Speaker 1: Hello everyone, and welcome to Talk Nerdy. Today is Monday,
April thirteenth, twenty twenty six, and I'm the host of
the show, Doctor Kara Santa Maria, And as always, before
we dive into this week's episode, I want to thank
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Talk patrons include Chuck Blell, David J. E. Smith, Daniel Lang,
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Speaker 2: So thank you all.
Speaker 1: So so very much. You keep the show going right.
The show is not a money maker otherwise because I
don't charge for it. I'm not in any subscription services,
so other than Patreon, which is you know, it's your
choice if you want to subscribe. Basically are offsetting that
price so that folks who can't afford to pay for
their content because everything is so expensive right now, you know,
they can still learn something new every week. And that's
really why I keep making the show. I like learning
something new every week, and I'm hoping that my curiosity
in the areas of interest that I have are translating
at least for some of you. So this week, we've
got another really interesting episode. So I had the opportunity
to speak with doctor Aschante m Reese. She's a writer,
an anthropologist, and an associate professor of African and African
Diaspora Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, and
she has a new book out. It's called Gather, Black Food,
Nourishment and the Art of Togetherness. So, without any further ado,
here she is doctor Ashante m Reese. A Chante, thank
you so much for being here today.
Speaker 3: Thank you for inviting me.
Speaker 1: I am excited to talk about your newest book. Gather
black food, nourishment, and the art of togetherness, and even
before we dive into your super interesting academic history and
the work that you're doing now, and of course you
know why you chose to write this book and get
into it. I have to start at the very top
saying welcome to the show, fellow Texan. I'm very excited
to talk to another Texan. You're, of course still there.
I left Texas a while ago.
Speaker 3: What part of Texas were you?
Speaker 4: So?
Speaker 1: I was I was born and raised in Plano, so
up in North Texas by Dallas, and you were born
in Cooper Settlement. I honestly, is that near Austin? Where
in Texas?
Speaker 3: You're not? Yeah, you're not going to see it on
a map, but it's right outide. The town you will
see on the map is Crockett, Texas. It's about population
six thousand, nine hundred and that's in East Texas, about
about two hours north of Houston.
Speaker 2: Gotcha.
Speaker 1: So that's a that's a big change, going from a
real small town like Cooper Settlement all the way to Austin.
Did you live anywhere in between or was it straight
from like you know, elementary, middle high school to college.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I lived there until I was eighteen, straight through,
and then I moved to my first city in college,
which was Trinity University in San Antonio. So you know,
I moved to San Antonio where neighborhoods are in terms
of census tracts are larger than the town I grew
up in.
Speaker 1: So yeah, that's incredible, And so I am curious then,
just from a demographic perspective, you know, where you grew up,
was it a predominantly like first of all, what was
the population?
Speaker 3: Yeah, so it's when I was growing up, the population
held steady around seventy four hundred. There's definitely been some Yeah,
it's small. When I say small town, it wasn't until
I was maybe I was in high school when we
had more than one signal light in the town supplight.
So now it's a little bit less. Like I said,
around sixty eight hundred. And actually, for most people think
about small rural towns as not being that diverse, but
our town was actually pretty diverse in the sense of
we were pretty equally split amongst white folks, Black folks,
Mexican Mexican American. So you know, I ended up going
to school with a pretty yeah, pretty diverse group of people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's interesting. I think a lot of people, especially like.
Speaker 1: I live in La now, right, so I live in
a very large metropolitan area. And for comparison, growing up
in Plano, you know, for folks who haven't heard of Plano,
it's a suburb of Dallas, and so you know, it's
not even in the big, big city, but it's a
suburb with two hundred and fifty thousand people.
Speaker 2: Like, it's not a small town.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: We had like three five A high schools and it
was it was big.
Speaker 1: But I think a lot of people don't realize that
even in a place like Plano, which was a wealthier
I was not on that side of town.
Speaker 2: I was on the east side of town.
Speaker 1: But a wealthier city, the South is significantly more diverse.
Now that doesn't mean that it is more integrated. It
just means that there are a lot more people from
a lot of different backgrounds. Like I had more kind
of exposure and experience with people from various backgrounds growing
up in Texas than I probably well that I probably
do hear in La at least from a demographic perspective,
although it doesn't feel like it because La is much
more I think, you know, community like integrated, community oriented
in that way. So what was your experience like growing
up in a small town. Was it pretty segregated or
was it pretty integrated?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's interesting. It's it sounds like a cop out
for me to say both, but I'll explain. And I
lived in a town with one elementary, one middle school,
one high school, so literally we were all going to
the same schools unless parents chose to put their kids
in private schools. We did have one private like elementary,
middle school, or they chose to put them in a
different nearby town or district. So in that way, I
was always exposed to my peers and their families and
what they were doing. One thing that I noticed very
early and my growing up though, where I did start
to notice the sort of less integration, was how we
were tracked. So people in education talk about students being
tracked early on, and in a small town it's so
much easier, right because you graduate fifth, sixth grade. Guess what,
the teachers in middle school, seventh grade, they all know you,
they're expecting you to come and so if you were
tracked as like a high achieving student, you were pretty
set but if you were tracked as lower achieving, et cetera,
it was hard to get off that track. And that's
where I noticed some you know, there were racial differences,
there were class differences. I was always tracked through the
honors classes and sometimes certainly one of few black students
in those classes is And then the town itself again
very small, but the neighborhoods pattern in similar ways as
large urban areas. Right, They're very racially segregated. So one
gated community, for example, called Enchanted Estates when I was
growing up, there was only one black family that lived there,
and it was you know, upper middle and upper middle
class and overwhelmingly white, and everyone kind of understood that
to be, you know, that was what it was, right.
But again, school, I played sports. That's where I experienced
a lot of the diversity of my classmates and did
a lot of extracur curriculars in that way. So there
were always opportunities. I think what felt really important to
me looking back and how I grew up, there were
always opportunities to be with people who were not like
me mmmmm, And I think we didn't always choose that,
but yeah, yeah, that's an interesting point.
Speaker 1: There is that, you know, I felt the same way
living in a town that was you know, however many
times over like orders of magnitude larger that I. You know,
I had a very classic Friday night lights upbringing, even
though I was a little bit of like an alt
kind of punk rock kid, but like you know, I
was a high school cheerleader. I sang and the choir,
I did all this stuff. And my one of my
best friends all through elementary middle and into high school
was a black girl who was also on the cheerleading
squad with me, and I had an opportunity to spend
a lot of time with her family and her extended family.
But I did notice a big change that happened. And
I'm curious if this is an experience that you had
it well, or an experience that you've ever kind of
investigated or studied. Where early on, in elementary, middle school
and early high school, the uh, there was a lot
of sort of mixing of classrooms and mixing of like
social events. And then as we got older, even me
and my best friend, I remember towards the end of
high school, we weren't hanging out as much, and she
was hanging out with you know, mostly her black friends,
and I was probably in choir and stuff, hanging out
with mostly a lot of my white friends, and I
saw that in some ways, almost like this segregation got
worse as we got older, not the other way around.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that's pretty that feels pretty spot on
in a lot of ways. I will say when I
was I have this core memory of being in first
or second grade and my best friend at the time
was a white student and she was having a party
and I remember her telling me that I was not
invited to her birthday party because, yeah, because she was
not allowed to have black kids in their house.
Speaker 2: I knew a girl like that too. Oh my god.
Speaker 1: I had a friend who never had black kids over
at her house and she was like, my mom's just real,
you know, in school and I was like, wow, it
is the nineties, you know.
Speaker 2: At that point, I was, yeah, it was happening.
Speaker 3: It was it was It was mind blowing. And you know,
there was one country club in my town, and I
had this really interesting experience with some former classmates several
years after we graduate. I mean we were finished with college,
et cetera, and I'd been reading something about a segregated prom.
I think it may have been in Alabama, and I
was like, you know, these kinds of things happened in
the town that I grew up in too. You know,
sometimes the white students would have parties at the country
club and somehow none of their black or Mexican friends
ended up on the guest list, those sorts of things.
But my best friend, I mean my oldest friend, my
best friend, we've been friends for thirty five plus years now.
We grew up together. She's a white woman and one
of the things that I like to and our friendship
has gone through, as you say, many different phases, but
we really clung to each other in high school. And
I think it wasn't until I was we were both
much older, that I realized that, you know, she was
sort of getting flack from some people sometimes for not
just having a black best friend, but really standing up
in some ways for some of the things that she
thought were right. And then you know, again, these aren't
things that she was mentioning to me at the time,
but talking about them later, it really grew my respect
for her. She's one of the few friends that I
had that every every birthday, every gathering I ever went
to was really an integrated experience. I was at her
house quite a lot. Her parents, you know, treated me well,
treated me fairly, still have a good relationship with their parents,
And so for me, I guess that friendship actually became
one of the models for how I wanted my friendships
to look, regardless of you know, what the sort of
racial makeup of the friend was. But just like, what
does honesty look like? And friendships across lines of difference?
How do you talk about difference with each other? So
we just got a lot of practice. We've had a
lot of practice over the last plus years doing that,
and I think.
Speaker 1: It goes to show I mean, there's so much here
and obviously we haven't even gotten into you know, food
and and and that component of togetherness. But I think
back to you know, I think of myself now as
somebody who is very oriented to intersectionality, very oriented to
social justice. You know, I got my PhD in clinical
psych with a with a concentration in social justice and diversity. I,
you know, practice therapy from an intersectional and feminist perspective.
At my mom's poor to reak in and I think
I learned a lot of amazing lessons growing up in
a kind of mixed household. And at the same time,
I look back and I didn't come into my own early.
Speaker 2: I don't think.
Speaker 1: I think I was starting to kind of separate from
from my father and from my Mormon upbringing, and from
some of the more like you know, regressive and right
wing policies and politics that I was taught when I
was very young. I pulled away from that pretty early,
like as a preteen teenager, but I probably wasn't standing
up the way I think I would have now, you know,
I think thinking about your oldest friend, the fact that
she had that kind of courage and bravery and insight
and even just like moral stance at a time when
I mean, that was not the norm, and it's not
what our parents were always teaching us or our communities
were always teaching us. I think that that's a real
testament to her just her character for sure.
Speaker 3: One hundred percent like she is. You know, I always
tell her, and I've said this publicly too, that she
was kind of my first model of someone who is
an age peer who was willing to stand up for
things that she believed in, even if it cost her something.
And she's pretty much been that person since i've known her,
She's continued to be that person. I'm super inspired by her.
And one thing I will say that I now recognize
that she recognized early and still continues one of the
things that I really cherish about our friendship. We know
each other in and out, through and through. And she
also understands that there are some things that I might
not talk to her about that I might only talk
to my black friends about. And I used to worry
about how she felt about it, and I don't know
how I stopped worrying about it, but there is a
moment where I realized, Oh, she understands this. She understands
that there are some experiences that I don't want to
translate or don't want to have to try to like, yeah,
give deeper explanation for not that she was asking. But
I think that, like that's just kind of a natural
thing sometimes, right, Like you really want someone to understand
and so you go to great lengths to explain something.
And she's never made me feel bad for that, and
that has felt like a gift of our friendship.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean, it's it's an interesting insight to
have so young. The emotional toll and the cognitive labor
that it would take, and also just the expectation that's
often put on individuals to like, you know, almost justify
their experience to the majority kind of class, which is
so I mean, I don't know how exhausting it is
for you, you know, but I like when I say,
I can only imagine how exhausting and kind of frustrating
and almost infantilizing it might feel.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I think, you know, again, growing up with
the kind of friends that I had, and particularly this friend.
Then I went to Trinity University that had when I
stepped on campus there were fifty black students out of
twenty five hundred, so I was like, whoa geez. Yes,
So there was this way of always needing to actually
figure out what my center and what my base is
and then move from there. And I think one of
the benefits of that has been I have a dexterity
around recognizing when and where I want to translate and
when I don't want to, And particularly the don't when
I don't want to is when I can recognize someone
is not engaging in good faith, in which case I
feel that is not my work, it's not my lane,
and that's not my work. But by and large, if
I feel like someone is truly engaging in good faith,
I don't actually mind doing some of the translation work, right.
But I think, especially in this moment, this current political moment,
it's hard not to look over your shoulder to wonder,
like you know what someone's motive is. And I actually
don't want to be I don't want to live that way, right.
I want to be in people's lives because I want to.
I want to be in the lives of people who
want that without second guessing or really doubting someone's intention.
And I mean, I don't know, I don't know. I'd
be curious to see how you feel. But I've just
noticed how much more, how much more paranoid I can
be sometimes, oh for around engaging people.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for good reason. I'm imprudent paranoia, we call it.
And I think for the listeners of the show, who
are obviously coming from all different walks of life, one
of the things that I like to talk about, especially
to female or gender minority listeners, is that even if
you are somebody who is in the majority sort of
racial or ethnic class or like for me, I'm Puerto Rican, sure,
but I'm white, like, so it doesn't matter because my
presentation gives me that privilege.
Speaker 2: But I feel the exact same way when I'm engaging
with men.
Speaker 1: About the patriarchy, Like if I do feel like it's
coming in good faith, like there's a humility and an
interest in learning, and you know, I just have never
been exposed to the things. I was amazed when I
found out what it's like to live as a woman.
And you know, that's when I'm like, sure, yes, I want.
I want to scream it from the rooftops because I
want more and more allies. But if it feels like
you're sea lioning me and my you're really just engaging
me to try and you know, prove me wrong, or
to try and like undermine my lived experience, as if
it's some sort of practice in rhetoric, Like I'm not
interested in that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And it's so I don't know. The older I get,
the easier it is to see that more or see
that someone is I don't want to use the word threatened,
but kind of sees it as their personal mission to
challenge me on what I know, right, yeah, right, or
to challenge whatever expertise I bring to the table. And
you know and that that way. I'm like, you know,
you can, you can actually have all of that. I don't.
I don't want to. I don't. That's not how I
want to spend my time, and much rather spend my time,
like creating with other people than sparring with someone who's
gonna walk away and have no interest in this anymore
beyond just the conversation.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and if somebody's whole, like I guess goal is
to minimize or undermine or try to I don't even
know what the right word is, but like, uh, delegitimize
not just one's lived experience, but also like you mentioned
your area of expertise, like what that's a that's a
losing proposition from the beginning, and so I'm curious about
that area of expertise. So you're an anthropologist. You're also
Associate Professor of African and African Diaspora Studies at UT
So did you go through an African studies route? Did
you go through like an anthro department? Was it interdisciplinary
kind of? How did you follow that academic path?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I went through a PhD program in anthropology at
American University in VC. I chose that department because they
had it was two things. One they had an emphasis
on public anthropology, which was basically for anyone who wanted
to think about how anthropology could serve the world outside
of academia. And then there was also an an emphasis
on race, gender, and social justice, which was an actual
track in the PhD program that I chose. And I
did I know anything really about anthropology until I started
researching graduate programs. I wasn't an anthropology major in undergrad
I was history and African American studies. But what I
knew about anthropology was that it had this method you
know that we talk about as ethnography and field work,
where you really learn about people and their customs and
their cultures by being with them. And I was very
intrigued by that. So there's some interviewing, there's other things,
but the hallmark of cultural anthropology has for a long
time been doing at least a year of field work
in a community, and that's how you learn the community.
And so that's what drew me to anthropology in general.
And then yeah, the public focus and the race gender,
social justice focus made American the perfect place for me.
Speaker 2: Oh I love that.
Speaker 1: I love that both of our PhD programs offered us
an opportunity to Like at my school was called a concentration.
At your school, it was maybe a track, but like
to have specialized training and experience in ours was called
social justice and diversity.
Speaker 2: Yours was what race, gender and.
Speaker 3: Social justice justice.
Speaker 2: Ye I love that, I mean, how I mean?
Speaker 1: That's also one of the great things about being involved
in these sort of like human studies like psychology and sociology,
is that there are huge swaths of the of academia
that are focused on that, which is good because there's
also a lot of really disgusting history in our fields
that is the exact opposite, that's super.
Speaker 2: Colonial and awful.
Speaker 1: But it does remind me a little bit coming back
to sort of the topic of your book itself, and
what we sort of started talking about was our experiences
in Texas high schools.
Speaker 2: Beverly Tatum and her book.
Speaker 1: Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?
Which I'm always quoting this book because I think it
was really informative and instrumental for me, especially her her
metaphor for the moving sidewalk and like what it takes
to work in anti racist spaces. But I noticed that,
you know, and I don't want to speak for you.
I'm actually curious about your experience. But my assumption, my guess,
is that you have plenty of opportunities throughout your life
to exist in predominantly white spaces, whereas white folks have opportunities,
but I don't think they often seize them, or you know,
go out of their way to try to experience and
exist black spaces.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I think that's fun on and I love that
you brought up doctor Beverly Tatum shout out to film
in college, which is where I taught before I came to.
Speaker 2: Ut Oh, no way cool.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, for those who are listening, historically black college
for women, really incredible experience there. Yeah, I've had plenty
of opportunities to exist in predomin white spaces. You know.
I go back to that moment that I realized when
I got to Trinity in our our opening sort of convocation,
I'm looking around the auditorium. There's six hundred and ninety
one students and I could count how many of them
were black, and there were eight of us. And it
was a moment where I was like, what did I
get myself into? What is happening here? How am I
gonna be here? And I had We were all assigned
to small groups, and my small group was led by
a white woman and her name was Lindy, and I
really really liked her. A small group of eight people,
we sat in a circle. One day, she asked us
what everyone's fears were, and I voiced I was afraid
that people were not going to want to get to
know me, that they had already made assumptions about who
I was and how I got there. And someone in
the group was so offended that I had said that,
and I was having this moment where I was like,
oh my god, I really chose the wrong place. And
after Lyndy was like, you know, I actually I really
do want to get to know you. And she said
something like it kind of like maybe in a very
kind of sitcoming way, but she said something like, actually,
I don't have that many black friends, and so I
probably do have stereotypes, but I would like to get
to know you. And you know, when Lindy and I
started doing we started running together every morning. That is
how we got to know each other at that time.
And so all of that to say that, like, yeah,
there are these moments. And then there are also these
decision points too, not just for me, but for other
people who were in the room with me, around how
we're going to engage with each other and the converse, like, yeah,
it's what I like to do when I put my
anthropological hat on. One of the things that I often
say to people is white folks, many white folks really
don't it's I don't know if it's not the opportunity
or a choice, but really don't have that many experiences
with black communities writ large, not just individuals, where they're
not already assessing lack or something being wrong.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I agree, that is the massive bias going in
or if they even go in, that is the bible,
and often that is why they don't go in is
because that bias exists.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and so that already shapes the whole experience, right,
That already puts one person or set of experiences over
the other. And then I think that there are other
moments where I have a really diverse group of friends
in general and specifically in Austin, which is something that
I really love. And going back to again that example
that Live is my best friend carved out for me,
I think even within these groups, we really have tried
to understand like how and when we can show up
for each other and when we can't, and why that's okay,
because sometimes we are carving out space for certain experiences.
Like I'm a queer black woman who lives in Austin.
I very rarely run across other queer black women in Austin,
And when I do, I'm like, can we just create
a little COVID so we can protect some of our
experience with each other? Right? And and so sometimes we
do that. There is there are moments where I'm just
gathering with other other queer women here, which is just
a way of saying that I know sometimes white folks
may be experience it as gatekeeping or being kept out,
and sure that's a part of it. But like I
think I like to think about it, is sometimes people
are creating their affinity groups or whatever based on what
they need in the moment. And that's not even about
the other people who are not included. It's really about like,
what do we need in this moment? And sometimes what
we need is, yeah, to gather in a space where
it's just you know, a deep eggshel you know, we're
lamenting right, Like, yes, I tell people all the time,
moving to Austin is the most heterosexual group of friends
I've had in a very long time.
Speaker 1: And you're from a real small town, so that's saying something.
Speaker 3: It's been a long time. It's been a long time.
And I and sometimes I look, I'm looking around, I'm like, wow, Okay,
I love this people. I love this group of friends.
Speaker 2: And yeah, but also come visit us out here in
l A.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, exactly exactly and so and no one gets
I don't think so. I mean, maybe people do, but
I don't think so. No one really gets offended by that.
You know, they understand analyzes of power, they understand.
Speaker 1: Well that's the point, right saying yeah, yeah, like and
that right there, I think is such an important thing
that bears like, you know, highlighting, especially for any listeners
who might still be holding on to any of I mean,
dare I say, I don't you know, I don't want
to whatever, but like bigoted notions that like, you know,
people stay segregated because they want because like likes like
and because you know, it's just and it's the same
reason that white people don't want to enter black spaces.
Speaker 2: Is the reason that black people don't want to enter
white spaces. No, it is not.
Speaker 1: It is not the same reason. The reason that you know,
black folks sometimes need to stay together and not enter
those white spaces is is the same reason that women
sometimes don't want to enter male spaces. It's a safety issue.
It's a you know, my experience, and I don't want
to have to explain myself to you. And also I
don't want to be on guard this whole time. I
need to just relax. And when men don't want to
enter female spaces or white people don't want to enter
black spaces, it's a completely different reasoning. It's a it's
a because the power differential is there, and I think
we didn't ignore that.
Speaker 3: No, I mean a really good example of this small example.
I'm a huge women's basketball fan and Austin has a
women's sports bar, and there was this whole dialogue and
I think it was a really useful dialogue around Okay,
when we say women's sports bar, is this are we
trying to create a space that is for women to
come watch sports or is it about we're projecting all
of the women's sports games, right, and they're related, But
they're slightly different. And I was at the sports I
love going there, and I was there maybe I guess
just maybe a couple months ago, I was watching some
college basketball and a group of men came in and
they wanted to watch I don't know. It may have
been like a ut longhorned football game or something. It
was point being it was some kind of sport that
was not women's sports. And they came in and they
were having such a hard time with the idea that
the game wasn't already on and that they wouldn't just
switch the TV to this game. And I heard I
overheard someone say to them, you know, there are thousands
of bars you can go to in this city, and
probably overwhelmingly most of them are going to have this
game on that you want to watch. And we've got
one spot that has openly expressed a commitment to women's sports,
and you want to come here. Why is that? Like,
I actually want you to interrogate why. And I just
want to stand on top of the table and collap
for that person because she was so so calm in
the explanation, very calm, and I think generous and maybe
too generous in some way. But you know eventually they left,
but I think that's just like you know what I'm saying,
like you're welcome to stay here and watch some basketball
with us. But it was just moment of realization that sometimes,
you know, people are not interested in just having what
they want. Sometimes people are interested in you not having
what it is that you want.
Speaker 1: Yes, completely because and I don't know if it comes
from a place of like, if you have what you want, your.
Speaker 2: Way of life might start to take.
Speaker 1: Over and threaten my power. I mean, I have to
assume that that's a part of it. But it's you know,
and again, like it's similar to why queer folks like
to hang out in queer spaces sometimes. And it's not
that they're avoiding hetero you know, cis had normative spaces
because they're always in those two. It's that there's a
there's a letting down of the guard that you can
have and a a camaraderie with folks where yeah, again,
like the cognitive labor isn't there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, under And I think for for for me, using
the queer example, if I'm out and about, most people
will read me as heterosexual, except other lesbians, because I
think they're like no, you're one of us. But I think,
like you know, I am been presenting people kind of
just don't think about it. And I think there's also
a safety issue, not just the comfort issue, because often,
not always, but often men really struggle with rejection. And
I can be as kind as I am, and there
are many moments where people men are very persistent and
no matter what I say, I can say, you know,
I'm not interested in men. I'm a lesbian. I can
say all these things and it doesn't matter. And so
then it also becomes an issue of like harassment and
safety and just wanting to exist in public without being
the object of someone's desire, right, Yeah, and yeah, so.
Speaker 1: I think even straight women can kind of attest to
wanting that. But that's why straight women love hanging out
at lesbian very often. I see that a lot, and
like myself, as you know, I also identify as queer,
and my flavor is confusing to a lot of people
because I'm a queer woman who is with a queer man.
But we are both very open and we you know,
explore different kind of relationship structures like ethical non monogamy,
and so one thing that I like about existing in
queer spaces too, is that there's like almost an implicit
understanding of non traditional relationship structures. And I don't have
to constantly convince people, or explain to people or argue
a position when it's like what do you care how
I live my life? I don't have to justify my
lifestyle to you. But when I exist in queer spaces,
I feel like there's just a like, yeah, cool, whatever
works for you, all are welcome mentality that you don't
always have in these like more cis heat spaces.
Speaker 3: I think that's I think that's spot on. I think
that's right. And again that level of translating, like we
all you know, power works such that some people never
have to translate their lives of or it is assumed
to be the standard. And I think I would like
to live in a world where I mean, I think
curiosity is one of the one of the sort of
magic tricks that we have in this life, Like curiosity
can be a lever that changes a number of things
versus you know, the assumptions that we make about people.
And I would like to live in a world where
we are more curious about other people's experiences as being
equally valid as our own.
Speaker 2: Absolutely.
Speaker 1: I think it's also why, and of course it's it's
interesting I bring this up because it's also a very
privileged position to be in. But it's why I love
international travel.
Speaker 2: And I'm not.
Speaker 1: Talking going to, you know, a resort that's owned by
an American company on international soil. I'm talking about going
into a city, experiencing that city, eating the food, trying
to navigate on foot in you know, an Asian country
or an African country. I've had a lot of really
life changing experiences where I was thrust into a place where,
you know, nobody looked like me, nobody sounded like me,
and they were not going to bend to me. I
had to adapt to that you know structure, and I
learned so much and I have such an not just
an appreciation. Now I feel like my world is bigger.
Like I'm like, oh, you've never eaten this food.
Speaker 2: Oh my god. You have to try.
Speaker 1: Yes, there's all these things that come along with that,
but you often can't have it if you stay in
your bubble.
Speaker 3: I think that's right. I think that's absolutely right. I
am equally grateful and uncomfortable when I go to places
that are not us centric, right, Like, I'm grateful because
for you exactly what you said, you expand so many things,
your your palette, your experiences, your understanding of the world.
And then I'm uncomfortable because that is when I mostly remember,
like as much as I might experience certain certain forms
of discrimination in the US, like the power of this
US passport still gives me an incredible amount of privilege
around the world.
Speaker 2: Right, maybe not for long, but yeah, maybe not for long.
Speaker 3: It's so true, so true. Who we kind of deserve it,
but it just it reminds me to like in the
ways that I want, you know, people who are highly
privileged in one way or another to de center themselves
at home. I have to practice that too, you know,
I practiced. I practiced it in the US in certain
I have certain economic privilege, education privilege. I have certain
privileges here and I have to be mindful of them.
But when I'm traveling abroad, I'm definitely aware of like
certain kinds of privileges and assumptions that I am carrying with.
Speaker 1: Me absolutely, And I mean I think in a lot
of ways too. That is what kind of maintaining an
intersectional perspective is about. Is recognizing the areas where we
have this kind of privilege, the areas where we really
really don't, and the areas where it depends. In some
it depends sometimes on the context whether even those privileges
are recognized or not. Like, probably you have this experience
as well, But I work in a large hospital system
now as a clinical psychologist, and it is not uncommon
that I will be referred to by my first name
and not my title doctor Santa Maria, whereas you know,
men may not have that same experience. And yeah, I
have the privilege of having a PhD and of being
a doctor, and when that authority is there, people do
look at me differently and talk to me differently. But
even amongst those circles, that respect isn't always seen. And
as a professor, I can only imagine that you are
called miss a lot more often than you are called doctor,
which is infuriating to me when that happened.
Speaker 3: It is it is that, And what I experience more
often is the mixed bag of colleagues who allow students
to call them by their first names, and then how
students might internalize that as like, Okay, this is kind
of a blanket for everyone, So all of my classes.
Every semester I start, I do an explicit little thing
around this is how you can address me. You had
these options, Professor Reese or doctor Reese. Those are the
only two options that you have, and that came from, Yeah,
from the exact kinds of experiences that you that you mentioned.
And it feels especially important. It feels important. It's always
felt important to me. It feels especially important in this
moment though, of just rising anti intellectualism, this moment where
black women in particular, like so much of the backlash
that is happening in politics. I heard Trusty mc millan
say this earlier, like maybe a couple of weeks ago,
and I think she's so true that a lot of
the backlash that is experienced people we're experiencing politically is
connected to people wanting to punish successful black women who
have had had the audacity to go and get the
multiple degrees to be in positions of power or authority.
Speaker 5: Right Like, it doesn't matter what people think you know
DEI is or was and what it actually is, No,
none of that matters.
Speaker 3: All that matters is there's been this response of you
got something you did not deserve it doesn't matter that
you did all of this, you can, doesn't matter that
you Yeah, it does not matter at all. And so
I've become even more boundaried around not only how I
am addressed, but how to engage in conversations right like,
because of course you you probably know this from graduate school,
where especially with graduate students, sometimes there can be a
tendency to just be a lot more casual because you
are training these you're training students, but they're going to
be your colleagues one day. And I have always taken
the position, but you're my student. Now when you become
my colleague, we can have a different kind of relationship
because it's a slippery slope.
Speaker 1: Absolutely absolutely, And I have to just like highlight once
again and reiterate the point that you made about so
many people seeing, you know, a black woman in a
position of you know, authority or of power and feeling
threatened by that. And I think a lot of times
when people say, yeah, but why would that be threatening?
Like what's underneath that? How do we go even deeper?
And I have a very dear friend who very eloquently
put at one time when we were, you know, talking
about race relations in this country, and she was saying, like,
it's threatening to somebody who had a built in privilege
that they never had to be exceptional because by virtue
of who they were, they were treated as exceptional. Now
all of a sudden, they're experiencing, you know, a middle
class white man is experiencing the fact that he has
to work hard to have the whatever it is, the feedback,
the promotion, the whatever, in order to like he is
finally experiencing even just a shread of what it has
felt like to be a person of color, or a
woman or an you know, gender minority throughout all of
human history. Because before you could just show up to
your factory job and you would automatically have your pension,
and you could be a mediocre worker, and you could
be you know, just showing up was enough. And now
it's like, no, because all of these people who let's
be honest here, not only do you deserve your job
entitle you deserve it almost more because it was that
much harder for you to get where you are. Like
that's the part that I think a lot of people forget.
There were a million things in the way that would
have made it much easier for you to quit and
walk away.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, I also think that there's this kind
of idea in some people's imagination that the others, however
you define others, are out to get them.
Speaker 1: I mean, reinforced by their political ideology for sure.
Speaker 3: And it's funny to be because I you know, my
response to that is I wasn't thinking about you, and
I'm actually very rarely thinking about you. I am to
do my best work in the world, and I want
other people to be doing their best work in the world,
whatever that means to them. But like there's no, there's
no competition here, like I am actually not. This is
I'm not trying to replace you.
Speaker 2: No, and your role do my work?
Speaker 1: Yeah, your role as a professor of African and African
diaspora studies at UT I don't think.
Speaker 2: You stole that job from a mediocre white man.
Speaker 3: Sure, but you know, I live in a state that
is really contesting the kind of department I work in
and the work that I do, because you know, beyond
the idea that yeah, I didn't see a job from someone,
But then this thing around, but is this real research?
Is this real field of study? Like this kind of questioning,
which is alm I was gonna say almost insulting, but
it actually just is insulting. You know that that happens too,
And I just, you know, I think one of the
things that is something I believe, it's something that comes
out and gather, which is there is no way we
as a human species make it without interdependence. And we've
got to look for models of where that's happening and
put and specifically look for how people are working across
lines of difference, even intercommunally, right, Like, I'm part of
so many different groups of black folks, and we still
got work through our differences with each other, and you know,
even within group. And so I think that's the thing
that gets me sometimes around the backlash where I'm like,
I know you hate this and you don't want to
hear it, but like, my existence and your existence are
bound up together, buddy, So we've got to, yeah, make
this work.
Speaker 1: And also even just identity, you know, I would go
even beyond that. I remember having a professor named Brian
Lowry on the show who is a psychologist who studies
like identity and intersubjectivity and the fact that you know,
our concept of self is interdependent, like we aren't even
beings without a sort of comparison and an interaction with
other beings around us. There's no such thing as the
self if not for other And we develop that as
we grow up in society. And of course, how do
we do that in a way that is as sort
of uh contributory to civic engagement, that is, as uh
contributory to kindness and empathy and caretaking and community. Then
to just exist with other people. And that's that's what
maybe we should get into now, is this transition to
gather to this idea of togetherness, especially togetherness around food,
around uh community, communal care. I guess we could say,
talk to me about how these topics started to come
up for you as a researcher and how they you know,
have become central to your academic studies.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so, you know, research wise, my focus from the
beginning has been on race and racism in the food system,
particularly urban foods systems, and so I spent years doing
research in Washington, DC examining how food access was patterned
along the same lines as racial segregation in DC, which
is actually true for most cities, LA included. Most major
cities have similar problems, and so I spent a lot
of time understanding those problems, but also trying to understand
how DC residents were navigating the unequal food system. And
so where that research left off is kind of where
Gather begins, which is, I feel like we've done a
lot of diagnosing of the problems in our current food system,
and I wanted to think about, but how are people
gathering around food and using food as a point of
connection and is there something we can learn from that
that we might scale up in terms of how we
create justice around food. So that's really where it came from.
I have been working in and around the food justice
movement for probably about fifteen years now. Movement I would
say movements plural, because I do think that there are
certainly different philosophies around food justice. But one of the
things that I was always curious about and remain curious about,
is okay, but how do we sort of bring more
people into the fold who aren't connected to social movements,
who maybe aren't the ones who want to, you know,
show up at the meetings, et cetera, but may have
something valuable to offer. And so Gather is also a
testament to that for looking at what everyday regular people
are doing, how they're enacting certain values that I think
are important for us who are still trying to tackle
this question of creating a more equitable food world.
Speaker 1: And so I'm curious, like, obviously we all got to eat, right,
Like it's one of those fundamental requirements to exist. Is
we think about food, water, and shelter, And obviously there
are whole movements and whole areas of research concerning with
how do we have equitable access to housing, how do
we have equitable access to water?
Speaker 3: Food?
Speaker 1: Though is I think in some ways it's interesting because
it does have this like massive social component tied to it,
and like a cultural component, like you know, we eat
different foods based on where we come from. And then
there's like ways that we eat food, Like I love
going out for Chinese hot pot, which is like a
very millial way to eat, and I go to this
one well hawk in restaurant that I love that's all
family style, and then there's other I don't know, there's
like buffets, and there's a million different ways to barbecue. Obviously,
group and Texas.
Speaker 2: Tex mex.
Speaker 1: There's a million different ways that we eat food that
goes beyond the ingredients or the processing of the food.
But it does kind of start with maybe start is
a wrong component, but part of your research when it
comes to food equity and food justice does come down
to like farming practices and just access to food, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's been a huge part of it. Farming practices,
access to food, distribution of food. You know, sometimes we
forget that supermarkets have not always been a part of
our food systems. Actually, but there's sort of a more
modern addition to how and where we acquire food, food waste.
We waste a ton of food in this country, and
that not just on the individual level, but on the
corporate on corporate levels as well. So all of those
things are I won't say all of those things are
things beyond the individual consumer, right. A lot of this
has to do with what are our land use policies.
You know, for example, farmers, there are many farmers who
themselves are food insecure because farming as a profession isn't
something that is highly valued in this country unless it
is tied to subsidies for things like soy and corn
and but but those are things that we're producing to
feed people on a regular basis, right, So I think
there's there's that part of it. So that and all
of that is political, but I think there's a reason why,
by and large, many people, I would venture to say
most people aren't thinking about that when they go to
the grocery store. They're not thinking about who picked this produce,
how much are they being paid, what is their housing?
Like are they safe? When you know we don't many
of us don't think about those those things, right, There's
like and there's good reasons for that, I think, in
the sense of the system isn't designed for us to
think that way, yep, right, And so then that also
creates a hierarchy of like who not just what is valuable,
but who is valuable and who we should be thinking
about and taking care of. The closest we got to
this was during the pandemic. I'm sure you remember, like
there are people were freaking out about what wasn't in
the grocery stores. And then there's this huge interest interest
in gardening and farming spiked so much because of people's
anxieties and worries about what our food system was going
to look like. And I'm just kind of watching this
and I never I had never well, I hadn't up
into that point seeing anything in my career where people
were really starting to connect the dots between supply chained
failures and how the food system is built itself. And
it was just so fascinating to me to watch that.
And on the other side of that were people who
were doing things like yes, I will share my seeds
with you, or I have these other starter plants that
I can share with you. There are also these ways
that people were leaning into communal practices that were really
intriguing to me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's interesting to think about. Like you know, you
mentioned earlier that people are sometimes surprised. But here in
La or at least I should say, in California, more
like in the Central Valley. I think it's maybe it's
a well established fact, maybe it's not well known that
You're right, some of the most food insecure people in
our state are the people who are actually produced using
our food, picking our food, our food.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a huge I mean it's a huge issue
here and so and at the same time, I think
that we are constantly bombarded because we live in this
like deeply capitalist society we are that's like full of
messaging and not just social media, but like advertising and
so much like persuasion science, that we're constantly bombarded with
like too many options, and then very often it feels
like we have zero options because well, I can only
afford to buy the cheapest thing, and the cheapest thing
might be like the least ethical thing in order to
you know, and so, and there's all this personal responsibility
placed on people to make decisions and to vote with
their dollar, when a lot of times it's like that's
not even a choice that most people have. Most people
just need to figure out how to get food on
the table for their families and do it in a
way that doesn't break the bank. And unfortunately we don't
always see, because of our global food system, that the
most affordable choice is also the most ethical choice.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's it's so complicated, right, because I
think also how people think about what is ethical is
already so interesting.
Speaker 3: Like, for example, I think I think a lot about
charity and mutual aid and what's the line that separates
the two of them. And I think for a lot
of people, you know, many of us grew up thinking
charity is what you that's what you do, It's a
mark of you being a good person. For people who
grow up. Christian charity is one of the things that
marks your faith, you know, giving to people in that way,
and so you know that might be an ethical sort
of no brainer for some people. But it's also true
that like charity in terms of food and the food
system is a bit of a quagmire in terms of
there's a lot of distance between the giving part, which
is sort of an affirmation of the person who's doing
the giving, and the receiving part, which has often by
and large required people on the receiving end to bow
down or lower themselves in a particular way. So charity
has been a part of charity is a part of
this hierarchy that continues to operate in the way that
it does. And I've been intrigued by mutual aid because
i think mutual aid on some level is an attempt
to upend that actually, to really tie our faiths together,
to treat someone as whole and human, and when we
have the opportunity to do so, to use our giving
as a as a as a space to do some
political education around different topics. Right, But it's not about
this is just you needing to pull yourself up by
your bootstraps. To me, mutual aid is recognizing that the
system itself is producing crisis. Yes, and we we have
moments where we can intervene. And so even just I
just use that as an example of like, those are
two very different ethical stances that produce different relationships to ourselves,
to our neighbors, to the idea of interdependency itself, and
it's you and it's a useful frame for thinking about Okay,
so what does this mean for how we understand what
needs to change about the food system? Right? I mean,
first and foremost, the US food system is so there's
so many monopolies in our food system it is nearly
impossible to so far because of different policies, etc. It's
been really hard to break up those monopolies. But that
is in my mind, a central kind of systemic problem
related to our food system. Right, And so maybe as
an individual consumer, that's not necessarily something like well, man,
I'm going to go take on nesle today, maybe, But
I think where we can be intervening is really on
the day to day level. In addition to of course, vote,
get involved in any kind of activism that you want.
But I also think anything that we do on a
small scale, we do on a larger scale. And so
for me, a large part of writing the book was
thinking about what are we doing on a day to
day scale and how can we grow that? Because most
people don't go from not caring to like a lobbying overnight,
right right, You know, like you've practiced something on a
small level that you didn't grow, And so I'm very
invested in that. Maybe some people would call that meeting
people where they are maybe, but I think I think
it's more so directing one's attention to a space where
you can practice your values, really practice it, practice them
before you're trying to scale up, scale them up and
apply them to somewhere else.
Speaker 1: And so, what are some examples that you have, you
know in the book that you've been focusing on about
how to engage in that way, those small kind of
steps that you know that those who are starting to
open their eyes to these issues can can engage with.
Speaker 3: I opened gathered with talking about Reverend Hebert Brown, who
was a pastor in Baltimore at the time that Freddie
Garrett Gray was murdered in twenty fifteen. And for anyone
who's listening, when Freddie Gray was murdered in Baltimore, everything
shut down because of protests, because of fear protests, and
included in those shutdowns were schools, and something like eighty
something percent of students in Baltimore received free and reduced lunch,
So no school meant no meals for some of these kids.
And also many grocery stores had boarded up to kind
of protect their property. And so Reverend Brown was getting
calls at his church from people asking for food, and
so he started making calls to other churches, created a
distribution center at a church to be able to meet
people's needs, and from that he also sparked a larger
idea of like, you know, people call churches potentially because
of the charity reasons that I mentioned, but for Black
churches in particular, they are some of the most stable
land holders and owners in any given community. And Reverend
Brown knew that, and so he started a garden in
his church's front lawn and grew things and started a market.
But long story short, that eventually led to him creating
the Black Church Food Security Network, which now has over
two hundred and fifty churches who are dedicated to doing
the same thing. Wow, I just thought again. It started
with a garden in the front lawn of a church,
and then it's built into something else. It's a literal
example of starting where you are and then seeing where
it goes, and then you know. Another example is I
grew up, maybe many, maybe probably many of us who
are listening, grew up with rituals around feeding people who
have just lost the loved one, right, and funeral repasts
are such a huge tradition in my own life and
my own communities, and I wanted to think about that
as a practice of being with people suffering, which I
don't think us Americans do very well. And what I
mean by like, I really mean being with people suffering
in it. And it's probably in a very Buddhist or
Buddhist adjacent way, which is we're not I'm not I'm
not trying to fix or change you.
Speaker 1: Right, I'm not trying to run from it, not trying
to yes, exactly.
Speaker 3: I am practicing building my tolerance for being with you
and your suffering, having empathy for you, and I think
also recognizing that this is a this is a part
of a shared human experience, and so repasts are such
a great example of that. And I write about Chef
Tam who was a chef in Memphis at the time
that Tyree Nichols was murdered, and she decided that she
was going to host a repass for the family and
for the city and anyone who was coming to town
for his funeral. And it ended up she was going
to do this all on her own at her restaurant,
but it ended up being thirteen chefs who committed to this,
and they created this whole. And I had never seen
anything like that before. I mean, I was so moved
by it that these folks created a community, essentially, a
community repassed to hold the grief of the city. It
was so so amazing. So another example of someone sort
of operating from a value and a tradition that they
knew very well and was able to scale it up
to some thing something larger. And I you know, I
could go on and describe more examples from the book,
but the point being that these people weren't starting from scratch.
They were starting from something that they already had an
investment in, but that that small seed metaphorically and literally
in the case of the garden, grew to be so
much more.
Speaker 1: I love that so much, and and I can imagine
that the wheels are maybe turning for the listeners right now,
because you know, obviously we're not all, uh, we don't
all have sort of a status in a community or
a space or a sort of position of community organizing
our power. But we do have, you know, our own home,
and we do have our place in our family and
in our chosen family, and there there are always place
places to start thinking about.
Speaker 2: You know, we got to eat. Yeah, we got to eat,
and we've got people that we.
Speaker 1: Love, and how how can we not just I guess
in some ways give back to community or affect this
sort of like you know, socio political change, but how
can we also just get what we can out of
this life by bringing people together?
Speaker 3: Yeah? And also, I mean I would be remiss if
I didn't say this, which is this idea that our
food practices are completely insular to just the homes that
we live in is also relatively new phenomena and also
kind of a minority when we think about global food practices. So,
you know, there's a long history of people being communal
around food, and communal meaning not just sitting down to
eat together, but sharing in the labor of beating oneself
in community and you know, I think there are ways
for us to practice that. And sometimes, you know, I imagine
several listeners probably love to cook, so do I, and
sometimes we just kind of think like, oh, I'm just
going to do this, it's not a big deal. But
when winter Storm Ury happened in twenty twenty one here
in Texas that took out our power grid, it was
those folks who were cooking these large pots of soup
and beans, et cetera, that were literally making the difference
between folks who were eating and not eating.
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh wow, yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker 1: And the thing is, sometimes this kind of organizing or
this kind of experience, it doesn't come because somebody has
a great idea and they.
Speaker 2: Want to get back. It comes out of necessity.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, And it's powerful and it comes out of necessity.
And I think I've been really reflecting on these moments
of how and why people choose to step up, and
I've landed at this realization that for some people, it's
not that they don't want to do something, they're waiting
for someone to lead the charge. And I don't even
mean that in a judgmental way. I think sometimes we're
just like with winter storm ury and the organizing that
I and others did here. That started because I put
something on social media saying I would like to help
people who do not have power or do not have
money to get to a hotel who needs help. And
then not only did that generate responses from people who
needed help, it was like an invitation to other people
who wanted to help, because then I was getting these
dms from people who were like, I can help too,
I can help too, and so it just snowballed from there.
And I think that that is for me, that is
a lesson in let me do what I feel nudged
or called to do, and that might be an invitation
for someone else to do the same. I'm not responsible
for someone else making that decision, but if I am
operating in good faith in my own lane, maybe that
activates someone else to do that as well.
Speaker 2: I love that.
Speaker 1: Gosh, I honestly could talk to you for hours. I
know I've already kept you so much.
Speaker 2: Later and then I said I was going to.
Speaker 1: Do but I'm curious before we start to kind of
close up the conversation, because obviously we talked about so
many different things. We didn't just focus on the book.
We didn't even really get into the book until like
halfway through. Is there anything that you know we did
discuss mutual aid and repass in these and kind of gardening,
And I'm curious if is there anything that we didn't
touch on? Obviously there's a million things we didn't touch on,
but that you would be remiss for us to leave out.
Is there anything you you want to make sure is
said before before folks, you know, go out and get
the book for themselves.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a great question. I think I would just
like to say, never underestimate a power, the power of
a gathering, no matter how big or how small. That
is the message of the book to me. Like I
end the book with I will I won't give the
endingway for people who will read it. But you know,
my impulse after the twenty to twenty four election was
to feed people I cared about, and that is what
I did. And it became a space for us to
really think together, grieve together, but also strategize around like
what does our safety look like? What do we want
our community to look like? What are the commitments we
want to make to each other? And that wasn't the intention.
I just wanted to feed people. We ended up having
these other conversations. So I think don't underestimate what is possible,
because if you are a gatherer, that's what I call myself.
I love gathering people. If you are a gatherer like me,
you can get so obsessed with all the details, like
trying to make every thing right, but you're that's not
your job. You might you're bringing people together and you
don't get to manage how they're going to show up,
what ideas they might have, what things they're bringing to
the table. I think the best that we can do
is that it is to assume that an invitation that
someone accepts means that they are ready to come and
be fully engaged. We don't have to do anything else.
Speaker 1: And I feel like you and I I mean as
best we can being you know, miles apart and being
connected through the internet, like we are gathering right now,
the post listening are gathering with us. But I'm also
very inspired. I have to be honest, because I am
a bit of a homebody. I do have a tendency
to be very boundary oriented and to say no to
things before I actually even think about saying yes. But
I am inspired to tap into some of my pre
pandemic tendencies right now and experience what this life could
be if I didn't just stay home, if I did
choose to say yes to show up to the gathering
doesn't mean I gotta stay for hours and hours. You
do not, you know, like just to get that face,
because I'll tell you what, every time I do it,
I'm like, I'm so glad I did that. I feel,
you know, refreshed, and I feel reconnected. So what an
inspiring chat. I can't thank you enough. This was absolutely
wonderful everybody. The book is Gather Black Food, Nourishment and
the Art of Togethernist by doctor Ashante M.
Speaker 2: Reese a chante. Thank you so much for being here.
Speaker 3: Thank you for inviting me. This conversation made my day.
Thank you.
Speaker 1: Oh I'm so glad to hear it mine as well,
and everybody listening. Thank you for coming back week after week.
I'm looking forward to the next time we all get
together to talk. Nerdy