Media
audio-visual document

Oral History Interview with Wallace Benton

Title
Oral History Interview with Wallace Benton
Interviewee
Wallace Benton
Interviewer
Ella Dietrich
Description
Wallace Benton of Alexandria, Virginia was interviewed by Ella Dietrich, Sewanee student, on November 3, 2023 on Zoom. While their conversation was primarily on the Black Lives Matter Movement, other topics included discussing his personal experiences regarding “White Flight” and his experiences regarding BLM and the Episcopal Church. 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
0:00:03 WALLACE: Now recording.

0:00:04 ELLA: Okay, now recording. Perfect. So I'm just going to ask you, this sounds really formal, but it'll just be a bit. Okay. This is Ella Dietrich from Sewanee University of the South. It is October 31st at 3:30 PM I am with

0:00:24 WALLACE: Wallace Benton.

0:00:26 ELLA: And you are from

0:00:29 WALLACE: Alexandria, Virginia.

0:00:31 ELLA: Perfect. Thank you Wallace for being

0:00:34 WALLACE: Here. I just moved here. I don't know where I'm from.

0:00:37 ELLA: Okay. So where were you originally from?

0:00:42 WALLACE: I was born in Edina, Minnesota, but I've spent the vast majority of my life outside of Atlanta, Georgia.

0:00:52 ELLA: Okay. And where did you go to college?

0:00:53 WALLACE: In around, oh, sorry, in around Atlanta, Georgia. I went to college, Georgia Tech or Georgia Institute of Technology.

0:01:04 ELLA: Perfect. And what did you do there?

0:01:07 WALLACE: I studied international affairs.

0:01:09 ELLA: Awesome. Okay. How is where you currently reside different from where you were raised?

0:01:19 WALLACE: Yeah, so I've only lived in Alexandria for two months. I think that's accurate in a lot of ways. It's very similar to where I was raised except for, I think the biggest difference is that where I was raised, where I grew up in Snellville, Georgia, which is about 30 minutes outside of Atlanta, there was a demographic shift that happened while I was growing up from a 70% white population to a, by the time I was in high school, kind of this 60% black population with a 35% white minority. And then everybody else fit somewhere in there.
0:02:18 And so here this is definitely racially and ethnicity wise, significantly more diverse. Population wise, it is just driving through and seeing the number of different, I think the big, big way that you can see that as types of restaurants. And so between having Afghan restaurants and Middle Eastern to Ethiopia, to India, Chinese and Japanese, and I think, and then American like pizza or even going to taking my kids to the playground and just looking around at families who all look or speak different languages has been absolutely wild and very different than where I grew up, especially when I grew up there.

0:03:20 ELLA: And then when you described that demographic change, was there a specific reason why those numbers went down

0:03:30 WALLACE: When growing up? I think the big demographic, so partially that was due to white flight. And so as black families moved into the southern area of Gwinnett County, which is this very large county outside of Atlanta, then a lot of families moved from that southern area of Gwinnett County and either moved north to places like Beauford, but Northern Gwinnett or they started moving towards Forsyth County and moving out and away from this kind of five county metro area. And so that's been a demographic change that I think several counties have experienced in this five county metro outside of Atlanta, or that includes Atlanta, but then outside of Atlanta.

0:04:29 ELLA: And with that shift in mind, mind, I'm just going to ask you about how did you find community as a child and how did that maybe switch when the people in your community were switching?

0:04:42 WALLACE: Yeah, so that's a good question. I think as a kid, I think I found community generally in things like orchestra and I feel like very specific groups. And so like I said, orchestra, I think because I was in the AP program, well "gifted" and then AP program in high school, the same kids were generally in those programs, which now looking back is kind of a place of quiet racism within the public school structure. So whereas the demographics of our school had changed from this 40%, 60% white, 40% black when I was a freshman and then when I was a senior was at this 60% black, 40% white. If you looked at the classes that I was taking, generally the same type, the demographic change was minimal in those classes. But I think I found community in those spaces because I was generally in the same classes with the same people. So I saw them all the time.
0:06:08 But I think really the place where I found a lot of community, and that was the safe space for me was my church. And so my church's demographics, I grew up in Episcopalian and Episcopal churches. Well, because church, not just Episcopal churches, but churches are generally do not have a lot of demographic shifts, especially when it comes to race. They generally tend to be pretty stagnant. Demographically, my church didn't change as the rest of the community changed. So it stayed predominantly white, even though we did have influences as there were Liberian families that moved into the church, but generally kind of stayed the same. But that was the place where I found community probably it did the same people went most Sundays. I can think of four families that, well, that's not true. I think definitely when I was in high school, I can only think of two or three families that left the church.
0:07:30 Generally speaking, everybody stayed in after 2003, everybody kind of stayed in the church. 2003, for those who don't know, that's when the Episcopal church elected its first openly-gay bishop. And that led to a lot of changes with that led to a lot of shifts. A lot of churches really struggled with that. A lot of Episcopal churches really struggled with that. And so as the Episcopal church was adjusting, there were people who, there was a big kind of mass migration out of the church, but then that was pretty much settled by the time 2004, 2005. And so my church generally didn't change demographically during that time period based on race at least.

0:08:25 ELLA: And that's, I mean, I was born in 2003, so my dad was just, I was being raised where you are now. And I think that he was experiencing a lot of that like, oh, what do we do now? Where is this new direction going? So I totally get that.
0:08:42 So you described how your childhood was and the different changes that you experienced with that shifting white flight and just stagnant Episcopal church as always, that's how my church has always been too, same people for 50 plus years. But where do you find community today in your space and as an adult, how have you found community?

0:09:06 WALLACE: That's a big one. Yeah, that's a big old, oof. So I think that's hard. That's a really hard question to answer because there were two kind of parts to that question. Ask it again for me, please.

0:09:30 ELLA: Yes. Well, the general question is where do you find community today? And specifically, I know that you've recently moved, so that's a hard one, but as an adult, maybe it would be an easier question. How did you find community in Sewanee and just in your moving mobile life, obviously you have a very sweet, lovely family. You can talk a little bit about that, but maybe almost in a religious sense too, in the church. How have you.. Yes, take it away.

0:10:05 WALLACE: Okay. So I think finding community is really hard as an adult. I think it was really easy when I was in college, or even I was going to say growing up and in college, because you see the same people, you interact with the same people, which is annoying because they're the same people over and over again. But you develop those relationships, you have kind of set patterns. The people at church I saw on Sundays and Wednesdays, and even if we saw each other more than that, so if we had a retreat weekend, and so then I saw them on Friday, Saturday, so we are adding two more days. We generally figure out our rhythms and understand who one another is. The same thing goes for people who I was on swim team with or people who I was in orchestra class with and all that stuff. You figure out those rhythms when you go to college, you're living, at least for me, a residential college, you live with those same people. And so you develop those rhythms and you kind of figure out, okay, you also, the things that I like, I will spend time with you or I think you're attractive, so therefore I want to date you and I'm going to develop community with your friends because I'm trying to date you.
0:11:23 And I think when I graduated college, all of a sudden then there's this, okay, so now how do you choose people to spend time with and where do you choose people? Where do you meet those people to then choose those people? And I struggled in developing that outside of the one place that I think was always a safe place, which was church. And so I feel like my community in the sense that my closest community has always been church related. And so that then has become muddled because of work. And so now it's a work and church, which is the same entity. That's where I find community. And so sometimes that can be really great and beneficial. And I love when I was a youth minister, all the old biddies (ladies) who would come and take care of me and give me free food and those kinds of things. And also that was also in some ways a work relationship. And so then when work wasn't great, then I didn't want to spend time with that community. But then that was the only community that I had.
0:12:34 So I think I recognized that that was been such a big part of my life. And so therefore, community has always been in this weird web of church. So church, church work kind, combination. And then when I was at, Sewanee we're adding in church work. And because we lived in the Sewanee community, then I wasn't escape those things. So I wasn't developing relationships outside of people who I worked with and their families. I wasn't developing relationships outside of the people who I did ministry with. And I don't think that's good or bad. I think it was or it has been. And so all of that to say, I think finding the community is always difficult, has always been difficult for me because I feel like I don't do enough things that are the outside of work in church. And that's probably on me. I recognize that. I do think that having kids now has created this new opportunity for me to develop relationships, except for now, the relationships are tied to the kids.
0:14:03 And so that's literally, for instance, and we had became really, really, really good friends with another couple because of our kids. Our sons had birthdays a week, about four days between one another. And so we became really close friends with them and recognizing that they're also always going to be a related, a church-work relationship kind of because one of 'em is a seminarian. And so at some point they're going to be fully into the church world. And so then that will always be a nature of our relationship. And so it's fascinating to think about how church and work is always going to be the basis of where I begin relationships Now, maybe I should start playing pickleball. I tried to convince my wife that that's something I should do, and I could develop some new relationships and develop some new

0:15:09 ELLA: Maybe.

0:15:11 WALLACE: Yeah, I also think family has also been, I haven't mentioned them a lot, but I think family has also been a big part of my community. One of the things about being an only child is that my relationship with my parents is really tight, even when it's not great, has been these two central pillars of my life. And then I think when I got married, my wife's family is significantly larger. She has three siblings all, and then the majority of them are married and they have kids, and then also her dad's still alive. And so now there are these new people who are part of that behind me. And so that can be really great, but sometimes it can also feel like a lot and overwhelming. But most of the time it's great.

0:16:03 ELLA: I think I can probably relate to the growing up in the Episcopal church and always kind of being surrounded. I mean, I grew up with older women telling me that I had to say the Lord's Prayer as a five-year-old, it's always been. And now I work there, I work with you. And so it's my friends, the Sacristans, but it's also, I go there to get paid. And my dad's always been at church to get paid. So I get the difficulty of separating that. What is work and what are my friends. Most of my friends came from the church that were also friends with my parents. I see it from your child's perspective kind of, but okay. So speaking of your job now in the church, can you describe your occupation and your journey to this role?

0:16:54 WALLACE: Yeah. So my current position is that I'm the associate director for Lifelong Learning at Virginia Theological Seminary, which there are a lot of syllables in that, but really I oversee a couple different department or program, large scale programs within the Lifelong Learning, which is kind continuing ed, excuse me, department for Virginia, for VTS or Virginia Theological Seminary, but I'll say VTS because that's a lot shorter. And so I kind of oversee these big scale programs within, but then also I do a lot of planning programming for lifelong learning. So I'm looking at my board, which has a lot of ideas for programs for next year, but then also some special interests that we're trying to see if we can get off the ground, such as sabbatical programming and things like that. And so I don't know how I got here in some ways, I don't know, I think if you had told me that this is something that I'd be doing when I was in college, I wouldn't have believed you because I would've said one, I wanted to be a shoot an ambassador. But then two, what is continuing education?
0:18:43 But then I think I did, I worked for a law firm for a little bit after college, and during that time as a part-time gig, I was a part-time youth minister at a church at the next Episcopal church over from the church I grew up at. And during that time I was like, I like this, but I'm still trying to figure things out. And I had been going to, during this time, I feel like I clearly was living a lifestyle where I believed that I had 26 hours in the day as opposed to 24. And so I was also in grad school to work in higher ed. I didn't know what I wanted to do. And so then after I graduated from grad school, I had started applying for full-time jobs. And the ones that were super interested and super interesting to me were these youth minister jobs.
0:19:36 And so then I did youth ministry for nine years for almost a decade, and then had this opportunity to felt like I needed to step away. I was like, I wasn't enjoying it. Also, it was Covid and all of that stuff. I was like, lemme just try something new. And had this opportunity to serve as the lay Chaplin at Sewanee. And during that time, I was kind of like, okay, I like higher ed things. I like church things. So what do I do now? And I think initially the plan was there's a little bit of a longer window that I was had initially been expecting, but the plan was to look at more chaplain college chaplaincy positions.
0:20:34 Also, knowing that a lot of places that are looking for chaplains on universities were also most likely would be looking for people who are ordained in some capacity. And that's not something that I could say for myself. And so I think I was also recognizing that there was going to be a cap, there was going to be a ceiling that I was going to hit, and I couldn't necessarily figure out what that breakthrough was. This current position had opened, and I have a friend who works for the department, and she was like, I think this fits stuff that you, like vocation work, you thinking about large scale strategy, you like being creative and creating programming. Why don't you check this out? And I was like, no, that's not the season. I still have one more year left that's Sewanee. And she kept pushing. And then finally I was like, well, let me just put in and put an application and just see what happens.
0:21:37 And I think more and more I was kind of like, okay, what could this position be? Do I see myself actually fitting into this? And so one of the things that I think, I have not read the book fully, and so that's on me, but my dad had gotten, my dad had gotten me a Brené Brown book about leadership. And literally in the very beginning, it's that or reminder that I think is so real about being okay with being vulnerable. And I was like, that's something that I feel like I brought that I tried to bring to the work that I did at Sewanee. And so I was kind of like, well, if I was able to do that at Sewanee, maybe this is something that I can be open to doing in this new capacity. And as long as I remember that it's okay to be vulnerable, then maybe I'll be okay in this space.
0:22:27 And so I was like, well, let me, let's see. Let's figure it out. And so that's what we're doing, even though right now I am having to, I get to do some creation, but we're not doing any of my programs just yet. But next semester it's all stuff that I've planned. And so I'm excited about what that could look like. I'm excited about how that might give people the opportunity to think about their faith, their ministries differently. But yeah, so like I said, I wasn't expecting to be here. I wasn't that person who was like, I'm going to be an engineer when I grow up, but now I am. And so I'm trying to be all in.

0:23:15 ELLA: Yeah. And I feel like, I mean, I only know you from Swanee obviously, but I think that you've kind of taken a lot of those skills from all these different jobs, even the lawyer job or law office job in creating community, and even in the Way Finding program, I think that you can take a lot away from that, and the people who were in it can take a lot away from that. But you talk about your dad and giving you this book, but is there anyone in your life that you look up to or can ask for help from or in your community now?

0:23:52 WALLACE: Yeah, so I think that it's funny, I talked to somebody recently about how I was kind of like, do I look up? I couldn't think about people who I look up to who are real human beings, just because I think I just, in my head, I'm always, I think I see human fallibility as I recognize it. And so therefore I'm like, well, then why is it looking up to you? Or is it maybe trying to glean a little bit of what you do. Try to understand what you do and then see, okay, is that something that I should replicate or not even replicate, but how are you doing the work and how could that look like if I either try to do that or are these threads that I should be pulling on, are these things that I should be reimagining..?
0:24:49 So I think my dad, in a lot of ways, he's the hardest working person that I know to an annoying degree. And I think the way that he treats life as gray life is always gray. There's always multiple ways to figure out to solve a problem. Stop thinking two dimensionally and imagine life in this three plus dimensional exhibit, and think about how you can manipulate things, not in a bad way, manipulate things to make stuff happen. And I think that's always been really beneficial for me. I have a really good group of friends who I lean on a lot and who I ask questions of a lot. So the number of times I've called people on the way home from work, and it was like, Hey, I'm excited about this. I need you to talk to me about it and tell me what makes sense.
0:25:53 Tell me if the idea is farfetched or if I need to go back to the drawing board a little bit. And they're really good about listening and challenging. And so I really appreciate that. And my wife, who is literally the person who, yeah, Sally's great, but I think one of the areas that she really excels, and so I'm always jealous of her and I try to figure out how she does it, is that the way that she can map out stuff. So if you say: "Hey, I have this idea of a program," and she can be like, this is what you need, and just kind of walk through, here's all the things that you should be thinking about. And the way that she does that I think is remarkable. And so I try to emulate some of that when I'm imagining things. I think where I go here are problems and I'll fixate on a problem and try to solve that problem. I think she's just kind of like a, "we're going to assume that all things are good" and just go boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Yeah.

0:27:12 ELLA: Yeah. That sounds like a really good community that you've got. I love Sally. She seems really cool. Okay. I think we're about done with some background stuff, but if you want to do an additional Zoom, I think that that would be great. Just really getting into your work with any social media that you've had and your work with, and not your work, but just any involvement with the Black Lives Matter movement. Yeah. And it was great to see you over Zoom. I know that you're in Virginia...

0:27:46 WALLACE: Okay, we are now recording.

0:27:48 ELLA: Yay. Okay. I still have to do the intro again because it's another part, but Okay. This is Ella Dietrich from Sewanee, the University of the South. It is 9:30 AM on November 3rd, 2023. I'm here with

0:28:05 WALLACE: Wallace Benton,

0:28:06 ELLA: And you are from

0:28:09 WALLACE: Alexandria, Virginia.

0:28:11 ELLA: Perfect. Thank you, Wallace for being here. Okay, let's get to the questions. So how do you receive the news in social media form? Are you watching the news?

0:28:27 WALLACE: I feel like I get most of my news either from podcasts or from, I have the AP news app on my phone, and so sometimes I'll read that.

0:28:38 ELLA: What kind of podcasts do you listen to?

0:28:41 WALLACE: That's not one of the questions. I like the Daily. I think I tend to go the Daily from New York Times the journal from Wall Street Journal, and then I think Vox has a daily one that I'll listen to as well, but that's where I feel like I get a lot of my news, oh, today exploding, and then NPR politics, and that's where I'll get a lot of my news from.

0:29:13 ELLA: Okay. What has been your experience with social media?

0:29:23 WALLACE: As I date myself, I guess I got a Facebook the year that they let high schoolers jump on Facebook was 2007, and so that was my senior year of high school. I think social media has been a part of my life since young adulthood, so throughout college and since then.

0:29:55 ELLA: Okay. I was four years old when that happened.

0:29:59 WALLACE: Thanks.

0:30:01 ELLA: Okay. How did you first encounter the Black Lives Matter movement?

0:30:12 WALLACE: I'd say probably when everyone else did. I dunno, I'm not really on Twitter, so I feel as though that Black Lives Matter appeared in my life the same time that I feel like really, I became aware of it, but hard to think about life and news pre covid. But I feel like, so I mean, I guess 2000, what is that? 2018 ?Oh my gosh, his name is Jumping Out of My Brain outside of St. Louis in Missouri. Yes. Was that 2018?

0:31:07 ELLA: I'm looking it up. Trayvon Martin was in 2012. That was

0:31:14 WALLACE: 2012 was Trayvon Martin. Yeah,

0:31:18 ELLA: That's when the hashtag started. But if you weren't on Twitter, I don't think it would've been. Yeah.

0:31:23 WALLACE: But so Trayvon Martin, I feel like that's when I probably.. So Trayvon Martin, and I probably think maybe not necessarily the organization or movement or the Twitter ness of it all, but I guess that would've been the first time I was aware that people were saying Black Lives Matter would've been Trayvon Martin. Yeah. Geez. I can't believe that. That was 2012?

0:31:45 ELLA: It was at least 11 years ago, and there wasn't anything in my community. Yeah. Okay. What is your opinion of the Black Lives Matter movement?

0:32:00 WALLACE: Yeah, I think I have mixed feelings, mixed feeling. I think that in some ways I like the simplicity of the message. What ended? I think that that was great. The idea of reminding people that Black Lives Matter, there is social weight to individuals' lives, especially those in the black community. I think what became really frustrating was I guess the response and the back and forth, because if we say Black Lives Matter, then what are we saying about everybody's life? And yes, all lives matter. All lives matter. All lives have weight, all lives are connected to other people's lives. And so if somebody is taken from the community, then there's a missing. There's something missing. There's missing. And weight is not the best word, but value. There's missing value, I think. And so there's the part of me that then that became a semantics conversation.
0:33:16 I felt like if you're saying one entity or one group's lives matter, then you're basically saying that anybody else could be taken from society and it's fine. And I think that that's dumb. I do think that, I think with everything and a lot of things that come out of a social media frenzy, at a certain point, I always wonder, do you reach the number of people you will ever reach? And then at that point, does it feel like you're constantly trying to push against a glass ceiling that you're not going to be able to get past? You're not all of a sudden going to get Ron DeSantis to say, I agree, "black lives do matter." That's not happening. He is, and I shouldn't have used him specifically, but as a representative of a certain demographic of the United States population, there's no point that they will ever, you'll bring anything new to them that will then challenge, or they'll then all of a sudden be like, huh, maybe Black Lives do matter.
0:34:37 So I think, I wonder if the Black Lives Matter movement, didn't.. I think it's kind of frustrating, I guess there was never a point of how do you convince these people who are, or how do you engage with these people who are outside and going to be and question the Black Lives Matter movement? And especially because the whole word of movement, then there has to be a counter movement, and it just seems like a lot. And I guess I always wonder, at what point do you then say "We're beyond the movement." And instead we're just trying to encourage people to think or be willing to be a little bit questioned critically like, "Hey, we saw this cop manhandling a black person. It didn't seem right. It made my gut feel weird. I should question this." I guess, to me, that is the hope that from the Black Lives Matter movement, and I guess I wonder if that happened across the board.
0:36:00 It's kind of like with #MeToo at a certain point with Me Too. Has that changed people's gut reaction to somebody, specifically a woman saying, "Hey, I had this interaction with an employer," and instead of just being like, "yep, seems weird, but I'm not going to worry about it." Instead, now we're like, "it seems weird. Maybe we should engage with this. Why is this weird? Why does this make me feel weird? Could this be, let's think about this a little bit more critically." So I don't know. I guess I wonder at one point, does the movement you have to transcend just being a movement into you are encouraging people's thoughts and minds to change even just a little bit, like a slight degree?

0:36:56 ELLA: And then this is kind of going ahead, but you've talked about, it almost sounds like you're saying that it might be fizzling away or maybe transforming into something else. What do you think that the future of Black Lives Matter is?

0:37:12 WALLACE: Yeah, I don't know.

0:37:24 ELLA: That's a hard one. It's okay.

0:37:25 WALLACE: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I guess I don't have a lot of faith in the United States when it comes to changing how we operate. I think the Black Lives Matter movement, I think there were the people who actually changed, whether that was before, they had never thought that police could harm other people intentionally or unintentionally, or that there were systems in place that made it difficult for black people to move up, whether that's financially or just survival wise. And I think in some ways there were lots of people who were like, oh, this is new. This is making me think about things a little bit differently. And I think there might've been people who were staunch conservatives, social conservatives, and now they're like, okay, maybe black people aren't scary. And I guess because I don't have faith in the United States, I guess I always wonder because of how strong the Counter to Black Lives Matter, and in other progressive movements, that's been, I guess I'm not seeing fully where those changes are coming from. And maybe that's also just from living in the South and for the vast majority of my life and nothing changing.

0:39:00 ELLA: Yeah. Do you think a lot of it is maybe people trying to take polar opposite sides and just getting distracted into an issue that it shouldn't be? And what you were talking about before is people should just see this and be able to recognize it's wrong, but instead that they're criminalizing this whole entire movement. So maybe that is what is pushing us to fizzle out?

0:39:23 WALLACE: I think that it's, from what I understand, because I was not alive. The Civil Rights Movement had this huge wave in the sixties where now people are engaging with it very differently than they were in the forties and fifties. And then you move into the seventies where people were like, there were the people who were like, we're good. We've done the work. And most of those people were the white people who were fine, who were not affected at all. Right. And so I guess I fear that we will move back into the seventies, into the eighties sort of mindset of we fixed "race", we did it, we finally did it. And I feel like we are closer to that mentality, or even worse of the huge backlash of conservatives being like, well, how can I just dismantle anything that comes close to racial parity in any avenue? How can I dismantle that and make it hard for anybody that doesn't look or pray or live like me?

0:40:57 ELLA: That's a really difficult reality to come to terms with. But I do kind of agree with that one. I think that a lot of people today, and this has been my Southern experience, but also just my grandparents and older people have been like, oh, no, we're good. That one thing happened, and it was kind of hard.

0:41:16 WALLACE: We did it, we fixed it.

0:41:18 ELLA: But I think it's the younger population that's really trying to go for it. But yeah, I do,

0:41:27 WALLACE: And this may be, so number 11 is like, how do you think the Black Lives Matter movement failed? And I think that this is actually part of the failure is that I don't know if the ... BLM got a lot of younger progressive support, and I think that that made a lot of sense. And I don't know if the BLM pushed to change the minds and attitudes of an older generation that holds the power. So I think it's really great. Then Gen Z and younger millennials were like, yes, Black Lives Matter, let's go. But then guess what? You're not in power.
0:42:19 You have power. You have purchasing power. You have power in terms of voices, especially in social media. But guess what? Doesn't matter in the real world, because as long as your congressman doesn't give two flips about what you care about on social media, which guess what they don't, then nothing's going to change. And I think that that's, and there's other factors I think in the world that move against ideas like the Black Lives Matter movement. As long as younger progressives continue to move into big cities over on the East Coast or West Coast, then you still have a lot of people in the middle who don't vibe with your progressive ideals and they aren't leaving.

0:43:13 ELLA: As long as they're not occupying those spaces, I feel like they're never going to get exposed to what those people's personalities or lives may be.

0:43:20 WALLACE: Yeah. Well, and also then those people are still going to vote against whatever what you are pushing for. And I also think that there's a whole discussion about should the Black Lives Matter movement been more organized in the sense of making political change rather than trying to go for a social focus? So if the Black Lives Matter movement had been focused on being a coalition politically, whether that was within a Democratic Party or not, what that could have changed in this political atmosphere rather than just a social atmosphere.

0:44:15 ELLA: It did feel like a lot, from my perspective, I think it felt like a lot of armchair protesting from my colleagues and my people in my classes, from just posting something on social media, being like, okay, I've done my part. I'm good. I posted my hashtag, yeah,

0:44:32 WALLACE: I got my black profile picture.

0:44:35 ELLA: But I agree with, I haven't really thought about who is that reaching, because it's not reaching any of my grandparents. It's not reaching the people who are going to make that change. So yeah, it's just going out to the people I already know that probably share my, yeah. Okay.

0:44:57 WALLACE: I think that in some ways, the Black Lives Matter movement is similar to, I don't use religious movement, but I think almost like, and maybe this was because I worked in the church for so long, so I only think about things in terms of church context. A church community that is mostly 50 sixties and seventies, if they are only interacting with other fifties and sixties and 70 year old year olds, those are the only people who they're evangelizing to, whether that's intentionally or unintentionally. Well guess who, the only people you're going to see in this church as it continues? The same fifties, sixties, and 70 year olds, you're never going to see anybody who is younger than them or who have little kids or anything like that because you're not actively trying to reach those people. You don't care. You are focusing on your friends and the other people in your friend group, and so guess what's going to happen? Eventually, it's going to die
0:46:03 Because those people are going to die. I think Black Lives Matter. Granted, I think really affected this younger generation of Gen Zers people who were in high school in the mid, mid to late 2010s. They're younger, and so therefore, they're not going to die in a physical sense. And like I said, there's a lot of purchasing power, there's a lot of power in terms of social media, but I don't know if that has shifted over into the reality of life. If Ella Dietrich isn't running for political office and planning to make the tenets of the Black Lives Matter movement part of her tenant, whether that's a school board member as somebody who's working in a local office, state level, or even Congress. If you aren't doing that, then it does not matter that ultimately that identify with the Black Lives Matter movement. It doesn't. And so like I said, we haven't figured, and also, if the only people who you're sharing your thoughts about BLM or any other social thing that you're engaging with, if you're only sharing that on social media and you're not engaging that with your parents, if you're not talking about it with the other older people or just people who you interact with in life, then those things aren't going to get passed on, and they are effectively going to die with you.
0:48:12 I think about, my oldest niece is 17 years old, and she has lots of ideas about how the world should be run. Some of them are decent and a lot of them are not great. She also believes that you shouldn't have homework and all this other stuff. So

0:48:33 ELLA: I agree with that. I agree with that.

0:48:34 WALLACE: No, I think people need homework. But one of the things that I've noticed is that if the people who she talks to and that she engages with conversations with are the same 20 people who 19 of them are all the same age, one of them is her grandfather. Well, guess what? Your brilliant ideas are not getting communicated out to anybody. And also, if you're not, then also listening to those 19 other people who are the same age, but then also that one person who happens to be in their seventies and you're not taking in some of the wisdom that they have and changing your thought about things the way that you think about things, then you're also doing a disservice to yourself and also to the other people who you're interacting with. So yeah,

0:49:37 ELLA: I think there's also something to think about with the isolation of COVID-19 and when the peak of Black Lives Matter happened with George Floyd, or, I mean, the peak in terms of my life, because I wasn't really aware of Black Lives Matter and how we were so isolated and not bored, but we really didn't have much going on. So it was so easy to attach every part of myself to this one movement and to go protest and go do these things, but then now I have this other life to live, and it's like, oh, it's kind of slipped into the background, and I feel like that's how a lot of people did, and I don't know. That's definitely a big part of it.

0:50:14 WALLACE: Yeah, I think it was really easy to have an online protest, online based protest or movement. I think, like you said, when it came to normal life, you had lots of other things that you needed to be engaged with. And I don't want to use you as you specifically as an example, but I think about youth that I worked with around the time, and I think it's really great if they were identified with the Black Lives Matter movement. But if you're a white kid and the only people who you talk to are white outside of your black youth minister, then it is really hard, I think to stay fully engaged and to fully live into the idea of Black Lives Matter. It is the same thing as there are a lot of women's right things that I think I identify with, that I care about, that I want to promote. I have to stay engaged with women. That's sounded engaged with

0:51:39 ELLA: I understand what you mean. Yeah.

0:51:41 WALLACE: But I have to be in contact and listen and talk to women to be able to fully engage with equal rights initiatives.

0:51:54 ELLA: Yeah, I think so too. I think that's a big point that everyone needs to understand.

0:51:59 WALLACE: Yeah, I mean, it's the same thing as if you're really going to promote LG LGBTQIA+ initiatives, then I think it's really great to be like, yes, I support that. Great. But if you're not engaging in conversations with

0:52:18 ELLA: People who identify,

0:52:20 WALLACE: People who identify, and also you probably need to engage with people who don't and maybe who may and then say, okay, this is what I'm hearing from my grandfather who's very confused about trans people. Let me take that in. Let me listen to it, and then figure out a way to engage with my grandfather and other people who are confused about the trans people.

0:52:41 ELLA: Yes. Okay. Okay. That'll move us right to our next question. When the Black Lives Matter movement kind of peaked, or if it was getting up there in terms of how you were processing it and when you were talking to your family and friends, how did that really go over? Or was there any complications?

0:53:08 WALLACE: I don't think that complications is not the best word, I think for a lot of people in my life, so not a lot of people. I think about, for instance, my parents who were like, duh. Also, I think for them, they're like, we've seen this before in some iterations, they grew up in the sixties, and so I think this wasn't nothing that Black Lives Matter did was new to 'em or shocking. I think if I think about the other communities that I was part of, I think the question was how are you going to engage with Black Lives Matter? I think a lot of my friends, a lot of people who I might've engaged in conversation with about the Black Lives Matter movement were all fairly progressive or moderate to progressive. And so I think it was more like how all in you were going to go, because I work in an Episcopal church, I think it was something that a lot of moderate to progressive leaning white women glommed onto. And they're like, yes, we're all in.
0:55:02 And the "wokeness" of it got really frustrating. And because they'd be like, we're in a space where people are talking about race. And they'd be like, well, I have thoughts, but I need Wallace. Why don't you talk about it? And I'm like, no, share your thoughts. Your thoughts are going to be valid because you have thoughts. You are a person. You share your thoughts, and then I can share my thoughts. We can take turns, we can listen to one another, but it's okay for you also to have opinions. Or then my sister-in-law would be like, "I care so much about BLM that I'm going to start an organization about thinking about race in the church at my church, and it's going to be so great." And it was so idealistic and awesome, and I wanted to be like that.
0:56:09 There are other organizations that are doing that in the Episcopal Church that you could just, maybe you should check those out first before you start your own. Maybe they're doing something and they're going to do something better than what you're putting together. And so I think that there was just, I think during 2020-2021, it was just this obsession of they wanted to be the winner of the culture war. And I think for me, it was kind of like, well, what are you going to do when the culture war loses? Are you still going to be engaged with this? Or is this just a flash of pan you need in something to go onto?

0:56:57 ELLA: Yeah, I think that's probably probably the latter, especially for this. I think that a lot of people in my community were very globbed on, like you said, I was surrounded by a lot of white, moderate women, and they just didn't have any education in the matter. So they would just go off of what, not Fox News, but the news sources said, and they would just talk about it with everyone I knew, but everyone is also white, so where is that really going? Okay. Another question. How has Black Lives Matter movement affected the way you interact with people of other races?

0:57:39 WALLACE: I don't think it has. I think now I find when as soon as a demographic of middle-aged people start talking about race, I tend to be like, how can I get out of this as soon as possible? I'm done. But outside of that, I don't think it has changed the way that I talk with people, interact with people of other races. I think if anything, it just solidified to me that I truly believe that race is a part of how we have built systems in our world, and that is unfortunate. And I think understanding that, having that understanding, then the next part is, okay, so either how do we change that in the spaces that we're in, or how do we challenge that in the spaces that we're in? So I think about my time at Sewanee.
0:59:02 There were three other male black, four other male black employees on staff. And so I could have become super insular and only talk to other black people, but other black men, or I could then say, I'm going to engage with this population and also engage with the other aspects of the Sewanee population and try to not necessarily serve as an ambassador, but try to serve as a place of listening and understanding, a place of saying, "Hey, I hear you white kid from middle of nowhere, that you've now seen seven more or interacted with seven more black people than you've ever interacted with. They're not scary, right? Let's talk about that."
1:00:11 Or for some of the African-American students on campus, this is the first time that they've ever been in classes with white people, and so let's talk about that. So I think for me, it's been more of how can I serve as an ambassador? How can I create connections for people? Because as long as we live in silos, whether that's racial silos, gender, sexuality, political, as long as we live in the silos, then it's really hard for us. I believe it is really hard for us to then move together as one in a time in which I think we have to move together as one.

1:01:09 ELLA: I think that that's a really good alternative to what we talked about earlier about the future of Black Lives Matter, just being an ambassador and making conversation, but not in a way that's like, let's share what we think, but more like let's share experiences and maybe future experiences that we might have.

1:01:27 WALLACE: Yeah, I think it's creating, showing that there are shared connection points. Everybody, everybody has parents stuff out there figuring out, okay, there's probably some cross understanding that can happen there. Everybody. I can't think of some other things right now, but we all have shared experience. Not only do we have different experiences, but we also have these shared experiences. Let's try to find connections across those shared experiences.

1:02:00 ELLA: Yeah. Okay. I think that was awesome. I think we can stop the recording now. Thank you, Wallace.

1:02:12 WALLACE: Maybe we can stop the recording. Okay.

Part of Wallace Benton