Ilia + Tony Jackson
I realize this post is long. Too long to be considered a proper “MiniSeries” post. However, I wanted to share our conversation because in the context of what is happening in our country, it is important to listen. Although it is a personal belief of mine that active and empathetic listening should be done at all times :)
Thank you for being so open and honest Ilia and Tony. Our time together was very enriching for me. I hope, dear reader, our conversation is for you as well.
Ilia and Tony Jackson are husband and wife, living in Columbus, Ohio. Our conversation starts out with what Ilia and Tony have been up to during quarantine and social distancing. Ilia was furloughed from her job. We’ll jump in here…
Ilia: Every time I’d start a new career, new position, different company, didn’t matter what it was. There would always be a point in time… where I would just be unhappy in what I was doing. And I would start looking for something else. And I would always come back to writing. Every single time.
Furlough has been good for you to get back into writing.
Tony: It has been. She’s been a different person almost, did she tell you that? Yeah, she’s been a completely different person. I like this person. [Ilia being furloughed] hasn’t been great, but from [the Ilia writing] perspective, it’s been good.
It’s given you the room to detach completely from your job. And given you space to do it, and permission to do it. Because there isn’t really anything else you can do right now.
Ilia: Absolutely. Until last Monday, Roman [our son] was out of daycare. Even then, I was able to write when he slept. This week [since he’s back in daycare,] I’ve been able to do a full draft of a 112 page book. I want to write everything. I want to write books, I want to write scripts for film, I want to write TV shows; I want to be a female writer to hit every platform. I want to win an Oscar. That’s my goal.
With this quarantine I’ve realized and talked to a lot of people who say you have to actually practice your craft. Writing a book, it’s a long term process. So I need to do something more in the short term. I’m going to start a website, I’m going to blog, and I’m going to try to publish a short story once a month.
Great short term goals! I’ve heard a lot from artists and writers about showing up and putting in the work for your craft. Whether or not you’re inspired or ‘in the mood’ every time.
Ilia: Right?…
I’m really trying to put in the effort into my dream. Cause that’s the other half of it right? You can want something but if you don’t put the work in it’s not going to happen. Having the time to do it is the other half.
…
Tony: I sell software to hospitals that tracks instrumentation. In recent months it’s been tracking N-95 masks, N-100 masks, gowns, pumps, ventilators, etc. to really figure out, “How many do we have, where are they?” A lot of the stuff has been going to different off-site places. Ohio Health, Ohio State, Mount Carmel, they have their own individual [off-site, overflow] set ups at the Convention Center. So they had to track what went there, how much do they have, if they get a surge what does that look like? Also with this software, it allowed them to keep staff employed… working in different capacities because surgeries weren’t going on. Surgery is a primary function of this software. It was a real shift in gears and a lot of thinking out of the box.
…
Tony: I’m in the interview process right now. Over the next three days, five interviews. I’ve taken a lot from [college football] experiences: showing up, putting in the work even though I don’t want to do it…If I don’t get this job…UH [big sigh] but it is a great opportunity. Hopefully it leads to where [Ilia] can have more time to do her craft and give her that support. So that’s something I’m excited for…
[The company I work for] sells software and products that are used for surgeries and there are no surgeries. So [the job I’m interviewing for is] a great opportunity for me, but it’s also scary because it’s unknown. Taking over this team, they will be looking at me like, “What do I do?” They don’t have anything to do right now. There are only maybe two hospitals out of their 50 that will allow them to come in. And people are scared, if they need surgery, they’re not going to go in. It could be a good year before things start to get back to normal. I work sales for a company where they’re about numbers. During this interview process, I’m asking, “What does that mean? You talk about holding me accountable to a quota. What does that mean? [The hospitals we sell products to] just had to take a pay cut or had to lay off their staff. And you want me to go talk to them?”
…
How have you guys been the past few weeks?
Ilia: With the other everything?
Yeah, the additional, on top of everything, everything.
Ilia: I have yet to watch the George Floyd video. I refuse. I don’t need to watch a man suffocate for eight minutes. It’s everywhere. You know what I mean?…
The day that it hit me I was holding our son, Roman, I just looked at him and in my mind I saw him on the ground. With a police officer on his neck. I just lost it, I lost my shit. I had to hand him to Tony and go upstairs to cry. That was the first time that it really affected me… We’re in it every single day and not just because we’re African American. We’re just down the street [from an area where] there’s constant crime. When we first moved in five years ago we couldn’t tell the difference between gunshots and fireworks, now we can.
…
Ilia: I felt a lot of guilt when it hit me, because we’ve been very successful as African Americans. I didn’t grow up in the way a lot of activists did…[I am mixed,] African American and Puerto Rican. The house I grew up in was Puerto Rican culture…
We definitely had those experiences where my mom had to choose between putting food on the table and paying the light bill. We weren’t poor, but we weren’t wealthy by any means. I’ve seen a lot of things growing up. From an early age I knew I wanted to be different. I didn’t want to live that life… Not have to worry about paying a bill, living paycheck to paycheck, not having the savings, not even speaking the word retirement because I wouldn’t make enough money to save for it.
With that being said, I had to make sacrifices I didn’t even realize that I made about who I am and about my culture. Specifically in the workplace. A lot of that meant being neutral. A lot of that meant being silent and letting things slide if say, somebody made a racial slur or a backhanded comment. Some things that just didn’t sit well with me but I’m just not going to rock the boat… It’s about things like that. Being mixed and having a black son, that’s not enough. Me being Black is not enough to say that I don’t have my part. I do have a part in this. Everyday I’m trying to figure out what that is.
Tony: I’ve seen a lot. Didn’t have a lot growing up, but I had enough. I am one of six, the last one. My dad is one of nine, my mom is one of eight. Really big family. A lot of cousins. Predominantly pretty close. But you know there are some cousins, sisters, and brothers that make holidays a joy [laughter]. Being so young with a lot of older cousins and siblings I got to see a a lot. Whether it was drug problems or problems with parents and those things. I think I took it as, I always had choices. I could either choose to go along with that or I could choose another path.
Go along with….?
Tony: Go along with the negativity, whether it was stealing or drugs… A lot of the people in my family had children at a very young age. You get the part about being part of the system, welfare or those types of things. It was really instilled in me by my parents, who had kids at a young age themselves, to see that. They never told me to not do it. They basically told me, “This is your choice. You can go down this route and make the mistakes that they did or learn from it.” …
I chose to take a different path, a different route. Sometimes I feel guilty because I was fortunate enough that people went before me. They had to learn those lessons firsthand. I got to see those lessons being learned. I was very fortunate of circumstance…It was difficult to make a choice to stay in school, to play sports, to go to college when I was not seeing very many people in my family go.
My sister, my bother and three of my cousins actually went to and graduated from college. There wasn’t that blueprint…
I had to learn a lot of things very very early. With that, I put on blinders. It got to the point where… I couldn't even associate with that part of being Black in America, because I went a different route and saw success. I wouldn’t let it pull me back in and not be successful. I played football for Ohio State and we had a lot of guys from all over the country that came from bad areas. When they come to Ohio State, when they come to Columbus, probably 98% of them stay. They wouldn’t even go back home for breaks because it was so negative. Being part of a program and being part of success, seeing that they can do things in sports or outside of sports and be successful. You tend to shelter yourself, and then your family, until you don’t necessarily identify with that anymore. That’s where some of those guilty feelings come from. But along the way, you have to deal with being Black in America. You’re on a football team with 120 guys. You have to deal with if one of my white fellow football players pops off at an officer, he can say what he wants but I can’t. If I get stopped, I gotta remember and do everything my parents told me about being pulled over verses when I’m with a white friend, they can say, “Why’d you pull me over? What’s the problem?” I can’t do those things…
So talking to you guys it seems like the stuff that’s coming up for you is going into your past and seeing where your choices have lead you. Taking that and trying to guide your choices into the future.
Tony: Yeah, I think we are. But then when you go back into your past and you start to realize or think about where our choices have lead us you also start to realize what choices you actually had. And what choices you didn’t have. What choices did I have being who I am personally versus what choices did I have as a Black man? Then also what choices do other Black and Brown people actually have? Right? We were fortunate enough we had a choice to go to school to get an education. There’s a lot of people we grew up with who didn’t have a legitimate shot of getting an education. With that education we are then provided with more choices to go on to college. We were also part of athletic programs and we had a choice to go to practice or not go to practice. I think those things make the significant difference about our past and what paths that we chose to take. Because we had the opportunity. So many people these days they don’t even have the opportunity.
…
Seeing all the yelling that’s going on in social media, sometimes the yelling turns into shaming because you’re not publicly displaying what you believe. Ok, that’s just not me, I am not a protester. This is how I’m dealing with it. I’m better at taking pictures of people and talking to people and putting people’s stories out there. I’m listening.
Tony: I have a problem with people shaming people who are handling this situation differently. Because I think people are taking the time to process things in their own way. To make an informed decision you have to have information. At least enough information to do something right. And to do it in your way and everyone’s way is different. My way is not going out and protesting. My way, personally, I’ve been thinking about it.
I work for a major corporation that have a lot of opportunities that are not reaching the diversified group that we need to reach. I have an opportunity [to help there] because the biggest problem within our company is with [my division,] the sales division. Marketing, operations, logistics, fine. Those are diverse groups. Sales? It is not… It is predominately white male. I have the opportunity to change that in a lot of ways…
I can bring some younger people along into my organization that look different than the people already there and [mentor them]. When you go into [sales at] a company like this, you’re talking to very powerful surgeons and CEOs. It can be intimidating if you don’t have anybody to put you under their wing and let you know it’s going to be ok. It’s ok to mess up, it’s ok to fail. You don’t get that when you grow up in a society that says, “You’re Black, you get one shot.” Or, “If you fail, you’re out.”
Ilia: Or you don’t have any shot.
Tony: A lot of kids think they gotta be an athlete. “That’s my only way out. I gotta play sports to get to college, to get out.” How do we show them that there are other routes? How do we show them that when they start cutting grass, this is how they make money from it, this is how they save money from it, this is how they buy their own lawn mower, this is how they buy another lawn mower so they can cut two yards, and start to develop that knowledge so they can get to more opportunities?
…
Ilia: With George Floyd it sucks that it took that to happen when there’s been so many of those instances in history. With the pandemic, it took that for the world to be like we’ve had enough. Because it is enough…but it took the world to be at a crisis for the world to actually hurt with all these people who have been hurting for generations.
Tony: I think that’s a great point. It took a virus that doesn’t see race, prejudice, class, status; to realize that this affects everyone…
I was listening to a podcast, [talking about how] the killings before George Floyd, Black people would justify, was it a life worth protesting for? Or feeling a certain type of way for? What was his background? What did he do? Those types of things. “Oh well I’m not going to stand up for that one. Should have never been there, wrong place, wrong time.” What people are starting to understand is there are not very many ‘right place, right times’.
…
I’m wondering with the pandemic and everyone who lost their job or are at home furloughed, if having the space because there’s nothing else to do, I’m sure that’s had an impact. To build up.
Tony: Yeah! There’s still a lot of mental health issues and situations going on with social isolation that people are dealing with. That has fueled a lot of this. I think that was the initial eruption. If you think about it with the peaceful protests? People are able to socialize in a positive manner and it’s giving them something to do that’s around other people. That’s where I see that positivity is good, as long as we don’t see a surge in COVID cases. Hopefully, cross our fingers about that because…
Ilia: People forget that we are still in a pandemic.
Tony: Right. And media will just paint that picture the wrong way if that happens. I think that it is giving people a positive outlet to socialize and congregate together.
At least it’s all outside!
…
Ilia: How I’ve been trying to tackle this day by day is talking to a lot of my white friends. Just having conversations with them. We have a really tight circle I’m very proud of. A lot of them reached out to me and said something. Some of my Black friends have been upset that their white friends haven’t reached out. I haven’t been upset because maybe they just don’t know what to say! A lot of them don’t know what to say. If I broach the subject and we talk about it, maybe they’ll feel better talking to someone else about it, and so on. I’m really trying to incorporate my writing and get my voice out that way…I’ve not been a fan of posting on social media. I’ll repost things, but as far as writing book posts, that’s not my MO. I’m still chasing a two year old around! Life is still functioning.
Tony: It’s been tough for me. I’ve had to suppress a lot of my feelings in order to prepare for this next opportunity in my life… It’s not that I feel I work for a company that I have to [ignore what is going on to continue the interview process.] In fact my president has spoken against racism… I think [I have suppressed these feelings to] focus my energy on these interviews. I’ll be honest with you, I cry. There are times at night I wake up at 2am and I just cry. There’s a lot of emotions. I think about the times where it could have been me. I think about the times where it can still be me. Just the feeling, I have a lot of white friends, we can go out and have a good time but what they don’t understand is that I have to conduct business differently. They’re like “Tony come on, we’re not doing anything.” Yeah, we’re not doing anything, but my presence changes that.
Ilia: My presence changes what we are doing regardless… It didn’t affect me as hard until I had my own child. My baby is a male and he’s a Black male. He is visibly a Black male, you can’t mistake him for anything else, even though he is mixed…
I get now why parents wait up for their kids at home when they go out.
Tony: All parents no matter what race they are, are worried about their kids and they stay up. The reasons why they’re worried are different. Did your kids do something wrong, did they get arrested, did they get in an accident, yea, all that…Where are they and could they be affected just because they are Black? Not doing anything wrong. The tragedies we’ve seen in recent years, a lot of them weren’t doing anything wrong, you know? Wearing a hoodie, a pack of Skittles, you know? You’re not doing anything wrong. That could be me, that could be my son.