Oral History Interview with Andrew Robinson

Title: Oral History Interview with Andrew Robinson
Interviewee: Andrew Robinson
Interviewer: Walker Robinson
Description: Andrew Robinson of Chapel Hill, North Carolina was interviewed by Walker Robinson, a Sewanee student, on November 29th, 2023 on Zoom. While their conversation was primarily on the Black Lives Matter Movement, other topics included his experiences with race as an African American living abroad. We hope that this conversation will assist scholars with a further understanding of race in the United States during the early twenty-first century. Please click on the link to see the full interview.
Transcript: 0:02 ANDREW: All right, cool.

0:05 WALKER: This is Walker Robinson from Suwanee, the University of the South. It is Wednesday, November 29th, 2023. And I'm with Andrew Robinson from Tribal Hill. And thank you, Andrew for being here. I'm going to start off with some background questions to learn more about you. So tell me, where are you originally from?

0:29 ANDREW: Originally from Columbia, Maryland.

0:33 WALKER: And how is that different from where you currently live?

0:38 ANDREW: It's actually not that different because Columbia, Maryland was one of the first pre-planned cities in the us and so based on this sort of community concept of having sort of mixed income villages and everything else, and so it was intentionally made to be very multicultural and diverse and inclusive. And so where I live in Chapel Hill is a place called Southern Village, and it's also sort of this mixed income community, very inclusive. So those two are very similar. But I've only lived in Southern Village probably for the last, I guess, four or five years. But outside of that I've lived in a lot of different places. So lived overseas for a bit, which was really different. I lived in upstate New York, which was a lot more segregated than I thought it would be in Albany. And I've lived in California, which is very multicultural. I've lived in Indiana, which was a bit more segregated. So I've lived in a lot of different environments.

1:57 WALKER: And where did you find community as a child?

2:05 ANDREW: Yeah. Wow, that's an interesting one. So it's interesting, I found community in sort of maybe a couple of places. So a lot of what defined my community was sort of two, well, three areas. One is obviously family, and I have a pretty extended family that lived in North Carolina, so we spent summers with cousins and stuff like that. So that was sort of part of the community. Before I lived in Columbia, I lived, which was a really grounding thing from a community perspective. I lived in a place called Randallstown, and Randallstown was a very sort of middle class community. But one of the things that was a bit odd, and it's a bit unique about Maryland is it has got a, because there's a lot of government offices, et cetera, and you have affirmative action, there were a lot of pockets in Maryland that you have middle class and upper middle class, African-American communities.
3:15 And so where I grew up for a bit of my time in Randallstown was a middle class, but large portion or even maybe majority portion of middle class black neighborhoods. So it was a very grounding aspect of just being able to see, we didn't have any doctors in there, but we had, what was it, auto workers there. My dad worked there who worked for the government, people with teachers, PhDs, et cetera. So it was a very grounding community around middle to upper middle class black community. And that was a bit in contrast to my school community, which I went to a private school, which was very, I guess it was predominantly white. So I was able to sort of fit in and find community there. But all that being said, where I generally find communities with family or sort of in an African-American community or oftentimes like an Asian community, because there were a lot of Asians in my high school, and so I generally connected there a lot. So by Asian I mean like Pakistani, Indian, Filipino. One of my best friends from high school is Filipino, Taiwanese, Chinese, et cetera. So that's usually where I sort of found community.

4:45 WALKER: Yeah. You said you went to an majority white private school. What was that experience like?

4:55 ANDREW: So I went there for all 12 years, so from first grade all the way to high school. And so I enjoyed it. I would say there wasn't as much of, wasn't a huge racial component to it. It was far more a class component to it because I mean, my high school, I don't know, I mean you've been there, it's Hogwarts big size of Suwanee, or maybe it's

5:36 WALKER: Not Carver High School.

5:38 ANDREW: It's not. And my tuition, there was as much as tuition at most colleges, private colleges. And so we had a very sort of wealthy community. So because my parents were sort of middle class, I think that was a dominant aspect of what drove the experience of feeling just not privileged in a very privileged environment. But I think one of the things I benefited from was because I started in first grade there and I knew everyone. My class was only 120 people. I noticed the class aspect, but it wasn't as predominant or maybe because I grew up and I didn't know as much about it. As for when people entered at high school because it was new to them, they got sort of blown away by just the privilege and everything else with it. For instance, I had to buy my own car. So I bought a car for 500 to 700 bucks after working a couple couple of summers. But kids at my school were driving Porsches. That was their car they got when they were 16. That just shows you the disparity,

7:02 WALKER: The gap.

7:03 ANDREW: Yeah, I got along with most people. I would say the dynamics and issues were no different than anything else. Yeah. So I don't know.

7:18 WALKER: Where do you find community today?

7:23 ANDREW: So I find it in a couple of ways. So one, I think what a big grounding aspect of community has really been sort of a few things. So one still family is there. And ironically enough, when we first moved to North Carolina, we lived in Hillsborough. In Hillsborough. Again, it was sort of like a middle class sort of upper middle class community, not as diverse as what I grew up in Maryland, but still fairly diverse. And I think there was a greater sense of community there. We have the Chapmans who we sort of connected well with Crowleys who were there as well. And so the galas, et cetera. So I think that's really built up a sense of community. If I look at what has transpired over a number of years, I would say one college in the connections I made in college has built sort of community that's sort of been long lasting as well as I pledged a African-American fraternity, alpha Phi Alpha. And so those connections have really sort of stand at the test of time. And similarly, another organization that I know you weren't the biggest fan of but really helped, oh, I

8:48 WALKER: Remember Ja and Jill

8:50 ANDREW: Back and Jill, because I think we, mom and I still connect with other parents that we met through there. And that's sort of a sense of community. Those are some of the avenues.

9:06 WALKER: Is your occupation and what has been your journey to this role?

9:15 ANDREW: I dunno. Well, I lead a company healthcare IT technology company based out of Pennsylvania. I guess technically they call it a CEO, I just call it sort of the leader president, whatever you want to call it. But in terms of my journey there, it's actually a pretty odd journey. Growing up, I always wanted to be an engineer. I always played with Legos, tinker around with things like things mechanical. And so that drove me into the engineering field because when I asked somebody who are the people that build stuff? And they said, oh, those are engineers. So that's why I wanted to be an engineer. And I did that for a number of years. So I really got to work on some cool stuff. I got to work on some industrial solutions that basically print out a lot of junk mail, but that was fun. But I also got to work on inkjet printers.
10:15 So if you ever use an inkjet printer to print out photos or something of that nature, that's something I worked on for hp. So really cool stuff. But one of the things I realized after a while was the people who decide what gets built and not the engineers. And I wanted to position to decide what gets built. And so I went back to business school and that was part of the journey to say, Hey, if I got into engineering because I wanted to build things that people could use and could get out into the world, then I needed to be on the side of the business side and the leadership side to be able to decide what got built and why. So that's why I went to business school. When I came out of business school, I had the opportunity to work for a company, Danaher is the name of it, but a company that was really focused on developing future presidents and future company leaders.
11:10 So I did that for just a number of years. In fact, I probably spent maybe almost, I don't know, probably 18 years with that company doing a whole bunch of different roles. Product manager, business unit leader, blah, blah, blah, president here, vice president there. That's what took us overseas into Dubai, working in that capacity and did that for a number of years. I think maybe a few years ago, back when we had George Floyd and the whole Black Lives Matter movement, I had the opportunity, I was presented with the opportunity to actually go do something different, which is work advocating for diversity, equity, inclusion at the corporate level. And so I did that for a couple of years really with the viewpoint that while I was able to do great things in the various different roles I have previously, all those really do is really build products that the world really doesn't need.
12:23 So at the end of the day, if I create another gas pump or I make a gas pump with the larger screen that puts commercials out you, it's not really adding that much value and it doesn't create any systemic change that's sort of positive. It's just like it makes money, but it doesn't do anything of that. And so I looked at this opportunity and really said, well, hey, here's an opportunity that can make a more long lasting change around how corporations think about diversity, equity, and inclusion, and be a part of that. And that's a more meaningful legacy to leave for people of color for you and Leland and for others than building another gas pump. So I did that for a couple of years, really exciting work, really meaningful work, ironically, really, really hard work because building a product in some ways is a lot easier.
13:25 You can just bang something out. Figuring out how to change people's win, the hearts and minds of people to change from what they have as preconceived notions or what they've experienced is really, really difficult. So I learned a lot about how do you shape and drive corporate cultures, but I think ultimately after doing it for a couple of years, it was great work, but it didn't resonate with me to my core because all my career had really been around, Hey, how do I work with great teams of people to build great products? And so I left that role and jumped into this role of leading this healthcare IT company to try and mesh the two together because we're here helping to transform healthcare and make better healthcare outcomes and doing it cheaper and more effectively while also we're creating new products. So it allows me to blend an aspect of how do I do something that leaves a positive impact on the world, but also how do I do something that resonates with my core, building great products and seeing them take fold and take launch into the world. So long-winded way of how I got there, but it's had a few ups and downs, but that's how it's worked out.

14:47 WALKER: How have you experienced international cultures in your life?

14:51 ANDREW: Yeah, yeah, no, that's a great thing. It's been really one of probably the more exciting things I've done. I think as a kid, we did a little bit of international travel, but not a lot. We went to Mexico, I think we went to The Bahamas and stuff like that, Canada. So that was cool. That was new and exciting. It was mostly touristy stuff. I think when I really started to get the bug for it, or a couple things. One, when I was a graduate student at Purdue University, I got the opportunity to do a mission trip in Haiti, which was really eye-opening. It was through the Catholic church, and we had two aspects. We had an aspect, we were out in the rural area working with one of the churches out there. And so really got a chance to work with a whole bunch of impoverished students trying to help.
15:47 I think we were help building a school or something of that nature. And it was just really eyeopening around just the energy, joy and the impact that you can have in a sort of different culture. We also spent about half the trip working in one of the maybe slum areas within Porter Princes, and also seeing the depravity of the human condition there. And just how when societies don't work well, what that can have from an impact of violence in terms of poor living conditions, trash, everything else. But it really got me excited around experiencing different cultures and a perspective outside of the us. And so that got me excited around, Hey, there's an impact and there's a world beyond just sort of what I was experiencing. And so from there, I think one of the big things when I started working was the ability just to sort of travel.
16:48 I got a lot of opportunities to travel overseas for work. So I got an opportunity to go to Europe a lot. I got an opportunity to go to China a lot, spent some time in Latin America, southeast Asia, and each one of these places I got a chance to experience unique business cultures and be able to spend time with people and recognize that at the core, most people want the same thing. They want to be able to feed their families and give them better life. They care about their kids and everything else. And I really learned that the media really starts to distort things in major ways, but then also really just the impact of economics and exploitation and the downside of capitalism, even though they're really good sides of it as well. And so I just got a chance to experience all that. But overall, I love being able to travel internationally, experience different cultures. And I think we spent two years overseas and I would say that was probably one of the most impactful life experiences I had.
18:00 There was one instance that really made me recognize how much the impact of socialization can have on people, even if they're trying to be open-minded. So I think this is before you all came over, I needed to get a phone. And so I was in the model of the Emirates and I went to Tesla lot. I don't know if you remember Tesla as one of the mobile phone providers, or maybe it was Dew. Anyway, I went to one of their stores in the mall because I was like, oh, I just need to get a phone and I need to get service for it. And I mean, as you know, a lot of the native lot of the Emiratis as well as non Emiratis and Muslims and Arabs, et cetera, wear traditional dress over there. And oftentimes traditional dress, when you have the headscarves, the headwear, et cetera, a lot of times in the US that is portrayed as like, oh, here's what terrorists wear.
19:08 And so I remember walking up to the store and a gentleman approached me in traditional dress. And keep in mind, I had been living there for two or three months, so it shouldn't have been a shock or surprise, but he approached me in traditional dress and out of nowhere I could see his lips moving, but I couldn't actually hear him. And the reason I couldn't hear him is because my body actually had this fight or flight response. I had all this anxiety, I was nervous, my skin started to crawl and my palms got sweaty, et cetera, and I didn't know where this is coming from. And luckily, I took a moment to calm down, and as I calmed down, I could start to hear what he was saying. And all he was saying was, how can I help you, sir? But it was that point and that recognition for me of my response to him just approaching me and stepping up to me was I, and I was like, what is driving this irrational behavior?
20:17 Because he doesn't have any weapons. I'm in a mall. He's coming up to me and he's clearly working at the store. None of this warrants this type of sort of fight or flight response. And as I started the process that I was like, my body and my immediate reaction was, oh, this is a terrorist that's coming to attack me and everything else. And that was driving my reaction. And I was like, this is an irrational reaction that's driven by all the sort media that I've consumed and all the stereotypes that I've sort of processed, et cetera. And I was like, even me who's traveled across the globe, lived there for a couple months, it could even impact me. And so it was this real eye-opening moment for me around the power and influence of society, culture and things around us in how we have a physical but also emotional reaction to it.
21:11 So it makes me far more mindful of what media we receive and what assumptions we make on individuals, et cetera. But overall, I like experiencing likes of different cultures. Every time I do it, I learn more. I learn more about what I'm biased about, but I also get this opportunity to make these awesome, intriguing sort of discussions. I remember one incident when we were in Dubai and we went to go, one of my work colleagues invited me over to the house or this house, whatever for tea or something. And so we were discussing, and you probably get it as well, you have this moment when you're building this relationship or making this new friend connection, et cetera. And there's that moment where you're having a nice sort of casual conversation, but then they're like, they've been dying to ask a question, but they've never had an African-American friend to ask that question.
22:14 And so they're just waiting for that time. And so I remember he asked me this question once we got to that point, and he was like, okay. And I think he was Saudi. Yeah, I think he was Saudi or something like that. And he asked me this question. He was like, oh, that's great. Hey, he asked me why are blacks so far behind in the US or why are blacks so backward or something like that in the us? And it turned into this amazing conversation where I walked him through, Hey, he didn't know anything about slavery or how blacks even got to the US or the impact of Jim Crow or the Civil War. He didn't know any of that stuff as sort of context. And it was another one of these conversations that I was like, wow, what impression and what image is out there of African-Americans, et cetera, and blacks around how we operate in a situation in the US that is being portrayed and how that's driving assumptions.
23:24 And this will be the last example I'll give you because I'm sure you have other questions. Your mom and I for our honeymoon went on, went to Ghana and did a three week volunteer trip doing community service, et cetera. So it was a great trip. We loved it. We were able to give back and stuff like that. I remember at the compound we were staying at, people would come and visit and just sort of want to interact with ourselves and the rest of the Americans there, et cetera. And I remember there was a Ghanaian soldier that came and visited with us, and he was just hanging out. His name was Echo, and you'll appreciate this. He was like, look, I thought all of that because he was like, he had been listening to rap and all this other stuff, and he was like, I thought all that stuff that was going on, and you all were talking about in gangster rap was just creating stories and kind of BSS and just all made up.
24:34:00 And he was like, no way in the world can things be that horrible over in the US because that's sort of the greatest place on the planet. He bought that sort of image of the US is some Mecca and it's the best country in the world. And he was like, but he's like, I went to grad school because he went to grad school in Russia, and it was so coming from Ghana, which is sort of all black to Russia, where he was sort of the minority, et cetera. And he was dealing with all kinds of attitudes, discrimination, et cetera, racism, et cetera. And he was like, when I got to that environment, he was like, I finally underst understood what the gangster rap and hip hop music was all about because he was at that moment in time, it connected with me why sort of Tupac and all these other artists were really resonating because they talked about the angst and the anger and the oppression and everything else.
25:36:00 And it was another moment for me of like, Hey, this is where you really have to be able to understand the context to go through a certain experience, to really have to be able to make and empathize and make the connection with the music, the culture that other people experience. And so it really allowed me to really start to appreciate that whenever you're trying to experience another culture, understanding the history of it is dramatically important to understand why things are as they are today, and why the attitudes or the perspectives or the biases are the way that they are because it sets the actual context of it all.

26:27:00 WALKER: Do you remember what you first do you remember when you first saw the video with George Floyd? Would,

26:40:00 ANDREW: I don't remember when I first saw the video. I venture to say I probably have never watched the video. Do you? Yeah. Because I think for me, I know it's one of those things where it brings up so many horrifying aspects of risk and trauma and in personal experiences, but then also what's happened to others. And that I, it is too emotional for me to sort of watch it. It's emotional for me to even think about just the situation itself. So sitting there trying to watch it is like it's in many ways unbearable for me.

27:49:00 WALKER: What has been your experience with social media?

27:56:00 ANDREW: It is a polarizing thing. It's fantastic in terms of allowing me to sort of connect with friends and colleagues in a different way. It is is extremely disappointing as to how it's turned also into a polarizing aspect of society that allows people to go down different rabbit holes of radicalization as well as it allows people to, I don't know, mouth off without having with no accountability. Because when you don't have to be, I think one of the things that I find challenging about social media is when you're able to put stuff out there without having to be and be able to avoid accountability or avoid being challenged on it, it's almost like in many ways sort of a coward's way out because it doesn't allow you to face the criticisms of it, et cetera.
29:46:00 And it doesn't allow for learning to happen because it allows people to, I forget the name of it, but that thing where you look for information that validates your view, it allows for people to just go and pursue and only look for evidence that proves their point and not have to deal with the aspects of things that disprove their point or offer a more complex perspective or nuance perspective. And I think it deteriorates the discourse and the dialogue because one of the things that I appreciated more before the rise of social media and the rise of YouTube and the fragmentation of television channels and everything else was when there was, so a couple of things. One, when you had more communities like physical communities that you knew more of who your neighbors were, et cetera, or you had to all listen to the same five stations or there were only so many television channels.
31:14:00 While there's a downside that you don't get as much variety, I think the good thing that it does do is it drives a better appreciation and perspective of the various different perspectives that are out there because it's got to cater to a broad audience. So you get the far right and you get the far left, and then the television channel has got to be more balanced in its view. And then each conversation also has to give, not give, but also gives an opportunity for more balanced dialogue to happen. And so I find today versus when I was growing up and even in college, I probably had more sort of debate and discussions of various different views, even with people who were like neo-Nazis or far but to have those discussions to at least sort of talk through it versus now, most of the time when you have these discussions, it's like in an echo chamber with people who are in the same viewpoint. So you're not really bridging, making a bridge of learning and understanding. And then with social media, it just polarizes it more. So that's what I find disappointing. I mean, it's great that allows for community not just be something that's physical so that you can have a digital community, but I think the downside has been that the discourse and the quality of the discourse has deteriorated and polarized to the point that, I don't know, I think it's probably one of the single biggest factors and risk factors for what could lead to, which I hope never happens to a civil war, not in many, many different countries including the us.

33:23:00 WALKER: Yeah. How did you first encounter the Black Lives Matter movement?

33:36:00 ANDREW: That's a good question. I think probably more, mostly around maybe two things popped to mind. I think Ahad Arbery, if I remember that right, who was killed when he was just jogging or whatever, and then Trayvon Martin, those would be the two aspects where it was started to resonate. And then everyone else, just the sheer sort of depravity of George Floyd being murdered was something that was just so cruel that they just sort of catalyzed it all.

34:34:00 WALKER: What generation do you think has been most affected by the Black Lives Matter movement

34:39:00 ANDREW: That's most affected?

34:41:00 WALKER: Yeah. What generation do you think has been affected, the most impacted, or which generation do you think had the greatest impact on?

35:05:00 ANDREW: I think your generation and the, what's the one after the millennials? All right. But I think your generation and millennials is probably,

35:23:00 WALKER: I think my generation is the one after millennials.

35:27:00 ANDREW: So I think your generation and millennials are the ones that it had the most impact on, because I think we had entered a period where the inclusion looked really sort of, you could go through these periods where I think it happened with me as well, but where American society looks like it's living up to the ideal more than it really is. So we went into a period where there was a lot of hope and optimism, which can cause you to, or cause people to ignore or not see the underlying tenants that aren't as strong. So we had just come off of, you had Obama getting elected for two terms. And so it's a thing that's great in monumental moment of like, Hey, we had a black president who was successful and sort of led the country in a strong way and represented that black people can lead just like other people can lead, and the power and everything else. So it was this great period, and I think it gave this false sense of hope that hey, maybe we're beyond sort of racism and sexism and all the isms because it made such these leaps and bounds, which causes people to ignore some of the underbelly of discontent and issues that are out there. And when I look at the, and we've got a minute and 15 seconds left, so yeah,

37:54:00 WALKER: We can, what's it called? Start up a new one, just I don't have the Zoom Pro.

37:59:00 ANDREW: Okay, alright. But we, sorry. Yeah, so it gets us into this false sense of belief, and so it starts to show its ugly head, and I think George Floyd was something that was too difficult for anyone to ignore that we're not as smart as we think we are. So yeah, I guess we can let this session end and then you can send me a link.

38:28:00 WALKER: I'll send you another link. Yep.

38:32:00 ANDREW: All cool. There you go.

38:37:00 WALKER: What was your community's reaction to the Black Lives Matter movement,

38:48:00 ANDREW: Outrage, anger, but not really surprised. I mean, it was, I think similar to Rodney King, right? It was just sort of like, okay, it is great that they got, I mean, not great, but they got it captured on video. But it's sort of the same thing of us not being humans, and at least now we had the world to see and people could see sort depravity of it. And so there's outrage, but I think for most people outside of the community, it was outrage and disbelief. I think for the black community, it was outrage. I don't think there was disbelief that something like this could happen.

39:39:00 WALKER: How would you say are the successes and failures of the Black Lives Matter movement?

39:48:00 ANDREW: The success is, I think it was, they leveraged it. So my perspective is the Black Lives Matter movement was super, super successful in getting this thrust into the national agenda and building a coalition of people around it to really drive and say, how can we drive systemic change? And that's what I really did around what is the ability to drive systemic change? So the things that they started to push and do around having body cameras that help provide accountability. I think that aspect of systemic change, looking at the systemic practices of police departments and how do you look at that at a systemic level, I think was fantastic. Looking and getting the buy-in of corporations and more importantly, not hedge funds, but investment funds and Wall Street and making the connection between the importance of diversity, equity, inclusion, and corporate result and sustainable. I think it was fantastic because that drove the fact to say, look, this is not what we want as part of society.
41:04:00 There's also a good area for business to get business involved and activated. I think that was phenomenal. I think the worst part of the Black Lives, I think one, they lost a lot of credibility when they took in tons of funds and there were questions around accountability around the money. I think that just all it does is destroy credibility. The other thing that I think was very negative is getting associated or having part of their message being defund the police, I think was super, super counterproductive because I think for me, I think there's aspects of no matter who you are, you want to be able to feed your family. You want to have a place to live, and you want to make sure that they're safe. And regardless of, and I think police are part of that aspect of making communities safe. And for me, I'm more concerned with accountability than I am with let's defund the police.
42:24:00 That aspect of defunding the police solution is not the right solution to the problem. Greater accountability and oversight is, but I think having that aspect tied to it and having that allowing for this, it allowed for this aspect of people to distract from the intent because the intent of defunded police was less around defunding. It was more around important to fund accountability. It's important to think about other social services to solve problems. There are other ways to solve these problems versus always using the heavy hand and the force of the police. That's what it was meant do. The way that they messaged and everything else was just horrible. And some people did want to defund the police, which I just think is just stupid. But what that allowed things to happen is it allowed things to get distracted in a way that played against it.
43:31:00 So you have this whole thing of the Blue Lives Matter movement and what are we doing about their lives matter too, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it's like, I think that aspect deteriorated from the basic message of everyone has a right to live. Everyone has a right their own personal rights, et cetera, and to be treated with dignity. And when that doesn't happen, those that are in positions where they're supposed to do it need to be held accountable. And it took everyone off of that point to this point of, well, getting into this simple stupid argument which distorts everything. Well, if you're saying Black Lives Matter, you are therefore by saying that someone else's life doesn't matter. And it's like, no, you're distorting the message. And from the aspect of the reason we're saying it matters is because these are successive incidents where, or people were treated in a way they were seen as less than, and we want them as equal as.
44:37:00 But when you have all of these other things that allow people to snatch onto, to sort of distract or dilute the message, it doesn't go well. And so those are the aspects of Black Lives Matter movement that I don't think work well, but for the most part, they made a huge movement and a huge progress in a short period of time. So I think it was fantastic. I think now we're dealing with the blow back, which always happens when you have two steps forward, one step back, and I think we're dealing with the blow back with the Supreme Court decision against affirmative action. All of these corporations pulling back on their DEI programs, it's now no longer the top of mind focus for anyone. This whole thing of against woke politics and stuff, all of this is sort of the backlash of groups and communities not being comfortable with the inequality and the disparity of the history of America.
45:41:00 And with that, we have groups that are like, look, this wasn't right and we need to hold things accountable so we're not doing this going forward. And it gets into when people are advantaged by different things, they'll try and justify, I wasn't really advantaged or this is because of me. There's all of these different things where as we think about America and its individualistic nature that we like to believe much in the way that we believe that we're beyond racism. People like to believe or want to believe rather, that everything is based on merit and that anything that is unjust is because people didn't put in any effort in work, and that's completely not the case. And it's this cognitive disconnect that a lot of people have when it comes to these decisions. If everything were, I always think of it very simply, if everything were a meritocracy and people got to where they are because of their own efforts, then people would not care what neighborhood they live in and what school is zoned for that neighborhood.
47:04:00 The reason they do care is they know that in playing the statistics, if they put their kids in better schools, and those better schools are in these districts, the likelihood of them having a better life is better than these other schools, which means that it's not equal. You're probability of success is not equal depending upon where you or what school you're at or what your circumstances are. But yet, it's this cognitive disconnect when people want to challenge to say, that system's not right, and everyone should have an equal opportunity. They'll say, well, yeah, I think it is equal an opportunity because I got here because of all my effort, but yet they'll make a decision to say, well, I do want to stack the playing cards for my kids that want them to have a better life. And that cognitive disconnect leads to all of these various different things, and it goes into people in power want to stay in power and all these other things. So anyway, I'm probably rambling on. Sorry, I can't hear you. I don't know.

48:16:00 WALKER: What do you think is the future of the Black Lives Matter movement? What do you think that holds?

48:23:00 ANDREW: I think it'll probably have to morph again. It's going to have to shift, I think. I'm not sure what it'll look like. If you think about it, it's this thing that shifts and morphs over time. It was sort of the black power movement in the late eighties, early nineties. If you go back and look at hip hop in that time, there was a whole big element of Nubian and stuff like this around black pride and stuff like that. Black Lives Matter. It'll probably have to change and morph again. I think one of the things that makes me extremely, extremely optimistic is one of the, I talked about this earlier, one of the downsides I talked about is the proliferation of channels and social media and all these other things and how it fragments communities, and you can go down these rabbit holes. I think while that's a downside of it, one of the benefits is that it allows more and more communities of like-minded people to sort of come together.
49:40:00 And it also has in some ways fragmented how companies frankly market to people and things of that nature. So I think about it like this, the demographics in the US are changing, right? More and more diverse. And because of that, in order to appeal and for companies to be successful, they are going to have to have more inclusive and diverse messagings just because the audience has changed, right? Back in the seventies with it being sort of 70% white or whatever, you could put out a message that only resonated in the white community and do really, really well and everything be it. Now, you can't do that. You've be able to make sure your product and brand is appealing. And so you see all these things around woke ism and all these other things, which is sort of a backlash against those dynamics and everything else. But the one thing I do have some sort of value points in is around that. At the end of the day, America is a very capitalistic society, and if nothing else, people will go where there's money. And I look at it as you remember a few years ago when Chick-fil-A was like, we don't support effectively same-sex marriages and stuff like that, but people love Chick-fil-A chicken, and so, huh, I can't hear you.
51:22:00 I can't hear you.

51:24:00 WALKER: Nobody cares about what Chick-fil-A supports. They just care about the chicken sandwich and how good it tastes.

51:28:00 ANDREW: And so people were, but you also had the lgbtq plus community sort of boycott and all these other things. Well, at the end of the day, Chick-fil-A wants to expand and grow, and at some point they're like, we're going to hit maximum level. And so they figured out a way to get themselves comfortable with adjusting their policies to be a bit more inclusive of the lgbtq plus community. So should the anymore, so I said, now sell them some chicken and shit, right?

52:04:00 WALKER: Yeah.

52:05:00 ANDREW: I think that nature of, even if someone is purely racist, et cetera, many times they will adjust what they do in order to make some money. There are very few companies and organizations that will allow a ideology like that to prevent them from making some cash. And this whole thing with sort of Disney and everything else, I see as sort of a modicum of that because you got DeSantis talking about woke Disney, et cetera. Disney is a money profitmaking machine, and while they may say all this stuff around, we're inclusive and we like diversity, et cetera, I look at it very basic and simply, a few years ago, Disney put out Black Panther. They were like, oh, shit. This shit made a fuckload of money, and we weren't expecting this shit to make as much money as it is. So, well, damn, why don't we put out another Black Panther and see if it'll still make some money, and why don't we come out with some women superheroes and see if that'll make a shitload of money and an Asian superhero and see if that makes shitload of money.
53:21:00 And you saw in the last Black Panther, oh, we need a Latinx superhero to make a shitload of money. As long as the shit is making money and they can appeal to these groups, they will continue to do so, and they can call it wca, whatever else it may be. But as long as they can make money by having people that look like their audience and they will go and put dollars for, they don't give a shit. If the Little Mermaid, if they cast, I forget her name, but a black actress to play Ariel, if that shit makes money, you will see more and more of that shit. If it doesn't make money, you'll see less and less of that shit. And I think that's what gives me some level of optimism to say, look, these companies are going to respond. They know, Hey, I want to be able to market to all these different groups.
54:15:00 They have become experts and being able to target their marketing to various different groups and constituencies such that you will likely see Disney and other companies sit there and go, Hey, we will have an LGBQ, which they do, and the Disney plus superhero. We will have a Latinx superhero. I'm sure they will figure out a way to have a superhero that appeals to the country demographic, et cetera. Just like Budweiser will figure out a way to regain a lot of the consumers they lost when they had that whole Bud Light influencer debacle. They will figure it out because they know they want to make money, and if they want to continue to grow, they will do So. It's the whole reason why people figure it out, just like Juneteenth. They're like, oh, shit, if we could make a bunch of money, well then let's do this Juneteenth branding, et cetera.
55:16:00 It's another buying occasion or pride month. The reason you see all these flags and shit is because they're like, well, this community has a lot of the couples in the LGBQ community, not all of them had kids. If they don't have kids than they've got high income, they're willing to spend and they're more loyal. So shit, I'll put up some pride flags and have them sell some shit. Right? It's like the whole reason like Subaru specifically targets that demographic because they have high brand loyalty. So that's what gives me some level of optimism that as the demographics change, government politicians, etc. Will have to adjust to it. But I think the concern that I have with social media is with a degree of polarization and everything else, it could be a super rocky road to get there.

56:15:00 WALKER: Thank you so much for your time.

56:18:00 ANDREW: Oh, okay. Yeah, no problem. No problem. You want me to stop the recording? Yeah. Okay.

Part of Andrew Robinson