Dr. Wendy Osefo
speaker
82 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Jun 2025
last heard Jun 2025
Dr. Wendy Osefo’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsNo recordings in the last 12 months.Older appearances are listed below; set an alert to hear about the next one.
Appearances
My closest friend in the political sphere is actually someone who sits on the different side of the aisle from me. And we learn so much from each other. And I say that to say, I think that people make politics a nasty word, but it's really not. Like, I learned so much from other people. And I just wish that we would remove all of the, you know, just the cattiness that comes with it.
Well, my first question to people, if I find that they sit on the same side as me or they sit on a different aisle as me, my first question is why? Why do you believe that? Because sometimes people don't know why they believe or they vote for a certain political party. They just say, oh, I'm this. I'm a Republican. I'm a Democrat. Mm-hmm. And I challenge people all the time and I say, why?
And it's just a simple question, but it leads to a conversation. It'll say, you know, I was raised in a blue collar town and, you know, my blue collar town, this happened or this president gave a similar, like there's always a story. And if there's not a story, it makes people start to think, okay, why do I believe this political view? So I always start with why. I am an educator at heart.
That's what I am. I'm a professor. So I come to people at the very root of every issue and we build upon. I think the thing is when people say Black Lives Matter, you may already think, all right, what do I associate Black Lives Matter with? And so because you've said that, I know the type of person you are.
Or if someone says, I'm a Trump supporter, someone may say, okay, because you're a Trump supporter, I already know who you are and what you think. No. just simply take things to the basics and say, okay, you're Trump supportive. Cool. Why? Tell me why. And that throws a lot of people off guard because they think you're going to attack them.
If you say Black Lives Matter, you know, some people may be like, why do you don't think all lives matter? No, just say, oh, Black Lives Matter. Oh, okay. Why? educate me, you know? And when you start having conversations like that and taking out the antagonistic nature of it, it's simple. It's like, okay, tell me why. Oh, okay. That's why. Well, let me tell you why I believe what I believe.
And then they're like, uh, no one has ever told me that no one has ever talked to me like this is usually, you know, banter and you're stupid. You're this, you're that. And we don't need all of that. Like, tell me why. And I'll tell you why we can move forward and then have a glass of wine. I like that approach.
I agree with that. And I think that, you know, if nothing else, I've had a few friends who have said that this year they've just educated themselves and they've learned more about people, about organizations. And I just think that that's really important. So, you know, when you when people are saying Black Lives Matter, it's not because, you know, white lives don't matter or anything.
you know, the lives of other people don't matter. Just simply saying we feel as though right now black lives are under attack. I cannot remember in my mind when I have seen a police officer kill a white man on tape. I cannot, I cannot, like I can't. But if you ask me, have you seen a police officer kill a black guy on tape? I could say, yes. I could literally say Philando Castile.
I could say George Floyd. I could say Rashad Brooks. I can name these people's names. And so I just think it's important for us to have these conversations, not because white lives don't matter. We're just saying that black lives are currently under attack and that's really what it is. And, you know, I have these conversations with my friends. You know, I was saying this the other day.
My son was invited over to one of his classmates, you know, houses. Everybody's in quarantine. Let's get together. And the mom said, you know, you guys should come over. Just got him a new, you know, water gun and all this other stuff. And I had to tell my child that he couldn't go and he didn't know why. And I said, because I don't want you playing with a gun. My sons, they're seven and five.
I have never bought them a toy gun. That may seem foreign to people, but that's because you have incidents like Tamir Rice. There was a 12 year old black boy who police pulled up that he was playing with a toy gun. They thought it was a real gun. Before they even looked at him, they killed him. He was 12. He wasn't doing anything. He was just playing. And that was it.
My sons will never have the privilege to play with a toy gun. Like that whole story of, you know, the Christmas story with the boy. His mom said, you'll shoot your eye out. Yeah, that's not relatable to my family because no one in my family that I can know of great, great has ever owned a gun. And the only person who did was my grandfather because he was a police officer.
We don't own guns because people think that you're going to kill them. So that is just something that says, that's how our lives are different. My son wants a super soaker. No, you can't get one. So just simple things like that, like just the bare things that make our lives different, but we live in the same country.
And I just, you know, sharing stories like that with my friends and them sharing different stories with me have just really made this time period one of learning, not just for white people, but also for black people. Like we're all learning. And as long as we continue to learn with open arms, I think that this country is on the right track.
Yeah, I think it's interesting when people say defund the police and what it means. It's like this whole notion of, I don't know if you ever heard of, you know, No Child Left Behind. I believe that was like one of the acts and everyone was like, yeah, you know, that's a great thing. No Child Left Behind. Nobody really read the policy because if you read it, it's really like, it's really bad.
But because of the name. Right. So defund the police doesn't necessarily mean like we want to defund the police. You know, I actually go further. That was my grandfather that I mentioned. My brother is actually a police officer currently. So I have police force. So every time I speak out, people always want to attack me like you hate police. No, my brother puts his life on the line every day.
But defunding the police, for me, Wendy's definition, it simply means that we give so much money to police, we need to start giving that money and allocating it to different entities. It doesn't mean police won't have. It's just that police have so much, like... The point that sometimes when you see things going on, you see them riding down the streets in tanks.
Why are we militarizing our police when we have schools that don't even have books that are older than the 1970s? In Baltimore, they don't even have air conditioning for students when they're in school during the summer months. But police officers are equipped with all types of stuff as if they're going to war. And they're not.
So for me, defunding the police is not something necessarily that I'm advocating for. But I am saying that when we look at public service entities, they should all be equally yoked as far as finances. That's it. I want kids to go to schools with the books that they can read. And they're not, you know, kids are getting kicked out of school because they owe a lunch balance of $2, $4.
Showing 21–40 of 82 · page 2 of 5
← Previous
Next →