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The Current Transcript for June 7, 2018

Host: Mike Finnerty

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

All I want is a place to live to a place where they can live without fear where their family work and live. People have the right to find a place for the family to be safe.

MIKE FINNERTY: The migrants at the center of public debate in the United States. They're fleeing because they feel it's their best option. More Mexicans now return to Mexico than migrate to the U.S. but the situation is bleak in what's called the Central American Northern Triangle. In a moment, stories from there and what kind of change might turn things around. Then, the open office. It can be annoying.

SOUNDCLIP

[Sound: Paper rustles]

VOICE 1: What are you doing? What are you doing?

VOICE 2: Clearing my desk I can't concentrate.

VOICE 1: It's not on your desk.

VOICE 2: It's overlapping. It's all spilling over the edge. One word. Two syllables. Demarcation.

MF: In half an hour we speak with a woman who spent three years watching the teams move to an open office. She found the impact on women was marked and pernicious. Also today, Facing Race.

SOUNDCLIP

The stump is now closed. We don't know if it's been close properly. We don't know what's seeping into the ground. It's in our community and it's not in the other community.

MF: Environmental racism in Halifax. That's in an hour. I am Mike Finnerty. Welcome to the summer edition of The Current.

Why migrants are desperate to flee Central America to cross U.S. border

Guests: Sofia Martinez, Matt Rooney

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: San Pedro Sula continues to be a city with high levels of violence. Up until now 116 miners have died when your kid leaves for school. You don't know if he's coming home.

VOICE 2: My son was a very loving person. Everyone in the neighborhood loved him. He was very dedicated to God. He was very dedicated to serving God, to his studies, to his family. They killed my son. At 3pm he left for a nearby neighborhood called Dos Caminos. He was missing until the next day when they found him dead. It looked like a very painful death because he was tortured. He was beaten to death.

MF: We've seen the images of thousands of migrants making the way to the U.S. southern border from Central America. But it's their stories like the stories those two Honduran men shared with Vice Media that make it so clear why so many continue to risk their lives, leaving everything behind, for a chance at a new life in the United States. Tales of violence in the Northern Triangle countries of Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala also help to explain why the Trump administration's zero tolerance policy for would be migrants will not, in most observers opinions, be enough to stop people from coming. Sofia Martinez is a Central America analyst for the International Crisis Group. It's an independent non-profit that works on conflict prevention and resolution and we've reached her in Guatemala City. Sofia hello.

SOPHI AMARTINEZ: Good morning. How are you?

MF: I'm well thanks very much. Could you paint more of a picture of what's at the root of that kind of horrible violence we just heard about?

SOPHI AMARTINEZ: Yes. I mean what we see right now is that the types of migrants are changing. After the internal armed conflicts in Guatemala and [unintelligible] the kind of migrant that we saw was the economic migrant, was someone; a male migrant, in the 20s or 30s that was coming to the U.S. to try to send a couple hundred dollars back home. What we feel now who is arriving at the U.S. southern border; it’s newborns, it's pregnant woman, it's kids from two years old. So these are not the type of economic migrants that we've seen previously but people that are fleeing life or death situations. So at the end of the day it's not people that are trained to the U.S. to pursue the American dream but really to escape from what it would be a very complicated situation for their lives and their loved ones.

MF: These are three different countries in what we call the Northern Triangle. And you know slightly different in terms of the types of challenges that they face. I wonder if you could briefly break that down for us and can we start with Guatemala where you are?

SOPHI AMARTINEZ: Yes absolutely. And I think it's very difficult to differentiate from country to country because as you are saying it is a different kind of challenges that each country faces. What we see is that here in Guatemala most people that are attempting to get to the United States or Mexico, they flee for economic reasons; poverty here social inequality levels are really high. So these are more the kind of problems that we see for Honduran migrants. On the contrary in places like El Salvador and Honduras it is more related to criminal violence. Al-Salvador for example is the country that suffers the highest level of gang violence. We see groups like the MS13 and the two factions of the X-18th Street gang that have literally taken control over most rural and urban territories. For example they have established checkpoints and roadblocks on the entrance of their neighborhoods and they extort businesses on a daily basis to get funds for their illicit activities. In Honduras, on top of the gang violence you also have levels of drug trafficking. Honduras is still a major country in the regional drug trafficking routes towards the United States. Approximately 90 percent of the drugs that arrive to North America pass through either Guatemala or Honduras. And you also have in Honduras high levels of political instability. After the November 2017 there was a huge crisis over the electoral process and since then the country has been in a political statement. So at the end you have three things here: economic constraints, criminal violence and politically related issues and this is where the solution should be, should be coming from to address the root causes of these forced migration.

MF: What's allowed gangs really to take root in Central America and those countries?

SOPHI AMARTINEZ: I think it's a mix of things. It is important to take into account that gang violence that was born phenomenon. Gangs are born in the streets of Los Angeles in the 90s or so. And because of a 1996 legislation many of the conflicts that had been born in Central America that were gang members were deported to Central America, and they were deported at a time when these countries were really war torn state. They were trying to exit from the- we're in the middle of the post conflict. So they found really a good route for expansion and if you mix that with institutions that are where weak, institutions that were in the process of being rebuild after the war, that's where you get why gangs have expanded. Also the policies that over the past 15 years. Central American countries have tried to combat gangs have been counterproductive because what have these have done is that they have made gangs more strength. They have allowed gangs strict spend more in their churches because of this - what we call [unintelligible] our Iron fist policy. It really is only looking at the law enforcement angle. But because of these are much more complex phenomenons, gangs are also a social phenomenon [unintelligible]. Approximately 8 percent of the local population is indirectly related somehow to gangs. You need to look for more alternative ways to tackle these criminal threat.

MF: So how pervasive for instance in El Salvador is gang life? I mean if for an average family that wants to actually stay away from the gangs, how possible is that?

SOPHI AMARTINEZ: It is very difficult because kids from 12 years old on are being targeted to be recruited by the gang. I've interviewed families in Honduras and El Salvador that have kids that have turned 11 or 12 and they're telling me that they're scared that their kids go out to play in the street because it's quite likely that they'll get a call from a gang or again will try to give them some kind of present. I mean these kids are really poor so for example they could give him like expensive sportswear or something to it as an incentive to join the gang. For women it's even more more complicated because there are also female gang members. But it's very common that in places like Honduras and El Salvador young girls are become sexual slaves of the gangs. I talked to a woman who told me a story about a family whose girl was around 12 or 13 years old. A gang leader knocked on their door one day and said I want your girl to become a sex slave, right. So he went every night took the girl, take her to his home and return it to the family every single day for two years. I mean these are the kind of stories that Central American families are leaving behind. These are stories that qualify according to UNHCR for refugee status. So we really need to change the mindset of what are the types of things that people are escaping from.

MF: Who's pushing back against the gangs?

SOPHI AMARTINEZ: What do you mean like the government?

MF: I mean anyone, actually. I mean how do you push back and is anyone successfully doing it?

SOPHI AMARTINEZ: It is very very complicated because I mean gangs are not guerrillas. Gangs are not the typical you know armed group that you have in mind. These are completely new phenomenon. Even for the local governments, it's hard for them to fight them. And in interviews with government officials in El Salvador they're telling me you know what 'We're so lost because this phenomenon has grown so much that we really feel that we're fighting a war that we cannot win'. So as I was saying before purely law enforcement efforts don't really have an impact. What you really need to think is that more alternative efforts to tackle gangs. I think that a very successful model for doing that is launching rehabilitation programs. Many people are born in a gang controlled community and don't have really much choice and then joining it. So they end up their early 20s in jail with really a perspective of life that's really complicated. And the government doesn't even invest in alternatives for people that are gang members that don't want to continue their criminal life and they say 'I want to exit. I want to be part of society'. And we don't see these kinds of programs and it would have really very much a big impact in trying to offer alternatives to exit criminal life.

MF: For El Salvadorans who are currently in the United States they currently have temporary protected status. That's following the earthquake back in 21, but that is set to expire next year as it has done for many other nationalities. What kind of impact do you think that might have?

SOPHI AMARTINEZ: We're very worried not just for TPS holders but also for the children. Approximately, there's 200,000 TPS holders for [unintelligible] but there is to have 245,000 kids from these people. Imagine what's going to happen to these kids when they come back to their home countries. And they are, again if they're teenagers or so, they will likely be recruited by gang. Families that want to start a business in southern Honduras; it's quite likely that they will be forced to pay extortion if they want to start their business in the console area. So these are the kind of threats that we see coming and at the end of the day what's going to create is a really never ending cycle of deportations. The Trump administration deports people to Central America where conditions are extremely complicated both economically and security. These people sometimes don't have much chance that leading again, they arrive to the EU's border and then the administration is going to deport them again. So there needs to be a way to break the cycle.

MF: I feel it's a pretty bleak portrait you've just painted.

SOPHI AMARTINEZ: Yes exactly. And that's why we encourage, not just Central America and the U.S., but really the region as a whole to take responsibility because Mexico for example is already suffering a lot of the consequences of this humanitarian crisis in Central America, Costa Rica Panama. So it really needs to be a regional response to make sure that in the long term these people don't have these kind of reasons to flee.

MF: Sofia, it's nice to talk to you. Thank you for your time.

SOPHI AMARTINEZ: No problem. Thanks to you. Have a good day too.

MF: Sofia Martinez is Central America analyst for the International Crisis Group. She was in Guatemala City. Beyond crime and insecurity what many migrants are trying to escape is poverty.

SOUNDCLIP

We as Central Americans want to be here in this country because in our own country there isn't enough of an economy. We make five dollars a day over there so we just can't feed our families adequately. So we have to immigrate to this country.

MF: Mynor Danièl Ichun Ichun is one of tens of thousands of migrants who arrived in southern Texas so far this year. And he came from Guatemala with his 17 year old son. They were headed for Minnesota. The question of how to address the poverty people such as Mynor are fleeing is something our next guest has been thinking about a lot. Matt Rooney is the director of the economic growth initiative with the George W. Bush Institute and he's in Dallas. Hello.

MATT ROONEY: Good morning Mike, how are you?

MF: I'm good. Thanks very much. How bad are the economic problems that Mynor is fleeing with his son?

MATT ROONEY: There's no doubt that the economic situation in those countries is tenuous. I think it's important to keep in mind how hard they have tried over the last 15 or 20 years since the end of the civil conflicts to put their economies on a better growth track, and they've made significant efforts to restructure and streamline their economy and make those economies work more efficiently. And they've actually made quite a lot of progress. But it is also true that that progress hasn't lifted everyone out of poverty and that there is a lack of opportunity particularly at the lower end of the scale.

MF: So what's driving that? What's driving the economic problems that are the root of the migration?

MATT ROONEY: Oh that's a tough question and it is a complex answer I'm afraid. I think there's a couple of factors. One is there is a vicious cycle taking place where the gang violence, which has as your previous guest mentioned reached the point where it is actually a challenge to the sovereignty of the state. And that is a deterrent to investment and therefore investment doesn't come, jobs aren't created. And that again feeds the gang problem because young people coming out of school don't see opportunities for themselves except to join the gang. So that is a serious problem and a cycle that needs to be broken. How to break it is a complex problem. I think part of the answer is the regional economic integration process that has been underway in Central America for a number of years. Those economies are small and if they could make themselves bigger by regionally integrating they'll be economies of scale. There'll be more attractive as an investment location. There will be greater opportunity so there is there is certainly that kind of answer to the problem. But I do think that breaking that cycle and making sure that the economy is ready to offer opportunity as the security situation resolves itself is one of the keys to the problem.

MF: Does the United States bear some responsibility for the conditions that migrants are fleeing?

MATT ROONEY: I think there's no question that that we do. As your previous guest mentioned the gang problem was actually incubated in the United States and was only transferred to Central America when the United States began deporting non-American citizens, people who had committed crimes and had completed their sentences in the United States that began to happen in kind of a large way about 15 years ago. And that that kind of transplanted the gangs to Central America. Also I think we have to be candid about the fact that the United States the 1980s had fairly clear views about how the civil conflicts in those countries ought to come out. And so the United States played a role in that as well. So I think we do have a level of responsibility for trying to work with those governments and work with those people to sort out the situation. I also think that the United States has acknowledged that responsibility. Certainly since the end of the civil conflicts the United States has been present in those countries with different kinds of assistance designed to reignite the economy, designed to help with infrastructure and address the problems that we all agree exist there. And since the kind of migrant crisis began, with the first wave of unaccompanied minors in 2014, United States - together with the Inter-American Development Bank and the three Northern Triangle governments - came together and encouraged the Northern Triangle governments to come up with a regional strategy. That strategy is in place. It's called the Alliance for Prosperity and it presents really an attempt at a comprehensive regional solution to the economic integration process to the Economic Opportunity problem and also to the gang and security problem.

MF: One of our producers was in South Texas last week and talked to Sergio Sanchez who hosts the local morning show on KURV in McAllen. Have a listen to this.

SOUNDCLIP

We need to point the finger of blame back at the corrupt, inept, willfully inept, willfully corrupt; governments of Central America, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras that are not providing safety and security for their people.

MF: Sergio also said that these Central American countries, the ones we've been talking about, don't deserve foreign aid, in his view, because of all that corruption and incompetence. What do you say to that?

MATT ROONEY: I think that we have to be practical about the problem that we face and we can make judgments about those governments and refuse to help them. And the problem will wash up on our shores.

MF: But they are corrupt, aren't they? I mean it's not just a judgment. I mean there's a real problem with corruption.

MATT ROONEY: Oh certainly there's no question about that. And so I think in general as we do these things we try very hard to wall off our programs of assistance from that. For example we generally don't transfer money to those governments. We provide the various kinds of assistance that we provide in kind. And so there is certainly an awareness of that and absolutely no illusions about the level of corruption that exists in those countries. I think the key point to me though is where do you want to deal with the problem. You want to deal with it in Central America or do you want to deal with it in South Texas. I'd rather deal with it in Central America.

MF: So what can - I'm going to say we do and not just the United States but also Mexico and Canada - What was the way out?

MATT ROONEY: Yes. So you know the Central Americans have done actually a great job of trying to lay the foundations for a regionally integrated economy that will, as I said earlier, have this kind of scale that is more attractive to foreign investment. I think there is a lot that still needs to be done there. Some of it is at a very granular level you know how what forms do you have to fill out the border, and some of it is that more of a policy level. And I think I think the key, the ultimate key, to breaking the cycle of violence is to have those governments generate the political will that it takes to make those tough decisions, to integrate their economies with one another and to make themselves into a place where both domestic and foreign investment will create jobs.

MF: I was going to ask you when you see that happening, because the problem is urgent.

MATT ROONEY: It is urgent. The Bush Institute here in Dallas which your listeners may not be aware of is the Think and Do tank founded by President George W. Bush when he left the White House in 2009. We have a range of programs of different kinds around the world to do different things. We've spent a lot of time and attention in the last three years on NAFTA and on the economic integration process that's taking place in North America. We are preparing in the second half of this year to launch a policy development process, in cooperation with leaders, thought leaders, younger and more established thought leaders from the three Central American countries where we are going to actually try to catalyze a network around, an agreed strategy for economic policy reform that we hope will help to break the cycle.

MF: Okay, we will have to leave it there and Matt. Thanks very much for your time appreciate it.

MATT ROONEY: Thank you sir.

MF: Matt Rooney is director of the Economic Growth Initiative with the George W. Bush Institute and he was in Dallas. I'm Mike Finnerty and you're listening to the summer edition of The Current. We delve into the open office in our next half hour.

[Music: Theme]

Open-plan offices leave women subject to sexism at work, research suggests

Guests: Alison Hirst, Elizabeth Von Lehe, John Brown

MF: Hello I'm Mike Finnerty. And you're listening to the summer edition of The Current.

[Music: Theme]

MF: Still to come; this past season the cry went on the road for a series of town hall programs on a topic that can be difficult to talk about. Our series Facing Race took in racism in Canada today, including in places you might not expected like the choice of where to situated dump in a predominantly African Canadian part of Halifax. And coming up at half an hour we will bring you back conversation Facing Race. First if you're listening to this in an open office environment then let's hope you're wearing your headphones.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: So there is such a thing as an office, then.

VOICE 2: No sadly not, no door.

VOICE 1: Looks pretty much like an office to me.

VOICE 2: What it is technically is an interactive space.

VOICE 1: Right. Is it?

VOICE 2: If anyone was interested.

VOICE 1: Right. Well I suppose we would better do some interaction quick, then.

MF: A subtle dig there at Open Concept officers from the BBC show W1A. And if you spent any time toiling in an opposite environment in the past - oh, decade or so - then you may harbour your own bitter feelings for the ubiquitous open office layout. Meant to replace the depressing cubicle Mirer with something that would increase interaction communication and productivity by breaking down walls and doors, the open concept trend shows no signs of abating. But the downsides are familiar and well documented. From having your every home phone call overheard by colleagues to having your lunchtime meals become a fun topic for group discussion. Alison Hirst knows the Open Office scape well. She and a colleague spent three years studying what happened when some 1100 employees moved from a traditional government office in the UK to a new open concept space. One of the big takeaways from her research is that all that openness can inadvertently lead to a subtle form of sexism. Alison Hirst as the director of postgraduate research at the Business School of Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge. And that's where we reached her. Hello.

ALISON HIRST: Hello.

MF: What made you want to research a government office's move from a traditional to an open plan design?

ALISON HIRST: Because at the time in the late 2000s in the UK there was a great wave of introducing workspaces, exactly like the ones that you just described, with specific aims for changing work practices and making organisations less bureaucratic, more based on face to face conversation and consequently swifter decision making, more creative, more outward facing. The idea being to inspire and energize employees to just basically get rid of their bureaucratic red tape and behave very differently while they were at work. So the interest was to find out to what extent those aims were realised. And always with any management intervention there are always unintended consequences too, so to look at what they wear as well.

MF: So did you go into it with assumptions?

ALISON HIRST: One thing that I did not assume that there would be any gender differences. Partly because as a public sector organisation it was a place that was generally at the forefront of believing in and acting out equality. So there will be women at all levels in the organisation. It didn't look like there was going to be a problem so I didn't really go looking for one.

MF: Okay and before we come to what you did observe Can you explain to us how it was you immersed yourself into the office?

ALISON HIRST: It's an anthropological research method when the researcher basically joins in and experiences the daily life of the place. So in this case it was using the office to do my research, meeting people, having lunch, attending meetings trying to find out what the unwritten rules of using the place were and you know to what extent the aims of the new building were realised.

MF: So how did it emerge in your observations and in your interviews that there was what you call a subtle sexism?

ALISON HIRST: I found that women started to tell me about their experiences of being visible. The visibility of the building was a major difference between it and the sort of office accommodation that people had moved from. So they actually raised it and I also noticed, myself, that I was taking a lot of care over my own appearance.

MF: Just before you go on, what were you changing? What did they tell you they were changing?

ALISON HIRST: They were more aware of the possibility of being observed at any time and any place in the building. The most common response to that was taking a great deal more care than previously over their appearance. So spending lots of money on clothes and dressing in a way that expressed their status. So one person said to me for example 'well I used to wear jeans. We do not wear jeans here'.

MF: And you felt yourself as well being sort of sucked into that.

ALISON HIRST: Yes and I didn't notice it at first. I was very excited to do this field work. It's a sort of method that suits a nosy person and I'm a nosy person so it was very exciting for me to just go nose around this organisation find out how it worked. And I just began to notice as time went on. Oh goodness. Actually there is something about this that is rather wearisome and tiring and it was because I had to be more immaculate than I've ever had to be before. I'm not a person that takes a great deal of trouble over my appearance but to fit in and be inconspicuous in this building, one had to be smart.

MF: So what sort of changes were you making? Give us some specific examples of things that you changed, things that you bought perhaps.

ALISON HIRST: I borrowed. I borrowed a very expensive Joseph suit Joseph being a designer label which I wore. I applied make up which I don’t often bother with. I ironed a shirt. It’s something that I wouldn’t- I’m a jeans and T-shirt sort of person but I would have stood out in the wrong way had I turned up to the building and dressed like that.

MF: Having done that what did it change?

ALISON HIRST: It enabled me to fit in. I knew that I could stand up to inspection if necessary. One day I bumped into the chief executive and the head of the council just out of the blue. Fortunately I was dressed like this and I felt a sense of relief.

MF: Your interview subjects, what did they say on this topic?

ALISON HIRST: They responded in various ways. I mean that was the most common response to say 'I am now very conscious that I can be seen whenever I'm in the building'. 'The toilet is the only place where you cannot be seen. So I have to now take more care over my appearance'. Some people dressed up if they were of a seniors status because, for example, there was a kind of uniform emerge. So a jacket said manager and a cardigan said somebody of lower status. The second thing that they said that was the difficulty of not having anywhere to retreat to if something had gone wrong. In this sort of building is fantastic. If you’re feeling good you can stride about all day showing off feeling good but if anything has gone wrong or if you’re upset about anything then its a hard place to be. So returning to work from a bereavement or having a bad appraisal, something going wrong in the course of the work. Then there’s there’s nowhere that you can’t be seen apart from the toilet and you can be seen by a lot of people so it is hard going.

MF: Now how much of all of this is true as well for the men?

ALISON HIRST: Certainly the bad appraisal situation, the returning to work from sick leave, that would be difficult for men too. None of the men that I spoke to told me that they had made any difference in terms of the way that they presented themselves. And there was also one example of quite bad behaviour that I heard about which was a group of men ranking female job applicants as they came in for interviews. And I didn't hear any of the kind of reverse example of that.

MF: Ranking them how?

ALISON HIRST: For their attractiveness.

MF: What? Like giving them marks?

ALISON HIRST: Marks out of 10.

MF: And you say that they didn't change their wardrobe. That wasn't happening with the men?

ALISON HIRST: No they just said - because I would start to ask them. I began to incorporate questions about dress and whether their visibility had made any difference to them and they said 'no I'm just wearing this fairly boring suit'.

MF: Were there any women who were fired it was a better work environment?

ALISON HIRST: Yes there were yes.

MF: Why?

ALISON HIRST: Because some people's jobs were all about networking. For them provided that they dressed appropriately, looked after their appearance, it did help them to do that because people are accessible in this sort of very open environment.

MF: And in terms of sexism, because one of the problems with close office spaces is that people try stuff on.

ALISON HIRST: They do indeed. Yes and I certainly wouldn't argue for going back to private offices, because you are right, complete privacy can enable all sorts of bullying as we've heard recently. I dont think this is an argument for going back to some sort of romantic past which was better. Nobody in the design team or the management team aimed to create this particular outcome. This was an unintended consequence. When I spoke to the architect in the early phases we were talking about visibility and he was in a way quite critical of it, and he was saying well it's not necessarily better that people are visible all the time and that can be quite pressurising. But then he used a metaphor and he said 'Well I think it's like being on a nudist beach. At first you think oh no everyone's looking at me and then you realize well everyone's naked. No one's looking at each other and they'll calm down'.

MF: Is that actually true?

ALISON HIRST: Well I'm sure it partly is true but there is also another side to nudist beaches which is that there is a lot of ogling.

MF: And who does the ogling?

ALISON HIRST: Well men tend to ogle women rather than the other way round.

MF: Alison Harris thank you very much.

ALISON HIRST: Thank you.

MF: Alison Hirst is the director of postgraduate research at the business school of Angley Ruskin University and that is in England in Cambridge. Elizabeth Von Lehe has been listening in on our conversation. She's head of design and brand strategy for HDR which is an architecture and design firm in New York City. We reached you there. Hello.

ELIZABETH VON LEHE: Hi there. Thank you for having me.

MF: It's a pleasure. So Alison Hirst there, that's quite an extensive study she's done. What did you make of her findings then in particular the subtle sexism?

ELIZABETH VON LEHE: I found the study very interesting but not surprising though not really as a reaction to the design. It's almost like when they took the walls and barriers down they were pulling away something and revealing issues that already existed within the culture of that group for sure but also pointed to issues that we have in our culture generally.

MF: And what about some of the comments from the women in the workplace about how exposed they felt and how that could lead to anxiety.

ELIZABETH VON LEHE: At a design level I commiserate with the comments about lacking private space. That's an error often made in open plan design and it is the hallmark of design that's lacking in its interiors quality. We are all still human beings who need our environment to provide for private moments some jobs required almost constant privacy. I don't know if there are any age are people out there that would want to have a difficult conversation in the middle of an open office. But for the other part the comments about feeling anxious, feeling like they're on display and perhaps up for judgment. I first point back to the cultural issue if women in the office don't feel like they're being judged on the quality of their contribution, that's something that needs to be tackled by the leadership of that company and no space design is going to fix it. It could maybe mask it. From The standpoint of designing the interior space, there are tactics that help people. I want to put big capital letters on that people, regardless of gender in a state of privacy vs. show when it matters. An example I would give is pointing back to the bathrooms, in any good interior design, the pathway to the bathroom, the access to it the way that you come in and out should be discreet.

MF: So do you think that open office plans intrinsically favor one gender over another?

MF: They certainly can affect and exacerbate issues of equal say career visibility and mentorship in a way that a well-designed open office could help overcome. So the example- if readership are cloistered away from the majority of staff that trait Corner Office phrase. That means that in meeting with them, and more importantly than meeting with them getting just important mentorship and guidance has to be a big deal. Capital B capital D. From a gender impact perspective then, if those leaders are primarily male they may also not yet be as inclined to meet with more junior female staff one on one. Or the tenor of those interactions leans toward a really formal interaction vs. a looser casual or bind and that's what ongoing mentorship is. So looking back at open design solutions in the environment they create it is more casual more casual atmosphere at least in the ability to access each other which can allow for critical feedback and interaction to happen on the fly in an ongoing way. Which is better for learning and it's better for forming bonds of mentorship with everyone male or female vs. the chosen few that might be able to get into that corner office. That's how I think the open approach vs. the very traditional cloistered approach really does impact on a regular basis.

MF: So do you think companies should be evaluating if the first floor plan is creating gender bias?

ELIZABETH VON LEHE: They should be evaluating if their culture is supportive and through the exercise of design they should evaluate decisions about sightlines, team adjacency, private versus public space all of those things play a part in a healthy work environment, but they will only be an extension of the culture already created. There's something that's relatively new at least to the casual listener called well building standards of lead but it's more for interiors, and it has post occupancy evaluation with in its criteria that allow employers to evaluate how things are going after work in hand in hand with the design team, which feels like this particular example needs that because a design should - at least have good design shouldn't - be this static thing that you do and then that's what it is for all time. It should wvolve. You design something and you test what you created and deploy solutions if there are areas that you overlooked.

MF: Is there a design that leads to an ideal level of success or the most success for women and men?

ELIZABETH VON LEHE: You need to get variety across the board for work styles, for levels of privacy, for sitting versus standing, being totally alone or collaborating with others. So the best design solutions have a really wide spectrum of options that people can choose and that intrinsically starts to deal with some of these questions of 'Do you have access to everyone?' Or 'if you don't want to have everyone had access to you do you have somewhere to go?' And that the same can be said for noise, for visibility, for the ability to focus vs. the ability to gather. That's where a good design can play a role in helping bolster our culture.

MF: At your office do you feel that you've figured it out? What's your space like?

ELIZABETH VON LEHE: It's an open offer and it's a work in progress. [Laughs] But that's the point. Design is not a static thing. You change it over time. You design something, you put it out there and you discover the thing that needs to be tweaked. It's like nobody ever built their house and laid it out and was like and here it is for ever. You evolve it.

MF: Elizabeth Von Lehe thank you very much.

ELIZABETH VON LEHE: Thanks so much.

MF: Elizabeth Von Lehe is head of design and brand strategy for the architecture and design firm HDR. She's in New York City. One more guest we want to bring into the conversation and John Brown an Alberta architect and first vice president of the royal architectural Institute of Canada. He's in our Calgary studio. John Brown, food morning.

JOHN BROWN: Good morning.

MF: Were you surprised to hear about that subtle sexism finding in that open office research?

JOHN BROWN: Yes yes it was it was a fascinating article and it's something that I am going to be bringing to bear to my colleagues and students in the fall.

MF: Does it ring true?

JOHN BROWN: I think so. Yeah. I do think that it rings true. Like most aspects of society we're all coming to terms with new forms of implicit or unconscious bias in the various things that we do and it's very healthy for someone a researcher to be able to shine a light on something that we probably haven't thought about before.

MF: Well I was going to ask you how much have you thought about, you architects, gender in office designs?

JOHN BROWN: Well I think that you know over the last 15-20 years becoming much more aware of gender politics and other forms of you know subtle discrimination and making sure that that were accounting for the needs of all people in an equitable kind of way.

MF: But I mean in that study, that first study, that Alison was talking about, the architects were men and the bosses were men and it did not sound like they considered it at all.

JOHN BROWN: No no. Fair play. I think that as Elizabeth mentioned it's a work in progress. Design is a work in progress.

MF: Can you take us into the spaces where we live? As open plan has really affected those as well.

JOHN BROWN: Absolutely and I think that if you're talking about houses that's a great example of gendered space. You can think about well if you think about the typical post-war house probably the ones that we that we maybe grew up in, it had a closed kitchen that was set in the back removed from the living room which faced the street and the dining room on the side. The kitchen was a place the design of that comes from a sort of Victorian precedent where there were servants that looked after the sort of dirty kitchen work. And in the absence of servants in the 1950s and 60s, who was there but Mum? So Mum was for the kitchen. Dad was in the garage or the basement and the kids were out in the yard.

MF: So what's the draw of an open floor plan in today's more common homes?

JOHN BROWN: Well part of it is about how releasing the idea that one person, typically the woman, has to be responsible for cooking and can't be part of the family can be part of entertaining guests. So, it's interesting that the open plan great room concept came out in the 70s, started in the 70s and the 80s, when there was this kind of emancipation. So of course it makes sense that we would want to open up the house so that there is more equality. So build mum and dad can cook and that it can happen while we're all entertaining.

MF: Okay. But there is a new trend in some houses and that is houses having two kitchens. Paul Schumacher is the president up Schumacher Homes and national home builder in the United States.

SOUNDCLIP

It is something we call the messy kitchen and that was really a secondary question which the majority of time features a secondary refrigerator, freezer, dishwasher, sink, storage for all the appliances. And there is tons Of counter space, or prep area to use in the messy kitchen. We are seeing this design request in all size homes, because the concept works well with any open floor plan where you can have all the benefits of the open kitchen, without the mess. It is the best of both worlds.

MF: Well John I wonder how much of that is a slipping back. Maybe to the old gender roles in homes you were talking about before.

JOHN BROWN: No I don’t think so. We've designed a few homes that have this, this idea of a butler's pantry. I don’t know if it's a full second kitchen but this area that can be messy, this idea of a messy space. I just think it's a natural part of the way in which spaces reflect the needs that we have as people. So imagine - well actually most people are probably living in a great open space plan whether it's a condominium or a large house - and you have this kitchen that's now in the center of your living space and you have guests coming over in and you're entertaining and yet where do you put the half eaten turkey carcass? What happens to the dirty dishes and the spaghetti pot? And people naturally want to have that not in the middle of their living room. And so I think is just a kind of natural evolution where we move to an openness of having equal access but at the same time we're human and we don't want to necessarily have all of the sort of messiness, that naturally comes along with kitchens, be Odean in the open.

MF: I sometimes feel as though I spend most of my free time cleaning up there, tidying up at least that open plank. Where's this going, the open concept trend, where whereas heading. Well I think it needs to be here to stay and I think it certainly will?

JOHN BROWN: I would reinforce what Elizabeth said, though is that design is always changing, houses and office spaces are also changing because our world is changing. Change is the only constant in life. What I am what I hope happens is that we get to have a more subtle and a more refined notion of what open means. Open doesn't mean big and empty. It's not a warehouse. It's actually a much is actually quite a subtle design space the way that that Elizabeth mentioned the discreet pathway to two washrooms. That's actually a pretty sophisticated piece of design idea and we need to incorporate all of that. So that we can have an open plan kitchen say, an open plan house, but we also have a place maybe not a full kitchen but a space where we can put the dirty dishes discreetly so that we can still entertain with our friends.

MF: John good to talk to you. Thanks very much.

JOHN BROWN: Thank you.

MF: John Brown practicing architect and first vice president other Royal Architectural Institute of care and he was in our Calgary studio. Coming up in our next half hour facing up to a difficult reality about Canada today. We'll bring you highlights from our facing race special from Halifax. I'm Mike Finnerty. This is the summer edition of The Current.

[Music: Theme]

Facing Race: The Current's town hall event in Halifax

Guests: Louise Delisle, Lucy Nickerson, Ingrid Waldron

MF: Hi I'm Mike Finnerty and you're listening to the summer edition of The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE: The dump was a fire all the time. The smoke was so thick it was like fog. The smell was so... I can't express it in words what that smells like smoldering every day. The rats, it was terrible. It was just basically in her backyard. The dump was playing area. Where we played as children.

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: So why was the jump put there.

VOICE: It was put there because we were black.

MF: Putting a dump in a black neighborhood in Nova Scotia. It's what the people who grew up in that neighborhood and those who still live there now call environmental racism. And it's just one example of the kind of racism still affecting Canadians today. This past season The Current hosted the three town hall events across the country to take on this difficult reality. The series was called Facing Race and the first show, in Halifax in February, addressed those claims of environmental racism. Here's part of that special facing race with Anna Maria Tremonti and a warning in the first few minutes you will hear offensive and racially charged language.

SOUNDCLIP

[Sound: Walking]

VOICE 1: Like a little rink there, right? We made it. We used to go skating there in the winter time and we would skate until our parents’ came to get us. We were so late to getting home those nights, oh my goodness.

AMT: So what I'm looking at over here what did it look like when you were a kid? What was there?

VOICE 1: Old cars, clothes, tin barrels, whatever you could think. All food. Everything. This dump is now closed. But we don't know if it’s been closed properly. We don't know what's seeping into the ground. You're looking at years and years of chemicals and garbage. Everybody's household garbage. Every industry that's in the community garbage.

AMT: You call this environmental racism. Why do you use that term?

VOICE 1: Because it's right in the middle of our community. It's in our community and it's not in the other community. The North End is where the white settlers or the white people live. This is where the black people live.

VOICE 2: At first we were drinking the water. And then [unintelligible]said your [unintelligible] drinking in that water. And I said, “Well we must stop this.” And we did and we bought water.

VOICE 3: [Unintelligible]

AMT: Who else is gone?

VOICE 3: The whole neighbourhood. The whole neighbourhood. I’m the oldest one.

VOICE 4: You are the oldest man left. Yes, you are.

VOICE 3: Yeah. And I realize that. I realize that… It’s horrible. You couldn't open a window. You couldn’t open your doors. You had to keep your window shut all night long.

AMT: You couldn’t put the clothes on the line.

VOICE 3: No. You have to wait till night because a smoke would be in the clothes and that would be terrible. A lot of people made a complaint about it. But nothing solved. They went ahead and did anyway. To me it was like we were nothing. How do I put it? Well we were...We were black and it didn’t matter. We could live through anything.

AMT: The people you just heard live in Shelburne, a community of fewer than two thousand people, tucked into the top of an inlet on Nova Scotia's south shore. And they say that in that small place they are living with a legacy of racism. Of government decisions that forced them and generations of their Black neighbours to grow up in the environmental shadow of a messy, smouldering, smelly landfill site. They worry it has contributed to cancers and early deaths. But they do not have and cannot get the studies to back up with hard science what they have been seeing and living for decades. In a moment we will hear more from them and from a sociologist who has been tracking and mapping the locations of landfills and industrial sites in Nova Scotia and has raised questions about the patterns she sees. We aren't stopping there. This is the first of The Current's three-city tour called Facing Race and we have come to Nova Scotia because of the rich and complicated history of African-Canadians here. Nova Scotia's black communities can trace their roots to the late 1700s when Africans victimized by the slave trade were brought here in chains and others on the U.S. side of the border were promised their freedom and land to settle by Britain if they fought on the British side during the American Revolution. Of course the black loyalists never received all that they were promised and though black communities grew and thrived they also suffered. Today their descendants can still point to the consequences of those early days in the political and social reality in which they now live. We will hear about belonging, gentrification, and the changing face of historically black communities in this province. We’ll also hear about violence against black women and girls and ask what's missing in the growing conversations around sexual violence. We are in Halifax before a packed house in the sparkling and splendid new Central Library. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti and this is a special edition of The Current: Facing Race.

[Sound: Applause]

AMT: We're going to start with two people you heard briefly in our opening tape. They both live in the South End of Shelburne. Louise Delisle is the co-founder of the South End Environmental Justice Society. Lucy Nickerson is her neighbour and friend. They call their neighbourhood "a community of widows." They say most of the men in their community have died of cancer. Hello to you.

LOUISE DELISLE: Hello to you.

AMT: Louise, the last voice we heard on our tape from my visit this week to Shelburne belongs to your Mom, Ruth.

LOUISE DELISLE: Belongs to my mother.

AMT: How old is she?

LOUISE DELISLE: She's 85-years-old in March.

AMT: She talked about not being able to hang her clothes on the line because of the smoke and the ash from the dump. Were they burning stuff all the time

LOUISE DELISLE: The dump was a fire all the time and when it was burning the smoke was so thick it was like fog. And I remember as a child her saying, “I can't wash again today. I am going to have to wait till the night when that smoke is gone so I can put these clothes on the line.” That's one of the things that sticks in my mind from that time. She would always say “Someday someone's going to put an end to this.” I remember [laughs]. She used to say “Someday someone will put an end to this.” And I never dreamed it would be me — trying to.

[Sound: Applause]

LOUISE DELISLE: Here I am.

AMT: So when you were a kid what do you remember about that dump?

LOUISE DELISLE: Oh my goodness, Anna Maria. The smell was so — I can't express it in words what that smelled like when it was a fire and the smouldering every day. And the rodents, the rats, it was terrible.

AMT: How close did you live to it?

LOUISE DELISLE: Less than a quarter of a mile. It was just in the yard. Basically in our backyard because the houses here a little bit of woods and then the dump – it was our playing area. We played as children.

AMT: And the trucks would then come in all the time too.

LOUISE DELISLE: Yeah. There was always some traffic up and down that road going to the dump either from one of the ship yards dumping their stuff or one of the industry's down there. The Navy Base dumping their stuff. The hospital dumping its stuff. Everything bad was placed in the Sound End of course. All the garbage from the people that lived in the community. Old clothes, magazines, old food from stores that had to be thrown out all went to the dump and then set afire. So you can imagine what that smelled like.

AMT: Lucy Nickerson, what do you remember about growing up near there?

LUCY NICKERSON: I can remember... I had my granddaughter there one day and we were making a cake. And I said "Put these in the garbage for Nanny." She said "There is no garbage bag in their Nanny — seven rats.” Seven rats were in there. And I'm screeching and hollering to her to come and do something with them [laughs]. So he got a pellet gun and the only thing we could do with them. It was always rats around. There's nothing you could do.

AMT: Lucy, what's been the impact of all this on your family?

LUCY NICKERSON: Well I have no son. My son died in September at the age of 45 with multiple myeloma. It wasn't a pretty sight. It was about the worst thing I could ever put myself through. At the end of it I just walked over to him and I said "William, mum's going home." I said, "She's going to get Kayla supper.” I said "If you want to go. You go. Mum loves you and we will meet again. So it hasn't been very good from me.”

AMT: He was diagnosed just over a year before he died.

LUCY NICKERSON: Yeah, a little better than a year.

AMT: We asked the Nova Scotia Health Authority for cancer statistics for the South End of Shelburne. There are no numbers specifically for the South End of town. But for the town of Shelburne in general the proportions of three cancer types appear to surpass those recorded for Nova Scotia as a whole: bladder, kidney, and multiple myeloma. There are no hard numbers but you lost your son to that very cancer.

LUCY NICKERSON: I did.

AMT: You both live in what you call "a community of widows." Why do you call it that?

LUCY NICKERSON: It's mostly men that die.

LOUISE DELISLE: We've lost the majority of men in our community — the next generation from our generation. Lucy's son is a rare example. But majority of men like my father's generation have all died of cancers. The majority of people that are dying of cancer are dying of multiple myeloma in the South End. It is a rare cancer and for it to be in such a large cluster in such a small spot is very suspicious to me.

AMT: So why was the dump put there?

LOUISE DELISLE: It was put there because it was easy for them to put it there without any repercussions from it. It was easy for them because they knew my father's generation and my mother's generation were not going to fight them against it.

[Sound: Applause]

LOUISE DELISLE: They never had a voice. They never had a voice to stop it. It was there because we were black.

[Sound: Applause]

AMT: They closed the dump officially in 2016.

LOUISE DELISLE: Yes they did.

AMT: What led to that?

LOUISE DELISLE: We decided that we were going to take some action and it was time we took action because people were dying too quickly. And we said well first thing we're going to do is call the Nova Scotia Environment and find out if what they're doing now there is something that we can get it closed by what they're doing now. And they were dumping white metal there at the time and oil barrels and stuff like that. Nova Scotia Environment found that they had reason to send a letter to the town to demand that they cleaned it up. After that we met with the town and told them that we wanted them to close the dump. And finally Mayor Mattatall closed it because we insisted on it being closed and we were go as far as we had to go to have to closed.

[Sound: Applause]

AMT: This is a good time to bring in our third guest sitting up with us here. Ingrid Waldron is a sociologist and a professor at Dalhousie University. She is also the director at the ENRICH project, which stands for Environmental Noxiousness, Racial Inequities & Community Health Project. Welcome.

INGRID WALDRON: Thank you.

AMT: I have a couple of things I want to ask you. First of all I do want to say we invited the Mayor of Shelburne, Karen Mattatall, to be here today. She was not available. But sent this statement, and I'll read part of it: "The Council has previously offered to assist with the testing of water and soil to further inform consideration of community concerns however there was not support for this. The town remains willing to assist with any testing and would work with residents and other interested parties to reduce costs.”

AMT: How do you interpret what the mayor is saying there?

INGRID WALDRON: Well it's good to hear. It's the first time I've heard that. I actually met with the mayor when I visited Shelburne with some scientists in 2016. And she came to me privately and she said, "Do you realize that a number of African Nova Scotians in this community smoke?” So I got a sense from that conversation that she was very doubtful about the issue. So I'm extremely happy to hear that she is willing to collaborate with the community and I know the Louise is interested in collaborating with her.

AMT: You know neither the mayor nor the town councillor for your area — Rick Davis — were available to see us in Shelburne this week. If I could have seen them I would have asked, “Why do you need other people to do the testing? Why isn't government taking responsibility for this?”

INGRID WALDRON: Government's not necessarily responsible for water testing of wells. It's the responsibility of individual communities to do that. I think my argument is if industries or dumps, or landfills are placed in communities, communities that don't want those waste sites, then from me they are accountable. I think the government is accountable. But in the meantime I think it's important as people are dying that something is done. So we've taken a step — many of us some scientists, geologists Fred Bonner, and Wilber Menendez who is a chemistry professor, a science professor at Nova Scotia Community College. We've taken the initiative to address some of the concerns by initiating a water testing project because people are dying.

AMT: You do research around environmental racism. How do you define environmental racism?

INGRID WALDRON: Environmental racism is a term that was coined in the early 1980s by Benjamin Chavez. And it's characterized by the disproportionate location of environmental contaminants in communities of colour and Indigenous communities and low income white communities. It's also very similar to what Louise mentioned is the lack of power that many of these communities because they are racialized because they’re low income the lack of power they have for resisting against the signing of these facilities in their communities. And it's also about the lack of representation of these communities on committees, boards, and regulatory bodies — individuals who have a say in where these sites are located. So when you look at environmental racism you need to look at the full breath of environmental racism. I would say that those three issues characterise environmental racism in the United States and in Canada.

AMT: We contacted the Nova Scotia Department of Environment to ask them about all of this. Here's part of what they said: "We take the issue of environmental racism seriously. Government has been taking action on initiatives to address disparities, racism and systemic discrimination that African Nova Scotians have faced for generations. There is more work to do, but we are on the right path forward in our journey of healing and resolution. This is a priority for the Government of Nova Scotia." Do you see the Nova Scotia government making this a priority?

INGRID WALDRON: The Nova Scotia government is not making this issue a priority.

[Sound: Applause]

INGRID WALDRON: In 2014 and 2015 I visited 14 government departments, including Nova Scotia Environment and no one was interested in taking up this issue. While they agreed that they needed to be more transparent and accessible in terms of sharing information to communities. None of the individuals that I visited were interested in taking up this issue. So they are not interested in it. More so they don't have the lens and the understanding of environmental racism. And when I look at environmental assessments — that's a process that you use to decide where a waste dump or landfill is placed — they don't have the understanding, the critical understanding, and the sociological lens to understand why placing certain waste dumps or landfills in certain communities is problematic particularly because you're placing them in communities that are dealing with existing vulnerabilities relating to racism, colonialism, class, income, education, lack of resources, food insecurity, and income insecurity. So unless they have that lens, which is a sociological lens, then the individuals in Nova Scotia Environment and other agencies in government don't have a full understanding of this problem.

[Sound: Applause]

AMT: Ingrid Waldron, you have mapped the locations of industry and landfill sites in proximity to black and Indigenous communities in the province. We'll put it up on the screen here so we can see what you've found. It's also available at cbc.ca/thecurrent and our Facebook Live audience will be able to find it on our Facebook page. Tell us what we are looking at.

INGRID WALDRON: This is a map that was developed by a health geography student, Beau Ahrens, in 2016. And he mapped the location of waste dumps close to Indigenous and African Nova Scotian communities across the province. So what you'll find is that waste dumps on the map are close to Shelburne, Lincolnville, Sunnyville, Upper Big Tracadie, Monastery, Mulgrave, Trenton, Birchtown, Beechville, Lucasville. And you'll also find landfills waste dumps close to Indigenous communities like Pictou Landing First Nations which is to me the worst case of environmental racism in Nova Scotia — one of the worst in Canada. Acadia First Natio, Eskasoni First Nation, Membertou First Nation, Millbrook First Nation, etc.

AMT: A long list.

INGRID WALDRON: Well it's longer.

AMT: And I was going to say the "etc" tells us it's even longer.

INGRID WALDRON: It's important to stress though that this is simply another tool in the tool kit. For example, if I were to visit government to make my case I would take my data, I would take my qualitative research based on the focus groups that Louise did for example, I would take quantitative of data, I will take this map, and I will take other information to make a case about environmental racism. The problem with government is they want to connect a particular landfill site and a contaminant to a particular cancer. Multiple myeloma for example, you can never do that. You can never definitively say that a particular waste dump is causing a particular type of cancer. What you can say is the probability is very high that it is which for me is sufficient. For government apparently it's not.

AMT: Before we end I want to go back to Louise and Lucy. What do you want to see happen now?

LOUISE DELISLE: I want to see somebody come in there to test our water to make sure that our water is clean because there's town water in the North End but not in the South End. Like Ingrid said you can't prove that cancer was caused by certain things. But I want to know what we've been exposed when it comes to what's been dumped there.

AMT: We are talking really about one community. But Ingrid you've made the point this is an issue across the province.

INGRID WALDRON: And across the country.

AMT: Thank you all of you for bringing it forward to us.

[Sound: Applause]

AMT: Louise Delilse and Lucy Nickerson are life-long residents of the South End of Shelburne. Ingrid Waldron is a sociologist and professor at Dalhousie University, where she does research on environmental racism. Thank you very much all of you.

[Sound: Applause]

AMT: Today we've been talking about the legacy of anti-Black racism in Nova Scotia and a reminder if you're tweeting about our program use the #CBCFacingRace. You can head to our Web sitecbc.ca/thecurrent To learn more about our guests and the issues we are talking about. We're going to give our last word today to El Jones who will debut a new poem she wrote especially for today's town hall. I'm Anna Maria Tremonti in Halifax. Thank you for being part of this special edition of The Current: Facing Race.

SOUNDCLIP

[Sound: Applause]

EL JONES: There's discounted black dolls on the shelves at Walmart. So black girls are assigned less value before they even start. A five year old black girl on the news led in handcuffs from class. So we're set up for failure before we can pass. White little girls they are treated like glass. But the teachers say black girls just have too much sass. Called security to knock a teenage girl from her desk flat on her back. Same as those girls at a pool party police knocked to the grass. Most of the time when it's us they don't even keep statistics. Can't find numbers on how many of us dead or missing. So then they tell us our experiences aren't realistic. Say that we ran away when we're kidnapped and trafficked. And when we come home then they label us ratched. They taught us histories that said that we're cannibalistic. Said that our cultures were backwards and simplistic. So now they claim that their stereotypes are our characteristics. They say we're not worthy of love, not worth being romantic. Say that we're acting so white if we think we're scholastic. Tell us our men won't make it past 25 without prison or the casket. Say it's against his nature to stay when the baby's in blankets. The hashtag on twitter says black girls are magic. But too many are born into circumstances that are tragic. They say we're the animals and put us through mental gymnastics. I'd tell you more of what they do to us but it's probably too graphic. When we try to talk about our issues people change the topic. But the Kardashian family uses our bodies for profit. We've been taught to be ashamed . We're told Instagram models are our best path to fame. If I said there's Black woman astronauts would you know their names. They deliberately only show some images in the frame. The blood of African queens still flows through our veins. But they'll make you believe we were fashioned for pain. It's not been so long since they had us in chains. I deserve more than the crumbs and whatever remains. Fire burns in my soul and it's lighting the flames. And don't think I'm your savage that you have to tame. With our natural hair that's our lioness mane. Uh uh we're Cleopatra returning to reign. But forgetting our heritage fits with their aims. We don't look at black queens and think we are the same. We see too much black booty and rarely black brains. White people lie to us and say to stay in your lane. And don't pull the race card when we try to complain. Got us working twice as hard til our energies drained . Call us angry black woman like it's a refrain. Say we're ugly and stupid, attitude and insane. It's like us just existing gives them a migraine. That's why Oscars so white like the grammy's again. Show us as mammies or welfare moms hooked on cocaine. When we have a black woman Prime Minister I'll crack the champagne. But stop telling Black woman how much we have gained. But there's little Black girls that we're fittin to train. See black girls aren't just magic we're hurricanes. And you better believe that they'll bring the propane. Because we're full of a power that you can't contain.

[Sound: Applause]

Thursday June 28, 2018 Full Text Transcript

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