00:00I found just great joy and humility and gratitude in helping other people, you know, achieve something that they didn't think was possible.
00:09I wanted to do for other people what somebody did for me. You have to see something greater in that person than they even see themselves.
00:16Hi, my name is Jamel Hill and I'm a senior staff writer for The Atlantic and also host of Jamel Hill is Unbothered on Spotify and I feel seen.
00:24I think being seen just means being heard. A lot of times, especially when you're talking about women of color, black women in particular, a lot of us never feel heard.
00:33It's almost like we're in this perpetual cone of silence. Have I always felt seen? No, because I think like a lot of black women, I've certainly gone through periods where you feel a level of invisibility.
00:45And so part of the reason why with this platform, I'm so loud and willing to be seen is because it's not just for me, but it's for other black women who I know have felt that level of invisibility.
00:56It kind of all started where I grew up in Detroit, because if you can hold your own among some adolescent boys, you can hold your own against pretty much anything for the rest of your life.
01:06One of my favorite phrases is doing too much, which I commonly associate with people who just need to settle down, stop being extra or stay in their lane.
01:14Early on in my career at ESPN, I never imagined I'd have a television show. And a lot of that I had to do is that I just look around the network landscape, not just at ESPN, but at other networks, and nobody or few people look like me.
01:30And the added layer to that is that there were not a lot of women, hardly any women, especially no black women, that were driving shows with their opinion.
01:38At this stage in my career, I'm honestly in this for the upliftment of others, especially of other women, other black women in particular.
01:47There is a lot of reward in building up others. There's nothing you lose by doing that.
01:52And I think we unfortunately have been conditioned to believe that somebody else's success has to come at our expense.
01:58And I've never been like that. And so I found just great joy and humility and gratitude in helping other people.
02:06I don't know. I mean, maybe it's just the high achiever in me. It's the grinder in me that feeling like I always have more to do and haven't done anything,
02:14which I guess is a good thing because it means that I'll always be striving.
02:18But it also keeps me from being present when great things are happening.
02:23And so I look back on a lot of things that I've already experienced and say, wow, I really wish I would have been in that moment when that happened.
02:30And I wasn't. I was just thinking about either how to get through it or what was on the other side of it or thinking about the 900 things I had to do after it instead of like embracing it for what it is.
02:41You tweeted Donald Trump is a white supremacist who has largely surrounded himself with other white supremacists.
02:46Yep. And that was right after Charlottesville. Right after Charlottesville.
02:50Yeah. So that's why I said I was reacting and responding in that moment.
02:54It was obviously a lot of turmoil, you know, when I confronted the president.
02:57It was a lot of turmoil. It was a lot of, you know, discussion.
03:01I mean, I was a personal sort of walking think piece for a lot of people and I get that.
03:07But for me, none of that stuff really impacted who I was and nor did it, you know, make me want to change what I said.
03:15And so, you know, if the world, they're going to have their opinions regardless of what I say or don't say.
03:23You gradually progress to a point through experience, through savvy maturity, a lot of things, where you stop caring so much about how people view you.
03:34And you care more about how you view yourself.
03:36What I do tell people when they ask, like what to expect, you know, from this podcast, truth is number one.
03:41Unbothered doesn't mean you don't care. It means you're just as passionate.
03:46What you are unbothered about is how people judge what you're passionate about.
03:51What was going through my mind was a new journey begins.
03:53And these are two people who I have a tremendous amount of respect for.
03:57That's why it was really important for me to pick the co-host that I selected and Michael Arsenault and Cole Wiley, because they were coming from the same state of mind that I was.
04:08I just think between the three of us, our collective experiences and perspective, that it's going to make this podcast truly stand out and be something, you know, special.
04:17So a lot of love went into posting this.
04:19A producer told me this a long time ago and I've always remembered it.
04:22Irrelevancy is the enemy.
04:24And so I think now I'm sort of trying to embrace and use this relevancy for something meaningful and not just for the sake of being quote unquote famous or just making more money or any of those things.
04:37Not that I'm opposed to making more money.
04:39Let me put that out there.
04:40But I do think, you know, if you're in a position like mine, you have to be in this for something that's much bigger than yourself.
04:46When I think about where my voice fits in in black culture, which is, you know, always evolving, I like to think that I'm doing what is, I think, key to any journalist job, which is bringing a sense of awareness to a lot of things that sort of people miss, I think, about black culture, both the good and the bad.
05:06You know, there's a lot of things that, you know, we haven't been acknowledged for, a lot of things that we've been overlooked for.
05:15And I'm hoping I can, you know, be a part of sort of addressing those ways in which people have shortchanged who we are as a people.
05:24And, you know, I don't look at it as I'm the voice of black America or the voice of black people because we're made of many voices, many opinions, many thoughts, which is, again, one of many things that people sort of miss about us.
05:39And I'm just hoping that I can just add some, you know, ideas and perspective to what my black experience has been.
05:47And I know a lot of people can relate to it, but I also know that, you know, there are certain wrinkles in it that are probably different from others so that people can see us not just as one dimensional, but as multilayered and multifaceted.
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