Michael Schulder: [00:00:00] You asked yourself, as a child, am I a real American? And your answer was –
Julie Lythcott-Haims: “I’m so American it hurts.”
Michael Schulder: Why Julie Lythcott-Haims, daughter of a prominent black physician and a white schoolteacher, has felt so much pain being a citizen of the country she loves despite her enormous academic and professional success, is an essential window on race in America.
Julie Lythcott-Haims: . This is my narrative of locating a self I could love regardless of what white folks thought or think…
Michael Schulder: We could begin with the time she was accepted to Stanford University and the father of one of her classmates made a special trip to class just to deliver a message to Julie.
Julie Lythcott-Haims: Then he sits down next to me. And he says, “So, Julie, you’re going to Stanford.” And I said, “Yeah.” And I thought, quite naively, that he was happy for me.
Michael Schulder: He was [00:01:00] not happy for her, and what he said next, which you’ll hear later, stunned her, and was part of a pattern of encounters that would stun most of us. I’m Michael Schulder, and on this episode of Wavemaker Conversations: a Podcast for the Insanely Curious, my guest is the best-selling author and thought leader, seventh generation American, descendant of a slave named Sylvie, Julie Lythcott-Haims. She joins me to talk about her newest publication Real American: A Memoir. She shares her journey not only as a black woman but as a black parent and a mother of a black son.
Julie Lythcott-Haims: In the black community, we give the talk, which is if and when you are pulled over, here’s what you do: put your hands in the air. Your job is to come home safely. Be sure if anything happens, you keep your hands in the air. Now, the trick, Michael, is how do you tell a young person that this is how they need to behave, and not [00:02:00] simultaneously crush the self-esteem out of them?
Michael Schulder: I spoke with Julie Lythcott-Haims on the campus of Stanford University, where she received her undergraduate degree, and where she ultimately become the dean of freshmen.
[music fades]
Julie Lythcott- Haims, welcome back-
Julie Lythcott-Haims: Thank you.
Michael Schulder: - to Wavemaker Conversations: A Podcast for the Insanely Curious.
Julie Lythcott-Haims: Yes.
Michael Schulder: And you’re –
Julie Lythcott-Haims: An insanely great podcast, done by Michael Schulder.
Michael Schulder: Oh, thank you. That’s, that’s, that’s like music to my ears. But there’s a lot of music here. Uh, so your new book, Real American, the memoir of you, a – a woman who grew up biracial before that term was really used, right?
Julie Lythcott-Haims: Yeah. I would say black and biracial. I mean, I think ultimately, this is a black narrative. This is my narrative of locating a self I could love regardless of what white folks thought or think, and also a self I could love regardless of whether some might think I’m a little too light or a little too white-sounding for blackness. So, biraciality is a [00:03:00] part of my identity now, and certainly was a place I clung to for a couple decades when the term first came out in the late ‘80s. But, uh, but fundamentally, I – I – now I identify as black.
Michael Schulder: It really – it sort of stopped me in my tracks, because our last conversation about your book How to Raise an Adult: Overcoming the, uh, the Overparenting Trap - I’ve got three kids, you’ve got two. Uh, as you reminded me, one of my kids is no longer a kid. He’s an adult. And that’s what we’re here for, is to raise an adult... So, this book was really a shock because you could almost have titled a chapter here how to – not how to raise an adult, but how to raise a black adult.
Julie Lythcott-Haims: Yeah.
Michael Schulder: Which is a whole different ballgame, it seems.
Julie Lythcott-Haims: Interesting. Thanks for finding an intersection between my two books. I appreciate that.
Michael Schulder: I want to start with a line that really struck me near the beginning. You asked yourself, as a child, “Am I a real American?” And your answer was “I’m so-“
Julie Lythcott-Haims: “I’m so American it hurts.” Absolutely. [00:04:00] Um, yeah. As I began to examine my founding story, child born in 1967, the laws saying my parents’ marriage was –was illegal had just been eradicated. My own founding story was one of, uh, America in a fight with itself around, uh, black people and white people falling in love and getting married and having children. You know, I was born to two people who were pretty transgressive for their time. And I have a slave ancestor named Sylvie, and she bore children, the children of her master. And, um, that terrible act resulted in my being here. And so, I traced myself back to a slave in South Carolina in the late 1750s. And as I plumbed the depths of that truth, and the more recent history of my own parents’ union, I found myself thinking, like, along the lines of Sojourner Truth. Well, ain’t I a real American? [00:05:00] I mean, who’s to tell me or anybody with my kind of American story, that is the descendant of a slave – who’s to tell us we don’t belong here? I am as American as America gets. And – and then that line popped into my head: I’m so American it hurts. And I love that line because we tend to use that line in the positive, right? I’m so in love with you it hurts, right? I’m so excited it hurts. And here I am sort of twisting that a little bit to say, I’m so American, which we think of as something to be proud of, and we, you know, firecrackers go off, and we have our hands over our – our hearts. “I’m so American, it hurts” is not what you’re expecting somebody to say. Um, I’ve been fiercely proud to be a citizen of this country. I’m 49 years old and, um, there’s a lot to be proud of. But I am increasingly saddened by our inability to accept and embrace people of all hues who have the right to call themselves Americans.
Michael Schulder: so [00:06:00] you have a black father and a white mother from England.
Julie Lythcott-Haims: Yup.
Michael Schulder: Uh, and – and a decision was made by both of them to try to imbue you with a black identity, capital B. As a matter of fact, maybe you can explain to me, because I didn’t hear the term African-American once, I don’t think, in the book.
Julie Lythcott-Haims: Right.
Michael Schulder: But it was always black.
Julie Lythcott-Haims: Right.
Michael Schulder: Tell me about that.
Julie Lythcott-Haims: Sure. Well, when you were a mixed couple in the ‘70s, which was a pretty new thing to be, again. Loving v. Virginia, Supreme Court case decided in 1967, said these laws on the books in about 15, 17 states saying blacks and whites can’t marry, those are unconstitutional. Um, so, you know, the barrier was pulled down. You know, as with gay marriage today, people started marrying. But it was still a small population of folks, um, intermarrying, as it was called, and having children. And the advice they received about how to raise those children was, [00:07:00] regardless of what the kid’s skin tone is, ‘cause you never know how the genotype will express and the phenotype and whatnot, but to raise those kids as black. To tell them they are black, uh, because America will see them as black, and they need to, um, be able to feel comfortable, and more than that, confident and proud in that identity. There was no term biracial. We had terms like “mulatto,” you know, which is a term that goes all the way back to slavery days about how to classify somebody half-black, half-white, meaning, you know, a slave raped by a plantation owner created this mulatto. Um, and there was quadroon and octroon, all these horrible terms to kind of denote, you know, your racial classification. We’d moved away from mulatto. We had mixed, but that didn’t sound very nice. Um, biracial didn’t come around, multiracial didn’t come around till about 1988, ’89. So, black it was. For somebody like me, um, in the United States in the ‘70s and through the [00:08:00] ‘80s, you know, we were black. There was no such thing as the opportunity to claim more than one race.
Michael Schulder: What struck me in this memoir, what made it so difficult for you, one of the things, to develop a black identity was your parents moved to an all-white – basically –
Julie Lythcott-Haims: All-white town.
Michael Schulder: All-white town.
Julie Lythcott-Haims: Yeah.
Michael Schulder: So, tell me how you—how you handled that.
Julie Lythcott-Haims: Yeah. You know, first of all, I’ll say the lessons of this childhood only revealed themselves to me in adulthood, so I couldn’t have articulated any of this to you then. But, you know, my dad was a Carter appointee. Those were four short but sweet years, ’77 to ’81. Reagan wins-
Michael Schulder: Assistant surgeon general.
Julie Lythcott-Haims: Assistant surgeon general, uh, in – in Health, Education, and Welfare, which is now HHS. And Reagan wins. It’s eighth grade. Uh, we’re living in the utopian community of Reston, Virginia, which was this carefully planned experiment around socioeconomic and racial diversity. It was a great place for me to grow up. Those four years were – were pretty sweet. We left there because of the change in [00:09:00] administration, moved back to Wisconsin where we had lived for some years when I was quite young. And my parents opted for the bigger plot of land and the nicer house out in the middle of nowhere. And I went to a high school of 1,200 kids. We were the only black family. Until yesterday, I said there was only one Jewish family. Then a friend reached out on Facebook and said, “You know, um, I’m Jewish too, and I was at the high school, and they threatened to put me in the – in the gas chamber,” uh, classmates and you know. Um, so those of us who were the other in my high school, maybe there were five or six of us. There was a kid who was half-Persian, and he told me recently he was called some pretty nasty racial epithets. But we didn’t have that solidarity. We didn’t see each other in that context of, um, we’re all being kind of labeled and, um, and mistreated on the basis of our background.
So, anyway, it was a very lonely experience, uh, being this dark-skinned person in an all-white town. And the – the experiences I [00:10:00] had ranged from the completely silly, you know, benign, um, walking down, you know, the length of a pool, a public pool, trying to find a lounge chair in the summer, and a lady walking past me, stopping, turning around, and then saying in her Midwestern voice, “Oh my gosh, you’re so tan.” Right? Not harmful, not offensive, but calling me out as the other. She – she thought I was tan. The point is, she had no consciousness about the fact that I might not be white, you know? I was that much the other that I got comments like that. Or being at the supermarket with my white mother, and you know, we’d put our groceries down. We’d be the only people in the line. And the clerk is trying to figure out where’s the imaginary dividing line between this white lady’s groceries and this black girl’s groceries. [‘Cause they can’t possibly belong together. So, I was constantly getting the message that I didn’t belong to my own mother. You know, and then somebody word the N-word on my locker on my 17th birthday my senior year of [00:11:00] high school, when I was student body president. And I was so ashamed that that had happened to me that I didn’t tell anybody till my 40s.
Michael Schulder: first of all, the juxtaposition’s unbelievable to me, ‘cause on the one hand, you were elected student body president –
Julie Lythcott-Haims: Right.
Michael Schulder: In basically an all-white school.
Julie Lythcott-Haims: Right.
Michael Schulder: And at the same time, there was this going on.
Julie Lythcott-Haims: Yeah.
Michael Schulder: With you and some of the other others.
Julie Lythcott-Haims: Right.
Michael Schulder: How did you get elected student body president?
Julie Lythcott-Haims: Well [laughs] . I think – it’s funny because I was student body president at my high school. I was the senior class president at Stanford University. I was a class marshal at Harvard Law School. Throughout my – my student career, I’ve always, uh, uh, sought and been chosen for positions of leadership. I’m a gregarious person. I’m – I’m interested in humans. I’m excited. I’m – I like to do things. So, student government was a natural [00:12:00] for me. And, um,– I – I think the majority of my classmates were not calling me the N-word behind my back. Um, but clearly, some of them were. And, um – and I think it speaks to the fact that the entire town doesn’t have to be racist for you to, you know, have some really unpleasant experiences.
It’s – the isolation that I felt as the only black kid was when this thing happened, I didn’t feel there was anyone I could tell. Today, if it happened, I would – if I was a kid today, you know, inhabiting the consciousness I do today, I would march down the hallway to the school principal and say, “You have a problem at this school.” I’d show him, you know, what happened at my locker, and I’d say, “You have a problem at this school. What are you gonna do about it?” Um, but I couldn’t tell anybody because I,– I just so desperately didn’t want anyone to know that this had happened to me. I – it was like – it was as if shame was brought upon me that this person, you know, wrote this on my locker.
one of the main themes of your memoir is – and I couldn’t believe it, [00:13:00] because you’re such – you’re such a confident person in so many ways. but that phrase self-loathing –
Yeah.
Michael Schulder: Really hit me.
Julie Lythcott-Haims: Yeah.
Michael Schulder: and you didn’t work that out until when?
Julie Lythcott-Haims: Yeah, my late 30s, early 40s. Michael, I think a number of us can identify with this. A number of us across every demographic, uh, descriptor of humans, whether based on race or gender or sexual orientation or citizenship or socioeconomic status, etc. Many of us have had reason to feel lesser because we perceive that others don’t value us. But I think many of us have struggled with, you know, trying to be ourselves, locate a self that we like and love, regardless of what others think. I mean, that is our task, like to just be yourself. Don’t worry about the opinion and judgment of others, you know. Know yourself, be yourself. Be your best self.
Michael Schulder: That’s the continuity, by the way –
Julie Lythcott-Haims: With How to Raise an Adult.
Michael Schulder: With How to Raise an Adult.
Julie Lythcott-Haims: [00:14:00] Absolutely.
Michael Schulder: Because as – as you said, it’s like –
Julie Lythcott-Haims: Exactly.
Michael Schulder: Stop con – your turn. It still sticks, resonates in my head. Stop concierging your kids.
Julie Lythcott-Haims: Right.
Michael Schulder: Let them find their own voice.
Julie Lythcott-Haims: Yeah.
Michael Schulder: Let them find out who they are.
Julie Lythcott-Haims: Exactly. It’s about having agency in your own life. And I think that is, uh, something that definitely, um, links both books. So, you know, I think it’s funny that, um, certainly any novel you read is supposed to have an arc. There’s supposed to be tension, and then it reaches a climax, and it resolves and comes back down. It’s sort of like a triangle. Any writing student or teacher knows what I’m talking about. Well, my memoir does the opposite. It has a dip. My memoir falls into a pit, and then I emerge from the pit, you know. If the typical arc of a book is a letter A, mine is a letter V, if that makes any sense. And the self-loathing is at the bottom of that V. Do you see what I’m saying?
Michael Schulder: It really – it really makes sense.
Julie Lythcott-Haims: Yeah, yeah.
Michael Schulder: And I’ll tell you why. Because you started out so bright-eyed.
Julie Lythcott-Haims: Oh my gosh.
Michael Schulder: About your country.
Julie Lythcott-Haims: Absolutely. Proud to be an American for sure. Really loved the patriotism. [00:15:00] Loved the songs. Loved the pageantry. Loved the parades. Was a Brownie and a Girl Scout, and I, you know, grew up four years outside of D.C., so I got to visit the places that mattered in our narrative. Um, but I was getting signs on early on, Michael, that something was wrong with me and my black daddy. Because strangers would look at him, some strangers looked at him with eyes that were so mean, so angry. Um –
Michael Schulder: What did you call it, the white supremacist stare? There was a phrase you had.
Julie Lythcott-Haims: There was a look, and I tell you, I saw it in the eyes of strangers when I was as young as three and four, okay? I couldn’t have said anything more than, “What’s wrong, daddy?” You know, “Why is that man looking at me that way?” I didn’t know what it was. But over time, I learned what it was.
Michael Schulder: you told us a few anecdotes of harmless comments that people made. I mean, that woman couldn’t have known that you were black. She – she had no experience. But what really struck me about this is that [00:16:00] the real insults just kept coming and coming when you least expected it. I want you to tell the people the story of your classmate’s father when he learned you were accepted to Stanford and his white son was not.
Julie Lythcott-Haims: Yeah. So, um, it was April of my senior year. I had been admitted to Stanford and other places. I had decided to accept the offer at Stanford. And, um, we were in our precalculus class. This was the highest math class offered in my high school. There we were. It was seventh period, the last period of the day. The bell rang to signal the end of class, and I start to pack up my belongings to put them in my backpack. And the door to the classroom opens, and in walks this kid’s father. And it’s odd. It was odd in 1985 for a parent to show up at school. Not anymore, I realize, but listeners, take yourselves back to 1985, if you can remember.
To have a parent show up, you know, [00:17:00] something bad has happened, you think. So, I see this guy’s father, and I think, oh no, I hope everything’s all right. Well, he’s acting fairly jovial. He says hi to his son. Then he sits down next to me. And he says, “So, Julie, you’re going to Stanford.” And I said, “Yeah.” And I thought, quite naively, that he was happy for me. Because not many kids in my school left the state of Wisconsin, uh, to go to college. There were 300 of us. I think ten of us left the state. So, I thought somehow, this was good news of mine that he decided to, you know, gee, I don’t know, congratulate me upon. So, I said, “Yes.” And he said, “What were your SAT scores?” And I told him. And he said, “Do you think it’s fair that you got into Stanford over” then he named his son, “given that your SAT scores were lower than his?” And I was so stunned. First of all, this is [00:18:00] almost an assault, you know, an assault on my right to take my next step, which I was so excited about, which I had felt that I had earned very much the hard way. You know, his son was not the student body president. I was. But somehow, that wasn’t coming up in his calculation. I think the two of us were quite similar in some ways on paper. We seemed to be in the same classes. We, you know – he was on the wrestling team. You know, I was a pom-pom girl. But to his father, it came down to the difference in test scores. And it was my first, um, encounter with something I would go on to encounter, which was the presumption that if you are black or brown and you’re at a place like Stanford, you must not actually belong there. You must have been recruited. I got questions when I was in the Stanford community, not on the campus but in the neighboring town of Palo Alto where now sit. “Oh, you go to Stanford. What team are you on?” The presumption being, oh, you’re black [00:19:00] and you go to Stanford, therefore you must be a recruited athlete. You know, the dirty secret of “affirmative action” is that it highly benefits white folks. You know, the thumbs on the scale in college admission overwhelmingly go to kids who are legacies, children of rich people, and recruited athletes. The vast majority of all of those populations are white folks. But instead, people focus on the small lift that’s given to black and brown kids, uh, in the name of affirmative action. So, but what I would soon discover is that this cloak of presumed inadequacy would be laid upon me. Folks would try to lay it upon me, and I would have to emerge out from that and try to prove to them, no, no, no, you know. What are you talking about? I have the right to be here. I am smart. I am hardworking. And that’s when I go back to self-loathing. Um, as more of that began to happen, what I began to do was try to perform in ways so as not to- not to receive those critiques. I wanted to be so [00:20:00] smart and so accomplished and so high-achieving that nobody in their right mind would dare to question my legitimacy to be in a particular job or academic community.
Michael Schulder: now I’m flipping through the pages, because this will give people a very graphic sense, a very detailed sense, of, of, of just how that impacted you. You were in Professor Steyer’s class.
Julie Lythcott-Haims: Jim Steyer, mm-hmm.
Michael Schulder: That’s here at Stanford?
Julie Lythcott-Haims: Yes.
Michael Schulder: Okay. And, you know what? Um, I’m gonna have you read just that paragraph with the underline.
Julie Lythcott-Haims: Okay, will do. “Later that spring” – so, this is my freshman year of college at Stanford, and I had done very poorly at the beginning, um, and was really nervous and worried and scared that maybe I didn’t have what it took. And I tell you, my – my high school friend’s dad’s question of, do you think it’s fair you’re at Stanford? That was sort of ringing in my ears. Maybe I don’t deserve to be here.
“Later that spring, [00:21:00] Professor Steyer asks a very tough question in our Civil Rights class, which was not unusual. What is unusual is that I know exactly what he is getting at, and I ache to respond. But to date, I’d never raised my hand in a class at Stanford, and still don’t dare to do so. Besides, this is obviously a really complicated question. No one else is raising their hand. My fear of being wrong, of being black and wrong, silences me, even though I know I have a good idea here. Scanning the huge room for potential volunteers, Steyer glances at me. Something in my must have – must be showing him my brain is working overtime. He nods once at me and raises his eyebrows, signaling that I should speak up. ‘Well, I begin,’ clearing my throat and playing with my hair, and then I keep on talking.”
Michael Schulder: So, obviously I underlined one phrase there –
Julie Lythcott-Haims: Yeah.
Michael Schulder: Which is “my fear of being black and wrong.-“
Julie Lythcott-Haims: Sure.
Michael Schulder: “-The stakes seem so much higher.”
Julie Lythcott-Haims: [00:22:00] Well, you know, this is an example of, um, how life constructs itself – itself differently for people of color in this country versus white folks. And I say people of color because those goes well beyond folks in the black community. But we are often made to feel that we represent our entire ethnic group or racial group. Um, so if one of us screws up, it’s “The black people screwed up.” You know, when a white person does something wrong, nobody says, “White people can’t do that thing.” When a white person shoots people up in a – in a mass act of terrorism, no one says, “White people are terrorists.” But when a black person is the actor or, you know, another person of color is the actor, we – we sort of get that heaped upon us, that group identity, that stereotype. And that is, in some ways, what it means to be the minority. These things are what happens.
So, yes. And we’re all aware of that. So, we know that when we win one, we win one for the team. But when we lose, we bring the team down with us. And none of us wants to do that to the others around us.
Michael Schulder: [00:23:00] and so – so you refer to – you know, maybe you started off without the best grades. And there’s a section in here, and you talk about keeping it a secret, your first semester grades.
Julie Lythcott-Haims: 2.0.
Michael Schulder: 2.0 average.
Julie Lythcott-Haims: Yeah. I got a D in Communication. Apparently, I’m not very good at communication. I got a B, a C, and a D. It was a 2.0. It was the evidence I’d been secretly afraid was gonna come, that Stanford had in fact admitted me because I was black and female and from the Midwest.
Michael Schulder: Where did you find the resilience during this period of self-described self-loathing, to pick yourself up and raise that GPA?
Julie Lythcott-Haims: Well, back in the day, we didn’t get our grades by computer, you know. They weren’t emailed to us. We got them in the mail, in the snail mail. And I –I must have gotten my grades in early January. And by early February, my parents had the guts on our weekly phone call to ask me. I can still hear my father’s voice. “Baby, [00:24:00] how’d it go first quarter?” And I burst into tears. Um, ‘cause I was, again, so ashamed that I had done so poorly. And my parents were in Wisconsin, and 2,000 miles away, therefore. And they loved me over the phone. And they told me they believed in me. And they told me that I had what it took, um, to be successful, and that I should go find the resources on campus that could help me. I did find those resources in the advising office, Michael. The great irony there is I would go on to manage that office as the dean of freshmen before leaving Stanford in 2012. So, I ended up managing the very office that was there for me when I struggled. And the advisors there, the good people there, I can still picture the faces of the people who believed in me in those moments when I did not believe in myself. And I think I sought to do that work as a dean ‘cause I wanted to be a resource for the next generation of students who would be struggling for whatever reason. They told me, “You have the [00:25:00] intellectual capacity to thrive here, Julie. But your time management needs a lot of help.” And the fact that it was that simple made me laugh. They were right.
Michael Schulder: What were you doing, by the way? Because for all those students out there –
Julie Lythcott-Haims: Oh my goodness.
Michael Schulder: Who are not managing their time well.
Julie Lythcott-Haims: I’ll tell you what. To be successful at Middleton High School in Middleton, Wisconsin didn’t mean in any way, shape, or form what was going to be required for me to be successful at Stanford. So, I’d never had to read so much material in a week. I’d never had to write papers of that length. I just was not ready for the volume and pace. So, I needed to organize my time more effectively. Uh, you know, if I was expected to read a book by the end of the week, I had to know how long is the book, how quickly do I read that book, and how can I chart out the hours in my calendar to make sure I set aside time to get all of that reading done. I’d never had to do that in high school. That’s just one example.
I was also a procrastinator, so leaving things till the last minute. The third thing they said was, “You’ve got to start taking classes that really speak to you. [00:26:00] You’ve got to start taking classes you love.” And that’s how I found Jim Steyer’s class on civil rights and civil liberties. And it’s no, um, mystery why I thrived in that incredibly demanding class. I was enchanted with the subject matter. It was Supreme Court cases, uh, teaching us about the development of the civil rights doctrines that had made life easier and better for black folk and other people of color and poor folk and so on in America. So, I was drawn to the content, which just impelled me forward through everything that was hard. And, um – and I thrived there.
Michael Schulder: I assume you didn’t get a 2.0 in that class.
Julie Lythcott-Haims: No, I didn’t. I never got a 2.0 again. I started to do very well.
Michael Schulder: And you then got into Harvard Law School, and in a period of high-achieving but still self-loathing, at some point it seems you realize that if you didn’t take care of this, you weren’t going to be able to be the kind of parent you wanted to.
Julie Lythcott-Haims: Yeah. Yeah. So, I think the incident [00:27:00] you’re referring to is the holiday party, uh, where I had my awakening. So, let’s fast-forward in time for the listeners. Now this is a story in 2005. I’m a former practicing lawyer now. I’m a university administrator. I’m a dean on the Stanford campus, and I have two kids. Uh, a son named Sawyer, who at the time was six, and a daughter named Avery, who at the time was four. And, uh, there was a gathering of, uh, of, uh, staff in the black community around the holidays, in 2005. And I wanted to go. I was beginning to develop, you know, a much greater sense of connection to the black community. As I began to like and love myself more, I began to really feel an embrace from black folks, which I very much appreciated. And so, being connected to friends in the black community was important to me.
But I knew if I was to go to this holiday party, I would have to bring my kids, because it was a Wednesday afternoon, and I always had my kids on Wednesday. I’m on a flex schedule, [00:28:00] work late on Wednesday nights, but home in the afternoon with my little ones. So, I wanted to go to the event so badly, I thought, okay, I’m gonna bring them to the event. And I realized as I drove to the event and parked the car and unbuckled them from their car seats that I was nervous about bringing my children into this event with my black colleagues. And the reason was, though my son resembles me racially, my daughter resembles her father more. My husband is white and Jewish. And so, she’s got very pale skin, you know, very light tan. Very curly hair, but, uh, but curls really easily and – and what we call good hair in the black community. You know, it doesn’t need a lot of product to look nice. Anyway, I was – I was worried about how my black colleagues might respond to this very light-skinned child. And I could feel the hairs on the back of my neck stand up as I walked into the event with my two children. I was afraid, um, of – of their judgment of me holding the hand of – [00:29:00] of this child. And for a split second, I even worried, am I ashamed of my daughter? And the fear that that might remotely be possible impelled me to unpack this further, um, that night after the event and in the subsequent days to come. It was really the first time I wrote volitionally about anything. That is, I – I sat down to write my thoughts without it being for work or school. And – and that exercise of, you know, am I ashamed of my daughter, led to no. I’m ashamed to be me. I am ashamed of my own fragile blackness, born of, you know, my having grown up in white communities, my voice sounding this way, my tenuous connection to blackness, my choice of marrying a white guy. It – you know, it’s almost like this lovely child of mine, the lighter one, is the evidence that I’m not black enough to have passed on blacker genes to both of my children. And I realized in that excruciating moment that my daughter and son deserve a mother who has her [00:30:00] stuff together. Now, this is a podcast, am I allowed to swear? I mean, what I want to say is –
Michael Schulder: Sure.
Julie Lythcott-Haims: A different word. They deserve a mother who has her shit together. And this race stuff was so embedded in me. I mean, I think that’s the moment that I pressed on and realized I have so much self-loathing, I’m about to pass this stuff inadvertently – you know, I’m about to pass it on to my kid somehow. And I can’t do this to them. I have to break this cycle of feeling inadequate in my skin if I am to be the mother these two wonderful children deserve.
Michael Schulder: So you have this awakening. And did you do it just through writing? Is that how you – is that how you worked through this?
Julie Lythcott-Haims: You know, it was a combination of writing and…I knew that, um for example, this N-word being scrawled on my locker in high school that I’d never breathed a word about to a soul, that was basically festering inside me. And, um, so as I began to put the [00:31:00] truth of what I had experienced up to myself like a mirror, I could say it out loud, say that this happened, and see that I still existed, that I was still okay. And so, facing that fear, facing that shame allowed me to make it dissipate.
Michael Schulder: Okay. So, so now the healthy, self-actualized Julie Lythcott-Haims, you’re still faced with this issue of – of raising – not just raising any adult, raising a black adult. And you referred to something in the book that I’ve heard from so many black parents. It’s –
Julie Lythcott-Haims: The talk.
Michael Schulder: The talk.
Julie Lythcott-Haims: Yeah.
Michael Schulder: Tell me about this talk, because a lot of – a lot of people are – are not aware of the talk.
Julie Lythcott-Haims: Well, any black parent listening to us knows, and they’re nodding their heads. Um, but for the rest of you, I will share what it is. Um, our children, particularly our sons, but not only our sons, uh, our black and brown sons and daughters, [00:32:00] face a different reality when they’re walking down the streets of America than white folks do. This is a truth, and we know it. And we know it so deeply that we try to equip our children, particularly our sons, with the skills they’ll need to navigate themselves through the world, regardless of what comes, particularly when it comes to law enforcement. So, every parent, of course, wants their children to be respectful with the police. I’m sure everyone teaches that. But in the black community, we give the talk, which is if and when you are pulled over, here’s what you do. And it’s about, you know, put your hands in the air. Um, uh, be respectful, answer every question, even if you know you have done nothing wrong. Even, for example, if you’re in a group of kids and you’re the darkest one, and something bad goes down, and the cops show up and they assume you’re the bad actor, even though you weren’t, don’t try to argue that point then. Your job is to come home safely. We’re gonna argue the point the next day, [00:33:00] okay? And for me, it comes down to I can picture my son, who’s 18 – um, he’s always listening to music. And so, for me, the narrative is, honey, don’t forget, when you go out, you know, be sure if anything happens, you keep your hands in the air. Baby, please don’t reach into your pocket to turn off your music, ‘cause I know that’s what my son could be doing. And I know there are some law enforcement officers, and by no means all, but some who will see the act of my black son reaching into his pocket as a potentially threatening act. And of course, my son is thinking, I’m turning off my music. So, it’s – it’s that degree of specificity that we try to impart in our kids so that we can have greater confidence that they’ll come home safe. Now, the trick, Michael, is how do you tell a young person that this is how they need to behave, and not simultaneously crush the self-esteem out of them?
How do you raise them to love themselves in this black or brown skin when so much of the messaging, so much of the [00:34:00] imagery, so much of what we see in the media says, guess what? You’re gonna go out in the world, and in some places, you’ll be loathed, harmed because of that skin, okay? We have this dual task of protecting them from what could happen and helping them feel an embodiment of pride and self-love despite what other people might think of them.
Michael Schulder: How did you do – how did you pull that off?
Julie Lythcott-Haims: [Laughs] Well, I don’t know that I have. My kid’s 18, you know? He’s new out in the world in college, um, left our home for the first time. I’m excited for him. I hope that I’ve, um, um, equipped him to be safe and strong and smart out there. None of us has any control over what happens to our kids out in the world. I mean, that’s the message of How to Raise an Adult. Raise them with the habits and mindsets and self-confidence and ability to persevere, get back up and move on. You know, I’ve not taught my son to look for racism everywhere, but I’ve taught my son that if and when something starts to go down, remember, those with black and brown skin are presumed by [00:35:00] many to be the wrongdoers. Don’t find yourself in that situation. Uh, and if you do find yourself in that situation, hands in the air. Hands in the air.
Michael Schulder: So, let’s – let’s not end this conversation before we just talk a little current events, because every day, there’s another story, black South Carolina senator Tim Scott –
Julie Lythcott-Haims: Yeah.
Michael Schulder: Went post-Charlottesville to talk to Donald Trump.
Julie Lythcott-Haims: Mm-hmm.
Michael Schulder: To sort of give him his perspective of why he thought Trump’s response to Charlottesville was wrong. Would you have gone to Donald Trump? Would you go to Donald Trump then?
Julie Lythcott-Haims: Oh, sure. I mean, I think the opportunity to speak to the President of the United States, regardless of what you might think of him or her, uh, is an opportunity you don’t turn down. A photo op? No. But an opportunity to talk? I would never pass that up, because I think talk is all we got. I think at the end of the day, we have a problem in this country of understanding and compassion. And I think we have to stop only talking to the people we agree with, okay? We have [00:36:00] to have that conversation on race, and we have to let everybody weigh in and participate. And I think thoughtful dialogue between reasonable people – I mean, some might question whether the president is a reasonable person, but I’d take that opportunity. Um, and um, you know, I think that’s – at the end of the day, that’s all we got. Look what we’re doing, right? You’re engaged in conversation about issues that matter, because you know that these kinds of conversations help people examine, explore, analyze, think, and maybe even grow, and maybe even change their minds. We believe that that happens between humans of differing viewpoints.
Michael Schulder: Well, Black Lives Matter thing has gotten such a backlash from some sectors of society, right? And you make the point which is, to me, you know, to many people, obvious, that well, no, Black Lives Matter doesn’t mean only black lives matter. And – and as you articulate it, you say what that means is black lives matter, too.
Julie Lythcott-Haims: Too.
Michael Schulder: And I’m just [00:37:00] wondering, just in terms of – of a branding issue.
Julie Lythcott-Haims: Yeah.
Michael Schulder: And in terms of a messaging issue, should the movement change its name to Black Lives Matter Too?
Julie Lythcott-Haims: Well, the movement has, uh, changed its name or evolved to also include the phrase “the movement for black lives.” That’s a new term to describe a different but perhaps overlapping set of folks who are all working around the same objective. The truth is, if you’re willing to see it, black folks are killed at the hands of law enforcement and civilians on a basis of “I saw you and I was afraid. I saw you with your brown skin and I was afraid.” That’s why Zimmerman was afraid of Trayvon Martin. These police officers who are getting acquitted, you know, I felt my life was in danger. Why? Because a black man was coming at me. Okay, that doesn’t happen. Their mind doesn’t go there when it’s a white man in front of them. And how do I know this? Because [00:38:00] my former colleague at Stanford, Jennifer Eberhardt, MacArthur Genius winner, psychology professor, has done research on implicit bias, and has demonstrated through study after study that there is an implicit assumption when you see a person with an object, if they have dark skin, you assume it’s a gun, if they have light skin, you don’t assume it’s a gun, okay? That bias is – is threaded into our psyche as Americans. It shouldn’t be, but it is. And we need to undo that. And one of the ways of undoing it is calling attention to the fact that, hey, our lives matter just as much. You may not assume that the skin God gave us makes us a criminal, okay? You need more evidence that we have done something wrong than the mere color of our skin.
Michael Schulder: I know you’re a fan – you’re a fan of Ta-Nehisi Coates.
Julie Lythcott-Haims: Yeah, he’s got a new book out, the same day as mine, [00:39:00] right? So, I’m so excited. He’s got this amazing book coming out, a collection of essays, and my little book, you know, I’m a relative unknown in the world. And here’s this famous person –
Michael Schulder: Can I just say, they’re gonna be great companion books.
Julie Lythcott-Haims: I hope so.
Michael Schulder: Because yours comes from –
Julie Lythcott-Haims: the heart.
Michael Schulder: Your own – yeah, the heart, and your own perspective.
Julie Lythcott-Haims: It’s a more – exactly. And his is analytical.
Michael Schulder: And his is historical.
Julie Lythcott-Haims: And it’s – it’s analysis, it’s essay, right? He’s written the persuasive piece, whereas mine is just my memoir. I’m not trying to, uh, say this is historical fact or whatever. I’m saying this is my lived experience. So, so major props to him. Uh, where’s what I think. I think that America is long overdue for a process of truth and reconciliation, like they were wise enough to do in South Africa when Apartheid was dismantled, okay? We have never collectively as a nation sat down with complete openness, baring our hearts to the Native Americans for what we did in taking their land [00:40:00] and creating genocide, and reducing them to a life consigned to reservations and struggle and poverty, etc. That needs to happen. Then what needs to happen is the truth and reconciliation around what we did to Africans when we brought them here as slaves. We all know that capitalism comes with, you know, costs and – and profits, and why were our profits so high and we were able to capitalize on that? Because we weren’t paying the labor. My people were enslaved, all right? That’s a big damn deal. If America could reconcile around that, you know, could come forward and say “This was wrong. We are ashamed. This should not have happened? It sounds silly or maybe symbolic only, but symbolism goes a heck of a long way. If today’s leaders could unite around the need for this dialogue and encourage Americans to just share feelings and thoughts about that history – nobody today needs to be ashamed [00:41:00] for what their ancestors might have done to my ancestors. But folks today ought to be able to acknowledge like, yeah, I – I have white skin, and that means when I walk into a store, I’m not presumed to be a thief. When I’m walking down the street, I’m not presumed to be a criminal. When I’m in an elevator, no one’s afraid of me. People don’t realize the extent to which that’s a privilege that you walk through life with. And those of us on the darker side have to constantly battle to show our legitimacy, or the fact that we’re not criminals or thugs or less smart or what have you. You know, that is real. If we could stop being defensive about that, lay it down and say, yeah, that’s a reality. Let’s acknowledge it, and then we can maybe move forward and say, all right, what’s the America of the 21st century? Multicultural. People here of every hue. Bring your tired huddled masses. Let’s go back to that Statue of Liberty tablet and say, “Yes, we are that place. We are diverse.” That doesn’t threaten us. That makes us stronger. That’s a very idealistic [00:42:00] wish that I have, but I think it’s only possible to move forward into the America that you and I desire by first going back and really acknowledging the damage that was done in the early centuries, including up to the present.
Michael Schulder: I know you’ve got another book in the works, and you’re already thinking about the next one. Can you just give us a sneak preview, and is it related to the parenting? Is there a follow-up, did I read?
Julie Lythcott-Haims: Yes, yeah.
Michael Schulder: Just, I mean –
Julie Lythcott-Haims: Yeah.
Michael Schulder: How – how can you top that? What – what can you tell us about what’s on your plate right now for that next book?
Julie Lythcott-Haims: I’m fortunate enough to have a deal to write another book, which is going to be a sequel of the first book. So, if the first book is How to Raise an Adult, the sequel is how to be an adult, or hash tag adulting, or hash tag adult. In other words, it’s aimed at the 20 and 30-something, somethings, who are having struggle – who are struggling with having agency in their own life. And, uh, so it’s not for parents. I mean, I think parents will read it. Fundamentally, it’s gonna be my voice speaking [00:43:00] directly to young people, young adults with a lot of compassion and enthusiasm, empathy, excitement, about this new phase of life called adulthood that they’ve got to inhabit. And boy, do they have to inhabit it, because Michael, we’re gonna need the next generation to be super competent and strong, be able to look after us in our old age, right? We need them to seize the mantle of leadership, and they need a little bit more help in doing so.
Michael Schulder: I can’t wait for that. Julie Lythcott-Haims, thank you for joining me again on Wavemaker Conversations: A Podcast for the Insanely Curious.
Julie Lythcott-Haims: You’re the best, Michael. Thanks for having me.
Michael Schulder: You’re listening to Wavemaker Conversations: A Podcast for the Insanely Curious. If you find this podcast enriching, I hope you subscribe for free on iTunes, or you can go to my website wavemaker.me. Once you subscribe for free, the episodes are delivered automatically to your phone or computer. Then, every traffic jam, every train ride, every flight [00:44:00] becomes an opportunity to get smarter. My thanks to Rebecca Lee Douglas, who edited this episode. I’m Michael Schulder, thank you for listening to Wavemaker Conversations.