Jun 22, 2020
- Fred Brown
That was difficult. And that the kind of person I am or what people expect from me is to not flinch in the face of adversity. I could never grieve. In a meaningful way. And I've never grieved in a meaningful way because. The role I typically play in this society that I live in is the caretaker provider and supporter. So. You know, I remember one time I got emotional and people looked at me and it was like. Their whole construct of strength was like in question for years and years and years. I just held onto OK. You can't cry. You can't be emotional. You got to hold. People are counting on you to lead in this moment of crisis.
INTRO
I have such an engaging, important episode for you today. My guest is Fred Brown, the CEO of the Forbes Fund. More on the Forbes Fund in just a little bit. Fred ushers us into his experience as a Black man in America, delving into his personal losses, reflecting on the murder of George Floyd, and talking about the head trip of anti-black racism that caused him to question himself over the years as he advocated for meaningful, systemic change. His story is compelling and immediate and important. And I will introduce you more fully to Fred in a moment.
But first, I’d like to thank our two sponsors. First is Fullstack PEO. FullStack PEO is an employee benefits provider for entrepreneurs and small business owners. In these uncertain times, benefits provide a sense of security for your people. Let the talented staff at FullStack take care of benefits so you can grow your business. We are also sponsored by Handle with Care Consulting. With a range of trainings, keynotes, and online options, Handle with Care consulting empowers you to come alongside your people with empathy with they experience disruptive life events.
Now, back to the interview and Fred Brown. Fred lives in Pittsburgh and has six children.
- Fred Brown
My oldest sons. The engineer works for Caterpillar. He lives in Kansas. My next oldest son is 18. He's headed off to college. My next oldest son is 16. He's at home with us. My 18 year old is at home with us currently. I have a 13 year old daughter, my six year old daughter, and my four year old daughter and my wife. And so the seven of us. In the house all the time.
- Liesel Mertes
We covered that full house and lots of opportunities for, I'm sure, all kinds of interactions. I am. I said I said to my husband recently, I said, thankfully, you know, I haven't wanted to divorce you. As a result of this, I have thought about if I could possibly divorce my children because there's so much always going on. So I hear you in that.
- Liesel Mertes
Are you a man that has space for any hobbies or when you are not working? How do you like to fill your time?
- Fred Brown
I like to fill my time of exercising. I used to like to fill my time reading. What with? Five kids in the house and school. You know, five different schools or three different school systems. That's difficult. Have family night every Friday. So, we do a family activity. We like to go camping before COVID. We used to like to go out every now and do some things. But since COVID, we've really begun to have deeper dialogue about race issues, about being an entrepreneur.
- Fred Brown
And so, my hobby, the thing I love to do pre COVID is, I have a very stressful job, so I need to let my energy flow in a way it is positive. So, I like to work out. Yeah. And yeah, I like to work out a lot. I used to be ranked 13 for the country as a proud power lifter many moons ago and about 40, 45 pounds that goes with it.
In addition to being a self-described “gym-rat” who enjoys outlifting men half his age, Fred is the CEO of the Forbes Fund, a 37 year old institution that comes alongside struggling non-profits.
- Fred Brown
When I ascended to the role of president CEO of the Forbes Funds in 2018, I immediately began to explore like the intersection of how can we promote the great aspects of organization is honor our history of being a supportive organization.
- Fred Brown
Look at the role of technology and create a pivot that looks at what is emerging in the belly needs in this sector. And so we began to look at this notion of systems design and ecosystems development taken into account at every community, had its own typography, its own unique DNA. And then we don't want a cookie cutter approaches,
- Fred Brown
We work with about a thousand non-profit organizations a year. There's about 20, several hundred in our area. And in southwestern P.A., there's over 80, 500 nonprofits.
The Forbes Fund has a strong team and are doing innovative things like funding catalytic community cohort, C3, that utilizes collective genius and mentoring relationships. They have also just launched the Forbes Funds University in partnerships with local institutions that provide non-profit leaders with credit and continuing education opportunities.
Earlier that day, he was offering his expertise and leadership in a call
- Fred Brown
And these kind of pivots have created phenomenal exchanges between philanthropy, between non-profit sector universities, community stakeholders and businesses. And I'm just excited about this stuff. I'm in the middle. And I just wish I was able to do more things.
- Fred Brown
I yesterday, we were on a call with a group that wants to start a gardening program. And this is where being a thought partner is part of a role we play. So, we started talking about institutional racism. And they started to talk about the historical trends in their community. And we said, well, what would the metaphor be for digging up the earth and planting and see and nurturing a foster new growth of plants to be eaten and used by the community?
- Fred Brown
Well, what would the metaphor be that you can rebirth a community? Put your hands in the soil? There's a cathartic experience there that could address racism, social injustices.
It is a powerful metaphor. And as you have already heard, Fred is a savvy, smart practitioner who cares about the holistic person and the toll that racism is taking on the bodies of Black and Brown Americans.
- Fred Brown
As people of color manage, we stay here for a while, for over two hundred years. There's an illusion that we're OK. And even in our own way, we convey that we're OK. But the data says other data says although we're managing, we have on average an eight year lifecycle difference we have financially we made. I think 70 cents on the dollar compared to our white counterparts.
- Fred Brown
And we carry a burden of comorbidity issues, which has an aggravated impact on diseases and viruses like COVID, which in many cities we have three times the death rate as our white counterparts. And so although we might be managing the burden of being black in America is not without a cost.
- Liesel Mertes
Yeah, yeah, I am. There's an incredibly impactful book that I've read with and I've read now a couple of times within the last five years by Dr Bessel van der Klerk. It's called The Body Keeps the Score, and it's all about trauma and embodied trauma and just the fact that it shows up in our physical health. And it's been something that I've pondered in my own journey. And as I over the last couple of months have extended my imagination into more of those data points, whether that is, you know, like the neonatal care and pregnancy complications.
- Liesel Mertes
And just regardless of, you know, education level or economic level, that there's so much lower, you know, for black Americans.
- Liesel Mertes
And to think like, yes, that's because the body is literally like holding on to generations of absorbed trauma. And just as I as I avail myself to listen to more stories and try to think like, what would it feel like if when I sent my 10 year old son out bike riding, that I was just worried about his, his safety all the time because of how he looks, you know, like I can't even extend to imagine that. But I, I don't I, I don't understand.
- Liesel Mertes
But I'm hearing differently being like. Yeah, what a horrible toll on your body.
- Fred Brown
You know, I think that many of us. We arrive at a point in our existence where we just accept what is. And we. We learn how to navigate that. How can you accept being killed? Over possibly a fake 20 dollar bill or selling single cigarettes or. Sitting in your car and reaching for your license is very different. You know, when I talk to other people and they never worry about these things, they don't ever have to tell their kids the story.
- Fred Brown
OK, do this when the police pull you over and you're going to get pulled over. Do this in the store when the police are a private detective, ask you, what are you looking for? Do this when you drive into community. And his gaited. Is there is this these next level? Requirements that you have to educate your kid on. You know, they're really. It's common place for us. But this is not natural, mother, other people are not doing that.
- Fred Brown
So I think there's an extra burden both on the child. You know, my four year old. I took her my daughter would go bike riding every night are my six and my four year old. So we're all riding last night. And we're eating some French fries and corn and, you know, just took a break from writing. And some people came up that I know and they came to talk to me and she said my four year old said, white people kill black people.
- Fred Brown
She's four. Yeah, her external expression that people know is that they're going to kill me or they go kill somebody black. And I said, where'd you get that from? She said, "that's what they said on the news."
- Fred Brown
How did you. I don't know. I don't know. That's difficult. But, you know, I have to sleep on that.
- Liesel Mertes
Yeah. Well, there, you know. I there are that you wish that you could say it was like a boogie man, like, no, that wouldn't happen to you. Like, no, you're safe. Like we want to extend to our children a sense of. There's so much we do as adults to protect them.
- Liesel Mertes
And there are the is that we can't take away, you know, and. I can't imagine in this room what that's like. You know, as a parent in. In my own experience, there's, you know, my, my children have had a sibling die. And I would love like they have a really real sense of like will another one of my brothers or sisters die. And I'd love to be like, no, that will never happen.
- Liesel Mertes
But that wouldn't be true. Like, that could happen. And I can't imagine to extend that to just meta like deeply a sense of, that is a possibility. And that kind of way.
- Liesel Mertes
You've as we mentioned at the top of the interview, you've you've had, your father's died within the last three weeks.
- Liesel Mertes
You lead an organization that is really attuned to the needs of your community. I imagine that watching these events on the news also connects to, like your own personal experience of life as a man in a black body. What has it? What is what is it occasioned? What is that felt like for you to live the last three weeks?
- Fred Brown
That's a heavy question. Not that it's not real. So in 1996. I began to do some social justice and environmental justice work, and at that time a young black man was killed in Brentwood, Brentwood. P.A. as a result of a truck traffic stop. Named Jonny Gammage.
- Fred Brown
And so I helped organize the city. The black community around protesting, peaceful, protesting, marching, demanding more laws to protect citizens and accountability for police. And so I thought, OK, we did that work. We made some progress. Not a lot, but somewhere in my psyche, I thought, OK, that was done. And I'm onto the next thing.
- Fred Brown
The next thing was I began to ramp up my work as a probation officer and I buried about 50 plus kids from gang violence during that same period and so I had gotten accustomed to go into funerals and and such.
- Fred Brown
And 2001, when I was in graduate school working on my PTSD in a six month period, I had six family members and friends there. My grandmother, my uncle, two cousins, my best friend's mother and a friend. And it it became a burden.
- Fred Brown
And I told somebody in an interview one time, I feel like I'm walking around a coffin on my back, literally. So, you know, I realize I'm getting crispy burnt out in this work with kids. And I think they're so important that I don't want to stop the work. So I continue to do the work and I continue to rise up in the system.
- Fred Brown
So my thought process and theory changes if I get high enough in the system. I can promote systems change, which will alter these kids lives.
- Fred Brown
So I do that now, figure out as I get up, work into the system. The system has no desire to change. It has no desire to be different. It has no desire to meet people way of way.
- Liesel Mertes
And so can you tell me a little bit more about that? I feel like that is a powerful statement that I would love for you to unpack a little bit more. What were you observing?
- Fred Brown
I was observing that there is a level of institutional racism within the system that perpetuates the need for actors to be arrested for not have a resolution to common problems, i.e., a kid could not get off her probation unless they paid their restitution. A kid couldn't get restitution paid for in a job because they were on probation. And so, it was these kind of vicious cycle is where you looked at the common person, what they just they just need to get a job and then they can get off a restitution.
- Fred Brown
Well, how does that work? A kid with a juvenile record with a record who's supporting that? And then if the kid is a juvenile, you've got to get special permission to work. You know, it's just it's just a burden and it creates a condition where there's just a vicious cycle. And then you see that the cycle trends upward as these kids who can't break the cycle as juveniles become adult offended, they just continue to recidivate. And you see very clearly there were point points of departure where people could have did something different.
- Fred Brown
And they, they didn't or couldn't. And, you know, I remember another experience when I worked on South and Charlotte. And this was probably most difficult job I've ever had is a PP social worker, a permanency planning social worker. And basically, in short, you determine whether if we came to your house and your husband and God forbid, got into fisticuffs or fight or whatever, and there was some concern about the kids, we might remove the kids.
- Fred Brown
You guys sort that out. Or if you put your hands on a K is doing a fisticuffs and that kind of stuff. And so we kind of determine whether or not people got their kids back. And what I noticed in that system was middle class people fared better than everyday low income people.
- Fred Brown
Training might be scheduled for you to go to five classes on parent engagement, behavior modification, anger control. You know any of these? No classes. The classes were usually offered dawn workday. So a person that is middle class or has a job, the salary. They can go to their boss or be the boss or just say, hey, I'm going out. I'll be back at this time. No questions. But an hourly worker had to go get permission from your supervisor to miss work.
- Fred Brown
And inevitably, the supervisors will say, hey, if you know I you're going to get fired.
- Fred Brown
I don't know about whatever you're talking about because at the same time, you're not trying to tell somebody, hey, I got go to these classes to get my kids back. Right. There is a certain level of discretion you're trying to to manifest just for your personal well-being. And so I just saw. Case after case where poor people were get were not getting the same benefit.
- Fred Brown
And I took this concern to management. My supervisor told me to take it to higher levels of management. And I talk to the manager, the highest level of management. That's a set of choices because I had been doing this work for. 20 something years, and I knew about nontraditional service provider systems, social service networks and such. And I presented models to this director that maybe there's a way that we can mitigate the risk. And the director looked at me and said, why would we do that? And I said, because there's a disproportionate impact occurring to certain families based upon socio economic strata, which is having an adverse effect on their ability to get their kids back.
- Fred Brown
And the highest ranking person in the institution said, we're not going to do that. I'm not interested. And I just in that moment, something that in me about humanity, something dad and me about, well, maybe they didn't understand. Maybe I wasn't a good communicator. Maybe. I didn't do a good job of explaining what I was talking about. So I went back and talked to other people. They were like, no, you were very clear, you know.
- Fred Brown
And the thing that broke me was broke my spirit was to have a grown man come to your office and start crying and said you would destroy my family and you said you were going to help me. There's nothing you've done to help me. The services you need me to attend don't work on my for my hours. The restraints you have on me, Sam Martel, don't work for my hours. And so there was just a series of unparalleled opportunities. Supported all families. And it just got me to start thinking about, well, who writes these policies? It's not poor people.
- Liesel Mertes
Yeah, and I hear I hear in that even like just to interject before we get you for the head trip, also that systemic institutionalized. Yeah, antiblack racism is in some ways in that, like you, you had to come away and think wasn't my fault. Like, did I not explain myself well enough like that? It turned inward like that.
- Fred Brown
Like, well, maybe I didn't do a good enough job when really it gets back to. Like, no, we we purposefully want to keep it this way, whether by design or just general apathy. Because it doesn't matter enough. So yeah, I imagine that’s the nuance of what it does. The self questioning. What causes you to have somewhat of a psychosis about? Are you in it? Are you in the Twilight Zone?
- Fred Brown
Are the things you're suggesting just so unrealistic? Or is there a, is there a strategy here that intends to keep people in the places that they're in and you don't want to believe that because you're working on the side of justice.
- Fred Brown
You're working on the side of equity. You're working on a side of this notion. And I struggle with this when I was a probation officer. And I'm going back now. I'm more forward and I'm going back with, you know, as I became more a flaw with the court system and working with judges and dealing with a lot of gang stuff and not really understanding the plight of the state of these kids and their neurological pathways for their criminal thinking errors.
- Fred Brown
And just you start understanding the science of this work, the human aspect of the work, the economics of the work, the poverty community, social structures. It's just there's a plethora of things that contribute to it. But when you start to peel it back. And you realize that you like doing this work because you actually think you can make a difference. And there's always a few people who make it like they, they create. And I call this the illusion of progress.
- Fred Brown
Right. Just always has to be somebody that makes it, because if nobody ever made it, two people would stop having hope that there's a possibility to change. So I think the system allows for certain few people to make it. And I will say and those people do what they need to do to get through. All right. But over all, when you look at the preponderance of people who go through the system, the statistics on who's successful in it is not high, as you have to start wonder.
- Fred Brown
Like, why is that? Why if our goal is to restore humanity and people, why do we say after somebody serves time for an offense? That they're a felon. But they did their time. Why are we now labeling them? And we know that that label is going to discredit their ability to have any measure of response and opportunity back in society. And now that label for act, they did time for which Anan's. I mean, it's like.
- Fred Brown
If you put you and I have kids, if we put our kids on punishment. And at the end of the punishment, you're still seen as being criminal. How does that work like you. Did your punishment? OK, let's start over. You got a clean slate. Mommy, daddy ain't mad at you no more. But here's what you need to be aware of, if that happens again, the punishment is going to be more severe or whatever that is right.
- Fred Brown
But there is a point where a person is held accountable and then they should be allowed to restore their humanity. And get a fresh, strong start. They should be able to. Acknowledge their wrongdoings, come to grips with that and decide how they can move forward. Well, the first thing they have to do is reestablish yourselves economically to take care of ourselves. And that's a burden that they can't even get a job and housing. Yeah, then we are by nature.
- Fred Brown
Knowingly, willingly, intentionally creating a dynamic that people are born recidivate. You're not giving them a chance to. Return to society, healthy and whole. You ask me to run a society where they sped up a race with one leg and with the title where you hit X.
- Fred Brown
Yeah. And I just you just have to wonder, like. Nothing's changed since we've been putting people in jail and per capita, we have the house arrest rate and incarceration rate in a world. Yeah, it's an interesting, you know,
- Liesel Mertes
Even, even just to take it to the really personal lived like level. You give the example with parenting. You know, if I have a child who lives and I punish them for lying, but then what it would it would be if I just you know, I was like, well, this is Ada the liar for the rest of her life. Why just that totalizing identity then to take on, you know, of every time I introduced her? This is Ada. She's a liar, you know. Yeah.
MUSICAL TRANSITION
- Liesel Mertes
So we talk about disruptive life events on the Handle with Care podcast and the more interviews that I get to do and just in my work as a consultant. Grief is always localized within a particular community and that community is shaped by by family habits. You know, some people it's like grief is very taboo. You know, we keep a stiff upper lip. It's also shaped by, you know, by aspects of just communal norms.
- Liesel Mertes
I can think of Karen, who she is, a Chinese American, and she talked about walking through her sister's suicide and like the very entrenched taboos of a Chinese, specifically a Chinese American culture and what that allowed her to do or didn't allow her to do. And so, this sort of specificity to community in dealing with hard things. And it's always like its own burden to ask someone to speak for an entire community. But I'd love to hear just from your personal experience, as you talked about, you know this.
- Liesel Mertes
I think you use an evocative term. It when when the six people die that you were getting, it was
- Fred Brown
Like walkin' around with a coffin on my back.
- Liesel Mertes
Yeah. Yeah. And that you you just were lacking resilience. What was it like. What. What did your community offer you in ways or. First, let me just start with tell me more about what it was like to be walking around with a coffin on your back.
- Fred Brown
That was difficult. And that the kind of person I am or what people expect from me is to not flinch in the face of adversity. I could never grieve. In a meaningful way. And I've never grieved in a meaningful way because. The role I typically play in this society that I live in is the caretaker provider and supporter. So. You know, I remember one time I got emotional and people looked at me and it was like. Their whole construct of strength was like in question for years and years and years.
- Fred Brown
I just held onto OK. You can't cry. You can't be emotional. You got old. People are counting on you to lead in this moment of crisis. You're a leader. And so for years, I just. So I've got to leave. You know, when I was in graduate school and all of those deaths happened. I remember going to talk to people. And somebody asked me, why are you still in school? Why? What are you trying to prove?
- Fred Brown
Like, want to go take care of your family? And deep inside my thinking and being was, I've never quit, so I can't quit now like I've gotten this far. And a PhD program, I'm from the hood. Nobody thought I would be here. Me quitting is just that's not an option. As I started to talk more more to people, what I would like has taken a toll on you. Is it worth it? Like, what are you having to prove?
- Fred Brown
And a friend of mine is a mentor of mine. I say that's a piece of paper. The work that you do is transformational. You don't need a piece of paper to be transformational. And what what you said,
- Liesel Mertes
- I want to I want to just go back for a moment, because that is really interesting to me that that sense of where you'd come from, like you come from the hood you'd come so far. Was it. Was it.
- Liesel Mertes
Was there an element that you felt of like a fear of like if I stop pushing, I might not keep going? Or like. Was that was that given to you by other people in your community who had celebrated how far you come? Did you feel like you were held up as something that you didn't have space for that? Tell me.
- Fred Brown
Right. I would say that nobody told me I couldn't quit or nobody said if you quit your this or that. But. I'm celebrating. Whether I like that or not, people see me as somebody who's navigated the streets and made it. And so. Good, bad or indifferent? Live with that identification. This has driven me to push beyond my my bounds and understanding of my capacity.
- Fred Brown
And, you know, one of the things I told the doctoral program, you know, because I was working on a degree and I was my dissertation was focused on Afro centricity as a theory of change.
- Fred Brown
And I cut a lot of flack for taking up that mantle. But that was the origins of my existence. And so, I wanted to show that ethnocentricity was indeed a universal practice that could be applied across multiple ethnic groups and be successful. And I was actually doing that in a successful way.
- Fred Brown
But want to get the piece of paper to say Dr. Brown wrote this book and he said this and that. And so, you know, the community was counting on me every time I went in.
- Fred Brown
Some places there's like there go, he's going to be a doctor. That's Dr. Brown. So there was just this. And it wasn't intentional, but there was pressure like, you can't fail. People are counting on you. You will be the first doctor to ever live on this street. You know, people know that. And you give back and you're not protected. You're not going to move out and leave us.
- Fred Brown
And so there was this symbiotic relationship with the community that I felt I had to uphold. And the reason that I saw myself even being capable of being in a PhD program was nothing added. But it was everything, the community important to me.
- Fred Brown
So I never saw my experience in school as my experience. I saw it as the community's experience. And I was just a vessel of theirs. And so that that was very difficult that I use. The word broke me and I'll know if that's the right word. It humbled me, but it hurt. Yeah.
- Liesel Mertes
You mentioned that mentor who is saying that he saw a tool that was taking on you. Were you seeing that as well?
- Fred Brown
I thought I knew it was a toll, but as a man who's a power lifter and who has this illusion that everybody thinks I'm in, you know, I shouldn't be bothered by stuff and I've taken on taking on that persona. I just saw it as another test. Like it was just like, OK, you've got to pass this test.
- Fred Brown
You have to have a story to tell people like when this happened, this is how you did it. Like people are looking to you forces for solutions in the face of adversity. So adversity is part of your eco system. So this is no different. So why are you getting personal and breaking down? And, you know, why are you hurt? And, you know, and I was like. I've never. Was able to really. Deal with that.
- Liesel Mertes
Mm hmm. Yeah. I am I'm struck that there is a certain distrust that white majority culture has towards strong emotions, specifically from black men and women. You know, I feel like you're so often labeled like this is this is an angry black man or angry black woman. And just that that big emotions are something that, you know, the majority culture doesn't really want to see and doesn't want to deal with. And that perhaps that that could also, you know, there could be a certain expectation as it relates to other strong emotions like grief or sadness.
- Liesel Mertes
Did you feel any aspect of, you know, there's like community expectation, your strength, but just of you can't have too strong of an emotion like that that wouldn't be professional or possible? Was that any part of an expectation at all that you felt?
- Fred Brown
I felt. Yeah, I felt like. I did show this pressure that I had to have equilibrium. I felt that. If I lost it, then that would signal to other people, it's OK to act like that and so that.
- Fred Brown
I was always in this place that I was trying to get white America to realize that everybody is black, is not all drugs a gang member just making babies and not taking care of. And the greatest challenge that most black men is my size at that time. And intellect is you threaten white people when you walk in a room and you ask the intelligent question, especially one they don't anticipate. And so if I became passionate about things in particular around the death of black kids and talking to people, I was the angry black man.
- Fred Brown
If I started asking too many questions, I was trying to be smarter than everybody else. So there was always this. Notion. Like, how did you create balance in the face of. The rhetoric that's not real. But. Is pervasive and dominant culture of pedagogy. This is very similar to what's going on now with many of my friends and colleagues.
- Fred Brown
Now, as a result of seeing George Floyd's murder on TV and seeing the face of the actor not being moved, not having any compassion. Now people are like, OK, I get it. And the struggle that we have is people of color who are friends with those individuals is once again, was I not telling my story. Clear enough? Was I not a good communicator? Did you not hear me say just buried over 50 caged like is these just things is rolling off my mouth. It off my tongue to interpret subconsciously as not being real tangible. That that like.
- Liesel Mertes
Man, if you could see my face, that just that's breathtaking. That. Of course, that feels like just one more iteration of feelings that you've had through the years. Yeah, that's powerful. It's I is a hard position right now.
- Liesel Mertes
When I know I feel like, you know, tap. It happens a lot. People want to go and say, like, teach me, teach me about racism or or things like that. So not to not to ask you for, like, the history of it.
- Liesel Mertes
You know, as, as we discuss empathy on the podcast, if there was something that you could just insert into the consciousness of white Americans as it relates to empathy for you as a black man right now, what would you want them to understand differently?
- Fred Brown
That's a great question. I think one of the things I would want. Is. For them to see. Me and other black men and women are just as human as.
- Fred Brown
As people were families, that. Really want the same things they want. We want the same kinds of attributes. We want the same acknowledgements. We want all of those things. And, you know, we we want a good space.
- Fred Brown
Because I have to believe that the people I'm cool with that call me and ask me, you know, I was talking to somebody else today and they say, did you get the call?
- Fred Brown
And as black people, we know what that means. Like, whenever something tragic happens, our white friends call us and say, and I feel so bad. I want it. And we don't think there's nothing wrong with that.
- Fred Brown
But then people say, what can I do? And it's like, well, did you not see? Or hear me for 35 years complaining about this. Did you not, like hear me say I buried his killers, just came from a funeral?
- Fred Brown
I had a rough week, you know, with a judge. Like, I got pulled over and it's like, so when I told you I got pulled over and I didn't do anything. Agent in the back of your mouth, were you thinking? Yeah, you probably do somewhere you wouldn't get got pulled over. And so you got upset. So it just makes you caucus. Now that. When you're talking to your friends or they. Listening or did they hear you?
- Liesel Mertes
Right. Know, I hear that. I'd like to just because I know you have to go. When you were going through this period of loss or even as you're grieving now, two questions.
- Liesel Mertes
First, I'd love to know what people did that made you feel supported. And then lots of times people do stupid stuff when they're trying to comfort. That actually doesn't hit the marks I want. I would love to know what made you feel supported and what made you feel totally missed, that you'd say don't do this stuff, It's just bad.
- Fred Brown
I felt supported, especially in the last three weeks by my board or my team. And my special assistant cleared my schedule, not telling people particulars, but just saying he's out. He's not available. And then stepping into the role of all the things I do, a lot of people don't know I do. And that. Missing a beat. Just stepping into it and managing that.
- Fred Brown
I think the second thing that was rewarding was my colleagues I work with around the country in the world to send flowers and plants or plants, not flowers, plants and cards.
- Fred Brown
And I haven't read all the cards and just know people said, I want to talk to you, not send you a card or text you. And then in an. Kidding, having this happen while the George Floyd case occur. There's been a lot of people I work with having epiphanies about. I really wasn't listening to you. I really couldn't hear you. So, it's a watershed moment. I think the thing that. This is problematic.
- Fred Brown
And I don't think this is anything anybody's done to me as much as it's something I've done to myself, which is I had this process in my mind and I could just turn it back on my creativity. So, I have four outstanding things I told people I was going to get to.
- Fred Brown
Two weeks ago. I just have not had the mental space to do it. And it's not. And this and people are not. Not expecting it. They are expecting the innovation.
- Fred Brown
And I'm so used to just coming through as I've done. Year over year in the past, where even in the face of adversity, actually some of these things make me dig deeper into. I need to answer. I need to answer. In this particular case, I'm tapped out.
- Fred Brown
I'll have to answer a personal loss triggering another black man being a martyr in the work I did in 96 to now it just trigger a cascade of historical events and current events that are going harder is not going to resolve. And being innovative is not going to resolve.
- Fred Brown
And so, I you know, and I'm inconsolable because I think I crown and said I'm not a outwardly cry, emotional guy set for when I'm angry. And so, because I walk into space and I'm in a meeting, I just facilitated a workshop.
- Fred Brown
And people's work is perhaps this pass. And I thought he was off. And, you know, so I've been in what I would call high level of things. I didn't want to not I didn't want to fall apart or not move forward.
- Fred Brown
And I knew people expected me to be there. So, I was there, but I was just there and. And body, not by spirit or soul. And, you know, interesting enough, today, my board and my board meeting, you know, my board was like, we need you to take a break.
- Fred Brown
And it was interesting because one of my board members say we need you back at 150 to 200 percent. Like you always been not 100. Right. So, my board already is acknowledging you don't function at 100 percent. Yeah. You function at a 150 and 200 percent. And so, whatever you need to do to take a break, that's what we need back. We don't need this guy limping in at 100 percent because that's not who you are. And so that was compelling today to hear my board say to.
- Fred Brown
And just acknowledge, like, dude, this is how you roll. Like, this is what he brought to the table. And so I'm conflicted with. How sustainable is that and. Is that what I need right now and cannot allow myself to grieve? And what does that look like? I don't know what that looks like. I know what I do when death occurs. I know what I do when tragedy occurs. I go to my office and that idea, I come up with solutions.
- Fred Brown
And so, the next day people are like, well, what are we going to do? Would I say, here's, here's what I'm thinking. And peoples like, wow, that's a good idea. I didn't think of that. Are we going to do that? And everybody's like, yeah, we're gonna do it.
- Fred Brown
And so, I'm just used to being able to turn it on. Hit the switch, go to another level. In this instance, there is no other level that I'm aware of. And it's not coming to me. I'm not having great insight. There's not a voice speaking to me. There's an emptiness that is compelling because the emptiness is in conflict with what's in my mind. Mm hmm, yeah. If that makes sense. Right on much swirling.
- Fred Brown
Yeah, I'm. I'm able to write and create because of something that's in my heart disconnected to my mind that comes out to my ability to articulate that. But I realize in the void that exists exists now cannot conjure up, even though my intellectual thought process is driving solutions because my heart and soul have been eviscerating.
- Fred Brown
I can't even grapple with the ideas not percolating to the tangible thoughts on paper. And I'm in this crazy because it's keeping me up all night, like I have these ideas, like I will do this and I would do that. I write it down to energy to to actually do the writing and to put everything together and create a serious change. It's not there. That's what I told my board. I say I'm not here. Like at an all my life I've been in all these places and doing all these things.
- Fred Brown
I am not here right now and I have to acknowledge to my board because I have a responsibility to let you know that I am not all here. And. And at the same time, I'm not trying to sit up and say, I got a problem, like I need this, I need that, you know, because I want people to blaze. He fit, not fit to lead. You know, and so it's a conflict. Right.
- Fred Brown
And you have to take time. And I haven't really taken time, like up almost every day. I was off, I did something, at least three things now compared to nine things.
- Fred Brown
Three things is better, but still, right? Yeah, it's three things. It's work things. Right. You know, so like today I'm going from seven to nine.
- Fred Brown
Yeah. All right. And no, nobody is thinking that's a lot. Or did he just have a tragedy? I think they think and that's just what he does. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
- Liesel Mertes
That, you know, those are important questions and. What, what it reminds me of, like I you know, when my daughter died, one of the the hardest voices that I had to deal with was my own, like, inner judgment, because these things that had come so easily and naturally, the things that it was just like, you know, like water off a duck's back, like, of course, I could, you know, execute on these projects and I'm in a graduate program and do all of it easily.
- Liesel Mertes
Like all of those things were hard and grinding. And it was this sense of like, I don't even like myself that much if I can't, like, produce the way that I. And there was that own sense of, like myself judgment that was really hard to reckon with. And, you know, there is just like somewhat similarly, I'm a person who I render myself in words and actions. And to feel like that capacity, which was like my most natural language of expression, just was like.
- Liesel Mertes
I had to struggle so much for that, and it was like, if I can't like, if I can't render myself that way. In this thing that matters so much like it was a sense of intense dislocation with myself. There was really heavy.
- Fred Brown
So let me tell you, was heavier ball, which you just said is. You said this twice on this call. And I heard it the second time about your daughter. And that's an example of.
- Fred Brown
I heard you, but I wasn't listening. And I'm struck by even more. Oh. Lack of. Acknowledgement that our hurting. So, let me first say my heart goes out to you as a parent for that loss. My heart goes out to you as a mother for the loss. My heart goes out to you as a human being. Who has to bury their child? Yes, the unnatural consequence. And I'm so unfortunately aware of that because of the many kids that I had to.
- Fred Brown
Be a part of their transition. And listening to you and and understanding now. I think why you do this show. Is incredibly moving and. Courageous to do this over and over again when every time you as these deep penetrating questions, it's a reflection of your own experience with your own child. Like deep. Somebody to me, that's how I interpret that. Like how? And you know, I will tell you this. I have a litany of things to do that are canceled, but this was not one of them.
- Fred Brown
I needed to be on here because I needed to talk. Right. No matter what it was, I need to be able to talk without an expectation, I had to do something right.
- Fred Brown
I need to get my emotional content out in some form or fashion. What I'll say. OK, I'll get this proposal to you by tomorrow or so, because I know I know for a fact my team was wonder why I had this call. Like like why you to have this call with all this stuff going on. And I couldn't explain to to them that I needed this. I need this for me, I need to have some emotional exchange with someone that's not kov.
- Fred Brown
It does not. George does not. Other is slight. I don't even know what it would be about. But, you know, depending on how you brought the story to life, I just need to be able to talk. From an unbiased perspective, without expectations and be authentic and courageous and listen intently. So thank you. Thank you for being patient with me. Even getting this set up. And I think you're a fantastic interviewer. You're very fluid and nonintrusive.
- Liesel Mertes
Well, thank you, I I receive all of that wholeheartedly. And I can see even that that is a kindness of you even to, you know, I, I, I. It touches my heart that you would pause and say that because you're a man in a lot of his own intense moments. So, thank you for that gift of empathy, May I ask. Let me just the exchange names my daughter's name who died was Mercy Joan Mertes. What was the name of your father?
- Fred Brown
My father's name is this transition is James Moler. It's a powerful thing to also know the names of someone is. Mercy,
- Liesel Mertes
Mercy. Yeah, it was when we were we were praying and hoping for. Yeah. And even as I think of of calls for mercy and justice, she, she gets to be before me as something not yet actualized,
[01:11:55.930] - Fred Brown
but beautiful. So. Wow. Powerful. Great story.
[01:12:07.300] - Liesel Mertes
Thank you.
MUSICAL TRANSITION
Here are three key takeaways from my conversation with Fred
- Systemic racism in America is real, insidious, and persistent.Fred talked about personal grief over the state of things, the way that systems, whether that was the probation system or family reunification system, were established and maintained in ways that hurt lower-income black men, women, and children. I have not been wounded by these systems, but it is important for me to listen to the stories of those that have, to believe them, and to advocate and usher in meaningful change. If Fred’s story piqued your interest, there are links to the Forbes Fund as well as to a good primer for educating yourself on these issues in the show notes.
- Be careful what you convey/expect from a leader that is grieving.Are you expecting them to just keep on churning, without pause? Fred has a beautiful commitment to his community. He felt like his accomplishments were not just for him but also for his community. He felt an expectation of strength and persistence from his community and that messaging kept him (in part) from fully grieving.
- We all need a place to grieve and just to be, without an expectation of performance.Fred talked about feeling compelled to keep our interview date, even with a dozen other pressing commitments. That having an unbiased listener allowed him to be authentic and courageous. His words towards me were kind…and this show gives me the opportunity to really listen to a story. But it can be hard to do in our personal lives, when there are so many demands and questions that we want to ask and subtle agendas or conditioning that keep us from really being available and showing up. May we be and may we become a safe space for those that make up our community.
OUTRO
Link to Forbes Fund: https://forbesfunds.org/
Workplace and Rcae Reading List: https://hbr.org/2020/06/confronting-racism-at-work-a-reading-list
Anti-Racist Resource List (books, movies, podcasts, articles). https://medium.com/wake-up-call/a-detailed-list-of-anti-racism-resources-a34b259a3eea