The Cost of Inequality No One Talks About

People literally gave their lives to open the doors that I have walked through. And I owe it to them we have worked to do. We have to have that greater sense of community and legacy with history so that we are motivated to make a difference.

four years in the making, family, today's guest has invested his career making the invisible visible. As a Harvard professor, one of the most sightest scholars in the world, Dr. David R. Williams has dedicated his life to one of the most important and most uncomfortable questions in public health. Why do black Americans die sooner, suffer more, and receive less even when they His research doesn't let any of us off the hook. Not the healthcare system, not the business community, not society at large. And the truth is that's exactly why his work matters. Dr. Williams, welcome to Ask JVH. Dr. David, you've said approximately 220 black Americans die every single day who would not die if their health outcomes matched white Americans. Now, that's a big, big statement and it's not a statistic really is a catastrophe in slow motion. How do you stay in the work when you're carrying the number like that on your heart?

Well, the number on my heart is a motivation to stay in the work. We cannot let this continue without doing something about it. Most Americans do not know that they are large racial inequities in health, although they have existed from the earliest data that we have. So I think playing a role of raising awareness levels of the problem, point into solutions pointing to things we could do that would make a difference is an important contribution to addressing the challenge that we face.

Well, I'm sure you're knowledge informs your heart as well and that's one of the reasons why I am so blessed to have you here to talk with our family and you you created the everyday discrimination scale that measures the chronic diet in dignities. Being followed in a store, being pointedly treated with less respect, receiving worse service than the person in front of you, if you happen to appear to be a different ethnicities. As a black woman who built a billion dollar business, These are moments that I like, I really dislike to say, I'll familiar to me, Doctor. What does that kind of ongoing stress actually do to someone's body over time? What may have had done to mine?

I have been surprised by how strong the scientific evidence has emerged, using the everyday discrimination scale to look at its impact on health. The everyday discrimination scale has a broad level of negative effects on health and just to put it into context. the everyday discrimination scale as people about the little indignities, being treated with less courtesy and respect as you mentioned. It doesn't ask them of front did this happen because of your race. It asked them in your day to day life, often you have these things. At the end, we say, what do you think was the main reason? What we are finding is that race is one basis of being treated badly and treated on fairly in our society, but it's an annual world, but it's not the only one. One of my doctoral students, about three years ago, did a research in the scientific literature, and at that time, there were four hundred and sixty papers from around the world that published and all of them were not looking at race. It is true if it's your LGBTQ status. It's true if it's because you are obese. It's the experience of being looked at less than, Um, that has these effects, but let me just give you a few examples of the study. I'll just cite some of the work of Dr. Tenny Lewis and African-American scholar who was at Yale, um, now at Emory, and I'll just tell you some of the findings she has had, one researcher using the everyday discrimination scale. She finds that people who score high and everyday discrimination have high levels of inflammation in their blood, you know, um, have higher levels, um, of coronary atric acidification. That's the development of heart disease. Have higher levels of visceral fat. That is the deep internal fat in your body organs that leads to higher levels of illness and disease. One study of adults followed over time, People who score high on everyday discrimination, it is a predictor of premature death. People are literally dying before their time because of discrimination. So it's just to give you a few examples of the broad range of negative effects physiologically that are occurring in the human body, in addition to the mental health effects and the negative effects on sleep and so on. It's the broad range. We are literally killing people early on on a regular basis by just how we treat each other. And if we don't treat people with dignity and respect, it has negative consequences.

And it's so hierarchical and repetitive. You're looking at a woman who was a little navigate at girl in Tauberg, North Carolina, growing up over 70 years ago. And I still carried with me many of what I now call in dignities back then. I didn't give them a name. It was just the way I lived, whether or not I kept getting to the back of the line if anyone why came up or never touched another person's hand, even though we were in the exchange of, you know, passing my money for the purchase of something, you know, it most of our family know it. I don't have to repeat those types of indignities. Then went beyond indignities because they also became barriers to opportunities as they well as help. Now, you've said discrimination is actually not the most powerful way doctor that racism affects health, that the deeper mechanisms are obstructural, locked in place, and it felt that way to meet growing up, and even though some of those physical locks have been removed, the mental and the experience locks are still there for many people. A lot of well-meaning people are focused on the wrong level of the problem, will you break

I will break that down, but before I do, let me mention something it's important also. Every did discrimination does not capture all the forms of discrimination. So I get a little troubled when someone tells me, I am using your every did discrimination skills to know I'm capturing all aspects of racism and it's capturing one domain, one neglected that ask in your life have you ever been on fairly fired, unfairly not high for a job and fairly stopped physically threatened or used by the police. Those are major experiences of discrimination and their matter as well. And I develop the measures of discrimination by read and qualitative reports. of experiences of real people as they talk to researcher about what their experience. And one of the things I discovered in this qualitative reports, people were stressed out not only by what had actually happened, but by the threat of what might happen. And so I developed also the heightened vigilance scale I call it. That says as people, after the everyday discrimination scale, When dealing with these kinds of experiences, we just, you just told me about how often do you carefully watch what you say and how you say, how often are you careful about your parents to avoid being threatened or harassed? How, you see, so it's just a little things you are doing, just leave in home, leave in the house, trying to protect yourself from these things that happen.

So I have these tales way in toward an impact on oneself.

Yes, absolutely. There is research shows that people who score high on African Americans who score high on the vigilant scale don't sleep as well at night. is really affecting the quality of the rest that they receive when they go to bed. So yes, so my first point is that yes, discrimination is everyday discrimination is important, but it doesn't capture everything and there are multiple ways in which these forces impact on us. But let me go to your question about what happens at the interpersonal level. Um, which is what we're talking about of how people are treating you individually, that that matters. But there are policies that are deeply embedded in society that determines how institutions and organizations work, and determines access to opportunity for people that are the even bigger drivers of the health challenges we face. back in 2001 with one of my former students, Dr. Jepita Collins, and we argued that residential segregation in the United States, we called it a fundamental cause of racial disparities in health. So one of the reasons why we have racial differences in health is we develop policies more than 100 years ago. that determine where people could live based on their race and banks and the real estate industry redline areas. And these redline areas, blacks would live and banks wouldn't loan money in those places and those kinds of things. And that has determined what exists today. We live in a society where you live is a powerful predictor of access to opportunity to the quality of schools that you can go to, to the quality of neighborhood resources that you have access to, to the opportunities for employment. So that these inequities we see are not random events, they're not accidents. Some people have access to great opportunity and some people don't. Let me give you two examples of research. These are research done by Harvard economists, very distinguished researchers, who have looked at one study, looked at a national sample of young, adults making it in the labor force and this researcher found that statistically if you could eliminate residential segregation, you would completely eliminate black white differences in this and these young people in income, in education, in unemployment, and reduce racial differences in single motherhood by two thirds. All of these striking differences that we see in the population are driven by opportunities at the neighborhood level where you live. Let me give you one last example of another Harvard economist. This is Raj Chetty and he got access to not a large sample. He got access to the U.S. census data for almost 30 years. And he said, let me look at black and white children. who live parents have the same level of household income. So he's completely adjusting for household income, all in that constant. How are the children doing in the next generation? And what he found was in 99%. And remember, this is looking all census data, 99% of census tracks in America. Black boys have lower earnings than white boys, even when their parents have started to add the same level of household income. Why are black boys having lower earnings? They're lazy? No, they're not working They live in neighborhoods that differ in access to opportunity. Black boys do as well boys, in neighborhoods with good resources, but very few of our Black children live in those kinds of neighborhoods in the United States.

Well, doctor, if somebody's zip code already determines their access before they ever walk through a door, what are we really solving for, help us to understand the power of the data that your researchers have put in front of you. I mean, let's think about this. Your research shows that even at the same income level, yes, Americans are statistically less healthy than white peer. Absolutely. That finding refuses to let us hide behind social economic explanations. So what is race actually doing that money alone cannot fix?

So race is multiple factors, the way we do think of it. It's multi-factorial. We talked about discrimination. And discrimination occurs. You are a black person walking down the street. Regardless of what neighborhood you live in, you are potentially vulnerable to be experiencing discrimination. So the interpersonal discrimination, what happens how does an individual treat you is one piece of it. But in addition to that there's what we call the structural or institutional discrimination. That is the discrimination that's built into policies And that's built into the way our society and its organizations function, all of these also have negative consequences for health. And the other piece that we have to keep in mind is that, which is another mechanism of racism, is that because of the negative stereotypes that exist. Um, that for many people are deeply embedded in their subconscious because it was part of their socialization. That's how they interpret the world. That's how they see things. Then it means that we also have differential treatment in social institutions. Can I give you one example of this? Yes, I'll give you an example of medical care. There was a physician. He named Dr. Kevin Schulman. He went to a medical conference, had over 700 physicians. Look at a videotape of a patient. All the patients' deficitions were actors. They didn't know who they randomly saw a different person, but they were all actors. They all claimed to live in the same neighborhood, have the same job, have the same status in society. They described they even were trained to have the same facial expressions as they described the symptoms. The only thing that differed was some more black, some more white, some more male, and some more female. And with the symptoms described, the appropriate treatment was cardiocassurization. And what the study found was that blacks were less likely than whites, women were less likely than men to be referred for the doctor to see the identical symptoms to recommend appropriate next steps. The black congressional black hawkers. got the United States Congress to vote to ask the National Academy of Medicine to answer this question. Did what happen at a medical conference with fake patients actually happen? when people enter healthcare context in the United States. That was back in 1998, and so in 1999 the National Academy of Medicine implemented put together a panel that produced a report called unequal treatment. I was one of about 12 scientists and researchers who worked on that panel and we didn't to repair a report? What does the scientific research say? He found about 180 studies that had addressed the question and more than 80 percent of them showed blacks receive blacks and other minorities receive poor quality care and less intensive care than whites. And this is true, regardless of your insurance, regardless of your income and education, there are these persistent racial gaps in the quality of care individuals receive. The report was released in 2003. It got a lot of national attention in 2023 with 20 years later, there were a couple different conferences in town where in DC, where researchers are trying to say, what have we learned in the last 20 years, how are things going, you know, what's different in 2023? We just have more evidence that the problem still exists. We have made little progress in reducing these problems. Study after study. We just have more studies that this is a problem in these United States.

Well, you know, what we call something often times and will impact how we treat it. Now, I grew up in a culture and a community that said, it's not what you call me, it's what I answer to. And that only works in so many stages. I'll tell you how doctor, you studied how unconscious bias affects the way physicians treat patients. And in corporate world, I discriminate between unconscious bias and unchecked bias. And so, whether we're talking about unconscious or unchecked, I have a sister who is an engineer, and she started to exhibit some sentence, She suffered from it for a long time, and she was living in the deep south. The physician's more than one, but in particular, this one who was considered an expert in a field told her, well, you can't she asked him one day, well, is it possible I have prones, because she'd done some researching herself online? And you know, we don't like being just themselves from on time research. He told her it was impossible she had prones, and she asked why, and he said, because you're California and I helped her identify some doctors here and the doctor put his head in his hands and I believe this doctor identifies as Jewish and he said this is such a crime to be occurring at this point. This was about 25 years ago. Right. He said, this is a crime to be occurring at this point. Furthermore, what does black mean when you're laying on a bed? What genetic traits are you carrying that have been introduced since your original post-America, you know, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, start to die at no-sub-person based on anything other than evidence. See thought was a crime. That dynamic lives in corporations when we talk about readiness or equipment for work. It's across the board. What do you want physicians and business leaders to understand about the cost of what they may not be seeing themselves doing? That's that unconscious bias that we allow we allow people to, I won't say scapegoat, but sometimes to part in era, that deeply impacts a person's life. You're familiar with Crohn's disease enough to know that had dramatic and strong effects on my sister, to suffer for so long without a diagnosis, which thankfully, she's alive and living today, but a lot more precarious circumstance than she would have had she been properly diagnosed at front.

No, it's a tragic story, but unfortunately, there are too many of these tragic stories. And one of the important things about unconscious bias is that for many people, it's You know, I sometimes, in speaking to my students, so I said, blink your eye, it takes 300 to 400 milliseconds, a millisecond is 1,000ths of a second to blink your eye. Research finds that when we meet someone in one third in 100 milliseconds, resize them quickly and dependent on what's deeply embedded in our subconscious about that person will affect how we then relate to them. And so one of the things I try to convey is if you have on contrast bias, you're not a bad person. You're just a product of your society. It's the associations that you have seen that have shaped how you view the world. And all of us use shortcuts to view the world and to navigate the complexity of all environments. embedded negative stereotypes about certain people, certain groups, certain things, then these shape how we react. This tragedy of our society is what we are doing is not working. The implicit bias One hour online, two hour workshop that some corporations do or some schools do, those are good research finds to raise awareness levels of this phenomenon. People now know that this happens and that this exists. It does not change behavior. I like to tell people I like to talk about the divine solutions. Professor Patricia Divine is a researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and she has developed a program that is effective in raising awareness levels, in motivating people, in helping people to change their behavior, in reducing implicit bias among white people in terms of their relationship It's a 12-week program with homework exercises and people who do the homework at this phase will be a more successful than those who don't. So the point is if they are deeply embedded subconscious behaviors that you have, Just a 60-minute program lets you know this phenomenon exists, but it doesn't change deeply embedded on conscious reactions that you have. And one of the things we have to do in our society is really confront the severity of the challenge we face and make a commitment that we will invest in ways to solve this

Well, Dr. you use a phrase called the empathy gap. And that's not, I think you use it to describe why systematic change doesn't happen faster. Now, awareness clearly hasn't been enough. You've just spoken to that. What does it actually take to close it, to close that gap?

Yes, I, you write a body empathy gap. I, I like to say W. E. B. Du Bois. He, he wrote first black person to graduate from Harvard University wrote a book in the late 19th century about the Philadelphia Negro. Has a chapter on Negro Health? And in that chapter, he says, the most difficult social problem when the matter of Negro health is the peculiar attitude of the nation toward the well-being of the race. And he went on to say they have been few other cases in the history of civilized peoples where human suffering has been viewed with such peculiar indifference. And what he called the peculiar indifference is the empathy gap. and scholars have documented it on every continent and that is human beings. we feel the pain, we empathize with the suffering of someone of our group than someone from another group. And these studies didn't ask people how much empathy you feel or they measure your brain. They look at how your brain is respondent when you are seeing the suffering of someone. And I'll tell you what is deeply troubling. There was a study done in the United States with predominantly with white little white children at age five. There is no empathy gap. They showed the child, being showed the child, a picture of someone being stuck in the arm with a needle. And they ask them, is that person feeling pain? How much pain is the person feeling? And so on. At H5, there's no empathy gap. The blacks, those white children, sorry, see blacks and white people being stuck with the needle. Same problem. By H7, There is a tendency for them to see the white person in more pain by age 10. It is pronounced. So this empathy gap issue is something that develops early in life that we need to address. By age 10, in white children, it is pronounced. This is carefully done scientific studies, telling us that that is so. So yes, we've got work to do as a society, and if we don't acknowledge and don't recognize a problem, we're not positioned to do anything about it.

will note that you've been part of national commissions studied communities actually getting it right. What doesn't organization look like when it's genuinely closing those gaps and what do you consider all the real ingredients?

It's a good example. I wish I could tell you that they're all these organizations out there. I could show you as exhibit A of success. I don't have. And what's deeply troubling at this moment in history, we are moving back with so fast. So far, I did nothing. This was possible in my lifetime. But that's another story. what it takes. It's vision and leadership. It takes individuals who recognize the problem, who acknowledge it, and then who are willing to lead. I think, and I can't overstate this point, a lot of the implicit bias that exists. exists not because these are bad people because they hate black people. Many of them were pointing to I have a good friend who was black. So it's a function of how we were raised, what we were exposed to and how that then shapes how we relate to others. So there needs to be First of all, leaders in industry, leaders in institutions who understand the problem, who recognize the problem, and who are willing to make a commitment to address the problem. Right now, we are going in full-scale denial in the United States, though, with these anti-DI campaigns, because there's no need for them, and in fact, which is, for me, absurd and ridiculous, the claim that is being made is that whites now have greater advantages. They have gone ahead and poor blacks have gone ahead, I'm sorry, clearly illustrate it. Can I give you one example quickly? In the early 1960s, 2.9% of physicians in the US were black. We've had DEI, we have affirmative action, we have all of these policies today, 5% of physicians are black 6% of Latino. Blacks, what? Around 16, 17% of the population, Latinos almost 20% of the population. So even though the numbers have increased, they have not increased dramatically, and they are truly still underrepresented. Um, on the other hand, you said, well, did the DEI work for anybody, did the firm live action work for anybody? Yes. You know, who it worked for? It worked for women. Um, when people said DEI today to think only of race, it was about minorities and women. In the early 1960s, 67% of physicians were female by 2010's of 45% of graduates of medical school were female today. It's about half. Most of these women have been white. the biggest beneficiaries of affirmative action have been white households in the United States. Because when the doors of opportunity were opened, white women were able to walk through those doors. Yet we have, in this moment, facing a backlash, we have to eliminate the iron and so on, Blacks and Latinos and other minorities have run ahead of us. It's just completely out of touch with the facts and the reality that exists.

Well, I had a conversation with another doctor. And he was sharing, actually, teaching around how we show compassion and how we're able to have empathy. He was speaking to some of the same issues you're describing, and advancing that, perhaps we have to see, you've used your study of the little children, age five. He was suggesting that that's where it begins. And I remember a movie where the song was, they've got to be carefully taught. They're taught intentionally, or whether they're taught circumstentially, they are carefully taught. So, doctor, the work that you've done is really full of a lot of heavy data. Now, I work with companies, large and small, local and global, sized, who are getting it right. And oftentimes when they're getting it right, they want to get it right outside of the glare. So, they don't publicize. what they are doing. Still, you carry a lot of heavy data over the decades that you've been working with this. Can you tell us where something, where is pointing to or something better?

I wish I could tell you that right now I'm optimistic. I am not because we are moving backwards You know, it's, and this is what, what for me is for a straight-in. We have made little progress. Let me give you a statistic, in 2018, national data for the United States, black households earn 59 cents in income for every dollar of income, white households earn. 59 cents to the dollar. Now, what is striking about that? That's the 2018. That is identical to the Black White Gapin income 40 years ago in 1978. 1978 was a peak year of the narrowing of the Black White Gapin income. As a result of the one poverty of the 60s and policy civil rights policy with 60s and 70s, it got to 59 cents in 1978 and I'm saying in 2018 it is still 59 cents was a stuck up 59 cents all this time. No, it felt dramatically during the decade of the 80s. Reganomics was not good to black America. You remember he had all these policies that savage social safety net. Some of the things that Trump's big beautiful bill proclaiming to do, he did that. His argument was the rising title, raise all ships. So that if he made the wealthy wealthier, then everybody was going to benefit, that's not what happened. And it wasn't until in the mid-1990s that blacks got up, back to $0.59 and it's a penny up and are racial inequities no longer exist or blacks have even gone ahead. That's why we have to get rid of the AI because they have they have gotten an advantage and in fact the data shows the opposite to be true. And I talked about the black white gap. in income, 59 cents to the dollar, if you look at the black white gap in wealth, it's 16 cents to the dollar. Okay, and that's 2022 data from the Federal Reserve Board. Okay, it's 16 cents, and the difference is, primarily the biggest source of difference begins with home equity. And then it's other financial assets and investments and so on that individuals have. So what I'm saying is, we, have not made much progress as a society, and so for me, it's mind-boggling that there's a whole movement in America right now to dismantle those programs that have helped, but haven't worked well enough. And now we still have a long way to go and now we even get rid of them on the false belief that blacks have gone ahead and now we've got to give whites a chance because blacks and other minorities have benefited so greatly.

Well, I know that so many are thankful that you've invested your career making the invisible visible. What do you want young professionals of any ethnicity, any race, anyone doing work that matters in a world that's slow to change? What do you want them to understand about staying in it?

I want them to understand. that there is a lot of work to be done. I teach an undergraduate class at Harvard. It's called poverty race and L. I get, you know, 30 to 50 bright young minds, every fall, and I teach them. And one of the things I do with every class that I begin, I show a moment from history. Some incident that has occurred historically, I get them from the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Alabama. On their website, you can sign up for a daily calendar and every day I get an email that says, on this day in history, something that happened not only to African Americans, but to Latinos and to Native Americans and to the Chinese and the Japanese, how people have been treated differently based on race. And I, partly, I do that for two reasons. One is I want to make them aware of what the historic legacy is, but I also want to make them aware. and I live with a deep consciousness of that. I have had a successful career by any standard that people would use. It's not just because of me, people literally gave their lives to open the doors that I have walked through. And I owe it to them. I owe it to their legacy. to continue this struggle. There is too much work to be done that we cannot sit on our laurels. Like, cannot be happy because of what I have done. Look at what people did, died to open the doors for me. I have to make a difference. And I have work to do. We have work to do. We have to have that greater sense of community. and let us see with history so that we are motivated to make a difference.

Wow. Wow, Doctor. Thank you so much. Let's go for four. I'm going to ask you four questions to which you'll give me four answers in there. No wrong answers. The first question is you get to host a dinner. and you can have anyone at this dinner you wish for many time in history to press it. Please let them be human and in a world of agintic workers and who's at your table?

That is a great question. So, turn a truth. Why? I would love to hear her take, and what hear from her own voice, the struggles that she went through and what she was able to do and what kept her going, that link to history, I think, would I would love to hear from Sajrna Truth or someone else from that generation. I would love to hear from Nelson Mandela. I have spent time in South Africa. I have directed a national research study looking at health in South Africa. And I have been struck by the rigidity of the South Africa race system, which by the way, I talked about segregation and how powerful it was. the average American does not know. I read it, one of my friends told me because of my interest in segregation. To read this book is a white scholar at Duke University. He wrote a book on the origins of segregation in the US, South and South Africa. He showed that the framers of apartheid in the late 19th and early 20th century got the idea of apartheid by looking at how well segregation and redlining was working in the United States. So when we see apartheid in South Africa, it's an American export. They got the idea from us, they tweaked it and made it more stronger. So my next person would be Nelson Mandela. just to learn about what he has gone through, what he went through and what shaped his life and what gave him that commitment to not be the angry and upset, but to channel his energies to make a difference for his people. So that would be a second person. I, I, you know, I, in almost every talk I give, I have a quotation from Martin Luther King. He's such a source of inspiration. And so, yes, I would love to, to him speak and just sit at his feet and listen and learn from him. You know who the fourth person would be when I'm sitting with these really powerful people, my mother.

You know, I can't be surprised if you are representative of her work and her wishes as a son. Then there is no surprise there and I'll give you a fifth person and let me be present.

Just so I think that's good. I think he will be so proud. Now I'll be honest with you my my father and mother had five children and all of us have been academically successful although neither of them when we were growing up had been to high school. But they have been academically successful, but that's misleading. I am an immigrant to the United States, came from the Caribbean. After my mother's children had all gotten grown up, gotten there, university degrees. She came to the United States and worked as a... living nanny in New York so that she could get her status and become a US citizen. And when she got her green card and she could now after working as a nanny for a wealthy family for many years, She told me she wanted to go to high school and I said to my I said you don't need to go to high school There's something called a gd exam and you just take that she says no I want to go to high school I was not very helpful. When I called her the next week, she was living in New York. I was living in Michigan. She told me she got found a high school in Chicago. She could do it by correspondence. And I would go to New York and visit my mom and she had all of these books from stuff. She went through all of the high school classes and then, you know, what she did next, what she had always wanted to do, went to nursing school. the power of purpose when to nursing school and until she retired late in life when she graduated from nursing school she was I think 59 years old and she was the they picked her all the other people were much much younger than she was but they picked it to be the valedictorian of the class. Well, it was something about the kind of person that she was, and she would be so proud. She's resting in peace now of what her son has been able to accomplish, but I think she would enjoy the company of these great people.

And she may be in their company now. We don't know.

Yeah, yes, indeed.

Yes, Dr. That is brilliant. And I'm going to be at that table, Um, let's go to before, what four pieces of music are you listening to now and why I don't that's a good question.

I, I, uh, the, the music I listen to most, um, and this has happened And my favorite, a person is a good friend of mine, Winthly Fipps, he has a beautiful voice. I know him, he's my brother, really. But we went to school together, many years ago. And he has some for every US president, other than the current one in recent. the time, you know, but he has a beautiful voice, but I mean, I don't even know who to start with, CC winons, you know, you'll learn the Adams, Kirk Franklin, Fred Hammond. I love good gospel music, and it keeps me focused and keeps me grounded.

That's a playlist on itself. And those particular artist you mentioned, really can lift you up and remove them. They can remind you why and they can, and that could be a whole podcast on its own between us. Yes. The whole thing on it, though. Thank you. Thank you for sharing that. What for books, going three for four, what for books do you recommend to our family to read and why?

I'll tell you the books I would recommend for America to read. I want them to understand, I think there are many people who are just unaware. I would want them tanishy codes between the world and me, the autobiography of Malcolm X. Just Mercy by Brian Stephenson. I mentioned him before. By the way, I have to tell you this. I digress for a minute. Brian Stephenson came to Harvard University a few years ago, because they gave out annually an award. I forgot what it's called. I can't remember what the award is called, but it's someone who is really making a difference in society, given their life, the time and life and so on for others, and he got, oh, it's okay, it's the, he got the Harvard humanitarian award, that's what it's called, the Harvard humanitarian award. What I didn't know is when every year they pick someone to receive the Harvard humanitarian award, they pick a Harvard faculty member to get the Harvard faculty humanitarian award, and they pick of the winner. And when Brian Stevenson was named that year to receive the Harvard Humanitarian Award, I got a letter from them saying, I had been picked to receive the Harvard Faculty Humanitarian Award. And you know, Brian's where this gorgeous denim, my family was there and there are lots of people and he, I had 12 minutes to speak and he had 30 minutes to speak, but I said that this, this is the greatest honor I have received. because I have profound admiration for him and for the work he does in his selfless life and fighting for others and death row and what he has created in Montgomery that is so amazing in terms of teaching us about history and what we've gone through. It's, it's the greatest honor for my name to be mentioned to say our graph with him.

So I'm sure he feels the same way. I'm sure he feels reciprocally the same way.

I know, but you know, he's, he's one of my heroes. So what, what did I, how many books did I mention? Just so just mercy is, he's one of them. And where was I with books? I can't remember.

Not that Ryan. So you're on, you've given us two.

Okay, all right, between the world and me, Tennessee courts, did I mention that?

No, you did not.

No, okay, so that's another one. And, well, I don't know. Isabel Wokison cast? Is it a good book that gives a deep richness of history understand that that made me another good one? I would love America to read books. that would help them understand the journey that as a nation we have gone through and the journey that blacks have gone through in this nation. And I think a lot of people just don't know and don't have an appreciation and have been shielded from that kind of knowledge. So if we could people of goodwill and their heart is in the right place but they just have never been exposed and if we could do that that would be great.

Dr. I agree so much with you. Dr. David we're going for for for now and now I'd love you to just give us four pieces of advice and if any of that advice

Um, the first piece of advice, and I would say it's advice, my mother would give me my mother had high expectations of her children and it's always do your best. Always do your best. Doesn't matter where you are. Doesn't matter what the task is. If you have to Mup floors, if you have to clean, do your best. Always do your best. The second piece I would say is dream big. You know, dream big, don't let anyone else define who you are and what you are able to do. I think that was a Ben Carson dream big, but I didn't get it from him, but I think that's important. I think it is dream and big. For me, another one, and it comes from my heart, from my own Christian experience, treat everyone with dignity and respect. Everyone is a child of God. And yeah, we all carry some baggage. linked to how we were raised, where we were raised, whatever exposures have been, but treat everyone with dignity and respect as a starting out point. And I am a Christian. And so for me, another fifth piece of advice would be as God to lead you. A favorite passage of scripture for me is Ephesians 320. I sometimes talk about it to young people and I tell the story of my life and I begin with Ephesians 320 that says unto him who's able And I think of that's what he's done for me, and I would tell people, yes, give him your dreams and he will do exceeding abundantly above what you could ask, go think.

And Anna, go and we're taught. uh, Seeky first the King of the Kingdom.

The King of the Kingdom of God. Absolutely.

And the King of the Kingdom of God.

And the King of the Kingdom of God. And the King of the Kingdom of God.

And the King of the Kingdom of God. And the King of the Kingdom of God. And the King of the Kingdom of God. And the King of the Kingdom of God. And the King of the Kingdom of God. And the King of the Kingdom of God. And the King of the Kingdom of God. And the King of the Kingdom of God. And the King of the Kingdom of God. And the King of the Kingdom of God. And the King of the Kingdom of the Kingdom of God. And the King of the Kingdom of God. And the King of the Kingdom of the Kingdom of God. And the King of the Kingdom of the Kingdom of God.

That is absolutely fine. It's a pleasure to meet you, pleasure to talk with you. The work you are doing is important too, because people need to be educated. Don't know. There are people with lots of people with good intentions doing things that are not helpful, but they don't know better. And yes, I think the work you're doing of reaching the masses, Um, and reaching people is so important.

From my heart to your home.

Thank you. Thank you.