Ep.20: Courtney Martin | Author & Activist | Living in Our Broken World

This week, host Mungi Ngomane is joined by Courtney Martin, Activist, Feminist, Author, Entrepreneur, and Journalist. Her book, Learning in Public: Lessons for a Racially-Divided America From my Daughter's School provides lessons that help white parents wondering if it's too early to speak to their young kids about racism—spoiler: it's not. Courtney is also the visionary behind the Substack newsletter, called Examined Family, and she co-founded the Solutions Journalism Network, FRESH Speakers, and the Bay Area chapter of Integrated Schools. Courtney is the Storyteller-in-Residence at The Holding Co, a lab to redesign care for the 21st century. Her work appears frequently in The New York Times and The Washington Post, and you can find her appearances on the TODAY Show, Good Morning America, MSNBC, and The O’Reilly Factor. Courtney also speaks widely at conferences and colleges.

In this episode, Courtney shares how she lives out her activism creatively in her daily life, with information that people wishing to be allies can use, her newsletter, Examined Family, and an article she wrote called, The Reductive Seduction of Other People's Problems, that Mungi highly recommends. To learn more about Courtney and her work visit www.courtneyemartin.com.

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Full Episode Transcript

Mungi Ngomane: This week, my guest is an absolute light of wisdom and love. And her name is Courtney Martin. She's an activist, an entrepreneur, a journalist, and a writer. In this episode, we discussed a lot, but most importantly, Courtney's purpose work, the lessons she learned from her daughter's school. The subsequent book that came from that as well as why she may no longer be identifying herself as a third wave.

If you haven't already read about the reductive seduction of other people's problems, I recommend you go read her article. After this episode, Courtney has said that her metaphorical happy place asking people questions. So I felt lucky to be the one asking questions this time. Here's our conversation.

All right. Courtney Martin, welcome to the Everyday Ubuntu podcast. I'm so excited to be speaking with you

Courtney Martin: today. Thank you so much. Mungi it's such an honor to be.

Mungi Ngomane: Oh, no, the honor is all mine. So I'm going to start with the first question and it's about how our resumes are not a full explanation of who we are as a person.

And I know that you have a pretty extensive resume, but I'm wondering what is not on that, that you think people should know about you.

Courtney Martin: I love that question. Particularly I'm weirdly one of these like very ancient millennials who have never had. Realtime like a full-time job. So my resume has been circulated so rarely that sometimes people will ask me like young people I know will ask me for advice about resumes.

And I'm like, I'm actually the last person on earth to ask about this. So honestly, I don't know what goes on resumes, but I do think this probably doesn't it is in my bio because it matters a lot to me, which is that I live in this thing called a co-housing community. And it's basically this community in Oakland, California, where there are nine separate units.

So like nine different families and each of our homes have everything a typical home would have, but then we also have communal spaces together. So we have an industrial-sized kitchen and eating area, a garden, a tool shed, all these things. And I mentioned that because for me, living in this experience of a living community, which I've done for eight years was a real leap of faith.

It's so un-American by nature, but it was something I'd always been attracted to. And when a unit came up in this community. My husband and I jumped on it and I especially jumped on it. I dragged him along and it's been the most profound teaching for me in a community in unconditional love and like radical hospitality, all these things that I now hold very dear about who I'm trying to be in the world and who I'm attracted to.

Are really rooted in the learning I've done in this community. So I feel like that should be on my theoretical resume that has never, and will never probably exist.

Mungi Ngomane: I read that it was, like your happy place. And when I was reading about it, I was like, oh, this kind of seems like living out like Ubuntu like in every day the way that I was reading about it.

But I'll be honest. When I was speaking to someone, I was like, I'm getting a little PTSD. Cause it's making me think of like group projects and university where we're all reliant on each other. And like sometimes someone doesn't pull their weight and I'm just like, not really good if you say you're going to do something and you don't do it

Courtney Martin: the worst.

Absolutely. It is bad in those ways. It requires a lot. Grace. And a lot of like riding waves of frustration with people at different points and real talk, you're not going to get 25 people intergenerationally and interfaith, and inter-racially living together without some of that group project experience.

Although I will say the art of this kind of living for me has been. A lot of wisdom about what to do together and what not to do together. What kind of expectations to have and what kind of expectations to let go of. So we have, after the community has been around for 21 years, like I said, I've lived here for eight.

So after that amount of time, You figure out, for example, this is like a little thing, but it illustrates it. We do when it's not COVID times have communal meals together on Thursday nights and Sunday nights, we have learned that we will not exchange any money whatsoever that it is. One household's job is to shop cook and clean on their particular night.

And then we each take a turn. So it's not like we're constantly figuring out well like spent this much money on a really nice fish that night. So now we're all stuck paying for it, even though it tasted terrible, it's like we've taken out some of the complexity. And then we've inserted some grace because you have to be like, if one family is struggling and they made rice and beans, then everyone's going to show up with a smile on their face and enjoy the rice and beans and be loving about it.

So we have really, over the years perfected how many groups, project vibe to tolerate. That's good.

Mungi Ngomane: I imagine overall, like when it's now probably just like second nature, Always put yourself in the shoes of others. Like you're just constantly thinking about others, how, what you do or say is going to affect other

Courtney Martin: people.

Yeah, definitely. And I think it's a real training in there's that saying? Like you, you never know what someone's burden that they're carrying is. And I think in this community, we actually do know each other's burdens. To some extent, there's been unemployment. There's been an awesome woman in the community.

Really severe stroke. So it's like a very. Close-up intimate study and just like human frailty and beauty. And that household who's dealing with unemployment is not going to, go all out on a common meal night and being close to that and loving on them. And also, appreciating my own stability economically at that moment.

It's just all of humanity but very up close. And then, I do have children and so that part is a huge benefit is that there's this intergenerational community here that can help mother and father and uncle and aunt and grandmother, my kids in a way that I wouldn't otherwise have.

Yeah.

Mungi Ngomane: Instead of just like the single-family and just, yeah. Yeah. So what would you say that you are your purpose?

Courtney Martin: I am one of these incredibly lucky people who at 41 gets to only do purpose work. I write books, I do journalism. I write this newsletter and those different kinds of writings scratch.

itches for me, they're like different forms of purpose. So I do know how to do very traditional journalism. And sometimes I do that, particularly from a solutions journalism angle. So I'm really interested in writing compellingly and rigorously about how things work, not always how they're broken, which feels very important to me as a balance to the majority of journalism onesies.

So that's mine like real nerdy research. A brain that loves to take a thorny problem and like really wraps my mind around it. I did some series for example, about the racial wealth gap in this country, or about caregiving for the New York times where I like really dig into it on this broad systemic level, and then try to find specific solutions that are worth looking at more closely.

So that's like my super nerdy analytical side, but I also do a lot of writing that is more memoirish. That's about my experiences of being a human, being a mother, being a daughter. And so that for me is a very profound experience of the kind of noticing my life, paying attention to my feelings, paying attention to patterns that I noticed paying attention to the like delight of parenting and also the pain and heartbreak of it.

And. Just be a portal to get that down on paper and. Writing people respond to in such a profound way that it feels very purposeful. Cause it's just wow, I thought this was just like me and my own little idiosyncratic brain and heart. And then I'll get like a flood of comments or emails about how it helped someone or named something that someone needed to have named.

And that just makes me feel so in my purpose. And then I do actually a lot of work Which is not as visible because it's inherently invisible, helping people tell their own stories. So helping people craft TedTalks, or helping people write op-eds. And for me, that is really like social justice work.

It's I'm, I tend to work with folks in the global south or women of color. And it's just a true joy to accompany people on thinking about how. Tell their story in a way that will translate to popular audiences. I just am so moved by getting to be close to people's stories and build the kind of trust that one has to build in order to help midwife people's stories along.

So that's work that I do that as you would never it's my name is never on it, so it just is in the world and I'm very, it feels like a deep purpose.

Mungi Ngomane: And I love your writing. So I want to ask what is your writing process? Cause someone asked me this, I think last night.

And I was like, honestly, I write really well from bed and I don't think anyone else ever says that.

Courtney Martin: Oh, I love that. I wish I could write from bed. My children would find me. So the way I right now is I basically like this last book because of the COVID year I hid in, we have a 1975 bright orange VW bus that my husband convinced me to buy against all of my judgment.

I was like, all right, fine. And it turned out to be the best thing that ever happened because it became my office. And it's basically like this metal, you shut the door and you're like inside of just like a chamber and my children can't open the door because it's like from the seventies.

So it's very hard to open. And so I would go in there I'm an early morning writer. So I don't know if you're in bed early morning or late at night, or if it

Mungi Ngomane: matters early, the workout shower, and then the writing in the morning,

Courtney Martin: and then you get back.

Mungi Ngomane: Yes, but like obviously like clean clothing, not,

Courtney Martin: yeah, fascinating.

No, I'm like rollover. Get your hands on the keyboard kind of person. I do need a cup of coffee. So I like,

Mungi Ngomane: because actually a lot of words come to me in the shower after I've slept

Courtney Martin: well. That's great. Also exercising. I do I do often. What I think are fantastic ideas. Sometimes they end up being totally inscrutable notes on my iPhone that I'm like, what is it?

It's like a sunshine, epiphany, and I'm like, I have no idea what I thought was so brilliant

Mungi Ngomane: to be able to connect this later.

Courtney Martin: Yeah, no clue at all. So I do a lot of good thinking on hikes for sure. I live in the bay area, so there's a lot of gorgeous nature that I'm so lucky to get to be in, but yeah, I really do my best writing.

Rolling out of bed. Cup of coffee. Either, hiding somewhere for my children and getting a couple of hours. And I can write later because I'm, I'm a journalist by training, so I'm a deadline writer. So if I've got the fire under my ass, like I'll get it done. But my favorite time to write is really early in the morning.

Mungi Ngomane: That's very interesting. I'm a deadline, I like a deadline. Yeah, sorta get it going. So I know that you identify as a third wave feminist and I wonder, can you explain what that is in case some of my listeners don't know

Courtney Martin: what it is? Yes. Although it's so interesting. I just read this really amazing book called against white feminism by this amazing Pakistani writer, American she's immigrated to America, but In her early years in Pakistan.

And she argued that these waves, the wave terminology is actually very American focused and American centric.

Mungi Ngomane: Where people are in their sort of journey in the US but not necessarily

Courtney Martin: in. Okay. All right. So it's like the original concept for those who haven't heard of it as like a first wave the second wave. Third-wave. The first wave was suffrage getting the right to vote in America.

Second wave. The sort of sex wars and Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem in the seventies. And then the third wave is people like myself were born. I was born in the last hour of the last day of the seventies. So basically the eighties and with more of a focus on again, sex came up, but the stereotype of the third wave feminist is a focus on.

Kind of aesthetic and getting to be as sexual as men and stuff like that. I think the part of third-wave feminist that I've always loved and identified with is the intersectional aspect. Kimberly Crenshaw is this amazing academic. Talked about this idea of intersectionality that sexism and racism and classism and homophobia, like all of these things, are intertwined and influence both how we experience the world, but also how we can take action in it and fight structural and systemic and cultural oppression.

Yeah. So it's interesting. I love that. You just asked that and I just read that cause I was like, oh, okay. Interesting. Maybe the third wave is not something I want to keep saying. And I, unfortunately, I have had like pretty amazing experiences internationally with feminists, but. I feel particularly in the last, like in my early years, like I actually studied abroad in South Africa, which is probably such a stereotype to you.

of like, all right, here's the white girl who's died in South Africa, but I did and had some really beautiful experiences there. And then I've done a lot of reporting like in Malawi and Rwanda and a few other places where I was able to intersect with some awesome feminists from the global south.

And then through some of the work I've done kind of midwifing other people's stories. I've gotten to meet some amazing global feminists. So it's interesting to me that I never thought to critique this, the wave metaphor because it is, but you don't

Mungi Ngomane: until someone does put in front of your eyes and you're like, oh, that, that was a blind spot that I just like

Courtney Martin: didn't I didn't realize.

So anyway, as of last week, I'm no longer a third-wave feminist. But I am, I do identify, it was deep. It influential for me to come of age in the twenties, right? When blogs were exploding. And I wrote for this blog called Feministing with a collective of women in New York City. And it was just, it was such an amazing experience and it really shaped my ability to do what I do now a lot, which is.

Into the fire of like very controversial topics and know that like I'm not going to die because someone writes a critical comment. I did a lot of that in my twenties and really learned how to right-size my own reaction and also really appreciate the feedback. I'm someone who genuinely appreciates critical feedback as long as it's, in the spirit of.

Really trying to build and critique, not just trolling or trashing me, but so that was all forged during my twenties with that incredible group of feminists that I was writing online with.

Mungi Ngomane: Speaking about, not knowing to like critique that it makes me think of your piece, that I was mentioning the reductive seduction of other people's problems were, I was a person that went and did my masters in international studies

and I learned Arabic because I wanted to go to the middle east and like work in refugee camps. And I thought, if you're going to go to someone's land, you need to be able to speak their language. But in your article, you're speaking about how we look at these problems across the world or in the global south.

And we're like, oh, okay. As an American, of course, I know how I can solve that. But if someone wanted to come here and solve, we'll take the, everything that's happening with abortion in the US where, the way we explain it, It'd just be too difficult to deal with because it's so complicated, the way that our laws work and their different legislatures.

And I never thought of it that way until I read your

Courtney Martin: article. Yeah. Yeah. It's the comparative study is so helpful on this particular issue because I opened that piece talking about gun safety, actually, and like painting this picture of this, like Ugandan teenager. Who's heard that, you can get big social entrepreneurship, prizes, and awards, and money for, going to another country.

And he's found there's this place called America where they like never figured out how to deal with gun safety and he's going to go and solve the problem. And. Yeah, it's just amazing how easily we flatten out the complexity of other people's problems, even though up close and proximate to our own societal particularly, but even intimately, we like to think they're just the most complicated thing in the world.

And probably the truth is somewhere in between, but it certainly begs the question of why so many Americans 20 somethings think that they have enough knowledge, experience, expertise to like. Go to some country in which they have very little knowledge and just start a nonprofit organization and started applying for grants and all the things.

Mungi Ngomane: And I appreciated that. You mentioned Molly Milczyn cause I went to listen to her speak when I was in high school. And I was like, oh, and this is important she's paying attention to the language that she's using with people. It's not just, we're going in, we're calling it FGM. And you're going to have to take my view as a westerner of how this is horrible.

And then the lessons that she learned over time. And I was like, yeah, this is how it should be

Courtney Martin: done. Yeah. Yeah. That, and also her deeply collective lens on things, as opposed to like individually convince people to stop a particular cultural practice, understanding that like cultures are embedded in collectives.

And that's true in America too. This is one of the things that's so hypocritical about the way a lot of Western feminists talk about different places, particularly in the global south is as if they are truly barbaric versus there a bunch of practices and things going on in the U S. We explain away pointing to the big, bad feminism that exists across the ocean.

Mungi Ngomane: You mentioned, you're writing as your purpose work, and I know that your most recent book is called learning in public lessons for racially divided America from my daughter's school. I'm wondering if you could speak about it and tell us a few of those lessons because I think a lot of parents in the US could

Courtney Martin: probably learn from it.

Yeah. It's amazing. Because even though that's a subtitle of the book, not one person has asked me that question, Mungi so I'm so glad you asked it. Yes. No, it's not a didactic book either. It's not like here are the seven lessons you know, it's just, I love that you were like that is the subtitle. So the book is really about its mostly memoir, but with a lot of journalism snuck in about my own journey A white mom with two kids.

I have an eight-year-old and a five-year-old two daughters, Maya and Stella. And when Maya was little, I started walking all around my neighborhood. I had just moved to Oakland in this sort of gentrifying neighborhood in Oakland and I kept walking by this elementary school that seemed beautiful.

It was like boisterous and Beautiful Redwood trees. And but then I started to look closer at the playground and I was like, wait, there are no white kids on that playground. And there's certainly a bunch of young white kids in this neighborhood that I've seen strolling around. So that question of where all the white kids led to a journey of a thousand moral miles.

As I say, in the book where I peel back all of these layers about the unfinished project of integration in this country. And most people don't even realize this, and this is another one of those weird cognitive dissonances that integration reached its peak in American public schools in 1988. So that's when I was as an eight-year-old child and it's only gone down from there.

So despite all of our romance about brown V board and Ruby bridges and all of these, like iconic. Stories that America holds dear. We have deeply segregated schools. And so I started to learn about why that was and to apply that to my local context and just discovered what feels like pretty profound hypocrisy, which is that I'm surrounded by these progressive families.

Most of them are white, some of the multiracial, economically privileged who do everything in anything to avoid the local school, which is majority black highlight next pop population also, and quarter newcomers. We have a lot of new immigrants from the middle east and central America. And it's about 75% free and reduced lunch, which means families who are experiencing, poverty or close to it.

And so we, the first part of the book is me and my husband to a lesser extent. I again, dragged him along figuring out this and like, where should we send our daughters? And we decided to send them to our local school. And then the other three-fourths of the book is living into that experience and being.

Vulnerable and introspective about what it feels like to be a white person in a white mom in that environment, trying to think about how I show up and how much I speak and where, and when do I offer resources and. What am I afraid of and what am I, what turns out to be totally unfounded and what turns out to actually be confusing around my daughter's experience there and, just really trying to paint a picture of proximity.

And I think that's one of the biggest lessons is that there's a lot of romanticization about proximity, especially among progressive Americans who get proximate to the problem. And I think Bryan Stevenson's incredible work. Push that forward in a way, but, and I love him and I love his work, but I do.

I think what one of the lessons is practice getting proximate is profound and it's very complicated. It's not some kind of like magic bullet to get proximate and this is part of what reductive seduction of other people's problems is about too. It's not that it's not worthwhile to actually live the questions.

Thinking about them at an academic distance, especially for white and privileged people. But if you are going to live the questions you're going to have to live the questions, it's going to be uncomfortable at times, you're going to have to learn how to apologize. You're gonna have to show up as a real person.

Yeah. And you're gonna have to do stuff you don't always do for some people that might be shutting up. That's a big edict of the movement. I'm now a part of white and privileged parents who are showing up at schools. Shut up and stay put is the idea. So I wrestled a lot with the shutting up in part, because it's actually more natural to me to shut up, but then I also realize that part of why I'm there is to demand excellence for all children at that school.

So if my kid is doing okay on standardized tests or learning to read, that's great. But if the kid who sits next to her, who's like a black kid from a multi-generational family in Oakland. Experiencing poverty is not doing well on the test or is not reading at grade level. That's gotta be my business too, in the sense that this is a collective, this is a community.

And so I wrestle with that in the book. So I think the lessons are in part that white and privileged people need to right-size their own risk. And actually. Make different decisions live differently. We can't just do another book club on anti-racism and expect the world to change. And that proximity is not simple and it's not, it doesn't earn you the gold star of anti-racism like it continues to be a journey.

But for me, the exhaustion from a real journey is like very edifying exhaustion as opposed to exhaustion of should I post the black square on my Instagram? Is that the thing I'm supposed to do today? Yeah. So much scrambling right now with white and progressive people. And I think it's, it is actually well-intentioned, it comes from a very good place in their own hearts.

Like I think white people are in America are really not all of them, obviously, but there's a proportion of white people who have really woken up over the last two years and are really trying to live differently. But. Are spending a lot of their energy instill in that place of the kind of anxious performance.

And so the book is really my attempt to say what if we live differently? What if we right-sized our own fears and risks and started being in community in different ways, started using our resources in different ways. And ultimately the lesson is integration is not the answer.

But it is an answer and it's worth trying particularly given that we have forced black and brown families to do the hard things in terms of school integration for so many years make their little kids get on buses and go to neighborhoods and schools that didn't welcome them.

So my, white daughter walking into a school where she's the minority but is totally welcomed, seems like a pretty small. Risk and it has proven to be it's this most beautiful community she's thriving. And now my little one just started kindergarten this year. She's thriving.

I've learned so much and have so many important friendships there. So it's born out to be just this really joyful, sometimes uncomfortable, like I said, but totally joyful experience. And life

Mungi Ngomane: is uncomfortable. I know that something, I think parents struggled with a lot last year or when I say parents, I Was the whole like but our kids are too young for us to be discussing like race and bringing this to them.

And, black parents' response is we have to discuss with them because this is their life. And I'm wondering is, have you found a way that you can discuss this with your eight-year-old and five-year-old that you think is helpful for other white parents to take on board?

Courtney Martin: One, one thing is, I think you do a lot less discussing in this abstract way when you're living in a community with people of various racial and nationalities and language backgrounds and everything else because it's just like a natural part of our experiences that our kids will be like, yeah. Like, why does she wear her hair like this?

And then we have a conversation about that. I actually find the conversations are very organic. That's one of my gifts of being at this school is the conversations I have with my daughters are quite organic because they are embedded in their own questions about stuff they're experiencing at school or stuff.

I can point out too, what they experienced at school. So that's one thing, but the other thing is I don't actually. Completely understand that white parents have the privilege of thinking they don't need to talk about this with our young kids. But part of my argument in the book is that there is a spiritual wound at the center of whiteness and that little kids feel it like when they notice

differences, which they do. There's all this scientific research about that kids are very tribal and totally notice those are the boys. Those are the girls, those are the black kids. Those are the white kids. So they're noticing all of this. And if white people are silent about it, it just continues to perpetuate this sense of something's wrong with white people.

And there is something wrong with white people. That's the truth. So like, how do I, my, my thinking is more. I feel that it's urgent and necessary for me to talk about race and gender and all the things with my kids as early as possible a because they're noticing it anyway, but B because I don't want them to grow up with this sense of the kind of double consciousness that like on the one hand.

Things seem really fucked up on the other hand, like everyone around us is compartmentalizing it's to say it's not really our fault. Somehow that we have a house and no one else does around the block or, we, in Oakland, we have a huge unhoused population. So I want to keep those innate questions about justice and district redistribution and stuff.

Not only keep those alive in my kids but encourage them and be like, no, that's right. This is fucked up. Like what can we do about it? And how do we, sit within systems and cultures that are broken knowing we can't fix them and we're not going to be a white savior, but like, how do we acknowledge them and think about living differently and tolerate and live with, and be honest about all of these.

Things that are deeply wrong. So that's a complicated thing to do, but actually like little kids I find are pretty incredible at wrapping their brains around that kind of complexity. And then just like continuing to show up in relationships. With their friends and they're such dreamers, they have like such beautiful imaginations about how things could be different and such like I had this great, this example, like I had this great moment where my mother-in-law who's a white woman from Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

There was a basketball player who has a Greek name, a black guy but has a Greek. On the Milwaukee Bucks, who's very beloved. But it's hard for everyone to pronounce and it's been like a big thing for like the white people of Milwaukee to learn how to pronounce this guy's name. And so we were talking about his name and then, and my mother-in-law and my daughter were playing checkers.

And my mother-in-law says to her so do you have a lot of kids at your school with like different sounding names? And Maya just looked at her and she's And I realized cause Maya doesn't even have the reference for what that would mean. She's yeah. I mean are names.

Yeah. There's Barack and like Gordon and there's all of these like variety of names, but to her, they're not normal. Like she, she just doesn't even have that point of reference. So it's I love that. On the one hand, they are able to just embrace this whole.

The idea about what's normal via they're living in a big city and being in this community, a multiracial community that we're part of. On the other hand, we're not pretending it's this like a perfect melting pot and everyone at school is equal. So we're like having real conversations about like for example, I'm making them eat school lunch, which they're like so mad about.

And they're like, why? And I'm like Because everybody at your school gets to eat the same lunch and then it doesn't create the same sense of difference. It's not very fair. If you show up with, you're like seaweed packets and you're like, I'm actually terrible at packing lunches. So that's the other secret.

Yeah. But if I were to pack a lunch, I know that it looks. I've learned now that that's this moment of proximity that really points out differences to the kids. Cause it's like some of the kids are getting the school lunch because their parents can't afford to pack their lunch. And then my kid is showing up with this in, in a more romantic version, it would be like the bento box of whatever.

And so that's like something they know now is Nope, we're gonna eat the school lunch. I hope I want the school lunch to be better for everybody. And I'll keep fighting for that. But so those are these lived moments where they get to bump up against some of these questions. And I think as you said, life is uncomfortable.

Like I want them to grow the muscles to, to know that and to adjust to that and to think critically about different choices they make. And I don't think that's going to happen. I think that's what leads to the reductive seduction of other people's problems. A five-year-old white kid who thinks they know everything because they haven't bumped up against this stuff.

Whereas if you've bumped up against you, you're like, oh no, I get how complicated these questions are in a lived daily way and I don't

Mungi Ngomane: think we give kids enough credit. My mom always says like you like kids do see the difference. It's just, they don't necessarily put these values, all the differences that we do.

And they learn to put these values because of us, because, they ask a question and we make that face like, oh God, don't ask that. And that's you know what they're learning.

And yeah, I'm like we could just learn so much from them.

Courtney Martin: Yeah, totally. I write about this in the book, but I've had all these little moments with my kids where there's this one book series called fancy Nancy.

That's this little white girl and I paid for it. I like it. And my daughters love it. And I was like, please read fancy Nancy. I'm like, okay. And they know I hate it, but they like, so one night they, my older daughter was like, please read the fancy Nancy stargazer, it's this one about her camping out in her backyard and looking at the constellations.

And begrudgingly. And then the next night she I'm closing the door to put her to bed and she's Hey mama, do you know, I asked you to read fancy Nancy. And I said, no. And she said because fancy Nancy calls that constellation the big dipper, but Harriet Tubman called it, the drinking gourd when she was leaving

the slaves out of slavery, Mrs. Miner, Tami. This is her transitionary kindergarten teacher. So she wasn't even in kindergarten yet. And I was trying to figure out why does fancy Nancy calls it that and Harriet Tubman called it something else. And it's here I was being a total asshole being like, I don't want to read fancy-dancy like this snob.

And she's figuring out, trying to learn ontological puzzle about like slavery and language and, I don't, I'm very careful about I'm not presenting my daughter as some genius. It's just this is what happens when kids are in schools where they're having hard conversations when they're little, is there cause a lot of people would say like you taught a four and five-year-olds about slavery.

It's yeah. And then they started making meaning of it gonna survive the conversation. Exactly. And not only that. Get creative about making comparative meaning about it and like the literature that they're being exposed to. Yeah, I just, it gets into all of this critical race theory, controversy, but I feel strongly that kids have the capacity and I do also, this is one other piece of it for me is I think we need to give white kids like my daughter’s examples also of white people who at every different moment throughout history.

 Have fought against some of this like immorality, you think about like white Quakers during slavery who refuse to wear cotton as a way to not be complicit. Or like Anne Braden is this amazing figure in Louisville, Kentucky who bought homes during the red line. For black families under her name and ended up going to jail for it.

So I do think it's important that our white kids see, whiteness is not only about depravity like that. We have to face up to it and there's plenty for us to face up to, and we can be different. We can make different choices. We can use our power differently so that they feel that sense of okay, I want to be like Anne Braden.

Of whatever of my time, whatever version of that it might be.

Mungi Ngomane: And I know that I know that your writing as an, a part of activism, but I also know that you do your activism and other creative ways that everyone's was like warming to my heart, because these are things that as a black person, I'm like, yeah, this is what we all should be doing.

But I think that some people don't know to do it. And I wonder if you could speak about your, for example, like when you were asked to be on an all-white panel and how you respond to.

Courtney Martin: Yeah. So I don't do all-white panels. I always say is there a person of color on the panel? If there isn't, then I will suggest one replace my invitation and, or I'm happy to join if they want to add more people of color, but obviously, too many people on a panel are like death by the panel.

So I'm fine to step out. If that's the case. And also, I just try to think a lot about how to share. Opportunities that I have like with this book that I had just come out, there's this important person at kind of the center of the narrative, who is my kids, TK transition, kindergarten teacher, amazing black woman educator, born and raised in Oakland.

And she contributed so much to my own growth and my own knowledge. That I feel really clear that I want her to be speaking next to me whenever we can do that. So like we've done a podcast together and I've helped her work on an op-ed of her own. And so I think a lot about sharing either speaking opportunities or.

Giving people that I write about because that's inherent to my work, the chance to speak on their own terms, whether that's in an op-ed if they want to, or in other ways and be supportive of them. And I actually find that people are like the sort of hosts, like people who invite me to speak on panels or give keynotes or things like that are often very receptive to this.

And so it's not, again, white people sizing their own risks. I don't tend to get pushback, people are really intrigued and oh yeah, I'd love to hear from her. Like I loved her part in the book. That would be so interesting. So that's just a very small thing, but now that it's part of my mindset.

It's a really nice thing to walk around in the world with yeah.

Mungi Ngomane: And I wonder the last year has been a difficult time for everyone, even if we have roofs over our heads and have incomes. What has sustained you in difficult

Courtney Martin: moments? Definitely my community.

I have two women who are in the same boat where we all have very small children and we're in. I'm like looking over. Cause I can see exactly where their houses are alright now, as we're talking. We jokingly call each other sister wives and we had plenty of moments where we would just like, either lose our minds together or be like, I'm having a really hard time.

I need. To get some support. So those two women completely got me through I'm so lucky. Cause one of them happens to be an educational psychologist. So she's like literally a child psychologist I could be like, oh my gosh, Stella's obsessed with death. Is that okay? And she's that's fine.

This is totally normal. This is the age that

Mungi Ngomane: they

Courtney Martin: ask all the death questions.. Yeah. Oh yeah. And my Stella she's oh, she's just this, she's got a massive heart. And I think somehow some like deep ancestral connection. Cause she just, she feels death. She wants to talk about it a lot. She even tells us she is sad.

She didn't get to know people who died before she was born and she'll name them. And we didn't even know she was like listening to us. Talk about that person. She must have met

Mungi Ngomane: them before then.

Courtney Martin: Do you believe that.

Mungi Ngomane: I believe that if the child comes after someone has passed, they probably met them like in the

Courtney Martin: interim.

Wow. All right. I'm going to carry that with me. Cause it does feel like something is going on with yeah.

Mungi Ngomane: It's like someone's name sticks with her. I feel like that's someone she's probably met and so she feels they're like

Courtney Martin: spirit or something because south Africans obviously were

Mungi Ngomane: very much about the ancestors.

Courtney Martin: I, I love that because I, it does feel like something, something is different with her. But it is developmentally appropriate for four-year-olds. Talk about death a lot, but she takes it to another level. So anyway, I'm just those women in particular who have just completely carried me through.

My writing has really helped me so much. I started my newsletter before COVID began, but I wrote through it and my readers were just. So generous and, I would write about different sorts of Kuwait feelings and patterns. I was noticing quite unsure if it was going to be of service to people, but hoping it would be, and I've had so much feedback that it really helped people feel accompanied at this completely bizarre apocalyptic moment.

And that's one of the gifts of a newsletter. Is, I don't have to pitch anyone. And it would be so hard to pitch the kind of stuff I write. Sometimes it's I want to write about like how. It's to be alive is to notice small things. And also to know your kids could die any minute. Like the stuff I'm writing is so random and like emotional and interior and spiritual and like any editor in a traditional journalistic framework would just be like, what?

What's the news peg? This is so bizarre. So I'm very grateful to have that space where I can just do my weird stuff and people respond well,

Mungi Ngomane: speaking of your newsletter, it's called examined family, I think. And I saw that it was something about, people who get all twisted up inside thinking about the brokenness of our world.

And I was like, hello, that is me. I see something like some sort of injustice and I like to want to cry like my stomach isn't.

Courtney Martin: Speaking of your ancestors, you've got that like the ancestral lineage of outrage, and yeah. And

Mungi Ngomane: I feel it in my body. And so I was wondering like how do you tell people, or, in the newsletter advise people to keep living and loving and being humble and brave in this fucked up world.

Courtney Martin: My first thought is like, what other choice do you have? But I think it's like we have to depend on each other. I'm such a collectivist. I'm always encouraging people to think more collectively and get out of their own way. I think when I feel really overwhelmed, It's often because I'm being too self-focused as opposed to right-sizing whatever's going on with me and figuring out how I can move with people.

But I also, I really, and this fits again into this reductive seduction thing, I really believe in local community local action, like the power of local. It's not that I'm not interested in scale or interested in global solutions. And I deeply care about issues. For example, right now, access to vaccines things that are not affecting me immediately, but I just feel like the wisdom of taking responsibility for like your little piece of land, your little life, your little family, in our case, this school and pouring yourself into those places in a thoughtful, very committed long-term way.

Is so strengthening. So even in these moments of dread and apocalypse and pandemic and climate change, and I can get very down and feel very worried about not only my own future but especially my daughter's future. But I think when I can dig in locally and feel will come, what may I'm going to keep showing up in this space, in these spaces, and I'm going to keep.

Strengthening my daughter's ability to be resilient and think collectively, and that's where I'm going to find meaning. So I think that's part of it. And then, just like joy and pleasure and delight. Part of these sister wives who got me through the pandemic was also, we would play the nineties, hip hop, and R and B in the courtyard and embarrass our children by having random dance parties in the middle of the day.

And so I just. A lot of strength by just continuing to focus on pleasure and joy and friendship and laughter and my husband and I got a really amazing ability to laugh at each other throughout the COVID year and make fun of each other. And I think that's how we stayed married.

And so it's that light and dark piece right. It is like holding onto all of it in order to keep going.

Mungi Ngomane: What would you say is your greatest fear for humanity?

Courtney Martin: I think I, what, whatever the Meta version of this micro-moment is, which I think about a lot, like when you're on your death bed and you're lying there, your proverbial death bed, and you're thinking like, did I spend. My time, the right way. Did I spend my energy, my love the right way? I think collectively we were thinking about the whole world on our deathbed.

The answer's no, like capitalism consuming so much stuff like taking up more than our share particularly, this American context or like a white American context, I think that is what is my biggest fear is just a real confusion about what matters and how to feel alive and feel like we matter as people.

And so I guess that's part of the bet with my writing being so personal. Is that I'm, I do believe there's a connection between the two. I feel if I can personally get in touch with that deathbed feeling and think would I care if my daughter went. The best quote, unquote, most highly resourced elementary school when I'm on my death bed or would I be thinking it's really cool.

She had this beautiful multicultural community that she was raised in. I'm pretty sure my deathbed answer is the latter. So it's, and then that can lead me to these bigger questions of do we really need. To travel as much as I'm thinking about even from a work travel perspective, how much we traveled pre-pandemic.

I don't think so. Like I think we can, there are things we need to do to limit and focus locally and find joy in smaller moments. That would be good for the whole planet that we can do in our individual lives. So I guess I just fall back on this sort of deathbed metaphor of how to do you individually.

Assess what you do on a daily basis, according to that. And then how could we collectively societally think about that. That's very

Mungi Ngomane: interesting. No one has said that. So I'm going to, I'm going to think about that now.

Courtney Martin: I didn't know. I was going to say that. I don't know if that works, but we can play around with that.

Mungi Ngomane: It, does it totally works.

Cause I want to think about it now. And then also, what is your greatest hope for humanity?

Courtney Martin: The opposite, is like being on that death bed and just being like, wow, I got to be alive at all. Like what a gift. And I know I spent my energy and my love and these beautiful ways. I hosted this conference multiple years.

I'm really, it's funny now that I'm thinking about it. Cause I talked about Stella being obsessed with death. I'm obsessed with death myself. So she probably comes by it quite honestly, but I've hosted this conference a few years in a row called end. Really beautiful day of talks from people who are innovating in and serving those in the death and dying and palliative care community.

And one of the speakers gave this incredible talk about soundscapes and hospitals and like the sounds people hear on their death beds. And one of the questions she asked us was what is the last sound you would want to hear? And it was such an amazing question. And I immediately knew like my daughter's laughter is what I would want to hear.

But, and so I think that is like my wish for humanity. To be able to either individually or societally like be at the end of our lives. And just feel like what a deep, profound gift it is to be alive at all and feel really good about the way we've loved on others, the way we've been loved.

And. Like to hear whatever that last sound is for you, which I think is so symbolic of what actually matters or what gives you comfort and pleasure and beauty. And that's the point of being here too, is justice for sure. But is also just your ability to be present enough to experience the beauty of being alive at all.

Oh my God. What would be your last sound? Do you know? I don't know.

Mungi Ngomane: Maybe my husband's saying that he loves me at probably something like that. It's okay. He doesn't listen to the podcast, so he'll never

Courtney Martin: hear, we got to go listen to this episode. Now the point is actually not him, but you, cause like next time he says that in passing, you'll be like, oh, that, that is the thing.

Because sometimes I hear my kids laughing now and I remember that talk and I am like, oh, here, right here at like really take it in, enjoy it.