I definitely don't.”

[laughter]

Gabrielle Apollon: So having someone go through that with you was really helpful. So we've mentioned just these statistics, these articles, just the fact that, I think for good reason Black maternal health outcomes are being discussed more. But that being said, that does bring a lot of fear and anxiety and trepidation to the people who as like me, who are the “subjects” of those stats and whatnot that you're like, oh, the stats and the outlook is kind of terrifying. And as I mentioned before, I had a lot of fear and anxiety and my mom had some childbirth complications. So you're coming into this experience that's supposed to be beautiful and amazing and whatnot with a lot of and I would say probably justified fear.

So I'd love to know Jenn, how do you balance kind of talking or thinking about these issues with your Black clients and the reality that confronting these things and addressing these can create stress, which as you said, you don't really want as you're going through this process. And how do you do that without taking away from the joy and the happiness component that is supposed to also accompany this process of having a child?

Jennifer Reynoso Ng: Yeah. I find that I usually don't have to bring it up. Because most people, especially if they are a person of color and they're looking for a doula, they know the statistics and they know the headlines. They know the stories that their friends have told them or things that they've witnessed themselves if they've ever attended a friend's or a family member's birth. So I make it my job just to make space to hear their particular concerns or worries and just try to be present with them through it. Obviously it's not something that we can solve in a day, but being able to attempt to make people feel seen, known, and loved is my goal in these conversations. I'm human so I don't get it right a hundred percent of the time, but that's what the standard should be in any type of care.

It's what Jesus says, it's how people feel when they meet with him. So being able to meet someone in their place of fear and anxiety of just being present with them and walking through it I think is how I just try to walk with them through it. And along with that, I think we have to intentionally center joy. The theme of this year's Black Maternal Health Week was, “our bodies belong to us: restoring Black autonomy and joy.” You have to make it a choice to center joy. Especially as followers of Jesus, we have access to this joy even if our lives are falling apart and the world is on fire as it often is, we still have access to this joy. And I don't mean this in a toxic positivity way, [laughter] you know what I mean? Like it could be, I don't know.

These past few years were really hard, and I feel like I've personally just started to understand what it means to have joy in every circumstance. So trying to remind clients to stay present. I like to open my prenatals with clients making or just saying what they're grateful for that day and centering joy without dismissing the pain. Because I think that's often what happens in church. We just try to pretend the pain isn't there, but it is. But we can have joy too.

Jonathan Walton: Absolutely. And so like Gabrielle was just talking about how the fear is very real and she said earlier that she'd never been in a church setting where this was brought up at all. So how do you think the church can support Black women on this journey of motherhood beyond just talking about it [laughs]? Are there concrete steps that church and spiritual leaders can take?

Jennifer Reynoso Ng: [exhales] Yeah. This is a hard question.

Jonathan Walton: Big sigh [laughter]. No worries; go ahead.

Jennifer Reynoso Ng: Well, I think partly because it depends on the church. But I think one, in recognizing that microaggressions and aggressions exist in churches too. So I think it all starts with being mindful of your biases and actually listening to people, listening for what they need instead of assuming for them. I don't know. I need help with this question Gabrielle.

Gabrielle Apollon: Oh, I have thoughts.

[laughter]

Gabrielle Apollon: Well, I think one of the things I was thinking about and the reason I was like, oh, wow, I've literally never heard this talked about. And I think we should probably say like, I have gone, I did grow up going to Black churches as a kid and then was mostly at I mean predominantly White churches. And I think about some of the things that we've more recently started to talk about related to motherhood, right? So I think we hear a little more about infertility, adoption, fostering, things like that, which I think are wonderful that we're expanding the scope of what it means to grapple with this journey of either motherhood or parenting. But the fact that I have never heard [laughs] anybody acknowledging the differences, and I think the intersectionalities in terms of motherhood and race and all of those things, I think speaks volumes.

And I think it especially speaks volumes after people have had these experiences, but might not have the spaces to talk about it. I think back to what you were, I think Sy mentioned earlier about Jenn giving me the space to talk about this, including what happened with this nurse and whatnot and making… I think one of the things that could be useful is one, for pastors and staff to really understand these realities. To understand that this is what various members of your congregation might be experiencing or grappling with as you ask how they can pray for you, as you ask how things went after, et cetera. But making room for that. And I'm going to leave maybe some more space for Jonathan as one of these kind of spiritual leaders to maybe share as well. But I think that's a big part.

But also I think that as we know, a lot of churches need to step up and do more related to social justice and speak out against these things. So I don't think that it should just be doula's work to fight and advocate for, or even doctors to fight and advocate for change in these practices. I think you should be discipling the doctors in your congregation, the people in your congregation about these realities and including in conversations about structural racism and things like that.

Jonathan Walton: Yeah, I think what's interesting about this question is the reality that it isn't just Black maternal health. It's we live in a downstream of a spirituality that has divorced the embodiment of our faith. So we could replace Black maternity with a lot of issues, just slot in the injustice. And I actually think one of our listeners, Pastor in Residence Mercedes Buchanan, when she brought up the Black maternity article from New York Times from the pulpit, she actually said, “I have never heard this mentioned before, and I am mentioning it.” And we had a segment for our service that was dedicated to thinking through and praying for Black mothers. And that is an outlier among outliers, right? So I think the minimum is mentioning, but when we do mention, hopefully that creates this space for someone to share an honest prayer request, not a filtered prayer request for the people that…I know they're going to receive that and not be as opposed to actually sharing what's going on. And so prayerfully after that space is created, the genuine space is created, then folks will step into that. Not just Black moms, but the door would open wider for people to bring their real burdens to one another in community as Jesus invites us to do.

Sy Hoekstra: To be way less spiritual and way more how I think, you could pay for stuff. Churches could…

Gabrielle Apollon: Boom [laughs].

Jonathan Walton: This is also true.

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah. Pay for somebody's doula. Pay for somebody's birth education class. Help them get all the diapers and the eight million things you have to buy while you're eight months pregnant.

Jonathan Walton: Yeah, canceling medical debt is a real easy thing.

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah, uh huh, yeah.

[laughter]

Gabrielle Apollon: Well, and I've seen Jenn, like you and other birth workers will sometimes do GoFundMe’s for clients who are in real need, and what would it look like for churches to come alongside and help support a birthing collective so that people can get these advocates that they really do need.

Jennifer Reynoso Ng: Yeah.

Jonathan Walton: Amen to that.

Sy Hoekstra: Okay. So something that I think Gabrielle and I learned a ton about during this whole process was there's a sort of hierarchy among birth workers with OBs and other doctors at the top. And then there's kind of midwives who's, especially like their home birth work is sort of looked down upon. And then you have doulas who most of the time are not even covered by insurance [laughs]. And I'm wondering what places you see for more movement and collaboration among birth workers, both to just support individual clients or programs in hospitals, but also for systemic advocacy. Have you seen any of that, or do you see a place where that could happen?

Jennifer Reynoso Ng: Yeah. So yes, this artificial hierarchy does exist. But I think in order for there to be collaboration, it can't be a hierarchy. That's the issue. And I think because of the way that birth has been medicalized over the last century or so and particularly how Black midwives in the South were intentionally erased from the picture, even though they were the ones who trained doctors back in the day. That's where the knowledge came from. Now, the way that to be an OB obviously, you have to go through college, through med school, through residency. There's this whole process and they're very highly educated and they're very highly trained, and they're very, very valuable. Their contribution and knowledge is so needed. But they also, they're a specialty.

They're a part of the picture. They focus on complications, they focus on high-risk births. And that is needed for the people who need that type of care. But somehow we got to the point in our society now that everybody is being viewed through this lens and everybody doesn't need to. For the most part, most pregnant people are healthy. Pregnancy isn't necessarily a sickness, it's just a life event. It's a transition, it's a life stage change, and that's just not the way that it's seen in the healthcare system. The healthcare system is for people who are sick. So now we have this factory approach where everyone is being treated as if they're high risk. And that is part of the reason why we see all of these poor outcomes because it's creating all of this unnecessary stress.

So where I see room for collaboration, it has to start with a mindset change of doctors. Yes, they have their knowledge, but the person who is giving birth has their knowledge too. They're an expert on themselves. So there has to be more of a partnership as opposed to, “Hey, this is what you need to do,” and that's it. Like of being able to walk with people through their care and taking them into account as an individual person. That is the midwifery model of care. And there are midwives who work in the hospital too, but again, they are working within the system so there are constraints.

Sy Hoekstra: Just because this is not something that I knew before I got into learning about this stuff, when you say everyone's being treated like they're high risk, what you kind of mean is just everyone's in a hospital. You don't go to a hospital otherwise unless you have problems. And birth in and of itself is not a problem [laughs].

Jennifer Reynoso Ng: Right.

Sy Hoekstra:  Is that that kind of what you're getting at? Like a lot of people give birth at home and then they just give birth at home and everything's fine and there's no doctors involved.

Jennifer Reynoso Ng: Yeah. So like I said, OBs are trained in the high risk complications of birth. Again, knowledge that is needed. Midwives are trained in the normal part of birth, in the normal development of birth in a person who is otherwise healthy and has no other complications. A person like that does not necessarily need to be seen by an OB in high-risk care. But because there's so much fear surrounding birth in our society and the narrative that is talked about, people think that they need to be seen by an OB for the myriad of reasons of things that can go wrong. And while yes, things can go wrong, but your midwives are also well equipped to be able to catch those things and refer you to other care if you need it.

I think one of the big difference between the different models of care, if you're OB, you have like five minutes appointment once a month and it's like you barely really have time to kind of answer questions. A lot of times and oftentimes they work in really big practices and you're not sure who's going to be delivering your baby on the day of. But in midwifery care, whether you're getting that at the hospital or at home you often have more time with your midwife. Those appointments last about an hour, and they just go into more in depth of what's happening and just care for you in a more holistic manner. Because again, this isn't just a medical event, it's a life change. It's a transition. They're supporting you emotionally, physically and looking at you as a whole person as opposed to just this one narrow view.

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah.

Gabrielle Apollon: So I feel like I'd be remiss if I didn't explicitly say again, how amazing of a doula you were and how much you transformed, I think, my experience. And so thank you again. But because you were such an amazing doula, I want to know kind of who your mentors were, are, who your teachers are in this work and kind of why you chose to follow their lead in particular.

Jennifer Reynoso Ng: Yeah. So as I mentioned earlier, I did my first training with Ancient Song Birth Services. They’re a birth justice organization in Brooklyn led by Chanel Porchia. And yeah, I was drawn to that training because like I said, after my birth experience and having a doula, I was like, how do other people give birth without doulas, and how is this not accessible to everybody? So they really focused their training on working with those in marginalized communities and centering them. That's what drew me to the work there because I knew, again, if I was going to be a doula, that was going to be my focus and where my heart was. I also did a mentorship program with Manhattan Birth and that's led by Tanya Wills and she's a home birth midwife here in New York City.

I don't know if you know guys know this, but most doula trainings are like a weekend [laughs]. And then they're like, “Go be a doula.” And I was like, “I need more training and support.”

Gabrielle Apollon: [laughs] What?

Jennifer Reynoso Ng: And so Tanya offers a year-long mentorship program for doulas and it's amazing. In that program you also get paired with a different mentor and you're just taught more of the nitty gritty logistics and just more comprehensive. Because again, even experienced doulas say this, every birth teaches you something new. Because no birth is the same, no person is the same. Even if it's someone's first, second, or third birth, each birth is different, each experience is different. So it's humbling in that way, and also I think awesome. But yeah, you're always constantly learning.

So they have that approach there in Manhattan Birth, and I really appreciate that. And the mentor that I was paired with while I was at Manhattan Birth is Emilie Rodriguez, and she is the founder of Ashé Birthing Services, and that's one of the collectives I'm a part of today. Emilie has a really big heart for community, and she also taught me a lot about self-care and honoring boundaries for sustainability in this work. And I think definitely without her guidance, I would have burned out by now. But since we mentioned churches giving money, Ashé has a community fund that we use to fund clients who can't pay for services. So if you're feeling moved, you can check out the website and donate there.

Sy Hoekstra: What's the website?

Jennifer Reynoso Ng: Oh, ashebirthingservices.com. I also did a mentorship program called Conscious Birth Collective. And that was specifically for doulas of color to be mentored by other doulas of color. That was also really a crucial part of my training and shaping of my work. My mentor there was Nicole JeanBaptiste, who runs SéséBirthingFreedom, and I think Gabrielle took some of her classes.

Gabrielle Apollon: I'm going to shout out culturally competent prenatal things, because I don't love exercise in general, and when I was pregnant Zumba was my primary form of exercise, and it gets a little, at least my Zumba class got a little intense. And then I found out that the Sésé collective did prenatal dance classes and apparently winding is very good for birthing exercises [laughter], and I...

Jennifer Reynoso Ng: Oh yeah, it opens up the hips.

Gabrielle Apollon: There you go. So, pro tip [laughter]. But I wouldn't have, I wasn't interested in prenatal yoga. I did have a great Pilates instructor. I'm going to shout her out, Erica. But I will say that those prenatal dance classes were it, and so, highly recommend. I'll stop there.

Jonathan Walton: Jenn, you've given so much, so much great information, and I know that there are more than what I'm about to ask you. But if an expecting mom could do three things to prepare for motherhood and for birth, what are just three pro tips that you would recommend?

Jennifer Reynoso Ng: I would say hire a doula [laughter]. But if that's not possible finding someone who can accompany you on this journey, even if they don't attend the birth in person. Someone who can kind of take a child birth ed class with you, or just sit with you and talk through some of these things that you're feeling, and someone who you feel safe with and can hold space for you. I'd say that's number one, identifying who that person is in your life. Two, I would say spend time with yourself. And what I mean by this is spend time journaling with your thoughts, spend time thinking about your dreams. For some reason, pregnant people tend to dream a lot. Just take notice of the things that are coming up for you and take the time to sit with maybe things that you've been pushing away.

Because chances are that they're going to come up for you at some point throughout the pregnancy or birth. Again, this is a transition and so transitions offer opportunity for us to reflect, to let go of things that are not serving us anymore and to make room for new things. And the last thing I'd say is remember your power. You know yourself better than anyone. You don't need anyone to tell you what to do, and you know what's best for you. And just start trusting yourself again. This is going to be crucial in your journey as a parent too.

Sy Hoekstra: Those are…

Gabrielle Apollon: I have this question, but I…

Sy Hoekstra: No, I was going to end us. You go.

Gabrielle Apollon: I just didn't know if there was anything else. Sy told me I wasn't allowed to ask more questions, but I…

Sy Hoekstra: Wasn’t allowed to, is that what I said?

[laughter]

Jennifer Reynoso Ng: We’ve got 15 minutes.

Gabrielle Apollon: I snuck one into the chat. Exactly. So I snuck one into the chat, but it's okay. You kind of answered it in the last question. But because these conversations can be so much about fear or anxiety I do want to know if you have any words of encouragement for Black women who are either pregnant or entering the stage soon.

Jennifer Reynoso Ng: I don't know why this is what's coming to mind, but I've been reading through the book of Nehemiah several times this year for some reason. But in there Nehemiah has to do this task. He has to approach the king, he's scared. So he feels the fear, but he does it anyway. And I think that has stuck with me in the last few years a lot. And when I've had things that I was afraid of doing, like even honestly becoming a doula, and now I'm starting the path to midwifery school, like I was afraid to do it. There's a lot of fear surrounding births, a lot of fear surrounding the unknown, childbirth, all these things. But it's okay to feel the fear and you can do it anyway. Particularly for people who follow Jesus, he is with you throughout every step of the way, and to remember that. Yeah, feel the fear, do it anyway and center joy.

Gabrielle Apollon: Actually, I love that you mentioned that. And the verse that comes to mind in light of what you shared is that Nehemiah 8:10, “The joy of the Lord is your strength.” What does that mean to bring that into this. Thank you.

Jennifer Reynoso Ng: Yeah.

Sy Hoekstra: Amen.

Jonathan Walton: Amen.

Sy Hoekstra: Jenn, where can people find you or your work online?

Jennifer Reynoso Ng: Yeah. So my website is waterlilybirthing.com. That's my doula page, and you can contact me if you're there. I'm starting a blog and will hopefully pay more attention to that soon [laughs]. So that'll be a space that I will just write about birth and my experiences and stories going forward. And you can also find me on Instagram at Jenn with two n’s Reynoso Ng.

Sy Hoekstra: Will the blog be on Waterlily Birthing?

Jennifer Reynoso Ng: Yep.

Sy Hoekstra: Cool. This has been fantastic. Thank you so much, Gabrielle, for co-hosting and for coming up with this idea. And thank you so much Jenn for being here. We really appreciate it.

Jennifer Reynoso Ng: Yeah, thank you for having me.

Gabrielle Apollon: Thank you for the work you do, Jenn.

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah. Thank you all so much for listening today. Just as a reminder like Jonathan said at the top, go to KTFPress.com/freemonth to subscribe to our Substack and get a free month at the beginning of it. You get our weekly newsletter with highlights for your discipleship and political education. You get the bonus episodes of this show and you support everything we do at KTF Press, trying to center and elevate marginalized voices as we leave colonized faith for the kingdom of God. As always, our theme song is “Citizens” by Jon Guerra. Our podcast Art is by Jacqueline Tam, and we will see you all in two weeks.

[The song “Citizens” by Jon Guerra fades in. Lyrics: “And that you’re building a city/ Where we arrive as immigrants/ And you call us citizens/ And you welcome us as children home/ Where we arrive as immigrants/ And you call us citizens/ And you welcome us as children home.” The song fades out.]

Sy Hoekstra: Look, Emma, I'm editing my podcast. [bumping noises from Emma touching the mic] Oh, that's the microphone.

Gabrielle Apollon: Can you say hi?

Sy Hoekstra: Say hi.

Emma: [a baby takes a deep breath and shouts] Hi!

[laughter]

Sy Hoekstra: Good job! Yeah!

Gabrielle Apollon: Say, “Welcome to KTF Press.”

Sy Hoekstra: That’s not the name of the show, but yeah.

Gabrielle Apollon: Okay. “Welcome to Shake the Dust. This is a KTF podcast something, something, something.”

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah, Emma, say that!

Gabrielle Apollon: [laughs] Can you say bye?

Sy Hoekstra: Say bye-bye.

  Emma: [shouting] Bye!

[laughter]

Sy reads his article that KTF Press just published about grief, inclusion, and the Substack platform.

Shake the Dust is a podcast of KTF Press. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Subscribe to get our newsletter and bonus episodes at KTFPress.com. Transcripts of every episode are available at KTFPress.com/s/transcripts.

Host

Sy Hoekstra – follow him on Twitter.

Our theme song is “Citizens” by Jon Guerra – listen to the whole song on Spotify.

Our podcast art is by Jacqueline Tam – follow her and see her other work on Instagram.

Production, editing, and transcript by Sy Hoekstra.

Questions about anything you heard on the show? Write to [email protected] and we may answer your question on a future episode.

Transcript

[A guitar softly plays six notes, the first three ascending and the last three descending — F#, B, F#, E, D#, B — with a keyboard pad playing the note B in the background. Both fade out as Jonathan Walton says “This is a KTF Press podcast.” There is a short pause, and then the intro piano music from “Citizens” by Jon Guerra plays briefly and then fades out]

Sy Hoekstra: Welcome to this  extra episode of Shake the Dust, leaving colonized faith for the kingdom of God. I’m Sy Hoekstra, here to read you the piece of mine that we just published at KTFPress.com. It’s called “Just Like Everyone Else: Grief, Inclusion, and Substack.” Alright, here we go.

Every day, I use a website for work that is a complete mess. The site boasts many features that are unusable. The way it presents data is often impossible to read. I click on links whose purposes are indecipherable just to figure out what they do, and some do nothing. I find workarounds, but I never know when the site will update and I’ll have to spend an unknown amount of time inventing a new way to get my work done. It feels like perpetual beta testing, except I’m the consumer, and things will probably never improve.

The site is the one we’re using to publish this piece (and this podcast), Substack, the product of a popular tech start-up. Most people don’t have the same experience with Substack that I do though. The difference is I’m working with a screen reader, the type of software many blind, dyslexic, and other people who have trouble reading print use to interact with computers non-visually. Effectively, screen readers alter the way we browse and use the functions on a computer so that everything is keyboard-based. They convey the information on the display to us via computer-synthesized speech or Braille so that we never need to see a screen. Software engineers and web developers can always create apps and websites in ways that permit screen readers to access them, but many don’t know how or don’t want to spend the resources (though the resources can be quite minimal). So  I often end up in situations where I  just make do with what I have. I’ve asked Substack’s tech support whether the company has any plans to remedy the problems, but they said they can’t speak to that.

As an aside, you might reasonably ask why we at KTF use Substack if it’s this challenging for me. And don’t we want all our content to be as accessible as possible for disabled consumers? The answer is that the screen reader experience on the customer side of Substack is passable, and some of the platform’s competitors are true accessibility nightmares. Plus, there are lots of other features and conveniences on Substack that work very well with what KTF does.

Of course, Substack would never have survived this long if its sighted users had anywhere near the experience that I do. No one would have taken them seriously or invested money in their company. But disability exclusion is casual and routine—something not worth consideration, if one even has the knowledge to understand that exclusion is happening (I didn’t write that explanation of screen readers for nothing).

The business minded will point out that screen reader users are a small fraction of Substack’s potential customer base, and have less than the average purchasing power to boot. So the investment in accessibility would likely not be profitable. It doesn’t survive the cost-benefit analysis.

Cynical, but accurate. Discrimination is often efficient. This is one of the reasons we have had to pass laws making it illegal. Sure, your desegregated lunch counter might lose its wealthier white patrons, but you have to serve Black people anyway. The inefficiency should be less important than people participating equally in society.

And with disability in particular, the inefficiency is never catastrophic. Legally (in the US at least—I don’t know about other countries), disability discrimination claims entail a cost-resource analysis. This is different from a cost-benefit analysis. The relevant question is whether the business can in fact afford to provide the accommodation that eliminates the discrimination. Over time, as more companies accommodate different abilities, there is innovation in how those accommodations happen, making them cheaper and easier to implement.

But the visceral, human side of all this policy chatter is what really matters to me. Because the psychological consequences of exclusion are deep and almost imperceptibly subtle. And note, I’m talking about exclusion now, in the broad sense. Not the type of discrimination, intentional or otherwise, which has a known solution. I mean the totality of all the ways that disabled people  have to live differently.

The forms of exclusion that seem like they can’t change amplify my emotions around those that can, but don’t. Imagine, for instance, a parent teaching their kid how to drive. A sibling, who is blind, sits in the back. There is nothing remarkable or surprising about this scene. It is still exclusion though. Yes, blind people can’t drive. But the obviousness—the cavalier, justifiable normalcy of the statement “Blind people can’t drive” is the point. I can’t. I just can’t. It’s a fact. Driving is an integral part of life, and I can’t drive. No one will think twice about it. I shouldn’t either. If I mention it, people will become awkward or confused, not knowing how to react.

The unrelenting, predictable ordinariness of a million different exclusions like this can become a diseased root from which too many thoughts and actions grow. And then coping mechanisms abound. I am adept at turning embarrassment, anger, and sadness into apathy, humor, and deflection. It is all too easy to convince others that I don’t mind them going off and doing that thing I can’t do. Really, I have more than enough to keep myself entertained; you go ahead. But these mechanisms are facades that crumble the moment I find myself participating in a new everyday activity.

One weekend in 2012, I bought an iPhone 4s. It was my first iPhone. A couple years earlier, Apple had taken the then-unprecedented step of adding an innovative new kind of screen reader to its touchscreen phone, and I was finally giving it a go. It seemed great, but just how revolutionary it was snuck up on me. I downloaded the New York Times app, opened it up on my usual Monday morning commute, and went down into the subway station. I started flicking through articles and listening to them in my headphones. On the train, I looked up at one point and saw the glow coming from all the other phones. That’s when it hit me: I was reading the news on the subway, just like everyone else.

When I was a kid and saw adults reading a newspaper in the morning, before smartphones, before people were really reading news online, it was another one of those things: I can’t. I just can’t. Then, all of a sudden, standing there on that subway, I could. I choked up.

The feeling I had in that moment is hard to describe. The closest thing is relief, but it’s complex. It’s a relief from the burden of not being able to do something most people can. It’s also a respite from the ever-present grief over being persistently forgotten and ignored. The attention, the time and care taken coding and crafting inclusion into hardware or an app are a declaration of value. They mean that meeting my needs is important to someone. In a way it’s an act of love, or justice, or both.

Right now, there’s no law clearly stating Substack can’t do what it’s doing. Somebody might eventually sue them. They might settle. They might fix everything. It happens from time to time. But man do I wish they would take the time now. It may not be profitable, aligned with their growth strategy, or a goal for this quarter. It would, however, be an undeniably good thing to do. And I would love to make my morning coffee, sit down at my computer, and know that I can simply start working, just like everyone else.

Thanks for listening. To learn more about what we do at KTF Press, or become a subscriber, please go to KTFPress.com. We’ll see you next week for a regular episode of Shake the Dust where we have a special guest, and my wife returns as a guest co-host. Gabrielle is back to talk about Black women and maternal health, and as always, to give me a hard time. It’s a great conversation. We’ll see you then.

[The song “Citizens” by Jon Guerra fades in. Lyrics: “And that you’re building a city/ Where we arrive as immigrants/ And you call us citizens/ And you welcome us as children home/ Where we arrive as immigrants/ And you call us citizens/ And you welcome us as children home.” The song fades out.]

Returning guest Irene Cho talks to Jonathan and Sy about financial education in marginalized communities, particularly for young people. They discuss the ways courses for marginalized students about money have to contrast with traditional programs, helping people build wealth without teaching them to love wealth, mental health and family dynamics around sharing money, and a lot more! This conversation, as always with Irene, is a lot of fun. Enjoy!

Shake the Dust is a podcast of KTF Press. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Subscribe to get our newsletter and bonus episodes at KTFPress.com. Transcripts of every episode are available at KTFPress.com/s/transcripts.

Hosts

Jonathan Walton – follow him on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

Sy Hoekstra – follow him on Twitter.

Our theme song is “Citizens” by Jon Guerra – listen to the whole song on Spotify.

Our podcast art is by Jacqueline Tam – follow her and see her other work on Instagram.

Production and editing by Sy Hoekstra.

Transcript by Joyce Ambale and Sy Hoekstra.

Questions about anything you heard on the show? Write to [email protected] and we may answer your question on a future episode.

Transcript

[An acoustic guitar softly plays six notes, the first three ascending and the last three descending — F#, B, F#, E, D#, B — with a keyboard pad playing the note B in the background. Both fade out as Jonathan Walton says “This is a KTF Press podcast.”]

Irene Cho: We want to promote how to buck the system without striving for the system. How do we help them understand the blockages and obstacles that are in place? How do we help them maneuver around that? But also, how do we help them understand that this is a system that we unfortunately have to work in because this is what has been set up.

[The song “Citizens” by Jon Guerra fades in. Lyrics: “I need to know there is justice/That it will roll in abundance/ And that you’re building a city/ Where we arrive as immigrants/ And you call us citizens/ And you welcome us as children home.” The song fades out.]

Jonathan Walton: Welcome to Shake the Dust, leaving colonized faith for the kingdom of God. I am Jonathan Walton.

Sy Hoekstra:  And I'm Sy Hoekstra. We are going to have a fantastic conversation today about money and financial literacy in marginalized communities. We have an incredible guest here with us to have that conversation, a returning guest in fact. But before we get to that really quickly, please remember, if you like what we do on this show and you want to support us, please go to KTFPress.com. Consider becoming a paid subscriber on our Substack. That gets you the bonus episodes of this show. That gets you the whole archive of all of our newsletters and everything. That gets you our full free weekly newsletter, where Jonathan and I send you highlights from media that will help you in your discipleship and political education. So, please consider going to KTFPress.com, becoming a subscriber, and you can always get a free month by going to KTFPress.com/freemonth—free month to start your subscription. Okay, Jonathan, please tell everyone the wonderful person that we have back with us today on the show.

Jonathan Walton: We have Miss Irene Cho, who has over 29 years of experience working with and leading youth, young adults, leaders, and families. She speaks nationally, internationally, has written numerous curricula, consults for churches and organizations on engaging youth, youth culture, community development, and racial justice issues, and is an advisor on many organizational boards. She is qualified to talk to us and for you to follow her [laughs]. Let's be clear about that. Irene has helped developed a financial literacy course aimed at marginalized students, and I'm just, I'm really, really grateful that I can pass something on besides Dave Ramsey. Thank you so much, Irene, for being here.

[laughter]

Irene Cho: We avoid trying to incorporate Dave Ramsey as much as possible.

Jonathan Walton: Absolutely.

Irene Cho: And by as much, I mean, 100 percent [laughs].

Jonathan Walton: Yes. Yes. So much shade. No, no hesitation right there. So much.

Irene Cho: No hesitation!

Jonathan Walton: No hesitation [laughs]. And so with that, again, thanks for being here. What motivated you to create the Future Profits course, and what are its goals?

Irene Cho: Okay. So thank you so much for having me. I love being here and having these great conversations with y’all. I, technically speaking, didn't create the course. The organization that I work for, which is Able Works, they've been around for 15 years now. And my boss, the CEO and founder of the organization, John Liotti, really launched the organization with the mission and value of creating economic justice or fighting for economic justice in marginalized communities and under-resourced communities. And the launch of that was several fold in that they, in the city called East Palo Alto, which is now where Facebook is located. For those of you across the country to not know the context, there is a famous city called Palo Alto, which is where Stanford University is located. It is a very, very wealthy community neighborhood.

Right next door, there is a small little enclave called East Palo Alto, which they fought for to create their own community. So the history of East Palo Alto is really amazing and awesome and fascinating, all wrapped into one. One of the issues though, it was very heavily black. It has shifted now to be predominantly Latine. But one of the elements of it was that they didn't have a financial institution. They didn't have a credit union, they didn't have a bank, and so everybody from East Palo Alto had to drive 15 minutes over into Palo Alto and use banking institution, financial institutions over there. So Able Works, my boss really launched off by creating a credit union. And then from there, seeing the need amongst young people, really they were 15 years ahead of the time because there was no such thing as teaching about financial education.

I was not taught financial education information, any of those things. So they developed a curriculum that was to go into high schools and began delivering information to high school students. So it has gone through, I believe we're on our fourth iteration at this point. And so me coming in with curriculum writing background, I think it's been developing well. But over the course of the last iteration which was divided into four units, a lot of the teachers were saying they wanted a bit of a more buffet, pick your topic, type of a la carte type of thing. So we did an evaluation, and now we have 17 lessons. So it's a 20 lesson overall, but we do an intro, and we do two concluding for each semester. So as like a recap, we do Jeopardy games, they get very competitive. The kids are like, love it [Sy laughs].

Jonathan Walton: That’s awesome.

Irene Cho: They're screaming and yelling, lots of correction if the question is wrong [Sy laughs]. They learned, right? So that's just so fun to see. But it's really 17 lessons overall that we felt were the core crucial lessons for what we are trying to deliver and teach in the high schools that we are delivering at. So we're in several different locations all across Northern California and Central Valley, so we have two regions that we serve. Yeah, so we've got about a thousand students in Central Valley, we've got about 500 students in the Bay Area.

Sy Hoekstra: That is awesome. So we have seen a couple of the, well, a few of the lesson kind of guides, the plans. Lesson plans. Boy, am I not a teacher that I couldn't think of that word [laughter]. I have a lot of family who are teachers, constantly talking about lesson plans. And they are quite different than a lot of the other things that you see out there for teaching financial literacy. Can you talk to us about how it's different than what else is out there?

Irene Cho: Yeah. So financial literacy is technically not a new thing because banks have them written. They have their own curricula, I believe Intuit, who does TurboTax, they have a curriculum. Dave Ramsey, I believe has a youth curriculum. And then there are two online courses, one called Next Gen Finance, and then EVERFI, and then Jump$tart also. But Jump$tart is a little bit more focused on the teachers. So if any econ teachers, et cetera, want to take Jump$tart really focuses on training the trainers type of deal. The issue is none of these curricula addresses a lot of the systemic issues that exist for the financial situation that our students are in. So Next Gen Finance, I do want to say, because Tim Ranzetta has been very gracious in somewhat partnering with us and having conversations with us.

He also taught in East Palo Alto and saw the need there. So Next Gen Finance is actually a larger organization than we are, because we are really focused on just delivering in our, the local community that we're serving in the two regions. And so Next Gen Finance, because their objective is a bit wider of a net, they do have subsections and sub chapters, somewhat naming the systemic issues, but they do not deliver that directly in the classrooms. I understand they're in the south, I believe they teach some curriculum in the south, and we do know what's happening all across certain red states rejecting “CRT” content, which is not what we are. But we're not… you know. We know. I know that you know and all of us know.

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah, yeah.

Jonathan Walton: Yes.

[laughter]

Irene Cho: So because of that stickiness, they have it as a subset, an additional supplementary information, our curriculum is straight in there because we just basically, we don't care [laughter]

Jonathan Walton: Amen.

Irene Cho: because we want to basically name the factualities.

Obviously, we don't villainize anyone. It's not pointing fingers saying that, “Hey, this is your fault,” or anything. But we do name the systemic elements that exist. Like we have a lesson on housing, and so we do talk a bit of the redlining and also the classism that exists of why there's limited housing available, especially in areas like the Bay Area. There's literally a video from NowThis news naming Menlo, Atherton. Naming Atherton, basically which is where Steph Curry lives. And we saw the news, I don't know if some of you saw the news about Steph Curry blocking multiple housing buildings to be built in his neighborhood, et cetera. And low-income housing being built in Atherton, which is right a subset of Palo Alto. And so this is a very prevalent issue in the Bay Area.

And so one of the things that we really name are those systemic elements that need to be discussed. Again, rightly named as well as then how do we overcome this and what can you do about it? Some of the other parts is culturally speaking, a lot of immigrant families, Asian families, Latine families, they're very suspicious of financial banking institutions for legitimate reasons. And we don't, again, we don't shame any of that, we just name it. We validate their suspicions, a lot of like naming it because this is a curriculum to the students. So we say a lot of your parents have come, or grandparents have come from situations that would cause suspicion of these financial institutions. Here's how in the US there has been some protection like the FDIC Insurance, the coverage, et cetera.

But we also say, that's why it's important for you to stay on your bank. We name how Wells Fargo, even though they are a grant sponsor for us [laughs], it did provide us a grant.

Jonathan Walton: Did they really [laughs]?

Irene Cho: But we name it, they've actually been a great partner. One of the few that, of banking institutions that have been actually involved and engaged in community development work. So it's this weird juxtaposition of the big corporate policies and actions that they have, and yet doing the work on the ground. This disconnect in this wide, very large, one of the largest banking institutions that exists.

Sy Hoekstra: Right.

Jonathan Walton: Right, of course.

Irene Cho: So, again, America… Capitalism, hooray. So they are, and we are transparent with the students that yes, we are sponsors and grantees of Wells Fargo, and yet we're also going to name historically that Wells Fargo did get caught with their pants down [Sy laughs] of like overcharging banking fees, et cetera, to certain family members. So we name these things in the curriculum as we deliver the lessons.

The other thing that's a little different about our curricula, is we have a very specific script that we provide to who we call our coaches. We don't call the people who deliver the lesson teachers because technically our folks are not certified, and we have volunteer folks. We have gracious, amazing volunteers who give their time. But we need to provide cultural education for them because the heart and the intention is very amazing and beautiful. The need to make sure we explain why it's important that we talk about what's the difference between a traditional bank versus a credit union, what benefits are there that exist. Really emphasizing why we need to talk about what is good debt, what is bad debt? What are the debts that really affect and impact families of color in particular, school loan debt, payday loan debt, all those things.

So we name that and we really, then we have another lesson that we talk about where to find money alternatively such as lending circles, which I knew nothing about. I only knew it according to our Korean word, that said—I didn't know that there was a terminology about that. It was just some weird subset thing that immigrant families do, and they have like this little group where they [laughs] they do. And now I'm like, “Oh, that's technically, officially called a lending circle,” and financial institutions can back it up et cetera. And so it doesn't become this weird mafia-esque type of [laughs] lending that exists. And so I know there are a lot of amazing organizations that are trying to legitimize lending circles to make it safer so that more families can find alternative ways outside of going to a traditional bank where they'll get either a high interest or rejected.

And so we also talk about credit unions and how a lot of credit unions exist in your communities now to support undocumented folks who need to open bank accounts, et cetera, and why that's a really good stable way to start building your equity and building your assets, et cetera. And then we talk a lot about, we talk about investments, we talk about insurance, why insurance is important. Again, coming from very immigrant family contexts, and kind of naming again, the cultural elements of insurance might seem like a scam, and technically it is somewhat, right? It's a necessary evil that exists in our life. And yet in California this past year we had extreme fires, which let's talk about Allstate, not… now coming…

Sy Hoekstra: Evacuating the state

Jonathan Walton: Yes, State Farm and Allstate, yeah.

Irene Cho: Yeah, they're not…

Jonathan Walton: …insuring homes anymore.

Irene Cho: Right. Oh gosh. So there's that, but there was a flooding. I mean, there was all these things and like our storms, I mean, tons of people had their cars damaged, houses damaged because of trees falling down, et cetera. So just naming the necessity of insurance, even though it might seem like a waste of money. And then the big lesson obviously is about what is the best type of savings and then how to budget well. What does that look like? And so in the budgeting lesson, we really love it because we do a case scenario. A lot of our students don't think that they need to go to college or don't think that they need to really think about it. Their career trajectory, et cetera, they're just like done with life because life has been really difficult. So they're like, “I'm just going to graduate high school, barely made it by the skin of my teeth, I'm going to go get a entry level job.”

So we have them go through budgeting in the two regions. What does it look like if you've got a $17 hour job? Now you're going to budget. And they're like, “Oh shoot, I cannot afford to live in this neighborhood. I can't afford to live in this community, unless I live with seven other people.” And so it was, because students, I think, they have this idealism. It's beautiful, I love it. We support that, but it's really like, how do we help them take that ideology that they have of the dream? And we really do that as well. One of the lessons we start off the whole entire curriculum with is them vision boarding, which for me as an Asian immigrant kid, I never understood the value of vision boarding. I was always like, “Don't ask me what my five to 10 year plan is. Ask God.”

Life has been completely unpredictable and awful, so why would I do a vision boarding? I don't even know what's going to happen next year, you know what I mean? But we talk about the value of that, and we name that the life you want to live. And every lesson from there returns back. If you want the life you want to live, you need to learn about good debt and bad debt. If you want to live the life you want to live, you need to know about good credit behavior. If you want to live the life you want to live, you need to know about how important budgeting is. You need to know about what kind of investments are a bit safer. So we constantly really motivate, not just, and I think that's a different element of our curriculum as well.

It's not just, “Hey, you need to know about this financial information.” All of this is tied together of like, you want to live that life? You want to buy a home, you want to go out and travel a lot? You want to provide for your family? You need to seriously think about all of these different topics that we're talking about because that's going to help you get to the life you want to live. And so we really base it on that foundation. And then even the housing element, which was kind of the most depressing topic for us here in northern California and Central Valley. For those of you across the country, I'm sure you have read many, many an articles about it. We are struggling in the state of California with housing prices being so exorbitant, so high and just out of control.

So we really, we're trying to help them figure out, okay, if you want to rent, like just asking themselves serious questions. Can you afford a house? What do you need? In the budgeting lesson, we talk about that where they, again, we do a scenario of, if you got a $17 hour job, if you got a $55,000 salary job, do a budget. What does that look like? Can you afford it? And so what was really exciting was the light bulb going up in students' minds that, “Oh shoot, I need to strive harder.” And that is the motivation, right? Because what is the motivation to get an A when your life is in chaos and your family structure is unstable and you're not sure what's going to happen tomorrow. Why does it matter to get an A in econ or history or whatever?

And so to give a value that school is important because it is going to help you get into a college that you'd like, and you're going to be able to find a major that not only hopefully fulfills you, but also provides a good economic stability. And then how do you take that income, and then how can we help you build equity through means by which are not too risky? We name that in investments that, a lot of your families probably think investing is gambling, but what does this look like? And so again, a lot of our curriculum is about naming the truths and trying to overcome some mental blocks and obstacles and cultural blocks and obstacles that students can start reframing things. Like we did the retirement lesson, which some of our volunteer coaches were like, this seemed too far away.

But students loved it. It was so powerful because we named for them, again, a lot of students from marginalized communities, we name it right at the gate. You probably need to think about two retirement plans. You need to think about the retirement plan for your parents and you need to think about retirement plan for yourself.

Jonathan Walton: Right.

Sy Hoekstra: Yep.

Irene Cho: Because a lot of us, let's name the truth, we are our parents retirement plan. And in the first lesson, we have them go through what we call money statements, and 100 percent. Every time it makes me so… it just makes me smile at the generosity and hearts of our students that even though they're financially struggling and they see their parents financially struggle, 100 percent of the money statement saying, “I want to make money so I can support my parents when I grow up.”

One hundred percent say “strongly agree” or “agree.” Nobody says “somewhat disagree” or “disagree.” They all want to. And when we ask them why did you chose the answer “agree” or “somewhat agree,” they're like, “Because our parents have sacrificed so much and we see that, so we want to pay them back.” And so in the retirement lesson, we named that, that all of you said that you wanted to provide for your parents when they get older, you need to think about retirement. And so we have them do a breakdown with you start retirement at the age of 25, here's how it's going to compound exponentially. Versus if you don't think about this and you start at the age of 40. And it was again, so eye-opening for them, and that's what we want. We want them to think about these things early on, because I didn't think about these things early on.

I didn't care. I was a very… even in my ways of serving the community, I was like, I don't need to care about money. But you absolutely need to care about money because how are you going to help others when you can't manage your own finances or you're barely making it?

Jonathan Walton: So you, one of the things that I love about what you're talking about, because you're focused on marginalization. Like can we bring people who live in these outside economic systems into the dominant system without losing themselves in it and being consumed by it? And so it sounds like your students don't have resistance to “I want to plan for my parents.” “I want a plan to take care of the people around me.” But your volunteers might have resistance to acknowledging the systems and structures.

Irene Cho: Right. I think that's… Yeah, I would say, again, it's a bit complicated. A lot of our volunteers come from wealthier backgrounds. Some of them have finance backgrounds. And so this is where the education is required, where we need to teach our volunteers the cultural elements of it. Because their heart is in the right place. They're like, oh, retirement's a bit too early for them because our students are 17, a few of them are 18, in the middle of their senior year. And so 18 is technically young. You don't actually start, I think most advisors say 25 is when you should start retirement planning. And they're going to be going to college, most of them, if not about half of them have the desire to go to college. And then some will start, try to launch a business or get some kind of entry job.

And so they really won't begin to think about this. But again, for us on our end, it's about planting seeds because we know it takes time to break cultural biases about which they've been ingrained and taught.

Jonathan Walton: Right.

Irene Cho: Also on the subset, we have what we call… so our program, our financial literacy program is called Future Prophets. It's a play on word in that it's also P-R-O-P-H-E-T, like prophet, like prophecy. So how can we help you have a prophecy of financial gain and economic justice for your trajectory? But we have a subset from our programs called Future Profit Clubs, where we meet with students who during their lunch hour where they come, we've got a good 20 students that come every Friday or whatever day that they choose, and we have a subject that we talk about mental health and money.

Sy Hoekstra: Which is so great.

Irene Cho: Right. And the objective is not to get wealthy, the objective is to gain control so that you feel like you have choices. That you know what decisions you need to make in order to get the life that you want to live. In order to accomplish that. In order to attain that, versus the other way, which is… and we say one of the top factors that harms families of color financially is lack of knowledge.

Jonathan Walton: Yes.

Irene Cho: And so you having information, even if you choose not to care about financial information, at least you know that you have chosen that path, versus you didn't know at all and you now wish at the age of 40, you look back and you're like, “Darn, if only I had known how important it was that I saved money.” Like I didn't know, and so I got into debt when I turned 18 because credit cards, I wasn't taught the correct information and I didn't understand. So now I tell students all the time, your credit score, that golden ticket, it's a golden ticket. It is more valuable, and I'm sorry to say this, it is more valuable than your virginity [laughter]. Like you need to guard your credit score with your life[laughter]. This is the thing. It's going to help you rent an apartment, it's going to help you get a car, it's going to help you get a home. It's going to help you get equity. You guard that. And that's, again, we talk about that in the good credit behavior and we name it. Like for some, I'm going to throw my at least Korean culture. I don't want to clump all Asians together. A lot of families, because of necessity, they use their children's social security. I have also been in this situation and it screwed up my credit.

Now, I know I didn't go through as much, but my friends have had their parents use their social security number to get loans and then defaulted. So they now have a bankruptcy on their credit score. And so it's like how do we help students, especially from immigrant families and marginalized communities, say have boundaries with their parents because they have control while also still giving space to be generous? Like to understand what does that look like? And how to help your parents begin to build their financial credit situation. So 60 percent of our students have given us feedback on the surveys we do with them. We do surveys with them, everything we do is data driven. We don't just “fill it out” which I know a lot of nonprofits tend to do [laughter].

One woman I met, she came from corporate world and went into nonprofit world. She's like, “It's very squishy in nonprofit world” [Sy laughs], And I was like, “that is the perfect word to describe nonprofit assessment.” So we do everything by data, and our students, 60 percent of our students have come back and said that they have shared what they've learned with their family members, which is amazing. One girl, she shared with us. She said, “My mom kept getting overcharged overdraft fees.” And she finally sat her mom back down and was like, “We need to figure out a budget. You need to stop wasting money by paying overdraft fees.” Because we talked about that in the banking lesson. And she said, it's been a month later and my mom has had zero overdraft fees from this point forward, and we've like really worked. And so for us it's not just impacting our students' lives, but it's impacting their family lives as well as hopefully their community lives.

Sy Hoekstra:  So one specific question I think about that, I think is interesting around mental health and family dynamics. Because there's this phenomenon I think in a lot of marginalized communities, where someone does go out and get a stable job with consistent income because they went to college or whatever. And there used to be a community, kind of what you were referring to before, where everybody just kind of lends to each other all the time. Like if you're in trouble, I'm going to give you some money to handle your emergency, and then when I'm in trouble and I have a financial emergency, you're going to lend to me and it just goes back and forth. And now all of a sudden, there's somebody who is only lending and never asking because they don't actually need the money anymore, or they don't need it as often or whatever.

And that creates a lot of times difficult family power dynamics and a lot of emotion. And so I think the mental health component of what you're doing is super interesting and important. And I just, I wonder if you've had to talk to students about that or what that's been like or what kind of advice you give around that.

Irene Cho: That's a great question. I think because our students are still young and only a handful of them are technically working right now…

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah.

Irene Cho: …they haven't felt the pressure or need to contribute to their family yet. We have a secondary program called Achievable, which we support community college students, usually first gen, in their first two years, so that they get set on the right trajectory. I did not know this before starting this position, that only 20 percent of community college students actually achieve their goals to transfer, complete an associates or certificate. So our program, we are at about a 75 percent success rate. They're on track to be successful, so we're really proud of that. But we do name that because we have to walk them through as they're doing community college.

Some of them have two jobs because they're helping pay rent and supporting their families. And so we name a lot of that mental health and talk about conflict management and boundaries and what that looks like. And so we go a little bit more in depth in our community college program and talking about what does it look like to make sure… in the budgeting lesson we talk about you have to pay yourself first, so we name that as well. We do use the 50/30/20 rule. I know that there's some just pushback on that, et cetera. [Jonathan inhales] Go ahead.

Jonathan Walton: No, you should… Some people may not know what that is, so…

Irene Cho: Oh, so if you look it up, when we talk about budgeting, it's pretty much the majority rule of thumb that's taught. Which is 50 percent of your budget should go to necessities like utilities, housing, food, 30 percent of your budget should go to wants. So anything that's like vacation or the new shoes you want to buy, whatever that's considered a want. Like you need a massage because your job is so stressful. Those all go under wants. And then 20 percent is your savings. And so it actually works, even though they call it the 50, 30 20 rule, it should work backwards because the ideology or philosophy is that the 20 percent you should pay yourself first. So you should put away 20 percent of your budget into savings. And so what we do is we do talk about the importance of that, and understanding that it is your money that you get to choose how you would like to distribute that out.

And again, it's not, we don't…. whereas other, I don't want to throw anyone under the bus, but there may be other financial curricula or teachings out there that say you should protect that money. What we want again to do, is to honor the cultural traditions and the cultures that you can provide for your family, but it is your choice to decide then if you're going to save 20 percent, that you can divide that up, 10 percent of that goes to your family, 10 percent of that goes to you, but it's just understanding the breakdown so that it's not just parents randomly asking for money here and there. A lot of our students choose to live at home even while they are in college or even while they're working. And so that means that their 50 percent of their budget goes to rent, which is supporting their family.

And it's just helping them understand… there's one video that I really loved, I forget the group's name, but they keep calling it Running the Numbers, and I really love that phrase. And so it's really helping students run the numbers to understand how much are you spending eating out? How much are you spending helping your parents pay for rent? How much are you spending, et cetera on these things. And just helping them break that down. And not shaming them, because I think a lot of western predominant culture aka predominantly white culture and privileged culture, and rural, white cultures are a bit different. We would consider them under resource as well. So, but the mentality that this is your money. This is my money, I've earned it, my family doesn't get to touch this.

And so kind of going back to your question, Sy, we don't want to shame that part. We want to honor it, but we want to help students understand that they are empowered. That they have the choice, and they just need to make the conscientious decision how much they want to sacrifice, how much they want to be generous, and how much they want to give. And that's okay, and that's good. It's being aware of what that looks like.

Jonathan Walton: Something that I really appreciate about what you're saying, is that it's empowering people to make a choice. Because so much of disenfranchisement, redlining, we are strategically hemming people in so that they don't actually have choices.

Irene Cho: Yeah.

Jonathan Walton: And so creating a space where people are empowered, we have choices, I think is great. The rub I'm wondering is, and this is a tension that I run into, is as I manage money and how I handle money, how do I not come to love money?

Irene Cho: Oh, yeah.

Jonathan Walton: And obviously, for us it's like we're trying to leave the accumulation, the greed, the goal of independence, at the expense of other people. And so how… I think you've mentioned it, but how does that look as people make their choices?

Irene Cho: That's a great question. So we do talk about how important it is in life to love what you're doing. It somewhat goes through, it weaves in and out in the curriculum, that money is not the be all end all that provides satisfaction. That you need to understand fulfillment in life, family relationships in particular, friendships, et cetera, all of these things. In the mental health club session, we talk about the sweet spot that exists and research has shown this. I've had friends who've done ministry work in very privileged high socioeconomic status communities, and the level of suicide, depression, isolation, abandonment, neglect, all of those things completely exists in those communities. My husband and I, while we watched Succession, we talked about this, where the level of, it's like [laughs] you're now in a state where you don't have to fight every day.

And what is it with humans than making their own problems and drama? Because it's like now that you don't have to fight tooth and nail for something and you have all this access, but you are dissatisfied, you then create this power dynamic, drama, struggle, fight for something that is somewhat unnecessary as well as… what's the word I'm looking for? It's not even false, but it's just, it's a puffed up element.

Jonathan Walton: It's construed.

Irene Cho: It’s construed. Thank you.

Jonathan Walton: It's totally construed. Yeah. Right.

Irene Cho: So you have that element of it. I mean, research shows there's a sweet spot where you don't want to be in such poverty that every day is such a struggle on the stress of your mental health. And there is a sweet spot by which you can live comfortably. You can have a cushion of savings and also allow space for generosity as well as being able to go on vacation. It's still like, it's so weird. Humans are so, we're so interesting, in that we do still require struggle. My husband and I, we talk about this too, psychologically speaking. There's a sweet spot. You don't want so much trauma in your life that it's like creating such harm that you cannot function, you cannot succeed. You're just struggling with all the elements of depression, anxiety, anger, bitterness.

And then the fallout of all of that, which all the choices that are made that we know about. And you don't want to be so without trauma that then you lack empathy, you have no compassion. You don't know what to do with your life, you're bored. All these things that exist when there's too much privilege, because you can't identify and understand other people's struggles and you're in this weird bubble. So there's a sweet spot of trauma as well [Sy laughs]. You need a bit, this is why people want to do marathons or do sport [Sy laughs]. This is why sports is so good, because there's technically a struggle that exists with athletics, right? You have to push yourself to gain control of that and push your body, and there's pain involved in there, but it's like good pain.

Which is so weird and anti-intuitive, but there's something glorious about that. Then you overcome that pain and you accomplish the thing that you set out. And so there's a sweet spot of finance as well where you're not quite so privileged that you don't have to think about it. Where your financial advisor can steal hundreds of thousands of dollars of money and you don't even know whether or not it came or went and all of these things, but you want this like cushion area that's like, okay, I have a good home and it's solid, and now I can think about how to raise my family in a healthy way, et cetera. So we really do promote that mentality with our students.

Jonathan Walton: Yeah. It sounds like, like my daughters will never know what it's like to be hungry.

Irene Cho: Right.

Jonathan Walton: They will never know that. And so we talk about how do you instill resilience in someone without suffering and trauma? And so you're really talking… I would call it strategic adversity.

Irene Cho: Yes.

Jonathan Walton: Like we got to go through some things without causing unnecessary suffering and harm. And so to bring your Succession point home, because I was literally having… I love Succession by the way. I love the show [laughter]. But to bring it home for people, it's like I've had conversations with people in the last few weeks where they have the degree, they have the money, and now they've lost their jobs, they’ve provided for. And their entire lives, they've been working to belong and to provide, and now they feel directionless. Because if they don't have to get a job to provide and they don't have to make money to belong, then what's the point? Because again, it seems like you're pushing people for concrete choices, in your vision boarding, is there a pattern or something that you've seen that a vision board leads to freedom? What does a vision board that leads to freedom look like [Sy laughs]?

Irene Cho: That is a great question because I, I was going to say I wanted to let you finish, but [laughs], I went through the same identity crisis in a little bit of a different way. I ended my last previous job, so I went through depression because things in my life finally settled down. My father had passed away, and then I didn't have this job position that I had had for 11 years, and we moved to a new community where I didn't know anybody. And I was like, I was trying to launch my company at that time, and I was having a really hard time with it because I, for the first time, did not know what motivated me to keep going. I was like, if I do not have external factors pushing me to set my day and set my agenda, what is me internally? What does it look like?

So it was really an internal question for me, of what it is that motivates me and drives me. Like, how can I find it internally? And I think we want to ask that question, that same question for students. Again, that's why even in the housing, we say to them, why do you want a house, in the housing lesson? You need to ask these questions. Did you say you want, is a house on your vision board because your family has told you this is what needs to happen? What is the motivation? So we do ask the philosophical question for them. Like as you think about what career you are going to choose, why do you want to choose going into tech? Why do you want to choose going into medicine? A lot of our students are wanting to become nurses, et cetera.

And because I think there's this belief or guarantee that that's a solid career. And so we just really ask… And if you enjoy that, then that's totally awesome. If you can find a career path that you find enjoyment in that also gives you the equity and stability that you need, then that's a match made in heaven. And we tell them as well, your career right now doesn't mean it's going to be your career necessarily for the rest of your life. You can have a career change in the middle, like as you progress. And then our community college program is really helpful. Like we've had several students, one student she wanted to do coding and she was going to go into tech. And then as she did it, she found she really does not enjoy it at all.

Sy Hoekstra:  Coding is very boring.

Irene Cho: It's very boring! And we helped her pivot, so now she's going into business major because she actually, she's been doing retail for her job. And she was like, “I really like managing people. I actually am really good at it.” She's finding out as a freshman and now she's a sophomore at community college. And so we've helped switch her through our academic advisor and what classes she needs to take. She's loving all of her classes now.

Jonathan Walton: That's awesome.

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah.

Irene Cho: And so it's that journey that we want to help students like in the majors with money thing, we also stress that just don't just strive after the money. Yes, you might be making $150,000, $200,000 out the gate if you do this, but you really need to ask yourself, what do you enjoy doing? And if you're just getting a job for the money, a lot of times it's not worth your mental health.

And so we do name that and we don't… I don't think we directly name that very profusely in every lesson, but we do name it as we say, the life you want to live, but then understanding as we unpack that. It's in every single, like there's the subtle message of it goes across because I think all of us understand that. Luckily all of our staff, program staff folks who deliver the lesson, they understand that. And so while yes, they also believe and they want to help their students gain economic mobility, they understand that you need to find fulfillment in the journey and in the process of all of that.

Jonathan Walton: I'm a fan.

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah.

Irene Cho: So we want to promote how to buck the system without striving for the system. That's really, at the end of the day, like when we were writing it, when I was editing it, that was my objective. Of like how do we help them understand the blockages and obstacles that are in place? How do we help them maneuver around that, but also how do we help them understand that this is a system that we unfortunately have to work in because this is what has been set up unless it collapses through an apocalypse and then we subvert and we start from the ground up [Sy laughs]. This is what's been set up for now. And so this is why in the, where do we find alternative money, we want to provide resources. Even for the housing lesson, we want to provide a list of resources that allow you to start with your equity.

But we name it too, like getting a house now in today's society, in the way the economy is working, having a house no longer guarantees an economic trajectory that it did 30 years ago or even 20 years ago, right? Because 2008 was dear Lordy, how long ago now? And so my husband and I live in Oakland right now, and we are constantly looking at houses. We are renters right now because we are trying to build the equity. Both he and I did not have the mentality of valuing stability in that way, and we are both regretting it. This is why I'm so passionate about this subject. And I gave a lot of my money that I earned to my family, in support of my family, and now that I'm getting almost to the age of 50 we really want to ask these questions, but it's frickin expensive in Oakland.

And so we were looking at a really beautiful house in Tennessee for the same price of 1.4 million that you could get a rinky dinky small two bedroom or three bedroom, like, I don't know. It was like 2000 square feet in Oakland. And it was like a 9,000 square foot home in Tennessee [Sy laughs]. And I was just like, okay. But as an Asian American, I mean, my husband's white, so it's fine for him. But as an Asian American, I was like, I turned to my… And the house was so beautiful, and I turned to him and I was like, but my question is, do I want to live in Tennessee as an Asian American?

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah, yeah.

Irene Cho: And so that's, it's okay that we talk about that, the truth of all of that.

Jonathan Walton: Right.

Sy Hoekstra:  So you've talked about this a little bit, but I want to know what you're hearing from the kids. You do data driven feedback from the students. What are they saying?

Irene Cho: Really good things. They love it. They are glad. Even students who… [laughs] we've had students on the survey give us in the open ended questions. They're like, “I hate school. We should just learn about financial education instead of our other classes.”

[laughter]

Jonathan Walton: Amen.

Irene Cho: So it's been good. Some of the lessons, we're editing, we're going through revisions. We're not overhauling the whole thing like we did last year. But like the insurance lesson, there was just so much to cover with insurance. And so we are cutting some down where we're not going to talk about medical insurance just because of where they're at, because they are either covered by their parents or they will be covered if they go to university. And so we just talk about the basic terminologies of what is a premium, what is a claim, et cetera, all these things. And but we are going to talk about auto insurance, and then we will talk about renter's insurance because they may go off and move out, some of them. Most of our students are staying at home because economically it's just better for all of them.

So yeah, that's happening. And then again 65 to 70, depending on the school, percent of our students are Latine students. And so the culture is stay at home until you get married. So that's beneficial for our students. Again, that's a reality, like this is a good time for you all if you're working you can save up money when you're young. So we want to name that, don't spend all of your money because this is a good time while you're not fully paying rent on your own. But they loved the banking. Again, we named how important it is. You can get a bank account even if you are undocumented, you just need your ITIN.

Sy Hoekstra: Yes.

Irene Cho: There are credit unions that support undocumented folks and families. So if you open a credit union account, you could probably even also get a loan from a credit union if you're undocumented.

So those are things that we named that cough cough Dave Ramsey does not name, because most financial curricula out there is like, “So go with your parents to open a bank account.” Like it's super simple, and so we name that, like some of you, we name, some of you are in the foster care system. Some of you have guardians where it's your grandparents. Some of you have parents who are undocumented and your parents will not step foot in a bank. So what does that look like? How can you go to a financial institution that allows your parents to feel safer …

Jonathan Walton: that’s awesome.

Irene Cho: …and maybe you can actually open account with your parents And so a couple of our students have said, “I went to a credit union and I opened a credit union and I went with my parents and I had them open a credit union bank account as well.”

So those are just really fun things that we hear back from our students. Again, the retirement lesson, I was petrified. I thought they were going to be like, “Why do we need to know about retirement?” So many of our students were like, “I'm so, so grateful that you taught us about retirement. These are things that I need to think about now, early.” So they're giving that feedback, which is just so much fun.

Sy Hoekstra:  It's just so useful. Is the reason they like it.

Jonathan Walton: Yes. Yes.

Sy Hoekstra: I mean, it's like when I got to that section in that one lesson plan that was like, here's the kind of tax ID number you need to get as an undocumented person. It's like yes, thank you.

Irene Cho: Yes.

Sy Hoekstra: Somebody is saying this to kids who need to hear it. Like it's just information that's… I mean, a decent chunk of this stuff, I didn't know when I was [laughs] trying to get started with a bank account or whatever.

Irene Cho: Yes, totally.

Jonathan Walton: Yeah, right.

Sy Hoekstra: It's just stuff more people need to know and tailoring it to what they need to hear is so great.

Irene Cho: Yeah. The bulk load of the work is doing the research. So NerdWallet names that as well.

Sy Hoekstra: I love NerdWallet.

Irene Cho: They have articles talking about it—I know, we do too [Sy laughs]. And so we do utilize the resources externally and we have in each lesson an “also what” section where we're like, Hey, we have vetted and sifted through all of the stuff, and here's our top 20 things in regards to this subject matter that you can go and look at more videos because our lessons are 40 minutes. So I mean, imagine trying to teach insurance in a 40 minute segment. It's really tight and we need to make sure there's an activity. So then that takes that away from content time. So there's a lot of these things that we are doing, because again, our lesson is a bit of an overview lesson, which I know that there are other curricula out there that students can go to, but they won't go to it.

And it's so different. Like we had a school that was using… and I will name it, it's EVERFI. And she was like, “It was fine. The content was fine,” but because it was online and they were kind of doing it on their own, the students were not engaged with it.

Jonathan Walton: Yeah.

Irene Cho: And so having a person in the classroom where it's like a workshop, we have slides, we're interacting with the students, we're giving them space to ask questions. We're giving them space to push back and answering these questions. She was like, it's just, sold. It's so different having somebody come in and deliver the lesson. And you know, we've been asked a lot about then why do we not do teachers, like teaching the teachers or training the trainers.

A lot of times the teachers, they love that we're coming in and delivering these lessons, because that's 40 minutes of a classroom time one day out of the week [Sy laughs] where they're just like, “Phew, I could grade papers, I could do things.”

Jonathan Walton: Yeah.

Irene Cho: They're in the classroom, and our teachers are very engaged and interactive. But just being able to have that mental, like a little bit of a sigh of relief while our coaches are delivering the lessons is super. Well see, the state of California, we do know, like I know Ohio has mandatory financial education. The state of Washington provides incentives. And so California is in the movement right now. There's a couple of bills that we're keeping an eye on. It's still not going to be fully mandatory in the sense of like we give 17 lessons. So we're in the classroom the entire year.

And versus I believe some of the bills that are being proposed, it would be one semester of mandatory financial education, which it's just not enough. And so we're going to try to, if that happens, it won't be for another four years probably, but we'll see how the economy turns and shifts and how we would expand, et cetera. What we would do.

Sy Hoekstra:  All this has been so great. We really appreciate you having here talking about money and all this with the marginalized at the center. That's how we want to talk about everything. So we really appreciate this whole conversation. And I would just like to know where can people find you or Able Works or future profits online or whatever you want them to find. Where can they find it?

Irene Cho: So go to able.is. I love our website. And so from [email protected], you'll see programs. We're revamping our website right now, so hopefully by the time this gets released out the website will have gone live. So it's still available now, but it might shut down for like a couple of days while it's getting revamped. So able.is, our financial curriculum. Our financial literacy program is called Future Profts. Our community college program is called Achievable. We have paused our, we had a single mom’s program, I want to relaunch it as an entrepreneurial program potentially…

Sy Hoekstra: oooh.

Jonathan Walton: Mmm.

Irene Cho: … called LiveAble, where we can help maybe do a cohort of kids graduating from high school and wanting to launch their own business. So like going through a year long program where then they can at the end of the year begin launching a business on their own.

Because we've got a lot of students, social media [laughs]. The student who wanted to do coding, she was like, “I want to be a coder or an influencer.” The range was so wide [laughter]. And so, and that's the thing too I think with students. We really want to help them be realistic. Because you don’t know. My parents wanted me to be a lawyer and now that I know what actually law work is, I would've been a terrible lawyer [Sy laughs]. And so I would've hated my job. I would've hated my life. And so, part of the thing we want to really help kids is understand what does this job actually look like on a day-to-day basis…

Sy Hoekstra: Yeah.

Irene Cho: …that you would find enjoyable or not enjoyable. So yeah, I think there's, that's some of the issues with young people. They have this idealistic understanding of what that job is, and then the day-to-day grind of it is completely different than what they saw on television or what they were told. And so yeah, we're trying to do that so see if maybe this LiveAble program... So that's my little pipe dream that I'm hoping we can launch in like a year with everything that we're doing. So yeah. And then for me personally it's, all my social media is IreneM, as in Michelle, Cho. C-H-O. So if you just do that, then you can find me on all the platforms.

Sy Hoekstra:  Some highly entertaining social media content coming from Irene Cho.

Jonathan Walton: For sure.

Sy Hoekstra: I can promise you that [laughter].

Irene Cho: I feel like I have calmed down a little! [laughs].

Sy Hoekstra: It's still entertaining [Irene laughs]. You can be calm and entertaining [laughter]. Irene, thank you so much for being here. We really appreciate it.

Irene Cho: Thanks always for having me.

Sy Hoekstra:  Please remember to take a look at KTFPress.com/free month to sign up as a paid subscriber with a free month at the beginning. Get the bonus episodes of this show, support everything we do at KTF Press, and get our weekly newsletter. Our theme song as always is “Citizens” by Jon Guerra. Our podcast Art is by Jacqueline Tam, and we will see you in two weeks.

[The song “Citizens” by Jon Guerra fades in. Lyrics: “And that you’re building a city/ Where we arrive as immigrants/ And you call us citizens/ And you welcome us as children home/ Where we arrive as immigrants/ And you call us citizens/ And you welcome us as children home.” The song fades out.]

Irene Cho: Right? And I was a little bit… [loud sound of thunder]

Sy Hoekstra:  Who, where was that? Was that you, Jonathan?

Irene Cho: Was that thunder?

Jonathan Walton: Uh…it has opened up in Queens.

Sy Hoekstra: [laughs] Okay, well...

Jonathan Walton: It is raining, and uh, Jesus might come back [laughter].

Sy Hoekstra: That's not the first time—Oh yeah, see now it's happening in Manhattan too. Irene, I will just quiet that while you're speaking so you can feel free to finish your thought and ignore any further sounds coming from our microphones that are caused by Jesus.