Spirit in Action

Letting My Peaches Go - Liberating Black Thought

Not All Poor People Are Black (and other things we need to think more about) is a collection of essays by Janet Cheatham Bell, treating the reader to the insights and experiences of a strong African American woman from Indiana. Janet speaks movingly, honestly, and inspirationally of racism, spirituality, politics, and much more. With astonishing candor and humble brilliance, Janet opens eyes and minds.

Duration:: 55m
Broadcast on:: 01 Mar 2015
Audio Format:: other

[music] Let us sing this song for the healing of the world That we may hear as one With every voice, with every song We will move this world along And our lives will feel the echo of our healing [music] Welcome to Spirit in Action. My name is Mark Helpes Me. Each week, I'll be bringing you stories of people living lives of fruitful service, of peace, community, compassion, creative action, and progressive efforts. I'll be tracing the spiritual roots that support and nourish them in their service, hoping to inspire and encourage you to sink deep roots and produce sacred food in your own life. Let us sing this song for the dreaming of the world That we may dream as one With every voice, with every song We will move this world along Racial issues and perspectives deserve our attention and care year round But the fact that February is Black History Month Provided some extra impetus for me to read Not all poor people are black and other things that we need to think more about A set of far-reaching essays by Janet Chitom Bell Janet was raised in southern Indiana when segregation, though not the law there, was the strictly enforced practice Having lived through dramatic societal and life changes And having propelled herself through powerful personal and professional transformation Including an interracial marriage, parenting a son, Publishing her own books and finding an authentic spiritual landscape for herself Janet Chitom Bell's thoughts ring with authenticity and integrity And provide great power for a better way forward for all She joins a spy phone from Bloomington, Indiana Janet, I'm absolutely delighted to have you here today for Spirit in Action Thank you for inviting me, I'm very happy to be here Quite a book, quite a collection of essays I really like the fact, by the way, that this is your writings in this case I know that you started out in publishing and producing books by collections of quotations Specifically of black Americans that you're preparing quotations of Would you care to wallace with any of the unknown or lesser-known quotations That you've been able to share with the world? Well, the first thing I'd like to do is to point out that it wasn't just black Americans that I was collecting It was people of African descent from all around the world And I want to check something about that right away I believe that we're all of African descent Well, you're absolutely correct in that Somebody just got closer ancestry Yes, so I was collecting the people who are of closer ancestry to African descent The original people, that's what the nation of Islam always called Black people, the original people Okay, would you care to share a few of those quotations? Well, I have one here by a woman that I'm sure you've never heard of But I got this quotation out of a collection of folk things And what she says is when you don't know when you have been spit on It does not matter too much what else you think you know Oh, wow Her name is Ruth Shays And where is she from? When is she from? She was from the South and she was Texas, I believe And this quotation came from a book of folk wisdom A guy went around and just talking to ordinary people and finding out what they had to say Any other quotes you want to toss out? Let me give you one from Martin Delaney Martin Delaney is an important figure in the history of African Americans He was the first who tried to encourage people of African descent to return to Africa Oh, okay He said a child born under oppression has all the elements of civility in its constitution You know, I'd really love it. I don't want to do it right now But I'd really love to hear some of your perspectives on Liberia and that whole process I don't know if you knew this Janet, but I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Togo in West Africa I never made it to Liberia, but with the people from Ghana who were friends and from Nigeria and Togo of course where I lived and so on I got different perspectives from the indigenous African as opposed to the, I don't know, returning expatriates or whatever Right What does that mean? Who am I? Am I an African American in Africa? Well, you know, they did call themselves American Liberians Really? Yes, they did And what is even more disturbing is that they also treated the native Liberians the same way they were treated by whites in America Right, yeah, and pass the views on Yeah You know, you start this book off with quite a splash I think it's maybe the second essay that you share The first one is just, I think, one page long The next essay really hit me and really the following couple You share so much so candidly about your personal life Including that first essay about abortion and your personal experience and your thoughts about it and what you got from your mother about these kind of things I don't want to miss a tribute to anything that you say So can you share a bit of that story which I really found so honest and powerful? Well, you know, I wrote that story First of all, I spent most of my life after I had the abortion being terribly private about it Because I was ashamed because of the time that I had it, it was a crime So not many people even knew about it But a couple of years ago, I guess, when all of these new laws were being introduced about how to not only keep women from having abortions but to keep them from even having access to contraception And I thought, "My God, what is going on?" I mean, I was so appalled by it I couldn't understand it And a couple of friends of mine who were women much younger than I am who had had legal abortions wrote about them just to show what this means and how important it is because all of this concern about the life of someone who hasn't yet breathed life and no concern whatsoever about the woman who has to carry that life So they wrote about their abortions and I decided at that point that I would write about mine And it was very therapeutic for me as well because it helped me to let go of the shame because in writing about it, I understood why it was so necessary for me to do that at that point in my life I let the shame go, I stopped judging myself and when I was putting this collection of essays together, I decided to include that one in the collection And you started up front with it which I think shows considerable bravery I mean, there are a lot of people who tend to judge you I mean, you made a mistake at one point an hour in the past and for some people it's unforgivable One thing I found interesting, I did an interview a number of years ago with a woman, she's like me, she's a Quaker and she is part of this effort at what's called consistent life Yes, we're anti-war, anti-capital punishment We're vegetarians with such great reverence for life Of course, we'd be concerned about abortions That doesn't necessarily mean we want to make laws about it or anything like that But yes, we're sensitive to life at all levels She told me that she has been to so-called pro-life conventions And one of the things that happens is the women who have had abortions who are pro-life now or maybe were at the time, they get together and they tell their stories to one another Which is something I had never imagined would happen on the other side There is such power in telling your story and being honest and admitting who you are and what's made you who you are and what informs your understanding of the future So where did you find the courage to do that kind of thing? Why does Janet Cheetham Bell able to do that? While so many people keep it in the closet I think my courage comes from my dad I've been in search for courage my entire life I believe I think I am naturally a straightforward person like my father was and he was my role model in that regard My father was born into a family that worked as sharecroppers but something in him told him that there was more for him to do so he left that life he had only completed the fourth grade and yet he became a respected leader in his community in Indianapolis and he always said the only work he could do was work but used his muscles on his back and he would never allow himself to be abused because he was looking for a job when he found that one and he could look for another one so he had a kind of courage that was unusual for a black man who was born at the turn of the 20th century so I guess that's what encouraged me to always feel that I deserved whatever made my life happy regardless of what other people thought I should be doing Well I'm glad you have the bravery to talk about that your perspective on abortion clearly it's important to tell our stories our experiences would you care to outline so I don't misrepresent in any way what your perspective is about abortion or about particularly the fight about abortion which still continues to rage in this country I absolutely believe that every woman has to make her own decision about her own body in every regard not just abortion but what she eats how she dresses all of that is the individual woman's choice and of course whatever choice you make you accept the consequences that come with that choice I cannot fathom how people who believe the government is too much in our lives think that it's okay for them not only to get into a woman's life but inside her body I find that so insulting and so abusive and so controlling that it's just a paul for me I can't tell you how appalled I am by the whole notion of somebody else dictating what I do with my own body it's none of their business and as I've heard so many people say and I hope I don't insult you by repeating this is that if men could have children abortion would be a sacrament I think you're right there's a lot of that actually I was trying to think of what the parallel might be what if the government mandated that a man had to have a prostate exam every six months exactly it's not an option someone has to probe your private parts every six months let's see how much you like that or mandated that you must have a condom attached to your penis or something you know just some other thing that would in so invade your private parts how would we feel about that legislation exactly would never come up just like all of the brew haha about the agra being available for men and what a wonderful thing that is and yet they don't want women to have contraception and here's the short-sighted thing about this whole contraception thing and I think I'd probably say this in my essay is that don't they know that the people who they would like to have reproduce the upper middle class people who have the wherewithal to get an abortion or contraception or whatever they want they are the ones who will not be increasing the population the population will be increased by all those poor people that they hate yeah the right hand and left hand don't seem to understand what they're doing but in any case I really appreciated the shareings that you had in that essay including the reflections from your mother's point of view haha from a more delicate age when someone was in the family way that's all haha another thing I appreciated about that particular essay is you started out with a quote from Westman West who like me as a Quaker and I was wondering you know you got your start in books doing quotations what drew you in that direction were you not ready to put your own story down yet your own essays your own thoughts what was it about quotations that was particularly valuable for you to pass on well I love words and whenever I was reading anything and I love reading biographies and autobiographies if I saw a phrase that struck me I would copy it and save it and because I used to teach African American literature I was constantly reading books and teaching about books so I had lots of stuff that I copied and saved in a file in my file cabinet and so people would come to me when they were going to give a speech or one time I was asked to help put a program together for an NAACP dinner and they wanted to use a quotation by a black person every page of the program so they came to me and asked me to do that so I just sort of was guided into collecting quotations and someone suggested at one point that I published them and when I did they sold like hotcakes so of course when something is successful when major publishers see you selling a lot of books they become interested because you know all they do is imitate one another so I had publishers coming to me after Warner picked up my quotation collection I had other publishers coming to me and commissioning me to do books of famous black quotations on women and love and birthdays and things like that I just sort of fell into that and I finally just had to say stop I'm not doing quotations anymore but I still use them as the opening of the chapters in my books and as you can see at the opening of every essay that I wrote we're doing this interview right now at the conclusion of Black History Month February I was wondering about your perspective you have such thought provoking essays in your book not all poor people are black and other things we need to think more about you include a number of perspectives that I think you could say are not the party line what are your thoughts about the pros and cons of having a particular month designated Black History Month is that a good thing a bad thing what are the pros and cons? well let me just say upfront that I dislike more and more with every passing moment of my life the division of people into races and ethnic groups and categories and that kind of thing however this is a society that I live in so in my spirit of accepting what is I accept the fact that Black History Month is absolutely necessary and the reason why it's necessary is because we still do not include a credible history of African Americans in our standard textbooks nor the history of Hispanic Americans who now have their own month nor an accurate history of the people who were inhabiting this land when it was invaded by Europeans so we still need Black History Month if for no other reason than to alert people to the fact that there is a history of black people that we have accomplished some things and as you may have heard in Arizona they have abolished teaching the history of Hispanics in their schools so these kinds of additional histories and celebration of the history of people who are not in power in this country are still essential I wish that weren't the case but it is so yes we do need to continue having Black History Month and I'm particularly happy about the fact that since we now celebrate Martin Luther King's birthday the Black History Month has really been extended by a couple of weeks it sort of begins with King's birthday and goes on for the next six weeks. As you say the history books I mean I think George Washington Carver is probably one of the few Blacks I knew much about maybe Frederick Douglass by the time I finished high school I mean of course Martin Luther King I graduated high school in 1972 but in the history books who did I find almost no one so I don't think that the situation though is a lot better now because in part Texas tends to control so much of what we see in our textbooks I think a lot of people don't realize that you talk a little bit about what you see what you've experienced of your life. Let me just say that I remember that there was nothing about Blacks in history when I was in school back in the 40s and 50s and then I was shocked when my nephews were going to school to learn that their still was nothing and then my son who was younger than my nephews he went to a private school and there was still nothing but because it was a private school and I was paying money for him to go there and it was just a one school I didn't have to deal with a whole bureaucracy I was able to get them to start teaching what they call multicultural studies but just to shake them out of their singular focus on people of European descent and my son sometimes jokes about that when he's doing stand up comedy he says my mother came to school and said are you teaching Black history when they said no she said well you are now but I did start his school in that direction I don't know if they're still doing it or not that was a long time ago so I see this pattern being repeated in every generation that Black history is ignored and not only I just watched the PBS documentary on the history of Hispanic Americans in the state and was astonished at how much I didn't know because I did know something about Hispanic American history but after watching the documentary I realized how little I knew so there's still a need for us to learn something about people other than those who were the conquerors but you know the victor gets to write the history books absolutely so often what they perceive as the lesser parts get written out we don't have to waste time with that right exactly you've had to deal with a couple different kinds of glass ceilings and you have your essays you know you're talking about doing your work in book publishing and working your way up that and you keep bumping your head against the ceiling part maybe because you're African American part because you're a woman and who knows what other reason people found for not letting you rise to where I think your abilities would have taken you you've heard the saying I think Janet that what doesn't kill you makes you stronger is that why you're so strong? I absolutely think that has a lot to do with it and also because I was willing to take risk and willing to find out about people I was always curious too so the idea that white people were powerful and that we as black people and I didn't discover the prejudice against women until I was much older because I always thought that when people were rejecting me it was because of my color I never thought that my gender had anything to do with until I was older but I was always curious and as I observed white people and discovered that not all of them were smarter than me and discovered that they could be intimidated by me simply because I didn't shrink in their presence I mean those were all learning experiences for me so that gave me the courage to step up and assert myself and not to accept certain things that they wanted me to accept and of course that didn't do away with all of the obstacles that were put in my path but it certainly shaped my character and encouraged me to be stronger absolutely. I want to ask you a few more things right away but first I want to remind our listeners that we're speaking with Janet Cheetham Bell today or website JanetCheethamBell.com if you don't know how to spell that come by a nordin spirit radio dot o-r-g this is spirit in action which is nordin spirit radio production on the web at nordin spirit radio dot o-r-g and on that site you'll find almost 10 years of our programs for free listening and download you'll find links and more information about our guests you'll find comments that others have posted and we ask that you add your comments when you visit because we love two-way communication you'll also find a place where you can support nordin spirit radio donation please click support to make this work possible you know that the corporations are not doing it so we need your help perhaps even more importantly I ask that you support your local community radio stations community radio stations provide slice of music and of news that you get nowhere else on the public airwaves in the United States so please start first by supporting your local community radio station again Janet Cheetham Bell is here today she's an author amongst other things Janet you're a mother and you're a daughter which makes a big difference in terms of what we do in this world and your father I think was from Kentucky you basically grew up in Indiana so I think that makes you a northern black is that an accurate statement technically it's accurate however Indiana when I was growing up was as segregated as any place in the south the only difference was that we didn't have the signs to sit whites only but everybody knew exactly where blacks could go and where they couldn't go and our schools were segregated by law there were special schools in every section of town for black kids the school that I attended in elementary school the only people there who were not of African descent were two students who were Native Americans I guess they were not black but since they weren't white they couldn't possibly go to school with the white children so they sent them to the black school have you ever lived in what we might call the deep south I got some perspective on this that I thought was kind of interesting I used to live in Milwaukee Wisconsin I was teaching at the university at one point I had a student in one of the physics classes I was teaching come up to me and he shared his experience he's from I think Alabama originally and he said that the racism that he experienced in Milwaukee was much worse than what he had experienced in Alabama because it was not owned I guess you'd say that in fact the racism he experienced was people mistreating him and smiling or pretending but clearly treating him like a leper what was your experience have you traveled in the south I have traveled in the south as a matter of fact my son's father is from Mobile Alabama so I've been to Alabama and other places I have friends in Florida and South Carolina and I visited both places yes there's an old folk saying among black people that really sort of capitalizes the different kinds of racism in the south they don't care how close you get as long as you don't get too high and in the north they don't care how high you get as long as you don't get too close I had never heard that but yeah that makes sense in the north they don't have signs that they whites only or neighborhoods that they overtly say are for whites only but they act all that out they don't want you around them they don't want you close to them they want you over there it doesn't matter to them if you are a college professor or some young boy who's in a gang if you're not right they don't want you to close so what's your experience now I mean we're now in 2015 things have changed we have what I'm sure was unimaginable to you is certainly to me growing up we have a president who qualifies as black and that would not have been possible I mean the first time I had any inkling that it would be possible is when Jesse Jackson ran for president I saw the tears of joy on his supporters and my heart just leapt it's like wow this would be so transformational what's your experience of living from segregation growing up to the day when we actually have a black president I was shocked as well when I recognized and I did recognize this long before he was elected that it was possible that he would be elected president it seemed like a sudden shift I don't know if you could tell from reading my spiritual essays but I believe that even though we people think that we're in charge of everything that we run everything and that we have all the power to make things happen I believe that there's certain points in the evolution of the world when the time has come for a certain thing to happen and it happens despite its complete unpredictability I think that is the case with Barack Obama because five years before he decided to run I did not think that such a thing was possible and I'm sure that I wasn't alone in that idea nor did I think five years before it happened that there would ever be anywhere in the United States of America where people of the same sex could get married but that's now the case lots of places for over half of the country I think now yeah so I think as Martin Luther King said that the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice I believe that but you also believe that sometimes it does a right turn and all of a sudden it heads to justice well I but I even see the fact that Obama's election terrified a large number of people especially those who see themselves as having been in charge of everything for a very long time you know nobody welcomes change but his being elected president was like a sound of alarm to these people because they know the demographics of the United States are changing and Obama's election sort of concretized their worst nightmare and I think that's why they have been so vitriolic toward him and so determined to make him a failure as a president is because they see their hegemony crumbling to dust before their very eyes so the only thing they can do is what people always do when they're afraid is lash out and try to destroy that which they fear and that's what they're trying to do to him but they cannot stop the evolution of the world they cannot stop change from happening they cannot stop the demographic change that is occurring in this country no matter how much they scream and dig in their heels they can't stop it and what's so interesting and ironic about this whole thing is that the very people in power who are trying to stop this evolutionary change are the people who started it in the first place yeah there's a quote I just saw a couple of days via Facebook and you probably hate me because I can't properly attribute it but I had a picture of the president it said something to be effective if someone spits on you abuses you mistreat you lies about you and you still respond with love maybe that should be the sign of a real Christian yes can't we hope yes I find it particularly repugnant that these people who are so vitriolic and so mean not only toward Obama but toward women as well call themselves Christians and it would seem to me the other Christians would stand up and say no no no absolutely not you're not Christian that's what they want the Muslims to do about Isis they want all the other Muslims to stand up and say no no that's not really Islam and when they don't stand up and scream that out at the top of their love then they are accused of endorsing Isis but somehow that doesn't work for Christians that way well since you bring it up let's talk a little bit about your spiritual journey after all Janet this is spirit in action and you're doing a lot of the action and I'd like to know a bit more about the spirit behind it you grew up Baptist what I read was that you liked the teachings of love the example that was taught there but the services didn't grab you as you and grew up a little bit tell us a bit about your experience of growing up as a Baptist in the USA well growing up as a Baptist felt very restrictive to me there were so many things we were told we shouldn't do but most of all I was disturbed by the fact that God was so mean I couldn't grab that God is love and I'm going to make you burn for all eternity because you danced yeah that just I kept that to myself because I didn't want to be blasphemous or whatever my parents would have thought but that just didn't feel right to me as a consequence for a while I rejected any spiritual inclination whatsoever because I decided was all bull really but then as I continued to read and also to think and also to observe things that happened in my own life I mean despite the fact or maybe because of the fact that I was born black I had an excellent life and I didn't know how excellent it was until I started meeting people outside of my narrow community that I grew up in in Indianapolis and learning what their lives were like so I started reading studying other religions and just finally concluded that my beliefs and my spiritual experiences could not be contained by an institution and the organization of an institution and the hierarchy of supposedly above me guiding me on how I was to live my life I decided I could talk to God as easily as they could well of course of course you and I both believe that I have a few other people think you need an intermediary you did write in one of your essays again the book is not all poor people are black and other things we need to think more about by Janet Cheetham Bell one of the other things that you mentioned about that experience is while the services in general you maybe didn't feel like you needed a half an hour sermon or whatever the music really grabbed you really speaks to you and you did mention later on you found that there's other places where you could find the music that you didn't have to go to church to get yes yes yes with your on and off again religious and spiritual seeking it included going to this church and that church and I interpreted it at least at one point for Kamau I think you start going church thinking that maybe it would be good for him but that you thought that he didn't like the services any more than you did and so eventually you describe yourself is coming to a place where you found some commonality something that I thought you could maybe respect in the spiritual search you called it a spiritual center can you say more about what that was and what you valued there yes what I valued there was the inclusiveness they did not ever speak a negative word about any religion whatsoever and they included wisdom from various religions in their services not only that but even though they had ministers they also welcomed discussion groups and other lay speakers to share their experiences instead of you know the minister being the one who stood up there and told you how to live your life and what to do they allowed lay speakers to share their own spiritual experiences which was very moving because ministers tend to speak or teach from a book but when individuals lay people share their spiritual experiences is more moving because they're telling about what actually happened to them and what they went through and how they dealt with it and it touches your heart more and you can relate to it more easily than having somebody teaching you from a book that they have learned to teach from you do comment though that even that place even though you found a lot of commonality and I think real respect for what they have that at a certain point it seemed like they were getting a little bit more hierarchical and yep ended up not settling there I guess is what I'd say so where did you go from there then Janet well what I do now is that I belong to two book groups one of them specifically studies spiritual books we read these books and we discuss them once a week we may have a particular book that we read and discuss for a whole year and we talk about how what we're reading applies or has worked in our daily lives we question what's written there sometimes because we don't agree with it or one person in the group interprets it one way and one interprets it another so I like these discussion groups because I like interaction I don't like having someone stand above me no just the fact that they always had them up high standing behind a podium I think you and I are made of the same cloth Janet but our book groups always sit in a circle where everybody can see everybody everybody is very attentive when someone is talking that's where I get my spiritual reinforcement now is in these groups so you're searching where you went around I assume you got a glimpse of other things when you you talk about folks who are not limited to one book or something like that I assume you might have checked out the Baha'is or the Unitarian Universalist Quakers unity the religious science folks did you have any contact with any of them yes I did I attended the UU church a couple times but again you know I just don't think human beings can I think building a hierarchical organization it's just something they seem to like to do and I just don't like that even though I've investigated I find things for example from unity I have a subscription to their daily word which I read all the time but I really am not comfortable being a part of that organization because again they still have making rules and things you must do and there's something about me that just rebails against that I think I've got the same thing so I you probably don't need to spell it for me I don't know if our listeners will know what you're talking about again folks we're talking to Janet Cheatham Bell author of not all poor people are black and other things we need to think more about her website is janetcheathambell.com or come by an orange spirit radio org I have the same experience this idea of someone bossing me or telling me what I'm supposed to think and believe and to set them above me I think that ignores something absolutely vital and you know I would say that in the beliefs of unity or of the uu or whatever they probably I'm pretty sure they do believe in the quality of all people but they set up the structure so my question is about community because I do have a prejudice in favor of community that strong community is how we get things done I don't think that civil rights movement would have worked if we hadn't had the strong presence of not only the black church in America but many other religious groups pulling together as a cohesive body and that always takes some kind of leadership and cohesion that we do that so you know I've got this quandary within myself that I'm an individualist you can't tell me what to think or believe and I believe we need community and you can't make me think otherwise you know it's that community is very important and I understand exactly what you mean about being an individual but one thing I have discovered in my almost 80 years of life is that some people operate on a different I read this book power versus force and it talks about people operating on different levels of consciousness because I know people who really want somebody to tell them what to do they don't want the responsibility of making their own decisions and they especially don't want that in terms of their spiritual life but there are other people like you and me who operate on a different level of consciousness who absolutely do not want anybody to tell me what to do I want to figure it out for myself so those organizations that control people and tell them not only what to do but what to eat and how to dress those are important for those people who prefer not to make their own decisions so I accept that and like you say we call on those organizations when we need people to come together to accomplish a goal and one of the things that I think we need in this country right now are communities of people organizing to push back again some of these grotesque new laws that these state legislatures are pushing through as with everything else we need it all amongst the journeys that you took you've been through a couple marriages and one of them was with a Jewish white man talk about going out of the comfort level of people at that time particular interracial marriage was pretty limited particularly a black woman with a white man the reverse I guess was easier to accept for them what did you learn from that marriage oh I learned so much first of all I learned that all of the propaganda that I had been told while I was growing up about the invincibility and the omnipotence of white people was not true and that's one of the reasons why I got into the relationship was out of curiosity sheer curiosity I mean we had some other things in common that we shared but I really was curious to see how these other people live I mean are their lives so different do they really have all that power that I've been told that they have they can do anything and I found out that they're human beings just like black people oh my goodness and also the other thing that was equally important to me was that I grew up my parents were not educated I was the first person in my family to go to college but I was always interested in learning as were my parents it's just that they didn't have the opportunity to explore it any further than the restrictions allowed in their day so I really enjoyed pursuing an intellectual life and there was something that I longed for but I didn't really couldn't articulate it and didn't know exactly what it was and so marrying a professor and operating and meeting other people who were professors or graduate students and we had an inclusive group it wasn't all professors and PhDs but it was just meeting people in doing things that I had never encountered before so it was a very expansive period in my life and I have absolutely no regrets about it whatsoever it's amazing to think about the amount of internalized limitations we talk about internalized racism and yeah that kind of thing one of the comments that you made that I found very interesting again because I've lived in Africa for a couple years I was there last August I was in the Congo a large share of my experience with Africans or people with dark skin has been in Africa I do have African American friends as well but the vast experience I had actually was in Africa and there is a different experience and you comment about that and you talk about people with a history of being slapped and if you've been beaten down enough even through previous generations it makes a difference what have you observed about Africans who've come to this country haven't been raised in Africa versus African Americans oh they have a much higher level of self-confidence and also the other aspect that I know I have to take into account is the fact that those Africans who leave their homeland and come here are the most ambitious Africans as well those people who don't have that kind of drive an ambition stay where they are so we're saying probably the most ambitious ones who have decided to relocate to another country but I've been to Africa as well but even people who are not educated there do not automatically think of themselves as inferior to white people that this is not something that ever crosses their minds they may feel themselves as not being on the same level as somebody who has an education or some other accomplishment but they don't skin color is not the issue and they haven't had generations of oppression and indoctrination telling them that they are not worthy that they are inferior that takes the toll continues to today because we take all of our measurements by race and we always say white said twice as much money as blacks white said twice as much education as blacks and so that reinforces this feeling that you already have that you're not up to snuff and we keep doing it and we keep doing it and I think it's by design and unfortunately black people have picked up the mantle or the baton and we do it to ourselves as well all of these civil rights organizations I don't know if they still do it because I don't pay attention anymore but they used to do a state of black America thing at the end of every year the beginning of every year and they repeat these statistics about how inferior we are to whites and I don't think they're helpful at all and when you swim in waters with these beliefs it's so easy to not know that that's the water that's around you I did a research project when I was in college and it was about I think it was the Civil Rights Act of 1956 it didn't pass by the way but it was the whole dynamics leading up to it and one thing they started at the observation then was the tremendous changes going on there were plenty of people in the U.S. who thought that blacks were getting a raw deal that Negroes or whatever color was used color do you know all of the different names that they were getting a raw deal and would fight for them and protect them and such but their observation was that up until maybe the 1930s/40s that even those people who were struggling on the part of and maybe the section included a lot of black people believed that blacks were inferior in some ways maybe intellectually to whites and that was internalized it was externalized it was the common myth that everyone was sharing and these weren't people who wished ill on anyone but I know it's the water you're drinking and it's reflected in your beliefs when did you overcome that when I got to know white people individually when I married my white husband that was the beginning when I stepped across that invisible chasm between blacks and whites and got to know white and heard their stories and found out it's not in my collection of essays but in my memoir I talk about when I was in my last year of college living in a rooming house with people from other countries and white people and so we all talked each other from time to time and I remember meeting this white woman who told me that her life had probably been poorer than mine and when she described to me what her life had been like and that she was also the first person in her family to go to college that was the first time that I really absorbed the idea that poor white people's lives were in fact worse than mine had been. The beliefs that one carries with one out of the background and the assumption of second classism it's not only blacks I mean women have carried that with them Hispanics do I mean everyone actually men have internalized limitations men don't believe that men can dance for the most part it's true or that sensitivity or that those feelings I can't do those we all have our limitations that we carry with us and when we see them it frees us and of course that's part of what you bring us to by sharing and not all poor people are black and other things we need to think more about there's so much in here that we need to think about let's talk about the last essay which is what the title of the book is about not all poor people are black of course not all black people are poor and all that kind of thing you have something shared in there that came out as a spiritual message for me and Quaker meeting this past Sunday it had moved me to think about it in my own life you talk about attitudes towards the Holocaust or the attack on the Twin Towers versus attitudes towards slavery it seems to me a really powerful insight you want to say for folks what that insight was for you I had always thought that people who thought the Holocaust was worse than slavery were just irredeemable races but when I heard this lecture on the causes and consequences of the evil label I had a really profound internal shift because of what the man said in the lecture I recognized that it was I really literally felt myself being put into the shoes of a person who was deeply hurt by the Holocaust and who in fact thought it was evil because they intended to wipe Jews from the face of the earth and I could see how that would be viewed differently than slavery was just meant to use the labor and keep people captive they weren't trying to wipe people from the face of the earth so I could see how somebody could look at that from that perspective prior to that I saw everything strictly through the lens of if you don't see my tragedy as being as significant as yours you must be a racist so they helped me to turn my thinking it helped me to see things literally from another perspective and I had never done that before it also had some impact in my personal life as well with some people in my personal life with whom I had some long standing let's say hostilities it helped me to see me from their perspective and I'm not even sure how that happened but it did happen in getting inside the other person's shoes and seeing it and seeing how we whitewash our own situation how we pretend that we're not doing evil because we don't want to feel like we're bad people and we want to look good and so on and some amazing insights in the book not all poor people are black that's not your only book of course you've got your memoir victories of the spirit reflections of my journey and there's many other books by Janet Cheatham Bell you can purchase copy of not all poor people are black on Janet Cheatham Bell's website again there's a link on Norton Spirit radio org please do buy the book and go right to the source Jan it's a great source for many good writings Janet it's a great collection you've got here great insights great personal experience I really feel close to you having read your essays thank you so much for joining me today for spirit and action thank you so much for having me it's been a pleasure the theme music for this program is turning of the world performed by Sarah Thompson this spirit in action program is an effort of northern spirit radio you can listen to our programs and find links and information about us and our guests on our website northern spirit radio dot org thank you for listening I am your host Mark helps me and I welcome your comments and stories of those leading lives of spiritual fruit may you find deep roots to support you and grow steadily toward the light this is Spirit in action with every voice with every song we will move this world along with every voice every song we will move this world along and our lives will feel the echo of our healing (gentle music)