This is the opening to The Good Men Project’s weekly Friday Call with the Publisher. This call was held on Friday June 18th, with Publisher Lisa Hickey.
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Lisa Hickey: Let me start by saying Happy Juneteenth!
I remember the call on Juneteenth last year (it’s not exactly Juneteenth today, it’s tomorrow). A little over a year ago, I had only recently even heard about Juneteenth. And we had a great discussion of how black people had been celebrating the holiday for years.
And here we are a year later. It is now a national holiday. The co-working space where Good Men Project has its office is closed. Most people I know have the day off from work. It’s a new thing, and people are excited about it.
Now — before you think I am putting TOO much importance on this — I understand that simply acknowledging Juneteenth is not directly solving racism or making up for both past and present harms. I understand it is coming at a time when we are ALSO banning critical race theory in schools — a step that would probably be way more important than making Juneteenth a holiday.
On Thaddeus Howze’s FB timeline today was this meme:
“Banning the teaching of systemic racism, Is actually a perfect example of SYSTEMIC RACISM.”
Bingo. So I understand it is one of the smallest possible actions we can take. And I also hate — absolutely hate — the idea that oppressed people should feel “gratitude” for these little bits of progress. I want to be really clear about that.
But let’s talk about what the celebration of Juneteenth DOES do. It helps change the culture to normalize the awareness of racism. Racism is deeply embedded in American culture. Racism itself has been normalized. So changing the culture needs to be done before racism will truly be solved. Racism needs to come out of the culture and be replaced with anti-racism. Anti-racism needs to be everywhere. In all of our institutions that are currently racist — across government and educational institutions and financial ones. Anti racism needs to show up in movies and books and tv shows sports. Anti-racism needs to be baked into our culture.
And making Juneteeth a national holiday is one small piece of that baking process. It’s like adding a pinch of salt to a recipe. Whether or not that one thing is a game-changer remains to be seen. But think about how a cake works — it’s adding all the ingredients together, combining them so they form a new system (cake batter) PLUS adding heat and time. You can’t bake a cake without all of those steps. You can’t solve racism without changing everything. And that means down to changing whose picture is on the $20 bill. Awareness of racism — and steps to combatting it — need to be a normal part of our culture. The other thing that celebrating Juneteeth does is create awareness among people who are actively anti-racist that this is the future. I don’t know how many people agree that if someone is overtly racist, you can’t argue with them. You can’t convince them NOT to be racist. But you CAN hand them a $20 bill, tell them not to come into work and enjoy the holiday. You can force them to see anti-racist work everywhere they go.
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Moving out to some slightly broader topics. You know that the Good Men Project is a conversation about the changing roles of men in the 21st century — and that our overall mission is a more equal, more inclusive world for all.
So I would be remiss if I didn’t ALSO say “Happy Father’s Day!” to everyone. Father’s Day is actually one of the days of the year where we get the most traffic. We publish content about fathers and father’s day — the good, the bad and the ugly — all day long. We look at people who have fathers, are fathers, and the roles that fathers play and how those roles are changing.
I also want to mention how much the issues we talk about on The Good Men Project are being talked about in mainstream media on an ongoing basis. Just today, for example, (June 18th, 2021) in The New York Times, were the following headlines:
- One story — right at the top — about Climate change
- 2 stories about LGBTQ rights, including one about bisexuality
- One about Juneteenth
- One about a police shooting in Hawaii where an officer was charged with murder and 2 others with attempted murder
- One story about a school in California apologizing for past sexual abuse
- One story in arts & entertainment talking about art by an enslaved African American setting auction records being prominently displayed in museums.
- Colleges and Universities are seeing their lowest enrollment in a decade, and there is what is being dubbed “the great resignation” as employees start to realize just how important quality of life is when compared to making your life all about your job.
At the Good Men Project — we’ve been talking about these issues and topics for years. And for years I would scan the NYTimes headlines and look for patterns, and how deep an understanding of the changing roles of men and systemic oppression was being discussed in mainstream media. But it only has been recently that I see the same topics we are talking about on Good Men Project every day.
One final example. Recent studies show that a Universal Basic Income of $1,000 a month could grow the economy by 12.6% in only 8 years. cash from UBI would stay local and reimagine the economy from the middle instead of a failed top-down approach. And I can remember just a few years ago this was seen as an extremist solution, one that was barely worth talking about because it seemed so far-fetched. And yet here it is in regular conversation.
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Every day at the Good Men Project we try to help build a more inclusive and more equal world for everyone. The things I just talked about are ways we are doing all that. But we couldn’t do it without all of you. So thank you!
We’re going to open it up to our audience now.
Please listen to the recording to hear the entire call.
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