Amena Brown:
Hey you all. Hey. So I have taken to giving you a couple of to-do items as we are leading up to Election Day. As of the release of this episode, we are 20 days from Election Day. So here are some to do items to think about for this week coming up. Number one, make sure you come up with your voting plan. Decide if you want to vote with an absentee ballot, or if you would like to cast your vote in person.
Amena Brown:
If you decide that you want to vote with an absentee ballot, there are many great websites that you can check out to make sure that you can fill out your application for your absentee ballot, as well as finding out how to get your absentee ballot to the right place. Some places are allowing you to drop it off, some places are asking you to mail it. So you want to make sure you get all of that information. This is a part of coming up with your voting plan.
Amena Brown:
And if you decide you're going to cast your vote in person, you may want to think about bringing a few things. First of all, you definitely want to bring a mask because we are still in a pandemic. You may want to bring a chair if there are going to be long lines of waiting in case you may need to have a seat for a while. You may need some snacks, or water, or hand sanitizer, or disinfectant wipes. Think about the things that might be a little bit of a survival kit of sorts that you could have with you if you are going to cast your vote in person.
Amena Brown:
Also, my number two thing to tell you is to make sure that you vote early if possible. We are 20 days from election day today. That means there are probably most states, counties, cities that are going to have some early voting available for you. Try and do that if you can. What that does is it evens out the amount of us that are going to vote, and we are hoping huge amounts of people are going to vote. We want to make sure you do that as early as possible, hopefully, that will decrease the weight and make it so that people who are not able to vote early can have election day to vote if that's the only time for them.
Amena Brown:
To help with your voting plan, visit rockthevote.org. I'm trying to give shout outs to some sites that are really helpful. If you know of any other sites that you recommend, please let me know on social media. I would love to hear that. And if you forget all these links and stuff, you can go to the show notes at amenabrown.com/herwithamena and find out all this information there.
Amena Brown:
And my third to-do item for you is if you are available, sign up to be a poll worker. Here in Georgia where I live, all of the times that I have gone to vote, most of the poll workers have been elders in our community. And right now, during the pandemic, we want to protect our elders and our senior citizens, we want to be able to keep them as COVID-free as we can. And one of the ways that we can do that, that we can prevent there being a pull worker shortage is by volunteering to be poll workers.
Amena Brown:
And actually, it's not quite volunteering because being a poll worker is a paid gig as well. So you can definitely go to powerthepolls.org to check out more information about that. And again, you can go to the show notes and get this information. We want to make sure that the people in our communities are able to cast their votes, we want to make sure that we are able to cast our votes, so these are good things. Come up with your voting plan, vote early if possible, and if you're available, sign up to be a poll worker. These are the things we do to make sure that we can get our voices heard.
Amena Brown:
Hey everybody, another episode of HER with Amena Brown, and I am happy to be back here with you all. This is so great. We're finding a rhythm. I'm hearing from you all, getting some ratings and reviews. I love to see it. I love to get to interact with you. So please, please comment, email, smoke signal, whatever you have, send me those things. I want to hear from you.
Amena Brown:
So one thing I discovered about myself recently is what kind of alcohol beverage I prefer. I am a late bloomer people. So I know, I just turned 40 years old and I'm just now figuring this out. And I don't know, you may go through different seasons of time knowing what kind of drink person you are. In general, I'm a lightweight, meaning I have one or two drinks and that's a wrap for me.
Amena Brown:
I also realized I don't always pace myself very well on how quickly I am taking on the drink, so that might be an issue too. But I want to announce to you all something that I have discovered about myself. I wanted to share it with you. I have discovered that I am a cocktail lady. I thought for a while that I was a wine lady kind of like how, when you're watching Real Housewives, almost all of the franchises, it's all built around, at some point, somebody in somebody's house gathering around a glass of wine. And I was like, maybe I am this lady.
Amena Brown:
But I have discovered through a home-made mojito that I am a cocktail lady. I enjoy it. There's all this creativity that you can put into it. There are these herbs and fruits and essence of the this and that, that you can pair with it. So I would like your favorite cocktail recipes. I would like you to hit me up on the socials and tell me, what are your favorite cocktails, and what are your favorite cocktail recipes?
Amena Brown:
Because this pandemic time, and we still are in a pandemic, everyone, just wanted to say that out loud in case it's hard to remember, but we are still in the middle of a pandemic, so we are still needing to try our best to not have to go out a lot for unnecessary things. We are also needing to try our best to wear a mask when we are not at home. And for some of us, even when you are at home, depending on who else lives with you, you might have certain moments that may require you to wear a mask. But yes, I just want to say that out loud because sometimes, people forget that we're in a pandemic.
Amena Brown:
So anyway, during this pandemic time, I have had to learn how to be a part of making some things from home. So I tried a mojito from home, and you all, this is great. These mint leaves with the rum, and I tried one with the strawberries, the lime juice, I mean, so I'm a cocktail lady. I feel like in my older, seasoned age, I hope I find myself just having a rum and Coke in the evening sometimes. That is who I am. So which one are you? Are you more of a cocktails person? Are you more of a wine or beer person? Or are you a person that's like, none of these for me, and here is my drink that I have that comforts me.
Amena Brown:
Sometimes for me, that's just a sparkling water. I didn't think that I was going to be a person that loves sparkling water. I'm not a LaCroix person, but there are some others like sparkling water brands that I really like, and I didn't think that I would get into that because I was like, why would you want to have something that tastes like a soda, but it's minus all the things that make a soda delicious? So that was my response to sparkling water at first, but now, I'm totally on board. That can be a very comforting drink to have at the end of the day. So let me know your thoughts. I want your cocktail recipes, and I want to know which type of drink is your drink for comfort? Share with me.
Amena Brown:
So I want to talk about something that I have experienced, that many people have experienced, and that is being broke. And I want to talk about being broke because being broke can also be a great place to build your creativity and innovation. And if you've ever been broke, you know this is true because being broke forces you to have to think about what you can do with the little bit of money that you might have. And maybe you're listening and you're like, I don't know what being broke is.
Amena Brown:
Being broke is the gap between the money you make and the bills and expenses you have to pay. And to the extent that that is sizable is to the extent of how broke you are. And I experienced being broke growing up sometimes, I also experienced being broke in my adulthood. And I feel like that brokenness hit me differently because it was up to me to feed myself. So I want to talk about in particular, the food lessons that I have learned from being broke.
Amena Brown:
One of the things that learned is how to replicate dishes from my favorite restaurants because when you're broke, you can't afford to be eating out like that. So one of the first dishes I learned how to make was Maggiano's Chicken Marsala, because I was like, this dish is delicious. However, I only have $20 to make it the next two weeks, which means I can't blow my $20 on one dish of chicken Marsala. So, that is how I learned how to make that. And it actually was not that hard to make, and for close to the price of what you would pay for the one dish at Maggiano's, you got a whole meal for yourself that you could eat a few days. Let's talk about that.
Amena Brown:
Also, I learned to replicate one of my favorite fast food drinks, Sonic Drive-in's Limeade. Sonic has a lot of nostalgic feelings with me because my high school in San Antonio, Texas, shout out to San Antonio, shout out to Judson High School, my high school was across the street from a Sonic. So I went to that same Sonic my first date ever. And we would go to that Sonic and hang out after school all the time. So I have a lot of great memories of that limeade.
Amena Brown:
And you might be saying, limeades are not that expensive. Yeah, but when you're broke and you're having to choose between keeping the lights on or going out to eat a bunch of fast food, then you will learn quickly that maybe a can of Shasta and one container of strawberries and one lime can get you further maybe than you going and buying a limeade every time you want one. Also, being broke taught me the food lesson of making the cheapest but most filling meals possible. And I have to give an extra shout out to my grandma on this because my grandma taught me the power of the salad.
Amena Brown:
And I don't mean the salad that has lettuce in it. I'm talking about the salad that's basically the base of it is like eggs, Mayo or Miracle Whip, depending on how you are, where you were raised, et cetera, relish, but you can add all sorts of other proteins to this. So the basic one is the egg salad where it's just chopped up boiled eggs, relish, and Mayo, basically. But put that on some toasted bread and I'm just telling you, it is a life changing moment. It is very delicious. Then if you have the means, you can also do a tuna fish salad. Same situation as the egg salad. Now, you're just adding tuna into that. If you have a little more means, chicken salad.
Amena Brown:
So my grandma taught me these things because that's something you can pull together real cheap. I know we're still in a pandemic time. If you even have that rotisserie chicken, you can cut that up, make some chicken salad. The purpose of what you want to be doing when money is low but mouths must be fed is you want to be thinking about what you can make most cheaply that can last the longest amount of time. So I learned these initial lessons from my grandmother, I took them on into my little first apartment. I remember when I was living in my first apartment ever, I think I was about 27 years old, and my apartment had faux granite and I was very proud of that faux granite.
Amena Brown:
I was super, super proud of it. I remember when people would come over and I would have just enough money to buy one container of orange juice. And then they'd come over, you're trying to offer them something to drink. They pour a tall glass of juice, and I feel tight in my chest because I'm like, could you have just gotten like a shortcut? And then I don't know if you've ever experienced this where you invited somebody over to your home, they pour something to drink, but then they don't drink the whole thing?
Amena Brown:
And if you have ever been to the level of broke where you were just so pissed that now this half drunk glass of juice that you paid for ... It really brought home to me the things that my mother was dealing with at home because when you're a teenager, you just walking around, taking a bite out of stuff, leaving it, forgetting about it. But getting your own place and get a job and realize how much of a struggle it is just to buy those things, that those things that when you were growing up were like basics at home are now like a luxury at your house.
Amena Brown:
So what am I saying to you? If you find yourself in a broke or in a financially lean moment, there are ways you can use this to bring out your own creativity. Make up some different meals. You can bring out some innovation. Figure out some ways to do this for the low, low, low, but let it build your creativity because you're going to need them skills. You're going to need to know how to make a lot out of a little bit. And that is our lesson for the day.
Amena Brown:
This week, I'm really excited to welcome Ifeoma Ike to our HER living room. Ifeoma's interview was completed prior to the pandemic, but I believe that the things that she has to say are so timely because of the work that she's done inside of the system of our government, as well as outside, and how we can affect change, whether we find ourselves inside the system of government or outside the system of government. So as we are leading up to election season, let's get some tips and some wisdom from Ifeoma Ike. Check out our conversation.
Amena Brown:
So first of all, let me tell you all that Ify and I are a great Facebook story, and apparently, right now Facebook needs some good stories. So we are a good Facebook story because we actually met at an event in New York. This was over 10 years ago.
Ifeoma Ike:
It was.
Amena Brown:
I feel crazy to even say that, Ify.
Ifeoma Ike:
It was because wow, I've been an attorney this year for 10 years. So I met you while I was in law school.
Amena Brown:
Wow. Yeah, we met at an event, which I forgot that we met there. I just think that Ify is amazing. And I've been watching her posts and all this amazing work she's been doing in New York, in DC, and there was one time I commented and you commented back. I was like, oh my God, she commented back to me. So I've been really-
Ifeoma Ike:
It was respectful admiration. It could have easily been shocking if neither one of us liked each other, but it was a respect, like oh, dope, Amena the poet knows me? Okay. Of course, I'll respond back. So yeah, it was definitely mutual. If you were definitely somebody that I couldn't take, I'd be like, security, I'd like to report flag on the field.
Amena Brown:
So it's so funny that when I was writing, Ify, to be like, hey girl, I want to interview you for this podcast. But I think I was like, I don't know if you know me, but we have these mutual friends and I have so much respect for this work you've been doing. And if she's reading the message, girl, I met you at this event in New York. Goodbye. So I'm so glad.
Ifeoma Ike:
[crosstalk 00:16:24]. I was like, "Girl, you know me." And you were like, "Really?" And then I thought about it and I was like, "Well yeah, you know me like we knew each other if we was waiting in a long line at Starbucks," which we'll get to in a second. But yeah, it was one of those, I guess first impressions. As cheesy as it sounds, first impressions, I feel like on both ends were so great. So I'm so grateful that you asked me to be on your podcast. And congratulations, just excited for you and your show.
Amena Brown:
I was like, I have to get Ify on here to talk about The Body Politic, which if you're not familiar with this term, The Body Politic is basically to imagine that our political landscape is itself a body.
Ifeoma Ike:
Yes.
Amena Brown:
That it is all interconnected. And hopefully, we want to approach that in a communal way. Ify will tell us how that's going. I'd love to start with an origin story. And I am curious to hear from you, this career that you've had in government, and law, and policy, and politics, if you imagined that life for yourself when you were young, like I remember when I was about eight years old, I was a latchkey kid. Some of you all are like, what's a latchkey.
Amena Brown:
Anyway, this is when your parents work in and they are like, I will not be able to pick you up from school. You will get yourself home from the bus or you will walk home. I will give you this key. And my mom threatened me within an inch of my life like, "When you get into the house, you're going to lock the door. I don't want nobody in my house. You're going to watch TV for 30 minutes, you're going to that homework, you're going to eat those snacks I got from Sam's, and I'm going to see you when I get home."
Amena Brown:
Now, a couple of times I spent my 30 minutes of TV watching Eddie Murphy's Delirious on VHS. Now, this is not for eight year olds, but it is one of the first moments as a kid that I was watching that man on stage with a microphone and a stool and there was something in me going, that is something I want to do. Did you have a moment like that as your younger self, or did this become this other iteration later in your life?
Ifeoma Ike:
So it's weird. It's also why I hate titles because I feel like my origin story as far as being an attorney is probably different than my origin story of a lot of other things that I feel like I am as well, including before I went to law school, I was in grad school for research. So I thought I was going to be a psychologist. And even before I went there and even up until now, there's a whole different community of folks that know me as a writer and an artist. So I feel like my path to law was one of both accident, and then one of obviously, divine something or else. So to say, I don't know if I should be credited as much as actually taking the right steps towards becoming a lawyer.
Ifeoma Ike:
I would be lying though if I didn't say that the influence of Clair Huxtable is not real in my life. Clair Huxtable was probably one of the more eloquent debaters. She mastered the art of debating without letting you even debate. If she was correct, then that actually just ended the conversation. And in a Nigerian household where the only thing that ends up conversation was my father, who I still believe is the original lawyer in my family, I think I've always been a nerdy kid and I always had a lot of information, but I was always looking for, what are the examples of people that could beat my father?
Ifeoma Ike:
And I'm pretty sure Clair Huxtable could beat, I'm pretty sure Felicia Rashad to this day could beat my father and an argument. And that gives me so much joy. So I would say that looking back, that was probably a very subliminal messaging tool that just allowed me to at least know that I could do it. That I, at least knew I could debate. And grown up in an immigrant family as the oldest of five, our journeys are often not as discussed, and I think especially when you're in a Nigerian household and people talk about like, oh, you guys are ... Well, depending on who you talk to, we're either really brilliant, or we're the senders of an email scam that on behalf of my community, I'm sorry.
Ifeoma Ike:
But I will say that there are all these assumptions that you have to have been well off, you have to have always been great in all of your subjects, math and science had to have been your strongest subjects. And I will say that math and science were actually strong. Math more than science. Math was a strong subject for me all through my life. Science, not so much. And it actually wasn't until high school that I actually started literally becoming this lover of all things science. And I think the combination of math, science, and of course, my love for art and literature is that in many sense, all of them are extremely logical.
Ifeoma Ike:
Even in the fluidity of art, even if it's just logical to the maker, it's still logical. And I just wanted to be a part of something that made sense. I loved solving problems. So geometry was amazing because geometry, to me, was like Tetris. Like, okay, well, if this is a square, prove it. And so that, I think coupled with the fact that as I got older and became a little bit more socially aware of my being, first my Blackness, then my immigrantness, then my poorness, I will say that it actually took some time, and we'll talk about this later, for me to also add what gender and orientation and all those things, how they played into my life.
Ifeoma Ike:
Because if we're honest with ourselves, as Black girls, we're not often taught about the injustices that we face as girls, we're taught the injustices we face as Black people. So that was very prominent for me. And I was always looking with how to address those issues, but I also happened to be an environment where I wasn't necessarily with other people that I would consider today as comrades. So I went undergrad and grad school in West Virginia University, not exactly the backdrop of diversity.
Ifeoma Ike:
And that was difficult because I'm involved in a lot of students leadership stuff, but I wasn't necessarily around colleagues or even friends that looked like me that were there to want to address the issues. And I started realizing that we can all be aware, but I wasn't comfortable being aware and not conscious. And I think that that's something that can happen. You can be aware of an issue, that doesn't make you cautious.
Ifeoma Ike:
Fast-forward, during law school, my grandmother was murdered, she was murdered in Nigeria, and that tripped me out because I had a lot of questions for my parents. And I remember asking, "Who's going to investigate this?" And they both gave me this look like, what the heck are you talking about? And that's when I think my global awareness was at least highlighted to know that every country doesn't have at least the tools or the words on paper like we have in the United States. And for those that even have that, because their situations and their traditions and norms are just as corruptible, just corrupted in a different way, that I also didn't have.
Ifeoma Ike:
I wasn't equipped to know who to call in Nigeria to be like, "Can you investigate the murder of my grandmother?" So in a weird way, I kind of always knew that law and justice are not the same thing, and I'm also very clear that we've never really seen justice in the way that it's romanticized as something that's an outlet that all people deserve.
Ifeoma Ike:
But I do think that I've always been interested in A, understanding the foundations of this thing called justice that I think, in a lot of ways, American-ness is like it romanticizes it, and then B, sharing that knowledge with other communities and recognizing that whether it's law or research, which was its own space of frustration, that our communities are severely either underrepresented as subject matters or were underestimated as far as service.
Ifeoma Ike:
So it's kind of a tricky route how I got there. I think when I was younger, I felt like I was going to ... I remember distinctly saying I was going to be a doctor. Half of my scholarships for undergrad were in engineering and the other half were in pharmacy. So I was definitely always that confused kids. I also write with both hands. So I'm always confused. I'm always like, no, I want to of course jump a rope and solve this physics problem at the same damn time. I'm always all over the place.
Ifeoma Ike:
But I think law at least keeps me grounded as to understanding the rules as it's been presented to us, and then finding ways to disrupt the same system that we've been told to be in love with. And that's a challenge. And I don't even think I've mastered that. I feel like I'm still in that process, but that is kind of my origin story as far as law.
Amena Brown:
Tell me more about law school. I'm going to be really honest that I do have some friends that went to law school, but I was not close with them during the time they were in law school. So law school, in my mind, it's like a combination of LA Law. And what finals was like in undergrad, but all the time. How you would feel when it was finals in undergrad. People are not showering and they're running around shuffling papers and going to Kinko's. Somebody is like, what's a Kinko's? Okay. But just a lot of like papers and busyness of things. And that's basically all I imagined when my friends were like, I'm going to law school.
Amena Brown:
And I'm also curious, when we talk about education and we think about those postgraduate degrees, how the further we get along in our education, the less we see women sometimes, the less we see people of color or women of color. So what was that experience like for you making this choice now to go to law school and being a woman, being a Black woman, being a woman of color? How did you experience that through those different layers of who you are?
Ifeoma Ike:
That's a really amazing question. And I would actually love to hear this response from other colleagues that I went to law school with, and even people that have contemplated going to law school as far as what decisions matter to them when they go to school. So I applied to 13 different law schools. I got in to 11, which is to say, I wasn't really picky with the exception of two, one of which was Howard, and the other one was where I ended up going to, which was CUNY Law School. CUNY Law School is known as the only public interest law school with all of the accredited laws.
Ifeoma Ike:
And based off of even what I just told you, I felt like off-mission. As somebody who wanted to use law to advance the progress for all peoples, it was a no brainer. And it was in New York. It was in New York, that year was a best buy, you're Googling and you're seeing this school's connected to the largest public legal clinic to citizens of New York, which largely serves marginalized and underrepresented communities. Everything checks the box. This is it. This is probably the furthest thing from where I went to undergrad and grad school. CUNY Law also prided itself in being diverse, which mattered to me on paper. I will say that law school as an institution, I don't care where you go, is a very hostile place.
Amena Brown:
Wow.
Ifeoma Ike:
It is hostile. It doesn't mean you can't have fun, and I would say, even if you went to an HBCU Law School, which is where my sister went, she went to NCCU, that it still has things that as a Black person, you almost have to stop, take a breather, and be like, what's actually happening. Are they reprogramming me? Because law is a new language.
Ifeoma Ike:
And that's the thing that people don't understand, is that there are words that they throw out like prima facie, and [inaudible 00:29:32], and even words that we use all the time, like that's my MO, which stands for modus operandi and what that means in criminal law. You are literally learning a new language, but you are also, in many ways, learning a culture.
Ifeoma Ike:
And when you're in a space where you're learning so much information and a culture, you don't have a lot of moments to stop and question either. Like why are some of these things called the way that they're called? Or why are there certain exceptions or certain procedures that apply to criminal court cases that don't apply to civil court cases?
Ifeoma Ike:
And how do those distinctions impact a system that over-incarcerates people of color? Things like that. You're there trying to figure out how you're going to get out semester by semester. Not even in three years. The three years actually goes by really quickly. It's the semester by semester feeling that you accurately mentioned is like a perpetual. You feel like you're being tested every day.
Ifeoma Ike:
So CUNY Law was progressive, but like most schools, was not equitable. They still had some racial issues. They still had some tensions between wanting to stand for social justice, but then also conforming to these traditional standards that all law schools have. And I would say they lacked racial and ethnic diversity with teachers. Although, if you were to ask them, I think that they felt like they were doing, and they probably were doing better than most other schools outside of HBCU law schools.
Ifeoma Ike:
This year marks my 10-year graduation from law school. And I am frequently asked to speak at my JD at alma mater. I also went to GW in DC for my LLM. But I speak to students and I tell them the truth when I'm asked about my experience, but I also tell them that it's not that much better anywhere else. In some ways, it's like you kind of got to grin and bear it. You will have amazing opportunities. You'll build a tribe. You'll build a squad.
Ifeoma Ike:
One of my independent studies while in law school had actually nothing to do with a legal concept. It actually had to do with the admissions criteria into law school. And why we rely so heavily on the LSAT as the tool to get us into law school, even though it has not been shown as a highly necessary tool on the other side, which is when you're applying for the bar. And it's also interesting what criteria we don't use to admit students into law school, like oral advocacy and debating, which people of color clearly, that's a skill that any kid down the street has already mastered before they're even at the age of 10.
Ifeoma Ike:
So I really question what that means as far as the larger establishment, the larger accrediting body who are the types of individuals that you actually want to be successful on the other side. And there are all these screening criteria, but both overt and covert that work together to basically funnel out this group of individuals that society isn't even aware of. As a student, you're not even aware of that you have been selected for a reason, and that also means that there have been other people that have not. So, I mean, other than that, I feel like for those that are considering going to a law school, be clear upfront that you want to be a leader when you go in.
Ifeoma Ike:
And it doesn't have to be a loud leader, it doesn't have to be a formal leader, but there are things that being in law school at a time where Katrina happened, at a time where Sean Bell was killed, he was actually killed very close to where our law school was at, and for you all listeners, Sean Bell was the young man who was killed the morning of his wedding in Queens, New York, our school at that time was in Queens, New York, so our mind set, the location we were at, Art Street where our law school was, was a post-911 checkpoint.
Ifeoma Ike:
So many of the men of color were late every day to class because they were just getting stopped and frisked before they got into the classroom. Being in that type of a backdrop, we recognized that we are in law school, but it doesn't negate the fact that we are human first. We are people of color. We are impacted by the things that impact our clients. And we were going to make sure that we used our space within the law school to further build our advocacy skills. So definitely, a mixed bag as far as feelings about law school. But it definitely was a good, I guess, testing ground for myself, who was interested in advocacy.
Amena Brown:
One of the things I hear in that story and that I also hear reflected in PoliTea, so for those of you who have not subscribed, listen now and subscribe to PoliTea. You need to do this. But one of the things that you and Turquoise have talked about is the importance of affecting change. And that sometimes when we are entering what we're thinking, this is a field where I will be able to affect change, that sometimes there are things that happen that in a PR way, or in a thing that looked good for a photograph or looked good on a video, but actually didn't change anything for the people who are really being impacted by the way our laws are set up.
Amena Brown:
So I want to ask you, as an attorney and activist, you have been a part of affecting change while working inside of the government system, which takes its own sense of grace to even do because you're affecting change inside of a system that wasn't built for everyone and is broken in a lot of ways. But you are going inside there to affect change. And you also have done work where you have worked to affect change outside of that system. So what's it like to have both of those experiences to affect change inside of a system and outside of it as well?
Ifeoma Ike:
So I am blessed that I can say that there are certain things that I have done that have visibly changed something in the lives of people that I know, communities that maybe were under-discussed or under-prioritized in certain spaces. I will say that. And I often caution people as to how we measure change because sometimes, if we don't see things moving fast enough, we think that change is not happening.
Ifeoma Ike:
And I think, in a lot of ways, some of what was happening around the larger movement for Black lives was that people, especially those who weren't at all in part of the movement, but people that I would like to say were more so spectators and watching on the sides, understandably part of what they were watching was there is a different measure of what change looks like.
Ifeoma Ike:
When you are saying this in an instance where you are a Black person in America, your reality of your day-to-day being profiled, being second-guessed at work, microaggressions, all of those things happen on a daily basis. So the type of change you're looking for is something that in a lot of ways erases all of the negative Black experiences that you're going through. And anything short of that is not change at all. For somebody who feels like they are called to do something about that, you can be really, really dismayed and disheartened if that is the measure of what change is for you.
Ifeoma Ike:
And it doesn't mean that that isn't your goal, but I think for me, I've always kept in mind that again, being logical, we can be really logical about one thing, and I feel like it's the question that I start with before I decide if I'm going to enter a space or not. And that question is Ify or Ify as my parents would call me, Ify, when you go into a space, what will be different after you leave than when you came? And I think in some ways, this is also a question that many advocates and activists don't ask themselves before they do certain activities.
Ifeoma Ike:
I'll throw out an activity that's commonly used. For example, conferences. People have conferences all the time. And I have definitely been at some extremely powerful conferences. But I've also really questioned the concept of conferences. If conferences are there and marketed as something that is there to promote change, and yet after the conference is gone, other than providing money to maybe small businesses in the area, which is very, very impactful, and then of course internally, the networking that people have with each other, are we affecting the change that we're advertising?
Ifeoma Ike:
That to me is a valid question that we all should be asking ourselves about our own personal activities and our collective activities that are happening. And some of our activities that are actually not collective, to be honest with you, you can have a lot of busy people doing a lot of things. You can have a lot of busy bees, but if those bees ain't bringing in honey, then they're not affecting the change that's supposed to happen in that ecosystem.
Ifeoma Ike:
So I think that one of the things that I know about myself, which is sometimes not always a positive thing, is that I am number one impatient with injustice, I am an empath, which is akin to being a sensitive person, I'm highly just sensitive to certain things, but I also do believe that I am empowered. For me as a person of faith, I believe I am empowered by God. And I also believe that those around me can be too. And as somebody who believes that God is the ultimate artist and the ultimate creator, that means that I am not afraid.
Ifeoma Ike:
Even if I fail forward, I'm not afraid to create something if it allows for other people to be creative about our change. And I think that's what it is, as that I think that the answers to the changes we want to see force us to not necessarily use the tools that exist, but to be creative about what doesn't. So I'm more excited about creating spaces, whether it was simply just putting a hashtag called hoodies on the hill on my G-Chat when G-Chat used to be the thing.
Amena Brown:
Come on G-Chats.
Ifeoma Ike:
Come on G-Chats, that you wasn't supposed to be doing at work. Being just this lowly judicial staffer on the judiciary committee in Congress and seeing my friends status messages changing because mindset Hoodies On The Hill, and this was all in response to the murder of Trayvon Martin. And everybody's status message just started changing to Hoodies On The Hill. And then I was getting messages like, when are we doing this? I could have easily just respond and be like, this is just how I feel. This is just a status message. Nope. 18 hours later, we organized the first congressional walk out of folks that were just ...
Ifeoma Ike:
It was hot, 80 degree weather, but we all had our hoodies and we really wanted to stand there to be like, if the only impact we're making here is that you recognize that when you pass a Black staffer, that we easily could have been Trayvon, that our family members could have been Trayvon, and we're not going to let this issue be something that people are going to just say under their breath, oh, it's so sad what happened to that young Black boy in Florida. It wasn't going to happen. So, that to me was about creating something that the space in our 9:00 to 5:00 just didn't allow for, it didn't have before we entered into that space.
Ifeoma Ike:
Two years ago now. Wow. Two years ago when a group of women came together, a group of seven of us, one of which we were fortunate to link up with Sandra Bland's sister, Sharon Cooper, we came together and we were like, you know what? We can't just keep having hashtags. At that time, hashtag Say Her Name was the hashtag that people were using when a woman of color was killed. We can't just keep talking about the inequities of Black women and girls. We actually need to create a space for it.
Ifeoma Ike:
And had a little bit of knowledge of how to create that kind of space from creating similar spaces in Congress. We worked collectively with three amazing chairs in Congress, Congresswoman Bonnie Watson Coleman, Congresswoman Yvette Clarke, Congresswoman Robin Kelly, and all of us happened to be members of Divine Nine organizations in solidarity with Sandra Bland also was a member of SGRho because that's what hit home to us was that she literally could have been any of us. She was stopped on her way from a job interview that could have been ...
Ifeoma Ike:
Literally, everything about Sandra Bland really gets under my skin because it's like even within our own communities, we make exceptions for who the Black person or who the victim is of crime. And sometimes without knowing it, we create differences between ourselves. But Sandra Bland was no different than really any Black woman in America. And we urge them to create what is now the congressional caucus on Black women and girls.
Ifeoma Ike:
And anytime I am asked to come speak or help collaborate, or I'm just in that space, or I'm invited to one of the member's district events in their districts and I see the floods of women, girls, men, non-gender conforming individuals just wanting a space to talk about their issues with elected officials that now are going to carry their issues with them on their backs as their burdens, it really kind of trips me out.
Ifeoma Ike:
What were we doing before this? Our issues just weren't as much in the front and center before this. So anyway, I could ramble and ramble and ramble about it, but I do think that for people that feel like I want to make change, let me tell you where my change making started. I didn't know nothing about nothing when people were talking about, for us, I think it was called recycling. We've now evolved to say climate change. But the whole recycling era for any of the folks that are part of the 80s babies crew, recycling was a big thing. You got to put your cans, you got to put your papers here and whatever.
Ifeoma Ike:
And I remember feeling like, oh, this is huge. How do I get people around me to talk about it more? And I made a little crossword puzzle because I was infatuated with crossword puzzles, and decided to start making games around it to share with people my age because I figured we like games, to just help them understand what terms are around recycling. It didn't really go far because ain't nobody in the hood trying to really give two craps about pollution. To be very honest, we had bigger issues at that time. But I was less concerned about whether or not I would be received, I was more concerned about how I could then connect with more people about something that may just not be that interesting.
Ifeoma Ike:
And I think that is the challenge of the today advocate. It is just as important for us to break down the tax bill that just got passed in December as it is to talk about patrons in Starbucks being asked to leave. Excuse me, asked to leave would have been polite. Being arrested for being Black while waiting for their friend at a Starbucks. Both are just as important, one may just be a little bit more complicated.
Ifeoma Ike:
And so I do think that in many spaces, those who are effective at connecting with communities that are impacted by policies that maybe they don't know about, we need to start almost deploying troops into other categories so we can better explain these issues, so that all of our people can be informed, and that it can maybe spark something in somebody who's like, you know what? I do want to make a difference. I just need more information about how. Right?
Amena Brown:
Yeah. Oh, that's so good. And it makes me think about how even hearing you describe some of this, how politics is a language. I think you said that politics is a language. Law is a language. And some people are more privy than others to what the language is, to how to interpret that, to how to discern what's being said. I was telling you earlier how, when I was growing up, I was going to these AP classes and we would have our English AP class have a current events assignment where you had to write about a current event or something.
Amena Brown:
And I would watch all my other classmates come in and share their interpretations of this current event that they pulled from, like The Wall Street Journal and US News and World Report. These publications that some I had heard of, some I hadn't. In my house, my mom ... I mean, we had different things. We had James Baldwin and Tony Morrison and Alice Walker. That was more my mom's stuff that she read.
Amena Brown:
But I remember them talking about some of those things and discussing the law and discussing how they were interpreting what they read, and feeling really intimidated because I didn't understand a word they said, or because I would not have known how to articulate that. Why is it important, particularly for marginalized people to understand politics, to understand what it is that's happening?
Ifeoma Ike:
So one of the things that I hope everyone who's listening to this show, if they haven't been affirmed ever before, I want to affirm to everyone that's listening that whether you understand politics or not, you yourself as a being are political. If you accept that you are political, then you are entitled, and you are more than welcomed to act within that political framework, which means also empowering yourself with more information. But also recognize that even if you don't have the language, your experience is enough.
Ifeoma Ike:
So even as you were speaking, one of the things that I find that's so interesting and politicized is data. Everybody wants us to talk about data. Now we have Twitter, and you can literally select within an hour, see tweets that come from Newsweek, New York Times, USA Today, Washington Post, Center for American Progress. You could see research and research upon research from experts that are paid to basically, in the space of like sociopolitical context, to give analysis on domestic issues that impact our lives. Those people are seen as experts. Those people are seen as the ones that they did the research, they ran the numbers. That is what we typically would call quantitative data.
Ifeoma Ike:
But we also have qualitative data. And what is interesting about every headline that I see, when it's like 40% of millennials don't see race or studies show that Black women are treated differently at the doctors, ask any Kesha, Pam, Lil' Kim that you know, Serena Williams that you know, and they'll be like yeah, been told you all that. And the problem is nobody captures the yeah, I've been told you that. Yeah, I've been told you that is data. That is a survey. That is qualitative data. You all are only getting paid to affirm what we've been telling you all since the beginning of time.
Ifeoma Ike:
So for me, we need to devise a different way to invite people as the political beings that they are. As a Black woman, as a Black man from an immigrant family, I have no choice but to be political. I also recognize my privilege of first of all, growing up in a house where for years and years on end, we didn't even have cable. And the only thing we could watch was Thursday nights because it was the Cosby Show and A Different World, maybe a little bit of Friday nights, depending on how my dad felt when family matters came out. But everything else was PBS and news. That was it.
Ifeoma Ike:
So I was privileged to be there with a dad, which I will say for your viewers because I'm not afraid to say it, who is a conservative. For the longest, I was being groomed with that mindset. I was being taught and basically being brainwashed. And we're all being taught by someone. If you're not actively teaching yourself, you're being taught by something. And it wasn't until I started doing my own research that I'm like, some of these policies don't really help us as a people.
Ifeoma Ike:
This isn't really the thing. But I do think that to your question of, how important is it for us to be political and understand the political language, it does require being uncomfortable sometimes and being immersed in spaces where literally, all that's happening is the words around you, even if they sound like jumble, they are swarming your presence.
Ifeoma Ike:
And so part of the reason why Turquoise and I created PoliTea was not necessarily because we want it to sound like the most eloquent people in the world, not because we wanted it to sound like everything we were saying was per se fact, we wanted to invite people as they are, as we are. We wake up and do it at 5:45 in the morning. So bless your heart. There's a lot of truth that comes in at that time because we haven't had time to code switch yet.
Ifeoma Ike:
So we wake up intentionally as two Black women with all of our experiences, all of our education and lack thereof, to talk about issues that we feel like are interesting. And we hope that other people get to hear it and be like, huh, maybe I'll Google it later. And we are encouraged when we do hear that people are like, I didn't know that. That we feel like is some type of change. Just that spark.
Ifeoma Ike:
To your point really quickly before we transition to talk about how political our lives are, there's a really great study that talks about the number of words an average White kid listens to just from the mere fact of two White parents versus what a Black kid listens to regardless of whether they have one parent, two parents, what have you. And that study is compelling to me because what they're talking about is the influence without a child even thinking that words can have, that exposure can have.
Ifeoma Ike:
So those Toni Morrison books impacted you because you were exposed, even if you only knew that the books were on the wall or that Song of Solomon was over here and The Fire Next Time was over there, and Beloved was over there. Even if these were the books that your mom was like, you better not touch these books, the fact that they were there says something to you. So I do think that one of the things we have to do is identify the politics and everything, including what we're exposed to.
Ifeoma Ike:
Not just what's on MSNBC, not just what's on CNN, not just what's on Fox News, even though what's on Fox News is at Israeli News, but whatever, to really identify that everything in our lives is political. And therefore, we have to participate in both the politicized nature of the way our social constructs impact us, but also the ways that we too can empower our political being to counter those narratives.
Amena Brown:
Ify isn't just speaking a word.
Ifeoma Ike:
Sorry, you all.
Amena Brown:
I'm on here like, quotes on quotes. I'm trying to get me a mug that says yeah, I've been told you that. I really need that on a mug. We're in an age right now that politically, in our country, it's fascinating, it's heartbreaking, it's hard, it's a lot of things right now. And not that it has not been hard because we know it has. But there are some interesting things right now about in particular, this political era that we're in. What would you say are some of the ways marginalized people should make their voices heard?
Amena Brown:
I think sometimes when you're in an era like we're in, sometimes people end up in an extreme. Either they are like, oh my gosh, I have to sell all my possessions and I have to just go and protest every day. I need to boycott everyone and everything, and either go to this way extreme. Or go to this other extreme of nothing I do matters anyway. Nothing that I do is going to change anything. What would you say are some of the ways marginalized people should resist, should fight, should make sure that our voices are heard?
Ifeoma Ike:
Some practical ways, and even some of the examples that I uplifted, none of those things were done in isolation. So finding your team, even identifying the people that when you yourself are discouraged, you need to be poured into is really, really important. Collaboration can be really, really hard in a capitalist society that also values this whole independent entrepreneurial blah, blah, blah, that shares the lies of the bootstraps without thinking about who had to make the boot and who had to make the straps.
Ifeoma Ike:
So recognizing that you yourself can make a difference, can make change, and think about what would happen if 10 of you made that change. And don't necessarily focus on the 25 others that don't want to change with you because I think sometimes that's also what holds people back is being discouraged that the whole choir can't sing. Well, part of the choir problem, they shouldn't be singing and that's probably not their gifting.
Ifeoma Ike:
And so it's really about being confident about your calling, but also being humble enough to know that while there are things that are unique to you, dare to believe that there are other people that also feel the same way and are just as impassioned about this issue as you are. And then form some type of a discipline in activism. So if that's going to meetings, going to NAACP meetings, and I'm not condoning any groups, I'm just throwing out examples, going to a Black Lives Matter student rally, going to a Muslim-American anti-Islamophobia session.
Ifeoma Ike:
Or just doing something that I really admire about the Black Panthers that I wish we would get back to, which is having community quiet, sit down, reading time, where they would actually just come together with their newspapers and just sit and read. And that's how they got caught up on their current events, sitting and reading and just digesting. And it reminds me of, for those of us who grew up with newspapers, what it meant to see your mother or your father sitting at the table and just reading the newspaper and just taking that information in.
Ifeoma Ike:
I do think that there is a little bit of more discipline that we should be promoting about disciplining your advocacy muscle. And all of it is not just about rushing out and doing something. Everything is about perspective. So looking at what it means to win and don't let other people define wins for you. Recognizing that effort is valuable. And also recognize that teamwork is really huge in how you accomplish and get to whatever goals you want to see.
Ifeoma Ike:
I will say that in a society that is not going to, and especially for marginalized communities, and I can only speak for the communities that I belong to, which are quite a few, in a society that's not necessarily going to give you anything, what I appreciate about your podcast, what I appreciate about PoliTea is that, look, we don't have to be the only ones doing this. There are so many free tools out there to allow you to let your voice be heard, let the voices of other people be heard.
Ifeoma Ike:
Use that phone that you pay all that money every month for and take videos of what is going on in your community. If you want to sing about it, do it through song. If it's visually, do it visually. If you're a really good event organizer, try to find some space. Maybe it's the local Y, maybe it's the boys and girls club. Invite people in your community to use art as a way to express all of their hurt and their dreams. My inclination is to create. So it's always about, how do we create spaces for other people so that they can also be creative and they can also identify solutions?
Ifeoma Ike:
The last thing I will say, and this is kind of getting to that extreme end that you had of people that are like, I'm going to boycott everything. I am going to caveat this and say, I am no longer in this space of telling people that as long as we all do something good in the spaces that we're in, we'll see change, we'll make a difference. I dream often of what it would look like if we all did things that were simple yet radical. What would happen if every Black person who was eligible voted? Oh my God. What would really happen if we actually all voted, and all voted all the time?
Ifeoma Ike:
Does that mean that "the man" is not going to change the rules and the system again? Absolutely not. The man is still going to be the man. But what would happen if the thing that they're spending so much money to make sure we can't do, what would happen if we did that thing? What would happen if we did all boycott? So I will say that while, no, my goal as an advocate is not to necessarily organize so that we are at 100% full participation, but I do want people to envision.
Ifeoma Ike:
To take the boycott even further, and not just stop at the boycott and the impact that it's going to have to capitalism. But to really envision what that means creatively for us. Is that the new Wall Street? Does that mean that we have to fill in the gaps of practical needs, like, okay, if we boycott Nike, what does that mean for [inaudible 00:59:32]? Well, think about it. What does that mean that we're going to support? What are our new principles? What are our new values?
Ifeoma Ike:
And so I don't see boycotts as us giving up something, as in as much as us unlearning what we thought we needed to have and filling it in with something else, something us, something closer to treating us as a community as humans. So I say that and encourage folks that I do think it's going to require more of us to get uncomfortable. I don't think you can stay at your cushy job for the rest of your ... I think there are periods and times in life where you have to do that because economically, that makes sense.
Ifeoma Ike:
But I don't think that all of us going into spaces and relying on our corporate social responsibility officers or our diversity and inclusion teams to come up with a solution is going to create change. I do think people who come from various diverse backgrounds, various diverse experiences, and to an extent, those of us who are privileged in ways that we don't often identify, education and degrees being one of them, that we need to be like, thank you, Lord, for what you have provided me, I am very well aware of what I could take advantage of, but I also am not clouded by what the fight is right now.
Ifeoma Ike:
And I hope to eventually benefit from the fruits of my labor, but I also recognize that because there are so many people that are laboring and not benefiting at all, that that is worthy for me to join in the struggle with that person. So we just have to make choices, and it's okay to be hot or be cold. But I think when you straddle, that's when we have full progress. And we need to stop straddling. We need to just decide if we want change or not. If we want to be free or if we want to be safe. And the two are different.
Amena Brown:
My Lord. You all, my paper over here is full of notes. If you want to be safe. Oh gosh, please. And I love that you said two other phrases that are so powerful. One phrase you said and one idea that you described so well, the phrase you said, simple yet radical. I think that is so powerful because I think sometimes, especially when we are sitting in our comfort, thinking about being radical, we are starting to think about all the things we stand to lose from being radical. But that there are some even simple steps we can begin to take to live a more radical life, which is really more communal life.
Amena Brown:
It's to be in consideration of the people that we are in community with, not just our own losses-wins, however, we define that. And you also described creating as resistance, whether we create art or we create space. That when we create, we resist in justice. And that is so powerful. I hope you all is taking notes. Some of you all are driving. Don't take notes. But when you sit down somewhere, you need to take a note. Please tell the people how they can, first of all, stay connected to the PoliTea Podcast, how they can subscribe and do these things. And if they would also like to follow you, learn about your work, where are the best places they can get connected.
Ifeoma Ike:
With all of our Facebook, Insta, and every podcast outlet that we are on, best place to go to is politeapodcast.com. That's P-O-L-I-T-E-A-P-O-D-C-A-S-T.com. And you can literally get to all of those outlets there, including hearing the latest episode for our podcast. Also, if you want to go straight to Instagram or Twitter, we're @PoliTea_Podcast. We also have a Facebook page. So we ask that you connect with us, you share it. If you agree with us, tweet us. If I said something that's too far, I will deny it. That wasn't me. You're trying to blow me up at no conference. Or be like, what did you say on such and such? It was early. Okay. It was early in the morning. Be graceful.
Amena Brown:
I love it. Ify, thank you so much. For this week's edition of Give Her A Crown, I want to give a crown to Tracy Gates. Tracy Gates is the owner of Busy Bees here in Atlanta, which is my favorite soul food restaurant in Atlanta. And I want to give Tracy Gates a crown because Busy Bees has been a long established, not only a restaurant for just having fabulous food and fabulous soul food, but also being a restaurant that has been so central in the Black community for the Civil Rights Movement, and also, they have just banging fried chicken.
Amena Brown:
I make mac and cheese at my house. I am the person in my family that makes mac and cheese for all family gatherings. And when I have Busy Bees' mac and cheese, I still can't quite figure out why my mac and cheese don't taste like that. So I want to give a special shout out to Tracy Gates. I want to give her a crown for being a Black woman and business owner of one of Atlanta's most legacy soul food restaurants for keeping our cuisine and our culture right at the forefront. Tracy Gates, thank you for doing that, and thank you for making sure that we have a wonderful supply of fantastic dinner rolls, fried chicken, oxtails, ham hock. I could go on. Tracy Gates, you deserve that crown sis.
Amena Brown:
HER with Amena Brown is produced by Matt Owen for Sol Graffiti Productions as a part of the Seneca Women Podcast Network in partnership with iHeartRadio. Thanks for listening. Don't forget to subscribe, rate, and review the podcast.