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[0:00] Tonya Pinkins: Hi, this is Tonya Pinkins, and you're listening to my podcast.

[0:05] Tonya Pinkins: You can't say that on the Broadway Podcast Network.

[0:13] Tonya Pinkins: So if you're just dropping in, this is Tonya Pinkins, and uh you're listening to my podcast.

[0:20] Tonya Pinkins: You can't say that. And we are um in a beautiful high rise looking out over New Jersey and Manhattan.

[0:29] Tonya Pinkins: And it's kind of the beginning of the apocalypse, it feels like, you know? Except Twitter and Instagram are still going.

[0:36] Tonya Pinkins: So, like, how bad could it be, right? And I'm in a room with seven men and myself.

[0:43] Tonya Pinkins: So, you know, we're doing the elbow bumps, but I don't know. We're all in an age range where we should be safe enough to recover.

[0:52] Tonya Pinkins: Yeah, but we just heard that uh Broadway is shut down, and I thought that meant Off Broadway would blow up, but Off-Broadway is shutting down too.

[1:01] Tonya Pinkins: So welcome all of the gentlemen. I'm gonna let you introduce yourselves from the Hot Wing Kings, Katori Hall's play, which is shutting down tonight because of the emergency.

[1:11] Tonya Pinkins: Go into my left here, Sheldon. You introduce yourselves.

[1:14] Sheldon Best: I'm Sheldon Best. I played Isom in the Hot Wing Kings.

[1:18] Tonya Pinkins: Oh, so good.

[1:20] Cecil Bletcher: I'm Cecil Bletcher, and I played EJ in The Hot Wing King.

[1:25] Toussaint Jean-Louis: Toussaint Jean-Louis, and I played Cordell in the Hot Wing Kings.

[1:28] Steve H.: I'm Steve H., the director of The Hot Wing King.

[1:31] Corey Jackson: And I'm Corey Jackson, and I played Dwayne in the Hot Wing Kings.

[1:36] Tonya Pinkins: So thank you. We're missing two of the actors who are not here with us today because the Bronx school shut down, and so one actor had to stay home with his kids.

[1:44] Tonya Pinkins: Could have brought those kids along. You know, they was gonna bring us that was they was definitely gonna bring us the coronavirus.

[1:51] Tonya Pinkins: So, I mean, when you read the script, what'd you guys think?

[1:55] Sheldon Best: Refreshing, beautiful uh story that we don't often see, uh we don't see told enough. Uh, it was uh it was a refreshing uh piece of theater, and which was what uh sparked uh my uh my interest.

[2:11] Tonya Pinkins: Steve, how did you even come on it?

[2:13] Steve H.: Listen, it's a little story. So me and Katori, I was directing her um Mountain Top out at People's Light Theater.

[2:19] Steve H.: She was there, uh, Malvern, Pennsylvania, right outside of Philly. So I was directing Mountain Top, and they brought her in because she was doing some changes to it since because it was pre-Obama and a lot of change at that last monologue about the current state of the world.

[2:31] Steve H.: She wanted to do some changes. So me and her went to a breakfast at McDonald's over a sausage biscuit.

[2:38] Steve H.: We was at the McDonald's, and I was like, you know, me. I'm from Little Rock, Arkansas. She's from Memphis, Tennessee, which is about an hour and a half from one another.

[2:45] Steve H.: So we were just talking about you know our lives, and she started telling me about her brother. And I said, Wow, that's your next play.

[2:52] Steve H.: She was like, You're lying, you think, you think? And I was like, I'm telling you, Katori, that is your next play.

[2:57] Steve H.: She was like, I'm gonna send you a couple of scenes, and we'll just see. And over the next two and a half years, periodically, I would say, Hey Katori, what you doing? Don't forget that play.

[3:04] Steve H.: Hey, Katori, what are you doing? And she's had a TV show since then. She's had Broadway shows, she's had a lot of stuff.

[3:11] Steve H.: And then one day she called and said, Hey, um, I'm just getting ready to wrap my TV show, and I finished that play. You've been telling me it's an encouraging me to write. It's called Hot Wing Kings, You're on Board?

[3:21] Steve H.: I thought, of course. Oh my god, that's so awesome. Now, we don't know the story of the brother. So, what was it about the brother that you thought made a play?

[3:28] Steve H.: Well, she would just tell he was from Memphis, a same gender-loving man in Memphis, and she was like, you know, we got this nephew, whom in the question is: can my brother and his partner raise this young man?

[3:40] Steve H.: And that was the question of rights of passage of men, and can a gay couple raise another, you know, male. And that I just thought it was intriguing coming out of the South and sexuality for black men in the South.

[3:53] Steve H.: And I was like, that's your play. And it's her play, Hot Wing Kings.

[3:57] Tonya Pinkins: Now you know this show is called You Can't SAY THAT, right?

[3:58] Steve H.: Right.

[3:59] Tonya Pinkins: So I'm asking all of y'all y'all's sexuality.

[4:01] Steve H.: Oh, ooh, you can't.

[4:02] Tonya Pinkins: Let's go all right. I listen. I I am same gender loving.

[4:04] Steve H.: Same gender loving?

[4:08] Tonya Pinkins: Yes. I'm asking. I I'm gonna say, first of all, I'm gonna say that uh that um if anyone doesn't want to say that, that I'm gonna say that that's cool.

[4:18] Steve H.: Yes, anybody is free to pass on this answering this question.

[4:22] Corey Jackson: I I am a bisexual man.

[4:24] Tonya Pinkins: Okay.

[4:25] Steve H.: Is is sis the right thing to say? For straight man? Is that what it is? I don't even know.

[4:29] Corey Jackson: I'm I'm straight.

[4:31] Steve H.: I'm straight male.

[4:32] Tonya Pinkins: Straight male, okay.

[4:35] Corey Jackson: Oh, I'll say I'm I'm also a bisexual identifying.

[4:38] Tonya Pinkins: Okay.

[4:39] Corey Jackson: I love everybody.

[4:40] Tonya Pinkins: Okay.

[4:41] Steve H.: Oh, and and me, um, what am I? You know, I'm of that age where anything could go.

[4:48] Tonya Pinkins: I love it.

[4:48] Steve H.: No, anything could go. I'm here for it.

[4:51] Tonya Pinkins: No, I'm here for it. I'm here for it.

[4:53] Tonya Pinkins: Um, so so reading the play, I always just wonder those things in terms of like who you're gonna play in a play and uh what that's gonna do.

[5:02] Tonya Pinkins: Like if you're playing something like I know the first time I played someone who had to kiss a girl, I was not ready for that. I and I was bad. I was really bad at it.

[5:11] Tonya Pinkins: But was that an issue for anybody?

[5:14] Steve H.: But you didn't have to do that.

[5:15] Tonya Pinkins: No, so it's okay for me. But even just uh, you know, uh sexuality in the ma in a Christian black thing is not it's not okay.

[5:22] Steve H.: No.

[5:23] Tonya Pinkins: So we got eight, six black men. Y'all got plays with talking about things that black people don't do.

[5:28] Steve H.: First of all, we don't do that. That's what white people do.

[5:31] Tonya Pinkins: So, you know, what was it like? You know, I'll if I could jump in, I would say um that my experience, it was twofold.

[5:38] Steve H.: There's on the one side, it's like I've definitely experienced that um, you know, among black people, among family, this kind of resistance.

[5:46] Steve H.: Oh, that's not a black thing. That's you know, this is not what we and then on the other side, within family as well, I've had the exact opposite response among people who are very Christian as well.

[5:57] Steve H.: My dad came to the play, and he was like, we can't live in a bubble and pretend that these stories don't exist. This is these are people's lives, and these stories have to be told.

[6:05] Steve H.: And he was really proud that I was a part of that storytelling. Um, and so it so I thought that this was uh a fantastic opportunity when I saw this play, uh, to be in a room with uh five other black men as act as scene partners that because that just does not happen very much.

[6:26] Corey Jackson: Right.

[6:27] Steve H.: Um, and then also to be able to tell a story uh where I for my character for Isom, who feels like a very free character. He he um I I I questioned how does he exist in that freedom, especially given the place where he grew up, given the circumstances that he grew up in.

[6:44] Steve H.: And because surely he has heard messages like that, that that's not black, that's not us, that's not, you know, whatever it is. That's we are not like whatever that is, and he has had to hear that and then decide what he's gonna do in response to that, how he's gonna live in the face of that.

[6:59] Steve H.: And that I've I found that to be a very um a fantastic opportunity for my own self-reflection to see what kind of things, what messages have I heard throughout my life that I am now saying, no, I'm going to live in freedom. I'm going to not I'm going to reject that message because it's wrong.

[7:16] Steve H.: And um, and I found that to be uh to be a very interesting conversation within myself and with other people.

[7:23] Tonya Pinkins: Now, there's two characters in the play, or at least there's one character in the play who's bisexual, and two of the men here identified as bisexual. So what does that look like? You know, I always think that women don't accept that.

[7:35] Tonya Pinkins: Okay, you either you either worship it at my church or you not. So, you know, what what is that like? I'm just curious.

[7:44] Corey Jackson: I mean Um, I assume that when you say uh one character bisexual, you're talking about Well in Hot Wing Kings, one character is he bisexual, yeah.

[7:52] Corey Jackson: Well, he he says he still loves his wife. I mean, but he's it's I mean, I think the question of sexuality is is is what is can sometimes be generalized, but I think he does he did love his wife, he did love having sex with his wife, but at the same time he realized that it wasn't what he really wanted.

[8:10] Corey Jackson: And the connection that he had with Duane is what brought him out of that confinement of feeling like he had to fit into this narrative of a heterosexual relationship, which wasn't what he initially like eventually found that he loved about himself and about the people that he was surrounding himself with.

[8:26] Corey Jackson: Um so I think yes, Cordell could be considered bisexual. It's interesting because I think about just terminology and what the what the play says, because he's because the play, the text of the play in front of EJ, he he affirms that he he considers himself gay.

[8:42] Corey Jackson: He self-identified as and so I but and I've had this conversation with some so the that word for some people, depending on the time in which I think um you came into your own identity or you just did the research, um, you know, gay sometimes can mean a very specific thing.

[8:59] Corey Jackson: Some people in interpret gay to mean specifically homosexual, but some people actually believe gay is is interchangeable like queer. It's like it's it's a word that also can act as queer acts, like an umbrella for anyone.

[9:12] Tonya Pinkins: Well, you gotta tell me what queer is an umbrella for, because I'm now I don't know.

[9:16] Corey Jackson: Oh, I I I thought I'm my understanding was that queer was an umbrella for anything, any identity that was not considered heterosexual.

[9:23] Tonya Pinkins: That's what I could heterosexual go under queer?

[9:26] Corey Jackson: No.

[9:27] Corey Jackson: Heterosexuals, I understood was the only thing that can't go under a queer.

[9:30] Tonya Pinkins: But when you say heterosexual, it means that you are only heterosexual.

[9:33] Corey Jackson: Like I will only be with someone the same sex as me. But yeah, I can be queer if I'm willing to be with anything or anyone.

[9:40] Tonya Pinkins: I'm asking.

[9:41] Corey Jackson: It's an interesting question, because it's a spectrum. Because I think then I'll ask, because even as a straight man, like honestly, I don't know. I never tried it.

[9:47] Corey Jackson: It's just never been an interest to me. So, like, I mean, I know I'm straight just because of my experience. I don't find myself being attracted to men, but like, who knows? Never know.

[9:56] Steve H.: You never know.

[9:57] Corey Jackson: That's what I'm saying. So I do I do believe it's a spectrum. And I believe, I don't know.

[10:01] Tonya Pinkins: So I thought your story was very interesting that you told us about how you discovered it.

[10:06] Steve H.: What story?

[10:07] Tonya Pinkins: I want to know.

[10:08] Steve H.: See, I don't know if I should tell it, because I might write it one day.

[10:11] Tonya Pinkins: That's okay. You know what? You people will listen, and that'll make them want about a book.

[10:15] Steve H.: Oh, but I didn't write the book yet.

[10:16] Tonya Pinkins: But see, but they be waiting for the book now, once you tell us the story.

[10:19] Sheldon Best: Well, I grew growing up, um And I have to say, this is my first gang bang.

[10:23] Tonya Pinkins: Oh, maybe it won't be the last.

[10:27] Sheldon Best: Hopefully they are. My lord, the freak house.

[10:38] Tonya Pinkins: Okay, tell us the story, Sheldon.

[10:39] Sheldon Best: Uh so growing up, um, I grew up Where?

[10:42] Corey Jackson: In Brooklyn.

[10:42] Sheldon Best: I'm from Brooklyn. Okay. Um uh but my my family's from the West Indies.

[10:46] Sheldon Best: And so growing up, I grew up in a um uh going to a church in Brooklyn that was a very West Indian church, and the the they kind of believed in a more literal interpretation of the Bible.

[10:56] Sheldon Best: Okay, and so the Bible is the literal truth of God, and um and because of that, the messages in the Bible around sexuality uh were taught in a very literal sense that homosexuality is an abomination, it's a choice, and it's the it's the abominable choice.

[11:12] Sheldon Best: It's a it's a sinful choice. Avoid that one. And so growing up, I felt attracted to I didn't just feel attracted to women, I felt attracted to men and women.

[11:22] Tonya Pinkins: So at what age did you say this?

[11:24] Sheldon Best: Oh, as long as I can remember, really.

[11:26] Tonya Pinkins: Okay.

[11:27] Sheldon Best: Um so uh I always remember being attracted to both, and so when I would hear homosexuality is a choice, and it's a sinful choice, I was like, okay, that makes sense to me.

[11:39] Sheldon Best: You can't have a choice if you don't have options in front of you, right? If someone's like paper or plastic, those are choices.

[11:41] Sheldon Best: If someone's like paper or paper, you that that's not a choice. You are choosing you're you you only have one option available to you.

[11:53] Sheldon Best: So I thought everybody has two options available to them, and I'm having trouble just keeping my eyes focused on one.

[12:01] Corey Jackson: And I thought that that was, and that was until my freshman year of college, when a friend of mine was talking about sexuality, and he was like, So you really think that sexuality like homosexuality is a choice?

[12:12] Sheldon Best: And I was like, Yeah, that makes sense to me.

[12:13] Corey Jackson: And he was like, I've never been sexually attracted to a woman in my life.

[12:17] Sheldon Best: And I was like, oh.

[12:20] Corey Jackson: And that was the moment that I stopped self-identifying as straight.

[12:24] Sheldon Best: Because I was like, I thought straight people just decided not to like look the other way.

[12:29] Corey Jackson: Whereas I'm like looking both ways and like, oh, I like, I like, I like, but I hadn't experienced that.

[12:34] Sheldon Best: I hadn't, I hadn't like like you were saying, I had never tried it.

[12:38] Corey Jackson: And so I was like, I don't know if I'm if I actually just like to look, but not to you know, I don't know what my I didn't know what my sexuality was concretely.

[12:46] Sheldon Best: I just knew what I was attracted to.

[12:49] Corey Jackson: And so it wasn't until that moment that you were attracted to everything, were you genuinely in your bones attracted to both?

[12:55] Sheldon Best: And you just were still a virgin when you got to college.

[12:58] Corey Jackson: Okay, wow.

[12:59] Sheldon Best: Yeah, it was.

[13:00] Corey Jackson: And what I think something just to kind of piggyback, what you said about I when I first start learning about the we keep saying sexuality, and I'd say big umbrella term versus gender identity, gender performance, um, sexual orientation.

[13:14] Sheldon Best: Oh boy, now you didn't give us a whole explain it, and we're right now talking about sexual orientation, right?

[13:26] Corey Jackson: Okay, now what's gender performance?

[13:28] Sheldon Best: Or sex, so sex is our sex organs, male, female, you're born or intersex, right?

[13:33] Corey Jackson: And that's your performance.

[13:34] Sheldon Best: No, that's your sex.

[13:35] Corey Jackson: We all have a penis, a vagina, or a mixture of both intersex.

[13:39] Sheldon Best: Got it.

[13:40] Corey Jackson: Um, gender identity is um how you feel.

[13:43] Sheldon Best: Like, um, what's his name?

[13:45] Corey Jackson: Um, Kardashian's husband at the time.

[13:47] Sheldon Best: Um Caitlin says, I feel I'm I'm born with the male sex, but I feel my identity as being a woman or me.

[13:59] Corey Jackson: I my identity has always been male.

[14:01] Sheldon Best: I've never I've always felt male.

[14:02] Corey Jackson: I'm in that.

[14:03] Sheldon Best: Then there's the gender performance.

[14:06] Corey Jackson: That's how it shows up.

[14:07] Sheldon Best: Like feminine, masculine, you know what I mean?

[14:09] Corey Jackson: People can say prince had a more fluid feminine performance, or people how they perform your identity and orientation is who you're um sexually engaged and attracted to.

[14:21] Sheldon Best: So there could be layers, it's complex.

[14:28] Corey Jackson: You know, in table work, like we we we like unpacking all of these things that we do and don't understand around not just for ourselves but for the play and for these characters was so fascinating.

[14:40] Sheldon Best: Um because like we say, when we when we're using the same terms, we're not always meaning the same thing because we don't always understand exactly what that thing means.

[14:49] Corey Jackson: Like we've just been we so that was the confusing thing.

[14:51] Sheldon Best: It's like with the term gay, it's like it does doesn't always mean the same thing to this to different people, depending on what your experience and how you came to know that word.

[15:01] Corey Jackson: Queer doesn't mean the same thing to every person, and depending on who you are and how you came to know that word, or or attach it to your own identity.

[15:08] Sheldon Best: Uh, you know, so it these conversations are always fascinating because I'm always learning new things about about the terminology and and the way how people use them to identify themselves or identify other people, you know.

[15:22] Corey Jackson: It's it's yeah, it's really interesting.

[15:24] Sheldon Best: Okay, I'm still like reeling from all of the different identities, but the question that I had on the table was about people who are considered themselves bisexual, because there's that whole thing in uh who wrote about it, E.

[15:37] Corey Jackson: L.

[15:38] Sheldon Best: Cummings.

[15:39] Corey Jackson: Is it EL?

[15:39] Sheldon Best: No, no, no, no, no.

[15:40] Corey Jackson: He died.

[15:40] Sheldon Best: Ellen Harris.

[15:41] Corey Jackson: You know, he's from Arkansas.

[15:42] Sheldon Best: Okay.

[15:43] Corey Jackson: That's yeah, I know who's Ellen Harris used to write a lot about it.

[15:45] Sheldon Best: You know, all these black men, and they would be marrying women, but they'd be on the down low.

[15:49] Corey Jackson: Yep.

[15:49] Sheldon Best: Yeah.

[15:50] Corey Jackson: And who wrote on the down low?

[15:52] Sheldon Best: It was very popular.

[15:52] Corey Jackson: I I I I know him well too.

[15:55] Sheldon Best: He was on Oprah.

[15:56] Corey Jackson: I actually was gonna travel with him with the play at one time.

[15:58] Sheldon Best: But yes, the down low, yes.

[16:01] Corey Jackson: So I mean, I think, I guess for me, I would imagine if everybody's consenting to people being whatever they are, it's okay.

[16:09] Sheldon Best: But it's when someone feels they have to lie to somebody about what the identity is, and say, I think you're this, because that's what you told me.

[16:15] Corey Jackson: Yes.

[16:15] Sheldon Best: And you actually want to be this.

[16:16] Corey Jackson: And that's, I think, for me where the problems volunteer.

[16:19] Sheldon Best: Yes.

[16:20] Corey Jackson: Which is the character that your guy plays.

[16:23] Sheldon Best: He or did he change his mind?

[16:25] Corey Jackson: Change his mind about loving a woman, or change his mind about loving Vanessa.

[16:30] Sheldon Best: Well, I mean, he clearly loved Vanessa.

[16:32] Corey Jackson: They were together for 20 years, they had children.

[16:34] Sheldon Best: I mean, I think he also describes how it was something that was ingrained in him from a very young age.

[16:38] Corey Jackson: That he he he always thought of himself.

[16:41] Sheldon Best: He he was able to love other people, but it was about how he had to make the choice living under his father's rule, living under the societal norms that that were already put upon those people in St.

[16:53] Corey Jackson: Louis, that that's what he lived under.

[16:55] Sheldon Best: He lived by those.

[16:57] Corey Jackson: Responsible or constrained, like restricting him own self.

[17:01] Sheldon Best: And I think that that's also the beauty of this that character is that he eventually finds himself wanting to be free, wanting to be loved, wanting to love, and it happens that Dwayne is that person for him, is that that is a person that brought him to love himself and is able to make him see himself within himself.

[17:17] Corey Jackson: And I think that that's also something that's throughout the play is we're all married of one another.

[17:22] Sheldon Best: Um, you know, I can see Cordell in ISOM, and that is something I said from the very beginning is that I some is the one that that seems to be the most free, and Cordell is the one that seems to be most constrained.

[17:32] Corey Jackson: But I some there's a lot in ISEM that Cordell loves and wants to feel and be.

[17:38] Sheldon Best: And that's because there is that freedom.

[17:40] Corey Jackson: But I can also see the trouble that ISEM goes through, or Cordell can also see the trouble that I some goes through, especially in relationships and being with somebody like Big Charles.

[17:48] Sheldon Best: And um, and Big Charles and I, I mean, that's actually a character that was split by um Katori's brother's partner, Charles.

[17:56] Corey Jackson: So Charles is his name, but Cordell was a name that I was given.

[18:00] Sheldon Best: But the two of us have that one scene where we reflect.

[18:03] Corey Jackson: Um, it's literally us talking to ourselves about love and needing to be loved and understanding that all little black boys deserve love.

[18:11] Sheldon Best: All black men in the bodies, um, all little black boys in the bodies of big black men deserve to be loved.

[18:17] Corey Jackson: And I think um Yeah, I mean I that yeah, it could be confusing, but I think that that's also the struggle that Cordell goes through on a day-to-day basis.

[18:26] Sheldon Best: I don't know if it's that he just changed his mind and said, I wanted I want to screw around with men.

[18:29] Corey Jackson: I think it's something that he was always that was always burning within within him.

[18:34] Sheldon Best: Now you brought up something that just I'ma just ask you, because how many times will I have six black men that I can ask?

[18:39] Corey Jackson: So I'm a mother.

[18:40] Sheldon Best: I have uh three sons, and I really I didn't get to raise my two oldest sons, but my youngest son, this was really where I got to experience it, and so I just want to know what it was like for you.

[18:52] Corey Jackson: I experienced with my youngest son that from a very early age, he was already being pegged as being difficult, like he got suspended from school for uh three days at like age four because he had knocked somebody down.

[19:11] Sheldon Best: And I remember I went in to talk to the principal, and I was like, Well, they're like four, they can barely stand up, like knock someone down.

[19:18] Corey Jackson: Well, they were playing those games and it's violent, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

[19:20] Sheldon Best: And I said, Well, he told me that it was an accident, and he apologized.

[19:25] Corey Jackson: And she said, Well, he did, but I didn't believe him.

[19:27] Sheldon Best: And for me, I was like, I if you're not giving up four-year-old the benefit of the doubt, we left that school immediately.

[19:34] Corey Jackson: And that's something I've experienced with my son all of his life.

[19:40] Sheldon Best: Me having to step in and go, you know, teacher calling and saying, Um, your son didn't turn in his final, so I'm gonna have to fail him, and me having to go, no, that's not acceptable.

[19:52] Corey Jackson: Um, you need to find where it was.

[19:53] Sheldon Best: If you all graded it in class, who graded his?

[19:55] Corey Jackson: Where is it?

[19:56] Sheldon Best: And then you know, weeks later they find it, and it's the top score in the class.

[20:01] Corey Jackson: Would you guys just sort of talk about your experiences of what kind of sort of targeting happens to you?

[20:06] Sheldon Best: First, it is just black men, then you can go with you know, not gender-conforming men, but just talk to me about that.

[20:14] Steve H.: One of the first things that came to mind was hashtag black perspective matters.

[20:18] Corey Jackson: And uh, you know, and I think that that is something that we do miss out a lot on.

[20:21] Steve H.: Is the fact that like we we grew up in these bodies, we understand what these bodies do in space, and when we didn't understand what it did, it we felt the repercussions of just being in a space.

[20:31] Corey Jackson: Um, I personally grew up in Houston, Texas.

[20:33] Steve H.: I was in what we at that time was a GT gifted and talented class.

[20:38] Corey Jackson: So if you looked at it in a hierarchical sense, I was in the top of the three.

[20:42] Steve H.: And what I always looked and I saw was that a lot of the black students were in the regular uh classes, while there was the accelerated, which was in the middle.

[20:51] Corey Jackson: Um, from first grade until third grade, I was I was good.

[20:56] Steve H.: I was good at reading, I was good at writing.

[20:58] Corey Jackson: Um, third grade, I had a teacher who told me I was not good at writing, and so that whole year, my thought process of what I could write, how I could speak, how I could communicate, shifted, went down.

[21:10] Steve H.: Then the next year, a math teacher told me I wasn't good, and then I talked too much in the class, so she put me in the back of the class.

[21:15] Corey Jackson: But that year I also passed the the uh uh ITBS test, whatever that the test is in uh Texas, um, with like an A.

[21:23] Steve H.: But what they did was they put me in regular classes in my fifth grade year.

[21:26] Corey Jackson: So it was this constant messing with my mind of what I was capable of doing and me constantly having to fight back against that, um, but being the only black kid in the class.

[21:37] Steve H.: So And were your parents able to go in and fight for you, or were they busy with uh their lives and other children and stuff?

[21:43] Corey Jackson: I mean, my mom and dad were not together when I was growing up, and it was just my mom in the household, and she was a teacher.

[21:49] Steve H.: So her perspective sometimes was that I was doing the wrong thing.

[21:53] Corey Jackson: You know, as a teacher looking from what another teacher would say, she's thinking, okay, well, my child is acting up, I need to correct him.

[22:00] Steve H.: But my experience was like, actually, no, I'm a really good child, but they keep picking at me, you know.

[22:06] Corey Jackson: Um, but like I guess just like learning those types of things in Texas um made me really want to leave and not, you know, I I never felt like I fit in, you know, I wasn't black enough for the black students from what they would tell me, and I definitely wasn't white enough for the white students.

[22:20] Steve H.: Um so I think, you know, black perspective does matter, and if there are people that are teaching your children that don't or aren't gonna give them the benefit of the doubt, then you I mean, I know it's hard for parents in general, not just saying people of parents of color, but uh in general it's very difficult for parents to be there at the home all the time, especially with the way you know we run our society.

[22:44] Corey Jackson: Um but there has to be some sort of support system for the child that's going through these diverse uh integrated schools.

[22:52] Steve H.: Um without people to actually look up to.

[22:54] Corey Jackson: I mean, black history was not a thing that was truly and authentically taught in Texas.

[22:59] Steve H.: It was Texas history with the perspective of Texans who those happy slave workers.

[23:07] Corey Jackson: So I won't even get to those stories about history class.

[23:10] Steve H.: But yeah, I mean, so you know, I think constantly having to go through that and fighting to this day.

[23:15] Corey Jackson: I mean, there's there's still that like leaving the white toxic spaces and trying to then re-identify who you are as a black person in the world, let alone in an industry that hasn't really allowed you very many opportunities to be a complex human being.

[23:31] Steve H.: So, I mean, that's one of the things I definitely give credit to Katori for doing is writing these six complex black men that we don't ever get to see.

[23:31] Corey Jackson: Ever get to see.

[23:41] Steve H.: I thought it was like, you know, I don't want to have to compare it to anybody because I think she's just a genius, but it was like poetic.

[23:46] Corey Jackson: It was like, oh, this wasn't poetic, these men.

[23:49] Sheldon Best: Yeah.

[23:49] Steve H.: Just beautiful, beautiful.

[23:51] Corey Jackson: Anybody else want to talk about growing up as a black man?

[23:53] Toussaint Jean-Louis: Yeah, um, I grew up in Chicago, and I I'll tell a story.

[23:58] Toussaint Jean-Louis: I was went to Kmart one time, I was like seven.

[24:01] Corey Jackson: Um, and I was just walking around, it was nighttime.

[24:03] Corey Jackson: I thought I don't know why we were there, who knows? It doesn't matter. But we were me and my mother were there, and I went off and I'd like to explore. And afterwards, she like came and picked me up, and then she went to like we went and she went to the man and she was like really mad. Not like, why is she so angry at this man? And then she was like, just because I'm so I'm like, I don't understand what's going on. She's just going off, going off. She grabs my hands, take me out the store, and I'm like, Mom, why are you so mad? And she was just like, um, there's an employee in that store following you the whole time. He didn't notice that I was noticing, and my mother actually looked, she passes.

I mean, that's a whole other conversation within our community. My mom passed for white. So, like, she was following this man, follow me, and he didn't know that she was my mother. And so she went and cussed him out, and then she explained to me because I was like, Wait, mom, why is she following me? I didn't understand. She was like, I was like, I didn't take anything, I had nothing in my hand. She's like, Because you're black and you're male. She actually said because she thought you stole something. I was like, You thought I stole something. She broke the whole thing. That's just like she was breaking racism down to me. Like, I was like, Whoa, seven years old. Yeah, I was like seven. I had no fucking cloud, I had no idea.

And she was just like, Yeah, she thought you stole something. I was like, I didn't steal anything. Why do you think that? She's like, 'Cause you're black. Like, what? And then I was like, that blew my mind. Then, and then that started to make me then I started understanding she looked different from me when I'm to school. People be like, ask why I was I adopted. And the whole other conversation of like um targeted me not so much, but I noticed it with other kids. I was also another person who was like kind of the rare, like in the gifted programs, and it wasn't a lot of us, but um there were. And I noticed the other kids would get treated a certain way, and I know I just learned pretty early it would behoove me to do certain things to be viewed in certain ways to get ahead, and then and I always saw that.

And so, and as I grew older, I was like, Oh, that's messed up that I didn't I had that we had to do that. So, yeah, um, definitely, definitely, definitely been like you said, we live in these bodies our whole life, and you kind of get used to it. Um, and you normalize a lot, but now that we're like talking about, I was like, Oh, yeah, I'm unpacking this, and I'm sure we could talk for hours about different things that have happened to us.

[26:14] Sheldon Best: Yeah, so you know it's funny you talk about uh we get used to that in in in these bodies, and sometimes something happens that kind of makes you remember the body that you exist in. And I find that that sometimes happens for me when I'm traveling. So I remember the I was in Ireland and I was there. I had been there, I spent a good deal of time there. So it was like five weeks or something. And I was getting, it was maybe four week four out of five. I'm getting ready to go back home, and I start getting a lot of anxiety. And I and I'm not pinning why I'm getting anxious. I'm just like, oh, I'm not, I'm not sleeping as well. I don't know, something's on my mind, I don't know what's going on. And it rains all the time over there, obviously.

So, you know, you're wearing a hood all the time. And uh one night I'm I'm running out of the rain to get back into this um to like the hotel or a bar or whatever it was, and I'm running to get out of the rain, and it hits me in a flash that I had been experiencing anxiety because I was worried about going home because for the last four weeks, I hadn't thought when I wear a hood, somebody might kill me for no reason. You know, so it was it was crazy to to to that my unconscious mind was starting to deal with, yo, you better put that armor back on because you're about to go back into the war zone. You're going back into a place where you could die for walking down the street in the skin that you're in.

And so I got back home and I said this to Neidra McLeod, Nidra um Sulatir. And uh and I said to Nidra, um, I said this to her, and she was like, You never know how heavy the armor is until you don't have to wear it. And it and it hit me that like we walk around, we get used to what it's like to be in these bodies, we get used to code switching, we get used to um to you know, to to all the kinds of ways that we have to navigate walking down the street to survive. And then we remember when we're reminded that that is not the natural state of being. That that is not the natural state of being. And it has to change.

[28:20] Tonya Pinkins: I want to hear y'all's answer to that question, but I just want to say this so we can come back to it. Like I was saying after the Trayvon Martin Um acquittal, it was a decision I made that I was not going to take care of white people's feelings anymore. Because what I was aware of is that they do live in a different world than we do, and that I am always walking around and protecting them in their world. And and pretending that the way they're describing the world is the real world. And I do that less than most people do it. Like I'm always the person who's bringing a little truth into the room. But after that Zimmerman decision, I was like, no more. You gonna get it straight like I see it, and I don't care what you think about it, but I'm not I'm not defending your version of reality anymore. So we can come back to that, but let's talk about growing up as a black boy.

[29:09] Toussaint Jean-Louis: It's well, it's funny you say that because uh, you know, uh I have uh the thoughts that are going through my mind are in direct connection to that. But I also wanted to uh provide a resource as I was hearing Toussaint um talk about his experiences and hearing you talk about your son, is uh I just recently um read this uh wonderful book uh uh called Open Season by Ben Crump, who's uh a lawyer who actually has represented a lot of these cases of of police brutality against um unarmed black people. And um he wrote a book um basically it's called Open Season Um The Genocide of Black America, and he makes a case for why this country is is systematically trying to kill us and why it should be called genocide.

Um, and and he breaks it down into uh several categories, and uh obviously we know about the the the uh systemic uh judicial you know justice system, the racism uh we we know uh there's environmental racism again, you know, housing and like but he also talks about educational racism and and there's uh an incredible amount of information backed up with facts um that he breaks down uh and and they speak directly to the story that you were talking uh about your son, and then also to some about how these these educational institutions break down um young black students at a young age um in ways that they are conscious of and not conscious of. It's both, it's both. It's not always conscious, although a lot of times it is, but a lot of times they're not even conscious of their own, you know, uh prejudice and their own and and and and why it's uh it's so uh detrimental and and traumatic and problematic to the the growth and the the um development of our youth.

And so um he he just describes in a way I just I just say go check his book out, Open Season by Ben Crump. He he really um there's a lot of great information, but the educational uh racism section really brought to light and made clear so many things that um I I was and wasn't aware of in our in our own education system.

[31:15] Corey Jackson: But I talked to when you uh talking about taking care of of white people's feelings, um my my parents uh did everything they could to put us in great school systems, education was very important to them, and and oftentimes putting us in great school systems and finding great school systems meant finding areas that were not necessarily very diverse, because that's where the tax dollars get put into those schools, and so they're spending more dollars per student, and so the teachers are better and the resources are better. So you know, I oftentimes, you know, throughout although I would say I went I've varied through different levels of diversity in my schooling, uh, from quite diverse to not diverse at all, where I was one of very few black students.

Um, but the school the schools were good. I had I had great education, but what you find is you you will often find a sea of white teachers. Um you I I was actually reached out to him. My the first black teacher that I had was my ninth grade English teacher, uh Mr. Knox, who I recently sh uh found and and sent him a long uh uh message because I realized how important he was to me, how important it was for him to introduce me to Richard Wright and to read a raisin in the sun, and and you know, and all the you know that I would the works that I would not have uh been introduced to had it not been for him. And um, and uh so I wanted to thank him.

[32:45] Steve H.: Um but what I what I realized as I look back as you get older and you look back, you realize how much of your education in these institutions and in these schools where you do not see a black face in front of you actually is teaching you how to take care of white people, how to look for affirmation from white people, how to um g gain favor from white people and whiteness, and how you realize as you get older that you have to do all this unlearning. You have to unlearn because you have made a habit out of it from a very young age to take care of, to get praise from, to to be accepted by. And you realize that it's it's they're they're they're standards are quite quite low. I mean I used to question whether I was tech was really smart because I figured out how to I called it taking a teacher I could figure out what they needed to hear and parent that shit back to them.

Girl that's how I got through high school so it took me a long time to realize that I was really really smart because most of the time I was just taking a teacher oh you need to hear that and okay but the minute you start asking questions you're a problem.

[33:55] Toussaint Jean-Louis: You're a problem yeah right this so as soon as you start to ask those hard questions and you start to advocate for your own point of view your own experience as whether you're a young black person or an older black person that's when you become challenging you become a problem and that's and that's and that is that realization when that first happens to you when you realize it you are you are okay until you push back until you question until you want to individuate in any way in any way for me it was it was it was the the system pushing back against me came when I became less interested in trying to finagle it and more interested in just serving myself and being who I am and and who I am as a black person and all that means and like that they don't like that when I started sinking into that that's when I started getting pushed back and like you said it's that when you individualize like when you come in yourself I feel that yeah when you come into your own yard and and it was just a huge uh it was a moment.

[34:58] Tonya Pinkins: And it's a thing for me that I find challenging with black with why they're bringing the Brits in. Can't you say that say it loud because they they're acculturated in a completely different way. And the thing that gives us our strength is what they teach out of us. You know, they try to press that out of you and they elevate the black male actors who have the least amount of authentic blackness in them. And when they have an American black, everything about our being is an indictment of the society that we come up in. And they don't have to deal with that when they have a Brit in those roles.

[35:57] Corey Jackson: Come back for part two.

[35:58] Woo!