Sam Simmons

Matter of fact, they can get up and move if they got a little money, right?

So the only thing they know is what they see on TV.

And the only time you show me on TV is straddled over a police car where you got the other person who answers the policeman from their car.

and don't have to get straddled, and I'm a nice white individual driving by, and I see this often enough, the conclusion is, there must be something extra wrong with them.

So that adds to the disparity in terms of, you know, now I don't feel no empathy for that person because that's them.

Okay?

Right.

No, but again, it don't get you nowhere.

But the other thing is, is how do you connect the dots?

And see, we want to connect the dots from now going forward.

A good part of our population don't want to connect the dots going backwards and then moving forward.

And so my focus around male trauma and Pacific Black male trauma is to say when you have

long, continuous trauma, it has an effect on how you see the world and how the world sees you.

And that is, you know, so when we break this down, I think, you know, sometimes I think, and this is my stuff, that we get kind of lazy when we talk about disparities from one direction.

Because, you know, if I want to address a disparity, one of the biggest things, and we've seen this,

is if you educate me, I might do better for myself, okay?

If you done, if I, you know, historically have been seen from a servant role, okay, then I'm more likely to feel better doing stuff for other folks.

Because one of the things, when you talk about folks who work in the field, one of the things in our community

is we feel a lot better doing stuff for other folks than ourselves because we've been conditioned to do that.

We get praised by the community for that.