Sept. 17, 2024

Unpacking Racism JD Mass on Growing Up White in a Black Community

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In this episode of Living the Dream with Curveball, host Curveball sits down with JD Mass, an entrepreneur, activist, podcast host, and author whose life's mission is to understand the roots of racism and promote a more equitable world. JD shares his unique upbringing as a white Jewish male raised in a black community in St. Louis, Missouri, and discusses the profound experiences that shaped his views on race and equity.

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> Curtis Jackson>Welcome, to the Living the Dream podcast with curveball. if you believe you can achieve Chee Chee, welcome to the Living the Dream with Curveball podcast, a show where I interview guests that teach, motivate and inspire. And we definitely have an inspiring conversation today, as I am joined by JD Mass, who is an entrepreneur, activist, a podcast host and an author.

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> Curtis Jackson>And his goal in life is to figure out the roots of racism and figure out how we can live in a more equitable world. So we're going to be talking to him about everything that he's up to and why he's so passionate about what he's up to.

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> Curtis Jackson>So, JD, thank you so much for joining me today.

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> JD Mass>Thank you for having me. I'm looking forward to the conversation.

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> Curtis Jackson>Why don't you start off by telling everybody a little bit about yourself?

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> JD Mass>So, I'm JD Mas. I, have a doctorate in organizational psychology.

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> JD Mass>I used that to really kind of put together my lifelong question and quest, which is, why did racism exist? Why did we create such a culture, of harm, in order to get the resources that we use to kind of make us what we consider great, and how to use that process of change to start, to motivate folks to want to do something different.

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> JD Mass>And change is a very difficult process.

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> JD Mass>And so that's where I'm at right now. The why is my parents wanted to raise their children from birth in and around black community. For those that don't know, I'm, a white jewish male, and, so I was born in the mid seventies, raised in the eighties and nineties in and around a black community in St. Louis, Missouri, called University City, and the majority of my friends, I wrote a book, and so on the book cover, is, my high school prom picture of me and all my friends.

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> JD Mass>And I'm very much the most distinguishable person, in the crew, based on my less melanated skin.

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> JD Mass>And so just experiencing life with them, growing up, seeing the difference in how I was treated, seeing how they were treated, seeing the prejudices, the discriminations, the bigotry, that we faced, it just made me really want to understand why. Like, I get it, we've been taught that over and over, but why did it start? What was going on? How does this continue? How do people, who call themselves either spiritual or religious or, you know, we consider ourselves the moral leaders of the world. How do we have such a harmful culture here towards anti black racism, and yet we still consider us these things. So I just wanted to get into that. Ah. And after going through my process, I now want to share that with others.

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> Curtis Jackson>So talk about what it was really like growing up in a black community.

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> JD Mass>So, I was born in Philly. My parents were raised in St. Louis, in the neighboring municipality, to where they raised me and my sisters. And, when we moved here in 1980, I was four years old, and we moved next door to a black family that was grandmother, grandfather, aunts, uncles, the mom of my friends, and who became my best friends.

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> JD Mass>And really, at this point, 48 years in, I'm brother, nephew and whatnot.

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> JD Mass>Right?

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> JD Mass>They, welcomed me in, and I, came over almost daily, sat, on the porch with them outside, played in the yards, both my yards and their yards, and really got a chance to learn the difference in the cultures, to an extent, right? I mean, this is only one family, so they don't represent everybody.

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> JD Mass>Still, the welcomeness that I received, the teaching almost scaring me, because not only am I a, less melanated person, and I'm the only one in that room, so to speak, but I'm also five foot three as an adult. So imagine I was a very small child, too.

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> JD Mass>And so they sort of scared the politeness into me. You better speak to everybody that you know, that you. When you come in this house, you better go give ma, ah, hug. You better, you know, do the right things this way or whatnot. And so just feeling and seeing the larger family love, in comparison to my family, was each household was kind of your own separate responsibility. It was this level of individualism that existed that I didn't even recognize at the time. the beautiful thing of it was my parents also welcomed all of my friends into their home. First time you come over, we'll serve you. Second time you come over, there's the kitchen. Grab what you need and move on. And so, they're demonstrating that same level of welcomeness was also, very meaningful for me growing up.

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> JD Mass>Now, on the flip side.

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> Curtis Jackson>Oh, go ahead.

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> JD Mass>I'm sorry. On the flip side, which I'm also thinking you're asking. You know, we walked through the neighborhood my dad and mom grew up in called Clayton, Missouri, which is a very affluent area. And to get to the tennis courts at night or to get to the, to get to the, movie m theater in the mall that we would go to. And on the way home, we were often stopped by police. And, you know, we're in middle school, we're in, in early high school, before I started driving. And we get constantly stopped. There were stories made up of. I can remember the first time I had to be about twelve years old. And they held us for about 30 minutes, telling us how there was a burglary. And they were just wanting to know why we were out. We got, you know, we're coming from the mall. What are we doing here? It gets frustrating. And eventually I say, you know what? What if we help you find the burglars? And my friends went, oh, no, we won't.

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> JD Mass>And I went, oh, I just said something stupid, didn't I? And so, they said the police turned it around and said, well, if you didn't do anything, then how would you know how to help us? And I went, okay, this is a game. I didn't know this was that type of game. Let me learn the rules to the game. And so on the way home, I got, you know what in black households is known as the talk.

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> JD Mass>The police are not your friends. They're not here to help us. They are here to matter of fact, watch over us and even sometimes cause us punishments, and things that are unjust. We need to know how to behave around them. You don't move this way. You don't talk back this way. But you don't, you know, you don't give in to what they're saying. And so learning that lesson, seeing people at the mall can't take back and return items that they didn't fit them and they had never worn yet. I can take back a, shirt with ring around a collar. Don't even have a tag. Go get the tag off of another shirt in the, in the mall and throw it in the box and take it back and act really upset that, that this shirt was given to me with ring around the collar on it. Meanwhile, it'd been worn several times. And I could get away with anything. And I was like, wow, this whiteness thing really is different in this society. And so to be able to just see that and experience that, was really eye opening. And it's something that people who deny racism right now don't know how to see it because they don't understand the differences.

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> Curtis Jackson>Well, I was looking in your bio, and you were involved with Nellie. And for those of you who don't know Nelli, Nelli is from St. Louis. He's a hip, ah, hop star. Shout out to Nelli.

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> Curtis Jackson>But explain that and how you actually got involved with Nellie.

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> JD Mass>Yeah. So if you look at the high school, at the, prom picture on the front of the book, Nellie is kneeling next to me. he moved into our community in the 7th grade. He grew up in the city of St. Louis. we were right next to the city in the neighboring municipality, part of the county.

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> JD Mass>and so Nellie came, and because he was into sports, he.

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> JD Mass>Most of my friends that I became friends with on that, on the book cover, I became friends with through my very best friend, who's in the upper and right hand side of the picture, of your face as you're looking at it. And so, a lot of them I met through, and Nellie was one of them. And Nellie started to come around a little bit around the end of the 8th grade, and then by. Yeah, well, going in from the 8th grade to the 9th grade summer, we started to hang out more and more. And by the time we were in high school, all of us were pretty much inseparable.

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> JD Mass>and so I was also entrepreneurial, from cutting grass and making flyers and getting around the neighborhood to, with my best friend, to when I was in college, I started a tennis teaching organization with my tennis coach at St. Louis University.

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> JD Mass>And because Nellie saw that as his career jumped off, I had just finished college and went into banking and was hoping to kind of move my way up the banking system. Knowing how powerful that financial industry is for, you know, for our ability to have a disparity in income and wealth, in this country, and wanting to fix that, I figured, okay, I'll maneuver my way, allow my whiteness to help me build through, and then see if I can affect change that way. Well, nine months in, Nelly's got the number one song in the world, and he's, his album drops, and he's, you know, it's him, britney Spears, and eminem at the top of the charts. And so, instantaneous success after all the years that he put in, he called me up and he said, I want to do these entrepreneurial things. I want you to help me out doing them. Quit your job. I'll pay you the same salary, and let's get rolling. And so I, for the first four years, 2000 to 2004, I worked with him pretty intently on his entrepreneurial projects.

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> Curtis Jackson>Man, that is amazing.

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> Curtis Jackson>So not only do you, do you do that, but you have a podcast that you started with Corey. So kind of tell the listeners about your podcast, what they can expect when they listen, where they can listen, and how you guys got started.

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> Curtis Jackson>And who is Cory?

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> JD Mass>So, Corey. so I'll tell you who he is after I tell you the story of how we met.

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> JD Mass>I'm looking at my phone one day, you get a LinkedIn post. It's from a Corey may, and it's spelled the same way as somebody I know from east St. Louis who I had been wanting, to do some work with and who's doing some great work with, I mean, great work out in east St.

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> JD Mass>Louis around the mental, health, field. And so I see, it's Corey May's birthday.

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> JD Mass>And, I shoot him a happy birthday text. K may. And he spells his name Kory and May. And he shoots me back, hey, thanks. What are you up to? I had just moved down to Florida for a job.

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> JD Mass>and I said, you know, I moved, down here for a job, you know, and he looked at my profile and he said, hey, I'd really like to get to know you. Like, maybe we could, understand your work better. And I went, what? He already knows me. And so then I opened it up, and this was a different Corey may from Iowa City, Iowa. So we exchanged information, told, him about, you know, the story. We cracked up about that, and we both had interest in doing a podcast, just not sure about what. And so, we, we got to talk. And then that night, I thought about it, and he thought about it, and we both kind of came back with, hey, you know, we have something here. Black man grew up in Iowa City, Iowa, around white peers and friends. White man grew up in University City, Missouri, around black friends in St. Louis.

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> JD Mass>There's a story. Why don't we get to know each other on a podcast, not learn about each other any other way other than how we talk, to each other on the podcast. And so that's been. We did our first season. we are in a break right now. but there is 27 episodes of stories, of perspectives that come from those stories and, how we look at life through the lens of race.

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> JD Mass>Having grown up as a minority in these different backgrounds, but also understanding that my power dynamic and his power dynamic were very different. Even though we were both minorities, amongst our friends and peers in the entire system, I had the power dynamic behind me. He had the power dynamic threatening him.

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> Curtis Jackson>So tell us about your book. Tell us where we can get it, and, you know, what listeners can expect when they read it and what made you want to write it.

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> JD Mass>So my book is called Race for what? F o r.

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> JD Mass>What. And that is the title of the website as well, where you can find the book, you can get to the links of where it's sold.

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> JD Mass>and there's quite a few options, Amazon being also one of them. But barnes and noble and elsewhere, I did an audiobook version of it, and it's on ebook form.

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> JD Mass>but raceforwhat.com has information about me. The book is, half of it is stories of my life, memoir style, regarding, how this.

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> JD Mass>Regarding my growing up in race and how race is related to my life. and then seven steps to healing the harm of our culture is the second half. And I wrote these seven steps based on my experience, what I had to go through. Even though my parents purposely raised me not to be racist, at a time when we were all raised to be racist, there was still a level of lack of understanding of the other culture that I got that my parents didn't quite get to experience on a full note half the time. Right? And so I met, a, hebrew israelite community and based in Dimona, Israel. they were all vegan. They were living according to, you know, natural laws, wanting peace and health and all these positive aspects. And I came in and wanted to make some real improvements as I saw it, so to speak, or really bring my level of influence and business to the table.

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> JD Mass>And they told me, sit down. It takes intentional, effort to really build such a level of humanity that I had never seen before. I got very excited when I saw them. And so I, talk about my experience, and then I take them through seven steps to healing the harms of our culture.

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> Curtis Jackson>So, one of your passions is reparations. So tell us about why you're so passionate about that.

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> JD Mass>Because there's a level of humanity in it, and we haven't learned that level of humanity.

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> JD Mass>And there's a level of humanity in black culture, and we don't learn about that either. Right.

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> JD Mass>so much of the harm of our culture to even us less melanated folks is due to the fact that there's, no real truth taught about how we got here and why we caused so much harm. And what do other cultures do believe in? How do they practice what's important to them? And so it's hard to even know anything beyond the fact that to us, this is life. And I try and tell people, and, there's a saying going around these days that's kind of popular, life be life.

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> JD Mass>And no, it doesn't the world be worlden, because life is beautiful. Life is the earth providing us nutrients and us, you know, having creativity. And that's life, right? This is a death based system. And until we start to repair the harm of our anti black racism, until we start to even understand the motivation behind it. And this is, for me, beyond the check that everybody's so worried about it.

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> JD Mass>But until we see it as true harm that needs to have an intentional effort to heal it, we struggle with our own level of understanding humanity, right? We understand. We struggle with our own level of understanding how our morals are shaped. And so I say, my example in the book, is what if I'm walking across the street and I get hit by a car? What if that car was intentionally trying to run me over and I'm in the right of way. I got the walk sign, I'm in the right lane, you know, the walk path, and I get run over. Do the rest of you, Curtis, sit around and go, I didn't do it. Don't look to me for help.

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> JD Mass>No. The people around would go, oh, my gosh, let's go help this person.

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> JD Mass>Okay. Don't touch them because you don't want to hurt them any worse. Right? So if we start doing things without knowledge of how we got here and an understanding of what truly our cultural harm is, then we can cause more harm. But at the same time, we don't not do anything because we didn't cause it.

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> JD Mass>Right? So when you call the ambulance, the ambulance doesn't say, well, I didn't do it. I'm not going to help them. No.

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> JD Mass>We have a system set up in place to help repair the harm. And it takes intention and there's going to be pain involved. If you're going to move me and I got a busted up knee and a messed up back and head trauma, you're probably going to cause me pain. And so even in the repair process, right, if you have to surgically repair something, you're cutting open something to get to somewhere else to fix that problem so that we can start the healing process. And there is pain involved in that. There's pain involved in lifting weights and strengthening yourselves, there's pain involved in rehabilitation process.

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> JD Mass>But there's also such a beautiful result when we do it right, when we start to heal. When you see that person get injured and you call the police, there's something in, I mean, called 911, there's something inside of you that has concern. I hope he's okay. I hope that person heals. You would love to find out that that person healed the family members of that person's want to know, right? There's an entire ecosystem of humanity that comes from the healing process that we do not address in this. And we. And it, you know, step four before this goes to appreciating the, appreciating the value of other cultures.

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> JD Mass>There is no greater asset in our country's growth and development than the value of black culture then the value of black folks building our right. Having the skill sets of the carpentry, having the skill sets of farming, having the skill sets of being connected to the earth, having the skill sets of being cool and influential and just connected in such a way, having the skill sets of love and, peace and harmony, that black power stands for love, peace and justice, instead of white power standing for causing harm. There is a value to that. So healing anti blackness isn't just a cost. Reparations is not a cost. We have costs. When we go to the supermarket, we cost us our time. It costs us our money to put gas in the car and to get there. It costs us our money to buy things.

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> JD Mass>We're not worried about costs. If there's a value on the other end of it. And there's a tremendous value for us at the other end of reparations. And that's what's important to me.

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> Curtis Jackson>So what is your opinion on cancel culture, and how would you define it?

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> JD Mass>So? I would define it as anything from murdering somebody and war, as a form of canceling to not being able to have a conversation and work through some things so that we can learn. And instead, we find disagreement as a place where we shut down and don't continue a conversation, where we don't say to. When we don't see people making mistakes and say, we don't have to just punish them, but we also can work with them. Right?

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> JD Mass>And so it's so easy and we feel good about ourselves because we're in a place of privilege to just shut down a conversation.

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> JD Mass>Oh, that person wore a blackface. Oh, that person said this comment about gays. Oh, that person doesn't agree with me. And we cancel that. Well, if you're in a position of systemic power, canceling doesn't bother you as much, but it's causing harm nonetheless. Still, when we actually could, as we saw in the state of Virginia, when, they determined that long ago, the governor, I think it was at the time, had warned blackface, white folks wanted to cancel him more so than black folks did. They wanted him to now show some level of repair in his work that he had healed and learned his lessons. That's a powerful statement. So to work through this, right, it. The muscles were torn going back to the making muscles and buildings. You know, in a strengthening, standpoint, you tear the muscles when you're lifting weights. And then when the muscles heal, that's why you give it a break. There's pain involved the next day, but that healing makes them stronger. And that's what the potential of removing, cancel culture as the way we operate with something instead of working through and teaching and finding out maybe there's a, language difference. And the way we're receiving the information is not the way it was intended when it was spoken, or maybe somebody was cracking a joke. And even though we didn't like it, didn't really cause that much harm, we're making more of a deal out of it by canceling it and not allowing us to move forward. The spirit is always moving. Energy is in constant motion.

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> JD Mass>We can't try and control energy by stopping it. We actually would do much greater by just having the conversation. Because the other part about it, right in one form, cancel culture, is, you know, let's, remove our books about race and everything. And on the other side, it's, if you don't agree with me, you don't get to, you know, if you say these harmful things, we're going to not support you, and we're going to cancel your ability to move forward. Both of them are harmful in stopping us from getting somewhere.

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> Curtis Jackson>Let's talk about some of the challenges that you faced on your journey to healing.

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> JD Mass>Well, one of them is cancel culture.

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> JD Mass>right now, after George Floyd and that start to push towards healing, there was a big pushback on whether or not books should be appropriate, whether we should learn about our history, or whether we're just going to keep making white folks feel bad, and we're not going to get anywhere in this world. And so there is even colleges that used to be the place where we could have these discussions. And I think part of that is a pushback that on the liberal side of things, when right leaning folks would want to come speak at colleges, liberal students and teachers and whatnot started to shut them down. Now there's that backlash.

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> JD Mass>And so it's very hard to even have discussions on college campuses, anymore.

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> JD Mass>You have so many rules and whatnot, and that's the target audience that I want to work with.

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> JD Mass>so finding that there's so many other problems people are dealing with right now, they don't want to have the conversation of race.

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> JD Mass>And because we've never healed from it, we've never really gotten away from it. We've just run away from it. Right.

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> JD Mass>We've, oh, it doesn't happen as much anymore. There's so much still denial going on and there's so much pain, economically overdose, that go beyond race going on, that it's difficult to still have the conversation, and get to a place where we actually really work towards something. Because one of the other challenges that, where we are in this system is, you know, when like, you got a job, you see something's wrong, but you need your job, right? So you're not going to say anything. You might go home and talk to your loved ones about it. What should I do? If we didn't have those pressures, then you'd be a good person. You would, you would. Being a good person, you would go and say, hey, that's wrong. Well, if you're wrong is being done by the boss and the boss's bosses, you're at, you're at a threat. And so now there's also so much of the, difficulty to change is because I don't want to lose at least what I have right now. And so if I lose what I have, then what do I do with it? Right.

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> JD Mass>so my challenge is to get them to see, get people to see that if we start to let go of some of the harmful ways, if we start to let go of our dependencies on some of these cultural systems that are built in place, social systems, this desire for such convenience, this desire to have our emotions be the center of our universe versus sharing things in a more collective way and supporting one another and serving one another, and the value and the enjoyment that's going to come from that. And so helping to shift the ideology from our fears of losing something to what we can really gain if we really let go of the harmful ways is the challenge.

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> Curtis Jackson>Tell us about any current, upcoming projects that you're working on that people need to be aware of.

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> JD Mass>So, I am putting the seven steps. I'm a, ah, little challenged right now. just getting the technological help. I have a seven steps program. so one of the challenges is finishing up this seven steps program and being able to promote it.

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> JD Mass>I'm looking for the right partner in an organization that's already working for justice or equity or something to that nature. what I found in anti racism work is because there's this been, this recent push over the past, however, 20 some odd years that white folks need to work on white folks, in an anti racism way. And then we can work on, you know, healing the work with other folks. But we need to kind of fix ourselves first. The problem with that is it's the blind leaving, leading the blind. And I don't mean to cause harm or put down anybody who's doing the work. I think the work is great.

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> JD Mass>Sometimes we need to have a level of greater understanding that says, yes, you're doing this the right way. Right. It can't just be us completely doing this on our own, because there's just so much we don't know about the other cultures, and it's purposely been done by the system. So what I'm doing is the seven steps. if I can get the support of organizations that already have, black folks, people of color, that can also say, hey, this is going on, and this is something we can get behind.

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> JD Mass>I'm looking to really launch. That is a major focus of mine right now, is the seven steps and working on speaking at colleges and getting across to that community.

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> Curtis Jackson>Okay, so, raceforwhat.com is the website closes out with some final thoughts. Maybe if that was something I forgot to talk about that you would like to touch on, or any final thoughts you have for the listeners.

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> JD Mass>So, my final thoughts are two things. One, we come from a scarcity mentality. And because of that, because our culture is based on a european thought, process based on a european culture that lives in an area that does not have all of the resources that the earth provides us. And we need those resources for our bodies, right? We are not whole unless we go out elsewhere to where melanated people are occupying those lands, and they're willing to share because they come from an abundant mindset.

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> JD Mass>And an abundant mindset leads us to a more comfortable village to raise a child, we're all sharing the earth. The earth provides for us.

00:32:05.834 --> 00:33:15.786
> JD Mass>in an area of scarcity, we see each other as competition. And if you look at our entire economic system, we are based on competition. And competition leads us to believe that if you have something I don't and or really that leads to the competition, that there's a scarcity of resources, then we want to do as much as we can to control those things. And that leads to greed and harm in so many ways that we don't even understand are associated with this culture of white supremacy. And if we can start to untangle and believe that, if we can see that our two pronged political system is part of this scarcity mentality, right, that we only have Democrats or Republicans, and yet, if you look past the leadership and the corporate greed behind both parties, there's somebody on each. There are people on each side and the majority of the people on each side that would give you $100 if you needed it and they had it, that would pick you up on the side of the road and take you somewhere safe if you needed it and they were able to do so.

00:33:15.890 --> 00:33:24.602
> JD Mass>That would come and help you fix a flat tire if you needed it and they were able to do so. That level of humanity exists on both sides.

00:33:24.657 --> 00:34:04.548
> JD Mass>And if we don't see, if we see each other through the lens of what we're shown on tv, then we're stopping ourselves from really experiencing humanity at a much greater level. And so the other part of what racism does is it makes us position ourselves. It's more important to worry about how do I strategically get the most out of this situation? You know, what's best for me and my family and all of that. And we don't really focus on how do I just be the best version of myself? How do I feed myself the healthiest meals? How do I provide, for not only me, but the people around me that I influence?

00:34:04.596 --> 00:34:28.585
> JD Mass>How do I improve my quality of life and the quality of life of others by my daily activities. And so being the best version of yourself is harder to do in this level of scarcity. But if we really untangle and look at, there's plenty of resources on the, We can reuse the land differently, we can reuse the resources differently.

00:34:28.617 --> 00:34:54.639
> JD Mass>We can rethink about how we look at money and the use of it, because it's really only supposed to be a medium of exchange. There's so much we can do differently if we take a step back. Don't try to change anything yet. Until we seek some understanding and really reflect on what is happening between us and the earth and each other, we could be the best version of ourselves and we'd enjoy life a lot more that way.

00:34:56.380 --> 00:35:23.137
> Curtis Jackson>All right, ladies and gentlemen, raceforwhat.com. i'll put the website in the show notes. Please be sure to share this to as many people as possible. Follow rate review if you have any guests or suggestion topics, Curtis Jackson, 1978 at att.net is the place to send them. get on your favorite podcast app. Leave us a review, follow the show, share it. Thank you for listening and supporting.

00:35:23.313 --> 00:35:27.777
> Curtis Jackson>And JD Mask, thank you for all that you do, and thank you for joining us.

00:35:27.914 --> 00:35:33.710
> JD Mass>Well, thank you for having me. I appreciate you and I appreciate your listeners for giving me a lesson.

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> Curtis Jackson>For more information on the living the Dream podcast, visit www.djcurvefball.com until next time, stay focused on living the dream.

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> JD Mass>Dream.