Welcome back to another episode of the Origination Point Podcast! In this episode, Bill is joined by guest Trey Grimes to discuss Institutional Racism. Enjoy the podcast and share with your friends!

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Origination Point Podcast Ep. #16 Hope And Healing With Trey Grimes

I have a special guest and friend with whom we’re going to have a conversation in this episode about what’s happening in our country with institutional racism, all the protests, and the incident that happened with George Floyd that set everything off. My friend’s name is Trey Grimes. He’s a colleague I met in Denver while working with Denver Public Schools.

We worked together with Cleo Parker Robinson Dance, doing a lot of equity training using the arts with students in our high schools in Denver. Trey’s here. We’re going to chat a little bit about some of these issues that are going on. I want to first have you tell us a little bit about yourself, Trey. Who are you? How long have you been in Denver? What do you do now? We’ll then jump into the heart of our conversation.

It’s good to talk to you and see you on this wonderful app. I am the Technical Director for Cleo Parker Robinson Dance here in Denver, Colorado. I have been with Cleo for a few years in that capacity as technical director. I have been in Denver, Colorado now for many years. I originate from Illinois. I was born and raised in Decatur, Illinois, which is about 150 miles South of Chicago. Growing up in Illinois, everything was Black and White.

A little bit more about myself real quick. I hold a Master’s in Information Technology. My concentration is digital forensics. I had the opportunity to work for DPS where I was able to build programs in technology for what has always been considered underprivileged children, giving them the opportunity to use tools otherwise they would not have been able to use. I’m a father, a brother, an uncle, a grandfather, and a mentor to many.

He’s a pretty well-rounded guy. Do you identify as a Black man?

I do.

Trey’s not only a Black man. He’s a 6’2” Black man. He has quite a shadow in terms of who he is and how people see him. That’s important to know because we’re going to jump into a conversation about the impacts of race. You and I chatted about some of the issues that come up and I want to get into it. I first want to say that some of the issues that we’re going to talk about are our personal experiences and are related to how our outgroup treats us. They’re the people who aren’t part of our group. We’re also going to spend a little bit of time talking about intracultural bias, about how we treat each other in our own groups based on language, socioeconomics, skin color, and depth of skin color.

I’m going to start out that race is one of the most powerful predictors of how a person will fare in our society. When we’re talking about bias, we’re talking about individual acts that people do. It’s usually connected to the idea that our behavior doesn’t match our belief system. There’s cognitive dissonance and for many of us, our biases are unconscious, implicit, unknown, or blind spots. You can use whatever language you want.

When we’re talking about institutional racism, we’re talking about systems that were created to the benefit of one group to the detriment of the rest. What we’re seeing with institutional racism in policing, healthcare, and the justice system in social surfaces is the way that systems work for White folks and not as well for everybody else who doesn’t identify as White. Prior to these racial incidents, we’re seeing COVID-19 fully expose all of those disparities in our healthcare system and our social services network.

It’s amazing to me that after eleven weeks of people being sheltered at home, we saw what happened to George Floyd, and all of a sudden, everybody’s coming out with all of their energy saying, “Enough is enough.” I’m going to step off there and would love to get your thoughts, Trey, about what you’ve been feeling, what your conversations have been like, and a little bit more of some of the stuff that we talked about over the last couple of days preparing for this conversation.

You hit it dead on the target with everything that you spoke of. One of the biggest that we haven’t touched yet is education. For me, being in education for so long, the first thing that COVID-19 brought to my mind is we were already looking at a digital divide. What is it going to be like now when students have to stay home? Students who already had basic issues of running water, and electricity, getting up every day dealing with domestic violence in the home, and not being able to even access any type of internet connection in the first place.

Now, we’re saying, “You can stay and learn at home.” True enough, that’s probably the best thing for safety-wise but in the long run, are we being realistic about that? What new inequalities and direct remediation is this going to cause for our young people? We haven’t even touched that subject yet and now, everywhere we looked, we’ve seen a Black man murdered right there in our faces. As you said, being holed up, not being able to socialize, having no human contact, and then sitting there and having to see that could take even the strongest person into a very dark place.

We’ll start with the education piece because I know in the ’90s when we were starting to talk about the disparity of achievement between Black and White students, it was anywhere between 30% and 40% difference in academic achievement and core subjects like Reading and Language Arts, the things that our kids need to be able to be successful. It was interesting because, in education at that time, we weren’t disaggregated data by race. People would say, “That’s anecdotal. That doesn’t exist. Institutional racism, equity, and academic gaps don’t exist.”

I was proud to be part of a group at that time working with the Department of Education which passed a bill to say that the information from students would be disaggregated by race and then all of a sudden, it was no longer anecdotal. You could see the division in most schools in the district. At the time, I was on the school board in Boulder. You might think that affluence means that those gaps don’t exist. When I was on the school board, it was one of the highest achievement gaps in the state of Colorado. As you know working with DPS, it’s got one of the highest achievement gaps in the country.

We shifted language because we started to talk about it from an achievement perspective. Over the years, we started to realize that when we talk about the achievement gap, we’re talking about a disparity in children and looking at the children as default. When we started to shift this language into an opportunity gap, which is essentially a nice way to say institutional racism, we begin to look at it from a systemic perspective.

The other thing that we do is create all these nice words to define something that isn’t so nice. Now, we call it the opportunity gap when what we’re talking about is institutionalized racism because the educational system was not designed for Black and Brown kids. Let me ask you this. What do you think are some of the messages based on your own personal experience and your experience in education that young Black children get going through the educational system starting at a very young age? What do you think are some of the narratives or stories that are created and supported by White educators?

Unfortunately, I believe it’s something that is so ingrained in human DNA through generational teachings. Even for myself as a young Black man growing up in Illinois during the ’60s, everything was Black and White back then. You always reach for the stars as a child but you have your counselors, your teachers, your deans, or your principals who tell you, “You shouldn’t reach for that. Do something that you’ll be good at. Go to the Army. Get ready to be a laborer in a factory or on the railroad.”

These are the choices. Suddenly, you’re given choices placed in front of you instead of pursuing your dream. If you don’t have that support to pursue your dream, you do fall for the okey-doke. You do say, “I can make a great living as a janitor.” It’s not to say that there isn’t anything wrong with being a janitor. It’s that being held back from your full potential is an agenda and that agenda has been set from slave days. I believe some White people do not know that they’re being racist because they were born into it and raised in it so they do not feel anything’s wrong with it.

Some white people don’t know they are being racist because they were born and raised in it. They don’t feel they are doing something wrong. Share on X

It’s like that fish story where the fish says, “What water?” If you are surrounded by the water, it’s like, “I’m in the water.”

Now is no different. When I see young White teachers come out of college, they have no perception of the community they’re placed in. The only thing they have is book sense and that book sense says, “We need to save you. I’m here to be your savior. I’m not here to instruct you. I’m not here to find out what your dreams are. I’m not here to find out what your individual way of learning is. That’s not my problem. Here’s what I need you to do. You can’t do this. You’re a bad kid. Get out of my classroom,” and it goes on and on.

For me, technology is second nature but one of the biggest things I hate and I see it all the time is that they want to reward a kid with good behavior to use a computer. That’s not your call. You have this device. This device is an aid for your teaching. This kid needs to know how to use this device in kindergarten.

What I’m hearing you say though, is for some kids, it is used as an aid for learning at a very young age, and for some Black children, it’s used as a reward for behaving. It is a pretty big distinction.

Also, we see it all the time. It’s not to say that some Black teachers and parents don’t do the same thing unaware that what you’re doing is taking a tool, a necessity, a way of living away from your child. Right now, a child cannot process or progress in life without having technology in their life. That’s plain and simple.

Where would we be right now with COVID-19 without technology?

As you were saying, when I was a child, and here I am now. It’s the same cycles, different times, different technologies in front of us, and different ways of doing things, but it all comes down to Black and White.

You brought up so many points in that conversation and I want to highlight a couple of them and then we can decide where we want to go with it. One is the genealogical connection to oppression. It’s interesting, working with White educators or some White folks who will look at an incident with a Black child or a Brown child and say, “I don’t know why they’re so mad. This only happened once,” who don’t understand that historical context of how oppression is passed through generations, not only from an emotional perspective, also through the stories of our elders.

This is because our elders share these stories in the hopes that the young people cannot only learn but they can also learn how to deconstruct these systems that have been oppressive. The interesting correlation now is that as more of this is shifting to institutional racism, I’m hearing more White folks that are being interviewed talking about the historical context of institutional racism. It’s built into our genes and something that we do.

The point I’m making here is that when it was looking at the oppression of Black people, there was no connection to that historical context, and now that it’s affecting them in such a large way, people understand the historical context. I don’t believe that these are ill-intended White folks who are purposefully being racist.

It’s like you said when you grow up in that environment, it becomes who you are. Until you challenge it, it’s the way of being. Yet, the connection has to be made for all people, not only when it benefits you. That’s one piece. The other piece is looking at these gaps. I’d love to get your thoughts on equity work in schools now, what that means and looks like to you, and who’s benefiting from that.

This has been a struggle and again, it goes back to childhood equity. A lot of people do not understand the word. For a lot of people, equity means, “I have billions of dollars. I am going to donate $200 million to $300 million to you over here, and that’s going to make the playing field equal.” It doesn’t work like that. It goes back to that whole mentality of how you were, what you were born into, and what you believe. As you were saying, some people will see certain instances and they go, “I don’t understand. Why are you so mad?” It’s because you live it every day. You live on Madison in the high rise every day. This is one of my favorite ones. Here I am, and I’m on the other side of the tracks.

Growing up in a small town in Central Illinois, everything was Black and White. It’s the ’60s and I did not realize until I went to high school that I lived on what was considered the other side of the tracks. Once you physically see it, you understand how barriers are structured. People who live in different ZIP codes live in different ways. You see it and then you get to understand why politicians want certain borders in certain places because they’re building their tracks.

As a kid, we would go play in our neighborhood. The tracks were right there. It was a fun thing to do. You climb the tracks and you look around. One day, I woke up. I’m here on these tracks and I look at my house, which in the Black neighborhood was considered a mansion, yet I look on the other side of the track and it’s a whole shiny kingdom.

I then realized that none of my friends lived on the other side of those tracks. I also realized if I go on the other side of those tracks, my mom would always tell me, “Be so careful.” I’d be like, “Why mom? I’m just going right there.” “Trust me. Be so careful.” The first time I go over there, I’m accused of shoplifting at thirteen years old. I’m just going to buy a comic book.

It’s like, “I’ll feel the eyes on me now. I’m getting it.” I’m starting to get it and you realize that at a young age, you’re different. As you were saying, you are not only different in a White neighborhood, but you’re different in your own neighborhood so you have to keep dealing with all that also. If you’re not the same dark-pigmented color as the rest of your friends or if you’re not the same light-skinned guy as the rest of your friends, you’re considered different. You’re considered different by the color of your skin no matter what, no matter who, by the texture of your hair, and by the way you speak.

 

This is what we’re talking about. It’s called intracultural bias where depending on if you are looked at as a light-skinned Black, then you’re not black enough to be Black. Even President Obama was accused of that within some of the Black communities. One of the things that are important to talk about is how damaging is the way that we treat each other in comparison to the way that White people treat people of color.

I’ll tell you my own story before you answer that. I served on the school board in Boulder for six years. Boulder County’s minority community was pretty small. It was probably about 17% or maybe 18% of the whole county population at that time. It was a Black community, a Brown community, and a Native American community. Those folks worked hard to get me elected with a slate of candidates.

It was great. I was one of 2 or 3 Latino folks who had been a part of the school board up to that point. Within about two years, some of those same people of color who got me elected came to my school board meetings to spend their 2 to 3 minutes of public conversation calling me a sellout and telling me I was turning White in front of 200 people, of it being recorded, and all of that.

That was hard because I knew that for some folks in that more affluent community, to have somebody who looks like me in charge of decisions for their children, they didn’t like that. I didn’t expect it from people who looked like me. That was one of the hardest nights that I had as a school board member. Share a little bit about your feelings on that and your own experiences being a Black man within the Black community and how that plays into what we’re talking about around institutionalized bias or racism.

It’s very hurtful because you know your heart and you know you’re out there doing the good fight. For your own race, friends, or associates to front you and say, “You’re a sellout because you speak well. You’re a sellout because you associate with your counterparts. You’re a sellout because you’re not in this neighborhood anymore and because you’re bettering yourself. You’re a sellout because you went and got a better education.”

It is hurtful for black people to be considered sellout just because they want to better themselves. Share on X

You get tired of it and then you have to look at yourself in the mirror and figure out how you going to deal with it. Do I succumb to this or continue to move forward and do what I know is right and what I need to do for our population? I had a teacher at DPS. We had a little uprising in a school where it was getting tense between Blacks and Whites in the school.

A White teacher walked up to me and said, “It’s going to be okay for you because you’re mixed, right? You’re not totally Black.” I had to think, and my reaction any time I’m asked, “Are you mixed?” “I am. I’m mixed with my mom and dad. I am a Black man.” It gets tiring. Once again, it’s hurtful, but it’s something that you take and use to move forward even stronger.

It’s an interesting dichotomy around this idea of being mixed, especially as America evolves and there are more mixed-race and mixed-ethnicity folks than there ever have been. I think about Cleo Parker Robinson. I love that woman. She’s an amazing storyteller and the way she uses the arts and creativity. I also know from her story that she is a mixed-race person who also identifies as Black.

I bring her up because what is the difference between what you’re sharing and what I’ve seen with her in terms of how people treat her differently than I see them treat other folks who would be considered light-skinned? How does someone like her garner such a high level of respect in the communities that she moves in and out of? She’s also able to move in and out of a number of communities with such grace and people hang on her story and the way she tells it. I’m curious and even thinking, “What did it take to get there?”

From my perspective as her technical director, a lot of that is a front, and she deals with it. I’ve had to deal with it for Cleo and I see how White technicians talk to her sometimes as a man, number one. I will pull them to the side and say, “Number one, she’s a human and a woman. As a man, I don’t like the way you’re speaking. Coming from the Black side, if I hear you talk like that again, we are going to have a real issue.”

I have had to do that many times all over this country in the years I’ve been with Cleo. I don’t run back and tell it to her because as the creative person she is, she needs to have her spirit and creativity flow. Dealing with race is something she does every day. If I can be of aid and support, I am. Once she hears this, she’ll be glad to hear that but she’ll be like, “How come you never told me?” I’d be like, “Number one, I’m a man.”

Knowing Cleo, I can imagine the conversation you’re going to have with her after she learns this.

“Trey, how come you never told me that?” “Cleo, as I said, number one, I’m a man.” Seeing injustice anywhere, whether it’s Cleo or any other sister, brother, or human, that’s an issue. If you don’t speak up like everybody’s saying now, silence is complacent. You are part of the problem.

What I am hearing you say something else, too, is that sometimes the appearance that a Black person has made is in some ways sometimes just an appearance because they have to deal with those same racial issues and don’t always bring those out into the public format. For sure, in my experience in the corporate world and in education, you don’t talk about those things publicly. Tell me a little bit about your thoughts on that.

I believe what has happened once again on this platform of race with Mr. Floyd has brought the problem of race to the forefront once again. It never ever went away because when Obama was elected into office, I was on the road with Cleo. I’ll never forget that. We were down in St. Louis, Missouri. I was going to a bar to have a drink. I’d already celebrated. This is wonderful. This is great. We have our first Black president. I get to see it. I had no disillusions of, “My life is getting ready to be great.”

I was proud. I was happy to imagine that maybe we can have some changes for good, but in no time did I say, “We have a Black president. That’s it. We’ve made it,” but I was shocked when I walk into this bar and I’m the only Black guy. All these White people ran directly to me and said, “Yay for you. Isn’t this great?” I’m like, “Really?” There was that magical illusion of, “Obama’s going to save us all.”

We got to still put the work in. There are still laws. There’s still Congress. There are still all these systems in place that we have to follow that we need to change to make a change. We all have seen what happened and we understand that now. For some reason, the thought that racism is gone because we have a Black president is insane. Now, all the ugly is back out.

 

Having a person of color in positions of leadership does not change the underlying institutional racism. That’s what happens a lot in diversity work. Companies will hire a person of color and then that person becomes responsible for dealing with all of the issues around race, class, and bias. We become systematized. When people of color get into positions of leadership, they have two choices.

I’ll talk about my own experience. I can either acculturate, which is nearly impossible because to truly acculturate, it means that the system has to accept me for who I am and allow me to be myself within that structure. Otherwise, I can assimilate, which means that I give up everything about who I am to be a part of that system. The political system was interesting because when I was on the school board, I worked with legislators, governors, and commissioners of education.

The politics of division were so prominent from that lens that it blew my mind. In fact, in one legislative session in the ’90s when I was on the school board, I heard two senators talking about a bill they were proposing that provided a small number of resources to communities of color, both Black and Brown communities. They said, “Let’s throw them a little piece of the pie. They can fight over it because as long as they’re fighting with each other, they won’t have enough time, resources, or energy to work together to make us change anything.”

That was truly indicative of what we’re seeing now where the politics of division are being used as a wedge by all political parties. I don’t sit here and say one’s better than the other. Even the whole design of the political system was designed to maintain White power to the detriment of everyone else. That’s where we are now in this conversation. The idea of institutional racism means that people had to do something.

I’ll tell one more story and then jump back into my question with you. When I worked in DPS, we had a White male superintendent, Tom Boasberg. He said very publicly with a group of folks of color around him that we live, work, and operate in an institutionally biased and racist school system. Yet, I never heard him talk about how his own privilege and prominence as a White male perpetuates that.

I’m heartened a little bit as I hear more White males that are being interviewed now in the times that we’re in start to talk about institutional privilege. Yet, going back to what you said, when I see these White billionaires throwing millions of dollars at the problem, I’m wondering, “When are they going to stand up and talk about how their White male privilege has contributed to what we’re experiencing?”

It’s not that they’re responsible for it because they didn’t create the systems. However, they sit in positions of power where they truly do have the ability to change because they run mega international companies, the Zuckerbergs, or the people who run Twitter, Facebook, and things like that. They sit in amazing positions of power to be able to shift the conversation and yet don’t. Any thoughts or ideas? This was supposed to be a light conversation on race, Trey.

It’s never simple, but we see it consistently every day. I believe once that young child with all those dreams gets to those teen years, they start to see it, too, not knowing that it’s too late. They should have been taught from the time they’re born. Like our counterparts, you have to be taught about race and how to be the person you’re going to be before you even get to school OR even start kindergarten. These things are ingrained in you right there.

You have to be taught about race and the person you will become even before you start going to school. Share on X

I had to go to Cherry Creek and for those who don’t know, Cherry Creek is affluent. When you go into Cherry Creek, you don’t see liquor stores. You don’t see McDonald’s. You don’t see people hanging on the corner. None of that’s happening in Cherry Creek. What you see in Cherry Creek is a bank on every corner, high-end shopping outlets, trade schools, and universities.

The difference can be made. Yes, Mr. Billionaire. You can come to that neighborhood where you see crackheads every day gather at the liquor store where their whole day consists of begging for change to get a Boont and a can of beer and go, “My day is complete.” They hang out until nighttime and sure enough, some trouble’s going to happen. Build some resources. Build that job center. Have police departments in that neighborhood. Take away their cars. Put them back on foot. Know your community. Teach kids about money, economics, and technology for the good of their neighborhood.

I want to be clear too on something that you’re saying. What you described about some Black folks in front of the liquor store is reflective of a level of socioeconomics that is also replicated in poor White neighborhoods because of a lack of services or opportunities that aren’t available. It’s important that people understand that you’re not saying that this is what all Black folks do in these poor neighborhoods. It’s that when you have fewer resources or opportunities in your community, whether it’s a poor Black community, a poor White community, or a poor Latino community, this is what we could see happen.

Instead of giving away your money and saying, “I did this. I did that,” watch where that money goes and make sure the correct resources are built for the neighborhood you’d like to see it in. That would make a big difference. It would be a start.

 

It was interesting. Before COVID, I used to travel a lot. I would go to different neighborhoods and want to go to a coffee shop. A lot of times, I would look for local places to go first. One thing I started to realize is that there are very few Starbucks in low socioeconomic neighborhoods in this country. You could almost tell when you’re driving around a low socioeconomic neighborhood based on what you said, who were the merchants that are there.

What we’re pointing out here for folks who are reading is these are all indicators of what leads to institutional racism and bias. It’s not to say that Starbucks is racist because we don’t know that. It’s that when we’re talking about institutionalized racism, we have to understand that there are several indicators of it and if we’re unconscious, we don’t even notice that those things are happening.

It is the other side of the tracks and we see it in every aspect of our life. We see it when we go to concerts. We see it when we go to sporting events. We see it in education enormously. I’ve seen it grow in different fractions all the time. Some kids will come to you and go, “May I use this device so I can go home and do my work and research?” I can tell you administrators will look at the kid. If it’s a young White kid, yeah. If it’s a young Asian kid, yeah. If it’s a young Hispanic kid, no. If it’s a young Black kid, no.

They build their own stereotypes instead of looking at the equitable portion of it. This is a DPS slogan, “Every child should succeed.” How can every child succeed if they’re not treated equally? How can every child succeed if a teacher walks into a classroom because a young Black child is squirming in his seat? Why is he squirming in his seat? Does he have to use a bathroom? Is he bored? Is he seeking your attention? You don’t ask him. You assume that this kid is that same bad kid every day. He’s not going to listen to me, “Grab your things and go sit in the hall.”

This is something that was supposed to be stopped. It’s something that should never happen in the first place but we have administrators who will go into a classroom and do the same thing. You’re the leader of that school. How do you go and grab a child in front of 30 other kids and tell him, “You’re bad, and go sit outside?” What does that do? What is that message for a kid in kindergarten? Do you know what I’m saying? You’re already teaching that kid, “The color of my skin is treating me differently from everybody else,” right off the bat.

It goes back to where you started talking about your own experiences in school. A few years ago, when I was in DPS, I would still hear Black students say, “My counselor told me that I shouldn’t apply for college because I’d be better off doing this.” Essentially, what we’ve been doing with equity work is programmatically trying to change a system that was designed to be equal and it does never get to the root core of what creates institutional racism. We’ve spent a lot of time talking about examples in your story of how you’ve experienced institutional racism throughout your life. I know there are other stories that we won’t get to now.

In this work, I’m always asked, “What would a Black person look at as progress in this work?” Seeing where we are in America now and knowing that you don’t speak for all Black people, you’re only speaking for Trey, what would examples be from your lens that we’re starting to move the dial knowing that deconstructing institutional racism is long-term work? What would you see that would say, “We’re on the right track?”

I have had a number of successes that do not validate, but give me hope and instill even more pride in the work I do. It’s because I still teach. Even though I am a Technical Director for Cleo Parker Robinson, I have a program that I developed entitled STREAM, Science, Technology, Robotics, Engineering, Arts and Media. Through that, I’m able to reach out and teach kids technical theater with the principles of STEM.

In doing so, we’ve been able to branch out in so many different avenues of technology, business management, and creativity but the biggest thing for me is being able to teach all kids of all colors and for them to excel based on the merit of my work. In doing so, I have to be me. I’m still me and the proudest thing I can do is always be me and be accepted for me. To be accepted for my work is a proud moment and makes me feel that we do have a sliver of hope for change.

The reason I’m saying that is as a Black man working in DPS or anywhere, even for Cleo and going into different theaters across the country, I’ve walked into theaters and the first thing a White counterpart would want to do is hand me the broom. This happened a few years ago. I look at him and go, “No, thank you. I am your boss. I’m here to instruct you. I am the Technical Director for Cleo Parker Robinson Dance.

It’s the same thing with DPS. I’ll go to different schools. It’s the same thing. I’m treated like, “Are you our new janitor?” I’m like, “Are you kidding me?” The perception of being a large Black man, which I’ve had to go through my whole adulthood is that, “You’re a laborer. You are here to be seen and told what to do. You are not here to instruct, talk, or give your opinion.”

When I’m able to stand up and look that person in the eye, tell them who I am and why I’m here, and successfully complete my assignments, that instills a little bit more pride. It makes me feel a little bit better about myself, but it also gives me that hope that all the young people that I instruct will walk the same path and that we will make a change one by one.

 

I’m hearing you say things about acceptance and about seeing me as a person and not as a racialized person. Have you had positive interactions with police officers over the years? Do you have stories of police that you know or that you’ve interacted with that didn’t leave you with, “I’m just a Black man,” type of feeling?

Unfortunately, I can’t tell that story yet. I do look forward to it.

Let me ask the question in a little different way. Do you believe that all people who are in policing reflect the behavior of those that we witnessed in the George Floyd?

I don’t believe that and I pray that it is not a front for the ones who are stepping forward to let everyone know we are all human. This is a job that I chose. It’s a career I chose and the reason I chose this career was to help people, serve a community, see that community be safe, and be part of that community. I have to hold onto that hope for myself, my family, my friends, and the community.

The reason I ask that question is I’ve done work around institutional racism in healthcare, policing, education, and even in the corporate world around who gets leadership positions and who doesn’t. Within every profession, there are people who are those extremes that we’re now witnessing. There are a lot more people who aren’t those extremes and for whatever reason aren’t speaking up.

What I’m hearing a lot of is that your silence is complicity in perpetuating those same systems that you want to go out and protest against. Finding a voice is probably another indicator of things starting to shift. I’m proud and honored that you chose to share your voice with our readers. This is what a conversation around institutional racism sounds like. It’s not easy. We don’t always agree, yet, we have to talk about it.

If you feel emotionally charged by anything that you heard, it’s not about attacking us. It’s about thinking about what’s going on for you. Why are you feeling what you’re feeling? That’s another thing I’m hearing you say. People need to essentially own their own stuff. Stop putting it out and saying it’s because of who you are, you don’t work hard enough, or whatever the excuses are that we put upon each other. We’re getting ready to close. What last words would you like people out there to know, do, or be as we move forward in this very young conversation around institutional racism and young, from the perspective of people finally taking it seriously?

There are two quick things. Number 1) Know your enemy because you are in a circle. I had a brother come in as a principal and once again, my White counterparts were like, “You’re going to be okay now. A Black man is our principal.” I’m like, “Okay.” He tried to make me an example that just because I’m Black, nothing’s going to be easy. I’m like, “Okay.” At which time, once we were alone, I am who I am.

I told him, “I’m a man first, color aside.” I’m a man, and the way you are speaking to me is inappropriate. I’m saying that to say that once again because you are of a certain color, make sure you know who your enemies are. Number 2) Be yourself. Find your heart. Remember that young people are watching you. Whether it’s your own children, children around you, children in the community, or young people at the job, people are watching you. Be the good person that you can be and be the best that you can be. Thank you so much for this opportunity, Bill.

Always be yourself. Young people will always be watching you. Be the best person that you can be. Share on X

I have another question for you, but before I ask that, I want you to let folks know that if they want to reach out or contact you, what’s the best way to get ahold of Trey Grimes after they read this?

I’m an email guy. Text and phone, I am not always there, but by email, I’m there. I can be found at Trey@CleoParkerDance.org.

My final question is, what do you want to be remembered for? What do you see as being your legacy?

I was thinking about that myself. I want to be known as that person that gave his best no matter what he did. Whether it be seen as a father, a brother, an uncle, a cousin, a grandfather, or a mentor, I want to be seen as that individual that was always the same and no matter what task he took on, he did his best.

I’m going to finish with something. I want to appreciate you for taking the time to be a part of this conversation and to let everybody know that these are not easy conversations. They will challenge every fiber of your being, yet amidst the conversations, we will never get to the action. I’m going to finish with a poem. Most people don’t know this. My family does about me, but I love to watch these cheesy movies about people doing good things.

I was watching one on Netflix called The Healer, and it’s about a guy who has the power to heal. In the end, there was a young girl who survived cancer and went into remission. She shared this poem and I was like, “This is appropriate.” It’s called Just Breathe. “We all at some point stop breathing. What if we lived one breath at a time?”

“We speak as though breathing is easy because it is innate. Half the time we don’t even notice our breath. When did breathing become the uncool kid that all the other body parts ignored? Think about the phrase, ‘Catch your breath.’ You have to catch it because you lost control of it. Find control over your breath. Live for me like tomorrow is your last day.”

For George Floyd, he had his last breath at the knee of another, and for his last breath to have meaning, we have to come together to disrupt the racist systems that allow these things to happen in our Black communities. As long as I have my breath, I will fight for everyone’s right to be heard and treated humanely. What will you do? With that, I want to thank you for being a part of the show and this conversation. I encourage and implore you to do something to be the change. Trey, thanks, brother. It’s been a pleasure. Have a great day.

You, too, man. It’s good to see you, brother.

 

Important Links

• Cleo Parker Robinson Dance
• Trey@CleoParkerDance.org
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• Bill de la Cruz – Facebook
• https://Anchor.fm/origination-point-podcast/support