Speaker 1: Pushkin. I'm Malcolm Gladwell and today on Revisionist History, I
Speaker 1: have a special treat I'm going to play for you
Speaker 1: an interview I did with an old friend and Pushkin
Speaker 1: co conspirator, Justin Richmond, who you may know from our
Speaker 1: music show Broken Record, which Justin has made happen since
Speaker 1: the beginning. But now Justin has his own gig. He's
Speaker 1: the creator and host of a new podcast called Started
Speaker 1: from the Bottom. It's a show about origin stories, particularly
Speaker 1: the origin stories of men and women of color, how
Speaker 1: they climbed their way up the ladder, the obstacles they
Speaker 1: overcame along the way. And for this episode that I'm
Speaker 1: about to play for you, I turned the tables on
Speaker 1: Justin and I interviewed him. We did it in front
Speaker 1: of a group of students and faculty at medgare Ever's
Speaker 1: College on the side of the Old Field in Brooklyn,
Speaker 1: New York. As someone of West Indian heritage, let me
Speaker 1: just say how gratified I was at the heavy West
Speaker 1: Indian turnout for this, And in good West Indian fashion,
Speaker 1: they asked some pretty good questions at the end too.
Speaker 1: So here we go my conversation with my good friend
Speaker 1: Justin Richmond. Hello, Hello, who's this on? Check? Check? A
Speaker 1: single race? So welcome. This is the first time I've
Speaker 1: ever done anything like this, and it is certainly the
Speaker 1: first live taping of Starter from the Bottom. So thank
Speaker 1: you so much for coming, Malcolm, thank you so much
Speaker 1: for doing this. Not at all, it's my pleasure, Justin.
Speaker 1: I've long dreamed of being on a stage with you.
Speaker 1: I can't imagine that's true, but it's very nice of
Speaker 1: you to say no. I think, well, I hope this
Speaker 1: is the start of many of these, Justin, But I
Speaker 1: think premise of today's is that I'm interviewing you, right,
Speaker 1: That's not our plan. Yeah, we want to get the Justin.
Speaker 1: We want to get the Justin Richmond origin stories, a
Speaker 1: little introduction in me. I guess, yeah, yeah, which I
Speaker 1: You know, I love these things because I've often I'm
Speaker 1: a firm believer that if you want to get to
Speaker 1: know somebody, even if they've done a lifetime of interesting things,
Speaker 1: if you just do the first twenty years, you get
Speaker 1: most of what you need. Right that it's a surprising
Speaker 1: how much you can glean from. So let's start. Let's
Speaker 1: do the Justin Richmond analysis, and I wanted to start
Speaker 1: with the thing we have in common. Now you might
Speaker 1: look at us and say, what on earth do they
Speaker 1: have in common? But we do have one very significant
Speaker 1: fact in common, which is we're both the product of
Speaker 1: by racial marriages. Yeah, and I wanted to start with that.
Speaker 1: First of all, you're more obviously by racial than me.
Speaker 1: I don't know how that happened. You. I'm a little
Speaker 1: more subtle. You yours. Your dad would say it's his jeans.
Speaker 1: So you're tell me about your parents. Let's start with
Speaker 1: those two. How did they meet? Justin start with that.
Speaker 1: They met at Compton Community College, So he grew up
Speaker 1: in Compton, and uh, and my mom was there for
Speaker 1: I don't even know why she was there, but she was.
Speaker 1: She was there. She was friends with someone there and
Speaker 1: so she was there. They met. Where did your mom
Speaker 1: grow up? My mom grew up in a city called
Speaker 1: El Monte, which is by Pasadena. My mom grew up
Speaker 1: on the racetrack. Her dad was a racehorse trainer, so
Speaker 1: she grew up on the racetrack. And yeah, they're they're
Speaker 1: very different people even to this day. And it might
Speaker 1: be because they've never seen them together. But my kids
Speaker 1: still cannot wrap their heads around that. My parents might
Speaker 1: be like, you know that there's any relationship between them
Speaker 1: or ever was you know, Uh, they were never together,
Speaker 1: they were never married, but yeah, like they liked they
Speaker 1: just liked each other, you know. So how long were
Speaker 1: they together off and on? About five years? Four years,
Speaker 1: So you have very few memories of the two of them,
Speaker 1: is in a couple very few early on, Like I
Speaker 1: remember being over at his house because I have two
Speaker 1: half brothers, so early on I remember being over there
Speaker 1: with them, going to Disneyland on occasion. Well, yeah, the
Speaker 1: memories are very sporadic. Early on, you know of them,
Speaker 1: and you're you're raised by your mom, raised a bit
Speaker 1: by both, but primarily by my mom. Yeah. And where
Speaker 1: are you grow in Long Beach or yes, in Long
Speaker 1: Beach And then at five, my mom moved to the
Speaker 1: city of Orange, which is in Orange County, which is
Speaker 1: about twenty minutes south of Long Beach. Yeah, yeah, what
Speaker 1: is Orange like Orange? As far as places in Orange
Speaker 1: County go, it's pretty diverse. There's a large Latino community there,
Speaker 1: but aside from the Latino population, it's overwhelmingly white. And
Speaker 1: that was a that was a change from even even
Speaker 1: having white parents, like even having like my mom being
Speaker 1: white and having that whole side of my family be white.
Speaker 1: I never thought of it that way until I showed up.
Speaker 1: You know, she moved there right before I started, a
Speaker 1: month before I started kindergarten. And I remember my first
Speaker 1: day at kindergarten. I rolled up and I had a
Speaker 1: ninety four, so I had a Power Rangers shirt on.
Speaker 1: I thought I was real cool, Power Rangers lunchbox. I
Speaker 1: really thought I was nervous, but I thought I was fresh.
Speaker 1: I thought it was good, right, And I'll never forget
Speaker 1: this kid who was in line in front of me,
Speaker 1: like looked back at me, and this is the first time.
Speaker 1: Like again, I'm like, I'm not really realizing the differences
Speaker 1: between us yet. But he turns around and looks at me, goes,
Speaker 1: are you poor? Are you poor? Yeah? Yeah yeah, And
Speaker 1: I was like like what do you what do you mean?
Speaker 1: And he's like, you look poor? Are you poor? And
Speaker 1: I was like what, you know, I was just deflated.
Speaker 1: I didn't know exactly what to think about it at
Speaker 1: the moment. I was. I was just deflated just because
Speaker 1: you know, you're five year old, You're going into kindergarten,
Speaker 1: you're trying to We had just moved and I thought
Speaker 1: it looked good, but apparently I looked poor. That's to
Speaker 1: remember his name, And should you tell your mom? Yes,
Speaker 1: I did that. I remember that. I remember I remember
Speaker 1: going home and talking to my mom and uh yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean that's when I think her hope was that
Speaker 1: it would take a little bit long from for those
Speaker 1: dynamic for that dynamic to set in right. But that's
Speaker 1: when we we had, like, you know, when she started
Speaker 1: talking to me about the fact that I am now
Speaker 1: at this overwhelmingly white place and many of the people
Speaker 1: I'm gonna be around are likely growing up, if not
Speaker 1: out and out racist, racist things being said in their household,
Speaker 1: they're going to be parodying those things back at that.
Speaker 1: So if I asked you, in saying middle school to
Speaker 1: how you would describe yourself racially, what would you have said? Black?
Speaker 1: I knew I was black, you just because because of
Speaker 1: my experience, Because of that experience going to the so
Speaker 1: you know, off, I would say, off and on. Between
Speaker 1: kindergarten and ninth grade, I was going to overwhelmingly white schools,
Speaker 1: and you know, these are places where I would get
Speaker 1: called nigger. You know, so when you getting called nigger,
Speaker 1: you know what you are, you know. And then I
Speaker 1: go talk to my dad about it. He go, wheah,
Speaker 1: well you are niggas. So but you know that was
Speaker 1: like his way of trying to be like, yeah, you
Speaker 1: are nigga, so yeah, you know. So I definitely knew
Speaker 1: what I was. I knew I was black. Um. And
Speaker 1: where it got well, I see where it got difficult
Speaker 1: was when probably in junior high, when it was teachers
Speaker 1: who I think sort of interacting with me differently because
Speaker 1: of my color, you know, like I had, I got
Speaker 1: in a lot of trouble because I grew locks, and
Speaker 1: I remember they wanted to kick me out of school.
Speaker 1: There was a there was a neo Nazi kid named
Speaker 1: name your name, all these people like on the bulleting board,
Speaker 1: where are you man? Right? And every day with him,
Speaker 1: you know, it was God back to Africa. And I
Speaker 1: mean it got to the point police got involved, you know,
Speaker 1: and he never got kicked out of school somehow. But um,
Speaker 1: but I would take the point in junior high as
Speaker 1: when teachers I started getting just weird comments from teachers
Speaker 1: and weird nothing I did was ever good enough. There's
Speaker 1: always a perception that I was lazy. And that's why
Speaker 1: when I think because I was I was always a
Speaker 1: smart kid, and because my dad played football, because I
Speaker 1: was so tall, I was always tall, the perception was
Speaker 1: always that I was going to go and be an athlete.
Speaker 1: But from early age, I realized I wanted to cut
Speaker 1: against that. Like I didn't want okay, cool, Yeah I
Speaker 1: can I can play ball. I can do that. But
Speaker 1: what I realized I really wanted was to show people.
Speaker 1: Like early on, I kind of got this um need
Speaker 1: to prove people wrong in me, and so I felt
Speaker 1: like I always wanted to be I always wanted to
Speaker 1: be the smartest person in the room at that point
Speaker 1: as a young kid, and I didn't always have the
Speaker 1: confidence that I was, but I deep deep somewhere I
Speaker 1: wanted to be. And by the time I got to
Speaker 1: junior high and the teachers were sort of I had
Speaker 1: these these odd interactions. I think that's when I started
Speaker 1: to That's when my my interest in education started to
Speaker 1: wane and my I would say, my pride and myself
Speaker 1: started to win. How many black teachers that you have
Speaker 1: in your public school experience, zero zero? You got something
Speaker 1: to do with it. I think that's a big thing,
Speaker 1: has a big part to do with that. Absolutely, yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: you got it. And that's the premise of my show.
Speaker 1: If you're not around, if you're not around people who
Speaker 1: look like you, who are successful, you know. And my dad,
Speaker 1: God bless him, you know, he was in the NFL,
Speaker 1: so to degree was a success. But my dad and
Speaker 1: I love him, but you know, he also like has
Speaker 1: a very small way of thinking, you know, and so
Speaker 1: I never really felt like I had someone what do
Speaker 1: you mean by a small way of thinking? For him,
Speaker 1: it was always like, yeah, just go be a cop,
Speaker 1: you know, Like that's sure money, Like you can go
Speaker 1: be a cop. You can get one hundred grand a
Speaker 1: year with over time, you can make like one twenty
Speaker 1: Like what are you doing with this college? Then? What
Speaker 1: are you doing with school? You know, like they didn't.
Speaker 1: He couldn't get that I wanted to be that. I
Speaker 1: wanted to be an educated brother. You know. He couldn't
Speaker 1: get it, I'd say, And a lot of my family didn't.
Speaker 1: It's difficult to talk about because I like, in so
Speaker 1: many ways they were successful, you know, but at the
Speaker 1: same time, I knew there was a level of life
Speaker 1: that I wanted to achieve that no one in my
Speaker 1: family had achieved. You know, my dad wanted me to
Speaker 1: go be a cop because he's like, that's guaranteed income,
Speaker 1: you can and you can do it. But I just
Speaker 1: had other aspirations. So it was a weird thing between
Speaker 1: growing up in a white world that didn't necessarily believe
Speaker 1: in me and growing up in, you know, my black
Speaker 1: family and a black world that had kind of had
Speaker 1: a way of thinking that wasn't they didn't understand what
Speaker 1: I was trying to do. Yeah, yeah, your dad's not
Speaker 1: He's not one hundred percent wrong being a police officer.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying you should have done it. I'm just saying,
Speaker 1: from his position being an LAPD officer, assuming that's what
Speaker 1: he's talking about, that is a good job. It's a
Speaker 1: great job. I mean in terms of, like if you
Speaker 1: look at just like income and like what you could
Speaker 1: provide for your family, Like, it's a great job. But
Speaker 1: it's the means of there's all an entire generation of
Speaker 1: largely black men who grew up in la for whom
Speaker 1: the LAPD was the stepping stone. I mean, you got
Speaker 1: a job in the LAPD, and then your kids got
Speaker 1: to go to college, I mean that was like he's
Speaker 1: reflecting something that was real, right, No, it was a
Speaker 1: real thing, And I don't At the time, I was
Speaker 1: very I was always upset when you bring it up.
Speaker 1: You know, now I understand why he did. But you know,
Speaker 1: when you have a dream and something you want to accomplish,
Speaker 1: hearing things like that don't and still confidence in you.
Speaker 1: Because I always have to hear these quess like, well,
Speaker 1: what if school doesn't work out? It's like, well, what
Speaker 1: do you mean? Was like, you know what, Like by
Speaker 1: the time I get to college and and I'm meeting people,
Speaker 1: I'm like, I can very much tell that this isn't
Speaker 1: their experience that they had, Like what a school doesn't
Speaker 1: work out? It was this expected you know. Is it
Speaker 1: your dad? Does he not think you're smart enough for college?
Speaker 1: Or does he think the obstacles facing a young black
Speaker 1: man are two high? What's his what's his theory? I
Speaker 1: don't know. My dad thinks he's the smartest man in
Speaker 1: the world, so and I think based he also thinks
Speaker 1: he has the greatest dream pool in the world, So
Speaker 1: I think so I think based on that, he knew
Speaker 1: I was very smart. That was his belief at least,
Speaker 1: but with my dad, I think it very much had
Speaker 1: to do again with like his perception of what was
Speaker 1: possible in the world. You know, he grew up in
Speaker 1: a place called you dream of Village and Content, which
Speaker 1: was a housing project that closed down because the soil
Speaker 1: was toxic. Like they didn't know it at the time,
Speaker 1: but the soil was toxic. So people were getting sick
Speaker 1: and cancer and dying, babies being born deformed. And I
Speaker 1: think it was also a sense of maybe his dreams
Speaker 1: were limited too or not. His dreams were big, but
Speaker 1: I would say his dreams were at some point, I say,
Speaker 1: his dreams are crushed as well. You know, my dad
Speaker 1: did get kicked out of the NFL. The story as
Speaker 1: it's been told to me, So my dad got drafted
Speaker 1: by the Colts and eighty four, I want to say
Speaker 1: eighty five, and the team captain, a white dude, called
Speaker 1: my grandmother a nigger, and so my dad whipped his ass.
Speaker 1: They had it, he got reprimanded, they had a team dinner,
Speaker 1: it happened again, my dad whipped his ass and he
Speaker 1: was kicked off the team. Yeah, and I think when
Speaker 1: that is, when that's what happens to your dream I
Speaker 1: think you start to worry in some way or is
Speaker 1: it his dream? Absolutely? Yeah, yeah. Does he still have
Speaker 1: regrets today, I'm sure he does. I don't think he
Speaker 1: regrets that, Like I don't think he regrets open the
Speaker 1: team captain's ass or anything. But yeah, I think he
Speaker 1: wishes it turned out different. Absolutely, you know. Yeah. Does
Speaker 1: he understand what you're doing now? Yeah? Yeah, you know
Speaker 1: the first time, the first time he really got it. Well,
Speaker 1: he got it when I went to when I got
Speaker 1: into Berkeley, he was kind of he was shocked. I
Speaker 1: was shocked. My whole family was shocked. I couldn't believe
Speaker 1: it too, so much so that I remember I drove up.
Speaker 1: I drove up, I wrote the counselor. I was like, listen,
Speaker 1: like I got some I gotta I gotta talk to you.
Speaker 1: I didn't want to do it over email. I didn't
Speaker 1: want to do it over phone. Like I needed to
Speaker 1: look this lady in the eye. So I was like, hey,
Speaker 1: can I meet you? And she's like, yeah, sure, sure,
Speaker 1: come down this date this time drove up to Berkeley,
Speaker 1: and yeah I was. I was like, look I got
Speaker 1: this to furred a mission. This is real. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: is you're living in Orange County at the time. I'm
Speaker 1: living in the LA Yeah. Yeah, you drove six hours
Speaker 1: yeah to Berkeley yeah, six seven eight to ask official
Speaker 1: of Berkeley whether your acceptance that it was real. I
Speaker 1: came that far. I wasn't gonna like and then also
Speaker 1: like trying to figure out how to run a place
Speaker 1: up there and pay a mission just to note. So
Speaker 1: I drove up there, and you know, so I'm is
Speaker 1: this real? And she goes, yes, this is real. So
Speaker 1: I goes, so I can start January fifteen. Yes, you
Speaker 1: can as a philosophy major. Yes, okay, and I can
Speaker 1: switch my major if I want once I get in, yes, right,
Speaker 1: you know. And then and then and I'm kind of
Speaker 1: trying to work up to also like, so I asked,
Speaker 1: I say, listen, I'm gonna be honest with you, Okay,
Speaker 1: like I don't have a high school diploma, I don't
Speaker 1: have a GEED, I don't have an equivalency, so you
Speaker 1: should like So based on that now you said already
Speaker 1: said this was real, but based on now with his
Speaker 1: new information, based on that, is this really? Is this?
Speaker 1: Can I really come here? We skip a step. The
Speaker 1: step we skipped was you didn't graduate from high school. No,
Speaker 1: I left at fourteen, at fourteen? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: left at fourteen. I also didn't graduate from high school.
Speaker 1: But that's because my mom called the principle and said,
Speaker 1: Malcolm won't be coming in. He's more productive at home.
Speaker 1: That was everyone was like, okay, fine, Like that's you know,
Speaker 1: that's a very that's the world I grew up, and
Speaker 1: it was a forgiving, understanding, do what you want kind
Speaker 1: of world. Wait, you left high school at fourteen to
Speaker 1: do what? Yeah? Nothing good? Yeah, nothing good. I would
Speaker 1: say I was pretty beat down by that point, you know,
Speaker 1: like confidence wise, I didn't know what I was doing.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I left, and I was I was just
Speaker 1: doing my own thing. What's your mom doing when you're
Speaker 1: doing this? So here's so what happened was so like
Speaker 1: basically my freshman year of high school, I was so
Speaker 1: rocked by them with my confidence, like I had basically
Speaker 1: like a zero point something GPA, Like I had like
Speaker 1: no GPA. It was literally zero points something. And the
Speaker 1: only the highest grade I got was I thought it
Speaker 1: was a C, but it turns out it was a D.
Speaker 1: I got a D in journalism. Yeah, and the teacher
Speaker 1: poem aside. He's like, justin you're too smart to fail.
Speaker 1: You deserve a F. I'm not gonna give you a F.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna give you a D. I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: thank you, mister Muller. But it was like a zero
Speaker 1: point something. So they said you're gonna have to go
Speaker 1: to continuation school, which was just like a school like,
Speaker 1: you know, for for fuck ups. And my mom was like,
Speaker 1: you're not a fuck up, so you're not gonna You're
Speaker 1: not gonna go there. I go, okay. She's like, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna have you stay home, and uh, this it sounds crazy,
Speaker 1: but I gotta give her credit because it didn't work
Speaker 1: for a bit, but then it really worked. Um, She's like,
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna stay home. You're gonna read the paper
Speaker 1: every day while I'm at work. I'm gonna come home.
Speaker 1: You canna have a little report on a couple of
Speaker 1: items you read. And of course, you know, for the longest,
Speaker 1: like I just took advantage. I didn't do it, you know,
Speaker 1: like I just didn't. She didn't want me being with
Speaker 1: fuck ups because she did she already could see I
Speaker 1: think that my confidence was shot and that was just
Speaker 1: gonna be worse so she pulled me out. I took
Speaker 1: advantage of it. I didn't do much um until I
Speaker 1: was like almost sixteen. Common story, I feel like for
Speaker 1: a lot of people. I got a copy of the
Speaker 1: autobiography of Malcolm X, and it really really reignited my ambition.
Speaker 1: So then at that point I enroll in community college
Speaker 1: because I didn't really want to deal with like trying
Speaker 1: to start over from my freshman year of high school.
Speaker 1: So I rolled in community college and just did that
Speaker 1: for about four or five years, and so I could transfer.
Speaker 1: I transfers. I started that at like just before I
Speaker 1: turned sixteen, and I transferred to Berkeley at twenty one.
Speaker 1: At we see, we'll get back to Berkeley and how
Speaker 1: things turned around for Justin in a moment. Back to
Speaker 1: my conversation with Justin Richmond at the Edison O. Jackson
Speaker 1: Auditorium at MEDGA Evers College. Justin was finding his place
Speaker 1: at Berkeley. So you have a kind of loss of
Speaker 1: confidence and do you get it back in Berkeley at Berkeley? Yeah.
Speaker 1: Gabrielle Williams right here. I met Gabrielle at Berkeley. She
Speaker 1: was doing her PhD. We met at the Black Student Lounge,
Speaker 1: or was that the that was like her her student
Speaker 1: job thing, and she was listening to music and I
Speaker 1: heard so we connected, and um, there was a professor
Speaker 1: there by the name of Ricky Vincent. He was like
Speaker 1: the pre eminent funk music scholar and was writing a
Speaker 1: book on the Black Panthers, and I had a strong
Speaker 1: interest in the Panthers. So like between like Gabrielle and
Speaker 1: Ricky Vincent and and all these other black folk that
Speaker 1: looked like me that I could relate to. And for
Speaker 1: Gabrielle coming from from La southern California, like there was
Speaker 1: just a lot in common. It definitely a hundred percent
Speaker 1: helped me. But but but she also helped me through a
Speaker 1: lot because there's many times I've called Gabrielle, including when
Speaker 1: I took this job at Pushkin, like I really do this,
Speaker 1: this is a smart move, and she'll have to talk,
Speaker 1: you know. When I got into grad school, Man, I
Speaker 1: really take out these loans, Gabrielle, I don't know, it's
Speaker 1: a lot of money, Like I don't want to be
Speaker 1: in debt, and gabriel I was like, justin, just was
Speaker 1: are you supposed to do? You're going to school, you
Speaker 1: gotta pay you unless you can afford it, take the
Speaker 1: loan out and go so um yeah, I definitely got
Speaker 1: a ton of confidence back there, not that I'm you know.
Speaker 1: And then slowly along the way ebbed and flow like
Speaker 1: as new situations arose, and I sort of fell into
Speaker 1: journalism because I couldn't really, I couldn't get a job
Speaker 1: after college, and I knew I kind of went in
Speaker 1: wanting to be a professor by the time I got
Speaker 1: to Berkeleys, like, I kind of want to do my bachelor's,
Speaker 1: get a PhD, then teach, But then I sort of
Speaker 1: fell out of love with with higher education just because
Speaker 1: of the bureaucracy element. Sorry together, wonderful to have us here.
Speaker 1: But I would talk to Gabrielle, I would talk to
Speaker 1: my guy Ricky Vincent and sort of be like, well,
Speaker 1: what is it that I like to do? Well? I
Speaker 1: like the idea of writing and connecting with people, communicating
Speaker 1: to people, like the idea of researching, And so that's
Speaker 1: when like the idea struck to do journalism. I started
Speaker 1: getting involved with radio around town KPFA, which was the
Speaker 1: PACIFICA station in Berkeley, the campus station. I took a
Speaker 1: journalism in class, so I kind of and it's just
Speaker 1: snowball from there where I fell into journalism. But by
Speaker 1: the time I like I get a job, I'm twenty five.
Speaker 1: I'm at MPR, and my girlfriend got pregnant, who's now
Speaker 1: my beautiful wife, Danielle. We got two beautiful kids, Crinanella,
Speaker 1: and I was making like thirty thousand dollars a year MPR,
Speaker 1: paying back loans and about to have a kid. My confidence,
Speaker 1: I say, at that point sinks back to all time low.
Speaker 1: And I have a friend named Drew who took me
Speaker 1: to Cuba. It's just like I sensed you're kind of
Speaker 1: going through it. Let me, let me take you to Cuba.
Speaker 1: This is when Cuba opened up. It's like I was like,
Speaker 1: I can't really fort He's like, I'm gonna pay for it.
Speaker 1: You sent me back whenever. So me and Drew went
Speaker 1: down And this is the most random incident in my life.
Speaker 1: This is most random thing that ever happened in my life.
Speaker 1: Is we're in Cuba and Havana. I've driven to Mexico twice,
Speaker 1: but other than that, I've never left the country. And uh,
Speaker 1: I run into Quincy Jones in Havana, and Quincy Jones
Speaker 1: like I'm like, damn, that's Quincy Jones. I want to
Speaker 1: I go, hey, Quincy, can I can I get a picture?
Speaker 1: And he goes yeah, and he doesn't get up. So
Speaker 1: I was like, okay, I'm gonna sit down and take
Speaker 1: a picture of Quincy. And he started asking me though,
Speaker 1: what's your sign? I go Leah, I go leo. He goes, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm Leo rising cool. I don't know what that means.
Speaker 1: He just starts talking to me and we have like
Speaker 1: a three hour conversation. We have dinner. He never told
Speaker 1: me because you and I met Quincy like five years ago. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was a full circle moment for me because we
Speaker 1: ended up going to Quincy's house. But I had like
Speaker 1: a three hour dinner with Quincy Jones in Havanna. I'm
Speaker 1: my lowest point. I'm making like no money, I'm broke.
Speaker 1: My wife is looking at me crazy because it's like,
Speaker 1: why are you even Cuba or running around like she
Speaker 1: didn't know if I was maybe gonna not gonna come
Speaker 1: back or what. Um, but I'm at Quincy And from
Speaker 1: that he was like, oh, you're you're a cool brother.
Speaker 1: Man gave me his gave me his card, and normally
Speaker 1: I wouldn't have reached out, but I felt I was like, okay,
Speaker 1: this man discovered Oprah Winfrey, Will Smith, Ray Charles. So
Speaker 1: I was like, you know what am I gonna do?
Speaker 1: Not reach out? So I could use all the help
Speaker 1: I could get. So I reached out to Quincy and
Speaker 1: was like, look, look Quincy, Like I realized I didn't
Speaker 1: want to reach out with nothing. So me and my
Speaker 1: friend Sinario Glinton, one of the few black men at
Speaker 1: MPR that sort of took interesting me right away sort
Speaker 1: of notice when I was there that I needed I
Speaker 1: needed his guidance. We decided I shouldn't just go to
Speaker 1: him with nothing to offer. So I was like, look,
Speaker 1: I'm a journalist. I work in a PR working audio everyone.
Speaker 1: You know, it's twenty sixteen. Podcasting is sort of new,
Speaker 1: but people are starting to have him. You've done everything
Speaker 1: from you know, everything across media that you could possibly
Speaker 1: do except for podcasting, like we can make you a
Speaker 1: podcast and it was like great, So you know, it
Speaker 1: wasn't that easy, but was a couple of meetings finally
Speaker 1: got into a great I got to sign some paperwork.
Speaker 1: I still have it framed. It's like me and Quincy
Speaker 1: Jones signature, which is the craziest thing in the world
Speaker 1: to me. But what happened was I couldn't. I couldn't
Speaker 1: I couldn't sell the thing. I've realized I didn't know
Speaker 1: the first thing about business. I've been flying blind my
Speaker 1: whole life, just trying to figure things out. I'm taking
Speaker 1: out loans, I don't know what I'm doing. And that's
Speaker 1: when the idea for this show occurred to me. It's like,
Speaker 1: if I could just talk to if I could talk
Speaker 1: to someone else, some other black man who I was
Speaker 1: like money, Magic Johnson by Ronalan who at that times
Speaker 1: about the Weather Channel. I was like, I bet they
Speaker 1: could tell me what to do because I was in
Speaker 1: these rooms just like realizing like I don't understand this jargon,
Speaker 1: I don't understand the speak, and I'm failing, you know.
Speaker 1: And so it really occurred to me at that moment,
Speaker 1: how important having people who look like you, who you
Speaker 1: can point to in your life, you can point to
Speaker 1: our successful at this particular thing. How that can really be.
Speaker 1: It's not the only way to figure things out, but
Speaker 1: it's man, it makes things so much easier. You know.
Speaker 1: Let's go back a moment and say what's the version
Speaker 1: of your life where you wouldn't have suffered that kind
Speaker 1: of crisis of confidence. I can't imagine. Give me a version,
Speaker 1: give me a version where it's where it's easy in
Speaker 1: the United States. I don't know. I don't think. I
Speaker 1: don't think you can't have it easy being born black
Speaker 1: in the United States. I don't think it's I don't
Speaker 1: think it's possible. I would say, best case scenario is
Speaker 1: you're like a Carlton type or something from Fresh Prince
Speaker 1: or something. You know, We're like, Okay, you succept but like,
Speaker 1: are you really how successful are you if you're not
Speaker 1: acknowledging the whole part of yourself. So it's hard for
Speaker 1: me to answer, But I guess in a scenario where
Speaker 1: there is no And this is interesting because I'm also
Speaker 1: thinking about this from from my kids now, like they're
Speaker 1: getting a much different life than I had, access to
Speaker 1: different kinds of people and education and two parents who
Speaker 1: are supportive of each other and supportive of them together.
Speaker 1: So I think, But but I mean, I guess, like
Speaker 1: for me, it's hard for it really is hard for
Speaker 1: me to imagine. But but maybe I guess the best case,
Speaker 1: you know, It's funny. I used to I used to
Speaker 1: dream that I was like a as a kid that
Speaker 1: like like I was like a Huxtable you know, which
Speaker 1: is maybe a little controversial now, but like maybe that
Speaker 1: would have been a best case scenario. You know that
Speaker 1: was a doctor mom was you know whatever in a Brownstone,
Speaker 1: and give me the worst case scenario so you don't
Speaker 1: get into Berkeley. What happens is that the key moment, no,
Speaker 1: I probably getting probably getting the Malcolm X autobiography because
Speaker 1: that was I was in a pretty bad spot there.
Speaker 1: But um, I'll say before I came to Pushkin, I
Speaker 1: almost gave up again, Like when you don't have examples
Speaker 1: of success around you and you don't have people who
Speaker 1: can teach you about money and how to um not
Speaker 1: even like in a gross like uber capitalist way, but
Speaker 1: just like how to accumulate it so that you can't
Speaker 1: have the things you want and need in life. Like
Speaker 1: I didn't have that. So I almost left journalism, even
Speaker 1: though you know I love it and I wanted to
Speaker 1: be in it, almost left it. I had a job
Speaker 1: offer with ADP, the Pay Road Processing, to do outdoor
Speaker 1: sales with ADP, because I was like, well, I'll just
Speaker 1: go do sales, you know, like I'll just I'll make
Speaker 1: some money doing sales. And I almost took that offer,
Speaker 1: you know, and that was maybe six months before for
Speaker 1: I got an email from from you, from me LaBelle
Speaker 1: and from you comor from Pushkin, which which I would
Speaker 1: say changed again my trajectory thanks to you, Jacob Weisberg,
Speaker 1: you know me labellum, Yeah, man, because because it was
Speaker 1: also bleak then a little bit, you know, it was
Speaker 1: also it was tough then, man. We'll take a quick
Speaker 1: break and get back to Justin's story. We're back with
Speaker 1: Justin Richmond in making sense of people's life stories and
Speaker 1: trying to figure out what's the difference between a in America,
Speaker 1: between a black life story and a white life story.
Speaker 1: One of the things, and it's very very difficult to
Speaker 1: convince persuade white people of this fact is it's how
Speaker 1: many strikes you get, or how many chances you get.
Speaker 1: If you are an upper middle class, well educated white person,
Speaker 1: you get like ten chances. You can script nine times
Speaker 1: and the system will catch you every time and start
Speaker 1: you over again. And if you're in the same position
Speaker 1: as a young black person, you maybe get two. And
Speaker 1: I remember this is a weird example of this. But
Speaker 1: there's an incredibly interesting book that was written about a
Speaker 1: suburb of Buffalo, a wealthy suburb of Buffalo. I think
Speaker 1: it's Williamsville, Not sure, amorist. The book, I think is
Speaker 1: called the Safest City in America. It was about how
Speaker 1: there's no juvenile delinquency and Williamsville. And the reason is
Speaker 1: not that there's no misbehavior among juveniles. It's that they
Speaker 1: just call us something different. Right, it's high jinks, it's
Speaker 1: sowing no wild oats, it's it's oh so and so
Speaker 1: it just has to learn to be. It's everything is getting.
Speaker 1: Everyone gets so many different chances that no one ever
Speaker 1: looks never comes to the definition of juvenile delinquency. And
Speaker 1: like that, that thing, this question of how many chances
Speaker 1: you get is it sounds listening to your story, that
Speaker 1: you are very close to running out of chances. It's
Speaker 1: even like more than that. It's just it's like I
Speaker 1: didn't even know that I had chances, you know, and
Speaker 1: maybe I didn't. I never knew I had chances. You know,
Speaker 1: there's a point where you know, I guess in your example,
Speaker 1: the difference would be in those instances, those kids in
Speaker 1: Buffalo their thought to be behaving badly, Whereas when you're
Speaker 1: a black kid misbehaving, you're bad, you know you you're Oh,
Speaker 1: you're absolutely defined differently. You're a terrible person. You can't
Speaker 1: you can't succeed, you can't do it's none of this
Speaker 1: is for you, you know. Yeah, And so that's where
Speaker 1: I was at, which is a pretty bleak place. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: my speaking of father, So my father who passed away
Speaker 1: a couple of years ago, but actually today, weirdly is
Speaker 1: his birthday. Um, my mom always says that my dad
Speaker 1: that that his motto was nothing bad will ever happen,
Speaker 1: which I thought about a lot. Partly that's the function
Speaker 1: of his personality. Had this kind of unstoppable and thoughtful personality.
Speaker 1: But he was also a came from a stable English family.
Speaker 1: He was well educated, he was very intelligent. The system
Speaker 1: always worked from my dad. He was a nice person,
Speaker 1: he was depending on, he was charming, he was people
Speaker 1: liked him. So it made sense that his theory of
Speaker 1: life was nothing bad will ever happened. My mother would
Speaker 1: ematin you know, she's a mom, she would imagine all
Speaker 1: kinds of horrible and he would just he would look
Speaker 1: at her uncomprehending me. It's like, no, no no, no, no,
Speaker 1: basically nothing, every bad's going to happen, right, And it
Speaker 1: was essentially true of like in that message. I was
Speaker 1: just thinking, as you were talking about your dad, the
Speaker 1: difference in messages sent to the two of us at
Speaker 1: a young age. I have this dad who just thinks
Speaker 1: it doesn't even occur to him that there's ever going
Speaker 1: to be any you know, detour of it's a runway, yeah, man, Yeah,
Speaker 1: something about opportunity, and there's something about the way from
Speaker 1: which society asks you or demands that you think about yourself.
Speaker 1: You know, it's like sometimes you don't get an option
Speaker 1: and how you want to think about yourself. I feel
Speaker 1: like the one thing that I don't Maybe it's fine
Speaker 1: this way, but the transition is still really the way
Speaker 1: that your life kind of turns around. I don't turns around.
Speaker 1: It's not like people were living a life of crime,
Speaker 1: but you know what I mean, like some hammitting myself
Speaker 1: on this something happens. It's really kind of interesting and
Speaker 1: mysterious to you in your twenties. It was a I
Speaker 1: was like, yeah, between it was just building up my confidence,
Speaker 1: I guess between fifteen and now I'm still trying, you know,
Speaker 1: Like from that time I did drop out of high
Speaker 1: school to like just getting through college, Like what motivated
Speaker 1: me was a sense of failure. I was like, man,
Speaker 1: if I don't get a high school, if I don't
Speaker 1: get a college diploma, like what I have an eighth
Speaker 1: grade certificate? Like what is that going to do for me?
Speaker 1: You know? So that was kind of like this real
Speaker 1: like it wasn't like a Carrott type of motivation. It
Speaker 1: was like you know, and and then I was like, well,
Speaker 1: then I couldn't get a job. And then I went
Speaker 1: started interning and I got into grad school, and then
Speaker 1: that gave me another Okay, now it's grads when I
Speaker 1: got to figure out grad school is a big scary
Speaker 1: thing and do that, and then I get out of there.
Speaker 1: I get right into this job and NPR and within
Speaker 1: them two months, like my girlfriend's pregnant, you know, and
Speaker 1: it's like now it's like, well I gotta figure out
Speaker 1: how to provide. So like my whole I feel like
Speaker 1: every step of my life up until recently has been
Speaker 1: about how do I just how do I not how
Speaker 1: do I not fail? And that's sort of been my
Speaker 1: motivation to succeed, and I'm trying to figure out a
Speaker 1: way now to be motivated now the debt, Like, that's
Speaker 1: why I'm on this journey. If I just trying to
Speaker 1: talk to successful people, I've I've been lucky enough to be.
Speaker 1: You know, first time we met in Santa Monica, I
Speaker 1: was like, man, I can't Lena go meet Malcolm glad Well.
Speaker 1: That's crazy. And you know, we had a very lovely conversation.
Speaker 1: I just remember, I like, I can't get out of
Speaker 1: here without asking like, like, how did you get comfortable
Speaker 1: having money? And I asked you that, what did they say?
Speaker 1: You're like, I just wanted to build, to do my
Speaker 1: own thing. I wanted to have my freedom. I wanted
Speaker 1: to build. I never wanted people to sign things to
Speaker 1: me or to be told what to do and so
Speaker 1: and I was like, damn, that's a great answer, you know.
Speaker 1: And but that's why that's largely why I'm I'm still
Speaker 1: you know, I'm still trying to figure out this this
Speaker 1: this world, in this life and navigating different things. So
Speaker 1: that's why I'm that's why I'm doing this and talking
Speaker 1: to people like Charlemagne the God and people like uh,
Speaker 1: Susie Orman, and just different people who you know, against
Speaker 1: the odds, against all odds, like figured this thing out,
Speaker 1: you know. And and my hope is that people listening
Speaker 1: to it it inspires them not only to take big swings,
Speaker 1: but also to seek out real world, real life mentorship,
Speaker 1: you know. Like obviously I want this to be a
Speaker 1: platform of mentorship for people. So hopefully you walk away
Speaker 1: having learned a lot and feeling boosted. But also like
Speaker 1: I think, you know, you need to have real life mentors,
Speaker 1: and I've been lucky enough to have so many, Gabrielle, you, Jacob,
Speaker 1: all kinds of different people. I'm hoping that I try
Speaker 1: to figure this out, people will figure out alone along
Speaker 1: with me. Yeah, that's lovely. Well, thank you, Justin. Will
Speaker 1: let's do some audience questions. Funny, if there are any questions,
Speaker 1: they could be for me or Malcolm here comes in one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: thank you. My name is Kevin Nesben. I'm an educator,
Speaker 1: one of the administrators that create the blockages you talked about. No,
Speaker 1: but thank you so much for the way you present
Speaker 1: YOURCCY good VP. As I call myself m I've had
Speaker 1: many friends that come from biracial families, and I think
Speaker 1: as someone that does not come from a biracial family,
Speaker 1: there's always this belief that there's some sort of protection
Speaker 1: that you might receive from your whiteness if you choose
Speaker 1: to adopt it, or if you choose to embrace it.
Speaker 1: And because I appreciate the way that you said you
Speaker 1: understood immediately you were a black man and that you
Speaker 1: had no choice because even if you wanted to imagine something,
Speaker 1: other society told you, no, you're a black man, right,
Speaker 1: And you gave many examples for that. But I have
Speaker 1: other friends that, throughout their journey, they've been able to say, well,
Speaker 1: it's it's not that it's a choice, but it's a
Speaker 1: little messier than that for them because they're both black,
Speaker 1: they're both white, and they grapple with what that means.
Speaker 1: Did you have any moments where you felt that having
Speaker 1: a parent that was white actually enabled some moments of
Speaker 1: protection or other as Malcolm described it, maybe one more choice, right,
Speaker 1: one more set of options. That's my question. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: guess I don't want to speak for other people, but
Speaker 1: my belief is when I talk to when I hear
Speaker 1: these stories, it's just that there's a bit of them
Speaker 1: deluding themselves. Perhaps you know that I don't, but hard
Speaker 1: hard to say. I don't want to speak for anyone else,
Speaker 1: but I didn't feel that maybe if I'd had a
Speaker 1: different mom, maybe it would have been different, But I
Speaker 1: was never allowed to think that anything different, you know,
Speaker 1: thank you. Yeah, yeah, there a This is my grand
Speaker 1: theory of biracial marriages. There's a big difference between black father,
Speaker 1: white mother, and white father black mother, which would be here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're actually very different kinds. The Historically, what a biracial
Speaker 1: marriage was was a white man and a black woman.
Speaker 1: That was the acceptable form for society. Goes back hundreds
Speaker 1: and hundreds of years. That's what it was. It was
Speaker 1: never the reverse. And only really recently have you seen
Speaker 1: black men mary white women. And I think the road
Speaker 1: is a lot harder both for the for the marriage
Speaker 1: and the children. It's a lot harder when your father's
Speaker 1: black and your mom is white. And I think of
Speaker 1: look like on the cases I'm thinking about my friendships
Speaker 1: with it was largely the what you describe where traditional,
Speaker 1: and maybe the household of the fathers, whether separated or not.
Speaker 1: Later on there was some sort of protection that dad
Speaker 1: would you'd have another outcome, right, you have another choice,
Speaker 1: so that I just wanted to hear a bit about that.
Speaker 1: I think society views a black man, white woman as
Speaker 1: as being subversive and in a way that they don't
Speaker 1: view the reverses being subversive. Thank you, that's true. Hello. Firstly,
Speaker 1: thank you Malcolm and justin you guys are It's just
Speaker 1: been a joy to have you here and I've just
Speaker 1: enjoyed this whole conversation. Um, I just wanted from you,
Speaker 1: just in like a sound bite or maybe just like
Speaker 1: a quick statement, like words of advice from one biracial
Speaker 1: man to another biracial man, just how it to like
Speaker 1: navigate the professional world and how it to just keep
Speaker 1: your bearings and keep yourself grounded. Man, I am not
Speaker 1: listening to my show because I think there's people far
Speaker 1: greater than me that are gonna be given advice. But
Speaker 1: I would say it's to this point in the instances
Speaker 1: where I haven't code switched, I've always been much more successful.
Speaker 1: You know. I don't know if that's because I've been lucky,
Speaker 1: but also some of it comes down to my Like
Speaker 1: I also think you shouldn't capitulate. So also like if
Speaker 1: someone doesn't want you, like I do have imposterive syndrome
Speaker 1: yet and still it's like I do somewhere in me
Speaker 1: have this belief that like I can't help but be myself,
Speaker 1: you know, And I think if songs, you just are
Speaker 1: true to yourself whatever that is, however you view yourself,
Speaker 1: identify yourself, behave like yourself, Like I think that's all
Speaker 1: you can do. And I think in those instances, like
Speaker 1: just knowing that you bring a lot to the table
Speaker 1: being you than you do you being someone else. And
Speaker 1: if you don't, you'll find out, right, Like, sometimes it
Speaker 1: doesn't pay to be means situations and I've you know,
Speaker 1: I found out, But okay, then find that one's not
Speaker 1: for me. Let me go to the next situation where
Speaker 1: it is good for me to be there. You know,
Speaker 1: I was at NPR before I was at Push Game
Speaker 1: with Malcolm, and that was a place that I was
Speaker 1: authentic to myself. But it didn't feel like that was
Speaker 1: it wasn't appreciated, and you know, so I got out
Speaker 1: to go where you're appreciated, and go where you're appreciated. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: thank you, yeah yeah. Oh welcome gentlemen, thank you so much.
Speaker 1: So you both mean a buy racial and I wanted
Speaker 1: to ask mister godwell, justin identify as as black and
Speaker 1: yourself I don't think about it. I think that's the
Speaker 1: difference between having I have a West Indian mom justin
Speaker 1: as an African American father. If you're a West Indian,
Speaker 1: you don't think about race in the same way. It's
Speaker 1: not this omnipresent thing in your life. So I was
Speaker 1: I just think of myself as I don't know. When
Speaker 1: I grew up. It was never forced. I mean it
Speaker 1: was never I was never forced to answer that question.
Speaker 1: My mom thought of herself as a Jamaican, not as
Speaker 1: a white person or a black person or so I
Speaker 1: don't have a I don't have a a kind of
Speaker 1: easy answer that you had a couple of layers because
Speaker 1: Jamaican and then growing up in Canada, which I feel
Speaker 1: like it was probably very different than yes, Canada. Again,
Speaker 1: I never I never got the the the racial experience
Speaker 1: of as all of you, everyone in this room knows,
Speaker 1: the racial experience of living in this country is just
Speaker 1: profoundly different from the racial experience almost anywhere else. Would
Speaker 1: life have been different if you are darker complexion, probably,
Speaker 1: I guess, although well black not black people always know
Speaker 1: that I'm by racial. White people don't necessarily know, so
Speaker 1: it would have made my uh. I have to tell
Speaker 1: my favorite story ever along his grounds is as running down.
Speaker 1: I went for a run one day in LA and
Speaker 1: running down Ocean Boulevard and this black guy in a
Speaker 1: gorgeous open portion eleven, like one of those tricked out ones,
Speaker 1: like one of these incredibly handsome black ones, looks at me,
Speaker 1: sees me running, stands up, so he's like, you know,
Speaker 1: he's through the roof of his car, raises his handling
Speaker 1: as he says, I love what you do, bro. So
Speaker 1: like I get a lot of love and that. So
Speaker 1: if I was darker, when I get more love for that?
Speaker 1: I mean maybe, but I I can't see how it
Speaker 1: get even more than I already get. Yeah, thank you
Speaker 1: very much. Okay, all right, thank you so much, guys,
Speaker 1: and thank you to Mega Evers College. You know, higher
Speaker 1: education is wonderful. This was the perfect way to launch
Speaker 1: Justin's new show started from the bottom. Now I heard you,
Speaker 1: all of you to subscribe to it right now and
Speaker 1: never forget. If you're a Pushkin Plus subscriber, you hear
Speaker 1: all story. No ads believe me, It's worth it. Thanks
Speaker 1: to everyone at Mega Evers College for hosting Justin and Me,
Speaker 1: especially Alexis McClean and Peter Holliman. Special thanks also to
Speaker 1: Keishall Williams, our associate editor, who is also a Medgar
Speaker 1: Evers alum and had the wonderful idea of bringing us there.
Speaker 1: Revision's history is produced by lem And Guestu, Amy Gaines,
Speaker 1: Kiara Powell, and Jacob Smith. Today's episode was produced by
Speaker 1: Kesha Williams, David Jaw and Amy Gaines. Our showrunner is
Speaker 1: Peter Clowney. Original scoring by Luis Guera, mastering by Ben Tolliday,
Speaker 1: and engineering by Nina Lawrence. Special thanks to Julia Barton.
Speaker 1: I'm Malcolm Glabow.