175: What if you had their knee on your neck?
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This Is Actually Happening features real experiences that often include traumatic events. Please consult the show notes for specific content warnings on each episode and for more information about support services. They were there to remind me who I was in the world. And it hurt too much on the inside. Being hurt on the outside didn't matter as much. And there definitely come times when you're like, look, I'm not going to eat this shit. I would rather be beaten than eat this shit. From Wondery, I'm Witt Misseldein.

You are listening to This Is Actually Happening. Happenings Volume 3. This is America. Episode 175. What if you had their knee on your neck?

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I was born in Blythe, California in 1972. It's a very small desert town along I-10. It's the last stop going anywhere. It's a kind of strange place, but a lot of my family was born in Blythe. My mother and all of her sisters were from there as well.

My mother was a single mother. I didn't actually meet my father until I was 30. And she moved a lot to a bunch of different places. Brawley, El Centro, Hopeville. And then eventually she got a better job and we landed in Pomona. I went to Kingsley Elementary School in Pomona. And my two best friends were Brian and Michael. They lived pretty close to where I lived. And every morning we walked to school together.

I really enjoyed that because my mother was gone when I woke up. Like that was something that was really difficult for me to get over because I would wake up to an empty house and I would be scared a lot. But when I was with my friends, I wasn't scared. So during the course of Brian and Michael and myself hanging out a lot, we ended up finding an old Richard Pryor album in I think his parents' house. So one day when we were kind of alone enough, you know, Brian, the oldest, he put it on and we just sit there and giggled.

And like many kids, we would copy the album, you know, fuck you, motherfucker, fuck you. And, you know, and the next day at school, this is exactly what we did. We walked to school and we copied Richard Pryor, you know, fuck you, nigga. Oh, you shut up, you punk ass, you know, and we're just laughing. And when we get to school, we are escorted directly to the office. And I didn't know what was going on. And we were told that we were being suspended.

I don't think I really found out why until the mothers got there. And when the mothers got there, there was a lot of anger from them. I think they were very angry. More importantly, my mother was very angry because she had to leave work.

And I'm pretty sure she was hourly. So if she had to take an hour off, that just meant less pay. And she was extraordinarily angry, you know, screaming in the office and we just kind of sat there. But in the end, the suspension stuck and we had to go home. And once we got home, our mothers talked about it. And the kind of general thrust of the conversation was white people are going to do what white people are going to do. And you can't really do anything about it. It does nothing for me, but make me angry.

And I was a kid, but I don't think I would have really fully understood the discussion. But if there is no discussion, then that anger just grows and kind of festers. And you have that sense of, you know, something that is distant and unjust that can still reach out and hurt you.

I can't remember how long it was, but probably a couple of weeks. I was afraid walking to school and I would walk to school in the same way. And I would look around and I would try to get a sense of, you know, who was the person that called that, you know, kind of hurt me.

Because I didn't know which house, you know, and I would just be very, very scared. And after a while, I don't want that fear. And so I quickly understood that if I walked to school and I looked at these houses as if they were enemies and I didn't like them, that I didn't have to be afraid. I can just carry that anger with me. And I did.

I don't remember how old I was, but I remember that I woke up and my mother was, as a kid, she was what I called work tired. And I wanted to go play with a friend. So as soon as she woke up, her eyes opened and I said, can we go to Jermaine's house? And we went to Jermaine's house and Jermaine wasn't there. And so there was a kid down the street who was playing with the football.

I looked down there and I asked my mom, I was like, can I go down there and play? And I was weird because my mother and Jermaine's mother had a private conversation and I didn't really understand what they were doing. But the kid down the street was white. My mother was kind of asking her, is it OK if he goes down there to play? Really, all this kid and I did was play in his front yard.

And it was just two kids kind of frolicking in the front yard. But every so often, his father would come from the garage and kind of poke his head out and stand and watch us. And he would say, damn, that is one fast nigger. I'm young. I didn't really hear the word nigger. What I heard more than anything else was fast. And I wanted to be fast. I thought I was fast.

I just took it as a compliment. And later on, my mother came down and picked me up. And then sometime during that trip, I told my mother what he had said, that I knew I was a fast nigger. And she immediately pulled over the car and she was angry. And she started to turn around, whip around and go back. And then she stopped again and turned around and went home. And the weird thing was that when we got there, you know, when we got home, she whooped me. And that was the thing she told me. She told me, don't you ever let anyone call you nigger.

This was the first time that I think I realized that I was not just a kid, that I was black. I didn't really understand it at all. I liked being fast, but I didn't really understand what being a nigger meant. That didn't really kind of set into my brain until high school. I was angry that my mom beat me, and I knew I couldn't do anything about that, but it was just that message, don't let anyone call you nigger. And it was taught with pain.

Because I had a single mother and she has a lot of responsibilities and I have a lot of responsibilities because she can't handle all of that. I was afraid of making mistakes as well because I knew that came with more punishment. If I was afraid and I ran out of the house without locking the door, I knew I was going to get punished when I went home. If I was afraid and I wasn't paying attention, I lost my key. I knew I was going to get trouble when I came home. If I left the oven on, I would be punished.

But one of the instances that I remember very clearly where I'm sitting at the table and I'm eating one of my favorite breakfasts, which is cream of wheat. And my mother is rushing, but she's rushing. So she's doing two or three things at once. And as I'm eating my cream of wheat, she comes over and she starts to brush my hair. But what she doesn't remember and I don't really understand is that I had a haircut the previous day. So as I'm trying to eat my cream of wheat, she's brushing hair into my cream of wheat. And I kind of knew that I was going to get in trouble either way. It didn't matter.

I'm sorry, but I knew there was nothing I could do. And like if I if I if I told her that there was hair in the food, that I was going to get a whooping. If I didn't eat the food, I was going to get a whooping. When you bump up against those things like over and over, you don't want to you don't ever want to be afraid. You just want to use whatever you have to, you know, to use your anger to be stronger than you are when you're afraid.

Now in hindsight, raising a hyperactive child by yourself on a minimum wage job, that's incredibly stressful, incredibly difficult. But I was really surrounded by a certain fear when I was younger. And the best thing for me that worked was to fuel that anger. I mean, I was still basically a pretty good kid, but I was just very angry and I didn't really understand why I was being punished.

Obviously, I hate when people hurt me, but when people hurt me and there's nothing that I can do to hurt them back, it's incredibly frustrating. You feel as if, or I felt as if I was surrounded and there was nothing that I could do. And unjust authority, in my opinion, has always been there to remind me who I am. I began to see more unjust authority in the world a lot. And each step, I kind of used anger to get rid of that fear.

If I was angry about something, I was less afraid and I started to get comfortable with that anger. I would walk to school sometimes and I would look at the houses and I would kind of feel the anger kind of, you know, royal in me. I'm like, yeah, fuck you and fuck you and fuck you. And just I threw rocks. I, you know, I was prone to pick up things in the alleys and hit walls with it.

And if people look at me as a danger, then instead of being hurt by that, it's like you embrace it like, yeah, I'm dangerous and I might fuck you up. So don't look at me like that. My second grade teacher, Mrs. Frazier, loved me. She was a black woman and I sometimes would run to school to show her my homework. Like I said, when I was younger, my mother was gone to work when I woke up in the morning. So many times, Ms. Frazier was kind of that substitute.

And so I would take my work and I would kind of run to her. And, you know, she would always be there, you know, to hug me, tell me how smart I was, you know, and, you know, I got really used to that.

When I went to third grade and my teacher didn't really like me at all, I didn't know that my third grade teacher was racist. I just kind of assumed she didn't like me very much. So in the third grade, I was put in a special group because my second grade teacher, Mrs. Frazier, insisted that I be put into this group. But within that group, I think there was eight of us and there was only two non-white students within that group.

And at the end of third grade, there was an agreement made that every student within that little group in that class would get to skip the fourth grade, provided they received all A's in the report card. So I assumed that I was going to be able to skip because I had never seen a B, never.

Mrs. Frazier kind of came and talked to me about that, even though I was in third grade. And she would tell me with these stories about, you know, you're going to do this and you're going to go to college at 15 and it's going to be great. And so I really wanted to skip the fourth grade. I really, really did. So when the report card came out, I had straight C's. And the only other person that had straight C's was a Vietnamese girl named Thuy.

And we both had straight C's. Everyone else in this group had straight A's. And so we were not able to skip the fourth grade. And that really, really bothered me. And there was really no conversation about it. It was really just, you know, it was kind of one of those things where white people are going to do what white people are going to do. I was very lucky that

Sometime during that time was when my mother met my stepfather. Sometime early during the fourth grade, I moved to Germany with my stepfather. I left that environment behind and it was an incredible change. For about four and a half years, I really lived life probably very similar to most middle class kids.

We took vacations. I visited the Netherlands, Belgium, different places in Germany, Stuttgart, Darmstadt, Bonn, all these different places. And it was wonderful. And the marriage did not work out. And when we came back, we moved back to Blythe because Blythe is far away from pretty much everything. And it's very affordable.

I grew up with my mother and her sisters listening to them talk about men. And the one thing that they all talked about, men that they couldn't stand, was men that wouldn't work. And I could hear often that they would say, oh, he did this and he did this and he did this, but he's got a job. He gets up and he goes to work every day. And so that was really, I mean, I focused on that.

I was kind of thrust into the role of an adult. I ended up getting a job sometime during my freshman year in high school. And I've definitely been someone who has tried to be a man in whatever way I thought I could. And as a younger man, that meant having a job. And as I got older and I started bumping into more unjust authority, it changed from having a job to being able to fight, to being strong.

My mother read when I was a child. She would often give me books. And so on long trips, she would just give me a book. And that happened at a young age. And unfortunately for me, probably around the time when I was 12 and in junior high, and I quickly realized that young girls didn't pay attention to guys who read books. Young girls typically paid attention to guys who scored touchdowns, to guys who scored a lot of points. It's probably what also led me to

try to cling to whatever masculinity I could find. And I didn't think that you could do that with any sort of books or literature. I felt that it had to be done on the court, on the field or inside of a ring or something like that. I really struggled with masculinity because I wanted to be strong all the time. And a lot of these forces were invisible. And some of them, I think, obviously directly connected with race. When you walk into a facility, wherever it is, and people turn and look at you, I mean, you're aware that you aren't supposed to be there.

You don't really know what to do with those feelings. And if you're angry enough, you just look at him and say, fuck you, I'm here. I don't give a fuck what you think. I would really think about that. If you don't like me, I'm going to whoop your ass. So you know that I can whoop your ass and it doesn't matter if you don't like me. And, you know, in high school, not having a father, I mean, I really, I wanted to be seen as strong.

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And the next, something goes wrong. But with ADT's 24-7 professional monitoring, you still feel safe. Because when every second counts, count on ADT. Visit ADT.com today. When I graduated high school, and I was in that little small town in Blythe, and I left, I want to say hours after I graduated, hours.

I really think it was probably my four and a half years in Germany that I knew the world was a bigger place. And I just didn't want to be in Blythe. People already had an idea of who I was in Blythe. And I wanted to be someone different. After high school, I had assumed that I was an all-star athlete. The news that I just wasn't as good as I thought I was, it didn't really sit well with me. I felt weak. And I didn't know what I was going to do with my life. A friend of mine told me he was joining the army because they were giving him $28,000 for college. And so I thought, sounds good to me.

We joined the military together and we went to Hawaii for three years. And when I joined the military, I made sure that everyone started calling me EJ rather than Eddie. I didn't want to be Eddie anymore.

in basic training. There was a couple instances when Drill Sergeant North, I think his name was, he would dog me quite a bit. And one day he was, we were throwing hand grenades, I think on this day. You know, I'm in the line to throw the grenade and he's dogging me, telling me what an idiot I am and I should be loyal to my country and you're a shithead and this and this. And as we get closer, I keep thinking about throwing this grenade. And by the time I get up there to throw the grenade, I have the grenade in my hand and I was pushed to the point where I was so afraid I

I knew that I would kill to get rid of this fear. And I turned to look for this drill sergeant and he is nowhere in sight. Nowhere. You know, thinking in my head like, that's right, motherfucker, because I will take your life. And then I just threw the grenade. And I knew, I knew that he was afraid. I knew that he knew that if he was close to me, I might take his life. And that was one of the most powerful feelings I had ever felt before.

So when I got out of basic training, I was more, I guess I would say dangerous. And unfortunately, I liked it. I liked looking at other people and understanding that they were afraid. It gave me the false reassurance that I wasn't afraid. It was 1991, I think, when I finally got to Hawaii. I want to say I probably fought two or three times my first week.

These are young guys and they're all in many ways arrogant and overconfident and they're told that they're killers and they're told that they're invincible and this sort of thing. And so guys get into fights. It happens. And then when I started to get trouble on base, I realized that I needed to go to clubs off base.

And so I'm standing out in front of this club waiting for a guy to come to the door. I think his name was Steve. And I knew that if I waited for Steve to come to the door, he would let me into the club. But Steve wasn't on the door. And so I was standing outside of the club, standing on a wall. And this wall is probably six to seven feet tall. And the sidewalk is below it. And as I'm standing there waiting for Steve to come to the door, I start waving at some of the pretty girls walking by. And me being me, I started cracking jokes, trying to be a jokester and a clown.

And one of them, I assume, told a cop. I see the cop walking down. But honestly, I'm not really doing anything other than being, you know, somewhat of a nuisance kind of standing on a wall. So when he walks up to me and starts giving me orders, I don't really pay attention to him. I'm kind of kind of blowing him off. I'm like, man, who are you talking to? I'm not doing anything wrong. I'm just kind of standing here.

So he says, jump down, jump down. And I start to say, well, move. You're not giving me any room. And then I'm making jokes. I'm like, you need to give me a space where I can jump. And then he moved back and I'm like, you need to give me a circle where I can jump. You know, and people were laughing and I agree that I'm being a bit of a shithead, but I'm not really breaking any laws. But as soon as I jumped down, he grabs me and throws me to the pavement. It's difficult for me to explain exactly what was done because there's so much emotion wrapped up in it.

When I was standing on that wall, kind of in some ways, probably embarrassing the cop a little bit. When I jumped down, he didn't say anything to me. He grabbed me and he threw me to the floor. I tried to get up and he jumped on top of me, you know, turned me over and forced me to the ground. I'm yelling and screaming. And I just remember more of the force.

And I get, you know, the treatment that many black men get. I'm on the pavement, you know, face down, you know, and it's like, like, what? Like, what did I do to be in this particular position here? So you can just come and grab me and you rough me up and throw me on the ground and push my face in the concrete because you don't like what I said to you. And the answer was pretty much, well, yeah. And that is just very unsettling. And I don't I didn't know what to do with that, except kind of try to build more anger up. I was told that I should have obeyed orders.

And you're telling me that I need to be better so he won't do anything wrong anymore. When stuff like that would happen, I would I would feel powerless. I don't like the Game of Thrones, but I liked Tyrion when Tyrion said, never forget what you are. The world will not. What I added to it is that the world will not be kind when it reminds you who you are.

I think what he was saying is like, I need to remind you who you are here and who I am. And it just it forces the blood to boil. And there's really nothing to do with it except drink. And that's what I did. I think many black men have this experience where if you are trying to be a man, you're trying to be masculine. There are forces that pop up and they say, no, no, no, no. That's not who you are. This is who you are.

Another instance that happened in the same Lourdes area, I was actually in the bar and it was a good night. There were a lot of people dancing and drinking and having fun. And there was a group of incredibly beautiful women. It was about three or four of them. And they were sitting together and dancing.

During the course of the night, you watch GI after GI approach them. 98% were just shot down. Boom, boom. They go to the table. All these guys were sent away. I kind of figured I was going to be sent away too, but I wasn't. I walked over and I tapped this woman on the shoulder and I said, you want to dance? She said, sure. We went out to the dance floor and the first slow song came on. I felt brave and I was a little drinking at the time as well.

I just kind of pulled her into me and got a quick kiss and we started dancing. And after I did that, I looked around the room and I noticed a lot of the guys looking at me and looking at us dancing. And that was really intoxicating. I liked being the guy that other guys looked at and said, why can't that be me? I really, really liked that. That was a big component of what I thought masculinity was. And after that dance, I said, did you want to take a walk on the beach? And she said, sure. So we held hands and we started to walk towards the beach and

As we're walking, I noticed that some of the guys that were angry in the club had also came outside of the club. And they're not being too obnoxious. You know what I mean? You know, they're maybe saying a few things here and there, but they're just kind of making their presence known. And I asked her to put her arms around me and my waist. And this is how we were kissing. So anyone who was looking could see that she was holding me and my hands were on the wall. I very specifically wanted people to see that. Yeah.

And so, you know, we're kind of, you know, softly kissing and whatnot. And I feel a tug on my shoulder. You know, I kind of brush it off and I feel another harder tug on my shoulder. I turn around absolutely with an attitude and I turn around and I kind of thrust myself into the face of the person who was pulling on my shoulder. Like what? What? And then as I'm in his face, I realize that this is not one of the guys from the club. Like this is a cop.

And so I kind of pause and I'm kind of confused. I don't know why this guy is bothering me. And I kind of pause and I look at him and I remember this. I took a step back. I remember this. I took a step back and then I repeated myself without as much anger, but it was still, you know, it still had an attitude. And so I took a step back and I said, what? And I think maybe I scared him when I turned around as quickly as I did, but I didn't actually touch him.

I looked to my left and I see three or four cops running towards us. And by the time I looked back towards him, he had already hit me. You know, he hit me and then I went to the ground. And then at that point, you know, three or four cops, they seduced me. And then there was a cop's knee on the back of my neck, one at my waist and another one holding my feet. Again, to my knowledge, I haven't done anything wrong.

And when I finally start to settle down and I'm not struggling anymore, one of the cops goes up to her and he asked her, he was like, are you okay, miss?

And I went into a rage. I was like, I remember screaming, yeah, motherfucker, she okay? And then I just, I start trying to get up again. And I'm trying to get to the cop that asked this question. And again, I can't really be specific about some of the brutality. I mean, obviously I was being hit. I was pulled and I'm really kind of in a way blind with rage. I'm incredibly angry.

And once they subdue me again, she goes back to her friends and I'm left with these cops answering questions. And I just I never really got over that because it really let me know, at least for me, that I was never going to be the man that I wanted to be because they weren't going to let me. They were there to remind me who I was in the world.

I never forgot that. That incident, I really began to hate almost any authority at that point, but specifically cops, but any authority. And I began this phrase, I'm that nigga that. I'm that nigga that. And I would tell myself that. I will tell other people that. I will tell anyone. I'm that nigga that you don't want to fuck with. I'm that nigga that does this. I'm that nigga that does that. And that very much carried over into after I got out of the military.

I saved up about five grand in the military. And when I got out, I bought, you know, it was a Honda Prelude at the time. And I put rims on it, of course. So I bought a Honda Prelude and I put rims on it. And it was a nice car. I liked it and it kind of got me the attention that I wanted. But it also ended up getting the attention of some police. I knew this girl and she had a friend. So I was taking my friend to her house to meet her friend and we were going to smoke weed and eat and whatnot.

We were on the way over there and we get pulled over. I think the reason we got pulled over is based on the car. The cops assumed that I was a dealer. I don't know for sure, but we were just pulled over. When we were pulled over, we did have about an eighth of weed on us because that's what we were planning to do with the two women when we got to her apartment. Because we had the weed, they did a complete full search of the car. And so we were set on the curb and I was I was angry. I was embarrassed.

One cop, he was just searching the car and the other cop, he was standing right next to us and talking to us. He would walk up really close. And because we're sitting on the curb, I mean, he kind of has this dick in my face and he's looking down at me talking shit. And it's really hard for me to explain the anger that, you know, you feel in this position, because for me, this is exactly what he's doing. He's reminding me who I am here. And I really feel that I can't do anything about it.

He picked up a military ID or something that indicated that I was in the military. And he said, you're in the military. And I said, yeah. And I'm bragging. I'm angry. I'm like, yeah, I'm like, I'm a ranger. So I'm airborne ranger or whatever. And then he said something like, well, I guess you dropped in the wrong hood this time, bro. After he said that, he was kind of walking away to go see what was going on with the other cop in the car. I said, hey, and, you know, kind of like, hey, and then he stopped and

And so I kind of soften my tone because the cop came back over quick and stood right next to me again. And so I just asked him the question. I was like, man, why do you think you get to talk to me like that? And honestly, it looked like he had never considered that. Like this was something that he never he never considered. And he kind of stood there for a moment lost. Like, huh, why do I get to say something like this to you? Like, I never really I never really considered that.

And when I look back up at the cop, he was he was frowning now. He was looking back down at me frowning. They make you empty your pockets. And so all of the contents of my pockets were sitting right next to me. My keys, my pager, any money or whatever I had. And in the couple of weeks prior, Shannon and I had gone to L.A. and we went to go get a get beepers from this place. And I had never seen one before. It was kind of a gray see-through pager. And I liked it. I just really liked it.

The cop was looking at me. He looked down, he reached down and he grabbed my pager, pretty much looking at my eyes the whole time. And he holds the pager for a minute and he says, oops, waits a full like three seconds and then drops it. And man, when I heard the pop of the plastic on the pager, I just kind of lost it. I kind of lost it. I tried to stand up and that was, you know, obviously I was put back down very quickly.

He wasn't very far away from me when I tried to sit up. And I mean, I kind of knew what was going to happen, but it was one of those things I couldn't, I could not do anything. I couldn't just sit there. At that point in life, I'm like, I would rather take a bit of a beating than allow this to happen again. I'm angry. And so I'm struggling to trying to get back up and he's forcing me back down. The other cops stop searching the car, comes back over. One's on my butt. One has his knee in my back and then my lower neck. And then that's kind of how they subdue me.

It hurt too much on the inside. Being hurt on the outside didn't matter as much. And there definitely come times when you're like, look, I'm not going to eat this shit. I would rather be beaten than eat this shit. Unfortunately, I think many men, not just black men, probably poor men in general, kind of have this relationship with authority, especially unjust authority. And I think that's probably hard for many people to understand. But I know that's exactly how I felt.

They ended up not giving us a ticket for the weed. I think that was because of everything else that happened. But I think the worst part about it for me is that I was in no way in any sort of state of mind to do what I wanted to do, which was to still go over to see this young woman. It really felt like that I was stolen from me. And I was just like so angry. I'm like, how can you do that?

I want to go see this woman and smoke a joint with her and eat some fries and hopefully have sex. But when like those kind of things are denied, then it just it bothered me because I had, you know, I had served my country at this point and I actually served during wartime. You know, it bothered me that I look, none of this matters. And it was like, he's here to remind you of who you are in this country. And this is why he's allowed to do it.

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Let's face it, we were all that kid. So first call your parents to say I'm sorry, and then download the Instacart app to get delivery in as fast as 30 minutes all school year long. Get a $0 delivery fee for your first three orders while supplies last. Minimum $10 per order. Additional terms apply. When I was younger, I did read a lot. I'd always done fairly well in school. I mean, I've been a pretty good student throughout. But when I got to my first junior college, and this was in Blythe,

While I was there, I took an English class and the professor was very kind. And at the end of the class, he pulled me aside and he says, you know, what do you what are your plans for college? And I told him basketball. And he said, sit down with me. And he says, look, I don't know. I don't know anything about basketball, he says, but I think that you can write. And I think this is probably you should consider this. And so I took a few more classes with him and he kind of impressed upon me that I could. And he also gave me books to read.

He didn't give me books that he thought that a young black guy would want to read. He just gave me books. And so he would give me things like Dostoevsky and Upton Sinclair. And I just like I kind of absorbed them. Once I realized that I enjoyed it, I had a conflict with who I thought I was versus who I wanted to be.

He continued to help me. And then once I got to UCR, I had another amazing professor, Susan Strait. She never treated me like I was something that needed to be improved or anything like there was something wrong with me. She was like, look, I think you have a little bit of talent and I want to try to help you cultivate it. And she just kind of offhandedly mentioned, she's like, you don't think you'd like to do what I do? And it clicked. I'm like, you know what? Yeah, I think I would like to do what you do. And I made a plan to go back to graduate school. And then here I am.

So I teach English at Valley College. I'm an English professor. And there was one instance that I remember. I was leaving work. I'm not a big fan of meetings. And I was leaving a meeting that, for whatever reason, made me really angry. And I couldn't run anywhere. I mean, I have a profession. I have a career. I own a home. I couldn't run away.

So I was on the way home and I decided to stop into a bar and I kind of felt myself, you know, standing here, you know, looking at these two or three guys at this table, you know, wanting one of them to say something to me. And so I could, you know, in some way try to pick a fight. And luckily for me, I hadn't had too much to drink when I've been sitting there. And I realized, I mean, like, what are you doing? Luckily, I kind of remembered that you're an English professor. What are you doing?

In the military, I would, I mean, we had a phrase, we would drink it off. And you would drink and pal around with friends and you would feel better. But, you know, I mean, I'm an English professor. I can't just go get drunk every time I get angry. And I felt that I was walking around looking for a fight, you know, that I needed to fight someone because I just didn't know what was going on. And the only way that I was going to feel better is that if I, you know, picked an enemy and, you know, picked a fight and then I would, everything would seem to fall into place.

And it was at that point that I knew that something was wrong. And I knew it was something that I needed some help with. It was really on that way home, I decided I have to do something. And I didn't know what I was going to do, but I had to do something. You know, I have insurance. And so obviously, I went to try to get an appointment to see a therapist. And I said, I'm having extreme problems. I need to see someone. I need to talk to someone. So two or three months later, I had my first meeting with this guy. And he says, you know, how do you process fear?

And my immediate reaction was to look at him like, motherfucker, I will fuck you up asking me some shit like that. OK. And in that moment, I instantly understood that I don't process fear. And I think that is because I haven't been I haven't felt that I've been safe enough to kind of allow myself to be vulnerable to process fear. If you mistake anger as something that is actually protecting you.

When you want to let go of that anger, then you automatically think that you're weak. And that's not necessarily the truth, but that's what I kind of thought. So that particular session, it was, there was a lot. I mean, he had to leave the room and he said, I want to go another half hour and I don't have the time. I mean, it was like, it was really big for me getting a little emotional, but he did tell me about, about mindfulness. And so, uh, I figured what I would do was I would just read everything I could until, uh, you know, we had the next meeting.

As I started reading, I really kind of thought that this is actually the path. This is what I should be doing. And I've been practicing meditation now for, I guess, about four years. And I went to my first 10 day retreat last year, which I think was very, very useful for me. When I'm angry, the answer is always clear. It's always simple. If I'm angry, I'm either going to fuck someone up or bide my time and wait until I can fuck someone up. The answer is very simple.

But when you're not angry and you're just afraid and you have to kind of sit with it for a little while, it's not it doesn't feel good. You don't feel strong and it's just very foreign. But I understand that I've been conditioned to do that. And I do see how my anger, especially the anger that I've carried for so long, like it blocks my ability to trust sometimes and to love.

After I had been maybe meditating for about a year, I suppose, I was in class and I formed groups at times to help students work through particular problems. And I'm walking around the classroom going from group to group to check on people. And this one student was having a particular problem. So I sat down with them and I'm kind of going over this problem. And another student from another group comes up and asks me a question. And I quickly turn to the student and say, one minute, I need to finish this. And then I turn back to the students I'm helping. And then she just starts yelling at me. She starts screaming. I don't know why. She just starts yelling at me.

I felt anger. It was like I was lit on fire. I felt anger in a lot of places in my body, in my face, in my hands, in my chest. And I was extraordinarily angry. And right before I spoke, I just realized that I was angry. And for whatever reason, I became curious. I looked up at her and then I said, why are you yelling at me? And then she started yelling even more.

And the most interesting thing happened. I was no longer really angry. I was still more than anything curious. And as she was yelling more, I was trying to calm her down and I was like, OK, I understand. But why are you yelling at me? And then at that, she paused and she looked at me like she didn't really understand what I was talking about. And she turned around and kept cussing and screaming and grabbed her bag and left. But at that moment, I was no longer angry. So I simply turned back to the students I was helping and just continued to help them.

And for me, that was kind of like a miracle. I guess it was the first time that I realized that sometimes negative emotions don't last as long as you think they last. The reason that they last is because you keep thinking about it. And as you keep thinking about it, you're creating that in your head. And it's that thought process that is causing the problem, not necessarily what happened. And I've been trying to pay attention to mindfulness and meditation ever since. I try very hard not to see people as evil.

When I see people as evil, it becomes very clear what needs to be done. They need to be fucked up. That's what needs to happen if they're evil. But if I don't see them as evil, I see them as other people. And these other people either have, they're holding onto a belief that is false and that is causing some of this behavior, or maybe they're just scared and confused like I am. And that is causing the behavior. And once I kind of understood that, it was easy for me to see that unjust authority and why some people did the things that they do.

that it has nothing to do with me, that they're trying to make themselves feel better about themselves. And all the only reason they're doing what they're doing to me is that they know they can get away with it. And I really try to remind myself, I'm like, haven't you done some awful things to other people simply because you wanted to impress other people around you? And that really humbles me. It really humbles me. I have to take into account what I've done

I don't think it should be excused. I think it's understood. I have to be honest. If I was in their position, I can't lie to myself and say I would never do what they did. I would never do that because that's probably not the truth. It's probably not. I would like to think that I would be a completely different person. And even if it mattered that I lost friends or family members, I would not be that person. But I mean, I don't know.

My last encounter with police threw me for a direct loop. I mean, I was already an English professor at this point. And I made an illegal left turn leaving campus. And, you know, it was a turn that I knew that I shouldn't make. But it was a turn that if I made it, I can beat the rush and I can get on the freeway and get home. I think I just wanted to watch a Laker game or something like that. And a cop pulled me over.

Like all of the humans, I'm conditioned to fight, flight, or freeze. And over time is that when I'm around cops and I don't think I can run, like I have this habit of freezing. Like, you know what I mean? It's like I look around and I freeze because I'm not sure what's going to happen. So he pulled me over and he came up to the car and looked at me and he was like, ah, you don't I know you. I'm like, yeah, I'm an English department. He's like, oh, oh, okay, okay. And then he did something that I had never heard a cop do up until that point. He apologized.

He apologized for pulling me over. He said, Sarf's pulling you over. He said, you know, but you can't make this turn. He pointed like down here. You can, you know, you need to make this turn to go on the freeway. And I'm like, oh yeah, oh yeah, all right. And he asked me why I made the turn. I think I said something about Laker game. He kind of laughed. He's like, yeah, I know that's important. And we kind of joked a little bit. He let me go and I got in my car and left. And I didn't go home. I couldn't explain what I was feeling, but it really threw me for a loop because every other encounter with police was,

I don't think I've ever been seen that way. It was very clear that he didn't see a nigger in the car. What he saw was an English professor. And I immediately went to a bar and started to drink because I didn't know how to process that really. And I didn't know what to make of it. I really didn't. It's taken me a little while to kind of...

be comfortable with the idea that this is who I am. Like you are now an English professor. Like you're just a regular person. And even though it's refreshing to be seen as a regular person, it's unusual. It really is. There are still some times when I feel like that I need to cling to that old self for safety, especially in 2020. After George Floyd was murdered, I went into a taco shop

I typically, or especially in my 20s, when I would go anywhere, I would survey a room as I walked in. I want to feel safe, you know, so I would look around and see who was in it. And this particular time, I'm walking in and I'm not looking around the room. I'm looking at the menu up top. As I'm standing in line, once I get there, I realized that there was a cop kind of in front of me ordering. And now I'm confronted with, am I going to leave or am I going to stay? You know, because I don't feel comfortable anymore. And I had to go to the bathroom to kind of regroup.

But while I was in the bathroom, I kind of put water on my face and I had to remind myself. I'm like, the cop that's ordering tacos here has never done a thing to you. What's happening right now is you're remembering something that has happened to you. And that is why you feel that's why you feel anxious. Then when I went back out, I honestly think the cop sensed my unease. And I think he was trying to make me feel comfortable. I honestly do. It made me feel really good that we were just, you know, a couple of guys who wanted tacos, you know.

We didn't have to see each other as enemies, I guess. And although I know I'm not going to feel like that around cops all the time, I'm able to make that distinction at least sometimes now. Now that what I'm trying to do more than anything else is I'm trying to make a commitment to love more. And when I was younger, because I was angry all the time, I didn't really see the use of love.

There are definitely some things that happened in my childhood that I wished that didn't happen. And some of the things that happened when I was a child, I resented as an adult. And as I got older and more educated, I wanted to talk about some of these things. And the relationship with my mother and I has been complex because at this point in time, her mind is slowly slipping and she has a little bit of beginning Alzheimer's and dementia. I have to really learn to love the woman she is now

and not resent the young woman that she was when I was a child. And I'm able to see that I am not a child anymore, and she's not a young mother anymore.

And I think that does a lot for our relationship, but I think it helps me with just patience and compassion in general. And it helps me remember that, I mean, I've obviously changed and I should accept that other people have changed as well. And it's allowed me to really begin to care for my mother because like I said, I want to, I want to love the woman she is and not, you know, resent the woman that she was. I still get angry. Absolutely. I still get angry, but I now realize that I don't have to hold onto that anger anymore.

Holding on to the anger is not going to protect me. Holding on to the anger is in no way going to help heal me. If something happens to me and it's obviously racist, I am able on occasion to think about the person and what they did and to try to see a way to say, okay, what they did has nothing to do with me. It helps me understand that the person that I'm dealing with here is human and flawed and that, you know, getting angry and fucking them up is not going to do anything for either of us.

and that I can't make him self-reflect, but living life as a fighter, you know, and using that anger to fight each and every day, I think that has kept me farther away from love and that has kept me farther away from trust.

And these are things that, you know, that you need to live a fully human life. And if you feel like you're fighting all the time and, you know, you're powerless. And so everything that you see, you're taking a swing at it before you even know what it is. You're pushing people away without realizing that you're pushing people away. And that's not something that I want to do anymore. Today's episode featured Edward Jones, known to most by his initials EJ. He is currently a professor of English at San Bernardino Valley College. ♪

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Hey, it's Guy Raz here, host of How I Built This, a podcast that gives you a front row seat to how some of the best known companies in the world were built.

In a new weekly series we've launched called Advice Line, I'm joined by some legendary founders and together we talk to entrepreneurs in every industry to help tackle their roadblocks in real time. Everybody buys on feeling, Guy, like everybody. So if you don't give them the feeling that they're looking for, they're not going to buy. A lot of times founders will go outside of themselves to build a story and you can't replicate heart.

You know, I think we all have a little bit of imposter syndrome, which isn't the worst thing in the world because it doesn't allow you to get overconfident and think that you're invincible. Check out the advice line by following How I Built This on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to How I Built This early and ad-free right now on Wondery+.