#9 - Giving It All Back: White People's Worst Nightmare

TRANSCRIPT

 

ADAM  0:38 

It seems like one of the biggest obstacles to reparations is white people's secret fear of giving up all that we have, like if everything is fair, and just in our society, and we really have to reckon with the past, that must mean that we're giving up our white privilege, and all of its perks you know, and life as we know it will be gone. There's an amazing depiction of this on the show Atlanta, which I think is the best show on TV. It's on season three, episode four. And it's the story of this average normal white guy who basically gets caught up in a lawsuit for reparations. And without spoiling too much, his life is never the same. So we encourage everybody to check out that episode, it probably should be required viewing for this podcast.

 

TONY  1:26 

Yeah, absolutely. That episode of Atlanta, blew me away. I had heard about it before I actually watched it. But very thought provoking in a few different ways. But Adam, to your point of a lot of white people having feeling like they need to cling on to what's, what's theirs, and really having a hard time seeing what a different world might look like if they were to let go of some of that.

 

ADAM  1:49 

We have a guest with us today, who in real life, took a dive into the deep end of individual reparations. And she's here to tell us that the water is fine.

 

TONY  2:00 

Morgan Curtis, is a young white woman who's making reparations in her own special way. Her story is fascinating. So in a nutshell, Morgan inherited a huge sum of money. She realized that it was rooted in a very foul family legacy, and decided to give it all away to support African American and Native American causes. Morgan works at the intersection of personal transformation, community building, ancestral healing, and social change. And as part of that, she coaches, other wealthy people who are interested in redistributing their wealth. She's pursuing a master's degree at Harvard Divinity School. And there she focuses on the spiritual dimension of reparations work.

 

TONY  2:46 

Morgan Curtis, welcome to pay the tab. We are super thrilled to have you here today with us. Thanks for taking some time to be with us in conversation today.

 

MORGAN  2:55 

Really excited to be with you. Thank you.

 

ADAM  2:58 

So Morgan, why don't we jump right in here. So you are part of a new movement, really, of young white people who come from wealthy families who are apparently giving their money away? So we want to we want to talk to you about that, and maybe start with what got you going on that path? Like what got you started in that process? And maybe you could start with a little bit of your family background as well.

 

MORGAN  3:22 

Totally. So I was born and raised in London, England, I was raised with a lot of material comfort and privileges. And I was raised with gratitude for those but very few questions about where they came from, or what it took for us to live so comfortably in a world that is deeply unequal. It was really when I came to college, I was part of starting a fossil fuel divestment campaign at my university. And it was in that campaign when I started to learn more deeply about economics about how some of the environmental devastation that I had felt as a small child was a deeply connected to the way our system operates and the way certain people invest in that.

 

MORGAN  4:30 

It was really young, my fellow young activists of color who began to educate me about the deeper roots of the climate crisis, I began to get taught about this is just the latest symptom of colonialism of white supremacy, of economic system that extracts from land and labor for the benefit of the few and I had been raised Send a family that was really proud of our early American history. There were portraits of ancestors on the wall and family silver under the stairs.

 

ADAM  5:11 

And when you say portraits, you mean like painting portraits?

 

MORGAN  5:14 

Yeah, like old ancestors from the 1800s, in big frames. And so when I started hearing about colonialism, I was like, oh, that's, that's my family. That's our story. That's our history. And I also was, you know, advocating for divestment. And that got me thinking, Wait a second. Both of my grandfathers were investment bankers. That kind of sounds like the opposite of divestment.

 

TONY  5:51 

Pretty much. Yeah.

 

MORGAN  5:52 

Pretty much; started looking at how, how I directly implicated out or my family participating in these systems. I'm asking this institution to question.

 

ADAM  6:06 

You mentioned, finding out about both your grandfather's being investment bankers you said, and did you at some point when you were younger, also learned about other relatives? I think you've mentioned I think it was a great uncle who was in the military or something.

 

MORGAN  6:23 

Yeah, there's a lot of different stories in my family. But yeah, I have a great great, great uncle, who was investor and director of mining corporations, particularly that were extracting gold and silver in Central America in the 1800s. I have another ancestor who ran a sugar plantation in Cuba. Also in the 1800s. I have another ancestor who was a colonel and fought in the Blackhawk and Seminole Wars, the genocidal wars that removed indigenous people here in these lands. Yeah, I've, as a little kid, I think I started my ancestry.com account when I was 12 years old, I somehow had this interest and my own grandfather. He wrote his own obituary, and in the first line, he said, Charles Buckley Curtis, descended from first settlers of Stratford, Connecticut. For his wife, career kids, that was the first line. Yeah, he was. And it took me educating myself to find my way underneath some of these stories to be like, oh, what does it actually mean to be descended from some of the first families in the United States? It means direct implication, and the foundational violence of this country? And

 

TONY  8:00 

necessarily, right,

 

MORGAN  8:01 

I mean, necessarily, yeah, that's the story. Yeah.

 

ADAM  8:05 

I think it was around age 20. Or so when you first discovered this fund that had been set up for you. Is that right?

 

MORGAN  8:12 

So I was that divestment organizer, and I ran old car on biodiesel, and I broke down and I sold it. And I said, Dad, it was your car, where should I put your $1,500? And he said, you can keep it, but only if you invest in the stock market. And I was like, I don't want to do that. My analysis at the time, I was like, Okay, I guess I'll buy some solar panel companies. And so I set myself up an investment account. And when I logged into it with my social security number and my information, there was $350,000. Already in the accounts,

 

TONY  8:55 

wow, bam.

 

MORGAN  8:57 

Yeah. And it was invested in some of those same corporations that I was campaigning against. Big moment of shock for me. I like hit refresh, like, like, what is going on here? I called my dad right away. And he was like, oh, no, you weren't supposed to know about that. And I was very clear that I wanted to get that out of initially, the fossil fuel industry, and then the stock market. And not that long after that. I was also pretty clear, I wanted to give this money away. That started from this place of just like, this is dirty, like, I don't want to touch this. I want to get this away from me. But it was, yeah, as I got more deeply educated by the social movement spaces that I was finding myself and I began to understand, oh, I have a particular responsibility with this money that comes from this family history that we've been talking about. up. This isn't just about getting it away from me. But it's actually about deliberately putting it back towards the communities that my family has stolen and taken and extracted from.

 

ADAM  10:12 

So I guess the next question is, what did you do next, when you sort of had these realizations of not very good vibes from learning about the Fund, and the degree of wealth that was now in your name, right? What was your - What was your first step on the next, the next chapter of this journey?

 

MORGAN  10:34 

My first step was kind of becoming like, a one woman campaign tornado targeting my dad, which didn't go very well. I think, in that time, when I was really learning to look to this history, it was a period of taking on a lot of shame, taking on a lot of like, self hatred of being like, oh, like, I'm part of a family and part of a system and carrying identities that have been like, constituted through violence, and like, that is eating away at me. And I threw that a lot at my dad. And it was a difficult chapter for us. And the first thing that happened was like some walls going up between me and that money, because I was pretty clearly being like, I want to give it all away. And that was not working for him. And so I, yeah, I spent some years, growing myself more deeply into social movements and organizing work, finding myself doing a lot of work around indigenous solidarity and ending up living in an intentional community in Oakland, California, where I have privilege and just the honor of a lifetime to live with 35 people in a multiracial cross class community, and particularly, some of my black elders, they're really saying to me, like, Ah, you need to be doing the work with your own people. Like, we get that you might want to be in this struggle for justice, but your piece of it is stopping your people from doing the harm that's still going on, and starting to try and build a culture that you can stand for something else. And

 

TONY  12:41 

as your your own people, other white people, other wealthy white people, or what how did you interpret that?

 

MORGAN  12:48 

Either or? Both? Okay, yeah. And, yeah, initially, it was very resistant to that idea. Part of that journey of being with the shame being with the self hatred was like, I put a lot of energy into getting far away from the world that I came from, I want to go back there. I don't like white people. Like, that was kind of the sense of it, but I found myself in. But it was a journey to figure out like, oh, I actually have to, like, love myself, enough to believe that we could one day stand for something else, and that there's a journey that we as white people and or wealthy people need to go on. And it's work that we have to do with one another, in accountability and in relationship with communities of color, but there's work that we need to do to remember how to be human again.

 

TONY  13:50 

So your your project or the blueprint for your project is you giving away 100% of your inherited wealth. Right and 50% of your future earnings. Is that right?

 

MORGAN  14:03 

Yeah. My present. Yeah. ongoing commitment.

 

TONY  14:07 

And how did you land on on those two pieces? How did you come up with that? formula.

 

MORGAN  14:14 

So when I first started being able to move some of the inherited money, I found my way to an organization called resource generation, which is a national membership based organization, multiracial of young people with wealth and class privilege. And the mission of that organization is to redistribute money, land and power from those of us in the top 10% of the US economy, towards communities that have had resources taken from them. And in that organization, we talked about kind of the different stages of redistribution. There's like your average philanthropic approach which is like You know, we're going to continue to accumulate wealth and move 5% each year. And we'll get richer and richer and retain control over the small amount that we're sharing. And then we talk about when you're moving like 10% of your assets, that's when you're beginning to spend down when you're actually beginning to say, like, I'm willing to be less wealthy at the end of the year than I was when I started. Yes, because I actually want to move control overall of who has wealth and power in this country away from me,

 

TONY  15:32 

not just designate pieces of my portfolio

 

MORGAN  15:35 

totally. And at the kind of end of that spectrum that we're organizing focus towards, is this idea of return all the wealth. Okay. Like, what? Yeah, what this moment and what this history demands of us is a radical reshaping of the American economy. And money is not enough to account for what harm has been done. There's so much that has been lost to white supremacy that can never be accounted for by money. And we have to move the money. And that requires of Yeah, institutions and individuals to be willing to make big uncomfortable commitments. And for me, that felt like a clear choice to move all of my inherited wealth.

 

TONY  16:34 

So discovering that you owned a big chunk of money was one thing. Right. But then, as you alluded to getting access to it was, was a whole nother story. Right. So can you give us some more of the details of the challenges that you faced? And how that how that played out? Yeah.

 

MORGAN  16:58 

Yeah, so for me, the the situation was that my father essentially had control over the money. And I think a lot of families with wealth, create structures like that, where the power is retained by the older generations, sometimes even in perpetuity. I've had clients and friends who, when they received a trust fund on their 21st birthday, it came with a letter from their great great grandfather, who had been dead long time telling them what to do with it. There's, yeah, structural institutional waves that are set up to keep wealth in wealthy families.

 

TONY  17:43 

And those were not suggestions. Those were commands, basically.

 

MORGAN  17:47 

Yeah, quite often, they're like legal stipulations can't be, they're very difficult to break out. My situation was not that mine was more just a relational journey of getting to the point where my dad was willing to let me move in this way.

 

ADAM  18:10 

So you sort of wore him down over time?

 

TONY  18:15 

That's probably a good way. That's one way to put it.

 

ADAM  18:18 

Yeah. Sounds like it was pretty heavy, actually.

 

MORGAN  18:22 

Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's had its ups and downs. And there's definitely been some hard points for our relationship and some amazing moments where he's joined me in moving resources and certain moments. Grateful for him staying with

 

TONY  18:40 

I mean, this is a personal aside, but just through our work on this podcast on reparations, it's made me think about the repair work that I need to do in my own life, right.

 

TONY  18:52 

And then what did you do? So once you had control of your account, like walk us through what was what were the next steps that unfold?

 

MORGAN  18:59 

Yeah. So the commitment I made was to move about a third of the resources to Black Liberation work to organizing and social movements and land projects that are building self determination and political power for black people. About a third of the resources to indigenous organizing land return work, and those two commitments arising directly out of my family history and where I'm seeing that I have reparative debt to and the other third of the resources I've moved to, yeah, mutual aid to community to folks in my life adjacent to my life. Yeah, such that I'm able to be a person and community that can respond to immediate needs, and share this financial privilege that I unjustly have. And kind of within those categories, there's been kind of two focuses, one being where can I move resources to places where the power over where they ultimately go is redistributed? So an example of that is moving money to the movement for black lives, the National Movement formation, resourcing black LED work all over the country. That's been one part of my focus is, yeah, how? How do I not be the one that decides where these resources go? Right. And then at the same time,

 

TONY  20:47 

let me jump in Morgan, is that because you don't want the responsibility? Or because it's not your part to play?

 

MORGAN  20:54 

That's not my part to play. Yeah. And at the same time, I know that if that's all I did, but there's also there's a way that lets me off the hook of needing to build accountable relationships, where I'm moving resources that are requiring me to like, get down in it with people and be like, Okay, I'm gonna give you money. And we're gonna talk about that. And to have that. Yeah, transformative experience of, yeah, moving resources to individual projects and people. So it's been a both and for me of like, where am I redistributing power? And where am I also being willing to show up as my full self without any mediations?

 

ADAM  21:43 

I think I saw you said somewhere also that the you're targeting of places to give were also geographical places where your ancestors had made money off of the either indigenous people or enslaved people or those locations. Is that right as well?

 

MORGAN  21:59 

Yeah. So I've focused a lot of my resources moving in the northeast, which is where my family history was, has mostly been also in California, because that's where I live now, where I'm currently settler on, I live on leash on Aloni lands in the Bay Area. And then also in the southeast, where I mentioned my ancestor who fought in Seminole War. So I've been living resources, particularly to a group of Muskogee people who've returned to the homelands that they were displaced from.

 

ADAM  22:38 

Right, you said earlier, when you when you first discovered the account, some years before that there was I think 350,000 in the account. And over the years after that, when you didn't yet have control and access, and I assume that that sort of compounded and increased a bit. So what, just so we have an idea when you finally were able to start redistributing the this wealth, how much was in there?

 

MORGAN  23:02 

I think when all said and done, I will been able to move about $600,000.

 

TONY  23:08 

Wow. Yeah, that's a good chunk of money. Yeah, yeah, that can do some some work.

 

MORGAN  23:13 

Yeah, that's the hope.

 

TONY  23:15 

And just because we're super nosy like this and trying to get help in your business. So how much is left to distribute?

 

MORGAN  23:23 

So I have about $19,000 in the bank that's committed to go out. And then I have a few different chunks of money that are in kind of solidarity, economy investments.

 

TONY  23:36 

Cool. Is it? Is it weird or uncomfortable? Or off putting when when folks ask you questions like that?

 

MORGAN  23:43 

I think I'm getting used to it at this point. Yeah.

 

TONY  23:46 

Yeah. I would imagine, I wonder how I react to that might be like, none of your damn business. Right. But that's part part of it, too, is if people want to want to know, right, and it's a very powerful aspect that we're not talking about, you know, 10,000 or 50,000, or 100,000. This is, you know, like some serious, serious change.

 

MORGAN  24:03 

Yeah,

 

ADAM  24:04 

I noticed. It's also money. Like you say, Money is always a delicate subject. But But numbers, sometimes it's even more like to put a number on things. Nobody ever wants to do that. Right. Whether it's because of it being too much or too little, or whatever, it's it's very sensitive. So, you know, we noticed with reparations, it's, you know, you definitely have to go there, we have to start talking about what the what the numbers are. And that that's pretty awesome that you're just talking publicly about the whole process. It's very valuable for people

 

TONY  24:33  

going back to your, your coaching. What does that look like? Is it technical advice on how folks should redistribute their wealth? Is it supporting them through the emotions, you know, of that or some combination?

 

MORGAN  24:47 

Yeah. So I kind of got started on that when I was finding myself as someone that was willing to talk a little bit about coming from class privilege in social movement. spaces. And I would tell that story and talk about like, Yeah, this is why I'm here is because of the way my family is implicated in whatever struggle and campaign we're fighting for. And I was just having a lot of people come up to me in the hallway being like, I also have a trust fund. And I've never told anyone about it. And sometimes that being like, someone who has been deeply involved with movement work for 20 years, and has never told anyone that may secretly have money. Wow. Like the levels of, yeah, shame, guilt and isolation. And so that was happening to me often enough. And I was finding myself on phone calls often enough supporting people through that, like, process sometimes of talking to someone for the first time about this situation. I was like, Oh, I, I think this might be my role. Somehow, my role is to work with the activists with secret trust funds. niche, it's a very specific niche, but there's a lot of us Wow.

 

ADAM  26:07 

Your people, right?

 

TONY  26:08 

Yeah, it's like a quick side side note, Adam, are you holding out on me? Are you are you one of these folks?

 

ADAM  26:14 

No trust Fund. Sorry. We will have... but it's interesting. I'll just say as a side note, and we'll we'll get back to this in future episodes. But tracing one's family tree is interesting. And there's, there's one branch in particular of my family, also from the northeast, that is going to get some scrutiny.

 

TONY  26:33 

Okay. All right bring it on. Yeah.

 

MORGAN  26:37 

And then there's also the external challenges of like, I didn't get any financial education as a woman. That's a really common one. Sure. Or, like, yeah, my trust fund has these legal barriers that I'm not able to move through, or, like, I'm currently really in conflict with this member of my family. And I don't know how to move through that.

 

ADAM  27:01 

So let us know if you need a couple of lawyers for that.

 

MORGAN  27:04 

I actually have a spreadsheet called trust busting lawyers for wealth redistribution,

 

MORGAN  27:10 

No kidding. That's awesome.

 

MORGAN  27:12 

If you know any lawyers that want to be on that recommendation list. We need those we need a lot.

 

TONY  27:19 

And you being in Divinity School. Now. Is that a byproduct of the work that you were doing or are not necessarily?

 

MORGAN  27:26 

Yeah, straight out of it. So yeah. Most often, when folks ask why I'm into veterinary school, I say I'm studying the spiritual dimension of reparations work required of white descendants of colonizers and in slavers. And sometimes people are  like wrrr after I say that.

 

ADAM  27:47 

Tony, and I talk a lot about the need for full truth telling, you know, on an individual level, and as a society, especially right before, there can be any real shifting of our, of our nation on reparations. It's interesting that you've, you've kind of taken this credo of telling the truth, 100%, right. And you're looking deeply at the sources of your own wealth, your family's wealth, and how to make it right and live your life more honestly. So that's, it's pretty striking what you're doing.

 

MORGAN  28:16 

Thanks for saying that. I was raised in an education system that told me like, get as much power as you can. And then maybe one day, you'll be able to make a little bit of difference. And just understanding like, no change has always been led by the people closest to the problem. Yeah, I think it is really important that we understand reparations is something requiring, or needing to happen at a governmental institutional scale. And I think we can fall into that trap of thinking that change happens from the top down. And like, I don't think and what I've been invited not to, but reparations won't win at a big scale until it's one at small scales. And like, as individuals, families, like universities, institutions, neighborhoods, towns, cities, states schools, like be like, Oh, we're actually going to take responsibility for returning resources, because why would we wait? Why would we wait? Yeah.

 

ADAM  29:17 

So Morgan, in some ways, your story is a lot of white people's worst nightmare, right? Sort of like giving everything away. And it sounds like that was part of the process with your dad. But why do you think that we have such a problem seeing outside our narrow boxes of fear and clinging and you know, clinging hard to the white privilege, right, and all the benefits and all the money and why is this such a Why is this so triggering that this topic?

 

MORGAN  29:50 

Yeah, I mean, it's funny. A while ago, there was a story written about me with the journalist, she said Morgan Curtis's life story is like the American Dream and reverse.

 

ADAM  30:01 

There you go.

 

TONY  30:04 

That's funny,

 

ADAM  30:04 

in other words, a nightmare.

 

MORGAN  30:06 

In other words, a nightmare. But yeah, I mean, we're, we are living in very unstable times, like, I think, even when people can't understand it, or can't take it in intellectually, or politically we can feel in our bodies. But like, this is a very treacherous moment on the history of this planet, the history of humanity. And like, that's, I'm talking about climate change, I'm talking about wealth inequality. I'm talking about racial violence I'm talking about, yeah, a colonial project in the United States, that's 400 years deep, but very uncertain. And what we've been told, and this is, many of us, but speaking for white people, it's like what we've been told is what keeps us safe in that system is money and power. And we can feel that it's unsafe, we built it to be unsafe. And it's also unsafe for us. And as we try and gain safety, as we try and grab at safety, like we are actually creating systemically ever more unsafe situations for all of us.

 

MORGAN  31:28 

And so yeah, I feel like part of my work is helping people to see helping myself to see, like, when we're talking about reparations, we're talking about arriving to a system in which everyone can thrive, like we're talking about building a world in which everyone has like, the self determination and safety and ability to like, live peacefully, and healthily. And we simply cannot get there without taking responsibility for the past, and drastically shifting power and resources. But it's in, I believe, that is in white people's self interest to do that. It's not like we're doing it for ourselves. But we have to understand that we need a world that reparations will build as well.

 

TONY  32:28 

Absolutely, yeah. So obviously, lots of good things have come about, from what you've done, right? What you've put in motion. And you can share some of that, you know, for sure, but we also have to imagine that there have been some critiques and some pushback, you've spoken about an interaction with a black man who confronted you about who gets to heal first, right, who has the right to heal from racial violence and oppression? First, can you share what he told you and how you responded?

 

MORGAN  32:56 

Yeah. So the fellow student and my time here in graduate school, and I was sharing some of the story I'm presenting about my work. And yeah, he spoke up and said, like, Why do you get to heal first? And I heard the pain in that question, took a deep breath and said, like, my, my only role in your healing is to help my people stop hurting you. And to make sure that, like, there's the space and the resources and the distance from us, such that your community gets to heal. And I've learned that I'm not supposed to step into your healing work more than that, and also, that our healing is connected, because it's not ultimately true, but we are like, separate people, like, my healing, is your healing is our healing. And we can't get where we need to go without any of these being part of the paycheck.

 

TONY  34:19 

Beautiful, yeah. Guilt obviously, is caught up in this in in, in some form or fashion, right. And, you know, you've shared that your guilt is not rooted in some sense of punishment or some grand notion of self sacrifice, right, but more from a desire to heal yourself as as we were talking about if I if I if I understood that right. Can you help us help us break that down?

 

MORGAN  34:51 

Yeah. I think guilt and shame are a necessary part of the journey for white people right now. I think if we're not feeling some of that, we're not looking closely enough at what's happening and what has been happening. I think of guilt as a natural, empathic human response to benefiting from the suffering of others. And it's also not where we stop. And I think guilt and shame can raise people. But there's also the opportunity, when we don't hold it alone, when we lean towards others who are having the same experience. And we say, we're going to do something about this, that it can become a generative source of motivation and energy. And that on some level, I think what we're most ashamed of isn't what we've done. But what we are yet to do, or what we're not doing, what we're not doing right now. And so the most effective medicine seems to go and shame is getting something done.

 

ADAM  36:14 

Action.

 

MORGAN  36:15 

Action .

 

TONY  36:17 

Yeah, you shared a really beautiful thought on this whole notion of responding to guilt. And, you know, you said asked, you know, guilt, like, Where are you taking me? And that there's a way to and through it, not just away from it. And I thought that was just a really powerful way to envision the role that guilt and shame might play in any of our lives.

 

ADAM  36:39 

Yeah. Do you have any recommendations just right offhand, for our listeners of any background, maybe particularly the white folks, but but not necessarily just that, just for people who may not really know where to start? And maybe they don't have a trust fund? Maybe they do, but who want to, you know, get involved on the front of reparations? Did you have any words for those people?

 

MORGAN  36:59 

Yeah. So the most important thing is to not do it alone. So I want to share some like communities for folks to step into and get involved with, or anyone that's been listening that does have financial resources, privilege as part of your story. Definitely recommend resource generation for young people interested in this work. Another community called solidaire, intergenerational community, for folks with wealth, looking to resource movements for liberation. More broadly, there's coming to the table, taking America beyond the legacy of enslavement, national chapter based organization of white folks and black folks coming together to be in healing and reparative dialogue. There's reparations for slavery.com is an incredible portal educational platform, place to get involved. So yeah, don't don't go it alone. listeners out there. Find the people in your region or through zoom webs. Like, yeah, we're not in it alone at this time.

 

TONY  38:19 

So I have one final question. I'm actually going to cheat and combine two questions, but they're connected. The first part is the role that truth telling plays in your work, it seems to be very near the center of your work is like telling, like the real story, the whole story. And also as it connects to your, your, your family legacy or your ancestors, you know, I read, you said that the work that you're doing is not designed to disrespect, disrespect them, but actually as a way to heal them and in and change their legacy, right, by the work that you're doing. Can you break that down for us?

 

MORGAN  38:59 

Yeah when I first started doing this work, there was this. My dad would call it searching for sin was like what I was doing in the family tree and he'd be like, What are you like, what are you doing to the ancestors

 

TONY  39:13 

digging up dirt?

 

MORGAN  39:14 

Yeah. And what I feel so clearly is that, like, my ancestors, our collective national ancestral story, like, doesn't want to end in violence and separation and, like unraveling like, there's a different legacy that's possible, like we can shift this story towards healing towards repair and I feel deeply that at least some of my ancestors are with me and that are not gonna rest easy until the things that they were not able to put right in their lifetime out of their actions. Yeah. shifted here and now.

 

TONY  40:05 

Powerful. Yeah, yeah. Wow. Yeah Morgan, we're not surprised. But really, really thoughtful insights that you shared and just powerful observations and reflections and inspiration for folks. White, Black, Brown native to, you know, do what what we can with what we have where we are right now. So we just want to honor and uplift you. And, and thank you tell you how much we appreciate you making time for us on pay the tab.

 

MORGAN  40:39 

Yeah, thank you so much for having me. It's yeah, I'm just really grateful y'all are doing this. Thank you for creating this conversation. And yeah, bringing your own stories and resources and communities and people to there. That's powerful to see.

 

ADAM  40:55 

Thank you again, Morgan, and keep keep doing what you're doing.

 

MORGAN  40:58 

Likewise.

 

TONY  41:03 

That was a whole whole lot that Morgan went into, right, just deep sharing powerful observations and connections that, you know, she's making between her family history, the work that she's doing in the future that she wants to see.

 

ADAM  41:20 

Right. Yeah, super open about everything, huh?.

 

TONY  41:23 

Very. very open, very thoughtful and deliberate about it. Yeah. One interesting fact that we didn't really get into in the interview was the history of actual enslavers in Morgan's family, right. So, particularly in the northern parts of the US in Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New York City, you know, part of Morgan's you know, ancestral history is that there were some folks who had enslaved people,

 

ADAM  41:49 

right. And a lot of people forget that there was a whole lot of slavery in the northern states, especially going back into like the 1700s. and stuff. Yeah, if you're a white American with old money in your family, there are definitely some major skeletons in your closet, there's exploitation, there's suffering, and always a very close connection to slavery.

 

TONY  42:08 

It's undeniable, we can't get get away from the fact that America's wealth was largely derived from the institution of slavery.

 

ADAM  42:14 

That's right.

 

TONY  42:15 

A lot of people, including Morgan's father would question the validity, the sanity of giving away your money that was saved up particularly saved up and by your parents, say, for a college fund or for a deposit on the home? You know, and they might say, Look, you know, first and foremost, we need to look after ourselves, right family first. That's right. That's what a lot of people say, for sure. And that philosophy, sort of, you know, negates the fact that all people are are connected, right, we're all related in some form or fashion. And that sometimes, many times we get caught up in these you know, fictitious walls and boundaries that we erect to the divide and separate, rise out without really tapping into our common humanity.

 

ADAM  43:02 

That's right. And it's difficult work, as we can see, with the, you know, the process that she went through in her own family. I think a lot of white people find it hard to think about messing in any way with all the spoils and advantages of our white privilege, right. And Morgan story really opens up your mind to the possibilities, what does it look like to let that go? It's interesting, because it's another theme from that episode of Atlanta, which is basically giving the message that you know, what, you guys it's going to be okay. White people can lose a whole lot of that white privilege. And still, you know, you're gonna be fine.

 

TONY  43:37 

Yeah. And sometimes we get faked out into believing that there's a limit to what's available, right, that we get divided and separated, and the folks at the very top of the pyramid like to pit us against each other, right? And believe that it's a zero sum game that, you know, in order for me to get more, someone else has to get less that, you know, we can all sort of Rise, Rise, Rise together. And you know, we think you know, Morgan's doing a really good job of re reimagining that paradigm in understanding that we all are connected in that we all rise, we all rise together.

 

ADAM  44:19 

That's right. We can only rise when we get together. Heather McGee has a great book on that subject. And she talks about the solidarity dividend and all the different stories throughout history where people from different groups get together and basically fight the power together. That's that's how you get results.

 

TONY  44:34 

Adam, we can imagine that there are some folks listening who might be wondering, like, Is this is this really the answer? Right? Are we really gonna rely on rich, guilt ridden white folks to you know, help solve the reparations equation? That that can't be that can't be the sum total the answer, right?

 

ADAM  44:53 

Exactly. Yeah, no one is saying that this is the answer. It definitely can't be the only thing going on, but It can definitely be a part. You know, taking direct action is always a good thing. If you're taking it in the right direction, and pushing the conversation forward. You know, she's been speaking out publicly and influencing people, and trying to help others to do the same thing. So that definitely never hurts

 

TONY  45:15 

giving away the money in the way that Morgan is doing. It is a legit way to go for sure. But it seems like the equally as important is the owning up,

 

ADAM  45:27 

Right.

 

TONY  45:28 

The Reckoning the the truth telling that there's power and talking about the shit that we don't really want to talk. Right. Right. And there's, there's a lot of value in, you know, fully disclosing, right, putting some names to it, putting some numbers on it, or striking up conversations about like some shit that actually happened.

 

ADAM  45:46 

Exactly, exactly. That's where a lot of people don't want to go. And another thing we should remember is that, you know, people who are making individual reparations, never lets the government off the hook, right, as we've talked about before, the massive harms to black and indigenous people in North America are rooted in much bigger forces at the national level. So all levels of government, federal, state, and local, they all need to be held responsible, and they need to make reparations happen, which, when you're when it comes down to it, right, that really means all of us together as a country need to be in this.

 

TONY  46:19 

You know, a lot of folks have great ideas of how to create change. And but many times for, for, for a lot of us those ideas stay in our heads, right, and we don't translate them into action, either because life gets in the way or, you know, we're afraid, right? Or we don't think that we might be successful. So, you know, what, one, one of the many reasons why we really appreciate what Morgan is doing is that she's actually doing the damn thing.

 

ADAM  46:48 

Yeah, that's right.

 

TONY  46:49 

you know, she came up with an idea and put it in motion. Sure, not knowing exactly how it was going to gonna play out but had confidence and faith that this was the right thing for her to do with her resources in her life. So you know, we encourage all listeners to, you know, give some thought to what were what's the reparatory work that you can take on that you're willing take to take on. So if you are inspired, to take some action in your own life, consider what you know, some of the things that you might be able to do.

 

ADAM  47:19 

That's right. And if you're somebody who has some wealth in your family background, or if you just have wealth period, and you want to put it towards some meaningful causes, you can check out this group resource generation, that's one of the groups that Morgan works with and will have their information in the show notes along with some other resources like that.

 

TONY  47:37 

And if you you know, aren't loaded and contributing financially isn't the way for you to make repair, think about what talents you might have. That could be a contribution, you know, maybe you have marketing expertise, or organizing skills or some technical ability, think about how you might be able to contribute those talents to help create a more equitable world right to make reparations in your own sphere, in your own way.

 

TONY  48:08 

So we'll close out with a passage from Morgan's writings that we think is a fitting way to conclude this episode. "If white supremacy is to enter this country, its own children must turn around and face its history saying, yes, those are our people. We are them and they are us. We did this and now we will work to undo it."

 

TONY  48:35 

Hey, everybody, thanks for joining us on pay the tab. We hope you enjoyed the show. Please subscribe to our podcast and if you like what we're putting down share it with your family and friends.

 

ADAM  48:43 

And please give us a review on Apple podcasts. This is the best way you can help us to get the word out with this show. So please check that out and give us some love.

 

TONY  48:51 

Thanks for listening. Keep coming back to pay the tab.

 

ALVIN CHEA  49:04 

It's time to pay, pay the tab.