Blair Imani

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey everyone, it's Sophia. Welcome back to Work in Progress.
Today's guest is a historian and an author, but she
is most well known for the power and scope of

(00:21):
her activism. Blair Imani is a speaker and a writer,
working hard to uplift voices, stories, and histories that have
been systemically underrepresented or intentionally blocked. Perhaps her best known
pushed and that is her viral video series Smarter in
Seconds and If Shorts Aren't Your thing. Her ted X

(00:41):
talk Queer and Muslim Nothing to Reconcile also reached viral status.
Blair has been present on the front lines of Black
Lives Matter, published two books and most recently her third,
that give historical context and credit to the people are
textbooks most often leave out. She's been profiled by The
New y Times, invited to speak all over the world,

(01:03):
and has even been arrested for peacefully protesting police violence
in Louisiana. From stages to the front lines, Blair shows up.
She is an absolutely admirable force for good and acceptance
in the world, and I am so honored to have
her on the show today. Those of you who have
heard of her or followed her work know what to
treat this episode will be and for those of you
who don't yet, well, I could not pick a better

(01:25):
person to get to introduce you to enjoy. Well Blair,
I'm so excited to have you here today. I know
that before we jumped into the interview, we were just

(01:46):
talking about how much fun it is when people who
have you know, shown up to support one another and
causes and uh, you know, who witness each other working
in the world. Actually you know, get to get off
of Instagram and chat for real. So I'm just so
excited that you're here. And I think for me as
like my star has been rising, it's been really cool
to be on the podcast that I'm listening to often,

(02:08):
and it's like, so it's so cool and like weird
also to like be able to like see you while
also hearing your voice because I'm so used to just
like this disembodied voice. It's a great combo. I'm so excited.
That means a lot. Thank you for for loving the
show and we're really excited to have you on today.
So I really like to go back and and find

(02:31):
out where guests have sort of started their journeys because
I think so often, as you said, when your your
star is rising, when you become a public speaker and author,
people meet you where you are. They're learning in real
time with you. And I'm always very curious about how
the incredible folks I said across from we're shaped before

(02:52):
they became go to teachers, online or household names. And
so I know that you grew up in Los Angeles
as well, which always makes me excited to meet fellow Angelina's.
What part of l A did you grow up in?
What what made this place feel like home to you
as a kid. I'm also from the Rose City. I'm

(03:14):
from Pasadena, yes, And so it's been like so cool
because you're also from Pasadena. I mean I was born
in Cedar Sinai in l A. But then I grew
up in Pasadena. I went to St. Mark's and I
ended up going to school in San Reno. And I mean,
first of all, it smells amazing here, like living in
different areas. I think that like having a hometown that is,

(03:38):
you know, the home of the Rose Bowl and all
of these beautiful, very like highly esthetic things, and then
it being so close to like the acting world and
the whole movie film industry and being able to step
back from it and be in a place where there's
like cal Tech right here in JPL, not far away.
It's a really unique place that feels like a small
town but of course, like you're right outside of Los
Angeles um having so many museums like the Huntington's. I mean, like,

(04:01):
is this an ad for Pasadena or my own life story?
Like you know, like to say, I'm into it. I
feel everything you do. And it's so it's so wonderful
and it's been cool, like as I've gotten older instead
of being like where are you from Pasadena? Where is
that to people being like, oh my god, I love Pasadena.
And so it's just a really unique place. There's such
a wonderful, like family oriented environment here and there's so

(04:22):
many things to do, Like there's so many ways to
be exposed to perspectives and lives and backgrounds that aren't
your own that it really makes you kind of like
this global citizen, just you know, like straight from being born,
because I remember having friends who didn't speak the same
language as me and going to school with them, and
not everybody has that experience of being able to like

(04:43):
create your own self understanding and identity while also seeing
so much difference and being comfortable in that. I think
a lot of folks, you know, moved to New York
and moved to l A and they're like, Wow, I
don't know anybody who is from my hometown, or I
don't know anybody who looks like me. But I've always
grown up with that, and it's been that place of comfort,
and I think it's definitely grounded my understanding with just

(05:04):
anti racism, anti oppression work because that's been my upbringing.
I love that. Yeah, I'm always so interested in getting
into you know, we're we're having conversations about privilege and
what that looks like and who has it and who
has it in what ways? And I think there is,
actually there is a positive type of privilege that I

(05:29):
think you're speaking about and that I know I experienced
as a kid, which I call the privilege of exposure. Yes, Yes,
the incredible good fortune of growing up around so many
people who come from different places, different cultures, different foods,
different traditions, different ideas. And and I think about how
you're right in this town that we both grew up

(05:51):
in that really does in many ways feel like a
small town, even though it's just outside of Los Angeles.
I grew up around so many people who didn't look
any like me, and who spoke different languages and whose
traditions I had the privilege of being exposed to and
learning about. And I I wish that for more people,

(06:13):
and certainly for more kids, because it does give you
a much more potential filled arena in which to develop yourself.
That is so actually said like I think, especially as
it relates to disability. That was something that was very
much kind of the groundwork of my growing up process.

(06:33):
My younger sister is autistic and bipolar, and she was
my parents fought really hard to have her experience everything
that every other kid would have, but also to understand
things like if Chelsea needs more accommodations, that's not something
that's extra, it's what she needs, that's her baseline. And
so the schools that we went to, like we ended

(06:54):
up moving from Pasadena schools to San Marino and we
had speech therapy and I went to speech therapy too,
And growing up and doing early childhood development gives you
kind of an understanding of early childhood development. And so
it's totally like the more work that I do educating
people about things like consent or you know, different months

(07:14):
of celebration, pride, lgbtq um, you know, identity and experience,
the more I'm recognizing that it came from growing up
here and just having to learn about different people, not
as a matter of it being a burden, but it
really being like an exciting thing. Like I wasn't raised Muslim.
I was raised Christian, and I converted to Islam in college.
But I remember the solution to the kind of growing

(07:38):
Islamophobia after nine eleven was to have somebody whose family
was Muslim come and talk to us about Islam, and
we learned about the five Pillars of Islam, and it
was like every chance to open people up to your
experience or to somebody else's background was something that was
jumped towards. Like I gave many presentations during Black History
Month growing up, which is very much apt because that's

(07:59):
what I do for a living, is give, you know,
public speeches and stuff. We had Chinese New Year celebrations.
We just it was just this perfect, very sheltered sheltered
from bias and sheltered from these instances of oppression, which
I'm sure we're still there, but we're in the forefront,
and then I like went to school in Louisiana where
people had never met a Jewish person, for example, or

(08:20):
a Muslim person for that matter, and this concept of
otherness being super duper pronounced. And I felt like I
went from this utopia of especially at that time because
Barack Obama was running for office when I was an adolescent,
and this idea of like a post racial America. So
I went from that to like very stark named biases
and racist biases that people had in Louisiana, not that

(08:43):
it was unique from anywhere else in the country. I
definitely don't believe that like the South is more racist
than other places. I just think that the way that
it is expressed is definitely different. And that's the kind
of the culture culture shock, but kind of being like
socialized to believe, but no, everyone's inherently good, and I
still believe that to it kind of being like don't
sit with us, you're black. Like going from those different

(09:06):
polls really activated me in a way that I felt
was very difficult. But I'm happy that I grew from it.
Like I don't want to say I'm happy it happened,
because I'm definitely not, but I think that it made
me aware that not everywhere is like Pasadena, and that,
like you said, I do wish that for everybody. And
it made me figure out how do I reconcile these
things where I'm not shaming people for their lack of exposure,

(09:29):
but figuring out what steps we can take to make
everybody more smart and compassionate about our fellow experiences, even
if it's not the path that we walked ourselves. M
I think that's so beautiful, especially because and I know
you probably have these moments where you know, I'm rolling
my eyes even thinking about it, and I don't want

(09:49):
to project that you also roll your eyes when this
gets said. But I think so many of us who
are from these quote coastal places get frustrated by the
way that we're painted as being out of touch. Um
because as you said, there are things about where we
grew up that really do feel like small towns in
so many places across the country. UM. And I've I've

(10:12):
experienced that living all over the country for work, you know,
going and making TV shows and movies, and you know,
big towns and small towns in the Midwest and in
the South, and um, and one of the things that
really strikes me is that we get told that we
just don't know something, when in fact, we know so
much because we're exposed to so much. The privilege of exposure,

(10:34):
of growing up in a place that is culturally diverse,
linguistically diverse, experientially diverse, is that you're not afraid of difference.
You're curious about it. And when you go to places
that because of economic oppression or because of you know,
generational segregation or whatever it is, when you go into

(10:55):
these communities that are deeply homogeneous, the fear of what
is different, of people who appear to be other creates
a bias. And in my experience, it's because of what
people don't know that they lean into those biases, and
when they get to know even just one person, they go, oh,

(11:17):
none of that stuff I was told or taught is true.
That's so often and it's like, I think that what
also happens. And I talk about this in my book
Read This to Get Smarter. I talk about all of
these kind of interpersonally racist things that might be said,
and sometimes people instead of going, oh, all of my
preconceived notions are wrong, sometimes they'll say, oh, all my
preconceived notions are correct. But here's an exception to the rule,

(11:40):
and that's when we hear things like, oh, but you
don't really seem black to me, or you're like cool
for a woman, especially like very bro circles, you're not
like the other girls exactly, or maybe your conception of
girls is incorrect. It's rarely those things, And so I
talk about how sometimes it's those biases that we have
to let go of, and I think what I will

(12:02):
say about these, like, you know, we get called coastal elites,
which is so hilarious to me. And in Louisiana, you
know we're the South coast, you know, we're right on
the Gulf. There's definitely, I think a level of privilege
that comes with people being able to kind of like
feel like they knew how you grew up. Like my
school was definitely like high school musical very much because
flash mobs were still a thing in the likes, like

(12:26):
it was very much like high school musical. Like we
didn't have a sports like we had sports teams about
if you weren't going to the plays, if you weren't
part of the drama department, then what were you doing?
And like finding out who was coming out was such
like the popular thing when you grow up, seeing how
you grow up on TV because all of the writers
are from where you're from, it's very different. And so
I think that what I want folks to do is

(12:47):
just be patient with one another. That's what I needed.
Like moving to Louisiana, I definitely had to like eat
some humble pie and figure out like, Okay, I've been
led to believe that everything was better in my hometown,
but no, there was anti Asian racism, there was anti
black racism. The girl's softball team was not funded the
same way that the baseball team was funded. And looking
at how just because I had this kind of like

(13:10):
rosy glasses of like naivete, doesn't mean there weren't problems.
And it's not a matter of which problems are worse,
but a matter of we all have a level of
privilege over somebody else, and we all have a level
of being more oppressed or farther away from power than
other people, And so how do we use our unique
experiences be patient with ourselves and be transparent with ourselves,

(13:31):
and you know, come together in a way that makes
everything better for everybody, even if that betterment doesn't necessarily
serve us first, but we'll be what serves just humanity
in a long term. And it's very much like a Mr.
Rogers way of looking at life. But I feel like
it works, and I do sometimes roll my eyes when
people feel like, oh, well, based on how you grew up,
you must not understand this, like you must not understand

(13:53):
fishing like I love to fish, and I love to
fish way before I went to L s U. And
it definitely makes me help me make more friends. But
you know, we can't really base each other's upbringing on
a script or an assumption that doesn't necessarily fet our
own story. Oh it's so important and it's something that

(14:15):
I really look at. A good sort of example in
my mind is the systematic issue of social media, because
it gives you this you know, too D screen and
you're comparing your three D life to it. We're encouraged
to compare our insides to other people's outsides via our phones,

(14:37):
and I think it's so important to remember that everywhere
you look there is an inside. And to your point,
which you made so beautifully, that the reality is every
place has issues. You know, those issues that you brought
up um that existed beneath the sort of high school

(14:58):
musical you know, diverse casting. I remember a friend of
mine UM who works at a studio, saying, yeah, you know,
everyone wants to be the modern Benetton, you know, the
United Colors of Benetton ads and be like, no, look,
we did a good job. And it's like, well, okay,
but what's happening behind the scene. So you know, you
may have grown up in a diverse and multi linguistic community,

(15:21):
but what what was happening underneath? You know, what prejudices
um and systems of harm? Can you identify where you're from?
Can that make you more empathetic two systems elsewhere? And
can we each say oh, we have work to do
rather than say you're worse, You're worse, this is bad,

(15:41):
we have work to do. We could do better. And
and something that I've been so inspired by, and we've
had some audience members right into us about this. Some listeners.
Dr Ibramax Kendy came on the show and he was
saying that if you will paraphrase, because he's much more
eloquent than I than I am, but he was essentially saying,
you have to take the emotional connection to what racism

(16:04):
is out and look at racism as a simple fact.
And I was like, you know how because it's so
the systems and the abuse in ther and he was
just like, you know, I get it. But if if
you just let it be a thing rather than a judgment,
you can then look at how to dismantle a racist
system because you're working on data and experience, and it's

(16:27):
not about minds worse minds, whereas yours is the word.
You know, people can take the emotion app And I'm
fascinated by the potential if we could simply look whether
you're at school in Louisiana or school in Pasadena and say,
these are the problems these are these are the the
damage in the system here is based on this kind

(16:49):
of racism, this kind of gender depression, this kind of
ablest ideology. What if we just aimed to fix the problems.
If everyone could show up and say, teach me what
I don't know, how can I help? How might I change?
Then it might lead us to say, oh, my preconceived
notions were wrong, rather than you're the exception exactly. So

(17:12):
that's interesting because I like, I think the way that
I was raised, especially because my parents are both in
mental health, and it was very much the thoughts and
feelings the way of growing up. And I think there's
a gender dynamic to where sometimes women are more socialized,
like lead into the feelings is I want people to
step into the emotions of it not necessarily being a
bad thing, or we can look at it just passionately.
I think that's what Dr. Kendy is is grasping at

(17:33):
there is like doing it this kind of like internal
review and being really transparent, honest with yourself. But when
we have things like preconceived notions, biases, you know, assumption stereotypes,
reflecting on what we feel in those moments, that kind
of fear like even you know, the microaggression that often
happens when there's a man who walks past and you

(17:54):
speed up. And sometimes it's because of valid fears because
the patriarchy is out here and ripe culture is real.
But looking at that feeling and what that connects to,
because I think sometimes we end up gaslighting ourselves into
thinking that these feelings we have are our fault, and
it's not necessarily a matter of fault. To me, it's
a matter of responsibility. A lot of us were socialized

(18:14):
with a lot of nonsense. I mean, can I cuss
on the show like it was just like total bullshit,
and like the fact is that we have all this
racist bullshit. And I think the conversation has become recently
whose fault is this bullshit? Instead of it being whose
responsibility is this bullshit? And so if we get to
a matter of responsibility, I really think the whole conversation
of discomfort when it comes to interrogating privilege, those things

(18:37):
are important because it makes us better understand what the
reluctance is. I really don't feel that the reluctance it
comes from people being like, well, I don't give a
ship what other people are going through. I'm fine. I
think there are some people like that, but I think
there are more people who are like I am so
immobilized by apprehension and this fear of not wanting to
do the wrong thing that I don't even know where

(18:58):
to start. And so what I want people to do
is to tap into that and to look at themselves
first and to say, Okay, who am I? And not
only who am I? But who do I understand myself
to be? And who do others understand myself to be
and one of those things not match up. Because when
those things don't match up, it is sometimes because of
where we came from or because of what we look like,
and those things aren't our fault or our responsibility. But

(19:21):
what is our responsibility is when we look at other
people and we say, I don't understand that person's gender identity.
That's not that person's responsibility. That's our responsibility to work through,
so it doesn't negatively affect how we interact with them
or others. Yes, yes, And I think for me, the
finding this kind of balance that you're talking about has
been such work for me because I am all emotion,

(19:45):
all feeling. If you're in pain, I'm in pain. What's
happening in your community might as well be happening to mine.
It's it's hard for me to disentangle sometimes, and I've
learned that what is so clearly unjust that I can
see some people, based on where they come from, what

(20:07):
they've experienced, what they haven't experienced, don't have the same reaction.
And it's been really helpful for me to learn to
pressure test my emotional response to something by leaning into
the data and saying Okay, if I just make it math,
if I take the feeling out of it, what might
I see that I could then explain differently from my

(20:31):
unique experience. And we each have those, and it's I
don't know. It's just been so fascinating to me to
begin learning how other people do it and and gleaning
some of those tools, because to your point, we don't
all have the same instinctual ways of communicating or seeing

(20:52):
or feeling. And I think that for me, being able
to pull in more scientific information to meet my feelings
has given me an assist in how to meet and
communicate with people. And I find it helpful as a

(21:12):
deeply sensitive person. And yeah, I just I think I
think that it can sometimes be the key to unlocking
that thing you speak of, which is the difference between
saying I don't understand something and I need help versus, oh,
I'm carrying a prejudice or a level of confusion. And

(21:35):
it's no one else's responsibility to do that emotional labor
for me. I have to do it myself. And it's
so empowering too, because once you usually an active step
in it, that's not something that is very easy to
turn off, like when you start watching TV shows. It's real.
I really don't recommend move people let go back and
watch their favorite movie or TV show from childhood, because
as soon as they do, look like this is problematic.

(21:55):
I don't know why children are allowed to watch this.
What the heck is going on with that? But it
starts with so many kids movies are terrifying. Oh yeah,
and like you don't want to step back into that.
But once you see it, you can't un see it.
And once you make it an active process, it's a
lot more activating where you can start going, Okay, what
is the work that we have to do, like you're
just saying and looking at it not as a matter

(22:15):
of fault and burden, but responsibility and activation so that
we can't take on this work and then become really excited.
But I mean, the point you're getting to is well
about how we all do it differently and process things differently.
It's just the essential key point. How did you remember
mitosis for your biology tests? When it comes down to that,
I made up like a song for it. Some other

(22:37):
people just get it immediately. So when it comes to
something like that that we don't often interact with unless
you're like a scientist, which is cool when it comes
to something that we interact with on a daily basis,
which are the systems of oppression. The way that you
understand it might be totally different from how I understand it,
but whatever it takes to get in the door, I'm
happy that we're here. Maybe we should have gotten here
a little bit sooner, but the fact is that we're here.
Now what do we do about it? And that's that

(22:59):
activation in And I also remind people that it's not
a matter of doing this work because it's trendy or popular,
but because it is a better it's a better way
to live. I truly feel because I think that a
lot of folks reflect on who they were prior to
June when there was this you know, quote unquote racial awakening,
and they look at themselves now and they kind of

(23:21):
cringe at things they may have said in the past.
And of course now we have like Instagram reminding us
who we were two years ago, so we can really
step into that cringe, but being happy that they have grown,
not because of what sparked that growth, because tragedies shouldn't
have to happen for growth to occur. But what do
we do with the facts of a situation, and how
do we come out of it, how do we cope,

(23:42):
how do we grow, how do we change? And I
think even with something like a global pandemic, there have
been a lot of people who had to sit down
and figure out what do I do with myself? And
these moments of quiet, A lot of people decided to
go to therapy. It's okay that I'm crying. I'm going
to deal with this trauma. I'm going to improve these things.
And what her circumstance got us into that place, That's

(24:02):
not what we need to focus on. It's what we
do with those circumstances. And I just get really excited
about all of it because I have friends who grew
up extremely privileged or believed that being color blind to
racism was a solution, which it's not. You can't really
ignore something and hope it gets better unless it's like
a tiny pimple on your face, like systems of oppression
don't work that way. But I see those folks sending
me videos of their kids being excited to go to

(24:25):
Black Lives Matter rallies or have tough conversations or be
like mommy, why are all your friends white like, it's
so exciting to me that process even happening, and that
parents are in a position to be like, honey, that
is a question that mommy needs to ask yourself. What
do we do about it? Versus getting something to run
away from? And I just think that it's a betterment
that a lot of folks are realizing there's so much

(24:46):
I don't know. I'm not afraid of that, but I
am excited by it because I have more work to do. Yeah,
And that if we can, if we can encourage people
to take the sort of of you know, never enough
feelings of failing that come from living in a deeply
you know, hierarchical and capitalist society, and and take those

(25:10):
out of personal identity and say it's okay that I
don't know everything. It's okay that I haven't had every experience.
How am I going to show up differently today? How
am I going to ask those questions today? Um? Yes,
we should have gotten here sooner, obviously, but here we are,
So what are we going to do from today forward?

(25:32):
And And it's interesting because I think about some of
the things you are talking about, you know, in these
moments and happening inside of families and and what is
opening up because of the Internet, because of the transparency
we all have and the capabilities we have to talk
to each other and see each other and and really
see systems that nobody wanted to put on the news,

(25:53):
but now Instagram is the news. Um, I'm very curious.
It doesn't seem accidental to me that so many things
lined up to put you in the world to do
all of this work. You know, you speak about your family,
you speak about the community you were raised in, what
you experienced with your sister. I think about the fact
that you were born only a year after the acquittal

(26:16):
of the police officers involved in the Rodney King assault
and riots. And when you speak on advocacy for your sister,
when you speak on advocacy for community, when you talk
about teaching young people as a black, queer Muslim woman,
do you see from this moment of leadership in your life?

(26:41):
Do you see through lines to understanding these systems were
referring to to understanding systems of harm and police brutality
and things as you were growing up or was that
something that moving to Louisiana and being in a completely
different experience for the first time in your young life.

(27:05):
Where do you where do you think it clicked on
for you looking back? I think that when I look
back and I tell like stories about how I grew
up to my friends, it's so linear, like I am exactly,
I'm doing exactly what I was meant to be doing,
the fact that I would often volunteer myself to give
a presentation on the Tuskegee Airmen or like the civil
Rights movement, or the fact that there's actually a video

(27:27):
me on my YouTube channel from like I think it's
like two thousand and six where I'm a little wee
baby and I have my little headband on, and I'm
giving my interview in my living room with my friend Katie,
and we're interviewing Dr Terrence Roberts, who was one of
the nine students that volunteered to integrate schools in Little Rock, Arkansas.
And he came over, you know, in his sweat pants,

(27:48):
like getting ready to for us to interview him. And
I see moments in that interview and I love showing
it to the young people I'm working with because they
are around that same age that I was. And there's
this point where I remember having these no cards but
there's one question I asked him that was a follow up,
and that's like, that's great journalistic skills. And I'm like,
you know, twelve or something. Those are the things where

(28:08):
I'm like really excited about it. But I also think
about what I do today, which is connect with so
many diverse people to explain things in these really tangible ways.
Like I did a lesson on how to apologize. I
don't think that a lot of us might raise our
hands and go, I need to learn how to apologize better.
But once we see that lesson, we might go, oh,
those are some tips and tricks that I actually need
to incorporate in my life. It's kind of this life

(28:31):
I've had figuring out how to get people to a
place where I know they can be, but maybe they're
not in a place of self understanding that they need
to get there, And how do I cross that bridge
in a way that isn't shaming people or judging people,
but just really kind of activating and exciting people. And
there's other aspects, like I was definitely a little bit

(28:52):
tokenized growing up as one of the few black students
in the school district period, and I remember that there
were points when it was very clear that Obama was
going to become president. Obama at least become the candidate,
you know, and then eventually president. And I would be
waiting for my mom at school and I remember one
of the parents, one of the white parents, came out
of the car and was like, Hey, Blair, I have

(29:13):
a question for you. So what does young black America
think about Canada? Obama and I had answers because I
anticipated I would be asked because I grew up with
such a belief in like being prepared. I mean my dad,
the way that he would teach us about preparedness. He
has this story about when he went to Kenya. He
did operations Crossroads Africa in the seventies. He was a

(29:34):
conscientious objector to the war in Vietnam, and he talks
about how everybody wanted to like have fun the first
day of the trip, and my dad was like, no,
I'm gonna go get some wood and I'm going to
build myself a bed that slightly off the ground because
there are weevils in the dirt and I want to
protect myself. And everybody was like, oh, do Walt, You're
so boring, And he was like, I don't care about

(29:55):
being boring. I care about being prepared. And he would
tell the story like if you forgot your homework at
home and didn't bring into school. But it really imprinted
on me that, no, you sometimes have to do the
unpopular thing or the lonely thing in order to be
prepared and equip yourself. Of course, for a twelve year
old Blair, super stressful way to grow up, and I
definitely have generalized anxiety to storder like and it's interesting

(30:17):
to look at all the pieces and just know that
sometimes I was put in the position of being the
spokesperson for all black people, and that's really unfair and
I don't want my kids to have to go through that. Simultaneously,
I have been so well equipped to do exactly what
I'm doing today. And I think that the difference between
being in Pastina and then going to Louisiana was that

(30:37):
I had this tool kit from growing up. I had
a vision of what things could be. When I came
out to my parents and my brother came out to
my parents, it wasn't like, oh, we need to go
to therapy about this. It was like, amazing, I'm so
glad you've realized this. About yourself. Thank you so much
for letling us in. And it was a vision of
how life could be. But then I went to school
in Louisiana and I had friends who were telling me

(30:57):
that their parents put them in conversion therapist who as
it came out, and I saw what life could be
and should be growing up, and then I was transported
by choice. I went to Louisiana State University and saw
how life is for a lot of people, and it
made me realize, I have been so blessed, and it's
not that I have been blessed or that I'm fortunate,
it's that I've grown up how it should be, and

(31:19):
so how do I create systems for other people? And
in that moment, my response was to put my classes
on Tuesday and Thursday, so that Monday, Wednesday, Friday I
could be doing trainings. I could do advocacy. I could
go to the Capitol building, which was right in the
city of Bouton Rouge and start doing trainings on you know,
civil disobedience and consent. And I think that it was

(31:41):
like I had all the skills and it was going
to Louisiana that activated me and also gave me a
sense that it's not as rosie everywhere else, but it
could be. And I'm glad that I had that that
growth and understanding growing up that no, you should be
able to come out and be accepted period. But a
lot of people don't experience that, And so how do
we use education to cross that bridge? I am endlessly

(32:04):
excited when people talk about not just envisioning, but actually
experiencing the world as it could be at its best,
and then committing to assisting in the creation of that world,
of that kind of a future. And I know it
strikes me, and I'm sure strikes plenty of people who

(32:25):
are listening to us have this conversation. You talking about
being a college student and saying, I'm gonna reserve three
days a week to run trainings on sevil disobedience to
to teach to gather people. How does a young woman
do that? How? How does how do you? As your

(32:45):
college self? I feel confident enough to say, oh, I
know how to do this? Where does that begin? Where
you were? You? Nervous? I have anxiety just thinking about it.
I think a big part of it is that I
grew up idolizing the civil rights movement and definitely was
doing a little bit of self fulfilling prophecy when it
came to that idolization. I expected college to be the

(33:09):
place where you went and had protests where there were
sit ins where you were changing yourself to the dean's
office so that things changed, which we never did. Um,
but I was always prepared to do it. You were ready. Yeah.
It was also an environment where, like my parents paid
for my school and we were able to get loans
and stuff. So I wasn't constantly in this position that
a lot of my peers were of needing to not

(33:31):
upset school administration, whether that was in a material sense
or like a belief sense and lose their scholarship or
get sent home, or didn't have parents who would fly
down to Louisiana and get you a lawyer and speak
to the double A c. P. If you got into
any type of racially based trouble, because that was my
parents all the time. Like my parents were like if
anybody says, especially because we were the only black kids

(33:52):
in many cases growing up, my parents were so present
and ready to go, Like if we weren't getting all
the things that we needed, my parents were like, let's
speak to the manager immediately that very much that energy.
So I came with that. I also came with the
understanding of seeing what had been done growing up down
the street from Dr Roberts, from Little Rock nine definitely
gave me this perception. I remember he told me he

(34:13):
was fifteen when he did that. I interviewed him when
I was like twelve or thirteen, and I was like, Wow,
that's only a couple of years from now. What am
I doing to be in the history book. So it
was kind of like this, not competitiveness in like a
toxic way, but very much like this where my contributions
coming in. So when I got to college and I
was like, Okay, the activism arena here, it exists. I

(34:34):
knew that in Baton News there with the bus boycotts
there that had preceded the ones with Dr King in Alabama,
and I knew that we could make this difference. But
there was also a lack of understanding I had about
all the trauma people had gone with policing. Growing up
in Louisiana, I had friends who who had a cousin
who disappeared, and I also had that in Los Angeles.

(34:55):
But I also grew up in San Marino, where my
mom went to high school with one of the police office.
There's who was the only black woman police officer at
the p D. And so when you hung up the
phone in San Marino, the police are already there and
they were happy to help. Like it was a very
different dynamic than constantly being harassed on your way to school.
And so I had that disconnect. And so when it

(35:15):
came time to organize a vigil, we did a vigil um.
When we found out that the police officer that killed
Mike Brown wouldn't be, you know, indicted, or that he
had been acquitted, I don't I don't recall the had
taken place, but we wanted to do a vigil to
give people a place to mourn, and my friends were
afraid to do that, and I was like, there's definitely
so much that I'm not aware of that my friends

(35:38):
feel afraid to have to come together with a permit
on campus with candles to mourn and do a spoken
word poetry night. I need to take so many steps back.
I need to let go that dream of chaining ourselves
to the dean's office and figure out how I cannot
do that thing that people think that folks from the
West Coast and the East Coast do, which is think

(35:59):
that we know everything and we come in and try
to solve problems that we aren't even familiar with all
the way. And I think I did that well. I
of course I would like to think I did it well,
but I think I had a lot to learn in
terms of what's the status quo here, and not only
feeling like, oh, I could fix everything, but that I'm
going to do my damnedest to fix it, but that
also I need to be collaborative. And I so got

(36:20):
burnt out, like I would always have talked with my
mom should be like, don't get burnt out, blare, and
I didn't. It was so abstract to me. I was like,
what is burnout? But for me, it looked like sleeping
through the protest that I organized because I was so exhausted,
or not taking care of myself or eating and drinking
enough water because I was feeling like, if I go
to this party or if I do anything nice for myself,

(36:42):
I'm taking money away from something I could donate, something
I could do better. And it wasn't sustainable whatsoever. And
so it was kind of like such an urgency within
my heart and soul. If I don't do this, it
won't happen. And that's a terrible way to organize, in
a great way to get burnt out. And what I

(37:03):
had to instead do, which I feel like I was
starting to accomplish as I left Louisiana UM in my
last year of school, which was figure out who I
could build in coalition with. But there were some things
that I definitely tried to burden or shoulder myself, like
I tried to protect people from things like instead of
being in community when we basically were doing these meetups

(37:24):
on campus and we would have blackout Wednesday. It was
co organized by my friend Kristin White and myself and
some other folks, and we would have press sometimes coming.
We had a lot of accomplishments, but I was the
one whose name was on paperwork, so I was the
one getting threats, but I wasn't sharing that that was happening.
I was just trying to insulate people. And so not

(37:45):
only was I burnt out and feeling like I had
to be the superwoman, but I was also kind of
trying to shelter other folks cause I knew that they
were afraid of these things, and I felt like if
I had shared that was the reality, then all the
progress we made would fall back, and so we ended
up not doing those anymore. And there was a time
where it kind of coincided with these two militiamen, self

(38:05):
appointed militiamen who came to campus with guns, and it
was kind of like a very diffused situation, but in
my heart, I was like, those could have been the
people who were giving me threats. And so it definitely
affected me further on in my organizing career to the
point where I'm a retired organizer. Now I can't do
that anymore because it's just not good for my mental health.

(38:26):
And so it was kind of like a candle that
burns quickly but burns out. And fortunately my new candles
to be like a writer and educator and historian. But
I went in with such a sense of this has
to be done that I didn't even have time to
look at what might happen. And I wasn't listening to
people in my family, like my uncle Vernon, who was

(38:47):
a black panther who was constantly telling me be careful,
watch your back. I was like, whatever, Uncle Vernon things
need to change. But he had gone through something that
I hadn't even believed was a possibility. So if I
could do it all again, I would be more patient,
I would listen more. And that's really what I tried
to talk to young people who are doing this work now,

(39:08):
is to take your time until really heed the warnings
and the environment that people are going into. But the
biggest part of it was that I was trying to
actualize a civil rights movement moment, and it was a
self fulfilling prophecy. But I didn't even think about how
many activists don't talk about their work anymore because they're
so exhausted. But I definitely understand it now. The candle

(39:30):
that burns out quickly really resonates with me. I think,
especially in a deeply motivated youth, we think we're going
to be the ones to change it. You know, talking
to my parents about attending civil rights protests and Vietnam protests,
and and you know, similarly, my dad talking about immigrating

(39:50):
to the US, and and in a way, because he
knew he was safe from the draft, he could go
and step up and say things that other friends who
were from here fell like they couldn't. So. Hearing you
talk about understanding ways in which you felt protected and
privileged by your own circumstance um and also put your
foot so hard on the gas, I'm like, yep, I've

(40:11):
talked to my parents about that. I definitely did that,
you know, as a young as a young woman really
jumping into the fray. It was like, I'm going to
use the privilege of this platform or everything at my disposal,
and yeah, when the threats start coming, nobody really prepares
you for that. And like my the way my parents

(40:33):
have reacted to me getting threats every single time is
probably the healthiest way, but not the most helpful way,
where they're like, well, that's how you know you're doing
something right when people are trying to get you, and
it's like, okay, yes, yes, but also I am fearing
for my life or I think, especially because there's this
massive lore within the black community around all these martyrs
of the civil rights movement, that if you're doing that,

(40:53):
you're on the right path. Not necessarily what is that
doing to your heart and your soul? And it really
wasn't until I was being to other activists who had
also gotten threats that I was able to heal from
it because they had been in that same situation, which
is like so beyond. And I tell people now, like
when I speak on campuses, I'm like, please remember that
this is college and definitely push the envelope and do

(41:16):
as much as you can because it is the real world,
but you definitely are sometimes more insulated. But also remember
that you don't have to double major and then organize
all the protests, Like you can literally just be a
person and at a time exactly, and you can trust
that you have a coalition of people who also care
about what you care about and want to make the
world better, and you don't have to fight this war

(41:36):
by yourself. And I just try to be the person
that I needed in that moment. But I was also
bottling so much up, like it was just interpersonal drama
plus my papers do and it was definitely like trial
by fire. And the funniest thing about all of it
was that I was so done with Louisiana. Afterwards, I
was like, I'm not going back to Louisiana. I'm moving away.

(41:58):
So I moved to d C. I finished we Will
in like three years in a summer school because I
was getting threats. Of course, my grandparents who migrated out
of Louisiana were like, why did you think we left Blair?
Like connect the dots, you know, uh. And they were
so afraid for me when I decided to move. But
they were like, she's stubborn, She'll have to learn on
her own. But the job I ended up getting, like
my first big girl job was at Planned Parenthood and

(42:19):
my job was to be the press officer in the
Southern States. So it was like, Awesome, I'm in the North.
And then they're like, and you're going back, and so
my job going back and you're going to be on
the receiving end of more threats, Yeah, like very specific ones.
And so from twenty six seventeen, I was a press
officer for like a lot of the Southern plant parenthead affiliates.
And I'm so grateful that all those things aligned because

(42:41):
it gave me the opportunity to heal and being a
different mindset. But it also was really cathartic and I
was able to use those skills that I had where
it was like, how can we come together and have
these tough conversations. A big part of my job was
teaching people how to talk about abortion from a religious standpoint,
and there's a big belief in the South that no
got f mint off my property, like this is ours.

(43:02):
And then also we're not judging my neighbor, even though
you probably will judge your neighbor. You'll just say bless
their heart afterward. But yeah, it was like, how do
we use that for the pursuit of justice? And I
saw so much progress. So I had felt so burnt
out and so kind of like defeated, where I know
we had wins at l s U, but I felt
like there was more I could do. And so that
was kind of like the conclusion of my organizing career.

(43:24):
Plus the first month that I was there, I got
arrested at the protests um around Alton Sterling. I remember
reading about that. But that's something I think is so interesting.
I think that that desire and I guess I I highlighted,
you know, my own version of it, which I know
is proximal, Like I know the threats many of us
are on the receiving end of as women who are

(43:46):
publicly advocating for change, and I know that you, as
a black woman publicly advocating for change, get a whole
other set and then you layer on that you are
a black, Muslim queer woman advocating for change, and I'm
just like, dude, I have months where I'm scared to
leave my house? How are you? And I guess that
it feels important to acknowledge that there is that burnout

(44:11):
that you know your family talked to you about, your
grandparents and your uncle, and that my parents warned me about.
And I, similarly to you, was like, we're going to
be the ones where the generation we're going to change
it all. And and my humble pie, as a public
advocate and activist, came with, oh, people have been working

(44:32):
on this for literal hundreds of years. So if I
think in my little brain that it's going to be
me and you and all our friends who are the
ones that push it over the edge, of course we're
going to burn ourselves out. What are we gonna do
in these you know, ten year blocks of our lives
that's gonna change the last four hundred, six hundred years

(44:55):
of what we've been trying to alter for the better,
for the greater good. And in a way it made
me get really practical about leaning into the reality of
we might move the needle say, say the last generation
moved at five clicks, let's hope we can move it six.

(45:17):
Let's hope. And and we're going to try our best.
And we have to stay in it for a long
time because it doesn't refresh like our phone. It isn't
a quick turnover, It isn't sexy. It's a long haul job.
And and if I think about it in that way,
how do I better take care of myself so I
don't completely burn out? How do I encourage the women

(45:39):
in my life, in our larger circles, my friends, my
co workers, how do we give ourselves a little release
on that pressure valve? And how do we do it
as a team rather than saying if I don't do it,
it's not going to get done. What does a decentralized
system of power look like an advocacy that we might

(46:00):
and model in our society. That that was a reckoning
for me starting to think about those things, And I
think I have like just a quick story about what
that looks like materially, because I think sometimes we think
it's like a big, grandiose overture of something that's really big,
big to do, and sometimes it's small acts of compassion
where we might inconvenience ourselves in the moment, but it's

(46:22):
in the pursuit of helping somebody else. And I think
about my coworker Danielle, and I actually called her and
talked to her about this. It was years after the fact,
but it was my first time going to Birmingham and
as a black person, like as you're saying all the
identities I embody and then going back to a place
where when I would drive down to Florida for spring break,

(46:42):
I was definitely trying to skip Mississippi and Alabama and
just hold it till we got to the other side
because there's so much trauma there. And I remember freaking out,
like we're in a meeting and I'm pretty sure I
just like dissociated completely. They're like, Okay, then Blair will
go down and then train folks in Birmingham and then
we'll do that, and I'm just sitting there like no, no, no,
no no, and just freaking out. And I had to
think that Danielle saw me in that moment and she

(47:04):
was just like, Okay, and I'm gonna go with Blair.
It's her first time training this affiliate. I'll just want
to be there and it was a moment where she
looked into her humanity and was like, I don't want
Blair to go by one. Blair's the only visible Muslim
person here, She's one of the black folks that's on
this communications team. Let's make sure that we're supporting her.
And it was just her being present. And I have tried,

(47:25):
I've exploited expressed her in that moment, but then of
course I think it was like last year I called
her about it, how grateful I was because it was
such a scary experience that she didn't have to accompany
me with. She didn't have to use her privilege as
a white woman to come with me, as somebody who
was more targeted by different systems of oppression, to be
there for me. I'm sure she had things that she

(47:46):
was also doing, deadlines that she had to push back,
but she also had the seniority and the power in that,
you know, at planned parenthood, to be able to say, hey,
actually this needs I need to go with Blair um.
And it's those things where she made herself in convenience
to an immeasurable degree of benefit to me. And I
really felt seen in that moment and it's those things.

(48:07):
It's not necessarily that we need to raise a million
dollars for a given organization. Sometimes it's having a tough
conversation with your friend that keeps miss gendering somebody, or
having a tough conversation with casting if you're able to
have seniority on a set and say we actually need
to have more black folks in front of and behind
the scenes. And it's those small acts that ladder up

(48:29):
to big change. And that's like the most concrete example
I can possibly think of because it meant so much.
And for her it was just kind of like a
squid Blair looks super uncomfortable. I don't want her going
by herself. I'm just gonna step up. And for me
it was like, oh my goodness, thank thank God for
this person seeing me and using their privilege so that
I could just do my best at my job, but

(48:51):
then also acknowledge the fact that I was terrified. And
so it's those acts of humanity and sharing our humanity.
But it also is about emotion, right, It's using our
emotional intelligence to look at other people's experiences and maybe
sometimes asking out loud, can I help you? Can I
support you? And being okay with no, and other times

(49:12):
making the judgment call that maybe I can be of
use here, maybe I can be of service. Yeah, that's
been such a a great clicking up, if you will,
for me in my awareness in communities like our extended
community of people who are really out trying to do
the work when things happen years ago, you know I

(49:35):
would I would reach out and just say, hey, I
saw this. Are you okay? What's going on? You know?
Do you need anything? And just the learning of being
in a in a community and and learning the types
of lessons you're referring to has made a change for
me where when anything's going on in the life of

(49:56):
a woman you know, or a friend, anyone who's kind
of out there writing for the future, if you will,
I don't reach out and say hey, do you need
anything anymore? I always say I saw this. How can
I support you right now? Just tell me, like literally,
if you need a delivery of groceries, or if you

(50:16):
need somebody to hop on a phone call or show
up to a meeting or be on a zoom, just
how can I support you right now? And it gives
people the permission two ask differently and I think about
how even you sharing that story of what you experienced
with your coworker might make someone who's listening that's in
a position similar to yours, or perhaps in a position

(50:39):
similar to hers, be able to say, oh, I need
this kind of support, or I can lend this kind
of support right now. And the thing is I didn't
even know her that well, And it's like, we don't
have to be best beds with folks to extend that.
I have another example, it's like all the women who'd
like to help my career. A woman named Julia who
worked at the Center for Disability Advocacy. I worked at

(51:01):
Heineken before I worked at Planning Parenthood, and on the
floor there was it was. It was in government relations.
People like, you're a musclem that worked in beer, and
I'm like yeah. In fact, when I did my TED talk,
I mentioned that I used to work in the beer
industry as kind of a litmus test, because if you're
really like an Orthodox person and you're not homophobic and
like scare quotes, then you would be upset that I
worked in beer and that I was gay. But there's
a lot of people who are just more upset about

(51:22):
the fact that I'm bisexual than anything else. But anyway,
So I was in Pine Niken and government relations. We
shared a floor and Julia worked at the Center for
Disability Advocacy, which was on that shared floor, so the
shared bathroom, and I was in the bathroom. Absolutely just
try you've had moments like this, like if you ever worked,
like any circumstance where just under a lot of pressure
kind of like okay, well I have to step right out,

(51:42):
I'll be right back. It used in the bathroom and
I was trying to ask my boss for a raise,
and I was so freaked out about it, and she
was just like, al right, girl, how could what are
we how can we support? She just was like, I'll
be right back. She brought me a cup of water.
We talked through some steps, and it's those moments where
you're just acknowledging somebody else's human be and now we're friends,
we still keep in touch, and it's those things that

(52:05):
make a true difference, because she easily could have been like, oh,
that's drama I'm not stepping into And sometimes we make
that call. But other times, and I think more valuable
and compassionate times, we go this person might need a
cup of water, this person might need some assistance, and
I'm just going to make myself of service so that
way and then give them the you know, the option

(52:26):
to to to decline that, but definitely just to be present.
And it's those steps that I think really dictate how
we're remembered and what our legacy is on this earth,
because it is those ten year intervals. But it's not
sometimes the fact that we did one grandiose gesture, but
all the little things together that make a difference when
you think about that kind of showing up, you know,

(52:48):
whether it's in a one on one moment or or
at as you said, organizing a protest. You know, you
mentioned that you got arrested at the Aults and Sterling protest.
Can you kind of walk us through what that's like.
You know, lots of people feel more permission now, I

(53:09):
think to speak up about elections and politics and each
other and community advocacy, but really being on the ground
protesting things like police violence and then being subject to
police violence in this community in the South where you
knew you were more at risk. Can you can you

(53:29):
share just a little bit about that maybe for people
who want to advocate, but also might be afraid to
show up on a front line like that. I will
definitely say that a lot of it was just bold,
reckless naivety, where I was just kind of like, I
can do it, and not necessarily what's the fallout. I
think that sometimes it's the consequence of being so ready

(53:52):
to go to like shatter a glass ceiling, that we
don't really think about where the glass is going to fall,
and I don't recommend at I think sometimes we can't
help it. I also accidentally came out on the Chucker
Carlson Tonight show. I was thinking, Wow, I've spent the
past year talking about abortion in the South. I can
do anything. I'm not thinking about how volatile is this

(54:13):
man's audience and will like what will the consequences be?
And in one breath I'm glad that I wasn't afraid
of those things, And in the other breath, I'm like,
oh girl, you in danger, Like really take a step
back and consider those things. And so what I tell
people to do now is to consider their sphere of
influence about the things that they can take action for. Like,
say you live near dl Rio and you're seeing what's

(54:34):
happening to Haitian immigrants, people who are trying to seek
refuge in asylum. If you're in that vicinity and you
don't have a warrant for your rest, and you know
that you exist in a body that won't be impacted
by police and that you are a citizen, sometimes showing
up and bringing water are the best things that you
can do. I also think about all of the people
who just brought handwarmers and boxes of pizza, two people

(54:55):
at JFK when there was the whole conversation around the
muscle van, Like I still have a picture on my
phone about this woman who just brought ten boxes of
pizza and was like, I lived nearby. I just thought
i'd bring something, and I was just like correct, like yes,
that's what you're supposed to do. And so I think
it's like what can I do? But then also really
taking stock of things, I think that sometimes we can

(55:16):
let our passions lead us in the not wisest or
more strategic direction. Like sometimes we'll go, oh, I'm going
to show up, but like oh snap, there's a warrant
for me, or oh snap, like I can't do this
because I will lose my job and I won't be
able to pay rent. We have to live in the
reality that we exist in while also trying to fight
for a better future. So it means being really practical
and really strategic. And the example I use is thinking

(55:38):
about activism like a pot luck and say that you
want to be the be the person that brings like
the rock star mac and cheese, but you've never made
mac and cheese before, you have a dairy and gluten allergy,
and you're not really good at substitutes. And meanwhile, your
best friend Becky just brought you like this fresh caught tuna,
and you have our chosen a mayonnaise and you have
fresh gill and celery. Sounds like you should be bringing

(55:59):
the tuna salad and not bringing the mac and cheese,
especially because Dolores across the street brings the best mac
and cheese every year. So maybe you go over to
Dolores's house and after the pandemic right and you figure
out how you can learn to make that mac and cheese.
But at the same time, you bring what your best
equipped to bring, which is that tuna salad. And nobody
really wants to bring the tuna salad, but it's what
you need to bring. To this pot luck of justice

(56:22):
to effect change, and so it's looking at your tool
set that way. So for me, like my Mac and
cheese is being a frontline activist, but I can't do
that anymore. It's not good for my mental health. It's
not where I'm most effective. I went to a protest
in San Marino and all of my racial trauma just
well to the surface, and I was just sobbing the
whole time, and it was the most safe space you
could imagine where it was just like a bunch of

(56:43):
people and Grandma's holding signs that said black lives matter. Meanwhile,
I'm reacting to this like I'm getting arrested again, which
just reminds me that I'm traumatized and I don't need
to put myself in those situations. So I Tuna Salad
is me being an educator and talking to people about
how they can affect change, teaching folks how will apologize
that they could be more compassionate and understanding and have
better interpersonal relationships. And I'm thriving at this. It might

(57:07):
not be what I envisioned for myself, but it's what
I'm good at and it's how I can best serve people,
and I think those are the steps that we have
to take. So we have to figure out what's in
our fridge and what we need to bring, and it
might not be what we want to bring, but it
might be what we're called upon to do. I really
love that, and I think it's also really important to
remember that if we're lucky, we're all going to live

(57:27):
long lives. You might start off being the mac and
cheese person and become the tuna salad person. You will
have stages of what your gifts are. And I am
certainly aware that I am in a stage where I
am having to give myself some gifts. Because I've spent
most of my career giving everything I can to other people.

(57:48):
I am having to bring some of those resources back
in and create some new space. And I know that
what's on the other side of what I'm learning experience
and seeing, meditating on sort of recalibrating. I know there's
going to be a next dish. And I think it's

(58:09):
really important, whether it's in the ways we show up
that you're talking about, or even in the things where
you know quote unquote meant to do, like in our careers,
um in our family structures, It's really important to give
yourself permission to do a new thing, to change your
mind about what you're good at. You know. That's that's
where we can I love the metaphor. I'm just going

(58:31):
to really lean into it. That's how we throw the
best potluck. That's how we have the most variety at
the table. And I I'm so excited as a person
who is truly just a fan and an admirer of yours,
um you know who loves when we like leave each
other messages on photos and things. I'm excited to see

(58:52):
what new things you've been cooking up. Your first book,
Modern History, your micro video series Smarter and Seconds. Like
you sit on the board of the Tegan and Sarah Foundation,
there are all these things that you have made are
making ways you are serving. Can you tell the folks
at home a little bit about those things before we
get into the new book. I want to. I want

(59:14):
to get through what what's been cooking and what's on
the on the stove now, Well, like Smarter and Seconds
definitely was a smash hit in ways that I couldn't
even anticipate. Where even now, like when I'm on board
meetings at the Tegan and Sarah Foundation, like we just
had one recently. They had a video of me doing
the lesson on rainbow washing, and I'm like, wow, my
worlds are really colliding. Or when I was at fashion
Week and all of my friends who are well established

(59:36):
in different entertainment fields are like singing my Smarter and
Seconds jingle back to me. I feel like this is
a really great example. But I was just talking about
where Reels was coming out. I've always wanted to be
like a Vine star, but Vine doesn't exist anymore. And
I know I have these skills and I have like
a stage presence, but when it's a short video format,
I'm not going to do songs and dances. I'm not
going to do makeup looks. I'm not going to do
clothing transitions, not because I don't want to, but just

(59:58):
because I don't want to embarrass my so but what
I can do is talk really fast. I can talk
really fast, and I can educate people about things in
a short, snappy way. And I reached out to one
of my friends who's a genius at branding, Courtney Quinn,
who's at color Me Courtney, and she was like Smarter
and Seconds like she was throwing out in different names,
and she ended up naming it Smarter and Seconds. And
I mean the first videos were just getting millions of views.

(01:00:20):
Now I have like fifty million views under my belt.
So we're actually going to be doing another vertical soon
called Science and Seconds because there's a lack of understanding
about science, and it will be teaching people about the
ring cycle pollution, d n A m r n A
to get lesson about vaccines in there. You know, vaccines
don't change your DNA exactly. So many different basic materials

(01:00:43):
that I can get across in thirty seconds or less.
And so if Bill Nye is a listener, I'd love
for him to reach out to us or my people
will be in touch with your people, Bill Nye, if
you happen to listen to Sophia Bush's podcast, Bill Nye
and Icon And so I want to do these more
comprehensive things even as I'm leading into this new book,
but I'm also on the board of the Muslims for
Progressive Values. I just really try to make sure that

(01:01:05):
I am maximizing my time on Earth and then also resting.
So like yesterday, I went to bed at like three
pm because I did a thirty six hour trip to
New York, and I never doing that again, but I
had to do it for the specific work task. So
I do try to rest as well, but I try
to do things that make me joyful. And I really
love teaching people, and I really love interacting with my smarties,
and it's so great that I get to do that

(01:01:26):
for a living. I love it. I love that we
have communities of smarties. I literally call the listeners of
this show whip smarties. Yes, you know I It's the
only thing I want is for us to get smarter
and more empathetic and to respect science and understand data
and feel empowered by all of it. And and I
think that's so much of the work that you do

(01:01:48):
feels to me again, as you know, if you were
like you have a very similar goal. And the book,
the new book is called Read This to Get Smarter.
So can you tell people a little bit about it?
And and what led you to this being your next project? Okay,
so this being my new project. What happened basically was

(01:02:08):
I made this kind of jump the Shark video for
Smarter and seconds where I think only happy days and
millennials are going to get that. So it's basically like
when you do something where it's like, Okay, this is
kind of over the top, is this going to ruin
the flow? And I did like a singing video where
I was talking about how you may have heard that
cowboys were white, but that just ain't the whole truth,
and I like totally saying it. I'm not going to
do it here, um, but I talked about how like

(01:02:29):
cowboys were also black and indigenous and of Mexican nationality
and like other backgrounds too. And the editor for my
last two books, like hey, where we're all really loving
Smarter and Seconds, would you have a conversation with us
about potentially and doing another book? And at this time,
I have to tell you, I was like, I'm never
writing a book again. I hate the process, Like it's
so stressful, never in life. Um. But I also wanted

(01:02:50):
to be open to different possibilities and opportunities. So we
had a few conversations and it was basically like how
do I use this format of an accessible, easy to
understand lesson then extended into a book forum. And my
last two books are about history, and I really actually
wanted to write a book about puberty, but I had
to put that mac and cheese on the shelf and
figure out, Okay, what can I actually do with this?

(01:03:12):
And there were chapters in this book that I didn't
want to write, Like I didn't want to write a
chapter about relationships. I didn't want to write a chapter
about class and classism, but I needed to for it
to get the point across. And you're supposed to be
as a writer. There's these sayings about, right the things
that scare you, and that was definitely the thing that
I did. I had to figure out, Okay, what are
the things that I can talk about that might be

(01:03:33):
not what I want to talk about, or might not
be the forefront of what I am called to do
or I feel that I'm called to do, but that
need to happen. And a massive part was reaching out
and asking for help and working with folks like Dr
sha Kill McLane and Dr Chary Spurt and Stelly and
feeling in these gaps, and then of course compensating folks.
Do you have to compensate people when they're consulting for you.
You can't be picking brains And then also talk about

(01:03:54):
that conversation too in the book. And so it's been
really a joy. And I just recorded the audio book myself,
which was terrifying because I really struggle a reading out loud,
and I'm like, this is good, Like I did a
good job, and so I'm really proud of myself and
excited for it to be in the world. I'm so
excited for you when you are bringing people into this

(01:04:15):
conversation about learning in this way about our identities are
experiences showing up in the world, the ways to apologize,
the ways that things like relationships and so on and
so forth affect how we live, and the potential for
showing up. It's not lost on me that a lot

(01:04:35):
of that centers around identity and integrity. And there's a
lot of people who push back on leaders and people
who are advocating for change, and they like to kind
of designate everything as identity politics. And you you mentioned
this um earlier. You you mentioned the day that you

(01:04:59):
went on Tucker Carlson, and I remember that and I
was like, what is she doing? What is happening? Is
she going to be okay? And I've obviously watched that interview,
as so many people have, and I know you reference
it in your Ted talk and he tried to do
that to you. He was so dismissive, and he said, oh,
you know, identity politics, and he was talking over you,
but I still caught your response. You said, it's not

(01:05:19):
identity politics when it's your life. And so I'm really
curious how you think through learning, through getting smarter, we
can dismantle that very dismissive card that gets flung around
and and encourage people to look beneath two people's actual experiences,

(01:05:44):
because it is the experiences and the seeing each other
that allows us to be more progressive in everything from
our own behavior to policy. Definitely, I think one of
the biggest things is I start with identity right at
the top of the book. I talk about ourselves and
the way that we understand ourselves in the ways that
others understand us, in that way we understand others, and

(01:06:07):
all these different dynamics, and it basically coming down to
a matter of we have assumptions, and those assumptions matter
not because they're true, but because it affects how we
treat people, how we understand ourselves, and how we understand
each other. And the conversation about identity politics is a
necessary one to have when it's when it happens correctly,
just like critical race theory is super important to discuss

(01:06:28):
if you understand critical race theory, otherwise it gets into
this kind of like mushy mess. But the fact is
that our experiences are lived experiences also adders up to expertise,
and we have to sometimes put really actually sometimes foreground
those things like when somebody says, well, I don't actually
need to know this person's race, well, why are you
saying that? Is it because it actually doesn't matter? Or

(01:06:49):
is it because if you acknowledge it you might lean
into your biases. When somebody says, oh, I don't really
care about this person's gender identity or I couldn't care
less what your sexual orientation is, is it a genuine
message of I'm going to treat you the same regardless,
or is it I'm afraid that I'm going to treat
you differently if I know this about you. And so
it's looking at intention every step of the way, and

(01:07:10):
also just understanding that often the most privileged of identities
are the ones that go unnamed and un acknowledged, where
we'll say somebody is half black, but we won't say
the other half because we already know that other half
is white, or somebody who's a white American just gets
to be an American, whereas I have to be an
African American. And Tony Morrison said that in the United States,

(01:07:33):
American means white and everybody else has to hyphenate. And
so it's understanding that when identities aren't named, it's because
those are the dominant identities, and because systems of oppression
allow those identities to go unnamed and unacknowledged, and that's
the system of power and the system of oppression that
has to be dismantled. So in the book, I talk
about racialized people and white people because as while white

(01:07:54):
is also racialized identity, it's important for us to specifically
named white because that comes with a degree of power
and privilege in a system of white supremacy. So it's
undoing the things that we claim to be uncomfortable with,
Like I'm sure that folks like Tucker Carlson would be
very uncomfortable being known as a straight cis white man.

(01:08:15):
But those are facts. So basically, the whole core of
it is that over the past six hundred years, race
has been invented very gradually, and a massive part of
that has been this unacknowledged fact that oftentimes when we
say human being, we mean white person. We don't necessarily
mean other aspects. And that's evidenced by the fact that
we say people and then we say people of color

(01:08:39):
when we're talking about different racialized people, or we say
l g B t Q plus, but we're not necessarily
talking about the straight and sis gender community. And we
force people to come out instead of acknowledging the fact
that we assume that everybody is straight and sis gender
unless they say otherwise, and then we put the responsibility
on them to do that, instead of putting the responsibility
on us not to assume those things. And those are

(01:09:01):
the conversations around identity that have to happen that I
go into great detail in when in my book. So
that way, we have to understand ourselves. We can't think
of ourselves as blank slates just because we're closer to
privilege or closer to a system of dominance. We have
to understand that we also have identities, that we also
have connections not only to systems of oppression, but of
power and of privilege. And while that might be uncomfortable

(01:09:23):
to acknowledge, it's necessary for us to get absolutely anywhere.
M H. And I think to be willing to interrogate
what we haven't known, what we're learning, and also what
we might assume about ourselves. Something that I thought was
so powerful years ago, um, when we were looking at

(01:09:46):
you know, Donald Trump running for president and going, there's
no way that this can't happen, right, Something that I
found to be one of the more impactful statements anybody
made that year. Brittany pack Nick Ningham was talking about
proximity to white supremacy and she specifically called out white
women and was like, ladies, white supremacy doesn't have anything

(01:10:07):
for you either, and and it has been, uh, such
a drumbeat. It was such a concise way to just
state the ultimate truth. And I am a long winded person,
so when someone who I respect does something in a
short form, I'm like, there it is. I have to
talk about this forever. And I really I have never

(01:10:29):
stopped thinking about that, about how, whether it's conscious or unconscious,
any of us who might be close to any system
that makes us feel safe, because that's what power it's about.
It's about, Oh, if you have this, you'll be safe.
And what does our deep desire, our our evolutionary reality,

(01:10:51):
you know, from back when we were all foragers, our
deep desire for safety. In what ways will that allow
us to conte or unconsciously ignore or turn away from
the lack of safety other people are experiencing. How how
can we really look at each other and say, if
it's happening to you, it could happen to me, and

(01:11:12):
vice versa. So let's show up to solve this together.
And also, I think what's necessary is that it might
never happen to me, and I should still care. I
think that a good litmus test is is my feminism
that I want to own half the plantation or that
I want the plantation to not exist, and I want
to free the enslaved people that should never been in bondage.
And I think that's the crux of white feminism is

(01:11:33):
that for a lot of people, they're concerned about owning
half of plantation, owning halfy enslaved people, owning half of
the tools of oppression. For other people, it's what are
we gonna do when we replace the Mount Rushmore heads
with suffragettes instead of it being let's not deface indigenous
land and give land back instead? And so I think

(01:11:54):
it's sometimes us looking at what must I give up
and what am I willing to give up so that
other people can thrive. I mean, you have the example
I was just talking about this with my friends that
for the second Matrix movie to happen, that KIANU Reeves
gave up a huge bit of his paycheck. That's socialism,
and also how the film was able to get made,
Like you know, we all love good guy Kiana Reeves,

(01:12:15):
but it's those things that must take place. And I
think that sometimes it's this need for safety, right, but
also acknowledging that sometimes that safety is an illusion. I
think about folks like my friends in Brooklyn who live
really close to a police station, and how they realize, actually,
I don't feel safe being in this close proximity to
such an impressive institution, even though when we moved here
two years ago we did feel very comfortable with this

(01:12:37):
and just evaluating what safety means. I think about the
women who uh and pardon me, like I shouldn't just
say women, I should say people with you know, who
need access to abortion, which is across gender, because, as
Erica Hart says, abortion has no gender, and people of
any gender can get an abortion, who have never had
access to the promises in ro Versus Wade, my friends
who have had to drive to Florida to get an abortion,

(01:12:59):
that reality which has existed with Row in place, who
are now having that eroded even further. And I think
about folks who will always have access to health care
because they're wealthy, feeling the sense of alarm, and sometimes
we need to step into those emotions, like we were
saying before, in order to have that compassion. But we
also need to understand that it's not a matter of
whether or not a threat as on our doorstep, for

(01:13:20):
us to acknowledge that it's a threat and for us
to make a difference. But when Trump became president that
was so bewildering. The other part that was bewildering was
that it went from don't talk about this toward marginalized people,
and then the next day it was why haven't you
warned us? And I felt similarly with this racial awakening,
where it was like, don't talk about this, Oh snap,

(01:13:42):
why didn't you warn us? And then again January six,
don't talk about this? Why didn't you warn us? And
then again with the Haitian immigrants and the move that
the United States decides to make, which is that no,
we weren't using whips and we'll just stop using horses,
instead of it being why are you removing people who
are refugees and asylum seekers and we're doing these policies
from the Trump era that you campaigned against Joe Biden

(01:14:03):
when you need to be overturning them, don't talk about this?
Why didn't you warn us about him? And it's this
perpetual gas letting that I think marginalized people experience where
every I say, like every eight ten weeks, White America
is upset that we haven't warned them about something that
we've been screaming our heads off about. And so I
have to just stay committed to hoping that I'm activating

(01:14:25):
the people who care and making those resources available, even
things like folks having an increased concern about missing and
murdered Indigenous women, where I had one of my followers
reached out and say, Blair, why haven't you spoke about this?
And I'm like, actually, here's the six times I've spoken
about this this year. But making those resources available so
that whatever point people decide that they need to be activated,

(01:14:47):
that there's a ladder for that, but also being patient
with myself and encouraging others to be patient that it
is immensely frustrating to feel like you're only called upon
in moments of crisis to acknowledge that, to name it,
but also to you really like hold together. Another thing
that Britney told me, which was that you had a
purpose before anybody had an opinion. And sometimes whether that

(01:15:09):
opinion is to listen to you or not, or whether
you have something to say that's worthy or not, or
that you matter or not, you have a purpose regardless
of what another person's opinion is. Yeah, and I think
everyone deserves to claim that and know that. And to
your point, wherever people are on their journey of awakening
to community, whether it's oh my god, if this could

(01:15:30):
happen to me and it could happen to you, we
have to solve this or you're further along where you say,
regardless of what my personal experience of safety is, this
happening anywhere is unacceptable. That should always be the goal,
you know. I think about it in terms of it's
funny because I get asked when I advocate for changes
in our budget, because to me, listen a national budget

(01:15:51):
is just a spelling out of priorities. And when you
look at how much this country invests in a war
machine and how little we invest in keeping people healthy,
that to me signals that we have a priority that's
very out of balance. And when people say to me, well,
you don't know anything about it and this, that and
the other, I say, no, No, I know a lot
about budgets. The reason that so many people in my
industry are such staunch advocates of unions, of universal health care,

(01:16:15):
and of fair distribution and investment of resources is because
that's what we do. I invest fifty percent of my
personal resources back into the people on my team, and
another back into workers who work part time for me
all year, you know, the artists and the stylists and

(01:16:36):
the teams. And then I invest another back into our
country in my taxes. And but to me this feels
important because people will say, yo, well you can pay
out all that money because because you make money. No. No,
this is about participating in the profit you create, and
so many workers are denied that ability. So I'm fine

(01:16:58):
living on of my entertainment companies gross income because it
means everybody eats when I do well, everybody I work with,
and everybody on my team does well, and it's possible
for our country because let me tell you what, as
much as I would love to be one of the
icons who we look up to, like a queen of

(01:17:18):
entertainment like Jail or Beyonce who just is like breaking
it in, I'm not, but the United States government is.
And when I look at how much available money we have,
I'm like, no, we have the money, we just don't
want to invest it in each other for whatever ridiculous
reason and whatever folks like Mitch McConnell or in power
and just want to, you know, get kickbacks from corporations.

(01:17:42):
We have the ability, we have the resources, and we
do have the mental acuity to envision and financially create
a better future for all of us, but we don't
have the conscience. But you're helping us get that conscience.
You're helping so many people see the truth of things

(01:18:05):
and and get smarter about what's possible. And I'm just
I know that you and I are in our own
ways like beating the same drum, But I am just
so grateful that you ay have taken this time today
be are using your gifts. You know that that you're
constantly filling the pot luck with what only you can bring,

(01:18:26):
and that you are welcoming people to these conversations to
be thoughtful about language and behavior and also to give
them steps to grow into deeper and deeper understanding, because
we have to give people permission to do that, to say,
it's okay if you don't know everything, nobody really does.
I might know a little more about this than you.

(01:18:47):
Here's another thing to think about. Here's another place for
you to to come and meet and be held and
be seen and and show up. Thank you so much.
And I was just so excited and you're just talking
about it because I talk about this in my book.
I talk about jama which is the African ideology about
shared resources. Before we were talking about relationships. That's UBUNTU,
which is mutual respect and humanity towards others. Then we

(01:19:10):
have Jamaa, which is about acknowledging that we can't thrive
together unless we are sharing resources. That some people have
way too much and other people's can't even live because
they don't have enough. And it's just so cool to
see it, like beating that drum in different ways, and
it's just such an honor and such an exciting, like
privilege to be able to do it every single day.
And I think that the ultimate goal of read this

(01:19:32):
to get smarter isn't to provide solutions, but hopefully give
people the vocabulary, the historical context in the language to
be able to move that needle those six ticks forward
instead of those five that our previous generation did. So
my very favorite question to ask every single person who
comes on this show, and I'm really so excited to

(01:19:53):
hear your answer, is, Blair, what feels like a work
in progress in your life right now? Who? I think
that my work in progress is my mental health and
really trying to get into a great place. I think
that as somebody who's like kind of in the business
of trying to help other folks improve themselves, I can
sometimes neglect myself and so I'm trying to pour back

(01:20:14):
into my cup so that way I have more to give.
But if you're empty, you have nothing to give. So
that's an ongoing process and it's a very vulnerable process.
But as I go through it, I just know that
it's an investment that I'm making in myself, that that
I deserve and that I need, and that it's okay
for me to need things from myself, and that's the

(01:20:35):
work in progress that I'm going through right now. Thank you,

(01:21:33):
un

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Sophia Bush

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