TillumTillToldyou.com The podcast about pop culture, black history, and spirituality. It's about to be a great part. Doctor Till, go and take it away. Tillum Till Told You.
Hey y'all, hey, thank you for joining me for another edition of Tillum Till Told You. The podcast where I share with you all my musings about black history, black culture, and black spirituality. I thank you for joining me for today the 100th episode of Tillum Till Told You. Now, if you've been following the podcast for years, you probably are surprised that we're just now reaching 100.
But by the end of this podcast, I'm going to get you to why it took me so long because I think there are some lessons in there for you and some reminders for me. Before we jump into that, though, I want to share with you some news about diversity, equity, and inclusion, some decisions that have been made lately by a few states. I also want to talk about what's going on at the Texas border and how I think all of this is related to education, public schooling specifically in the United States. So let's just jump right in.
Now, listen, Thursday, Utah's Senate, excuse me, had a vote. So let me tell you this. They have banned diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts in the state government and in universities there in Utah. The bill passed the Senate of Utah this Thursday and nowhere on these college campuses, nor in the government.
Can there be any offices dedicated to diversity? It passed the Senate with a 2036 vote. The Democrats in that particular Senate were very vocal about the impact. Utah is already predominantly white.
We know that. And so the Democrats are rightly concerned that this makes it even more difficult for there to be a diversity of perspectives in college campuses, nor in government, because of this ruling. The ruling also outlaws, excuse me, any state funds that might possibly be used for these efforts no longer can. There's complete restriction on funding of DEI efforts in Utah's government.
Now, Utah is simply the latest state to join in a number of states making this move. Florida and Texas probably are the most well-known cases where diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts are now banned, essentially banned. Now, if you listened to last week's episode of the podcast, I talked about how white supremacy depends on people who are mediocre, and rather than do the work to become excellent, would rather look at other people and imagine for themselves that these people are inferior to them. I want to tell you what I tell my students all the time.
If one is naturally superior to other people, you do not have to create laws, policies, nor legislation to prevent them from excelling. And so we're seeing them peep their whole cart a little bit here. Why don't you want diversity? Most research studies, except for those conducted by crackpots.
Most research studies, evidence that diversity of thought actually is a strength for corporations, businesses, government, all kind of places benefit when there is a heterogeneous representation of ideas, right? So why then would someone not want efforts to increase diversity of perspectives? I'm not going to answer that for you. I'm just going to leave it there for you to think about.
So again, that's Utah passing this. It's only the latest in a long line of states that are moving in this direction. I want to say this for black folk in particular who might be stressed out about these moves. I will remind you that there were those of us always very wary of DEI efforts anyway.
There's not, let me just say I have not been convinced that any of these efforts really had a huge impact on our lived realities. Many of these things didn't get started until around 2020 with the George Floyd case. And as my friend Dr. Vincent Willard says, it was a case of us monopolizing on white guilt while we could.
And so if you look around, a lot of these DEI efforts never really changed the realities of black folk in these institutions. And so I don't want us to always be prepared. I want us to always be strategic. I always want us to know that we have the agency to change things and we want to change.
But I also don't want us to be disillusioned by something that wasn't quite real in the first place. So I'm saying, yes, we should continue to fight for all programs and policies that increase diverse perspectives, diversity among populations in the workforce. But I don't want us to be distracted when those things come under attack. Now, speaking of Texas, if you're paying attention to the news and you see the quote unquote border crisis that's coming up with Texas talking about seeding from the Union and the Civil War and all of these things, let me tell you what this has to, well, I'm going to tell you about the case and I'm going to tell you what it has to do with education because I is making my teeth is y'all.
All right. On Monday, the Supreme Court of the United States issued an order that said Biden is within his presidential rights to request that the barbed wire that has been placed in some areas of the Texas border to be removed, right? And in response to that scolus order, the governor of Texas Greg Abbott said that he ain't finna do it. And he's got 15 Republican governors that have joined this war of rhetoric again.
Go back and listen to last week's episode because they just be talking a good guy, come on. But they're saying they're going to defy the order, that they don't have to abide by a Supreme Court order that quote unquote violates the Constitution. I will remind you of what we learned in elementary school. And that is that there are three branches of government and the governor's job to interpret the Constitution.
That is the job of the Supreme Court of the United States. They issued a ruling on Monday that Abbott is saying is not true. And so there is a bit of in the news stand off because I don't think this is real. And I'll tell you what I mean by that in just a second.
There's a standoff in the news of these 15 governors saying they support Texas' right to go in and defend its state borders against the federal government. Here's what this has to do with education. Again, there are three branches of government. It is not up to the governor of Texas to say what the Constitution says, okay?
That's up to the highest court in the land, the Supreme Court of the United States, all right? And if the Supreme Court of the United States says, which the Constitution says, that is the federal government that protects federal borders, then this really is Biden's call. And you don't have to be a Biden supporter to see that, right? You just have to understand how the Constitution works, how states' rights works, so on and so forth.
Now, I want us to watch this case because it's a slippery slope that's happening here and it continues the slide towards fascism that some of us are warning against. If individual state governors can defy rulings of the Supreme Court, then it becomes slick. What happens when they decide 1954 Brown v. Board of Education in 1955 Brown II, if you've been watching social media when it comes to this case, there is an element of media literacy that's also important when we're reviewing what's happening with Abbott in the Supreme Court.
Now, the border in question is Shelby Park in Eagle Pass. It's a 47-acre park there in Texas where there is barbed wire that is actually presenting some threats to human life that Biden wants removed. And what's interesting to me is that people that actually live in the vicinity of the park have been driving out to the border to see if it's this huge crisis as right-wing media is trying to paint it to be. And what they're finding is business as usual.
There's not a huge influx of people trying to cross the border. There's not a huge military presence trying to quote unquote protect the border. It's life as usual. So then one question could be what is to gain by stoking public fears in this way?
And I think two things are happening. One is the stoking of public fears because that's typically a right-wing tactic during election years to mobilize their base, right? So we need to be careful that certain people aren't being triggered or we need to be just aware that that's what they're doing. They're trying to manipulate the base through fear.
But I also want us to be informed so that we're watching in an informed way, right? So again, paying attention to what precedence this sets for states to override federal rulings. Now, here's where education comes into this all, right? I've already talked about three branches of government and how that works.
I want to talk about South Dakota Governor, excuse me, South Dakota Governor Christie, no one. She was interviewed because she's one of those 15 states that is backing Texas in Abbott. And she said in an interview, she was talking about when the original colonies, the original 13 colonies signed the Constitution in Texas was agreed to the treaty and my love, my dear, my baby. Now, we learn about this again in elementary school.
Texas was not one of the 13 colonies. Texas was Mexico, the Indian baby. Christie, why you don't know that? And you a whole governor in the United States of America.
And you don't know what the 13 original colonies were, or that Texas wasn't one of them. You don't remember that map that we used to have the color? I'm confused. But I'm not confused because I'm an educator and I told you I was coming back to the public education system.
There is a book by John Taylor Gatto. He was once the teacher of the year in New York. He has a book called Dumbing Us Down. And he argues that the public school system in the United States essentially dumps us down.
Now, I'm saying that out loud, but I also want you to pay attention to where some of these DEI efforts are happening, they're having on college campuses, right? Just this week, Florida has somebody has crafted legislation that try to keep social media out of the hands of students younger than 16. We already know what's happening to the sharing of non-white history in public schools. We already know what's happening with book banning.
All of their symptoms of fascism, right? But they have the express purpose of making people dumb. So if I don't know that they're three branches of government, and my governor says to me that he has the right to defy federal order, even if the Supreme Court of the United States says the Constitution says he does not, I might believe it if I don't know any better for myself. If my governor says when Texas signed the Constitution, I might actually believe that if I don't know that Texas at the time was part of Mexico, I might not.
You see what I mean? I'm easily manipulated if I don't know the realities for myself. Side note, I'm also convinced that that's why a lot of these red leading states don't allow the teaching of cursive in the standards. Now, I heard yesterday that Georgia is supposed to put them back in, but it's been almost 10 years, if not more than that, since they've taught cursive in US, I mean Georgia public schools.
That means there's a whole generation of people who can't read the founding documents for themselves. So when a governor says Texas was one of the first colonies, what happens if you can't read this stuff anymore? You have to listen to someone else's interpretation of it. And that's scary.
All these things go hand in hand. That's why, as much as I want this podcast to just be about our culture, it has to include politics. All life is political. And if we care about the liberation and protection of our communities, we have to pay attention to how other people are manipulating systems to maintain dominance in this society.
So I'm going to get off the, that segway is perfectly into what I wanted to tell you in the celebration of this my 100th episode of the podcast. Now listen, let me tell you how the podcast started. I don't know that I've ever shared this with you or not. I actually can't even remember.
Some years ago, this was probably 2016, 2017. Some years ago, there were a group of us that had obtained our doctorates from Emory University together. And we wanted to start a podcast. We wanted to start a podcast to talk about the thing I just finished talking about.
We wanted to talk about education and how it related to black liberation. And we wanted to tell you some of the things that we knew from our areas of expertise, that we thought would empower the community to advocate for equitable educational opportunities for all students, but particularly for those students from our communities. And it was a good podcast. We recorded one pilot episode.
It was so fly, y'all. I wish anyway, I'm not even going to go there. I'm not going to make myself sad. But that's how I became interested in podcasting was this pilot episode that we recorded.
And everybody I shared that pilot episode with was excited. They were so excited because I got some funny, smart ass friends. They're very smart, very knowledgeable, clever, funny. Just they fly, right?
And so we recorded the podcast and then some time went by while we worried about the clearance for the theme song, because even the theme song was fly because I got friends who was MC, Anna Schaller, she's super fly. I know I need to find another adjective, but I'm just saying we fly y'all. And time just kept ticking and we never could. It never seemed like we could get together to put the podcast out.
And I became increasingly frustrated. Now if God puts a call on your life, there are things you cannot walk away from. It'll just eat you at night. It'll just bug you all the time that you're not doing the thing that was put on your life to do.
And so I was like, fuck it. I just will do my own. And that's how Talented told you came to me. It was me being ultra frustrated that this group of people with this amazing talent weren't using it in the way that I thought we should.
That might have been kind of narcissistic of me that I thought my ideas should be driving the direction of the group. But from it, so Talented told you was born from frustration. Right. But it was also born from frustration because I know that I have, and I'm not saying I'm unique in this by any means, I know that I have an area of expertise that can benefit my people.
And so I was looking for a way to get in the hands of the people while still living in a relatively small town where I don't have access to lots of people. Right. And so that's how the podcast came to be. And I was thinking about that this week because some other things are beginning to be like that in my life where I've partnered with people to achieve some things and because the partners aren't doing what I think we should be doing.
It's just not happening. And I came across my dear friend Nikki Byron posted something about it. Now I was not following this person at the time, but I'm going to say their name Stacey Jordan Shelton. I've since followed her on Facebook.
Nikki shared one of her posts and I'm going to share it with you right now. I'm going to read it verbatim again. This is from Stacey Jordan Shelton. I followed her now on Facebook.
So I'm going to quote, I recently saw someone executing on something so similar to the vision I've had since forever for my work. I wish I could see the things I mapped out 15 years ago or more. Things I've wanted to do and have done, but not able to sustain. And you know what I realized?
It wasn't because I was off track. It was because I was trying to pull folk along instead of just running with folk who already have big visions and have a deeply rooted belief in abundance and know that there is enough for all of us. I was running with the wrong folk and know this isn't this ain't about being around people with money. It's deeper than that.
Vision plus unwavering belief in abundance. Demonstration not just affirmation plus deep abiding love for black folk and a willingness to move and do the work are so much more important to me. Who can stop us when we have that? Everyone is inaccessible when we leverage those things.
No one, nothing. So many folk are competing with each other instead of lifting each other up. My momma taught me that we can all eat together. There isn't a need for competing and jealousy, especially with our own folk.
We literally have and are every single thing we need. All I know is it's about to be different over here, for real. If you're reading this, stop waiting on them folk. Find your visionaries and make it happen.
Moving forward doesn't mean you don't love people. Love yourself more and be obedient to the call on your life. So I want to thank Stacy Jordan Shelton for that good, good word. I just, she goes to her words.
And I want to thank again my sis Nikki Byron for sharing them because they really hit me. Now I'm not telling you that what happened with my friends was jealousy or anything like that. But I did identify with waiting. And I know I'm not alone.
How many of us are waiting for somebody to give us permission? How many of us are waiting for external validation to do the thing that only we can do? We can't continue to live like that. Listen, this is the 100th episode of the podcast.
And I could sit here and beat myself up because Lord knows I've done it enough. I could sit here and give you five million excuses for why I didn't record this month, that month, last week, half of this day. I can make those excuses and I can sit here and punish myself emotionally for not doing or not being as consistent as I set out to originally be. I could do that.
It would be easy for me. In fact, my therapist will tell you that's my schema. That's what I go back to is blaming myself for things. Instead, I want you to join me as Mama Lucille Clifton said something tried to kill me and it didn't succeed, y'all.
So I want to celebrate with you that this is my 100th episode. Despite starting and stopping over and over again, despite feeling like I didn't have ideas worthy of sharing, despite the fear of rejection from people listening to the podcast, despite fear of alienation from people who didn't want me to speak my truth, I'm at episode 100. And I'm going to allow myself to be a little proud today that even though something came to destroy me and this word, it's still here. And I know you got something to share too.
Please share it. So that's all I really wanted to talk about today. I wanted to tell you that again, the seven day challenge for confidence started on my Instagram yesterday. If you're listening to this on Tuesday, it's starting yesterday.
Once I run through the seven days on live and on in my stories on Instagram, I'll transfer it over to YouTube. So that will be on the YouTube channel. Also, I want you to let you know that the shine six week coaching group coaching on building professional confidence starts on February 19th. And the sacred self group coaching that is part of my regular programming will begin on April 15th.
So there will be more news about that in the newsletter and on the website. But in the meantime, I just wanted to share them here again. Wish me a very happy 100th episode. I'm going to enjoy it.
All right. Have a good one. Tell them to tell you.