SPFPP Episode 134: Do Better AND Do Different - Inconvenience Yourself

White people are currently asking the question "What can I do?". In reference to people with conditions, we use people first language, so applying that here, you are a person with whiteness. Don't Question your humanity, your natural instinct to see the human in another human. Question your perpetual use of your whiteness.

YOU have to look at HOW and WHERE it is being put to use. When you ask, "what can I do?", that shouldn't even be a question a human has to ask about injustices done to other humans. There shouldn't be questioning at all, only reflection on the use of your inherited whiteness in a time where those without whiteness are suffering because of it.

Episode 134 Transcript

Calling Out Racism and Setting a Hard Boundary

00:00:00 Courtney Brame: What can we do? What can I do? I want to do better. These statements have been directed towards me significantly over the last week given the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis white police officer witnessed by three other white police officers as well.

Courtney Brame: And during this time of a pandemic, COVID 19, today is June 4th, 2020. I don't know how timeless this is going to be, but I really hope that this is something that never needs to get brought up again. I am in a place where I am with a lot of my white friends, peers, the only Black friend that they feel comfortable opening up to and asking these particular questions.

Courtney Brame: I see it on social media with people who may not have that kind of connection or maybe want to be seen as trying to be a part of the solution so that they're not viewed as part of the problem or whatever it may be. And I want to share first off that when we talk about any of these questions, I think that we need to finish the sentence. What can I do with my whiteness? Because by default, if you listen to the podcast and know about how we talk about people, notice that we use people's first language. So when people say do better, we need to appeal to the people, which is the humanness that we all share. We are all inherently human if we're able to have this conversation. Right?

Courtney Brame: What needs to happen is we have to look at ourselves as that first. So to say what can I do means that you're othering someone whether it be yourself or Black people. to say you don't understand or you don't get it, which of course you won't get because it hasn't happened to you. If you're not someone who's lost a son or brother or relative to police violence because the police, they are there to protect and serve you. That's what this comes down to.

Courtney Brame: I've not seen, in my experience growing up, the police have never really done anything for me whenever they were called on. they come and they invoke fear in the spaces that I've been and where I've grown up. And that's what it is. I've noticed that I've been treated differently by cops after now having kind of been a business owner with having a gym and police come by, they're friendly, they say hi. But I see how the police talk to and look at the people who don't have a business who wear their Blackness a little bit different than mine is.

Courtney Brame: And I noticed that this is a really important thing to bring up because I was born a human who inherited Blackness. And for many of the people who listen to this podcast, you were born human and you inherited whiteness. Society dictates what that means. There's always a message being sent based on my Blackness, based on your whiteness.

Courtney Brame: And I believe that the murder of George Floyd during this pandemic, during a time where we're not supposed to be outside, where we're consuming so much more media and we're constantly being exposed to it, people who haven't seen this before are unable to turn away. You can't unsee You can't unsee this video. this human with whiteness choking this human with Blackness. So, when we talk about “what I can do as a white person?”, first off, we want to switch that around. As a human, you shouldn't have to ask that question. You just shouldn't. You can reflect on your whiteness as a human.

00:05:00 Courtney Brame: You should be able to empathize and be like, " my god, that is A human who is white and in this uniform that represents whatever it represents." And that is an injustice that should sicken It should frighten It should anger you. But I don't have the answer to this question. I propose questions that are going to make you come up with the answer yourself. Take inventory on your whiteness and how you wouldn't really know how you benefit from it because you don't know any difference.

Courtney Brame: You don't know what it looks like to not be white or to not have whiteness, To put it in perspective, when you ask the question, "What can I do?" And you ask this to your Black friends, different Black people that you interact with, I want to make it very clear that Black is not a universal thing. You cannot take what Courtney says to you and then apply it to the Black person that you work with, the Black person who lives in your neighborhood, the Black person whose family your kid goes to school with or that you volunteer at the same place. This is not a universal thing. Black is in fact a spectrum.

Courtney Brame: It overall has so many unique experiences that come with this and so many different beautiful shades of color. If we're talking about the physical factor, we've got all of the different subcategories of various aspects of culture. It's not just Black, it's also Black LGBT, it's also Black into anime or Black in whatever field of work. There are not Black is if we want to put it on a comparison with something, think of it like gender. There's however many genders there are, think of it as at least that many types of experiences that come with Blackness. Okay?

Rejecting Performative Handouts

Courtney Brame: So my experience here with Blackness today in this realm, I've had to step away from social media for a significant amount of time in comparison to what I normally would. So I'll say I'm stepping away from social media and I may post something, I may like something, I may see something, I may share something. Over this last week, my experience in my Blackness has been very triggered for a different reason than what would be for someone else's. I am the kind of person who does not like handouts. I will say this. If there is ever a time where** reparations are given for Black people, you goddamn right I'm going to be the first person in line for it.

Courtney Brame: But in a sense of people uplifting, supporting, giving me money for the work that I do via something positive for positive people during this time just because someone told you to support a Black person. That infuriates me. If you my s*** because this is something that you find useful and effective. Don't support my s*** or support me because I'm a Black person and you pity me. That is how I feel about it. That may not be the intention, but I don't like the s* and I was unable to really register what I was experiencing in my body. But it just makes me feel less than on top of living in a society where I'm already seen as less than.

Courtney Brame: my rewards and my victories, my blessings, all of these things. I celebrate significantly more intensely for myself when I earn an opportunity, when I execute a thing, when I am consistent in something, when I finish a project, when I am able to have my accomplishments regardless if it requires me to go through somebody or have to sell someone on it. I enjoy earning I am giving what I'm given and seeing so much of this it angers me because it's seeming to come from a place of pity and this again is not going to be everyone else's experience these are opportunities for other people to just it can make or break them in their business perhaps I'm a prideful

00:10:00 Courtney Brame: person and I take pride in my work ethic, but to me it just seems like invalidated that my work has any greater quality than any of my peers or that it's necessary or efficient or useful in a sense that because I'm Black now in a time where y'all just now realizing this s*** been going on, don't promote my s*** now.

Courtney Brame: Unless you genuinely like it and if you genuinely find value in it, that's what I want to see. I don't want to follow these Black educators and then to see it from people who are uplifting these things like have you even engaged with my content or did you just see what my headline is or the most recent three four posts on my Instagram page? I know that a lot of people don't even understand that something positive for positive people has a podcast. H on my chest is an Instagram handle where I talk about herpes and oftentimes I have to tell people, hey, for your questions, you should check out this podcast. And it's been in my headline for I don't know how long, but I still say that. They're like, you have a podcast? I didn't know you had a podcast.

Courtney Brame: And so for people to uplift one of my posts or my work or something to see it just alongside other Black people I know how I feel about this. I'm like where the f*** were you at, when we were interviewing and uplifting the services of other Black people ourselves? You're not aware of my content. you don't even follow me. What do I mean? it just doesn't seem genuine. So when people ask what they can do, someone probably told them that's what they can do, but that s*** doesn't work for me because of the kind of my Black experience. That's been what mine is. So now multiply that by infinity and you have however many other perspectives there are.

Courtney Brame: So it may seem overwhelming when you ask what I can do as a person with whiteness. You have to reflect on your whiteness. Look at your blessings, privileges, skills that you have acquired over the years through your whiteness and you apply your humanness to it. If that were a white person, it wouldn't be. But try to imagine a world where that's okay for someone who's more connected to you or close to you, who's having the** life choked out of them and it's being recorded and people are standing by. No one's doing anything.

Courtney Brame: put yourself in that f****** situation to be the parent or a sibling or really close friend or partner to George Floyd or maybe if his name were whatever like a white guy's name is. I don't f Put yourself there. You will use every resource at your disposal to call out these injustices. And what I'm noticing collectively is that we're at a place now where many people are asking what can be done, what can I do, how can I do better, People are shocked that this is going on. People are shocked that violence is occurring. And it's because the silence isn't working.

The Upside of Anger

Courtney Brame: Taking a knee hasn't worked or not being heard and acknowledged. And now that there's this shock value, what has to happen next is more than likely going to be acceptance of it. I was in a room full of white women, the other day, yesterday unfortunately we won't get to share that audio from this, but it was really phenomenal to have had 13ish white women of different walks of life be willing to come into a space and sit down with a Black woman to talk about things, to have that space created openly for them to ask questions and receive information. And it was wonderful.

Courtney Brame: I'm not going to go into the details because it got very vulnerable. But I will say collectively what I gathered from it is that no one was angry. None of the white women who were there. I'm sorry. I want to tell women with whiteness to use people's first language at least for the sake of this podcast. None of them were angry. They were shocked, they were sad, they were maybe frustrated, but no one was angry. One of my favorite books I listen to on a regular basis is Letting Go by David R. Hawkins. And most recently, I've come into this book called The Upside to Your Dark Side.

00:15:00 Courtney Brame: And both of these books talk about the usefulness of Anger gets us out of this space of helpless emotions. Yes, anger is considered a negative emotion. Yet, it's the one right before courage when it comes on the emotional scale. When you get to anger, that's when s*** gets done. But they don't have a reason to be angry. There's no reason to be angry because life has been a breeze for many women with whiteness, people with whiteness, because we are in a society where anything not white inferior, is oppressed.

Courtney Brame: And therefore, as the oppressor by association, you don't recognize that there can't be a problem. What's going on? What? And now to have been indoors all for us to have had all this time to just be around our families and want to step away and look at media or be isolated and just be scrolling down the news feed to see the triggering s*** that we have to share for the sake of hopefully having justice served.

Courtney Brame: Having that s*** thrown in your face non-stop, it shouldn't make you sad anymore. It shouldn't shock you because this s***'s been going on since people with Blackness have gotten here. It's been happening. It's been going on. We've been speaking about it. We've been asking for help. We've done a lot. And now that we're tired, we're exhausted. We're angry. We've been angry for a long time. And I've gotten to a place where it went from being shocked to being sad to being annoyed to frustrated to just** enraged. And then it hit a point where I felt like I was becoming numb to it.

Courtney Brame: there is not going to be anything that I can do to change this. And after that numbness came a sense of helplessness because how often is it going to happen? How often is this cycle going to continue? I am very grateful to the people with whiteness for stepping into the space of wanting to figure out what can be done, what they can do. You can get mad. You can get angry. You'll never be as angry as we are. But you can get angry at the injustices done to humanity.

Courtney Brame: humanity that inherited Blackness. The message is always being sent and received by society, by me. Same thing with a person's whiteness. How will you use your whiteness to bring peace to humanity? Continue the evolution of Liberate humanity. I've looked at my core values and I'm able to look at this and say it myself.

Courtney Brame: like peace, liberation, evolution. Those are my three core values. And I said that connection and transparency are working their ways in there. We've got to see the humanness in one another. We have to embrace the humanness in ourselves. And then the question should never be, how can I do better? That's b**. That is the bare minimum expectation of humanity because change, we evolve. That's what we do collectively as a human race. That's what we do.

00:20:00 Courtney Brame: So when you ask yourself now hopefully as a human with whiteness, can I do? Look at what your whiteness does for you or doesn't do for you. If you call out racism at your job or injustices or you become someone who is actively vocally anti-racist, if you lose your job, you can get another one. If I go vocal and I'm the angry Black dude that's fighting for equality or yelling out s*** about what's wrong and injustices, I could get fired and not get hired again because I'm the angry Black man and that's to be expected.

Courtney Brame: Or maybe it's expected for me to be silent and just shut the f** I have done this throughout my life until I've gotten to the point of helplessness. Going into work the day after witnessing a public lynching on your social media feed non-stop, having to act like everything's okay. That's a real thing. the resilience that has been programmed and passed down from our ancestors for our Blackness, and what that looks like for us. This is repressed anger.

Courtney Brame: When you see someone sitting on that* Zoom call at this point, when you see employee with their head down, when you see your co-workers who have whiteness coming into the office all cheerful and I've got donuts after having the social media feeds flooded with a public lynching in 2020. 20 via a white cop choking out a Black man and with all of the other murders that have gone on as well. White men, white women. Can't forget about the cop that went into the Black man's house and killed him thinking it was her house.

Courtney Brame: When you are able to witness your employer your co-workers come in with just that cheerfulness, that nonchalantness like nothing happened and ask, the normally cheerful, smiley Black guy that's in the office, what's wrong with you? How will you use your whiteness and connect with that other person's whiteness who has no f****** idea what that human with Blackness is going through?

Courtney Brame: How will you explain to them in a way that they can understand because they don't understand their humanness over their whiteness and therefore they cannot connect with the human who has Blackness? How are you going to console that person? How are you going to talk to their employer and say, "Hey, I think, maybe we should look at or do something for our people with Blackness in our office. Maybe they shouldn't be here right now. Maybe they need a day off.

Courtney Brame: Maybe we should help connect them to some sort of counseling or therapy for the day because of a traumatic event in relation to humanity because of the Blackness inherited because of the silence of most people with whiteness and the indifference there. How you going to use it? That needs to become the question that we need to be the question that you ask yourself. That shouldn't be a question for me. We all have our circle of friends. We have our networks, our people we're connected to, our communities. The people who are immediately around you with Blackness, you connect with them on a human level.

00:25:00 Courtney Brame: You don't like them because they're Black. You don't hang around them because they're Black. You hang around them because they're human and you like the things about them that come with their Blackness. And when you connect with the human, you should be able to empathize and know, okay, this is what this must be like for them. And you use your whiteness to ease that burden just a little bit, however that may look.

The Emotional Burden on Black People

Courtney Brame: It is a huge emotional burden for people with Blackness to have to talk to people with whiteness about what they can do or what's wrong or explain to them, help them understand and educate. And oftentimes when you ask more than one person, you're going to get more than one answer. It's going to read this book. It's going to be a Google search. It's going to follow this page. It's going to be donate to this cause, to that cause. Promote this on your social media. Start conversations. And with all of this thrown at you, you can do a little bit of everything and feel so accomplished. You can feel like you just changed the world with your individual effort because you did everything your Black friend asked you to do. That ain't how this works.

Courtney Brame: That ain't how this works. And in no way, shape, or form is one answer going to be the end all of what is going to the first off is not going to bring anyone back. Whatever action is taken, be better. That's perpetual. Again, the basic standard for humanity is to do better. Nature literally forces us to do better. So, you got to do different. What are you going to do differently now that you're… Now that you're crying and you feel for us and you're sad now that you're there and in that place, what are you going to do differently? Are you going to inconvenience yourself? I've been inconvenienced. George Floyd was inconvenienced.

Courtney Brame: The protesters are inconvenienced. The right people aren't being inconvenienced. That's what this comes down to. It's a matter of maintaining the status quo as it is out of convenience and comfort. inconvenience yourself by having that challenging conversation with your other humans who have whiteness. Collectively, y'all know y Y'all have connections. You have skills. You have resources that people with Blackness don't have access to.

Courtney Brame: How can you use them to bridge a gap to potentially amplify the usefulness of the resources that we have? Ask each other what y'all can do with y'all's whiteness. connect with see that humanity in yourself. Where are you not being a decent human being at the base level to where you have to ask yourself, What can you do differently? When there are opportunities to learn, when people open up their

Courtney Brame: space to be willing to talk about racial issues and talk about social injustices. Inconvenience yourself by listening, by tuning in. Inconvenience yourself by not just taking notes or not just reading the books, but implementing things. All of that stuff needs to come with this. You can't consider learning something because no action is being done to make any impact. What we're in right now requires immediate action. How long would it take you to finish that book? How consistent will you be in your donations to different organizations?

00:30:00 Courtney Brame: having these conversations? How consistent will you be in posting a Black f* square on your Instagram page in solidarity for one day for something that's been happening for can we say centuries get mad. You're okay. You're not going to get in trouble. You're not going to be seen as the angry Black man. No, that will never happen. You won't be seen as the loud Black woman, the outspoken Black woman for speaking up for basic standards of humanity.

Courtney Brame: And again, my experience is unique to anyone else's experience. I don't want the* social media handouts. I don't want to follow this page if you don't mean that. If you're not a supporter, if you're not a friend, if you're not a podcast listener, if you haven't consumed the content, if you haven't gotten anything out of this, don't do that because it angers It makes me feel less than in a world that already puts me down and makes me feel less than. I am inconvenienced. You can be a little bit inconvenienced. You can break your routine.

Courtney Brame: You can dedicate something that you can do consistently, not just once a month when another Black man or Black person gets murdered, goes missing, Black trans person, a Black woman, a Black man, a human with Blackness when some injustice happens to them. Y'all got to f** hold each other accountable. Y'all need to be outraged at these f*** cops. Y'all got to get angry. That's what you can do. Inconvenience yourself. Get angry. I've been angry. I've dealt with the consequences of being angry. I've dealt with the consequences of repressing my anger. I used to get whoopins for being mad, for being emotional, for sharing my emotions. I used to get whoopins for that s***. You know why?

Courtney Brame: Because at any given point, if I am not logically thinking about things that are happening, if I get too emotional in the streets, outside playing with my friends, my teenage self- doing something reckless because it looks like it's fun. Or if I get angry at someone and I don't have an outlet for it and I just let that s* out, any given point, I could be murdered by a cop. I could lose my life. So, while a 17-year-old boy with whiteness can I don't even know how old he was, what the Brock dude can rape an unconscious woman at a university, be sentenced to six months in jail, and get out three months early on good behavior because you don't want to mess his life up.

Courtney Brame: For stealing a candy bar at a gas station, a 60 whatever cent could be murdered by a cop because I look older than I am. I look like an adult or I look more threatening because of my Blackness making me darker and seemingly more rough and tough, I guess. I don't f***** know. But my parents had to be that way with me. My grandparents had to do that for me. And here I am now telling other people, you need to get emotional. That's what we need. We need that from people. We need them to get mad. We need for y'all to get mad and point the anger in the right direction. Point that s*** to the system.

Courtney Brame: The same way m**** were on this social distancing s*** when people were dying in the pandemic. Look at how, you need to be six feet apart. Stay at home. We're in this together. That same** energy, I don't believe has ever been brought to the murdering of Black people. We're looking out for humans when this affects everybody, right? Because anyone can get COVID 19, but not anyone can get murdered by a cop or murdered by a white man and the murderer gets away with it. No, that's not nearly as important. We don't all need to get on board with that, right?

00:35:00 Courtney Brame: No. And for the people who are standing by cops and siding with the police in this instance here or any instance in these cases where a cop murders a f****** unarmed Black boy in cases... Man obviously recently person Black a person living with Blackness for the sake of putting this in terms that can be more understanding because when I say Black I'm sure people probably cringe a little bit at that.

Courtney Brame: So when we talk about this in terms of looking at it like humanity, we are all human. You have your whiteness. I have my Blackness. And when I talk about my Blackness, someone who has their own experience with Blackness has way more understanding and empathy than a person with whiteness does. And why is that? If we're people, right? We're humans, right? We got to do different. I challenge you to look at your humanness. You could even draw a f****** t graph on a sheet of paper and on the other side write Black. What are the similarities?

Courtney Brame: You will find that there are significantly more similarities in your Blackness and in Blackness and whiteness through humanity than you will in the whiteness and Blackness inherited skin color and experience and societal interpretation of what that means. When you look at it on paper, in all honesty, you could just write out, what it means to have whiteness for yourself or what you're now seeing for people who have Blackness, what we're going through, and then just write the opposite on the other side underneath what you have. And you'll be able to see, okay, I have these luxuries. I can get angry.

Courtney Brame: I can get emotional at work, but can't we all do that? Why can't we all just get angry when something is wrong and speak out against it for justice to be served? We can't do that. Can't tell you how many times I had to bite my tongue through some covert racism s* that I've seen in the workplace. I can tell you how that feels actually. It makes me angry. It makes me angry when I can't be emotional. It makes me angry when I can't speak out against injustices. when it makes me angry when I can't express myself at all. That's what it makes me.

Media Manipulation and Withholding Timeouts

Courtney Brame: And I have to push that down. And also, I can't express it a lot of white angry men might express it. perhaps putting a Black man in a choke hole because you wear a uniform in a badge that inherently means that whatever situation you're in, you're the good guy and the other person must be the bad guy or have done something wrong or deserves whatever the f*** it is that they have coming to them. No, no, it's not safe.

Courtney Brame: I honestly don't feel safe doing this and sharing my thoughts on what we need to do because in my experience the Black men that I've seen step up, speak out, lead have been killed. young. However they might have died whether it be from someone within their own community or someone externally. That's my experience. I have seen Black men as thought leaders of revolutions of change get too loud and then for somebody be like, " They getting too much traction. Get them out of here."

00:40:00 Courtney Brame: some of my role models now. I feel like maybe this is and this is going to sound stupid, but maybe this is a protective mechanism for me, but I'm staring at my role model right now on my wall. Goku won't get murdered by the police. Goku from Dragon Ball Z. Yes, that is exactly right. I have to look up to and get my values from animated characters. Because the ones who look like me that I'm supposed to look up to aren't here. And these animes are eternal. You can even add to their lives by making more seasons. We don't have that. I cling on to what's not real for hope.

Courtney Brame: I cling to what's not real because there's more reality in it, more connectedness in it than this f** up ass world that we live in. No, my other role models they're also animated characters. Iron Man. f***. They just killed him, so that negates everything that I just said. So it's hard for me to speak out. It's hard for me to want to fearlessly lead and say what I believe can happen to create change. But it seems like now we're at a point where people are paying more attention. People are listening.

Courtney Brame: I feel that around everything that I've done through learning about myself and doing my own self-reflection on what it means to be a human. I feel like that gave me my voice. Creating something positive for positive people and fostering the community of amazing y'all amazing that are in this community. It's given me a support system that makes me feel powerful. I get chills when I say that.

Courtney Brame: powerful enough to speak out from the heart and say what I wouldn't have normally said. I have volume that wasn't there as just Just Courtney didn't have volume to it. Something positive for positive people Y'all supporting me, you give me more volume. You turn the volume up for something positive for positive people so that this can be heard. And I appreciate that because it gives me the confidence to do and say what needs to be said and for me to hold myself accountable.

Courtney Brame: cuz ain't nobody else going to do it. I have had many years of experience working in the media. I have gained more than anything the experience of recognizing patterns and there is a major pattern in this system of oppression to where I know that I've learned from school and going to college and the privilege that comes with that taking inventory on as

Courtney Brame: a human. What my Blackness has done for and means for me. I think that it made me identify danger and actual threats at more of an intense level. And then patterns of those threats and dangers. And the truth. The media is supposed to reflect what's happening in society. And I'm noticing that isn't always the case. The media also has this shadow side and power to manipulate what is being shown so that it completely shifts the narrative telling people how to think.

00:45:00 Courtney Brame: And what gives the media the power to do that for whatever the agenda is behind the person who has the media company to send the messaging is its advertisers. I've worked in television, newspaper, social media. And it's the same story. you as a media outlet, I collect your demographic information.

Courtney Brame: I know how many people are tuned in to this broadcast network or station at what time and I am able to say we can reach this many of women men of Black men or women whatever and here's what it's going to cost for you to put your ad in this program that is shaping how they think. brands, businesses, they covet these numbers. They covet our eyeballs, dollars, our consumer power, all because we sit down in front of the TV, we sit down in front of our phone and we consume that content and these media stations get paid and they have power to create more programming. They have

Courtney Brame: the power to shape reality. What kind of reality is being shaped? H if we look at a lot of our prime time television shows, What kind of stereotypes do you see? What kind of stigmatization do you see? What type of racism do you see? What are you seeing about Black people, people with Blackness? What are you seeing about people with whiteness? Who are the main characters? Who are the bad guys? What do they look like? What are they wearing? How are they dressed? What's the music looking like? The videos, right? What kind of music is being pumped? what personalities on the radio are, what are they saying? What kind of messaging are they putting out there to shape this reality that we live in? Right?

Courtney Brame: So for perspective, if I have programming that, let's say it s* on Black people or let's say that it's super violent and it doesn't portray Black people, Black men. Let's say that Black men are in their household with their families or it portrays them in prison and the moms at home with several children and living off of government assistance. Or let's say that it's one of these** housewives shows or something like that. I don't know what messaging is being sent to the world. This is how this group of people acts and without the explanation that I just gave on Blackness have been on a spectrum and have unique perspectives in the experience of what it means to have Blackness. Without those

Courtney Brame: You'd probably think that whatever it is that you're consuming, this can be applied universally to what it means to be Black and how you can see and talk to Black people and what you think that Black people want to be talked to or what they want to dress And that's where this s*** comes from. I just assume that you like fried chicken. Because you seen somebody on f****** Basketball Wives say, "Oo, I love fried chicken." Black people love fried chicken. Probably seeing that s*** and you go to work and that's what you do. That's the power these media companies have to perpetuate and uphold the status quo. They can also invoke this racism s* in people just by putting programming out there. And we consume it.

Courtney Brame: The more we consume, the more they can show people are watching it, the more that their value goes up to a brand that just wants to run a 30 to 60-second commercial within that program, right? What happens if say sports goes away and now it becomes a lot harder to reach the Black man, the man with Blackness who is an avid sports fan and watches his favorite sports team no matter what.

00:50:00 Courtney Brame: who gathers on whatever night of the week that their team plays and they buy snacks and host parties, maybe barbecue, buy drinks. What happens to that man that's now not able to watch sports? What's he doing? What does the value of sports become if sports are playing and that man with Blackness is not watching the The value decreases in that program. So, you have two options. you change the program or as an advertiser you pull your dollars out of it. So, with that being said, if there's programming that perpetuates racism, stereotypes, stigma, and our eyeballs are bringing in money, therefore what you want to do is replicate that because you want more money, more power, right?

Courtney Brame: Our consumerism, our ability to consume, our eyeballs are worth significantly more than we believe it is. Our people are paying tens of hundreds of thousands, millions of dollars depending on the programming to just get 30 to 60 seconds of our attention. If we were to take whatever, if we were to just reduce, I'm not even going to say boycott media or boycott certain programming, if we were to just collectively as humans choose not to subscribe to this kind of programming that is perpetuating the status quo of racism, white supremacy, and portraying people with Blackness in these

Courtney Brame: stereotypes of basically programming our youth to see, okay, here are what your options are. You're going to play sports. You're going to be a musician. You're going to be an actor. That's it. I want to see more politicians. I love This Is Us because they do such a great job of I love Grey's Anatomy. I love the Chicago shows. They do this. I love the CW Network shows with all the superheroes. Again, we're going into fantasy where fantasy appears to be more reflective of reality than the reality TV that we watch. The Flash, the arrow, Supergirl, they've touched on racism significantly. Cloak and Dagger on Hulu, they touch on sex trafficking and police brutality. These are shows that don't get exposure, though.

Courtney Brame: You don't see ads about these shows that are addressing these things and seeing the injustices that occur and seeing what can be done in order to get justice. You want to talk about history, I was watching DC's legends of tomorrow. Jefferson, Black dude, played football. I forget the extreme details of his backstory, but he's one of the heroes on the show. And what do DC Legends of Tomorrow do? They go through time. And where They ended up in the** past. And that was not a good time for him. And I think that that is the way that they portray these things on these shows and in these animations and cartoons. This is where reality is.

Courtney Brame: That's where reality is. And so programming that doesn't make it to prime time Programming like that doesn't mean maybe it was at one point but the ratings may not have been there but us as consumers are not coming. We're unconsciously consuming and then we unconsciously even apply what we're learning, what we're being told from these programs into the real world. The media is not reflecting reality. The mainstream, let's say, media is not reflecting reality. And the brands that put the money there, they're putting the money there because our eyeballs are there. So, they're following our eyeballs and they're just meeting us at the media point.

00:55:00 Courtney Brame: So, we move our eyeballs to, let's say, we create our own media outlets or we support more media outlets that reflect reality, that support us in our communities. That's where these businesses have to go. What happens to these media companies? they're not going to just lose that money. They're going to have to do something different. And that's what we need to do. We need to do something different. The brands are going to do different because they have s* to sell. We want to buy s**, right? But when we claim our power and we are collectively able to minimize our media exposure to these stigmatizing racist shows and s***, our attention goes somewhere else. Where does it go? I don't care. But it shouldn't go to these s** media outlets and give them more influence, more money.

Courtney Brame: Hannah Brown from one of these Bachelor seasons just said She was rapping a song on an Instagram live and said* in the Bachelor Nation, I guess. I don't know, but had now at this point been exposed to something that they probably had no** idea that they would be exposed to. But you know what? People backed this woman and were like, it's just a song. She can say it. I imagine that if that's not how they sound, but I was listening to a podcast where I think it was something Taylor.

Courtney Brame: I don't know, but I wanted to just kind of see what thoughts were on this because that's a popular prime time TV show and this is a personality at this point and people are supporting her and it's like 'Why' you want to say it? What made you feel compelled to say** in the song? And some of the responses were just absolutely ridiculous. It was ridiculous. And that's a really good example of the support of a community because some people unfollowed her, but that brought out other people's, yeah, you get to see what a person's community backing them looks like in times like that when they overtly do some s*** they ain't got no business doing. There's no reason for her to say that.

Courtney Brame: and she did it cuz she knew she could. And for her to not know that that was a problem, but this is an example of whiteness in use. Her whiteness made her feel that she was entitled to say whatever she wants because of freedom of speech. You can say whatever the f*** you want. I don't care what you say. But understand that there are consequences for saying consequences in different social groups, communities, direct people around you, whatever you want, free speech, but understand that there are consequences. Now, back to the consumer part of this. It is very important that we become conscious of the media that we expose ourselves to because our data is always being collected even on our phones. I don't understand why

Courtney Brame: We don't see our power. And maybe, it's because we haven't all worked in the media. I've seen these big ass orders. I've looked at orders and been like, they want to spend $30,000 on one commercial or one program. What? This doesn't make sense. And some of the brands that spend money in these programs, they only care about the eyeballs. But Make these brands care about the impact that they're having on society. Brands that say, "We don't want to" Make them get political by redirecting your eyeballs. Make these media stations start to reflect reality and stop misconstruing the narratives around peaceful protest, around police brutality, and dumbing it down.

Courtney Brame: I saw a headline that said the death of George Floyd and it's like the murder of George Floyd by police officers. It honestly. Be honest. Say the truth. That's what needs to f* happen. It's not. We're getting there. We're getting there for sure. But the only way we'll really get there. The immediate action that can be taken is if people decide to challenge these** brands. I saw Reddit change their logo to Black and white. The day after, I was like, "Why isn't working? Why isn't it working?" And I had to redownload it and my logo was black. I appreciated Reddit for that. I appreciated Nickelodeon for making a statement. When COVID 19 dropped and people had to stay at home, Zoom was all over that s***.

01:00:00 Courtney Brame: We're at Zoom right now in regards to police brutality. Where do you stand if you say you don't get political and then when something like a pandemic happens and you have a business opportunity and you still don't want to get political? That's political to me because you're choosing to remain silent. Therefore, in your silence, you are siding with The status quo the status quo does not say serve my possibly future children. And it's sad because I feel in this world with where we're at right now, if there isn't an immediate change or an immediate action, like we're** becoming an endangered species.

Courtney Brame: I feel like the most precious gift that I would be able to give my children to hopefully get them to adulthood and not have a target on their back or not have the same experiences that I've had as a Black man is to give them lighter skin. How* up is that? I have a potentially subconscious programming in my head that says, "Okay, if we're looking at the patterns of survival and what we need to do in order to pass down RC, we're going to have to give our kids lighter skin." My dark skin is f**** beautiful. I don't bruise. I can get cuts on me and take a shower and that s*** burn, but you won't see the marks. I can have an affair and have hickeys and s***. No one will see it.

Courtney Brame: I can get into a fight and get my ass whooped and you won't know I had a black eye. This s*** is wonderful. I still sunburn, so don't let nobody tell you cuz I thought that that couldn't happen, but it does. I've gotten sunburned before. But that's where we've got to be able to collectively communally get on the same page with this s***. Media consumption is directly driven by businesses. And businesses are not taking a stand. Businesses need to get political because that is where the power is. And the power and the money are going to the media. And the media are controlling the narrative. And we are feeding the narrative to the media by allowing them to feed us this b*******.

Courtney Brame: We got plenty other programs. Where's Hulu stand? Where's Netflix standing? What about Facebook? I'm sending things on, and whenever I do impulsively open up my social media pages, I see something that is like Facebook employees are feeling awkward about the silence from Facebook. Yes, that's what we need. Put that social pressure on these media outlets. Put it on these brands because when our attention goes away from these media platforms, they have to do something different. They got to do something different. And in addition to that, the brands are going to have to reallocate their dollars. They're going to have to earn our money. So if you call yourself supporting the humans with Blackness in your atmosphere, in your communities, in your workplace, there's something we can do.

Courtney Brame: How about we organize times to where we minimize, not eliminate, because I understand how unrealistic that is, our media exposure. Take inventory on the necessities in your life and look where you're spending your money, where you're spending your attention. I have my Amaran electric bill, my Spire gas bill, my Spectrum internet bill, and** my car payments, like the bills that I have on a monthly basis. These are fixed things. I mean, I would love to be able to be like, "What are y'all saying on racism?" indifferent. I'm not giving you money anymore. That's not realistic. I understand people may only communicate with others through Instagram. And I'm not asking you to stop doing that. I am saying to consider a business boycott online. Why the f*** has Amazon not paid taxes?

Courtney Brame: There's all this stuff about Jeff Bezos or whatever the f*** his name is being an a****** in the media or in articles or people saying that why do we keep using Amazon? We don't have to f*** order books or boots and s*** like that online. Things are opening back up. Amazon isn't the only business that's out there. I unfortunately have audio or Audible, an Amazon company. So perhaps it's time for me to cut that s*** too. I would love to see us get on board with, getting changes made by directly impacting these dollars. Dollars from the businesses need to be allocated to these bail funds, to these different organizations that are fighting for people with Blackness, whichever I'm going to just say interchangeably at this point. But I want you to see the human first.

01:05:00 Courtney Brame: the human and then understand that we have acquired Blackness. You have an acquired whiteness. That's how we begin. And as these businesses start to pick sides, we want to uplift and support these businesses because of their ethics. We want to challenge them to keep up this momentum. It's Pride month, right? So all the rainbow logos are going up. What about when this is over? are you always gonna be queer friendly or just when it's convenient, you're gonna ride the wave. Are you always going to be standing up for Black lives in the face of police brutality? You got to whatever you choose to do, be consistent with it. I am minimizing my social media exposure to weekends.

Courtney Brame: I have a business account that needs to run on a regular basis, but I will figure out a way to make that work and let people know, hey, you got to contact me this way, but I'm minimizing my use of media exposure. And I've done that this week, and it's led to me being a lot more creative and introspective. I've read a hard copy book, and it's very hard for me to sit still and physically read. I fell asleep. I get tired. But I f****** did it and I'm proud of myself for it. I've been editing my podcast more and I've just redirected the energy that I would have as a consumer on a regular basis to my connections. I've talked on the phone to more people. I mean, I'm exhausted from these* Zoom calls and FaceTimes and everything, but just being able to connect with those people that are closest to me and checking in and I've got a therapist and I've been taking care of my mental health.

Courtney Brame: All of these things that came from me just redirecting my drive, my battery, let's call it that. each of us is an individual battery fueling the media for it to use us as profit, for it to charge us up with b**. That's what we are to the media. We're its batteries. So take those batteries elsewhere. They can't charge us up with***. We'll recharge ourselves. We'll get our charge from real honest information. And those people with podcasts are going to be the ones to get hired in radio shows and on TV shows. the ones who live for the truth and transparency and honesty and integrity and who are reflecting what's happening in society, not manipulating it.

Courtney Brame: So there's something we can do differently. It is a matter of inconveniencing yourself by not buying from these places. Inconvenience yourself by challenging these brands and businesses, asking them where they stand on police brutality, social injustices. We all can do that. And I want to just close out this whole thing with I understand who my audience is and I often compare what it's like to live with herpes and the stigma that we face to what I found in the LGBT community. And now I think that it's important to bring in how this works as Blackness as well.

Courtney Brame: I mean in having herpes H we have HSV1 orally or generally HSV2 orally or generally and then we have the people who have HSV1 who don't want HSV 2 the people who have HSV2 that don't want HSV1 the people who just have cold sores or fever blisters and would never date someone with herpes all of these subcategories and then we've got the lesbians gay bisexual trans and queer and across the spectrum. And then we've got different layers of Blackness as well. We have to see the humanness in all of these. We are all humans. As a human with Blackness, there can be someone who fall who has herpes, who is a member of the LGBT community and has Blackness.

01:10:00 Courtney Brame: They're All of us have this humanness to us. And the stigma that's faced, the stereotypes that are faced, the injustices that are done, if herpes is the biggest problem that you have, you are doing pretty f****** for yourself. If that's your biggest concern, if herpes is the biggest inconvenience of your life, you can inconvenience yourself a little bit more by speaking up for any of these groups. People with herpes, a lot of us don't want to speak up for ourselves. When people make us feel bad and make us want to kill ourselves or make us depressed, we don't speak up for ourselves.

Courtney Brame: We have the luxury of choosing not to speak up for ourselves. For some LGBT members, it's a matter of being outcast from their families, their communities or support if they come out as members of the LGBTQ community with my Blackness. For so long, I couldn't speak. for so long I couldn't say anything in regards to Doing this s*** for herpes and people who are living with herpes raised my volume. I'd say s*** under my breath, but I don't have to do that anymore. I'm not living in fear anymore. I'm hopeful that now with the support system that I have, with the power that I've acquired, that there can be some influence here. There can be some I can tap into my leadership.

Courtney Brame: I still have flashbacks from a football game. It was us in Southeast Missouri State. I'm on the field my red shirt junior year. I'm out there with my boys and we are tired as f***. It's the end of the game. We're playing Jacksonville State and we're tired and it's fourth down and long and we are exhausted. Something says Courtney called timeout. I'm not the captain. That's not my responsibility. I'm not going to call a timeout. We line up and this is the* play of my life. Second longest because there was a reverse that made it on ESPN that I missed the tackle for. Yes, I remember this very vividly. This****** throws a touchdown pass and we lose the game. Granted, we still won our championship, but I will never get overthinking what would have happened if I called timeout. Worst case scenario, I'd have got chewed the f*** out and taken off the field for calling timeout because I was tired and I read the f****** field.

Courtney Brame: We were all tired. Second worst scenario, they still threw a touchdown pass. But there are infinite possibilities that would have come from me just speaking up and calling them out. Infinite. More of them would have gone in my favor. Ideally, I'd have called timeout. I'd have stayed on the field. I'd have made the play, maybe a fumble, picked it up, scoop, score a touchdown. All me. That's the perfect case scenario. There are so many things that fall more so on the side of positive had I trusted myself than negative. I am not withholding my time outs anymore.

Courtney Brame: So, as followers of something positive for positive people, as people who are just like Courtney, I know that my audience is primarily sex educators, primarily not all the way straight women. And so, my answer to you "What can we do?" When we say how can I use my whiteness to help? First off, you can help me by not pitying me. So just remove me from that s***. There are people who would love that, possibly maybe ask them and offer your intention.

Courtney Brame: I would love for one of my good friends to share my podcast with her audience in a time where it's like okay we do want to support these resources and businesses but she knows this. It's not some stranger. I'd be** weird me out that people just all of a sudden start sharing my s*** I would love the eyeballs but I want it to be for the right reason. Share it because it's useful.

Courtney Brame: Share it because you agree with it, you like it, and because you have benefited from it. That's what I want. I've been asking for reviews for** three years. I got 44-45 reviews now and on the podcast, and I don't know, at one point there were 22,000 subscribers to the podcast. So, having 44-45 reviews is not very reflective of that. I don't want my s*** to spike because a Black man was murdered by a cop. And it's triggering for me. It's for various reasons and maybe I don't have the language for it, but it does make me angry again because I'm seen as an inferior and now this just compounds it. I don't want your sympathy. I want your action. That's what I want.

01:15:00 Courtney Brame: Challenge the other humans with whiteness to use their whiteness. That's what I want. I want for us to be able to limit our social media consumption, minimize it, demand that these brands tell us where they stand and understand that this is me talking as one human with the experience of being Black, connected with me on that and understand that this isn't going to be an end all be all for all Black people. I am one I'm one of your people in your circle. So, this is how I feel. You can empathize with this because we're in the same field. There's pieces of us that we connect with that draw us here in the positive sex education space.

Courtney Brame: Even if it's just herpes, you can empathize now. Use your resources, use your tools, take inventory, and do what in your heart needs to be done. My therapist told me that it was when I vented to him. I told him, hey, I'm angry and I feel like I shouldn't be angry for the reason that I'm angry.

Courtney Brame: And he told me for the first time in our five, six sessions in ongoing communication that he calls it the robot, but mechanical because t I have language for everything. I always use my words. I do a very good job of that. This was just raw emotion. This is me venting. This has been f****** bothering me since last Friday.

Courtney Brame: I had a very pleasant weekend and had a very healthy distraction for myself, but I wasn't able to be there the entire time until I got something out on paper. And then I just took a break from social media so that I could process. But y'all get Inconvenience yourself. This is anger in action. I'm tired of being helpless. I'm tired of feeling numb.

Courtney Brame: I'm tired of hiding and repressing my anger. This is it. So, if y'all gonna do something. But you have to let that out and direct it at the places that have the power and the influence. Direct it at these businesses. Take away our consumption from the media companies and the media that is pumped into us that is not reflecting reality. That is what we do. I love y'all, but I love me more and I had to do this for me. Next week, I guess we'll go back to regularly scheduled programming. But this isn't a one-time thing. This isn't going to be the time I do this. It's not going to be the only time that I speak like this.

Courtney Brame: This feels good for me and I'm going to keep up my momentum. Can you?

Transcript ended after 01:19:52