Good morning, peeps, and welcome to wok F Daily with me your Girl, Danielle Moody recording from the Home Bunker. Folks, I am really excited to bring you this conversation with author and CNN journalist John Blake, who is penned the book More Than I Imagined, And I have to tell you that this conversation with John was one of the most i opening, provocative conversations that I've had in a
really long time. And in his book, John tells the story of hiding the fact being closeted in his terms about being biracial and having a white mother that he didn't meet until he was about seventeen years old. In the essay that he wrote for CNN back in April of this year, it's entitled What a Black Man Discovered
when he Met the White Mother He Never knew. Folks, if you don't run out and buy John's book more than I imagine, than I plead with you to go over to CNN dot com and read What a Black Man Discovered when he Met the White Mother He Never Knew. The essay is beautiful, the story is beyond compelling, but John's story mirrors the kinds of conversations vulnerability and expandiveness we need to be having in this moment when the Republican white supremacist Party is working over time to push
us further and further apart as a society. And I think now more than ever, that's when you reach your arms out for those who are reaching back. And so this was a robust conversation. It was one that honestly I could have had for hours and hours and hours. And so without further ado, I bring you a really
in depth conversation with author, journalist, writer John Blake. Folks, I am very excited to welcome to OKF Daily for the very first time award winning CNN journalist and author John Blake, whose latest book, More Than I Imagined is Your
Personal Narrative. His personal narrative about being raised in the inner City of Baltimore in the nineteen seventies and being I guess, in your words, you say closeted by racial man until you, in fact meet your white mother, and John, I have to say that your essay, which I want to tell folks, the title of your essay at CNN, which came out in the spring of this year, What a Black Man Discovered when he met the white mother he never knew was one of the most captivating essays,
which I know is the inspiration and is a directly taken from your book. Pieces I've read in a long time, and I read a lot. I read a lot, and one of the things I want to I want to jump in with is something that stood out to me in the essay that I have personally been grappling with probably since I started this show, which is when you wrote facts don't change people relationships do?
Yeah?
Yeah, I mean, John, I'm just going to say, please, please, please talk to me so that I can stop looking for statistics, that I can stop looking to shove truth in people's faces and pray to some God that they will wake up from this racist maga coma that they have been seduced to be in. But that if we're honest, this country has been gripped by since it's creation. But reading that in Black and White, facts don't change people relationships do, I said, well, God, damn, I have to start over.
So you know, it's funny you mentioned that because so many people cite that quote, and it seems like the enlarges with people's you know, memories and to me, it's kind of a dangerous quote because I don't want to imply that facts aren't important. I mean, I'm a journalist like you, so I revere facts. I know that facts are very important. But that quote comes from twenty five years, twenty five plus years of being a journalist writing about
race and politics. I've covered so many racial reckonings that come and go. And to give you an idea about how old I am, I wrote about Clarence Thomas' nomination to the Supreme Court. I covered the Rodney King protest in nineteen ninety two. So I've seen these racial awakenings come in America and go, and we write these hard hitting stories about race. We thought I thought that all these videos of people like George Floyd would decisively shift
racial attitudes. And yet after George Floyd, more white Americans voted. More Americans voted for Trump than any other president before besides Joe Biden. So I asked myself, as a journalist, what shifts racial attitudes? Because it's definitely not facts and information. It's helpful, but that's not the decisive thing. And then I looked at my family. So you mentioned your question. You know, the maga coma, the maga madness. The white members of my family were caught up in their own madness,
their own racism. These were people, you know, brief description, who rejected me at birth. My mother disappeared from my life right after I was born. There was no explanation. Her family wanted nothing to do with me because my father is black. These were people who freely used the N word, who thought that white and black people should be kept apart. And yet today we're family. We have this close, close, beautiful relationship. And I asked myself, how
did that happen? And it came through relationships. It came through us getting to know one another year after year, time after time. And to me, that's why I said that when I looked at me, when I looked at when I looked at a lot of social science things that really changed people, it's really being in relationships. Those are the things that decisively shift racial attitudes. And I
think we've forgotten that. You know, a long time ago, I'm going to mention a word that is so uncool that you might boot me off the show for saying it. But people used to talk about this thing called integration. Yeah, you know when King talked about it, I have a dream, you know all these when he dreamt of a day where white and black people would sit together at the
table brotherhood. There was an understanding that in the fight for racial justice, yes you have to pass the Voting Rights Act, Yes you have to do all these things, but you also have to put people in situations where they will be around people who see the world differently, and in doing so, people will see their common humanity and change also occurs there. So that's what happened to my family, and I begin to see that that's what really changed them, not all this knowledge I had about racism.
So that's why I put that quote in that essay that you read.
And I will say this that it isn't and I didn't interpret it as sax don't like that, sex don't matter what. But what it like stung was that you cannot change people that you are not willing to engage.
That's a beautiful point. And in my situation, I was forced to engage with white family members who were captured by racism and didn't want anything to do with me, because I had to come together with them to take care of my mom. And as I mentioned in the estimate essay. I first met my mom at seventeen. It was this totally unexpected meeting, and the place where a met her was a mental institution. She had been institutionalized for schizophrenia. So I had to come together and become
her caretaker. And to do that successfully, I had to work together with my white relatives, the same ones who wanted nothing to do with me. Now, I never thought that that relationship would change me and change them, but it did. So I tried to figure out, like, how does this stuff happen? And I read a lot of literature about it, and it keeps on going back to the same thing, bringing people together. There is a reason why racist white Americans have fought through our history so
much against bringing black and white people together. You know, segregation wasn't just created because white people hated black people. Segregation was created because white people, white elite people knew that if white working class and black and brown working class people ever lived together, went to school together, they would notice that they had common interest yep. So I think it's really important that integration that we see for
what it is. It's not assimilation, meaning that we learn how to be more white and to mean more dulcile and just be like them.
No.
To me, integration is about power. It's about sharing space but also sharing power. But in doing so, that's the thing that shifts racial attitudes.
You know, you speak, you know in such a logical way and in such an easy way, because I I think about your aunt, yeah who you know who we write about, and you know said, well, I didn't not come to see you because you were black, Like it's because you were in Catholic right, Like, let's just live in the river of denial, right like it wasn't you know, because and you please share the story of your of your of your father and your mother, and your father
going to your mother's neighborhood, going to her home. Yeah, please tell tell the listeners what happened in nineteen sixty three.
Okay, So when I was born in the mid sixties, interracial marriage was illegal in much of the country. It wasn't like it is today. There was no Obama or Kamala Harris in public, in pop culture, in the public eye. Interracial marriages were illegal, and if a black man could be seen with a white woman in public, he could
literally be killed. And yet my father during that time decided, for whatever reason, that he was going to date my mom, And so when he went to visit her for a date in Baltimore, he took a cab there, and first a cab driver I didn't even want to take him there because black people didn't go there, but he convinced him to do so. And when he knocked on my mother's door, her father answered the door and he physically assaulted my father, called him the inWORD, and had him arrested.
And yet despite that, my mother decided to date my father and to have two black kids with him. And that's the world that they lived in. But to give you an idea, you know my family, and this is part of a strange part of my story. That same father that assaulted my father, who called him the inWORD, my maternal grandfather, is somebody that I was able to reconcile with. But none of this happened unless you'd engage
with people who see the world differently. And it's very difficult to do because you know, Frankly, as a journalist who covers race, I get tired of black people. We're always trying to understand them, we always have to forgive them. It is so tiring, and so I can understand people who don't want to do that, but I was forced to do it because this is my family and I got to take care of my mom, and I have to understand these people. But in doing so, I learned
so much and it changed me. I just didn't change them, but they changed me. So I thought it was a beautiful story. And we don't really hear those type of stories about race right now.
No, because see, I mean, the only stories that we hear right are the story that we just heard recently in Texas. Black mother goes to confront her white neighbor. Yeah, mother of four, she's dead, yeight ye. Black boy sent to go pick up his little brother, knocks on the wrong door. Right, who shot in the head?
Right?
Do you know what I'm saying. I know you like your your father's story. That interaction has been so normalized, yes, but the escalation in it is that people are shot dead right or harmed in their tracks simply for daring to do what your father to do what your father did. And so for me, I'm just like laying out just those two stories. There are like two thousand more in the last two years that sound like nineteen sixty three.
And go ahead. I'm sorry, I don't want to interview.
No, I was just gonna say that for me, it does become I tell people all the time who listen to woke a app, I'm exhausted all the goddamn time, right,
like I am. You know, I tell people to really, you know, particularly people of color, he particularly activists who are on the front lines, particularly journalists, to take really good care of their mental and emotional well being, right because this work is designed to wear you down, right, And you know, And so I ask you, like you made these inroads, did you feel like you had to drop your preconceived notions, your anger because you were hiding
before you said I was closeted as biracial. I'm checking other boxes that say that my mom is black. That was not the case. So what did you have to shift in order to allow for space?
Well, I want to say two things today. One is when you were talking about how this work wears you down, and I can totally relate to that. But for all those stories that are tragic, the ones you rightly mentioned, I think there are other stories out there where people find a way to connect. We just don't really hear
about them. I think it's really important that we tell these stories about racism that show people finding a way to get past it, because if we keep on telling the same story that implies or says that America is so racist, it will never change, that white people will never change. If that's the only story we're telling, what incentive does white America have to change? What hope do we have that we can ever make a multiracial democracy work. So the stories we tell are incredibly important to give
people the energy. It was this writer I like, she said that action without hope is impossible, and we're telling hopeless stories. People aren't going to have hope. They're not going to think they can change things. So that's fun. But two, you ask me about what did I have to do to shift to make these to me that the quick answer is I had to get a little humility. I had to Like you mentioned my mother's sister. I
talked about my mother's sister in that essay. He was a woman's stone cold racist as far as I was concerned, who denied when I met her in my mid twenties that race had racism had anything to do with her absence from my life. So I was very angry at her, and she would try to reach out to me and
establaghe this relationship. But I tell this story about how I went to Lowe's one weekend to buy something for my home improvement project, and I could myself racially profiling a black man, meaning there was a black man and a white man behind the counter. The white man was on the phone, but I waited till he was off the phone to ask him for help. But I didn't
ask the black man who was free. And only later did I realized that, and that I began to realize, you know, racism is so powerful that it can even infect black people. And we know what happened with Tyree Nichols. He was beating the black out. So I said, let me a little grace to my aunt, this woman who denied, who denies her own racism because she grew up in this all white world. She's not aware of these things. And when I did that, our relationship began to shift.
I didn't preach to her, I didn't condemn her for a racism. I started to just try to understand where she come and came from to build this common ground. And so with a little humility like with in her, A little bit of that is in me as well. So it's not the sexy thing to say. It's so much easier to just condemn, and it feels good and we should And I don't get me wrong, I'm not
saying we shouldn't be angry. Somebody told me once an interview, or you're not angry anyone like hell no, it is right to be angry when you see black people struck down like that. It is healthy, you know. But I'm not talking I'm talking about this all consuming anger that takes you out where you see all white people this way, are any group that way? That's that is not good. And so when I saw when I approached my aunt, my white aunt, with this kind of humility, that really
helped our relationship and now we're like this family. She maybe the beneficiary in her will. I never would have predicted that, but it happened.
What you're stating, and the story that your book, your story unveils for us, is that what we have to understand is that there are concerted efforts that are being made by people in high up places that see the rest of us as pieces on a chessboard that they move around, and they keep apart in order to win their game. Right, right, there is money made right in the dissension. In the dissension, there is money that is
made in the misery. Right And and I you know, and the place that I come to, though, John, is that how do you see moving from the place that we are in right now in this country, which is a tinderbox, back to a place of conversation When your book is probably banned in Florida, when your book is probably banned in Texas, in Alabama, in all of these places, where are the are are the roots of the trees are soaked with black people's blood?
Mm hm.
So how do we move into the place that we need to do, where narrative, where conversation and storytelling is so important, when we don't even have those books anymore?
Well, that's a that's a very good question, and it's tough. In I would say two things. One is, I think one of the most important things we can do is to not lose hope in telling those type of stories. And I said earlier that action without hope is impossible. And what I sense from people like yourself, people who've been writing about race and try to tell these stories to change America. I sense exhaustion, you know, like, just
how do we get past that? And I think when we get to that point, it can be easy to say nothing's ever going to change. Like I had a guy tell me the other day that racism is embedded in our DNA, that people can't change. So I think one is we can't give into that kind of hopelessness. And one of the easier said to done. I know, but one of the things that really helped me is
that I looked at my mom and her life. So I'm like, I asked myself, how do people who seem like they have no power deal with people who seem like they have a lot of power, and how do they change things? So when my mother met my father in the mid sixties, over ninety percent of Americans opposed in a racial marriage. About a year ago pol was taken, and now something like ninety four percent approve of interracial marriage.
And it cuts across all political racial lines. And so I asked myself, how did that dramatic shift take place in a lifetime. And you know, because a black man could be killed, like I said before, just walking in public book and now you see biracial children, interracial couples, it's no big deal. How did that happen? And I think part of the things that happened is that ordinary people like my mom and dad, they did not give
into hopelessness. They saw these all these antimessgenation laws as absurd, and they acted. They didn't wait for judges of politicians to decide. They said, I'm going to love who I'm gonna love, regardless of skin color. And when enough of them started doing that, it created a chain effect, a ripple effect, until it changed norms, and then the politicians and the judges had no choice but to decide. This
was the same dynamic in gay marriage. If you remember, not too long ago, George W. Bush ran against gay marriage and ran and won. But all these game less people came out to their husband, you know, to their families, to their friends and their jobs, and that shifted that norm and then the Supreme Court and the politician's followed. So one of my favorite writers a guy named Eric
lou and he says norms changed before policy changes. So I think what I've learned from my mom is that people who seem like they have that that they have no power when they act on their conscience, on their convictions, they can have tremendous power. They can change norms. And when you change norms, the laws and the policy will eventually follow. So to me, that means what we do in our private life, what we do in our actions,
that really matters, and we can't give up hope. So that's that's one of the things that gives me hope. And two, one of the things that gives me hope, and I talk about this in the book, is that I think one of the things you get white Americans to brace change is to stress that it's in their self interest. Okay, if you're going to appeal to a group's morality, like do this because it's the right thing,
that's pretty weak argument. But if you look at some of the biggest changes we've had in history, with the passage of civil rights laws, white Americans have decided what's in their interest. Why did the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act and all those laws passed the mid sixties. A huge part, as you probably know, was because of the Cold War. We were engaged in this
big competition with Russia, and we look like hypocrites. We are all engaged with another great power competition with China, where they say democracy doesn't work. So I believe that when White America gets to the point they realize we have to make this work if we're going to be vital, prosperous, remain a superpower, particularly when we have such a the
very demographic change in our country. I think when many of them start to see it in their self interest, that also gives me hope that they will be changed. And that was a very long answer, but sorry about that.
But yeah, no, not a very long answer. But I want to ask you a final question. You know, as a journalist, John, what responsibility do you think that journalism bears now as we are watching our democracy circle the drain, as we are watching race relations disintegrate. And what I often say on this show is that mainstream media is aiding and abedding in our destruction. And so, as a journalist, what responsibility do you see this very powerful industry have in our survival?
Two things come to mind. One is that we I think we can't hide behind claims the neutrality to avoid calling out things that are anti democratic. So we're training and journalists to always show both sides of the story. But I think there are certain stories that it would be a disservice to our readers to say that there are two morally equivalent points of view here. For example, you say January sixth was an insurrection. You don't say January sixth was an insurrection, but others say it was
a protest. No, you say it was an insurrection. You say, if a politician is saying something racist, you don't use a euphanism like racially charged or anything like that. You said, no, that was a racist statement. So I think calling out things that threaten out democracy is one of the things we can do to protect it, and I think that's incredibly vital. I think number two is something else. Someone that told me when they read my book, they said,
this is a very subversive story. And I thought that was interesting, and I thought it and I kind of agree with it now. It's subversive because I'm humanizing people that a lot of people think that journalists are opposed to, Like I'm humanizing members of my family who are frankly who were very racist, and I'm showing him as multidimensional human beings and I'm treating them with respect, and I'm
listening to him. I think when we do that too, when we also try to engage people as journalists who see the world differently it might be different politics, different skin color, that we just don't dismiss him as all, you know, beyond redemption, beyond inability to change. I think that's really important as well. And I know that's kind of some people might say, you know, you're kind of
being like an ople tom or something like that. But for example, if I'm talking to a white conservative who might support Trump, I think one of the most effective things I can do is treat them with respect and consideration, because that defies what people tell them about the media. So I think there's something else that we can do. So I don't know if that makes sense.
It does, John, it absolutely does. And you know, I'm so appreciative of one of your writing, of you sharing a story, particularly now that we're not listening right and we're not reading right in ways that we could, and we're being so overwrought with hopelessness and despair that most people are just turning away. And I think a part of my job one is to bring the alarm on those injustices, but it is also to remind people of their personal power regardless of the size of their platform
or not. That you have voice. And as long as you have voice, you can have conversation. And as long as we stay in dialogue, then there's hope.
Where do you get your hope from?
When you where do I get by home? I like how you journal, it's turning the tables at me. Where do I get my hope from? You know, people, I get my hope from people. I get my hope from, you know, the audiences that listen to my show. I get my hope from the fact that you know, I am have seen so much shift in this country in what seems like a short period of time. To your point, you know about the shift in interracial My my father, my stepfather is white. Right is you know is a
white man, and you know my cousins are bi racial. Right. I am a black queer woman, right, that fought on the front lines for marriage equality, right, and that has used my voice in so many different ways. And I have watched opinions shift. I've watched you know, corporations raise rainbow flags that now there's you know they're taking down.
But I think so long as people keep talking, I believe that people can change and That's why that quote for me was just like, yeah, this is really about connectivity and relationships and dialogue and so so long as we are doing that, I believe that there's hope.
Oh definitely. I mean that's the story of my family. I mean, you know, we didn't talk as much about it, but the neighborhod I come from in West Baltimore is a place known for hopelessness. Also the Wire, Yeah, the Freddie Gray Uprising rebellion. Uh So it's not a place where you can expect this type of story where white and black people can come together. Particularly white people wanted nothing to do with this black family but that, but
that happened. So yeah, I think when I use the word hope, somebody use the term that I prefer, say a muscular type of hope. When I'm saying hope, I'm not talking to like a Hallmark card hope, a naive, wishful, wishful hope. But I'm talking about a muscular kind of hope that acknowledges how difficult it is, but believes that we fight together, we can make this happen. And to me, it's that kind of hope that's part of black culture.
To me, you don't survive the Middle Passage. You don't survive slavery without having hope and so that you know tomorrow can somehow be better. So that's the type of hope I'm talking about. And I almost feel like it's really uncool if you write about race to tell stories like that. I was, I was talking to an editor about my book and he said, I can't do anything on it. I'm like, why, He said, Well, I can't do anything unless it triggers controversy, you know, and I don't.
I frankly don't know where the Yeah. Yeah, they don't frankly know what to do if it's a story that shows people coming together. So and I think that's a mistake because, like I said, if we're just telling the same story of despair and hopelessness, that kind of we're really not that different from the MAGA people who say, yeah, Trump talked about American carnage, that the country's going to hell. You know, people don't get energized by that. People don't get inspired to like change.
So anyway, I know, but it's but it's a it's one hundred percent true. And you know what, I will add on to the question that you that you asked me about where do I find hope? I think that to and I joke on this show all the time, and I say, I carry around a mustard seed of hope, right like that is what is that is what is in my pocket on a day to day basis. But the fact is that I wouldn't do the work that I do if I wasn't hopeful. I wouldn't you know.
I wouldn't fight for our democracy, if I wasn't a patriot, I wouldn't you know I And I think that to allow hopelessness to take over is to spit in the face of my ancestors, who I mean, had to live with so much pain, so much trauma, and had to endure it in order for me to be here, right, And they endured it because they had hope, because they had faith, right, And so to lose hopefulness, to lose, to lose, to lose out on that, and to succumb to hopefulness, I think would be to make a mockery
of their pain. And I refuse to do that well.
As Beautifley said, and that's one of the things I wanted to convey with my story. When you write a memoir. My first duty is to be honest and take this follow the story wherever it goes. But I have to meet when I was writing it, and I wrote a lot of it, doing the follow up the George Floyd in the Pandemic. It really gave me a lot more hope than I realized. It really changed the way I approached my job, the way I look at the future.
Just to see how my mom, who this woman who seemed like she had no power had nothing, taught me so much about resilience and about you know, faith and hopefulness. So yeah, I I appreciate this chance to share that with you.
I appreciate you so much. Thank you, Thank you John for making the time to join woke F and folks, don't walk but run to go and get this book more than I imagined, And don't walk, but run to go and read his essay at CNN dot com What a black man discovered when he met the white mother he never knew. This was an absolute pleasure, and I really do hope that you'll join us again.
I'm wok honor to thank you so much.
Thank you. That is it for me today, dear friends on woke F. As always power to the people and to all the people power. Get woke and stay woke as fuck.