LET'S DIG | Pierre & Danilee Aristil
Pierre and Danilee Aristil let you in on their personal chats. Inspiring you to DIG deeper relationships with God, yourself and others.
Jesus said, “You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind… and equally important: Love your neighbor as yourself.”
- Matthew 22:37-39
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LET'S DIG | Pierre & Danilee Aristil
Confronting Racism | The Power of Asking Questions
Later in the episode, we explore the broader theme of cultural understanding and the pivotal role of curiosity in building authentic connections. Through personal anecdotes, such as navigating mixed-race family dynamics in less diverse areas and the humorous yet insightful analysis of Diddy's viral video, the discussion underscores the importance of openness. We reflect on how asking the right questions can dissolve narrow-minded perspectives and promote mutual appreciation. Don't forget to engage with us and share your thoughts as we aim to continue this important dialogue in future episodes. Your feedback is crucial—join the conversation and let your voice be heard!
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So that racist lady came back into the salon the other day. Remember the one I told you about?
Speaker 2:I do remember her and I need a picture of her, by the way.
Speaker 1:Oh, you don't want to see it, it's not good. And she was being like low key racist to another girl I was working with Like undertone, like oh, I can't say your name, so I'm just going to call you this. Father the worst.
Speaker 2:All right, y'all, we're just going to chat today about some things that we've learned in these conversations and so if y'all ready, we're ready. Whatever, let's dig, let's dig. This conference is gonna be short and sweet because we saw in the chats from the last time we talked about this you remember that one person jumped into my like in the comments, was like oh, that dude is too. He's too weak to have a black woman.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you said that he was like it's too weak to pull a black woman.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you said that You're like it's too weak to pull a black woman. That's the most ignorant thing I've ever heard in my life.
Speaker 1:People are ignorant. But this lady that was at the salon, she came in one time. She was talking about her kids, like it got kind of like awkward in what she said. That wasn't like the racial tones. What came next was and she was basically like I was like I don't know what to talk about. This lady, she's kind of weird. She was a lot when she walked in the door. Already it just wasn't vibing so I was like when in doubt, just talk about your kids. Everybody loves kids.
Speaker 1:So I said something about my son. He calls himself a mitt, which is a man in training and he wants to wear like little chain necklaces.
Speaker 2:He is like a man in training too. That boy smell like a man in training.
Speaker 1:He's trying so hard and I was like he likes to wear like little chain necklaces like his dad. Whatever, I'm washing your hair, y'all like we are face to face. I'm shampooing his hair. If you've ever had your hair washed at a salon like we're face to face and the lady literally looks at what did you do? Marry a black man? That's crazy, bro. Like silence and I literally stopped and I looked her dead in her eye and I was like actually, yeah, I did. And she was like oh, cause. I was going to say like what is it? Some like did you marry somebody from Compton?
Speaker 2:That's crazy.
Speaker 1:Which there's so many things in this conversation. There's so many things in this interaction, but a lot of what made me mad was that this white woman with blonde hair who's only ever lived in California walked into a white woman with blonde hair and this woman assumed she knew who I was. Like she knew me. Like you don't know nothing about me I'm I'm not this California girl. Like it literally made me go want to dye my hair. Yeah, like, don't get it twisted, lady. I'm not some other white blonde woman. Yeah, well, I was ready to fight.
Speaker 2:Okay, so my problem with her comment? Yeah, you were.
Speaker 1:Well, I'm still ready to fight. Let everybody.
Speaker 2:Um, okay, we're just gonna go into it, because this conversation got to be short. I'm looking at the clock right now and we got to go pick up our son from school, so there's gonna have to be two conversations. I feel like my mic is dropping. Um, you guys see, we got these new mic stands. Yay, we can move. I know, finally. Well, mine, mine is moving on its own, so I'm just gonna hold it like this. I feel like my biggest issue with what she said wasn't the words that came out of her mouth, because I'm about to defend her in for a second. I'm about to defend her. It was her tone, definitely. Almost like she was like disgusted or disturbed, that how you described your son and what he was wearing, almost like what did you marry a black?
Speaker 1:man, what did you do? Marry a black man? I yeah, you're right her tone.
Speaker 1:That's my biggest issue but at the same time. So I work in, uh, in Costa Mesa, california. There's not a lot of diversity. So I'm very intentional of when I offer the information that I am a mixed family, like I have interracial kids, I'm married outside my culture. I'm very like hesitant to share that because I know that there are people who have those thoughts. You're just a stranger. I'm not offering that information to you. Once I have like a relationship with a client or whatever, then I'll show them my kids and my family, cause I feel safe with them. But this lady I literally racked my head of like how did what did I say that made this woman say black man from Compton?
Speaker 2:Okay, I'm about to defend her. I'm about to defend her. Okay, here's my thing. I think what happens is it's a cultural thing. So when we obviously in our last conversation we talked about culture, right, culture is nothing but just behaviors, customs, rituals Of the land yeah, like in your household, how you grew up, so like in our household here. Behaviors, customs, rituals of the land yeah, like in your household, how you grew up, so like in our household here. It's culture, right. I go to you know my friend's house who's Asian. In their culture they take their shoes off you gotta take your shoes off.
Speaker 2:In my culture we don't take our shoes off.
Speaker 1:You never see the black man's feet.
Speaker 2:that's so true. You remember that. Oh, bro, I'm so mad that this popped in my head, so that whole video that's going viral of Diddy running down the hotel room chasing his girl yes, and he grabbed a towel and put it around him. What else did he have on him? I don't know. That boy had socks on. He's sleeping naked with socks on. Nobody's talking about B Diddy socks that he was wearing.
Speaker 1:They were like they look like socks that Buddy the Elf would wear. It's also because that video was so disturbing that we were caught up in the other things, but that is a good point.
Speaker 2:What I'm saying is culture is as little or as big as behaviors, lifestyle how you want to wear something Like. In some people's culture, it's all about wearing shoes that look beat up. Other people's culture, it's all about wearing shoes that look crispy clean. That's very true. So what I'm saying is, when you described our 10-year-old son to her I'm going to defend her for a second you weren't describing, like you know, something that was bad or negative. You're just describing something based off of how she know those things to look like. So when you say my son Chain necklace.
Speaker 1:That was the word.
Speaker 2:Chain necklace. So you just described her experience. So now, because of her tone, her tone is saying that she's had a bad experience and that I think it's what's making her racist.
Speaker 1:But it's still so small-minded that your brain goes from chain necklace to black man from Compton. That's what's so small minded about it because literally every man in every culture has, at one point or another or know, somebody in his culture Asian, Filipino, like all of them white guys like they wear chain necklaces.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I got a. I got a lot of other friends of different ethnicities that wear chains.
Speaker 1:Right. So that's where it shows her small mindedness.
Speaker 2:Like gold chains, like we have a lot of. I have a lot of white friends, like our pastor. He's white, he wears chains. We have other pastors they're white, they wear chains. We got other guys that are Asian friends that they wear chains.
Speaker 1:So it's just her small mindedness.
Speaker 2:It's her small minded. It's her small mindedness and based off of where she came from, how she grew up, in the small circles that she grew up in, they've only had a negative experience with people that looked like that. So when you describe that, basically that's exactly where she went to and that's my problem, I think, with people in the society that are small minded, that her tone automatically expressed her experience.
Speaker 1:Or her opinion about it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and her opinion about it Almost like what did you marry a black man? Yeah, for sure. So that's what bothered me. It was her tone and her experience, already dumped on you, how she feels about people who wear chains.
Speaker 1:And here's what I would say as a white girl corn-fed, middle of Indiana. Yeah, like y'all, there's not keep talking.
Speaker 2:My mic you follow.
Speaker 1:I'm gonna literally go get something to go fix my mic like from a middle of america american white girl experience. I would say to people like that, the only way you get out of that small-mindedness is if you ask questions, like I have. I had an experience this weekend with one lady who was Afghani. The other girl was Pakistani, and one has been in the country practically her whole life. The other one's only been here for two years and I learned so much about their cultures and while I was with them I did ask questions. I did did say why is that? What is that? What are you doing that for?
Speaker 1:And here's the experience from my side it's that I had to trust these women to not judge me when I asked them questions. So there was a situation we went to starbucks and one of the girls that I was with she was like oh, I haven't been to starbucks in a really long time, but I'll go with you, right, come to find out. We opened up the conversation and I was like why have you not gone to Starbucks? She was like well, you know, because of the war and things.
Speaker 2:Well, and the you know already implies that you should have an angle from her perspective.
Speaker 1:Right and I had a generalization of what she was speaking about. So I kind of left it there. And then I realized I wasn't satisfied with a general knowledge. Realized I wasn't satisfied with a general knowledge. So I went back probably 10, 15 minutes later and I said hey, I may sound really ignorant right now and I'm so sorry. I was like I understand it has something to do with the war. I was like but what does Starbucks have to do with it? Cause that was the missing piece. And she was like oh, because they did this and that and this, so therefore I'm not supporting them. And I was like thank you so much for explaining it to me. But it is all about like, when people don't know and you're ignorant of something, it's super scary to put yourself out like that. I just met one of these, the one that I asked. I just met her this weekend, but I trusted her enough to be like hey, don't judge me no-transcript.
Speaker 2:They don't know what they don't know, right. Could you imagine if that girl like what a spasm. You said it's not my responsibility to educate you on my culture.
Speaker 1:That was on a on a show that I watch, a Haitian woman. Actually, she responded to a white lady that day. She was like it's not my responsibility to educate you, which she is right in saying that it's not her responsibility.
Speaker 2:But what I think is every person that you encounter that is ignorant, that doesn't know. You do have a responsibility to lead them in the right places to be educated.
Speaker 1:If you don't want to educate them, that is your choice it's not your responsibility.
Speaker 2:Don't get mad at them exactly. Don't expect nothing else from them so they're not going to grow and they're not going to learn so, babe, that's why I had to low-key defend that white lady that sat in your chair, because at I know it's hard and and her tone expressed her experience. I get that, but you had an obligation right there to literally school her and educate her. And you know, next time that happens, man, call me up, I'll pull up, I'll pull up.
Speaker 1:And why I literally had to finish that woman's hair and never do her ever again.
Speaker 2:I want to help diffuse the situation, but I want to help her take down those walls of whatever experience that she had, whatever where, like whatever she experienced in east la or in compton, and she came across or she got robbed by someone, that who happens to be black in that area. Because, first of all, all nationalities, all ethnicities, everybody has criminals right. So your experience, depending on where you live, the people that might be doing the most crimes, may have a darker skin complexion.
Speaker 1:I bet she's never even been to compton.
Speaker 2:No, she just assumes that she was just watching tv.
Speaker 1:She's watching she lived in orange county her entire life she's watching news and how she sees the news.
Speaker 2:She's like, man, it's crazy over there in compton. So, yeah, she is small-minded. But what I'm saying is we all have obligation to teach those that don't know and and sometimes help them, put those walls down. And I think, like you know, like even us man, people look at us and think, man, ok, you know, he married a white girl, she married a black dude. And everybody has these assumptions of like. Why all that matters? Like, and let me just say it right now, like I didn't marry I did not marry a white girl because she was white.
Speaker 2:I married her because her and I had so much in common Us, the two of us, we were interested in the same things. What brought us together wasn't just Christianity, it was the church cultures that we were part of and the style of music that we played, the way we dressed in that church culture. Then that brought us together. We met at the same school, and meeting at the same school made us realize how much we liked the same things. I liked what you liked, you liked what I liked. My ex-girlfriend was black and she was straight, black, black, african American, born and raised in a black culture, right. But with that black culture there's a lot of history there that her family and her, her mom and her dad and her stepdad, all that, all that stuff that happened. So when her and I got closer and closer together and I got a chance to get into her family, there are some things about her family that just didn't sit right with me, that wasn't attractive to me.
Speaker 2:It had nothing to do with her being black. It was their lifestyle, their culture, how they saw marriage, how they saw divorce, how they saw the church. Their point of view wasn't attractive to me when we met. How I saw things, how you saw things, that was attractive. It had nothing to do with what you looked like. It had everything to do with the things that you loved and the things that I love that brought us together.
Speaker 1:And, to be fair, I dated a white guy before you too. So we both dated people from our own race or culture, similar cultures, like of what people care about. Right, they care that you marry a black woman, they cared that I marry a white guy. But we both dated those and they didn't fit that. We were not compatible and we found the best match in each other. We found the best match.
Speaker 2:That's simply what it is Like. People have all these assumptions trying to figure out, and you know what? Here's the crazy thing is.
Speaker 2:I had those assumptions too we mentioned in the last episode, like when we first got married there's some things that I had in my back of my mind, thinking like man, here's how life's going to be now that I have a white wife. But when you go down to the root of it, what brought us together? It had nothing to do with what you look like. It had nothing to do with looks, especially in the church world. Like you know, the church world tries to adopt the world's point of view of things and puts those things in our minds because how they operate. But when we're fully into this with a pure mindset, in God's kingdom, there is no color. That's true. It's all about what's on the inside. It's all about being equally bonded, equally yoked. That's what it was all about.
Speaker 2:So I liked what you liked, you liked what I liked and we wanted to pursue the same things in life. My ex-girlfriend she's black and she's beautiful, very pretty young lady, like I hope she's doing good. I still care for her and her family, her son and her whole situation. But the culture that she came up in and how she saw church, how she saw families, how she saw school, education, fashion, all these types of things, as we got closer we just bumped heads and we didn't have that many things in common, and so there's a big misconception that people think like why black men marry white women? That's a whole nother conversation for a whole nother day.
Speaker 2:But I think a lot of it has to do with understanding culture, understanding the culture. You came out of the culture, I came in and we had common ground, yeah.
Speaker 1:I was watching this video on YouTube the other day and it was the cutest, most innocent conversation between a British, white nine-year-old girl and a Muslim. I'm not sure what country she was from. I think her dad was from, I don't remember actually so I think he's actually Jamaican, Right? So it was a Muslim little girl. She was nine, same age, and they were both asking each other these culture questions and, like the the, the British girl was asking the Muslim girl well, do you have to wear a headscarf? Do you have to do this? Like? And it was the most innocent conversation of just open, of like, hey, why do you do that? Like when we got married, you didn't understand that I do you do that like when we got married?
Speaker 2:you didn't understand that I did not have to wrap my hair when I went to bed, I was straight up like you're not gonna wrap your hair, but but it was, it's because there was yeah, all the black girls wrap their hair white.
Speaker 1:People don't have to wear hair, is fine and I didn't understand.
Speaker 2:So every time we sleep, your hair's all over my face and my mouth.
Speaker 1:It's your hair's everywhere and I'm like yo wrap that thing and I'm starting to do heatless rollers, so I actually do end up wrapping my hair and I'm like, oh, he doesn't mind, but it raising a black girl too raising a black girl. I got her, I have her in a bonnet. She's wrapping her hair.
Speaker 2:Yep, it's so true I love that story that you're sharing, that these innocent minds are just asking genuine questions and we got to be open to understand someone else's lifestyle is different from ours and so to say, bro you, bro, you need to get culturally caught up. It's like that doesn't? That doesn't literally make sense, like we grew up in two different worlds, two different lives. After a while we start to learn each other and realize, oh, I like that, oh, that's really cool, and cultures can be. Look, cultures can be taught, they can be caught and, more importantly, they can be dropped. You can easily say, ah, that was the culture I grew up in. I'm dropping that. Yeah, I'm dropping man, I'm looking at the time. Right here we we gotta go.
Speaker 1:I think we need to do like a part two. This has to be a part two tell us what you guys think.
Speaker 2:Um, if you like this conversation, hit that button like smash that like button. You know how people be saying smash that like button, yo write us back. You know, um, there's a link in there that says send us a text message. Know, we actually want to hear what you guys are saying. Drop a comment in there. Let us know your opinions, your thoughts. Like how do you see this? Is this resonating with you? Like, we want to know what's your perspective on this thing. We're going to keep digging for part two on this, right.
Speaker 1:Part two. We want to hear from you. Let's dig.
Speaker 2:Peace.
