Human Powered
Season 1, Episode 6 Transcript
Tracey
I think my mother would say I've always been this leader. But I think just moving here and being in this position where there was no voice, it just forced me to be a voice.
Jimmy
This is Tracey Robertson
Tracey
In Chicago, I always took Blackness for granted because everybody else was Black. Coming here and being one of the few really forced me, required me, I'd say required me to be in this leadership position. I had a daughter who was going to the university here and I think part of mama bear showed up and some of the difficulty she was having. I just, I needed to see that be different.
Jimmy
In 2014, Tracey moved to Oshkosh...And almost immediately threw herself into community work. Both as a community leader and entrepreneur. That’s when she founded Fit Oshkosh.
Tracey
So people can come here, they can reserve conference rooms. We have computers, printers, scanners, laptops that they can use for free.
Jimmy
Pre-COVID, Fit Oshkosh was a lot of things to a lot of people: it was a coworking space and a community library…it was even a space for family.
Tracey
And my grandson has an office--desk back there.
Jimmy
Walk around for a minute and you can’t help but notice these *absolutely stunning* photos.
Tracey
Of course we have our photo exhibit here, right it lives here.
Jimmy
The photos are from the Color Brave exhibit. It was put together by Tracey and a group of community partners in 2018. So a bit about the photos, they’re these striking and expressive studio portraits of people of color who live in the area. Think...the *best* yearbook photos you’ve ever seen. And underneath each individual photo, you can read a bit about people’s lives and experiences.
The exhibit has had *wild* success in the region since it opened…displayed in the fine arts museum, schools, libraries...basically, if there was an open wall, people wanted it there.
And one of the reasons why this project resonated so deeply…why representation is so important...and why it came to life in the first place...is because of what Tracey experienced when she first moved to Oshkosh.
Tracey
People would ask me if I'd moved here because of the prison. And that didn't feel like a very safe welcome for me. People made assumptions that I had moved here from the ghettos of Chicago. And while I am from Chicago, I live in a pretty upper-middle class community. So the assumption that I had escaped the ghettos of Chicago for the safety of Oshkosh, Wisconsin, was really problematic for me.
Jimmy
One place where Tracey found support was a women’s church group.
Tracey
I'd asked the women at the group that night if they would be willing to pray with me about the decision I'd made to come here and how I could survive in this community as a person of color. And there was a woman there, her name is Janine Wright. And she approached me after the bible study and said, "You know, I'm a white woman who has been married to a Black man. We've raised four biracial children in this community, I understand how difficult it could be. And if you'd be willing, I'd love to get together and just talk about how challenging this is, and just kind of be an ear for you."
Jimmy
Tracey and Janine got together once a month and talked about all the things. But always thinking about the challenges People of Color face in the community. It wasn’t long until more people, more *white* people wanted to have these talks, too.
Tracey
You know, we'd go back to our respective places of influence and talk to people and they'd say, "you had that conversation," like "you talked about that thing?" And I'd say yes. And they'd say, "Gosh, I'd like to be a part of that conversation."
Jimmy
I’m Jimmy Gutierrez, and this is Human Powered, a new podcast from Wisconsin Humanities, Love Wisconsin, and Field Noise Soundworks about how people make places better.
Now I’m from Milwaukee, but I’ve been visiting all corners of Wisconsin my whole life. And something I’ve noticed, from Fond du Lac to Waupaca is that when it comes to race, and holding space to have dialogue, to really hear each other, we’ve all got work to do.
When people think about towns like Oshkosh, or so much of Wisconsin in general, they might picture small towns filled with white folks. Which isn’t untrue. But for the past 50 years, the state has been racially and ethnically diversifying. That’s a story Tracey Robertson wasn’t hearing. So she set out to tell it.
Back in 2014, when Tracey started having these talks, she found people wanted to engage. They wanted to talk. The problem was, they didn’t have the knowledge or tools to even know where to start.
Tracey
Yeah, it was largely white people saying we understand that this is an issue and we want to deal with it. And what we've been taught up to this point is just pretend like we don't see it, right. Just be colorblind.
Jimmy
One night, Tracey was on the internet and came across a TED talk. Mellody Hobson was on stage, a businesswoman who was often the only black woman at any professional table she sat at.
Mellody Hobson
the first step to solving any problem is to not hide from it. And the first step to any form of action is awareness…
Jimmy
One day, Mellody walked into a press conference and was promptly led to the kitchen...because people thought she was the help.
Mellody Hobson
So I think it's time for us to be comfortable with the uncomfortable conversation about race, Black, white, Asian, Hispanic, male, female, all of us. If we truly believe in equal rights, and equal opportunity in America, I think we have to have real conversations about this issue. We cannot afford to be colorblind, we have to be color brave. Thank you.
Jimmy
This talk became the foundation for Tracey’s work in Oshkosh.
Tracey
We really fell in love with that idea with that concept of being brave and not being blind and acknowledging that you see race and because people are… present as a person of color, that they have obstacles that are very different than people who are white. And so just being able to acknowledge that and be brave enough to say, I get it, that spoke to me. And it's an important concept to think about. So we started what we call Color Brave Community Conversations.
Jimmy
These conversations have moderators. Tracey was one of em. And how it works is: they would show a video clip, or a scene from a movie, about race or a racialized incident. Moderators would give people some structure to unpack what they saw. And people were into it.
But one night, a woman asked...
Tracey
"what's next?" And I said, "I don't know what you mean, what we, this is what we're doing." And she says, "No, what's next?" She says, "because, What I've come to notice in the times I've been here is that you're preaching to the choir, like the people who are showing up are the people who have a vested interest in this work, right?" And she says, "How do we get places like the police department, the county, the city, the stakeholders in this community? How do we get them at the table?" And I said, "I don't know."
Jimmy
That’s how Tracey met Dr. Jennifer Chandler.
Tracey
And so we decided in that moment that we would create some curriculum, we would establish a 501 c 3, and we would go out and target those very institutions—the police, the fire, the county, the city—to help them increase their capacity to increase their racial literacy. And that was how Fit Oshkosh came to be.
Jimmy
In just one weeks time, Tracey went from preaching to the choir to preaching to the colorblind.
Tracey
And we went to our very first meeting the next week. And it just took that one conversation with the stakeholders in the community for me to know, this is not going to be easy. It's going to be met with a lot of discomfort, and, frankly, anger.
You know, I've had people say to me, I remember a conversation I had with some folks out of the Appleton area, and they were like, "We don't need this work. We're really good white people, and you're just causing trouble," right? There was one stakeholder in particular who was like, "I'm never gonna support you." And I said, "I'm sorry to hear that." But we kept working.
Jimmy
And the deeper she went, the deeper she found these narratives were embedded.
Tracey
That narrative that Black people move here because of the prison. And Black people come from two places, the ghettos of Chicago, or the ghettos of Milwaukee, really stuck with me, it was always problematic to me, and I didn't know how to address it because people of color are as complex as any other group of people, right. And the reasons that they move to a certain community and the reasons that they stay in a community are varied, you know, some people moved here for love. Some people moved here for career opportunities. And to put us in that little box. It just kept me up at night for many years.
Jimmy
Tracey started reaching out to community contacts, sharing her story, brainstorming possibilities. She ended up connecting with Paul Van Aachen [Van AWK-in], a UW Oshkosh professor. He’s the person who suggested a photo exhibit.
Tracey
So it was really important to me to find a photographer of color, that was key.
Because I thought, well, for two reasons. One is because I'd had a bad experience with a person who was working on a documentary for us who was not a person of color. And the questions that this person was asking of our subjects, who were all people of color, were really problematic.
And so I was like, I have to partner with someone who gets this like who, who has a personal connection to this work, and understand if this is done, right, how impactful it can be.
Colleen
When I made the realization that I'm moving back to this area, and that I'm going to be stuck here probably the rest of my life. What can I do to make change, in this area? To make change in this city?
Jimmy
Colleen Bies was the photographer for Color Brave. Born and raised in Oshkosh, her parents were forced out of Laos after her father fought for the U.S. in the Vietnam war. Growing up first gen here, Colleen had a wildly different experience from her white peers. She remembers the racist neighbor who would set his dog loose on her and her siblings. The isolation at school. She just didn’t fit.
Colleen
I knew it at a very early age. Some days, it was great, and it didn't make a difference. But there were also days where it felt really weird to be the outcast and to be different.
Jimmy
After high school, she left Oshkosh and joined the military. She went off to college but in a *surprise twist,* came back home for her master’s degree. And that’s when she started her career in photography.
Colleen
I don't feel that I was naturally born a photographer, naturally born an artist, I had to work to learn how to be an artist. So for me, connection mattered more. And then the art came second
And I think it helped that I was a person who lived and grew up in Oshkosh that I could share a piece of my story first, which would then hopefully, let them take down their guard and allow them to open up a little bit and have a more open and warm discussion about their experience and the photos are being taken during that process as well.
Jimmy
One of the first people Colleen photographed was her dad. And he is *not* a fan of getting his picture taken.
Colleen
I remember a number of years ago, I tried to take photos of him and my mom in their traditional Hmong attire. And when we got to the park, we started taking photos and it was seven minutes in and he said, I'm done. And so I thought to myself, okay, I have seven minutes. So as he came in, I said, "Dad, just give me a second. I'm going to take a couple of headshots," I took like two tests. And I said, "Okay, dad, like you got to look like you're not totally miserable."
And so he just smirked. And I happened to take that picture. And after I took that picture, it was as if he had a mic, he was like: mic drop. And he just walked right out and said, "I'm done. I'll be at the car."
Jimmy
Colleen’s dad made it two minutes. And one mic drop. It is possibly her proudest photo. It was also one of the last photos of her dad, who passed away in January 2019. Less than a year after the exhibit opened.
The photos were the first part of the exhibit. A breathing visual reminder of the people who live here. Their stories written across their faces in their smiles. In their smirks. But Tracey knew that people also had something to say.
Mushe
When Tracy asked me to be part of the Color Brave exhibition where we can talk about our stories, our experiences and share with other communities, I felt that I needed to do this, not only for me, but also for the children that I have the son that I have, and my friends' children. So I took it upon like this is the right thing to do. I’m going to go to Color Brave and share my experiences and teach.
Jimmy
Mushe Subulwa (MOO-shay Sa-BOOL-wa) moved to Oshkosh in 2007.
Mushe
I was one of the few African Black people or African American in the city of Oshkosh. Every other African that came including Tracey, they found me.You know, so I became one of the elders of People of Color in town.
Jimmy
Unfortunately, no surprise...like Tracey...Mushe’s arrival in Oshkosh was rough. He had been in his new house for *two days* when police showed up.
Mushe
I'm on the phone talking to my mom back home, in Zambia in Africa, telling her how we have moved in here and everything is okay here. And suddenly, the Oshkosh PD, just like swoop in my doorstep, three of them — three vehicles. Bam, bam, bam, bam! The next thing I was told, was "put the phone down, put the phone down."
And eventually they say, "well, a neighbor called, there’s a Black guy in the neighborhood." That's the stuff we see on TV. We see all that on TV a lot. But we don't realize it can happen to somebody. It was happening to me.
And for moving forward I realized that I have to turn this anger into something positive, you know, because I knew definitely this was gonna affect other people that moved into town here.
Jimmy
When Dr. Shawn Robison came to Oshkosh for college, not only was he Black in a new space, he was also dealing with dyslexia.
Shawn
You know, I feel like an outsider at times, not just based on my race, but also my learning disability. Being biracial, and not being around a lot of African Americans when I was growing up and coming here and being around some African Americans on campus, not a lot, always had that seesaw, like, some people saw me as being white, as some people saw me as black. So I had to, you know, be comfortable in my own skin and keep it moving.
So I try to use my experiences and work to give people and kids hope, you know, that no matter where they start from as long as they just keep you know plugging away keep their head down stay focused and stay encouraged that anything's possible but you got to work hard.
Jimmy
When it came to sharing these stories in the exhibit, Tracey still had work to do. She had a photographer, yeah. She had folks like Mushe and Shawn...ready to share. But she needed to find people who could take these stories and make something with em.
Tracey
We really wanted these stories to be meaningful, and we wanted these stories to stay true to each person's voice and experience. But we wanted some expert storytellers. And so we partnered with some humanities experts at UW Oshkosh, Susan Resing, Alicia Johnson, and Roberta McGuire.
Jimmy
With her all-star team finally in place, all she needed now was a host site. Somewhere to show off the stories and the smiles.
Aaron
When Tracey came to talk to me about it, she already had a pretty fully formed idea and was moving forward. And so I had the opportunity to jump on the bandwagon.
Jimmy
This is Aaron Sherer, Executive Director of the Paine Art Center.
Aaron
The Paine is the primary presenter of visual arts in our community. And then we also have gardens so we're the primary botanical garden in the community.
Tracey
The Paine is just the it's a staple in this community. It's a destination. It's beautiful, and it just made a lot of sense to depend on some of Aaron's expertise to make this project successful.
Jimmy
Tracey thought, “If we’re gonna show out, let’s show ALL the way out!”
But there’s another reason why partnering with The Paine, and Aaron in particular made sense.
Aaron
My husband and I were very naive when we adopted our two African American sons, they needed a place to live. And we thought we could provide a home for them. And it was only after we brought them in to our home and then started really understanding the responsibilities of raising African American boys in our culture, and this is a hard issue for all communities, but they do not have teachers who look like them.
But I think then what it reminds me of is that we just have to be a lot more intentional about these conversations and about what we can do rather than pretending like this isn't an issue or there's nothing we can do about it.
Jimmy
On April 20th, 2018, Color Brave debuted at The Paine. Admission was free. And the gallery was packed.
It was new for a lot of people to see their faces and stories on display. Artistically. With such care. It was also new for them to step inside this museum.
Tracey
we've got great pictures of little seven year old girls, right, who'd never been to The Paine. Looking at these beautiful portraits. We have lots of people of color, who had never been to The Paine that were now in The Paine \
Jimmy
If you were at The Paine that night, you might remember Dr. Shawn Robinson’s photo. He’s sitting on a stool...button-down shirt untucked over his jeans...bearded smile on his face.
And you might’ve read Shawn's story. A story that’s not easy to read. But it gives you a sense of what it’s like to try to make a life as a Black, or Hmong, or Indigenous Person of Color in Wisconsin. A story we’re going to share with you right now...
Shawn
My own life experiences not knowing how to read till I was 18. And getting accepted here at UW-Oshkosh as a 18 year old with an elementary level education and to the Project Success Program here on campus. And then once my professor taught me how to read, I just never stopped loving school, I went and got my undergrad, Master's, and a PhD and I was in school 18+ years after high school--getting what was, you know, stolen from me when I was a kid, in terms of my education. So my professor who taught me how to read was old-older white guy. I love him to death like a father. You know, he said to me, "you know what, I can't tell you what it means to be Black. Nor am I gonna try. What I'm gonna do is teach you how to read." So we had a common ground right there. It's like look, he's not trying to tell me who I need to be. He's trying to teach me something so I can be who I want to be. And so you know, at this point, you know, being 42, having two boys and a beautiful wife, beautiful family. I don't have time for no, no lip service or rhetoric. And that's what people do it's all lip service. It's these lets--Let's start a diversity committee. What's that going to do? They talkin about the same thing they talked about 10 years ago, today. So to me, it's, let's, let's move. Let's make some action. Let's actually get behind the wheel and put our foot on the gas pedal and move the bus. Right now the buses just sitting there spinning the wheels, and that's what they do. They love to just keep talking about, you know, what they can't do versus what we can do. You know, "we can't find Black professionals. We can't find this. We can't..." No, no. They don't want to find them. They don't want to hire us. They don't want to include Tracey they don't want to hire people who look like us. So you know, I just, at this point in my my career, I'm like, you know, I'm always to speak my truth because my truth has power to it.
Jimmy
After that, you might have taken a deep breath, and walked over to Mushe’s photo. He’s looking up and to the right. Huge smile on his face. Pure joy. Long dreadlocks rolling over his shoulders. And then you stop and read his story.
Mushe
I've been in that neighborhood for five years now talking saying hello to each other, you know, but there were moments where my other neighbors their children are playing with my kids. These are just normal little kids, boys and girls are playing. And you'll hear the neighbor say, "Hey, don't you leave your bike outside their cars, ‘cause those n* kids will steal it." So you, you'd hear that in Oshkosh in 2019. And my kids are small, they don't understand all that. I'm absorbing it. And I know like, it's gonna be a time where I need to explain to my kids, like, this is the world that you live in, you know, your, your judgment, your treatment will be different. The question is how you respond. Some of us from the continent of Africa, especially from Southern Africa, we are guided by one principle of Ubuntu. This principle tells us that you are who you are because of us. So it reminds every African that today, I may think I have achieved what I think I have. And I should not cheat myself to say, "Oh, my God, I'm so hard working or this is, look, I work so hard. I do this." No, I should realize and remember that along the way, everybody else, assisted me. So with a spirit of Ubuntu for me, it was instilled in me since I was a kid by my parents. So in the village, we were taught to share, taught to respect and taught to give to others and taught to give to the communities that you live. And the communities that I lived, gave me so much. In Oshkosh, in the beginning, I first I thought maybe that spirit was not there, because the kind of treatment that was given to me. And eventually, when I started navigating myself through, I realized that spirit is here. The question is, how do we tap into it?
Jimmy
Tracey knew from the beginning these stories couldn’t stay housed in a ::fancy art museum::. The exhibit would go on to tour all across the Fox Valley. It traveled so much the photos were actually getting worn out. That’s where the idea came to turn it into a book.
Tracey
the photo exhibit was supposed to just travel for a little, short time. And we still get requests today. You know, over more than a year later, for people to see the photo exhibit. We got a call last week and someone was like, "I'd love to see the photo exhibit". I'm like, "great, we've got a book for you." So it was far more impactful than I could have ever imagined.
Jimmy
People stop Tracey in stores, or on the streets, to talk about the work. They want to talk about Mushe, about his kids. About what she’s up to now. But even with Color Brave’s success, Tracey wants to keep moving the conversation forward.
Tracey
So I have a six year old grandson who was born in Neenah, Wisconsin, he lives here in in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. He goes to school. He's in kindergarten in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. And I love that he has that as a point of reference. He goes to school all day and rarely sees Black men who look like him, right, adults that look like him. And I want him to be as successful as he chooses to be. And right now in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, there are so many barriers to that success for him. And so for me, he's the only reason why I get up and do this work every day still. There's not a long lifespan and social justice work. It's so personal. It's so hard. It's so stressful. And so you know, a lot of my people who are executive directors and social justice work have moved on to do what the thing is. And I look at that little face and I'm thinking, I've got to fight until this place feels safe for him.
Jimmy
And here’s where we wanted to end things: this work is hard, it takes everything out of you... because to do it right, it takes everything *inside* of you. And for the most part, it’s invisible work. Rarely featured in The Paine. Rarely talked about in donor groups or all white settings.
Then Tracey shared online that Fit Oshkosh, her nonprofit, was dissolving.
Tracey
I've had lots of conversations with lots of people all over the country, asking, you know what happened and there wasn't a one thing that happened. And I've really tried to find the right words to talk about race work and how difficult it is. And I heard Renita, who is the executive director of the YWCA in Green Bay, talk about race work as bloodwork. And I thought that is the best description I've heard about this work, and how it cuts you to the core and impacts you psychologically, it impacts you physically, it impacts you in every way imaginable. And that's very much what the work had been for me. And for a long time, I said, You know, I do this work, because I have a six year old grandson, and I do this work for him. And for me, the stress of the work and the weight of the work had gotten so heavy that one day I came to the realization that if I didn't stop doing the work, I wouldn't be here to help him at all.
Jimmy
But just because Fit Oshkosh is gone, doesn't mean that Tracey is. She’s still doing social justice and anti racism work. Working with the University to improve Black businesses in the area. And celebrating wins. Even the small ones.
Tracey
Those of us who do race work, right, it's like, but if there's a little sliver of hope, then there's hope. And so I kind of live in that space where there's a little sliver of hope. You know, we have our first woman of color mayor here in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, and that her leadership is always a little sliver of hope. Right? But again, for those of us who do this work, you only get a little sliver, right and you think there it is, and we have some little slivers.
Credits
Wisconsin Humanities and Love Wisconsin have teamed up to make six monthly episodes of Human Powered because we believe that sharing stories about people making their communities better helps us all imagine what is possible.
If you like what you heard today, please subscribe wherever you listen. And be sure to leave us a rating and a review, which will help more people hear all about Tracey’s story and work.
Human Powered was produced by Craig Eley at Field Noise Soundworks, along with Jessica Becker. Story editing by Jen Rubin. Production assistance from Jade Iseri-Ramos.
Dena Wortzel and Brijetta Waller are Executive Producers. The show is mixed by Rob Byers, Johnny Vince Evans, and Michael Raphael (RAY-feel) of Final Final Vee Two. I’m your host, Jimmy Gutierrez.
Special thanks to Jake Timm and Scott Williams at Oshkosh Community Media, and Ian Olvera at Wire & Vice Studios.
Music in our episode comes from Blue Dot Sessions and the band Kinfolk, find them on Facebook.
Visit Wisconsin Humanities and Love Wisconsin for more information about this episode and our work.
