Kay williams is attorney and the host and executive producer of the podcast holding with ebony. Kay williams. She is the first black castmate of the real housewives of new york, and shes here tonight to speak about her book, but im black. The good news about being black America Today in, her book, ebony, will offer her thoughts on the importance of celebrating the black experience in america. She highlights representation, historical knowledge as bedrocks leading a first class black life. She will also reflect on her own life and experiences. So you will better get to know the ebony that youve seen on tv. Williams writing is at turns entertaining and incredibly inspiring. After finishing this book, youll be reawakened to your own worth and. Understand the value of celebrating blackness, whether yours or others, as williams said in her infamous tagline. Ive had to work twice as for half as much, but im coming for everything. And she wont be satisfied until our people have unfettered access to everything right alongside her . She boldly proclaims that blackness is single, most misunderstood construct in america. And im betting black. Williams invites you to join her on the quest to show the world blackness really is. And now further ado, please welcome Ebony Williams to the stage. Thank you much for that incredible introduction. Good evening. It is so amazing to see yalls friendly faces. This is my very book event for bet on black. The very good news. Thank. The very good news about being black in America Today. And i have to say, im really happy that were starting in Baltimore Charm city. I was last here spring of year for the north Atlantic Regional conference for a little known called Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority, inc. I see some stories in the house tonight. Yeah, listen, i really want to spend this time with you over the next hour giving you what you most want of this evening, which i would think is access inside information going the cover of the book going behind my experience broadly. You know, we are here to talk about bet on black in this second day. Yes. Second day of black history month, 2023. And we will talk about the book. Im going to start with telling you why this book and why this moment. I think thats important to address. But ultimately, this is going to be around your questions and my ability to really answer them deeply and intimately and this evening, that sounds good. Okay, great. So i bet on black and why this moment. First of all, i study well if anybody saw anybody see view this week. Okay. Yeah. So then you know that i am a proud graduate of uncchapel hill. Shout out to the tar heels and im a proud graduate with a major in black american studies and. As i said directly to the of florida who has decided to make it make it his business to really try to erase and annihilate and destroy the academic value and integrate of studying blackness in america. My god, this just could not a more precise right moment for this book. I have to say i did not anticipate running up in to this this horror that we find ourselves as a nation in this moment. I started off writing this book, but my god im certainly glad that i have created this curriculum a lot of ways on the back of bed on black, most you probably have your books already. Of course you buy them tonight. If you dont, ill sign them and well take some pictures. But at the back of this book, it was important me to include a resource guide because. What youre going to get in the pages of bet on black art, deep thoughts and conversation starters. But i really want you to go deeper. You know, this is not about accepting. I say everything i believe as you know, the start and end of these conversations. This is about taking my on black moves which are tangential blueprint, like steps to navigate what is to be a black person in America Today. But to take those nuggets, yall, and go deeper and go on your own journey or continue, im sure most of you have already long ago started this journey, but go deeper in your own personal journey of exploring and really redefining what your blackness is for yourself and for for those around. What i found is blackness is probably single, most misunderstood concept product in America Today. And again, to reference the florida governor, i was triggered behind backstage. I was watching the view before my segment and they played a clip of ron desantis saying that he was eradicating studies studies in the state of florida at the Higher Education level because he was he didnt want to be this zombie studies. The man said zombie studies. Yeah so if thats not demonizing blackness, if thats not an overt its not even thinly veiled at this point. Yall its over out in the open they play it in our face attempt to illegitimacy it legitimize what it is to be black and educated and qualified. And thats what we are in this nation. And thats why i wrote this book and i wanted to write right now because especially in the peak of coming, i cant even say on the heels off, brother Terry Nichols was just murdered, you know, weeks ago, as we put him to rest, just yesterday. So as we are still very much in the midst of trying to reckon and i have to say trying to reckon with what it is to be attacked daily in our homeland. And this is our homeland. I really did not want the moment to pass us, didnt want it to feel like brother floyd was murdered. We march, we protested. There was some level legislation and i have to say small level because the George Floyd Justice and police act is still outstanding and we have to get that done. And now were going to put a bow on it and we blackness next. We cant do it. I wont do it. So this book again is to make sure that in 2023 and beyond we keep these conversations top of my we keep the curiosity there, we keep the pressure and we do need to put some pressure. One of the things i say in the book all is we to be a bit more demanding as a people. I start chapter in the book. Youll with a historical quote of some sort. Some go as far back as frederick. Theres a lot of Frederick Douglass theres lot of James Baldwin, some contemporaries like denzel washington. I quote him with saying ease is a greater threat to greatness than hardship, ease is a greater threat to progress than hardship. And thats the chapter. And i go into that. But when i say we have to be more demanding as a black people in our nation and it is our nation im quoting Frederick Douglass, who says, power concedes nothing without a demand, and it never did and it never will. And off the heels of that assertion, which i know to be true, ive lived it and i know everybody in here it to be true because yall live it every day less demand, more. You know, if we really expect change in power structures and Systemic Systems and processes that work to subordinate our existence, to maintain us. And as a second very class of being a secondary class, being in our own country, it has to start with us demanding it, not asking it, not negotiating about it, demanding it. So thats a little bit about why i wrote book. Thats a little bit about why wrote the book right now. And now id like to open this up really, truly all for your questions. And again, dont feel like its got to come from the pages of the book, the books, but out just two days. I dont expect to have read the entire thing or any of it at all. Feel free to ask me about the view could add. I hosted the Breakfast Club the past two days, which was a lot of fun and also important work and an important space for the culture. You feel free to ask about anything, including many around that. You know, and just anything that you want to talk about in the culture, in the news headlines, whats going on with some of this legislation, whats going with the law, whats going on with social justice, any of it . And i will take your questions. And there are microphones. Thank you, my dear. Go ahead and make your way and yall can feel free because we want to keep it moving. Weve got some visitors here recording. Weve got some virtual as well. Shout out to yall in virtual please line if you will ask your questions and well do it that way. Yes, dear. Whats your name . Jamila. Hi, jamila hello, heavenly. Thank you so much for just even stating really quickly here. How being and black in america is a and i know im experiencing that in my own place of work im an educator and so i really do plan on taking your and hopefully adapting some ways for the children. Well yesterday you know the first africanamerican governor less moore was not out to and that. He stated in his speech that the word service was direct glee as a latin word. For in latin it means slavery. And he talked about basically this service is the only way that we are ever going to come up. And i know this to be the fact, but when we tie this into the government and we hear this language, what are some of your thoughts on, you know, making servant worker ship and, you know, a way of being in maryland so much so that it might even replace educators are qualified because were using mentors of teachers in the. Thats profound. Yes. So Servant Leadership is a value im sure that we all share. But i think whats important in what youre is that we dont ever want to get to a place where we are erasing and undermine, meaning the value of our educators. I mean, right. Like when i think about the aspects of liberation of people in america, we, which is really what this book is about bet on black is nothing if its not a an overt effort on my part and an invitation to all of to continue the of fully liberating and re humanizing black people in america. Because i suggest work has never been fully done. So if we start with that premise right. It going back to Douglass Douglass before became the great emancipator matter. Does anybody know what frederick was so little bit of a trick question. How he was a reader. He learned to read. He tricked his masters white son to teach him the alphabet. I bet you spell cat. The white boy would say its cat. Okay, well noted. Literally. This is how an enslaved piece of property chattel learned to read and pre emancipated america to socalled emancipated america when it was against the law and punishable by up to death. Thats how threatening an educated black person is in this country because an educated person is a black person who is not inclined to submit in a perpetual state of servitude. So i think this is really provocative. Ive never really unpacked this until moment, but i love it because what is sold to us as a bill goods of the kind of vote you wisdom that comes through service, and god knows i make a service to all mankind. Azikiwe absolutely. And that does not have to shall not be the end our position. So to me i think my short answer to you, if i can make it succinct, its about our positioning as black people in america not shrinking it, not reducing it. I think the effort since weve arrived on the shores since 1619 has been to exclude our positioning. Is that solely up servitude. But now the good news about black in America Today so we get to to to sit in full expansion and if we choose fast to to be the space in which we lead primarily amazing. And if we choose it to be academia and if we choose it to be executive, including the presidency of the United States, if we included to be judicious leadership. Shout out to the fantastic, historic and tangible down jackson on the Supreme Court of the United States of america. If we choose it to be. Ownership in business, ownership and finance ownership in land and property and real estate is something that is very germane to our liberation. Black people. You cannot be free if you dont anything. You can not be free if you dont own anything. Open chapter six. I think its called leverage with that statement. So i think its about rejecting anything that confines kind our positioning to one of servitude which can look like subordination and challenging systems and individuals and each other to expand. Thank you. Brilliant. Hello, darling. Hello. Your name, day journey. Day journey. You had. I like your. Is this pearls analyzed . Your jacket. Uh, i dont know what it is. I just thought it was cute. Its dazzling. Its giving thanks. Go to. My question was why bet on like when you were thinking of the title, what made you finally decide on that . Yeah, thats great. So let me start with my process of this book. I wrote a book in small imprint. It was released back in 2017 called pretty powerful appearance and success. And its a great book, very, you know, colorful glowing. But it was a very different process. So i knew at some point i into a place professionally and frankly just in my lived experience. You know ill be 40 in september. Which you know yeah i mean its obviously still relatively young but its also like you a little ive lived a little now like for real been through some things seasoned. Thank you, sis and so i. I felt, frankly, a responsibility, especially with the platforms i occupy right. Not everybody. The privilege of being on the Breakfast Club. Not everybody has the privilege of being on a bravo platform that has global reach as a first historic black housewife in the city of new york. Not everybody gets to be on the view and just, hey, whoopi, you know, so when you get that platform, i believe i have it in here responsible party to do work on the platform. So i knew i needed to write another book come on get to your question. I didnt really know how to it. So like probably most of yall in here my phone and my little memos, my little note section, that is my best friend. So literally yall for like a year and a half, i would just if i had a if i felt moved by something, i would just make a note almost do wish. I bought my phone so you guys could see just the litany and the variation where my mind was for the two years and then when i started putting everything, the piece about ownership the piece. I had the blessed experience to go to rwanda last year last spring and somebody said, you know, i didnt fully confess ignorance here. I knew very little about the genocide in rwanda, where you know, a Million People were slaughtered uttered by one another. I in 90 days and the whoopsy in the two sioux. And they killed each other. And it was awful. And then now today not i think theyre only 26 years past it. Not very far. Its illegal to even ask the distinctive if someone is a hutu or a tutsi and they abide by it and they live side by side where one generation ago your grandmother murdered, my mother, or vice versa. And so my cohort, i were like, its amazing that ill do this. But frankly why . Why you so to sit in with one another after such brutality. And that man said to me, because it is in the best interest of rwanda. And i said, thats thats amazing. I said, what if our what if america what if america said that are going to disavow antiblackness, the antisemitism, the homophobia, the transphobia, the islamic phobia, but for no other that its in the best interest of america. Right. Its amazing. And so some of those were the things. So i put it all together. That was the through line of my thinking globally, locally, politically financially, like when i looked at all the academically personally professor, really, when i looked at all the elements and i was like, what is the common factor here . It is an innate, consistent, unapologetic, unmovable, nonnegotiable betting on the blackness, and particularly nowhere in the world and ive had some decent travels. Nowhere in the world is it more important us to have a finite, clear and accurate of blackness than in the United States of america. Because is one of the most perverted elements of identity on. This land in anything else. Msa with you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. On paying here. Hello. My name is steve. My question to you is, what was your experience like being the first black on the housewives of new york . What that experience like and being in that kind of space with those women that have not been around black people and that close proximity of that mix. Yeah, well, certainly not ones werent operating in servitude. Right . Right. So i detail it in Chapter Three because i know that that is germane to the expectation of someone occupying my platform to address it directly. And trust me, i do. The chapter is called disruption apropos. And what do want to share this with you . I did not go on to contrary to popular and contrary to kind of public afterthought. I didnt go on the show. I didnt go on the platform to disrupt my disruption became, a byproduct of hostility that i endured not told oddly unexpectedly because i was a day, one season, one episode one rhony watcher. Unlike many in the culture, but i, i was so i knew a bit but i kind of didnt believe. Remember i was cast right before the racial reckonings of brother floyd summer of 2020. And i guess even i even i had a little of naive going on what i really thought. She shall not be named. And the. One would italys in that moment where it seemed like even the most narrow minded couple sheltered unaware or among us were curious. And what i couldnt believe as that these women werent curious around my experience was like in the same city that they live in as a black woman. And here is where you know, not just bravo, but all of these like reality tv shows try to control for this. Well, what if we make a really pretty what if we make her a little bit light skinned . What we make her really educated and really well dressed. A birkin just like them. And it didnt help all. And it didnt help all. And that by my understanding of blackness being the single most misunderstood in america, because matter the window dressing nomad, somebody said this recently, you cant accomplish your way out of misconceptions. Willful misconceptions of blackness. You cant earn your way out of it. You cant i mean, shout out to meghan markle, who learned the hard way. You cant even white proximate yourself out of it. Yeah, yeah. So what the experience like. It started off as an expose one of curiosity and frankly i just want to get to my what . Like why would i a woman with my positioning do a show like that . Its very simple. The work that i do in the way that i do it, yall are the if you think about it, yall showed up on a thursday night to a library. God bless you. I mean, there were my whole heart. But what that tells me is that youre hungry for the engagement. Y