Our Body Politic

Black Women on the Future of Twitter and Building Generational Wealth

Episode Summary

Farai is joined by Karen Attiah, Our Body Politic contributor and columnist for the Washington Post, and Dr. Sarah J. Jackson, Presidential Associate Professor of communications at the University of Pennsylvania and coauthor of Hashtag Activism: Networks of Race and Gender Justice, to discuss what Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover could mean for women of color users. Then, we reach into the archives for a past conversation between Farai and Mellody Hobson, co-CEO of Ariel Investments about how race relations inform financial security and the vitality of providing financial literacy for people of color.

Episode Transcription

Farai Chideya:

Hi, folks. We are so glad that you're listening to Our Body Politic. If you have time, please leave us a review on Apple Podcast. It helps other listeners find us and we read them for your feedback. We'd also love you to join in financially supporting the show, if you're able. You can find out more at ourbodypolitic.com/donate. We're here for you with you and because of you, thank you. This is Our Body Politic, I'm Farai Chideya. This week we're kicking off the show with a special round table to talk about Elon Musk's rocky takeover of Twitter and what that means for the future of Black Twitter. I've invited show contributor and Washington Post columnist, Karen Attiah, to lead the conversation. Take it away, Karen.

Karen Attiah:

Thanks, Farai. I am super excited to be here. So each week on the show, we bring you a round table called Sipping the Political Tea. And joining me this week is Professor Sarah J. Jackson, Presidential Associate Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, and co-author of HashtagActivism: Networks of Race and Gender Justice. Welcome, Professor Jackson.

Sarah J. Jackson:

Thanks so much for having me, to both of you.

Karen Attiah:

And of course, our very own Farai Chideya and host of Our Body Politic is joining us today. Hey, Farai.

Farai Chideya:

Hey, Karen. And I'm very proud of you for your power lifting, just the whole superhero Karen Attiah as opposed to the journalist Karen Attiah.

Karen Attiah:

It's one and the same. And I think we're all just trying to train for the apocalypse. You know what I mean?

Farai Chideya:

Imagine.

Karen Attiah:

That's what I tell people.

Sarah J. Jackson:

So true.

Karen Attiah:

So speaking of trying to be in safe spaces, this week, we are discussing the significance of Black Twitter and how Elon Musk's ownership of the social media platform could affect its future. For those who don't know, Black Twitter is an informal internet community that uses the platform to draw attention to issues affecting Black communities. And I think when we talk about Black Twitter, I just think about when I started using the platform maybe about a decade ago, and I remember it was just a real source of community and support. I remember the days of #natural hair Twitter and how bloggers and YouTubers and just us kind of regular Black women who were deciding to do the big chop and stop relaxing our hair.

We would come together, I think every Sunday and just tweet with each other about how we were taking care of our hair. What products we were using, what techniques we were doing, what types of 4A, 4C, 3B, coily hair, all those things. And honestly, it helped me learn how to take care of my own hair and my own self. And that's just a real foundational memory for me when it comes to Black Twitter. So I'm curious about both of you guys, and I'll start with you, professor Jackson. Can you tell us a little bit about your experience with Black Twitter?

Sarah J. Jackson:

Yeah, absolutely. I joined Twitter, I want to say around 2011, and one of the first things I really remember from Black Twitter was actually an activist campaign to try to stop the execution of Troy Davis. And Troy Davis was a death row inmate, and there was really a lot of questions about whether or not his prosecution and his sentencing had been ethical. And of course, generally, I'm in the camp of people who thinks the death penalty is wrong, regardless. But I remember seeing this thing happen online in the lead up to his execution where there was a lot of activism happening, and it was a lot of really ordinary people.

Young Black folks like me who had day jobs or whatever, but were using the time and the moment on the computer to tweet about Troy Davis and to use the #TroyDavis and to really try to start letter writing campaigns and writing to congressman, making phone calls to try to get this execution halted. And it wasn't successful, which I remember was very heartbreaking. Troy Davis was executed, but I remember that was one of the first moments where I realized that Twitter could really be used not just to create community, but also to create change. And that Black users were particularly really finding each other and coalescing around fun issues, but also really important political issues.

Karen Attiah:

I do remember that cold episode in a way, and it was extremely powerful, even despite the outcome of everything. How about you? What are your memories and thoughts about some of the early days in your early experiences?

Farai Chideya:

Well, I have been on Twitter for ages. I joined in January 2009, call me an OG. But the seminal moment for me was I spent a year DMing with the white nationalist during and after the 2016 election, and he taught me so much about what was happening in this country, and he actually liked my reporting. He was like, "You see us?" And I was like, "Yes, I do." And I feel like that was one of the big failures of reporting generally, is that people did not see the influence of white nationalism on politics. And I couldn't get my editors at a certain publication to really take that seriously. I had asked on Twitter recently, "What do you call someone where you have emotional intimacy but you're not friends?" And a lot of people are like, "Why wouldn't you call him a friend?" And it's this guy. And someone said, "Trauma buddy." And I was like, "That's it.' We were both traumatized.

Karen Attiah:

Wow.

Farai Chideya:

And we did trauma bonding even though we were on different sides of the same culture war. But I loved the fact that he was open enough to talk to me, and he went to Charlottesville and I saw his mental health degrade. We talked a lot about his mental health. He said he had a agoraphobia and depression and all these things, and I saw his mental health change from the nature of his writing. And that was a front seat to history that Twitter facilitated.

Karen Attiah:

That sounds fascinating. And I think probably a lot of us are digital connections probably really are over a good amount of trauma, honestly. All right. So then, that takes us two today in the current moment. So billionaire Elon Musk acquired Twitter in late October for $44 billion, geez. He says he plans to increase the company's revenue to $26.4 billion by 2028, up from $5 billion last year. So pretty big jump. Musk began his overhaul by laying off thousands of workers, specifically executives, and about half the staff. Some of those layoffs included the entire human rights team, members of the child's safety team, which is the team tasked with removing child sexual abuse material, and members of the accessibility team. So it's just been a scorched earth takeover so far. So Farai, just curious to your reaction to Musk' new Twitter regime thus far?

Farai Chideya:

Well, first of all, if it's like a zero stars to five stars, it's zero stars for this. And then I would point to an incredible newsletter by Brandeis Marshall, who is a Black data scientist. She writes this incredible newsletter called Rebel Tech, which she describes as our safe space to critique data and tech algorithms. And she points out that all of these executives basically fleeing what might be a sinking ship, or at least as a listing ship, is ahead of an FTC compliance report. So she puts it, they decided to walk away, and Elon Musk wanted to retain that company product services knowledge. And so, basically, regulators are going to be in a state of panic to even find the data to understand what Twitter is doing. And in terms of protection from rampant human rights abuses, we don't really see any. All of which is to say the way that compliance teams are being hollowed out is not just about hurt feelings of Black women or "snowflakes." It's about civil society, it's about stability.

Karen Attiah:

Yeah. It's a really kind of unsteady moment when it comes to just our democracy. Professor Jackson, what's your take on all this?

Sarah J. Jackson:

I absolutely agree with Farai, this is really serious. And I mean, I think there's a few things. First off, Elon Musk, we knew, Black users on Twitter, scholars who have studied Twitter, we knew that the space was never an altruistic space. It was never a space that was designed to be used or maintained for us, but we made it that. And users really made it a lot of the wonderful things that it has been in terms of creating public discourse, in terms of influencing popular culture, in terms of influencing politics. But with Elon Musk coming in, it really has become an antagonistic space because he's become this sort of antagonistic figure and that list of folks that he has laid off, which not just includes the human rights team, but also includes people from the trust and safety team, which were the folks who were tasked with reviewing issues around hate speech and other things, really indicates how antagonistic he is towards sort of a particular group and particular groups of people.

And we've seen this in his own tweets where he's reinstated folks who have previously been banned from Twitter because they've tweeted conspiracy series or they've sympathized with Nazis, or they've engaged in other forms of hate speech. But at the same time, many accounts on the left have been recently suspended. And so, we're seeing this move by Elon Musk, which really feels, I think both to lay observers and users, but also to those of us who study the platform like a very clear and intentional attempt to shift the types of public discourse that happen on the site. And part of that, I think we have to say is a reflection of real intellectual dishonesty on the part of Musk, because he came in saying that he was sort of this free speech savior activist that he wanted to make the site free. But what he really meant by that, it's become pretty clear, is that he wanted to make it a space where people on the right felt comfortable, but he's not as comfortable with himself being critiqued.

I mean, we've seen that and how he's reacted to people critiquing him right on the site and how he's reacted even to his employees critiquing him, which is often by firing them. But also, just the way that both the internal choices of whom to fire, who to push out and the actual way that he's using and supporting the site have really reflected something. I think that is very concerning in terms of the shift in what kinds of discourse are welcome on Twitter. And I've talked to several former Twitter employees, both those who have been fired and some who have chosen to resign. And a lot of them tell me that they're not sure that Elon Musk is as sort of maniacal or Machiavellian as we might think. A lot of them feel like, oh, he just has a lot of hubris and he thinks that the things he's doing are going to make Twitter hot again.

But clearly, they're actually, in my opinion, know suppressing speech on the site and making it a less enjoyable, and I think less democratic space. But I'm not sure that I agree with that assessment. It does feel like from his own insistence on making himself a main character, that he really has a particular political agenda. I mean, I think the fact that he tweeted that conspiracy story about Nancy Pelosi's husband after he was attacked in their home, which was just outrageous, reflects that whatever media and ideas he's consuming are ones that we should really be concerned about. And I think that that does concern everyone.

Farai Chideya:

That was Washington Post columnist Karen Attiah, leading Sip In The Political Tea with Sarah J. Jackson, Presidential Associate Professor at the University of Pennsylvania and me, the host and creator of Our Body Politic. Coming up next, more about the future of Black Twitter and Elon Musk's rocky takeover. Plus Co-CEO and President of Ariel Investments, Mellody Hobson on the importance of financial literacy and building intergenerational wealth in the Black community. That's on our body politic.

Welcome back to Our Body Politic, I'm Farai Chideya. if you're just joining us, we're talking about the latest on Twitter and the future of Black Twitter in a special round table led by show contributor and Washington Post columnist, Karen Attiah, with University of Pennsylvania Presidential Associate Professor, Sarah J. Jackson. Let's listen.

Karen Attiah:

Twitter has been sometimes a hellhole for women and women of color for a while, way before the stake takeover. According to a 2017 crowd-sourcing data analyzed by Amnesty International and Element AI, which is a global Artificial Intelligence software product company. Women of color, so including Black women, Asian women, Latinx women, mixed race women were 34% more likely to be mentioned in abusive or problematic tweets than white women. And according to the study, Black women in particular were 84% more likely than white women to be mentioned in abusive or problematic tweets. And just as a side note, this is five years old, this data. So surely the exact percentages might have changed from 2017 to now, but I'm sure as the three of us as Black women on this platform, we've seen probably this abuse ourselves just being on the platform, having opinions, particularly a political opinion. So I'm curious, this idea of free speech, what does this mean for us and our safety specifically on this platform?

Sarah J. Jackson:

Yeah, I think one thing that study's absolutely right, and that study sort of reaffirmed something that those of us, like you said, who have been Black women on the internet already knew, which was that we are subjected to a type of abuse and backlash for speaking out, sometimes about things we don't even realize are controversial, that our colleagues often aren't. That's absolutely the case. But I do want to say one of the remarkable things about Black Twitter and about Black women Twitter users in particular, is that they have really been on the vanguard, on the front lines of pushing not just Twitter, but other social media platforms as well, but especially Twitter, to integrate better sort of trust and safety policies, to have better responses to hate speech, to have better report and review policies to avoid various forms of abuse.

Now, you're right, it was never an appropriate place. It was always a place where folks were subjected to abuse and these other sort of forms of hate online. But a lot of the progress that had been made to address those things were because of Black users and often Black women users really speaking out and talking about their experiences online. And so, I think when we connect this to this question of so-called free speech, what we really see now, and what I'm really worried about is self-censorship. Which is to say as people increasingly feel like the powerful billionaire owner of the space is antagonistic to their identities.

And as they see that person try to mainstream people who essentially have fascist and other forms of very scary and problematic politics, I think people will increasingly either leave or be more careful about how they tweet and what they tweet about. So people will lock their accounts, people will hesitate to tweet about hot topics or about politics or about controversial issues because they'll be more concerned that they will be subjected to hate speech and brigading and sort of other forms of online harassment. And I think that self-censorship is something that is really already changing the way that people are using the site. And I think that's kind of the exact opposite of what you want if you support and believe in free speech.

Karen Attiah:

Farai, I'm curious about your take. I mean, you mentioned obviously earlier about connecting with someone who is involved in white nationalism, and obviously, you've been following extremism super closely on the show. So how are you seeing this sort of unregulated, supposedly free speech ethos now on Twitter?

Farai Chideya:

Well, first of all, the whole concept of free speech is about the relationship of citizens to government. The First Amendment protects citizen speech and non-citizen speech from government censorship. It does not talk about private companies.

Sarah J. Jackson:

Correct, right.

Farai Chideya:

So when Elon Musk talks about free speech, he can talk all day and all night, but that is not actually relevant in a legal construct to the debate over what gets on the platform. And I think here, let's just be real. The platform doesn't really care about whether or not Black women are safe. But the platform cares about advertising and advertisers are like, "Oh, crap." What you're seeing is advertisers just backing away slowly from the dumpster fire and Elon Musk's problem is not with the First Amendment, it's with advertisers who are afraid that their customers are going to be scared off the platform. And that is something that every billionaire should respect, is a financial transaction.

I personally have very mixed feelings about platforming. The white supremacist who I corresponded with was de-platform several times for violation of terms of service. And he used his Twitter accounts like burner phones. He would just create a new one and he would find me again, and I would be findable because I wanted to be findable. So it's a question for me of what is the poorest nature of having speech that actually is additive to social debates. But the free speech thing is a red herring because the whole construct of free speech is about the constitution and the federal government and government censorship. Elon Musk is not here to cape for Black women, but his company better cape for advertising if they want to stay alive.

Sarah J. Jackson:

Well, first off, right on, I mean, the point about free speech and what the First Amendment is, of course, it doesn't necessarily even apply here. So it is a red herring in the conversation that I think sometimes successfully distracts us. But this point about, of course, Elon Musk doesn't necessarily care about Black women, obviously. The former owners and engineers and designers maybe didn't either and probably didn't either. But I think to your point about advertisers, not just advertisers, but also relevance, cultural and political relevance. I mean, I think we should point out that whether or not the folks that designed Twitter cared about Black women. Black women, made the site relevant in many ways.

Karen Attiah:

Amen.

Farai Chideya:

Absolutely.

Sarah J. Jackson:

It was Black women who many times created the hashtags or the memes or the popular culture like shortcuts or sayings or the mashups or whatever that made it into the primetime news cycle or that made it into that television show, or that became an episode of Law and Order. It was often us who were driving the reason that Twitter became such a sensation and became something that journalists and politicians and advertisers flocked to because we made it cool.

Karen Attiah:

You are listening to Sip in the Political Tea on Our Body Politic. I'm Karen Attiah. This week, we are discussing the future of Black Twitter with Farai Chideya, creator and host of Our Body Politic. And Sarah J. Jackson, Presidential Associate Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, and co-author of HashtagActivism: Networks of Race and Gender Justice. All right, ladies, let's talk about Black Twitter and the impact of it, and particularly how Black women have really impacted the conversations and hashtags and movements through Twitter. So Professor Jackson, you've written a book about HashtagActivism. Tell us a little bit more about that and how you see how those hashtags and campaigns and conversations have been so successful.

Sarah J. Jackson:

I think there's so many examples, there's the most obvious ones, of course, are the #BlackLivesMatter, and the #MeToo, both of which originated with work on and offline that Black women were doing. But there's countless other examples, both in politics and popular culture. We can think about the #OscarsSoWhite. That was a form of media critique about representation and the Oscars and many others that have really engaged important cultural and political moments and conversations over the last decade, really. So, I mean, that is one of the things we talk about in the book, HashtagActivism is, even MeToo, which of course, became a sensation.

There were all these Black women on Twitter before MeToo, who were engaging in these sort of feminist hashtags, conversations about power, conversations about inequality, conversations about sexism. With hashtags like SurvivorPrivilege and WhyIStayed and SayHerName and YouOkSis and GirlsLikeUs, there's so many of these. And in many ways, the networks that were created through these hashtags and the conversations really laid the groundwork for something like MeToo going viral later. And so, we see that over and over again where there are particular sets of users, and they often are women of color. They often are Black women in solidarity with other folks, but who are really leading these conversations that I think have really seeped into and shifted a lot of cultural discourse in America over the last 10 years.

Karen Attiah:

I'm also kind of curious, Farai, or to both of you even about the conversations that we have intra community, whether it's colorism, whether it's issues of, I mentioned hair at the beginning, but even the evolution of hair politics within our community. I'm just curious how you see that and how we use that as a way to talk to each other about our own issues.

Farai Chideya:

For me, as someone who you has a very generationally close connection to Africa, in my case, through my dad only. I also just love the fact that for me, Black Twitter is primarily Black American Twitter, but also gets into South African Twitter, Zimbabwean Twitter, west African Twitter. And when I'm up in the wee hours of the morning as I sometimes am, then it puts me in a position where I can see in real time what's happening in Black Twitter from other parts of the world. And I love the global community, and there's Black British Twitter. There was a big to-do about a British woman who runs a wonderful organization and who was basically grilled by a member of the royal family on where she was from. She's like, "I am from here." So it's just one of these things where, to me, Black Twitter, in addition to the brilliant OscarsSoWhite and all of the different influential hashtags that come out of Black American Twitter is a global Black Twitter.

Karen Attiah:

So this comes back to a certain extent, we got to do it, but I hate having to center Elon Musk, but let's talk about what King Elon's reign is meaning right now. Since Musk takeover, we've had notable public figures leave Twitter. Some of those have included Whoopi Goldberg, Shonda Rhimes, Tony Braxton, and recently the New Yorker writer, Jelani Cobb. A few weeks ago, Black Twitter, we had kind of a hilarious "funeral' for the platform. We were asking each other what we were going wear to the home going, who is bringing what food to Twitter? It is the casket who did the body, stuff like that, which was hilarious. But I think representative of the enormousness, the kind of a really big hole that would remain if Twitter and Black Twitter along with it were to not be here anymore. The humor, I think is what we loved about Black Twitter. And I'm just curious, maybe personally for you, what do you feel like you would mourn if Black Twitter were to not be a thing?

Farai Chideya:

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, in some ways I'm already mourning not just Black Twitter, but also there's... I won't name this person because the reason that they restricted their account was not to be as public anymore. But a person from disability Twitter just locked her account and I'm on it, but I wanted to retweet something and I couldn't, was like, "What's happening?" And then I was like, "Oh, what's happening is that she's locked her account and I will miss the ability to be part of the flow of information and to retweet people who don't even leave the platform, but who are taking a step back from being on the front lines."

Karen Attiah:

So to that end, in terms of the choice to restrict or the choice to leave, Farai, are you staying? Are you going?

Farai Chideya:

I'm a 100% staying and I'm keeping my profile public, but what I'm doing is I'm basically sweeping my account every two to four weeks and deleting my tweet history.

Karen Attiah:

Okay.

Farai Chideya:

It's not that, I mean, basically a lot of different people archive tweets and fun fact among the people who archive tweets are foreign agents from places like Russia and China that look at political speech to try to manipulate it and do disinformation. So I probably have a little bit of a Twitter archive internationally as well as domestic extremists. So let's just be real about what this is. You are putting yourself out there on the digital corner when you post, but just as a matter of practice, I'm trying to do a little more hygiene, but I'm staying.

Karen Attiah:

Okay. I'm curious about this question. And I actually...

Farai Chideya:

I also saw your article, 'Why I'm Not Leaving Twitter.'

Karen Attiah:

I'm going.

Farai Chideya:

Karen Attiah, Washington Post.

Karen Attiah:

Yeah, man. I mean, I wrote that because I was having a lot of conversations with both Black folk and white folk. I noticed very anecdotally that a lot of my white liberal friends were freaking out about Elon Musk taking over the platform. They were like, "This is about to be a cesspool of racism and conspiracy theories and misogyny, and we can't take it. We're going to go flee and find somewhere else." And for me, anybody who's followed my career over the last few years knows that I have gotten my fair share of abuse, of racism, of sexism, of literal governments coming after me on Twitter. And as we mentioned before, Black women were more likely to get abused. And yet I want to stay, I guess, because first of all, I'm like, my friends are still here, my community is still here. That's what I care more about and about reaching people here.

And I also, maybe for better or worse, just being used to operating in hostile environments in the real world, really. And having to navigate, having to think about modulating behavior, speech, just navigating difficult spaces. So to me, I'm like, we've been doing this. It might get really difficult, but this is an extremely powerful tool, particularly for Black women that we've seen over the last decade or so. And the idea that we would abandon a powerful tool, yes, it's a tool for extremists and terrorists and all of that, but it's a powerful tool for us. And I just believe that any tool we have that can use for our own power, we should retain. That's how I feel about it. So to close that, Professor Jackson, are you going or are you staying on Twitter?

Sarah J. Jackson:

For now, I am staying for many of the reasons that you just outlined. I think when we have built so much of the good things about a place we can hold the reality that there are bad things about the place. But also it's really hard to leave that very real community and very real potential that Black folks have built on the website. And I have great respect and admiration for many of the people who have chosen to leave, and I understand why. But I'm very skeptical that this sort of community that we had can be created elsewhere, at least at the moment. And that isn't to say that we won't figure it out later, but for now, I feel like I want to see what happens. However, I will say that I did lock my account. It was always public before, but I did lock it a few weeks ago. And I am tweeting less because I am nervous about what's happening. And so, I think I'm one of the case and points of people who are using it differently, but are still reticent to go.

Karen Attiah:

I hear you. But the point is, we're still here and we're not going anywhere for now. All right. But for today, at least for this episode, we will have to wrap up. Thank you both. Thank you, Professor Jackson for joining today.

Sarah J. Jackson:

Thank you for having me. It's been great.

Karen Attiah:

And Farai, of course. Thank you so much for joining.

Farai Chideya:

Well, I am really looking forward to hearing even more Karen Attiah on Our Body Politic with you in what I call the bossy seat.

Karen Attiah:

The bossy seat. I like it.

Farai Chideya:

That was Sipping the Political Tea, led by Karen Attiah, show contributor, and Washington Post columnist with Sarah J. Jackson, University of Pennsylvania, Presidential Associate Professor, and me, Farai Chideya, the host and creator of Our Body Politic. Coming up next, we revisit a 2015 conversation from my old podcast, One With Farai on building financial literacy in the Black community and leading as a Black woman in finance. With Mellody Hobson, Co-CEO, and President of Ariel Investments, you are listening to Our Body Politic.

Welcome back to Our Body Politic, I'm Farai Chideya. Today, we're looking at making space for Black women. So we're revisiting a conversation I had in 2015 on my former podcast, One With Farai, with the Co-CEO and President of Ariel Investments. Mellody Hobson. Hobson has over 30 years of experience working at Ariel Investments, one of the most prominent African-American owned money management companies in the United States. Since I interviewed her, Hobson has broken even more barriers. She was named the first Black woman to head the Economic Club of Chicago in 2017, and the first Black woman to be a chairperson of an S&P 500 company when she became the vice chair at Starbucks in 2018. And then later, the chairwoman in 2021. And this year she became one of the first Black women to be part owner of an NFL team, just to name a few of her accomplishments. Let's take a listen back to how she got her start from my 2015 interview.

Mellody Hobson:

As a child, I was desperate to understand money, and that was a function of a roller coaster kind of life with money, where my mom was an entrepreneur and so special and so hardworking, but things didn't always work out. And that had consequences for us that were at times as a child, especially where you feel like you have no control, very destabilizing, and it could be everything from being evicted to getting our phone disconnected. And so, as a result of that, I was in search of security and understanding. So that's why I ended up in the financial services business. And that's why I feel this way that I feel about financial literacy in our society. I've said many times, my life's mission is to make the stock market a subject of dinner table conversation in the Black community. Because I want that awareness to be there so that we can have greater opportunity for financial success.

And regardless how you feel about the markets over the long term, the stock market has been the best overall investment since 1926. That doesn't mean there aren't going to be bad years or really bad years like 2008, but over the long term it's been the best place to be. But we have largely as a community, African-Americans, and to similar extent Hispanic-Americans have not participated in this to the same degree as our white counterparts, which has left us with less financial security, lower retirement accounts, lower total net worth.

Farai Chideya:

So I read an article with you, Mellody, where you talk about basically going to the funeral of John Johnson, the founder of Ebony and Jet, and having an epiphany about how you viewed yourself and how you operate in the world. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Mellody Hobson:

Well, this happened more than a decade ago, and I was sitting at his funeral, which was an amazing experience because he's a legend as an entrepreneur in our society, but certainly, as well in the African-American community. And there were a series of eulogies, and one of the people who gave a eulogy was Tom Joyner, who is a well-known disc jockey. He's known as the fly jock. And in talking about John Johnson, he said that he was unapologetically Black. And when he said it, it landed really hard for me. And I sat there in my own mind, mulling over what that meant and trying on what it meant for me.

And I thought about it and I said at that moment, I was going to shift and make a decision that I would no longer apologize consciously or unconsciously for who I was and that I wanted to be unapologetically Black and unapologetically a woman. I thought it was a bold statement that maybe some people don't see as being so G whiz, but it felt G whiz to me at that moment in time and where I was as a person and in my development, and it was just transformational as an idea. And I've held onto it ever since then.

Farai Chideya:

What did that mean in practical terms, in terms of how you dealt with business, how you dealt with relationship, how you dealt with family? How did that realization change you on a day-to-day basis or a year-to-year basis?

Mellody Hobson:

Well, I felt in some ways that I was trying to unconsciously be small. And what I mean by that is just not ruffle any feathers, not get overly noticed. And as a result of that, I was limiting the potential. Now, I say that and you listen to me and you say, "Well, you're not shrinking violet." But I just think of things that I did and said at the time. The example that I gave was after that happened, I was standing with a woman at a conference and she and I literally were talking about dresses and one of my colleagues walked up to us and she said, "Oh, I'm sorry, this conversation must be so boring to you." And I stopped her and I said, "No, we were having a conversation." He walked up to us. And how many times have we had conversations where guys stand and talk about sports that we may or may not be interested in? And they've never apologized to us for that. So why are you apologizing?

Farai Chideya:

Yeah, no, it's funny. I was just having this conversation with a friend of mine and talking about the ways in which I also know shrinking violet and in a very different world than you. But I know I love engaging in the world of ideas and I'm ambivalent about it. But in order to operate in that world, I have to also not be small. Sometimes I think women are trained and African-Americans and other people of color are trained that it is self-protective to not claim as much space as you can claim. Because you can frequently be disappointed when you try to claim that space.

Mellody Hobson:

Well, it's interesting and it's not to suggest in any way I'm trying to scream from the rafters, but I just noticed little things about myself, just very small things. And I decided that I would shift. I remember if I had my hair slicked, I would say, "Oh, I didn't get my hair done today." Like, who cares? Why am I saying this? Why do I feel that I have to say that to someone? What context or do I believe they're looking at me and looking for some answer? It's little things that ultimately you realize are like death by a 1,000 cuts of a person. But they were self-inflicted, not blaming the world and I am not a victim. It was just me taking ownership of who I was and am, and living in the world in a different way. Not threatening and not threatened.

Farai Chideya:

Yeah. Well, you've been talking out in Ted Talks, in your many speeches about the different issues that matter to you, whether it is financial security or whether it's race relations. How does your work at Ariel play into your desires to see people have financial security? I mean, you're someone who definitely has a mission-driven approach to the work that you do.

Mellody Hobson:

Well, it's interesting. I once heard Charles Schwab say at Schwab, they feel like they're curing cancer. And I was like, so do I, people have this lens or view of people like me who are in the investment business, who are big believers in capitalism and a capitalist society, which I am, with the social safety net and programs to of course protect those who can't. But I really do believe that. I wake up every day saying to myself, the work that I do lets people send their kids to college and lets them retire and lets endowments have more money to pay for educations.

Whatever it might be as it relates to the individual clients that we have, that are institutions or individuals or maybe someone's 401(k) plan that we're contributing to in terms of the investment performance that we generate that again, allows them to retire. So these are, in my mind, valuable and important efforts. But this vantage point from which I sit also and how I grew up, etc, also convinces me that financial security is worth pursuing for society and for individuals. And the less financially secure you are, the more likely you are to have a host of other problems. Not to mention the financial ones, but literally there's a direct correlation between financial health and physical health-

Farai Chideya:

Absolutely.

Mellody Hobson:

... as an example. So there's a whole host of issues that are embedded in this work that to me is, as you correctly assess my life's work that is about a better society. So I'm kind of all in on this issue. And a lot of the opportunity that I've seen is that my voice has been unique, not so much anymore, but certainly in the early days. And that Ariel as a company was so unique and being the first minority owned investment management firm to ever start. But in being out there and recognizing some of the differences that occur between the races when it comes to investing, allows me to call out issues that hopefully can cause particularly minority investors to shift so that we can rise up to the same level of investment as our white counterparts.

Farai Chideya:

You are listening to Our Body Politic, I'm Farai Chideya. We're listening to a 2015 conversation from my former podcast, One With Farai, with the Co-CEO and President of Ariel Investments, Mellody Hobson. One of the things that I've been looking at and studying is wealth discrepancies between the races. And right now, African-American families have one 13th of the wealth of white families. That gap got as small as six times the factor versus 13 times the factor during the later part of the Clinton years. And do you think that we have the ability to reverse this trend of kind of moving further apart in the racial wealth gap?

Mellody Hobson:

Well, I love that one Obama quote. "There's never been anything false about hope." I always have hope, and I'm actually a big believer that America solves its problems. That's one of the things that Warren Buffett, the great investor, always says, 'America solves its problems.' So if you come the world through that lens, which I do, I actually think anything's possible. But I do think it requires a conscious effort. And I do also think it requires a tremendous amount of education. But I think these things are possible. I mean, at just a basic level, we should have financial instruction in schools.

I'm not talking consumer economics on you know how to write a check or pay a light bill. I'm talking understanding what is the Dao, the Nasdaq, and the S&P, what is the difference between a stock and bond? These kind of questions that ultimately knowing them could make a huge difference in an individual's life change. The dynamics of their ability to pass on wealth, change the dynamics of their ability to retire comfortably, understanding the power of compound interest. These are things that should be taught and we actually have the ability to do that. This is not so radical as an idea, but it's radical in its execution.

Farai Chideya:

You also serve in many different ways. I want to talk about corporate board service, which is very different, but also community outreach and with Afterschool Matters and other ways of reaching young people. What do you do with afterschool matters, and why does that organization matter to you?

Mellody Hobson:

Afterschool matters is a program that was started by Maggie Daley, who was first Lady of Chicago, married to our mayor, Mayor Daley, Richard Daley, who was mayor for 21 years in Chicago. She started a program from scratch and basically had this idea that she would create afterschool opportunities for Chicago's public school kids and paid them to come. And it was actually a brilliant idea, and it's two decades long in terms of its program history, but we now provide 22,000 unique afterschool opportunities and summer jobs over the course of a year. And the one thing about these teens, I always joke that it's like when you see them in these programs with 600 programs and they can take everything from opera to hip hop dance instruction to ballet with Joffrey, they can paint, they can do mosaics, they can do animation, they can do ceramics, they can do horticulture.

I mean, I could farm to table, I could go on and on and on. She wanted whatever interest they had for there to be an opportunity to pursue that interest. And that's what we've done. And when you go and visit these programs or see these students, it's like teens get a bad rap in our society. And yet it's just the opposite. It's like this happy place. And you meet these teens who have overcome extraordinarily obstacles. I mean, I've had my issues, but they pale in comparison to some of the stories that I've heard from our teens of teens, literally being homeless, their parents evicting them, the parents who are drug abusers. I mean, I could go on and on and on. And yet they have these dazzling smiles and this amazing spirit.

And so, it's one of these programs that is deeply successful in changing lives, but where I feel a deep connection, I'm the first chairman other than Maggie Daley, who passed away a few years ago. She was the chair the whole time. And I said, "I think let Maggie left after school matters to me because she knew I would feel so strongly about these teens and consider this another aspect of my life's work." So it's been an exciting program to be a part of, and every day we'd get to see amazing things happen.

Farai Chideya:

I want to ask you a couple quick questions about your personal life. You, for many years, were the partner of, and now are the wife of George Lucas. Were you a Star Wars fan before you met him?

Mellody Hobson:

Isn't everyone?

Farai Chideya:

Oh, that's a political answer.

Mellody Hobson:

I know, I was. I have told George, I think Star Wars was the first movie I ever saw in my life in a movie theater.

Farai Chideya:

Oh my gosh, that's so funny. Because I remember as a kid, I was a huge fan and my family went, we were Gaga over it. And then later we brought a kid who was one of my friends and she was just bored out of her mind. She just couldn't relate.

Mellody Hobson:

Oh no, I had a crush on Lando Calrissian.

Farai Chideya:

Oh yes, Billy Dee.

Mellody Hobson:

I thought he was just like the greatest thing.

Farai Chideya:

The bees knees. Absolutely. And so, now you have a child together. You had been co-parenting some of his children, but you have a baby, a young girl together. How has that changed how you think about your life's work since you are a very mission driven person?

Mellody Hobson:

It's actually made me more committed to it. I wake up every day thinking that I want my daughter to be proud of me. I want her to look back and say that I was proud of my mother, that I did all these things with intention and presence and energy. And that she not only has that as a role model, but feels good about it. So I think people always talk about being proud of their children, and I see it actually the other way. I want her to be proud of me. So it's been a gift. I mean, people always talk about it. You don't understand it until you're going through it. But it's been a wonderful thing and it's been wonderful to see learnings through the eyes of a child. And it's actually given me a lot more perspective, I think, and more capacity for empathy and for love.

Farai Chideya:

That's beautiful. Just quickly, one thing that I didn't talk about in your business life is that you're on these amazing boards, including Starbucks, and something that has been an issue in American business is that there are just not that many women on power boards or even not powerful boards. So how do you begin to change the game with that? I mean, I think, let's say your daughter goes into finance and she wants to do something like what you're doing. How do we change the game with corporate boards and women?

Mellody Hobson:

Well, we've done it by, we've started an organization called the Black Corporate Directors Conference. We do a conference every year with Russell Reynolds and Deloitte as our co-sponsors. And we convene all the Fortune 500 Black directors because this isn't just a woman issue, it's a diversity issue in terms of race and gender. And in both situations, we have a long road ahead of us. So in convening these directors, we've actually created a call to action, which we call the three Ps, where we're asking companies to really measure themselves on people across all levels of the organization. Purchasing, do they do business with minority community? And philanthropy, where do the philanthropic dollars go? Do they go to civil rights organizations, diverse organizations, etc? And if we can start there, we can change the paradigm and the conversation inside of the boardroom. So that's been my contribution and we are now, I think 13 or 14 years in this work and it's been remarkable. And we've seen changes happen, not fast enough, but at least we're not, as we like to say it, Ariel admiring the problem. We're trying to do something about it.

Farai Chideya:

That was Co-CEO and President of Ariel Investments, Mellody Hobson, talking to me in 2015 on my former podcast, One With Farai. Thanks for listening to Our Body Politic. We're on the air each week and everywhere you listen to podcast. Our Body Politic is produced by Diaspora Farms. I'm hosting executive producer for Farai Chideya. Jonathan Blakely is our executive producer. Nina Spensley is also executive producer. Emily J. Daly is our senior producer, Bridget McAllister and Tracy Caldwell are our booking producers. Steve Lack and Anoa Changa are our producers, Natyna Bean and Emily Ho are our associate producers. Kelsey Kudak is our fact checker. Production and editing services are by Clean Cuts at Three Seas.

Today's episode was produced with the help of Lauren Schild and engineered by Archie Moore. Devin Robins produced the One With Farai interview with Mellody Hobson. This program is produced with support from the Ford Foundation, Craig Newmark Philanthropies, the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Philanthropies, Democracy Fund, the Hamisch Foundation, Compton Foundation, the Heising-Simons Foundation, the BMe Community, Katie McGrath and J.J Abrams Family Foundation, and from generous contributions from listeners like you.