- 8 months ago
Discover how personal transformation can ignite global change. In this inspiring and authentic conversation, Colman Domingo and La June Montgomery Tabron, President and CEO of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, share their transformative journeys through identity, healing, growth and belonging. Addressing present-day challenges, they’ll share exciting opportunities to create a society where everyone can live authentically and cultivate healthy relationships – a society where the future is bright for all.
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00:00Can you hear me? Yes. Good afternoon everyone. I want to thank you all for joining us this afternoon
00:20for a conversation about how racial healing can be the pathway to address the needs of the most marginalized people in our communities.
00:36This conversation will be about connecting people to one another.
00:44My name is LeJune Montgomery Tabron. I'm the president and CEO of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.
00:52Thank you. And I am so honored to be here at the Essence Festival with all of you.
01:00And in a minute, joining me will be award-winning actor, Coleman Domingo.
01:13But before we bring Coleman on stage, I really wanted to share with you the why behind this conversation
01:21and why this healing pathway is a pathway for all of us, every last one of us here today.
01:29At the Kellogg Foundation, children are at the center of everything we do.
01:37But we know for children to thrive, their families need to be stable and their communities need to be equitable.
01:47We also do this work in partnership and we support many of you in your efforts to create conditions that children need to thrive.
01:59Sadly, however, these days, racism and racial inequality has really deeply impacted negatively our children.
02:11And what we know is that racial equity must happen for all of us.
02:21And for us, racial equity means that every person will have an opportunity and have access for opportunities as well as other ways of thriving.
02:37And have the well-being that they need for themselves and their families.
02:42But we know racial healing is at the heart of racial equity.
02:46And we believe that racial healing is what strengthens the racial equity work.
02:52And racial healing happens as we build trusting relationships with people across their differences
03:01and allows people then to work in solidarity to address the systems and structures that are really impacting our people from thriving.
03:12And so today, I am going to introduce Coleman Domingo and he and I are actually going to have a healing conversation.
03:23So at this point, let me introduce to you the Academy Award nominated and Emmy and NAACP Image Award winning actor, Coleman Domingo.
03:37Who says racial healing can involve dance and radical joy, right?
03:56You need radical joy when you're doing this work.
03:59Absolutely.
04:00I'm no longer nervous now that I've had my dance.
04:04Thank you so much.
04:05You're very welcome.
04:06And we are going to get into this conversation, Coleman.
04:09Yes.
04:10And hopefully people will see that healing is something that everyone can take a part in.
04:16So let's get started.
04:18And I'm going to ask you the first question.
04:20Because when we do this healing work, we want to start out really knowing the person and their true story.
04:27Okay.
04:28So my first question is going to be, can you tell us about the landscape of your childhood?
04:36Where did you grow up?
04:38And what was your family like?
04:40I grew up in Philadelphia, in particular, West Philly.
04:44Any West Philly in the house?
04:46There we go.
04:47How you doing, cousin?
04:48Well, I grew up in West Philly, went to public schools all my life.
04:51I was raised by, you know, a very working-class family.
04:55You know, my dad, my stepfather sanded hardwood floors.
04:59And my mom worked in a bank.
05:01And they just did everything they could just to make sure that we, not only had a roof over our head,
05:05food on the table, but that we were provided for.
05:08And they were just more concerned about us being healthy citizens.
05:12And that means giving us whatever access we could to art in a very minimum way,
05:18minimal way, caring about community.
05:21I think so.
05:22I grew up with all these values.
05:24And like we were talking earlier, I grew up where they had arts programs.
05:27And that's something I'm always advocating for because I think arts is the way that you find ways to heal
05:32and the way to see each other.
05:33You know what I mean?
05:34So I grew up like that.
05:35Just a very, I'm the middle boy out of four kids.
05:40Okay.
05:41And what about you?
05:42Yes.
05:43You grew up in a large family living in Detroit that had deep, deep roots in Mississippi.
05:47Yes.
05:48How would you say your family story shaped your experiences?
05:51Yeah.
05:52My family, as I said, was one of the part of the Northern migration.
05:56My father left Mississippi, went to Detroit for economic opportunities.
06:02He worked in the auto industry and provided for our family.
06:07And as a younger person, I think I was buffered a lot from the impacts of racism,
06:15even though obviously we were impacted by it.
06:17But my family really wanted to just spread love and joy and caring for others as the root of what we were instilled.
06:28And, you know, our famous slogan was, once you try and don't succeed, try, try again.
06:34We were about getting it done.
06:36We were about doing the work.
06:37And as the ninth of ten children, I learned a lot from my older siblings.
06:42Number nine.
06:43I am number nine.
06:44And because of that, I'm, you know, I'm wise beyond my age because I listened and I learned.
06:52I was very smart to know that you can learn an awful lot from other people who were around you in your environment.
07:00Hmm.
07:01Hmm.
07:02Hmm.
07:03Hmm.
07:04And then what would you pinpoint as a key moments to some experiences that were really formative of you?
07:08Yeah.
07:09And formative to this context.
07:10I think there was a lot of strength in my family, and I think that moment of being resilient was one that really carried with me throughout all of my life.
07:24And even as I encountered real, you know, acts of racism, I had forgiveness in my heart, and I knew that I was in control of what I wanted to do in my journey.
07:39Me and this lovely human were talking today a lot about this National Day of Racial Healing.
07:46That is actually, when is it, it's the day after?
07:49It's the day after Martin Luther King Day.
07:51Right.
07:52And it was intentionally created as the day after Martin Luther King Day so that we could make actionable the vision of Martin Luther King.
08:02So that means we can all do the work.
08:04Exactly.
08:05And what does healing require?
08:06It requires first you take personal stock, right, and then you see how it can be actionable in communities.
08:11And that's for all of us, black, white, and other.
08:13Absolutely.
08:14Anyone who's interested in, I don't know, but we do know we live in such a polarized world right now, and it's fear-based in every single way, but we have to, listen, which is why I came out dancing.
08:24Because I think as much as we need to have revolution, we also need healing, and we also need joy.
08:31Yeah.
08:32Can I get an amen for that?
08:33We really need that.
08:34And so I feel like to actually gain tools to heal is what this is all about, which is great.
08:39It is exactly what it's about.
08:41For all of us.
08:42So you tell me, when you first experienced racial inequality in your life, what was that like for you?
08:52And how did you kind of navigate that space with your own identity?
08:58Well, it was shocking because I think, I've got to tell you this.
09:01I was working at a place called John Wanamaker's in Philadelphia.
09:05It was my first job.
09:06And I was working in customer service.
09:08It was a summer job.
09:10And I was just so happy to finally have a job making some money.
09:13And some woman came in who didn't look like me, and she gave me a look, a strange look.
09:19And I was trying to tell her about I'm giving her a change.
09:22And she grabbed it, and she was like, I know what you people do.
09:25So she was profiling me in such a way that I was so confused because that was my first time dealing with that.
09:31And I realized, when I look back now, I thought I was angry.
09:35I wasn't actually angry.
09:36I was actually hurt.
09:38Now, as an actor, for me, I always say there's a difference between playing anger and playing hurt.
09:42Anger is just fire, and you can't really work from that.
09:46But hurt is more complicated.
09:48And I realized it was very complicated for me in understanding why I was hurt by what I was presenting and what she was projecting.
09:55And it didn't make sense.
09:57So I had to do my own work, actually, to realize why I was hurt and then how to also find words to it so I can actually heal from it.
10:05That was my experience.
10:06That's great.
10:07You?
10:08You know, my first experience, because I think I lived in a bubble as a younger person, when I went to the University of Michigan, which is, you know, 35,000 people and probably a couple hundred people of color, black people, I was like, just didn't know how to see what I was seeing.
10:30And I was challenged by my white classmates because I wanted to gravitate to the other black people at the university.
10:39And someone asked me, why do you only hang out with black people?
10:43And it was funny because at the time, I thought, well, why do you only hang out with white people?
10:48Because, you know, there's 30-something thousand of you all, and you all are worried about the 200 that I have connected with.
10:56But that was about me understanding that while we need relationships across all spaces, having an affinity to someone that understands you and supports you and having that solidarity was critical in the journey of understanding how to build trusting relationships across races.
11:17So it's very important that that either or mentality that, you know, it's either this or that is a dichotomy that is false.
11:28I think so, too.
11:29Yeah, yeah.
11:30So let me ask you, because, you know, you've tried to make sense of your experience in many different ways.
11:39You know, you're a black man.
11:42You are an Acro-Latino, which I didn't know, but I was very intrigued by that.
11:48And you're also a member of the LGBTQ community.
11:51I just check off all the boxes.
11:52Yes, you do.
11:53So in what ways have you come to understand your own capacity for healing, and how have you navigated your journey in that space?
12:06I think I've had to.
12:07I don't think I've had the luxury.
12:08Otherwise, I would live in a very, I don't know, I like to think of myself as somebody who believes, because I was set up this way by the way my parents taught me.
12:17I believe the world is set up to do me more good than harm.
12:20Yes.
12:21That's just naturally the way I move through the world.
12:23And so if I walk through the world with an openness of who I am and carrying the stories of black people and queer people and Afro-Latinos and everything else and stylish people.
12:33Yes.
12:34You know, that's a hard plight to carry.
12:36You know.
12:37But you know what, I like to always tell a joke in there.
12:41But I do think it's important because I think that like I've navigated in a way where I know I have to do the work.
12:47And the work is every day.
12:48Like we're talking about the National Day of Healing.
12:52But it is a daily practice.
12:54People are like, you know, anybody can, any of my friends will let you know, I'm naturally I feel like a joyful person.
13:01And I do feel like, but it is a practice because I have choices to do otherwise and be otherwise.
13:08Or to react and I have everything inside me to burn it all down like anybody else.
13:13But I choose love and I choose light.
13:15Because I feel like I'm doing it not only for me but I'm doing it for, we're doing it for each other.
13:19You know, and we're for reflections of each other.
13:21So I think that that's, and I think that's radical.
13:24I think that's what we need more of right now.
13:26It's actually radical to step out on a stage and start dancing.
13:30You know what I mean?
13:31To step out with love and come to a place like this that we all have to do this together.
13:35It starts here and then we take it out into the world.
13:39Absolutely.
13:40And we find our connections.
13:42And once we find those connections, we know we can build empathy for one another and then support one another in our journeys.
13:49And together what we hope is that we can see the inequities and address those inequities together.
13:56And begin to start rebuilding structures that work for all of us.
13:59I think so.
14:00So that is the work of healing.
14:01Yeah.
14:02It's about transformation.
14:03Well, also, I just wanted to say I'm going off cards.
14:06I thank you for what you do and your philanthropic organization and how it's really embedded in our culture.
14:14And like saying how we need to transform and we can do it.
14:17And we start with our kids.
14:18With our kids and we take care of them and we give them tools.
14:21And I'm an artist.
14:22And I use this platform and my microphone with my art to make a difference.
14:27And coming together, we have to find ways to like, oh, how can we come together?
14:31For this partnership to happen, there's other partnerships that can happen.
14:34Because we all want to do the same thing.
14:36But we've got to bring our superpowers to the game and help each other out.
14:41Yeah.
14:42Well, speaking of art, I do want to ask you a question about your projects that you have going on.
14:47You've been in some of the most expressive movies around the civil rights movement, around freedom, Rustin, The Color Purple.
14:59So you all know all these great movies that you've been a part of.
15:04And there's narrative in those movies.
15:06And there are stories.
15:07And they are a form of healing.
15:09So when you think about your journey in that space, please share with us, you know, how you carry that narrative.
15:16And then some of your upcoming projects where the narrative continues.
15:19I will thank you.
15:20When I was a younger actor, I think I just wanted a gig like everybody else.
15:24And then, but I started to align myself with things that made me feel good and made me feel like I was doing something, I don't know.
15:34I was representing black men in very different ways and unique ways.
15:38And so that, I took that on as a responsibility.
15:41If I'm going to play a drug dealer, he's going to be the most complicated, interesting drug dealer in the world who has a full life.
15:46You know what I mean?
15:47I think that's important to not just take the gig but say what the gig can actually be.
15:52And so that's turning from when I started out on Nash Bridges in San Francisco and it moved into these other films and Beale Street, you name it.
16:01And now I sit, you know, I've been working for what, 34 years?
16:05And I look back now and I'm starting to see the line of my work.
16:09What really is, it's important for me, I don't think I'm, I'm not a real politicized person, but I am somebody who believes in civil and human rights.
16:20And it's aligned in my work.
16:22By having difficult conversations in the work is important to me.
16:26Because I know that I want depictions of black men to be, I want the tropes to be smashed about who we are.
16:34I have a new film coming up.
16:37Yeah.
16:39I think it's radical and me and my colleagues talk about this.
16:43I want to talk about more black male tenderness.
16:46You know what I mean?
16:47To know that because I think that's a part of our mental health as well.
16:49Yes.
16:50To say that we can be tender as well.
16:52And to know that's not only for us but that's for our families and for our communities as well.
16:56I have a new film coming out, not that I'm promoting a film, but it is coming out.
17:00Right.
17:01On July 12th called Sing Sing.
17:03And it's about a rehabilitation through the arts program inside Sing Sing.
17:08And it's a program, 98% of my cast mates are formerly incarcerated men.
17:15And it really is about these guys going, you know, this program that was established to, you know, do plays.
17:21And then they realize it actually has been working on them and giving them a pathway to healing and rehabilitation.
17:28And it's their doing and taking it on.
17:31And it has, get this, the program actually has less than 3% recidivism rate.
17:38Oh, that's amazing.
17:40So it's showing you how art, and for me it always gets me thinking how art saves lives.
17:45Art transforms.
17:47And we need them in our schools.
17:48We need them in our communities.
17:49We need to reach out toward them as they're the parachute that's going to save us all.
17:54Because when you start to look at the line and you look at like, oh, why are arts always cut first?
18:00Music cuts first in schools.
18:02It's a direct path to the institution of prisons, I think.
18:08Yeah.
18:09So anyway, that's enough of me being on that platform.
18:11But I do think that it's something that can really change.
18:14And that's what I'm interested in with my art.
18:17To be entertaining, to be thoughtful, and thought provoking.
18:21But how can we also, you know, do our work?
18:24I mean, I think we're all trying to do the same work.
18:26And I feel like mine is more subversive and done by, you know, showing different depictions of black men.
18:32We definitely are all doing the same work.
18:35And as I hear your story and that particular movie, Sing Sing, I hear healing.
18:41Yes.
18:42I hear our work, that work of healing people from trauma, from past wrongs, but getting them in a place of humanity, connecting them with one another, and helping them see how they can be a part of the future.
18:57Absolutely.
18:58And shape conditions for others.
19:01Because you mentioned that as they continue this journey, they actually go out and heal others.
19:08Yeah.
19:09And help them in this work.
19:10And that's really what racial healing is all about.
19:14So I really thank you so much for this conversation.
19:17There's been extreme alignment.
19:19And you all have heard us both talk about the National Day of Racial Healing.
19:24And that is a day that happens the day after Martin Luther King Day.
19:28And it's a day where all of you can be actionable in how you think about healing yourself and healing your communities and connecting with one another in solidarity and ways to really improve our conditions for our children.
19:45So if you want to learn more about the National Day of Racial Healing, go to dayofracialhealing.org and you'll find all of the information as well as materials so that you can be a part of this great day.
19:58And thank you all for having us.
20:00And Coleman, thank you so much.
20:03For your presence here today.
20:04Vote!
20:05Yes.
20:06Yes.