From the University of Texas
at Austin and KUT Radio,
this is
In Black America.
That's why I wrote the book Black
Fatigue, because it's fatigue in
generation after generation
to have the same story.
So, you know, I was in
the workforce, you know, 36,
38 years ago.
But I'm hearing from the younger
people, and the reason I wrote the
book actually, is because
millennials were telling me when I
went into organizations
doing the work that the Winters
group does.
They were saying, you know, we're
tired, we're exhausted.
I'm like, you, 30 years old.
How are you? Exhausted already.
And they look at me with their side
of the we're exhausted.
So if the younger generation is
exhausted from the microaggressions
and the racism that is in the
workplace, you know, think about the
younger generation and the new
generation coming into play.
So it's generation after generation.
And so that's why I wrote the book.
It's intergenerational fatigue.
We have not fixed the issues.
I have conversations with clients
that I had 30 years ago and have the
same conversations.
I was shocked when, um,
you know, George Floyd happened and
then all of the companies started to
put out the statements about
anti-racism and these CEOs
were claiming we didn't know.
Mary Frances Winters, founder
and president of the Witness Group,
Inc.
and author of Black Fatigue How
Racism Erode the Mind, Body
and Spirit, published by the Red
Color Publishers.
Black fatigue is the physical and
psychological toll on
African-Americans daily lives
as a result of systematic racism.
The damage wrought by racism isn't
the only atrocity so powerfully
condemned in the demonstrations and
protests around the world is
the constant barrage of everything
from daily microaggressions to over
acts of brutality that aren't
captured on cell phones.
Until we address this, things won't
change.
In a book wouldn't make clear that
African Americans are exhausted from
the long history of blatant racism.
In nine chapters, Winter's
exploration on the subject is not
only proof of racial disparity,
but a step by step guide designed
to educate and what African
Americans can do about it.
I'm John Leo Henson Junior and
welcome to another edition of
In Black America.
On this week's program, Black
Fatigue with Mary Frances Winters
and Black America.
So we have been, you know,
in this mindset of equality, just
give everybody the same thing.
Well, when you're when you're
starting from a deficit position,
when you're starting from not having
had the same thing,
you know, you need to give people
what they need in order to succeed.
So the image in the book that you're
talking about is like these three
little kids trying to see over a
fence to a baseball game.
And they gave they gave all the kids
the same size box.
Well, you know, one child was tall
and he didn't need a box.
Exactly.
Another child was very short.
She needed to box.
And the third child was in a
wheelchair and didn't need the box
at all. It needed a ramp, you know,
in order to get up, you know, to
see. And so when we think about
equity, that's equity.
So equity is when, you
know, when we give people what they
need. Equality.
I was talking about giving people
all the same thing.
And I maintain that we need equity
to get to equality.
Black fatigue is a phenomena
with which African-Americans are all
too familiar.
Drawing from my own experiences
as a first generation American
born of African Canadian parents,
her endures of racism in education
and in corporate America, and deeply
researched facts and statistics.
Black Fatigue highlights the history
of white supremacy and racist
systems that led to African-American
intergenerational fatigue.
It focuses on the impact of black
fatigue, on African-Americans and
on society.
The racist system is not just
literally killing African-Americans,
is tearing this nation apart
in every aspect of life, from
socioeconomic to education,
the workforce, criminal justice,
and, very importantly, health
outcomes.
Mary Thatcher Winters has a
well-deserved reputation as one of
the country's most thoughtful and
courageous voices on race.
She has spent over three decades
inspiring hundreds of organizations
and thousands of individuals, a
thought provoking message and our
approach to diversity and inclusion
in black America spoke with winners
regarding this groundbreaking
observation.
I was born and raised in the upstate
New York area of Buffalo, Niagara
Falls area, and then I moved to
Rochester, New York for school.
Then I moved to D.C.
then I moved to now living in
Charlotte, North Carolina.
Mary, tell us about the women's
group. When did you start it and
why?
Yes, well, I started it in 1984.
I left the corporate world because
as a black woman, I didn't feel
that I was being, you know, valued
and respected.
By all accounts, I was doing very,
very well. Kodak sent me for
my MBA with four with three
other people. There were four of us.
They took four people a year to send
to an executive MBA program.
The three white the three white men
who came, graduated from the
program, received, you
know, they got big jobs, big vice
president job. And so that's what
happened for me to know that wasn't
the case for me.
Uh, you know, my hair.
I was wearing a short afro.
One of my colleagues asked me, you
know, will your hair grow?
And I said we had to grow this.
He said, Well, you ought to let it.
You know, So I went through a lot of
different things as a black woman.
I would go home crying every night
just saying, This is not for me.
And if I was going to make it or not
in life, I didn't want it to be some
white man telling me I was too busy
or not enough that I wanted.
If I didn't make it in life, I
wanted to be because Mary Frances
didn't work hard enough because, you
know, I didn't have the
have the right stuff.
And so I felt that entrepreneurship,
which I still feel for black people,
is the is the way entrepreneurship
was the root for me, because I could
in some ways control
my own destiny, even though I still,
you know, have clients who try to
control how we do things.
There's still an independence with
entrepreneurship.
So in 1984, I ventured
out and as a matter of fact, it was
such an anomaly at that time.
The local newspaper in Rochester,
New York, wrote an article.
A woman starts business in her
basement because at the time people
were not doing that.
And so, yes, it's been 36 years,
started as a market research firm
doing qualitative and quantitative
research on consumer kinds of
things, and then morphed into
doing research on
employees and looking
at, you know, the plight of black
employees and Asian
employees and women
in the organization.
And so that's when I got into the
diversity and inclusion space.
I found an interesting Mary Frances.
Can I call you Mary Frances?
Absolutely.
Okay. I found this in Mary Frances
that I had recently interviewed
another high tech
CEO.
Her name was Shirley Archambault.
And she stated some
of the same problems that you ran
into when you were in Eastman Kodak.
She became eventually the CEO
of Mich Extreme, which is a
tech firm on the West Coast.
And one of the examples she gave
of her ideas not being
valued at her as her
white coworkers.
As you stated that you had done some
research for Eastman Kodak
with Fujifilm.
Well, she had been working for
blockbusters here in Texas,
and at that time Netflix
was on the horizon
and they had to do some research
about Netflix and
to see if it was going to be a
competitor. Well, she did the
research, submitted it to
the corporate executive,
and their response was, well,
we don't think so.
And if Netflix
get real large,
we've just buy them.
Well, fast forward 30 years.
Who's still in business that
watches out Netflix
in the U.S.
And like you stated in
your book, Fuji
got the sponsorship for the
Olympics. So I understand
that this is nothing new
that African-American women's have
to go through once they climb
the corporate ladder as far as
their ideas being on par
with their white coworkers who are
also executives.
Exactly. And that's why I wrote the
book Black Fatigue, because it's
fatigue in generation after
generation to have the same
story. So, you know,
I was in the workforce, you know,
36, 38 years ago.
But I'm hearing from the younger
people. And the reason I wrote the
book actually is because millennials
were telling me when I went into
organizations doing the work that
the Winters group does.
They were saying, you know, we're
tired, we're exhausted.
I like you, 30 years old.
Are you exhausted already?
And they look at me with their side
of the we're exhausted.
So if the younger generation is
exhausted from the microaggressions
and the racism that is in the
workplace, you know, think about the
younger generation and the new
generation coming into play.
So it's generation after generation.
And so that's why I wrote the book.
It's it's intergenerational fatigue.
We have not fixed the issues.
I have conversations with clients
that I had 30 years ago, and they're
the same conversations.
I was shocked when,
you know, George Floyd happened and
then all of the companies started to
put out the statements about
anti-racism.
And these CEOs were claiming we
didn't know.
Well, how could you not know?
How could you not know that racism
is still, you know, an issue?
And part of the reason they don't
know is because one of the one of
the books or one of the articles
that I've written is Race
Diversity's four letter word,
because in in all of the diversity
space, race is the one that we've
been we didn't talk about didn't
want to talk about things related
to African-Americans, but you
couldn't even use the word racism,
you know, in the corporate space,
because they said, well, if you say
racism, then we're going to get
sued. And so you couldn't even talk
about it from the lens if you use
words like diversity and inclusion
and belonging.
So you had to sanitize the language.
But now as a result of the protests,
you know, George Floyd, everybody's
now interested in really
understanding how racism plays out
in in the workplace.
I'm coaching a CEO from a it's not a
big company. 2000 employees only
have 36 black people.
And of those 36 black people, the
black people came to them at around
George Floyd's time and said, you
know, we don't think we're being
treated fairly. They did a study
of pay a pay equity study and found
that half, you know, 18
of those 36
black people were actually
underpaid.
Now, how do you not know that
already? How does it take a protest
for you to not know that?
We have systemic racism, but
it's been denied.
One of the chapters in the book is
called Sublime Ignorance.
Right? We don't talk about it.
We deny it.
And it's just happening generation
to generation. And it impacts our
health. It impacts every aspect of
life. And we're fatigued, retired.
And researching
some of the things that you write
about in the book.
And and I think is some
of the things that particularly
African American parents who have
sons, we have to have
that particular talk with
our son, but also
the way society is
currently operating until
my son actually comes home at night,
you know, I'm on pins and needles.
And how is that particular mindset
having a
fatigue affect on particularly
parents?
We have a lot of single parents,
old mothers out there with
sons on a day to day basis,
not knowing if their child
is going to make it back home once
they leave the house.
Right. That stress is real.
And it the scientists
say that that stress gets
into our cellular system
and it creates the
issues around our health.
So racism, not race,
is the cause of many of our health
ailments.
And you write that.
I write about that in chapter four.
Right. Racism literally, literally
makes you sick is what is what it's
called. And I don't think, you know,
when I first started writing the
book, the publisher said, well,
who's the book for?
And I saw the book is for white
people. And they said, Oh, really?
Called Black with their fellow black
people. We know we're fatigued, but
I'm learning from people who are
reading the book Black, they were
reading the book.
They're thanking me for the book
because they're saying they didn't
necessarily correlate
their illnesses with
with the book, with the stress
of racism.
Right. Not not if not explicitly.
We have normalized we have
normalized that we're just sicker.
We have normalized, you know, all of
these things we just have to work
harder with.
We're more tired, Right.
Fannie Lou said, I'm sick and tired
of being sick and tired.
And, you know, but when even when we
look at today, you know, all of
these struggles with the election
and what Stacey Abrams and others,
you know, Stacey Abrams in Georgia,
all that work that she has to put in
and the people who are working with
her in order to get Joe to
get the result that we got
in Georgia. And so it's
known and it's been written about
that. You know, black women in
particular carried this election,
which they and they carried they
carried other elections as well.
And so it's not just black women,
but I'm talking about black women in
particular right now to say, yes,
we're sick, we're tired, we're tired
of the workplace, we're tired of
being told, you know, that, you
know, you got to keep keep working
and make it and make it up the
corporate ladder.
When you do that, you know, you're
looking at not only yourself,
but you do represent your whole
race. Because if you don't make it,
then they're going to say, well,
we're not going to hire any more
black people, because this one, you
know, this one didn't make it.
So that stress, that stress
is really real.
And it is, you know, what happens?
As an example, black women are
twice as likely to to
lose babies and they're twice as
likely to die themselves in
childbirth, regardless of
socioeconomic income.
So black women who are in middle
class still have they
die twice as likely as poor white
women. And the
scientists are saying this is
because of this intergenerational
stress that has intracellular
intracellular systems.
So it's really, really deep what
what racism does
to to us.
Now, you use two prefixes
throughout the book.
Intra and insure
tells the difference between the
two.
Yeah. So intra personal
racism, intra means
that we begin to believe the
stereotypes about ourselves and so
we internalize that.
And so that then can manifest
in, you know, black on black crime,
it can manifest in the self,
the self-hatred.
We know that that starts as early as
three years old
in the 40 tens.
And maybe Clark did a study of the
black doll study, and little black
kids thought that the white dolls
were better and prettier and
smarter.
And that study has been repeated
in like 20 1213
and the same thing. So it starts it
starts early. So that's intra intra
racism.
Interpersonal racism or internalized
racism is where you begin to
believe that you are less than that
you're not as good as.
And so that manifests again in how
it manifests and fatigue.
You know, personal racism is
between, you know, so a white person
who would call a black person,
you know, the N-word or say, I hate,
you know, black people in their
behavior, which would
be racist.
And then there's structural
institutional racism.
And the structural racism are those
things that create things like voter
suppression. Other structures are
set up so that black
people have a much more difficult
time getting to the polls.
Structural racism plays out in our
criminal justice system, right?
Why is it that three times more
black men are, you know, are
incarcerated and we just you know,
we just saw this I heard this
yesterday with a young man who was
who was executed, you know,
on death row, right?
Yeah. So so all of that, all
of that is structural racism.
How? The structures are set up
to to be against
black people to disproportionately
and negatively impact black people.
So. So what people don't understand
is that there are different levels
of racism. So if you talk about
the word racist, white people get
all upset, Oh, don't call me a
racist. I'm not a racist.
Well, nobody you know, nobody is
necessarily calling you personally a
racist, right?
I don't know your heart.
But we live in a racialized world.
We live in a world where there's a
racial hierarchy and white people
are at the top of that racial
hierarchy. And so, in essence,
because we all live in a racialized
world, we're all racist.
If you if you want to just extend it
that way. So we have to begin
to really understand these
definitions and what they really
mean before we the conversation gets
shut down.
I was doing a keynote for
a very large sports franchise
the other day and they will say
which one it is, but it's a very
large sports franchise and all their
employees were there.
And I use the term white supremacy
culture. I got a call afterwards
saying, well, you know, one of the
senior leaders shut down
was didn't hear anything else you
said after you had said white
supremacy, because people think
white supremacy means the KKK
and neo-Nazis.
It does it. That's part of it.
That's the extreme part of it.
But white supremacy culture, which
white people need to begin to
understand, is how
the world is structured all over the
world, not just the United States,
is structured to benefit white
people. The white is supreme, you
know, all over the world.
And so we need to begin to
understand that.
But if you're going to shut down
just because somebody says the word,
how far can we get?
And I'm glad you mentioned
there because you brought that up in
the book, why it's
so difficult
or the majority population
become offensive when
we talk about racism
to a point that affects
our daily lives.
And if if you're not
Caucasian, you really don't have
to think about it because it's not
directly affecting you on a personal
level every day, right?
If you are black, if you are if
you're white, it's not affecting you
on a personal level, You know, every
single day you're not living while
black. And so I mentioned to you
that I'm in Florida right now, and
so I'm renting an Airbnb with my
family. And so we had to we
were concerned, well, you know what?
Where's this Airbnb?
What neighborhood is it in?
Is it a all white neighborhood?
And if they see us out walking,
you know what?
How is that going to impact, you
know, us?
And so, you know, you worry about
just doing the simple things
in life which white people don't
have to worry about.
You know, will I be accepted,
you know, going into this this
place of business?
Am I going to be followed in the
store?
You know, all of those kinds of
things. Do I have to worry about my
son? I have a son who is a
professor of religion at Duke
University. He graduated from
Harvard and Duke and Princeton.
However, he's a big, tall black guy.
Right. And he has had his run ins
with with police because
he was in the wrong, you know, wrong
place. Right.
Wrong, wrong place.
Right. You know, not doing anything
wrong at all, but just being.
And so this is what I hear when I do
research as well with people in
with black people in corporations
that just just are very presence.
Just our very presence is often a
threat to white people and therefore
creates more black fatigue
for us.
I found it interesting as
part of Chapter one,
and I wanted to
talk to you about this.
When you've experienced racism
in kindergarten and through no
fault of your own youth management
bidness and one of the others didn't
just come up and call you and
the other African-American in
your class the N-word.
And that's when you
realized that throughout
life people will just not like
you because of the color of your
skin.
No, there is.
No other reason.
And, you know, when I do work in
this area, again, going and doing
training and whatnot, I often hear
from other black people that their
experience with with figuring
out that the color of their skin
made a difference was at a very
young age as well.
So it's not unusual for us to to
have this realization.
But think about a five year old
trying to comprehend that.
Right? You only five years old.
Right? Right. Are you trying to
comprehend what you know, somebody
might not like me because of the
color of my skin.
So from that day forward, I
went from this little carefree
little kid to being this cautious
person. Right.
I can't trust people.
I don't know if they're going to
like me. And again, I think impact
my my own my own self-worth,
my own my own self esteem, because
at five years old, you even no
matter what your parents might tell
you about how wonderful you are and
how beautiful you are, you know that
somebody me, you know, told you told
you that that, you know, called you
this bad, bad word.
So, you know, it's been a long time
since I've been in kindergarten.
But I remember that day as if it
were yesterday. I remember what it
looked like.
I remember what the kindergarten
teacher looked like. I remember it.
And I have heard from a lot of other
people as well, because it's a it's
a transformative, traumatic
experience, which you remember for
the rest of your life.
And it does impact how you
experience the world from then on.
My friend, I found it interesting
and I actually went back and read
this particular part a couple
of times, Equity verses.
Equality.
And the illustration was point
on, and I came
up with the conclusion actually
before I started reading what
you had written.
And how did you,
you know, come up with this
particular chapter?
Yes. So a lot of people think that,
you know, all we need to do is pull
ourselves up by our bootstraps.
If we get everybody this, if we give
them.
Is that worked?
If you got boots, if you got it
right, if you got boots, that
work. So we have been,
you know, in this mindset of
equality, just give everybody the
same thing.
Well, when you're when you're
starting from a deficit position,
when you're starting from not having
had the same thing,
you know, you need to give people
what they need in order to succeed.
So the image in the book that you're
talking about is look like these
three little kids trying to see over
a fence to a baseball game.
And they gave they gave all the kids
the same size box.
Well, you know, one child was tall
and he didn't need a box.
Exactly.
The another child was very
short. She needed to box.
And the third child was in a
wheelchair and didn't need the box
at all. It needed a ramp, you know,
in order to get up, you know, to
see. And so when we think about
equity, that's equity.
So equity is when,
you know, when we give people what
they need, equality is was talking
about giving people all the same
thing. And I maintain that we
need equity to get to equality.
So equality is our end point.
We first have to we first have to
get to equity.
We first have to give people what
they need. And we see this playing
out against structural racism.
We see this playing out where people
say, Oh, you know, we're giving all
of these folks, you know, welfare
and all this. And, you know, truth
be told, more white people get
wealth than a black people.
But that's a whole nother story.
Right? Right. But yeah, but the idea
is that there's a mindset in this
country which has been fueled by
this current administration
that is this this
unequal playing field.
And the unequal playing field now is
towards whites, that there's some
kind of, you know, reverse
discrimination.
I say discrimination is
discrimination. I don't know about
reverse. You know, we should we
should be at parity.
And when we're at parity, it means
that we are at a place of equity.
And we all know that we're at that
we have equity when we can no longer
predict outcomes by one's identity.
And currently we can predict
outcomes by one's identity.
We can predict outcomes for black
people. We can predict that black
people are going to be disproportionately
impacted by the coronavirus.
Right. And there was there was
surprised by that as well.
You know, black people weren't
surprised. We know we the health
care industry has known for years
that black people are disproportionately
impacted for another a number of
different reasons.
And so that is truly not
equity. Part of the reason for the
health care is access.
That's one aspect of it.
But the other another aspect of it
is just when you do get treated, you
don't get treated the same way.
I got this in the book.
Two studies show that black people
are not given the same kind of pain
medication as white people
for the same kind of indicators.
You know, black black women don't
get as many mammograms
as white women when they have breast
cancer. So there's all sorts of
disparities within
the health system.
And we do not have we do not
have equity.
And when we have an administration,
we won't have them anymore.
But we have an administration that
says things like there is no such
thing as systemic racism.
Pence said that How would you know?
How would you know that there's no
such thing as systemic racism if
you have not experienced it.
And so to dismiss
that certain groups, when the data
is just so apparent in
evidence.
Now there's two chapters that are
on point with what's going on
at the time of this discussion.
Chapter six Say your Name Black
Women's Fatigue and
I Can't Really Breathe.
Black Men's Fatigue.
Why was those two chapters important
for you to articulate?
Because I think the fatigue plays
out differently for black women than
it does for black men.
You know, one of the authors of
another study say black men
get locked up and black
women get locked out.
And so you see, you know,
a disproportionate number of black
men who are who are locked up.
Disproportionate number of black
women are locked up as well.
But not it's not as extreme as it is
for you know, for for for
women. But what happens
to single mothers for, you know, for
black women is that they're getting
evicted at much higher rates
than than white women are.
And when you have an eviction, it's
hard to get a job.
There's not systemic racism where
you get you have an eviction.
It's hard to get another apartment.
You know, if you do get on your
feet, it's hard to get a job when
you have you have an eviction.
And so I wanted to articulate
how the fatigue plays out
differently for black men
than it does for black black
women. No, I have a part in
the book about mental
health care.
And for black men that's been a
stigma and they haven't reached out
to get that. You know, they've got
now what's called the barbershop
therapy, where people are training
barbers, you know, not to be real,
you know, therapist, but they're
training barbers to be able to
listen in a way with empathy
because, you know, the barbershop in
the black community has been that
place where you you feel like you
can let your your you know,
you can be open and talk with your
barber And so.
You know, there are some things that
are being done to, you know, to
support that.
But I wanted those two chapters to
play out, to recognize that,
you know, being black and being a
woman, the intersection of blackness
and the intersection of womanhood
is a very different experience than
it is for black men.
Very fatiguing, very,
you know, very much both
experiences.
We don't have equity.
We have a lot of racism.
But I wanted to articulate how those
are play out differently, because I
don't think we look enough at
the very distinct
differences that we have
at the intersection.
So think about in the book I talk
about you're black, you're
a woman, you're a single mother, and
you're poor. All of those are
stigmatized identities and
they all are compounded then
to create situations that
that preclude black women from
achieving what they would like to
achieve.
You know, I understand now you have
words of wisdom on each
chapter. You begin
with words of wisdom from Toni
Morrison, and you end the book with
words of wisdom from Angela Davis.
Why was this necessary
or important to you to include
include those words?
Yeah, because I think that
there are so many with wisdom who
have gone on who have been before
me. As a matter of fact, in the
preface, which it did come out, I
named a bunch of people in the
preface, but I didn't make the book
widely, but I named
even more so. I think I found the
point at the point of Black Fatigue
is that, you know, other people have
you know, I don't think what I have
said is so revolutionary.
Other people have said the same
thing. You know, I thought, you
know, I as you know, I quote James
Baldwin quite a bit, you know, in
the book as well.
And so other people have said and
but the point is, is that then is
now, because I have a whole chapter
on then is now Things have not
changed in the 1960s.
You know, James, I hear people
here's what I hear my clients saying
these days. What we need to give at
times is going to take a long time.
Well, how much time do we need?
And James Baldwin said this, you
know, my grandfather's time, my
grandmother's time, you know, how
much time do we need?
We've had time.
And so, you know, time is no longer
an excuse. I wanted to bring those
voices into the book to
recognize that these things have
been said before.
We are at a point where this is not
new.
Mary Frances Winters, founder
and president of the women's group
and author of Black Fatigue How
Racism Erode the Mind, Body
and Spirit.
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